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According to Kant, no. You might not want to help anybody else, but (the argument goes), you wouldn’t want nobody to help anybody else, because then nobody would help you, which would be to your detriment. So, a rational being could not will this maxim to be a universal law.
- As Darwall outlines, one way of thinking about this is that perhaps there are some goods that any rational human would need (e.g. social insurance/support), and nobody providing mutual aid would undermine these goods, so a rational being could not will that.
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But it is not so clear-cut as that.
- I may expect that I do better overall in the world where nobody helps anyone else than the world where mutual aid is provided, because I’m an unusually well-off individual and so the net benefits to me of mutual aid are negative. There doesn’t seem to be anything irrational about this behaviour.
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Also, it is possible that I am an individual with certain values (rather than material conditions) which mean that I do in fact endorse/“will” a complete lack of mutual aid.
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Maybe I am a rugged individualist who abhors the idea of anybody assisting me with my projects. Taking a broad view of “help” meaning “further the interests of” rather than “provide assistance to” might partially get around this issue (other people could leave me to my own devices, thereby furthering my interests), but maybe I actively want others to obstruct me.
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You could argue that this is irrational, but that is now smuggling in some claims about what the content of rational preferences must be, in a not-very-principled way.
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Alternatively, you could say that “help” includes hindering where I want to be hindered, but this is now a rather stretched interpretation and not all that useful for moral decision-making (how would I know whether I should “help” someone by assisting or by hindering them?)
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If I can’t rationally will M to be a universal law, what are the implications within Kant’s theory?
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To determine if a course of action is permissible, you first turn it into a maxim. Then you ask whether it is it self-contradicting if universalised (like, e.g., breaking promises is). On the self-contradicting test, this proposed law does fine: it’s entirely possible to conceive of a world where nobody helps anybody else. So, according to Kant, you have at most an imperfect duty to help others.
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If it is right that I couldn’t will M to be a universal law, then I do have an imperfect duty to provide mutual aid. So, at least some of the time and in certain circumstances, I need to help others. (Beyond this, the implications seem limited: Kant doesn’t say how often one must perform the imperfect duty, or what the consequences are of failing to do so.)
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One further thing we can conclude from the above discussion is that the answer to the titular question isn’t immediately self-evident, and depends on e.g. what you take rationality to require. That counts against Kant’s claim that anybody can do morality, using pure reason alone.
Bibliography
Kant, Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Preface and Section I.
Stephen Darwall, Philosophical Ethics (Westview, 1998), pp. 144–154.
Chapter 1, “An introduction to the ethical, political, and religious thought of Kant”, in Korsgaard, C.M., 1996. Creating the Kingdom of Ends. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.