Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [53]
A modern-day parallel to Kant’s prudent shopkeeper can be found in the recruiting campaign of the Better Business Bureau of New York. Seeking to enlist new members, the BBB sometimes runs a full-page ad in the New York Times with the headline “Honesty is the best policy. It’s also the most profitable.” The text of the ad leaves no mistake about the motive being appealed to.
Honesty. It’s as important as any other asset. Because a business that deals in truth, openness, and fair value cannot help but do well. It is toward this end [that] we support the Better Business Bureau. Come join us. And profit from it.
Kant would not condemn the Better Business Bureau; promoting honest business dealing is commendable. But there is an important moral difference between honesty for its own sake and honesty for the sake of the bottom line. The first is a principled position, the second a prudential one. Kant argues that only the principled position is in line with the motive of duty, the only motive that confers moral worth on an action.
Or consider this example: Some years ago, the University of Maryland sought to combat a widespread cheating problem by asking students to sign pledges not to cheat. As an inducement, students who took the pledge were offered a discount card good for savings of 10 to 25 percent at local shops.8 No one knows how many students promised not to cheat for the sake of a discount at the local pizza place. But most of us would agree that bought honesty lacks moral worth. (The discounts might or might not succeed in reducing the incidence of cheating; the moral question, however, is whether honesty motivated by the desire for a discount or a monetary reward has moral worth. Kant would say no.)
These cases bring out the plausibility of Kant’s claim that only the motive of duty—doing something because it’s right, not because it’s useful or convenient—confers moral worth on an action. But two further examples bring out a complexity in Kant’s claim.
Staying alive
The first involves the duty, as Kant sees it, to preserve one’s own life. Since most people have a strong inclination to continue living, this duty rarely comes into play. Most of the precautions we take to preserve our lives therefore lack moral content. Buckling our seat belts and keeping our cholesterol in check are prudential acts, not moral ones.
Kant acknowledges that it is often difficult to know what motivates people to act as they do. And he recognizes that motives of duty and inclination may both be present. His point is that only the motive of duty—doing something because it’s right, not because it’s useful or pleasing or convenient—confers moral worth on an action. He illustrates this point with the example of suicide.
Most people go on living because they love life, not because they have a duty to do so. Kant offers a case where the motive of duty comes into view. He imagines a hopeless, miserable person so filled with despair that he has no desire to go on living. If such a person summons the will to preserve his life, not from inclination but from duty, then his action has moral worth.9
Kant does not maintain that only miserable people can fulfill the duty to preserve their lives. It is possible to love life and still preserve it for the right reason—namely, that one has a duty to do so. The desire to go on living doesn’t undermine the moral worth of preserving one’s life, provided the person recognizes the duty to preserve his or her own life, and