Kant's Lectures on Ethics

In his Lectures on Ethics Immanuel Kant argues that both lying and suicide are acts that are contrary to the Supreme Principle of Morality. Determining whether actions are or are not morally good is a matter of determining "the relationship in which actions stand to the general rule," the universally valid law of the free will (42). To understand Kant's claims about lying and suicide it is therefore necessary to understand the general rule to which they do not conform and then examine his specific reasoning about why each act fails the test of morality.

In explaining the principle Kant rejected all previous ideas that appealed to either the satisfaction of human inclinations, the notion of human aspiration toward perfection, Aristotle's ideal of the mean, or any version of moral principle as a response to divine will. The supreme principle of morality could not be based on human motivations, as all these examples were, but must be based in human understanding. This, Kant argued, was the major confusion in previous ethics. The problem lay in the failure to separate two distinct principles. The "principle of discrimination of our obligation" is the principle by which we determine "what is morally good and what is not" (36). But a motive for an action refers merely to that which "moves me to act in accordance with the laws of morality" (36). This refers to moral feeling and cannot itself reveal what is moral and what is not. Instead morality consists of "the subordina

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rent worth of the human being. There is no "unlimited freedom in respect to our own persons" and the principle of human worth "insists" that unless we value our individual humanity we become objects of contempt, worthless in the eyes of others and in ourselves (121). The duty to the self is the supreme condition of morality because the individual who destroys his own worth "can no longer perform any manner of duty" (121). On the basis of this duty to oneself, the act of suicide is shown to be immoral. For Kant suicide is "an abomination" because it is the "an abuse of man's freedom of action" (120). Kant admits that the arguments in favor of suicide can be very convincing. Free will would seem to imply that the individual has dominion over himself and that, if he were suffering terribly, it would, therefore, be up to him to decide whether to continue to live. It is often argued, for example, that one can decide to have a foot amputated because it threatens one's life. Thus ending one's life because of the same kind of pain and misery is seen as morally possible. But Kant says that the foot has the status of a thing while a person's human worth resides in his living self. "He is free to dispose as he pleases of things ap

Category: Philosophy - K