Real Worlds, Ideal Worlds, "Our World"

All,

I feel the need to interject in the conversation swirling around Kant. There seems to be a disconnect between what Kant is describing--which is "our" "real" world--and the way in which he is being portrayed on the blog as "Kant's" world. Just two quick notes for consideration. First, Kant's world is the world of rationality. He's not saying that we are perfect rational beings. We are not. He's not saying that in an ideal world we would be. That wouldn't even make sense to him. What he is saying is that he has found the rational metaphysical basis (or conditions for the possibility) of morality and freedom. And from this he can tell us, for example, that when we act on the basis of our inclinations we are very definitely not acting freely but enslaving ourselves to forces outside of ourselves. Or, for example, when we use other people we are actually validating and justifying them to use us, to enslave us, to treat us like objects or tools or whatever, and saying that this is not only ok but we encourage it (because we actively pursue it). But if I use someone or lie to them or whatever then I am saying that they can do this to me, but then lying and using wouldn't work because if I knew the person was lying or using then I wouldn't believe it or go along with it. Put another way, you have to regard other human beings as not human--as subhuman, as another species, as animals, etc.--in order to lie to them or use them, as you cannot possibly consider them to be your equals (Kant's "respect for the moral law within them") because if they were they wouldn't be duped, because you are the one duping them... Do you get it? Either they are subhuman (i.e., you are a god), or you are saying that everybody can do this to everybody, but then it would never work because nobody would fall for it...

I'm rambling intentionally, as Kant is trying to show us the circularity of a world without a rational moral substructure. But this is OUR world--we all implicitly agree with the categorical imperative, as we consider ourselves to be essentially rational, and we say all the time that something is "wrong" or "unfair" or "just" or "good..." We just haven't really figured out how these two fit together. The fantastic irony is that we all implicitly recognize that our immoral actions should not work if others are our equals--we just don't think of them as equals when we dupe them, which is why we are capable of duping them in the first place. Otherwise we wouldn't.

This doesn't mean you hate your grandmother when you tell a white lie. It does mean that you are putting yourself first, before any concern for her or respect for her as an autonomous rational being capable of dealing with whatever it is that you are hiding from her. Otherwise why and how would you ever do such a thing? But if she IS your equal (i.e., she can put herself first), then she can do the same thing to you, so she should be able to recognize when you do it or at least wary of your capability to do it. Otherwise she is genuinely less than you in a biological/neurological way. Note that everyone generally regards both of these scenarios--that I am a god amongst lessers, or that everyone should and does always put themselves first in a way that makes trust completely irrational and makes the trusting person retarded--as scenarios wherein anything like morality, community, rationality, etc. have been completely jettisoned. So Kant attempts to provide an alternative which--with all irony--does not SEEM to mesh with our experience and desires and beliefs and conceptions of freedom, yet DOES mesh with our experience and desires and beliefs and conceptions of freedom. In sum, "Kant's world" IS our world, and we always kind of knew that, but we've been waiting for someone to come along and explain how it works to us, yet now that Kant has done so we wish he hadn't because it is uncomfortable to recognize how willfully ignorant and hypocritical we have been prior to hearing why and how our world actually works (even though we always implicitly knew...etc.).

Let me know if this helps or if it just confuses you more. And skip the sarcasm on this particular thread: I'm genuinely trying to determine if Kant is sinking in.

-W.