[lit-ideas] Re: Ethnic Pride, Black Truck Style

  • From: "Phil Enns" <phil.enns@xxxxxxxxxxx>
  • To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
  • Date: Sat, 4 Aug 2007 12:02:18 -0400

John Wager wrote:

"I've always thought that what Kant had in mind was the motivation for
an activity or action, not the action itself.  One can do the right
thing for "heteronomous" reasons, or for "autonomous" reasons.  What
makes this "public" in the sense you use the word above is that it's
based on the form of reason itself, which is indeed "public" to
everyone.  It would be impossible easily to tell from the outside
whether a person was acting from a morally relevant rule, or acting
out of some other motivation. Some people just habitually "tell the
truth" without thinking about it at all. Others see that this is a
"rule" that one should give one's self and see why; this is an
"autonomous" individual."

This is all pretty slippery.  For example, if as John suggests the
emphasis is on motivation, then we would expect the autonomous
individual to be one whose motivations are largely based on the form
of reason.  But how much of an individual's life is comprised of
motivations that could be based on the form of reason?  I like to
think of myself as relatively sensitive to ethical issues but a very,
very small part of my day is taken with authentic ethical encounters.
Most of my day is taken up with work obligations, family obligations
and personal pursuits.  In other words, the vast majority of my life
is not public, but private.  Occasionally I am faced with an ethical
dilemma and then I like to think I act autonomously.  I just don't see
that as being sufficient grounds for calling myself an autonomous
individual.  And I find it impossible to imagine a socialized adult
whose motivations are largely based on the form of reason.

It gets more messy if we try and figure exactly how to distinguish
between motivation and act.  After all, a motivation is always a
motivation to do something in particular.  In the Third Critique, Kant
suggests that a way of evaluating the universal character of our own
judgment is to adopt the standpoint of others.  If we are to do this,
it seems that the very idea of motivation collapses into the act since
when we take up the standpoint of an other, we take up their
standpoint vis a vis a particular act.  It seems to me to make more
sense to distinguish between autonomous and heteronomous acts since
motivation and act can be structurally distinguished but not isolated.
 As I said motivation is always motivation to do something.  And acts
have attendant motivations so that when someone acts we can usually
ascribe motivation.  We can therefore identify actions as ethical as
opposed to private because we usually have a pretty good idea of the
motives attending those actions.

What counts as ethical is never certain and always open to debate, but
enough agreement exists to make judgments regarding human activity.  I
just don't think it make sense to apply this judgment to people.

Sincerely,

Phil Enns
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