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Humanity Formula, Good Will and Foundation of Respect

Hüseyin Güngör, 2015

Abstract:

In this paper, I argue for a reconstruction of the notion of “Humanity” in Kant’s second formulation of

the categorical imperative. I parse the second formulation and examine the crucial notions employed in

it. I argue that the most significant notion in the second formulation is that of humanity, since the

intuitiveness of the second formulation goes astray, if we do not even know what the notion of

humanity stands for or refers to. I consider several candidates for the notion of humanity in the

literature and I raise trouble for the one defended by Richard Dean. Afterwards, I propose that the

notion should best be understood as the capacity to set ends, as defended by Korsgaard and Wood.

Additionally, I back up this defense with further data from behavioral and developmental psychology,

where I consider certain experiments of evaluating the moral perception of infants. This data provides

me with a stronger ground to argue that even infants have the capacity to recognize goal-setting or, in

our terminology, end-setting and claim that the capacity to set ends is the stronger candidate for the

notion of humanity employed in the second formulation. However, even this proves to be insufficient,

since the notion I have defended turns out to exclude certain animals which we respect in themselves.

I, further, propose that we should weaken the notion by removing what Allen Wood calls “the

personification principle.” Only in this form does the notion of humanity encapsulate the concept of

moral value and worth we seem to operate upon.

1 Introduction

Second formulation of the Categorical Imperative, generally known as the Humanity Formula, is one

of the features, which makes Kant’s moral philosophy appealing to a number of philosophers. From

the mouth of Kant, it reads as follows: “Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as

in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.” (G 4:429)

The appeal of this formulation can be appreciated in several ways. First, Kant explicitly states that the

Formula of Humanity “brings the idea of reason closer to intuition” (G 4:436-437). Another reason

might be found in “the Doctrine of Virtue”. As Allen Wood observes, of 14 duties Kant enumerates in

“Doctrine of Virtue”, 11 of these duties are unequivocally based on the Formula of Humanity (Wood,

1999, p. 140). Some Kantian scholars also emphasize that this formulation provides the content for the

Categorical Imperative.

However, there are certain aspects by which the Humanity Formula (HF from here onwards)

gives rise to thorny issues. First, the content or referent of what Kant refers to as “humanity” is not

crystal-clear. Second, even if it is clear, it causes a distinction between beings with humanity (or of

rational nature) and beings without, where those without humanity lack the merit of dignity or respect.

Superficially conceived, the definition of humanity seems to be leaving a number of creatures we

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today respect in their own rights out. For instance, non-human animals and young babies turn out to be

beings without humanity and not deserving our respect. Furthermore, HF provides us with a somewhat

clear formula of how to treat beings with humanity, but it does not provide us with any insight into

what to do with those beings without. Even though Kant, in his lectures, talks about an “analogous”

account of how to treat non-human animals, this account encompasses beings without humanity, only

insofar as we regard our treatment of these animals as constitutive of our own self-worth (LE, 27:459).

This puts non-rational creatures in a position which can at best be means to the development of our

own moral character or self-worth. In his lectures, Kant also suggests that we are capable of bonding

with non-rational animals, since we spend time with them and observe them. This process makes us

able to make some sort of analogy with non-human animals. However, still we have a duty toward

non-rational animals, not because we regard these creatures having an intrinsic worth (the same

conclusions can be salva veritate applied to nature, environment and all non-rational entities we can

think of), but because the favorable treatment of these animals serves to improve our own moral status.

At its best, this account turns non-rational beings into more of a means in terms of their worth coming

only from the vicarious roles they play to make our moral character more worthy rather than being

ends in themselves, which is a highly disappointing result and, furthermore, it fails to account for the

obvious, every-day respect people show to their offspring, pets or other non-rational companions.

In a formal moral theory, we usually leave these aspects out and pretend that they did not exist or

claim that what we are dealing with is not within the purported scope of these questions. However,

since Kantian moral theory is an all-encompassing moral theory which should tell us how to do rightly

by all beings in moral scope, we cannot simply ignore those beings who are unfortunate enough not to

possess humanity and we have to be able to distinguish rigorously if these beings lack or possess

humanity. Additionally, there is now accumulating behavioral-psychological evidence that infants,

which are thought to be devoid of humanity, possess a capacity to distinguish a morally right action

from the wrong12, which is suggestive that some purportedly non-rational beings may have humanity.

1 J. Kiley Hamlin, Karen Wynn & Paul Bloom, “Social Evaluation by Preverbal Infants”, Nature · December 2007. 2 There is a well-known objection to this experiment by Damian Scarf: Scarf, D., Imuta, K., Colombo, M., & Hayne, H. (2012). “Social evaluation or simple association? Simple associations may explain moral reasoning in infants” and an experiment also conducted by Hamlin to respond to the criticism by Scarf: J. Kiley Hamlin

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It seems hard to deny that these infants do not have any capacity to distinguish an action supposedly

performed by a being with a goal-driven mind. Though indirectly, infants seem to recognize a certain

character of the action, which seems to be in conformity with rational nature and ultimately some sort

of morality.

