Introduction
Taha Abderrahmane begins his ethical work, Su’āl al-Akhlāq (“The Question of Ethics”), with a ḥadīth of the Prophet ﷺ, in which he says:
I have been sent to perfect noble character (makārim al-akhlāq).
This is an important starting point because it implicitly shows us the relationship of the religion of Islām with character, and to a larger extent, with ethics.
However, the natural philosophical question that arises from this is “what exactly is the nature of this relationship between ethics and religion?”. Logically, we can exhaustively consider and list all of the possibilities:
Ethics follow from religion
Religion follows from ethics
Ethics and religion are independent
For Taha, there are several Western philosophers worth looking at as representatives for each option listed above: St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas—two famous Christian theologians—for the first, Immanuel Kant—a highly influential 18-the century German philosopher who inaugurated a new philosophical tradition called ‘German idealism’—for the second, and David Hume—one of the last of the ‘early modern’ philosophers—for the third.
In this post, we will examine option (2): whether religion follows from ethics. Thus, I will first summarise Kant’s ethical system, then I will present Taha Abderrahmane’s critique of it, and then I will offer my thoughts on it. To motivate our analysis, keep this tweet below in mind, it is a profound observation because it is ultimately what Taha’s critique of Kantian ethics boils down to:
A Summary of Kantian (Practical) Ethics
A typical study of Kantian ethics would start with the question of whether synthetic a priori knowledge is possible (at least, that’s how a course I took on Kant did). This is an excellent start to understand Kantian ethics and its relation to Kant’s greater philosophical project, since the question of a priori and a posteriori pervades Kant’s entire philosophy. However, in the case of practical ethics, this really is not necessary, thus we will confine ourselves to mostly his work (one of his most influential works on ethics) called ‘Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals’ (1785) which is his ethical philosophy applied in a practical realm. It would be tempting to reduce Kantian ethics to solely this book, but this would be a mistake, since this book never claims to be a complete guide to ethical theory. Therefore, if this is your first survey of Kant (good luck!), keep in mind that this summary is only a summary of his “practical” ethics, i.e. how would Kant’s ethical theory look like if we put it into practice.
Kant begins with the idea that the only good thing that is good without qualification is the ‘good will’. This is Kant’s bold response to the question most of pre-Kantian ethicists were grappling with, especially ancient ethicists—“what is the highest good?”
Now, what exactly is a ‘good will’? Kant does not think that it is merely isolated good intentions or individual attitudes but rather of good moral volition overall: a morally good character (cf. in the introduction when I translated makārim al-akhlāq as ‘noble character’), which will then express itself in good acts of will, and consequently good actions.1
Fundamental moral value is precisely this special unconditional value we ascribe to a good will. The value of anything else, like knowledge, wealth, friendship, etc., is conditional upon them being used for good ends, i.e., upon them being subject to a good will.
The good will is also the only product for which reason is absolutely necessary. The cultivation of a good will is reason’s “highest practical vocation” even when this aim requires going against one’s inclination and one’s aim of happiness.2 Now that we have established notions about the will, we can turn our attention to actions.
Intuitively, we usually judge the moral worth of an action based on the motivation of the person acting it. We might even feel disgust if, for example, we find out that someone who rescues the life of another does it solely hoping for a reward. Thus, what gives action its special value is the motivation behind it, the principle on the basis of which it is chosen, or in Kantian terms, willed.
In this case, we are interested in studying actions with unconditional value (recall that the good will is good without qualification). Once we understand how actions with unconditional value are willed, we will know what makes them morally good. And when we know what makes actions morally good, we can know which actions are morally good. Then, we can determine what the moral law tells us to do.
To pursue this study, Kant focuses on one particular class of actions: actions done from duty. Kant distinguishes three types of motivations for actions:
An action done from duty. It is an action that you perform because you think it is the right thing to do.
An action done from immediate inclination. It is an action done for its own sake, or because you have a natural tendency to do so.
An action done “impelled to through another inclination”.3 It is an action done as means to some further end.
Korsgaard, a commentator of Kant, illustrates the difference between (1) and (2). The person who has no natural inclination to, for example, help others, but does so anyway because of duty is morally praiseworthy, while the person who is naturally inclined to help others and does so is not morally praiseworthy. This is because only the first manifests good will, even though the end result of both of them are the same. The difference lies in why they adopted this end: the former does so from duty, the latter adopts it only because he happens to want to help others as a matter of contingent fact.
