06.14.09
Ethics and freedom
Comment on A Science Of Freedom
The post’s title referred to a chapter in World History And The Eonic Effect, related to but quite different than the material on Kant.
This commentary is interesting, and shows you are struggling with the complexities of Kant’s ethical theory, which can be very hard to understand, and, in the minds of some fool hardy souls, very easy to reject.
The point (if I understand your comment) is that Kant wishes to derive categorical imperatives by pure rationality alone. This has often been criticized, but the overall line of attack is brilliant, despite its incomplete character. The point then is that empirical observations can’t derive these moral laws which arrive ‘a priori’.
dandy said,
June 14, 2009 at 1:31 pm ·
“But it is otherwise with moral laws. These, in contradistinction
to natural laws, are only valid as laws, in so far as they can be
rationally established a priori and comprehended as necessary. In
fact, conceptions and judgements regarding ourselves and our conduct
have no moral significance, if they contain only what may be learned
from experience; and when any one is, so to speak, misled into
making a moral principle out of anything derived from this latter
source, he is already in danger of falling into the coarsest and
most fatal errors.” – Kant, from The Metaphysics Of Morals
First, why are conceptions and judgments drawn from experience irrelevant as judgments about the nature of moral laws, about laws of freedom? It is just because every action IS a product of freedom, so simple. We cannot expect that human actions will reflect laws of freedom because we cannot anticipate in which way each man would CHOOSE to use his freedom. They can choose to use it in any way – execute any kind of action from the set available to them. The idea in “laws of freedom” is that there is an idealistic way, a desired way to use the property of freedom of which we alone are in possession of. When faced a given circumstance we can choose to execute an “unlawful” action or a “lawful” action, examples abound.2. First, why are conceptions and judgments drawn from experience irrelevant as judgments about the nature of moral laws, about laws of freedom? Because we only see the phenomenal aspect of human activities – we cannot see their noumenal aspect of use of freedom, for good or for worse – only outside reflections of behaviour, not the motivation or reason behind it.
“But it is otherwise with moral laws. These, in contradistinction
to natural laws, are only valid as laws, in so far as they can be
rationally established a priori and comprehended as necessary.To discover the appropriate way in the use of freedom we have to explore it from a position that is remote from our simple natural dispositions and aversions. To arrive at a knowledge of what the right/good decision is to make in a given situation, we have to appeal instead to other set of principles, this one we learn about through rational induction and it is therefore not pertains to the resulted human activity shown by experience and is absolute in its decrees.
There’s a dichotomy between effects that seem to be influenced by natural causes, as it is in the world of physical laws and phenomena, where everything can more or less be predicted in accordance with immutable laws, and the realm of rational effects (human actions), there those effects cannot be predicted because physical laws of nature do not hold to be valid nor influential in the realm of free human conduct.
dandy said,
June 16, 2009 at 2:33 pm
“This commentary is interesting, and shows you are struggling with the complexities of Kant’s ethical theory, which can be very hard to understand, and, in the minds of some fool hardy souls, very easy to reject.
The point (if I understand your comment) is that Kant wishes to derive categorical imperatives by pure rationality alone. This has often been criticized, but the overall line of attack is brilliant, despite its incomplete character. The point then is that empirical observations can’t derive these moral laws which arrive ‘a priori’.”
The notion of morality implies an absolute manner of conduct necessitated in regard to our actions. We can make insufficient generalizations regarding what constitutes legitimate or illegitimate action, such as the generalization about stealing to be a bad thing to do in whatever culture we find ourselves, however primitive or developed, as Newton made a generalization about the principle of equality of action and reaction, but to derive moral principles absolutely as *LAWS* would require something more then implicationable induction from experience. In fact we can never arrive there by induction from experience, that’s the whole point. We do arrive there by going to the core issue underlying those considerations while looking at a man’s freedom to act.
dandy said,
June 28, 2009 at 5:23 pm
Does the principle of right in accordance with which we direct our actions also require a matching inner motivation? That is, is it necessary to act rightly from an inner directing force? The answer is yes and no at the same time. From the point of view of RIGHT it is not necessary, the inner motivation does not count as a determinate consequence in the field of right, all that is necessary is that actions does not violate the external right of people. However, from the point of view of VIRTUE it is necessary that each man choose to act rightly from an internal correct disposition, that his motivation to act the way he acts (rightly) comes from proper ground.