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An introduction to Kant’s Categorical Imperative.

In 1755, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) became a Privatdozent, or non-stipendiary lecturer, making a living by charging students for his lectures and giving private tuition. His students joked that he could cover for the entire philosophy faculty—which at the time included everything except the three “higher” faculties of theology, law, and medicine. He became a star lecturer, reputed for his wit, dry humour, and poker face.

When he lectured, Kant was, according to a contemporary account, “all things to all men.” He stood at a diminutive five foot two (1.57m), with blond hair, blue eyes, and rosy cheeks. Despite his slender build, flat and narrow chest, and “slight corkscrew twist”, he was described as attractive. According to his own account, his flat and narrow chest left “little room for the movement of the heart and lungs”, contributing to his delicate constitution, predisposition to hypochondria, and sedentary, regimented lifestyle.

Kant compensated for his physical frailties by being a sharp dresser. He took inspiration from nature for matching colours. Thus, in middle age, he often wore a yellow waistcoat with a brown tailcoat trimmed with gold braid. In public and in company, he sported a powdered wig, even after it had fallen out of fashion. As late as 1791, his friend and follower Joachim Christian Friedrich Schulz described him as having “the look of a good, honest watchmaker who has gone into retirement”.

From 1766, Kant derived a modest but regular income as sub-librarian of the university. From 1768 to 1777, he rented two rooms in the house of the publisher and bookseller Johann Jakob Kanter. In this period, his student Johann Gottfried Herder described him as “the most urbane fellow in the world”. He moved in the city’s most refined circles and often stayed out into the small hours.

Kant never considered himself quite rich enough to take a wife. He twice considered marriage, first to a “beautiful widow” and, much later, to a “pretty Westphalian girl”, but in each case prevaricated for so long that the ladies ended up marrying otherwise. Although he never married, Kant defended the institution of marriage, which he prosaically defined as “the union of two persons of different sexes for lifelong possession of each other’s sexual attributes”.

Kant’s Categorical Imperative

Kant is famous, among other things, for trying to put morality onto a rational basis, that is, for trying to make morality objective and “categorical” rather than subjective and arbitrary. His core ethical principle is the Categorical Imperative, according to which we should only obey those moral laws that we could consistently and rationally will as universal laws. This might be restated as, “Always act such that the maxim of your action can at the same time be upheld as a universal law.”

The Categorical Imperative is similar to the much older Golden Rule of the Bible and Indian Mahabharata, according to which we should treat others as we would ourselves wish to be treated. But whereas the Golden Rule is based on personal desire, which is subjective (I might, for example, be a masochist, or be willing to tolerate some mistreatment), the Categorical Imperative is based on reason, which is objective.

Hypothetical imperatives are practical rules for achieving a desired outcome, for example, “If you want to lose weight, you should watch what you eat.’ If you do not desire a particular outcome, you do not need to follow the rules. In this much, hypothetical imperatives are conditional and contingent. In contrast, Categorical Imperatives are universal moral commands that bind everyone regardless of their aims, for example, “Do not lie”, “Do not steal”, “Do not commit suicide”.

Hypothetical imperatives answer to the lower faculty of desire, which aims at pleasure. Categorical Imperatives answer to the higher faculty of will, which functions rationally and autonomously by following the laws which it legislates for itself, regardless of consequences or personal feelings. For Kant, true moral actions must be motivated by duty, not some desired outcome. Thus, Kantian ethics are sometimes described as deontological, or duty-based (Greek, deon, “duty”), and contrasted with consequentialism (for example, utilitarianism), which is outcome-based. For Kant, moral systems based on outcomes or desires operate on hypothetical imperatives, not true moral law.

Kant furnishes some examples to flesh out the bones of the Categorical Imperative. Imagine a person in financial need who borrows money and promises to pay it back, knowing full well that they never will. If this action were universalised, promises of repayment would no longer be believed and the practice of lending would end. Kant also points out that abusing the lender in this way reduces a dignified being with ends of his own to a mere means-to-an-end.

The universalizability formulation is only the first formulation the Categorical Imperative. The second formulation is the humanity formulation, or end-in-itself formulation: “Act always treating humanity, in yourself and others, as an end and never merely as a means.” 

