Archetypes of Wisdom

1
Archetypes of Wisdom

• Douglas J. Soccio
• Chapter 11
• The Universalist Immanuel Kant

2
Learning Objectives
On completion of this chapter, you should be able
to answer the following questions

• What is the difference between nonmoral and
  immoral?
• What is Kantian formalism?
• What is Critical Philosophy?
• What are phenomenal and noumenal reality?
• What are practical reason and theoretical reason?

• What is a maxim? What makes a maxim moral?
• What is a hypothetical imperative?
• What is the practical imperative?
• What is a thought experiment?
• What is the original position, and how is it
  related to the veil of ignorance?

3
The Professor

• Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was born in Königsberg
  in what was then known as East Prussia (now
  Kaliningrad in the former Soviet Union).
• His parents were poor but devout members of a
  fundamentalist Protestant sect known as Pietism,
  living severe, puritanical lives.
• At the age of sixteen, Kant entered the
  University of Königsberg.
• In 1755, he received the equivalent of todays
  doctoral degree.
• He became a popular lecturer, and in 1770, the
  university hired him as a professor of logic and
  mathematics.

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The Solitary Writer

• Kants life is noteworthy for not being
  noteworthy, never traveling more than sixty miles
  from his birthplace, and living with a regularity
  that people in his town could set their watches
  by.
• But Kant was a prolific writer. His works
  include
• The Critique of Pure Reason (1781)
• Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785)
• Critique of Practical Reason (1788)
• Critique of Judgment (1790)
• Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793)

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A Scandal in Philosophy

• Kant was one of the first thinkers to fully
  realize the consequences of Humes relentless
  attack on the scope of reason.
• However, the seeds of what Kant referred to as a
  scandal in philosophy were planted when
  Descartes doubted his own existence and divided
  everything into two completely distinct
  substances minds and bodies.
• Kant felt something was drastically wrong if the
  two major schools (rationalism and empiricism)
  denied knowledge of cause and effect, denied
  existence of the external world, and rendered
  reason impotent in human affairs while the
  science of the day clearly showed otherwise.

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Transcendental Idealism

• In response to this scandal, Kant turned to an
  analysis (or critique) of how knowledge is
  possible.
• In the process, he posited an underlying
  structure imposed by the mind on the sensations
  and perceptions it encounters.
• The theory he developed, transcendental idealism,
  claims that knowledge is the result of the
  interaction between the mind and sensation.
• Experience is shaped, or structured, by special
  regulative ideas called categories.

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Kants Copernican Revolution

• What Kant was proposing challenged assumptions
  about thought, in the same way Copernicus
  challenged assumptions about the universe.
• Kant suggested that instead of mind having to
  conform to what can be known, what can be known
  must conform to the mind.

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Phenomena and Noumena

• For Kant, our knowledge is formed by two things
  our actual experiences and the minds faculties
  of judgment.
• This means that we cannot know reality as it is,
  but only as it is organized by human reason.
• Kants term for the world as we perceive it is
  phenomenal reality. His term for reality as it is
  independent of our perceptions what we commonly
  call objective reality is noumenal reality.
• Although we never experience pure reality, we can
  know that our minds do not just invent the world.
  
• Our minds impose order on the world, and that
  order is what Kant is trying to make explicit.

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Transcendental Ideas

• Though we cannot directly experience noumena, a
  class of transcendental ideas bridges the gap
  between things as we experience them and things
  as they are in themselves.
• Kant identified three transcendental ideas
• Self
• Cosmos (totality)
• God
• These ideas create the unity and objectivity of
  your experience of yourself as you (in a world
  of sensation created by some higher
  intelligence).
• These transcendental ideas regulate and
  synthesize experience on a grand scale.

10
Theoretical and Practical Reason

• Although there is only one faculty of
  understanding, Kant distinguishes two functions
  of reason theoretical and practical.
• Theoretical reasoning is confined to the world of
  experience, and concludes that human beings, like
  all phenomena, are governed by cause and effect
  in the form of the inescapable laws of nature.
• Practical reasoning enables us to move beyond the
  phenomenal world to the moral dimension, helps us
  to deal with the moral freedom provided by free
  will, and produces religious feelings and
  intuitions.

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The Moral Law Within

• Kant notes that very few people consistently
  think of their own moral judgments as mere
  matters of custom or taste.
• Whether we actually live up to our moral
  judgments or not, we think of them as concerned
  with how people ought to behave.
• Just as we cannot think or experience without
  assuming the principle of cause and effect, Kant
  thought we cannot function without a sense of
  duty.

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The Moral Law Within

• Our practical reason imposes this notion of ought
  on us.
• For Kant, morality is a function of reason, based
  on our consciousness of necessary and universal
  laws.
• Since necessary and universal laws must be a
  priori, they cannot be discovered in actual
  behavior.
• The moral law is a function of reason, a
  component of how we think.

13
The Good Will

• It is important to note that Kant conceives of
  the good will as a component of rationality, the
  only thing which is good in itself.
• Kant argues that ought implies can by which
  he means it must be possible for human beings to
  live up to their moral obligations (since
  circumstances can prevent us from doing the good
  we want to do).
• Thus, Kant reasons, I must not be judged on the
  consequences of what I actually do, but on my
  reasons.
• Put another way, morality is a matter of motives.
  
