is the word 'diary' better than the word 'blog'? probably not.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kant v. Mill: Celebrity Deathmatch�You be the judge.
The other day I was writing about administrative totalitarianism, and talking about how when we don�t give thought to why we have rules and policies, and don't also give thought to what we want the rules and policies to do for us, things get crazy. Bureaucrazy. Rule fetishism is the blind adherence to pre-set rules. Toast only comes with butter. Bags only come with Velcro. One size fits all. Of course, �one size fits all� is one way to treat everyone equally without having to differentiate between cases. That�s why it�s called formal equality: it is an equality achieved by procedure rather than by having to think about each case. Thinking about each case would make everyone insane and leave no time for watching marathons of Law and Order.
The other side of the coin: injustices will always occur when we let ourselves believe that one size really does fit all. So we need to achieve a balance between formal equality and recognizing the details of individual cases.
But then there this thing called (for lack of a better term) �bureaucrazy� where rules get experienced as if they were part of our DNA, as if they were never invented by imperfect human beings, and as if they didn�t have a necessarily limited scope of application. Then they�re like biblical commandments.
A utilitarian philosopher like J.S. Mill would say that commandments are more useful to us than more abstract guidelines, because when we are told what the specific rules of a society are, we learn what that society values, and then, as we observe the rules, we are molded in the likeness of those rules to have the values of our society. I hope you can see that there are pros and cons to that truth. A society has to express approval and disapproval of different behaviors, and we couldn�t live together if we didn�t observe the rules that do this for us. But sometimes rules express bigoted or outdated ideas of justice that need to be questioned. And so� if our conscience is formed for us BY the rules, how will we know when and how to question the rules?
That�s why a deonotological philosopher like Kant thinks that a maxim is a better way of getting at the law than a set of commandments. A maxim is a general guideline, a condensed truth, that you can apply to any given situation. Kant�s famous categorical imperative is a maxim that tells us that we should act only so that, whatever we do, we can will it to be a universal law. Fair enough. If I�m about to cheat someone, I�ll know that I couldn�t will that to be a universal law because then it would be OK for someone to cheat me, and it would also make it impossible for promises and contracts to exist, which would undermine the very fabric of social order. Another phrasing of the categorical imperative says that we should treat human beings as ends in themselves, never as only a means to some other end. In other words: don�t use people. It�s a similar maxim, which tends toward the same answer to questions you might pose of it, but this one focuses directly on how you treat other people rather than on your own actions in general, regardless of where they are aimed.
These are two ways to think about how people might be bound by rules. Mill says commandments give us values. Kant says maxims guide us. One important distinction between the two can be expressed in terms of WHERE the rules are coming from. If you are led by commandments, the rules come from elsewhere, from some site of authority that you recognize as empowered to make rules. But if you follow a maxim, the rules come from within yourself. You use a maxim to determine what the rules are. In other words, to quote Rousseau, you give the law to yourself. (Rousseau: freedom is obedience to a law you give to yourself. That is how Rousseau solves the so-called problem of how we can be both free and bound by laws at the same time� isn�t freedom the opposite of rules, some might ask? The answer to that question is: No. Valuable freedom is obedience to a law you give to yourself.)
But there must be cons to Kant�s views, right? Of course there are. For instance: there can be no exceptions to the categorical imperative. Mill, the utilitarian, would argue that, though there is a commandment against stealing, sometimes you might have to steal if the only choice you had was between letting someone starve or stealing bread to feed that person. That doesn�t make stealing OK. It only means that every rule sometimes has exceptions. But utilitarianism might also let us say that it is fine to imprison an innocent person if that makes everyone in the community feel safer. (Utilitarianism is about the greatest happiness of the greatest number of people, so it, in some of its versions, can be unkind to individuals.)
So utilitarianism has its danger-zones. Kant�s focus is all about the individual, and thus may not pay enough attention to community. Do we really want to say that even if killing one person would save 100,000 people, we can�t do that because it is always wrong to kill a person? Maybe, maybe not.
What is clear is that either way we don�t escape the need to use human judgment when we face hard cases.
To bring this back to the �toast only comes with butter / bags only come with Velcro� continuum, what kind of society produces people who can�t see beyond buttered toast and Velcro-d bags? Democracy is supposed to be about public debate, contestation of ideas, all of that. Sure, in your mind-numbing daily job it might be easier to follow policy blindly. But I would hope that anyone who does that would at least do it with some ironic detachment, so that she or he would also remain aware of what is being passed over when we give up our capacity to judge in individual cases. When you tell me that toast only comes with butter, or that bags only come with Velcro, at least laugh about it. I want you to laugh not because you have resigned yourself to the rules, but because you recognize how ridiculous blind following of rules has rendered you. When it comes to toast and bags, it's OK to be ridiculous. But don't let that laziness leak out into the rest of your life, or you may end up thinking it doesn't matter that a government with the U.S. Constitution is torturing people.
PS� You can test yourself to see whether you get the main distinction between the two philosophies by asking yourself whether it is clear why this is true: a utilitarian argument could justify torture, but a Kantian argument cannot. Also: both philosophies can justify the death penalty, though they would do so in different ways.
Who wins the deathmatch? I think it depends on what values we decide are �stronger.� Any thoughts?
9:49 a.m. - December 26, 2007
RZ - 2007-12-27 04:58:59
I recently heard Allen Wood give a wonderful talk defending Kant against the charge that according to it killing is never permissible. I don;'t think it's on his website, but there are a number of other nice papers: http://www.stanford.edu/~allenw/
-------------------------------
meow - 2007-12-27 12:26:02
I never knew Kant was a dentist. wow!
-------------------------------
js - 2007-12-27 14:11:05
yeah. i think there is a major difference between "Kant" and "a Kantian." Most "Kantians" would argue against the death penalty using Kantian arguments even though Kant himself was a very much in favor of it (for Kant-ish reasons, too). The "Kantians" would say that the death penalty doesn't respect human dignity or perhaps treats a criminal as a means to an end (the alleged deterrence effect of the death penalty) whereas Kant thinks that if someone breaks a law like the law against murder, you respect him or her by holding him or her responsible for his or her actions--that's what it means to be free: you are responsible for what you do, because you did it freely. And what better way to do hold someone responsible than eye-for-eye-ing it: the death penalty. But why are we still so caught up in what a crazy old dentist from Konigsberg thinks?!
-------------------------------
Vermont Cousin - 2007-12-27 19:38:07
Now I know what to tell August when he questions one of my rules: "Kant!"
-------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
|
|