When Is It Moral to Have Sex?

Kant’s rigid application of the Categorical Imperative led him to condemn many actions and behaviours that are no longer generally condemned, such as suicide out of world-weariness, homosexuality, and masturbation. He referred to homosexual acts and masturbation as “unnatural vices” on the basis that the natural purpose of sex and the reproductive organs is procreation. Marriage, he argued, is the only morally permissible context for sexual relations. But for those unable or unwilling to wait, sex is preferable to masturbation. Masturbation transgresses the natural order, sex, only the civil order.

What has aged a lot better is Kant’s insight that, during sex, one turns the other into an object of gratification, a means to an end rather than an end-in-himself or end-in-herself. This is only permissible if, in return, one makes oneself into an object of gratification for the benefit of the other. Marriage, on the other hand, is a unique union in which two people mutually surrender their bodies and selves to create a united whole.

For us, the take-home message is: Kant never had sex or even masturbated. 

Jokes aside, Kant grew into, and arguably remains, the supreme moral authority in the Western World. For better or worse, what he thought and how he thought remains part of our mental makeup.

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The Scientific Revolution disrupted the centuries-old Aristotelian system of the Church and universities. It all began in 1542, when the Pole Nicolaus Copernicus published On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres. This work challenged the geocentric system of Aristotle and Ptolemy in which the Earth—and, more importantly, man—stood proud and unmoving at the centre of the universe.

It is arguably Newton who completed the Copernican Revolution, and put the nail in the coffin of the Aristotelian system, with the publication, in 1687, of his Principia mathematica. In this work, which is deemed impenetrable, he introduced his three laws of motion along with the Law of Universal Gravitation. In the mid-1660s, Newton kept a notebook with the title, Certain Philosophical Questions. Above this title, he inscribed the motto (which is a paraphrase of Aristotle): Plato is my friend, Aristotle is my friend, but truth is a greater friend still.

The Scientific Method

Also contradicting the Aristotelian worldview were William Harvey’s demonstration of the circulation of blood, published in his De motu cordis of 1628, and Galileo’s discovery that falling objects undergo uniform acceleration irrespective of their mass, published in his Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems (i.e. the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic and the Copernican) of 1632. Aristotle had held that heavier objects fall faster, and that blood is constantly produced in the liver and consumed in the body’s periphery.

More radically, both Harvey and Galileo privileged experiment and observation over the authority of Aristotle, Ptolemy, Galen, and the Bible. Only a decade earlier, in 1620, Francis Bacon had formalised the modern scientific method in his Novum organum, which sought to undermine and replace Aristotle’s canonical treatise on logic, the Organon (hence the title, Novum organum, or New Organon). Galileo even published in Italian rather than the de rigueur Latin.

The Search for a New Metaphysical System

The demise of the Aristotelian system, for all its promises, left a void that needed filling, ideally by some all-encompassing metaphysical system on the scale of the old, Aristotelian one. If the Earth no longer stood at the centre of the cosmos, was man not the glory of creation, as affirmed in the Bible (1 Corinthians 11:7)? In this new mechanistic, atomistic world of matter in motion, where might God and the immaterial soul fit in? Where freedom and justice? And where, therefore, heaven and hell?

The three seventeenth century philosophers who rose to the challenge of formulating a comprehensive metaphysics were René Descartes (1596-1650), Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677), and Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1646-1716).

Leibniz and the Principles of Logic

Leibniz built his system of monads on just two fundamental principles, the principle of non-contradiction and the principle of sufficient reason, which are rooted in Aristotle’s Organon. The principle of non-contradiction states that a proposition and its negation cannot simultaneously be true; therefore, if the one is true, the other must be false, and vice versa. The principle of sufficient reason states that everything must have a reason or cause, even when those reasons cannot be known to us. There are no brute facts. Later philosophers, such as Hume, Kant, and Hegel, would not deviate an inch from these two sacrosanct principles of logic, established by Aristotle and Leibniz. Nietzsche, with his perspectivist theory of truth, would be the first to do so.

The Parable of the Madman

In The Gay Science (1882), which consists of 383 aphorisms, Nietzsche pulls the rug on the projects of his predecessors to rescue the old order, that is, to somehow reaffirm, through abstract logic and elaborate metaphysics, the place of God and the dignity of man. Nietzsche could not have been more categorical about this: God, he says, is dead.

