Consequences Do Not Matter As Long As You Do It For The Right Reasons: Exploring Kant

For Kant, I ought to do my duty without regard for anything else. I simply must do my duty based on the act itself, not its consequences.

I ought to obey the absolute commands of the categorical imperative, which is a demand of a will that is good in itself. Kant begins by asking what it means to be good, and the answer is the good will, which is the will to do the right thing. We do not always act according to the good will; sometimes we act according to our other desires. However, acting from the good will is the only way to be moral. For example, an honest cashier gives a blind customer the correct change. He could have given the customer the wrong change but decides not to. Kant would ask why he did that. If it was motivated by fear of getting caught or because it makes him happy, then it is not a genuinely good action because it was not motivated by good will. For Kant, the consequences do not matter as long as you do it for the right reasons.

This also means that doing what somebody tells you to do cannot be good. Whether it is God or your parents, if you are just following orders, you are not acting from the good will.

Moral rules come to us as a result of being rational beings. Rational here means being able to listen to reasons. Part of being rational is recognizing that there are some reasons we cannot ignore and that apply to everyone. According to Kant, morality is grounded in logic. This leads to the categorical imperative. I ought to obey the absolute commands of the categorical imperative, which is a demand of a will that is good in itself. The categorical imperative is simply the thing you have to do all the time, regardless of circumstance. It is an imperative, an order, which applies categorically.

Kant expresses his basic moral ideas in four formulations of the categorical imperative, two of which are the following:

1. The formula of the universal law: Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. This means that you should only act if it makes sense for you to will everybody to act in the same way. For example, telling a lie. To will that everybody lies whenever they want to would lead to the breakdown of the whole concept of truth and lies. Nobody would trust each other.
2. The formula of humanity as an end in itself: Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end. This calls us to respect other people as beings of moral worth, as well as respect ourselves. When we talk to doctors who serve us, in a way, we are using them as a means to an end. We are only talking to them because of what we can get out of them. That is true, but it is not really a problem for Kant as long as we remember that those doctors are beings of moral worth and are doing their job voluntarily.

In conclusion, the moral law should come from us, and its chief commandment is that your will should make sense.