Kant thinks that when you perform an action because you regard that action as an obligation for you, this is the same as being moved to perform an action because you think of the maxim of that action as a kind of law. That is somewhat of a mouthful so let’s break that down: a law has some sort of form4 no matter what the substance or matter of the law is. This form of the law is the requirement, because when we think of a law, we think of it as something that is required from us, no matter what it may be. Thus, when we think that a certain maxim of an action expresses a requirement, this thought is itself an incentive for us to perform this action. Kant calls this incentive "respect for law".
To be clear, we can now conclude that an action done from duty has a special moral worth if the person who does them does so out of respect for law. The principle of a good will is, therefore, to only do actions in which their maxims can be conceived as having the form of a law.
There is, therefore, only a single categorical imperative and it is this: act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.5
Ah, the elusive categorical imperative. Any person who has studied Kant at any level will have come across this phrase at some point, and I will not labor on the difference between a hypothetical and categorical imperative and why the latter is synthetic a priori. Instead, it is sufficient to know that the categorical imperative must give us an unconditional requirement—which means that the maxim themselves must be laws, not because of some further conditions or other laws they must conform to. And since the characteristic of a law is that it is universal, one must conceive of the maxim as some sort of universal law.
This act of conceiving is something like a thought experiment, with several steps you go through, although Kant does not outline this explicitly. First, you formulate the maxim of an action, usually in the form of “I will do action A in order to achieve purpose P”. Then, we consider it as a universal law in a hypothetical world: “anyone who wants to achieve purpose P will do action A”. Would a contradiction arise in us trying to conceive of this hypothetical world? Would that hypothetical world contradict our will?6 If the answer is no to both questions, that it is a morally acceptable action. If it contradicts one of the two criteria, then it is a morally unacceptable action. In this scenario, one can then consider humans as self-legislating beings.
So 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.7
This is considered the ‘second formulation’ of the categorical imperative, i.e., it is merely restating the same categorical imperative we had above, only in a different way. Again, I will not labour over exactly why these two are equivalent, but the short explanation of it is this, (and it is not exactly important, but I will include it anyway for the sake of completeness):
Whenever we formulate the maxim of an action, we always have an end in mind. And thus, whenever we decide to act on it, it is always with some end in view: either we think that the action is good in itself or we are using it as means for a further end. However, since we want to make it incumbent on all rational beings, there must be some objective ends that are necessarily shared by all rational beings. Everything we do in life gets its value relative to how they serve our needs, like science, the arts, technology, etc. Their values do not lie intrinsically in themselves, yet we pursue them, because we consider them to be important to us. In other words, we are taking ourselves to be important, and thus, viewing ourselves as the ends. Therefore, the objective end is, in fact, every human being.
In so far as we are rational beings, then, we must respects ourselves as so and also respect other people as rational beings. This means that one must respect their rights to make their own decisions in life, and we must promote one another’s chosen ends. Thus, Kant’s vision of an ideal human community is one in which people reason together about what to do. Since each member possesses the status of legislator of universal laws, it would be beneficial for everyone to reason together to formulate principles that are accepted by a community of fully rational agents. Everyone is doing this while considering themselves and each other as ends, which is why Kant calls it the kingdom of ends.
Therefore, here, we end our summary of Kant’s practical ethics since we have reached the desired endpoint for society (although there is still more to be said in the Groundwork so please read the entire book!).8 This entire summary suffices to show us that starting with the principle of a good will, Kant was able to build his entire practical ethical system completely devoid of belief in God or God’s unconditional Will. In fact, Kant explicitly states this in his other work:
it has no need for the idea of something above him for him to know what his duty is, or the idea of an incentive other than the law itself for him to do his duty…thus morality itself has no need for religion because its needs are met entirely by pure practical reason.
—Preface to the first edition, Religion Within the Limits of Bare Reason
However, recall that Taha Abderrahmane asserts that Kant represents those who say religion follows from ethics, not that the two are entirely separate. Thus, we now come to the theological aspects of Kant’s philosophy.
Kant thinks that moral philosophy should say something about the relationship between the Highest Good (summum bonum) and moral life. This Highest Good is that in which happiness is in accordance with virtue. The moral law generates the duty for us to do all we can to bring about the Highest Good in the world. However, the Highest Good, as we shall see, is only possible if we postulate two things. Thus, this necessitates us to postulate these two things: the immortality of the soul, and the existence of God. These are known as the postulates of pure practical reason.
