Kant what makes us human

To use stem cells obtained by killing living human beings in their embryonic stage is still using them as a means. It is not enough to say that the wicked deed has been done — that the embryos have already been killed. The purpose of that killing was to obtain the stem cells. One ought not to implicate oneself in that process, not even for the noblest and most beautiful ends [ 2 ].

Of course, Novak cannot literally mean what he says: that we must never use human beings as means to even noble ends. To follow Novak's suggestion would be utterly impossible, given that human beings use each other as means to several ends all the time. Kant does not proscribe treating persons as a means to an end, rather he argues against persons treating each other solely as a means to an end; in a manner that completely dehumanizes them.

It is certainly permissible for persons to treat each other as means so long as they are, simultaneously, treating each other as ends in themselves. In his August 9, speech to the nation regarding the federal funding or lack thereof of human embryonic stem cell research, George W.

Bush alluded to the formula of humanity as well when he stated that " [e]ven the most noble ends do not justify any means Similar arguments abound elsewhere in the stem cell literature.

Physician, philosopher, and theologian Fuat S. Oduncu argues that:. The human embryo is looked upon as a human being from the moment of its conception and thus attributed the fundamental principle of human dignity that guarantees the right to life of the embryo.

According to Kant, human dignity forbids and even condemns instrumentalization and reduction of a human being to a mere means and object. Human beings are persons and as such they are ends in themselves Jens G. Reich writes that the formula of humanity "excludes categorically any instrumentalization of a human being for means other than its own existence, thus prohibiting procreation of a human embryo solely for scientific or medical purposes" [ 5 ].

Paul R. Boehlke invokes Kant's imperative as well in order to also argue that each human embryo should be treated as an end in itself and never as a means only [ 6 ]. Each of the abovementioned authors assume a very crucial, yet highly contentious, premise: that when Kant argues that humanity must be treated as an end in itself, that he means to denote a biological category, i.

Moreover, the arguments above, most explicitly Oduncu's argument, assume that it is at conception the time when a sperm fully combines with the ovum to form a new and distinct genetic code that a new Kantian person comes into existence; that the newly conceived human zygote particularly, at the blastocyst stage of development, about five days after fertilization qualifies as the type of being to whom the second categorical imperative applies.

The purpose of this paper is three-fold. First, I will illustrate how, in the second categorical imperative, Kant does not use the term "humanity" to denote a certain biological category, but rather a certain human capacity, i. Therefore, what must be treated as an end in itself is not necessarily a human being simplicter , but rather the capacity for reason within a human being. Second, I will expand on an argument briefly mentioned by Mark Sagoff in his article "Extracorporeal Embryos and Three Conceptions of the Human": that it would be difficult to regard conception, indeed any biological event, as the exact time when a Kantian person comes into existence.

My purpose in the first two sections of the paper is largely to illustrate that the ascription of Kantian personhood to human embryos from the time of their conception is more problematic than is assumed by the abovementioned authors, and thus that they, or anyone that happens to agree with their contention, need to provide a better argument to establish this crucial premise.

It is important to note that I am not arguing that human embryos are definitely not Kantian persons. Rather my goal is much more modest; my main concern is to illustrate the difficulties that come with making the claim that the act of conception realizes a Kantian person in the world.

By doing so, I will, in effect, be throwing the ball back into the court of philosophers like Oduncu and Novak; they would need to at least address the difficulties I pose in this paper before contending that Kantian personhood applies to embryos from the time of their conception. Lastly, I will appeal largely to Allen Wood's work on Kantian philosophy in order to sketch a Kantian argument in favor of embryonic stem cell research.

Let us look closer at the exact wording of the formula of humanity: "act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. Kant defines a "person" in the Groundwork not as a member of the species Homo sapiens, but rather as a rational being whose "nature already marks [him] as an end in itself, that is, as something that may not be used merely as a means and hence so far limits all choice and is an object of respect " [ 7 ].

In the Metaphysics of Morals Metaphysics , from hereonin , Kant describes a person as "a subject whose actions can be imputed to him. Moral personality is therefore nothing other than the freedom of a rational being under moral laws" [ 8 ].

