I'm going to pinch from the answer I gave to jujulilianan on this matter.
Kant doesn't disregard consequences, it's just that there is a strong distinction between moral principles and situational ethics. His disregard of consquences in his moral theory is not supposed to be ethicially defensible, in the same way the noumenal forms are not supposed to represent phenomenal objects.
For example (oft-used example) Southern Poland 1942. Two armed SS officers knock on the door of a peasant's home.
"Good morning. Do you have any Jews here?" "Oh no, none at all", says the peasant, lying through his teeth. "Thank you", says the officers, "have a nice day".
Now the peasant has breached Kant's moral principle here. It is wrong to lie. You wouldn't want people lying to you and society couldn't function if everyone was lying to each other. However, Kant would say, although the action is immoral it is ethicially justifiable as the peasant has good reason to believe that if he told the truth, a worse moral crime would be committed.
A cynic could say, in Kant, ethics is about how to be justifiably immoral...
Having read the Jihad statement, I feel a strong desire to join.
There's an el-jay community just for that!
I'm quite interested in 10,000 islands too...
I'll send you an email invitation real soon now (I'm at work and even this el-jay response is a bit sneaky)
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Kant and Ethics
Date: 2005-06-06 10:34 pm (UTC)Poor Kant. He's so misunderstood.
I'm going to pinch from the answer I gave to
Kant doesn't disregard consequences, it's just that there is a strong distinction between moral principles and situational ethics. His disregard of consquences in his moral theory is not supposed to be ethicially defensible, in the same way the noumenal forms are not supposed to represent phenomenal objects.
For example (oft-used example) Southern Poland 1942. Two armed SS officers knock on the door of a peasant's home.
"Good morning. Do you have any Jews here?"
"Oh no, none at all", says the peasant, lying through his teeth.
"Thank you", says the officers, "have a nice day".
Now the peasant has breached Kant's moral principle here. It is wrong to lie. You wouldn't want people lying to you and society couldn't function if everyone was lying to each other. However, Kant would say, although the action is immoral it is ethicially justifiable as the peasant has good reason to believe that if he told the truth, a worse moral crime would be committed.
A cynic could say, in Kant, ethics is about how to be justifiably immoral...
Having read the Jihad statement, I feel a strong desire to join.
There's an el-jay community just for that!
I'm quite interested in 10,000 islands too...
I'll send you an email invitation real soon now (I'm at work and even this el-jay response is a bit sneaky)