Kant's Kingdom of Ends

I want to remind us what we've done in looking at Kant's theory we've examined two formulas primarily the formula of universal law that says act only on that Maxim you can at the same time will as a universal law and also the formula of humanity that says you should treat humanity always as an end in itself never as a means only never merely as a means if you put those two together you get a certain picture and as we've seen he thinks one of them gives you an argument for the other that if you judge things on the basis of universal considerations there is one thing that all rational agents value and respect and on which he thinks actually their dignity rests which is their ability to make rational decisions their rational agency and so all rational agents have to respect rational engine C well if we put these ideas together we say all right we've got two ideas two concepts one is the concept of universal law we have to be able to universalize our moral judgments can't make exceptions for me or other people we like or my group or that type of thing and the second thing is that we have to respect people we mustn't use them we mustn't manipulate them we can't deceive them we cannot coerce them okay we have to respect their moral agency now so far one you can say well what does this mean in organizations last time we talked a lot about the universality and the fact that we can't discriminate on the basis of irrelevant considerations of a variety of cons this one indicates something that includes that but also gives you a sense of something more what would it be like to treat someone with this respect without discriminating necessarily but nevertheless treat that person disrespectfully treat them as a mere means yeah okay lying to so the same things right I'm deception we could say look at the conditions for rational agency somebody has to have information so if I deceive them if I lie to them or if I just withhold important information that they need to make a rational decision then you might say I'm exploiting them I'm using them merely as a means another way if I'm coercing them I'm doing something to force you into something that would constitute treating you with disrespect is there anything beyond those there are some contents who say that's it just don't deceive people don't coerce them but it's that all there is to it yeah good example suppose you plagiarize somebody's work right that would be a case you're not deceiving them you're not coercing them maybe you're deceiving your reader but in any event your reader might not even care whether you are your origin of this idea or somebody else is nevertheless you might think there's something wrong here you're not just maybe using your reader you're using the person merely as a means who actually came up with the idea who actually wrote this in the first place and so plagiarism feels like it's using someone who isn't even maybe aware of this right it doesn't require that the person even know about this can you think of other examples where somebody is really taking advantage of someone else but with what without coercion without deception yeah ah all right there's a lot about respect and if we think in terms of those relationship types that we studied a few weeks ago we can say aha wait a minute there's a lot to respect that has to do with the particular relationship type and so if I do not address someone with the properly respectful title I do not refer to the Duchess as your highness Oh or whatever I do not refer to anybody I mean it might be my doctor right if I don't treat the person in the way that the relationship suggests they ought to be treated then you might think that I'm treating them with disrespect even though there's no coercion or deception involved for example students are often puzzled about how to refer to professors it's it's like a weird question because it's not really that you want to treat someone with disrespect it's like what's respectful in this context and it's not agreed upon in a way right it's an awkward thing I went to a Quaker College where you know it's kind of a thing to refer to people by their first names but it felt very strange to just you know ask my professor a question class and say hey dick I don't know but I felt like it was strangely formal to refer to him as professor or doctor or something and so the solution we all came up with is we never referred to our professor and all you just hope to be noticed right you didn't use it any form of address whatever and and that that's rather awkward and in different contexts different things matter I mean in a lot of contexts it bugs me if somebody uses just my last name if they use just my first name that's fine but just my last name feels familiar in a way that I dislike on the other hand you know it does depend on the context if the newspaper were referring to me that's really ever happened but if it were I would expect them to use my last name and not to just say dang said blah blah blah right so so anyway it's kind of strange and something similar happens with names that can be abbreviated like Daniel or dan Kenneth ken etc different oh say doctor yeah doctor B that doesn't bother me at all actually yeah my junior high school students used to refer to me is dr. Dan that was getting on the borderline but anyway there were things that yeah I'm gonna put it often we are called one thing as a child right and maybe another thing in high school and then it's an adult you want to be called something different and their weird dynamics about this one of my best friends in print calls me Dan and yet in person calls me Daniel for most people it's exactly the opposite right in person they call me Dan unless they've known me since like a long time ago in high school or earlier in which case they call me Danny but there aren't many of those left no I thought that I've killed them all or anything I've just moved all over the places so but anyhow that you know to