From Andy Blunden’s article:
Kant offers a several alternative formulations of [the] categorical imperative. In the Science of Right, [he] draws on a maxim of Roman law to introduce a crucial additional nuance to [it]:
Honeste vive [“live rightly”]: juridical rectitude, or honour, consists in maintaining one’s own worth as a man in relation to others. This duty may be rendered by the proposition: “Do not make thyself a mere means for the use of others, but be to them likewise an end.” [Science of Right, p. 6]
Axé.
coldhearted scientist وداد 
Interesting formulation — but it is a weighty, weighty responsibility to be responsible not only for one’s own self but for the ideas that others generate about one.
Yes but as a maxim or guiding principle it is sort of good – reminds me of Gracian, a maxim compiler par excellence – not to be a means but also an end.
Yes–under certain circumstances it could be the guiding principle behind a revolution, given that entrenched economic inequality automatically turns a certain portion of the population into a means to an end.
On the other hand, if it is interpreted more conservatively, as I suspect would be more likely, then it would only reinforce the economic inequalities that are presently in existence. The common double bind of class society is to blame the victim for their own predicaments: “You let me turn you into a means to my end — therefore you are not moral!’
“On the other hand, if it is interpreted more conservatively, as I suspect would be more likely, then it would only reinforce the economic inequalities that are presently in existence. The common double bind of class society is to blame the victim for their own predicaments: “You let me turn you into a means to my end — therefore you are not moral!’”
Ah yes, good point. Definitely I like the quotation to the extent that I feel able – i.e. in a privileged enough position – to be able to aspire to it.
This of course leads us to another of the important conundrums of academia: one is supposed to be in a position to act upon this maxim, assured that one is, and so on, asked to believe that one is. When one is not in such a position and therefore acts accordingly, in comes the blame-the-victim speech, just as you say.
All of which is grist for the mill of the out of field, general essay I should write (will write) on academia in late capitalism. 😉
When one is not in such a position and therefore acts accordingly, in comes the blame-the-victim speech, just as you say.
Sometimes there is not any speech — one is just met dismissively, and with disbelief.
Anyway, the above reason (the dismissiveness) is part of why I would seek a more active and extreme environment for being professiorial in. I really am attracted to various non-Islamic parts of Africa, because I consider that the more rural you go, the less will the qualities of Kantian idealism hold sway. I want to immerse myself in the material sense of history as it happens, and not feel that I am living on some moral plane above it all.
Do universities there actually pay enough to live on? In Latin America many do not really … you have to have two jobs, or some other source of income, or have inherited a family dwelling so that you are not paying rent/a mortgage, something. Otherwise I would have left already – and I may still (now that I have more savings / more equity, which if I keep plugging a little longer will add up to that extra something).
I don’t think they pay very much, but I like the idea of having a bit of land, and growing some food on it.
I suspect that immersion ‘in the material sense of history as it happens’ is quite achievable most places outside academia. I see little evidence of non-academics living ‘on some moral plane above it all’. And yet there is still considerable difference there between the ‘I’ and the ‘me’ regardless.
Actually, I see as much immersion ‘in the material sense of history as it happens’ in academia as I do elsewhere. And I see very little evidence of academics living ‘on some moral plane above it all’.
I see the lack of those characteristics much more in doctors, lawyers, social workers, housewives, CEOs, the IMF, the World Bank, and the Bush administration!
ok. Because I don’t know. I haven’t been behind the scenes in academia.
It’s like being in business or government, which includes the military. You are working for a large, bureaucratic institution that is part of an even larger, bureaucratic system. There are certain goals in mind which may be idealistic ones, but there is always the bottom line – funding – and politics of various types, and the institution and system. The idea that it is divorced from all of that is a myth – it is very much like working in any other middle class profession, no less separated from “life” than these are (and all of them are to a certain extent / in a certain way). And / but see the “American Illusions” thread. 😉
Ok thanks. But I’m not sure that when I said “Idealist” that this is what I meant. When I wrote the term yesterday, I was probably thinking of the non-tertiary education system here, since I have experienced the ‘behind the scenes’ of that. Anyway it’s not possible to explain in a few sentences here, but the process of keeping discipline in such schools is to engage as little as possible with the actual students whilst holding up a moral standard for behaviour over and against them. It’s very anti-personal, but it seems to be what is expected. The moral plane is the level of impersonality that enables teachers to maintain control.
“The moral plane is the level of impersonality that enables teachers to maintain control.”
Ah, yes. This exists in universities as well, but I think the location of it is higher up. It is how administrations keep control over both faculty and students. It is terribly frustrating and demoralizing to work under that kind of “leadership.”
In the university, fortunately, you maintain control over a classroom just by knowing the material and not being afraid to admit to what you don’t know.
Some people try to do it by feigning greater expertise than they have, or by condescending, but that never works for long. Some people believe you should keep that level of impersonality – sometimes for ostensibly good reasons, like being sure not to favor students you know better because you have had them before. It works better for me to just be real with everyone.
Ah, I see. What you say rings true.