Kant I: Ethical Frameworks and Their Discontents

Man can be contented or discontented with himself either pragmatically or ethically. But he very often confuses the two. He often thinks he has pangs of conscience, although he is only afraid of the tribunal of prudence. ... Prudence calls for good understanding, and morality calls for good will. Our free conduct rests solely on good will, if it is to have moral goodness, and thus our will can be good in itself. (Kant's Lectures on Ethics, p. 47, 53)

Kant's distinction between pragmatic and moral motives (for action) may help us to reframe some of the issues raised by the case studies in Spinello, and perhaps it can motivate distinctions between ethics and law, and ethics and politics as well. First, however, let's look at why a Kantian framework for evaluating ethical dilemmas may be more challenging than that of a Utilitarian or Rights-Based framework. Consider lying. Some obvious questions:

• Do you consider lying unethical, and why?
• What are the differences between the reasons/reasoning of someone who finds (certain kinds of) lying unethical from a Utilitarian, Kantian, or rights-based view?
• Are there additional frameworks or justifications for finding lying unethical?

In evaluating the Swedish Data Protection policy, was your perspective primarily moral or pragmatic (in the Kantian sense)? To what extent does the Policy reflect ethical rather than pragmatic principles? To what extent do you think it desireable for laws to reflect, prescribe or proscribe ethics? I once read an essay on ethics and the law that began with the claim that there is a big difference between societies in which the law is derived from ethics and those in which ethics is derived from the law. What do you make of such a distinction?

Spinello's Case Studies, pt II, sections 3-5 Some final questions before we leave Spinello for Kant (at least temporarily!):

• How many of the assigned case studies in Spinello can be redescribed as raising questions of the form: "Is it right to ________ ?"
• Does such a redescription change your response(s) to any of the cases?
• Most of the studies assume that there is no great distinction between methods for evaluating ethics in "public", "social" and/or "private" life. Is it desireable or even possible to make such a distinction?
• Are there any cases we've read in which your answers/ solutions would not change regardless of changes in the circumstances surrounding the "core" issue/question?

A Word about Difficult Books

Next time we'll begin discussing Kant's Lectures on Ethics (Cambridge UP, 1997). Kant is perhaps the most difficult author you will read at Brown, if in fact you're ever assigned Kant's writings. In this class we're reading Collins' notes, taken in the 1780s, based on Kant's lectures. The Notes are plenty difficult themselves, so we'll talk a bit about strategies for reading this text, and difficult books generally, aided by suggestions from Mortimer Adler.

For Monday:: Read pp. 90-149 in Kant's Lectures on Ethics.

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