from the Writer's Almanac [4/22] "It's the birthday of Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant (books by this author), born in Konigsberg, Prussia, in 1724. His father was a saddle maker. He studied theology, physics, mathematics, and philosophy at university, and worked for a time as a private tutor; he made very little money, but it gave him plenty of time for his own work. He lectured at the University of Konigsberg for 15 years, until he was eventually given a tenured position as professor of logic and metaphysics in 1770. Though he enjoyed hearing travel stories, he never ventured more than 50 miles from his hometown, believing that travel was not necessary to solve the problems of philosophy. In his most influential work, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781), he argued against Empiricism, which held that the mind was a blank slate to be filled with observations of the physical world, and Rationalism, which held that it was possible to experience the world objectively without the interference of the mind; instead, he synthesized the two schools of thought, added that the conscious mind must process and organize our perceptions, and made a distinction between the natural world as we observe it, and the natural world as it really is. He viewed morality as something that arises from human reason, and maintained that an action's morality is determined not by the outcome of the action, but by the motive behind it. He is also famous for his single moral obligation, the 'Categorical Imperative': namely, that we should judge our actions by whether or not we would want everyone else to act the same way.
He wrote, 'Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe ... the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.'"
He wrote, 'Two things fill the mind with ever-increasing wonder and awe ... the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.'"
Comments
not be worth mentioning"
I think one of the great marks of civilization is the existence of a robust body of law and social custom consistent with both the Categorical Imperative and Christ's Second Law. Furthermore, in stable civil societies, citizens measure their actions according to both, even in the face of corrupt authorities and institutions. So the idea of an internal moral compass seems important to me. Such a compass starts with the "how would I wish to be treated" and uses reason to work out general rules from examples.
My fantasy is that Kant would have asserted that it is precisely this kind of process that works to create bodies of law and social standards in a public forum. It seems to me that the process is not far from the surface in Hammurabi's code or Judaic law. So social conventions and bodies of law are a public projection of the internal process Kant describes.
Of course, I will admit that when I read Kant, I find his language is so obtuse that I frequently wonder whether he had a clue what he, himself, meant to say. I'm sure I'm taking some liberties with his ideas.
An implication of what I am arguing is that moral law cannot be absolute, objective, definitive, complete, canonical, fixed. It is reasoned from current social conditions and practices. This does lead to conflicts about moral reasoning where cultures collide. But I think if we keep Christ's Second Law and/or the Categorical Imperative clearly in view, many of our differences can be resolved through thoughtful public discourse.
And, perhaps, when we have moral convictions that we cannot convince others about, we would do better not to mention them.