In doing research on Kantian ethics, I found myself amazed at the system Kant had created. The categorical imperative (at first) seemed like the ultimate ethical guide regarding whether an action is right or wrong. The trouble is, its obvious flaws really drag it down and I could never adopt such a faulty system.
Take, for example, the famous case where you are to reveal the location of a murderer’s prey through the truth, or lie to save that person’s life. For Kant, you cannot lie. Additionally, you can’t look at the consequences when making your decision.
But I can’t do that. And because Kant doesn’t provide a way for us to prioritize duty, there’s no way (apparent to me) to refute the fact that lying is more immoral than the demise of the murderer’s prey.
What I’m wondering is, how can we amend Kantian ethics and allow for duty to be prioritized? Is this possible? Kant said himself that in creating exceptions we destroy universality contained in his principles. Is there a way around this? I’m looking for thoughts, because I really don’t think so. His whole system disregards feelings in favor of reason so maybe those who subscribe to this particular philosophy can explain how/why they’re okay with doing so.
“For Kant, you cannot lie”
There’s a generally concieved split between Kantian Ethics and Kants Ethics. The former is the method of deriving norms, the latter Kant’s own interpretation of what values this system would produce.
There’s no reason why Kantian Ethics should lead to the rule ‘you must never lie’. Whether Kant believed it did or not is a different matter (I believe he was inconsistent, as it happens). A kantian might well argue that its universally true that in a situation when a murder would be prevented by lying, it would be a moral duty to lie (indeed - this is almost what a Kantian should argue).
“What I’m wondering is, how can we amend Kantian ethics and allow for duty to be prioritized?”
Seriously, there’s very little need for this - Kant’s ethics is founded on the notion of duty (the notion of moral laws being categorical imperitives)
The categorical imperative is flawed not just because it provides no basis to resolve conflicting “duties” such as “to not lie” and “to save a life” in the above example, but primarily because it tries to extract the morality of a situation without considering that situation itself. Real life is so much more complex, unique, conditional, imperfect and personal than Kant believed. You cannot just look at a situation and ignore all the specifics or causes or potential outcomes or motives or personal beliefs or experiences, and come up with some “impartial” universal “duty”. I do not know what was wrong with Kant, but clearly he was an idiot, if not actually insane.
Trying to look at reality through such a hyperrational lens, selectively attending only to the bare essentials while ignoring the fact that even these barest of essential factors are nonetheless subjective and depend upon one’s perspective, Kant not only failed to adequately give us a system for determining moral value or correct action, but he inserted a deep lie into the human consciousness, one that pervades through the masses in the form of memes and unconscious emotional-archetypal knowledge: that human morality is somehow divorced from the day-to-day events and personal beliefs/perspectives/desires of humans. And even more so: that the ends are irrelevant, that action is to be divorced from its consequences. Kant turned morality into an ugly thing, crude and impersonal and unreal. We are told that “the good” is somehow disconnected from actual reality, from the needs and causes and situations of daily human existence. But no one can possibly make sense of “duties” even in a oversimplified case, and of course in actual reality, where morality ought to work most effectively and provide us with real guidance, the entire concept collapses into absurdity.