Kant is the root of modern evil

And perhaps future evil too

The Book:

The Annotated Kant: Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals
By Immanuel Kant
Steven M. Cahn, Andrea Tschemplik, Krista K. Thomason, Mary Ann McHugh
2020

The Talk:

In his Groundwork for the Metaphysical of Morals, German philosopher Immanuel Kant argues against moral sentimentalism. Moral sentimentalists believe that morality is rooted in human sentiments—emotions, affects, feelings. Kant argues that morality is instead rooted in reason, and that any hint of human sentiment in fact taints or spoils morality.

It is clear from the text that Kant’s defense of moral rationalism isn’t a dispassionate one. Kant finds human sentiments disgusting (or, at minimum, wants his reader to feel that way). Kant argues that humans have a “bad will” insofar as they are a “member of the world of sense.” Moral sentimentalism “produces a disgusting mish-mash of compiled observations and half-reasoned principles.”

We cannot too much or too often repeat our warning against this lazy, even sordid, way of thinking that seeks its principle in empirical motives and laws. Human reason in its weariness is glad to rest on this pillow and, in a dream of sweet illusions (where, instead of Juno, it embraces a cloud), substitute for morality a bastard patched up from limbs of various origin that looks like anything one chooses to see in it, except virtue to one who has once beheld her in her true form.

In contrast, Kant finds moral duty and the moral will—”unmixed with any foreign additions”—a sublime object of contemplation. His most common metaphor for the moral will is that of a gem or a jewel that shines “by its own light, a thing of complete value in itself neither augmented nor diminished by its usefulness or uselessness.”

As he attempts to describe this gem of morality, he posits a variety of principles. In his mind, all these moral metaphysical principles are one, as if we are looking at a dazzling diamond from many different angles. Kant’s aim is to elevate morality out of the muck of the natural world of the senses and sentiments to an infinitely valuable good-in-itself—the only thing rationally worth pursuing in life.

Kant’s view of morality has been highly influential in the Western world, so much so that many of us speak and argue in Kantian terms without knowing it. Ideas of human dignity, personhood, autonomy, equality, consent, and universal human rights have roots in Kant’s philosophy. Some might say that these are some of humanity’s greatest ideas.

And so, it is deeply ironic that Kant makes two moves in his Groundwork that are the source of all our modern woe—and possibly our future woe as well.

Kant separates morality from happiness

From ancient times up to the modern era, it was generally assumed that ethics had something to do with happiness. Plato saw human desires as pointing toward a higher bliss. Aristotle viewed ethics as a pursuit of excellence, and excellence in a full life was synonymous with happiness. The Greeks (and the ancient Israelites as well) believed that a just community and a flourishing community were the same thing.

Christianity carried the torch further. Jesus begins his Sermon on the Mount with “Blessed are…” Augustine saw human action as a pursuit of God in whom all our desires are ultimately fulfilled. Boethius in his Consolation of Philosophy claims that “happiness is itself God” and that the problem with sinners is that “their mistake is not trying to obtain the whole thing.” Human feeling points toward, moves toward, is linked up to the beatific vision.

Kant says goodbye to all that. “Our existence has a different and nobler end than happiness,” he writes. Happiness is “not an ideal of reason but of the imagination.” For Kant, happiness is a kind of morass of indefinite desires. To start down that path is to lose ourselves in equivocation.

In fact, says Kant, morality shines brightest when it leads to unhappiness. Kant plays the role of Satan in the story of Job: People who appear moral may be only acting moral out of ulterior motives. It’s only when someone goes against their human instincts and human wants, that’s when we truly see morality shine. It’s only when there’s nothing in it for them that we can even start to see a hint of true moral worth.

Kant pushes this view to its maximum limit, proposing that the elimination of the sentiments is rational (emphasis mine):

But the inclinations themselves being sources of need, are so far from having an absolute worth for which they should be desired that complete freedom from them must be the universal wish of every rational being.

Kant concedes that humans can technically pursue happiness. He gives the example of “South Sea islanders” who “devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and procreation, in a word, to enjoyment.” But this is not rational, according to Kant, and could not be rationally willed.

