Philosophy Paper

16 Theoretical Perspectives

or unjust, according to the light in which they are

regarded.

It appears from what has been said that justice

is a name for certain moral requirements which,

regarded collectively, stand higher in the scale of

social utility, and are therefore of more paramount

obligation, than any others, though particular cases

may occur in which some other social duty is so

important as to overrule any one of the general

maxims of justice. Thus, to save a life, it may not

only be allowable, but a duty, to steal or take by force

the necessary food or medicine, or to kidnap and

compel to officiate the only qualified medical prac-

titioner. In such cases, as we do not call anything

justice which is not a virtue, we usually say, not that

justice must give way to some other moral principle,

but that what is just in ordinary cases is, by reason

of that other principle, not just in the particular

case. By this useful accommodation of language,

the character of indefeasibility attributed to justice

is kept up, and we are saved from the necessity of

maintaining that there can be laudable injustice.

The considerations which have not been

adduced resolve, I conceive, the only real difficulty

in the utilitarian theory of morals. It has always been

evident that all cases of justice are also cases of expe-

diency; the difference is in the peculiar sentiment

which attaches to the former, as contradistinguished

from the latter. If this characteristic sentiment has

been sufficiently accounted for; if there is no neces-

sity to assume for it any peculiarity of origin; if it

is simply the natural feeling of resentment, moral-

ized by being made coextensive with the demands

of social good; and if this feeling not only does but

ought to exist in all the classes of cases to which the

idea of justice corresponds—that idea no longer

presents itself as a stumbling block to the utilitarian

ethics. Justice remains the appropriate name for cer-

tain social utilities which are vastly more important,

and therefore more absolute and imperative, than

any others are as a class (though not more so than

others may be in particular cases); and which, there-

fore, ought to be, as well as naturally are, guarded by

a sentiment, not only different in degree, but also in

kind; distinguished from the milder feeling which

attaches to the mere idea of promoting human plea-

sure or convenience at once by the more definite

nature of its commands and by the sterner character

of its sanctions.

A SIMPLIFIED ACCOUNT OF KANT ’S ETHICS

Onora O’Neill

Onora O’Neill is the chair of the Equality and Human Rights Commission, a professor emeritus at the

University of Cambridge, and a member of the House of Lords. She is the former principal of Newnham

College, Cambridge University. She has taught philosophy at the University of Essex and Barnard College.

She has published numerous articles on ethics and is also the author of Acting on Principle (1975), Faces of

Hunger (1986), and Constructions of Reason (1989).

Kant’s ethics represent the prevailing approach to deontological moral theory. In this selection, O’Neill

elucidates and provides an interpretation of one of the formulations of the Categorical Imperative, The

Formula of the End in Itself, in terms of the notion of consent. She also highlights the differences between

utilitarianism and Kantian ethics on the value of human life.

Onora O’Neill, “A Simplified Account of Kant’s Ethics,” from

Matters of Life and Death , edited by Tom Regan, 1986.

© 1986 The McGraw-Hill Companies. Reprinted by permission.

Theoretical Perspectives 17

Kant’s moral theory has acquired the reputation

of being forbiddingly diffi cult to understand and,

once understood, excessively demanding in its

requirements. I don’t believe that this reputation

has been wholly earned, and I am going to try to

undermine it. . . . I shall try to reduce some of the

diffi culties. . . . Finally, I shall compare Kantian and

utilitarian approaches and assess their strengths and

weaknesses.

The main method by which I propose to avoid

some of the difficulties of Kant’s moral theory is by

explaining only one part of the theory. This does

not seem to me to be an irresponsible approach in

this case. One of the things that makes Kant’s moral

theory hard to understand is that he gives a num-

ber of different versions of the principle that he calls

the Supreme Principle of Morality, and these differ-

ent versions don’t look at all like one another. They

also don’t look at all like the utilitarians’ Greatest

Happiness Principle. But the Kantian principle is

supposed to play a similar role in arguments about

what to do.

