A Kantian Guide to Life
Episode Stats
Summary
Karen Storr is a professor of philosophy and the author of "Choosing Freedom: A Kantian Guide to Life," a book about Immanuel Kant's ethical system. In this episode, she explains Kant's philosophy and how it can be applied to everyday life.
Transcript
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Brett McKay here and welcome to another edition of the Art of Manliness podcast.
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If you've had some contact with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, there's a good chance you found
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it abstract, heady, and hard to understand. But my guests would say that it's full of rich,
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usable insights on how to become better people. And fortunately for us, she's got a true knack
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for making Kant's wisdom really accessible. Karen Storr is a professor of philosophy and the
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author of Choosing Freedom, A Kantian Guide to Life. Today on the show, she brings Kant's ethical
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system and categorical imperative down to earth and shares how it can be applied to our everyday
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lives. We discuss Kant's belief in our great moral potential and duty to improve ourselves
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and how his insights can help us make right choices. Karen explains Kant's ideas on the
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difference between negative and positive freedom, the importance of treating people as ends and not
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just means, the tension between love and respect, why ingratitude could be considered a satanic
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vice, how practicing manners can make us better people, and more. You can't miss this episode.
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Sorry, I had to do that. Out of the show is over. Check out our show notes at aom.is slash Kant.
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All right, Karen Storr, welcome to the show. Thank you. Thank you for having me.
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So you are a professor of philosophy who has written and researched a lot about the Prussian
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philosopher, Immanuel Kant. And you wrote a book about his philosophy called Choosing Freedom,
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A Kantian Guide to Life, which is, it's a very reader-friendly introduction to Kant's ethics.
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Because I think if you took a college ethics course, you definitely covered Kant. But you
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probably, like me, found Kant to be kind of abstract and hard to understand. But you did a
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really good job of making his ethical system really accessible. So if people aren't familiar
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with Kant, why do you think this philosopher of the 18th century is still relevant today in the 21st?
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Yeah, so I think Kant gives us an incredibly powerful ethical theory that's capable of illuminating
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all kinds of human problems that are still very important to us, and also giving us guidance on
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how to maybe think about solving them. And that's because his theory has these robust concepts like
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things like autonomy and respect and dignity and equality. And he has really useful things to say
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about all of those. And why do you think, I mean, in my experience,
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it's sort of the popular culture. I think Stoicism gets a lot of play, maybe Aristotelian virtue ethics,
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Nietzsche, people like to talk about Nietzsche. But Kant gets overlooked. Why do you think that is?
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Yeah, well, I think this is partly Kant's own fault. He's really hard to read. And I think for a lot
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of people, it can seem kind of dry, or like disconnected from their lives in ways that Aristotle,
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the Stoics don't. But I think it isn't. I think that part of the problem is that there's a tendency
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to read sort of small bits of Kant's work, but we get a better sense of who he was and what he cared
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about if we read a wider array of things that he wrote. And once we do that, both sometimes the
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reading gets a little bit easier, and we can kind of see what Kant was about in ways that we can't
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always by just focusing, for instance, on his famous groundwork.
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And how would you describe how Kantian ethics differs from other ethical systems,
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for example, like Aristotelian virtue ethics? Because I know that's another area of your
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Yeah, so I think Kant actually probably has more in common with both Aristotle and the Stoics
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than it might seem. He was actually very influenced, particularly by Stoicism. And he's often talking
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in ways where it's clear he's responding to the ancients. So one of the hallmarks of Kant's theory
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is his emphasis on reason. That's something that is absolutely present in Aristotle and the Stoics
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too. Kant also emphasizes an ideal in ways that Aristotelians and Stoics do as well. In Kant's
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case, the ideal in question is what he calls a person with a goodwill. So there's many ways in
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which the structure of Kant's theory is very much in line with other sorts of ethical theories.
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But Kant's theory is also very modern in other ways. He's an enlightenment philosopher,
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and this is reflected in the kinds of things that he cares about, focusing on things like
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individual rights, political liberty, problems about coercion and consent, religious tolerance.
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These are all problems that Kant saw in the world around him that he also wanted to solve. So it's a
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different spin on ethical problems than you'd find in ancient philosophers, but there's, I think,
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actually more in common across them than there is that separates them.
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Yeah. And what do you think are the biggest misconceptions people have about Kant? Because
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as you said, he's hard to understand. He's hard to read sometimes. So that can cause a lot of
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misconceptions. What are the biggest ones you've seen in your career?
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So I think probably the biggest one is that Kant only cares about us as rational beings, that he's
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uninterested in actual problems of actual human life. I think that's a common portrayal of Kant,
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but I think it's just false. And I think it's, you can see that it's false. If you sort of read
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into other things that he wrote, he had a lot to say about moral psychology and about sort of the
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complicated conditions of actual human lives. So that's probably the biggest. There's also a
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tendency to treat Kant as very focused on individuals and not at all in communities. I think this is also
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a mistake. I think that he does actually have lots to say about how we live with other people in
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communities. And then I think the third one, and maybe this is the most damaging one of all
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for people who studied him at all in school, is that thinking of Kant as being incredibly rigid and
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dogmatic about things, particularly people often think of him as someone who had an absolute
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prohibition on lying. And that actually, I think is, his views online are misunderstood. They're actually
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much more nuanced than people realize. But I think that all of those are not quite right. There's not
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that there's no truth to any of them, but they're an oversimplification or kind of a character that
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the full picture of Kant's work is way more interesting, way more focused on how we make
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sense of the problems that we face as real, normal, frail, embodied human beings than people realize.
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Yeah, I had that last misconception. I've always thought of Kant as, you know, he's a deontological
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philosopher, which he is, it's about duty. But his idea of duty isn't totally rigid and you have to
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stick, no matter what, here's this rule and you got to follow the rule. He is, like you said,
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Aristotelian. There's instances where you have to use some discretion and judgment to figure these
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things out. Yes, absolutely. I mean, there's no question that Kantianism presents us with certain
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kinds of absolute prohibition. So most people are familiar with trolley problems and maybe familiar
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with the version that says, hey, can you push the guy off the bridge in order to stop the trolley?
