The Extraordinary Categorical Imperative

Hannah Arendt , Lectures in Kant’s Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 19.

Bonnie Honig , Political Theory and the Displacement of Politics (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993 ), 18-19, and chapter 2 as a whole.

William E. Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1999), 163-177.

Many scholars now omit the categorical imperative from Kant’s "legacy for contemporary political and intellectual life." Nicholas Tampio, "Redefining Kant’s Legacy," Political Theory 34 (2006): 807.

All references to Kant’s work, except for citations to the Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft) (1781, 1787), refer to the volume and page number of Immanuel Kants Schriften, Ausgabe der königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1902-) ("Ak"). Citations to the Critique of Pure Reason refer to Kant’s first ("A") and second ("B") editions. All in-text citations refer to Kant’s Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), Ak 4. Unless otherwise stated, all translations of Kant’s work are the author’s own.

Raymond Guess credits Kant as one of the main inspirations for the contemporary "ethics-first" approach to political theory. Ethics-first political theory begins with a "separate discipline called Ethics," constructs a systematic theory of what ought to be, and then applies this theory to politics. Empirical realities and concrete contexts of action only become salient at the point of application. See Philosophy and Real Politics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), 6-9. John Rawls’s original position procedure for discerning the basic principles of justice, which is inspired by Kant’s categorical imperative, exemplifies ethics-first political theory. See Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1999), 221-27; and "Themes in Kant’s Moral Philosophy," in Kant’s Transcendental Deductions: The Three "Critiques" and the "Opus postumum," ed. Eckart Förster (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1989), 81-113, esp. "§I. The Four Step CI-Procedure."

Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals is the standard English translation of the original title Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten. The German is more consonant with reading the Groundwork as a conversion narrative (as this study does). "Groundwork" does not suggest the same level of movement as the German "Grundlegung"-literally the "Laying of the Ground."

"The ontological categorical imperative" and "the epistemological categorical imperative" refer to the ontological and epistemological aspects of the categorical imperative. Kant’s categorical imperative is a single principle with a double burden.

"Existential" is used in a nontechnical sense and refers to a radical change in the way I see myself and my place in the world. Kant has more in common with existentialist philosophers than we might otherwise think, but it would be anachronistic to label Kant an existentialist.

Susan Meld Schell is one of the few commentators who pay serious attention to the initial impetus for the Groundwork’s inquiry. See Kant and the Limits of Autonomy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 121-31.

According to Kant, what rests even minimally on "empirical grounds" is contingent upon these grounds and cannot ground obligations. Kant calls the purely rational component of Sitten "die Moral." The empirical part of Sitten, "practical anthropology," is not the concern of the Groundwork (4:388-89). Practical anthropology offers guidance on such matters as how, given the limitations of "empirical human nature," a human being might meet the demands of the moral law. See Allen W. Wood, Kantian Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 61. Kant explains in Die Metaphysik der Sitten (1797-98) that Recht governs external actions and secures external freedom. Tugend concerns inner ethical dispositions and, unlike Recht, cannot be commanded by external laws. See Metaphysik der Sitten, Ak 6:379. English translations of the Groundwork often translate Sitten as "morals," but this is inappropriate since Kant specifically reserves die Moral and related words for the purely rational component of Sitten (4:388). Thus "the moral law" refers to the ground of the metaphysical component of Sitten. Translating Sitten as "ethics" also invites confusion as we moderns tend to draw a distinction between positive law and ethics, whereas for Kant Sitten encompasses both. To minimize confusion this study leaves die Sitten and related words untranslated and, as far as possible, reserves "morals" and related words for die Moral and its cognates.

See Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793-94), Ak 6:29-32; and Henry E. Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 151-52. Allison notes that in the Groundwork Kant refers to the natural dialectic as a "propensity" (Hang) at 4:405.

Religion, 6:36; 46-48.

See Pierre Hadot, Philosophy as a Way of Life: Spiritual Exercises from Socrates to Foucault, ed. Arnold I. Davidson and trans. Michael Chase (Oxford, UK: Blackwell, 1995); and What Is Ancient Philosophy? trans. Michael Chase (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), esp. 265-70.

See Ian Hunter, "The Morals of Metaphysics: Kant’s Groundwork as Intellectual Paideia," Critical Inquiry 28 (2002): 908-29, esp. 909, 913-14, 918; and Rival Enlightenments: Civil and Metaphysical Philosophy in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001).