As I have briefly hinted at above, another issue emerging with the concept of humanity is that

it seems to refer to several concepts in Kant’s philosophy. It seems to refer to good will in Kant’s

claim in Groundwork. Though Kant never claims that humanity is good will, he explicitly claims that

only thing of unconditional value is good will and this seems to lead to the conclusion that humanity is

good will. This causes certain problems with regards to the scope of morality.

Considering all of the said above, my primary aim in this paper will be, first, to provide a brief

account of HF and how HF is structured and what its constituents are, what fundamental concepts

make up the formula; second, to present the problems encountered in adopting the concept of

humanity merely as good will. I will also mention the problems emerging even in adopting a concept

of humanity as capacity to set ends, namely, the beings excluded to have humanity, but apparently

treated as if they were ends in themselves. As an example, I will present the psychological data from

“Social Evaluation by Preverbal Infants” (Hamlin, 2008). From the experiments, I will point out at

how infants can recognize goal-driven actions or, in more relevantly technical terms, ends set by

supposedly rational agents. Lastly, in order to weaken HF to include beings even of non-rational

nature, I will consider Wood’s “removal of personification principle” from HF (Wood, 1999, p. 144),

which provides conceptual tools to extend the respect for beings assumed to be without humanity and

those with the “infrastructure for rationality” (Wood, 1998, p. 200) and discuss if this weakening of

HF stands devoid of problems. This will let me conclude that the notion of humanity or rational nature

is “closer to intuition”, when it is taken to be the capacity to set ends, but even this is not enough to

include a number of beings we obviously treat as ends in themselves. Additionally, unconditional

worth cannot be restricted only to rational nature, since this would obviously clash with Kant’s

remarks about natural beauty obtaining its value not from rational nature, but possessing its value in

(2014) “The case for social evaluation in preverbal infants: Gazing toward one’s goal drives infants’ preferences for Helpers over Hinderers in the hill paradigm”

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itself in Critique of Judgment (CoJ 5:353-354)3. Then I will argue that humanity should be extended to

other beings by virtue of the removal of the personification principle.

2 Breaking down the Formula

If we ever want to make sense of the HF, then it trivially follows that we should be able to understand

what it says without ambiguity. This requires one to adopt a certain definition and stance on the

concepts utilized to construct the formulation. The problem is, though, that some of the concepts via

which the HF is constructed got already ambiguated and whoever wants to find some justification for

his reading of Kant seems to find the senses of the concepts fitting for their purposes straight from

Kant. The reconciliation of these people who beg to differ on what the true reading of Kant is does not

seem to be a possibility, not because they are enemies, but because Kant seems to use some concepts

ambiguously to convey different meanings at different passages and if one wants to find some textual

evidence for his own position, she can acquire it straight from Kant.

I am not proposing that how I will conceive these concepts or which senses I will adopt for the

concepts are the orthodox ones or Kant meant them in the way I conceive them. I believe that, at this

stage, in the year 2016, it is unfruitful and most probably futile to assert that such-and-such is the

orthodox, one-true Kant reading. My endeavor will be based on how I understand Kant and how a

Kantian picture of morality fits with the reading I have in mind, specifically how HF can give us

insight into how to find some aspect we were missing otherwise in our daily lives, at what times it

does not give an insight and when it does not, what can be done to emend the aspects of Kantian

philosophy falling short of providing an answer for us.

3 Main Concepts of the Formula to Elucidate

“Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at

the same time as end and never merely as means”—there are at least 3 concepts in this formulation of

3 Due to limit of space, I cannot fully expound on this, but the way I read the passages about the analogy between the morally good and beautiful in Critique of Judgment (5:353) is that the objectivity of moral good and beauty obtains their objectivity in a similar way. In the case of morality, we obtain this objectivity through the employment of Categorical Imperative, though in the case of beauty, it invokes an inscrutable unification of theoretical and practical reason, giving rise to objectivity. Similarly, we harbor an affinity towards beauty in the form of an intuitive reflection, whereas we approach the moral good in its concept (5:354).

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the categorical imperative we need to have a grip on, which are “end” or, more specifically, “end in

itself”, “humanity” and “using humanity”. The concept of end is the least controversial one, so I will

start with the analysis of what an end is and what types of ends Kant seems to have in mind. Then after

specifying three types of ends, end in itself, relative end and existent end, I will further discuss end in

itself, since it is what is at the focus of HF. The concept of “humanity” is much more controversial and

there are a number of philosophers who take different sides on what “humanity” is. For instance,

Christine Korsgaard (Korsgaard, 1986, p. 187) take “the capacity to set ends” or, in Kant’s words, “the

humanity by which he alone is capable of setting ends” (Kant, 1996, p. 387) and Allen Wood takes it

to be a cluster of properties, one of which is the capacity to set ends (Wood, 2008, p. 92), whereas

some others (Dean, 2006) tend to take it as “the good will”. I will have my own reasons for why I will

regard the concept of humanity as the capacity of setting goals or ends.

