KANT AND RESPECT FOR PERSONS

The Idea of Human Dignity

Something which exalts us above the animals and the rest of creation

• "an intrinsic worth" making us valuable "above all price"
• which animals lack
• consequently animals have no moral standing
• we are free to use them as means to our ends
• without considering their ends (desire)
• In virtue of which human beings should never be used as means to ends.

Two formulations of the Categorical Imperative

• Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.
• Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only.

What gives us our dignity & moral importance

• [only] people have [conscious] desires and hence [intrinsic] goals
• only people are rational agents
• free agents capable of
• making decisions
• setting our own goals
• guiding our conduct by reason
• the moral law is the law of reason
• rational beings are the embodiment of that law itself
• moral goodness can exist only insofar as
• rational agents apprehend the moral law and
• acting from a sense of duty, do it
• So we rational beings are beyond value since we are the sources of value

Treating others as ends involves

• a strict duty of beneficence:
• to help & not harm others is, insofar as possible
• to further their ends
• respecting their rationality
• to do otherwise would to impede their project
• would use and manipulate them
• note the absolute proscription on lying seems to fall out of this!

Retribution and Utility: in the Theory of Punishment

Punishment as evil

• Bentham: "all punishment is mischief: all punishment is in itself evil"
• deprivation of property: fines
• deprivation of liberty: imprisonment
• deprivation of life: execution
• Since evil it requires justification

Retributivism

• people who do wrong deserve mistreatment
• in punishing them we are paying them back -- exacting retribution -- for their wrongs
• repaying them harm for harm
• "an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth . . ."
•  Bentham's Objection
• retribution causes suffering
• without [requiring] any compensating gain in happiness
• Kant's Reply
• punishment is justified even if it increases the sum total of misery over happiness in the world
• because the punished individual deserves it
• Utilitarian Line
• in order to be justified punishment must have good consequences (infliction of suffering on the perp not itself good -- as with Kant!)
• good consequences of punishment include
• reterrence & prevention
• rehabilitation
• the upshot -- punishment should be replaced by treatment
• the reigning orthodoxy in theory:  "prisons" become "correctional facilities"

Kant's Retributivism

Objections to Utilitarianism

• Practical/political (not Kant)
• ineffectiveness
• "Burn Bundy burn!'": emotional retributivist sentiments: bloodlusts go unsatisfied
• public hangings
• drawings & quarterings
• burnings at the stake
• "take that you evildoer" +  "there but for the grace of God"
• Kant's Objections
• Imprisonment for the sake of deterrence
• uses the person as means to a (socially desirable) end
• hence violates the person's dignity
• "Rehabilitation" = manipulation
• we try to psychologically trick them into accepting
• the rules and values we think they should accept
• Contrast
• we have the right to pay them back for their misdeeds
• we have no right to violate their integrity by trying to manipulate their personalities

Kant's Postitive Doctrine re: the Justification of Punishment

• People should be just because they have committed crimes and for no other reason
• The punishment should "suit" or be proportional in severity to the crime.
• slanderers should be defamed
• thiefs should be deprived of property
• assualt should be repaid with corporeal punishment
• murder with death (capital punishment)
• LH's question:
• if considerations of harmful consequences are verboten "serpent windings"
• what determines the seriousness of the crime?
• Kantian answer: intent.
• LH: What makes the intent to murder worse than the intent to steal?
• LH's answer:
• loss of life is a worse consequence
• than loss of property
• Kantian answer: it's the selfishness or uppediness of the intent
• intent to murder indends a more grievous violation of the victim's automony
• than intent to steal
• Utilitarianism may be faulted on both the preceding counts
• desert: nothing in the basic idea of Utilitarianism limits punishment to the guilty
• proportionality: ulterior purposes might best be served by punishments disproportionate to the offense.
•  What justifies punishment in the first place
• justice
• it holds the miscreant morally responsible for their misdeeds
• animals & the mentally incompetent: not morally responsible
• act from necessity not from liberty
• can't understand the rightness or wrongness of their acts
• rational beings
• have free will to choose to do or refrain from doing
• what they are capable of understanding to be right or wrong
• the deep point: rubbing it (i.e., the Categorical Imperative) in
• in repaying in kind we are in effect enforcing the maxim of their misbehavior as universal law
• showing them how their maxim plays out on the other end of the stick.

