This blog post deeply examines the philosophical reasons and significance behind Kant’s thorough exclusion of human contingency—such as emotions, inclinations, and social conditions—in establishing universal morality.
In modern Western ethics, Kant’s moral philosophy and Hegel’s ethical theory are represented by the concepts of morality and humanity, respectively, and remain subjects of debate even today. Among these, the primary goal of Kant’s moral philosophy lies in establishing ‘universal morality’. He conceives this ‘universal morality’ not by relying on the authority of a transcendent being like God, but based on the fact that ‘reason’ is already inherently given to humans. To achieve this, he removes all contingent elements belonging to the empirical world from both humans and morality. He eliminates the fact that humans are physical beings of flesh and blood, possess tendencies like emotions or tastes, and are social beings living alongside others. He focuses solely on the single fact that humans are rational beings. In this way, he derives the concept of a ‘will’ that requires nothing other than ‘reason,’ calling it the ‘rational will’. The rational will is pure will; it is free will and simultaneously autonomous will. Here, freedom signifies ‘autonomy’ as ‘self-legislation’ and ‘self-subjugation’—establishing one’s own laws and voluntarily subjecting oneself to those self-imposed laws. Moreover, the duty compelling action arises from ‘the necessity of action born from respect for the law,’ which becomes the sole criterion for judging moral action.
The individual, as a ‘rational subject’, represents all of humanity and is a ‘self-contained’ being capable of representing all rational beings. His subjective principle of action, the maxim, becomes the moral subject by becoming the necessary universal law of the moral world. Kant calls this moral principle and duty the ‘categorical imperative’ and formulates it as follows: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” Accordingly, the core of morality lies in ‘universalizability’.
Hegel criticizes Kant’s concept of morality and highly values the contrasting concept of the ‘ethical life’. An ethical life is the realization of true freedom, the point reached by an endlessly advancing self-consciousness. Unlike moral order, ethical order possesses actual content; thus, the difficulty of determining what is a duty based on abstract or formal principles of reason disappears at the level of ethics. Participating in ethical communities like family, civil society, and the state signifies the external realization of the rational essence of human nature. As members of the community, individuals accept specific roles and acknowledge the corresponding duties and responsibilities. Furthermore, once each person confirms that their particular will aligns with the ethical order as the universal will, duty and right become one within the ethical order, and duty ceases to be coercion.
Hegel refers to the realm of ethical life as human relations. The development of human relations occurs in three stages. The first stage is the family. Through the family, the individual enters the world of ethical life and first gains self-awareness of their individuality within it. The individual recognizes themselves not as an independent being but as a member of the family, accepting the rights and duties existing between spouses and between parents and children. The second stage is civil society. Civil society arises through the union of self-existing individuals based on their needs, legal systematization, and external organizations established to secure their specific common interests. Individuals attain a certain level of freedom when they discover their actual spirit is embodied within civil society. In civil society, individuals are uniquely embodied beings according to their respective social positions, yet within the legal system, they are all beings possessing equal rights. The third stage is the state. The individual’s distinct identity and particular interests pursue the achievement of their full development and the clear recognition of their rights. Furthermore, the individual seeks to align with the universal interest beyond their own self-interest, to recognize the universal, and to aspire to it. When the individual possesses true individuality within the state, recognizes the universal as their actual spirit, and actively pursues the universal as their goal, the state becomes the realization of freedom for them.
