sk, "Why?". For instance, if a rabbi tells me "You should refrain from eating pork", then that appears to me to be an incomplete statement. I immediately want to hear the missing half of the statement, which would answer the question "Why should I refrain from eating pork?". Or better, "What will happen to me if I do eat pork?". The Kantians do not try to answer the question why. Instead, they "tell" people that they shouldn't worry about why because the question "Why?" is meaningless when interrogating a categorical imperative. Since most people do not have a background of analytical philosophy, they feel obliged to accept this imperative. In Kant's view, only if a person is acting solely on the categorical imperative such as doing something out of duty, can the act be morally good. This is because if somebody is acting out of the hypothetical imperative, he/she has an ulterior motive in acting in that way and are therefore not acting out of duty but are pursuing a certain end. They need not be acting in self-interest, but if they act because of a desire to act in that way, this is not morally worthy. You can still act morally if it gives you pleasure, as long as the reason for your action is solely out of duty.Kant gives the example of someone who without any motive of self-interest finds joy in helping others. They act out of the pleasure that it gives them to do so. In this case the person's action (though we may applaud them for it) has no true moral worth. It is only if his mind "be clouded over with his own sorrow so that all sympathy with the lot of others is extinguished," and that " though no motivation moves him any longer, he never the less tears himself from his deadly insensibility and performs the (moral) action without any inclination at all, but solely from duty, that for the first time his action has genuine moral worth" (Immanuel Kant, 'Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals').The final important argum...
