From Such Crooked Wood

A three-minute defence of Kant's ethical ideals

“From such crooked wood as humanity, nothing perfectly straight can be built.”
- Immanuel Kant

It is odd that the most influential philosopher of the so-called ‘modern’ period (which confusingly began half a millennia ago), has a reputation for a moral philosophy that is too demanding. Immanuel Kant’s ideal for how we should live together is taken to be impossibly strict, and something that nobody could live up to in practice. Which makes his remark above all the more intriguing. As we might expect from a Lutheran raised in the 1700s, Kant begins from the assumption of humanity’s inherent imperfection. Why then is his ethical thought taken as too demanding…?

Kant proposed that we could understand our obligations to each other as reasoning beings through a demand he called the categorical imperative, which is to say, a universally binding principle. He outlines this in three interrelated forms:

1. Ethics is universal - a principle is only ethical if it is binding on every rational being

2. Mutual respect - treat others always as ends and never merely as means

3. Communal autonomy - act as if you are a part of a merely possible ‘realm of ends’, whereby your goals do not prevent others from attaining theirs.

I have an unusual take on Kant’s categorical imperative: I believe the first principle is in error, and that mutual respect and communal autonomy do not require any capacity to elevate ethics to universality. Indeed, I see this as essential for rescuing Kant’s moral philosophy, since it is now clear that the differences in our worlds mean that treating ethical principles as universal is always a tool for empire, never for solidarity and peace. Human rights were directly inspired by Kant’s philosophy, yet by the start of the current century, these have become merely hypocritical excuses for powerful nations to enforce their rule upon others while shamefully abandoning these promises at home.

It is the second principle (mutual respect) that is most often argued as being overly demanding, although the third (communal autonomy) may seem to intensify the difficulty. The claimed problem is that while it may be comparatively easy to respect other people’s purposes negatively, to refrain from lying for instance, it is very difficult to take the intentions of others into account in any positive way. This seems to require a kind of superpowered Good Samaritan. But clearly, this isn’t how Kant saw it, since he understood that humanity was made from ‘crooked wood’. It was not that he envisioned helping everyone positively towards their chosen goals, merely that he saw the necessity of ring-fencing liberty in a principled manner such that each might be free to pursue their own ends.

For Kant, the “merely possible” alignment of our goals was primarily concerned with not thwarting the free actions of others, the sole exception being where necessary to protect freedom for everyone. Thus citizens in Kant’s eyes could be compelled not to injure or threaten others, because such constraints exist to protect a like freedom for all. This is why the conception of rights we recently abandoned was so powerful, even though it provided only negative protections - such as protection from interference with our beliefs, speech, and bodies. Today, this particular freedom is one that every political faction runs roughshod over, forever evoking excuses why on such-and-such a topic your body or mind must submit to their anxious demands. The horror of it all is that so many are certain their faction - and their faction alone - has such matters straight, conveniently forgetting that we are all made from the same crooked wood.

It may already be impossible to rescue Kant’s ethics, even though his legacy gifted us those human rights agreements that were the cornerstone of the international civilisation that recently ended. Teaching Kant was challenging, and required universities that were committed to the ideals of both civic communities (microcosms of Kant’s ‘realm of ends’) and individual liberty (Kant’s ‘mutual respect’). These ideals are dying, supplanted by mere calculation and the political skulduggery of rule by censorship and deception. Without the kind of ideals envisioned by Kant, however, all we are left with is the crooked wood of humanity.