Kant calls his Supreme Principle the Categorical

Imperative ; its various versions also have sonorous

names. One is called the Formula of Universal Law;

another is the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends. The

one on which I shall concentrate is known as the

Formula of the End in Itself . To understand why Kant

thinks that these picturesquely named principles are

equivalent to one another takes quite a lot of close

and detailed analysis of Kant’s philosophy. I shall

avoid this and concentrate on showing the implica-

tions of this version of the Categorical Imperative.

The Formula of the End in Itself

Kant states the Formula of the End in Itself as follows:

Act in such a way that you always treat human-

ity, whether in your own person or in the per-

son of any other, never simply as a means but

always at the same time as an end.

To understand this we need to know what it is to

treat a person as a means or as an end. According to

Kant, each of our acts reflects one or more maxims .

The maxim of the act is the principle on which one

sees oneself as acting. A maxim expresses a person’s

policy, or if he or she has no settled policy, the prin-

ciple underlying the particular intention or decision

on which he or she acts. Thus, a person who decides

“This year I’ll give 10 percent of my income to fam-

ine relief ” has as a maxim the principle of tithing his

or her income for famine relief. In practice, the dif-

ference between intentions and maxims is of little

importance, for given any intention, we can formu-

late the corresponding maxim by deleting references

to particular times, places, and persons. In what fol-

lows, I shall take the terms “maxim” and “intention”

as equivalent.

Whenever we act intentionally, we have at least

one maxim and can, if we reflect, state what it is.

(There is of course room for self-deception here—

“I’m only keeping the wolf from the door” we may

claim as we wolf down enough to keep ourselves

overweight, or, more to the point, enough to feed

someone else who hasn’t enough food.)

When we want to work out whether an act we

propose to do is right or wrong, according to Kant,

we should look at our maxims and not at how much

misery or happiness the act is likely to produce, and

whether it does better at increasing happiness than

other available acts. We just have to check that the

act we have in mind will not use anyone as a mere

means, and, if possible, that it will treat other per-

sons as ends in themselves.

Using Persons as Mere Means

To use someone as a mere means is to involve them

in a scheme of action to which they could not in

principle consent . Kant does not say that there is

anything wrong about using someone as a means.

Evidently we have to do so in any cooperative

scheme of action. If I cash a check I use the teller as

a means, without whom I could not lay my hands

on the cash; the teller in turn uses me as a means

to earn his or her living. But in this case, each party

consents to her or his part in the transaction. Kant

would say that though they use one another as

18 Theoretical Perspectives

means, they do not use one another as mere means.

Each person assumes that the other has maxims of

his or her own and is not just a thing or a prop to be

manipulated.

But there are other situations where one per-

son uses another in a way to which the other could

not in principle consent. For example, one person

may make a promise to another with every inten-

tion of breaking it. If the promise is accepted, then

the person to whom it was given must be ignorant

of what the promisor’s intention (maxim) really is.

If one knew that the promisor did not intend to do

what he or she was promising, one would, after all,

not accept or rely on the promise. It would be as

though there had been no promise made. Success-

ful false promising depends on deceiving the per-

son to whom the promise is made about what one’s

real maxim is. And since the person who is deceived

doesn’t know that real maxim, he or she can’t in

principle consent to his or her part in the proposed

scheme of action. The person who is deceived is as it

were, a prop or a tool—a mere means—in the false

promisor’s scheme. A person who promises falsely

treats the acceptor of the promise as a prop or a

thing and not as a person. In Kant’s view, it is this

that makes false promising wrong.

One standard way of using others as mere

means is by deceiving them. By getting someone

involved in a business scheme or a criminal activ-

ity on false pretenses, or by giving a misleading

account of what one is about, or by making a false

promise or a fraudulent contract, one involves

another in something to which he or she in prin-

ciple cannot consent, since the scheme requires

that he or she doesn’t know what is going on.

