# Kant's One Rule for Right and Wrong

Speaker: Lee Braver
Course: From Socrates to Sartre: How Should We Live?
Watch: https://ergo.org/videos/lee-braver-the-categorical-imperative-explained
Transcript: https://ergo.org/videos/lee-braver-the-categorical-imperative-explained/transcript/
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aPZ2w87x8v4

When quoting, name the speaker and link to the watch URL.

Having established in the previous lecture that Kant wants ethics grounded in pure reason alone, Lee Braver now tackles the harder problem: how can a rule with any real content come from logic alone, with nothing about human nature to draw on? The lecture unpacks the key machinery of Kant's ethics: the difference between hypothetical and categorical imperatives, and why only the categorical imperative counts as truly moral. Braver walks through the famous lying promise example to show how universalizing an immoral action reveals a hidden contradiction, not unlike an X-ray exposing what's beneath the surface. He then introduces Kant's second formulation, the demand that we treat people as ends in themselves and never merely as means. Using examples from Judge Roy Bean to Batman, Braver illustrates both the power and the rigidity of Kant's system. Every moral theory has its trade-offs, and Kant's uncompromising absolutes are no exception.

## Empirical vs A Priori Ethics

Mill bases his ethics on empirical observations. He was a social scientist. He thought we needed to know what human nature was like in order to base our ethics on it. For Kant, there are fundamental problems with that, and therefore, he wants to make his ethics a priori. He wants to make ethics based on, without taking into account anything about human nature, not knowing anything about how we are, what we like, how we behave, how we live, nothing.

So, he is intentionally taking away the vast, vast majority of possible resources he could draw on to get content for his theory, to get rules. We get rules from what people like and what people don't like. Seems like a pretty obvious thing, but he is taking those off the table. He is going to get his ethical theories from much, much more abstract notions. And the beginning comes

## Reason vs Inclinations: The Will at a Crossroads

From this psychological idea, that we are in between reason and inclinations. The will is at a crossroads. When we make a decision, we can either listen to reason or we can listen to inclinations. Inclinations tell us, "Do the thing that makes us happy. Do what we are inclined to do." Get the food we like, keep the money, cheat the kid, whatever it is that gives us what we want. That's what inclination tells us to do.

Reason says do the right thing. It doesn't matter who does it, doesn't matter what happens. All that's irrelevant. Just obey the law. And we have the capacity to go with one or the other. If we have the ability to obey or disobey it, then that puts the moral law into one specific form, the form of an imperative.

## What Is an Imperative?

An imperative is a command. It doesn't make any sense to give someone a command, to command someone to do something they can't help but doing it. I can't order you to obey the law of gravity because you have to obey it. There's nothing else you can do. You're going to stick to the earth's surface no matter what. But if you can disobey something, like the speed limit, then it makes sense, obey the speed limit. Then I can command it of you because you have the ability to disobey it.

Because we are in between these two influences and we have the ability to disobey the moral law, therefore it takes the form of a command or an imperative to us. Now we know the form of the moral law for beings like us. And he explores then what an imperative is. And he says there are two kinds of imperatives. First, there's a hypothetical.

## Hypothetical Imperatives Explained

A hypothetical imperative has a structure, do X in order to get Y. It promises the attainment of some goal for doing a certain action. And so it's a command, do X, you ought to do X, that you are commanded to do X, but the explanation, the justification of it, the motivation for doing X is in order to get something else.

It's like Mill's instrumental good. The reason why you are obligated to do X is because you want Y. Practice your backhand in order to win tennis games. Take the medicine in order to recover from the disease. So, these are commands, practice, take, but they are justified by the goal that they are meant to acquire for you. That's very different from the other type of command.

## The Categorical Imperative: Just Do X

The categorical imperative has a very different structure. Do X, not in order to, not because of, it's just do X. Categorically do this thing. Now, the question that faces us, we know that morality takes the form of an imperative because we have the ability to disobey it. The question is, here are the two types of imperatives, which is the moral? What form, which imperative, does the moral law take, categorical or hypothetical?

Well, let's take a look at them. The hypothetical is relative to a particular desire. You need to want the Y in order for the command to do X to have power over you, to have authority over you. If I tell you, "Practice your backhand in order to win tennis games," you think, "Well, I don't wanna win a tennis game." Then the command, practice your backhand, means nothing. You suddenly are not commanded by that. That command slides off you and has no authority over you.