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Kant's answer to that is going to be like, no, that's just not a thing you can do.
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So there are some absolute sort of principles, but not really as many as people think. And they
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don't have quite the form that people think. He's not really trying to sort of create a rule book
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for us about how to live. Instead, he's trying to call our attention to certain sort of crucial
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features of us and the way we relate to other human beings that are going to kind of guide the
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way that we act. So you start out the book saying to understand Kant's ethical system, you have to
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understand his idea of human nature and I guess the telos of humans. You can say this about any
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philosopher. If you want to understand Aristotle, you have to understand what he thought humans were
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made for, their ends or even Nietzsche or whatever. So how did Kant view humans and what was his telos?
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You mentioned that idea of an ideal human is someone with goodwill. So flesh that out a little
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Yes. Oh, I'd love to do this because of course people do think rightly so of Aristotle as a
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theorist who's grounded in human nature and people often don't think of Kant that way, but in fact he
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is. And one of the things I find so interesting and actually quite appealing about Kant is that Kant
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thinks that sort of as a matter of human nature, we're basically pretty much a mess. You know,
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we're prone to all kinds of wickedness and frailties. We've got all these issues ourselves,
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but he also thinks we are capable of being so much more than we are. So there's a pretty big gap
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for Kant between sort of what human nature is like and what human beings are capable of being.
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So it's both like sort of pessimistic and optimistic at the same time, if that makes sense.
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But the point about the teleology and about sort of the direction of humanity, this is really
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controversial within Kant because it's kind of hard to know how he was talking about it, but there's a
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general idea behind it that Kant thinks that we are oriented both sort of naturally and actually
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sort of morally we're drawn toward improvement in progress. And this is true of us as individuals
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and also true of us as communities of people. So Kant thought that progress is something we can do
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and that we're sort of oriented toward doing as a matter of nature, but it's also not just going to
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unfold on its own. We have to do things. We have to act to make sure that we are becoming better and
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that our communities are becoming better. And Kant's ethics is very much about how to take that
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action, how to become better, how to progress. No. And he even says, because we have that natural
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orientation to want to get better. He says, we have a duty. That's one of our duties in life is to
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make ourselves better, primarily ethically, like become more moral people.
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Yes, absolutely. He does think it's a duty. So Kant sees us as sort of creatures who could
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sort of go either way. We have tendencies that take us in the direction of evil or at least failures of
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various kinds, but he also thinks we have the capacity to choose otherwise. And that capacity to
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choose what is right or what is good is for Kant what is so central about us. And on Kant's view,
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we do have a duty to do that and to make ourselves into the kind of people who will be better and who
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will make good choices and help move our communities toward better versions of what they are now.
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And so it is, that's like our main moral goal is to try to make some progress as best we can.
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I think people listening might've heard that metaphor that Kant made about our human nature.
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He called us crooked timber, basically. So in our job as, and we say carpenters of ourselves is to
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make something beautiful out of this crooked timber we've been given.
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Yes. Yes. To straighten ourselves out, basically, as best we can. Kant also recognizes that we are
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never going to fully succeed, at least not in this life, because it's just not possible. But we can
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always be trying. We can always be attempting to make something better out of the kind of mess that we
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are. And this is sort of the goal of our striving in many ways, but he's also really hopeful that we
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can do it. Like we're not fated to stay crooked in a sense. We can make ourselves better. We can
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straighten ourselves out. So a lot of ethicists, particularly Aristotelian virtue ethicists,
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they focus on the types of virtues people should develop to live a good life. And Kant does that too.
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We'll talk about some of that today, but you point out that Kant, he actually spends a lot of time
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talking about vices. And the language he uses about vices is really delicious. It's, you know,
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he calls things satanic and just, you know, just really great words. So why does Kant spend a lot
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of time focusing on vice in his work? So Kant does spend a lot of time on vice. And even more
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than I realized, you know, I've read Kant's works more times than I can count. And it wasn't in so sort
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of like, until I was sort of far in that I realized how much of his discussions about us are framed in
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vice terms. So Kant, it's not that he doesn't care about virtue. He does care about virtue. He thinks
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of virtue as a kind of strength in doing what's right in the face of like obstacles and challenges
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of different kinds. So he recognizes that some of these obstacles are outside of us, but he also
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thinks a lot of them are inside of us. And the challenge is to sort of recognize the things that
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are getting in the way of our own moral progress. And vice is, he talks about individual vices,
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and he also talks about vice as kind of a catch-all. But vice is a way of thinking about ourselves in
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relationship to other people that sort of warps our reasoning. At one point, he calls the vices
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monsters that we have to fight, which I think is funny language. But vices have a tendency to sort of
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block us from doing what we need to progress. And the reason why he emphasizes them so much, I think,
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is that he thinks that when it comes to being better, like sort of getting a grip on our vices
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and our character is probably the most of the battle. He doesn't think that the challenge necessarily
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is in figuring out what to do. I mean, so sometimes it is, of course, there are really difficult moral
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problems. But in many cases, the real problem is like getting ourselves to do the thing that we
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already know is right. And that's where the sort of fighting vice comes in.
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No, I think people can probably understand this. If you can just go through your life
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avoiding vice, you're probably going to have a good life, right? If you just like follow the
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Ten Commandments, don't kill people, don't lie, don't commit adultery, what else? Don't covet,
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whatever. You're probably going to have a decent life. And then, you know, anything above that with
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that virtue, those strengths you develop is going to be like icing on the cake. But if you know people
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who, you know, they lie, they're constantly, you know, philandering, and they're constantly
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just worried about what other people have, and they're comparing themselves, they're usually
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Right. Yeah. And they're also, I think, going to be sort of thinking about things in the wrong way.
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So for Kant, vices often arise out of our sort of desire to put ourselves first in a variety of ways.
