2 ms·
I’m picking examples that I believe will resonate with most people on this forum, simply because all of them tend to get the most vitriol. My personal views are
by gjsman-1000 3y ago
I’m picking examples that I believe will resonate with most people on this forum, simply because all of them tend to get the most vitriol. My personal views are a bit different.
My point remains though that if Kant is correct, the moral high ground most people here feel over these groups is quite thin.
- staunton 3y agoKant famously "derived from basic moral principles" that it's acceptable to kill unwanted newborns provided they are born out of wedlock. Make of that what you will... Edit: Polemics aside, I looked it up and of course people don't agree if Kant really meant it that way. https://doi.org/10.1515/agph-2021-0034 https://doi.org/10.1515/agph-2021-0034
- allturtles 3y agoIt's pretty clear he never said it was "acceptable." He waffles on whether it should be punishable by death and decides in the end that it must be, but, as one might say today, "that it's pretty fucked up." The reason is that having an illegitimate child in the eighteenth century was a source of dishonor that would see you effectively rejected from society. So out-of-wedlock mothers were in an impossible situation: kill the child or have their own lives destroyed. See this article https://www.jstor.org/stable/20484950 https://www.jstor.org/stable/20484950, which quotes Frederick the Great, among others, who pointed out this same quandry: > A girl, only too easily fooled by the presence of a seducer, does she not find herself compelled by the very force of circumstances to choose between the loss of her honor and the elimination of the unhappy fruit that she has conceived? Is it not the fault of the laws to place a girl in such a desperate situation?