'cause otherwise humans would have a mean nature. duh.
Robert Wolf says it's an argument from elimination, right before 429-- there has to be something like this, and none of the objects of inclination or whatever could be it, so the only thing left is rational agency. Idunno. Good enough for lecture purposes, since it is, after all, Saturday night.
In 428 there is: "On the other hand, rational beings are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as endsin themselves" and earlier, still in 428, "Now I say that man, and in general every rational being exists as an end in himself and not merely as a means, blah blah". (Mine is the Hackett edition.) Which two statements, especially the first given but textually second, seem basically to say "hey, these beings, they're ends in themselves because they're rational". Which makes the discussion of inclinations in 428 seem kind of pro forma? But this is based on a five-minute glance at the text.
didi I ever tell you guys that I think guys who care about the minutiae of Kant are really hot? oh wait, revealed preferences...
So Husband X, back in the day, learned how to ride the motorcycle, took you out for a ride, and shouted sweet maxims above the roar of the wind? Maxims that were fit to be universal laws, mind you...
This is really a love story to give me hope, let me tell you.
IIRC, Christine Korsgaard says it's because the fact that you're contemplating what reasons you might have for acting one way or another presupposes that you accept that you must regard your rational nature as an end in itself. If you don't believe your rational nature is an end in itself, then you have no reason to worry whether or not your reasons are good reasons (or even to regard yourself as having reasons at all) so you wouldn't be contemplating the problem in the first place.
If we had some ham, we could make a ham and cheese sandwich, if we had some cheese.
Dear Matthew, from my cursory reading of your response to your admittedly confused colleague, your explanation appears to be correct. For Kant, transparency would seem to be the ideal (by "ideal" I do not mean to use the term in a technically Kantian sense, but somewhat more colloquially) -see, for instance, the discussion of "concursion" in the Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgement in the Third Critique, section 58.
MY: Yeah, I understand the idea that thinking about reasons brings other stuff in its wake, but why should I regard my rational agency as *unconditionally* valuable? Couldn't I think of the value of rational agency as being of only contingent worth, consistent with giving and taking reasons?
Dear FL, Please clarify what you mean by "Couldn't I think of the value of rational agency as being of only contingent worth, consistent with giving and taking reasons?" And what then of Kant's "good will"?
I think the Korsgaard take on it is largely correct. But as to your question on why rational agency is unconditionally valuable, hmmmm.
If we accept some picture of human beings as creatures to whom a rational nature is constitutive -- which doesn't seem all that strange to ascribe to Kant -- maybe we can make some sense of this. We aspire to be the best sort of beings we can; one of the things we do in pursuit of excellence is to do the most rational thing. (This is where the Korsgaard bit comes in. ) And to do that seems to require that we take our rational nature as an end in itself, or at least it's only instrumental insofar as we're improving our rationally-natured selves.
exbeforelast, not sure that 58 of the Third Critique figures in here all that much. (Also not sure if you're just being facetious.) Explain?
I'm not sure if that's an inclination or not, exactly, FL. It couldn't ground the CI; but I'm not sure I can respect a person as a person without respecting her nature -- including her rationality.
But the more I type, the more I think it's easier to go from Humanity as Ends to UL formulation.
FL, is this for an intro class? (Talking about your class is more fun than prepping for mine.)
Aspiration to better one's rational nature is not an inclination, but a manifestation of duty, that is, the phenomenality, as it were, of pure practical reason. Cala is right, although, having forgotten the ins and outs of "Grund" I hesitate to comment on the supposition that it cannot ground the CI, although I am not sure it does not.
No, I was not being facetious about 58 -one gets quite a view of Kant's perspective on the wholistic character of reason by virtue of his analysis of the aesthetic, particularly as he attempts to articulate the "leap" manifest by virtue of the reflective function of judgment -the same sort of activity going on in all that time stuff in the First Critique. I am sorry, cannot go into long explanation at this juncture, have a legal memo to get out for the boss.
Comment, generally, though: some of the difficulties in understanding Kant come from what might be called "too subjectivist" a standpoint in approach to grasp of the tenor of his thought -i.e., it is one hell of a lot more what one might call "abstract" or "structural" than it seems is reflected in some of the discussions here.
Alas, must go back to memo.
Have enjoyed dropping in. Now I see what ogged has been up to...
Couldn't we just put Kant's proof in a special place with the various proofs of the existence of God, the explanations of the one or two natures or persons of Christ, three persons of the trinity with the filioque clause, etc., so we would know where it was if we ever needed it for something?
Ouf, John, ouch. Although, reminds me of a friend of mine who used to say, "I have only one feeling, and I keep it well hidden, so that it does not get hurt." And ogged, you know who I mean....
I am also tainted with the Korsgaard/Herman interpretive brush, but I thought it went something like this:
1. value of reasons presupposes value of rational nature (MY's comment), so to treat end of reason X as an end, I must treat rational nature as an end.
2. value of rational nature as and end thus "prior" to value of any other reason-grounded end, and thus unconditional in the sense that other ends cannot put conditions on its value (other reason-given ends can't restrict its scope, because they rely on it for their own status as ends)
3. Could ends that are *not* given by reason put condition on the value of rational agency, you ask? For example, an end given by inclincation? Those aren't ends!
Anyone buying?
So the idea is: since rational agency is a necessary condition for valuing ends, we can't but regard our rational nature as necessary insofar as we have ends? Thus, e.g., we can't sacrifice our rational nature for the sake of some other end, because having that *as an end* depends on rationality. It's sort of like the cogito, only for valuing. It's also sort of like that O. Henry story about the combs and the watch chain.
I sent you an email, FL, and you ignore me. I'm heartbroken.
I just got it like TEN MINUTES ago. Man, you people are so demanding.
That's the way I recall it.
Q: What would it be like if a reason-given end caused you to abandon rational agency as an end?
A: Pretty darn weird, that's what!
w-lfs-n, you'll get really rapid responses from colleagues when you're an I-banker.
I can imagine a rational analysis that would lead you to conclude that you'd be better off without rational agency, though it would probably be difficult to execute. I feel obliged to mention Cybele at this point, but I'm not really sure how to work it in ("working it in" being very hard to do for initiates of Cybele).
Somebody (michael smith?) has this paper in which he posits an evil demon that will destroy the universe iff you (the reader) possess rational agency.
I think this example misunderstands what it means for rational agency to have unconditioned value. It *doesn't* mean you can't wish you had never been born. It needn't even rule out suicide (recall Kant's example of Frederick the Great's poison vial).
Count on w-lfs-n to get too rarefied on a thread on Kant. Original Latin, sheesh.
If it's really iff, then you couldn't decide, rationally, that you should abandon rational agency, since the universe wouldn't exist.
Unless the demon's going to wait until time t to do so. ("Time t", like 40 days or years, or the "year and a day" of folk tales, just means "long enough" or "forever"; it is the time beyond which one cannot think. As a young student at Chicago, I lived in a house headed residentially by a couple, Krisztina Féherváry and Matt Hull, who had a son, Alex Féherváry-Hull, for whom the number 18 had this function. Anyway, if that were the case, then our young Rational Agent would be able to off on a quest, not in the world to rid the world of a tyrant or to rescue a damsel, but in himself to change himself, quite probably succeeding at time t-1, like in that movie by Tarkovsky.)
I like to go the distance for my cock jokes, Weiner.
Short distance, though. And did you just spoil a Tarkovsky movie?
Short distance, though.
Short cock, you know?
I don't regard myself as having spoiled a Tarkovsky movie.
Short cock, you know?
Good gravy, I hadn't realized that that was what I was implying.