Universalization and Setting an Example

In concrete terms, Kant's Moral principle prescribes a constraint on certain behavior.  In some cases, the effect is non-action, e. g. not harming oneself or others, but in other cases--constraint from laziness or indifference to the suffering of others--the effect is a positive action, but only mediately.  So, it is not merely because Reason functions independently of any Passion, but because its Causality is insensible, that this concept of it is beyond the scope of Hume's subordination of it to Passion, and, hence, beyond the Sentimentalist limitation of the role of Reason in behavior.  Still, insofar as the prescription can be defied, in itself, the principle is no more than a heuristic device, as is the concept of Universalization that constitutes its content.  So, what Kant's principle prescribes is not to be confused with a familiar phenomenon in which personal behavior is concretely Universalized--Setting an Example.  But he is not unaware of that phenomenon--he recognizes it in the case of the productions of artistic Genius, and yet he cannot accept it as such.  For, even after explicitly affirming that such works are exemplary, he still insists that they be further subordinated to another Universalist criterion--Taste.  So, it is not Universality that Kant's Moral doctrine promotes, but a constraint on some behavior.  Or, in other words, in his doctrine, its conventional Deontic component has priority over its Rational component, which Hume could interpret as confirming his thesis that Reason is never more than a slave.