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It could be like put our own interests or, you know, desires above the desires and interests of others,
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or to kind of want to claim a sort of standing for ourselves that we're not willing to grant to
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others. We want to feel sometimes superior to people. Sometimes we tend to feel inferior to
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them. And so these are all ways that shape our interactions with the world, like the person we
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feel entitled to stuff, we feel angry or resentful when we don't get our way. All of those for Kant are
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types of vices. And they block us from like living happily and having good friendships and all those
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things. But they also just interfere with our capacity to reason well, Kant thinks. So we're
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going to be getting the world wrong if we have vices. We're going to be getting our relationships
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wrong if we're vicious. And so for Kant, like it's like the first step is to like sort of know thyself
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and as best one can try to rid oneself of the vices to which we're prone.
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All right. Start straightening that crooked timber.
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Okay. So let's dig into his ethics a little bit more. Let's talk about his famous categorical
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imperative. This is a really complex nuance. It took you several chapters to walk people through
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this. So I think you can probably dedicate a whole podcast to this, but what is the categorical
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imperative and how does this help us achieve more freedom in our lives?
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Yes. So this is really very much the heart of what Kant is about in many ways. Although in the book,
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I also say that I think sometimes the focus on the categorical imperative can distract us from
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other things that Kant wants to do, but it's definitely central. So let me just start quickly
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with the idea of freedom. So Kant has this interesting view. I mean, there's lots to say
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about freedom, but he thinks of freedom in a couple of different ways. One way is in terms
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of what he calls negative freedom. Negative freedom is basically not being determined by anything else.
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And Kant interestingly thinks we can't actually know for sure whether or not we're free. We don't
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really know. Maybe the world is really determined. Maybe we don't really have an ability to make
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choices, but he thinks that we can't help, but think of ourselves as being free because when
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from sort of the inside or what philosophers might call a deliberative perspective, we have to think
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of ourselves as capable of making choices that we can't just think of ourselves as something that's
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pulled along by fate or by nature in some way. So we have to think of ourselves as capable of making
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choices. But for Kant, there's another kind of freedom that matters more in some ways, which is
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about using that freedom to choose well. Because we all know that it's possible to choose badly because
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we all do it all the time. If we think about, look at the world around us and we see people
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as choosing, making bad choices, but they're choosing them sometimes because they're caught up in
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their desires for things like money or power or whatever it is. And those desires can take hold
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of us in a way. So this is really well exemplified in, you know, like the Lord of the Rings, like the
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desire for the one ring, you know, people become almost enslaved by their own desires, their own
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themselves in a way. And this is an old idea because it goes back to Plato's Republic. It's actually where
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that idea of the ring comes from, where Plato makes this really interesting claim that the life of a
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tyrant is like the worst possible life because the tyrant is like the most enslaved person of all.
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So Kant's idea of freedom, and this is getting to the categorical imperative, but his idea of freedom
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is kind of in the same vein. This idea that I have this power of choice, but I can use it well or badly.
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To use it badly is to use it in ways that don't really reflect my nature and my capacities as a
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rational being. And so one of the ways we can see this is like when we all procrastinate, which of course
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everybody does. So like when you procrastinate, it's a strange phenomenon because in some sense
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you are choosing, like you're doing, you're sitting there on the couch playing video games or
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something instead of exercising or doing your work or sleeping. And no one's making you do this. No
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one's holding a gun to your head, but you're still doing it. And Kant would say that there's a sense in
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which that's free, but also a sense in which it's not. Because to be free in this, what Kant calls a
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positive sense is to use your reason well, to choose wisely. And sometimes that's going to mean
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constraining yourself. And to choose wisely is to choose and act on principles, this is Kant's view,
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that are rationally defensible in our own eyes and the eyes of others. And this is sort of the heart of
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the categorical imperative. Because Kant thinks that when we're exercising our positive freedom,
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when we're choosing well, he thinks that we are going to employ a principle of reasoning to which
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he gives this name, the categorical imperative. Okay. That's a great setup. Yeah. So let's dig into
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the categorical imperative. All right. So the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative,
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Kant thinks, is basically a principle of common sense in many ways. He thinks already how a good
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person thinks about their choices, but he has this sophisticated structure. So it's an imperative.
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And that means it's a command, but it's a command of reason, not a command that somebody else is giving
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us. And it's binding on us and binding on everyone, every rational being universally. And it doesn't
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depend on what we want or what we care about, but on how we sort of think about ourselves as rational
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beings. So there's a bunch of different formulas. Well, there's at least three formulations of it. The one
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that people often know the most about is what's called the universal law formulation. So on this
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one, Kant says that we should always act on maxims that we can will to be a universal law. So what does
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that mean? Well, it's kind of like when people think, well, what if everybody did that? Or something
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like the golden rule. Although it's a little bit different for Kant, because the idea here is that
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to act well is to act on principles that are kind of rationally defensible in a community of rational
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agents. So, and by that, it's a kind of principle that you could will that other people also have as
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their own. So here's an example that I think makes this clear. It's not in Kant, but it's similar.
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Think about cutting in line. So not everybody has lines, different cultures think differently about
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lining up, but in a culture that does use lines as a way of getting people to sort of behave fairly
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when someone cuts in line, because they just don't feel like standing in line, they're treating
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themselves as a kind of exception. Like, okay, I'm going to operate according to a rule that I don't
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want other people to operate by because if everybody cut in lines, there'd be no lines. So I want to
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act on a maxim or a principle, I'll cut to the front of the line when I don't feel like waiting
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that I don't want other people to act on. So I'm like making a rule for myself that puts me at the
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center of the universe in some sense and not others. And Kant thinks that this is actually irrational
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because there's nothing about me that makes me so special that I get to cut to the front of the line.
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And so in doing this, I'm claiming a status for myself that I don't really have, that I'm like,
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not everybody's equal. And Kant thinks this is irrational. And so that categorical imperative
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in that form serves as a kind of like check on us to be like, are we actually thinking of us as
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equal to everybody else here? And the categorical imperative is a way of sort of seeing when we're
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doing that and when we're not. Okay. I like the example of cutting in line. I think that really
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does explain it. And I think you've probably seen this in other areas of our life on a day-to-day
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basis. Whenever you think, why I'm the exception here, Kant would say, well, maybe not. Because as
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you said, it not only are you put yourself in a position of like as the center of the universe,
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which he thinks is irrational and it's going to hurt the community, but it's also in the end,
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it couldn't end up hurting you. If everyone decided to follow that exception that you want to make
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for yourself, then it's probably going to hurt you eventually, right? If you decide, well,
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if everyone could just cut in line, well, then when you need to get something, you're probably
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not going to be able to get it because it's just chaos and you end up hurting yourself eventually.