use the wrong term for somebody like that even though somebody you know well in a kind of equality matching relationship can be weird so I think you're right to say there are certain things about the roles but the specific relationships that don't have to do with coercion they don't have to do with deception but do involve a kind of respect within the context of that relationship and one set of rules applies to the authority ranking type relationship that you had in mind another set of rules applies to friendships and equality matching relationships and so on a different set of rules applies when you're dealing with market pricing relationships if you are I don't know waiter waitress shopkeeper or something like that you know how do you refer to a customer and it may depend on the kind of shop and a certain kind of shop that will be mr. Jones I don't know it'll be hey dude so depends and that does make this kind of slippery part of what it is to learn about that relationship in that social situation is to understand that kind of form that respect takes within that so anyway I think that's a crucial thing and within any given organization they're gonna be informal practices about this if I go in and talk to the Dean how do I refer to him if actually that it's a very easy question if I don't know the Dean but if we were friends for a long time before he became Dean now suddenly it's like oh you know hey what do I do what do I say about so anyway these things can be tricky in many cases any other ways in which you might think you could express disrespect without coercion without deception ah good you didn't do your share right you've got a group project you're working on together you each take a part of it you don't do your part you might say look that was disrespectful toward the others now did it involve coercion no did it involve deception well maybe if you promise to do it but on the other hand it might be that it was a really deception nobody officially promised anything you simply had the mate in fact maybe a group leader just said hey you know we'll all work on all the parts you know but but it'd be great if you could start on this and start on that and you just don't do it they might interpret that as disrespectful even if there was no real promise made we're gonna get to those type of group projects later main game theory and as we'll see it's actually really hard to structure a group in such a way that people have an incentive to do their part yeah yeah free riding in general feels like that the person who goes into the subway and hops over the turnstile it feels like they're in a sense using the system right if a person who manages to sneak up on the bus without paying the fare it feels as if those people are taking advantage of the system we would often say because there it's hard to pinpoint one specific person who's being shown disrespect you almost get the sense that everybody who's using the system properly is showing disrespect you feel like a chump while you're good they're paying for your seat while somebody else just cheats their way onto it and you might feel the same way about someone who cheats on an exam let's say maybe they are partly deceiving the professor but it's not just that it might be felt by other students to be disrespectful because you might think wait why am I doing this honestly while you're cheating your way to this and all sorts of cheating whether it's in an academic context or a business context or whatever can feel that way you feel like a chump for playing the game by the rules yeah ah good breaking propriety so it's not just forms of address or things like that there are in general rules of propriety that are broader than moral rules and you might think respect encompasses all of those so there's a way of reading content ethics where it's very specifically moral but you could say really this concept of respect is much larger than that and go back to that example of walking into somebody's shop and think about it point from the point of the customer showing respect for or disrespect for the owner at the shop it's not just a question of what you say to them it's a question of how you behave what you do and you can imagine all sorts of inappropriate behavior that would constitute disrespect for that shop in its owner so I think that's a great point this is something that feels like it goes far beyond just specific things about deception or coercion or something like that it really has to do with appropriate behavior in general okay well if we think about those things we can say these set bounds on our behavior right they set boundaries and you might think that that's really the purpose of Conte and ethics to say you can't make exceptions for yourself you can't treat people with disrespect but now is there anything more to it than that what about helping people what about the person who needs help are you required to help them you haven't made a promise your this isn't part of a group project or something the person is slipped and fallen and they can't get up there hurt please help me you say Hey sucks to be you and walk on now does that show them disrespect Khan would say yes it does but you can get the sense wait there are two senses of disrespect going on here right one is a sense where you are really under some obligation whether it's a rule of propriety or something specific to the relationship or something very general about rational agency you are you have some responsibility you have some obligation but what about this case where it looks like I'm not using them merely as a means suppose I just don't acknowledge them at all and in fact that happens all the time somebody falls down and collapses out here in the hallway does everybody in the hallway go rush over to help no in fact the more people that there are in the whole hallway the less likely it is that any individual person is going to help and so you might think wait what are my obligations here what Cod says I