On Tue, 19 Oct 1999 15:38:12 -0700 (PDT) Dennis R Redmond <dredmond at OREGON.UOREGON.EDU> wrote:
> On Tue, 19 Oct 1999, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote:
>
> > Read Kant, but don't do a Kant.
>
> Maybe we could actually *grow* a Kant inside of a
test-tube...
The philosophers have only interpreted Kant, in various ways; the point, however, it to change him.
ken
ps. Yoshie, my last post was not intended to injure, I was stressing the Kantain point to be made, less we forget, that when one acts in the service of God, or country, or capital ... we risk the highest degree of authoritarianism. We can only be responsible for things when we acknowledge their incompleteness, their failure. Ethics is a perspective from the viewpoint of radical (not diabolical) evil. Theorists of the good or just life: Taylor, Gadamer, MacIntyre, Rawls, Habermas, all fail to consider this. When one acts in a just manner, when one successfully completes a good act... then the act itself is rendered autonomous from all other social, political, or economic considerations. What was it Oppenheimer said... I have become like death? He recognizes that his involvement constituted an evil... he recognized the harm that would and could come as a result. Naturally it is important to forsee such circumstances, to minimize suffering whenever possible... but, as a retroactive act, "what have I done" evil as an ethical perspective is sound.