Modern Constructivism

It’s a little late but, better late than never. Kant’s form of deontology can be seen as a kind of moral constructivism. According to Rawls, what Kant “constructs” is “the content of the doctrine”(3.2). This means that the universality of a particular categorical imperative that pass the laws of universality are considered to be constructed by “a procedure of construction worked through by rational agents subject to various reasonable constraints”(3.2). Kant believes that the procedure to construct these doctrines is not what is being constructed. This procedure, the categorical imperative procedure, is derived from our everyday understanding and our implicit awareness of the need for practical reason. Judgments made like this are not correct because the outcome is correct. These judgments are correct because the procedure and all the rational agents at work in the procedure make that outcome correct.

These thoughts have a basis which upon they work. The basis is that everyone is free, reasonable, and rational. With this basis in mind, the categorical imperative procedure can be followed to construct doctrines. Besides needing people to be both reasonable and rational, this categorical imperative procedure demonstrates that everyone is both reasonable and rational. We are rational in the beginning when we rationalize the procedure in order to follow it. We are reasonable because we are using the categorical imperative procedure to begin with. Rawls believes that Kant thinks that if we were not reasonable, we would not both to check our maxims against this procedure in order to see if it holds up to the law of universality (3.3). It also shows that we are reasonable when, if our maxim follows this procedure and is rejected by the law of universality, we go back and take an interest in trying to fix it.

I believe that this procedure is not as fixed as Kant would like to think it is. It only works when the person putting it to use is both rational and reasonable. I believe that this is a much harder thing to ask for humanity than Kant does. Kant simply assumes that all of humanity, with a few exceptions of course, are rational and reasonable beings. I do not believe that most of humanity is as reasonable and rational as Kant would like to think. Think about all the times that you have stopped and thought to yourself, “What was he thinking?” or “That really isn’t fair.” It happens quite a lot, does it not? Most of the time, thoughts like these are based on decisions other people made, decision where they were clearly not being reasonable or rational enough to use the procedure that Kant believes everyone naturally can and does use.