happiness are empirical and derived from experience. Kant claims
that “for the idea of happiness there is required an absolute whole,
a maximum of well being in my present condition and in every
future condition.”44 He argues that nothing short of an omniscient
and omnipotent being could form a determinate concept of what he
real y wil s here. He criticizes various ideas of happiness, showing
why each of them is subject to unintended negative consequences
that would call into question whether to will this would be to will true happiness. Kant goes on to assert that “the human being claims for
himself a wil ” only in so far as he disregards all desires and sensible incitements.45 The rest of this passage makes a thoroughly confused
argument, which lapses into something close to antinomian Gnostic
dualism:
...reason alone, and indeed pure reason independent of
sensibility, gives the law, and, in addition... since it is... as
intelligence only, that [the rational being] is his proper self (as
a human being he is only the appearance of himself), those
laws apply to him immediately and categorical y, so that what
inclinations and impulses (hence the whole nature of the world of
sense) incite him to cannot infringe upon the laws of his volition
as intelligence; indeed, he does not hold himself accountable for
the former or ascribe them to his proper self, that is, to his wil ,
though he does ascribe to it the indulgence he would show them
if he allowed them to influence his maxims to the detriment of
the rational laws of his wil .
If the “wil ” is nothing other than law-giving reason itself – which,
as we can see, Kant is already tacitly asserting at least in this passage of the Groundwork – then based upon what ground can the rational 44 Kant, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals” in Practical Philosophy, 4:418.
45 Ibid., 4:457.
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subject show indulgence to sensible inclinations and impulses? The
problem is that, in the Groundwork, Kant also wants to maintain that this will is “his”, i.e. the rational subject’s, whereas it is, in fact, a generic Will and not one that can be the causal source of actions
for which persons may be held individual y responsible. Although
Kant claims that “freedom... signifies only a ‘something’ that is left over when I have excluded from the determining grounds of my will
everything belonging to the world of sense”, the preceding passage
demonstrates that this exclusion leaves the subject with no grounds
to be responsible for his failure to adhere to the moral law.46
In the Critique of Practical Reason Kant maintains this opposition to any object of the faculty of desire, and its attendant “intervening feeling of pleasure or displeasure”, as mediating reason’s lawgiving.47
Reason, which is to say Wil , gives the law directly. Of course, as we have seen this is incoherent, because there would be no way to hold
a person responsible for not abiding by the moral law, since Will/
Law either determines his action or brute sensible inclinations do.
Nevertheless, not realizing this, and continuing to refer to action
determined directly by Will as “free wil ”,48 Kant makes an argument
that a principle, any principle, in which one may take “pleasure or
displeasure (which can always be cognized only empirical y and
cannot be valid in the same way for all rational beings)” cannot serve as a practical law, but only as a subjective maxim.49 [In the language of the Groundwork, it is fit for a hypothetical but not a Categorical Imperative.] He further claims that all material practical principles
of this kind are real y variations on the general principle of self-love or concern with one’s own happiness – which is obviously not fit for
universal law-giving, because the “own happiness” of each person
can only ever be his own.50 Most significantly, according to the
Kant of the Second Critique, this includes the desire for “universal 46 Ibid., 4:462.
47 Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason” in Practical Philosophy, 5:21; 5:25.
48 Ibid., 5:29.
49 Ibid., 5:21-22.
50 Ibid., 5:22.
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happiness”.51 Although “the happiness of other beings” can be the
object of the will of a rational being following the moral law, and
although “every volition must also have an object and hence a
its possibility” – in other words as what furnishes a maxim fit for
universal law-giving.52
What seems to change in the Metaphysics of Morals, is that the matter of the desire for the happiness of others (and for one’s own
perfection) is no longer only allowed to be added to the mere form
of law, but is in fact presupposed in any ethical action of a rational being adhering to moral law. What allows for this change is Kant’s
realization that unlike other objects of the faculty of desire, the
ends of the happiness of others and one’s own perfection are not
incentives to some other end, they are incentives to their pursuit as
ends in themselves shared by all and only rational beings.53 These
ends that are in themselves duties54 and that provide a matter of
the power of choice55 fit for universal law-giving because they are
shared by everyone,56 are another instance of “an end in itself” of
rational beings that we encounter in Kant. Are the happiness of
others and one’s own perfection different ends in themselves, or
are they somehow the same as the Groundwork idea of “an end in itself” with respect to the existence of beings? How is it that what, in the Groundwork, would have been a “subjective end” that is merely a means to be used by a rational being as a matter of preference57
has now become an – or the – “objective end”? In the Groundwork, the only “objective ends” are rational beings themselves, qua their