• As Kant himself said, Morality is not properly
  the doctrine of how we should make ourselves
  happy, but how we should become worthy of
  happiness.

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Inclinations

• In Kantian terminology, decisions and actions are
  based on impulse or desire or inclinations.
• Inclinations are unreliable and inconstant, and
  so not what morality should be based on.
• Inclinations are not produced by reason. Animals
  act from inclination, not from will.
• In contrast to inclinations, acts of will reflect
  autonomy, the capacity to choose clearly and
  freely for ourselves, without outside coercion
  or interference.

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Moral Duty

• Kant says, Duty is the necessity of acting from
  respect for the moral law.
• Duty does not serve our desires and preferences,
  but, rather, overpowers them.
• Such moral duty cannot be based on what an
  individual wants to do, what he or she likes or
  doesnt like, or whether or not the individual
  cares about the people involved.

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Kants Imperatives

• Imperatives are forms of speech that command
  someone, or tell them what to do.
• Kant distinguishes two types of imperatives
  hypothetical and categorical.
• Hypothetical imperatives tell us what to do under
  specific, variable conditions.
• They take the form, If this, then do that.

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The Categorical Imperative

• Categorical imperatives tells us what to do in
  order for our act to have moral worth.
• They take the form, Do this.
• The categorical imperative is universally binding
  on all rational creatures, and this alone can
  guide the good will (which summons our powers to
  obey such an imperative).
• The categorical imperative says, Act as if the
  maxim of thy action were to become a universal
  law of nature.
• In other words, we must act only according to
  principles we think should apply to everyone.

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The Kingdom of Ends

• Kant believed that as conscious, rational
  creatures, we each possess intrinsic worth, a
  special moral dignity that always deserves
  respect.
• In other words, we are more than mere objects to
  be used to further this or that end.
• Kant formulates the categorical imperative around
  the concept of dignity sometimes referred to as
  the practical imperative.

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The Kingdom of Ends

• As Kant explains, Act in such a way that you
  always treat humanity, whether in your own person
  or in the person of another, never merely as a
  means but always at the same time as an end.
• To describe the universe of all moral beings,
  Kant uses the expression,kingdom of ends.
• By this, Kant means a kingdom whose creatures
  possess intrinsic worth, in which everyone is an
  end in himself or herself.

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The Metaphysics of Morals

• Kant describes the metaphysics of morals as the
  transcendental realm that is universal and
  necessary for all creatures that are rational.
• The metaphysics of morals include
• the transcendental ideas (of self, cosmos, and
  God)
• the division of reality into phenomena and
  noumena
• the moral law and duty our good wills have to
  abide by
• the categorical imperatives that ought to
  override our inclinations
• the kingdom of ends to which we all respectfully
  belong

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A Kantian Theory of Justice

• John Rawls relies upon some fundamental insights
  of Kants to generate a very powerful theory of
  justice.
• Rawls begins with a thought experiment known as
  the original position to justify two basic
  principles of justice.
• Rawls asks his readers to imagine that they are
  to found a society.
• What principles of justice would be chosen to
  regulate it?
• Principles chosen behind a veil of ignorance
  would be objective and impartial, and therefore,
  justified.

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A Kantian Theory of Justice

• Rawls argues that ultimately two principles would
  be chosen
• 1) Everyone has an equal right to the most
  extensive basic liberty compatible with a similar
  liberty for others.
• 2) Any social and economic inequalities must be
  such that they are both (a) reasonably expected
  to be to everyones advantage, and (b) attached
  to positions and offices open to all.

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What about Family Justice?

• Susan Moller Okin argues that Rawlss theory of
  justice contains gender biases in both the
  language and choice of examples.
• For example, Rawls does not provide an analysis
  of justice within the family.
• According to Okin, Family justice must be of
  central importance for social justice.

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What about Family Justice?

• Okin analyzes Rawlss theory of justice with
  special attention to issues of gender and the
  family.
• According to Okin, Rawlss analysis of justice is
  problematic because he rarely indicates how
  deeply and pervasively gender-structured society
  is.
• As Okin notes, A feminist reader finds it
  difficult not to keep asking, Does this theory
  apply to women?

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Discussion Questions

• How can we get a clearer sense of the power of
  the categorical imperative in order to clarify
  the nature of various forms of behavior?
• Formulate and then analyze the maxims that are
  required to justify contemporary issues in
  society, such as the following
• Having unprotected sex without knowing if you are
  HIV positive.
• Forcing schools to teach the values of your
  religion.

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Chapter ReviewKey Concepts and Thinkers

• Moral
• Nonmoral (amoral)
• Immoral
• Kantian formalism
• Critical philosophy
• Phenomenal reality
• Noumenal reality
• Theoretical reason
• Practical reason

• Hypothetical imperative
• Categorical imperative
• Practical imperative
• Principle of dignity
• Thought experiment
• Original position
• Veil of ignorance
• John Rawls (1921-2002)
• Susan Moller Okin (1946-2004)