Tournament: College Prep | Round: 1 | Opponent: x | Judge: x
Part 1 is Framework
I value morality to ensure topicality – the resolution questions what we ‘ought’ to do, and Random House Dictionary defines ‘ought’ as:
the definition of ought. (2016). Dictionary.com. Retrieved 3 October 2016. RB
(used to express duty or moral obligation): Every citizen ought to help. (used to express justice, moral rightness, or the like): He ought to be punished. You ought to be ashamed. (used to express propriety, appropriateness, etc.): You ought to be home early. We ought to bring her some flowers. (used to express probability or natural consequence): That ought to be our train now.
Morality is not about what’s good, permissible or necessary; it’s something deeper than that – Princeton 8
“WRI167 The Ethics of Human Experimentation.” Blog for the Princeton University Writing Seminar. Princeton University, 15 Apr. 2008. Web. 1 Nov. 2016. RB
I began wondering about practicality in relation to ethics and morality last class, in the discussion of destroying embryos to harvest stem cells. I am still pondering the question: if an action is unethical but practical, which takes precedent? There were two situations that Alex, Mike and I were talking about the other day: 1) A train is going to crash killing all 5 of its passengers. But you have the power to change its track, thus saving the train and its 5 passengers, but in doing so, you will kill 1 person who is stuck on that track. Practically, you would change the track, thus saving 5 lives and killing one, rather than doing nothing where you save one life but kill 5. Ethically it is more complicated: by actually changing the track, are you murdering that one person? By doing nothing, are you murdering 5 people? To me it seemed that generally, most people would change the track, sacrificing one person to save 5 in the name of practicality.
Thus, the standard is ‘Respecting Kantian Ethics.’
One can never restrict the ends a subject can set as their means because to be human is to autonomously set your own ends – Ripstein 1
Arthur Ripstein. “Beyond the Harm Principle.” University of Toronto. 2006. RB
You are independent if you are the one who decides what ends you will use your powers to pursue, as opposed to having someone else decide for you. You may still mess up, decide badly, or betray your true self. You may have limited options. You remain independent if nobody else gets to tell you what to do. Each of us is independent if neither of us gets to tell the other what to do. This interest in independence is not a special case of a more general interest in being able to set and pursue your purposes. Instead, it is a distinctive aspect of your status as a person, entitled to set your own purposes, and not required to act as an instrument for the pursuit of anyone else’s purposes. You are sovereign because nobody else gets to tell you what to do; you would be their subject if they did. Once freedom is understood in terms of people’s respective independence, one person’s freedom doesn’t conflict with another’s. Each person is free to use his or her own powers to set and pursue his or her own purposes, consistent with the freedom of others to use their powers to set their purposes. A system of equal freedom demands that nobody use their own powers in a way that will deprive another of theirs, or uses another person’s powers without their permission.
Only restrictions predicated on independence create limitations that are fair since they are equally restrictive to all parties – Ripstein 2
Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy, 2009. RB
Independence is the basic principle of right. It guarantees equal freedom, and so requires that no person be subject to the choice of another. The idea of independence is similar to one that has been the target of many objections. The basic form of almost all of these focuses on the fact that any set of rules prohibits some acts that people would otherwise do, so that, for example, laws prohibiting personal injury and property damage put limits on the ability of people to do as they wish. Because different people have incompatible wants, to let one person do what he wants will typically require preventing others from doing what they want. Thus, it has been contended, freedom cannot even be articulated as a political value, because freedoms always come into conflict, and the only way to mediate those conflicts is by appealing to goods other than freedom. As I will explain in more detail in Chapter 2, such an objection has some force against freedom understood as the ability to do whatever you wish, but fails to engage Kant’s conception of independence. Limits on independence generate a set of restrictions that are by their nature equally applicable to all. Their generality depends on the fact that they abstract from what Kant calls the “matter” of choice—the particular purposes being pursued—and focus instead on the capacity to set purposes without having them set by others. What you can accomplish depends on what others are doing—someone else can frustrate your plans by getting the last quart of milk in the store. If they do so, they don’t interfere with your independence, because they impose no limits on your ability to use your powers to set and pursue your own purposes. They just change the world in ways that make your means useless for the particular purpose you would have set. Their entitlement to change the world in those ways just is their right to independence. In the same way, your ability to enter into cooperative activities with others depends upon their willingness to cooperate with you, and their entitlement to accept or decline your invitations is simply their right to independence.
