Immanuel Kant: Morality is Not about Making People Happy

  Saint Jerome in his Study, by Antonello da Messina (1474), via Wikimedia Commons

Note: the following article is an abridged extract from my upcoming book, The Philosophy Prescription: Lessons from Big Thinkers for Every Stage of Life, published by Penguin Random House. It’s adapted from Chapter 3, ‘Learning to be Good’, which considers how different philosophers discuss morality. If you enjoy this extract, I’d be honored if you’d consider checking out the book!

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“It is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong.” So declares English philosopher Jeremy Bentham with his moral philosophy of ‘utilitarianism’. Morality doesn’t have to be complicated, Bentham suggests; moral acts are simply those that have the highest positive impact on the world.

To work out the best path forward, we must consider not which action we think is ‘inherently’ good or virtuous, but which action will produce the best results – which will lead to more ‘good’ in the world (pleasure or happiness) and less ‘bad’ (pain or suffering).

So, if you want to be a good person, just walk the path that generates the most happiness for the most people. There! Problem solved. Close the books, open the champagne. Moral philosophy is sorted, and we can finally all move on with our lives.

Not so fast: here comes a nonplussed German to spoil the party.

Writing a decade after Bentham’s first moral treatise, Immanuel Kant argues that utilitarianism gets morality deeply wrong. Happiness is not a good guide to moral action: it’s elusive, different for everyone, and utterly changeable.

In many cases, we simply cannot know in advance if our actions will bring forth more pleasure or pain. I even misjudge something as low stakes as how much chocolate cake is ‘enough’, for instance. And if predicting happiness fifteen minutes into the future is a challenge, it’s virtually impossible over longer timeframes.

Not only does the fog of time obscure our view, but our preferences evolve, too. I might think securing a certain job title will make me eternally happy, only to find myself restless again two weeks, two months, two years down the line.

But if I can’t even know what will make me happy, how can I be trusted to know what will make all other beings happy? Isn’t it a bit careless to base all our actions around mere guesses at what might make the world a happier place?

Besides, as Kant puts it in his 1788 work The Critique of Practical Reason,

morality is not… the doctrine [of] how we should make ourselves happy, but how we should become worthy of happiness.

Morality is not about becoming happy; morality is about doing the right thing

We need to get happiness out of our minds, Kant implores. In fact, we need to get all kinds of instrumental thinking out of our minds. Morality is not for anything else. We don’t do what’s right in order to advance our own agendas, become happy, or increase other people’s happiness; we do what’s right because it’s right.

Kant describes this kind of attitude – doing what’s right for the sake of what’s right – as having a ‘good will’. Our actions are moral only if they are motivated by a good will, he declares; no other motivations qualify.

If I make a charitable donation simply to make myself feel good, or to draw admiration from others, then even if my donation has good consequences I am not acting morally; I’m acting out of self-interest.

Acting from a good will means purging ourselves of all instrumental calculation: it means doing our duty not for the ‘greater good’, but for the sake of fulfilling the principles of a universal moral law.

This might all sound a bit serious, but for Kant morality is serious. The principles of a universal moral law cannot be decided by something as feebly unreliable as feelings. They can only be decided by reason. And the governing principle of reason we must all follow, Kant tells us, is what he calls the categorical imperative.

Kant’s categorical imperative: respect people’s rational agency

Kant offers a few different formulations of his categorical imperative, but they all emphasise the importance of respecting rational agency.

While Bentham sees us all as bearers of pain and pleasure, and so grounds morality in minimising pain and maximising pleasure, for Kant our most important moral feature is our capacity for reason, and so he grounds morality in respecting one another’s capacity for reason.

One version of Kant’s categorical imperative, for instance, known as the ‘humanity’ formula, states that we should never treat people merely as a means to an end; they are ends in themselves. As Kant puts it in his catchily titled Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals:

So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.

Put simply, if we strive to act morally, then the ultimate rule to remember is that we must never treat people as mere pawns in our game.

Every person’s capacity for reason gives them inherent dignity that must be respected, Kant argues. To respect someone as an ‘end’ means recognising their ability to make rational choices and pursue their own goals.

That doesn’t mean we can do whatever we want, so long as we don’t interfere with others; it means our actions should be guided by reason, and this includes respecting another person’s capacity for it.

Using someone through force, manipulation, or deceit ignores that capacity, and is therefore immoral. On the other hand, cooperation, mutual agreements, and asking for help are entirely acceptable, so long as we also respect the other person’s goals and autonomy.

We might now see why Kant’s moral philosophy has been so influential in providing a basis for things like universal human rights and individual liberty.

