THE MORAL MISANTHROPE
Perhaps the hardest case for Kant's view involves what he takes to be the duty to help others. Some people are altruistic. They feel compassion for others and take pleasure in helping them. But for Kant, doing good deeds out of compassion, "however right and however amiable it may be," lacks moral worth. This may seem counterintuitive. Isn't it good to be the kind of person who takes pleasure in helping others ? Kant would say yes. He certainly doesn't think there's anything wrong with acting out of compassion. But he distinguishes between this motive for helping others --- that doing the good deed gives me pleasure --- and the motive of duty. And he maintains that only the motive of duty confers moral worth on an action. The compassion of the altruist "deserves praise and encouragement, but not esteem.
What, then, would it take for a good deed to have moral worth ? Kant offers a scenario : Imagine that our altruist suffers a misfortune that extinguishes his love of humanity. He becomes a misanthrope who lacks all sympathy and compassion. But thus cold-hearted soul tears himself out of this indifference and comes to the aid of his fellow human beings. Lacking any inclination to help, he does so "for the sake of duty alone." Now for the first time, his action has moral worth.
This eeems in some ways an odd judgment.Does Kant mean to valorize misanthropes as moral exemplars ? No, not exactly. Taking pleasure in doing the right thing does not necessarily undermine its moral worth. What matters, Kant tells us, is that the good deed be done because it's the right thing to do --- whether or not doing it gives us pleasure.
THE SPELLING BEE HERO
Consider an episode that took place some years ago at the national spelling bee in Washington, D.C. A thirteen-year-old-boy was asked to spell echolalia, a word that means a tendency to repeat whatever one hears. Although he misspelled the word, the judges misheard him, told him he had spelled the word right, and allowed him to advance. When the boy learned he had misspelled the word, he went to the judges and told them. He was eliminated after all. Newspaper headlines the next day proclaimed the honest young man "a spelling bee hero," and his photo appeared in The New York Times. "The judges said I had a lot of integrity," the boy told reporters. He added that part of his motive was, "I didn't want to feel like a slime."
What would Kant think about the spelling bee hero ? Not wanting to feel like a slime is an inclination, of course. So, if that was the boy's motive for telling the truth, it would seem to undermine the moral worth of his act. But this seems too harsh. It would mean that only unfeeling people could ever perform morally worthy acts. Surely this not what Kant means.
If the only reason the boy told the truth was to avoid feeling guilty, or to avoid bad publicity should his error be discovered, then his truth-telling would lack moral worth. But if he told the truth because he knew it was the right thing to do, his act has moral worth regardless of the pleasure or satisfaction that might attend it. As long as he did the right thing for the right reason, feeling good about it doesn't undermine its moral worth.
The same is true of Kant's altruist. If he comes to the aid of other people simply for the pleasure it gives him, then his action lacks moral worth. But if he recognizes a duty to help one's fellow human beings and acts out of that duty, then the pleasure he derives from it is not morally disqualifying.
In practice, of course, duty and inclination often coexist. It is often hard to sort out one's own motives, let alone know for sure the motives of other people. Kant doesn't deny this. Nor does he think that only a hardhearted misanthrope can perform morally worthy acts. The point of this misanthrope example is to isolate the motive of duty --- to see it unclouded by sympathy or compassion. And once we glimpse the motive of duty, we can identify the feature of our good deeds that gives them their moral worth --- namely, their principle, not their consequences.
WHAT IS THE SUPREME PRINCIPLE OF MORALITY ?
If morality means acting from duty, it remains to be shown what duty requires. To know this, for Kant, is to know the supreme principle of morality. What is the supreme principle of morality ? One of Kant's aims in his writings is to answer this question.
We can approach Kant's answer by seeing how he connects three big ideas : morality, freedom, and reason. He explains these ideas through a series of contrasts or dualisms. They involve a bit of jargon, but if you notice the parallel among these contrasting terms, you are well on your way to understanding Kant's moral philosophy. Here are the contrasts to keep in mind :
CONTRAST 1 (morality) : duty v. inclination
CONTRAST 2 (freedom) : autonomy v. heteronomy
CONTRAST 3 (reason) : categorical v. hypothetical
imperative
We've already explored the first of these contrasts, between duty and inclination. Only the motive of duty can confer moral worth on an action. Let's see if we can unravel the other two.
The second contrast describes two different ways that my will can be determined --- autonomously and heteronomously. According to Kant, I'm free only when my will is determined autonomously, governed by a law I give myself. Again, we often think of freedom as being able to do what we want, to pursue our desires unimpeded. But Kant poses a powerful challenge to this way of thinking about freedom : If you didn't choose those desires freely in the first place, how can you think of yourself as free when you're pursuing them ? Kant captures this challenge in this contrast between autonomy and heteronomy.
When my will is determined heteronomously, it is determined externally, from outside of me. But this raises a difficult question : If freedom means something more than following my desires and inclinations, how is it possible ? Isn't everything I do motivated by some desire or inclination determined by outside influences ?
The answer is far from obvious. Kant observes that "everything in nature works in accordance with laws," such as the laws of natural necessity, the laws of physics, the laws of cause and effect. This includes us. We are, after all, natural beings. Human beings are not exempt from the laws of nature.
But if we are capable of freedom, we must be capable of acting according to some other kind of law, a law other than the laws of physics. Kant argues that all action is governed by laws of some kind or other. And if our actions were governed solely by the laws of physics, then we would be no different from that billiard ball. So if we're capable of freedom, we must be capable of acting not according to a law that is given or imposed on us, but according to a law we give ourselves. But where could such a law come from ?
Kant's answer : from reason. We're not only sentient beings, governed by pleasure and pain delivered by our senses ; we are also rational beings, capable of reason. If reason determines my will, then the will becomes the power to choose independent of the dictates of nature or inclination. Notice that Kant isn't asserting that reason always does govern my will ; he's only saying that, insofar as I'm capable of acting freely, according to a law I give myself, then it must be the case that reason can govern my will.
Of course, Kant isn't the first philosopher to suggest that human beings are capable of reason. But his idea of reason, like his conceptions of freedom and morality, is especially demanding. For the empiricist philosophers, including the utilitarians, reason is wholly instrumental. It enables us to identify means for the pursuit of certain ends----ends that reason itself does not provide. Thomas Hobbes called reason the "scout of the desires." David Hume called reason the "slave of the passions."
The utilitarians viewed human beings s capable of reason, but only instrumental reason. Reason's work, for the utilitarians, is not to determine what ends are worth pursuing. Its job is to figure out how to maximize utility by satisfying the desires we happen to have.
Kant rejects this subordinate role for reason. For him, reason is not just the slave of the passions. If that were all reason amounted to, Kant says, we'd be better off with instinct.
Kant's idea of reason ---of practical reason, the kind involved in morality ---is not instrumental reason but "pure practical reason, which legislates a priori, regardless of all empirical ends.
No comments:
Post a Comment