The Categorical Imperative
An imperative is a command, instruction or rule governing how one
should act. An imperative is ‘categorical’ when it is exceptionless, that is, when it is binding
on all rational agents, in all circumstances, at all times. Kant believed that
what he called ‘the supreme principle of morality’ was just such a categorical
imperative, and he provided a number of different formulations of it. The most
important are:
1. Act only on that maxim
through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal
law.
2. So act as to use humanity,
both in your own person and in the person of every other, always at the same
time as an end, never simply as a means.
3 So act as if you were
always through your maxims a law-making member of a kingdom of ends.
The Categorical Imperative is, for Kant, an a
priori, abstract law which governs the
moral value of the maxims on which we act – maxims which, in turn, determine
the moral value of those acts themselves. So an act is morally good if it is
performed for the sake of a morally good maxim; and a maxim is morally good if
it conforms to the Categorical Imperative.