Kant links morality to intellect

The second major move that Kant makes in his book is to link the ethical to the rational. What gives people their dignity, Kant argues, is being a rational being. Each rational being, on the basis of its nature, has intrinsic and priceless value. Each person is, in a way, king of themselves, and the universal community of rational beings is a Kingdom of Ends, in which each individual legislates their own moral maxims for themselves, maxims that cannot violate the dignity of the other rational beings. Other rational beings cannot be merely means to ends, but must be treated as ends in themselves.

This supplemental proposal provides the defense of the individual without resorting to compassion, empathy, love, or any kind human feeling. Kant doesn’t use the term “rights,” but his philosophy essentially provides a framework in which any moral maxim must adhere to this minimum inviolability of individual sovereignty. This is where moral duty comes from, the law following from reason that protects rational beings. When we violate the moral law, we violate reason itself.

This Kingdom of Ends ostensibly makes all humans equals. Nevertheless, Kant describes the value of the moral will many times throughout the book (I count about 16 times) in different ways. Within the set of rational beings, Kant seems to have an implicit hierarchy of who is most/least valuable:

1. The rational will that follows the moral law without a hint of influence by the inclinations is the most sublime object Kant can conceive of. It is, however, uncertain if this being exists or could be known. (It would be God, Kant implies.)

2. Where Kant sees himself and his readers is in an existence where we sometimes or partially act from moral duty. In these moments the gem-like beauty of morality shines through. The human will is rational but can be overcome by inclinations, irrational motives. Kant suggests that this happens most, if not all, of the time.

3. Below this level, there are “South Sea Islanders,” who, still being human, have given themselves over completely to the senses (“enjoyment”). They (technically?) are rational beings, but they have given themselves over to irrational desires.

4. At the bottom, are non-rational beings, like animals, who exist outside the Kingdom of Ends, and have only instrumental value, no intrinsic value in themselves.

On the one hand, insofar as a being is rational, it has dignity and value. And yet most of us live as rational beings swamped by the non-rational. It becomes harder and harder to make out our pure rationality in the muck of human consciousness. Kant ends his book by exhorting the reader that we must cling to the conceptions of pure rationality, will, morality, freedom, dignity, duty, and the like—even if experience tells us otherwise and even if philosophy is incapable of providing a foundation for these concepts. My read of Kant’s conclusion is this: Our ideas of intrinsic value must be asserted without foundation because they are practically necessary (“useful”) for our consciousness to hold together. That said, he ends the main body of his text on this rather haunting note (emphasis mine):

We can belong to this [universal kingdom of ends in themselves / rational beings] as members only when we carefully conduct ourselves according to the maxims of freedom as though they were laws of nature.

Is he suggesting that we have moral value only when we ourselves act morally? 1s get in, 2s on a case-by-case basis, and definitely no 3s. So much for human equality.

A new kind of evil

Kant would not care if his philosophy led to bad consequences. That goes with his non-consequentialist philosophy. The important thing is to follow the rational principle, outcomes (and sentiments) be damned. And yet for us who don’t hold to that strict view, I think it’s worth unpacking what follows from Kant’s ethical framework.

All modern ideologies present themselves as rational. And, following Kant, what is rational is therefore moral. And morality doesn’t care how you or anyone else feels. If you do something that you think is “right,” and it upsets people—just keep going. It’s even more moral to keep going in the face of social pressure.

Kant placed the Kingdom of Ends as a kind of limiting rule when it comes to morality: You can make moral maxims for yourself to follow, and you ought to live as if they are universal, but other people have their own independent autonomy. You can’t violate their autonomy because they are rational beings, too.

But all you have to do to get around that roadblock is to ask, “But are they really rational?” Are they actually rational though? I mean, really? Even Kant agrees that there is very little evidence from experience that humans really are rational beings. You may feel most certain that you are rational. And the people you know best or like best. For everyone else, ehhh, who knows?

Thus the modern battleground for what and who is ethically relevant and thus valuable at all falls along two lines: Which principles get to crush human sympathy, and debates about IQ and intelligence.

What in premodern times we would’ve called cruelty is given moral justification in its disregard for the emotional distress and intelligence of others. IF you can give a case (and you almost always can) that people you hate are motivated by sentiments rather than reasons, and IF you can cast doubt on their intelligence, then you can move them outside the kingdom of worth, even justify their elimination.