From these lines alone, it seems that Kant considered the term "person" to be applicable to beings with certain capacities, rather than to beings who are members of a certain species. Indeed, it is notable that, despite his attitude toward nonhuman animals which will be explored below , Kant was not opposed to the idea that there could be nonhuman persons, i. A closer inspection of Kant's use of the term "humanity" also reveals that he did not use the term in a descriptive sense to pick out all and only Homo sapiens.

Rather, the term "humanity" denotes a certain capacity or predisposition in persons. Kant refers to personality as "the susceptibility to respect for the moral law as in itself a sufficient incentive of the power of choice " [ 12 ].

As Allen Wood notes: "Kant identifies personality with autonomy, in the sense of the ability to give oneself the moral law through reason, which is the ground of dignity" [ 13 ]. According to Kant, "humanity" is also a predisposition or a capacity, rather than a species denotation, and it refers to the rational faculties of persons, the ability that persons possess to follow self-imposed ends.

Unlike the capacity for personality, which contains as part of its definition respect for the moral law, the capacity for humanity is the capacity for reason proper , without any explicit reference to morality. In the Metaphysics , Kant writes:. The capacity to set oneself an end — any end whatsoever — is what characterizes humanity as distinguished from animality.

Hence, there is also bound up with the end of humanity in our own person the rational will, and so the duty, to make ourselves worthy of humanity by culture in general, by procuring or promoting the capacity to realize all sorts of possible ends, so far as this is to be found in a human being himself [ 14 ]. That is, " [p]reserving and respecting rational nature means preserving and respecting it in all its functions, not merely in its moral function of giving and obeying moral laws.

Furthering rational nature requires furthering all the morally permissible ends it sets, not merely in its moral function of giving and obeying rational laws" [ 15 ]. For example, in the Metaphysics Kant argues that all persons have an imperfect duty to cultivate one's talents. Kant writes:. A human being has a duty to himself to cultivate cultura his natural powers powers of spirit, mind, and body , as means to all sorts of possible ends. Notice that the duty to the self is to cultivate one's rational faculties simplicter ; Kant makes no mention of cultivating only one's moral prowess.

When it comes to our duties toward others, Kant also maintains that each rational being must make the rational morally permissible ends of other persons " [their] own end as well" [ 17 ]; the promotion of the ends of other rational creatures is also my duty. No mention is made that I must respect or promote other people's ends only when they are related to following the moral law; I must respect the rational or autonomous decision that another person makes because in doing so, he is exercising his humanity.

Once it is understood what Kant means by the terms "person" and "humanity," the formula of humanity can be re-phrased as follows: "act that you use the capacity or predisposition for reason , whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means.

Kant reiterates this imperative several times throughout his writings. In the Metaphysics , for example, Kant argues that all human beings are required to "acknowledge, in a practical way, the dignity of humanity in every other human being. Hence, there rests on him a duty regarding the respect that must be shown to every other human being" [ 18 ].

Notice what Kant does not say. He does not just say that we are to respect the dignity of every other human being. Rather, he says that we are to respect the dignity of humanity the capacity for reason in every human being and that therefore we must respect a human being in virtue of the fact that he possesses this capacity. If Kant wanted to argue that we must respect every single member of the species Homo sapiens as an end in himself, surely the former method of wording the imperative would have sufficed.

Yet Kant takes pains to always remind us that it is the humanity within human beings or within persons that must be respected. That is, what must be respected is the capacity for reason; the capacity to set ends, follow those ends, and be an autonomous individual. Therefore, from the wording of the imperative alone, it is not true, contra Oduncu, that Kant "condemns the instrumentalization and reduction of a human being [ qua Homo sapiens ] to a mere means and object" and it is also not true, from the wording of this imperative alone, that " [t]he mere membership of humanity creates and preserves the fundamental value of human dignity until death.

