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Last time we began trying to we began by trying to navigate

our way through Kant’s moral theory.

Now, fully to make sense of Kant moral theory in the groundwork

requires that we be able to answer three questions.

How can duty and autonomy go together?

What’s the great dignity in answering to duty?

It would seem that these two ideas are opposed duty and autonomy.

What’s Kant’s answer to that?

Need someone here to speak up on Kant’s behalf.

Does he have an answer?

Yes, go ahead, stand up.

Kant believes you the only act autonomously when you are pursuing

something only the name of duty and not because of your own circumstances

such as – like you’re only doing something good and moral

if you’re doing it because of duty and not because something

of your own personal gain.

Now why is that acting… what’s your name?

My name is Matt.

Matt, why is that acting on a freedom? I hear what you’re saying about duty?

Because you choose to accept those moral laws in yourself

and not brought on from outside upon onto you.

Okay, good. Because acting out of duty –

Yeah. - is following a moral law

That you impose on yourself.

That you impose on yourself. That’s what makes duty

compatible with freedom. - Yeah.

Okay, that’s good Matt. That is Kant’s answer. That’s great.

Thank you. So, Kant’s answer is it is not in so far as I am subject

to the law that I have dignity but rather in so far as with regard

to that very same law, I’m the author and I am subordinated

to that law on that ground that I took it as much as at I took it upon myself.

I willed that law. So that’s why for Kant acting according

to duty and acting freely in the sense of autonomously are one and the same.

But that raises the question, how many moral laws are there?

Because if dignity consists and be governed by a law that I give myself,

what’s to guarantee that my conscience will be

the same as your conscience? Who has Kant’s answer to that? Yes?

Because a moral law trend is not contingent upon seductive conditions.

It would transcend all particular differences between people

and so would be a universal law and in this respect there’d only be

one moral law because it would be supreme.

Right. That’s exactly right. What’s your name?

Kelly.

Kelly. So Kelly, Kant believes that if we choose freely

out of our own consciences, the moral law we're guarantee

to come up with one and the same moral law. -Yes.

And that’s because when I choose it's not me, Michael Sandel choosing.

It’s not you, Kelly choosing for yourself?

What is it exactly? Who is doing the choosing?

Who’s the subject? Who is the agent? Who is doing the choosing?

Reason? - Well reason… Pure reason.

Pure reason and what you mean by pure reason is what exactly?

Well pure reason is like we were saying before not subject to any

external conditions that may be imposed on that side.

Good that’s’ great. So, the reason that does the willing,

the reason that governs my will when I will the moral law

is the same reason that operates when you choose the moral law

for yourself and that’s why it’s possible to act autonomously

to choose for myself, for each of us to choose for ourselves

as autonomous beings and for all of us to wind up willing the same moral law,

the categorical imperative.

But then there is one big and very difficult question left even

if you accept everything that Matt and Kelly had said so far.

How is a categorical imperative possible?

How is morality possible? To answer that question,

Kant said we need to make a distinction.

We need to make a distinction between two standpoints,

two standpoints from which we can make sense of our experience.

Let me try to explain what he means by these two standpoints.

As an object of experience, I belong to the sensible world.

There my actions are determined by the laws of nature

and by the regularities of cause and effect.

But as a subject of experience, I inhabit an intelligible world here

being independent of the laws of nature I am capable of autonomy,

capable of acting according to a law I give myself.

Now Kant says that, "Only from this second standpoint can I regard myself

as free for to be independent of determination by causes

in the sensible world is to be free."

If I were holy and empirical being as the utilitarian assume,

if I were a being holy and only subject to the deliverances of my senses,

to pain and pleasure and hunger and thirst and appetite,

if that’s all there were to humanity, we wouldn’t be capable of freedom,

Kant reasons because in that case every exercise of will would be

conditioned by the desire for some object.

In that case all choice would be heteronymous choice governed

by the pursued of some external end. "When we think of ourselves as free,"

Kant writes, "we transfer ourselves into the intelligible world as members

and recognize the autonomy of the will." That’s the idea of the two standpoints.

So how are categorical imperatives possible? Only because the idea

of freedom makes me a member of an intelligible world?

Now Kant admits we aren’t only rational beings.

We don’t only inhabit the intelligible world, the realm of freedom.

If we did -- if we did, then all of our actions

would invariably accord with the autonomy of the will.

But precisely because we inhabit simultaneously the two standpoints,

the two realms, the realm of freedom and the realm of necessity

precisely because we inhabit both realms there is always potentially a gap

between what we do and what we ought to do between is and ought.

Another way of putting this point and this is the point with which

Kant concludes the groundwork, morality is not empirical.

Whatever you see in the world, whatever you discover through science

can’t decide moral questions.

Morality stands at a certain distance from the world,

from the empirical world.

And that’s why no science could deliver moral truth.