Morality for Kant is grounded in reason, not feelings. Whether we like or dislike someone is not what’s at stake: it’s about respecting their dignity as a rational being.

To bypass someone’s capacity for rational choice is to treat them as a thing rather than a person, which is always immoral. From this we can derive certain rights, duties, and rules for conduct: no murder or physical harm, no lying, no cheating, no manipulation, no promoting your own interests at the cost of someone else’s freedom…

Kant makes it clear that such rational constraints apply to everyone, everywhere, all of the time with another formulation of his categorical imperative: the formula of the ‘universal law’.

Kant’s universal law: never make yourself an exception

Kant’s ‘universal law’ formula of the categorical imperative is the bane of many a philosophy student, and one of the most challenging concepts in moral philosophy. If logic puzzles aren’t for you, take a deep breath before proceeding.

Essentially, Kant thinks he’s hit upon a better, more stable replacement of the ‘golden rule’ of ethics, which is to treat others as you wish to be treated.

However, rather than treat others as you wish to be treated, Kant suggests, you should

act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.

In other words, every time we act, we must reflect not on our own feelings and inclinations, but on whether it would be rational or coherent for everyone to live according to the logic behind our actions.

Kant wants us to recast our actions as principles and ask: what if everyone followed this principle? Can it be universalised without contradiction? Would it be logically possible? Or does trying to turn the principle into a universal law reveal some kind of fundamental unreasonableness or irrationality in our behaviour?

It’s easy to misunderstand what Kant is getting at here. He’s not asking us to question, ‘would it be good if everyone adopted this principle?’, he’s asking us to question, ‘would it be logically possible or coherent if everyone adopted this principle? Does universalising this principle make sense?’

Take lying. Suppose my friend asks for my opinion on a sensitive topic, and my only options are protecting their feelings with a white lie, or potentially upsetting them with a harsh truth. We might think the former is somewhat acceptable, but Kant’s universalisation test offers a different verdict.

The principle behind my action here would be something like: I can lie to avoid telling harsh truths. Trying to implement this principle universally, it turns out, results in a logical error.

This can be a little difficult to get your head around, but stay with me. Lying is only possible in a world that expects the truth. Rolling out a principle that permits everyone to lie would remove this presumption of truth: no one would be able to trust what anyone else said.

But if no one could believe anything, then the very concepts of ‘truth’ and ‘lie’ wouldn’t make any sense. In a world governed by lying, lying itself wouldn’t be possible, because no one would regard anything as true anyway. The very concept of lying, when universalised, breaks down.

So, our attempt to make our behaviour into a universal principle, ‘I can lie to avoid telling harsh truths’, ends up producing nonsense: at scale, the concept implodes.

Given we should only act according to principles it makes sense for everyone to follow, this means I am not permitted to follow it either. I have a strict duty not to deceive my friend.

This brief example perhaps offers a glimpse into the daunting, magisterial rigour of Kant’s moral system. Scholars still disagree over how best to find our way through the abstract labyrinth that Kant has constructed; I dare not delve much further into it here, lest we never find our way out.

The important takeaway is that Kant’s ethical system hangs not on specific circumstances but on the consistency of our principles: he seeks to ground morality in logic, rather than observed outcomes. He refocuses our moral considerations away from what particular people value – certain likes, dislikes, norms, pastimes – and towards what all people share: rational agency.

Whenever we treat ourselves or others as exceptions to the universalising principles of reason, Kant concludes, we fail to do what a good person should.

Note: this article is an abridged extract from my upcoming book, The Philosophy Prescription: Lessons from Big Thinkers for Every Stage of Life. It’s adapted from Chapter 3, ‘Learning to be Good’. If you enjoyed it, I’d be honored if you’d consider checking out the book!

What do you make of Kant’s view?

• Do you agree with Kant that happiness is not a good basis for morality?
• If we want to be moral people, what matters more: living according to fixed principles with Kant, or committing to the greater good with Bentham?
• Kant suggests lying is always wrong, but what if lying to a some evil warlord was the only way to save the world from destruction? Wouldn’t the moral thing to do in that case be whatever it takes to save the world?
• Should we aim for right actions, or good consequences?

To inform your reflections, you might enjoy the following related Philosophy Breaks:

• The Greatest Happiness of the Greatest Number: What Bentham Really Meant
• The ‘Golden Mean’: Aristotle’s Guide to Living Excellently
• Confucius: Rituals Grind Our Characters Like Pieces of Jade
• Elizabeth Anscombe: ‘Morality’ is a Useless Concept; We Have Better Terms to Guide Us
• God is Dead: Nietzsche’s Most Famous Statement Explained
• Ethics and Morality: the Best 10 Books to Read

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