Formality and fertility

It is commonly believed that if we are to do what is right and good we need to have moral principles and to act on these principles, or at least not against them. Philosophical writings on ethics include a long tradition of analysing how principles should be selected and how acts can be aligned with principles. The most famous analysis is Kant’s discussion of the Categorical Imperative, the ‘supreme principle of morality’, as a test of the universality of the principles on which agents act, which he intended to reveal both whether they acted on principle and the moral status of their acts. He formulated the Categorical Imperative in a number of ways, of which the best known demands that we

Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.

The appeal of this principle to Kant was its combination of formality and fertility. He thought that its presuppositions were meagre, perhaps wholly formal, and yet that it was powerful in guiding us to do morally acceptable acts.

There are numerous latterday descendants of this famous ancestor, which sometimes have only a rather remote family resemblance to it or indeed to one another. But their proponents share Kant’s hope that they have produced a necessary condition on moral actions which, if not strictly speaking formal, is still parsimonious in its presuppositions, and yet useful in guiding action.