KANTS, PHILOSOPY OF LAW

PROLEGOMENA LAW AND ETHICS

Who is Immanuel Kant? Metaphysics

 is one of the most influential philosophers in the history of Western philosophy.
His contributions to metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics have had a
profound impact on almost every philosophical movement that followed him.

What is Metaphysics?
Philosophy is divided into 3 fields: Physics (study of the physical world),
Ethics ( study of morals), and logic ( the study of logical principles).
Metaphysics is the study of pure concepts which related to moral or physical
experience. Methaphysics is a philosophical inquiry that goes beyond the physical
sciences and ask very general questions about the nature of reality and the basic
categories by without we are to understand it.

The idea and Necessity of a Metaphysics of Morals

Moral Law- in contradiction to Natural Laws, are only valid as laws, as they can
be rationally established a priori and comprehended as necessary.

Morality only exists if a person can be accountable for their actions. It implies
freedom of action. Kant argued that we are free to make moral decisions.

The conceptions and judgments regarding ourselves and our conduct have no
moral significant if it only contained on what we learned from experience and when
any one to speak, may misled into making a Moral Principle out of anything derived
from this latter source, which he is in danger of falling into the coarsest and most fatal
errors.

Philosophy of Morals were nothing more than a Theory of Happiness

(Eudoemonism), it would be absurb to find the Principles of priori as a foundation
for it. Even the experience, can comprehend by what we may attain to a lasting
enjoyment of the real pleasures of life, it is taught that it is either tautological
(redandant / that the statement is true in a form of logical alone ) or is assumed
without foundation. Only Experience that can bring us enjoyment.

All human being desire and seek happiness.

Natural impulses directed towards nourishment, sexual instinct, or tendency to

rest and motion that developed with natural capacities, are alone capable of showing
what those enjoyments are to be found.

Kant does believe that, all other things being equal, it is better to be happy than
to be miserable.  Not the most important thing when making moral decisions. For
pleasure that comes at the expense of someone's freedom, of someone's life, is
not worth it.

Example a sense of duty does not lead to happiness, such a soldier going into
battle, he may be satisfied that he is doing his duty but gain no happiness from it.
 Metaphysics designates any system of knowledge a priori that consists of pure
conceptions. A practical philosophy not having nature, but the freedom of the will for
its object, will presuppose and require a metaphysics of morals.

The Concepts of Morality has a Nature of Imperatives, Good Will and the notion
of Duty.
Good Will it has no qualifications. Is good by Virtue because it is the will to
follow the Moral Law.

Nation of Duty- I want and I ought. The Moral actions are not spontaneous, like
if someone in need of help, You may inclined to look the other way, but you will
recognize that your duty is to help.

The Nature of Imperatives are commands

2 Imperatives
Hypothetical Imperatives and Categorial Imperatives.

According to Kant every man does, possess in himself a duty to have a

metaphysic. How could any one believe that he has a source of universal law in
himself, without principles a priori? And just as in a metaphysics of nature there must
be principles regulating the application of the universal supreme principles of nature
to objects of experience, so there cannot but be such principles in the metaphysic of
morals; and we will often have to deal objectively with the particular nature of man as
known only by experience, in order to show in it the consequences of these universal
moral principles.

Principle of Prior - judgments that do not depend on empirical experience.

 justification provides reasons for thinking a proposition is true that comes from
merely understanding, or thinking about, that proposition.

Synthetic priori- the substantive rules that can be applied priori to experience.

Principle of Morality -Judgments depending on empirical experience.

The motives, not the outcome that matters. Everything in nature works according
to laws. Only a rational being has the power to act according to his conception of
laws like according to principles and he has a will.

Apparently moral acts cannot derived from were done out of emotions, not duty,
and have no moral worth. They may be beneficial, but they aren’t moral. One can
have moral worth only if one is motivated by morality.

Presuppositions of Experience
Moral Judgments
The categorical imperative"It is always wrong to torture for fun."
The Laws of Logic
The principle of noncontradiction

General Divisions of the Metaphysics of Morals

All legislation, whether relating to internal or external action, and whether prescribed
a priori by mere reason or laid down by the will of another, involves two elements:
First, a law which represents the action that ought to happen as necessary
objectively, thus making the action a duty. The action is represented as a duty, in
accordance with the mere theoretical knowledge of the possibility of determining the
activity of the will by practical rules.

Second, a motive which connects the principle determining the will to this action with
the mental representation of the law subjectively, so that the law makes duty the
motive of the action. The obligation so to act is connected in the subject with a
determining principle of the will as such.