Since individuals can’t have independence in the state of nature, the constitutive aim of the state is to act as the collective will – Ripstein 3
Arthur Ripstein. “Beyond the Harm Principle.” University of Toronto. 2006. RB
These difficulties for innate right in the state of nature—indeterminacy, lack of conclusive defense or nonaggression agreements, and the impossibility of a remedy in cases of completed wrongs—do not make innate right provisional in the sense of being unenforceable. They do, however, stand in the way of its being what we might call “conclusively conclusive,” that is, forming an integral part of a consistent system of rights. The fundamental feature of all rights is that they are parts of a system of equal freedom under universal law. In a state of nature, the indeterminacy of innate right and the impossibility of a remedy in cases of its violation mean that innate rights do not form a consistent set, which is just another way of saying that they do not, after all, fall under universal law. Although parallel considerations in the case of interacting nations lead Kant only to the conclusion that nations must bring their disputes before a court, in a civil condition the state must have the further power to bring innate right under universal law. Acquired rights can only be conclusive under universal law, and the universality of that law requires that innate rights also fall under universal law. If each individual were left with the power to do “what seems good and right” with respect to his or her own person, then each person would be entitled to resist with right the state’s omnilateral claim to enforce acquired rights. Instead, the state must claim the power to define the objective standards governing each person’s person, as well as the power to resolve disputes about wrongs against persons in accordance with law that has been laid down in advance. Thus although there is no direct argument from the innate right of humanity to the creation of a civil condition—no civil condition could be mandatory if acquired rights were impossible, because nobody would have standing to force another into one—systematic enforcement of acquired rights generates the state’s authorization to make law with respect to innate right. V. Conclusion Kant characterizes the state of nature as a system of private rights without public right. The apparatus of private rights applies to transactions in it, but subject to three defects that make that application merely provisional. Each of the defects reflects difficulties of unilateral action. Objects of choice cannot be acquired without a public authorization of acquisition; private rights cannot be enforced without a public mechanism through which enforcement is authorized by public law; private rights are indeterminate in their application to particulars without a publicly authorized arbiter. Even the innate right of humanity is insecure in such a condition, both because no remedy is possible in case of a completed wrong against a person, and because even the protective right to defend your person against ongoing attack is indeterminate in its application. These problems can only be solved by a form of association capable of making law on behalf of everyone, and authorizing both enforcement and adjudication under law.
Part 2 is Offense
Restrictions on free speech can’t be universalized – Surprenant 15
Surprenant, Chris. "Kant on the Virtues of a Free Society." Libertarianism.org. April 07, 2015. Web. December 07, 2016. RB
The second point is a bit less straightforward. His claim is that a sovereign that outlaws free speech creates a condition where his actions “put him in contradiction with himself.” This language is remarkably similar to what he uses in his moral theory to describe principles that violate the categorical imperative, Kant’s supreme principle of morality. In the Groundwork, Kant claims that when a principle of action fails when tested against the categorical imperative, it fails because something about that principle is contradictory. It may be the case that it is not possible to conceive of the action that comes about as a result of universalizing the underlying principle connected to the action (i.e., a contradiction in conception), or the result of universalizing the principle is self-defeating in some way (i.e., a contradiction in the will).