have an obligation to not just not you might say deny someone were rational agency I have to make my actions harmonize with it and that means I have to take on their ends as my own in fact he puts it really strongly he says I don't want to just maintain humanity I just I have to advance it the ends of any subject who has it ended himself ought as far as possible be my ends also well that's kind of a that's a remarkable claim right I have to take on your end so you've fallen down and you want to get up I have to help you up but how far does this go yeah okay good yes you might say wait I is a rational agent facing this impediment would want somebody to help me and in fact I would see it as necessary fulfillment of my agency right I I'm try I can't do this help me and so yes I apply the universal law I think I would want that and in Dean way presents this argument he says that's why look I am going to frequently meet the love and sympathy of others and so I'm gonna need help so I better help others and all of that makes a certain kind of sense but now to what extent do I have to go to take your ends on as my own so you are seeking to know something about organizational ethics I am supposed to take that end on as my own right because I'm your professor but suppose you have a hobby on the side you say well I also collect stamps do I have to take that in dogs my own do I have to say oh I'll help you collect stamps or suppose you I don't know one of my nephews has this goal of climbing every high mountain in New Hampshire every mountain over 4,000 feet or something there are dozens of them and he's done all but one or two well do I have to take that end on as my own I'm not gonna climb mountains in New Hampshire I mean I've done it a few times and but it's not a passion of mine and so if I pay you've only done this with one or two what about what about Monadnock it's like I don't know bad knock leaves me cold I have three children well not just literally I have no desire really to get to the top of every mountain should I take that on as my own or shall I take on his doing it's like I have to help him somehow it's like oh I'll Drive you up there what are the limits of this yeah oh okay well good let's see what happens if we reverse it because you're right he says it's very important what gives us dignity is our autonomy our ability to make decisions for ourselves and lay down the law for ourselves so we want to allow people as much autonomy as we can consistently with respecting the autonomy of others but now let's see if we can flip that around does that mean well what would it look like flipped around in a positive way I have to take on your ends as if they were my own to the extent that it does interfere with my pursuit of my own ends maybe that so I have to help you as much as I can without getting in the way of what I'm trying to do that would be one way of interpreting this after all if I'm really to serve the advancement of humanity the advancement of our rational natures then you could say I am supposed to help you attain what you want to the extent that it doesn't interfere with what I am doing now that would be one interpretation I think so you might say if we think about this helping this harmonizing business taking you on the ends of others as my own you might say well here's one way of looking at it I should do this as much as I can without interfering with my pursuit of my own own ends and I'm just gonna borrow a term from jean-paul Sartre here to help us shorten that interfering with my projects after all I do structure various activities toward some goal let's just call that a project so I have certain projects I should help you with your projects as long as it doesn't interfere with my projects now that's still really demanding hey what are you doing on Saturday night well nothing in particular oh you're gonna ask me to do something and now I have to do it for Elise peak right because I don't really have anything else going on oh so you might think this is still gonna kind of be burdensome yeah okay good hey hey my project is relaxing right my my project for Saturday night is recharging my batteries ah that's a perfectly legitimate thing to do and in fact the older you get the more you value time when there are no demands on you it's like so what do I have to do nothing okay so yeah there's a real value to that sort of project of like not doing anything yeah oh well good good point okay there are two things here one is yes wait a minute you have a lot of projects going on right and so what time often you're in a situation where hey what are you doing for the next hour well I don't have specific plans for the next hour but it's not like if you hadn't asked me to help you I would have been sitting there in some kind of Zen state just going I mean probably I did once make the mistake of taking a benadryl because my allergies were bothering me a lot before I went to work now I know don't take them during the day because I found myself just sitting in my office and looked at the clock and realized I had been sitting there for 45 minutes staring at the wall and it was not a zen-like meditation well that maybe it was I don't know maybe it's the one time I ate Satori was yeah benadryl like what was going on here nothing I think but normally that's not you you would have been thinking about something doing something reading something working on something maybe just relaxing whatever it was you would have been in advance in one of your projects so you might argue look isn't something else always kind of interfering the second point though is there are lots of people who would like help you know so imagine you just say hey I have Saturday free anybody need help with anything maybe you'll be lucky and nobody will respond but maybe you put this out there on social media and suddenly thousands of people do this it's kind of like saying hey you know what I've decided it's my obligation to help people in need I'm gonna