Philosophers who study the history of philosophy, the Oxford philosopher Derek
Parfit once remarked, divide into two kinds: archaeologists and
grave-robbers. As with most good jokes (and everything that Parfit has to
say) this bears thinking about.
Certainly, both historians of philosophy and archaeologists aim to understand
the past for its own sake. But the parallel goes further: both must develop
their interpretations on the basis of imperfect evidence. The
archaeologist’s skill is to be able to reconstruct an isolated artefact
(perhaps only a fragment of an artefact) from a conception of its point and
purpose. That bar there – was it once a handle? If so, why is it bent? To
answer such questions, each item must be appreciated in terms of the role it
plays in a way of life. That way of life will have something in common with
ours (people always need to eat, keep warm and shelter from the rain) but it
will be different too: one thing we know is that the beliefs and values of
those who lived long ago were not the same as our own.
Likewise with the philosopher. It is true that philosophical texts are much
less likely to be damaged or truncated than the objects that the
archaeologist recovers, but they have their own incompleteness.
Philosophical arguments are characteristically enthymematic – that is to
say, the premisses that would be necessary to make them conclusive are not
spelled out. This is not (well, not always) a weakness on the part of the
author. It would be impossible for all of the presuppositions of a
philosophical argument to be articulated at the same time, not least because
among those presuppositions are assumptions about the method of philosophy
itself – what counts as a good philosophical argument is not something to be
taken for granted. Yet, without an idea of what its unstated premisses are,
a work of philosophy will not be intelligible. The historian of philosophy
must reconstruct the text from the perspective of the most plausible set of
implicit beliefs that can be attributed to the author. That is what we mean
when we say that texts must be read in context.
Consider now the grave-robber. Sometimes, of course, grave-robbing is just
illegal archaeology (the Macedonian helmet ends up as a trophy on the wall
of a billionaire’s villa instead of in a museum) but, for Parfit’s contrast
to work best, the true grave-robber is the one who takes an artefact to use
it now and doesn’t mind what was done with it in the past. If that
boot-scraper was once a ploughshare, what does he care? But, one might ask,
if the grave-robber is to make effective use of what he finds, wouldn’t it
be important to know how it was used originally? What good would an
astrolabe be to someone who had no idea of astronomy? In that case, the two
enterprises may be closer than the contrast at first suggested: even the
most ruthless grave-robber may have a need for the archaeologist’s skills.
In the world of Kant scholarship, Allen W. Wood is a distinguished
archaeologist. He has written extensively about all aspects of Kant’s
thought over many years and he is co-editor of the Cambridge Edition of the
Works of Immanuel Kant. His project in Kantian Ethics is different, however.
Kantian ethics as Wood describes it is not merely, or even mainly, an
interpretation of what Kant said. It is put forward instead as a theoretical
option in thinking about ethical questions . . . . It is answerable not to
textual accuracy or exegetical standards of Kant interpretation but to the
right standards for thinking philosophically about ethical theory and
ethical issues.
Has Wood changed sides? Has Indiana Jones turned into René Belloq? In fact,
Kantian Ethics contains a great deal of textual exegesis and some very
robust criticism of those who, in Wood’s opinion, misinterpret Kant. Once
those misinterpretations are cleared away, Wood claims, it will turn out
that Kant’s own ethical theory is much more defensible than most recent
interpreters think. “What is needed instead, in many cases, is only a better
understanding of Kant’s own thoughts.”
Wood’s strategy has three strands. There are parts of Kant’s theory which,
however dear they may have been to Kant himself, must now, in his view, be
abandoned. The most important is Kant’s idea that human beings belong to
both a “noumenal” and an empirical realm – a metaphysical conception that
must be quarantined from Kant’s ethics, Wood says, “as if it carried the
plague”. Beyond that, central elements of the theory have, he claims, been
misunderstood by defenders and critics alike. Wood takes particular issue
with readings that have Kant as a moral “rigorist” who is in some way
hostile to human happiness. Finally, he thinks, Kant has sometimes drawn
conclusions from his own ideas that are inconsistent with their basic
inspiration, for instance in what he has to say about lying and punishment.
It is helpful to start with this third strand because it allows the problems
faced by Wood’s own interpretation to be seen most easily.
