Comparing Kant’s Categorical Imperative and Mutual Respect in Effecting Choices as the Ethic of Justice
An ethic is a rule to govern human conduct. Let’s say that “the ethic of justice” is an ethic that necessarily applies to all human beings: no one can deny its applicability to every human being, including oneself. Surely everyone would agree that knowledge of such an ethic would be a monumental advance in our understanding of justice, i.e. universally valid governance of human relations.
Immanuel Kant lived and wrote in the late 1700’s. He is generally considered to be the greatest Modern philosopher.
Kant made the case that the only ethic that can be legitimately placed on any human being to constrain that person’s conduct is an ethic that person acknowledges to be valid for oneself. He tried to prove that there was an ethic that every rational being — every human — would have to accept as applying to oneself. He called that ethic the “categorical imperative.”
In making that attempt Kant sought to get at the given form of knowledge itself — what we as humans can know and how we can know it. Fortunately, for present purposes we don’t have to get into the details of all that.
We do, however, have to note that Kant’s ethic entails the existence of what he called a noumenal realm of existence. The temporal world, the world of material existence, he called the phenomenal realm of existence. The noumenal realm is outside, or beyond, or ‘prior to’ the phenomenal realm of material existence.
A noumenal realm is necessary for Kant because that is where he says the human will exists. Kant said that the will is not material — not of the phenomenal realm — but we can know it exists because we see evidence of its existence in the conduct of human beings. In large part due to the evidence of a will in human beings, we therefore know of, he maintains, this other realm of existence that is outside, etc. material existence.
Kant said that the will is what must be constrained to achieve ethical conduct. He had three different formulations of his universal (he claimed) ethic, but insisted that they all boiled down to the same thing. It is usually presented as requiring that all people treat all other people as subjects, as ends in themselves, and not as objects, or as means to an end. His ethic is therefore a requirement of mutual respect.
Now, there can be no such thing as an ethic, a rule to govern humans’ conduct, that human beings would be unable to transgress. The fact that an ethic can be violated is not a valid basis for rejecting it. Kant’s ethic is no exception.
This is skipping ahead a bit, but likewise, anyone can accept any (belief-based) ethic for any reason — or no reason. That is also the case with Kant’s ethic.
To be required to accept Kant’s ethic, however, we must be required to accept that human beings have a will that exists in another, non-material realm that we can only know of via its effects in the realm of our material existence. Despite Kant’s heroic intellectual efforts, in the end that is no different than believing in any other kind of Spirit realm that can affect lives in our material existence. [G. W. F. Hegel would attempt to make the case for a singular realm of Spirit that we can know exists — and (rationally) only it.]
So, Kant’s categorical imperative ends up resting on a belief. No belief is amenable to being proven or disproven within material existence because all beliefs refer to something outside, etc. that existence. Therefore any person can accept or reject any belief — or any ethic that would follow from a belief — for any reason or no reason at all. Kant’s noumenal realm of existence, on which his categorical imperative depends, is no exception.
Even so, Kant’s assertion, that the only valid ethic for constraining any individual’s conduct is an ethic that person has accepted as being valid for that purpose, remains. For starters, it is intuitively satisfying. Otherwise, some people would have to be imposing an ethic on other people. While this is a conjecture, I think that most people would insist that having an ethic imposed on themselves by other people would be an injustice. (In talking about “human beings,” “people,” etc. I am talking about adults; of course children must have rules of conduct imposed on them.)
Whether coercion were involved or not, an ethic based on a belief simply cannot be necessarily valid for all human beings. Even if every human being accepted a belief, it would still not be necessarily valid, because it would refer to something outside , etc. material existence, and anything outside, etc. of material existence is something we can only accept as a belief. It is not part of human being as we experience it in our material existence, no matter how certain any number of people might be of its validity.
Only that which we experience within material existence can be necessarily valid for all human beings. To be that, it must be something all human beings actually experience, each of us for oneself. No one would be taking any other person’s word for anything.
In seeking after a necessarily universal ethic within material existence the fundamental problem is intersubjectivity. Just because one individual experiences this or that in material existence does not mean that individual can know that other beings, even of the same kind, share that same experience of material existence.
Therefore, for any individual to claim knowledge of a necessarily universal ethic on the basis of one’s personal experience of one’s own material existence cannot of itself get us any closer to such an ethic than beliefs can. Kant’s assertion, that the only valid ethic for any human being is an ethic a person accepts for oneself as being valid for governing one’s conduct, still stands. On the other hand, if an ethic can be found to exist within material existence that every human being has no choice but to accept as being valid, we can call that the ethic of justice for human beings.
As a being who identifies as a human, I perceive that I experience a material existence that includes in the world around me other human beings, beings who are materially more like me than not, with whom I can interact as a fellow human being. Even if those interactions might be violent, oppressive, etc., they would still be materially human to human.
