The Kant I am talking about is the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant (1724–1804); the “cant” I am referring to is, “hypocritical and sanctimonious talk” (Oxford English Dictionary). Kant was a very influential philosopher during the Age of Enlightenment and is probably best known for his moral philosophy captured in his Categorical Imperative as stated in his Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant describes a categorical imperative “that which represented an action as necessary of itself without reference to another end, i.e., as objectively necessary. If now the action is good only as a means to something else, then the imperative is hypothetical; if it is conceived as good in itself and consequently as being necessarily the principle of a will which of itself conforms to reason, then it is categorical.” Can you see the “cant” in that statement? He goes on to define his Categorical Imperative: “There is therefore but one categorical imperative, namely this: Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law.” What kind of a world would it be if my behavior became a universal law for everybody?

This will be the first of what will probably be several future posts on Kant’s writings on morals and philosophy. My subject today has to do with the “hypocritical and sanctimonious” nature of his principle of morals. Sanctimonious means, “making a show of being morally superior” (OED). Nowhere is that more evident than in his comments on two imperatives from the Bible. The first one is in Leviticus 19:18 where it says that you are to love your neighbor as you love yourself. He leads up to his comment on this verse by saying that “To secure one’s own happiness is a duty, at least indirectly; for discontent with one’s condition under a pressure of many anxieties and amidst unsatisfied wants, might easily become a great temptation to transgression of duty.” He had written earlier that for an action to be moral it had to be done from duty and not because the person wants to do it. With this in mind, he had this to say about the above verse:

It is in this manner, undoubtedly, that we are to understand those passages of Scripture also in which we are commanded to love our neighbour, even our enemy. For love, as an affection, cannot be commanded, but beneficence for duty's sake may; even though we are not impelled to it by any inclination- nay, are even repelled by a natural and unconquerable aversion. This is practical love and not pathlogical- a love which is seated in the will, and not in the propensions of sense- in principles of action and not of tender sympathy; and it is this love alone which can be commanded.

Kant says love itself cannot be commanded, but acts of love can be done as a duty, so the commandment to love your neighbor is impossible to obey. He has a better idea—do acts of beneficence to your neighbor because it is your duty. But what if it does not make you happy? He already said, “to secure one’s own happiness is a duty because if you are not happy you will be tempted to not do your duty.” This one question he did not address. He also did not address the fact that love is commanded because it is a choice and not a duty. Love that is not willful is obedience to duty but not a heart issue. The seat of love is the heart. The seat of obedience to duty is in the will. They are quite different.

The second Scripture Kant comments on is what is known as the Golden Rule—“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” (Matthew 7:12). Here again, Kant thinks he has a better idea which he puts in a footnote:

Let it not be thought that the common "quod tibi non vis fieri, etc." [Latin: that they do not wish to be done unto thee], could serve here as the rule or principle. For it is only a deduction from the former, though with several limitations; it cannot be a universal law, for it does not contain the principle of duties to oneself, nor of the duties of benevolence to others (for many a one would gladly consent that others should not benefit him, provided only that he might be excused from showing benevolence to them), nor finally that of duties of strict obligation to one another, for on this principle the criminal might argue against the judge who punishes him, and so on.

Here Kant quotes only the second part of the Golden Rule in Latin and he puts it in the negative. But this is not the only thing he got wrong. He says it has limitations that keep it from serving as a rule or principle, the first of which he lists as a lack of the principle of duty to oneself. Secondly, he says it does not require any duty to do anything benevolent to others; and thirdly, it ignores any obligation to others altogether. He interprets the Golden Rule to mean that one can avoid doing an act of benevolence for others if one is prepared for others not to act benevolently toward oneself. He gave the example of a criminal objecting to a judge’s sentence on the basis that the judge would not want to suffer the same penalty. Wasn’t the criminal a criminal because he was operating under his own Categorical Imperative?

Kant fails to consider the immediate context of the Golden Rule and the total context of scriptural moral rules. The immediate context is Jesus asking rhetorical questions about how a parent would treat a child if the child needed food. Then he says if you know how to give good things to your children, how much more would your heavenly Father give good things to those who ask. And then the imperative that says, “In everything” which does away with limitations, “do unto others”, the part Kant omitted, which does require doing something for others; “as you would have them do unto you” which indicates a duty to look after yourself. The wider context of the New Testament would have filled in some gaps for Kant if he had been interested. “Love your enemies”, “do good to those who hate you”, “give to him who asks you”, “if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back.” These and other examples for Scripture and from experience shows that the Categorical Imperative is no Golden Rule.

The duty to oneself that Kant missed is the duty to love and obey God. “Be careful to obey all the regulations I am giving you, so that it may always go well with you...” (emphasis mine) (Deuteronomy 12:28). That is the kind of reason that Kant was looking for, but he was looking in the wrong place – he was looking to his own reason:

Even the Holy One of the Gospels must first be compared with our ideal of moral perfection before we can recognise Him as such; and so He says of Himself, “Why call ye Me (whom you see) good; none is good (the model of good) but God only (whom ye do not see)?” But whence have we the conception of God as the supreme good? Simply from the idea of moral perfection, which reason frames a priori and connects inseparably with the notion of a free will.

He did not recognize that without an objective standard for right and wrong (morals) that applies to everybody, there are only autonomous standards of behavior guided by conscience, which, in turn, is guided by public opinion and personal preference. Reason is no reason for moral standards.

Kant believed in and wrote a lot about God. By placing his Categorical Imperative above the commands of God, Kant showed that he was smarter than God, and thus a hypocrite, because he was not. By placing his reason as the source for morality above the word of God, he showed he thought himself morally superior to God. His Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals was Kant’s cant.