palmquist.tree.22. freedom and the boundary of morals

7/23/2019 PALMQUIST.tree.22. Freedom and the Boundary of Morals

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/palmquisttree22-freedom-and-the-boundary-of-morals 1/31

staff web.hkbu.edu.hk

D1

42 min read • original

22. Freedom and the Boundary of Morals

by Stephen Palmquist ([email protected])

Near the end of the previous lecture I left you in a rather uncomfortable

position. Do you remember? Youwere stuck in Lion Rock Tunnel, inside a

bus being driven by a man who claimed that things just "happen",without

being caused by anything. What should you do in such a situation? Instead

of answering this question directly, I want to change the story a little bit.

Let's imagine that when you ask the bus driver why he stopped the bus,

instead of saying "I didn't ...", he pulls out a gun and asks you to give him all

your money and leave the bus, or hewill shoot. Youwould probably obey his

demands. But after the bus drove away, as youwalk through the tunnel, you

would probably become quite upset atwhat that man had done to you. In

fact, most of uswould probably report his action to the police as soon aspossible, accusing him of doing somethingwrong.

Whatwould be the rational basis of our claim in such a case? Why

wouldwe judge that man's action to be morallywrong? In philosophy these

kinds of questions are called "ethical". Ethical questions are about howwe

should and should not act. There are many, many ethical questions-so many

that we cannot even begin in this class to explore the different kinds of

ethical questions, to say nothing of s pecific questions about the rightness or

wrongness of particular acts. Ethical questions are like the many smalltwigs on the end of a tree branch: they are very important, for on them grow

the leaves and the f ruit of the tree; yet there are so many that any one of

them could be removedwithout significantly changing the appearance or

the health of the tree.

D1 — staffweb.hkbu.edu.hk https://www.readability.com/articles/mtb4

de 31 15/12/2015 20



There is, however, a similar kind of philosophical question that is more

weighty than an ethical question. All ethical questions are based on certain

f undamental moral principles, just as all leafy twigs are held up by one of

the larger branches of the tree. An awareness of the questions related to

these principles is f undamental ifwe wish to understand the tree of

philosophy. At one time the term "moral philosophy" was used to refer tothis entire branch (including the twigs). But this term is not used very often

nowadays. The entire branch of philosophy concernedwith establishing the

rational foundations for moral actions is now more often referred to simply

as "ethics", with "applied ethics" referring to the twigs and "meta-ethics"

referring to the main part of the branch. In order to avoid conf usion,

though, I think it is better to use "ethics" to refer to the whole "science" (in

the loose sense of this word) of making moral decisions, and reserve the

term "moral philosophy" for the basic underlying principles.

As such, "moral philosophy" is the branch of the tree of philosophy that

begins by asking the most basic questions about morality, such as: Are

human beings f ree?How canwe distinguish between good and evil? and

How is ethics itself possible? Of course, the term "moral philosophy" does

not refer to a "goodway of doing philosophy", as opposed to a bad, "immoral"

philosophy. So-called "moral philosophers" can be just as immoral in their

daily lives as anyone else! Nevertheless, the ultimate goal of moral

philosophy is not just to understandwhat goodness is, but to use it to help

us become better persons. And, just as Jonathan Seagull learned to fly much

faster once he understood flying, so also understanding the moral

foundations of ethical decisions should help us make wiser choices in our

daily lives.

One of the most influential moral philosophies was proposed by

Immanuel Kant. Kant's first C ritique helped us in Part One to reach some

f undamental insights about the nature of metaphysics, sowe shalldevote

mos

t of tod

ay's s

ess

ion to an examination of his s

econdC ritique

,w

her

e hesuggests a very interesting way of copingwith our ignorance of ultimate

reality. Whereas the C ritique of P ure Reason adopts a "theoretical"

standpoint to demonstrate how space, time, and the categories form an

absolutely necessary (i.e., synthetic a priori) boundary line for human

experience (and therefore make possible our empirical knowledge of


2 de 31 15/12/2015 20



phenomenal objects), the C ritique of P ractical Reason, as we shall see (cf.

Figures III.4, III.6, and IV.4), adopts a "practical" standpoint to demonstrate

how f reedom and the moral law form an absolutely necessary boundary line

for moral action (and therefore make possible our moral judgment of

noumenal objects). In simpler terms, we can describe this distinction by

saying Kant developed in these books two distinctways of looking at theworld (i.e., two "standpoints"): he adopts the standpoint of the head in the

first C ritique and that of the belly in the secondC ritique (cf. Figures II.8

and III.4).

Viewing two sets of opposing ideas as representatives of two

stand points can often help us see how both can be true, even though they

appear at first to be contradictory. A simple examplewill help to clarify this

point. Most of you have probably seen at some point one of the many

pictures used by psychologists to test the way our mind perceives objects. Apicture is drawn that can represent two completely different objects,

depending on how it is perceived. For example, the picture given


3 de 31 15/12/2015 20



in Figure VIII.1, looks like a goblet ifwe focuson the dark area in the center. Yet ifwe look atthe edges,we suddenly see two faces facing

each other. Which answer is correct? Of course, both are correct, each in its ownway.The same is often true in philosophy,wheneverthere are two apparently contradictoryanswers to the same question, if it turns outthat each answer approaches the question in adifferentway, or with a different end in view.

In Lecture 9 we saw how Kant argued that,in the process of gaining theoreticalknowledge, various

FigureVIII.1: TwoPerceptualPerspectives-AGobletorTwoFaces?

"ideas" naturally arise in the mind of anyonewho thinks rationally about

their own experience: among these the most important are the ideas of God,f reedom, and immortality (see CPR 29). But he posed a problem in regard to

these ideas; for, if Kant is right, we are necessarily ignorant of the reality

each of these ideas points to. This "noumenal" reality, he claimed, is beyond

the boundary of our possible knowledge.Nevertheless, we must be caref ul

not to assume, as do some interpreters, that Kant had a skeptical view of

these ideas. On the contrary, one of his reasons for denying the possibility of

our having knowledge of the ideas was to insure that it would be impossible

for anyone to dis prove their reality.No one can prove that our ideas of God,

f reedom, and immortality are mere illusions, because in order to do so, a

personwould need to have knowledge of ultimate reality; and this,

according to Kant, is impossible.Hence, by denying "knowledge" in this

way, Kant left open a s pace for "faith" in these ideas (29)-though we still

need to find good reasons for adopting such faith, in the face of our


4 de 31 15/12/2015 20



theoretical ignorance. By examining in the second C ritique the necessary

conditions for bringing about a moralworld, as we strugglewith our desires

(the "belly"), Kant attempted to provide such reasons, on the grounds that

the ideas themselves actually point us beyond the realm of theory, to the

realm of practice.