51 Ibid., 5:26.
52 Ibid., 5:33-34.
53 Kant, “Metaphysics of Morals” in Practical Philosophy, 6:222.
54 Ibid., 6:381.
55 Ibid., 6:380-81; 6:389.
56 Ibid., 6:395.
57 Kant, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals” in Practical Philosophy, 4:427-28.
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existence.58 Kant was emphatic there that no other end, to which they would serve merely as a means, could ever be put in their place.
So have the happiness of others and one’s own perfection replaced
rational beings as the ends in themselves?
There is a passage at 4:430 in the Groundwork that suggests
that Kant conceived of the pursuit of one’s own perfection and the
happiness of others (which in turn allows them to pursue their
own perfection) as already inherent in his original concept of
the rational being existing as an end in itself. In this passage Kant claims that there is a predisposition towards attainment of greater
perfection in humanity (by which he means universal humanitas, not homo sapiens), and that while humanity would be preserved
if this were neglected, adherence to the Categorical Imperative
respecting rational beings (including oneself) as ends in themselves
requires one to actively further one’s own perfection. He also
claims that, while humanity would
subsist if no one sought the
happiness of others, but did not intentional y compromise their
happiness, treating others as ends in themselves demands also
furthering the ends of others to the extent possible. The problem is
that the universal law formula, as it appears in the Groundwork, is insufficient for this ethical acceptance of the well being of others as one’s own end. It would allow for no distinction between juridical
duties enforced through state coercion and ethical duties that ought
not to be coerced and that are ethical only insofar as one performs them for their own sake.59 Distinguishing the will from the power of
choice and allowing for one’s own perfection and the happiness of
others to be a material determining ground, not of the wil , but of
the power of choice, allows for this distinction to be drawn between
ius and ethica.
58 Ibid., 4:428.
59 Kant, “Metaphysics of Morals” in Practical Philosophy, 6:220.
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III.
Kant’s jurisprudential Doctrine of Right may consist almost entirely
of acquired rights, but it is nonetheless grounded on a single inherent Natural Right: “the sum of the conditions under which the choice of
one can be united with the choice of another in accordance with a
universal law of freedom.”60 Or put otherwise: “Any action is right if... on its maxim, the freedom of choice of each can coexist with
everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law.”61 On this
definition of the Natural Right to reciprocal y respected Freedom,
coercion is justified if it aims to prevent one person from coercing
another person who is not doing anything that would interfere with
his own freedom:
If then my action or condition general y can coexist with the
freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law, whoever
hinders me in it does me wrong... if a certain use of freedom is itself a hindrance to freedom in accordance with universal laws,
coercion that is opposed to this (as a hindering of a hindrance of freedom) is... right.62
Note the word “coexist” here. A case could be made that it is referring to the same “existence” at issue in rational beings existing as ends in themselves, that it is their coexistence as a “kingdom of ends”. The Natural Right to Freedom, as an inherent right, should apply to the
coexistence of all rational beings. In other words, it is the basis of a political system that could rightly govern both terrestrial humans
and any possible types of extraterrestrial intelligence.
What is more significant though, is the following. We have just
established that allowance of furthering the happiness of others and,
by this means (indirectly), their perfection as well as one’s own,
as objects of the faculty of desire, is necessary in order to prevent
60 Ibid., 6:230.
61 Ibid., 6:231.
62 Ibid.
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a political system from being a totalitarian one that would destroy
ethical duties by making all of them legal obligations to the state. The reason that Kant did not original y want to allow for this is because
he believed that any material objects of the faculty of desire, such
as desiring the happiness of others, presumed certain sympathetic
sensibilities that not all rational beings may share with humans.63
He was concerned that “a principle that is based on the subjective
condition of receptivity to a pleasure or displeasure...can always be
cognized only empirical y and cannot be valid in the same way for
all rational beings”.64 Kant comes around to asserting that it would
indeed be valid in the same way for all rational beings. In order for
extraterrestrials to be able to have my happiness as their end, and
indirectly to further my perfection while directly furthering their
own, we have to presume an empirical commonality of sensory
capabilities and physical and mental faculties capable of infinitely
approximating themselves to, or converging on, some common
standard of perfection. In fact, this is exactly what Kant does
presume in the theory of extraterrestrial intelligence that he sets
forth in the third part of his Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, discussed at the outset. In sum, Kant’s apriori universal ethics requires that there be an empirical convergent evolution of
intelligent life, not only in this universe, but in all logical y possible universes that could have been. The world of understanding does not
just ground the world of sense,65 it is an attractor that draws rational beings initial y differentiated by their contingent encumbrances in
the world of sense towards an increasingly refined realization of an
underlying archetype.