Do we have a duty to tell the truth even when the consequences of doing so
will be very bad indeed? For example, should we tell the truth to a would-be
murderer trying to locate his victim? In his later years, Kant did not often
reply to his critics but he discusses just this example in a short response
to Benjamin Constant that has become notorious. Yes, he says, we do have
such a duty, even though “I do no wrong to him who unjustly compels me to
make the statement if I falsify it”. Wood is uncomfortable with Kant’s
answer – as well he might be. He claims that it is important to appreciate
that in responding to Constant, Kant is treating lying as a violation of a
“duty of right” (a duty that falls within the sphere of what is publicly
enforceable) rather than a more general ethical duty. Wood’s point seems to
be that Kant’s absolute prohibition of lying is only intended to apply to
some rather narrowly defined special cases. But when we come to look at what
Kant says about lying as a matter of ethical duty, it appears that his wider
view of it is every bit as uncompromising. Lying, Kant says, is “the
greatest violation of man’s duty to himself regarded merely as a moral
being”. Even if the liar is trying to achieve a good end, “his way of
pursuing this end is, by its mere form, a crime of man against his own
person and a worthlessness that must make him contemptible in his own eyes”.
Such utterances (and there are many similar ones) should not be taken
literally, Wood claims: “I think that they have to be understood as the
rhetorical exaggerations on the part of a moralist who is not only motivated
by the philosophical aim of systematizing moral rules for theoretical
purposes but also – or even instead – concerned to have what he sees as the
proper effect on his audience”. So Kant’s assertions that it is
impermissible to tell a lie even for the sake of a good end are themselves
untruths being advanced to promote a good end? I hardly think so. In my
view, Kant’s absolute prohibition of lying is meant completely seriously and
it connects to the very deepest parts of his ethical theory.
As Wood himself points out, Kantian ethics rests on a single fundamental
value, the absolute worth of rational nature as giving moral laws
(“personhood” or “humanity in my person”, as Kant often calls it). This view
is extraordinarily radical – more radical than is often appreciated by many
of those who consider themselves to be Kantians. It seems natural to think
that if any action is to be good, it must be good for something that is
morally valuable – either by promoting it or by protecting its existence.
But Kant’s idea of personhood cannot be like that. After all, as long as I
exist as an agent, I have that morally valuable quality. It can’t be
increased by making me happier (or by giving me more choices). Nor would it
be decreased by harming or restricting me. So what sort of duty could we
have towards personhood (our own or others’)? Wood himself says that other
things that have value “have it, in one way or another, on the ground of
this basic value”. Yet this too is very puzzling. In what way could this
basic value “ground” another one? The most obvious way that one thing can be
said to derive value from another is if its existence promotes or protects
that other thing. But if personhood is not something that can be increased
or diminished by what exists outside it, how can anything else derive value
from the relationship that it has to personhood?
Wood says that “the demands made on us by this value depend on the kinds of
conduct required to show respect for it”. I think that this is quite right,
but again it is a puzzling thought. How should we show that respect? If a
law tells us to do something, then we show respect for the law by doing as
it tells us to. But for that we need to know what the content of the law is
in the first place. The dominant tradition of Kant interpretation looks for
this content by trying to use one of the formulae with which Kant expresses
the moral law – “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you
can at the same time will that it become a universal law” – as a decision
algorithm to compete (for example) with the simple maximizing principle of
utilitarianism. Wood thinks that such attempts have failed and that, in any
case, they represent a misconception of what Kant is trying to do. I agree
with him, but then where does the content of the moral law come from?
The answer, as I see it, is that the idea of “showing respect” for the value
of personhood is actually primary in giving content to the moral law: we
follow the law by respecting what is intrinsically valuable rather than
respect the law by following it. We show this respect in various ways. To
respect personhood we ought, in the first place, to respect persons, the
embodiment of that value, whether those persons are other people or
ourselves. Respecting other people requires us to respect their power to
choose their own paths in life and to promote their happiness. Our duties
towards ourselves as persons are founded, Kant says, “on a certain love of
honour consisting in the fact that a man values himself, and in his own eyes
is not unworthy that his actions should be in keeping with humanity”. This
requires us to perfect ourselves: to develop our moral powers and to live
life, so far as we can, in accordance with the ancient virtue, sustine et
abstine – endure and do without.
