Categorical Imperative and Utilitarianism

¶ … human life be more valuable than another? William Godwin's thought experiment concerning Fenelon and his valet is intended to argue precisely this point. Godwin proposed a burning building with two people in it, Fenelon and his servant. Godwin argues "that life ought to be preferred which will be most conducive to the general good" and concludes that the moralist who would write the "immortal Telemachus" is therefore more valuable than the domestic servant. Even though students today are unlikely to have heard of Fenelon or share Godwin's high estimation of him, the thought experiment still stands. I propose, however, that applying the moral philosophy of Kant to Godwin's problem will demonstrate that Godwin's ethical sense here is no more infallible than his sense of Fenelon's literary immortality.

Kant's ethical theory is primarily concerned with the motivations for performing a moral action, not with the effects or consequences that the action has in the world or on other people. As a result Kantian moral principles are intended to rest on a kind of unimpeachable universalizing basis that Kant refers to as the "categorical imperative." The simplest way of summarizing the categorical imperative is to suggest that, when a person performs a moral or ethical act, this act is only truly moral or ethical if the person would wish it to be performed universally. Kant's deontological ethics are intended to replace or oppose a notion of consequentialist ethics, which sees the moral behavior not in the motivation and in the act itself, but in the results of the action. Godwin's thought experiment is basically a textbook definition of consequentialist ethics. He even frames the experiment so that Fenelon is on the brink of writing his supposedly immortal book, and so the consequence of saving Fenelon is therefore better than saving the servant -- even if the servant is my father or brother. This last element highlights one particularly shoddy aspect of Godwin's reasoning. If we judge moral actions solely by their consequences, this gives us no criterion to judge between different types of actions. Godwin has laid down a supposedly logical basis for moral behavior, but then expects us to consider it self-evident that the life of Fenelon is more valuable than the life of the valet, although in the twenty-first century, the ethical valences of the consequences are by no means obvious. As an archbishop Fenelon will have no children -- but what if the valet is to be the great-great-great-grandfather of Louis Pasteur? In the twenty-first century where nobody reads Fenelon's Telemachus but everyone drinks pasteurized milk, we can hardly claim that even the consequences Godwin sees as self-evident retain any inherent ethical value -- or that there is any end to consequentialism when we are considering matters of life and death. Likewise, would the ethical obligation be reversed if Fenelon was a person about to write a particularly bad and immoral book? If we replaced Telemachus with a book of dubious moral influence (Mein Kampf, Atlas Shrugged, 120 Days of Sodom) would it be our duty to prevent the man about to write such a wicked book by saving the valet instead of the author-to-be?