One of the reasons is the minimality condition, which also corresponds to my general

philosophical attitude of “assuming as little as possible and building up from these minimal number of

assumptions”. Minimality condition will manifest itself in the form of a regress argument. By the

regress argument it will be plausible to prevent the possible loss of content in the HF due to the

unlocatable and undecidable nature of good will. I will call this “undecidability of good will”. Another

reason, which I will not deal with in detail, is that the concept of good will is either too

unsubstantiated or too little explicated by Kant to base one of the formulations of Categorical

Imperative. For instance, after introducing the concept of “good will”, Kant never provides a full

account of or an analysis of the term and in other writings, very rarely uses it4, even though he keeps

employing other terms such as duty, categorical imperative, virtue et cetera. The importance of

categorical imperative, virtue, duty carry over to the other writings of Kant, but that of good will

seems to subside. I also believe that it is not that Kant does not want to explicate the concept, but it is

that he cannot, because he places good will not in actions, but in maxims, which we cannot ever have

4 For instance, in Critique of Practical Reason, Kant uses the term “good will” only twice. It is surely strange that, even though Kant ascribes to the term the significance of “being the only unconditional worth”, he rarely turns back to it. Allen Wood is right to observe that the term is not central to the Kantian scheme of morality or ethics (Wood, 2003, p. 458)

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intuition into, which renders the explication of the concept deficient of content5, especially without

engaging in transcendent metaphysics. It is not hard to see that Kant wants to avoid that.

Even though Kant proposes as explicitly as possible the assertion that only thing which has

unconditional value is a good will (G 4:393)6, this claim turns out too strong to be sustained and, in the

end, turns out to be a concept which should be assumed rather than argued for.

Basically, these reasons will lead me to adopt the capacity account of humanity rather than

good will. Kant’s adoption of the capacity account is mainly in three passages—one is on page 392 of

the section VIII., “Exposition of Duties of Virtue as Wide Duties” of The Metaphysics of Morals

(Kant, 1996, p. 392), the other is from Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone where he talks

about three distinct predisposition of human beings, one of which being “humanity”, which is the

capacity of practical reason as opposed to “reason which is practical of itself” (Wood & Giovanni,

Kant, 1998; 6:28)7 and the last one is from Groundwork where he says “rational nature discriminates

itself from the rest in that it sets itself an end” (G 4:437).

4 Different Types of Ends

The definition for the word “end” is a goal, a terminal point one strives for. How Kant uses it is in the

sense of a means-end reasoning. However, the distinction further deepens in the concept of end itself.

There is “end in itself”, which has categorical, unconditional value, which is irrespective or irreducible

to any other end by virtue of value or worth, in other words, it has objective value, not changing from

person to person or in virtue of the different desires. End in itself gives rise to an opposite notion,

which can be called a relative end, which is dependent or contingent upon desires, inclinations or other

subjective criteria. If end in itself can be conceived in conjunction with Categorical Imperative, then a

relative end is surely associated with hypothetical imperatives, as Kant surmises (G 4:428-429).

5 Remember Kant’s famous aphorism about concepts and intuitions: “concepts without intuitions are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind” (Critique of Pure Reason: A51/B76) 6 “It is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered

good without limitation except a good will.” (G 4:393) 7 We should note the difference between “practical reason” and “reason which is practical of itself.” Kant ascribes practical reason to general capacity to set ends and seek the means to achieve that end, while reason which is practical of itself is directly related to personality, the part which is tied to morality. While thinking about practical reason, I came up with this kitschy maxim: “Practical reason is the faculty to turn your dreams into reality”, which is not quite off, considering that it is the general faculty to produce the representation of an end and make the representation of that end turn into the object of that end.

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Relative ends are the type of ends which do not exist in the current state of things, but set by agents. In

Kantian terms, only their representations exist and we strive to achieve them and turn their

representations into objects. Kant claims, just before constructing the Formula of Humanity, that the

value of all objects through actions are always conditioned, as opposed to being unconditioned and

marks a distinction between “things”, which have “relative worth as means”, and “persons”, whose

nature “marks them out as ends in themselves” (G 4:429). Relative ends are then always conditioned

and their worth depends upon the being who set those ends, whereas the worth of ends in themselves

are unconditional, necessary and objective and they depend upon “nature” (ibid).

We can think another type of end, what Allen Wood calls “existent ends” or what Kant calls

“self-standing ends”, we constantly act in accordance with them. As I understand the concept, existent

ends are the type of ends which exist independently of our setting them, in other words, they exist

simply due to the way things are. The natural example, as Korsgaard notes, is self-preservation

(Korsgaard, 1986, p. 185). Self-preservation is not an end we ultimately try to achieve, but it is an end

we sustain by means of some other ends. We eat food, drink and try to avoid trouble for our self-

preservation. Self-preservation as a super-end, for instance, gives to two types of distinct ends, namely

negative and positive ends, the former being the type of end which provides us with something to

refrain from and the latter being the one which provides us with a purpose or goal to strive for in

accordance with self-preservation.

