As in, “treat humans like an end.” This began as a reply to a comment by Steve in discussion on a post over at Pinocchio Theory, but it got long enough that I felt impolite posting it as a comment and figured I’d make it a blog post instead.
We were discussing the ‘as if’ in Kant, in particular in relation to aesthetic stuff. (I then wrote about this stuff a bit here.)
Steve says
“[M]ore of a case might be built for the moral or categorical as if: act as if you are a rational and free being, etc; and, human beings must be approached as ends and not merely as means (which, as Karatani says, rules out the market-capitalist economy in which people, together with all else, are only means).”
I very much want this to be so, but I’m not convinced it is. My wife and I had a bonding experience very early in our friendship. At 18 or so we were in a class together where we read some Kant, a selection from the Grounding of the Metaphysics of Morals, on the categorical imperative. We were stunned by it, concluding that - since our society is predicated on the treatment of others as means rather than ends - capitalism is fundamentally wrong. This made sense cuz we were lefties but the absoluteness of it, the certainty, the clarity, the going-to-the-heart-of-the-matterness …! Our less lefty classmates were scandalized and we had lively argument for about a week.
Which is to say, I want this to be true. But I don’t think it is, or rather, I think there’s another step somewhere. Namely, what does it mean to treat someone like an end? Always treat people like an end, absolutely. The problem is that this doesn’t resolve much and I don’t think it rules out capitalism. One can say to someone “you are not treating X person as an end” and they can respond “yes, I am” and as long as they have an argument as to what treatment as an end consists in and how they’re behavior is in line with that, they’re not lying.
The claim to the incompatibility of the categorical imperative rests, I think (I’ve not got round to reading Karatani) on a very understandable impulse, one which says about some behavior which is objected to “this is not to treat someone as an end!” Fair enough. I do that kind of thing all the time. But what I’m doing is saying “this which I object to is not what I mean by ‘to treat someone as an end’” which is different from “this which I object to is not what it means to treat someone as an end.”
That is, “end” is interpreted, and always-already so, such that one does not have something one can assert as being a real end from no or from every perspective. An end as determined by god, or the ultimate good, or what have you. Further, claims to what an end is, what it means to treat as an end, as subject to being internally coherent and mutually incompatible. A union busting lawyer might well hold that to get someone fired for wanting to improve their life is to treat that person as an end. An employer or a nationalist may hold that to participate in the success of the firm or the nation, even to the point of being sacrificed to it, is the end for a human being such that to treat people as they do is perfectly in keeping with the categorical imperative. A sort of sado-bataillean might hold that the end for a human being is to die in tremendous pain as part of gratifying another, thus allowing the inflicting of great pain and death upon another to also count as in keeping with the categorical imperative. (I have a vague recollection of there being something related to this in Dialectic of Enlightenment but my copy went to a used bookstore prior to finishing it so I can’t substantiate in any depth. The interweb tells me there is a section titled “Juliette or Enlightenment and Morality,” that sounds like the section I’m thinking of.)
In each instance someone could say “no, that terrible example is not an example of something compatible with the categorical imperative but rather something which is incompatible with the categorical imperative and only mistakenly believed compatible.” I think this impulse to say such a thing is understandable and laudable, but doesn’t mean that the categorical imperative actually has the force one wants it to have (that I want it to have). The force that one thinks it has is based on the implied concept of end which one already has and then plugs in to the argument. The hope behind the categorical imperative is that there are such ends and that we can converge upon them. Not only that we can do so, but that if just hold the imperative right, think right, we will do so. That’s not the case. The possibility for hard disagreements - relatively incommensurable moral positions such that the use of force (rhetorical or otherwise) is authorized - is not in principle eliminable.
My hypothetical someone could say “No, you’re just unable to really grasp what it means to treat someone as an end, as are the terrible people in your examples.” Conceding that for the sake of argument, the hard disagreement recurs - “you’re not doing the categorical imperative right” could be one, as could “you’re apparently unable to grasp the categorical imperative.” And those about whom those kinds of arguments are made - children, animals, anyone else judged in this way to be inferior - are precisely those upon whom certain exertions of force are often though acceptable.
In short, capitalism is eminently compatible with treating people as ends, if one defines ends in a certain way. It’s incompatible with treating people as ends if one defines ends in a certain other way, as I do, and as Steve and Karatani do. People with these differing definitions of ends may manage to change each others’ minds via argument and reason, but there is no guarantee that such a change will occur (not only is the ideal speech situation not achievable but even if it were there would still be potential problems irresolvable in that situation). Breakdowns, failings of reason and argument to achieve those changes, would not have to be due to failings or shortcomings or bad faith on anyone’s part. Hence the need for extra-rational measures in the abolition of the capital relation.
Hi Nate,
Surely talking about “ends” is a diversion from talking about beginings? What’s great about Kant is the revolt against instrumentality which expresses perfectly the evil that is capitalism. Instrumentality is Kant’s twisted way of seeing how capitalism values us only as a means of making profit - an instrument for the self-valorisation of Capital. The rest of the poor sod’s idealistic contortions can surely be left in peace? Let’s stop treating each other as means or ends but as co-conspirators in re-discovering the beauty of freedom.
Comment by Paul — October 6, 2006 @ 12:11 am
Deep waters here. And I am too busy & tired to make anything but a brief, and I hope not too cryptic, response.
