Aristotle and Kant Lecture 11

ARISTOTLE AND KANT

This lecture is meant to provide you with a little background to better understand the ethical theories of Aristotle and Kant, which turn out to be much closer to each other than the differences in their scientific and philosophic views might lead you to believe. KANT

Everything in nature is determined.The body is part of nature.

Therefore, everything bodily is determined.

(I.e. physical movements, emotions, and desires.)

Thus, Kant can say that our emotions and desires dont have moral worth because they are not free.

The will is NOT part of nature. It is the ability of our reason to form maxims or principles of action.

The will is free. Hence, it CAN have moral worth precisely because it is free.The will is not part of nature, according to Kant, because its part of our rational faculties, which impose order upon the perceptions of the senses, and by nature he means the world of the senses, the physical world.

This may sound weird, but Kants way of thinking is part of a philosophical tradition stemming from Plato, according to which the physical world is NOT the ultimate reality. In the form in which it appeared in the period in which modern science arose (i.e. since the seventeenth century), Kants view is more problematic than Platos. In this view the physical world is a vast machine in which everything that happens is determined by the physical laws of nature. Our minds exist, but we dont know how to connect them with our bodies. Hence, it is called the mind-body dualism.

Yes, it sounds weird, but is it any weirder than biology professors refusing to say what life is? As Keeton, the author of the biology text I cited might say, Hey, lemme alone. Im a biologist, not a philosopher. How should I know what life is? Im only a poor biologist.

Perhaps you can see from this example that the mind-body dualism isnt something that a few obscure philosophers thought up. It pervades our thinking. It pervades our science.

Another consequence of this view is that, strictly speaking, animals are just machines. So we can do with them what we want.

Now of course, the average person doesnt believe that, but the average person as well as modern scientists still doesnt know how to overcome this dualism, and this puts them at a disadvantage when arguing with people who dont have scruples about wiping out and otherwise messing up the environment. Hence, when biology came to the fore among the sciences in the nineteenth century with Darwin and others, it had a materialist view of the world that contradicted a more normal view of biological organisms in which we tend to regard them as more than just machines.

The conclusion you might draw from this is that, despite the wonders of modern science, a lot of modern thinking is confused and self-contradictory. That is a correct conclusion. And for the most part, the philosophers, that is, the philosophy professors, or professional philosophers as they often call themselves, share this confusion.

ARISTOTLEThere is no mind-body dualism in Aristotle and biological organisms are not machines. To say they are alive, according to him, means that they have a principle of organization and self-movement called the psych or soul. I put the English word soul in quotation marks because it has religious connotations, which Aristotles term does not, but its the closest word we have in English to translate his term. All Aristotle meant was that the various functions of biological organisms are not separate components of a machine, but that together they comprise an organic whole that functions as a unity. That unity is very dependent on the different organs of the body that comprise it, so that when the organism dies, in Aristotles view, this unity doesnt survive.

The soul is the functional unity of the basic bodily functions, and the mind is its highest power. The mind too forms a unity within the overall unity of the soul. Again I emphasize that the mind is a power of the soul, so the two are very closely connected. The mind is the power of the soul by which we think. The brain is the physical organ where the mind is located, but the brain is obviously part of the body and the mind is part of the soul. Hence, to say that we have free will (to use the modern term) means that the mind has the power of thinking and of moving the body.In this brief lecture I wont go into the details of Aristotles explanation of just how the mind thinks, how it moves the body, how Aristotle explains the nature of consciousness, how he avoids the mind-body dualism that has plagued modern philosophy AND modern science, and so on. I trust you will be so kind as to take my word that whether or not his explanation is correct, he does have such an explanation and Kant and the other modern philosophers do not. Hence, Kant has to POSIT free will and the minds ability to move the body, but he has no way of explaining it. Of course nothe thinks biological organisms are really machines! But I dont want to belabor this point. Aristotles Ethics and Kants EthicsThe bottom line (for our discussion of ethics) is that for Aristotle, unlike Kant, its not just the will that is good and moral. Aristotle doesnt have to define morality strictly in terms of moral laws like the categorical imperative. We can have good emotions and pleasures, and good feelings toward each other, something like the higher pleasures of Mill and Epicurus.Aristotle DOES have moral commands or principles or laws, based on the overarching virtue of justice, but they arise out of our nature as beings possessing reason. In other words, when we fully realize our nature as animals possessing reason, our emotions and desires and our reason TEND to be in harmony with teach other. The Bottom Line

Despite these fundamental differences, based on their underlying scientific and philosophical theories, their ethical theories turn out to have more in common than they are commonly understood to have. For example, consider Kants perfect and imperfect duties, or to use his alternative terms for them, strict and meritorious duties.

Aristotles virtue of justice roughly corresponds to Kants perfect or strict duties, and the list of virtues that Aristotle provides roughly corresponds to Kants imperfect or meritorious duties.

Hencehere is the shattering conclusionthe behavior or lifestyle that each recommends is fairly similar.

That statement immediately has to be qualified a little. For one thing, Kant did not understand Aristotles concept of ethical virtuebelieve it or not, he never read Aristotle, who was out of favor in the time when Kant livedbut WE can see the similarity, even if Kant himself didnt. Even brilliant minds like Kant arent perfect. On the other hand, we can appreciate Kants brilliance more when we see how much he did philosophically with the limited tools he had to work with.