The Gay Science is especially remembered for Aphorism 125, the so-called Parable of the Madman, announcing the death of God under the weight of reason and science. In the Parable of the Madman, a madman lights a lantern in the bright morning hours, runs into the marketplace, and cries incessantly, “I seek God! I seek God!” When the people laugh and jeer at him, he jumps into their midst and pierces them with his eyes: “Whither is God? … I will tell you. We have killed him—you and I. All of us are his murderers. But how did we do this? How could we drink up the seas? Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon?”

What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying, as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space? Has it not become colder? Is not night continually closing in on us? Do we not need to light lanterns in the morning? Do we hear nothing as yet of the din of the gravediggers who are burying God? Do we smell nothing as yet of the divine decomposition? Gods, too, decompose. God is dead. God remains dead. And we have killed him. [Gott ist tot! Gott bleibt tot! Und wir haben ihn getötet!]

Later that same day, the madman forces his way into several churches to strike up a requiem for God. When dragged out and called to account, he always replies, “What after all are these churches now if not the tombs and sepulchres of God?” 

Was sind denn diese Kirchen noch, wenn sie nicht die Gräber und Grabmäler Gottes sind?

In response to the death of God, Nietzsche advocates a so-called “gay science”: a skeptical, light-hearted, artistic approach to life.

What Nietzsche Meant by the Death of God

God is dead. And we have killed him. But who or what are we going to replace him with?

While we wait for the enormity of what we have done to sink in, God’s shadow lingers on, not only in our empty churches but in our groundless morals and values. But what are these towering edifices without their fount, reason, and justification? Merely the “tombs and sepulchres of God”.

Instead of facing up to this crisis, we linger in a state of denial and false hope, like Beckett’s Vladimir and Estragon, who lend their lives structure and meaning by waiting for Godot.

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) had been the first openly atheistic philosopher. His response to the demise of the old world order had been a “passive nihilism” or “will to nothingness”. But for Nietzsche, it is only when the nihilism is overcome that life and culture can be reborn.

If Nietzsche sought to accelerate and precipitate a crisis of meaning, it was only to hasten humanity’s arrival into the sunlit uplands that lay beyond it.

Neel Burton is the author of the newly published The German Greeks: German Philosophy and the German Philosophers.

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Despite his love of hosting, conversation, and fine dining, Kant’s house was unadorned and austere. He had only one picture, which hung above his bureau. This picture was of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who was only 12 years older than him. According to lore, the only time Kant failed to take his daily walk was when he received his copy of Rousseau’s Émile.

How did Rousseau’s outlook work its way into Kant’s moral philosophy? If for Rousseau, it is by following the “general will” that we can be said to be free, for Kant, it is by obeying those moral laws that we would will as universal laws. Moral laws that we would will as universal laws are given not by our individual will but by our rational will, which we have in common with all other rational beings.

We often experience this dichotomy in our minds: this is what I selfishly or frivolously want to do, and this is what I truly ought to do—because I want to live in a better society that abides by this rule, and would resent it if other people behaved in such a biased, thoughtless way.

To conform to the universal law is not to be a slave; on the contrary, it is to follow reason and free ourselves from our irrational and disordered appetites. For Kant, this capacity to overrule our individual will lies at the heart of our special dignity as human beings.

The Categorícal Imperative vs. the Golden Rule

When obeying those moral laws that we could consistently and rationally will as universal laws, we are following the so-called Categorical Imperative, which might be re-stated as, “Always act such that the maxim of your action can at the same time be upheld as a universal law.”

This is similar to the much older Golden Rule of the Bible, according to which we should treat others as we would want to be treated. But whereas the Golden Rule is based on personal desire, which is subjective (I might, for example, be a masochist, or be willing to tolerate a degree of mistreatment), the Categorical Imperative is based on reason, which is objective.

Hypothetical imperatives and consequentialism

Hypothetical imperatives are practical rules for achieving a desired outcome, for example, “If you want to lose weight, you should watch what you eat.” If you do not desire a particular outcome, you do not need to follow the rules. In this much, hypothetical imperatives are conditional and contingent. Categorical Imperatives, in contrast, are universal moral commands that bind everyone regardless of their aims, for example, “Do not lie” or “Do not steal.”

