From: [email protected] (malenor)


"Phil Roberts, Jr."  wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> malenor wrote:
> > 
> > "Phil Roberts, Jr."  wrote in message news:<[email protected]>...
> > >
> > > 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?
> 
> My own limited imagination apparently, and my assumption that justification
> is about rationality through and through.   Are you
> suggesting that we are obligated to conform to the CI for no reason
> whatsoever?
> 
Kant does mention "duty" 99 times in the Critique of Practical Reason,
for a reason. Your use of the term "reason" implies its meaning as a
motive. I like your tricky equivocations on terms, it makes me have to
stop and think. What is my reason for conforming to the CI, i.e., what
is my *motive* for doing so? In other words, you're talking about the
efficient cause of my behavior, but it is not an empirical cause,
rather, one generated internally and originally. And so through
reflection I am able to realize that there are two senses of "desire"
that impel me to act in the world, a lower and a higher. The lower
desires find their "reasons" in the empirical and psychological realms
(circumstances and inclinations). The higher desires find their
reasons in the transcendent. It is, for all intents and purposes, as
if I am saying that I do my duty for no apparent reason whatsoever,
"duty is its own reward," duty for the sake of duty. And, as far as
empirical conditions are concerned, this is the case.

But one must be careful and not read into this principle a motive for
self-sacrifice. The CI is the highest principle of the self and so to
discard the self is to discard the CI. And besides, a being of
positive emotional self-worth is far more likely to practice the
higher good in the world, than a being who is lowly and contemptible:

 "And now the law of duty, in consequence of the
*positive worth* which obedience to it makes us feel, finds easier
access through the respect for ourselves in the consciousness of our
freedom. When this is well established, when a man dreads nothing more
than to find himself, on self-examination, worthless and contemptible
in his own eyes, then every good moral disposition can be grafted on
it, because this is the best, nay, the only guard that can keep off
from the mind the pressure of ignoble and corrupting motives." (CPR2,
emphasis mine.)

This is interesting because it demonstrates the connection between
duty, self-worth and free will. Doing your duty brings positive
feelings of self-worth because you sense that you are a free,
undetermined being in control of yourself and your life. When you get
used to this state of being, soon you begin to dread the opposite
state ("worthless and contemptible"). When you feel high self-worth,
and this is an established state of mind such that you begin to dread
the opposite state of self-esteem, you develop a good moral
disposition, meaning, you become more and more predisposed to doing
your duty to reason. It is a self-sustaining cycle. On the other hand,
you have the being whose morality is contingent on external or
psychological factors (forces), who does not feel in control of
himself or his life, whose self-esteem is low and who has little
consciousness of his own freedom. To such a being the CI makes its
presence felt still through his awareness of his own contemptuousness,
despite the fact that the CI is hardly ever practiced. Such a being is
motivated merely by a hedonism either short-term (pleasure) or
long-term (happiness). Since the Ideas of reason still reign in all
human life, this being seeks a higher perfection, only it becomes
lower, empirical, and thus impossible to attain, as there is no such
thing as empirical perfection. It's not that happiness should be
rejected by the person of high moral worth, only, it does not become a
motivating factor. And the feeling that results from doing one's duty
is not the (imperfect) happiness created by the satisfaction of one's
lower needs (mitigated by the anxiety of knowing that the future might
not bring happiness), but the perfect *contentment* (which is more an
aesthetic feeling than moral) derived from achieving an accord, a
balance, a state of harmony within.