Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [51]
Our capacity for reason is bound up with our capacity for freedom. Taken together, these capacities make us distinctive, and set us apart from mere animal existence. They make us more than mere creatures of appetite.
What Is Freedom?
To make sense of Kant’s moral philosophy, we need to understand what he means by freedom. We often think of freedom as the absence of obstacles to doing what we want. Kant disagrees. He has a more stringent, demanding notion of freedom.
Kant reasons as follows: When we, like animals, seek pleasure or the avoidance of pain, we aren’t really acting freely. We are acting as the slaves of our appetites and desires. Why? Because whenever we are seeking to satisfy our desires, everything we do is for the sake of some end given outside us. I go this way to assuage my hunger, that way to slake my thirst.
Suppose I’m trying to decide what flavor of ice cream to order: Should I go for chocolate, vanilla, or espresso toffee crunch? I may think of myself as exercising freedom of choice, but what I’m really doing is trying to figure out which flavor will best satisfy my preferences—preferences I didn’t choose in the first place. Kant doesn’t say it’s wrong to satisfy our preferences. His point is that, when we do so, we are not acting freely, but acting according to a determination given outside us. After all, I didn’t choose my desire for espresso toffee crunch rather than vanilla. I just have it.
Some years ago, Sprite had an advertising slogan: “Obey your thirst.” Sprite’s ad contained (inadvertently, no doubt) a Kantian insight. When I pick up a can of Sprite (or Pepsi or Coke), I act out of obedience, not freedom. I am responding to a desire I haven’t chosen. I am obeying my thirst.
People often argue over the role of nature and nurture in shaping behavior. Is the desire for Sprite (or other sugary drinks) inscribed in the genes or induced by advertising? For Kant, this debate is beside the point. Whenever my behavior is biologically determined or socially conditioned, it is not truly free. To act freely, according to Kant, is to act autonomously. And to act autonomously is to act according to a law I give myself—not according to the dictates of nature or social convention.
One way of understanding what Kant means by acting autonomously is to contrast autonomy with its opposite. Kant invents a word to capture this contrast—heteronomy. When I act heteronomously, I act according to determinations given outside of me. Here is an illustration: When you drop a billiard ball, it falls to the ground. As it falls, the billiard ball is not acting freely; its movement is governed by the laws of nature—in this case, the law of gravity.
Suppose that I fall (or am pushed) from the Empire State Building. As I hurtle toward the earth, no one would say that I am acting freely; my movement is governed by the law of gravity, as with the billiard ball.
Now suppose I land on another person and kill that person. I would not be morally responsible for the unfortunate death, any more than the billiard ball would be morally responsible if it fell from a great height and hit someone on the head. In neither case is the falling object—me or the billiard ball—acting freely. In both cases, the falling object is governed by the law of gravity. Since there is no autonomy, there can be no moral responsibility.
Here, then, is the link between freedom as autonomy and Kant’s idea of morality. To act freely is not to choose the best means to a given end; it is to choose the end itself, for its own sake—a choice that human beings can make and billiard balls (and most animals) cannot.
Persons and Things
It is 3:00 a.m., and your college roommate asks you why you are up late pondering moral dilemmas involving runaway trolleys.
“To write a good paper in Ethics 101,” you reply.
“But why write a good paper?” your roommate asks.
“To get a good grade.”
“But why care about grades?