Kanflict: How Humans Have Risen Above The Divine Essay, Research Paper

Kanflict: How Humans Have Risen Above The Divine

November 23, ‘96

Philosophy: Lily

Nov.22

Until Emmanuel Kant, God, primarily the western Religion of

Christianity’s concept of God, was of an elevated stature over humans when

concerning the issue of morality. This however was to be questioned due to this

philosophers works on this subject. All philosophers preceding him also tried to

solve and define this mystical thing called moral good.

For Kant this journey had a side benefit. He discovered that it was

all more impressive to be good as a human than God itself. For a human to do the

right or moral thing means that a decision must be made; to side with the

duality within each person, to be moral or follow the animalistic nature of

inclination. This inclination is the desire, primarily, to be happy.

To be moral means adhering to codes of goodness and selflessness.

This might involve running into a burning building to rescue a child. This

doesn’t make one happy, because one doesn’t say, “I could die or I could live.

Ya know, I think I’ll take the first option?Yippee.” This seems ludicrous, that

one would chose the good of one over the good of another, and not chose yourself.

But this is what elevates us above the rest of the life on the planet, that we

will chose to serve the laws of morality and justice, while putting aside one’s

own happiness.

God on the other hand has no such decision to make. God only knows

morality. There is no weighing or balancing of conflicting agendas, be it

morality or desire. This is what I choose to tag “Kanflict.” God’s decision is

all the less impressive because morality is the only option.

For us humans it is all the more difficult and therefore impressive

to choose morality over desire to serve our own happiness. Kant has therefor

shown that Plato’s analogy of the Ring Of Gygies is not the perfect life, that

Hobbes was wrong when he said that the best life was to be able to do whatever

suited our desires. He has shown this to be false with the fact that humans feel

a contradiction in our own will. In other words, we feel guilty and awful after

we have chosen the less glorious, but all the more easy and gratifying in the

short term, way out called desire.

This contradiction is caused by a series of things which Kant

outlines and discusses in his discussion of the Metaphysical. A few of these

components are: a priori, a posteori, maxim, will, and law. These are simply

words for the parts that make up a decision, and it is important to understand

their relation ship to the imperatives, or reasons for an action. The three

imperatives are: 1. skill, how something is carried out, 2. Hypothetical,

suggestions of what will make one happy, desires, 3. Moral, this is simply the

ought part of a decision or the conscience. The first two, when combined, are a

formula for happiness. This is not, as it is to Hobbes, the best possible life

and is second in our mind to the third imperative, moral or categorical. This is

simply to say that one knows what is the moral thing to do and must, in some

cases, choose over happiness when conflicts of interest occur chose the moral

way.

How does one know what is moral? The terms before assist me with this

answer. A priori is the knowledge we have of what is good or bad, moral or

immoral, that is known without experience. For example, it is wrong to rape. A

posteori is less glorious and pure, but it has a similar effect. It is the

knowledge of something from experience. The maxim is the action which one’s will

considers and weighs before doing it. In other words it is the word for the

whole process discussed here. These all assist the understanding of what is

moral, called the categorical imperative. The imperative is broken down into a

few parts. Unlike the hypothetical, one knows before an action what one must do.

It is immediate. It is also an end in itself. It must be universally true and to

be good one must make it the maxim of one’s action.

The categorical imperative would be one which represented an action

as objectively necessary in itself, without any reference to any other

end.”(p.1009)

Kant is trying to say that an action must be purely only done for the

purpose of doing that action, without any other motive or reason for doing it.

Charity is a good example of this. People often give to charity because it is

good to help others, but they also get to feel good and show off to their

friends with little medals of plaques. This destroys the good of the original

moral reason for doing that action.

That is why it is so much more impressive to do moral acts as a human

than God. For God only has one option, only one imperative for doing an act.

Whereas a human has three kinds of imperatives. One might have 20 desires and

one moral reason to do an act and still chooses the moral way out. To be purely

moral may be next to impossible, for I have never known a purely moral act

myself. But perhaps, it is possible and here lies the potential for glory of a

more impressive stature than the divine.