Ask Lemmy
A Fediverse community for open-ended, thought provoking questions
Rules: (interactive)
1) Be nice and; have fun
Doxxing, trolling, sealioning, racism, and toxicity are not welcomed in AskLemmy. Remember what your mother said: if you can't say something nice, don't say anything at all. In addition, the site-wide Lemmy.world terms of service also apply here. Please familiarize yourself with them
2) All posts must end with a '?'
This is sort of like Jeopardy. Please phrase all post titles in the form of a proper question ending with ?
3) No spam
Please do not flood the community with nonsense. Actual suspected spammers will be banned on site. No astroturfing.
4) NSFW is okay, within reason
Just remember to tag posts with either a content warning or a [NSFW] tag. Overtly sexual posts are not allowed, please direct them to either [email protected] or [email protected].
NSFW comments should be restricted to posts tagged [NSFW].
5) This is not a support community.
It is not a place for 'how do I?', type questions.
If you have any questions regarding the site itself or would like to report a community, please direct them to Lemmy.world Support or email [email protected]. For other questions check our partnered communities list, or use the search function.
6) No US Politics.
Please don't post about current US Politics. If you need to do this, try [email protected] or [email protected]
Reminder: The terms of service apply here too.
Partnered Communities:
Logo design credit goes to: tubbadu
view the rest of the comments
I interpret the categorical imperative differently than you do. I agree that one of the most straightforward readings of it seems to be advocating for everyone to be lawful stupid — "lawful stupid" is the perfect phrase for how I first interpreted Kant when I'd only heard about fragments of his ideas.
I find this lawful stupid conclusion to be a useful step towards thinking about the categorical imperative in a useful way. Sort of like "what would need to be true in order for this to make sense?".
For example, in your second point, I think the categorical imperative might ask us to "zoom out" and consider why we're in a situation where we have to make a bad choice. After facing such a choice, people may ease their conscience afterwards by convincing themselves that the bad thing they did was actually good because it prevented a worse thing. I feel like a more Kantian response would be to let oneself be uncomfortable with the small bad deed, in order to understand how to prevent that from being necessary again in future.
I think that zooming out to get more context is often the solution to lawful stupid. Your final example resonated with me because that situation is something I've struggled with a few times in my life. When I have cut harmful people from my life, it was because it was clear that they were hurting me to an unreasonable degree, and diminishing my capability for kindness. One of those times, I didn't so much decide to cut someone off, more to just spend my energy where it would be more useful, which led to me cultivating a network that helped me to realise how toxic that friendship had been.
Personally, reading Kant has led me to take a more "ecological" view in areas like this, where I consider myself as one small part of a much wider system. I haven't read Kant in too much depth though, so I'd appreciate any input you might have — I'm very much a scientist dabbling in Philosphy, so I have a lot to learn. In particular, I'm curious about if there's an alternative philosophical framework that you find does work for you.
Please read a basic guide on deuontological ethics. It is so clear that context really doesn't matter to Kant. All morality flowed through duty and not even the agent mattered. For me to do action x (according to Kant) has the same moral value as anyone else doing it.
It's kinda nice what you people are doing. You are taking something clearly broken and fixing it. It is a lot less nice to retrocon it. We know what the man said.