Robbing the grave of Immanuel Kant

By Michael Rosen
The Times Literary Supplement, October 15, 2008

Edited by Andy Ross

Kantian Ethics
By Allen W. Wood
Cambridge University Press, 360 pages

Allen W. Wood has written extensively about all aspects of Kant's thought over many years and he is co-editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. Kantian ethics as Wood describes it is put forward as a theoretical option in thinking about ethical questions. It is answerable not to textual accuracy or exegetical standards of Kant interpretation but to the right standards for thinking philosophically about ethical theory and ethical issues.

In fact, Kantian Ethics contains a great deal of textual exegesis and some very robust criticism of those who, in Wood's opinion, misinterpret Kant. Once those misinterpretations are cleared away, Wood claims,Kant's own ethical theory is much more defensible than most recent interpreters think.

Woods believes that parts of Kant's theory must now be abandoned, for example Kant's idea that human beings belong to both a "noumenal" and an empirical realm. Beyond that, he claims that central elements of the theory have been widely misunderstood. He also thinks Kant has sometimes drawn conclusions from his own ideas that are inconsistent with their basic inspiration.

Do we have a duty to tell the truth even when the consequences of doing so will be very bad indeed? For example, should we tell the truth to a would-be murderer trying to locate his victim? Kant says yes, we do have such a duty. Wood seems to think that Kant's absolute prohibition of lying is only intended to apply to some rather narrowly defined special cases. But it appears that Kant's wider view is also uncompromising.

Kantian ethics rests on a single fundamental value, the absolute worth of rational nature as giving moral laws ("personhood" or "humanity in my person", as Kant often calls it). This view is extraordinarily radical. It seems natural to think that if any action is to be good, it must be good for something that is morally valuable. But Kant's idea of personhood is that as long as I exist as an agent, I have that morally valuable quality. It can't be increased by making me happier or decreased by harming me.

Wood says that "the demands made on us by this value depend on the kinds of conduct required to show respect for it". I think that this is right. If a law tells us to do something, then we show respect for the law by doing as it tells us to. But for that we need to know the content of the law. The dominant tradition of Kant interpretation looks for this content via the moral law – "act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law". Where does the content of the moral law come from?

The answer, as I see it, is that the idea of "showing respect" for the value of personhood is primary in giving content to the moral law: we follow the law by respecting what is intrinsically valuable rather than respect the law by following it. To respect personhood we ought to respect persons. Respecting other people requires us to respect their power to choose their own paths in life and to promote their happiness. Our duties towards ourselves as persons are founded, Kant says, "on a certain love of honour consisting in the fact that a man values himself". This requires us to perfect ourselves.

Such are the deep roots of the idea that lying is always prohibited whether or not it promotes happiness. A lie violates a duty to ourselves; it is dishonourable and makes us "contemptible". Similar considerations also explain Kant's views about punishment. Kant believes that punishment must be retributive. We should punish wrongdoers to the degree that matches the gravity of their crime, including the death penalty for murderers. Wood finds this part of Kant's theory as unappealing as the rigoristic account of lying.

On the conventional, modern view that a good action must benefit a morally valuable being, it is hard to see how such a radically retributive view of punishment could be defended. Punishment is a way of depriving the person being punished of welfare. For Kant, what matters above all is respecting the inner core of moral personhood we all carry within us. And justice means holding moral agents responsible for their actions. Punishment is a way of expressing respect for moral personhood.

The fact that we value personhood within ourselves does not mean that we should value life above all things. Because personhood is not just an empirical property of human beings, it can be honoured even when life has to be sacrificed. The point is to uphold justice. "For if justice goes, there is no longer any value in men's living on the earth."

I think that Kant's rigorism is rooted much more deeply in his thought than Wood would have us believe. The idea that ethics is based upon a single value, personhood, which cannot be increased or diminished by any action that we take, ties Kant's ethics to the picture of human beings as poised between two worlds, the noumenal and the empirical. Our aim in the empirical world should be to act in ways that are expressive of our membership of the noumenal world.

Kantian Ethics is an important and challenging book. The position that it presents is original and its argument is supported by exceptional knowledge. But Wood's passion for using Kant to support his own moral convictions sometimes lead him to overlook dimensions of Kant's theory.
 

Michael Rosen is Professor of Government at Harvard University.
 

AR  On the basis of the slender evidence I have now, I side with Rosen against Wood here. Kant saw his ethics as rooted in the same philosophical Gedankenwelt as his metaphysics. Attempts to reinterpret the Kantian views that challenge contemporary liberal thought in order to make them look more modern do Kant a disservice. His views are rooted in classical ideas and ideals. It is the more modern views that stand in need of reinterpretation if we are to recover the full depth of classical insights on honour and justice and so on.