Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends

A Book Proposal

 

As Socrates famously noted, there is perhaps no more important question than how we ought to live. Over the past couple of centuries, two opposing theories have dominated philosophical discussions of this issue: utilitarianism and Kantianism. Utilitarianism holds that we each ought to maximize aggregate happiness, producing the greatest happiness for the greatest number. And because utilitarianism insists that this be our sole ultimate end, it implies that the only limit to how much aggregate happiness we’re required to produce lies with how much aggregate happiness we’re able to produce. Consequently, utilitarianism is extremely demanding, requiring us to sacrifice our personal projects and relationships whenever this will enable us to produce more aggregate happiness. What’s more, utilitarianism denies that there are any restrictions on what we may do in the pursuit of aggregate happiness, holding that we are even permitted to treat people as mere means if doing so will maximize aggregate happiness. 


Kantianism, by contrast, holds both that we are permitted to adopt more than just one ultimate end and that there are restrictions on what we may do in the pursuit of them. Thus, Kantianism doesn’t insist upon our producing as much aggregate happiness as we can and instead allows us to dedicate some of our limited time and resources to our other ends, including our discretionary ends. But while Kantianism gives us the freedom to pursue our own ends, it also limits the kinds of things that we may do in their pursuit. Kant held, for instance, that we may never treat a person as a mere means. In other words, we must never treat them in ways that they could reasonably refuse to consent to being treated.   


Neither theory has managed to prevail over the other. Indeed, both theories remain as much contenders today as they were centuries ago. This is, in large part, due to each theory’s being a mix of both the plausible and the implausible. So, in the hopes of breaking this stalemate, I propose to write a monograph in which I construct and defend a new moral theory: one that takes what is best from both while leaving behind the problems associated with each. 


What I, and many others, find most attractive about utilitarianism is its act-consequentialism—the idea that whether an agent ought to perform an act just depends on whether they ought to prefer the way it would make the world go to all the ways that the alternatives would make it go. Indeed, it has long been noted that utilitarianism’s “[act-]consequentialist element is one of the main reasons why utilitarianism seems so compelling” as well as what “makes the move to rule utilitarianism an unsatisfactory answer to the problem of reconciling utilitarianism with common moral opinion” (Foot 1985, p. 198). There are at least two features of act-consequentialism that account for this. 


First, act-consequentialism endorses the following plausible conception of action. It is through our actions that we attempt to affect the way the world goes. Whenever we face a choice of what to do, we face a choice of how to affect the way the world goes. Moreover, whenever we act intentionally, we act with the aim of making the world go a certain way. The aim needn’t be anything having to do with the causal consequences of the act. The aim could be nothing more than to perform the act in question. For instance, one could run merely with the aim of running. The fact remains, though, that for every intentional action there is some end at which the agent aims. It’s natural, then, to suppose that the agent ought to act to make the world go as she ought to aim for it to go, just as act-consequentialism holds.


Second, act-consequentialism insists that, in determining what we ought to do, we must compare how the world would go if we were to perform that act with all the ways that it would instead go if we were to perform the alternatives. And it’s this kind of comparativism that gives consequentialism a distinct advantage over its non-comparativist rivals, such as Kantianism. On Kantianism, an act is wrong if it is an instance of treating a person as a mere means. And, so, it doesn’t matter how the world in which this act is performed compares to those in which some alternative is performed. It’s wrong simply because it’s an instance of treating a person as a mere means. But this absolutism is problematic given that such highly general principles (such as ‘one ought never to do X’) are extremely implausible: the reason being that whether one ought (or ought not) to do something often depends on how it compares to the alternatives with respect to various competing factors. Thus, even if one ought, other things being equal, to refrain from treating a person as a mere means, we ought also, other things being equal, to prevent billions from dying. Thus, it seems permissible to treat one person as a mere means if this is necessary to prevent billions from dying.  


