Compare and contrast Hegel and Nietzsche�s criticisms of
Kant�s attempt to found ethics on the Categorical Imperative.

Greg Detre

Saturday, February 24, 2001

Dr Rosen, post-Kantian VII

Kant�s moral law is a �categorical imperative�. It is discoverable a priori, i.e. through reason without reference to experience or the senses, as opposed to a posteriori, i.e. the senses, experience or empirical facts. An imperative is more than just a command, but a �command of reason�, so that if we were governed by reason alone we would infallibly abide by it. By �categorical�, he means that it is good in itself, as opposed to �hypothetical� imperatives which are merely good because they are means towards something. It might be argued that something can only be rational as a means to a desired end. In answer, we could say that though this may be true of hypothetical imperatives, a categorical imperative is, by definition, rational in its own right.

Morality is prescriptive (unlike hypothetical imperatives). It is impossible to conceive of a moral requirement without recognising that that is what one ought to do and that there is no rational, moral reason for not doing it. Moral requirements are categorical imperatives � they are automatically reasons for action, even though I may of course choose not to act even so. It is in this sense that it is a moral �law�, rather than that it can be neatly codified.

The Categorical Imperative is the closest Kant comes to a normative encapsulation of moral principles. It is usually formulated in two ways:

1. �Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it (should) become a universal law.� (G 88)

2. �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.� (G 96)

I think Nietzsche�s criticisms about Kant and morality can be divided into two: criticisms about the foundations of objective morality itself; and about the dictates and nature of slave moralities. I shall consider Hegel�s criticisms within these categories.

Most of Nietzsche�s later thought is really an exposition of the consequences for reason, the will to truth, morality and religion of the metaphorical death of God.

In such a world, reason suffers badly. Cartesian philosophy demonstrated the sort of reason that philosophers have since tried to employ, but Descartes never resolved the crucial circle by which clear and distinct ideas could be justified except by God. As a result, Kant�s entire enterprise stands or falls on a defence of reason. Thus, the Categorical Imperative �would permit of the following hypothetical fomulation, without any injustice to Kant�s thought: do this, if you want to be rational!�� (Kaufmann). That is to say that Kant�s Categorical Imperative derived its imperative from an analysis of reason and rationality, and that Kant�s conception of reason is unempirical and non-naturalistic. In order not to fall into his own trap, Nietzsche�s prescriptions are, in Kantian terms, hypothetical and do not involve any absolute obligation. One can be decadent if one so chose. �If a man does not want to be healthy, the most that can be said about him is that he is diseased to the marrow, or, in Nietzsche�s later terminology, decadent�. By being so, the most he risks is invective in Nietzsche�s books.

The death of God also threatens the notion of objectivity itself. This is perhaps where Nietzsche is least clear and most contentious. There are sections where he could be interpreted as saying that there is no truth, no rational world order, and certainly no moral objectivity. I think his attacks are more forceful if we regard him as targeting the Kantian idea that morality is universalisable, though I will discuss this below.

Hegel�s main criticism with the Categorical Imperative is its �emptiness�, its inability to produce determinate duties. Hegel appears to be demanding that it produce a list of universal commandments that we all ought to follow, which is clearly not Kant�s aim in the enterprise. However, it is not entirely fair to Kant to dismiss the application of the Categorical Imperative as purely formal and empty. Kant has deliberately allowed for an extremely flexible notion of duty that can be moulded by each individual, within the bounds of internal consistency. This freedom to shape one�s own duty is essential to Kant�s idea of autonomy. Hegel regarded this as modern individualist morality separating the abstract from a living society. There is not room here to evaluate Hegel and Kant�s respective notions of freedom within a society, but we can answer Hegel�s criticism of emptiness. As Kant demonstrates with his four examples of suicide, promise-breaking, helping others and developing one�s talents, the Categorical Imperative can be instructive. Moreover, the ambiguity of the second formulation, about humans being ends not means, can be read as making a strong statement akin to Jesus� Golden Rule, �Do unto others as you would be done by�, that is, universalise your actions so that they could be applied to you too.

Nietzsche does not consider whether or not the Categorical Imperative is empty, because he is more concerned with the odious spirit of Kantian morality. He would take issue with both formulations of the Categorical Imperative. The first formulation would tie him to self-consistency, not a quality he displays very often.

Interestingly though, there is one instance where Nietzsche espouses a doctrine that seems similarly universalisable and self-consistent, and applies equally as a criteria for everyone�s behaviour: the Eternal Recurrence. It seems to work best as a psychological dictum: �Live every moment as though you will have to repeat and relive it endlessly�, just as the Categorical Imperative seems to be appealing to us to live so that �you can at the same time will that [the maxim of your actions] (should) become a universal law.� Kaufmann attacks this reading of the Categorical Imperative, since he argues that Kant was not trying to appeal to our psychological dispositions, but merely as a means of making explicit the contradictions inherent in the universal adoption of contradictory maxims. He was uninterested in our emotional reaction to their consequences. Indeed, Kant�s idea of the moral value of the act derives entirely from the act itself, or more specifically, the dutiful intention causing us to act. On the other hand, the Eternal Recurrence will affect our actions only insofar as we are we would wish to relive or avoid their them over and over eternally. This point is backed up by Kant�s second formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which is specifically worded to avoid us having to empathise with others, so much as simply accept that they are ends too.