Even though it may be obvious from our usage of the term, we should note that humanity is

not an end we set; it is an existent end and puts some constraint on our actions in observation of

humanity in ourselves or others. If humanity were an end to be set as opposed to an existent end, then

there must be something else which sets this end which has an unconditional status. It is obvious that a

faculty setting an end has a more fundamental status than the end set by that faculty, hence closer to

having an unconditional value. Therefore, the faculty setting the end will always be more valuable

than the end set by it. This type of reasoning is quite alike to Korsgaard’s conception of humanity as a

“value-conferring” agency (Korsgaard, 1986, p. 200). This type of a regress argument can be used to

argue for humanity’s existent end status. Kant utilizes a similar argumentation to locate the end in

itself or unconditional worth among possible options.

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Now what Formula of Humanity commands us is that we never ought to treat a being with

humanity as a means, but always as a terminal point, an end. There are obvious implications of this we

can immediately understand. For instance, I should never treat a grocer merely as a grocer, because

that would be using him/her merely as a means to achieving my goal, which is buying some vegetables

and fruits. I should respect her humanity, because, eventually, he is an end, not merely a means. This

entails that, for instance, I cannot insult the grocer, simply because I think that he is a bad grocer. If I

treated him merely as means, then I could insult him, because he is a bad grocer, but due to his rational

nature or humanity, I cannot insult him, because in that case I would ignore the fact that he is a human

being and not be showing respect to his humanity, which is an end in itself, that is to say, under no

condition should I disrespect the humanity in anyone with any of my actions, as Kant suggests (G:

4:434). We can understand this much, but we should immediately be led to the obvious question:

“What is humanity or what is a being with humanity?”

5 A Much Thornier Concept: Humanity

At first sight, “humanity” does not seem to suggest a complicated denotation or connotation.

Superficially, coming from the term “human”, it may seem safe to assume that it refers to the cluster

of properties of what we take as a human being, i.e. the capacity to language use, reasoning et cetera.

In another sense, we use the term in our everyday lives for a concept of more moral/ethical nature. In

my mother tongue, Turkish, it refers to some sort of a conscientious property of humanity. For

instance, you will witness someone utter “this guy must have lost his humanity”, when that guy does

something cruel and horrible. Well, “humanity” is a technical term for Kant, but it is not completely

distinct from what we gave as ordinary language examples. In fact, this manifold nature of the term

brings us right on the controversial aspect of the concept of humanity, that is, why Kant scholars

disagree about the denotation of this term. However, till we start dealing with these different

conceptions, we need to provide some definitions and textual evidence.

There are three places where Kant explicitly defines “humanity” (G: 4:437; Kant, 1996, 6:392,

Wood & Giovanni, Kant, 1998 and additionally, Wood & Kant, 1786) and in all of these places, he

explicitly states that the power to set ends to itself is the distinguishing trait of humanity. However, it

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is a question mark, if “humanity” used in these passages is the same notion used in the HF. At this

stage, I will concede that it is, but this will become clear only after I provide my argument against

humanity as good will.

However, different scholars in different traditions treated the concept of humanity from

different angles. Richard Dean provides a summary of who conceived humanity how in his subsection

“What Should We Treat as an End in Itself?” (Dean, 2006, pp. 24-33). I will not go over these

conceptions, but for the convenience of my goal I will divide these conceptions into two camps: 1)

Humanity as the Capacity to Set Ends, and 2) Humanity as Good Will. There are nuances among those

who treat humanity as the capacity to set ends, but I have no space to deal with these nuances.

As analogous to the regress argument, I would like to start with the good will account and after finding

it an ineligible candidate for humanity, I will try to give an account of the capacity to set ends as

humanity. Naturally, some of my objections will pave the way for the latter account.

5.1 Humanity as Good Will

Kant never gave an explicit account, but we can try to construct one from what he implied and said in

conjunction with the good will. A good will should be pretty much what it suggests: it is a will that is

good. Then what is a will? We may inquire more into the concept of will. Trivially, we can say that

the will is our capacity of willing. Kant states that willing is “not a mere wish[ing], but the summoning

up of all means insofar as they are in our control” (G 4:394). From what I understand from this

explanation is that willing is a type of means-end activity, meaning that we set an end for ourselves

that we wish to actualize with our faculty of practical reason. Accordingly, Kant in Groundwork says:

“Everything in nature works in accordance with laws. Only a rational being has the capacity to act in

accordance with the representation of laws" (G: 4:412-413), meaning that we can act in such a way

that the moving force of our action may not be a law, but its representation (i.e. desire). This sort of

being able to act merely from the representation of law seems to be the capacity of willing or simply

will. A good will is then a will whose principles of actions or maxims are always in accordance with

the moral law and from moral law, since the moral law is the source of good. This is the most explicit

account I can think of for the concept of good will. However, we need to note that there is an

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asymmetry in Kant’s use of the term “good will” and “good willing”, these may not always coincide in

certain scenarios. For instance, in case of beneficence from sympathy, even though the agent’s willing

is good, it is not necessarily good, because it is dependent upon a contingent principle (sympathy).

The argument for humanity as good will comes from Kant’s claim in Groundwork of the

unconditional worth of good will, as I noted earlier. Kant writes: “There is nothing it is possible to

think of anywhere in the world, or indeed anything at all outside it, that can be held to be good without

limitation, excepting only a good will” (G 4:393). Though never provided by Kant, the argument for

humanity as good will seems to go as follows:

1. Only a good will has unconditional value.

2. An end in itself is of unconditional value.

3. Humanity is an end in itself. 8

∴ Humanity is good will.

