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Kant and Utilitarianism

By Nathaniel J. Kan

TA: Ken West

According to the Kantian, in order for one to perform moral actions, one must

obey the Categorical Imperative, which has several formulations. One of these is that it is

necessary to "act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own

person or the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time

as an end."

1

For the Kantian, it is morally required to recognize that the existence of

every person is an end in itself. This idea might be said to conflict with utilitarianism,

which could be interpreted as treating people as means. I argue that although the

utilitarian might be argued to often consider others as mere means, the Kantian

Categorical Imperative cannot provide an easy answer to every situation either.

It is important to pay attention to the exact wording of this formulation of the

Categorical Imperative. The problem for the Kantian is not treating someone as a means

alone; we do this all the time in our lives without moral question. When we take a bus we

are using the bus driver as a means of going. When we take class we are using our

professor as a means of learning. The problem for the Kantian is not when we treat

another as a means, but when we fail to recognize that he is also an end. Essentially, the

argument is that as I treat myself as an end, so should I treat others, because it is rational

to do so. Were everyone not to treat others as ends, then no one would be treated as an

end by his fellows, as would be rational because every person is a free and autonomous

being. This would thus result in what the Kantian sees as a logical contradiction.

1 Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Chapter 2, line 834.

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It might seem that the utilitarian does not require treating everyone as ends in and

of themselves. A situation might be presented where the utilitarian would use one person

to increase the well-being of several people. The person being used in this instance would

thus be being treated as a means. But remember what the Kantian says: the problem is not

treating another as a means, butfailingto treat that person as an end. Thus the question at

hand is whether or not in any given case, the utilitarian is failing to treat a given person as

an end. On this fact the agreement of the Kantian and the utilitarian is contingent.

Let us consider an example. A doctor has five patients who need organ transplants

to survive, however, there are no donors. On the way to the hospital he runs over a

homeless man with no connections or relatives. At this point he might do two things: A,

attempt to save the man's life, orB, let the man die and use his organs to save the five

other patients. We will stipulate that A ends in a successful saving of the man, and in B

all the organ transplants would be successful, and result in saving the lives of patients that

would die otherwise.

In this case the utilitarian would follow option B, as would be morally required by

utilitarianism, as this option results in the greatest total well-being: five live and at the

cost of one life. The Kantian, on the other hand, considers the example a priori to

circumstance, and thus the question becomes "Is it wrong to kill a man?" to which the

answer is obviously, yes. In the case ofB, the doctor would be treating the homeless man

only as a means, and therefore the Kantian is required to choose A.

The utilitarian can argue, however, that he does consider every person as an end,

because he is considering every person's well-being when calculating the total sum. Thus,

when the doctor decides to harvest the homeless man's organs, although it seems as if he

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is treating the man as a mere means, the doctor also considers the man's well-being as an

end, just as he considers every man's well-being as an end.

The Kantian, however, would disagree with this definition of "treating another as

an end." To the utilitarian, treating one as an end means maximizing total well-being, and

maximizing total well-being means maximizing total pleasure. But to the Kantian, one's

pleasure is not equivalent to one's autonomy. Freedom is a priori to circumstance, and

pleasure is a posteriori to it. To the Kantian, performing an action because it gives

pleasure is not a moral action; moral actions are actions in which the sole motivation is

reason. When the Kantian talks of treating every person as an end, he means that it is

necessary to treat every person as a rational author of universal law. Thus in the case of

B, the doctor does not treat the homeless man as a end, because he is not respecting the

intrinsic value of the man, the fact that the man is an end and not simply a means to some

goal.

Utilitarianism does regard every person in some way at least, insofar as the fact

that it considers every person's well-being. The Kantian criticism that the utilitarian does

not regard every man as an end reduces to whether one agrees with the Kantian stance

that every man needs to be treated as a rational author of universal law and respected for

his intrinsic worth a posteriori to circumstance. The general criticism of the utilitarian in

this matter is that the utilitarian moral action does not always fit with our moral

intuitions, because it often allows for the sacrifice of one for the benefit of many.