One need not be human, in the biological sense, to be a person, according to Kant. Thus, the term "person" or "humanity" is not necessarily tied into the concept of Homo sapiens in Kantian moral philosophy. From the second principle formulation of the categorical imperative alone, it cannot be concluded that mere species membership is sufficient grounds for Kantian personhood, and thus sufficient grounds for dignity or respect in the sense of not being treated as a mere means.

Therefore, from this alone, we cannot conclude that human blastocysts are included in Kant's sense of the term "person" and thus that they must be treated as ends in themselves. Nevertheless, the question of whether an embryo or a fetus may still be counted as a person who possesses the predisposition or capacity for reason is worth pursuing in light of other aspects of Kant's writing.

Kant did consider children persons, even if their humanity, their capacity for reason, and their personality, their capacity to follow the moral law, are not quite developed. Indeed, Kant refers to small children as persons who have an innate right to their parent's care [ 19 ] even though small children are not the type of beings "whose actions can be imputed to [them].

Individuals who argue that blastocyst-stage embryos possess value akin to any other human person usually argue that this value is acquired at conception. Given that we are approaching this from a Kantian standpoint, what seems to be assumed by these individuals is that the moment of conception although this is a misnomer, since conception does not take place in a single moment realizes a new being in the world that possesses the capacity for reason as part of its nature and is, therefore, a proper subject of Kantian moral concern.

Since the concept of the "human being" is more fundamental, and even precedes the concept of "the person," the bioethical debate should be conducted on the grounds of a biological and anthropological concept of the human being. The concept of the human being and the inherent value of human dignity related to it may find a wider acceptance, as it refers to the biological species of the Homo sapiens sapiens [ 20 ]. Here are the following claims that, it seems to me, can be derived from the above passage.

First, Oduncu argues that the event of conception is responsible for generating a human being in the world with inherent human dignity. Given that Oduncu is appealing to Kantian philosophy, I will assume that his concept of human dignity is akin to Kant's. Therefore, it seems that what Oduncu means to say is that the event of conception is causally responsible for generating a human being in the world that possesses the capacity for reason; conception is causally responsible for the genesis of the Kantian person.

Indeed, if he does not think this, he does not give an alternative viewpoint concerning the genesis of the Kantian person. Since he does not mention any other biological event other than conception, it seems safe to assume that he means to say that conception is responsible for generating a Kantian person. Second, it seems clear that Oduncu wishes to equate the concept of a Kantian person with the species Homo sapiens. Indeed, he argues that the ethical debate concerning the moral status of the human embryo "should be conducted on the grounds of a biological and anthropological concept of a human being.

Oduncu wishes to understand the origins of a Kantian person via a biological event. The problem, as I will illustrate below, is that the capacity for reason, according to Kant, is a supersensible capacity, given that the possession of transcendental freedom is a necessary precondition for possessing this capacity.

Therefore, the argument that must be made by philosophers like Oduncu, in order to stay true to the Kantian conception of personhood, is that conception is the moment that realizes, or brings into existence, a being who possesses the supersensible capacity for reason albeit, perhaps, in a latent form.

Is there any textual evidence in Kant's philosophy that lends credence to such a view? Some philosophers have certainly argued as much, and those arguments are rather impressive and formidable ones. He writes:. It is impossible to attribute moral status to an [extracorporeal human embryo] on grounds of its physical characteristics alone — even when its potential is considered — because there is no point in the process of ontogeny at which a scientific finding can be made, as it were, that a glob of protoplasm is now sufficiently endowed with moral freedom that it has become a responsible agent or sufficiently endowed with cultural, aesthetic, and ethical capacities that it has become a human being [ 21 ].

Given that a human embryo is obviously a human being in the biological sense, I assume that what Sagoff means here is that mere biological humanity cannot tell us anything about moral humanity; about what it means to be a person, or when a human being becomes a person. In other words, although biological humanity is an observable, physical, trait, Kantian personhood a being endowed with "moral freedom that In order to support this claim, Sagoff appeals to Kant's metaphysics of human freedom as discussed in the Third Antinomy in his Critique of Pure Reason first Critique , from hereonin :.