Hypothetical imperatives answer to the lower faculty of desire, which aims at pleasure. Categorical Imperatives answer to the higher faculty of will, which functions rationally and autonomously by following the laws which it legislates for itself, regardless of consequences or personal feelings.

For Kant, true moral actions must be motivated by duty, not some desired outcome. Thus, Kantian ethics are sometimes described as deontological, or duty-based, and contrasted with consequentialism (for example, utilitarianism), which is outcome-based. For Kant, moral systems based on outcomes or desires, such as utilitarianism, operate on hypothetical imperatives, not true moral law.

Perfect vs. imperfect duties

Kant provides some examples to add flesh to the bones of the Categorical Imperative. Imagine a person in financial need who borrows money and promises to pay it back, in the knowledge that they never will. If this action were universalised, promises of repayment would no longer be believed and the entire practice of lending would collapse. Kant also points out that abusing the lender in this way reduces a dignified being with ends of his own to a mere means to an end (“Act always treating humanity, in yourself and others, as an end and never merely as a means” is the second formulation of the Categorícal Imperative).

Second, imagine a person who does not intervene to help a person in distress. Were this maxim to be universalised, no one would ever help anyone, making the world into a worse place.

In the first case, not repaying a loan, the maxim cannot be universalised because it would involve a contradiction. In the second case, not helping a person in distress, there is no such contradiction. Nonetheless, it would not be rational to will a world in which no one ever helped anyone. Whereas repaying a loan is a “perfect duty,” helping someone in need is an “imperfect duty” in that we have some latitude in how we go about fulfilling it. Though we ought to be benevolent, we do not need to go about helping everyone all the time.

Failing in an imperfect duty, such as helping others or cultivating our talents, does not attract the same strict blame as violating a perfect duty, so long as we do not adopt a maxim contrary to the imperfect duty.

Kant’s example of the prudent grocer

When we do help someone, our action must be motivated by duty if it is to have moral worth. If I help someone from inclination, for example, from sympathy or because it makes me feel good, I am still doing a praiseworthy thing, but my action, being circumstantial rather than principled and reliable, lacks moral worth.

Imagine a grocer who always gives the correct change, but only to avoid being caught and losing his reputation. His behaviour, though not blameworthy, is lacking in moral worth. If he knew that he could not get caught, he may behave differently and dishonestly. Because his behaviour is prudential and circumstantial, rather than born out of duty, it is not categorical.

For Kant, a paradigm of moral worth is the person who hates life and longs to commit suicide, but stays alive purely out of duty. Because this person has no self-serving inclinations, he is acting purely from duty, rather than mere “conformity to duty.” Similarly, a hard-hearted person who has no other motivation than duty has a moral worth “beyond all comparison the highest.”

How to identify the Categorical Imperative

During his trial in Jerusalem in the 1960s, the Nazi Adolf Eichmann, a major organiser of the Holocaust, claimed to have been abiding by Kant’s Categorical Imperative—having interpreted “doing your duty” as blind obedience to superior authorities.

To identify the Categorical Imperative, we need to look inward to our rational self and engage in our own moral reasoning—asking whether the maxim guiding our action could be universalised—rather than delegate responsibility to some external authority such as a dictator (say, Hitler) or even a religious doctrine (say, the Ten Commandments).

So long as they reason correctly, every rational being, human or otherwise, should be able to arrive at the same Categorical Imperative. As pure rational wills, shorn of our attributes, temperaments, and desires, we are all the same. Whenever we carry out an action with a moral dimension, we implicitly universalise that action for all other wills.

In her analysis of the Eichmann trial, the philosopher Hannah Arendt introduced the concept of the “banality of evil,” highlighting that evil can be perpetrated not only by fanatics and psychopaths, but, more ordinarily, by “normal” people who fail to engage in critical self-reflection.

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Should free speech be curbed to promote a more inclusive society?

