I asked a Kantian, “Does this mean that, if I don’t give myself Kant’s Imperative as a law, I am not subject to it?” “No,” I was told, “you have to give yourself a law, and there’s only one law.” This reply was maddening, like the propaganda of the so-called People’s Democracies of the old Soviet bloc, in which voting was compulsory and there was only one candidate. And when I said “But I haven’t given myself Kant’s Imperative as a law,” I was told “Yes you have.”
(DEREK PARFIT on Kant’s Universal Law)