Within that existence I perceive that all human beings have no choice but to effect choices (i.e. choose among perceived alternatives and take action to bring that choice to fruition). Effecting choices is in fact what we do, every moment while we are awake (having not made the choice to go to sleep). Even to continue doing what one is doing rather than stop that and start doing something else is an ongoing choice. [Warren J. Samuels all but defined “social power” as the ability to “effect choices” in “Welfare Economics, Property, and Power,” Perspectives of Property, Gene Wunderlich and W. L. Gibson, eds. (1972).]
So choosing for ourselves is a given part of human being within material existence as I experience it. It is something we simply have no choice but to do.
In my interactions with other human beings, to recognize them as fellow human beings I must respect their given, human, unalienable capacity to choose for themselves. To fail to respect that capacity to choose for themselves is to fail to acknowledge them as human beings. It is to assert, by my actions, some status regarding myself and them that can only refer to something outside, etc. material existence: a belief, which no one has to accept as valid for oneself (without coercion) — ever.
Respecting the capacity of other people to choose for themselves means, for starters, respecting their capacity to choose whether, or how, or to what extent to be involved in the process whenever I am effecting any choice. Whether as means or ends, directly or collaterally, purposefully or not, if they are in any way involved in the process, in being involved they must have exercised their capacity to choose for themselves. For me to act otherwise is to co-opt them or to preempt in some other way their capacity to choose for themselves, to treat them as something other than fellow human beings.
So that is the ethic that I acknowledge must govern my interactions with other human beings. This ethic is, most succinctly, mutual respect in effecting choices.
This ethic arises any time I am effecting a choice and any other human being is involved in any way in the process. While it can only apply to any being who shares the same experience of material existence that I experience, the applicability of that ethic to all beings who do share that experience of material existence cannot be denied.
Since this ethic applies to all beings who identify as human, who experience a material existence that includes fellow human beings in the world around them, none of whom have any choice but to effect choices, the applicability of it to any such being cannot be denied. In recognizing the applicability of this ethic to oneself as one choice-effecting human being among others, one is availing oneself of its protections and avowing its obligations upon oneself in one’s relevant interactions (i.e. with other human beings in effecting a choice).
The only way any apparently human being can deny the applicability of this ethic to a relevant interaction is to claim not to be a human (or at least to claim that in one’s experience effecting choices is not necessarily a part of being human) or to claim that the other being involved in an interaction is not a human. In the former case, to make a claim is to give away the game: one is doing a human thing (and effecting a choice in doing it) and addressing it to others as fellow beings of the same kind. In the latter case, sheer physical appearance is determinative. For purposes of this ethic, human being is a material matter only, and cannot be denied on the basis of any assertion that is outside, or beyond, or ‘prior to’ material appearances. No human being can legitimately deny the humanness of any other being who looks human does the things a human being does (to include one who is acting horribly).
The philosophical technicalities can now be dropped. Mutual respect in effecting choices is the ethic of justice for human beings.
In deciding whether or not to accept an ethic people tend to want to consider its implications in order to to judge the acceptability of the ethic. In this case that is not valid. As rational beings, humans have no choice but to accept this ethic for governing their interactions with other human beings in effecting any choice, whether anyone likes it or not and regardless of its implications for anyone’s life.
Still, people do need to learn about its implications. Applying this ethic of justice to the governance of society would result in maximum liberty as a practical matter (not in obeisance to some belief-based doctrine); a democratic political process (i.e. the process of effecting choices for the community as a whole) pretty much as we know it; and a market-based economy (which is nothing but a conglomeration of choices being effected) with a “democratically distributed income” (“DDI”) to supply it with money — which would result in a self-regulating, more sustainable economy with no unemployment, poverty, taxes, or public debt and still no limit on income/wealth. [The compatibility of this ethic with contemporary democracy is due to democracy’s basis in ‘equality’; equality is not itself an ethic, but it does imply an ethic of mutual respect; so mutual respect is the ethic that has actually governed democracy as we know it; that’s how democracy can be applied to the economy without limiting income/wealth.]
Within those societal conditions, processes, and structures are myriad micro instances of interactions among individuals. Material existence with co-existing human beings effecting choices is a complicated place. There will inevitably be instances in which establishing whether this ethic has been violated or not would require gathering information and deliberation. Moreover, there will inevitably be instances in which a person’s capacity to choose what to be doing will be subordinated, such as at work.
In short, this ethic cannot usher in a Utopia. Civil society, to include systems for enacting laws and enforcing them as well as other constraining institutional structures, would still be with us. Even so, knowledge of this ethic is indeed a monumental advance in the just governance of human relations.
For more about “real justice” (as I call this ethic and its implications for human beings), especially its societal implications, a brief (“5 min read”) summary is here in Medium. For more on the DDI, “A Truly Great Idea” is in Data Driven Investor here in Medium — “behind the pay wall;” on this side of that wall there is this brief (“5 min read”) summary (where I refer to the DDI as an “allotted income” because that term doesn’t suggest any further philosophical issue).