NationStates Jolt Archive

Hello, everyone in Nationstates. Since I'm taking Social Ethics in college I likw to make topics based on stuff I learned. And since everyone and his mother seems to talk/debate about Bush and Kerry, I thought I'd see how Iraq's rational would be if Kant used his theory.

Kant's Moral theory is the principle that the Act and Motive are far more important than the consequences. The idea is we generally ought not to blamed or praised for what is not in our control. Such as saying something to cheer something up and don't know you angered them.
Also people ought not to be used, but ought to be regarded as having the highest intrinsic value, is as central to Kant's ethics, as thr importance of a motive to do what is right.
Intrinsic value is are things good in themselves.

For our action to have moral worth, according to Kant, we must act not only ought of a right motivation but also do the right thing. I kant's terms, we must not only act "out of duty" (having right motive) but also "according to duty" or "as duty requires"(to do what is right)."

For something to be right it must be a universally rule. Act only on that maxim that you can will as a universal law.
As a ratiuonal being you can will only what is noncontradicatory.

A example is whether it is morally premissible to "make lying or false promise in order to extricate myself from some difficulty." If you can will this act for all then its okay. However, it doesn't work.
In a test you check, you could ask whether you can will for all. If it was general practice in which people who made promises (for example, to pay back some money) made the promise without intending to keep them. If people who generally made such promises did so falsely, then others would know this and would not belive the promises. Consider whether you would lend money to a person if she said she would pay you back but you know she was lying. The reasning is thus: If I tried to will a general practice of false promises making, I would find that I could not do it because by willing that the promises could be false I would also will a situation in which it would be impossible to make a lying promise. No one could then make a promise, let alone a false promise , because no one would believe them. Part of being able to make a promise is to have it belived. Its a self-destructive practice.

Back to Iraq.
Now we have what? Motive + Act = a consequence but we shall look only at Motive and Act first.

For sake of argument, I will accept that Bush is a nice guy. He wants to spread democracy to foreign countries. He tried his best to make allies for the war. He told the world using shaky intelligence that Iraq was dangerous. They had Weapons of Mass Destruction. I say shaky because many intelligence agents say that they doubted it was good. But Bush trusted it anyway or was told to by others.(either way) And after finsing out for a facrt that there were no WMD's, Bush says he would still atacking it because it got rid of a Dictator.

Motive: Spread democracy. Get rid of Tyrant. Good thing.
Act: Wage war even if intelligence untrusted/supported. Kinda follows misleading people even if himself too. Bad thing.

Thus according to Kant, Because the Act was bad even if Bush had a good motive because it was a bad thing to do. He ought not to do it. If any other country had done so people would be outraged.

And that is about it. We won't be tested for it till next week.

Lord, I have to say that your analysis of Bush's motives sounds to me somewhat simple and naive. As far as I'm concerned, the act was not so bad as the motive. Invading a country out of sheer greed is, in my opinion, one of the worst reasons available. (Just below lust for power and a way above "in order to purify the population of inferior races")

Yes, but assuming Bush was actually a kind, thoughtful person though. We are trying to get away from reality for a few seconds :D
I am a staunch believer in Kant's theory, and that is why, though I am a communist, I hate Lenin. It is assuredly true that Bush did what was wrong, even though his motivations were good. Just like Hitler wanted the embetterment of Germany, but killing millions of people was wrong.

For our action to have moral worth, according to Kant, we must act not only ought of a right motivation but also do the right thing. I kant's terms, we must not only act "out of duty" (having right motive) but also "according to duty" or "as duty requires"(to do what is right)."


Almost right. Kant never made much of the consequences of his action, although as you said, the intention was very important (IIRC, he said that even were the outcome to be catastrophic, the intention would still shine forth like a jewel by itself). But you err when you state that his intent at the point of mentioning "out of duty" and "as duty requires" was to do the right thing. This is insufficient in Kant's account. What he's really talking about there is that you should intend to do the right thing and act upon that intention for the right reason. Most of the 2nd section of the Groundwork was devoted precisely to finding out what this reason was.

What he came up with was that you should do the right thing out of pure respect for the rightness of the action you are taking, not because, for example, it would be beneficial to you or because it would make you happy. He reasoned that either of those two inclinations lead to taking the right action only incidentally, whereas doing the right thing out of respect for the moral law could never lead you astray. Nevertheless, he did concede that you could never be fully aware that you were acting out of duty (i.e. doing the right thing for the right reason out of respect for it's rightness), only that you were acting in accordance with duty (there might be some subliminal rationale other than the fact that course of action x is right that causes you to take course of action x). This is of course where his epistemological/metaphysical break in the world of perceptions/world as it is kicked in for humans.

As for applying it to Bush's invasion of Iraq, I must say that I'm not sure how well we can apply it at this point. Even granting that Bush's intentions were genuine (a point many people would dispute), and granting that war was the only way to remove Saddam Hussein from power (which is noble both in goal and in execution), I'm still not sure whether you could justify any war in Kant's view, because warfare as a general principle is not a universalizable maxim, nor still is it the kind of thing that treats humans as ends rather than means, and most likely warfare would not be practiced in the Kingdom of Ends. As it doesn't really fit well with any of the three formulations of the Categorical Imperative, I'm not sure Kant would say it's moral (of course, this in my view is one of the greatest problems with the Categorical Imperative as a Normative Criteria: it's highly sensitive to how you phrase your question. War in general would be rejected, but particular examples, like war for defense or war to stop genocide, might be accepted).