Despite these advantages stemming from its act-consequentialist element, utilitarianism has the disadvantage of endorsing an overly simplistic view about what the competing factors are. It holds that there are only two: happiness and unhappiness. Arguably, though, we should be morally concerned with more than just these two. Utilitarianism has such a narrow conception of what matters because it holds that the only things that matter are those that matter from the perspective of an impersonal observer. But, as W. D. Ross pointed out, this is to ignore, or at least to fail to do full justice to, “the highly personal character of duty” (1930, p. 22). The problem is that whereas utilitarianism holds that “the only morally significant relation in which my neighbours can stand to me is that of being possible beneficiaries by my action,” the fact is that they can also stand in the relation of “promisee to promiser, of creditor to debtor, of wife to husband, of child to parent, of friend to friend, of fellow countryman to fellow countryman, and the like” (1930, p. 19). And these all seem to be morally relevant despite being relevant from only one’s own personal perspective. 


My plan, then, is to combine utilitarianism’s act-consequentialism with Kantianism’s acceptance of the personal character of duty. The resulting theory will be part act-consequentialist and part Kantian. Hence, I’ll call it Kantsequentialism. It will be act-consequentialist in that it will hold that whether we ought to perform an act just depends on whether we ought to prefer how it would make the world go to how any alternative would make it go. But, unlike utilitarianism, it will hold that each of us are to assess these possible ways that the world could go from our own personal point of view rather than from what utilitarians call “the point view of the universe.” It will thereby allow us to account for various agent-centered aspects of commonsense morality, such as both the idea that there are various types of acts (e.g., lying) that we must sometimes refrain from performing even so as to prevent more numerous others from performing the very same act-type (which are known as agent-centered restrictions) and the idea that we are sometimes permitted to pursue our own personal projects and relationships even at the cost of doing less than we can to promote the aggregate happiness (which are known as agent-centered options). 


Kantsequentialism will be a new and promising moral theory not only in that it will be a hybrid of utilitarianism and Kantianism, but also in that it will reconceive the focus of morality. Whereas most moral theories take acts to be morality’s main focus, Kantsequentialism will takes ends to be its main focus. Indeed, it will hold that our most fundamental moral duties are duties to adopt ends—that is, telic duties. A telic duty is, fundamentally, a duty to adopt an end (that is, to form the desire to bring something about insofar as one has suitable opportunities to do so) and, derivatively, a duty to make plans, form policies, adopt other attitudes, and perform actions as is necessary to count as having adopted that end. For instance, one of our telic duties is, as Kant believed, “to make the happiness of others a serious, major, continually relevant, life-shaping end” (Hill 2002, p. 206). But, importantly, having an end doesn’t necessitate taking every favorable opportunity to promote it; rather, it merely necessitates taking advantage of such opportunities sufficiently often, where what counts as sufficiently often depends on how our various legitimate ends compete for our limited time, resources, and opportunities for pursuing them. And, here, our legitimate ends include both our obligatory ends (e.g., that of not treating any person as a mere means) and our discretionary ends (e.g., that of mastering the violin). Thus, unlike utilitarianism, Kantsequentialism doesn’t require us to produce as much happiness for others as we can, but only that we adopt the happiness of others as an end that must compete with our other legitimate ends. 


Like Kantianism, Kantsequentialism holds that adopting the happiness of others as an end involves more than just acting beneficently sufficiently often. It also requires us to have certain attitudes. Thus, as Kant thought, we cannot fulfill the duty of beneficence simply by giving enough money to charity, for if we do so only to impress others, we have not truly adopted the happiness of others as one of our ultimate ends. Thus, we must not only act charitably but do so for the right reasons. And the same holds for other ends. We are, for instance, required to adopt as an end refraining from treating people as mere means. And this too requires us not only to act in certain ways, but also to do so for the right reasons and, thus, to do so out of respect for people’s autonomy (i.e., their right to self-rule). 


Now, it’s important to note that whereas some of our legitimate ends are determinate, others are indeterminate. An end is determinate if what counts as adequately realizing it is precisely delimited. Thus, the end of summiting Mount Everest is determinate in that it counts as being adequately realized if and only if one reaches the summit. But other ends are vague concerning what counts as adequately realizing them. To illustrate, take the following example from Sergio Tenenbaum (2020, p. 1–2): It’s “Monday and I am engaged in making the house look nice for a visit from my aunt, who will be arriving some time Wednesday afternoon. My having this end leaves various things indeterminate. Should I hang paintings on the wall, or put flowers at her bedside, or both? …How nice is nice enough for my aunt? …[And] at precisely what time should everything be ready?” 


