How to Be Perfect: The Correct Answer to Every Moral Question

by Michael Schur

Most of the thought experiments invented to attack consequentialism involve having to do something awful to prevent something more awful from happening;

The utilitarian would simply aim to spread the food around to as many people as possible, starting with those who had been hurt the most by the storm or were in the greatest need—because we’d create more pleasure by giving those people food than if we gave it to people who were only lightly inconvenienced.

“Should I tell the truth?” is one of the most common ethical dilemmas we face.

However, we also sense that there must be some ethical cost when we lie.

There’s a whole bunch of “what-ifs” involved with ethical calculations, which is partly what makes utilitarian accounting feel shaky.

Immanuel Kant, and the philosophical theory known as deontology.

The Categorical Imperative: The Most German Idea Ever

discern rules for moral behavior using only our ability for pure reasoning, and then act out of an unflinching duty to follow those rules.

Following the right rules = acting morally.

Not following them = failing to act morally.

It’s a pretty rigid system,...

might expect, Kant was a pretty...

apocryphal,

Kantian ethics

It’s called the categorical imperative,

which he introduced in his not-at-all-intimidatingly titled Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same tim...

it’s arguably the most famous sentence in Western philosophical thought.

come close would be René Descartes’s Cogito, ergo sum (“I think, therefore I am”),

Thomas Hobbes’s “The life of man [is] solitary, poor, nasty, ...

The categorical imperative states that we can’t just find rules that tell us how we ought to behave—we have to find rules that we could imagine everyone else following too.

So: we can’t lie to anyone, ever, for any reason. (See? The dude is hard-core.)

we tell the truth only out of a duty to follow the universal maxim we have reasoned out.

In order to be good little Kantians, our motivation in any action cannot stray one inch from

“Act out of a duty to follow a universal maxim.” No exceptions!

In that sense, Kantian deontology is the exact opposite of utilitarianism;

while all of utilitarian ethics was based on maximizing happiness, Kant thought “happiness” was irrelevant.

Kant doesn’t care what you think of the world versus what I think of the world—he wants to take feeling and sentiment out of the equation.

This is Kant’s calling card: the insistence that morality is something we arrive at free of our subjective feelings or judgments.

he had a massive influence on those who came after him.

nineteenth-century German grump Friedrich Nietzsche, who found Kant overly moralistic and schoolmarmish:

I think this iteration of the categorical imperative means there’s a beating heart under all that pure reason.

the doctrine of double effect,

Basically, it means that an outcome can be more or less morally permissible depending on whether you actually intended it to happen when you acted—like, when we kill someone in self-defense, we intended only to save our own innocent life, and the result was that someone else died.

sometimes, if we use utilitarian methods, we arrive at the right moral answer but for the wrong reasons.

finagle

the three main globs of secular ethical thought in the Western world over the last 2,400 years: Aristotelian virtue ethics,

consequentialism,

deont...

(Aristotle was right, it turns out—everybody needs a teacher.)

Scanlon

“contractualism.”

core tenet really appe...

A person is a person through other people.

“I am, because we are; and since we are therefore I am.”

anytime we’re deciding what to do puts “community health and happiness” as its primary concern, not just as a pleasant potential by-product.

“I think, therefore I am”—which,

happiness pump,

Do we “deserve” some kind of bonus if we act with virtue?

The desire for others to recognize our goodness has been discussed for centuries, and when I did an informal survey of my friends and colleagues, many of them copped to the same foible:

Why do we so intensely crave recognition for our good deeds, even if those deeds are minuscule?