Kant's connection to altruism

[The Lonely Rationalist]

I'm writing a paper on Kant's ethics for school, and I'm having trouble with 1 point: How is Kant connected to altruism? I can not find anywhere where Kant said that doing an act for a beneficial gain is immoral, nor can I find anything on him saying that doing things for others is a virtue.

If someone could point out a quotation of Kant's on these things, that would be a huge help. For now, I'm stuck.

[Grames]

If you break altruism up into method and content, then Kant contributed the method and Comte the content. Kant wrote that ethics was about duty, a deontological ethics. Comte said your duty was to others. Duty

[Capitalism Forever]

Consider the following three kinds of action:

1. an action done with your own benefit in mind; i.e., an egoistic action

2. an action done for the benefit of a stranger: an altruistic action

3. an action you don't expect to benefit anyone at all: a nihilistic action

In Kant's time, the dilemma was between #1 and #2: traditional Christian ethics held #2 as the moral ideal, but the ideas of the Enlightenment were beginning to turn the tide in favor of #1. Kant's ethics was all about reversing this and returning to #2, so in this sense he can be called an altruist.

However, Kant's ethics was not primarily pro-others but rather anti-self. You are quite correct to point out that he never made doing things for others a virtue; what he made a virtue is not doing things for yourself. This raises the possibility of #3: an action that is not done for yourself--nor for anyone else. In Kant's ethics, this could very well be a completely virtuous action, so with this in mind, we can say that Kant was an ethical nihilist.

[Dante]

In Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant discusses his concept of a "will which is to be esteemed as good of itself without regard to anything else." (I believe this is on page 397 in the original text. Its a few pages into the first section.) He then says that his concept of duty contains that of a good will. In describing duty and differentiating it from other reasons for acting he says (I quote at length):

"It is a duty to preserve one's life, and moreover everyone has a direct inclination to do so. But for that reason the often anxious care which most men take of it has no intrinsic worth, and the maxim of doing so has no moral import. They preserve their lives according to duty, but not from duty. But if adversities and hopeless sorrow completely take away the relish for life, if an unfortunate man, strong in soul, is indignant rather than despondent or dejected over his fate and wishes for death, and yet preserves his life without loving it and from neither inclination nor fear but from duty -- then his action has a moral import.

"To be kind where one can is duty, and there are, moreover, many persons so sympathetically constituted that without any motive of vanity or selfishness they find an inner satisfaction in spreading joy, and rejoice in the contentment of others which they have made possible. But I say that, however dutiful and amiable it may be, that kind of action has no true moral worth. It is on a level with [actions arising from] other inclinations, such as the inclination to honor which, if fortunately directed to what in fact accords with duty and is generally useful and thus honorable, deserve praise and encouragement but no esteem. For the maxim lacks the moral import of an action done not from inclination but from duty. But assume that the mind of that friend to mankind was clouded by a sorrow of his own which extinguished all sympathy with the lot of others and that he still had the power to benefit others in distress, but that their need left him untouched because he was preoccupied with his own need. And now suppose him to tear himself, unsolicited by inclination, out of this dead insensibility and to perform this action only from duty and without any inclination--then for the first time his action has genuine moral worth." This appears on pages 397-398.

One can now see Kant's conception of duty as a motive for action. It occupies a completely separate sphere from any personal characteristics or inclinations, with no overlap. Only an action which accords with duty, and is done specifically because it accords with duty, is worthy of moral praise. Morality has nothing to do with personal (some would say selfish) desires and feelings towards oneself and others. The commands of duty, as "categorical imperatives," are good in and of themselves, without reference to any outside purpose. Duty must be done for its own sake to receive moral praise.

This complete separation of morality from the personal concerns of one's life is what Rand derided as altruistic. Kant would not always have you sacrifice everything you have to others (he says on page 399 that "To secure one's own happiness is at least indirectly a duty, for discontent with one's condition... could easily become a great temptation to transgress duties."), but he would tell you to completely separate your decision-making from your own personal values, and pursue duty single-mindedly.

Kant says on pages 438 and 439 that pursuing the commands of duty will undoubtedly sometimes conflict with one's own pursuit of happiness. Though one might "scrupulously follow this maxim [the categorical imperative]... he cannot count on its favoring his expectation of happiness. Still the law... remains in full force, because it commands categorically." One's happiness is irrelevant to the commands of duty.

More on page 440: "We have also shown above how neither fear nor inclination to the law is the incentive which can give a moral worth to action; only respect for it can do so."

Hopefully this is a start on your essay. If you characterize the egoism/altruism dichotomy as "pursue your own good" versus "pursue the good of others" then you'll have a hard time calling Kant an altruist, for this is not what he is saying. He doesn't claim that pursuing your own good is immoral, nor that pursuing the good of others (always at all times) is moral. Rather, he simply separates morality completely from one's personality and desires. Morality, for him, occupies a completely separate sphere, where the only concern is duty for duty's sake. It is in this sense that his ethics is the exact opposite of egoism, which (in some way or another) equates morality completely with one's own good.

Edited January 31, 2010 by Dante

[The Lonely Rationalist]

Wow, thank you for that amazing answer, Dante! That really helps clarify it for me.

[Focus]

In one part of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Kant states that it is rational to pursue one's own happiness and that we should view ourselves as our own ends. How to achieve happiness is a big difference in Rand and Kant. Reasoning one's way to happiness is against Kant's ideas. In the beginning of the first section he states that reason is only meant to be our way of rewarding ourselves for accomplishing something, He tries to argue that if nature wanted us to secure our happiness then instincts would work better than reason. Rand states that man is to reason his way to happiness whereas Kant would believe that one finds his happiness in submitting to duty.

Just in case it matters at all, my version of Groundwork was translated by Thomas Abbott.

[Black Wolf]

I've been hearing a lot about Kant lately, what a concidence, we were discussing him in The Trolley Problem today in Philosophy.

Could it be argued in favor of his altruism that Kant believes "people should not be treated as a mere object"? What is his definition of a mere object? Wouldn't an employee be an "object"?

[pmuriello]

I've been hearing a lot about Kant lately, what a concidence, we were discussing him in The Trolley Problem today in Philosophy.

Could it be argued in favor of his altruism that Kant believes "people should not be treated as a mere object"? What is his definition of a mere object? Wouldn't an employee be an "object"?

Not treating people as an object, or "treating people as ends in and of themselves" as Kant puts it, is altruistic insofar as treating a person as an object would be of benefit to you. Employment is a kind of objectification, but not typically in the sense that Kant meant.