Since Hegel, Kant’s ethical theory is characterized as the paradigm for formalism in ethics. It contends that Kant’s supreme principle of morality is too abstract and general to tell us what we ought to actually do in the concrete particular.
To Mill, CI cannot do the work it is meant to do – show us which specific rules of conduct are impermissible and which ones permissible. ‘All Kant shows is that the consequences of their universal adoption would be such as no one would choose to incur.’
Dissatisfied with characterization and criticisms, formalists try to defend Kant by treating C1 as a formal accomplishment, it has been the tradition that C1 in formalist expression, is a decision procedure for testing maxims by running our proposed maxims through this procedure and testing them for universality, we can construct rational maxims, either to disclose the real nature of the Categorical Imperative or spell out the specific procedures for applying it.
This essay seeks to contribute to current debates about emptiness critique of Kant's Categorical Imperative. Kantian formalists, like Silber, Rawls, and O’Neil reconstruct Kant’s ethics by demonstrating that moral test can be made by C1 ( the universal formulation of categorical imperative). In order to judge right or wrong, they predicate moral contents that could be based on common sense, rationality and socio-politics. I will argue those interpretations imply two shortages: 1) those interpretations are proposing a background theory, consisted of buttressing rules of C1, which are too heavy for Kant’s ethics to bear.2) the formalists demonstrates the formal moral law, whether it is an effective procedure for determining moral obligation or duty is still uncertain.