The adjective besonder can also have the senses "particular" and "exceptional."

Speculative philosophy here refers to the reason that unites theoretical and practical reason.

Paul Guyer argues that popular moral philosophy is an expression of the natural dialectic in "The Strategy of Kant’s Groundwork" in Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 209.

Both Jens Timmerman and Susan Meld Schell translate "Selbsthalterin" as "autocratrix." They argue that Kant’s language references the title given to Catherine the Great. Meld Schell points out that "in the parlance of the time, Catherine the Great was commonly referred to as ‘Kaiserin and Selbsthalterin’ of all Russia." See Jens Timmerman, Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals: A Commentary (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 89n; and Meld Schell, Kant and the Limits of Autonomy, 137 and 368.

Here Kant seems to be referring to the Scottish Enlightenment’s claim that there is a moral sense and Aquinas’s account of how humans know natural law.

If this is so, then the overarching aim of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason could be practical. In line with this view Paul Saurette argues that even though Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was published before the Groundwork and the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant originally conceived of the Critique of Pure Reason "as a task that had to be undertaken for the service of pre-existing moral and practical aims . . ." See The Kantian Imperative: Humiliation, Common Sense, Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2005), 36.

See Thomas E. Hill Jr., "A Kantian Perspective on Moral Rules," Philosophical Perspectives 6 (1992): 290-291.

Kant’s claim that his formulas of the categorical imperative restate "the very same law" (4:436)-a claim this study accepts-has been the subject of much scholarly dispute. This dispute often concerns whether the different formulas lead to the same results when they are treated as epistemological tests of the right moral rule and so occurs at a tangent to the present study. For an insightful discussion and critique of this dispute, see Wood, Kantian Ethics, 79-84. Although Wood does not read the Groundwork as a conversion, Wood’s interpretation of the Groundwork and of Kant’s ethics more generally has several points of agreement with the present study. Wood agrees that Kant is not concerned with questions of application in the Groundwork, that the Groundwork does not seek to simply validate moral common sense, and that Kant does not view moral judgment as a technical procedure, but instead allows for attention to the contexts and consequences of human action. See Kantian Ethics, 43-84.

For an overview of various (epistemological) interpretations of the formula of humanity and a systematic treatment of the various accounts of man’s rational nature/humanity within Kant’s thought, see Thomas E. Hill Jr., "Humanity as an End in Itself," Ethics 91 (1980): 84-99.

"Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?" ( 1784), Ak 8:35.

"Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientiren?" (1786), Ak 8:146n. This translation comes from Immanuel Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, trans. and ed. Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 18.

Ibid.

From the principle of autonomy, Kant derives another formulation of the categorical imperative-the formula of the kingdom of ends (4:438). This study does not answer the question of whether each of the formulas of the categorical imperative has an epistemological and an ontological aspect. For our purposes, it is enough to see that even one formula of the categorical imperative has an ontological aspect.

Kant makes this point more clearly at 4:446-47 when he offers another analytic proof of the identity of freedom and obligation.

The finding of freedom is difficult to categorize. As Kant insists in the Groundwork and in the Critique of Pure Reason, freedom is not an object of sensible experience. Human beings cannot have knowledge of freedom in the way they can have knowledge of sensible entities. Freedom is "a mere idea" of reason. See Groundwork, 4:459; and Kritik der reinen Vernunft, A532-58/ B560-86. So on the one hand, the finding of freedom is not a sensible experience of freedom. Indeed, the finding has to be a priori, if it is to ground the unconditionality of the categorical imperative. On the other hand, the finding of freedom is not a logical entailment; otherwise it could not support a claim about existence.

While this study embraces the formality of the formula of humanity, many Kant scholars prefer the formula of humanity as a guide to duties over the universal law formulas of the categorical imperative because they regard the formula of humanity as less formal. Wood argues that "the universalizability tests actually give us at most permissibility tests for certain individual maxims that violate determinate duties we already recognize" and so cannot be used to deduce "positive duties." Wood regards the formula of humanity as better suited for the identification of positive duties because it appeals to "certain ends it is our duty to have." See Wood, Kantian Ethics, 74, 167. See more generally 66-75, 166-70.