General Preliminary Conceptions of Defined and Explained

Natural - Obligation is the necessity of a free action when viewed in relation to a

categorical imperative of reason. It maintain that ethical and political principles can
be justified by reason alone, that they are objective and universal scope, and that
they do not depend on the subjective feeling or desires of individuals or
originate in the decrees of government.

Positive Laws- Likewise representing the action as necessary, does not consider
whether it is internally necessary as involved in the nature of the agent — say as a
holy being — or is contingent to him, as in the case of man as we find him; for where
the first condition holds good, there is in fact no imperative.

Duties specially in accord with a juridical legislation can only be external duties.
For this mode of legislation does not require that the idea of the duty, which is
internal, shall be of itself the determining principle of the act of will; and as it requires
a motive suitable to the nature of its laws, it can only connect what is external
with the law. Means it concerning law but is also framed by a moral theory of
republic thst requires freedom.

Maxims - simple or basic rules that guide action.  They are often easily recognizable
and easy to remember. Kant’s view is that we should act according to the maxims
that can be ragarded universal laws, that we should act only according to the maxims
that all people would follow.

“I will cheat on my exam so that I will be able to graduate this year”

The maxims has two components:

The statement of what you are about to do - I will cheat on my exam.

The reason why you want to do it- to graduate this year.

Formulate your maxims: State what you intend to do and why you want to do it.

According to kant we all follow certain principles. If we don’t, then our actions are
random.

The categorical imperative may be expressed according to the same formula as

the moral law: act only in such a way that you could want the maxim (the motivating
principle) of your action to become a universal law. When people violate the
categorical imperative, they apply a different standard to their own behavior than they
would want applied to everyone else in the form of a universal law. This is a
contradiction that violates principles of reason.

The categorical imperative applies to all people at all times

When an objective principle necessitates the compliance of will, it is a command

(of reason). The expression of the command is an imperative.

-Is the source of all the imperatives of duty. It may be expressed “Act as if the
maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.

Examples:

● A man is very unhappy, sees no prospect for improvement and his natural
self-love leads him to want to kill himself

Can it be made a universal law? That one ought to kill oneself out of self-love?

If you find yourself transgressing duty, behaving immorally, you’ll fine either you
do not want the maxim of your will to become a universal law. That is why we make
an exception for ourself to serve our inclination.

is one which does not represent the action in any way immediately through the
conception of an end that is to be attained by it; but it presents the action to the mind
as objectively necessary by the mere representation of its form as an action, and
thus makes it necessary. Such imperatives cannot be put forward by any other
practical science than that which prescribes obligations, and it is only the science of
morals that does this. All other imperatives are technical, and they are altogether
conditional. The ground of the possibility of categorical imperatives lies in the fact
that they refer to no determination of the activity of the will by which a purpose might
be assigned to it, but solely to its freedom.

The categorical imperative may also be formulated as a requirement that we must

not treat other rational beings as mere means to our own purposes. Rational beings
have the capacity to pursue predetermined objectives ("ends") by means of their will,
yet in pursuing their goals they never think of themselves as mere means to another
purpose; they are themselves the purpose of their actions- -they are "ends in
themselves. If we treat other rational beings as mere means, we contradict the fact
that all rational beings are ends in themselves. In this case, our principles could not
be universal laws, and we would violate the categorical imperative.

The categorical imperative may also be formulated as a requirement that we act only
according to principles that could be laws in a "kingdom of ends" (hypothetical) --that
is, a legal community in which all rational beings are at once the makers and
subjects of all laws.

Categorical Imperatives are not based on what I want. So one

could never change her mind about the commands of
categorical imperatives.

A. What the Science of Right is.

 The Science of Right has for its object the principles of all
the laws which it is possible to promulgate by external
legislation. Where there is such a legislation, it becomes, in
actual application to it, a system of positive right and law;
and he who is versed in the knowledge of this system is called
a jurist or jurisconsult (jurisconsultus). A practical jurisconsult
(jurisperitus), or a professional lawyer, is one who is skilled in
the knowledge of positive external laws, and who can apply
them to cases that may occur in experience. Such practical
knowledge of positive right, and law, may be regarded as
belonging to jurisprudence (jurisprudentia) in the original
sense of the term. But the theoretical knowledge of right and
law in principle, as distinguished from positive laws and
empirical cases (collection of evidence), belongs to the
pure science of right (jurisscientia). The science of right thus
designates the philosophical and systematic knowledge of the
principles of natural right. And it is from this science that the
immutable principles of all positive legislation must be derived
by practical jurists and lawgivers.

