You Can Be Stronger - Kant Said So!

Here's where I'll start explaining why I think people are stronger than they think, and we'll start with the natural person—Immanuel Kant.

Kant? Really? That guy?

Most people who have some familiarity with Kant and his duty-based (or deontological) system of ethics probably remember the categorical imperative, which comes in several flavors (all vanilla!) that allow a person to test their plans of action (or maxims) to determine if they're permissible or morally forbidden. The most well-known version of the categorical imperative is the one that demands that maxims must be universalizable:

Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law. (Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals, p. 421)

Maxims that fail that test become duties to avoid such action; more instance, lying fails the universalization test because if everyone lied, no one would believe anybody, which would defeat the purpose of lying. Voila, the duty not to lie.

Sure, there's that formalistic part of Kant's ethics—which is not as bad as it seems, really, but maybe I'll talk about that in another post (or look at this paper). The other versions of the categorical imperative are more humanistic, such as this one:

Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means. (Grounding, p. 429)

As this version makes more clear, Kantian ethics are about the equal dignity of all persons, and the mutual respect that the recognition of this equal status demands. (That's also the motivating factor behind universalizing maxims in the first place, but again, more on this later.)

But Kant didn't simply assume we would all follow what our duties perfectly; no human being can be perfectly moral, as we each have an undeniable animal nature that we nonetheless must struggle to resist. He also wrote about the strength needed to do this (which he called virtue), where it comes from, and how to develop it.

First, let's talk about autonomy. In Kantian terms, this is the capacity, possessed by all human beings, to make choices independent of external influences (social pressure, authority) and internal desires. It is what allows us to do the right thing, even if other people urge us not to, and—more often—even if we don't want to.

In terms of ethics, autonomy implies that we determine the moral law for ourselves and follow it of our own choosing; understood this way, it is an amazing power, but also an awesome responsibility. While we all have true autonomy or inner freedom (freedom of choice, as opposed to outer freedom, or freedom of action), we must use it in a moral way. Based on this capacity for autonomous choice, Kant argues that human beings have dignity, an incomparable and incalculable worth, as we saw from the the second version of the categorical imperative above.

But while we have tremendous potential for self-direction and self-invention due to our autonomy, it's not necessarily easy to realize it. Temptations lie all around us: other people try to get us to do things we don't want to do or that we feel wouldn't be ethical, and our desires often interfere with our judgment regarding the right thing to do, or our will to do it (remember that animal nature!).

In other words, we need strength:

For while the capacity to overcome all opposing sensible impulses can and must be simply presupposed in man on account of his freedom, yet this capacity as strength is something he must acquire. (Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, p. 397)

and how does one acquire this strength?

The way to acquire [strength] is to enhance the moral incentive (the thought of the law), both by contemplating the dignity of the pure rational law in us and by practicing virtue. (Metaphysics of Morals, p. 397, emphasis mine)

So strength doesn't just come to us; we have to work at it. As I'll post about later, psychologist (and fellow PT blogger) Roy Baumeister and his colleagues have written that willpower (or strength of will) resembles a muscle in many ways. In particular, it gets stronger when it is "exercised," and withers away from neglect; or, as Kant wrote about strength, "if it is not rising, [it] is unavoidably sinking" (Metaphysics of Morals, p. 409). Or, in modern terms, "use it or lose it."

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Personally, I find Kant to be inspirational because he emphasizes this potential in each of us to be stronger than we may think we can be, and a lot of what it takes to get there is effort. It may not be easy, but it is possible!

(If you want a concise and very well-written introduction to Kant's ethics, you can't do any better then Roger J. Sullvan's An Introduction to Kant's Ethics, which I assign my students whenI teach Kant.)