Many Anglo-American translations of the Groundwork render "Achtung" as "respect." But this is an overly narrow choice for translating "Achtung." In addition to "Respekt" other senses of "Achtung" in German include "Ehrfurcht," which is commonly translated as "awe"; "Bewunderung"; and "Reverenz." Confining "Achtung" to "Respekt" makes it difficult to grasp "Achtung" as the combination of felt sublimity and finitude. H.J. Paton argues that many passages in Kant’s writings (including the passage on the starry heavens) "suggest that Achtung is akin to reverence, or even awe, and is very different from a strictly limited emotion like respect." Paton himself translates "Achtung" as "reverence." See The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant’s Moral Philosophy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971), 63-64.

Although awe is a feeling, it is not a feeling "received by means of influence." Awe is not passive sensibility. Awe is a feeling "self-effected (wirken) through a rational concept (Vernunftbegriff)" and so is different from feelings ("inclination or fear") that arise from influences upon the senses (4:401n).

Religion, 6:46-48.

Ibid. Kant says only God can know my inner disposition.

Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), Ak 5:88.

Ibid., 5:161-62.

Speaking of translating "Achtung" as attention, J. David Velleman says: "This is a punning translation, of course, since Achtung can denote not only attention but also a mode of valuation, and the latter is the meaning intended by Kant. But these two meanings are not independent: there is a deep conceptual connection between valuation and vision-a connection evident in words like ‘respect,’ ‘regard,’ and even in Kant’s synonym for Achtung, the Latin reverentia" (footnotes omitted). See "Love as a Moral Emotion" in Self to Self: Selected Essays (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 75-76.

See Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik: Welt, Endlichkeit, Einsamkeit, Gesamtausgabe, vol. 29-30, ed. Friedrich Wilhelm von Herrmann (Frankfurt am Main: Vittorio Klostermann, 1983), 100-2.

"Was ist Aufklärung?" 8:35-36.

"Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientiren?" 8:146n.

Heidegger uses the language of mystery in relation to attunements when he says that the delicate task of "letting-an-attunement-be-awake" requires that somehow man become a "mystery" (Geheimnis) to himself. See Die Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik, 255. Kant speaks of "mystery" (Geheimnis) in relation to the coincidence of my finitude and possible sublimity in Religion. Kant says that God must play a pivotal, though ultimately unknowable, role in any inner revolution. Kant captures God’s role in three mysteries of religion "revealed to us through our reason." One of these mysteries is the mystery of the "call" (Berufung) of the moral law. See Religion, 6:139, 142-45.

When viewed as a conversion narrative, Kant’s Groundwork has some similarities with Heidegger’s treatment of Schuld in Being and Time. Heidegger identifies a constitutive guilt concealed by ordinary morality and irreducible to specific duties, and describes a "call" back to this constitutive guilt (the "call of conscience"). See Sein und Zeit (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer Verlag, 1967), 267-301.

Religion, 6:49.

"Was ist Aufklärung?" 8:35-36.

See "Über ein vermeintes Recht aus Menschenliebe zu lügen" (1797) Ak 8:425-30.

Robert J. Benton discusses different approaches to mitigating Kant’s position and offers his own approach to mitigating Kant’s position-based on the underlying political context of Kant’s piece-in "Political Expediency and Lying: Kant vs Benjamin Constant," Journal of the History of Ideas 43 (1982): 135-44.

See "Über ein vermeintes Recht aus Menschenliebe zu lügen," 8:426-27; and Metaphysik der Sitten, 6:228.

Christine M. Korsgaard , "Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant," The Journal of Ethics 3 (1999): 1-29, esp. 27.

See "Politics as a Vocation," in The Vocation Lectures, ed. David Owen and Tracy B. Strong, and trans. Rodney Livingstone (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 2004), 78-79.

See, e.g., White, The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009); Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist? and Capitalism and Christianity, American Style (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2008).

See White, The Ethos of a Late-Modern Citizen, 43-49; Connolly, Why I Am Not a Secularist, 163-187; and Connolly, Neuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2002), 104-7. See also Saurette, The Kantian Imperative, for the argument that awe contains a politically dangerous element of humiliation.

For example, they might argue that even though awe is a feeling, it is a feeling of the intellect and so does not adequately esteem human sensibility and sensibility’s potentially positive contribution to politics.

Weber discusses the rarity of bringing together these two elements within a political ethos in "Politics as a Vocation," 78-93.