pass $100 bills out on a street corner on Saturday morning you know a lot of people are gonna show up a lot more than you can afford to give hundred-dollar bills to so you might think wait I don't know if this is on one extreme it feels like maybe this convinced me that nothing on the other extreme it's like maybe this commits me - I don't know helping the whole world with all sorts of things this is tough so that's one way of looking at this is there any alternative way one way would be to say well look I have to help people with things that are intrinsic to their rational agency there are things that are ends of all rational agents namely for example their rationality their ability to develop their own capacity for rational agency but there are other things that are their own private ends and so do I have to help you collect stamps No do I have to help you further your rational agency yes so you want to learn how to do something I really is my obligation to teach you if I know how to do it you want help with something that will help enlarge your capacities for rational action then yes I should do that because it's the kind of thing I should do for any rational agent at all but the specific private ends whether it's climbing mountains or collecting stamps or I whatever it is I don't have to help you with that you say hey I've got this goal of going to every live music performance in Austin I can possibly get to and somebody's playing at the nutty brown cafe and I have no way way of getting there will you drive me I don't have to say yes okay even if I'm not doing anything else because look that doesn't really further your rational agency I mean maybe it could maybe it's like wait I I have an audition with this band next week and I got to hear them before I get so I know what they do okay then maybe I should help you but otherwise no I don't have to take one of those private goals so a second interpretation would be to say look they're the ones that are essential to rational agency those are the ones I have to help you but all the private stuff that's different that's your thing that's not something I have to help you it so you've fallen and can't get up or you're drowning and need somebody to save you yeah I really do have an obligation to help any rational agent would have that obligation toward any rational agent but if it's a question of collecting stamps or climbing mountains or going to hear that band etc I don't have to help you with that yeah Oh how do you choose who to help good lots of people need help I want you to imagine for a moment that you're Bill Murray in not just in general in Groundhog Day okay and you're living the same life over and over again at one point somebody asks the director so how long did you imagine this all taking and the answer was something like 10,000 years and finally get past this day but in any event so you're going through this again and again and you get this mission finally you realize my goal here should be to help people and so you try to save the kid fall it's a tree and you hopefully got choking in the restaurant and all of this stuff but now how do you decide who to help there are a lot of people and actually in the movie he tries to help the old man who dies and he finally realizes yeah I can't do that the guy's gonna die no matter what I do and so he gives up on that one but ends up having the time to help these old ladies with their flat tire and a variety of other things anyway the whole idea would be look okay if you're stuck in Punxsutawney Pennsylvania for one day maybe there are only a certain number of things you can actually help with but in the whole world at large for the rest of your life there's an overwhelming number of problems you could help with right and a huge number of them have to do with things essential to rational agency things about saving lives or about at least improving lives tremendously malaria kills a lot of people for example but it also just damages a lot of people in a way that harms their rational agency so you could say wow maybe I should devote the rest of my life to trying to help people avoid malaria to cure malaria to eliminate malaria or maybe you you know but why that right there are many many things and so it could feel overwhelming even if we restrict it to that well part of the reason I go through this is to say that in organizations it's one thing to say there are certain boundaries treat people with respect don't make exceptions for yourself not just in organizations of course in society at large too but then we ask well what is it to contribute what are your what are the expectations on you to not just do your own work without harming the work of others but actually to help other people with their work and it can be hard to say with those expectations right it's hard to know so what is it to be a good citizen a good departmental citizen or a good good corporate citizen or a good I don't know a good worker in a nonprofit agency or something like that or just a good team player what what are your obligations you might think yeah I want to be a good team player I want to really be involved and come and help other people but what does that mean exactly what do you have to do so let's reflect on that for a moment what is it to be a good team player whatever that team happens to be yeah okay well that sounds a lot like this first one actually yeah right in the sense that look you're supposed to do your own thing but insofar as you can help others with what they're doing now notice it doesn't necessarily mean well just any at all comers maybe lots of people need help but you're gonna be a lot more qualified to help some people than others and so maybe a friend of mine in the chemistry department is overwhelmed and really these help grading chemistry homeworks I could volunteer to help but I'm not of much use you know I did take ap chemistry in high school that was the extent of my Chemical background so my ability to do this