More elaborate conclusion would be humanity and good will being coextensional, but due to the

multi-meaning of humanity, there will be more beings with humanity and humanity will be

coextensional not only with good will, but also with beings with capacity to set ends, to do theoretical

reasoning, follow hypothetical imperatives et cetera. However, I believe that this argument does not

work, not only because, as we will see in the progression of the paper, good will is not something we

can ascribe to particular beings. Even though we can describe a hypothetical being with good will, in

practice where Categorical Imperative should be a guide to our actions, it becomes unable to prescribe

any guide to actions, because humanity qua the content of HF becomes ambiguous or something

which cannot be worked with. Hence, we would be stuck in a situation of not knowing which beings

with humanity we should treat as an end. Consequently, I believe that the general effort of Kant with

the HF is to provide a content for the Categorical Imperative, but Good-Will Reading hollows out the

content from the formulation.

5.1.1 Two Main Issues with Humanity as Good Will

8 This premise is coming from HF: “Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.” (G 4:429) This suggests that humanity can never be a means to end or an end to some other end; it is always an end in itself. We can also find that Kant himself conceives humanity as an end in itself (G 4:430-431).

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There are mainly two grave issues Good Will Account of Humanity suffers from.

a) Undecidability Problem: We know that having a good will has nothing to do with the

consequences or actuality of our actions (Kant maintains that good will “would shine like a jewel for

itself” even under the worst conditions) (G 4:394) and it cannot be tainted with bad consequences of

our ends or failure to achieve our ends. Then good will has its basis not on our empirically observable

actions, but on maxims or principles of action. Even Kant agrees to this, when he asserts: “it [moral

worth] does not depend on the actions, which one sees, but on the inner principles, which one does not

see.”9 (G 4:407) We cannot directly assert that someone has a good will or a bad one. It is impossible

for us to observe the maxims of others, deduce and ascribe a corresponding will to the person with

correct order of maxims, meaning maxims not only in accordance with duty, but also from duty, or the

person with what Kant calls “depravity”, that is, deliberate subordination of maxims in accordance

with duty to the maxims of inclinations or other arbitrary drives.

As far as my understanding goes, it seems that Kant posits good will within the metaphysics of

noumena whose deduction cannot rely on empirical observation, which precludes one from ascribing

the corresponding will to the relevant agent. Accordingly, the existence of good will is purely

dependent upon assumption or supposition rather than deduction. Even though I observe the most

heinous actions possible performed by some agent, I cannot assume a bad will for that person, because

I have no proof for his subordination of good maxims to bad ones. Maybe his rather weak nature for

massacre and total annihilation is preventing him from acting upon his dutiful order of his maxims.

When we consider an agent who does bad throughout his life, should we assume that whenever he

does bad, he has a good will, but lacks the strength of character to act upon his good maxims? This

type of an extreme charitable reading of one’s life surely seems incorrect. In addition, it also seems

that the gap between one’s actions and maxims must be attributed to one’s frailty of character, since

we must assume the good will of the relevant agent’s. This is a horrible conclusion, indeed, since in

these types of scenarios we need to eliminate the possibility of bad will or depravity. It seems only

9 We know that Kant agrees to the fact that moral worth does not depend on the consequences of actions, but on the status of their maxims, that is, whether the maxims are formulated in accordance and from the moral law. We can see this from his assertion: “In such a case [where the action is effected from the principle of sympathy] the action, however it may conform to duty and however amiable it is, nevertheless has no true moral worth.” (G 4:398)

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natural for some of the actions one performs to be indicative of his will, but when we assume an

inherent good will in agents, we seem to attribute to his will only his good deeds and, when it comes to

bad ones, we seem to attribute to them the lack of strength of his character. Therefore, the good will is

decidable and attributable from a conceptual perspective, but anything we have, which could bear

proof, cannot be used in determination of the good will in one’s person, which deprives us of any

method in ascribing good will to any being selectively. This leads to what I call “the undecidability of

good will”.

These are some general remarks about the undecidability of good will and they will also neatly

be tied to our discussion of humanity as good will. Suppose we should treat those with good will

always as an end in itself. Considering the frame above, then whom/what we should treat as an end

will be those with the correct set of maxims derived in accordance with and from the moral law. This

should eliminate those with bad wills from the set of agents we should treat as an end, but we cannot

obtain any knowledge with regard to any bad will. Then our actions should always be set in such a

way that we must always assume what we are treating has a good will. However, this is also an

undesirable result, since this would entail that every agent is a morally committed one, even if his

actions demonstrate otherwise.