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Yeah. You're frustrating your own purposes, which is irrational on Kant's view.
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We're going to take a quick break for your words from our sponsors.
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And now back to the show. So that's one formulation of the categorical imperative.
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Yeah. So the other, a second formulation is what's usually called the humanity formulation.
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And this one, and Kant thinks these are all equivalent, but they're different ways of saying
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the same thing. The humanity formulation tells us that we always have to act in a way that treats
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humanity in ourselves and in other people as an end in itself and never as a mere means.
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And so this is often sort of spelled out in terms of treating ourselves and others as having dignity
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and respecting that dignity. And there's all kinds of implications of this principle.
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That principle is actually the one that Kant uses more often and one that often shows up most
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in discussions about Kant's ethics. So the universal law formulation is more famous in many ways,
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but the humanity formulation is one that actually gets used a lot.
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Well, let's talk about the humanity formulation. Cause I think, as you said, this, this shows up in
00:23:30.780
all parts of our life. And that's why I think it makes it such a useful and powerful idea. So let's
00:23:37.620
talk about treating people as ends and not just means. So what are some examples of us treating people
00:23:44.940
as ends? And then also examples of treating people as means?
00:23:49.920
Yeah. So Kant thinks of it sort of the most foundational part of it is actually sort of
00:23:55.360
not treating people as what he calls a mere means. And so this is, there's a common sense equivalent to
00:24:00.880
this that we're all familiar with this idea of just like using people, seeing them as objects that
00:24:05.760
you can manipulate for your own purposes, however noble your purposes are, but to see them as things in
00:24:11.940
the world that you can use that are free for you to use. So back to the trolley problem, you know,
00:24:17.500
you're pushing the guy off the bridge to stop the trolley. You're using him as a mere means to stop
00:24:22.480
the trolley. And on Kant's view, you don't have, you're not entitled to do that because that's not
00:24:27.840
treating him as having dignity. So to make sure that we don't treat people as a mere means, that's a way
00:24:36.320
of sort of setting, we might describe as boundaries around the kinds of things that we can do to other
00:24:41.420
human beings. And so it's going to rule out killing them, understandably. It's also going to rule out
00:24:46.320
trying to coerce them or manipulate them in a variety of ways. It's going to rule out trying to thwart or
00:24:53.060
get around the reason. This is why Kant thinks it's wrong to lie to people, for the most part, because
00:24:58.020
you're trying to manipulate their way of understanding the world. So those are all going to serve as sort of
00:25:03.240
foundational constraints on how we behave toward people and ourselves, because he thinks this applies
00:25:09.580
to us. But Kant says there's also other things that we need to do in order to treat people in a fully
00:25:16.360
respectful way and to really respect their dignity. And for Kant, he describes that as treating them in
00:25:22.460
his technical language as setters of ends or of people who have projects and interests of their own.
00:25:29.360
And for Kant, this plays out in a duty to sort of help people with their projects. So in a practical
00:25:35.860
example, let's suppose that you're driving home from work and you see somebody stopped on the side
00:25:40.440
of the road with a flat tire. You have a couple of choices here. One choice would be like, I think
00:25:44.880
I'll try to like run them down. So that would obviously be a violation of their dignity, treating
00:25:49.040
them as a mere means. But it's not just that, because you might think, huh, maybe I should stop and help
00:25:54.320
them. And to stop and help them is to respect them in a somewhat different way, but also really
00:26:00.420
important to respect them as someone who, you know, needs to get home, who has a flat tire and
00:26:05.680
could use a hand. And Kant thinks both of those are part of treating people with dignity.
00:26:10.520
And this can get tricky when you're trying to figure out, suss out, treating people as mere means
00:26:15.380
and treating them as an end. Because oftentimes our roles in society, particularly in the marketplace,
00:26:20.800
we are presenting ourselves as means, right? Like a carpenter is there to fix people's stuff,
00:26:25.020
right? Or you're a professor. So your means is, you know, people go to you to learn things.
00:26:30.380
What would Kant say, how do you figure out like, you know, when you've crossed the line where you're
00:26:34.380
using someone as a means, but then it's just, you're treating them just as a means and not as an end?
00:26:40.200
Yeah, that's a really good question. And it is really hard to figure out where the line is,
00:26:45.560
because sometimes it's kind of fuzzy. Like there's some really clear cases of treating someone as a
00:26:50.580
mere means where you're like, yeah, you're really just using that person. You're seeing them as
00:26:54.340
nothing more than a way to get what you want. And, but sometimes we're doing things like you
00:27:00.120
describe, like, you know, you, you have a project in your house, you need done, you need to hire a
00:27:03.820
plumber or a carpenter or someone, cause you don't have those skills. So is that treating them as a
00:27:07.600
mere means? Like that would be weird if that were true. And Kant says, no, what matters is whether
00:27:12.800
you're treating them like as just a way of fixing your leaking pipes, or are you also treating them
00:27:20.420
as a being with dignity? And some of this is going to play out on like, are you going to actually pay
00:27:25.300
the bill when they send it to you? Are you going to treat them respectfully when they come into your
00:27:29.740
house, treat them as like a person who is not just a plumber, but who has, you know, ends and desires
00:27:36.460
and projects of their own. And so it's subtle and become things really, really important. And I think we
00:27:43.540
often feel the difference. I think anyone who has ever worked in minimum wage jobs understands the
00:27:48.740
difference between a customer who actually respects you as a person and a customer who is just treating
00:27:55.300
you like you're nothing. And it's that difference that I think Kant is really after when he's talking
00:28:01.000
about treating people as a mere means and treating them as a means, but also as an end.