The immortality of the soul
We can see that the Highest Good is possible if everyone acted from the moral law, i.e., the will must conform its maxims and dispositions completely to the moral law. However, our experience of human events has given us no evidence that such a state is practically achievable, and indeed, even indicates the contrary. But we cannot rationally adopt something that is we believe is never achievable as our end. Therefore, this seems to create some sort of contradiction within practical reason. Thus, it must be possible for the will to conform with moral law. However, Kant thinks this state of completely conforming with moral law is impossible for any rational being in the sensible world. It can occur only through an endless progress towards complete conformity through the degrees of perfection. Therefore, we are morally obligated to believe that the soul of finite rational beings is immortal.9
The existence of God
Happiness, as defined by Kant, is “the state of a rational being in the world in the whole of whose existence everything goes according to his wish and will”. Thus, in order for a rational being to bring about the Highest Good, his will must be in conformity or harmony with nature, i.e., nature must be set up in a way that is conducive to him being able to attain happiness. However, the rational being himself can never reach this alone by himself. The rational being, by virtue of them being autonomous can will, and by extension, form the moral law independently from nature. Thus, the only other possibility for this conformity to be possible if there is a cause that causes nature to be in harmony with the rational being’s will. This cause is God. Therefore, we are morally obligated to believe in the existence of God.10
Taha Abderrahmane’s Critique
It is worth noting that these two postulates are merely postulates. They are adopted solely for practical purposes, or to put it crudely, these ideas have a reality only from a practical point of view. This becomes clear when we understand that Kant makes a distinction between practical reason and speculative reason. For Kant, speculative reason determines the object and its concept, while practical reason (which we have been engaging with solely so far) is concerned with making its object actual. To think of it in another way, the outcome of speculative reason is always cognition while the outcome of practical reason is always activity.11
However, Taha says that these two theological postulates descends to the rank of axioms for speculative reason, something unprovable that we must necessarily accept as a first principle, which follows from ethics. Furthermore, since they are axioms, other propositions must branch from them. In this case, it is ethical propositions that are built on these two axioms, like what you can find in Spinoza’s Ethics. This is because these two theological truths are not associated with the outer and sensible world which is the domain of speculative reason, since it only has knowledge of phenomena—how things appear to us. Instead, these two theological truths are related to the inner and unseen world, in which practical reason governs. As Kant says:
I must suppose its possibility and so too the conditions for this, namely God, freedom, and immortality, because I cannot prove these by my speculative reason, although I also cannot refute them.12
These must instead be necessarily accepted after establishing the entire ethical theory solely based on pure practical reason.
Taha asserts that there are many forms to the notion that Kant’s supposedly non-religious ethics is actually built on religious grounds. However, Taha only mentions one of the most implicit ways in which this notion comes into fruition is in Kant “using religion as an intermediary to cut [people’s] relation with religion, much like how a secularist build his secular theory with elements that are taken from religion”.13
There are two main ways that this occurs:
Method of substitution (ṭarīq al-mubādalah)
What this means is that the thinker who comes up with an ethical theory substitutes well-known terminology in religious ethics with obscure terminology that he uses in his own theory of ethics. The examples that Taha mentions is that Kant substituted these terms:
“Faith” with “reason”
“Divine Will” with “human will”
“The unconditional goodness of God” with “the unconditional goodness of the will”
“Divine command” with “categorical imperative”
“Transcendence” with “impartiality”
“Love of God” with “respect for law”
“God legislating for others” with “self-legislating humans”
“Divine reward” with “summum bonum”
“Heaven” with “kingdom of ends”
Method of comparison (ṭarīq al-muqāyasah)
What this means is that the thinker who comes up with an ethical theory will evaluate the ethical rules of his system to be similar to the rules that is taken from religious ethics. The examples that Taha mentions are:
In religious ethics, you have ethics established from a revealed Divine source. In Kant, you have ethics established from pure reason alone.
In religious ethics, God legislates laws. In Kant, humans take on the role of legislating these laws.
In religious ethics, God is transcendent from reasons and motives in placing down His Divine laws. In Kant, the human must also be impartial from any inclinations and goals in formulating his human laws.
