Quote of the Day… not actually daily, but whenever I encounter one I think worth sharing and there are not too many in sequence. I like quotes as they frequently distill a piece of wisdom into a brief passage, or make other points very succinctly – such as the witticisms of Oscar Wilde.
“Always treat persons (including yourself) and ends in themselves, never merely as a means to your own ends.” ~~Immanuel Kant
If you have been playing along at home, you no doubt realize that this is a second quote from Kant very soon after the first:
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law.”
I discovered this quote in a Wondrium philosophy course I was watching, Think like a Stoic: Ancient Wisdom for Today’s World. In my first posting I commented that it was a high brow version of the Golden Rule.
I went from watching the course on Stoic philosophy to another Wondrium course, The Big Questions of Philosophy which had today’s quote.
Both are statements of what philosophical types are calling Kant’s Categorical Imperatives which are “commands or moral laws all persons must follow, regardless of their desires or extenuating circumstances.”
The professor in the first course just put the quote out there. In the second course, the professor spent one whole class discussing Kant. Spoiler alert he is not a fan. However, he mentioned two or three times in the 30 minutes that Kant’s Categorical Imperative is not the Golden Rule, with a brief explanation as to why. Mainly, that the Golden Rule is more concerned with how the individual feels that any universality, i.e. self centered.
I can buy his arguments for my original Kant quote. It probably reflects my philosophical naivety more than anything else, but the second quote does not seem that far removed from the Golden Rule.
In any event, Kant’s approach to morality is a little too rigid for me. I am never sure if it is good or bad, but I live in the gray zone on many of these moral/ethical issues. One of the few lessons I have learned from life is that there are no certainties.
I’ll go back to being least serious in another post, I promise.
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