00:28:07.720
And this can even fuzz you with friendships. I think maybe some people have encountered this with
00:28:11.500
their friend, or maybe like they have like a longtime friend they haven't heard from a long time,
00:28:14.640
like, Hey, let's connect. You're like, Oh, great. This is a great friend I had from high school
00:28:18.440
wants to talk to me. And you get together and then he like springs a multi-level marketing pitch on you.
00:28:23.000
And you're like, Oh my gosh, I just got used. Like, I just feel, I feel gross.
00:28:27.700
Yeah. That is a common situation. Yeah. This idea, like what's going on there. So one way of
00:28:33.700
explaining it in Kantian terms is to say that your friend who has turned your, you know, you're,
00:28:38.520
you're hanging out your dinner together into a marketing pitch is like almost changed the terms
00:28:43.820
on your relationship unilaterally. So they're like, okay, I'm making this friendship into a
00:28:49.080
business relationship. And a business relationship is an entirely different kind of thing, of course.
00:28:53.740
And so when your friend just does this to you, like, I'm going to stop treating you as a friend
00:28:57.120
right now. I'm going to treat you as a possible, you know, business contact here. You feel like,
00:29:02.760
wait a second, my friend doesn't really value me as a friend. They're just seeing me as a way to make
00:29:06.600
money. And so that's a perfectly reasonable way to respond to that because your friend has just
00:29:12.040
changed your relationship in ways that you haven't signed onto. And because of that, you can't really
00:29:17.340
function as friends there. If every dinner is turning into a sales pitch of some kind, you're not
00:29:22.940
really friends, you're unwilling business partners. So that would be treating someone as a mere means.
00:29:28.480
And this fuzziness can, it gets even more complicated and complex in marriage. So here's an example
00:29:34.020
that I've seen play out. Wife doesn't like how disciplined her husband is. She thinks he's too
00:29:41.080
rigid, too inflexible, can't be spontaneous, et cetera. But this guy's discipline, it's what
00:29:46.960
allows him to be successful at work. It's something that helps him grow in his own telos. And the wife
00:29:52.700
even says, like, I appreciate that about him. Like, he's great. I love it. It helps our marriage. He gets
00:29:57.240
stuff done around the house. It allows us to, allows them to provide for our family. But that rigidity
00:30:02.400
just still bugs her. And she wants him to change. And she frames it the way like, well,
00:30:07.740
you need to loosen up for your own good. But really, it's for her. So she's not really thinking
00:30:12.520
about what's good for his end. She's more seeing him as a means to her happiness. So how to figure
00:30:19.680
out how to treat someone as an end, as having their own telos in a marriage, that can get hard to
00:30:25.400
us out as well. Very hard. Yeah. Because when we're in close relationships with people, there's
00:30:31.000
lots of opportunities to do this behavior. You know, everybody in a long-term friendship or
00:30:38.540
relationship or marriage, right, finds themselves in situations where they have all these very human
00:30:43.220
frustrations and annoyances. And the hard part in all of these cases is remembering how much you love
00:30:50.040
and value this person and that they are not yours to change or alter in any way. And trying to sort
00:30:56.860
of separate out in some ways what I want this person to be for my sake, from who they are and
00:31:04.760
who they want themselves to be. This is so difficult, but it makes all the difference for Kant in whether
00:31:11.100
you are really valuing them as an end in the way that he says we must, or just valuing them as,
00:31:17.560
you know, something useful to you. And what does Kant say, what do you do when there's people in our
00:31:22.780
lives where they present themselves merely as a means, right? Like that's it. Like they're,
00:31:29.760
I'm thinking maybe an influencer that shares all of their details of their private life and they
00:31:36.020
monetize it. And it just seems like everything they do is, it's not really, like it's, there's no
00:31:42.200
dignity in it. They're just trying to get money or whatever. Does Kant still say like, you have a duty to
00:31:47.040
still treat that person who's treating themselves as merely as a means, as an end?
00:31:52.040
Yeah, you do. So one of my favorite parts of Kant's ethics is that he has this really big and
00:31:58.900
important place for self-respect because the humanity formulation, all of those requirements
00:32:04.360
that you treat others with dignity applies to you too. You have to treat yourself with respect
00:32:10.360
and you have to ensure that others treat you with respect. And being able to treat yourself with
00:32:16.840
respect means sort of knowing your true value and living in accordance with it. So there are lots of
00:32:25.220
ways in which this can go wrong. And in many cases, it's not something the person could have controlled
00:32:32.940
and we wouldn't necessarily blame them for it. Because sometimes the reasons why people don't have
00:32:37.580
self-respect have to do with factors outside of them about the way that their family members
00:32:42.740
treated them or society has treated them. But Kant thinks there is a duty to act in a self-respecting
00:32:49.460
way. And there's a duty to treat others respectfully, even if they're not treating themselves respectfully.
00:32:58.080
So Kant thinks that this vice of like not treating yourself with enough self-respect is a vice for
00:33:03.400
Kant. He calls it servility. So the servile person either doesn't know their own value or they don't
00:33:08.600
really claim their own value. And interestingly, Kant thinks that arrogance is like sort of the flip
00:33:14.640
side of servility. It's also a failure of self-respect because both the arrogant person and the servile
00:33:20.940
person are making mistakes about the source of their own value. So that influencer, right, who really
00:33:27.040
thinks like, okay, my value is caught up in, you know, what kind of following I have or who advertises
00:33:33.500
on my site or all of that, they think that their worth is based on that. And so if they're doing
00:33:37.880
really well, they might be prone toward arrogance, thinking they're better than people because they
00:33:42.460
have influence that others don't, or they might be servile. They might think that they're worth less
00:33:48.040
than others. And Kant says, both of these are wrong, right? Because what gives you value,
00:33:53.020
what gives you your dignity is something that you have and nobody can take away from you and how many
00:34:00.400
likes you have or how many followers you have is irrelevant to it. So self-respect for Kant is about
00:34:06.820
sort of understanding what our value is and interacting with people accordingly.
00:34:14.400
Yeah. And he would even say in order for you to respect others, you have to respect yourself first.