Is either of these criticisms a legitimate concern about utilitarianism? Accepting

the Kantian objection is contingent on accepting the truth of Kantianism, at least, the "all

men are ends" formulation of the Categorical Imperative (which, because all formulations

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of the Categorical Imperative are said to be equivalent, becomes the acceptance of the

Categorical Imperative in general). But accepting this is really contingent on accepting

the underlying axioms of Kant on moral theory: that moral actions are actions whose only

motivation is duty, and all morality is a priori to circumstance. This is in strong

disagreement with the utilitarian, who believes that there is nothing moral a priori to

circumstance at all; moral actions rely solely on circumstance. Then the problem reduces

to which set of axioms we accept: the utilitarian ones or the Kantian ones.

The general criticism that utilitarianism treats people as means seems to be a more

valid one, because it is independent of the moral axioms subscribed to by the critic. When

considering our previous example, many people would agree that it seems contrary to our

moral intuitions to follow the course of action described in B. Because our moral

intuitions are the only real measure we have of deciding whether a system of morality is

acceptable, we need, in at least some way, to take them into account when devising a

moral theory. Thus, the seeming disparity between what utilitarianism directs the doctor

to do and what our moral intuitions direct is important.

This disparity might very well cause one to decide in favor of a Kantian system of

morality over a utilitarian one. It seems that the system "treats people as [only] means" is

not an objection that could be made about the Kantian system. In practice, the Universal

Law Formulation (which directs us to take no action unless the maxim on which that

action is motivated could be adopted as a universal maxim) and the "treat all persons as

ends" formulation both become something very much like the Golden Rule: treat others

as you would yourself wish to be treated. Following the Kantian system leads us (in our

previous example) to choose A, which is much more in line with what most would

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believe is morally correct.

It is not necessarily true that one should immediately adopt the Kantian position,

however. There are plausible objections to the Kantian argument as well. Although the

Kantian is required to always consider others as ends in themselves, it is unclear how in

practice this consideration is to be regularly applied. Consider the possibility where one

man has the option of killing a criminal to prevent his killing of several people. If we take

the Kantian approach, we must analyze the action a priori to circumstance, and therefore,

look at the act as if it only involved killing the criminal. Then, we conclude that it is

immoral to do so, as we are not considering the criminal as an end in and of himself; we

are not respecting the idea that he is a rational actor capable of making moral decisions.

But the a posteriori fact is that the criminal is not necessarily of the same rational mind as

us: he does not care about logic or morality and is going to cause the deaths of others

anyways. By not killing him, are we not failing to take into consideration the rights of the

others to be ends as well? By letting them die because we fail to act is that not denying

their intrinsic self worth?

Killing the criminal is using the criminal's death as means to saving the lives of

others. But not killing the criminal is denying the rights of the others to be ends. Consider

another example: two men are locked in combat. One man has the ability to either kill his

opponent, or let his opponent kill him. What is the moral action? In the first case, the man

would be using his opponent's death merely as a means to save himself. In the second

case, the man would be using his own death merely as a means to save his opponent. To

the utilitarian, either course of action here is the moral action (assuming both men are

identical in the well-being they would spread; assume they are identical twins or some

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close contrivance). It seems here however that the Kantian can provide no moral action

(or non-action). But a complete moral theory cannot say that no action is a moral action;

for any given two actions a moral theory must be able to say either they are equally as

good, or one is better than the other. Here there seems to be an incompleteness in the

Kantian theory.

Utilitarian does often treat people as means. Whether or not those people are

being considered as ends as well by the utilitarian depends on the interpretation of "ends."

It is a valid criticism of utilitarian to claim that because our moral intuitions often deny us

the action of sacrificing one for the needs of many, utilitarianism often does not fit that

well with what we feel is right. It would be a mistake, however, to immediately jump to

accepting Kant, as Kantianism does not readily provide us with an answer for all

situations either.