Kant, of course, struggled in the Third Antinomy and elsewhere with the disconnection between the empirical self the subject of scientific or biological research and the intelligible self the subject of agency, freedom, judgment, and thus moral status.

Kant understood that from a biological or scientific perspective, all natural activities whether of humans or non-humans, adults, or embryos have to be explained in terms of the deterministic freedom-excluding framework of the physical and chemical causality.

Kant believed that to show we can act as moral and cultural beings — to show that we are not all bound by natural law as are stones — is already to accomplish a lot and much more than can be inferred from any biological or physiological inquiry [ 22 ].

Here, Sagoff argues that the aspect of a human being that possesses moral worth in the Kantian framework, the rational agent or the "intelligible self," is not reducible to the natural or "empirical" aspect of the human being. In what follows, I will offer support of Sagoff's claim by engaging in an exegesis of Kant's first Critique , along with other supporting literature. As discussed in the previous section, although Kant argues that it is the predisposition for personality that is the source of human dignity, it is the predisposition for humanity, the ability to make rational decisions, that must be treated with respect and as an end in itself.

According to Kant, with the ability to make rational choices comes another very important feature: freedom. As Wood notes, the possession of the predisposition for humanity "presupposes a kind of freedom, namely the ability to resist the immediate coercion of desires and impulses" [ 23 ]. Therefore, the capacity for humanity entails the possession of freedom, and, as Sagoff argues, there is much reason to believe that Kant would have resisted identifying conception, indeed any biological milestone, as the precise time when a being endowed with freedom is realized in the world.

In the first Critique , Kant discusses the problem of free will versus physical determinism as the Third Antinomy of Pure Reason. Kant acknowledges that there is a tension between humans possessing freedom and the fact that humans are subject to physical causal laws; if all human action is determined by the latter, then the former does indeed appear to be impossible. Kant expresses the problem in the following way:.

Suppose there were a freedom in the transcendental sense, as a special kind of causality in accordance with which the occurrences of the world could follow, namely a faculty of absolutely beginning a state, and hence also a series of consequences; then not only will a series begin absolutely through this spontaneity, but the determination of this spontaneity itself to produce the series, i.

Every beginning action, however, presupposes a state of the not yet acting cause, and a dynamically first beginning of action presupposes a state that has no causal connections at all with the cause of the previous one, i. Thus transcendental freedom is contrary to the causal law Freedom, Kant maintains, cannot be tied with any empirical, natural, phenomenon, for the latter necessarily entails a determinate chain of causality, while freedom presupposes no causal determinism.

Kant is, in essence, characterizing freedom in a rather libertarian sense, and he calls it "transcendental freedom. According to Kant, even though all empirical evidence establishes otherwise, transcendental freedom must exist, for the fact that persons acknowledge the moral law provides indirect evidence that this is the case.

Our empirical exposure to the world cannot justify assuming the faculty of freedom because the exercise of the Kantian notion of transcendental freedom must be liberated from causal laws, and all experience tells us that nothing in the empirical world is liberated from causal laws. Therefore, insofar as human beings are subject to the empirical world, and insofar as we are natural creatures, the possession of freedom is impossible.

Nevertheless, freedom must be assumed to exist if human beings recognize the moral law as binding upon them, since the moral law requires that we follow it independently of what our desires and inclinations demand. Allison affirms this Kantian connection between freedom and morality in what he calls the "Reciprocity Thesis The part of the human being that is a member of the empirical world, the phenomenal self, is subject to the causal laws of nature. However, the intelligible self, the part of a human being that exercises freedom, cannot be found in the empirical self, but rather in the noumenal self, the part of the human being that is independent from the empirical world and therefore the laws of causality.

It is because humans possess a noumenal side, according to Kant, that we are able to follow the moral law despite our inclinations and desires. Human beings are not completely ruled by those inclinations and desires because our reason allows us to be free of them if we so choose, and we can follow the moral law simply because we recognize it as binding on all rational persons.

Kant further supports this dualistic view of human agency in the Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View , where he writes that human beings have two types of character: " [t]he first is the distinguishing mark of the human being as a sensible or natural being; the second is the distinguishing mark of the human being as a rational being endowed with freedom" [ 28 ].