00:34:18.380
Like you have to understand that. He does, right? Because you won't, if you're arrogant or servile,
00:34:23.420
if your self-image is bound up in your followers and you regard others in the same way, you're going
00:34:29.400
to be making mistakes in both directions. The only real way to act is to understand that the value that
00:34:34.840
we have is the same value as everybody else has. You can't, you cannot wish away your dignity or
00:34:41.360
correct. You can't lose it or waive it. It is something that you possess always, but we don't
00:34:47.680
always live up to it. We don't always treat others in accordance with the value they actually have.
00:34:52.160
And we don't always act ourselves in ways that accord with that value.
00:34:57.260
So you mentioned this idea of respect. One of the more, I think, really useful sections in your book
00:35:02.040
was talking about the difference between love and respect. And Kant says, these are two moral forces in
00:35:08.240
our lives that pull us in opposite directions. Let's talk about this. Like what did Kant mean by
00:35:13.120
love and respect? And then how does he think they pull us in opposite directions?
00:35:18.300
Yeah. So this is one of my, another favorite part of Kant. So Kant calls love and respect these two
00:35:24.000
sort of great moral forces, but he thinks they pull us in opposite directions. He says, love tells us to
00:35:30.080
come closer to people and respect tells us to keep our distance. And so an example that I think makes
00:35:36.060
this really clear, what he's getting at is what happens if you're, you know, you're walking around
00:35:40.060
someplace and you see somebody in public, a stranger who's crying or who's really upset and you don't
00:35:46.500
know what to do because you're like, should I help them? You know, they, they seem to be really upset.
00:35:50.160
Maybe there's something I can do, but you also worry that it's none of your business, that you might be
00:35:53.920
invading their privacy. This is a great example of the tension that Kant thinks we can face between love
00:35:59.720
and respect and Kant thinks like both of those are right. Like it is good to want to help people in
00:36:05.800
their troubles, but it is also really good to want to make sure that we're respecting their privacy and
00:36:10.540
their boundaries. So there's a tension here and it's just a tension in real human life. It's not
00:36:16.180
one that we can do away with in some ways. So yeah, it's not a problem we can easily solve, which kind of
00:36:21.600
makes sense because that like leaping stranger is a real problem. What do we do?
00:36:26.380
No, you probably encounter that with your friends. Maybe you hear that your friend is going through a hard
00:36:30.540
time. Maybe they lost their job. They're getting a divorce. The love part is like, I want to reach out to
00:36:34.700
them and help them out. But the respect is like, well, maybe that's going to make him feel less than, or maybe
00:36:38.880
just wants his privacy during this time. And you never know what to do. Does Kant have any advice on how to
00:36:44.600
figure that out? Does he have like a rule that we can follow to know when we lean on love or lean on
00:36:49.340
respect? No, sadly, no. I'm not sure anyone does, but there's a lot of value to identifying
00:36:56.140
what's important here. So I think one of the things I like about this, this idea of attention
00:37:02.520
is that we recognize that both matter because sometimes love for people can make us overstep
00:37:09.100
boundaries. Like maybe, you know, someone is in pain and we just want their pain to stop because
00:37:13.320
we care about them, but also because it's bothering us. And so sometimes it becomes more about us than
00:37:19.100
about them helping does or giving advice. Or sometimes, you know, are like, oh no, no, I don't want to get in
00:37:25.120
the way. It's just like us being lazy or selfish too, that we're not really moved enough by love.
00:37:30.440
So I think that a Kantian answer or really any answer is got to be sensitive to things like
00:37:34.980
context or relationships or like your capacities. Like, can you actually help? You know, is the
00:37:40.440
person like about to go into a job interview? You know, are they acting like they're trying to pull
00:37:45.540
themselves together? In which case maybe you should leave them alone and let them like pull themselves
00:37:49.860
together. So there's got to be some space for judgment in this case. Like what could I really
00:37:55.340
do here? What would really be helpful here that wouldn't be overly intrusive? And I think that
00:38:01.240
answer is going to change depending on what circumstances you face. And so a lot of it is
00:38:06.000
going to be trying to get this right, trying to be caring and considerate without overstepping what
00:38:12.620
Kant thinks are morally significant boundaries between ourselves and other people.
00:38:16.860
So it sounds like you have to use some Aristotelian phronesis and practical wisdom to figure this
00:38:22.660
Yeah, I think everybody needs it. It needs some Aristotelian practical wisdom. No one can sort
00:38:27.740
of do without it because it really is about understanding what is at stake in the situation
00:38:32.940
that you're facing and figuring out how to act accordingly in accordance with what really
00:38:39.520
Continuing on this idea of love and respect, Kant has a lot to say about contempt. And I've heard
00:38:44.920
contemptibility described as a state of being both unlikable, so like maybe you just have
00:38:49.720
a really rough personality, and incompetent, right? So skill-wise, you're not good at anything.
00:38:55.460
And so contemptible people, they're hard to either love or respect. But Kant says contempt
00:39:00.680
is one of those vices we really, really need to avoid. Why is that? And then did he offer
00:39:05.400
any advice on loving and respecting people who are unlovable and unrespectable?
00:39:10.640
Yeah, he has a lot to say about this. In fact, I kind of wonder if Kant struggled with
00:39:15.740
this himself. At one point, he's like, it's really hard sometimes not to hold people in
00:39:19.800
contempt, but we can't. Because contempt, he thinks it's a vice, but he also thinks it
00:39:25.220
violates a duty that we owe to people. And the duty in question is to sort of recognize
00:39:31.220
them as being capable of something more. So to hold someone in contempt on Kant's view,
00:39:40.120
and there's different ways of thinking about contempt, is basically to see them as sort
00:39:44.580
of beneath us in a way that means like they're worthless in a way that makes them not even
00:39:50.340
part of a human community. And Kant thinks that is never true of any of us. No matter what
00:39:57.040
you have done, how horrible a person you are, you can never like give up or waive your right
00:40:02.360
to be a member of the moral community. So we owe it to people to treat them with at least
00:40:08.900
basic respect. So this is compatible with still like, you know, punishing people and putting them
00:40:14.740
in jail and being mad at them. It doesn't mean that we can't do those things. But I think it's
00:40:19.980
nicely encompassed when we think of like telling someone like that they need to do better.