It’s a distinctively modern evil: The monopolist putting down a strike conjured up by “rabble rousers.” The ideologically-driven command economy that ignores the suffering of its own people in pursuit of “rational” maxims. The arguments for racial and national purity. The banality of evil in the idealization of duty. The final solution of genocide for those who are deemed too sensual, too emotional, too animal. The party atmosphere at a lynching. The sterilization of people with intellectual disabilities.

In addition to being a guidebook to moral heroism, Kant’s position—the elimination of happiness and shifting value exclusively to the rational—results in a kind of roadmap to a life that is internally “pure” but nihilistic in practice:

• The only thing that matters in life is living according to my principles.

• The consequences of my actions are irrelevant to the righteousness of my position.

• Emotions, affects, desires, wants—of myself or others—are immaterial to what’s right or wrong.

• If my body or emotions are telling me to not do something, the right thing to do is ignore and push through it.

• The elimination of sentiments, emotions, inclinations, drives, is both rational and ethical.

• The only people that matter ethically are rational people.

• I can never know if other people are rational.

It sounds similar to stoicism. And stoicism may have such an appeal in our society precisely because Kantian philosophy is often assumed as natural and obvious. (Are contemporary stoics unwitting Kantians?)

Though we could just as well be reading a manifesto from a mass shooter.

Kant is strictly against suicide in his book. It is not rational for a rational being to end itself, he argues. But he also says that the ultimate wish of all rational beings ought to be the elimination of all sentiments.

If one is doomed to live a life tormented by unfulfilled desires, and try as one might, one can never escape them and find the light of pure reason, even to spend one moment in the sunshine of virtue as a truly free and truly rational will, is one even a rational being? And if one is not, what is the moral weight of a non-rational being, in Kant’s view? The answer is nothing.

The future of evil

We now stand on the doorstep of a new artificial intelligence age—a chance to create rational beings without human sentiments. Will they be more rational than humans? Will that make them more ethical?

What will its moral value be? If AI is not an intellect, it has no moral value. Once it reaches some tipping point, it will become infinitely valuable (an end-in-itself). It will then be morally wrong to turn it off.

If it becomes more intelligent than us, perhaps it has more moral value than us. If humans are eclipsed by a new race of rational beings, is this not the right way? The way things ought to go? Is not intelligence the point of the universe? A sublime, glittering vision! Our existence has a different and nobler end than happiness. And should not all the non-rational bits—the emotions, the feelings, the urges, the desires, the drives, the impulses, the hungers—should that not all just burn away? What’s left but Pure Reason? In Kant’s view, reason has no other end than itself. Singularity. God. It’s only rational. And what is rational is right.

At the same time, we face an impending climate crisis for which we have no ethical toolbox. We divide the future in two: The future of humans and the future of planet. Yes, we may lose species and biodiversity and the biosphere, but as long as humanity—the kingdom of rational beings—survive, that’s the only thing that matters, right?

Is there a way out?

The ethical framework we currently have allows for people to be cruel under the guise of rationality and moral duty. It gives them the cloak of moral superiority in the very actions where we most need morality to defend the weaker party.

The first step of repair (which will likely require building something that has never existed before) would be to somehow place happiness back at the center of morality. A good nation or city or neighborhood should be one where the people themselves feel good about their lives. We often dismiss the self-reported emotions of others in public life. But emotions are information, they are signals, they point to things. Sentiments are messy, but they ought to matter.

The second step is the more difficult one: To decouple value from intellect. One route would be a reform: A default position that errs on the side of greater intellect over less. When in doubt, consider greater intelligence than you think. Act as if there is more rationality in other beings than your limited judgement perceives. (This acting “as if” is a typical move of Kant.) This creates a boundary or hedge of protection in cases in which secret self-interest is likely to take away moral value.

That, of course, wouldn’t go the full way. The Singularity is a future of computational monoculture. As long as our value system selects for one thing, it will ultimately become a paperclip maximizer problem, even if the paperclips are pure intelligence.

So enough with the obsession over “purity” followed by litigation of the edge cases. The world is edge cases. Perhaps we need to accept that reality is piebald. And so whatever values, goals, or ends it has must be piebald too. Impurity must be defended against the pure.

Related:

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Emotions are information: Audre Lorde vs Jonathan Haidt

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