Duty, the summum bonum and evaluation

Overview

Recall questions on duty and acting from duty, the good will, the postulates of freedom, immortality and God, the summum bonum, and the evaluation of Kantian ethics, including conflicting duties, abstraction, the place of sympathy and love, its strengths, and a lie that would save a life.

What you need to know

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Questions from this subtopic

Each one with the model answer underneath.

1. 1

   Explain the objection from conflicting duties, and how a Kantian might answer it.

   Model answer

   If a murderer asks where your friend is hiding, telling the truth and protecting innocent life are both duties, and Kant's absolutism appears to require the answer that gets your friend killed. Kantians respond that you are responsible only for your own act and not for the murderer's, that remaining silent or refusing to answer is available, and that the end-in-itself formulation forbids handing someone over to be used. Critics find these replies evasive, and this remains the standard objection to moral absolutism.

2. 2

   What does Kant mean by duty, and where does the idea come from?

   Model answer

   Duty is acting because an action is right, not because of what it will bring about. The concept belongs to deontological ethics, which locates moral value in the act itself, and to absolutist ethics, which holds that some things are right or wrong for everyone everywhere. Kant's distinctive move is to argue that reason alone can identify what duty requires, without any appeal to God, happiness or desire.

3. 3

   What is the difference between acting from duty and merely acting in accordance with duty?

   Model answer

   A shopkeeper who gives correct change because dishonesty would ruin his business acts in accordance with duty, but his motive is self-interest, so Kant gives the act no moral worth. A shopkeeper who gives correct change because it is the right thing to do acts from duty, and only then does the action have genuine moral value. The outward behaviour is identical; the moral difference lies entirely in the motive.

4. 4

   Why does Kant say that the only thing good without qualification is a good will?

   Model answer

   Every other candidate can be put to bad use. Intelligence, courage, wealth and even happiness become worse things in the hands of someone wicked, so their goodness is conditional. A will that chooses rightly because it is right cannot be corrupted in that way. Kant adds that a good will keeps its full value even if circumstances prevent it from achieving anything at all.

5. 5

   What are Kant's three postulates of practical reason?

   Model answer

   Freedom, immortality and God. Kant does not claim to prove any of them theoretically; he argues that they are presuppositions we must accept if morality is to make sense, so that in obeying a moral command we are already committing ourselves to all three.

6. 6

   Why must freedom be postulated in Kant's system?

   Model answer

   Because obligation presupposes possibility: it is senseless to say a person ought to do something they could not have done otherwise. If human beings were wholly determined, moral commands would be empty. So the very experience of being bound by duty commits us to regarding ourselves as free agents, whatever theoretical difficulties that raises.

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