i just kant decide

Great Debates
1

ok, i hope this is the right place to post this. i was debating it before, so i figured it was best suited for
the board about debates. plus it is philosophical, which people are always debating. anyway:

so my friend is studying immanuel kant, and was telling me about kant’s two big - i dunno, thesis or ideas or whatnot.
they are, basically:

1. if you would will that anyone else be able to do something, then it is ok for you to do it. for example, if you said, "i will that everyone be able to pee in the

soap dispensers at dennys" (and mean it) then you would be able to pee in the soap dispensers at dennys too.
2. you have to treat people as an end in themselves rather than as a means to an end. lying to someone, using them - those things are all no good.

and, you can’t use #1 to deactivate #2. no fair saying “i will that everyone else can treat me like shit, so therefore i can treat everyone else like shit.”
now, the big hypothetical situation is this: suppose you are a person living in nazi germany who is hiding a bunch of jewish people in your house. one morning, a nazi officer knocks on your door and asks you “so…you hiding any
people in there? any ** jewish ** people?”

assuming you are trying to follow the philosophy set out above, what do you do? if you lie to him, you save the people in your house but end up treating him like a means to an end (because you lie), or you tell the truth and basically sentence all the people in your house to a death camp.

now, obviously to me, it is better to lie to one person than to kill a bunch of people, but what is the correct rationalization for that within the system?
i hope i explained this clearly.
if not just let me know : )

2

The rationalization is made by qualifying the terms. In this case, by dehumanizing a particular segment of the population, it is no longer necessary to apply the general rules to that segment.

For some interesting essays to this end, check out: Fest, Joachim C. The Face of the Third Reich. 1963. Translated by Michael Bullock. New York: Pantheon, 1970.

3

Channeling e.e. cummings there, are we, Sneeze? :slight_smile:

Anyway, assuming one is trying to live by the two tenets set forth, then it seems to me that, aside from (hopefully) saving the lives of those you harbor, you are inviting others to lie to you (tenet #1). You are also treating the Nazi as a means to an end, rather than an end unto himself (tenet #2). Of course, if you turn in the Jews you are harboring, you are treating them as a means to an end (presumably, the end being you don’t get killed by the Nazis for harboring Jews).

So, it appears that however you act, you will be in violation of your beliefs (assuming those two ideas constituted the sum total of your philosophy). Given the choice, then, it would undoubtedly be better to lie to the Nazi. Of the two possible ends (“tell the Nazi the truth, all the Jews die,” or “lie to the Nazi, all the Jews live”), you have violated tenet #1 is in the least damaging manner (you’ve indicated that it’s OK for others to lie to you, but not to rat you out), as well as #2 (you’ve used one Nazi as a means to an end, rather than a number of Jews as a means to an end). This would seem to be true even assuming you assign the same relative value as humans to the Nazi and the Jews (which I suspect most would not…).

Unfortunately, I don’t know the first thing about Kant’s philosophies, so I can’t say for sure what the ‘proper’ rationalization should be, but that would be mine!

4

There’s more to Kant, and I think he (in the now fairly well known “murderer runs into your house looking for his target which ran through moments before” scenario) actually rationalized it and very well, with no contradictions. To see it, read his Groundwork on the Basis of Morals (I think).

Basically, the murderer is treating you and the victim as a means to an end. By lying to the murderer you are treating him and the victim both as ends by preserving the life of the victim and preventing the murderer from murdering (a heinous crime).

Of course, that’s my rationalization, I think Kant’s is both different and far more eloquent.

5

btw, a good book that explains most of philosophy fairly well, but not too deep is Sophie’s World by Jostein Gaarder.

I think Surgoshan summed it up pretty well. Kant can be explained somewhat by the Golden Rule. Since you would want someone to lie to hide you from the Nazis, you should lie to the Nazis. But you’re lying, something which you probably don’t want others to do to you. But by lying, you are stopping the Nazi from carrying out heinous orders, which you might want someone to do to you. So it’s win-win. I think.

6

forgot my sig. thought it’d be appropriate.

