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Now we turn, to the hardest
philosopher that we're going to read in this course
today we turn to Immanuel Kant
who offers a different account
of why we have a categorical duty
to respect the dignity of persons
and not to be use
people
as means
merely
even for good ends.
Kant excelled at the university of Königsberg
at the age of sixteen
at the age of thirty one he got his first job
as an unsalaried lecturer
paid on commission
based on the number of students who showed up at his lectures
this is a sensible system that Harvard would do well to consider
luckily for Kant
he was a popular lecturer and also an industrious one and so he eked out a meager living
it wasn't until
he was fifty seven that he published his first
major work
but it was worth the wait
the book was the critique of pure reason
perhaps the most important work in all of modern philosophy
and a few years later
Kant wrote
the groundwork for the metaphysics of morals which we read in this course
I want to acknowledge even before we start
that Kant is a difficult thinker
but it's important to try to figure out
what he's saying
because what this book is about
is well, it's about what the supreme principle of morality this
number one, and
it's also
it gives us an account
one of the most powerful accounts we have
of what freedom really is
so
let me start today.
Kant rejects utilitarianism
he thinks
that
the individual
person
all human beings
have a certain dignity
that commands our respect
the reason the individual is sacred or the bearer of rights according to Kant,
doesn't stem from the idea that we own ourselves,
but instead from the idea
that we are all rational beings
we're all rational beings which simply means
that we are beings who are capable
of reason.
we're also
autonomous beings
which is to say
that we are beings capable of acting and choosing
freely
now, this capacity for reason and freedom
isn't the only capacity we have.
we also have the capacity for pain and pleasure
for suffering and satisfaction
Kant admits the
utilitarians were half a right
of course
we seek to avoid pain
and we like pleasure
Kant doesn't deny this
what he does deny
is Bentham's claim that
pain in pleasure
are our sovereign masters
he thinks that's wrong.
Kant thinks
that it's are national capacity
that makes us distinctive, that makes us special that sets us
apart from and above mere animal
existence.
it makes us something more than just physical
creatures with appetites. Now
we often think
of freedom
as simply consisting
in doing what we want
or in the absence of obstacles to getting what we want
that's one way of thinking about freedom.
but this isn't Kant's
idea of freedom
Kant has a more stringent
demanding notion
of what it means to be free
and though stringent and demanding, if you think it through
it's actually pretty persuasive
Kant’s reason is as follows
when we,
like animals
seek after pleasure
or the satisfaction of our desires of the avoidance pain
when we do that we aren't really acting freely.
why not?
we're really acting
as the slaves
of those appetites
and impulses
I didn't choose this particular hunger or that particular appetite,
and so when I act to satisfy it
I'm just acting according to natural
necessity
and for Kant,
freedom is the opposite
of necessity
there was an advertising slogan
for the
soft drink Sprite
a few years ago
the slogan was
obey your thirst
there
there's a Kantian insight
buried in that
Sprite advertising slogan
that in a way is Kant's point
when you go for Sprite,
or Pepsi
you're really
you might think that you're choosing freely sprite versus Pepsi
but you're actually
obeying
something, a thirst, or maybe a desire manufactured or massaged by advertising
you're obeying a prompting
that you yourself
haven't chosen
or created
and here
it's worth
noticing
Kant’s specially demanding
idea
of freedom
what way
of acting, how can my will be determined if not by
the prompting sub nature or my hunger or my appetite, or my desires?
Kant's answer:
to act freely
is to act
autonomously
and to act autonomously
is to act according to a law that I give myself
not according
to the physical laws of nature
or to the laws of cause and effect
which include my desire,
to eat or to drink
or to choose this
food in a restaurant over that
now what is the opposite
what is the opposite
of autonomy
for Kant he invest a special term
to describe
the opposite of autonomy
heteronomy
is the opposite of autonomy
when I act
heteronomously
I'm acting
according to an inclination
or a desire
that I haven't chosen for myself
so freedom is autonomy
is this specially stringent
idea
that Kant insists on.
now why is autonomy
the opposite of the acting heteronomously or according to the dictates of nature
Kant’s point is that
nature is governed by laws
laws of cause and effect for example