- Kant, Groundwork for Metaphysics of Morals (Allen Wood edt and Trans) pp. 45-54 (Numbers refer to the original text and not the pdf document). Kant – groundwork for the metaphysics of morals with essays
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dignityindignity 
Hobbes argues that although your own life is extremely precious and irreplaceable to you, it cannot seem that way to anybody else. Hobbes comes to the conclusion that your “public value” alone makes up your “dignity.” And it is nothing more than the price your skills may make you pay: Your accomplishments are what earn you respect.
Kant, however, had a different perspective on the same issue. We all possess the worth or position of human dignity, which we cannot lose. Instead, we must strive to sustain the moral superiority of humans over other creatures and objects in our daily choices.A fundamental idea in reason and morality known as the categorical imperative tells us to appreciate each person’s humanity as a goal in and of itself rather than just as a means to an end. We must act as if we were both legislators and subjects in an ideal moral commonwealth where the citizens are regarded as ends in themselves rather than as a mere commodity.
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Kant says the only thing that has an end in itself has dignity. A student of Kant, Schiller, says, “I know that talking about political freedom is fashionable now. The road to political freedom is through art.” Art should remain autonomous and free from the market. So people to have an education in art because he believes art is not only visual art and painting; poetry, drama, literature, dance, and so on are also part of art. He thinks art is a field/area humans experience their humanity freely. Live art as an end in itself. So, art does not have to serve industry just like science. In fact, arts have a civic role to play by keeping the race of humanity.
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Readings for this week were very thought-provoking as Hobbes’s ideas are totally opposed to the ideas of Kant. Hobbes, on the one hand, says that the first natural law of a human is seeking peace. But, on the other hand, he claims that the worth of each man is defined by how useful he can be to the others. As I understand this, human beings should be always aiming towards peace, but at the same time they can get instrumentalized. Hobbes also claims a quite interesting idea of having friends. According to Hobbes, friendship exists under the condition of getting profit from our friends. Thus, if we are unable to get anything from our friends, we do not need them. I agree with idea to the extent that we should should make friends that are better or more successful than us, hence, they can share significant knowledge and experience, consequently, encouraging us to grow and improve our skills. But I am downright against the exploitation and the goal of getting monetary or other kind of profit our of friendship.
On the contrary, Kant has opposite ideas. According to Kant, if a human beings instrumentalizes himself, he takes away his own dignity. Moreover, he says that each person should be treated as the end to himself, what basically means that people cannot be treated as the instruments. Thus, the price of a life of a human being is placed above all the prices, as each person is unique and irreplaceable. Although I comply with Kant’s ideas, I find them controversial within certain situations. It was once declared in the German Constitution that human life cannot be measured by numbers. But if we take war as an example and bring Kant’s idea that people cannot be instrumentalized, will it always be true? Is it right and reasonable to sacrifice a smaller number of people in order to save a larger number of population? According to Kant, this is a wrong thing to do, as human life is above all the price and cannot be measured by numbers, but as Hobbes would say, the acts of sacrificing for a larger good or for peace would be considered useful, thus, worthy.
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Out of all Kant’s arguments, his perspective on Suicide intrigued me the most. Most philosophers we have considered so far regard Suicide as illicit due to its direct opposition to the divine will – as Life is imposed on the individual by God, taking one’s own objects this grand right and is recognized as either opposing Him or considering oneself as superior to the ‘regular’ man. However, as Kant recognizes a man as the end itself, not merely as the means to it, as it was thought of earlier, he proposes a clashing novel idea. His argument is based on the view of a man’s moral worth emerging from one’s autonomous rational will.
He explains rational will as a source of one’s moral duty dictating our actions. As such, a conscious destruction of the body, the tool used to carry out its impulses, directly contradicts its own motives. His argument deflects the controversy of Suicide from an outer, God’s, constraint to a rationale found in an individual themselves.