The first necessary condition for the possibility of moral action is

reedom. Freedom, Kant argued, is the one and only "given fact" of practical

reason. By adopting the practical standpoint,we can actually break through

the boundaries of space and time (the limitations of our "sensibility") and

replace themwith f reedom. But this f reedom does not leave us lost in a

boundless world of unlimited conf usion; rather, f reedom itself f unctions as

a new kind of limitation. Whereas space and time are necessary limits that

anything we can know must appear within, f reedom is the necessary limit

that any moral action must conform to. The former is the world-limitationimposed on our heads sowe can know the truth; the latter is the

self -limitation imposed on our bellies so we can do the good. Though these

two standpoints lead us in opposite directions, we need not view them as

irreconcilably contradictory, providedwe recognize that they refer to

f undamentally different aspects of human life.

Kant never claimed he could prove human beings are f ree; on the

contrary, the first C ritique demonstrates why such a proof is impossible.

Instead, his argument is that we must presu ppose f reedom in order to enter

the realm of morality, just as we must presu ppose space and time in order to

enter the realm of knowledge. In both cases we are facedwith a brute fact

that cannot even be questionedwithout radically changing (or perhaps even

undermining) our human experience. Although Kantwould not have put it

in this way,we could therefore say these "facts" f unction like

complementary myths for anyone in the modern worldwhowants to

interpret their experience in terms of knowledge or moral action.

If f reedom in the secondC ritique corresponds to space and time in the

first,what corresponds to the categories? The logical aspect of the

boundary of morals Kant called the "moral law", or "categorical imperative".

All maxims (i.e., subjective rules of action) must conform to this law to

qualify as moral. By "categorical" Kant meant that this imperative makes an


5 de 31 15/12/2015 20



unconditionaldemand. "Hypothetical" imperatives, by contrast, are ones

with an "if" attached. If I say to you "Please be quietwhen I am in the room",

then my command is hypothetical, because you are not required to be quiet

if I am not in the room. A command such as "Do not tell lies", by contrast, is

normally regarded as unconditional. I doubt if your mother ever said to you

"Do not tell lies, unless it makes you feel good"! That is because commandssuch as telling the truth are usually regarded as duties. A "duty", according

to Kant, is an action performed out of respect for the moral law-i.e., in

obedience to one's conscience, rather than just following the desires or

"inclinations" of one's belly.

Kant believed he could determine a formula that would apply to all

moral action. In the end he actually proposed three distinct criteria for (or

formulations of) the categorical imperative. The first states that an action

is moral only if its maxim is universali z able: "Act only according to thatmaxim bywhich you can at the same timewill that it should become a

universal law" ( FMM 421). This does not mean everyone will actually agree

with your maxim, but only that everyone ought to agree. The second

requires us to res pect human persons: "Act so that you treat humanity,

whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and

never as a means only" (429). The third requires that our maxim must be

autonomous (i.e., self-legislated): since "every rational creature [makes]

universal law", a moral maxim must be "consistent with the universal

lawgiving ofwill" (431). Let's test these necessary criteria, especially the

first, by applying them to an example.

If I cheat on an exam and someone asks me "Did you cheat on that

exam?", then I am facedwith a moral choice. I can either lie, and hope

nobody discovers the truth, or I can tell the truth and suffer the conse-

quences. Although lying in such a case might make me happier, Kant

thought this choice would be morallywrong, because it would be based on a

maxim on that co

uld

never

become au

nivers

al law

.In the fo

rme

r ca

se mymaxim might be "It is acceptable to tell a lie, if it will get me out of a difficult

situation",whereas in the latter case my maximwould be "Never tell a lie".

Kant f reely admitted it is possible towill (i.e., want to tell)a particular lie,

but he argued itwould be irrational towill "a universal law to lie": in such a

case "my maxim would necessarily destroy itself as soon as itwas made a


6 de 31 15/12/2015 20



universal law" ( FMM 403). In other words, if we imagine aworldwhere it

would be acceptable for everyone to lie whenever itwould make them

happy, the primary f unction of language (i.e., its ability to convey truth)

would be undermined. Moreover, a lie also breaks the second and third

criteria: it uses another human being, neglecting their rational capacity,

solely in order to make oneself happy. Because lying requires us to break auniversali z able law (and therefore also to disrespect human rationality),

telling a lie is always morallywrong, no matter how happy a lie might make

us feel.

Kant gave other examples, relating to suicide, laziness, and apathy (see

FMM 421-424); but for our purposes itwill suffice to point out the f unction

Kant's criteria for judging moral actions are supposed to f ulfill. According

to Kant,we do not have to think consciously about the categorical

imperative's three formulations each time we face a moral dilemma; rather,their f unction is to enable philosophers to locate truly moral issues and

then define an objectively valid boundary line between morally good and

evil actions. The boundary line is objective because it is true for everyone

(i.e.,universal) and because it uses an objectively existing reality (i.e.,

humanity) as a basis for judgment.

When the moral law tells us to do something, performing that action

makesusworthy of praise only if our choice is not also meant to satisfy one

of our inclinations-i.e., only if our reason for doing it is unrelated to

satisfying our desires. Thus, Kant's moral philosophy can be restated as

follows: an action can be morally good or bad only if it is done f reely and out

res pect for the moral law rather than out of our inclination to f ulfill our own

desire for happiness. Kant devoted much attention to the contrast between

following inclinations and duty. Of course, sometimes a single action can

both satisfy the moral law and f ulfill our inclination to be happy. But

whenever this is not possible,we must choose to say "No!" to our own

happiness

. Accord

ingly,w

e can expr

ess

the bas

ic command

of thecategorical imperative as: "Respect the moral law!" or "Follow your

conscience as an objective principle!" or simply, " Do your duty!"

This kind of moral theory is sometimes called "deontology" and is

traditionally contrastedwith "utilitarianism". The latter viewwas defended


7 de 31 15/12/2015 20



by J.S. Mill (1806-1873), an English philosopher who argued that an action

is good only if it maximi z es human happiness. Kant regarded the outcome of

an action as less important than the inner motivation of the person who

performs the action. This is why he said at one point that nothing can "be

called goodwithout qualification except a goodwill" ( FMM 392); this means

there is no such thing as an absolutely good action, yet there is such a thingas an absolutely good will-namely, a will that bases its maxims on the moral

law. For Kant, the proper order for viewing morality is f rom the inside to

the outside. For Mill, by contrast, the outer result of an action is far more

important than the motivation behind it: the best action is the one that

makes the most people happy. This means, of course, that Mill would

condone lyingwhenever it had sufficient "utility" (i.e., usef ulness) to help

more people than it harmed. Likewise, the bus driver's theft might turn out

to be morally acceptable, if, for example, he needed your money to feed his

hungry children,whereas youwere just going to use it to buy some

philosophy books for your own selfish pleasure.However, if we are to

believe Kant, such a worldwould be an irrational world-a worldwithout any

boundaries-andwould ultimately destroy itself. Instead of examining more

closely this long-standing debate between deontology and utilitarianism,

let us continue our discussion of Kant's version of deontology by looking at

some of its f urther implications.