Problems with Kant (LH)

Imprecision & Impracticality

• Not so easy to figure out
• what maxims you're acting on
• worries a la Freud: we aren't the greatest judges of our own motives
• not clear we generally do or should act on maxims or set policies
• Imagine someone saying, "my life is jazz man,  . . . not classical . . . improvisation is where it's happenin' man . . . not your fusty old playin' from a score
• or which you'd be willing to universalize . . . especially on the fly.
• Nor so easy to know when you're using someone merely as a means
• Is the used car salesman who sells me a lemon using me only as a means to line his pockets?
• "Let the buyer beware," he contends.
• He didn't make me not take it to a mechanic to get checked out.
• He was just respecting my freedom to be a chump who didn't beware.

Heteronymy (Different Strokes) Counterexamples & Rejoinder

• The ultra-racist employer: discriminates against blacks: seldom hires & never promotes them.
• He's willing to accept the proposition that if he were black he should be discriminated against.
• He's a fanatic fundamentalist Morman: the "Book of Mormon" commands it, he thinks.
• So CI licenses a maxim of racial discrimination . . . which, by our lights,  is immoral!
• Nazi Ned: Kill the weak, is my maxim, says Nazi Ned.
• "But if you were weak you wouldn't want others to kill you," says Kant, blanching  in horror.
• "Better to die than live as a sniveling weakling," says Ned eyes ablaze with sincere fervor,
• "I would want someone to kill me."
• "Do the right thing and put me out of my shame."
• CI in this case approves Nazi Ned's maxim: and that's immoral.
• Rejoinder (bullet biting)
• if Nazi Ned genuinely and conscientiously would be willing to universalize his principle
• then his acting on the maxim is morally right
• insofar as he is striving to be true to his sincerely universally willed principles
• he is acting conscientiously & in a moral manner.
• would-be rejoinder itself encapsulates what's  most wrong with Kantianism IMHO
• conscientious & sincere villiany is possible: in fact it's the worst kind!
• nothing inherently redeeming about a moralizing & maxim-izing lifestyle (as opposed to Jazzman's)
• Poster child: Ken Starr:
• Kantianism instakes moralism for morality

Objectionable Account of Moral Motivation

• Aristotle's heirarchy
• virtue:             knows what's right: wants what's right: does what's right
• continence:     knows what's right: wants what's wrong: does what's right
• incontinence:  knows what's right: wants what's wrong: does what's wrong
• vice:               doesn't know what's right: wants what's wrong: does what's wrong.
• Rates vice too high: mistakes it for continence or virtue
• virtue: if Nazi Ned enjoys killing the weak
• continence: if Nazi Ned has to overcome temptation to be merciful & take pity
• compare Huck Finn
• case of reverse incontinence
• Rates continence above virtue: only acts from duty -- contrary to desire -- deserve moral credit
• best case scenario: my neighbors wife vamping on me
• I'm tempted but, out of moral duty, I refrain: my restraint is morally praiseworthy
• I'm not even tempted (I'm gay): my restraint is not morally praiseworthy
• worse case scenarios
• the virtuous (caring) v. continent (road-rage-resisting) driver:
• continent driver restrains self from mayhem reluctantly
• virtuous driver restrains from
• the loving v. dutiful hospital visitor:
• loving visitor: wants to come visit out of affection.
• dutiful visitor: comes to visit because they believe it's their duty.
• Upshot: Kantians morally obliged to cultivate bad desires?
• so as to resist them
• thereby doing what's best?