Another standard way of using others as mere

means is by coercing them. If a rich or powerful

person threatens a debtor with bankruptcy unless

he or she joins in some scheme, then the creditor’s

intention is to coerce; and the debtor, if coerced,

cannot consent to his or her part in the creditor’s

scheme. To make the example more specific: If a

money-lender in an Indian village threatens not

to renew a vital loan unless he is given the debtor’s

land, then he uses the debtor as a mere means. He

coerces the debtor, who cannot truly consent to

this “offer he can’t refuse.” (Of course, the outward

form of such transactions may look like ordinary

commercial dealings, but we know very well that

some offers and demands couched in that form

are coercive.)

In Kant’s view, acts that are done on maxims

that require deception or coercion of others and so

cannot have the consent of those others (for consent

precludes both deception and coercion), are wrong.

When we act on such maxims, we treat others as

mere means, as things rather than as ends in them-

selves. If we act on such maxims, our acts are not

only wrong but unjust: such acts wrong the particu-

lar others who are deceived or coerced.

Treating Persons as Ends in Themselves

Duties of justice are, in Kant’s view (as in many oth-

ers’), the most important of our duties. When we

fail in these duties, we have used some other or oth-

ers as mere means. But there are also cases where,

though we do not use others as mere means, still we

fail to use them as ends in themselves in the fullest

possible way. To treat someone as an end in him or

herself requires in the fi rst place that one not use

him or her as mere means, that one respect each

as a rational person with his or her own maxims.

But beyond that, one may also seek to foster others’

plans and maxims by sharing some of their ends. To

act benefi cently is to seek others’ happiness, there-

fore to intend to achieve some of the things that

those others aim at with their maxims. If I want to

make others happy, I will adopt maxims that not

merely do not manipulate them but that foster some

of their plans and activities. Benefi cent acts try to

achieve what others want. However, we cannot seek

everything that others want; their wants are too

numerous and diverse, and, of course, sometimes

incompatible. It follows that benefi cence has to be

selective.

There is then quite a sharp distinction between

the requirements of justice and of beneficence in

Kantian ethics. Justice requires that we act on no

maxims that use others as mere means. Beneficence

requires that we act on some maxims that foster

others’ ends, though it is a matter for judgment

Theoretical Perspectives 19

and discretion which of their ends we foster. Some

maxims no doubt ought not to be fostered because

it would be unjust to do so. Kantians are not com-

mitted to working interminably through a list of

happiness-producing and misery-reducing acts;

but there are some acts whose obligatoriness utili-

tarians may need to debate as they try to compare

total outcomes of different choices, to which Kan-

tians are stringently bound. Kantians will claim that

they have done nothing wrong if none of their acts

is unjust, and that their duty is complete if in addi-

tion their life plans have in the circumstances been

reasonably beneficent.

In making sure that they meet all the demands

of justice, Kantians do not try to compare all

available acts and see which has the best effects.

They consider only the proposals for action that

occur to them and check that these proposals use

no other as mere means. If they do not, the act is

permissible; if omitting the act would use another

as mere means, the act is obligatory. Kant’s theory

has less scope than utilitarianism. Kantians do not

claim to discover whether acts whose maxims they

don’t know fully are just. They may be reluctant

to judge others’ acts or policies that cannot be

regarded as the maxim of any person or institu-

tion. They cannot rank acts in order of merit. Yet,

the theory offers more precision than utilitari-

anism when data are scarce. One can usually tell

whether one’s act would use others as mere means,

even when its impact on human happiness is thor-

oughly obscure.

The Limits of Kantian Ethics: Intentions and Results

Kantian ethics differs from utilitarian ethics both in

its scope and in the precision with which it guides

action. Every action, whether of a person or of an

agency, can be assessed by utilitarian methods, pro-

vided only that information is available about all the

consequences of the act. The theory has unlimited

scope, but owing to lack of data, often lacks preci-

sion. Kantian ethics has a more restricted scope.

Since it assesses actions by looking at the maxims of

agents, it can only assess intentional acts. This means

that it is most at home in assessing individuals’ acts;

but it can be extended to assess acts of agencies that

(like corporations and governments and student

unions) have decision-making procedures. It can do

nothing to assess patterns of action that refl ect no

intention or policy, hence it cannot assess the acts of

groups lacking decision-making procedures, such as

the student movement, the women’s movement, or

the consumer movement.

