Kant, Universality Test, and a Criterion of Morality

Abstract

The universality test is a significant reflective procedure, owing to which Kant’s categorical imperative is brought into proximity with moral practice and with an agent’s decisions made in particular circumstances and at the face of value collisions. The test is to be done in every single case by a moral agent her/himself and it aims to examine a selected maxim for its universality, that is to its congruity to universal and necessary moral law and hence to its moral dignity. This issue has been broadly developed during the last century either within Kant studies, or in positive philosophical discussions, often sharply polemical. The paper represents some positions in those discussions (O. O’Neill, D. Parfit, H.J. Paton, J. Rawls, A.P. Skripnik, E.Y. Soloviev, A.K. Sudakov, A. Wood). No matter how important the universality test in an agent’s moral decisions, so far universality signifies one of three embodiments of the categorical imperative, it would be wrong to consider the test the only criterion of moral dignity. This is true both within the Kantian conception of morality and more so beyond it. The paper proposes the Golden Rule as a critical correlation to the categorical imperative with its universality test. The rule also presupposes a kind of universalizability procedure. However, if the universality test set up by the categorical imperative is based on congruence of a maxim with the universal law, universalizability grounded on the Golden Rule consists in delocalization of intentions by taking into consideration the Other in her/his general and particular dispositions.