 So in these excerpts we'll see Kant trying to do two things, he's trying to answer two questions. The first question is, how should I live my life? Pretty much the topic of the whole semester. The second question is really in response to the answer to the first question. So Kant is posing this question, how should I live my life? And his answer is that you should live a life according to duty. The second question then, it follows very quickly from that is, well then what is my duty? So for Kant the answer is going to come from rationality. It's not so much allegiance to one's country or even to a set of moral principles or anything like that. Rather what your duty is, is going to be determined by rationality. And rationality is determined by the will. It's also important to remember something about Kant's theory. What it's giving us is a conception of morality where more rules are absolute. That means that these rules have absolutely no exceptions. You must obey the rules no matter what else follows. This is contrasted to what we might call Ketter's paribus laws or Ketter's paribus rules. But Ketter's paribus means in the Latin it is all other things considered equal. So the idea, and this is pretty typical, we can see from morality as a set of rules all other things considered equal. So all other things considered equal, you know, you don't lie. You just don't go around telling people a bunch of falsehoods when there's nothing else at stake. Now suppose something more important, what we think is more important is at stake, say people's lies. Then we think it's perfectly fine to lie. So Ketter's paribus rules, Ketter's paribus laws, which pretty much encapsulates a lot of what we've been dealing with so far, are rules that you follow all other things considered equal. But when you travel outside normal circumstances or typical circumstances, you have to re-evaluate the rules. That doesn't mean anything goes, but you have to re-evaluate the rules. Kant strenuously disagrees. Morality is absolute. Morality is without exceptions. For Kant, the only thing that's good, the only thing that matters, what is good is the will. This means that whatever decisions you make, it doesn't matter what the consequences are. As long as you willed in the right way. It doesn't matter what you will. Only matters is how you will it. It doesn't matter what you decide. The only thing that matters is how you decide upon it. It doesn't matter what happens as a result of your decision. Something dreadful happens, something wonderful happens. That doesn't matter. If you will in the wrong way and something wonderful happens, you haven't done something moral. If you will in the right way and something terrible happens, you have done something moral. Now the consequences are unimportant for Kant. The only thing that matters is the will. You might be tempted to think what Kant means here by how one wills by something along the lines of what were your motivations. What did you intend to happen? That doesn't matter. Your character doesn't matter whether you're coward, whether you're brave, whether you're beneficent, whether you're cruel. That doesn't matter. The only thing matters is how you will. Not what you will, not even what you intend to happen, but how you intend, how you make a decision, how you will. You might wonder for Kant at this point what's supposed to determine how you will, what's the important relevance. If it's not consequence, if it's not character, it doesn't matter your intentions or motives or the results of your actions. What is it that matters when you will? For Kant, the way that matters how you're supposed to will is by conforming your will to duty. You might ask yourself how do I know what my duty is? Is it to country? Is it to some moral value? That's not it for Kant. Remember, for Kant the only thing that's good is the will. What does the will do? It makes decisions. It's rational. Your duty, then, is to rationality. Rationality is self. Not to any particular will, not to any particular person, but to rationality itself. Now, to illustrate what Kant means by rationality, I'm going to start with a notion, self-defeating actions. Now, this is important to remember. Self-defeating actions is not a concept that Kant describes, at least not explicitly. But I'm going to use this idea of self-defeating actions in order to illustrate the kind of rationality that Kant's getting at. Again, I want to be clear that the concept of a self-defeating action is not Kant's concept, at least not explicitly. This is something that I put together to help illustrate what Kant means by rational. He doesn't mean rationality in terms of truth. He means rationality in terms of practical reason. Now, what it's getting at here is that every action, at least the intentional ones that we perform, are for a purpose. So, it's a matter of practical rationality that if you want to be healthy, then you should eat, write, and exercise. That's practical rationality. Performing those actions achieves the purpose. A self-defeating action is an action which actually defeats the purpose for which you're performing the action. So, considering health, we might think of something silly as, oh, I don't know, eating nothing but Milky Way's candy bars. So, the idea is, well, I'm going to have Milky Way candy bars and just have just enough to reach my calorie limit, but I'm not going to go over that and that's going to be healthy. That's a self-defeating action. Because there's all kinds of things that you're not getting with those Milky Way bars from vitamins to proteins, well, you're getting proteins, but vitamins and certain minerals, all you're getting is a bunch of empty calories and fat. Okay. So, that's perhaps kind of a trivia example of a self-defeating action. There's lots more. There's lots of examples of self-defeating actions. We kind of tend to do these a lot. So, suppose something like this. You and a friend are having a discussion and you're trying to reach a point of agreement. Say you're debating politics and you're trying to reach a common ground with this friend of yours. You're trying to reach a point where something that you both can settle on and then move from there. But after a while, you aren't able to do this. So, what do