Do Unto Others Before They Do Unto You
One imagines that the Enlightenment was a real headache for many philosophers. It was not just that some of their most cherished theories were exposed as pseudo-intellectual nonsense — that’s all in a day’s work for the professional philosopher — but because it was a period when regular people were encouraged to start thinking for themselves. There arose an alarming fashion for scientists to perform their own experiments and see what actually happens, rather than simply regurgitating the existing scientific consensus. Others began to question the rational foundations of religion, and why it was that an all-powerful and benevolent deity would allow terrible things to happen (especially those on holiday in Portugal around the 1750s). Perhaps worse of all, ordinary citizens began wondering if maybe they should have a say in their own governance, rather than merely accepting the rule of an entrenched, self-serving political class. It was a world gone mad.
Yet while some philosophers never really recovered from the shock, and redoubled their efforts to disenfranchise the general public by continuing to inculcate incomprehensible gibberish only accessible to the properly initiated (this is sometimes also known as German Idealism), other philosophers rose to the challenge magnificently. Amongst the most enthusiastic embracers of the Enlightenment was the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), a true polymath who endeavoured to refute scepticism once and for all, and to put the new scientific worldview on more secure footings.
But more importantly, Kant was also concerned to show how our most cherished moral principles were not in fact threatened by this brave new world of independent thinkers, but actually strengthened by it. He argued that the validity of an ethical prescription did not derive from its being issued by some suitable authority, but was instead something that could be comprehended through the exercise of pure reason alone. This is an idea that provides the underlying framework of modern society.
According to Kant, we can recognise a genuine moral principle in terms of its logical structure. It is a principle that can be universalised, which is to say that it is one that can be consistently followed by everybody at the same time without conflict. So for example, the principle of repaying injustice “an eye for an eye” is not universalisable, since eventually you are going to run out of eyeballs. But the injunction to “turn the other cheek” meets the test, since we can all just leave each other alone without any logical incoherence. Or to take a more contemporary example, it would mean that you could not demand that other people be silenced in order to avoid offending you, on the awkwardly equitable grounds that the other party might be somewhat offended in turn at being forcibly silenced. Everybody shuts up, or nobody shuts up. It’s just a matter of reason.
All of this is what Kant called a Categorical Imperative; and if the idea that you should act only insofar as you would have others act sounds familiar, that is because Kant was inspired by that bit in the Bible where Jesus suggests we “do unto others as you would have them do onto you”. As an Enlightenment thinker however, Kant maintained that this so-called Golden Rule was not valid simply because God commands it. Rather, God commands it because — having presumably read Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason — He is able to grasp the underlying logical principles upon which it rests.
One of the principal advantages of Kant’s account is that it allowed Enlightenment thinkers to finesse the otherwise messy problem that different cultures and societies tend to have different views about what is right and wrong. And that’s because it doesn’t tell you what to do, only rules out certain proposals that — frankly — weren’t going to work out very well regardless of your moral commitments. It is therefore a perfectly neutral framework, shorn of any cultural assumptions or religious hang-ups about our goals and purposes, that shows how different points of view can happily co-exist in a modern cosmopolitan society.
Of course, such a framework also makes it very difficult to criticise any moral system beyond its mere logical consistency. In providing an account that abstracts away from our individual goals and purposes, Kant offers us no resources for challenging an otherwise logically consistent moral system directed towards unsatisfactory ends. Everybody shuts up, or nobody shuts up — but which one? Nor does he offer any guidance in improving an already existing moral system, let alone for constructing any radical alternative.
Ultimately then, what Kant’s account really does is provide a fancy-sounding justification for whatever already happens to be the status quo. As is so often the case, the project of emancipating our fellow man through the exercise of reason just ends up legitimising the political consensus of those people who already have the “right” opinions (which is probably more like how different points of view really manage to co-exist in a modern cosmopolitan society). This is an idea that provides the underlying framework of modern society.