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Title: Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals: With on a Supposed Right to Lie Because of Philanthropic Concerns by Immanuel Kant, James W. Ellington ISBN: 0-87220-166-X Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Pub. Date: June, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4 (8 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: You Kan't Read This Without Having A Headache
Comment: If you are interested in taking up philosophy, I would recommend that you not start off with Immanuel Kant. Start off with someone reasonable like Aristotle or Machiavelli. Kant is infamous for being the most difficult philosopher to read. Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals is an excruciating experience. Although a great philosopher, Kant is not that great a writer. He often makes up words and talks in circles. The pedantic nature of this work makes for an awful read. If you do understand Kant though, go for it. He has some good stuff to say ... you just have to find it.
Rating: 4
Summary: Reason examines itself.
Comment: Kant's foundational work for his extensive examination of ethics and reason. I picked up a copy in the Harvard book store (no, I was just visiting), perhaps inheriting it from a business or law student who might by now be struggling to ignore whatever he or she once learned of ethics (sorry -- I'm sure that's not the case...). Much as Einstein would one day struggle to establish physical principles independent of observational considerations, Kant undertakes to construct a philosophy of ethics "which does not permit itself to be held back any longer by what is empirical." Kant himself might not have liked the analogy involving special relativity, but clearly science embraces his concept of universal law. Says Kant, "... wisdom -- which consists more in doing and not doing than in knowing -- needs science, not in order to learn from it, but in order that wisdom's precepts may gain acceptance and permanence." Hard to argue with that.
Kant sets forward his categorical imperative -- "I should never act except in such a way that I can also will that my maxim should become a universal law." He proceeds to illustrate and defend the imperative. The writing is extremely dense (by which I mean deliberate and exacting, not ill conceived). He anticipates and answers detracting arguments, undoubtedly including any that I might offer here. Some of his critics may not recognize that their objections have been dealt with (and Kant seems to anticipate even this). So is Kant right? Yes, or at the least mostly yes. If on some point he may be rebutted, he still wins the war, so to speak. So-called moral relativists will obviously disagree with his central premise, yet Kant remains one of the most influential philosophers of any age. He is cited frequently by ethicists, educators, scientists, and spiritual leaders.
"We find that the more a cultivated reason devotes itself to the aim of enjoying life and happiness, the further does man get away from true contentment. Because of this there arises in many persons, if only they are candid enough to admit it, a certain degree of... hatred of reason."
-- I'd give it five stars if it was easier to read.
Rating: 4
Summary: Unfounded Grounding (But Great Atmosphere)
Comment: Kant has the brilliant clarity of a calculus text with the genius of comprehension that can magnify your idea of life with nearly every sentence. For calm logic in the use of practical judgement Kant's philosophy is more formidable than the original Harvard College to a challenged scholar. But Kant lays his philosophy of metaphysical morals on an empty foam pad called human equality.
Kant can upset "free thinkers" by appearing to place euphemisms for the Golden Rule and God with his school terms the Categorical Imperative and the Thing-in-Itself. The theory of a Categorical Imperative, to act as though your actions were to form the universal law for the acts of others is an impossible concept to fully sound. You may believe if I do A then B will happen, but possibly G or Q will. Acts do not have morally strict correlative coefficients.
Consider what would happen if Kant's formula were used that your decisions or behavior were to legislate the behavior or decisions of everyone else. Though thieving from others deprives them of their property, it would also maintain a circulating economy with immediate returns and potentially eliminate class-conflict. People who wanted things would be able to find those things when they want or need to use them, and while left in disuse others could capitalize on the property's availability. If everyone physically assaulted each other, everyone would be more likely to have the skills and discipline learned from the martial arts. Were the world to all use marijuana, no violent monopolies could profit from the plant and the likelihood of the above all-fight-all scenario would probably be attenuated. Should humankind unaminously lie, people's discernment, questioning, and imagination would be more commonly employed.
I am not of the persuasion Kant's philosophy can stand unless its vacant space is filled with philanthropic sentiments of noble humanitarian instincts by whoever lives by it. To say you should act as you would have all others act, in the first formula Kant gives, has no more compelling reason to be accepted than the hypothetical situation where everyone acts as you would not act, leaving you to existentially resolve your best response. The aggregate of various acts that fall into the slots of different types of behavior are stimulated by a person's idea of the best life, but evidence here is as subjective as political welfare.
When Kant writes of his Utopian kingdom of ends he strikes on a sympathetic chord heard through most ethical teachings and ideology. Too bad Kant still lacks a proof that one person should aim for the happiness of another or all. I could object about the slippery-slope or snowball effect fallacy or talk about the sociological difficulties, the insurmountable charge of conflicts between duty and right, but maybe someone already has a paper or journal discussing this that Internet serves. Kant's niceties of distinction, steadiness and smooth argumentation is more groomed than The Godfather, but Kant is almost as hard to read as Joyce. My introductory philosophy instructor forewarns, "If you can read and understand Kant, you can probably read and understand anything." So, as of Everest, Kant's worth the challenge just by being there.
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Title: Utilitarianism by John Stuart Mill, George Sher ISBN: 087220605X Publisher: Hackett Pub Co Pub. Date: June, 2002 List Price(USD): $3.95 |
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Title: The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford World's Classics) by Aristotle, David Ross, W. D. Ross, J. L. Ackrill, J. O. Urmson ISBN: 019283407X Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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Title: The Republic by Plato ISBN: 0486411214 Publisher: Dover Pubns Pub. Date: 18 April, 2000 List Price(USD): $2.50 |
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Title: An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (Oxford Philosophical Texts) by David Hume, Tom L. Beauchamp ISBN: 0198751842 Publisher: Oxford Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: Leviathan (Penguin Classics) by Thomas Hobbes, T. Hobbs, C. B. MacPherson ISBN: 0140431950 Publisher: Viking Press Pub. Date: June, 1982 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
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