you say? You say, well, let's just agree to disagree, but that's a self-defeating action. You're trying to say, well, we can agree to disagree as in saying this is the common ground upon which we will start from. But you haven't reached a common ground. All you said is we're going to, our common ground is the fact that we don't have a common ground. That defeats the purpose of the discussion. You might have ended the discussion, okay, but you haven't ended the disagreement. The point of the discussion was to find the common ground. The point of the discussion was to find an agreement from which you two can begin and move from there. There are other examples of self-defeating actions. As I say in the text, or I wrote in the text, you have often heard people say question everything or question authority. Well, an imperative is what's given by an authority, and that's what that command is. It's an imperative, question authority. Well, that means that you're supposed to question the very authority that's supposed to question the authority. Supposedly changes bait, question everything, including that command. Somebody says question everything, say why? Or they say question authority is like including you. You're not the boss of me. So self-defeating actions, again, are actions which defeat the very purpose for which you're performing the action. So this brings us to imperatives. Imperatives are these obligations or principles upon the will. That's what's demanded by practical reason. And remember for practical reason, the idea is that you perform these actions to achieve this goal or to achieve this purpose. So for con, imperatives come in two kinds, hypothetical or categorical. Now, hypothetical imperative is an action or was demanded of you by practical reason to fulfill some further good, some further purpose. So as an example of a hypothetical imperative, if you have the goal or further purpose of health, you ought to eat, write, and exercise, including pull-ups or walking. For another example of a hypothetical imperative, suppose you're good or your purpose is education or completing a particular course. In order to do that, you would have to study, you'd have to read and take notes and take tests. Now that might be narrowed down even further, right? Hypothetical imperatives for a chemistry class might be different than an English literature class. For a chemistry class, hypothetical imperatives would involve going to the lab and carrying out experiments. But that hypothetical imperative would not be the same for an English literature class. Now these hypothetical imperatives are hypothetical and the said said, if you were to have this goal or if you were to have this good that you're pursuing, then you'd perform these actions. That doesn't sense the wish of a hypothetical. Categorical imperative is different. A categorical imperative is an imperative you follow regardless of what good or purpose you have. This is what's good, what Kant calls good in and of itself, performing the action in and of itself. Now that's the definition of a categorical imperative. Kant thinks that this definition of categorical imperative leads to only one categorical imperative. We don't have a set of them, we just have one. This brings us to Kant's argument then for the categorical imperative. Now for Kant, the categorical imperative is that you must act in such a way that what you act, you can will into universal law. In universal law he means that anybody can do it and you're even more to the point that anybody does do it. So that's kind of extreme, right? Everything that's moral is what's rational. And what's rational is that you act in a way that can be made into universal law. Now it's got some reasons for this. So as we saw from the beginning, he's just starting with this idea that rationality is what matters morally. So pretty much maybe quite simply or stupidly it was like if you're acting irrational then you're acting morally. That's kind of the first major step. Well say you suppose or if I act or one acts in a way such that what and what acts, the acts and what performs cannot be made into universal law. Well if you're doing that, if it can't be made into universal law then you're acting in such a way that a person's decisions can be obstructed or stopped or hindered. So if you're acting in a way that can't be made into universal law then you're acting in a way such that somebody's decisions, somebody's will can be obstructed. Now what he means by that is if you're acting in a way that can't be made into universal law what happens is some people can't perform that action. And if some people can't perform that action, their will is obstructed, their will is hindered. Okay. Well, if you're acting in a way where somebody's will can be hindered, you're acting in a way where the will, anybody's will, can be hindered. Now, you might wonder why anybody's will versus, you know, just somebody else's beside your own. Well, remember what matters for Kant. It's the will, not your will, but the will, its rationality itself. All wills are created equal in Kant's eyes. It doesn't matter whose will it is. Just like it doesn't matter what is being willed, only how it's being willed. It doesn't matter who is willing, it only matters how the will is willing. So if you're acting in a way where somebody's decisions can be hindered, then you're acting in a way that can hinder your will, that can hinder your decisions. Well, if you're acting in a way that can hinder your decisions, you're acting against your own will. You are making the claim anybody's will can be hindered, including mine. That's not going to work, right? That's contrary to rationality. That's contrary to practical reason. If you're acting in a way where your will is hindered, that is contrary to reason. Okay. So that's irrational. And as we saw before, if it's irrational, it's immoral. And at least Kant, since what started this whole deal is the idea that you can act... What started this whole deal is acting in this way. If you're acting in this way where it can't be made to universal law, that's what's immoral. Well, if that's what's immoral, then acting in a way such that your action could be made to universal law, that's what's moral, that's what's rational.