Once, upon being asked to name the most beautiful of all things, Diogenes the Cynic (d. 323  BCE) replied parrhesia, which in Greek means something like “free speech” or “full expression”. In the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle (d. 322 BCE) says that parrhesia is a trait of the magnanimous or great-souled man, the megalopsychos. The Greeks did not conceive of parrhesia as a right or privilege, but as a virtue or perfection, as well as a moral and social obligation. Living in a much more oral society, and having but one word, logos, for both speech and reason, they understood the close connexion between freedom of speech and freedom of thought.

In Athens, parrhesia underpinned the democracy. For a democracy to flourish, or even merit the name, citizens must be free, able, and willing to speak their mind. Free speech not only enables a democracy, but also legitimizes its laws and protects it from aspiring tyrants. Undermine free speech, and you undermine democracy—which is why free speech is enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. Undermine free speech, and you undermine human dignity, which is why free speech is enshrined in Article 19 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights:

Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference and to see, receive, and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers.

“Free speech” is something of a misnomer. It includes not only free speech but also other forms of expression, such as writing a book, drawing a cartoon, or burning a flag. Taking inspiration from the French libre expression, we might more accurately refer to “free speech” as “freedom of expression”.

Today, many people, especially younger people, believe that freedom of expression can conflict with minority rights, and ought to be curbed to promote a more inclusive society. Is this argument worth entertaining?

Let’s begin by looking more closely at the benefits of free speech. Often, it is by articulating it to others that we are able to determine what we think on a particular issue. And in arriving at what we think, it helps if we are being encouraged, assisted, and challenged—which is why tutorials and communal meals are (or ought to be) an important part of university life.

Even if an opinion is untrue, it may still serve to clarify or reinforce the truth. Moreover, many misguided opinions contain aspects of the truth. Plato himself doubted his Theory of Forms, which nonetheless remains of immense value. Rousseau, who pushed back against the Enlightenment, may have been wrong to idealise the state of nature, but was right to point out that progress has downsides. Even when securely established, a living truth risks stultifying into a dead dogma if it is not regularly challenged.

So far, we have been talking about the kind of constructive, co-operative discourse that graces academia. But are bitter bigots also entitled to freedom of expression? Or to put it another way, do the intolerant also merit tolerance?

If bigots were unable to air their opinions, or simply denied a platform (“no-platforming”), these and they would go unchallenged. Feeling vindicated and persecuted, the bigots would recast themselves as tellers of uncomfortable truths, and, in time, recruit a following. Feeling unheard and unrepresented, this growing mass may resort to violence and destruction, including sabotage of the political system.

Censoring bigots also risks giving their opinions greater appeal and publicity. Prosecuting David Irving for Holocaust denial put him onto the front pages, and turned him from obscure and discredited historian into something of a free speech martyr. Banning The Satanic Verses and issuing a fatwa to kill the book’s author and publishers turned it into a must-read all-time classic.

Conversely, those who engage in “cancel culture” are likely to invite resentment and, in so doing, harm their cause—to say nothing of the extra-judicial and often disproportionate damage done to the reputations and careers of their targets. In such a climate of fear, self-censorship, even by constructive academics and liberals, makes it difficult to calmly and rationally discuss sensitive topics such as transgender rights.

Of course, we do already police free speech. In the words of Judge Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., free speech does not include the freedom of shout “Fire!” in a crowded theatre. John Stuart Mill (d. 1873) drew the line at incitement to physical violence.

But beyond this (and a few other cases such as libel and false advertising), where might we redraw the line between the acceptable and the unacceptable? Socrates, Christ, and Giordano Bruno all lost their lives expressing what came to be regarded as seminal ideas.

Once we had redrawn the line, would the temptation not be to keep redrawing it? The Spanish Inquisition began as one thing and ended up as quite another. And it made no difference if some of the inquisitors were well-intentioned.

Today, the public square has moved online, and it is unaccountable tech giants, rather than the church and state, that are being expected to police free speech—when they might simply begin by ensuring that each of their accounts is genuine and accountable.

As they say, sunlight is the best disinfectant. The best response to a bad opinion is not censorship, but good argument and rhetoric. And yes, this might sometimes include mockery and derision and causing offence—although we should not go out of our way to cause offence, as with “hate speech”. Our focus ought to be on the facts, and not on the characteristics (although maybe the character) of our opponent.

