第11讲：《考虑你的动机》
Sandel教授在课程中这样介绍康德：最具挑战性和最有难度的思想家之一。康德认为，我们作为个体，是神圣的，是权力的享有者，但并不是因为我们拥有自己。相反，理性和自由选择是我们的能力，使我们变得独特，使我们跟单纯的动物区别开。当我们将责任付诸行动的时候（去做正确的事），只有这样，我们的行动才有道德的价值。Sandel引用了一个例子：一名店主拒绝给一个顾客换零钱，只因他担心会影响他的生意。根据康德的理论，这不是一种道德行为，因为他没有找到正确的理由做正确的事情…
Immanuel Kant康德
What the supreme principle of morality is?
What freedom really is?
Kant: all human beings have a certain dignity that commands our respect. That’s because we are all rational beings, we are beings who are capable of reason.
Kant admits the utilitarians were half right. We seek to avoid pain, and we like pleasure. But Kant disagree that pain and pleasure are our sovereign masters. Kant thinks that it’s our rational capacity that makes us special, that sets us apart from and above mere animal existence.
Kant’s definition of freedom: when we, like animals, seek after pleasure or the satisfaction of our desires or the avoidance of pain, we are not really acting freely. We are really acting as the slaves of those appetites and impulses. Freedom is the opposite of necessity.
Kant: To act freely, is to act autonomously, is to act according to a law I give myself.
The opposite of autonomy: “Heteronomy”, to act according to desires I haven’t chosen myself.
To act freely is not to choose the best means to a given end; it’s to choose the end itself for its own sake. Respecting the dignity of persons, means regarding persons not just as means but also as ends in themselves.不止将人视为实现目的的手段，而是要将人本身也视为目的。
What gives an action its moral worth?
What makes an action morally worthy consists not in the consequences or in the results that flow from it; what makes an action morally worthy has to do with the motive, with the quality of the will, with the intention for which the action is done. (do the right thing for the right reason)
“A good will isn’t good because of what it effects or accomplishes, it’s good in itself. Even if by utmost effort the good will accomplishes nothing it would still shine like a jewel for its own sake as something which has its full value in itself.”
Duty职责 vs. Inclination偏好
例子：店主为了保护自己名誉而不给顾客少找钱
Kant: did the right thing but for the wrong reason, thus not moral
例子：the Better Business Bureau’s full page ad in the New York Times: “Honesty is the best policy. It’s also the most profitable.”
Question: what’s the guarantee that the law I give myself, when I’m acting out of duty, is the same as the law that other people give themselves?
Kant’s answer: the reason that leads us to the law we give ourselves as autonomous beings is a reason that we share as human beings. It’s not idiosyncratic. We are all rational beings and we all have the capacity to reason, and it’s the exercise of that capacity for reason which exists undifferentiated in all of us, that makes us worthy of dignity.
第12讲：《道德的最高准则》
康德说，就我们的行为的道德价值而言，赋予它道德价值的是我们超越自身利益和偏好，将责任付诸行动的能力。Sandel讲述了一个真实的故事：一名13岁的男孩赢得一项拼字比赛的冠军，但随后他向法官承认，其实他把最后一个单词评错了。用这个故事和其他的故事，Sandel解释了用康德的理论如何来确定一项行动在道义上是否正确：在作出决定时，想象一下，你的行为背后的道德原则，是否能成为每个人都必须遵照的普遍法律。这个准则，是否能作为一个普遍规律，让所有人都受益？
Immanuel Kant: What is the supreme principle of morality?
Kant’s three contrasts:
1. MORALITY Motives: only one kind of motive is consistent with morality, the motive of duty基于职责的动机 all other motives fall into the category of inclination (every time the motive for what we do is to satisfy a desire or a preference
3. FREEDOM Determination of will: autonomous vs. heteronomous. I’m only free when my will is determined autonomously (according to a law I give myself).
4. REASON Imperatives命令: Hypothetical imperatives假言命令 use instrumental reason工具性的理性. If you want X, then do Y. vs. Categorical imperatives绝对命令。”If the action would be good solely as a means to something else, the imperative is hypothetical; if the action is represented as good in itself and therefore as necessary… for a will which of itself accords with reason, then the imperative is categorical.”
What is categorical imperatives?
1. The formula of Universal law: “act only on that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”如果在同一时间所有人都会遵循某个法则 e.g. promise keeping. If everyone makes false promise there would no longer be promise at all.
a) John Stuart Mill’s criticism on Kant: “if I universalize the maxim and find that the whole practice of promise keeping would be destroyed if universalized, I must be appealing somehow to consequences, if that’s the reason not to tell false promise.”
b) Mill is wrong though, it is a test but not exactly the reason. The reason you should universalize to test your maxim is to see whether you are privileging your particular needs and desires over everybody else’s.
2. The formula of humanity as an end: “We can’t base the categorical imperative on any particular interests, purposes, or ends, because then I would be only relative to the person whose ends they were只与人的目的有关. But suppose, however, there were something whose existence has in itself an absolute value… an end in itself… then in it, and in it alone, would there be the ground of a possible categorical imperative.”
“I say that man, and in general every rational being, exists as an end in himself, not merely as a means for arbitrary use by this or that will.”
“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time, as an end.”不只是看作手段而同时看作目的。
Humanity, the capacity of reason, resides undifferentiated in all of us. The reason that we have to respect the dignity of other people has not to do with anything in particular about them. So Kantian respect is unlike love in this way. It’s unlike sympathy, unlike solidarity or fellow feeling or altruism, because love and those other particular virtues or reasons for caring about other people have to do with who they are in particular. But respect, for Kant, is respect for humanity, or rational capacity, which is universal.
Using other people as means (e.g. when purchase food use people at the counter as means) is not objectionable provided we treat them in a way that is consistent with respect for their dignity.