From: [email protected] (malenor)


"Phil Roberts, Jr."  wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> Ed Cryer wrote:
> > 
> > 
> > Kant rates in my opinion as one of the greatest philosophers who ever lived.
> > I would hold "The Critique of Pure Reason" to be the single most important
> > book of philosophy ever written and concur with Goethe who said that to read
> > it was to enter a brightly lit room. But when Kant moved from epistemology
> > to ethics he slipped. He's famous for the line "the starry heavens above us
> > and the moral law within us", and also for saying that he had to limit
> > knowledge in order to make room for faith. Don't forget that he was a
> > Lutheran Pietist by upbringing and practice and that his categorical
> > imperative comes very close to "do unto others as you would have them do
> > unto you".
> > 
> 
> Let me employ Ed's intelligent remarks as a spring board for reintroducing
> the intial thought with which I began this thread.  A bit of crass 
> self promotion if you don't mind.
> 
> The categorical imperative isn't actually a categorical
> imperative.  It is entailed by the implicit premise, 'Given that one 
> chooses to be rational'.

snip

This is incorrect. The CI holds whether you choose to be rational or
not. That is why it is a law, a law of human nature, and not a rule
contingent on one's subjective choices.  It is, rather, governmental
law that changes in its application to the penal code, when it
recognizes that sometimes people are in a situation where they cannot
choose. The CI on the other hand, is not a matter of subjective whim.
It's not a matter of, for example, waking up in the morning and
saying: "I choose not to be rational today, therefore morality no
longer applies to me." Where did you get the idea that this was the
idea behind the CI?