Suppose a person is born so severely handicapped and mental y
retarded that he will never be able to use any rational faculty; i.e.
physical y speaking, he has none. According to Kant, this unfortunate
creature would still be a ‘person’, with an innate Natural Right
(although perhaps with no duties obligating him). This cannot be
63 Kant, “Critique of Practical Reason” in Practical Philosophy, 5:26.
64 Ibid., 5:21.
65 Ibid., 5:121.
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because certain instrumental interventions, surgery or technological
augmentation, could provide such a being with the capacities that
he presently lacks. For if this were to be Kant’s response, he would
have to admit that the same would hold true for chimpanzees, so
that prior to such augmentation a chimpanzee would have rights in the same measure as a human born severely retarded. We must,
therefore, conclude that this retarded ‘person’, is a ‘person’ to be
treated in accordance with the Categorical Imperative, because his
biological formation was unsuccessful y aiming at realization of
some archetype. This telos cannot be a species-specific “human”
one either, since, as the entire line of Kant’s argument demonstrates, ethical and juridical obligations are grounded in a Categorical
Imperative common to all rational beings. That the severely retarded
person is a person, means that all intelligent extraterrestrials must also be individuated persons; that the retarded human has rights means that he shares with all intelligent aliens an archetype
guiding their physical evolution towards a common structural goal
determined apriori.
Kant’s divine “model to which all finite rational beings can only
approximate without end”66 can no longer be thought of as purely
abstract, if common sensibilities are required insofar as we, together with all intelligent extraterrestrials, make each other’s happiness and perfection objects of our faculty of desire. A concrete discussion
of the evolutionary biology of possible intelligent life forms will
help clarify the enormity of this claim implicit in Kant’s attempt to
construct a universal ethics. Imagine a fictitious, although plausible, natural history of an intelligent life form radical y different from
mankind. What we are trying to imagine are intelligent beings whose
distinction from homo sapiens would be of a different order than
the variation between human cultures. Any primate-like life form
would be too similar to offer an instructive contrast, since
according to Kantian anthropology any hominids that behave largely as we do
would qualify as “human” (in the narrow sense) even if they were
the products of convergent evolution halfway across the galaxy and
66 Ibid., 5:32.
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we could not actual y interbreed with them (even if we were sexual y
attracted to them).
While dolphins, whales, and even octopuses have been proven to
be strikingly intelligent (and in the case of bottle nose dolphins, more intelligent than chimpanzees), their viscous undersea environment
is prohibitive of the development of technology. The size of the
avian brain is constrained by the need to maintain a lightweight
frame for flying. Even on a planet with lower gravity, there would
still presumably be a local economy of weight distribution. So we
need a land-based life form capable of manipulating its natural
environment. Reptiles have neither the requisite intelligence nor
the proper bodily structure for tool use. Moreover, they do not
seem to compensate for their dull-wittedness by forming any kind
of aggregate intelligence with other members of the same species;
even canine packs are more coordinated. On Earth, social insects
are the one type of land based non-simian life form that is well built for manipulating the environment and that does act as a highly
coordinated group to accomplish feats utterly impossible to its
individual members. Incredibly rapid and astonishingly complex
collective activities have been observed in ant colonies, beehives,
and hornet nests. Members of these species act as if they were parts
of a single organism. Their group intelligence is qualitatively far greater than that of any of its components. (The opposite seems true
of human beings. While there are some highly intelligent human
individuals, large human groups are by comparison stupid to the
point of being self-destructive.)
To object that such creatures have not in fact developed a
technological society is to lose sight of the fact that for hundreds of millions of years, the only mammals on Earth were scurrying little
rodent-like critters that were in constant danger of being eaten by
dinosaurs and birds. It is not beyond the pale to imagine that if we
were to cause a mass extinction of ourselves and other large species,