Enlightenment ethics always fail and yet they never seem to lose their appeal for some people. There is an entire generation out there right now that is heavily invested in the idea of enlightenment. And thus this fascinating claim:
And that is always the challenge with Kant. There is an inner coherence to Kant, so much so that it frightens people. The problem is convincing people that this very rigorous and cold-sounding ethics has anything to do with the life we live. (Exactly the same strategy drives Derek Parfitt's new book On What Matters by the way.)
The Al Pacino speech has something of the opposite problem.You can listen to all eight minutes of it at the link above. Pacino doesn't do an excellent job of articulating anything at all. The power of his speech rests on the well-established Hollywood principle that whoever sounds the most self-righteous is right. The moral principle he argues is crass and dubious: that it is always wrong to snitch. Imagine that Charlie had seen not a prank against the dean but four or five of his classmates raping a girl and the stupidity of the no snitching position jumps out at you. But, whatever weaknesses it may have in principle and logic, it speaks to the gut.
Lutzuk's attempt to make Kant seem human comes apart in this telling shift:
But if Pacino's character in the movie had really meant that, he could have said that. He chose the word "soul" for a reason. He chose it because it means something that no other word means. He could not have said—as some namby pamby modern preacher would—that Charlie could have lost his spirit because "spirit" means something too close to a state of being, something that can be regained with a rah rah speech.
No, the whole thing hangs on—that word "soul" means soul.
And from there we can see where the rest of the argument goes wrong.
And here we can see a very deep problem for someone like Kant. For if we pose the choice as being between maintaining an abstract concept such as autonomy and getting what we really want, what we really want is going to win out every time. That is why so many of the people who lecture us about climate change live in giant mansions.
(By the way, it's interesting that Hollywood keeps cranking out stories like this that essentially retell the story of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. For Hollywood's own conduct in those years was endlessly shameful and yet they keep making stories about people who bravely refuse to snitch. It's sort of like the guy who refused to serve in the war making a series of movies in which he plays a war hero.)
In the climactic speech delivered by Al Pacino in Scent of a Woman, Pacino does an excellent job of articulating why Kant rejected the pursuit of self interest as an ethical position. In the speech Pacino clearly disavows the pursuit of self interest as being properly ethical.That is Eric Lutzuk over at Partial Objects. The strategy here is interesting. The point of the argument is not to state Kant's position and then try and justify it. The strategy rather is to say that Kant lines up with our ordinary moral ideas as in this homespun emotional speech by Al Pacino.
And that is always the challenge with Kant. There is an inner coherence to Kant, so much so that it frightens people. The problem is convincing people that this very rigorous and cold-sounding ethics has anything to do with the life we live. (Exactly the same strategy drives Derek Parfitt's new book On What Matters by the way.)
The Al Pacino speech has something of the opposite problem.You can listen to all eight minutes of it at the link above. Pacino doesn't do an excellent job of articulating anything at all. The power of his speech rests on the well-established Hollywood principle that whoever sounds the most self-righteous is right. The moral principle he argues is crass and dubious: that it is always wrong to snitch. Imagine that Charlie had seen not a prank against the dean but four or five of his classmates raping a girl and the stupidity of the no snitching position jumps out at you. But, whatever weaknesses it may have in principle and logic, it speaks to the gut.
Lutzuk's attempt to make Kant seem human comes apart in this telling shift:
Pacino refers to Charlie’s “soul” as intact, and the school risks executing Charlie’s “soul” if they punish him for his silence. What are we to make of this reference to Charlie’s soul? Pacino is here referring to what Kant would have called autonomy."Soul" is a word that means something even to people who don't believe in souls. As Wittgenstein pointed out, the same is true of "ghost". The Enlightenment move is to try and replace these words with other, more sanitary concepts such as spirit. That is to try and replace a kind of being with a quality of being. You don't have a soul but you could have soul the way a Ray Charles song has soul. So Charlie isn't really losing a thing—his soul—but a quality of life—his autonomy.
But if Pacino's character in the movie had really meant that, he could have said that. He chose the word "soul" for a reason. He chose it because it means something that no other word means. He could not have said—as some namby pamby modern preacher would—that Charlie could have lost his spirit because "spirit" means something too close to a state of being, something that can be regained with a rah rah speech.
No, the whole thing hangs on—that word "soul" means soul.
And from there we can see where the rest of the argument goes wrong.
Charlie, by rejecting the bribes of admission to an Ivy League school, can be said to have his soul intact, to have retained his autonomy, as we know that his action was freely chosen, and was not the result of self interest as it directly violates what would be in his self interest i.e. getting into an ivy league school.Well no. Because his soul is his and keeping it intact is in his self interest. If one choice is better than the other it is not because one choice is in his self interest and the other not but rather because some kinds of self interest are better for us than others.
And here we can see a very deep problem for someone like Kant. For if we pose the choice as being between maintaining an abstract concept such as autonomy and getting what we really want, what we really want is going to win out every time. That is why so many of the people who lecture us about climate change live in giant mansions.
(By the way, it's interesting that Hollywood keeps cranking out stories like this that essentially retell the story of the House Committee on Un-American Activities. For Hollywood's own conduct in those years was endlessly shameful and yet they keep making stories about people who bravely refuse to snitch. It's sort of like the guy who refused to serve in the war making a series of movies in which he plays a war hero.)
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