Anyway, the Kant quote that Karatani cites is: “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person, or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means. And he argues that this accords with Marx’s critique of how capitalism uses labor-power as merely another factor of production, rather than recognizing the humanity of the worker. (See Karatani pp 112-130, especially 128ff). In this way, he links the categorical imperative to the theory of surplus value.
Of course, this is a very particular way of reading Kant; there are many other ways too, since Kant’s texts are so rich and contradictory. (When you give the example of a sado-bataillean reading of Kant, I was reminded, not just of Horkheimer and Adorno, but of Lacan’s article “Kant With Sade” as well, and Zizek’s explication of it.
So I really should have said, before, that this is one particular way of reading Kant and extricating conclusions from him, and that any fuller engagement with the 2nd Critique would be far more tangled and complicated, for the reasons you cite here among others…
Comment by Steven Shaviro — October 6, 2006 @ 1:31 am
Paul, I’m up for the conspiracy, and for several rounds of drinks. This is actually related to the disagreement we’re having about use value as well. Basically the stakes for me are whether or not communism is world-historical (or otherwise grounded on something larger/deeper/more real than itself) or is just our thing, is its own ground and justification. I’m much more partial to the latter, I like to think of it in terms of what Tronti (I think it’s him) calls being rigorously one-sided - workerist, in the sense of classist.
Steve, I think that’s probably true to Marx, I’m not enough of a marxologist (yet!) to really be able to sort that one out. That judgment against capitalism stands conceptually on a meaning of end which then serves as ground. I’m all for that if it’s not something which is held as universal in the sense of explicable and not subject to the possibility of disputes which can not be resolved by logical argumentation. I think any claims otherwise are not actually the case. I meant to say, though, but forgot to do so in this post, that this is another part of where I like the ‘as if’ in Kant. One can and probably should act as if these beliefs have some greater ground, in terms of certainty of conviction, but one should not look for or ask after the grounds of those convictions as that oversteps the bounds of reason. When one finds oneself doing that what one needs is not so much an argument as something like therapy (ie, I think the departures from conviction or search for greater certainty are at least as likely to be affective as they are propositional).
Another way to put this is that I like there to be as few links as possible between a belief and that which anchors a belief. So, let’s take a christian marxist. This person believes in a god. That gives them a belief in a type of human dignity, treatments which people deserve. That gives them a belief in the need to overthrow capitalism as incompatible with that dignity. Similarly, a Deleuzian might hold to a certain ontology (flux and becoming), which gives a belief that capitalism’s reified categories can give way to change, which gives a belief that the working class can act. All of these are great, but insofar as it’s the last belief, the end of the belief chain that I’m interested in, then I’d prefer for that belief to be it’s own anchor. Otherwise the anchor can change and impact the belief. I see one way to understand the ‘as if’ as taking something as that ‘anchor’, if that makes sense.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — October 6, 2006 @ 2:53 am
Hey Nate,
Lots to chew on here. I will be the first to admit that I never had a deep grasp on Kant, even when I was a full-time philosophy student. However, I think the flaw you point to in the categorical imperative is part of the reason I’ve long identified as a consequentialist. (Another is the obvious wrong-ness of, for example, the blanket obligation not to lie, at least in some number of circumstances.) It seems to me that people are in fact means, as well as being ends (and beginnings, of course). At least the Kant quote allows that people should not be “merely” means, and that makes sense to me.
I’ve known for years that this analysis makes me an apostate among anarchists, many of whom conclude that I’m a not-so-closeted Stalinist thug, who would line people up and shoot them by the thousands if I thought it could advance the cause of freedom and communism. Of course, it is nearly impossible for me to see how such an action could possibly advance this cause, and I am always ready to hand with the Malatesta quote, to the effect of “if winning the revolution requires the erection of a gallows in the town square, then I prefer to lose.” I don’t prefer to lose, but I don’t see how the gallows helps to “win” anything that would be worth winning.
Of course, my consequentialism doesn’t solve the greater problem you point to. “Good” consequences are not self-evident to everyone. But as I argued a dozen years ago in my undergrad thesis, anarchism is best understood as the axiomatic refusal of relations of domination. This axiom determines which consequences I understand to be good, and which ones bad, and that guides my ethics. It seems to me this presents a very short (one link?) chain, which hopefully you will find appealing. On the other hand, you may think I’ve re-introduced the categorical imperative and returned to a deontological framework. I would disagree, but then I’m also pretty well reconciled to the contradictions internal to my own philosophical framework.
Hope that makes a little sense,
Mike
Comment by Mike — October 6, 2006 @ 3:12 pm
Doesn’t the fact that Kant is happy with contracts rather limit his utility as a critic of capitalism? If I understand him right, if somebody (rationaly) agrees to be used towards some other end, they are not being used as a means only, but are being respected as an end in themselves. I think this comes out in the discussion of the kingdom of ends in the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, and also, perhaps, in the oft-quoted business about marriage as a mutual contract for the use of the spouse’s genitals.
If this is right, whether capitalism is moral or not depends on whether or not it is compatible with reason for the worker to sell her labor-power to the capitalist. I’m not sure on what grounds a Kantian would say either yes or no to that.
Comment by voyou — October 9, 2006 @ 5:34 am
Good point.
Comment by Nate — October 10, 2006 @ 4:59 pm