Jean-Jacques Rousseau, undated aquatint.© Photos.com/Jupiterimages
Rousseau revealed his route in The Social Contract (1762), which called for rule by the “general will.” This may sound like democracy, and, in a sense, it was democracy that Rousseau advocated; but his conception of rule by the general will is very different from the modern idea of democratic government. Today, it is taken for granted that in any society the interests of different citizens will be in conflict, and that as a result for every majority that succeeds in having its will implemented there will be a minority that fails to do so. For Rousseau, on the other hand, the general will is not the sum of all the individual wills in the community but the true common will of all the citizens. Even if a person dislikes and opposes a decision carried by the majority, that decision represents the general will, the common will in which he shares. For this to be possible, Rousseau must be assuming that there is some common good in which all human beings share and hence that their true interests coincide. As man passes from the state of nature to civil society, he has to “consult his reason rather than study his inclinations.” This is not, however, a sacrifice of his true interest, for in following reason he ceases to be a slave to “physical impulses” and so gains moral freedom.
This leads to a picture of civilized human beings as divided selves. The general will represents the rational will of every member of the community. If an individual opposes the decision of the general will, his opposition must stem from his physical impulses and not from his true, autonomous will. For obvious reasons, this idea was to find favour with autocratic leaders of the French Revolution such as Robespierre. It also had a much-less-sinister influence on one of the outstanding philosophers of modern times: Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). Kant
Interestingly, Kant acknowledged that he had despised the ignorant masses until he read Rousseau and came to appreciate the worth that exists in every human being. For other reasons too, Kant is part of the tradition deriving from both Spinoza and Rousseau. Like his predecessors, Kant insisted that actions resulting from desires cannot be free. Freedom is to be found only in rational action. Moreover, whatever is demanded by reason must be demanded of all rational beings; hence, rational action cannot be based on an individual’s personal desires but must be action in accordance with something that he can will to be a universal law. This view roughly parallels Rousseau’s idea of the general will as that which, as opposed to the individual will, a person shares with the whole community. Kant extended this community to all rational beings.
Immanuel Kant, print published in London, 1812.Photos.com/Jupiterimages
Kant’s most distinctive contribution to ethics was his insistence that one’s actions possess moral worth only when one does his duty for its own sake. Kant first introduced this idea as something accepted by the common moral consciousness of human beings and only later tried to show that it is an essential element of any rational morality. Kant’s claim that this idea is central to the common moral consciousness expressed, albeit in an explicit and extreme form, a tendency of Judeo-Christian ethics; it also revealed how much Western ethical consciousness had changed since the time of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle.
Does common moral consciousness really insist that there is no moral worth in any action done for any motive other than duty? Certainly one would be less inclined to praise the person who plunges into the surf to rescue a drowning child if one learned that he did it because he expected a handsome reward from the child’s wealthy parents. This feeling lies behind Kant’s disagreement with all those moral philosophers who argued that one should do what is right because that is the path to happiness, either on earth or in heaven. But Kant went further than this. He was equally opposed to those who regard benevolent or sympathetic feelings as the basis of morality. Here he may be reflecting the moral consciousness of 18th-century Protestant Germany, but it appears that even then the moral consciousness of Britain, as reflected in the writings of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Butler, and Hume, was very different. The moral consciousness of Western civilization in the early 21st century also appears to be different from the one Kant was describing.
Kant’s ethics is based on his distinction between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. He called any action based on desires a hypothetical imperative, meaning by this that it is a command of reason that applies only if one desires the goal in question. For example, “Be honest, so that people will think well of you!” is an imperative that applies only if one wishes to be thought well of. A similarly hypothetical analysis can be given of the imperatives suggested by, say, Shaftesbury’s ethics: “Help those in distress, if you sympathize with their sufferings!” In contrast to such approaches, Kant said that the commands of morality must be categorical imperatives: they must apply to all rational beings, regardless of their wants and feelings. To most philosophers this poses an insuperable problem: a moral law that applied to all rational beings, irrespective of their personal wants and desires, could have no specific goals or aims, because all such aims would have to be based on someone’s wants or desires. It took Kant’s peculiar genius to seize upon precisely this implication, which to others would have refuted his claims, and to use it to derive the nature of the moral law. Because nothing else but reason is left to determine the content of the moral law, the only form this law can take is the universal principle of reason. Thus, the supreme formal principle of Kant’s ethics is: “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
Kant still faced two major problems. First, he had to explain how one can be moved by reason alone to act in accordance with this supreme moral law; and, second, he had to show that this principle is able to provide practical guidance in one’s choices. If one combines Hume’s theory that reason is always the slave of the passions with Kant’s denial of moral worth to all actions motivated by desires, the outcome would be that no actions can have moral worth. To avoid such moral skepticism, Kant maintained that reason alone can lead to action without the support of desire. Unfortunately, he was unable to explain how this is possible, beyond arguing that it is necessary if the common conception of morality is to make sense. Of course, the fact that the alternative leads to so unpalatable a conclusion may be in itself a powerful incentive to believe that somehow a categorical imperative is possible, but this consideration would not be convincing to anyone not already committed to Kant’s view of moral worth. At one point Kant appeared to take a different line. He wrote that the moral law inevitably produces a feeling of reverence or awe. If he meant to say that this feeling then becomes the motivation for obedience, however, he was conceding Hume’s point that reason alone is powerless to bring about action. It would also be difficult to accept that anything, even the moral law, can necessarily produce a certain kind of feeling in all rational beings regardless of their psychological constitution. Thus, this approach does not succeed in clarifying Kant’s position or rendering it plausible.
Kant gave closer attention to the problem of how his supreme formal principle of morality can provide guidance in concrete situations. One of his examples is as follows. Suppose that a person plans to get some money by promising to pay it back, though he has no intention of keeping his promise. The maxim of such an action might be: “Make false promises when it suits you to do so.” Could such a maxim be a universal law? Of course not. The maxim is self-defeating, because if promises were so easily broken, no one would rely on them, and the practice of making promises would cease. For this reason, the moral law would not allow one to carry out such a plan.