In order for morality to be truly rational, Kant thought moral action

must be capable of f ulfilling its pur pose: to bring into being the highest

possible good. Just how this "summum bonum" ought to be defined is,

however, a question that has been debated among philosophers since

ancient times. The Stoics believed the highest good is virtue, and that a

virtuous life ought to be pursuedwithout any regard for happiness. The

Epicureans, by contrast, thought the highest good is to f ulfill one's plea-

sures, and therefore pursue happiness. This difference can be traced back to

the difference between Plato,with his focus on the ideal of goodness, and

Aristotle,with his concern for the experience of real happiness. It may alsoappear at first to correspond to the distinction between Kant's deontology

and Mill's utilitarianism.However, Kant rejected this interpretation of the

implications of his own moral philosophy.

Kant argued that the best conception of the highest good must include


8 de 31 15/12/2015 20



both virtue and happiness. Happiness without virtue would be unjust;

virtue without happiness would not be worth the effort. Therefore Kant

explained the highest good as the picture of an ideal worldwhere each

person is rewarded for their virtue with a proportional level of happiness.

In other words, if your level of virtue reaches eight on a scale of one to ten

and mine only reaches seven, then you should be rewardedwith 80%happiness, whereas I should be rewardedwith 70% happiness. Any other

conception of the ultimate purpose of moral action would make morality

irrational, inasmuch as morality would then aim at something less than

perfect goodness and justice.

Kant has often been criticized for introducing happiness into his

theory at this late stage: how could he include happiness in the highest good

when he had already defined virtue in terms of obeying duty rather than

happiness? But this criticism is based on a misunderstanding. By includinghappiness in the highest good Kantwas not suddenly changing his mind and

saying that happiness can be the motivation for our action after all. Rather,

we must distinguish between happiness as an original motive and

happiness as a rational hope. The reality of human life, according to Kant, is

that right action often requires us to do something we knowwill make us

less happy (such as resisting the temptation to steal someone else's money,

to lie in order protect our reputation, etc.); yet at the same time our reason

tells us that in the end the person who chooses to obey the moral law is

more worthy to be happy than the person who chooses to pursue happiness

as an end in itself.

This presents a problem that must be solved if morality is to be

rational: in the world as we know it, virtuous people often are not rewarded

with happiness. How then can we conceive of the highest good as possible?

Kant argued that practical reason requires us to "postulate" (i.e., put

forward as a necessary assumption) the reality of life after death and the

exis

tence of God

. Unlike f r

eed

om, thes

e pos

tu

lates

play nor

ole in makingan action moral; instead, they help us understand the rational purpose of

morality itself. Without believing in another life and in a holy God

governing that life,we maywell be able to act morally, but we will not be

able to explain how the highest good could ever be realized. This is Kant's

famous "moral argument" for the existence of God. He never claimed it


9 de 31 15/12/2015 20



could give us real knowledge of God's existence; but he did argue that it

provides the best practical reason for believing in God. Essentially, his

argument is that anyonewho acts morally and believes such action is

rational is acting as if God exists, whether or not they actually believe in

God. In other words, Kant claimedwe must either believe in God or else

reject one of the following propositions: (1) moral action is good; (2)morality is rational; (3) the highest good combines virtue with proportional

happiness.

Aside f rom providing this "practical proof" of God's existence, Kant's

moral philosophy made several other important contributions. For

instance, as we have seen, it established a clearly defined boundary

between moral and non-moral actions. An action is moral only if it is done

reely (i.e.,without depending on our own happiness) and in accordance

with the moral law (i.e., based on a universalizable maxim). These arenecessary conditions that must be true for anyone whowishes to act

morally, so they define an absolute set of guidelines for our inner moti-

vation, just as space, time, and the categories define an absolute set of

guidelines for understanding the outer world. We can picture the opposi-

tion between Kant's two f undamental standpoints as follows:

(a) The bounds of knowledge (b) The bounds of action

FigureVIII.2:TheTheoreticalandPracticalStandpoints

A potential problem arises out of Kant's moral philosophy when it is


0 de 31 15/12/2015 20



viewed together with his theoretical philosophy (as in Figure VIII.2), for it

sets up an apparently irresolvable tension between f reedom and nature.

How canwe be f ree on the one hand (when considering the foundations of

moral action), yet determined by laws such as the law of causality on the

other hand (when considering the foundations of empirical knowledge)?

Kant tried to answer such questions by showing how, in some aspects of human experience, the opposition between f reedom and nature, between

practical and theoretical reason, is actually overcome. In Part Four we shall

examine the two mainways he did this: Lecture 29 will dealwith the theory

of beauty he defended in the thirdC ritique; Lectures 32 and33will then

discuss his most effective way of transcending this opposition-and at the

same time his best answer to the question "What may I hope?" (see Figure

III.6)-his theory of religion. For religion providesuswith the onlyway of

explaining how the highest good can be realized; hence it is the area of

human experience that Kant believed best exemplifies theway nature and

f reedom can work together for the good of the human race.

Although Kant didwrite several books in the attempt to demonstrate

that there is a realm of human experience that synthesizes f reedom and

nature, the strict opposition between these two realms did not bother him

as much as it has bothered many of his critics. For his own tendencywas

not to regard these two realms as posing an absolute contradiction that

needs to be explained away, but to affirm the opposition as an essential

characteristic of being human. He regarded it as an opposition between two

human pers pectives, two ways of looking at the same thing (see Figure

VIII.1), that necessarily arise together and to a large extent -like the

opposition between "hot" and "cold", or "large" and "small"-depend on each

other for their very existence. Only by keeping this in mind canwe f ully

appreciate the respectf ulway he talks about this opposition in his

well-known Conclusion to the second C ritique:

Tw

o things

fill the mindw

ith ever

new

and

incr

eas

ing ad

mir

ation and

aw

e,the oftener and more steadilywe reflect upon them: the starry heavens

above me [i.e., nature] and the moral lawwithin me [i.e., f reedom]. I do not

merely conjecture them and seek them as though obscured in darkness or in

the transcendent region beyond my horizon: I see them before me, and I

associate them directlywith the consciousness of my own existence. (CP r R


1 de 31 15/12/2015 20



161-162)

23. Transvaluation: A Moral Breakthrough?

We saw last time how Kant tried to intensify the rational significance

of acting mor

ally by ar

gu

ing that mor

ality is

bas

ed

on aninternal

FigureVIII.3:

The Contrast betweenSubjective andObjectiveEnds

sense of f reedom and moral duty.His belief in a universally valid "voice"

inside us, telling each person the difference between right andwrong, may

seem odd to anyone who has been thoroughly immersed in the relativism

that tends to dominate modern western culture,where no clear distinction

is drawn between right andwrong. As a quick review of Kant's moral

philosophy, and in order to point up some of the differences between his

view that moral ends (or aims) are "objective" and the common view thatthey are all "subjective", I have summarized some of the main differences in

Figure VIII.3. Ever since Kant proposed his radicaldistinction between the

standpoints of moral action and empirical knowledge, philosophers have

been attempting various ways of overcoming the limitations he proposed.