It may seem a great limitation of Kantian ethics

that it concentrates on intentions to the neglect of

results. It might seem that all conscientious Kantians

have to do is to make sure that they never intend to

use others as mere means, and that they sometimes

intend to foster others’ ends. And, as we all know,

good intentions sometimes lead to bad results and

correspondingly, bad intentions sometimes do no

harm, or even produce good. If Hardin is right, the

good intentions of those who feed the starving lead

to dreadful results in the long run. If some tradi-

tional arguments in favor of capitalism are right, the

greed and selfishness of the profit motive have pro-

duced unparalleled prosperity for many.

But such discrepancies between intentions and

results are the exception and not the rule. For we

cannot just claim that our intentions are good and

do what we will. Our intentions reflect what we

expect the immediate results of our action to be.

Nobody credits the “intentions” of a couple who

practice neither celibacy nor contraception but still

insist “we never meant to have (more) children.”

Conception is likely (and known to be likely) in such

cases. Where people’s expressed intentions ignore

the normal and predictable results of what they do,

we infer that (if they are not amazingly ignorant)

their words do not express their true intentions. The

Formula of the End in Itself applies to the intentions

on which one acts—not to some prettified version

that one may avow. Provided this intention—the

agent’s real intention—uses no other as mere means,

he or she does nothing unjust. If some of his or her

intentions foster others’ ends, then he or she is some-

times beneficent. It is therefore possible for people

to test their proposals by Kantian arguments even

when they lack the comprehensive causal knowledge

that utilitarianism requires. Conscientious Kantians

20 Theoretical Perspectives

can work out whether they will be doing wrong by

some act even though it blurs the implications of the

theory. If we peer through the blur, we see that the

utilitarian view is that lives may indeed be sacrificed

for the sake of a greater good, even when the persons

are not willing. There is nothing wrong with using

another as a mere means provided that the end for

which the person is so used is a happier result than

could have been achieved any other way, taking into

account the misery the means have caused. In utili-

tarian thought persons are not ends in themselves.

Their special moral status derives from their being

means to the production of happiness. Human life

has therefore a high, though derivative value, and

one life may be taken for the sake of greater happi-

ness in other lives, or for the ending of misery in that

life. Nor is there any deep difference between ending

a life for the sake of others’ happiness by not helping

(e.g., by triaging) and doing so by harming. Because

the distinction between justice and beneficence is

not sharply made within utilitarianism, it is not pos-

sible to say that triaging is a matter of not benefiting,

while other interventions are a matter of injustice.

Utilitarian moral theory has then a rather para-

doxical view of the value of human life. Living, con-

scious humans are (along with other sentient beings)

necessary for the existence of everything utilitarians

value. But it is not their being alive but the state of

their consciousness that is of value. Hence, the best

results may require certain lives to be lost—by what-

ever means—for the sake of the total happiness and

absence of misery that can be produced.

Kant and Respect for Persons

Kantians reach different conclusions about human

life. Human life is valuable because humans (and

conceivable other beings, e.g., angels or apes) are the

bearers of rational life. Humans are able to choose

and to plan. This capacity and its exercise are of

such value that they ought not to be sacrifi ced for

anything of lesser value. Therefore, no one rational

or autonomous creature should be treated as mere

means for the enjoyment or even the happiness of

another. We may in Kant’s view justifi ably—even

nobly—risk or sacrifi ce our lives for others. For in

doing so we follow our own maxim and nobody

uses us as mere means. But no others may use

either our lives or our bodies for a scheme that they

have either coerced or deceived us into joining. For

in doing so they would fail to treat us as rational

beings; they would use us as mere means and not as

ends in ourselves.

It is conceivable that a society of Kantians, all

of whom took pains to use no other as mere means,

would end up with less happiness or with fewer per-

sons alive than would some societies of complying

utilitarians. For since the Kantians would be strictly

bound only to justice, they might without wrongdo-

ing be quite selective in their beneficence and fail to

maximize either survival rates or happiness, or even

to achieve as much of either as a strenuous group

of utilitarians, who know that their foresight is lim-

ited and that they may cause some harm or fail to

cause some benefit. But they will not cause harms

that they can foresee without this being reflected in

their intentions.