Richard Dean’s argument against the rarity of good will may seem to be countering this

argument, but it is not (Dean, 2006, p. 96-97). The high quantity of beings with good will does not

matter, if we lack the methodological tools to selectively attribute to each individual good will. In

specific cases, when we take humanity as good will, HF does not tell one how to treat an arbitrary

being, whether it is to treat it as an end or means. I believe that my argument against good will stands

unaffected against Dean’s optimism about the commonness of good will.

b) Validity of Respect for Only Those Who Are Morally Committed: This objection is

close linked with the first one and it assumes some of the objections made in the first one. We have

mentioned at the start that Humanity Formula is really at a key position to guiding our actions in

accord with morality. Kant himself gives explicit account of most of the duties in Metaphysics of

Morals in the shape of this formulation. Therefore, the rightful and dutiful actions which have been

validated by this should make up at least some of the morally right actions in our lives. However,

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when we take humanity, which is the key concept in the formulation, as good will, which determines

the scope of the right for our actions and our morally salient content, then I believe the concept of

humanity becomes unfavorably and contingently restrictive.

Taking humanity as good will entails that what we should treat as an end is a morally

committed agent, whose committal we cannot derive or prove, but always assume. But even if we

were in a position to tell apart the good will from the bad, the situation would not still be favorable. As

I have stated in the introduction, our mission is to make HF into a formulation, which is more

inclusive toward non-human animals, babies and other non-rational nature. However, when humanity

is good will, HF becomes so restrictive that it lets us treat only those with a correct moral alignment as

an end and all the morally blemished people would be eligible to be used at the whim of morally

correct ones. Aside from being a highly discriminative and downright unjust, this would also turn CI

into a tool of the morally self-righteous to assert dominance over the others.

This would also lead to a contradiction in the order of moral reasoning. Take the case of

killing other minimally rational beings without good will. If we take humanity in HF, then we should

be able to find some rational ground which would allow us to kill that being, since he is not an end in

itself. The vital consideration should be that will of that minimally rational being is not of a fixed

value, that is, it is not indicative of what that person will do in the rest of his life; he may possess a bad

will, but he still has a will and therefore, the power of free choice. At any moment of his life, he may

start acting upon good maxims. By denying him the right of life due to his lack of good will, we

remove any possibility for this person to have a good will in the future. Despite Kant’s claim about the

good will’s unconditional worth, it seems to be that a good will’s existence is a matter of contingency,

given that the concept of good will is about the order or hierarchy of our maxims and this order can

change at any moment of our lives. Even the purpose of moral education seems to be to teach and

learn how to regulate our order of maxims through time.

The example hints at a more radical conclusion than I would like to have, actually. In the case

of undecidability, we have mentioned that we cannot ascribe selectively to beings good or bad will,

since we lack the methodological devices to do so. However, we are always confronted with

unspeakable atrocities in real life and we should be able to impute some of these atrocities to their

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perpetrators. However, if the assumption of good will should remain at the basis, then the perpetrators

are always at some crossroads in terms of the strength to act upon which of their maxims.

Accordingly, their power of free choice is always infringed upon by their morally conflicting

inclinations against their will (which is supposedly good). This is a cumbersome result and it is much

easier to conclude that some of the actions of agents are surely indicative of their maxims and wills

and, consequently, they may possess bad wills. However, the problem is that we cannot be sure of the

status of their wills rather than the fact that they have wills. I believe that we should not place our faith

on the unreliable assumption of the goodness or badness of one’s will, since objective moral

imperative rests not on the status of the will, but on the fact that the being has a will. We must concede

that, should Categorical Imperative have content for its object of respect, then this content must be

something of more decidable ground.

These are the major objections I harbored throughout the discussion against the conception of

humanity as good will and these cumbersome results in the progression of the argument led me to

reject the account of humanity as good will. Next, in my regress argument, I will deal with humanity

as power or capacity to set ends, the potential problems it poses and how they can be emended.

5.2 Humanity as the Capacity to Set Ends

By not being convinced by the argument that humanity is good will, I will regress on the possibility

that humanity may only be the capacity to set ends, which “discriminates” rational nature from other

types of natures (G 4:437) and what we should respect in conjunction with HF is the will beings

possess. Setting ends is a special type of activity where one does not act by being caused by some law,

but by being caused by the representation of that law, as Kant also states (G 4:412). A being without

will acts purely on the cause-effect of some law. However, a being with will can act on the

representation of that law without being reliant on the actuality of the law itself. It is most

fundamentally the capacity to effect the power of free choice. Then what good will is just a special

case of will with which we act from the moral law willingly. I believe that having a good will requires

a sophisticated cultivation of the rational faculties one might or might not achieve throughout her life,

whereas will is a more fundamental notion, more readily given in beings, if it exists.

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We can think of respect for humanity as the capacity to set ends in the following way: take

every being with will in a life-building project. They will particular things to their liking and strive to

employ the means to achieve the ends their wills set. Some of these ends will be in conflict with some

other being’s end; some of them will be mutually permissible. Even without including morality in the

picture, we can appreciate that one needs to respect these life-building projects as much as others need

to respect ours, because the maximum harmony among these ends can only be achieved with a

reciprocal respect between parties. This is a simple, but a harmonious picture of a community of

minimally rational beings. When Allen Wood says the capacity to set ends is also what makes

“systematization of different ends into a whole” possible, one of the points he seems to make is this,

considering the fact that these different ends can also be ends of different agents (Wood, 1999, p. 119).