(More often than not, the ways Kant himself tried to reconcile these two


2 de 31 15/12/2015 20



realms have, unfortunately, been completely ignored.) In this lecture we

shall examine the main ideas of one such philosopher, a man who foresaw

many of the changes inways of thinking and acting that have occurred in

the twentieth century andwho, in some respects at least, was responsible

for them; for he started, as itwere, a new cycle in the history of western

philosophy (cf. Figure III.3).

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900) was a German philosopher who

believed the traditional values of the society of his day had cut religion and

philosophy-and indeed, humanity itself-f rom their proper roots. As a

response to the impending disaster he saw looming on the horizon, he

called for a thoroughgoing "transvaluation of values"-that is, a complete

rethinking of the whole philosophical and religious tradition that produced

those traditional values. The theories he developed in carrying out this task

set up something like a new myth, replacing the myth of dispassionaterationality, established by Socrates and popularized by Plato,with a myth of

passionate irrationality,whose implications are only now beginning to be

understood. (Nietzsche claimed, incidentally, that his philosophywould not

be f ully understood until two hundred years after itwas written.) The

problem with understanding his ideas is that he intentionally wrote in an

unsystematic way; constructing systems he saw as part of the old set of

values. Not only do some of his ideas contradict his other ideas, but many of

his books do not even pretend to develop a single,well-argued set of ideas.

Rather, they contain collections of diverse ideas, often expressed in the

f ragmented form of "aphorisms". It is as ifNietzsche simply wrote a bunch

of insight papers, then published themwhenever he had enough to make a

book! He viewed himself more as a poet, a psychologist, or even a prophet

than as a philosopher in any conventional sense.Nevertheless, many of his

insights are directly addressed to philosophical issues; so a summary of his

main ideas should enable us to appreciate his significance for the

philosophical tradition.

Nietzsche himself (whose name, by theway, is pronounced as if it were

spelled "Neecha")was the son of a Lutheran pastor.He was so intelligent

that he finished his formal education early and became a professor of

classics at the University of Baselwhen he was only 24. Many of his ideas

during this period developed through a brief but intense f riendship with the


3 de 31 15/12/2015 20



musician, Richard Wagner. After teaching for ten years, however, he

became disillusionedwith the game of academia and retired to a hut in the

mountains,where he spent the next ten years of his life as a recluse,writing

some of the most passionate and challenging books in the history of

western philosophy.

Nietzsche's transvaluation of values, a focal point uniting all his other

ideas, was primarily an attempt to break through the traditional

understanding of the boundaries that limit our moral and intellectual life,

establishing in its place a new set of higher values. The old values, as

represented especially by Christianity and the philosophical tradition

culminating in Kant, are "life-denying", he argued; they must therefore be

replaced by "life-affirming" values, the best examples being found in the

pagan religions and philosophies of ancient Greece. Science, with its

narrow field of vision, interpreting theworld as basicallydead, is not solelyresponsible for this faulty world view. For the traditional Christian morals

accepted by the vast majority of the western world, and defended in Kant's

philosophy, also support notions such as love, humility, and self-sacrifice;

and such values, according toNietzsche, have killed the human spirit itself,

and caused us to forget how to dance.

Looking back to ancient Greek mythology,Nietzsche chose names for

these two types of outlook on life: the traditional, life-denying outlook he

called "Apollonian" (after the God of the sun, named "Apollo"),while the

life-affirming outlookNietzsche hoped to put in its place he called

"Dionysian" (after the God ofwine, named "Dionysius"). Whereas the

Apollonian outlook is conscious, rational, and calm, the Dionysian is

unconscious, irrational, and passionate. The former gives rise to a "slave

morality" that causes people to adopt a "herd mentality" and view them-

selves as determined by a fixed boundary line defining good and evil; in

politics this attitude gives rise to democracy (rule by the masses), thus

encour

aging ever

yone to be alike in med

iocr

ity. By contr

as

t, the latter

gives

rise to a "master morality" that causes people to adopt a "hero mentality"

and view themselves as f ree to break out of the conventional ways of

interpreting right andwrong; in politics this attitude gives rise to

aristocracy (rule by a few people), thus encouraging the greatness of the

human spirit to be expressed.


4 de 31 15/12/2015 20



In these and other ways the Dionysian outlook enables us to go "beyond

good and evil" and live on a higher plane, characterized bywhatNietzsche

called "the will to power". The will to power is a form of radical f reedom

that solves the problem posed by Kant's distinction between nature and

f reedom by demolishing both sets of boundary lines:


5 de 31 15/12/2015 20



"we must...posit hypothetically the causality of thewill as the only causality." We can truly masterourselves, according toNietzsche, only by coura-

geously taking hold of a f reedom that ref uses to beenclosedwithin any boundary, for only in sodoing canwe affirm life as it actually is. Followingthese guidelines,we can picture Nietzsche'stransvaluation of values with the map shown inFigure VIII.4.

The problemNietzsche facedwas that thesociety of his daywas thoroughly entrenched inthe Apollonian way of thinking. Hence, his ownattempt to balance this with a Dionysian mes-

Figure VIII.4:Nietzsche's Trans-valuation of Values

sage inevitably came across as madness. This is at least one of the points of

Nietzsche's famous story of the madman in the market place:

Have you not heard as yet of that mad-manwho on one bright forenoon

lit a lantern, ran out into the market-place and cried out again and again, "I

seek God ! I seek God! -Because there were standing about just at that time

manywho did not believe in God, the mad-man was the occasion of great

merriment. Has God been lost? said one of them. Or is He hiding himself? Is

He af raid of us?Has He boarded a ship?Has He emigrated? Thus they cried

and laughed.

But the mad-man pierced themwith his glance: "Whither has God gone?"

he cried; "I am going to tell you. We have killedH im-you and I! We all are His

murderers. But how have we accomplished this?How havewe been able to

empty the sea? Who gave us the sponge towipe off the entire horizon? What

were we doingwhen we unchained this earth f rom its sun? Whither does


6 de 31 15/12/2015 20



the earth now move? Whither do we ourselves move?

"Are we not groping our way in an infinite nothingness? Dowe not feel

the breath of the empty spaces. Has it not become colder? Is there not night

and ever more night?How dowe manage to console ourselves, we master-

assassins? Who is going towipe the blood off our hands? Must not weourselves become gods to make ourselves worthy of such a deed? (JW 125)

This famous passage not only states the problem, that our lifeless, Apol-

lonian personalities have killed God, it also gives a clue as toNietzsche's

solution. The only beings capable of killing God are those who can them-

selves become gods. Out of this aroseNietzsche's theory of S u perman.

