As Christianity and its influence have declined in western culture, it has become necessary to replace the system of ethics it provided with something else. Because of their necessarily subjective nature, these lack the power of Christian ethics - they take the form of preferences, although they are couched as sets of principles - yet it is on these that a secular humanist is forced to base his behavior. One of the more successful of these attempts - in large part because it was, as originally formulated, not yet entirely divorced from Christian ethics - is Kantianism.
Before continuing, it should be noted that this is a critique of Kantian ethics as commonly applied today, not a critique of Immanuel Kant himself or his ideas. The former would be unwise, as Kant had many very good ideas (although imperfect, his ideas on God are, for example, more complete and more reasonable than many of his contemporaries); the later would take the discussion beyond the scope of the author's knowledge and the intended length of the post. Kant's actual system of ethics was in the main internally consistent. It garnered its power from Kant's belief in the existence of God, an authority to whom the individual is responsible for his precise application (or lack thereof) of the categorical imperative to his behavior. It is only the modern philosophers, who divorce Kant's ethics from Kant's God, who render the system useless as a guide to ethical behavior.
The basic principle of Kantian ethics is the idea of the categorical imperative. Simply put, the categorical imperative is the idea that humans have an absolute duty to act in such a way that every other human in similar circumstances could act in the same way without ill effect. For example, one could not take as a maxim "kill those who I dislike," since if the entire human race did so we would very soon become extinct. Of course, several obvious problems arise with this concept, but most of these can be addressed by the existence of a God, which, although not explicitly stated as a foundation for Kant's metaphysics of morality, certainly played a role. For example, one might naturally inquire which outcomes we should consider desirable, and in answer to that Kant would most likely point to "intuitions," what might also be called - but not by Kant - the remnants of God's work on our hearts, as the guide to desirable outcomes. Although this strays far too close to the badly flawed concept that those things which feel right are right (the Bible tells us that there is a way which seems right unto a man, but the ends thereof are the ways of death), it is at least internally consistent.
Although Kant's philosophy holds together as a coherent whole, when later philosophers attempt to rip his ethics out of the framework in which it was housed and use it as a replacement for Biblical ethics, they do so at the expense of the cogency and even the coherency of Kant's ethical system. Not only is an objective standard required to determine which outcomes are actually desirable, some objective standard must also exist to establish that we ought to care which outcomes are desirable. If I can get away with it, why shouldn't I? Not everyone could do it, but then again, I'm not everyone, am I? Even if the Kantian ethicist could answer those questions satisfactorily - and if he does he will almost certainly have to resort to Kantianism's rival, Utilitarianism - he is still faced with the fact that, as Benjamin Franklin put it, "so convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do." Given enough time, one could always find some peculiarity in one's situation which renders it distinct from others in its class, and allows one the opportunity to do some otherwise dastardly deed without compunction. This is not, in fact, so different from what most people do to justify bad behavior without any code of ethics to guide them. In order to apply the categorical imperative properly, one must first have a firm enough sense of honesty and decency to apply it without regard to the immediate well-being of oneself and others.
Therein lies Kantian ethics' problem: it is not in itself a complete code of ethics. It is rather a sort of "meta-ethics," which may appear as a viable supplement to, but not a replacement for, morality. Kantian ethics are in reality nothing more than a supplement to Biblical morality. Attempting to replace Biblical morality with Kantian ethics is not only a perversion of what Kant intended, it won't even produce the viable code of ethics modern secular humanists seek. Kantian ethics requires a prior ethical standard in order for it to be applied, and that prior standard cannot be explained using Kantian ethics, since it is of necessity the foundation of Kantian ethics. A little thought should be enough to establish that this is not a peculiar flaw of Kantian ethics. All man-made ethical systems will have the exact same flaw for the exact same reason: there must be some reason not to ignore them completely or stretch their application to allow any action one desires. Only God, who holds a prior claim, has the authority to state that one thought or action is right and another wrong simply because He says so. He needs no preexisting standard; He is the preexisting standard. Without God a coherent morality is impossible, and Kantianism, appealing as it may be, is no exception.
Labels: Christianity, Philosophy, Theology