Recalling that a person, according to Kant, is a being whose actions can be imputed onto him, a person is a being who possesses this noumenal, intelligible, aspect to his agency, a person is a "rational being endowed with freedom.

From this perspective we can impute the actions to an agent and claim that they ought or ought not to have been performed. This, Kant suggests, is because in viewing actions in this manner we are considering them in relation to "something intelligible," which stands outside of the temporal order of the phenomenal world.

This is, of course, the agent's practical spontaneity, his capacity to act on the basis of reason, which is assigned to his intelligible character [ 29 ]. In making this claim, Kant has effectively argued that a being's personhood is not reducible to any of his physical aspects, but, rather, that personhood belongs to the transcendental, intelligible, aspect of a human being. Hence, Kant has effectively severed the attainment of personhood from any physical process or occurrence.

A being's possession of personhood, rather, can only be understood by appealing to his transcendental, noumenal, self. According to Kant, therefore, freedom and autonomy, and with it the capacity and predisposition for humanity and personality given that the latter two contain the former two as necessary components , are not part of our physical, empirical, phenomenal, self; rather they are part of our transcendental, intelligible, noumenal, self.

As Allison puts it, it is only in the idea of the transcendental aspects of humanity, rather than the empirical aspects of humanity, that Kant "provides a model for conceiving of human choice or agency Kant's point is that the conceivability of practical freedom necessarily involves a reference to the transcendental Idea" [ 30 ]. Within Kant's corpus, there is a distinction between transcendental and practical freedom; many Kantian scholars contend that Kant's ethical writings are more concerned with the latter rather than the former, and thus that it is the possession of the latter that is necessary in order for an individual to be a moral subject from a Kantian perspective.

Kant defines practical freedom in the Groundwork as the "property of such causality that it can be efficient independently of alien causes determining it, just as natural necessity is the property of the causality of all nonrational beings to be determined to activity by the influences of alien causes Even in his practical philosophy, Kant considers human freedom and human reason as immune from the influence of inclinations or empirical laws of causation.

Indeed, in the Groundwork Kant maintains that humans possess dignity in virtue of their ability to be "free with respect to all laws of nature, obeying only those which he himself gives and in accordance with which his maxims can belong to a giving of universal law to which at the same time he subjects himself " [ 32 ].

Although practical freedom seems to be the main concern in Kant's moral philosophy, the aforementioned discussion concerning transcendental freedom is far from moot.

As Allison's quote above illustrates, it is not possible to understand the nature of practical freedom, according to Kant, without a reference to transcendental freedom. Indeed, in the first Critique , Kant explicitly maintains that "it is this transcendental idea of freedom on which the practical concept of freedom is grounded Therefore, the existence of practical freedom is at least conceptually dependent on transcendental freedom, and, like transcendental freedom, practical freedom involves independence from empirical or natural causality: "freedom in the practical sense is the independence of the power of choice from necessitation by impulses of sensibility" [ 34 ] All beings who possess freedom in the practical sense also possess an intelligible aspect of the self, the part of the self that is not reducible to the empirical world.

It is the a priori theory of the universal and essential features of the human mind and human agent as Kant laid it out in the three " Critiques " and in other important works from the s. Chapter 1 summarizes Kant's transcendental anthropology, and it is an impressively clear and concise overview of the important elements of the critical philosophy.

This chapter could easily serve as a standalone introduction to the most influential components of Kant's philosophy. Chapters address various aspects of Kant's less familiar empirical anthropology. These chapters will probably be the book's most interesting parts for Kant scholars because Frierson appeals to a wide range of texts not found on the average Kant scholar's reading list. Like transcendental anthropology, empirical anthropology attempts to explain the human being as knower and doer, but the latter does so through inquiry into the contingencies of human psychology, moral character, and cultural and historical location.

