9.3 Hypothetical and Categorical Imperatives
If we agree with Kant and want to act for the sake of duty, what should we do? To what actions is the Good Will urging us? His answer is that we must act out of respect for the moral law. To know the moral law, we must approach it rationally. The core of Kant’s ethics is the concept of the categorical imperative, for which he provides four formulations, four different ways of explanation.
An imperative is an “ought” or a “must” i.e., a command. Our minds are issuing commands to us regularly. Kant made a distinction however between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. A hypothetical imperative is one that we must obey if we want to satisfy our desires. Thus ‘go to the doctor’ is a hypothetical imperative because we are only obliged to obey it if we want to get well.
Such imperatives are:
- Conditional in nature: They are dependent on particular desires, goals, or circumstances.
- Good Instrumentally: They prescribe means to achieve certain ends.
- Not universally binding: They only apply if one accepts the condition or goal.
- Of limited moral worth: For Kant, actions based solely on hypothetical imperatives lack true moral worth, as they’re driven by inclination rather than duty.
A categorical imperative, on the other hand, binds us regardless of our desires: everyone has a duty to not lie, regardless of circumstances and even if it is in our interest to do so. These imperatives are morally binding because they are based on reason, rather than contingent facts about an agent.
Thus, such imperatives are:
- Absolute in nature: They are not dependent upon circumstances but are always in force.
- Universal: They always apply to all rational persons regardless of their desires or circumstances.
- Good Intrinsically: They are good regardless of the consequences.
- Of absolute moral worth: They are derived from pure reason and thus to act against them would be to act irrationally. They are the highest ethical imperatives.
These latter imperatives are the heart of Kantian ethics. If a command is categorical then people ought to follow it irrespective of how they feel about following it, irrespective of what consequences might follow, or who may or may not have told them to follow it. For example, the command “do not peel the skin of babies” is categorical. You ought not to do this and the fact that this might be your life’s ambition, or that you really want to do it, or that your teacher has told you to do it, or that society commends the practice is completely irrelevant.
Kant attempted to explain the nature of the categorical imperative in four ways, four “formulations” as he called them. Here we shall look only at the first and second formulations.
|
Formulation |
Imperative |
|---|---|
|
First Formulation |
…act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law. |
|
Second Formulation |
So act that you use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. |