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There is a major difference in the perception of dignity according to both Hobbes and Kant. From Hobbes’s perspective, a person cannot choose his own self-dignity and cannot be the one to decide whether or not he actually had dignity but he also believes that a person can do specific actions to make people admit that he has dignity and that dignity is a thing that you can work for but only if you do the specific actions that would help with that. He mentions the example of a king and how he can honor himself in a parade and that would increase his dignity. On the other hand, Kant believes that the amount of dignity that you have is the amount that you were born with according to your family and that you cannot increase your dignity because it is inherent and that person can only be able to maintain his dignity by doing specific actions but not increase it which opposes Hobbes’s argument. For Kant a human is only different than animals and other creatures because of the ability to rationalize and that a human can decide to do actions to maintain their dignity.
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The contrast between Kant’s and Hobbes’s approaches to defining the worth of an individual is stark. Hobbes believes that the self-worth of a person cannot be chosen by himself but rather by the commonwealth. However, he can increase his worth by doing specific actions or projecting certain ideals on the surrounding people. Additionally, a person’s peers can be affected by others; he gives the example of the king who told a court member that he could parade through the city with a crown on his head with princes behind him, honoring him and increasing his worth.
Kant, on the other hand, believes that a person’s worth are pre-determined and inherent and that the person must work to maintain their worth, as the only thing that separates him from other creatures is his ability to rationalize and choose to maintain his dignity. He proposes that a person is valued as an end in themselves and not a means to an end.
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To you, your own life is immensely valuable and irreplaceable, but it cannot appear that way to anyone else, according to Hobbes. Hobbes concludes that your “public worth” is all that constitutes your “dignity.” And that is nothing more than the cost your abilities can impose: Your output is what gives you dignity.
Kant, however, view this same phenomenon differently. Human dignity is a value or status that is inherent in us and that we cannot lose. Instead, we must work to uphold this moral standing that sets humans above animals and ordinary things in our personal decisions. The Categorical Imperative, a foundational concept of reason and morality, instructs us to respect each person’s humanity as a goal in and of itself rather than merely as a means to an end. In an ideal moral commonwealth where the citizens are valued as ends in themselves rather than as a mere commodity, we must conduct ourselves as if we were both lawmakers and subjects.
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Kant gives us strong principles to act by: The will of rational being is what makes it follow the laws, which according to him have to be universal, with humanity as the goal, and autonomous at the same time.
He views dignity as a non materialistic concept which, as his categorical imperative, is free of any incentive : Dignity of a rational being comes from laws it gives itself. Dignity is above all and does not have a price since price is an equivalency of one object to another.
The autonomy of human is a ground for dignity. Acting according to your principles that you consider rational and fair to everyone is dignifying.
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Kant argues that there are fundamental, or natural rules that lead people to the common good. For Kant the scale of morality constitutes of maxims, or in other word, values that are based on one’s will. While the intuitive sense of people in theoretical matters is weak, most people are usually able to obey moral law in practise because their intuitions are more or less accurate in practical reasoning. This idea was really surprising because it was almost inconsistent with what Hobbes said in his Leviathan. Whereas Hobbes did not want to assign individual acts any moral conclusions, Kant is much more strict in his reasoning and essentializes the essence of such actions in a way. I think I agree more with Hobbes in this regard, since the categorical imperatives and maxims of Kant leave no space for interpretation of acts that might appear wrong, but are actually pleasant. Moreover, both Hobbes and Kant can be said to interpret their principles of morality as the means by which people in the state of nature ascend to those in the state of society.
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The classification that Kant makes between humans in things is interesting. He lays the foundation for this idea that humans are meant for more; while things can be used as a vehicle to get somewhere else or accomplish something, human beings are not just used as a means to get somewhere.
Kant believes people have a duty toward others, an idea I’ve consistently seen throughout our readings. We are all dependent on each other in some way, including in having dignity or being humanized in society. We should seek to help others reach their goals. However a new idea that is brought up is the duty toward oneself.
After reading so much about how one cannot validate their own dignity, the concept of humans owing themselves something is fascinating, as well as I believe to be accurate. Kant explains it using suicide, saying humans are not a thing, meaning actions of humans are not only used as a means. As a result, we are unable to hurt or kill our own person. What I think makes this unique is that there has to be some level of self respect or self-esteem involved in being unable to hurt or kill yourself, something that is not inflicted by surrounding society. Since any form of self-harm is well, self inflicted, there has to be some reason that one sees themselves as jus as human as everyone else, and just as deserving of a decent life as anyone else.