For instance, Chapter 2 contains a lengthy discussion of Kant's empirical theory of action and motivation, explaining the contributions of instinct and character in determining the predispositions at the basis of human action. In his purely philosophical writings, Kant tells us that humans, as a part of nature, are subject to deterministic natural laws, so it is interesting to see that Kant also has an empirical theory of these laws worked out in some detail.

Other highlights from these chapters are the discussions of radical evil and human history Chapter 3 , Kant's theories of gender and race Chapter 4 , and the "pragmatic" uses of anthropological knowledge Chapter 5.

The most interesting parts of these chapters have to do with the relation -- sometimes consonant, sometimes dissonant -- between Kant's transcendental anthropology and his empirical anthropology.

Some examples: 1 Kant's empirical psychological theory of instinct and character presents human choice as at the mercy of deterministic causal forces, but, as is well-known, such determinism is a necessary part of nature and is consistent with the possibility of transcendental freedom lying outside the natural realm. Although culture, education, our parents, etc. Perhaps the most interesting conflict between transcendental and empirical anthropology appears in Chapter 4's discussion of Kant's theories of gender and race.

For those of us who choose to devote significant parts of our careers to studying Kant's philosophy, there is a strong temptation simply to ignore the sexist and racist elements in Kant's writings we know they're out there but we don't go out of our way to read them very often. Kant says that women are not capable of true virtue because they cannot act from principles.

And he says that black skin is sufficient proof of stupidity. Frierson bravely addresses these embarrassing aspects of Kant's writings head-on. The problem isn't simply that Kant is empirically wrong on these matters although he is surely that. It's that he fails to recognize that his transcendental claims about the universality of human capacities for cognition and moral freedom are straightforwardly inconsistent with his empirical claims about the cognitive and moral capacities of women and non-white races.

This is a vivid example of something commonly criticized about the Enlightenment, viz. That being said, Frierson also avoids the temptation to apologize for Kant by appeal to his time and place. Kant cannot be excused by the prejudices of his day because he had access to discussions of gender and race that were much less sexist and racist than his own including one by his own student, Herder.

If I have one criticism of Part 1, it is the lack of discussion of Kant's own sources in the development of his empirical anthropology the influences on his transcendental theory are already thoroughly documented in the literature.

Aside from a few references to well-known influences such as Rousseau and Kant's access to travelogues, we don't hear much about what Kant appealed to as he complied his empirical anthropology over the course of his career. Along similar lines, it would have been good to hear more about the relation between Kant's theory and other anthropologies from the ongoing Enlightenment, of which Kant was self-consciously a contributor.

Part 2 is a single-chapter interlude about several theories of human nature from the 19 th century. Frierson focuses on the dialectical idealism and materialism of Hegel and Marx respectively , Darwin's naturalism, Nietzsche's anti-universalist moral theory, and Freud's account of motivation based in his theory of the unconscious. Although these discussions are interesting and make for good reading, they are each too brief to count as more than quick overviews, and the brief contrasts with Kant usually only a paragraph or two at time only skim the surface.

What should we say about Carla? Surely, children and the mentally disabled are morally important, and, you might think, they matter in just the same way as everyone else. You could argue that we accord children moral importance based on their potential for rationality, but this argument does not hold water when it comes to permanent mental disability. Another way to go is to say simply that children and the mentally disabled are not persons, or not full persons.

But then how do we explain the strong sense we have that they are still important? Do we, as full persons, somehow make them important? No, they are important in their own right, as individuals.

So another approach is needed to explain this independent importance. And I think one can be found if we distinguish the individual ism from individual ity. In the United States, individualism is a pervasive way of thinking about individuality and hence personhood. From thinkers like Kant and others in the Enlightenment, we got the idea that persons are little atoms, autonomous and independent, interacting with one another largely on the basis of self-interest.

But in recent decades, some philosophers have pointed out that this vision of individuality is limited to a segment of the population in the prime of life. For significant periods of our lives, we are utterly dependent on others; and even when we are not so dependent, we often have others depending on us. The fully autonomous adult unencumbered by demands from others is much rarer than our intellectual inheritance has led us to believe. We owe a great deal to the Enlightenment and individualism.