00:40:24.500
So this idea, do better, suggests that A, you're not doing as well as you could,
00:40:30.120
but also that you could really do better. That you acknowledge that the person is capable of more.
00:40:36.780
They're not hopeless. They're not worthless. They're not stupid. They might be acting that way,
00:40:41.520
but they're not really that way, or at least they could be otherwise. And I think Kant thinks that
00:40:47.540
this is the way in which we are morally required to see people and interact with them.
00:40:53.860
And it's really hard sometimes, but we must turn ourselves into the kind of people that are
00:41:00.100
capable of seeing someone else's humanity. This idea is all over Martin Luther King's sermons
00:41:06.080
in ways that are really beautiful, like the way that he sort of frames this. He has this wonderful
00:41:10.400
sermon called Loving Your Enemies, where he's like, you know, liking your enemies is impossible,
00:41:14.860
but you can love your enemies because you're capable of seeing them as being something else.
00:41:20.880
And I think that's very much what Kant is after with contempt and his insistence that we can't
00:41:25.960
hold people in contempt. We must see them as capable of being better and we must hold them
00:41:34.500
And this could be tricky again, because this kind of goes back to the love and respect. Like,
00:41:37.740
how do you know when you should step in and tell someone, hey, I think you could do better.
00:41:41.800
And how do you do it in a way where it lands and you're not overstepping that boundary? Again,
00:41:45.420
this can get hard. It can. Yeah. So, I mean, Kant thinks that in some sense, we can't make other
00:41:52.840
people better because to make yourself better is to commit internally to being a better person.
00:41:59.060
And like, I can't make you decide that you're going to have a goodwill and you can't do that to
00:42:03.780
me because it's in some ways a personal choice. But that doesn't mean that we can't influence each
00:42:09.740
other or that we can't tell people that they are failing in our expectations of them. And in fact,
00:42:16.180
not doing that might be a failure of self-respect. So like insisting that people behave better
00:42:22.460
is something that we're entitled to do. And that's partly because we get to require that other people
00:42:29.100
do their part and perform their own duties and don't treat us badly. And so it's a way of holding
00:42:35.380
other people accountable for being better than they are. And so I think Kant thinks of contempt
00:42:40.980
is like just writing people off. And that's the thing that he thinks we must not do, however
00:42:47.220
difficult it is. But it doesn't mean that like some ways are going to be more effective than others.
00:42:52.040
You know, whether calling someone out on a moral failing is going to be useful or whether it's
00:42:58.140
appropriate is going to depend a lot on what the failing is and what the context is. He thinks that
00:43:03.440
friends have a duty to point out each other's flaws to each other. This is one of the things
00:43:07.380
about friendship. But he also recognizes that it threatens respect because it makes people feel
00:43:15.200
like they're not respected. Their friend doesn't respect them and they get all worried about this.
00:43:19.600
And so he clearly thinks it has to be done carefully.
00:43:23.400
Yeah. I imagine they do some like introspection too. It's like, am I calling this friend out because
00:43:27.740
it just makes me feel better? Because it makes them less than and me and the superior,
00:43:31.440
that self-conceit. Or am I just doing this? Yeah. Like you got to constantly say, don't do that.
00:43:37.100
That's not good. But you have to do it where you actually, you're trying to help this person out.
00:43:40.460
You're not trying to gratify some sort of self-conceit.
00:43:43.620
Yeah. That's a really important point because sometimes we are just doing it as a way of
00:43:47.260
expressing our own superiority. Like you're terrible. I'm great. Even if we don't put it in those terms,
00:43:51.980
if that's what we're doing, then for Kant, that is actually vice. That's like me being smug or
00:43:57.340
like self-righteous or something. And Kant thinks that we have no business doing that because first
00:44:02.860
of all, we have as many flaws as the next person does. And it's just a way of trying to, it's not
00:44:09.200
really about them. It's more just, yeah, about making us feel good. Let's talk about gratitude.
00:44:14.660
Kant had a lot to say about this. He called ingratitude a satanic vice. Why do you call it a
00:44:20.280
satanic vice? Yeah. So I'm not sure if I know exactly why, but it's very interesting,
00:44:24.580
but it shows how seriously he took it. So ingratitude, gratitude for Kant is a duty and
00:44:30.440
ingratitude is a vice of hatred. And the hatred is the part that makes it satanic because what
00:44:37.700
we're hating, he thinks, when we're not being grateful is we're hating somebody else's expression
00:44:43.640
of love or expression of care or concern. Now, sometimes when other people are helping,
00:44:50.620
they're not really trying to help us. Like sometimes it's not really caring. And so setting
00:44:54.100
those aside, let's suppose someone really does try to do something kind and we're not
00:45:00.240
grateful. Kant says that when we're hating that, and he recognizes that it's hard because
00:45:05.360
nobody likes being dependent. Nobody likes having to rely on other people. But in being
00:45:10.320
ungrateful, we are sort of rejecting somebody else's really good act. And that's what I think
00:45:17.720
Kant means when he calls it satanic. That it's a rejection of something good, which is beneficence.
00:45:23.400
So even if someone helps you and it's not very helpful, you should probably still thank them
00:45:28.620
because they're trying to show love towards you. Yeah, probably. So with the caveat that sometimes
00:45:34.760
when people are trying to be helpful, sometimes they really are trying and just failing, not
00:45:39.680
through any faults of their own. But sometimes when they're trying to help, they may not actually
00:45:43.640
be trying to help. They might be trying to impose their will on you or something. So, but if we're
00:45:47.900
talking about cases where the person really is trying their best to help, even if it fails,
00:45:52.500
it doesn't work, like they've tried to buy you a gift that they really think you will like and you
00:45:56.960
just don't, then ingratitude is advice. Because there, you're not marking out the value of the
00:46:03.820
thing that they've done for you. Gotcha. And again, this can get tricky because you may be like,
00:46:08.280
okay, well, even with the gift thing, will they give this because for me or was it to help
00:46:11.980
sort of satisfy something in them, the giver? Yeah.