When Nietzsche talked about people transcending their themselves

and becoming §bermensch (the German wordusually translated as"Superman", but also sometimes as "overman"), he was not thinking of the

strange man in the red suitwho flies around "faster than a speeding bullet"

fighting the powers of crime and defending the American Way! On the

contrary, the imaginary hero f rom Krypton first appeared shortly after

Nietzsche died and bears little similarity toNietzsche's ideal. The

Superman whose comingNietzsche proclaimedwas far more important, for

he is the very pur pose of the earth. Thus, the "f uture hope for man" lies

entirely in the emergence of this power f ul person f rom the otherwise

hopelessly lost conditions of modern society:whereas ordinary people areall like "polluted streams", "we need to become oceans". In order to bring on

the Dionysian outlook of the Superman, we must, for example, love our fate

(called "amor fati" by Nietzsche) so thoroughly that we couldwill each and

every moment of our life to be endlessly repeated in a continuous cycle of

"eternal recurrence".

Nietzsche's best description of this ideal Superman, and of how his

character is to emerge, comes in his book, Thus Spake Zarathustra

(1883-1884). The Prologue to this book tells a story about a man named

Zarathustra (actually the name of the founder of the ancient Persian

religion called Zoroastrianism),who lived alone in the mountains for ten

years. One day he meets an "old saint in the forest" and is surprised to find

that this man "hath not yet heard of it, that God is dead! " Zarathustra then

goes to the market-place of the nearest town,where many people are


7 de 31 15/12/2015 20



assembled towatch a tight-ropewalker whose performance is about to

begin, and he begins to preach to them, saying:

I teach you the S u perman. Man is something that is to be surpassed. What

have ye done to surpass man? ...

What is the ape to man? A laughing-stock, a thing of shame. And just the

same shall man be to the Superman: a laughing-stock, a thing of shame.

Ye have made your way f rom the worm to man, and much within you is

stillworm....

Lo, I teach you the Superman!

The Superman is the meaning of the earth. Let your will say: The

Superman shall be the meaning of the earth!

I conjure you, my brethren, remain true to the earth, and believe not

those who speakunto you of superearthly hopes! Poisoners are they,

whether they know it or not.

Despisers of life are they, decaying ones and poisoned ones themselves,

ofwhom the earth is weary: so awaywith them!

Once blasphemy against Godwas the greatest blasphemy; but God died,

and therewith also those blasphemers. To blaspheme the earth is now the

dreadf ulest sin, and to rate the heart of the unknowable higher than the

meaning of the earth! ...

Verily, a polluted stream is man. One must be a sea, to receive a polluted

streamwithout becoming impure.

Lo, I teach you the Superman: he is that sea; in him can your greatest

contempt be submerged. (TSZ Prologue ?)

Someone in the crowd, getting impatient with Zarathustra's strange words,

then asks to be shown this "rope-dancer" (meaning the Superman).

Zarathustra responds by saying: "Man is a rope stretched between the

animal and the Superman-a rope over an abyss." After suggestingwith this


8 de 31 15/12/2015 20



metaphor the picture of humanity shown in Figure VIII.5, Nietzsche told

how, after another speech by Zarathustra, the tight-ropewalker then

Figure VIII.5: Nietzsche's Tight-Rope

started his act, but was disturbed by someone else on the rope,who, "like a

buffoon", caused the tight-ropewalker to fall to the ground. The story ends

by telling how Zarathustra helps the injured and dying man. Althoughwe

do not have time to discuss the interpretation of this story in detail, I should

at least add that in the first section of the book itself,Nietzsche told a story

about "three metamorphoses": a spirit is transformed into a camel, the

camel into a lion, and the lion into a child. Ifwe treat this as symbolizing

three stages in the development of humanity, it could beused to argue that

for Nietzsche the Dionysian ("lion") outlookwas not to be part of the ideal

man, but was merely a necessary compensation for the over-rational bias of

the contemporary Apollonian ("camel") outlook. The ultimate ideal of

Nietzsche maywell have been the personwho transcends the distinction

between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, by adopting neither the

servant-based outlook of a camel nor the power-based outlook of a lion, but

the instinct-based outlook of a child.

In any case, the final aspect ofNietzsche's philosophy I shall present to

you today is his theory of pers pectivism.Nietzschewas the first

philosopher to use the word "perspective" as a technical term in his

philosophizing. And this, as you may have noticed, is a practice I believe can


9 de 31 15/12/2015 20



be of utmost value to the philosopher. However, for Nietzsche, the

implication of saying that everything we "know" is limited to some per-

spective is that there are actually no facts, only interpretations. Indeed, he

went so far as to suggest that everything is false; in other words, language

falsifies reality. This view is similar in some respects to both Kant and

Wittgenstein, as well as to the ideas of many other philosophers whowished to distinguish between what is andwhat we can say about what is.

Unlike Kant, but like Wittgenstein, he was highly critical of all

metaphysical theories (especiallydualism). For the very idea of a "true

world" beyond this one is, he believed, the root of all life-denying outlooks.

This radical rejection of all truth, metaphysical and otherwise, is an aspect

ofwhat is often called "nihilism". For the true nihilist there are no real

moral limitations whatsoever: all values can be rejected as meaningless.

Understood in this way, there is some debate as towhether or not

Nietzsche,whose ultimate goalwas to reach a Higher Value (namely,

Superman), ought to be called a "nihilist" in the strict sense.

What are we to conclude, then, about Nietzsche's philosophy?How are

we to res pond to such a passionate plea for a moral breakthrough?How can

we cope with his scathing criticisms of religion and the modern scientific

world view? H as man ironically "killedGod" with the very rationality that

virtually all philosophers f rom Socrates to Kant believed can point us

beyond ourselves to that God? Can we truly become God through the force of

our own will? Surely these and the many other questions raised by

Nietzsche's philosophy cannot be answered in any satisfactoryway in this

introductory course.However, I would like to point out that, above all else,

Nietzsche's writing is calculated to evoke some response.Nietzsche would

regard his task as a success if his ideas have shocked us into rethinking our

entire system of values and belief s. The last thing he ever wantedwas to

found a new "school" of thinking, called "Nietzschean philosophy"!

With this

in mind

,I have

seve

ral comment

s to make abo

utN

ietzs

che's

ideas. First, the mythical character of his philosophy should be clear by the

very fact that he ref used to see or accept any boundaries. Nietzsche's world

was aworldwith no limits-or at least, the limits it hadwere arbitrary, and

could not be used to determine the truth. (This is partly due to the fact that

he had no clear recognition of the difference between analytic and


20 de 31 15/12/2015 20



synthetic logic.) This is why I have suggestedwe regard his philosophy as

having started a new revolution in the cycle of western philosophy (cf.