is gonna be very limited and you might think yeah you know look don't go messing around trying to help where you're not competent to help but be selective the places you can do most good maybe you should try to do that good yeah ah well that's an interesting point I should be supportive right maybe I can't do it but I should be supportive so for example let's go back to the case of the the nephew who's climbing the mountains in New Hampshire I don't have to help him I don't have to do it but I might be I might have to be supportive I might have to be encouraging right he tells me his goal is to climb all these mountains I don't say oh that's so stupid right I don't do that I am supportive even if I'd be actually I don't think it's stupid but if I didn't think it's stupid still I'm not supposed to say that I keep that to myself and I say you know oh how interesting or whatever people do when they're polite and want to be supportive without believing in it at all but yes we can be really trapped into situations where it's like ooh what kind of advice do I give am i Frank you know or do I act supportive even when I privately think it's insane and you're really harming yourself and and that's that's a delicate thing sometimes somebody has to let you know I mean I've occasionally asked people for advice they'll say oh yeah that's great I say well if you just say it's great I don't get better tell me what I could do better and then I got all these suggestions oh okay you actually had a lot of criticism a lot to say and sometimes you can spin it that way if you want this to say look I want you to tell me the truth so please I got to tell you tell me the truth don't tell me what you think I want to hear but but yeah it's delicate and sometimes when I grade student papers I have a stat dilemma luckily not with any of you because you're all very good but in the past sometimes people turn in garbage and then and often it's a student I think is actually a good student but nevertheless it's garbage and some of the best professors for the best moments I had as a student we're actually the least Pleasant at the time because a professor just said yeah this distinct man you got to do better and it's never fun to hear but did help me get better yeah but yeah we're very good being straightforward in a nice way yeah I mean the worst thing to do is to be disdainful openly that's what that really does seem to reflect a disrespect not only is like this bad work but I don't have any respect for you as a person you have to try to convey that respect at the same time now after a while people get attuned to this like look I I think you're really very good but you know now be very afraid I would fear at less if you didn't feel the need to say you're good at this but but still I think you're right often you have to somehow convey the message that no this this isn't right this has to you know this needs to be improved without showing disrespect for the person or indicating that you don't respect their rationality yeah well that's a good point you might say look to some extent the market corrects for this kind of thing although people can devote a lot of time and effort and money to something pointless on the other hand you're talking to a philosophy professor who went to and got a PhD in philosophy in the 1970s when the job market in academia was terrible much as it is today and and so I knew at the time look this is kind of a long shot but I also figured well I'm young and you know I got plenty of time and my you know to some extent I was just cocky like will you go to the best possible place you just emerges like one of the best possible people out of that place and if you find that you're not able to do that don't do it and so I found that was my strategy just be the best person with the best place and we fought but and that's that's a pretty good strategy in a way actually for graduate schools I often tell people that look if you can get into a top 10 place go okay if you can't maybe a top 20 place if you're gonna work in an area where they're strong if you can't do that don't go don't do it now that's a little too strong there are programs that are very good for more specialized things and either more specialized topics or they tend to get jobs for their people doing a specific kind of thing in a specific area of the country and if you say hey I'm happy doing that fine but yeah there are certain degrees where a few people are going to end up in positions that are their dream jobs and then most people aren't and if you know that going in and just say yeah be odds are against me but I'm gonna do it anyway okay give it a shot but have a back-up plan that's my my sort of view make sure you're working with a net under you okay well we're wasting a lot of time here so let me get to where this is actually going the last version of this formula that I really want to focus on is the formula of the kingdom events it is one of those puzzling things in kotzen ethics I think he says very little about it and there's a huge amount of scholarly disagreement about how to interpret what he does say so let's take a look at the kingdom events the right just special is the way it is in German and the word right just means kingdom or realm it's often these days translated as the realm of ends but this is one of the works that Hitler read when he was imprisoned after the Munich Beer Hall Putsch and I wonder whether his idea of the Third Reich came in part from this writers Becca so after that it is the term in German has a little bit of a scary connotation and according to some scholars that's actually it should but let's get to that in a moment anyway here is the idea he says by a kingdom I understand the union of different rational beings in a system by common laws if we abstract from the personal differences of rational beings and likewise from all the content of their private ends we shall be able to conceive all ends combined into a systematic whole