Universality is a functional litmus test for moral action – Dumont 10
Dumont, Stephen. University of Notre Dame. “Kant’s Ethics.” pages 4-5. RB
Your maxim is your reason for acting. The formula of universal law therefore says that you should only act for those reasons which have the following characteristic: you can act for that reason while at the same time willing that it be a universal law that everyone adopt that reason for acting. The best way to understand what this means is by looking at Kantʼs discussion of an action which violates the formula of universal law. Kantʼs line of reasoning here appears to be this: if I consider the maxim Promise to get money whenever I need it with no intention of paying it back. as a universal law, then I imagine a scenario in which everyone is constantly making false promises. But in this sort of scenario, the convention of promising would cease to exist: after all, no one would have any reason to lend money on the basis of promises if such promises are never kept. So in such a world it would be impossible to act on this maxim.
Free speech is integral to our democracy and constitution – Warren 57
Warren, Earl. "SWEEZY V. NEW HAMPSHIRE.". June 17, 1957. Web. December 05, 2016. RB
The essentiality of freedom in the community of American universities is almost self-evident. No one should underestimate the vital role in a democracy that is played by those who guide and train our youth. To impose any strait jacket upon the intellectual leaders in our colleges and universities would imperil the future of our Nation. No field of education is so thoroughly comprehended by man that new discoveries cannot yet be made. Particularly is that true in the social sciences, where few, if any, principles are accepted as absolutes. Scholarship cannot flourish in an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust. Teachers and students must always remain free to inquire, to study and to evaluate, to gain new maturity and understanding; otherwise our civilization will stagnate and die. Equally manifest as a fundamental principle of a democratic society is political freedom of the individual. Our form of government is built on the premise that every citizen shall have the right to engage in political expression and association. This right was enshrined in the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights. Exercise of these basic freedoms in America has traditionally been through the media of political associations. Any interference with the freedom of a party is simultaneously an interference with the freedom of its adherents. All political 354 U.S. 234, 251 ideas cannot and should not be channeled into the programs of our two major parties. History has amply proved the virtue of political activity by minority, dissident groups, who innumerable times have been in the vanguard of democratic thought and whose programs were ultimately accepted. Mere unorthodoxy or dissent from the prevailing mores is not to be condemned. The absence of such voices would be a symptom of grave illness in our society.
The Constitution serves as a primary maxim for the USA – Tsesis 13
Tsesis, Alexander, Maxim Constitutionalism: Liberal Equality for the Common Good, 91 Tex. L. Rev. 1609 (2012-2013) RB
This Article argues that the central purpose of U.S. constitutional governance is the protection of individual rights for the common good. Members of all three branches of government must fulfill that public trust through just policies and actions. The maxim of constitutional governance establishes a stable foundation for the rule of law, requiring government to function in a non arbitrary manner. It provides the people with consistency and predictability about the scope of governmental powers and responsibilities. The foundational dictate of governance is incorporated into the U.S. constitutional tradition through the Declaration of Independence and the Preamble to the Constitution. Those two documents reflect the national commitment to promulgating laws that are conducive to both the public good and the personal pursuit of happiness. The federal legal system must integrate protections of rights for the common good into statutes, regulations, and judicial opinions that address a plethora of social demands and problems. The project of maxim constitutionalism runs counter to positivist skepticism about the validity of fundamental constitutional principles. This Article seeks to demonstrate that maxim constitutionalism reflects the normative underpinning of legal order that is compatible with pluralistic self-governance. The protection of rights for the common good facilitates the workings of a polity that tolerates debate and deliberation. The administration of laws for the public benefit enjoins tyrannical majoritarianism and abuse of state authority.
