eli5 What is Kant’s categorical imparative?

Question

I have to understand it for a debate in class about the death penalty, but I can’t wrap my head around it just right

In: 6

Answer 1

Basically the golden rule, a fancy wording of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”

I think it goes like “act only on that maxim which you could make a universal law.”

In other words, say you cheat on a test. By doing that, you are saying by your actions that it is permissible for everyone to cheat on a test. But what would happen if that was a “universal law,” like everyone should cheat on tests if they feel like it? That would be bad. Do you want to see a doctor who cheated on medical school tests? Do you want a teacher who doesn’t know what they’re talking about because they cheated on college tests? Do you want an accountant who cheated on their math test? No, so you couldn’t make “cheating is okay” a universal law. Therefore you shouldn’t cheat.

But let’s look a good rule. Suppose you refuse to rape people. What would happen if everybody followed your example by not raping? There would be a lot less trauma, and probably nobody would rape you. So that would be a good universal law, so it is morally acceptable to refuse to rape people.

Suppose you were to act on the maxim that “you should kill people who have killed people.” What would the consequences of that be? Could that be a universal law? By one argument, no. If you kill a murderer, then somebody has to kill you. Then somebody has to kill them, and so on and so forth until everybody is dead.

The counter argument would be to add more specific conditions: “you should kill people who have killed people who haven’t killed people.” But then, of course, revenge murderers would be free from the death penalty. So you could be like “you should kill people who have killed people but only if you have permission from a jury.” But if those jurors grant permission, aren’t they also acting on the maxim of “kill people who have killed people, as long as there are 13 between jurors and executioners?” And doesn’t that kind of condone gang violence as long as there are 2 gangs have at least 13 members each?

So where you stand on how the categorical imperative impacts the morality of the death penalty depends on how many “except for” clauses you’re willing to add.