Which means, number one, it's relative. One person wants to win at tennis, therefore the command has power over them. Another person doesn't want to win tennis, therefore it doesn't have power over them, so it's relativistic, one of the things that he's trying to fight. Number two, it's about achieving a consequence. Winning the game. Kant is an anti-consequentialist. Morality is not about what happens, what you get. Therefore, if the command is about the consequences, then that can't be a moral one.

Number three, why do you want that achievement? Why do you want Y? Because it makes you happy. "I like winning. I like playing the guitar." That's desire. That's happiness. It's eudaimonic. So, all three of the things that Kant is against, it turns out the hypothetical command falls into all three of those. And therefore, for all three of those reasons, the hypothetical command cannot be the moral command.

## Why Only the Categorical Imperative Is Moral

What about the categorical? To whom does this apply? Who is this restricted to? People who want to win? Nope. People who want to play? Nope. What conditions does it restrict itself to? None. That's what categorical means. It means all times, all places to everyone. "Do X." It doesn't say, "Do X if..." It doesn't say, "Do X when..." It doesn't say, "These people ought to do X." It just says, "Do X," all times, all places, all people.

This is absolute, not relative. This is necessary and universal, not contingent and variable. So it passes the first requirement. The consequences are off the table. Consequences are irrelevant. There's no consideration of consequences. You must do X, period, categorically, regardless of what happens, which is exactly how ethics ought to be for Kant.

And the reason why we want to do Y is because we are inclined towards it. It makes us happy in some way. There's some reward there. If you're doing something for a reward, it's no longer ethical. It's prudence. It's prudential. Again, nothing bad about that, but it's not ethical.

The categorical promises you nothing. The categorical does not appeal to your inclinations at all. The categorical has nothing to do with happiness. The categorical says, "This is the right thing to do, therefore do it." Nothing else. The categorical imperative is the structure of the moral law, Kant argues.

## Deriving the Universal Law from Pure Form

Now, that doesn't give us much. What we've got now, we have the three things that Kant was against. We have this moral psychology of inclinations and reason, and that led us into the fact that the moral law takes the shape of an imperative, and now we know which kind of imperative it takes. But what the hell is this? We know we gotta do it, but what is it? What do we do? Nothing. We have nothing. We have no information to go on. He's given us nothing. He's taken away everything, all information.

Just from this fact, "Do X," Kant will get a law. Kant will get an actual rule that will tell us what to do in every single situation we are ever in for our entire lives. Just from that. It's one of the most amazing hat tricks in the history of philosophy. What we know is that the moral law takes the form of a categorical imperative. A categorical imperative has a structure of a necessary and universal law. The hypothetical is only a rule, a rule of thumb. It's variable, it's relative, so on and so forth. But the categorical is necessary and universal.

And Kant asks, "We have taken away all possible information and all possible consequences. All we know is that the moral law, whatever it is, we don't have any content yet, we don't know what the law is, whatever it is, it's got to be a necessary, universal law." Because for a whole bunch of reasons, one reason being that reason traffics in necessary, universal laws. It does it in science. It does it in math. It does it in ethics. It's got to do that to be, not to be relativistic, to be absolute. It's gotta do that for a whole bunch of reasons, to be impartial, so on.

This fact tells us what the moral law ought to be. If the moral law is derived from reason, and if reason is a faculty of necessary universal laws, then we know whatever our moral rule is, it must be necessary and universal. And that, which sounds like a purely formal description of what the rule must be like, is the rule. He takes this description of the rule, must have this characteristic, and he makes that description the rule itself.

The rule, the first version of the categorical imperative, there are four different versions, we're only gonna talk about two of them. The first version of the categorical imperative is only do the kind of action that you can will to be a necessary universal law. It's a test. You're thinking to yourself, "Can I do this? Can I do that? Is this action that I wanna do, is it ethically allowable?" In order to find that out, you put it into this formula. Could this be a necessary universal law? I want to do this, I want to do that. Could it be a necessary universal law? And if it could, then it's okay. If it could not, then it's immoral and you are not allowed to do it.

