dr_who@umcp-cs.UUCP (07/31/83)
It's interesting that Alan Wexelblat has read Kant's works and I've read commentaries on it only. Anyway, I'm willing to defend Kant (to some extent) against the criticisms made so far. Alan Wexelblat's main criticism is that Kant's universality test is too restrictive -- it declares immoral, actions which we think are OK. Alan's examples 1 and 2 are instances of actions which seem OK, and yet seem to be ruled out by Kant's test. I will argue that they are not ruled out. Alan's example 3 is along the same line. Another criticism is that the universality test fails to rule out policies which should be ruled out. The community of "pure altruists" is an example. A third criticism alleges that Kantian morality requires perfect knowledge. A fourth denies that Kant justifies his claim that the universality test is necessary to morality. Wanting a limited good is not ruled out by the universality test. The universality test applies to "maxims," which are principles on which a person acts. Suppose my maxim is to take some of this limited good AS LONG AS this does not create severe scarcity (e.g., driving the price too high may be a measure of severe scarcity, in the case of the limited good oil). My maxim IS universalizable, I would not object to everyone's following it. Choosing a loved one over an unknown person to be rescued is not ruled out. The maxim to prefer a loved one IS universalizable, since a world in which people rescued strangers would be dispreferred to one in which people rescued loved ones. The people in the latter world would be happier, because loved ones would be more likely to be together in the latter world. Granted that I might be upset if a loved one said he rescued me BECAUSE OF a rational principle. But he doesn't have to say that: it's misleading. It would be more accurate to say that he rescued me because he loved me. He acted IN ACCORD WITH, rather than BECAUSE OF, a principle. As far as giving to CARE is concerned, I'm not sure the universality test requires this (although Kant seems to have thought so). But also, I don't find the idea terribly offensive. COUNTERINTUITIVE, yes, but I think any moral theory has to (and even should!) go against our moral intuitions in some cases. I would be suspicious of someone whose moral theory confirmed all his intuitions -- it just seems too convenient. Perhaps the universality test does not rule out "pure altruism". I think Kant would say that human nature rules it out, because nobody would want to live in a world where nobody could do anything or make anyone happy, and because we all come equipped with physical needs which inevitably create physical desires. Furthermore, the universality test is not the only formulation of the Categorical Imperative. A second formulation is "treat humanity, *whether in your own person or that of another*, always as an end and never merely as a means" (emphasis added). For an interpretation of Kant that says he does justify the universality test, see W. Michael Hoffman, *Kant's Theory of Freedom*, (Wash. DC: University press of America, 1979), esp. pp. 53-69. Kant says that "the mere concept of a categorical imperative ... provides us with the formula containing the only proposition that can be a categorical imperative" (quoted in Hoffman, p. 62). This concept is that of "a pure practical law ... given through reason completely *a priori*, and which is prescribed to us not in an empirically conditioned but in an absolute manner ... a product of pure reason." Products of pure reason are universal. The objection that held that Kantian morality requires perfect knowledge began with the claim that what is important is the "'greatest good' to the universe." But that claim makes Kant out to be a consequentialist, which most scholars on Kant would flatly deny. Kant was a "deontologist." But even if, contrary to fact, he were a consequentialist, he would not fault persons for incomplete knowledge. The morality of an action, in Kant's view, depends on the *maxim*.