Welcome to The PATH (Monday Meditation) — A weekly reflection with three timeless insights for daily life. This week’s reflection searches for ancient lessons from Immanuel Kant (Freedom, Morals, and Human Nature).
1. Freedom
For Immanuel Kant, the eighteenth-century Prussian philosopher, a morally good life is a life lived according to reason. Although Kant believed living a rational life is difficult to achieve, it is a profoundly worthwhile undertaking.
In Choosing Freedom: A Kantian Guide to Life, philosopher Karen Stohr (an upcoming podcast guest) writes,
To live according to reason is, for Kant, to live in accordance with our fundamental natures as free, rational beings. Kant’s emphasis on rationality is both essential to his theory and distinctive of it. … Kant is skeptical that our natural feelings, emotions, and intuitions could ever serve as a firm enough foundation for morality.
According to Kant, there are many things that we cannot know for sure. One is whether or not we have free will. Since this could cause a problem for someone trying to develop an ethical system, Kant suggests that while we can’t know for sure, we are free — it is rational for us to act as though we are.
But for Kant, freedom is not a means to an end; it is a way of living by which we guide ourselves in accordance with rationally defensible principles.
2. Morals
“Morality is not properly the doctrine of how we may make ourselves happy,” observed Kant, “but how we may make ourselves worthy of happiness.” The project of becoming a good person is at the heart of Kant’s philosophy.
“The greatest human quest is to know what one must do in order to become a human being.”― Immanuel Kant
In his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant asks us to reflect on the concept of a good person. For Kant, this is a useful starting place for ethical inquiry because we already have a general idea of such a person.
How would you describe a morally good person?
What is it specifically that makes someone a good person?
Stohr writes,
A good person being someone you can count on is especially central to Kant’s own conception of a good person, or what he calls a person with a good will. For Kant, a person with a good will is committed to morality in a way that means we can always count on them to do the right thing, no matter what temptations they face or what pressures they’re under.
Kant’s view is that we have an innate ability to determine what is right and wrong. This view differs from Aristotle’s, who believed moral knowledge is a specialized capacity. Moral judgment requires the virtue of practical wisdom, for Aristotle, or sound judgment about what to do.
For Kant, we do not need anyone to tell us the moral principle on which we should act. We only need to shake ourselves free of the desires and inclinations that get in the way.
3. Human Nature
Although Kant believed that we are free and have a sense of right and wrong, he did not think the path to living rationally was free of obstacles. In an essay, Kant wrote, “Out of such crooked wood a human being is made, nothing entirely straight can be fabricated.”
For Kant, the biggest obstacle to overcome is ourselves. We are often our own worst enemies when it comes to living rationally. “Not only are we a confused muddle of emotions, passions, desires, and inclinations,” writes Stohr, “but we’re also prone to misusing our reason in ways that make things worse.” Most moral philosophers focus on cultivating virtue, but Kant is equally concerned about vice. In the project of improving ourselves, overcoming vice is more than half the battle.
In Choosing Freedom, Stohr put it this way,
Kant seems to think that evil is entwined in our very natures. We’re all in danger of succumbing to it. It’s also rather hard to recognize, in part because it is quite sneaky. We’re so good at rationalizing our actions that we do not always notice when our reasoning has been overtaken by evil.
Kant thinks we have serious obstacles ahead of us if we want to improve ourselves. We all have the potential for evil acts; therefore, we must be on guard against them. Although straightening ourselves out is not easy, it is within our power to do so.
Kant calls us to realize that reason is the way and that all of our actions matter. To quote Kant, “May you live your life as if the maxim of your actions were to become universal law.”
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Thank you for reading; I hope you found something useful.
Until next time, be wise and be well,
P.S. If you are looking for a good book on Kant’s philosophy, I highly recommend Choosing Freedom: A Kantian Guide to Life.