Conatus: REVISED EDITION by Tom Wallace - HTML preview

C O N A T U S

rather than means? It could be said that ‘imperatives’ are just ‘sentiments’ — things that we would like to be true rather than absolute criteria for correct action somehow forced upon us. But it is impossible to formulate a universal maxim because everyone’s circumstances are so unique. And perhaps looking for morality to be such that it could be treated as a universal law seems to just pre-suppose that there are already universal laws that are just being discovered rather than invented.

Despite Kant’s rules-based system, he also aspired to a society where people loved to do the right thing from the heart, as it were, rather than because of the demands of ethics. This takes us to other approaches to ethics. We can usefully contrast Kant’s deontological approach with the ‘ontological’ — or, it might be best to call it, ‘character-based’ — approach, which seem to be more about who a person is in themselves, rather than moral rules — and thus about virtue. But arguably it is also about the underlying value of love, which Kant — almost despite himself — seems to be advocating in his ‘kingdom of ends’. What’s missing — or perhaps just not obvious — from Kant, is a reason why humans should be ‘ends in themselves’ (and a basis for his kingdom of ends). We could simply say that there is an assumption of humans’ intrinsic worth here, and indeed a certain regard for the wider world as being, in some way, sacred. Kant, and most philosophers of the past, had this usually as a result of their belief in God. But it seems reasonable for us to accept the intrinsic worth and sacredness of people, nature and the universe as a foundational value, even if we might not have a religious faith.

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