Speech does not hinder others from achieving their ends – Varden 10
Helga Varden, “A Kantian Conception of Free Speech,” in Freedom of Expression in a Diverse World, ed. Deirdre Golash (New York: Springer, 2010), 42. RB
This distinction between internal and external use of choice and freedom explains why Kant maintains that most ways in which a person uses words in his interactions with others cannot be seen as involving wrongdoing from the point of view of right: “such things as merely communicating his thoughts to them, telling or promising them something, whether what he says is true and sincere or untrue and insincere” do not constitute wrongdoing because “it is entirely up to them the listeners whether they want to believe him or not” (6: 238). The utterance of words in space and time does not have the power to hinder anyone else’s external freedom, including depriving him of his means. Since words as such cannot exert physical power over people, it is impossible to use them as a means of coercion against another. For example, if you block my way, you coerce me by hindering my movements: you hinder my external freedom. If, however, you simply tell me not to move, you have done nothing coercive, nothing to hinder my external freedom, as I can simply walk passed you. So, even though by means of your words, you attempt to influence my internal use of choice by providing me with possible reasons for acting, you accomplish nothing coercive. That is, you may wish that I take on your proposal for action, but you do nothing to force me to do so. Whether or not I choose to act on your suggestion is still entirely up to me. Therefore, you cannot choose for me. My choice to act on your words is beyond the reach of your words, as is any other means I might have. Indeed, even if what you suggest is the virtuous thing to do, your words are powerless with regard to making me act virtuously. Virtuous action requires not only that I act on the right maxims, but that I also do so because it is the right thing to do, or from duty. Because the choice of maxims (internal use of choice) and duty (internal freedom) are beyond the grasp of coercion, Kant holds that most uses of words, including immoral ones such as lying, cannot be seen as involving wrongdoing from the point of view of right.
Respect for humanity requires unconditional respect for free speech – Ruger 16
William Ruger, “Free Speech Is Central to Our Dignity as Humans,” Time, 3 June 2016. RB
At its most fundamental level, free speech is our natural right to express ourselves, consistent with the equal rights of others to do so. Protecting this right respects the moral dignity of individuals as reasoning, autonomous beings with their own ideas, beliefs and values. This means that speech should not be restricted, even when we think it is wrong or dangerous. When we vociferously disagree with someone and willingly engage them in a dialogue, we actually reveal our deepest respect for their dignity as reasoning beings. On a more practical level, positive social change—as well as moral and scientific progress—is more difficult without the free flow of ideas that free speech allows. Repressive societies, by squelching speech, impair people’s ability to improve those societies. Even the Soviet Union recognized this and belatedly initiated a policy of glasnost (“openness”) shortly before its collapse. Here at home, Americans’ ability to confront the evil of slavery was set back in the 1830s and ’40s Congress by its “gag rule” on debate of anti-slavery petitions. Conversely, freer speech in the 1950s and ’60s helped civil rights advocates bring down Jim Crow.
Part 3 is Solvency
I defend the maxim that public universities and colleges ought not restrict any constitutionally protected speech. Therefore, I don’t actually pass the resolution as a policy through congress; rather, I simply recognize its deontological value.
Maxims are moral norms we should epistemologically value; coercing us to enforce them contradicts Kantian philosophy – Timmermann 2k
Timmermann, James Harvard University. “Kant’s Puzzling Ethics of Maxims.” 2000. RB
In Kant's philosophy of action, maxims are the freely chosen subjective principles or deeper intentions of all of our conscious actions. They are thus expressive of the stance we take towards our incentives. Maxims determine the extent to which we freely and willingly decide to act on them, that is, to pursue the subjective ends that our incentives suggest to us. According to what Henry Allison has dubbed the "Incorporation Thesis" in his Kant's 7'heory of Freedom, it is the free choice of our maxims in incorporating or approving of the incentives we have that leads to action, constituting our freedom of the faculty of choice (Lat, arbitrium, Ger. Willkiir). There are two aspects of this freedom: First, our choice of maxim and the actions that result from this choice are negatively free in the sense that they are not determined by natural factors. Incentives merely suggest possible maxims, ends, courses of action, and sometimes vehemently so; but for action they still need our stamp of approval. Secondly, maxims are, as a result of this, subject to the standards of rationality. Even though we often act on maxims that fail to meet these standards, our freedom entails that we always could and therefore ought to have met them. In this sense, the Kantian catchphrase of Ought implies Can can be reversed: Can also implies Ought. This most fundamental type of maxim is clearly on the subjective side of things and therefore easily contrasted with imperatives, which are prescriptive as well as objective and express an 'Ought'. Whenever we act in the full sense of the word-that is, when we act on more than a mere reflex or impulse-we act on some maxim of this sort. Because, as we are fundamentally convinced, our will is free, it is not forced upon us by our sensibility (but we need not consciously formulate this subjective principle of our action). Rather, it is the complement to our sensibility required for action, and it is freely chosen because it can conform to the standards of reason. A maxim of this kind is a belief, a 'Willensmeinung' (V:66), and the choice of this 'volitional belief constitutes our freedom of Willkur.
