Kant on the Cheap: Thomas Scanlon Interviewed Alex Voorhoeve
Thomas Scanlon is a philosopher's moral philosopher. His writing is like the Harvard Arts Centre by Le Corbusier that he points out as we walk to his office: without ornamentation, constructed with its purpose always in mind.
In this measured style, Scanlon addresses the basic questions of moral philosophy: When we call an action morally right or wrong, what kind of judgement are we making? What kind of reasoning do we employ to arrive at such judgements? Further, when we consider an action wrong, this gives us an important reason not to perform it, and to condemn ourselves if we do. But why should moral considerations carry such weight in our lives?
<> "Why be moral? You answer this question by thinking about how your relation with others is altered if you are behaving in ways that you could not reasonably expect them to accept. This puts you on a footing of revealed or concealed antagonism towards them. You are, in a way, contending parties. The reason we have not to have our relationships to be on this footing is the reason why we can be motivated to be moral." <> Just as the capacity to assess and act on reasons is foundational for all valuable human pursuits, so, Scanlon argues, caring about justifying oneself to others is fundamental to all valuable human relations. At the root of our relationships with others as colleagues, lovers or friends is a recognition of these others as people with separate moral standing, to whom justification is owed in their own right, not merely in virtue of the ties of commerce, love or friendship that bind us to them. There would, remarks Scanlon, be something unnerving about a 'friend' who would steal a kidney for you if you needed one, or, we might add, about a friend like the main character in Dominic Moll's thriller Harry, un ami que vous veut du bien, who rids you of your parents because they make your life miserable. The attitude of such a 'friend' implies that the only reason you are not harmed is because he happens to like you (164). <> So to me, neither Kant's idea of freedom nor his idea of a contradiction seem to really work in the end, and when you give up these two ideas you've given up a lot of Kant. However, I do find the idea of moral community very appealing. So I try to develop a notion of morality which simply takes as basic that notion of moral community. When you ask 'why be moral?', I think we can just describe the appeal of that kind of community and the disappeal of its alternative. Now, in Kant's view that's heteronomy. But not being a great believer in Kant's particular notion of autonomy, I do not see this as a problem. I have a different idea of freedom than Kant does, so it's Kant without the really fundamental bit (for him), without the difficult part."
"So" he says laughing, "you might say I'm Kant on the cheap."