Thus, I believe that when Kant says “using the humanity in oneself or in some other”, he points out at

the respect of this very minimal act of willing, as opposed to respecting those with the greatest moral

alignment, i.e. good will.

Will is also the fundamental constituent of morality, since it includes both the power of free

choice and the actuality of acting against the animalistic or naturalistic impulses. When non-human

animals act, the impulses are direct causes of their actions; they cannot act “against” the naturalistic

impulses. When it comes to a being with will, these impulses may play the role of a drive or an

incentive, but eventually to act on them or not will depend on how agents exercise their power of free

choice. This is why Korsgaard can combine Kant’s claim of unconditional good being good will and

his claim of humanity being the power of free choice. She says: “what enables Kant to make both

claims [good will being the unconditional worth and humanity being the capacity to set ends] without

any problem is this: humanity is the power of rational choice, but only when the choice is fully

rational is humanity fully realized.” (Korsgaard, 1986, p. 197) If we refer to the distinction Kant

employs in Religion, we can say that personality is only possible, when there is humanity. In the

hierarchy of human characteristics Kant lists in Religion, humanity is more fundamental than

personality and personality is built upon humanity. The achievement of highest good can be feasible,

only when there is the possible existence of a faculty acting against impulses (my assumption is,

indeed, for imperfectly rational beings like ours; not for holy or divine wills).

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Now we can explain why humanity as the capacity to set ends is a more plausible reading: we

have seen in the good will discussion that the determination and detection of a good will is not

possible, as Kant also admits. However, it is not hard to detect the will itself, since it is the general

capacity to set ends and pursue the means to these ends, which has more deducible nature than good

will. This is a capacity which can be attributed to the relevant beings with less controversy than good

will can. We can appreciate this point better, when we think in terms of an analogy with the general

rights: the right to live is a right which should be provided to as many beings as possible, as opposed

to the beings which are arbitrarily meritorious of this right. In the same vein, the right to respect

should be defined in such a manner that it should be applied to as many beings as possible. We are

assuming the right to dignity and respect of some beings up until they infringe upon someone else’s

right to dignity or humanity. This saves us from the undecidability of good will and provides a solid

ground to apply the content of HF. It also provides the content, as it was aimed to do. Consequently,

we needed content for Categorical Imperative, which is not of doubtful existence and for which the

Categorical Imperative is unconditionally binding and the will of rational nature (or humanity) as the

capacity to set ends is the best candidate for this content.

5.2.1 Problems When Humanity is the Capacity to Set Ends

Even though we have rescued the concept of humanity from being the referent of only those who are

morally committed (of good will) and applied to a broader scale of beings, we still have a problem of

excluding infants, non-human animals and other non-rational beings. This is still an undesirable result,

considering the fact that we do not treat babies and try our best not to treat non-human animals merely

as means to our ends. HF, in the form we have shaped into, is still too restrictive to include non-

rational nature. Allen Wood in his article “Kant on Duties Regarding Nonrational Nature” observes

that this problem arises due to what he calls “personification principle” of Kant (Wood, 1998, p. 194-

195). Recall HF: it is specifically constructed in such a way that it states: “… whether in your own

person or in the person of any other”. This phrasing is the reason for why HF excludes that which we

want to include in the scope of the formulation.

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I have referred to “Infants’ Experiment” in the introduction of this paper (Hamlin et al., 2008)

which, I believe, takes infants’ in the scope of rational nature and makes them meritorious of the

dignity of rational nature without personification principle excluding them. How the experiment shows

this is as follows: in a context of habituation, infants of 6 and 10 months old are exposed to scenarios

where there are characters either helping or hindering a character trying to achieve its end. These

psychological experiments are so designed that these helpers and hinderers either help a character

whose gaze is fixed upon the zenith of a hill, indicating the goal-drivenness or end-setting of the

character. Infants consistently prefer the characters that help the goal-driven character, which suggests

that infants are able to recognize the end-setting characters at the first stage and prefer the agents who

help the characters achieve the end they set. Remember that we take humanity as the capacity of

setting ends and in the experiment, we see that infants are capable of recognizing the end-setting in

other characters. We can doubt the results of these experiments (as Scarf did: Scarf et al. 2012), but

after a reaction experiment (Hamlin, 2015), it is seen that when the characters lack the eyes which

indicate that the character has a goal it is trying to achieve, the preference of the infants become more

and more arbitrary. This type of a scenario may absolve the infants as young as 6- and 10-month old

from the grasp of personification principle, since it clearly hints at the humanity of infants. But there

are still non-human animals and other things of non-rational nature which suffer from the rational

privilege (Consider the growing awareness and conscience toward nature). However, non-rational

animals are still not in a position to be treated as ends and can be subject to the whim of us, rational

creatures.

To emend this, Allen Wood proposes that we remove the personification principle from HF to

extend it to the non-rational beings. However, the content or properties of the morally relevant beings

should still be specified, since we are still concerned about a certain extent to which beings of certain

properties are within the moral scope of the formulation. For this, Allen Wood suggests that we accept

as eligible properties for morally relevant beings what he calls “recognizable fragments of rationality”

(Wood, 1998, p. 204). These consist of pleasure, pain, basic notion of desire et cetera. If we did not

apply this kind of a distinction, we would end up in a scheme which would preclude us from treating a

piece of rock or wood differently from a being of non-rational nature, but still deserves to be as an end.