Fixed principles are a prerequisite to meaningful application – Chesterton 8
Gilbert Chesterton Christian apologist and writer. “Orthodoxy.” 1908. RB
Silly examples are always simpler; let us suppose a person wanted a particular kind of world; say, a blue world. He would have no cause to complain of the slightness or swiftness of his task; he might toil for a long time at the transformation; he could work away (in every sense) until all was blue. He could have heroic adventures; the putting of the last touches to a blue tiger. He could have fairy dreams; the dawn of a blue moon. But if they worked hard, that high-minded reformer would certainly (from his own point of view) leave the world better and bluer than he found it. If he altered a blade of grass to his favorite color every day, he would get on slowly. But if they altered his favorite color every day, they would not get on at all. If, after reading a fresh philosopher, they started to paint everything red or yellow, their work would be thrown away: there would be nothing to show except a few blue tigers walking about, specimens of their early bad manner. This is exactly the position of the average modern thinker. It will be said that this is avowedly a preposterous example. But it is literally the fact of recent history. The great and grave changes in our political civilization all belonged to the early nineteenth century, not to the later.
We as debaters should learn the importance of freedom so that we improve society as passionate voters and citizens when we grow up – Giroux 15
Giroux, Henry. “Higher Education and the Promise of Insurgent Public Memory.” March 3, 2015. RB
The corporatization, militarization and dumbing down of rigorous scholarship, and the devaluing of the critical capacities of young people mark a sharp break from a once influential educational tradition in the United States, extending from Thomas Jefferson to John Dewey to Maxine Greene, who held that freedom flourishes in the worldly space of the public realm only through the work of educated, critical citizens. Within this democratic tradition, education was not confused with training; instead, its critical function was propelled by the need to provide students with the knowledge and skills that enable a "politically interested and mobilized citizenry, one that has certain solidarities, is capable of acting on its own behalf, and anticipates a future of ever greater social equality across lines of race, gender, and class." (22) Other prominent educators and theorists such as Hannah Arendt, James B. Conant and Cornelius Castoriadis have long believed and rightly argued that we should not allow education to be modeled after the business world. Dewey, in particular, warned about the growing influence of the "corporate mentality" and the threat that the business model posed to public spaces, higher education and democracy. He argued:¶ The business mind, having its own conversation and language, its own interests, its own intimate groupings in which men of this mind, in their collective capacity, determine the tone of society at large as well as the government of industrial society.... We now have, although without formal or legal status, a mental and moral corporateness for which history affords no parallel. (23) Dewey and the other public intellectuals mentioned above shared a common vision and project of rethinking what role education might play in providing students with the habits of mind and ways of acting that would enable them to "identify and probe the most serious threats and dangers that democracy faces in a global world dominated by instrumental and technological thinking." (24) Conant, a former president of Harvard University, argued that higher education should create a class of "American radicals," who could fight for equality, favor public education, elevate human needs over property rights and challenge "groups which have attained too much power." (25) Conant's views seem so radical today that it is hard to imagine him being hired as a university president at Harvard or any other institution of higher learning.
