Kant's Categorical Imperative and the Duty to Play

Handle so,

als ob du durch deine Maximen

jederzeit ein gesetzgebendes Glied

im allgemeinen

Reiche der Zwecke wärest.

Act

according to the maxims

of a universally legislating member

of a merely possible

kingdom of ends.

Immanuel Kant describes two kinds of imperatives: hypothetical and categorical. When you take an action only as a means to a larger end, then the motivation to take that action is called a hypothetical imperative. You have your hypotheticals, you have your goal and the specific set of circumstances which determine the means through which the goal can be achieved. Your will to achieve the goal is the imperative, the drive, that which impels you. We contrast hypothetical imperatives with the categorical imperative. This is what your will must reach for no matter the circumstances and no matter the goal. It is what you must do categorically, across all categories. Without exception and without regard to what you want, it is what you are impelled categorically to do. 

Understanding this isn't easy, so to help, I often compare the hypothetical imperative to the legal concept of malum prohibitum "wrong because prohibited" and the categorical imperative to the legal concept of malum in se "wrong in itself."  Wrong because prohibited implies that the determination of what is wrong is arbitrary but necessary. Think of simple things, like driving on the left side of the road in countries where you drive on the left side of the road. In these places it's wrong to drive on the right side not because such inherently wrong, but because you're in a place where such has been prohibited. 

So much of our morality really is situational. Act, and then ask whether your actions honor, or at least cohere with, your world and culture. Whether you're acting right or at least coherently depends entirely on your world and culture. Now, take away your world and culture, and take away any givens, take away any assumed goals or circumstances, take away anything defined. Place yourself in a non-situation, and then try to figure out what you really shouldn't do there. Think of genuinely bad things, like theft or murder, things that pretty much are wrong in all places. Things that are categorically wrong, malum in se, wrong in themselves. This is the inquiry driving Kant's formulations of morality: what makes something wrong in itself. 

He eventually reaches a few essential formulations to determine of how to determine the rightness of your actions:

"Act only according to that maxim where you can at the same time will that it should be a universal law."

To do the right thing, pretend that you write the laws that apply universally, that apply to everyone, including yourself. Then act according to that. Even if you don't exactly know what that law is, when you act, imagine it, and know that your actions write it. It's not so different than the golden rule, but more sophisticated. You treat people not as you want to be treated (or, under the platinum rule, as they want to be treated) but as a universal lawmaker would want everyone to be treated. 

Who is this universal lawmaker? Each and everyone of us. You are, I am, all of us are. Any law you make applies to me, and you, and all of us. Any law I make applies to me, and you

lawmaker, as am I as are all of us. There are two principles in this formulation that help us really understand all of this: first, that the laws apply to the lawmaker, and second, that we are all the lawmakers. 

But there is one other element that helps understand how to think about the categorical imperative. You are concerned not so much with the result of your actions, but the principles that cause you to take that action, or the principles that caused you to prohibit such actions. As a universal lawmaker, would you prohibit murder and theft?  Yes, you wouldn't want to be stolen from or murdered of course, nor would anybody. 

But the most important thing to consider, as a universal lawmaker, is your status as a universal lawmaker. The most important thing to protect is your ability to make laws, and the ability of your fellow lawmaker's ability to make laws. We make laws to protect our ability to make laws. This is what makes something bad in and itself. 

Malim in se: quod erat demonstrandum.

Now we move to a new question. What about bonum in se? What is "good in itself"?  Is there such a thing?  If breaking your own universal law is bad in and of itself, then we ask, what is good to do, in and of itself? 

Kant gives us a few more formulations that might help. One is to treat people (including ourselves) as people, not as means to ends, which he states thusly, "every rational being exists as an end in himself and not merely a means to be arbitrarily used by this or that will."  Thinking of people as ends (meaning that they are ends in themselves, rather than means to an end) pushes us farther to getting to what is good in itself.

His final formulation is, "act according to the maxims of a universally legislating member of a merely possible kingdom of ends." 

Sorry if this gets a bit confusing, and sometimes I'm not sure how well I understand it myself, but there is something about "universally legislating member of a merely possible kingdom of ends" which sounds lovely. It gets more confusing from there on, but there is a lot of attention to freedom and autonomy. I had never really thought what the word "autonomy" means, so I looked it up. "Self-law." We create law for ourselves to respect the lawmaking power in others. The problem is that we are still stuck in prohibitions (malum in se) rather a proscriptions (bonum in se.) We are still merely protecting the power of everyone as a universal lawmaker. So we ask again: what is good to do, in and of itself?  What is the good in and of itself in this kingdom of ends? 

To support the lawmaking powers of every end in it. To enrich them, to enliven them, to do what makes these powers flourish.

Calvinball Variations is about making rules and playing according to them. My hope that these rules can feel like an affirming formulation of the categorical imperative. Treat people as ends in themselves, yes, and then imagine what those ends should do. What would you tell everyone to do if you could tell everyone to do something? I would mandate big freeing movements and sophisticated ideas and beautiful feelings. I would make rules that we have to run up a hill joyously to write a haiku which will be spliced into another's haiku and to run with closed eyes with another acting as eyes, then hop, then hop on one leg, then in hop on one leg in slow motion, then make paintings to hop over in slow motion on one leg with eyes closed. 

But most importantly, I would make rules that we all have to make rules. I would make rules that are not only be about the flourishing of my own affirming imperatives, but the flourishing of yours. I would make rules that help all of us make the greatest rules we can. Making good rules is good in itself, and isn't easy, but it's not that hard. Making rules that make you make good rules is the most good. But it's pretty hard. 

I'm working on it, and I think is the best thing I can contribute to a Kingdom of Ends.

(Last edited 10/16/24, 7/23/25, 9/19/25

(notes: based on categories, and on using those categories to make the clearest commands and prohibitions based on arbitrary choice and then circumstances and expediency. But take away circumstance and expediency, and take away the arbitrary How do you have a morality based not on these things? Take away the idea that morality is a means to an end, and what remains? Take away your culture's specific circumstance, and what is left? )