On Behalf of our Cultivating a More Complete Moral Outlook

(This is a continued reflection on a-moral situations.)

   In the fourth meditation Descartes writes, "When no reason inclines me in one direction rather than another, I have a feeling of indifference—that is, of its not mattering which way I go—and that is the poorest kind of freedom. What it displays is freedom, considered not as a perfection but rather as a lack of knowledge—a kind of negation.  If I always saw clearly what was true and good, I should never have to spend time thinking about what to believe or do; and then I would be wholly free although I was never in a state of indifference."

   If we consider, with Kant, that our freedom is recognized as a postulate whenever we are cognizing our duty, then the passage just quoted from the Meditations can be thought in terms of a life lived where we are always cognizing some duty and so constantly engaged as free beings.  This state of constant and complete moral determination doesn't imply that we are always acting out of duty, but that we always have something moral to be doing in every case.  If we consider this to be a positive direction to move towards, as Descartes does, it may be helpful to understand why, as well as what pursuit brings us closer to this state.

   Ultimately, the reason to engage ourselves in developing a complete moral outlook will need to be moral, and so something we discover on our own, so I will need to discuss how this duty may emerge.  But first, we may find this ideal of a completely morally determined orientation to the world attractive to us by repeating what Descartes says: "I would be wholly free although I was never in a state of indifference."  You would always experience yourself in action, and interested.  Also, you would be potentially attaining to higher levels of self-esteem; you would feel closer to having attained the goal of perfect virtue, since you would see it tested at all moments.

   (Recognition of a completely determined moral orientation as an ideal provides a new challenge to the validity of Schopenhauer's virtue of denial of the will to live, since Schopenhauer's argument arises out of thinking that we must necessarily find ourselves in a position of boredom when we are idle.)

   In considering how such a practical ideal for our moral outlook could emerge, we can consider how different understandings of nature and degrees of worldliness must always result in differences in moral judgments.  From this alone I assert that bringing humanity to a unity in moral matters depends upon agreement on our study and interpretation of nature (I will develop this topic elsewhere).  Our  fallibility  in interpreting our situation can call all our moral judgments into question, and so there seems to be a potential demand we could come to recognize morally (which I have come to feel) that clarifying the situations we are in to our utmost is important, but this duty right away conflicts with many other duties which may overrule it, particularly where we have special knowledge such as situations where we are inclined to lie.

   While I know that no theoretical argument can be given to support a moral judgment, I can at least hope to continue to articulate an interpretation of the situation that can heighten a concern with our understanding of the situation, and will hopefully foster this sense of duty to understand for ourselves in others.

Does Kant have a Prescriptive Ethics?

"But who would even want to introduce a new principle of all morality and, as it were, first invent it? Just as if, before him, the world had been ignorant of what duty is or in thoroughgoing error about it." (Critique of Practical Reason, Preface)

"Do you really require that a mode of knowledge which concerns all men should transcend the common understanding, and should only be revealed to you by philosophers?" (Critique of Pure Reason, A831 B859)

   Prescriptive (or Normative) Ethics are often understood as 1) deciding what is right or wrong on a case by case basis according to some procedure, and 2) developing general theories of such a procedure. Kant is often read as having a Prescriptive Ethics with a unique decision procedure that competes with decision procedures of other Prescriptive theories, such as Utilitarianism in its various flavors. I maintain that this understanding of Kant is completely wrongheaded: there is no decision procedure created by Kant; Kant does not use a procedure to determine what things are right or wrong. Because of this I often call Kant a Descriptivist, but this overcorrection is not technically correct, since his pure moral philosophy is not just an empirical investigation into what people generally have said is right or wrong in history (this empirical study Kant calls 'moral anthropology' in the Preface to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals). Even saying that Kant does a sort of Meta-Ethics, which traditionally deals with what counts as morality or what 'morality' means, does not properly describe what his project is.
   Construing all three of these terms (Prescriptive, Descriptive and Meta-Ethical) in a new way may help us to to get a sense of what Kant is doing. (I am not proposing redefining these terms generally, but only in the scope of this paper to highlight a certain understanding of Kant.)
   Kant's Ethics are Prescriptive in the sense that they recognize that we experience categorical judgments pertaining to morality. What this refers to is that the starting point of morality for Kant is 'duty', or what it's like to know what you ought to do. Prescription in this sense is not determined by any particular person, but rather is something experienced.
   Kant's Ethics are Descriptive in the sense that they try to give a formulation of the general form of 'duty' (what it's like to know what you ought to do). Just as the first critique looks at how experience of objects is possible, the second critique looks at how the experience of 'duty' is possible.
   Kant's Ethics are Meta-Ethics in the sense that they are interested in determining something formal. We begin with 'duty' and then abstract anything experience contributes. If we want to see ethics in action, however, we must look at a specific case. When we ad the specific case, we are also contributing a number of empirical interpretations, which may lead to disagreements - however, not disagreements as to the form of law, but to its particular judgments. The important thing here is that the form is constant, and so deliberation is possible between agents.
   Kant intends his Practical Philosophy to be a formal representation of common reason, and so we should have an interpretation that stays close to that guiding principle. This, however, is only one small step in clarifying Kant's Practical Philosophy.