## The Lying Promise: A Famous Example

That shouldn't make any sense yet. Let's look at an example. A couple of examples. His most famous example and his best example is lying. Kant talks about the example of a person who needs money, and they know they're not gonna be able to pay it back, but they figure if they tell the truth and they say, "Hey, I need to borrow $5,000 and I'm never gonna pay it back," no one's gonna give it to 'em. They say, "Lend me $5,000 and I promise I'll pay it back to you next week. I swear I will." Because only if they lie do they think that the person will actually give them the money, and they really, really need the money.

Now, that's what is prudential. They need that money, therefore, what's in their best interest, what's best for their happiness is to get that money however they can. But that's prudence. The question we're asking is, is it ethical? Is it ethical for him to lie, to make a false promise in order to get this money that he needs? Kant says we have a test that will tell us this. We have the categorical imperative.

What the person does is they take their action, make a false promise in order to get the money that I want, and they turn that, right now, that's a personal individual action. What I'm going to do right here, right now. That's not what ethics is about any more than science is about an individual object. It's about universal rules. I'm gonna turn that impersonal, and I'm gonna say, "Well, look, if this action is acceptable, then it's not acceptable for me because individual people are irrelevant. That would make it variable. There's no difference between me and you, morally speaking. We're exactly the same. Therefore, if it's okay for me to do, then it's okay for you to do, it's okay for her to do, it's okay for him to do, it's okay for anyone to do." If the action is morally acceptable, then any actor can do it. And if any actor can do it, then every actor can do it.

Let's ask the question, what would happen if everyone lied in order to get money that they wanted? What if this was like a law of nature and everyone did this? What do you think would happen? If everyone, whenever they wanted something and they knew the person wasn't gonna give it to them, they lied. "I promise I'm gonna give you the money back," knowing that I won't. And if that was what everyone did in every situation. Kant says no one would lend it.

We all would know that the person's lying. It'd practically become a joke. "Right, you're gonna borrow, lend it back. You're gonna pay it back. Good one." And no one would lend it. The very act of lending, the very act of telling the truth requires trust. It requires a certain amount of belief. And trust requires most people to tell the truth most of the time, you see?

If most people lie most of the time, the entire practice of making promises falls apart. The entire practice, the thing that I want to do, make this promise to get the money, would stop working, and I couldn't get what I wanted. I couldn't get the money that I'm trying to get. So, here is a practice, making promises, that would implode if it were done universally. It can work for one case here or one case there. Because most people will tell the truth, therefore most people believe it. One exception here, one liar there, one liar there. But if everyone lies all the time, then no one would believe anyone and no one would ever lend them money. And therefore, I could not succeed at the very action I'm trying to do: make a promise to get the money.

## Not Consequentialism: It's an X-Ray

That sounds consequentialist, right? That sounds like Kant is saying the thing that your mother said, "What if everyone did it?" To which the smartass responds, "Well, everyone isn't doing it, so who cares?" But that's not what he's saying. It sounds like it, but it's not. That'd be a pretty obvious contradiction if he were going consequentialist like that.

The question is not would this be a good thing or a bad thing. That's consequentialist. That's about happiness. That's all kinds of problems with that. And of course, it's not gonna happen, so that would be a really, really dumb thing if that's what his point was.

Framing it this way is a tool. It's an X-ray vision into these actions to show us something that's usually hidden. It shows us something at the heart of these actions that we usually can't see. Something very, very important that when it's just me doing this one thing one time is invisible. So lemme give another example.

## Judge Roy Bean and the Thief's Contradiction

This is from a Paul Newman movie from the '70s, *The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean*, where Paul Newman plays this outlaw. And he hears about this town, Virago, out in the Wild West. This is the Western middle 19th century. And he hears about this town that's run by outlaws. There's no law there, there's no sheriff, there's no anything. He's like, "Oh, that's awesome, I'm an outlaw. It'll be terrific, I'm gonna go there."

And so he robs a bank, he gets these bags of gold, puts them on his horse, rides out to Virago, ties his horse up, walks in the saloon, opens those swingy doors, says, "Hey, everybody, I'm an outlaw just like you. I just robbed a bank. Got all my gold out there. This is great, let's all have a terrific society." And everyone looks up at him and says, "That's great." And they beat him up and take his gold, because of course they do, they're outlaws. It's like, that's the whole point.

