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"Briefly, the categorical imperative states: “Act only according to the maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” Wh
by lists 14y ago
"Briefly, the categorical imperative states: “Act only according to the maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” Whoa! That certainly describes the extreme nature of tons of the protagonists/antagonists of these various films. From Bane and Batman in The Dark Knight Rises to everyone in Inception, the idea of finding a universal truth and then applying it (sometimes forcefully) onto everyone seems to be exactly what’s at the core of all these movies."
Philosophy grad here. Absolutely none of these characters are exemplary of Kantian moral philosophy. That goes for about 99% of blockbuster heroes.
The key thing to understand is that 'universal' is a technical term in Kantian philosophy. Kant doesn't use this term to designate a relationship like that between a genus and its species, a class and its instances, or a set and its members. 'Universal' in Kant is synonymous with 'necessary', as in, "all stones necessarily fall back down to the ground if I throw them in the air." So what the categorical imperative really says is, "Live your life as if it were a force of necessity", or a more humanist formulation, "Live your life as if you were fulfilling your duty." If that sounds weird, realize that Kant doesn't think altruism qualifies as a foundation for morality because it's still based on pleasure, which for him brings us right back to egoism.
In terms of blockbusters, Watchmen's Rorschach or The Dark Knight's Joker are better approximations.
- andreasvc 14y ago> Kant doesn't use this term to designate a relationship like that between a genus and its species, a class and its instances, or a set and its members. Doesn't he simply mean universal law as in "a law that applies in every situation"? So the universe of discourse would be situations. I think your formulation with "necessity" is rather more ambiguous, because it doesn't stress the deontic nature of the statement.
- lists 14y ago"A law that applies in every situation" is an instance of empirical universality, which is the weaker species of universality. Kant's entire problem with this is that a principle that has to be applied to a case in order to be true can admit exceptions since the only way to actually prove it true is to intractably observe every situation, so instead the warrant for the principle ends up being a mere inference. On this point he's specifically going after Hume: If I can only infer that the sun will rise tomorrow because it rose yesterday and the day before, I still leave open the possibility that the sun simply won't rise tomorrow. This is how Hume started questioning necessary causality and Kant totally freaked out. Pure Universality is strictu sensu synonymous with necessity because a principle of this sort is a condition of possibility. This example is technically incorrect, but for illustrative purposes all stones either necessarily fall back down to the ground when thrown up in the air or I'm not able to write this. Kant thought causality in much the same way, either human beings can necessarily conceive of it without any empirical support or experience in toto is impossible. Kant explicitly wants to derive morality from Pure rather than empirical reason. Self-interest, altruism, pleasure, and even our everyday notion of happiness are set by the wayside in the name of actions that wholly brought about by principle than any expectation of reward, service to a higher cause, or just plain conformity (which are all arguably the same thing). The key thing to realize is that Kantian morality is really really inhuman: for all intents and purposes, Kant wants to automate morality. Hence my language of "Act as if you were a force of necessity".