Now I want to test Kant’s moral theory with the hardest possible case,

a case that he raises, the case of the murderer at the door.

Kant says that lying is wrong. We all know that.

We’ve discussed why. Lying is at odds with the categorical imperative.

A French Philosopher, Benjamin Constant wrote an article responding

to the groundwork where he said, “This absolute probation online

What if a murderer came to your door looking for your friend

who was hiding in your house?

And the murderer asked you point blank, "Is your friend in your house?"

Constant says, “It would be crazy to say that the moral thing to do

in that case is to tell the truth.”

Constant says the murderer certainly doesn’t deserve the truth

and Kant wrote to reply.

And Kant stuck by his principle that lying even to the murderer

at the door is wrong.

And the reason it’s wrong, he said is once you start taking

consequences into account to carve out exceptions to the categorical

imperative, you’ve given up the whole moral framework.

You’ve become a consequentialist or maybe a rule utilitarian.

But most of you and most to our Kant’s readers think there’s something odd

and impossible about this answer.

I would like to try to defend Kant on this point

and then I want to see whether you think that my defense is plausible,

and I would want to defend him within the spirit of his own account of morality.

Imagine that someone comes to your door.

You were asked that question by this murder.

You are hiding your friend.

Is there a way that you could avoid telling a lie

without selling out your friend?

Does anyone have an idea of how you might be able to do that?

Yes? Stand up.

I was just going to say if I were to let my friend in my house

to hide in the first place, I’d probably make a plan with them

so I’d be like, "Hey I’ll tell the murderer you’re here,

but escape," and that’s one of the options mentioned.

But I’m not sure that’s a Kantian option. You’re still lying though.

No because he’s in the house but he won’t be.

Oh I see. All right, good enough. One more try.

If you just say you don’t know where he is because he might not

be locked in the closet.

He might have left the closet. You have no clue where he could be.

So you would say, I don’t know which wouldn’t actually be a lie

because you weren’t at that very moment looking in the closet.

Exactly. -So it would be strictly speaking true.

Yes.

And yet possibly deceiving, misleading. -But still true.

What’s your name? -John.

John. All right, John has... now John may be on to something.

John you’re really offering us the option of a clever evasion

that is strictly speaking true.

This raises the question whether there is a moral difference between

an outright lie and a misleading truth.

From Kant’s point of view there actually is a world of difference between a lie

and a misleading truth.

Why is that even though both might have the same consequences?

But then remember Kant doesn’t base morality on consequences.

He bases it on formal adherence to the moral law.

Now, sometimes in ordinary life we make exceptions for the general rule against

lying with the white lie. What is a white lie?

It’s a lie to make...you’re well to avoid hurting someone’s feelings for example.

It’s a lie that we think of as justified by the consequences.

Now Kant could not endorse a white lie but perhaps he could endorse

a misleading truth.

Supposed someone gives you a tie, as a gift, and you open the box

and it’s just awful. What do you say? Thank you.

You could say thank you.

But they’re waiting to see what you think of it or they ask you

what do you think of it?

You could tell a white lie and say it’s beautiful.

But that wouldn’t be permissible from Kant’s point of view.

Could you say not a white lie but a misleading truth,

you open the box and you say, “I’ve never seen a tie like that before.

Thank you." You shouldn’t have.

That’s good.

Can you think of a contemporary political leader who engaged...you can?

Who are you thinking of?

You remember the whole carefully worded denials in the

Monica Lewinsky affair of Bill Clinton.

Now, those denials actually became the subject of very explicit debate

in argument during the impeachment hearings.

Take a look at the following excerpts from Bill Clinton.

Is there something do you think morally at stake in the distinction between a lie

and a misleading carefully couched truth?

I want to say one thing to the American people.

I want you to listen to me. I’m going to say this again.

I did not have sexual relations with that woman Miss Lewinsky.

I never told anybody to lie not a single time, never. These allegations are false.

Did he lie to the American people when he said I never had sex with that woman?

You know, he doesn’t believe he did and because of the …

Well he didn’t explain it.

He did explain that, explain congressman.

What he said was to the American people that he did not have sexual relations

and I understand you’re not going to l ike this congressman

because you will see it as a hair-splitting evasive answer.

But in his own mind his definition was not...

Okay, I understand that argument. -Okay.

All right, so there you have the exchange.

Now at the time, you may have thought this was just a

legalistic hair-splitting exchange between a Republican who wanted to

impeach Clinton and a lawyer who is trying to defend him.

But now in the light of Kant, do you think there is something

morally at stake in the distinction between a lie and an evasion,

a true but misleading statement? I’d like to hear from defenders of Kant.

People who think there is a distinction. Are you ready to defend Kant?

Well I think when you try to say that lying and misleading truths are the same thing;

you’re basing it on consequentialist argument which is that they achieve the same thing.

But the fact to the fact to the matter is you told the truth

and you intended that people would believe what you are saying