Kant Redux (was shirtless helots & neo-asceticism)

JKSCHW at aol.com JKSCHW at aol.com
Sun Feb 13 19:50:59 PST 2000


You have worn me down. I actually haven't the patience for Kant scholarship just now, so this is my final note on the subject.

My point was just that Kant is not an ascetic who espouses self-denial not that I don't prefer Marx's more historical approach to these questions. But you do not do justice to the subtlty, depth, and profundity of Kant's ethical thought, much of which finds some echo in Marx, for example, in the centrality oif productive activity. I don't say that Kant anticipated Marx in every respect even on this point, or agreed with Marx's communism. He did not. In his personal economic views, he is an bourgeois philosopher. Whether that could be squared with the Kingdom of Ends is an other story. But Kant did get there first with the notion that a happy life is one of productivity activity, and to be preffered for that reason--hardly the view of an ascetic.

I think you misread Kan't remarks on women and civilk personality, etc. I believe these are purely descriptive. Now, Kant does not have Mill's passion--one far greater than Marx's by the way. He never got on his high horse about women's subordination as Mill did. However, his remarks on women as sex objects are right out of contemporary feminism.

Finally, there is no logical connection between anti-utilitarianism and the rejection of revolution: Marx was an anti-utilitarian, and for very good reason. Neither is there any connection between abstract moral universalism and antirevolutionism, even if Kant thought there was. As I explained. the Categorical Imperative can authorize or mandate revolutionary action. You can revolt for other reasons than to promote happiness. Utilitarianism, on the other hand, can, notoriously justify slavery if that maximizes total or average utility.

That's all I have to say about Kant just now.

--jks



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