When he wakes up, he doesn't say, "Well, of course they stole it 'cause they're thieves. I stole too, so I can't say and I can't blame them for doing it since I stole." No, he goes and he kills them all and takes his gold back. And what this shows is that for the thief, for his theft to work, the thief has to condemn thievery. The thief cannot say as a universal, "Stealing is fine." The thief can't say, "It's okay that I stole because stealing is okay" as a universal impartial law. Because if they say that, then they're giving permission in advance for people to steal from them. And if the people steal from them, then they get the very ill-gotten goods that they stole, and that defeats the whole purpose of them stealing.

The only way that Roy Bean's thievery works and succeeds at what he's trying to get, which is to keep the gold, is if other people don't steal. You see, he can only steal successfully if others don't steal. So he gets to steal because other people don't get to steal. He condemns them in order to give himself permission to do the same exact action. The problem is from a moral perspective, he has no more rights than they do. He has no right to be treated special in a way that they don't.

Here is Kant's egalitarianism. Reason treats everyone the same. Everyone has the exact same reason. That's why I have the same math and logic that you do. Everyone has the exact same rights, the exact same expectation of dignity and respect. So I have no special rights that you don't. Roy Bean has no special rights that everyone else in the town doesn't. So if it's okay for him to steal, it's got to be okay for anyone to steal.

But the thing that this version of categorical imperative reveals is that for some actions, it cannot be okay for everyone to do. This isn't a matter of what Roy Bean feels. This isn't a matter of what the liar believes. The liar cannot approve of lying in general, because if everyone lies, they can't lie. Roy Bean cannot, it's not because of his personality, it's not because of his individual opinions. He logically cannot approve of stealing universally, because then he can't steal. He has to treat himself differently than he treats everyone else.

What he does, Kant says, is he issues mentally a universal rule. No one can steal, and then makes an exception, except me. No one can lie, but I get to, 'cause that's the only way these actions work. Lying can only work if other people don't lie. Stealing can only work if other people don't steal.

And this is what the categorical imperative reveals. It's not about the consequences. It's not about what actually would happen. It shows us something deeply buried in certain actions. Certain actions require a difference in roles, that not everyone gets the same treatment, not everyone gets to do the same things. For lying, for stealing, the liar and the thief have to treat themselves differently from everyone else, differently from everyone else, or it doesn't work at all. This isn't a matter of their personal beliefs or opinions or feeling. It's logical. It's just the nature of the action.

## The Hidden Contradiction in Immoral Actions

These actions separate out perpetrator from victim. They have to behave differently. They have to have different rights. And the fundamental rule underlying this is that no one is special, morally speaking. Everyone has the same rights. Everyone must be treated the same. No one gets to make an exception of themselves. If it's okay for you to do, it's okay for everyone to do. If it's okay for you to do, it's okay for anyone to do, and therefore it's okay for everyone to do.

And some actions can't do that, and that shows that you're treating yourself differently than others. You're allowing yourself to do something you're not allowing anyone else to do, and that's wrong. That's the evil or the wrongness the first version of the categorical imperative exposes, that you are allowing yourself to do things that you're not allowing others to do. And there is no moral justification for that. All the features about you that are different from others are about your inclinations or about your outside, and none of those matter morally. The only thing that matters morally is that you're a rational agent and you reason exactly the same as everyone else, and therefore the things you are allowed to do are exactly the same as everyone else.

And this shows that certain actions cannot bear that, and those are the wrong actions. Those are the actions that are evil. On the other hand, telling the truth, everyone can tell the truth and it's fine. There's no conflict, there's no contradiction, no problem. Therefore, that's perfectly good. Everyone can give. That's perfectly good. No problems there.

It's only a few actions where it breaks down, and this is what's just stunningly brilliant, because it seems random, it seems arbitrary, but it shows, it digs out this feature in these actions. It's not at all apparent. And what this feature is, is a contradiction. This is how he gets morality from logic. I would have said it's impossible if he hadn't done it. Contradiction is, I'm saying both lying is okay, because I'm doing it, and lying is wrong because all of you can't do it. So the liar has to say it one at the same time, "Lying is acceptable and lying is unacceptable." And they're contradicting themself, and that's a logical contradiction. And from that logical contradiction, Kant gets an ethics.

