Question

The Questin is : In our opinion, why can the moral law not be to maximize happiness? (Based on the reading down below)

Kant- Pgs. 417-418

According to Kant the imperatives of prudence would totally and entirely coincide with those of skill, and be equally analytic, if only it were so easy to provide a determinate concept of happiness. For here as well as there it would be said: whoever wills the end also wills (in conformity with reason necessarily) the only to it that are in (418) his control. But, unfortunately, the concept of happiness is so indeterminate a concept that, even though every human being wishes to achieve it, yet he can never say determinately and in agreement with himself what he actually wishes and wants. The cause of this is: that the elements that belong to the concept of happiness are one and all empirical, i.e. must be borrowed from experience and that, even so, for the idea of happiness an absolute whole is required, a maximum of well-being, in my present and every future condition. Kant goes on to say, now, it is impossible that the most insightful and at the same time singularly able, but still finite being should make for himself a determinate concept of what he actually wants here.

To be happy, one cannot therefore act on determinate principles, but only according to empirical counsels, e.g. of diet, of thrift, of politeness, of restraint, and so on, which experiences teaches on average well-being most. From this it follows that the imperatives of prudence cannot, to be precise, command at all, i.e. present actions objectively as practically necessary; that they are to be taken rather as counsels (consilia) than as commands (praecepta) of reason; that the problem of determining reliably and universally which action would advance the happiness of a rational being is completely insoluble, and hence that there can be no imperative with regard to it that would in the strict sense command to do what makes us happy because happiness is not an ideal reason, but of the imagination, which rests merely on empirical grounds, of which it is (419) futile to expect that they should determine an action by which the totality of an in fact infinite series of consequences would be attained. This imperative of prudence would, however, be an analytic practical proposition if one assumes that the means to happiness could be reliably stated; for it differs from the imperative of skill only in this, that in the case of the latter the end is merely possible, whereas in the former it is given: but since both merely command the means to that which one presupposes one wills as an end, the imperative that commands willing the means for someone who wills the end is in both cases analytic.

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Answer 1

Immanuel Kant the founder of deontological or duty ethics clearly outlines the unstable human mind and its inability to determine the means to happiness thus being in a perpetual dilemma. He says that happiness itself is not a state which could be achieved because one could achieve happiness through many means and if one is not clear about the means to achieve the end which is happiness or if one doesn’t believe in the means to reach the end or if one doesn’t believe that one can achieve happiness at all, one won’t be able to achieve happiness. One should be prudent enough to believe, plan and execute the means in order to achieve the end product which is happiness, besides happiness is a state of mind, thus one should be able to be happy even when working with the means to achieve a goal which would make one more happy. So, living in the present, enjoying what one does thus contributing more to life would keep one happy in the present.

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