including both rational beings as ends in themselves and also the special ends which each may propose to himself that is to say we can conceive of a kingdom of ends which on the preceding principles is possible what is this it is a systematic union of rational beings by common objective laws now this is a kingdom of ends where we've got a systematic union of rational beings by common objective laws now what does he mean by this what exactly does this require he says look it's only an ID but a rational being belongs to the kingdom events when although giving universal laws in it he's also subject to the laws he belongs to it as a sovereign when while giving laws he's not subject to the will but the point is everybody is subject to these laws their universe so a rational being must always regard himself as giving laws as a member of sovereign as a kingdom of ends now that's what we're supposed to do so imagine yourself as a legislator who is also subject to the very same legislation that's how you're to think of everything you do imagine that you are in doing this not only laying down the rule for your health but for everyone in this systemic whole well ok to some extent and this is capturing the idea of universal law once again but what do we mean by the systemic Union just as we saw there were different interpretations about what was required of us here there are different interpretations of this so one interpretation which is to say look we have to unite our private ends he says at one point abstracting away from the private ends but then he says well including them too so we have some ends I'm gonna draw it this way here's the ends we have in common as rational being and then you might say we all have these private ends in addition and they might overlap some of yours might be also mine and so on well we have this realm of private ends out here and all of these private ends well what's supposed to happen to those ok on one interpretation the idea behind the systematic union is that it's just those common ends we have a systematic union of those in other words the kingdom of ends is a kingdom in which we all treat every other member fully with respect ok we treat them as ends in themselves not as means only and so the systemic Union we're talking about is of these common ends we all obeyed the same objective laws and from that point of view this is a kind of idea where everybody is behaving morally everybody's treating everybody else with respect he says look it's only an ideal but nevertheless it's important to think about that moral ideal and in fact John Rawls and Derek Parfit much later distinguish ideal from non-ideal theory and the idea would be this is giving you a picture of the ideal theory this is how we ought to behave ideally in Aquinas this is how the Angels treat each other and then you know in the real world where people are corrupt and they often do the wrong thing and people treat other people with disrespect and they make exceptions for themselves well then that's why we have to say this is only an ideal but now there's another interpretation of this because it depends what we think happens to the private ends I'm supposed to take on your private ends as my own well on a second interpretation we say ah no it's not those it's the whole shebang it's all the common ends and the private ends we review all of those as a systematical in other words in the end we're all supposed to have the same end so actually this is a rather misleading picture I have to take on yours you have to take on mine in short we must have a thoroughly systematic union of all ends and the goal is to get all these people on the same page seeking the same things with the same ends now that interpretation can be pretty sure if you write it large enough right this is behind like shulton this is behind the idea that everyone tends have to be aligned behind in short political correctness we all have to think the same thoughts want the same things and so forth that's gonna be hostile to things like free speech and freedom of thought and so on but there's another way of taking it where you might say look go back to this I don't have to eliminate my private ends I don't have to share all of yours completely I just have to be supportive of them well why am I talking about this at all in this course because actually there's another way of taking this in the context of organizational ethics I think it's a very useful way as members of an organization you have common ends that go beyond these common ends you have as rational beings that is to say in an organization you have these kinds of common ends as rational beings but then you have another set of ends in common automatically as members of the organization there really is a sort of systematic union of ends just by being a part of that company or that nonprofit agency or this university or whatever it is you've got certain ends in common with everybody else here and then of course you've got all of these private ends on the outside but you might say yeah in organizational ethics we can give this another third interpretation where really the idea is imagine that we're all team players right we're all valuing not just their own private ends and not just the ends we all share as rational beings but also think goals of the organization then we can say ah now I can say what these common obligations we have are there things that have to do with the goals of the organization and insofar as those are moral goals than these become moral obligations for us - ok well next time we'll start with utilitarianism you might have the sense that all of this sets boundaries on our behavior but still within a very large realm it doesn't help me decide what to do

Channel: Daniel Bonevac

Views: 3,644

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: Immanuel Kant, Kingdom of Ends, Respect, Autonomy

Id: _wAooyipc-k

Length: 44min 41sec (2681 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 04 2019