And because the aliens have the same logic as we do, they have the same access to the same moral laws, and therefore the first meeting, they all have the same access to the same exact laws. Before we talk, before we sit down and empirically, come to an agreement, they already have the same rules. They already have the same laws. The law is that everyone must do the same thing universally, and it is universally accessible to everyone. It's just a beautiful theory. Whether it's right or wrong, you have to make up your own mind, but my God, is it gorgeous. So that's the first version.

## The Second Formulation: What Has True Value?

of the categorical imperative. There are four. Kant says they're all the same. They're just different perspectives, different aspects, different ways of looking at it. Whether that's true or not, forests have been felled to make the paper for books that scholars have filled up debating that question. We are not going to get into that.

But the first two were probably the most influential. Third is also, but we're not going to get into that. The fourth no one cares about. But the second one is much more obvious how it's ethical. It's not as strange. You don't have to work as hard to connect it to common sense ethical issues. And this one starts from the question of, what is valuable? The same question that Socrates asked in the *Euthyphro*. What is value and what makes things valuable?

Because if we could find something that was objectively valuable, then everyone would have to value it. Something that's subjectively valuable, well that's variable. It's contingent. I value chocolate ice cream, you value strawberry ice cream. And therefore, valuing chocolate ice cream cannot command everyone the same. That's based on inclinations, and I have different inclinations than you do. But if there were something that had objective value, then our reason could recognize it, and then everyone would be obligated to value it.

And he says, in fact, there is one thing and one thing only in the universe that is of objective absolute value and that is the good will, the will to do good deeds. Anything else is of conditional value. Money can be good or it can be bad. Money destroyed Elvis. Money can be used to buy horrible things or it can be used to buy good things. It's conditional, it's hypothetical because it's conditioned on being used well.

You look at intelligence. Intelligence is a nice thing, but the smarter a villain is, the more harm they're going to do. Beauty, happiness as we saw. For Mill, happiness was an absolute. For Kant, if you imagine Hitler sitting on the beach in a Hawaiian shirt with a coconut drink in a hammock, happy as can be, that's awful. That's undeserved happiness, that's bad happiness. Happiness is not an absolute. It's conditioned on the happy person deserving that happiness.

But the choice to do the right thing can never be bad. The choice to do the right thing, the will that is determined to obey the moral law, to do its duty, this is the absolute good. Unconditional. And if it's unconditional, then you can have a categorical imperative to value it. Anything conditional will be hypothetical. Value this if the person is good, value this if it's being used for good purposes. But there is no bad purpose that the good will can be turned to, because it can have bad consequences, but that doesn't matter, that's consequentialist. It itself is good in and of itself. And the only place we can find the good will is in rational beings.

## Treating People as Ends, Never Merely as Means

And therefore, Kant argues that here's the second version of the categorical imperative, is to act in such a way that you always treat rational beings as ends in themselves and never as means only. Now, what that means is that a rational being is an end in themselves. That means an intrinsic good, from what we talked about from Mill. A rational being has value in and of themselves and therefore they need to be respected in and of themselves, they need to be respected for their rationality.

What it means to be rational in this context for Kant is the ability to make up their own minds. We talked about this. There's why it's rational beings who are morally relevant, or the moral agents, because they can think about what they want to do. So to treat a rational being as rational in this context means to respect their ability to make their own decisions. Treating them as a means, on the other hand, means treating them as a way for you to get what you want. Not caring what they want, only as an instrument for you to achieve your ends.

So slavery is a perfect example of treating someone entirely as a means, only as a means, because what the slave wants doesn't matter. The slave does not get to make up their own mind. The slave is basically a piece of machinery that a person uses for their own good to achieve their own goals. They're being used only as a means, only like a thing, like an object, not like a person who has a mind, who has a reason, who has goals of their own, who can make up their own mind.

If we talk about lying? An example from the first one. Well, if I lie to you, I say, "I'm gonna pay you this back, $5,000, I'll pay you back if you lend it to me." What I'm doing is I'm preventing you from making a decision with all the relevant factors. I'm keeping information away from you, the information I'm never gonna pay it back, which means I'm manipulating you. Because you could decide, even if I'm not gonna pay you back, you could still lend me the money, or in this case, give me the money. But I'm not letting you make that decision. I'm keeping all the relevant information from you, and therefore pushing you in a certain direction.