Figure III.3), replacing Plato's Socrates as the foundation for a new

philosophical age, often called "post-modernism". We shall examine that

the latter movement in more detail in Lecture 24.

Another interesting point is that the relationship between Kant and

Nietzsche is comparable in some ways to the relationship in ancient

Chinese philosophy between Conf ucius and Chuang Tzu. The former in

each case developed a massive philosophical system revolving around the

principle of inwardly legislated moral action, whereas the latter in each

case tried to break through the typically rigidways of interpreting that

system, by living a wanderer's life and urgingus all to be guided by the

passionate "Way" that is in some sense the essence of life itself. Unfortu-

nately,we do not have time to pursue this parallel relationship in thecontext of this class. So it will suffice merely to note that, like Nietzsche,

Chuang Tzu's radicaldestruction of traditional values often makes him look

like a nihilist; yet we can avoid this error by keeping in mind that the Way

serves as an ineffable, but nonetheless real limit for human action.

At this pointwe maywant to ask: which is truly life-denying,

Nietzsche's interpretation of man as either purely Apollonian or purely

Dionysian, or a confession of the inevitable tension between these two

aspects of human nature (as in Kant)? The personwho crosses the

tight-rope and is successf ully transformed into Superman (i.e., into the

Dionysian hero) will be just as one-sided as the one who sits back and

remains satisfied to be a mere animal (i.e., part of the Apollonian herd). In

either case, ifwe try to regard life in terms of either one of these outlooks on

its own, we will surely end up denying life: this can be visually represented

by noting that the tight-rope of humanity in Figure VIII.5 would fall to the

ground if either building supporting it were to be taken away. This surely

sugge

sts

that the onlytruly

life-affir

ming view

is

the one thatr

egards

humanity as both Apollonian and Dionysian. Whether the tension be

between love and passion, consciousness and unconsciousness, knowledge

and ignorance, or any other pair ofNietzschean opposites, it is in each case

the tension itself that keeps us alive. Indeed, this is simultaneously the

greatness and the tragedy of human life: that we are capable of taking great


21 de 31 15/12/2015 20



risks in the pursuit of high ideals; and yet, that we cannot reach those ideals

without losing our very life. And the good life, just as the good tight-rope

walker,will be the one that exhibits the best balance (e.g., by integrating the

opposites).

Finally, I should mention that, for the last eleven years of his life,Nietzsche was insane. Trying to explain what caused his insanity can only

be a matter of conjecture. Some believe it was the result of a physical

illness. Others interpret his suffering as that of a true prophet, as if he were

symbolically accepting such a punishment on behalf of those who could not

see mankind's tendency toward self-destruction so clearly. Still others

regard his final fate as a natural outcome of his philosophical outlook. In

the latter case his example could certainly serve as awarning to anyone who

wishes to experiment with a philosophy cut off f rom its natural roots in

metaphysics. In any case, because of her brother's insanity, Nietzsche'ssister ended up taking charge over the publication of his writings and the

promotion of his ideas. Unfortunately, she perverted his ideas in such a way

that Hitler was able to use what looked like Nietzsche's ideas as a

philosophical support for his own fascist political regime. Political

philosophywill, in fact, be the focus of next week's lectures. But we can end

today by noting that the use Hitler (and others) made of Nietzsche is now

generally recognized to be a gross misrepresentation. For Nietzsche was no

anti-Semitic fascist, but truly a philosopher unto himself-a new Socrates

(or anti-Socrates) if ever there was one.

24.Perspectivism:ReconstructingtheBoundaries

Probably the most common myth to be assumed (and sometimes

defendedwith arguments) in the insight papers written by my past students

has been the view known as relativism. Students f requently claim there is

nothing absolute in the world, though few think very deeply about the

implications of such a position. The reasons typically cited are that actions

can be right in one situation yet wrong in another situation, or that

propositions can be true in one context yet false in another, or that a

physical feature regarded as beautif ul in one culture may be ugly in another

culture. As these examples illustrate, the issue of relativism concerns not

only moral philosophy, but virtually all aspects of applied philosophy.


22 de 31 15/12/2015 20



Wherever a boundary has to be drawn and awise choice made as towhat

falls inside the boundary andwhat should remain outside, the question of

whether or not the boundary is "absolute" (i.e., fixed, or true in every

respect,without considering context or individual differences) eventually

arises. In ordinary life, most boundary issues are obviously relative. For

example, there is no absolute principle to tell youwhether or where to erecta fence between your property and your neighbor's; such a decision depends

on a variety of "relative" factors, such as what laws apply to the district

where you live,what kind of relationship you havewith your neighbor, how

you feel about fences, etc.

The philosophical question concerning relativism is not whether

anything is relative; that is obviously true. Rather, the question is whether

everything is relative, or whether, by contrast, some f undamental princi-

ples might be absolute. And nowhere is this question more important thanin moral philosophy. This weekwe have seen that the twentieth century's

tendency toward relativism derived to a large extent f rom (or at least,was

foreseen by) Nietzsche. But its roots goway back. As early as 1651, Thomas

Hobbes wrote in Chapter 13 of his book, Leviathan, that "moral philosophy

is nothing else but the science ofwhat is good, and evil, in the conversation,

and society of mankind; which in different tempers, customs, and doctrines

of men, are different." The distinction between good and evil is thus

regarded as purely a matter of social custom, not rooted in any absolute

moral principles. Furthermore,Hume argued that "ought" statements

cannot be justified by appealing to "is" statements (T HN 469-470). For

example, just because abortion is a common practice nowadays does not

mean that it ought to be regarded as "right". This gap between the "is" and

the "ought" prevents moral "science" f rom ever reaching the level of

objectivity that natural science aims to obtain. Indeed, Hume inferred f rom

the absence of any empirical justification for moral belief s that they are

merely a matter of custom or habit (cf. Lecture 21)-a view that leads

directly to extreme forms of relativism.

Strict relativism, the view that no opinion is ultimately any better than

any others, must be clearly distinguished f rom "perspectivism". For

Nietzsche, as we have seen, the latter means that everything is false. Yet, if

we really take this seriously,we are left with a tree without roots-and


23 de 31 15/12/2015 20



perhaps even without a trunk! Throughout this course I am defending a

radicallydifferent version of perspectivism. Instead of arguing f rom the

perspectival nature of all knowledge (as demonstrated by Kant) to the

falseness of all language,we can regard each well-defined perspective as an

opportunity to gain truth within boundaries. Thus, for example, I have

defended a philosophy of perspective wherein truth does exist, but can beknown as such only within the boundary of a distinct perspective. In this

waywe can say truth is relative, without saying it all boils down to personal

opinions: once we realize that the love of wisdom requires first and

foremost a search for the proper perspective for interpreting ideas such as

truth and goodness, then and only then willwe be able to affirm that

opinions (sometimes even the majority opinion) can bewrong! Rather than

saying,with Nietzsche, that all interpretations of theworld are false,we

can then affirm that many of them can be true. Indeed, evenwhen two views

appear to conflict with each other, they may both be right, if they are

assumingdifferent perspectives.