B. What is Right?

It is all the more so, if, on reflection, he strives to avoid

tautology in his reply and recognise the fact that a reference to
what holds true merely of the laws of some one country at a
particular time is not a solution of the general problem thus
proposed. It is quite easy to state what may be right in
particular cases (quid sit juris), as being what the laws of
a certain place and of a certain time say or may have said;
but it is much more difficult to determine whether what
they have enacted is right in itself, and to lay down a
universal criterion by which right and wrong in general,
and what is just and unjust, may be recognised. 

This empirical laws may, indeed, furnish him with excellent

guidance; but a merely empirical system that is void of rational
principles is, like the wooden head in the fable of Phaedrus,
fine enough in appearance, but unfortunately it wants
brain. 1. The conception of right — as referring to a
corresponding obligation which is the moral aspect of it —
in the first place, has regard only to the external and practical
relation of one person to another, in so far as they can have
influence upon each other, immediately or mediately, by
their actions as facts. 2. In the second place, the conception
of right does not indicate the relation of the action of an
individual to the wish or the mere desire of another, as in
acts of benevolence or of unkindness, but only the relation of
his free action to the freedom of action of the
other. 3. And, in the third place, in this reciprocal relation of
voluntary actions, the conception of right does not take into
consideration the matter of the matter of the act of will in
so far as the end which any one may have in view in
willing it is concerned.
 It is not asked in a question of right whether any one on
buying goods for his own business realizes a profit by the
transaction or not; but only the form of the transaction is
taken into account, in considering the relation of the
mutual acts of will.

Right, therefore, comprehends the whole of the

conditions under which the voluntary actions of any one
person can be harmonized in reality with the voluntary
actions of every other person, according to a universal
law of freedom.

Universal Principle of Right.

“Every action is right which in itself, or in the maxim on which it

proceeds, is such that it can coexist along with the freedom of the will of
each and all in action, according to a universal law.” The action or
condition can co exist with the freedom of every other, according to
a universal law, any one who hinders in the performance of the
action, or in the maintenance of the condition. It cannot co exist with
freedom according to Universal laws. Kant therefore believed that we
each have a right (in the second sense) to engage in any action that is
right.

Reason in this connection says only that it is restricted thus far by its
idea, and may be likewise thus limited in fact by others; and it lays this
down as a postulate which is not capable of further proof. As the object
in view is not to teach virtue, but to explain what right is, thus far the
law of right, as thus laid down, may not and should not be represented as
a motive-principle of action.

Right is Conjoined with the Title or Authority to Compel.

 Resistance which is opposed to any hindrance of an effect is in reality a furtherance

of this effect and is in accordance with its accomplishment. Now, everything that is
wrong is a hindrance of freedom, according to universal laws; and compulsion
or constraint of any kind is a hindrance or resistance made to freedom.
Consequently, if a certain exercise of freedom is itself a hindrance of the freedom
that is according to universal laws, it is wrong; and the compulsion of constraint
which is opposed to it is right, as being a hindering of a hindrance of freedom, and as
being in accord with the freedom which exists in accordance with universal laws.
Hence, according to the logical principle of contradiction, all right is accompanied
with an implied title or warrant to bring compulsion to bear on any one who
may violate it in fact.

Conclusion:

Kant believe that we must follow absolute moral rules dictated by reason, which he
called categorical imperatives. These rules can never be broken there can be no
exceptions.
Kant's transcendental philosophy is professedly a ‘metaphysics of metaphysics’ in
which critical standards for metaphysics are established. Primary condition of
human knowledge is the impossibility of knowing ‘things-in-themselves’; these
are concepts with no access to absolute truth about the world.

The Critique of Pure Reason (1781) develops these theses systematically.

The Critique of Practical Reason (1788) draws practical consequences of the first
Critique: neither worldly good nor evil, but rather the human will is the foundation
of morality. It concerns a priori knowledge, or knowledge whos justification does not
depend on experience; and he associates a priori knowledge with reason. The
project kf critique is to examine whether, how and to what extent human reason is
capable of a priori knowledge.

Questions:
1. What kant mean by maxim?
A principle of action that one gives to oneself.

2. What is categorical imperative

- it is a command of reason that does not depend on our desires.

3. According to kant, morality requires to

- act only on maxims that will become universal laws.

4. Kant claims that the moral law is given to each person by?
- One’s own will

5. The basis of morality is the concept of:

- Freedom

References:
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/morals/
ch04.htm#:~:text=The%20science%20of%20right%20thus,by%20practical%20jurists
%20and%20lawgivers.
https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/morals/ch03.htm