Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [57]
Some people find this version of Kant’s categorical imperative unpersuasive. The formula of the universal law bears a certain resemblance to the moral bromide grown-ups use to chastise children who cut in line or speak out of turn: “What if everybody did that?” If everyone lied, then no one could rely on anybody’s word, and we’d all be worse off. If this is what Kant is saying, he is making a consequentialist argument after all—rejecting the false promise not in principle, but for its possibly harmful effects or consequences.
No less a thinker than John Stuart Mill leveled this criticism against Kant. But Mill misunderstood Kant’s point. For Kant, seeing whether I could universalize the maxim of my action and continue acting on it is not a way of speculating about possible consequences. It is a test to see whether my maxim accords with the categorical imperative. A false promise is not morally wrong because, writ large, it would undermine social trust (though it might well do so). It is wrong because, in making it, I privilege my needs and desires (in this case, for money) over everybody else’s. The universalizing test points to a powerful moral claim: it’s a way of checking to see if the action I am about to undertake puts my interests and special circumstances ahead of everyone else’s.
Categorical imperative II: Treat persons as ends
The moral force of the categorical imperative becomes clearer in Kant’s second formulation of it, the formula of humanity as an end. Kant introduces the second version of the categorical imperative as follows: We can’t base the moral law on any particular interests, purposes, or ends, because then it would be only relative to the person whose ends they were. “But suppose there were something whose existence has in itself an absolute value,” as an end in itself. “Then in it, and in it alone, would there be the ground of a possible categorical imperative.”21
What could possibly have an absolute value, as an end in itself? Kant’s answer: humanity. “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.”22 This is the fundamental difference, Kant reminds us, between persons and things. Persons are rational beings. They don’t just have a relative value, but if anything has, they have an absolute value, an intrinsic value. That is, rational beings have dignity.
This line of reasoning leads Kant to the second formulation of the categorical imperative: “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.”23 This is the formula of humanity as an end.
Consider again the false promise. The second formulation of the categorical imperative helps us see, from a slightly different angle, why it’s wrong. When I promise to repay you the money I hope to borrow, knowing that I won’t be able to, I’m manipulating you. I’m using you as a means to my financial solvency, not treating you as an end, worthy of respect.
Now consider the case of suicide. What’s interesting to notice is that both murder and suicide are at odds with the categorical imperative, and for the same reason. We often think of murder and suicide as radically different acts, morally speaking. Killing someone else deprives him of his life against his will, while suicide is the choice of the person who commits it. But Kant