Another idea that, while is not unique, is something that hasn’t been as present in our readings, is treating others the way you want to be treated. We’ve read about slavery and the beliefs of natural slavery, where some groups of humans are actually subhuman and not seen as capable of being leaders or anything beyond slaves. Nowhere in these readings or hundreds of years of slavery was the belief held that we should treat others the way we want to be treated. While it’s possible that this concept would have been “reserved” for fully human beings in order to circumvent the idea of equality, the introduction of this idea alongside the respect we have towards ourselves in order to continue living is really though provoking, given the time of when this piece was written.
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This text will present the main takeaways from Kant’s “Groundwork for Metaphysics of Morals”, comparing it with Hobbes’s ideology, and discussing its applicability with an example.
The metaphysics of Kant are different from this of Hobbes as he assumes that there are some things that are called ideal, that are beyond nature at the end. He furthermore opposes Hobbes by saying that “That which has price has no dignity.”
For Kant, the dignity of the person is in his autonomous nature. Kant in his three premises views people as an end in itself, while Hobbes believes that people are means to an end. Kant believes that when you put a price on something it becomes interchangeable, it becomes an instrument, it loses its uniqueness, it loses its autonomy. A thing that has a price becomes not an end in itself but a means to another end. This way one’s personhood and dignity are being undermined.
The example of suicide, whether Kant will justify it as morally right or not, discussed during the class was interesting for particularly because it exemplifies Kant’s ideology and compares it with that of Thomas Aquinas. Kant will not consider it morally right to commit suicide as when you do so you make your life a means to an end. According to Kant, when the person doesn’t like himself due to various reasons and it stops being an end in itself, they take away the dignity of life. Thomas Aquinas considered it immoral as well cause you are taking away God’s property.
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In his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant addresses obligations of good will and moral law. He believes that there are three general principles about duty: Actions are good when done for the sake of the duty; actions are judged by motivation of the principle rather than the purpose; duties should be done out of reverence for the law. He believes that moral law should be applicable in all situations because moral law cannot be a specific stipulation that calls actions in any particular way. Although people’s intuitive sense for theoretical matters is poor, most people are generally able to follow moral law in practice since their intuitions in practical reasoning are more or less correct.
Kant’s arguments were very interesting because it had implications that moral actions cannot have impure motivations. This made me think about what the distinction between what we think are “moral” and “immoral” are. For instance, some people argue that abortion is immoral, while others beleive it is moral. What can we say about people’s intuitions in such matters of practical reason? Kant also thinks that moral actions cannot be based on consideration of possible outcomes. This was difficult for me to grasp because we usually think about the effect of our actions when we are trying to determine whether our actions are doing more good or harm and thus moral or immoral. Kant’s philosophy is very abstract but I believe it is important in understanding more about concepts of morality.
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With hindsight to Kant’s ‘Metaphysics of Morals,’ the will is determined by representing specific laws specified in traditional beings. There are two types of grounds, which include the “subjective” and “objective.” The subjective ground of desire is what is known as the incentive, whereas the objective basis of volition is the motive; hence, the distinction between the personal ends depends on reasons that are valid for every rational being.
Every rational being exists as an end in itself, not merely as a means; hence, the human being is symbolic of hi sown existence in this way. Kant expresses the duty not to main oneself in connection with the responsibility forbidding suicide, probably carrying the broad sense of ruining or destroying rather than the narrower sense of moral corruption.
The principle of every human will as a will legislating universally through all its maxims. A rational being belongs as a member of the realm of ends but also subject to universal laws.
Looking back at Shiller’s letters, he focuses on how, through beauty, we can arrive at freedom. In letter 9, completely independent of the arbitrary will of men. To be argued with and the artist should create because of its dignity. Aesthetic education is needed to lead man to freedom. All in all, Shiller philosophy coexists with Kant’s morals and aesthetic philosophy.
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