Utilitarianism and Respect for Life

From the differing implications that Kantian and

utilitarian moral theories have for our actions

toward those who do or may suffer famine, we

can discover two sharply contrasting views of the

value of human life. Utilitarians value happiness

and the absence or reduction of misery. As a utili-

tarian one ought (if conscientious) to devote one’s

life to achieving the best possible balance of happi-

ness over misery. If one’s life plan remains in doubt,

this will be because the means to this end are often

unclear. But whenever the causal tendency of acts

is clear, utilitarians will be able to discern the acts

they should successively do in order to improve the

world’s balance of happiness over unhappiness.

This task is not one for the fainthearted. First,

it is dauntingly long, indeed interminable. Second,

it may at times require the sacrifice of happiness,

and even of lives, for the sake of a greater happi-

ness. Such sacrifice may be morally required not

only when the person whose happiness or even

whose life is at stake volunteers to make the sacri-

fice. It may be necessary to sacrifice some lives for

Theoretical Perspectives 21

the sake of others. As our control over the means

of ending and presenting human life has increased,

analogous dilemmas have arisen in many areas for

utilitarians. Should life be preserved at the cost of

pain when modern medicine makes this possible?

Should life be preserved without hope of conscious-

ness? Should triage policies, because they may maxi-

mize the number of survivors, be used to determine

who should be left to starve? Should population

growth be fostered wherever it will increase the total

of human happiness—or on some views so long as

average happiness is not reduced? All these ques-

tions can be fitted into utilitarian frameworks and

answered if we have the relevant information. And

sometimes the answer will be that human happiness

demands the sacrifice of lives, including the sacrifice

of unwilling lives. Further, for most utilitarians,

it makes no difference if the unwilling sacrifices

involve acts of injustice to those whose lives are

to be lost. It might, for example, prove necessary

for maximal happiness that some persons have

their allotted rations, or their hard-earned income,

diverted for others’ benefit. Or it might turn out

that some generations must sacrifice comforts or

liberties and even lives to rear “the fabric of felic-

ity” for their successors. Utilitarians do not deny

these possibilities, though the imprecision of our

knowledge of consequences often somehow makes

the right calculations. On the other hand, nobody

will have been made an instrument of others’ sur-

vival or happiness in the society of complying

Kantians.

A THEORY OF JUSTICE

John Rawls

John Rawls taught philosophy at Princeton, Cornell, MIT, and Harvard universities. He is perhaps the most

important political philosopher of the twentieth century. His books include A Theory of Justice (1971),

Political Liberalism (1993), and The Law of Peoples (1999).

In this excerpt from his book, A Theory of Justice , Rawls argues that justice is best understood as a

certain kind of fairness, where people agree to principles in an initial situation that free and equal people

would see as reasonable. But from within this position, the principle of utility would not be considered

fair. Instead, Rawls proposes that people would accept as fair a set of principles that would work out to the

benefit of the least well-off person.

Reprinted by permission of the publisher from

A Theory of Justice by John Rawls, pp. 11–16; 60–63; 136–142; 78; 101–104,

Cambridge, Mass: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, Copyright © 1971, 1999

by the President and Fellows of Harvard College.

My aim is to present a conception of justice which

generalizes and carries to a higher level of abstrac-

tion the familiar theory of the social contract as

found, say, in Locke, Rousseau, and Kant. In order to

do this we are not to think of the original contract as

one to enter a particular society or to set up a partic-

ular form of government. Rather, the guiding idea is

that the principles of justice for the basic structure

of society are the object of the original agreement

They are the principles that free and rational per-

sons concerned to further their own interests would

accept in an initial position of equality as defi ning

the fundamental terms of their association. These

principles are to regulate all further agreements;

they specify the kinds of social cooperation that can

be entered into and the forms of government that

can be established. This way of regarding the prin-

ciples of justice I shall call justice as fairness.