I'm preventing you from genuinely making the decision. So I'm not treating you as an autonomous rational agent, but coercing you. Doing my best with the control of the information to force you to make a decision in one way and not the other, instead of respecting your freedom and your autonomy.

Now, we do treat people as means. At this very moment, you are treating me as a means. You're treating me as a means to understand Kant. But that doesn't make it immoral. Because he says what's wrong is treating someone as a means only. It's virtually impossible to live in a society and not treat people as a means.

When you go to the grocery store and you buy a loaf of bread, you're treating the cashier as a means to get the loaf of bread. You're treating the farmers as means, who raise the crops. You're treating the truckers as means. All these. You treat people as a means all the time. To treat someone as a means only means not allowing them to make up their own minds. The cashier decided to be there. The farmer decided to raise that. The trucker decided to truck.

I decided to be here. There's no one off screen, with a gun on me. I have not been forced to say that. Please send help. So I've chosen to be here. So you're treating me as a means, but I have chosen to do this. So your treating me as a means veers into my choice of my end. So even though you're treating me as a means, you are also treating me as an end in myself, because I have chosen this end for myself. And this is how we, for Kant, this is how we respect each other's freedom, each other's autonomy, while interacting with each other.

## Batman as a Kantian: Why He Won't Kill

And we can point to, to understand this, we can point to Batman. What I always want to ask Batman is, "Why don't you just kill The Joker?" We got the same pattern. Joker breaks out of Arkham Asylum, goes and kills people, does horrible things. Batman catches him, throws him back in Arkham Asylum, he breaks out, does horrible things. Batman is the world's greatest detective. He can recognize this pattern. When he throws Batman in the asylum, he knows he's gonna break out and do terrible things. It's just gonna happen.

So why doesn't he just kill him and get it over with? If we look at this on a utilitarian basis, should he kill The Joker? The negative is a small amount of pain. Batman's a ninja, so he can do it painlessly. Of Joker dying. But all that misery being saved. It's a no-brainer. On a utilitarian basis, of course, he should kill him. No question. But he doesn't.

And I would say the reason why Batman does not kill The Joker is because he's a Kantian, which, as celebrity endorsements go, is pretty good. For Batman, the sanctity of life is an absolute. It's not up for calculation. It's not a factor in considerations to be played up against others. There's no compromise. There's no question. You do not kill, period. Not killing, for Batman, is a categorical imperative. Let the consequences fall where they may.

He's gonna do everything he can to catch The Joker. He's gonna do everything he can to reduce and minimize the harm. But he will not kill, because this is, for him, an absolute. And once you start making exceptions, it's a slippery slope down.

And this is how Kant will never fall into the situations of exploitation that Mill slides into. For Kant, there are absolutes. For utilitarians, nothing's an absolute. Everything has to be examined in its situation. And things, horrible things like murder, like slavery, they are almost always gonna be condemned, but almost always. You can't be sure. For Kant, always. Always. These are absolutes. Lying is wrong, period. Murder is wrong, period. Kant, because he has the absolutes, he does not risk the sliding into the potential situations of exploitation that Mill seemed to have to.

## Rigidity vs Flexibility: Strengths and Weaknesses

On the other hand, Kant seems to, because he has the absolutes, there are times when he seems, when those bad actions seem to be absolutely the right thing to do, and he can't approve them even then. The most famous example of this is if someone shows up at your door, at your door, with an ax dripping with blood, and says, "Hey, where's your friend Bob? I wanna go kill him." Well, the utilitarian thing to do would be to say, "Oh, he's right in that abandoned shed. Go in there." And when the guy goes in there, you lock the door and you call the police. The lie would save Bob and would get the guy caught. Or he says, "Go down to the police station," then call the police so they say, "Here comes this ax murderer."

But for Kant, you cannot lie. Lying is wrong, even when it would be to everyone's benefit. This is his non-consequentialism, his non-eudaimonism. We cannot think about those. Even when it's overwhelmingly in the favor, even when it seems so obvious common sense we ought to do it, he cannot bend. He cannot yield.

So on the one hand, he does not fall into the exploitive situations that Mill does. But on the other hand, he's so rigid in his absolutes that he seems like he cannot yield, even when common sense would say it's obviously the right thing to do. Again, every situation, every theory has its positives and its negatives.