In part #4 I will explain Kant’s suggestion we just don’t set any ends at all.
In later blogs I will take you through to what I think is a resolution of the paradox. A way to find meaning where there is none.
#4 A sense of duty
Another way of coping with the problems associated with the paradox of the end is to avoid the setting of ends altogether. This can be achieved by stipulating activities which are not within the category of means/ends. Instead activities are understood as doing one's duty. Consequently these activities would be in observance of a set of commands or laws, or in accordance with a convention, rather than toward some stipulated goal.
Yet while this strategy avoids the paradox of the end its requirements and consequences seem less than ideal in a world dependent upon social interaction. This is made explicit when we consider briefly Kant’s Groundwork of The Metaphysic of Morals, in particular the motive of duty.
Any system of duty necessitates as a precondition a summum bonum, a supreme good which is the highest object in a kingdom of ends. For Kant this was rationality whose function was to ‘produce a will which is good, not as a means to some further end, but in itself’ . According to Kant’s formulation an action is morally good if performed solely for the sake of duty. However, this framework means actions need not be externalised, rather actions are to be regarded as a series of duties to oneself to guide daily life; to perfect oneself. Consequently, an action performed from duty has no worth other than to be in accordance with its maxim. This means, according to Kant, that we are only performing our duty if we act ‘irrespective of all objects of the faculty of desire’. In other words, the ontology of moral action is not located in discursive practices, or the interactions of the social domain, but in producing rationality, a will which is good.
It follows then from the Kantian sense of duty that nothing in any action qua action establishes its moral worth. In other words, there is no motivation or desire in respect of others which establishes the worth of that action. To put it another way, there is no moral worth in acting if you want to, only if you do so out of a sense of duty. Consequently an action’s worth is not established by the purpose it serves but rather by virtue of the maxim to which it accords. It becomes questionable, then, whether performing our duty, in Kantian terms, requires a community of more than one person since the only requirement is that we extend our humanity as far as our grasp. This of course constitutes an activity delineated by extension since performing our duty requires only that the maxim be universable, not the action itself.
However, Kant’s theory is not the only formulation; ethical egoism is based on the ideal of rational self-love, nevertheless it also remains susceptible to the problems highlighted with the Kantian theory. Although theories of universalism and contractarianism (a social contract or convention) do not fall foul of psychological hedonism the worth of any action still remains questionable. This is because while both these strategies avoid the problem of ends one immediately senses the activity itself to be inconsequential. All that matters is that we are doing that which has been commanded, or acting in accordance with the law, or in accord with the social contract.
So if we are merely required to do our duty evidently the worth of an action is not established by reference to an inventory of consequences. All that matters is that the end action constitutes doing one’s duty, where duty is understood as the necessity to act out of reverence for the maxim. Effectively, then, any act directed toward the benefit of others may be agreeable, but of no worth other than it be in reverence to the stipulated maxim.
In #5 I will look at the idea of stipulating ends and means as simultaneous acts and so free ourselves from the sense of meaningless of ‘means/ends’ activity.