Such are the deep roots of the idea that lying is always prohibited whether or
not it promotes happiness. A lie violates a duty to ourselves; it is
dishonourable and makes us “contemptible”. Similar considerations also
explain Kant’s views about punishment. Kant believes that punishment must be
retributive. We should punish wrongdoers to the degree that matches the
gravity of their crime (including the death penalty for murderers) even if
no wider social benefit comes from doing so. Wood finds this part of Kant’s
theory as unappealing as the rigoristic account of lying. Although he does
not quarrel with the interpretive claim that Kant is a retributivist, he
asserts that this part of Kant’s theory “receives no real support from the
rest of his practical philosophy” and, indeed, that it is “inconsistent with
fundamental elements” of it, since it is an ethical duty to promote the
happiness of others. Again, I disagree.
On the conventional, modern view that a good action must benefit a morally
valuable being, it is hard to see how such a radically retributive view of
punishment could be defended. Punishment is, after all, a way of depriving
the person being punished of welfare. If there are no benefits to other
human beings (now or in the future) to balance that, how could it be right?
But for Kant, as I have said, what matters is, above all, respecting the
inner core of moral personhood we all carry within us – promoting people’s
welfare is secondary to that. And in this case Kant’s view is clear: justice
means holding moral agents responsible for their actions. Punishment is a
way of expressing respect for moral personhood, something that the criminal
can recognize that he deserves, and justice (at least in Kant’s universe)
has a clear priority over the duty to promote welfare. Although human
society is an imperfect means of doing so, it is the duty of the ruler to
enforce justice in all circumstances.
You may think that it is a very odd way of showing respect for personhood when
the state puts an end to the life of someone in whom personhood is embodied,
but that is exactly what Kant believes. The fact that we value personhood
within ourselves does not mean that we should value life above all things.
Because personhood is not just an empirical property of human beings, it can
be honoured even when life has to be sacrificed: “the man of honour is
acquainted with something that he values even more highly than life, namely
honour, while the scoundrel considers it better to live in shame than not to
live at all”. Even if society were about to dissolve, it would still be
right to put the last murderer to death, Kant says. The point is not to
uphold society but to uphold justice itself. “For if justice goes, there is
no longer any value in men’s living on the earth.”
In short then, I think that Kant’s rigorism is rooted much more deeply in his
thought than Wood would have us believe. The idea that ethics is based upon
a single value, personhood, which cannot be increased or diminished by any
action that we take, ties Kant’s ethics – for better or worse – to the
picture of human beings as poised between two worlds, the noumenal and the
empirical, that Wood finds so noxious. Our aim in the empirical world should
be to act in ways that are expressive of our membership of the noumenal
world.
Kantian Ethics is an important and challenging book. The position that it
presents is original and its argument is supported by an exceptional
knowledge of Kant’s thought, of the Kantian literature and of ethical theory
more broadly. It is not, however, a particularly attractive one to read. The
tone in which Wood criticizes those with whom he disagrees is hectoring and
dyspeptic. They show “a deplorable tendency to think in terms of entrenched
prejudices”; they commit “whoppers”, have a “tin ear” for Kant, say things
that are “strangely arbitrary and nonsensically extreme”, and so on.
Philosophical texts are exceedingly complex, and to enter into their world
is not easy. When someone feels that they have grasped what others have
missed it is perhaps understandable that they should come to think that, as
Wood puts it, “what Kant is trying to say is not making it past the
censorship of their philosophical prejudices”. I can appreciate this, not
least because I found myself thinking similarly about Wood himself. It
seemed to me that his grave-robber’s passion for using Kant to support his
own moral convictions had sometimes led him to overlook dimensions of Kant’s
theory to which, as an archaeologist, he should have given greater weight.
But this thought does not diminish the admiration I feel for the seriousness
and erudition with which he sets about his task.
Allen W. Wood
KANTIAN ETHICS
360pp. Cambridge University Press. Paperback, £15.99 (US $25.99).
978 0 521 67114 9
Michael Rosen is Professor of Government at Harvard University. He is
completing a short book on “dignity”.