Of the current movements inwestern philosophy that look back to

Nietzsche as the father of the "post-modern" era, "deconstructionism" is

one of the most influential. Deconstructionism originated as a method of

interpreting literary texts (cf. Lecture 18), but has now grown into a distinct

philosophical school, based on the assumption that the world has no "deep

structure"whatsoever, so that the search for the foundations of anything is

necessarily f utile and counterproductive. I think the life of this movement

will be short-lived, because, like logical positivism (cf. Lecture 16), it

attempts the impossible task of growing a tree without roots. While rightly

claiming that the belief in metaphysical foundations is all too often used to

close off the possibility of alternative explanations, and can therefore be

misused as a tool of oppression, deconstructionists themselves, in effect,

close off the possibility for any communicationwhatsoever, by their belief

that there is no common groundwe can all stand on. Because they focus

much of their attention on interpreting past classical texts, many of theirlegitimate insights can be found in a less extreme form in the writings of

more conventional philosophers. Nevertheless, let's look at a few of the

ideas defended by one of the most influential deconstructionists.

Jacques Derrida (1930-) is an Algerian-born scholar who has spent


24 de 31 15/12/2015 20



most of his professional life living andwriting in Paris. He attracted much

attention during the last one-third of the twentieth century, thanks to his

provocative and insightf ulwriting style. The most popular of his works,

Margins of Philosophy (1972), sets out the most detailed defense and

explanation of the main features of his new, "deconstructionist" approach

to philosophy. Derrida rejects a number of key assumptions made by pastphilosophers (especially the "structuralists"whose viewswere very

influential in France during the middle part of the century), such as: the

priority of speech over writing; the notion that texts have an objective

structure giving each a primary or most correct "meaning"; the belief that

the author rather than the reader gives the text its true meaning; etc. In

place of such views he demonstrates with his ownwriting that texts have

many layers of genuine meanings and that the reader's own meaning(s) may

be just as valid as the one(s) intended by the author. Moreover, he ref uses to

give philosophical texts a privileged position in relation to other types of

writing; they are simply another form of literature to be interpreted and

critically assessed.

As a literary critic, Derrida values the act of writing as the primary

category of all philosophy and the most basic form of verbal

communication. The essence of writing is a "f ree play" of language, not the

communication of some deeper "meaning". As he puts it: "There is nothing

outside the text." Rather than searching for some elusive "true meaning",

interpreters should view their task as playingwith the text until some new

insight arises as a result. Some of the "tricks" Derrida uses to deconstruct

classical texts in this way are to find a dominant metaphor that guides the

way the key terms are used and understood, to trace all such terms back to

their original or literal meanings, to focus on differences between what

might seem to be the "obvious" meaning of a text and other, hidden

meanings, and to explore the way different types of differences interact

(including differences in sound, spelling, etc.).He coined the term

"différa nce" to refer to the latter, the interplay between differentdifferences, emphasizing that we are able to examine only one type of

difference at a time: the other types must "defer" to the one that grabs our

attention at any given time. To locate such alternative or underlying

metaphors, meanings, differences-such différa nce-Derrida often utilizes

concepts f rom depth psychology, arguing that unconscious connections are


25 de 31 15/12/2015 20



imbedded in the text. In so doing, his aim is not to deny a text's "traditional"

interpretation(s), so much as to play aroundwith thewide variety of other

interpretations that might be just as plausible.

So convinced is Derrida that the proper interpretation of a text must

always remain an "open", unstructured question, that he claims that themargins of a book are as important as the printedwords. The margins,

together with all the spaces between thewords, constitute the différa nce

that makes reading possible in the first place. On the one hand, the margins

representwhat is notwritten, and this tells us as much about a text's

meaning as what iswritten. On the other hand,when a reader writes his or

her own comments in the margins, these become as much a part of the text's

meaning as what the originalwriter had in mind.

Though deconstructionism is by no means limited to texts relating toissues in moral philosophy, this is the best week to deal with the movement,

because it tends to result in the notion of a text's meaning being totally

relativized. And the implications of this total relativization are nowhere felt

more strongly than in the realm of ethics. Derrida and other

deconstructionists go so far as to claim that any attempt to insist on a "true"

meaning, or to regard any principle as absolutely true, is a political ploy

used to "oppress" people who hold different views. As such, the whole

movement takes on a moralistic tone not unlike that ofNietzsche's,

whereby any attempt to support traditional ideas is cast into disrepute. In

fact, I was once at a seminar where a deconstructionist argued that even a

simple logical principle such as the law of noncontradiction is nothing but a

tool of oppression that ought therefore to be rejected! Another influential

deconstructionist, Michel Foucault (1926-1984), applied such ideas in far

more detail to moral issues, especially those relating to sexuality and

mental illness But rather than examining his or others' ideas at this point,

let us return to Kant in order to draw some conclusions about the

implications

of a healthy pers pectivism

for

mor

alw

isd

om.

On the standard interpretation of Kant, as assumed byNietzsche, he

regarded the categorical imperative and perhaps even the specific maxims

ustified by it (such as "Never tell a lie") as absolute moral principles.

However, Kant's moral theory need not be interpreted so rigidly. For, just as


26 de 31 15/12/2015 20



he regarded everything that appears in space and time (i.e., in theworld) as

contingent and therefore relative, while onlywhat our mind imposes on the

world a priori (i.e., as the world's boundary) is necessary or absolute, so also

he regarded the moralworth of an action as stemming not f rom its result in

the world of outer objects, but f rom its source in the agent'sworld of inner

motives.Hence, Kant's moral theory is relativistic at least in this sense: thesame action can be right in one situation andwrong in another if the

underlying motivation is different in each case. Where Kant partedwith

strict relativism, in his moral theory as well as in other areas of his

philosophy,was in believing there are absolute principles that underlie all

such "relative" decisions. These principles are absolute only in the sense

that they define specific pers pectives; but we are f ree to adopt different

perspectives to interpret any given situation. In this way, Kant's position

transcends both the foundationalism that naively upholds the maxims of

traditional morality as if theywere absolutes and the antifoundationalism

of deconstructionist relativism that wipes away all boundaries. Instead,

Kantian perspectivism recognizes the boundaries as "relatively fixed"-i.e.,

fixed only in relation to the principles that define each perspective.No

principle is true f rom every perspective, so nothingwe know is "absolutely

absolute".