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Allen Wood sees the solution to what I call “Agent-Scope Problem of Morality”, by taking Kant’s

claims of natural beauty having worth for its own sake mainly found in Critique of Judgment (CoJ

3:351-354). Wood claims that Kant offers in those passages something with worth for its own sake,

even though this something is not in the person of some rational being (Wood, 1998, p. 204-205).

Even though the appreciation of the value of something not in the person of some rational nature is

grasped by the fundamental faculty of reason in an objective manner, just as Kant suggests one can

find the objectivity of moral ground, the value this something has is not dependent upon the value-

conferring status of rational nature, but dependent on its own worth, at the same time somehow

“derived from the fundamental value of rational nature” (Wood, 1998, p. 14). This conception allows

us to find things in nature whose value is in itself and not dependent upon the person of our rational

nature. Therefore, I believe that nature or animals are existent or self-standing ends whose value can

only be inferred by way of reason. With the removal of Personification Principle, this allows beings

and things of putative non-rational nature to be included in our scope of respect and CI. Generally,

removal of Personification Principle from HF surely allows us to be more inclusive in terms of the

scope of beings which we obviously treat ends in themselves and to respect the dignity of beings taken

to be non-rational in nature and more importantly, allows us to ascribe unconditional value to these

beings without violating the primacy of the value of rational nature.

6 Conclusion

Since our primary aim was to make the HF more intuitive, just as Kant suggests (G 4:436-437), I

believe that our two steps (eliminating the conception of humanity as good will and removing the

personification principle) helped us ascribe unconditional value to beings even without non-rational

nature, even though the objectivity of this value is inferred by virtue of rational nature, thereby

allowing us to weaken the rigidity of the original formulation.

I propose that, by the prominence and salience of HF in Kant’s project, reading HF by

observing these tweaks and moderations brings the formulation more in line with the original purpose

of Kant, that is, “bringing the formula closer to intuition” and provides us with a more intuitive and

observant-of-real-life reading of Kant. I am firmly of the opinion that HF is one of the most significant

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steps in Kant’s proposition of the objective moral code and it deserves the attention this paper attempts

to pay duly. I am hoping that I have been able to provide a lucid account of how we can drive HF to be

a more coherent with Kant’s purpose of formulating it in the first place.

Furthermore, what I have tried to show is the minimum we can set the bar for humanity,

because the problem plaguing Kant’s conception of humanity (in its strong version with

personification principle) was already that it was too restrictive and falling short of providing an

account for the obvious affection and care we seem to display to those putatively without humanity.

Of course, a good will, should it exist, would be within the scope of humanity, but it would constitute

the ceiling rather than the floor and definitely not the point from which one should start excluding

beings from the scope of morality.

References:

Immanuel Kant’s Works:

G: Kant, I., Wood, A. W., & Schneewind, J. B. (2002). Groundwork for the metaphysics of morals.

New Haven: Yale University Press.

LE: Kant, I. Lectures on Ethics, (1997) trans. Peter Heath, ed. Peter Heath and J. B. Schneewind. New

York: Cambridge University Press.

CoJ: Kant, I., & Bernard, J. H. (1951). Critique of judgment. New York: Hafner Pub.

MM: Kant, I. (1996) The Metaphysics of Morals Cambridge University Press, New York

——Wood, A. W. & Kant, I. (1786) “Conjectural Beginning of Human History” Anthropology,

History, and Education, 160-175. doi:10.1017/cbo9780511791925.013

——Wood, A., & Giovanni, G. D. (1998). Kant: Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason: And

other writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Secondary Literature and Other References:

——Dean, R. (2006). The value of humanity in Kant's moral theory. Oxford: Clarendon Press.

——Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2008). “Social Evaluation by Preverbal Infants” Pediatric

Research, 63(3), 219-219. doi:10.1203/pdr.0b013e318168c6e5

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——Hamlin, J. K. (2015). “The case for social evaluation in preverbal infants: Gazing toward one’s

goal drives infants’ preferences for Helpers over Hinderers in the hill paradigm” Frontiers in

Psychology Front. Psychol., 5. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01563

——Korsgaard, C. M. (1986). “Kant's Formula of Humanity”. Kant-Studien, 77(1-4).

doi:10.1515/kant.1986.77.1-4.183

——Scarf, D., Imuta, K., Colombo, M., & Hayne, H. (2012). Social Evaluation or Simple

Association? Simple Associations May Explain Moral Reasoning in Infants. PLoS ONE, 7(8). doi:

10.1371/journal.pone.0042698

——Wood, A. W. (1999). Kant's ethical thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

———— (1998) “Kant on Duties Regarding Non-Rational Nature” Aristotelian Society

Supplementary Volume 72, Issue 1, pages 189–210

———— (2003) “The Good Will” Philosophical Topics, Volume 31, Issue 1/2, Spring/Fall, Pages

457-484, DOI: 10.5840/philtopics2003311/24

———— (2008). Kantian ethics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.