In religious ethics, God’s laws are placed on all creations without exception. In Kant, the laws that the rational human formulates must apply to all of humanity.
In religious ethics, it is obligatory to be obedient to God’s laws. In Kant, to act by the human laws is obligatory (“from duty”).
In religious ethics, moral worth necessarily comes from obeying God’s laws. In Kant, moral worth necessarily comes from performing human laws.
Therefore, Taha says, the similarity in the meanings/concepts (in the first method) and rules (in the second method) between religious ethics and Kantianism becomes clear. Even if Kant did not deliberately make them similar or did not desire for them to be that way, at the very least you can say that that the goal of symmetry and uniformity was at least in mind.
Taha says that there is no doubt that Kant built his secular ethical theory on religious principles while also inserting his creations into them, resulting in the point that man has replaced the position of God, along with man’s laws being modelled on God’s laws. Thus, this theory is only outwardly secular, there is no difference from religion except that this theory seeks to worship man himself instead on an unseen God.
Finally, Taha says that the notion that religion follows from ethics for Kant is refuted. In fact, what would be correct would be to say that religion is the cradle of non-religious ethics, because the reality of the non-religious ethics is that it is merely religious ethics in disguise.
My Thoughts
Taha Abderrahmane’s observation of how secular moralities still end up being inseparable from religion has parallels with Nietzsche, in his most oft-misunderstood passage:
God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?
—Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science: 125
Nietzsche was not making a dramatic statement on the non-existence of God. Indeed, he was keenly aware that the 19th-century Europe he was living in was entering an age of post-religion and that the intellectuals of his time sought to rationalise moral values as independent from religion. However, these secular moralities ultimately for Nietzsche have underpinnings that are fundamentally Christian in origin, and thus, these Christian values continue to shape the moral life of Europeans. A true rejection of religion, according to Nietzsche, needs to do away with these hidden underpinnings, although Nietzsche rightly predicted that this would result in nihilism.
There is much more to be said on Nietzsche’s analysis on this subject, which really proves this point in a deeper way, but I do not want to derail this post in as profane a direction as Nietzsche.
An important thing to keep in mind when reading Taha Abderrahmane’s critique is that he is not saying Kant’s ethical theory is entirely demolished. In fact, one could still very well be a committed Kantian. The only refutation that Taha sought from Kant’s practical ethics is the notion that it can be built completely independent from any notion of the religious, and that what is religious becomes a necessary consequence of it, instead of preceding it.
Whether this critique stands is left as an exercise to the reader. If we return to the summary of Kant’s practical ethics and try to replace his secular concepts which Taha says is taken from religion, would it still make sense? I would argue that the critique stands, although I have to say, the critique itself is quite simple (and some would argue to the point of being simplistic). However, the critique only seems simple once one untangles the notoriously complicated system of Kant, so perhaps the complexity of the critique lies in having to first summarise and explain Kant’s practical ethics before being able to actually do the critique itself.
In the next part of this series, we will look at a more sophisticated critique where Taha Abderrahmane tackles the third possibility: the independence of ethics from religion. In particular, Taha will be critiquing Hume’s is-ought principle, and this is, in my opinion, where one can start to get a glimpse of Taha’s genius.
Wallāhu a’lam. And God knows best.
Timmermann, Jens. Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: A Commentary. pp. 17.
Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. 4:396.
Ibid. 4:397.
The distinction between matter and form is inherited from Aristotelian metaphysics.
Ibid. 4:421.
Kant is ambiguous about this second criterion, and Kantian scholars disagree as to what exactly it means or even if it is a separate criterion from the first. To put it roughly, it is seeing whether the hypothetical world is one in which duties are violated—such as helping others in need or putting your talents to use.
Ibid. 4:429.
Much of the summary was aided by Christine M. Korsgaard’s introduction to the Groundwork in Cambridge University Press’ edition of the book. While other interpretations of Kant are available, I have chosen to use her work since she teaches at the institution I am studying at, with many other faculty members in the philosophy department recommending her works on Kant to me.
Kant, Immanuel. Critique of Practical Reason. 5:122-124.
Ibid. 5:125.
Wells, Richard B. Chapter 9: The Ontology of Speculative Reason.
Kant. CPr. 5:142.
Abderrahmane, Taha. Su’āl al-Akhlāq. pg. 39.