The Categorical Imperative

In the philosophy of ethics, one of your classic heavy hitters is Immanuel Kant. This is the same fellow behind "I think, therefore I am" but today we're talking about ethics.  His take on ethics was not unlike his approach to existence; thought is the first and most important thing. He saw rationality as the most sound basis for building an ethical system. What's more, as rational creatures with free will, our first duty is to be rational and not impede the exercise of that free will. 

Ethics really just comes down to "what should you do." One approach is to target good outcomes. If what you do results in "good" things, it's a moral action. But this has dangers. Who decides what is good? And it seems like sometimes good results come from clearly immoral actions and vice versa. Kant figured it was better to judge ethical behavior by how well it adheres to ethical rules (this is called Deontology). And how do we judge whether the rule is ethical? We ask if it is rational, which we can take to mean logically consistent in a universal way. So you can follow whatever rule you choose as long as it would still make sense applied to everyone universally. For example, "Always pay your debts in a timely fashion." If everyone followed this rule that would be great, so feel free to adopt it as a guide for your own actions. On the other hand "A bit of littering is no big deal" fails the test. That may be okay as long as everyone else behaves better than you, but if everyone thinks littering is no big deal you quickly spoil your environment. This duty to live by universally consistent rules what what we call the categorical imperative. 

At this point you may say, "Uh, Kant, that's basically the Golden Rule. We've had that about since the origin of the species." There is definitely truth to this. The Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you," seems very similar. A defender of Kant would point out that the similarity suggests we're on the right track, since the Golden Rule is one of our best common-sense ethical principles, but there are critical differences. The Golden Rule seems to be founded on a desired outcome. IF you want people to pay back their loans, THEN you should pay back yours. This takes us back to the outcome-based ethics and the associated weaknesses. The Categorical Imperative is founded only on logic and is thus thought to be more sound. 

The biggest consequence of the categorical imperative, to Kant, is that lying is always immoral. Lying is a prime example of something that only works if it is not universally taken advantage of. If everyone felt free to lie, we couldn't trust one another and lying would cease to be effective. Lying would seem to be doubly evil because it corrupts the other's free will. If you give someone false information, than their resulting actions are no longer entirely their own; you have taken some of that agency and pushed them to think and do what you wanted them to think and do. 

Like most ethical systems, you may find that it is less than helpful for some of life's more subtle and thorny problems. Most people judge it moral to lie under certain circumstances. And how specific can your proposed ethical law be? Could you say "It's okay for anyone listening to this awesome song and driving on this fun road in this sweet car to go way over the speed limit."? In any case, maybe it gives us a glimpse into how ethics and morality might work.