Consider, then, that on Kantsequentialism we evaluate how we ought to live over the course of our lives by comparing how the world would go if we were to perform this or that course of action over our lifetimes. And we compare these worlds in terms of the extent to which our various legitimate ends would be adequately realized if they were performed. But given both that many of these ends are indeterminate and that almost none of them require any specific action at any specific time, we have, as commonsense morality supposes, the option of choosing what to do on most occasions. And this gives Kantsequentialism a tremendous advantage over a theory such as utilitarianism that requires that we perform, on each occasion, the act that would produce the most aggregate happiness. 


So, my plan is to write a book, Kantsequentialism: A Morality of Ends, that I will then submit for publication. It will consist of seven chapters. Chapter One—“Moral Theory”—will explain what a moral theory is, what it is meant to achieve, and how it might hope to do so. Chapter Two—“Kantianism versus Utilitarianism”—will argue that these two theories have the opposite strengths and weaknesses. For whereas Kantianism but not utilitarianism accords with our commonsense views about morality, utilitarianism but not Kantianism accords with our commonsense views about action and reasons for action. Chapter Three—“Kantsequentialism”—will explain how we can combine the strengths of both Kantianism and utilitarianism in a single theory while leaving behind the weaknesses of each. Chapter Four—“Kantian Telicism”—will explain which ends we’re permitted to adopt as well as which we’re obligated to adopt. I’ll argue that we’re obligated (1) to respect persons and, thus, to adopt treating persons as ends in themselves as an end, (2) to have an altruistic concern for the happiness of others and, thus, to adopt promoting the happiness of others as an end, (3) to appreciate the impersonal good and, thus, to adopt promoting the impersonal good as an end, and (4) to have an aversion to the risk of disaster and, thus, to adopt avoiding disaster as an end. Chapter Five—“Agent-Centered Restrictions”—will embrace Kant’s idea that our humanity (which Kant understands as our capacity for using reason to set and pursue our own ends) is something that we should aim to respect in ourselves and in others. And it will explain how act-consequentialism is better equipped to account for the agent-centered restriction against treating people as mere means than any absolutist deontological theory, such as Kantianism, is. Chapter Six—“Agent-Centered Options”—will argue that our duty of beneficence is not a duty to do all that we can to promote the happiness of others, but rather a duty to adopt the happiness of others as an end. And Chapter Seven—“Practical Applications”—will show how Kantsequentialism provides us with some key insights into various practical moral issues, such as discrimination, climate change, and consumerist ethics. 



Cover Design -- Cover design by Genís Carreras (www.studiocarreras.com).


TABLE OF CONTENTS

Preface


Acknowledgments


I. CHAPTER ONE: Moral Theory


II. CHAPTER TWO: Kantianism versus Utilitarianism

   

III. CHAPTER THREE: Kantsequentialism: A New Moral Theory

   

IV. CHAPTER FOUR: Kantian Telicism: Our Legitimate Ends and Their Moral Significance

  

V. CHAPTER FIVE: Kantsequentialism and Agent-Centered Restrictions

 

VI. CHAPTER SIX: Kantsequentialism and Agent-Centered Options

 

VII. CHAPTER SEVEN: Practical Applications


VIII. CHAPTER EIGHT: A Morality of Ends

 

References


Index


Back Cover Blurb


THE THEORY

Kantsequentialism (short for Kantian Consequentialism): This is the view that accepts the following five core tenets: 

If we’re willing to ignore certain complications concerning what determines an agent’s options and which of those options inherit their deontic statuses from other options, we can summarize this theory as follows: (1) An agent’s will along with the value of things determine their legitimate ends. (2) Their legitimate ends determine the prospects they should prefer. And (3) the prospects that they should prefer determine the options that they should take. That, in a nutshell, is Kantsequentialism.