7

re: the Kantian moral imperitive and the Nazi asking for jews:

The Nazi is asking whether you have any Jews in your house in order to kill them. He has chosen to act without "good will," and therefore to live outside our Kantian moral universe. The choice presented is to tell the truth to this "man," and therefore avoid using him as a means, or to lie and save the lives of those you are hiding.
But because the Nazi has, through his will and action, taken himself out of our moral universe, the normal restrictions of means vs. ends do not apply. Is he treating you as an end? The Jews? No. You are not obligated to treat him according to Kant's universal moral law because he has rejected it.
8

Au contraire. It is possible, you see, that the Nazi IS within Kants code and the Jews are not. Thus, the Nazi is not required to treat the Jews by his morality, much like I wasn’t required to treat the Nazi by morailty.

I am a fan of Kant, but these sort of things always get to me. Subjective reality I can tolerate to a point (mainly because I can turn it around to be objective) but “create-a-moral” subjectivity really pains me to argue. Subjective morality finds itself standing on quicksand and defeats itself by squirming to explain.

Something I don’t feel is clear (either in the OP, for Kant, or both) is if a person can use himself (in th masculine case :)) or not…for example, is working in a capitalistic society using yourself as a means to an end? Not to hijack, just to point out that this position is very soupy…

9

Since it would be unfair to lie to the Nazi and use him as a means to an end, you must look to Rule #2 for your answer:

It seems very obvious that you need to end the Nazi. Shoot him and bury him in the back yard. That is the only way to stay with in the rules and do what is right.

10

[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by aynrandlover *
**

It would seem that denying a person the right to use themselves is to treat them as a means to an end (the end of social justice or whatever).

On the other hand, certain totally personal actions, like suicide, are immoral under the categorical imperative (on Kant’s own interpretation) just because they violate some idea of society-wide order, so it’s possible that there is some line we cannot cross, like selling oneself into slavery.

11

I thought the only good thing of itself was good will. Acts of themselves are not good but only good will motivating them is. The means vs ends is a test of the motivation not the act. Kant made me dizzy.

12

If I remember my Kant correctly (and it was many years ago), motivation to act morally defeats the moral quality of the act. In other words, having a strong emotion that something is morally good to do eliminates any virtue in the act because one is acting from the motivation.

Yes, it’s dizzying. Kant thought that the only truly, completely moral acts were ones done out of purest duty, no matter how one felt about the act itself. The best example is a miser giving to charity - since you know he hates the act, you know he’s acting only out of a moral duty to which he is compelled by the rational realization of the duty. In other words, you know what’s right and you do what’s right because it’s so, but you’re at least indifferent to the performance of the act itself.

No one ever said Kant was easy. He could speak for fifteen minutes just uttering one sentence, which was in German, so all the verbs were at the end. Imagine his university lectures.

13

yamo1, kant makes me dizzy too - arguing him (atleast when i argue about him with this one particular friend) is like riding on a merry-go-round; you just go around and around and around and around until you have get off and throw up.
that’s why i posted the question here - not because i wanted to make you guys throw up too, but because i figured there was probably a doper or two among the masses who open up a new perspective on the issue for me.

this arguing friend and i basically agreed with what Surgoshan said, btw, and then, instead of stopping while we were ahead, we went on to the less important but far stickier (to us, anyway) issue of white lies.
anyway - tally ho
: )

14

Immanuel Kant, but Natalie Would.

15

Really? What Kantian ideal has he violated? He is trying to kill Jews? So? What if he believes that everyone should kill Jews? And while the Nazis did make some soap and stuff out of some Jews, for the most part they killed Jews just to kill Jews. So are they not treating Jews as ends, not means?

It seems to me, though, that the second principle contradicts the first. For instance, suppose that you notice that someone forgotten his wallet. So you now have two basic choices: pick the wallet up and run after the guy to give it back to him, or keep it for yourself. Now, my guess is that Kant would say that the categorical imperitive demands that you do the former. But then, aren’t your actions towards the man motivated by moral concerns, and therefore directed towards those concerns, rather the man himself? Are you not, then, treating the man as a means to the end of morality? I think that this is what hansel was getting at.

16

I believe that this is a seriously mistaken view of Kantian morality. On Kant’s view, morality inhered in the rational nature of the universe. There is one moral code, rationally determined and determinable by rational agents (us). There’s no his morality or her morality. There is one morality, and that someone acts immorally doesn’t mean they have removed themselves from the sphere of moral obligation.

I think Kant would say that it’s rational to lie to protect someone from greater harm; thus, it’s moral to lie to the Nazi.