Categorical Imperative and Its Role

Most people would agree that lying to a murderer about the whereabouts of his victim to save a life is morally permissible, but Kant famously insisted that even in this case, lying is impermissible. Some cite this refusal as a failure of his moral system, for surely no system would so easily dismiss the value of human life. In this paper, I will address this objection and show how, despite it, Kant’s categorical imperative should not be rejected. I will begin by addressing Kant’s strongest argument in favor of telling the truth to a known murderer and demonstrating why it fails. Next, I will assess the argument that universalizing the principle of lying to save lives is consistent with the categorical imperative, showing why it fails. I will then argue that lying to save lives is consistent with the categorical imperative, not because it meets the three criteria of the imperative, but because the murderer has sacrificed his rationality in his quest for murder, thereby abdicating the right to truth afforded to rational beings under the categorical imperative.

To understand the objection to Kant’s categorical imperative, a brief discussion of it is helpful. Categorical imperatives can be distinguished from hypothetical imperatives in that they should be willed for themselves, not for the ends they achieve. Kant’s categorical imperative then demands that people, “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (30). In short, as rational beings, we are required to act as we would require others to if they were in our position, otherwise we are acting for our selfish interest, which does not necessarily align with morality. This results in two other formulas of the categorical imperative: the formula of humanity, which states that we should treat people “as an end and never simply as a means,” and the formula of the kingdom of ends, which requires that our actions be consistent with a “systematic union of different rational beings through common laws” (36, 39).

Under this system, lying is wrong because it violates the categorical imperative’s main criteria. First, lying cannot be universalized because doing so would be self-defeating. As Kant says, lying to achieve an end would be “impossible, inasmuch as no one would believe what was promised him but would merely laugh at all such utterances as being vain pretenses” (31). In other words, in a world where lying is commonly accepted, no one would trust what they were told and thus lying would not accomplish the ends it was designed to.

Secondly, deceiving someone to achieve an end disrespects their autonomy because they are being used as a means, which violates the second formula – the formula of humanity – and therefore makes attaining the kingdom of ends impossible. Thus, in a world where lying was permissible, no one would believe anything they heard, making that world dysfunctional, and humans would be used as means to others’ ends, which would violate their autonomy, which are two strong reasons from Kant’s categorical imperative to avoid lying at all times.

Of course, the question then arises as to how Kant’s moral system handles the objection that it seems permissible, if not mandatory, to lie in certain circumstances. A common form of this objection, which I will use throughout the rest of this paper, uses the example of Nazis and a man hiding Jews from them to save their lives. Under this scenario, a member of the Gestapo comes to the man’s door looking for Jews, asking if there are any in the house. In this case, our intuition might lead us to conclude that he has an obligation to lie to the Nazi to save the Jews’ lives. If we accept Kant’s categorical imperative, however, we are forbidden to lie even in this circumstance, since the categorical imperative is absolute. Because the value of human life seems more valuable than an individual’s right to be treated as an ends in all cases, many cite this instance as an example where the categorical imperative fails. Since it is an absolute system, the integrity of the entire categorical imperative seems to come into question if we admit this exception.

In response to this objection, Kant insists that “truthfulness in statements that cannot be avoided is the formal duty of man to everyone, however great the disadvantage that may arise therefrom for him or for any other” (64). In other words, the man hiding the Jews must tell the Nazi the truth, even if it results in the Jews’ death at the hands of the Nazi. His justification for this position, however, is unsatisfying. Kant argues that one rational agent does not bear responsibility for another’s actions if he acts honestly. In this case, the act of telling the Nazi the truth on its own is not inherently wrong, only the Nazi’s decision to round up the Jews is wrong. The Nazi’s actions, however, are determined solely by him and thus the moral wrongness of those actions can be traced to him. If the man lies to the Nazi, however, then the man has not treated the Nazi as an end but as a means to his end of protecting the Jews. And according to Kant, he is therefore responsible for any action the Nazi takes since the man has artificially created the conditions to which the Nazi is responding.

Although this response fits the framework of the imperative, a man turning Jews over to Nazis for the sake of preserving his own moral innocence does not seem a persuasive reason to accept the death of an innocent person, much less other innocent people. For this reason, many have reached for alternative explanations, even trying to argue that Kant was wrong to absolutely bar lying under the categorical imperative.

One such argument claims that the categorical imperative is valid in the face of this objection because it actually allows the man hiding Jews to lie to the Nazi. The trick, according to the argument, is to redefine the maxim to be universally willed more narrowly. In other words, the man lying to the Nazis is doing so to save lives, so suppose we universalized the principle of lying in order to save lives. On the surface, this principle seems to withstand the test of the formula of universal law and even the formula of humanity. Since the opportunity to lie to save lives presents itself so rarely, trust will remain intact because all other cases will require honesty, so the world will continue to function. Since people will have to tell the truth in all cases where lives are not at stake, this will also virtually eliminate the risk of people being used as means to ends. Thus, defining the principle as lying to save lives seems to suggest that lying in this case is not an exception to the categorical imperative but is rather encompassed by it.

Unfortunately for this response, however, it does not actually pass the test of the formula of universal law. Although it is true that people would tell the truth in virtually all imaginable circumstances, which would keep trust intact, the goal of this principle is to save lives. As such, it is necessarily self-defeating. In other words, Nazis would know in this world that people will lie to save lives, so Nazis would have no reason to trust a person who tells them that they are not hiding Jews. Since this is obviously self-defeating to the goal of protecting Jews from Nazi abuses, the idea that we can solve the problem of lying to save lives by redrawing the principle more narrowly to fit the categorical imperative does not hold.

So, Kant’s claim that others’ actions cannot be morally imputed to us remains unconvincing and redrawing the principle at play when lying to Nazis fails the test of the universal law. At this point, it seems as though the integrity of Kant’s moral system is in jeopardy, but one avenue remains to rescue it.

The categorical imperative demands respect for rational beings by demanding that their humanity be preserved in any decision you make and that your decision, if universalized, would result in a kingdom of ends where everyone’s autonomy is respected. This does not explain, however, how we should act toward individuals who are either a. non-rational beings or b. rational beings temporarily acting irrationally. In the case of a Nazi, we can grant that he may generally be a rational person, so a. does not seem to matter when considering general conduct toward him. B., however, presents a different case. In the pursuit of murdering an innocent person, the Nazi is acting irrationally under the categorical imperative, because one obviously cannot will that we universalize the principle of killing those with whom we disagree. Thus, if the Nazi is acting irrationally, there seems little reason to treat him as we would treat a rational being. In that case, since the man hiding the Jews is no longer bound to treat the Nazi as a rational being, he may lie to protect the Jews without undermining the Nazi’s autonomy.

To use an analogy, we can suppose that a drunk man desires to shoot himself with a gun. Although one would not be permitted to interfere with his autonomy by taking his gun from him when sober, in a drunken state the man has given up his autonomy and his rationality. In that case, it would be permissible for a third party to intervene and prevent him from using the gun for his desired purpose. Similarly, when the Nazi acts irrationally by attempting to kill others based on their religious beliefs, a third party may intervene without violating that Nazi’s rationality or autonomy, since the Nazi has sacrificed both by trying to kill the Jews.

Thus, lying to save lives is consistent with the categorical imperative, but not because it can be universalized as a general principle. Rather, this action falls under a moral loophole in the categorical imperative because in that situation, an agent would be dealing with an irrational person, whose rationality would be impossible to respect since it would be nonexistent.