Outlines of a Critical Theory of Ethics · John Dewey
XXX.
Criticism of Kantian Criterion of Conduct. 2. _With reference to the furnishing of a common good or end._ If the Kantian end is so formal and empty as not to enable us to bring into relation with one another the various acts of one individual, we may agree, without argument, that it does not provide us with an end which shall unify the acts of different men into a connected order of conduct. The moral end, the acting from regard for law as law, is presented to each individual by himself, entirely apart from his relations to others. That he has such relations may, indeed, furnish additional material to which the law must be applied, but is something to which the character of the law is wholly indifferent. The end is not in itself a social end, and it is a mere accident if in any case social considerations have to be taken into account. It is of the very quality of the end that it appeals to the individual as an isolated individual.
It is interesting to note the way in which Kant, without expressly giving up the purely formal character of the moral end, gives it more and more content, and that content social. The moral law is not imposed by any external authority, but by the rational will itself. To be conscious of a universal self-imposed law is to be conscious of one's self as having a universal aspect. The source of the law and its end are both in the will--in the rational self. Thus man is an end to himself, for the rational self is man. Such a being is a person--"Rational beings are _persons_, because their nature marks them out as ends in themselves, _i. e._, as beings who should never be used merely as means.... Such beings are not ends simply _for us_, whose existence as brought about by our action has value, but _objective ends_, _i. e._, beings whose existence is an end in itself, an end for which no other end can be substituted so as to reduce it to a mere means." Thus, we get a second formula. "Always treat humanity, both in your own person and in the person of others, as an end and never merely as a means." (Abbott's Trans., pp. 46-47; Caird, Op. cit., Vol. II, 219).
Here the criterion of action is no longer the bare self-consistency of its motive, but its consistency with the rational nature of the agent, that which constitutes him a person. And, too, "the will of every rational being is likewise a universally law-giving will." (Abbott, p. 49). The conception of humanity embodied in others as well as in one's self is introduced, and thus our criterion is socialized. Even now, however, we have a lot of persons, each of whom has to be considered as an end in himself, rather than a social unity as to which every individual has an equal and common reference. Kant advances to this latter idea in his notion of a "Kingdom of ends." "We get the idea of a complete and systematically connected totality of all ends--a whole system of rational beings as ends in themselves as well as of the special ends which each of them may set up for himself--_i.e._, a kingdom of ends.... Morality is the reference of all deeds to the legislation which alone can make such a kingdom possible." (See Abbott's Trans., pp. 51-52). This transformation of a mere formal universal into a society or kingdom of persons--while not sufficiently analyzed as Kant states it (see Caird, Vol. II, pp. 225-226)--gives us truly a social criterion, and we shall hereafter meet something resembling it as the true ideal. As finally stated, it does not differ in essential content from Mill's individual who "conceives of himself only as a member of a body," or from Spencer's free man in a free society.
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