A Kantian state is definitely plausible; Germany proves – Ripstein 9
Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy, 2009. RB
Strictly speaking, the right to dignity is not an enumerated right in the German Basic Law, but the organizing principle under which all enumerated rights—ranging from life and security of the person through freedom of expression, movement, association, and employ- ment and the right to a fair trial to equality before the law—are organized. It appears as Art. I.1: “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.” Art. I.3 explains that the enumerated rights follow: “The following basic rights shall bind the legislature, the executive, and the judiciary as directly applicable law.” Other, enumerated rights are subject to proportionality analysis, through which they can be restricted in light of each other so as to give effect to a consistent system of rights. The right to dignity is the basis of the state’s power to legislate and so is not subject to any limitation, even in light of the enumerated rights falling under it, because—to put it in explicitly Kantian terms—citizens could not give themselves a law that turned them into mere objects.
Part 4 is Framing
Deontological theory is what gives value to consequences – Korsgaard 83
Christine M., "Two Distinctions in Goodness," The Philosophical Review Vol. 92, No. 2 (Apr., 1983), pp. 169-195, JSTOR. RB
The argument shows how Kant’s idea of justification works. It can be read as a kind of regress upon the conditions, starting from an important assumption. The assumption is that when a rational being makes a choice or undertakes an action, he or she supposes the object to be good, and its pursuit to be justified. At least, if there is a categorical imperative there must be objectively good ends, for then there are necessary actions and so necessary ends. In order for there to be any objectively good ends, however, there must be something that is unconditionally good and so can serve as a sufficient condition of their goodness. Kant considers what this might be: it cannot be an object of inclination, for those have only a conditional worth, “for if the inclinations and the needs founded on them did not exist, their object would be without worth”. It cannot be the inclinations themselves because a rational being would rather be free from them. Nor can it be external, things, which serve only as means. So, Kant asserts, the unconditionally valuable thing must be “humanity” or “rational nature,” which he defines as the capacity to set an end. Kant explains that regarding your existence as a rational being as an end in itself is a “subjective principle of human action.” By this I understand him to mean that we must regard ourselves as capable of conferring value upon the objects of our choice, the ends that we set, because we must regard our ends as good. But since “every other rational being thinks of his existence by the same rational ground which holds also for myself,” we must regard others as capable of conferring value by reason of their rational choices and so also as ends in themselves. Treating another as an end in itself thus involves making that person’s ends as far as possible your own. The ends that are chosen by any rational being, possessed of the humanity or rational nature that is fully realized in a good will, take on the status of objective goods. They are not intrinsically valuable, but they are objectively valuable in the sense that every rational being has a reason to promote or realize them. For this reason, it is our duty to promote the happiness of others – the ends that they choose – and, in general, to make the highest good our end.
Meta-ethics debate solves extinction of the entire galaxy – Muehlhauser 11
Muehlhauser, Luke (Executive director at the Singularity Institute). "The Urgent Meta-Ethics of Friendly Artificial Intelligence." Less Wrong. 01 February 2011. RB
Barring a major collapse of human civilization (due to nuclear war, asteroid impact, etc.), many experts expect the intelligence explosion Singularity to occur within 50-200 years. That fact means that many philosophical problems, about which philosophers have argued for millennia, are suddenly very urgent. Those concerned with the fate of the galaxy must say to the philosophers:" Too slow! Stop screwing around with transcendental ethics and qualitative epistemologies! Start thinking with the precision of an AI researcher and solve these problems!" If a near-future AI will determine the fate of the galaxy, we need to figure out what values we ought to give it. Should it ensure animal welfare? Is growing the human population a good thing? But those are questions of applied ethics. More fundamental are the questions about which normative ethics to give the AI: How would the AI decide if animal welfare or large human populations were good? What rulebook should it use to answer novel moral questions that arise in the future? But even more fundamental are the questions of meta-ethics. What do moral terms mean? Do moral facts exist? What justifies one normative rulebook over the other? The answers to these meta-ethical questions will determine the answers to the questions of normative ethics, which, if we are successful in planning the intelligence explosion, will determine the fate of the galaxy.