Kant did recognize a level of reality that goes beyond the relatively

absolute principles of his perspectivism. But as we saw in Lecture 8, he

regarded this absolute or "ultimate" reality, the realm of the "thing in itself",

as unknowable. Rather than merely defending the "old" morality, as

Nietzsche claimed, Kant's perspectivism thus provideduswith a third

alternative. Traditional morality lives in the myth that a specific set of

moral maxims (e.g., those found in the Bible) are absolutely true for all

people and at all times. Relativism breaks through this myth by arguing

that, because nothing is absolute, anything can be true or right. "Cultural

relativism" is the more specific view that each culture sets its own

boundaries, and that right andwrong are in fact nothing but cultural norms.But if this were the case, then no culture could ever be wrong and itwould

be difficult to imagine how or why a culture would ever change its moral

standards. Nietzsche's relativism is not cultural, for he clearly accuses

some cultures (namely, the Apollonian ones) of being morally corrupt.His

view might rather be called absolute relativism, inasmuch as he argued that


27 de 31 15/12/2015 20



the only healthy moral theory is one that breaks through all boundaries,

cultural or otherwise. Kant's position goes beyond relativism by

encouraging us to return to the boundary of morality even thoughwe are

ignorant of exactly how f ullywe are following the moral law at any given

time. For Kant,we are to believe there is something absolute, even though

we cannot know exactlywhat it is; onlywhen we humbly accept thisunknowable absolute as a boundary-defining reality willwe be able to make

moral decisions that are genuinely our decisions (i.e., f ree) and yet

genuinely moral as well.

The presence of a moral absolute, even if it is in a sense outside the

world of our actions, has important implications for howwe treat those

who disagree with our opinions. Relativists usually encourage us always to

be tolerant of the views of others. Tolerance in general is, of course, a very

good thing. It is a reaction against an older way of looking at the world, asf ull of absolute, black andwhite distinctions that ought to be strictly forced

onto all other people. In the name of absolute truth and goodness many

people down through history have been attacked, ostracized, beheaded, and

burned at the stake, merely for holding opinions differing f rom those of the

peoplewith more political power.Nevertheless, the danger in relativism is

that it ultimately leads to the destruction of both knowledge and morality.

By blurring the distinction between true and false or between right and

wrong, it convinces people nowadays to ignore the inner guidelines that

reason provides for us to determine truth and goodness. Must we, so to

speak, "throw out the babywith the bath water"? Kant would say "No!" Be

tolerant up to a point, but not at the expense of denying two of the highest

values in human life. Kantian perspectivism provides an alternative to

relativism by maintaining that there are rational absolutes, and that,

although these absolutes are objectively unknowable, practical reason itself

communicates them to each person, if onlywe will listen to its voice.

Because goodness and truth have their absolute basis not in the actions and

objects found in the world, but in the rational voice within each individual,intolerance can still be opposed, but not so systematically as to destroy the

possibility of knowledge and morality.

Kant's own keyword for the basic principle of morality, res pect is

actually related in a significant etymologicalway (at least in English) to the


28 de 31 15/12/2015 20



whole notion of a pers pective. To "re-spect" a person is "to look again" at

them and their situation-to think twice before judging or acting according

to one's own inclinations. To " per-spect" a situation is "to look through (or

by means of )" a given presupposition at the various details under

consideration. Interestingly, at least one translator has used "to perspect"

for Kant's term "einsehen", literally meaning "to see in" and as a noun,"understanding" or "insight". This accurately reflects the close relationship

we have seen operating throughout this course between perspectives and

insights. Thus we could say that, as respecting is to morality, perspecting is

to insight, and so also to philosophy in general.

Before concluding this lecture, I would like to mention that some of you

are still falling into the self-reference trap (see Lecture 10) in your insight

papers. Now that we have a deeper understanding of perspectives and how

they f unction in relation to myths, I hope youwill be more adept at statingyour arguments more caref ully. With this in mind, let me now give another

example of how to deal with philosophical questions without falling into

this fallacy. Once I read a paper that claimed "Truth always hurts", and

another that similarly argued "The only time we can be certain ofwhat is

true is when it inflicts pain on us." Such claims may be true and even wise in

a variety of human situations. But ifwe present such an insight as a

universal principle, then it obviously fails the self-reference test. For

merely believing the statement "Truth always hurts" does not, in itself ,

inflict any pain on the believer. If the principle is true, then there is at least

one truth that does not hurt!

Kant's perspectivism, on my interpretation, is unique and superior to

all the other options we have considered, inasmuch as it argues that each

area of applied philosophy does have its proper boundary, but that none of

these are absolute in the sense of applying to all situations. On the contrary,

we may choose to impose one set of boundaries on a situation at one point

in time, ther

eby tr

eating it as

ad

eter

mined

event in as

cientific f r

amew

or

k,yet impose a different set of boundaries on the same situation at a later

time, thereby treating it as a moral situation. Whereas Nietzschean

perspectivism, like deconstructionism, regards the perspectival nature of

all knowledge as virtually doing awaywith the notion of truth, Kantian

perspectivism reconstructs what has been relativized by regarding


29 de 31 15/12/2015 20



perspectives as truth-defining boundaries -or in the case of moral

philosophy, as goodness-defining boundaries. To say that an act is good only

relative to the moral standpoint does not reduce morality to a cultural norm

or personal preference, but raises it to the status of a philosophically

ustified belief.

QUESTIONS FOR FURTHER THOUGHT/DIALOGUE

1. A. Can a single action be both f ree and determined at the same time?

B. Are there any absolute (i.e., unchangeable) boundary lines?

2. A. Can a value judgment ever be false?

B. Can two genuine duties contradict each other?

3. A. Are "life-denying" acts ever morally right?

B. Could a human being kill God?

4. A. Is a "breakthrough" always good?

B. Is philosophywithout reason really possible at all?

R ECOMMENDED R EADINGS

1. Immanuel Kant, Foundation of the Metaphysics of Morals, Second

Section, "Transition From the Popular Moral Philosophy to the Meta-

physics of Morals" ( FMM 405-445).

2. Immanuel Kant, C ritique of P ractical Reason, Book II, "Dialectic of Pure

Practical Reason" (CP r R 106-148).

3. J.S. Mill, Utilitarianism, ed. Oskar Piest (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,

1957).

4. G.E. Moore, E thics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1965[1912]).


30 de 31 15/12/2015 20



5. FriedrichNietzsche, The Joyf ul Wisdom, ?25 (JW ).

6. Friedrich Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Prologue (TSZ ).

7. FriedrichNietzsche, Beyond Good and E vil: P relude to a philosophy of the

uture, tr

. R.J.H

ollingd

ale (H

ar

mondsw

or

th: Pengu

in Books

,19

73

).

8. Jacques Derrida, "Différance", Margins of Philosophy, tr. A. Bass

(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp.1-27.

border=0 height=62width=88>

Original URL:

http://staff web.hkbu.edu.hk/ppp/tp4/top08.html


palmquist.tree.22. freedom and the boundary of morals

Documents