In a society in which suffering is medicalized, there is a tendency to assimilate psychological offence with physical violence, with an implication or suggestion that retaliatory physical violence might be justified. But “free speech” includes the right not to listen. Taking offence, as the Stoics taught, is always a choice. Offence exists not in the insult but in our reaction to it, and our reactions are completely within our control. It is unreasonable to expect a boor to be anything but a boor; if we take offence at his bad behaviour, we have only ourself to blame.

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Karma, often misunderstood as fate or destiny, is conceptualized as a causal law by which our modes of engagement come to determine our station and situation. According to several Indian religions, karma is the law of cause and effect extended to human affairs; every instance of thought, speech, and action is a cause, and all our experiences are their effects.

Karma, good and bad, is often referred to as punya (“merit”) and paap (“demerit”). Even if punya does not immediately pay off, or seem to pay off, it does in the longer term, which is why karma is tied to samsara, the transmigration of life, with future births conditioned by the accumulated balance of paap and punya.

Greek Parallels

At the outset of Plato’s Republic, the sophist Thrasymachus argues that it is not the just but the unjust who flourish, and that the tyrant, being the most wicked of people, is also the happiest. At the end of the Republic, in the Myth of Er, Plato resorts to reincarnation to guarantee that the genuinely just always come out on top, with each soul choosing its next life according to its wisdom. In this and other things, Plato was influenced by Pythagoras (d. 495 BCE), who, like the Indians, came to believe in the transmigration of the soul.

The Transfer of Karma

Although karma is individual, it is believed that in certain circumstances it can be transferred—for example, from a dying father to his son, with the son being, essentially, the continuation of the father. This rite, in which the father places himself above his son, and touches his organs with his own, is laid out in the Kaushitaki Upanishad.

More ordinarily, the paap of a person, living or deceased, may be mitigated by the prayers and pilgrimages of others.

The Function of Karma and Christian Parallels

Karma serves the same purpose as Eden in providing the major motivation to lead a moral life. In the Christian tradition, it is believed that the soul of the newly deceased is judged and sent to heaven, hell, or purgatory. Then, there is also a Last Judgement that takes place after the Second Coming of Christ and the resurrection of the dead.

In the Letter to the Galatians, St Paul warns: “Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.” According to the Old Testament, punishment might even be extended to later generations, that is, to future selves:

The Lord is long-suffering, and of great mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression, and by no means clearing the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation.

Karma also serves other purposes, such as accounting for the existence of evil, rationalizing rebirth (which could also operate independently of karma), and providing a soteriological goal of final liberation.

In determining our circumstances and even our temperament, karma may constrict our options, but it does not deprive us of choice and deliberation, enabling it to condone social inequities and the caste system while at the same time affirming human freedom.

The Philosophy of Karma

The importance of karma, and the degree of freedom and determination within it, is a matter of debate between the Hindu schools.

But even if karma theory is not literally true, it is at least metaphorically true. Being good does pay off, if only in peace of mind and mental health.

In which case, is karma theory a firm basis for morality, or an appeal to naked self-interest?

One way around this problem, which has been taken, is to broaden the scope of karma to include thoughts as well as actions, so that the system becomes impossible to game.

Doing the right thing for the wrong reason is not the same, and does not feel the same, as doing it for the right reason. According to the Great Forest Upanishad, the truly virtuous act is the one that is desire-less. Like the Stoic archer, one must concentrate on doing the right thing, to the best of one’s ability, without being attached to the outcome. For it is from attachment that life and misery arise.

The Buddhist Solution

The Buddha had another way around the problem, which is to deny the metaphysical distinction between the self and others so that helping others is the same as helping oneself.

Aristotle makes a similar move in the Nicomachean Ethics, when he says that there is no conflict between helping a friend and helping oneself insofar as a perfect friend is like another self.

When we are good to another, we are good to all, including ourself, because the distinction is an illusion, and karma travels.

If we have no self, why did the Buddhists not altogether give up on karma and samsara?

In part, because karma can still operate in the absence of a Self, or Atma, with future incarnations being conditioned by the sum of all the karmic actions that have been put into the world.

Every person—their parents, their teachers, and their parents and teachers—is the embodiment of every karmic action that has ever gone before. Our every action reverberates to the end of time.

Read more in Indian Mythology and Philosophy.