Autonomous legislation cannot be done out of pity – Cartwright 88
David E. Cartwright “Schopenhauer’s Compassion and Nietzsche’s Pity.” 1988. RB
Hence we find that Nietzsche adopts and scores some critical points by employing the Kantian line. There is a danger for the pitier, Nietzsche claims, not simply because of the suffering involved in this emotion, but also because of the susceptibility of the pitier to the manipulation and control by those pitied. This susceptibility to the control and manipulation by others suggests two other important Kantian themes, the loss of one's self-control vs. autonomy and the irrational and involuntary nature of emotions such as pity. Both Nietzsche and Kant maintain that one of the problems with pity is that it usurps the agent's autonomy. Nietzsche argues that in being manipulated and controlled by the recipient of pity, an agent may lose autonomy in two ways. The agent is made to suffer, and this is something that most people find undesirable, and, since pity for someone is usually conative, the agent may act to help the recipient escape his or her suffering, and this may be something the agent would usually not want to do. While the agent is not exactly out of control, Nietzsche's point is that in pity the agent loses self-control by being controlled by someone else. The notion of self-control is the basic idea behind Kant's conception of autonomy. Kant argued that to be autonomous it was necessary for agents to be free from external forces, which compel their behavior. This sort of negative freedom, he argued, was not sufficient for autonomy, however. An autonomous will must also have ". . . the property ... of being a law to itself."'1Kant held that autonomous agents act from their own conceptions; their actions are ascribed to causal factors whose origins are, in some way, identified with their rational natures. In other words, autonomous agents are self-controlling because they determine their own actions. In pity, nevertheless, autonomy is usurped because it, like any emotion, is initiated by factors external to the agent, factors that over- whelm or "infect" the agent.
Respecting minorities as ends is the only hope for ending oppression – Farr 2
Arnold Farr (prof of phil @ UKentucky, focusing on German idealism, philosophy of race, postmodernism, psychoanalysis, and liberation philosophy). “Can a Philosophy of Race Afford to Abandon the Kantian Categorical Imperative?” JOURNAL of SOCIAL PHILOSOPHY, Vol. 33 No. 1, Spring 2002, 17–32. RB
That is, the implication that in Kant’s philosophy, rationality can only apply to white, European males does not seem to be the only alternative. The problem seems to lie in the requirement of abstraction. There are two ways of looking at the abstraction requirement that I think are faithful to Kant’s text and that overcome the criticisms of this requirement. First, the abstraction requirement may be best understood as a demand for intersubjectivity or recognition. Second, it may be understood as an attempt to avoid ethical egoism in determining maxims for our actions. It is unfortunate that Kant never worked out a theory of intersubjectivity, as did his successors Fichte and Hegel. However, this is not to say that there is not in Kant’s philosophy a tacit theory of intersubjectivity or recognition. The abstraction requirement simply demands that in the midst of our concrete differences we recognize ourselves in the other and the other in ourselves. That is, we recognize in others the humanity that we have in common. Recognition of our common humanity is at the same time recognition of rationality in the other. We recognize in the other the capacity for self determination and the capacity to legislate for a kingdom of ends. This brings us to the second interpretation of the abstraction requirement. To avoid ethical egoism one must abstract from (think beyond) one’s own personal interest and subjective maxims. That is, the categorical imperative requires that I recognize that I am a member of the realm of rational beings. Hence, I organize my maxims in consideration of other rational beings. Under such a principle other people cannot be treated merely as a means for my end but must be treated as ends in themselves. The merit of the categorical imperative for a philosophy of race is that it contravenes racist ideology to the extent that racist ideology is based on the use of persons of a different race as a means to an end rather than as ends in themselves. Embedded in the formulation of an end in itself and the formula of the kingdom of ends is the recognition of the common hope for humanity. That is, maxims ought to be chosen on the basis of an ideal, a hope for the amelioration of humanity. This ideal or ethical commonwealth (as Kant calls it in the Religion) is the kingdom of ends.34
