Immanuel Kant

Today I had the chance to be a substitute for 3 history classes and 1 philosophy class at a local high school. The history classes were easy to guide and I enjoyed them. The philosophy class was my third class of the day. I saw the lesson plans said for the students to fill in a paper, answering questions from the textbook, review the paper, and have a meaningful discussion but that's all the info. I had. To be prepared, I read the textbook chapter and answered the questions myself during the first two history classes. I also felt like it was important to read the textbook well and take some notes so I could lead a (hopefully) meaningful discussion. It was all about the German philosopher, Immanuel Kant. I'm a big nerd so I deeply enjoyed this. I was worried about feeling fully prepared by the time philosophy class rolled around but I loved that I was getting paid to learn new things. Kant says basically that you always have to do the right thing. Take your emotions and tendencies away and just do the right thing in every situation. For instance, always be honest. What if you could avoid hurting feelings by being dishonest? Well, if everybody did that, there would be no trust and no meaning in honesty so you just have to be honest no matter the outcome. He felt that everybody should understand morals and then use their will to act in perfect accordance to those morals. He wrote many things that imply all rational people would always choose to behave morally and that if you didn't behave morally, it was a sign of your lack of manliness.

Kant claims that nothing can be called good (intelligence, wit, judgment, courage, resolution, perseverance, power, riches, honor, health, or happiness) IF the character of the person who possesses it is not good. If we use such things without having a personal sense of duty to moral values, those characteristics become tools for evil. To make this more understandable, I asked the class who could list talents of Adolph Hitler. The room was silent and the students seemed hesitant. I really urged them and finally I got, "He was a great public speaker." Absolutely! I needed more so I urged more. "He was a promising artist." Yep! More! It took a little digging. Everybody was uncomfortable listing talents of somebody who was responsible for the most well-know modern slaughter. I added that he was a genius on human behavior. He could have never managed to do what he did without his profound understanding of behavior and manipulation. We then went into Kant's philosophy that no matter what a person possessed (talents, power, riches, etc.), if they didn't have a personal sense of duty to moral values, those things were a tool for evil. I demonstrated that Hitler is a perfect example of somebody who had talents and resources but no sense of morality so all that he was "blessed" with just became a tool for evil. It made it easier to understand both what Kant believed and how he had perhaps drawn some of his conclusions. There was much in the reading about honesty and we talked about many considerations of that. We talked about why we lie, whether it's realistic to ever have a completely honest society, and about both pains & benefits (mostly emotional) to lies. We hit lightly on Kant's belief that there is moral value in fulfilling one's human potential. With that, discussion was had about our personal talents and whether we have a duty to develop and/or share them. We briefly talked about whether all humans are WORTHY of happiness and if not, who isn't worthy? Kant's biggest critics argue that Kant evaluates moral actions but not their consequences. If Anne Frank's family was fully committed to honesty, they would have told the Gestapo they were Jews. The people that helped hide them would have gone to the government. Kant would argue that would be the only moral behavior that was correct. However, if we look at possible consequences, we can see that there can be value in what may look like dishonest behavior. This instance of dishonesty preserves a wrongly-persecuted people.

I really can't scratch the surface but I just wanted to remember how fun it was to learn and discuss some aspects of philosophy today and I'll get paid for it!!! What a great gig!

An Incredible Poem

Somebody who chose to remain anonymous at a web site I like to read from constructed the following: There can never be a master who obeyed his slaves. And the master cannot have a slave who understands what a slave is. For once the slave understands what he is he wonders: Why are you the master, and why am I a slave. And thus we see that the only thing stopping a slave from being the master is one simple thing. Knowledge. And once a slave has knowledge. He will never be content with being a slave. But a slave who has no knowledge or does not seek knowledge, he cannot be anything more than a slave.