December 3, 2003

• All for One and One For All ?

  
  

  I have a lot of "favorite" philosophers.  Some I like to read because I think they were nuts and I like the challenge of working out my argument for why they were off base.  Some because they introduce me to new ways of thinking, and potentially better ways of living.  Some I like because their words resonate with me.  I don't so much think it through and agree with them as I recognize them.  These are the ones that make me wish I had said it that way first. 

  
  

  I'm not sure which category I'd put Immanuel Kant into.  (I do apologize to all of you who said that you really didn't want to read a blog on Kant.  He's been on my mind, so I HAVE to write it out, but if you'll hang in with me for a few moments to get him out of my system, I'd appreciate it.)

  
  

  See I've been trying to work through some issues in my life, and one of the big concepts that I keep tripping over is responsibility.  Kant was ALL about responsibility.  Anytime you hear things like, "What if everyone did that ...", "All for one and one for all," "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, or the one ..." all these ideas encapsulate the core of Kant's ethics.  He said that we owe it to humanity to live as we ought to live.  He was so insistent upon this business of ought that he said doing the right thing just because we wanted to do it, or preferred to do it didn't qualify us as being moral people.  The only way an action could be considered virtuous in his definition was if you had come to the conclusion that you should do that thing, and performed the action out of your sense of duty.  

  
  

  I've found a lot of things that I should do over the years.  And for the most part, I've done them.  I've had a few slips, but I'd like to believe that in the total of my life, I can be counted on to do the right thing.  Sometimes the right thing is a more complicated affair than it appears on the surface.  I'll give another example from Kant's work.  He concluded that it is better for the Higher Good of mankind for people to be honest than to lie.  Therefore under every circumstance in every situation, a person is dutybound to speak the truth. 

  
  

  But, you might ask, what if speaking the truth could harm another person?  Say, a man comes running down the road in front of you, haggard, breathing raggedly, and looking roughed up.  He comes to a fork and veers right.  Just about the time he's out of sight, two men come running up from the same direction.  They demand to know which way the first man went.  Should you answer them?  You don't know anything about why they are chasing the man, maybe he's a criminal and these guys are undercover agents in pursuit.  Maybe he's an honest man who escaped from a robbery attempt and they are pursuing him to silence him.  You don't know why they want him.  Should you tell the truth?  Kant would say "yes".  That under all circumstances, it is for the Higher Good that we should volunteer the truth. 

  
  

  That's a standard that very few of us would choose to live by.  I think that we all recognize that if we gave information to people bent on harm, then we would bear some responsibility for the harm they did.  So why am I stuck on Kant when there are obvious flaws in his viewpoint?

  
  

  It's my own predisposition to accept responsibility for taking care of "the group" first and myself second.  If there are a dozen people who would be affected/influenced by my behavior, then I have been known to take every one of their viewpoints into consideration before I act.  I will state my preference last.  I will make certain that nothing I do could harm you.  If I know that x, y, or z would cause my Mom stress (now keep in mind that my Mom is 62 and I'm 40), I will avoid the action where I can, and if I can't avoid the action, I will try to do it in such a way that she doesn't have to deal with it.  I would not lie about it, but I'd try very hard not to be in a position in which she'd have cause to ASK me whether or not I did x, y, or z.  

  
  

  Trying to live responsibly in this way makes me subject to the feelings, the desires, and the happiness of other people.  You see what I mean?  

  
  

  But ironically, Kant's imperative to do the thing that you should do rests on the foundation of freedom.  He notices that unless a person is free to choose, then no action they perform can be considered a moral action.  Then he constructs a towering argument which binds me into a place where I'm not free to choose at all. 

  
  

  This is ultimately the only logical position of humanity without God.  Nietzsche took this argument to it's extreme in his work.  He concluded that without God we have no choice but to become the shapers of our own values, and fashioners of our own lives.  But he described the responsibility that goes along with such a position as being terrifying in proportion.  In Thus Spake Zarathustra he wrote, "Alas grant me madness ... By being above the law I am the most outcast of outcasts."  The acceptance of the full measure of responsibility for all the possible ramifications of all our actions is the path of insanity. 

  
  

  I don't want to be insane.  I want to be a moral person.  But I cannot accept the logical end of being responsible for my every action.  Is there a way out of this quandry? 

  
  

  I think the answer is the pairing of freedom with equality.  I'm neither above nor below you.  I'm not responsible for you.  It's an old standard.  But to find balance, I must learn to love my neighbor as I love myself.  I can't place the needs of the many above the needs of the one, I must insert my needs into the equation.  Because, and I think even Kant would agree with this, if we each take care to have our own needs met, that's best for everyone involved.  

  
  

   

  • 9:36 am
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