Kaufmann also points out that it is not clear what sort of contradiction Kant adduces from the examples he considers against the Categorical Imperative, since there is no logical contradiction. The paradigmatic example of promise-breaking aside, applying the Categorical Imperative seems to require that we look for contradictions in the spirit of the law, but I don�t think this need be a critical objection.

Kant seemed to intend the Categorical Imperative primarily to highlight inconsistencies within one�s own behaviour, though the promise-breaking is an example of where duty has social connotations.

Nietzsche�s main objections to the Categorical Imperative lie with the second formulation. Nietzsche effectively divides the human race into man and the Overman, with the same gulf as divides man from the animals. By treating all men as �ends� rather than �means�, Kant has left no room for this distinction, or indeed any ranking within humanity. This is probably what Nietzsche finds most odious in Kant, what he would regard as the whiff of the slave morality. Indeed, the whole notion of duty would be anathema to him, although Kant�s emphasis on man�s autonomy in creating his own duty, within the Categorical Imperative, might be commendable to Nietzsche.

Wood considers Hegel as working on the systematic self-actualisation of Geist�s freedom, in the specific form of the practical subject or free will. Hegel draws on the Aristotelian idea that ethics must be founded on a conception of the human good as the actualisation of human essence. But, as Kant emphasises, this good need not be happiness, or anything that our nature demands. Indeed, the human vocation is freedom itself, following Fichte�s identity of freedom with the activity of the self. Hegel�s is thus neither deontological, nor teleological, but a self-actualisation theory.

Hegel�s system of the self breaks down into:

the �person�, a free volitional agent, capable of abstracting completely from desires and situation � �abstract right�

the individual as subject, a moral agent with its own agenda, as well as responsibility to others � �morality�

Neither of these can be actualised, except within a harmonious social system or ethical life. Hegel�s mature theory differs from Kant in its binding of the individual to social institutions as part of �ethical life�. Hegel is seeking a freedom that is rooted in embracing otherness, �being with oneself in an other�, and thus actualising freedom. This allows for freedom within rational self-actualising social institutions and empirical motives in a quite un-Kantian way.

However, Hegel also breaks freedom down into three parts:

abstract freedom � the spiritual self is with itself in external things, which are its property

morality � it is with itself in its own subjective willing and the external consequences

ethical life � it is with itself through social institutions that support it and provide community

Although quite distinct in character, this seems rather akin to the manner in which Kant is able to consider us free on the basis of his distinction between phenomena and nuomena, one of the least defensible areas of his thought, and yet crucial to his notion of �autonomy�. In a similar but more complicated way, Hegel�s system allows for different strivings, responsibilities and freedom at different levels, though he rejects any ontological implications. In one sense, Nietzsche premises freedom (in what we might term the autonomous, or subjectively free, senses) as part of being human, or at least within the potential of the Overman. Without it, little sense could be made of his system or his constant beckoning to the Free Spirits. Nietzsche�s idea of freedom is probably best understood as crucially linked to the will to power, the Overman and the Eternal Recurrence. With power comes joy, and if you can so fully rejoice in the moment so much that you welcome its infinite recurrence, then you are free, in what Hegel might consider an objective, self-actualised way.

In one last, basic way, all three of them derive their morals from their metaphysics. Kant�s metaphysics is informed and restricted by his epistemology, leaving him with a shell of a morality that is founded dubiously on the autonomy of reason. Hegel�s conception of metaphysics is inherently active, in contrast to the seventeenth century conception of the substance of the universe as passive. His universe is inherently rational, and strives towards self-understanding. This is where his basis of self-actualisation is derived, and the freedom-reason identity arises. Nietzsche could also be seen as founding his morality on his metaphysics. For when God died, metaphysics and morality died with him. This moves his philosophy away from the descriptive task that he sees philosophical labourers like Hegel and Kant attempting, and towards a legislative, creative view of moral philosophy. This whole enterprise can be seen as following straight on from Kant, viewing Kant�s own moral philosophy as a footnote to the opposing premise, that reason cannot be trusted as a means to truth, and indeed neither truth nor the will to truth are solid foundations.

At the root though, Hegel�s and Nietzsche�s criticisms of Kant�s founding of ethics go deeper than the Categorical Imperative � they are more concerned with his faith in reason as he understood it. Hegel�s largest disputes with Kant lie in Kant�s refusal or ignorance of speculative, or dialectical, reason. This allowed Hegel to form the metaphysics on which his morality is based, and Kant is reduced to a step in the history of philosophy by his non-dialectical rationalism. On the other hand, Nietzsche would simply reject everything that both Hegel and Kant required to function as philosophers. Most of all though, we can see what Nietzsche might have hated in Kant�s Categorical Imperative - its universalisability, its imperative. And, for all that Kant points to autonomy and one�s own formulation of duty, it is binding to us, at least as rational agents. There is no room for the sublime, the joyful, the aesthetically non-dutiful act of pure affirmation.