00:46:16.020
This can get tricky. Yeah, Kant has so many interesting things to say about beneficence.
00:46:21.340
But if I'm doing something supposedly nice for someone else, but it's really just about me
00:46:26.120
because I want to look good or like, I don't know, like I'm donating money, but I'm doing it for the
00:46:29.040
tax break or, you know, for, so I can get in somebody's brochure. That's the wrong reasons.
00:46:34.120
And Kant would even say that's not even really an act of beneficence as he understands it. It's not
00:46:39.140
fulfilling the duty. I'm just like doing it for my own purposes.
00:46:41.980
So you should still do it. Like he doesn't want people not to give away money or help change
00:46:45.780
flat tires, but beneficence for him is doing it for the right reasons because the other person
00:46:52.060
is worth your effort. And if that's, what's being expressed by the gift or the action,
00:46:57.980
then Kant thinks that means the response of gratitude.
00:47:01.760
So Kant also had a lot to say about good manners, which is kind of weird. Why,
00:47:05.620
why would like a systematic philosopher talk about table manners, but he thought manners could help
00:47:10.940
cultivate virtue in individuals and communities. And you've actually, you've written a lot about
00:47:15.180
manners. So let's talk about why did Kant think good manners were important part of our life?
00:47:20.540
Yeah. So Kant seems to think that good manners matter for a couple of different reasons.
00:47:27.100
One, he thinks that they will actually make us better in some sense. So he often says,
00:47:33.560
and this is going to make him sound Aristotelian, like sort of Aristotle's sort of famous for saying,
00:47:37.880
well, you become, you know, a generous person by doing generous actions on the long lines of you
00:47:42.920
become a builder by building things. And Kant seems to go along with this. Like you become the kind of
00:47:47.980
person who treats other people with respect by treating other people with respect. So there's
00:47:52.100
that, like it helps us become better. But Kant, I think also has sort of a bigger role for manners
00:47:57.760
in his life or what he calls the social graces. And that's because they help us kind of create
00:48:03.220
a vision of a world that we should all be signing onto, even if it's a hard thing to live up to.
00:48:10.440
So this is a sense in which we might think like it's a kind of pretending in some sense,
00:48:14.240
he calls it a beautiful illusion. So you might be like, oh, well, this is just like deceptive or
00:48:18.760
something. But I don't think Kant thinks it is because I think he thinks we all know what's going
00:48:22.340
on. So one example I like to use is in the case of like sports games. And so sports have a lot of rules
00:48:28.940
about how players have to interact with each other and with the referees and with the fans and all of
00:48:33.160
that. And those rules impose certain kinds of behavioral norms in circumstances where it can
00:48:39.200
just be hard to maintain those. So players are supposed to shake hands with each other, right?
00:48:43.900
They're supposed to go along with what the ref says, whether or not they agree with it. There's
00:48:47.340
all kinds of norms of behavior. And we have those in place because they create an environment in which
00:48:54.600
people sort of remember that they're playing a game in some way, and they can still interact with
00:48:59.940
each other as human beings. And I think Kant thinks it's crucial for us to remember in some sense
00:49:05.700
what we as a community are about. And manners are a way of doing that, right? A society that doesn't
00:49:12.160
care about those forms of social interactions is a society that doesn't really care about getting
00:49:19.820
And I think too, manners help you develop the self-control necessary to create
00:49:25.440
that society, right? To live a Kantian life requires us to sometimes refrain from doing
00:49:30.720
things. It requires self-control. And manners is like a tool we can use to help us strengthen
00:49:37.280
Yes. Yeah. So if you're in a situation where there's someone that you really don't like,
00:49:40.580
but you need to like shake hands with them and make small talk with them. And it's not like
00:49:43.900
they're so evil that you shouldn't do this at all, that you should cut them, but you must.
00:49:46.860
Kant's like, yeah, well, you must, right? And in this way of being like,
00:49:49.820
I'm going to still interact with this person that I don't much like because it's good manners,
00:49:53.920
that is, I think for Kant, a way of making ourselves better, constraining ourselves and
00:49:59.580
doing it in the service of treating a person respectfully. Even if we're not feeling it at
00:50:04.580
the moment, it still matters because it's still a way of interacting with them on the terms that
00:50:10.460
Kant thinks we should be interacting with them.
00:50:12.980
Yeah. It helps us treat, again, people as an end, not merely as a means, right? So you do these
00:50:17.660
sort of niceties with the barista, right? Who's there to make you coffee, but you say, hello,
00:50:23.080
you say, how was your day? Because you're doing that because it's a way to recognize I see you as
00:50:29.260
Right. Yeah. So I mean, Kant's like, yeah, this is really hard sometimes. Like sometimes it's just
00:50:33.740
really hard to like not dislike or hate people, but we've got to get over that. And manners are a
00:50:39.660
way in which we help ourselves get over it. And so I think he would say those conventions matter
00:50:44.360
because they do kind of hold us into patterns of behavior that exemplify better relationships
00:50:51.400
with each other. Real respect. Even if we're not feeling it, the handshake, the conversation,
00:50:56.540
the greeting, the barista is a way of exemplifying true respect.
00:51:01.160
Well, Karen, this has been a great conversation. Where can people go to learn more about the book
00:51:05.560
Yes. So I have a website. I teach at Georgetown University and the philosophy department
00:51:10.360
there has a website and I have a link to a page that says more about me and my reading.
00:51:15.480
And the book is part of Oxford's guides to the good life series. There are several books in this
00:51:20.160
series, all of which on different figures that are also really fun to read about. So I encourage
00:51:27.820
Fantastic. Well, Karen Storer, thanks for your time. It's been a pleasure.
00:51:32.280
My guest today was Karen Storer. She's the author of the book,
00:51:34.620
Choosing Freedom, A Kantian Guide to Life. It's available on amazon.com.
00:51:37.820
Check out our show notes at aom.is slash kant. We can find links to resources. We can delve
00:51:50.360
Well, that wraps up another edition of the A1 podcast. The Art of Manless podcast hosts guests
00:51:54.800
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