{"id":200,"date":"2020-11-11T18:46:20","date_gmt":"2020-11-11T18:46:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/?p=200"},"modified":"2020-11-13T21:40:21","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T21:40:21","slug":"you-mean-i-kant-act-on-my-disagreements-with-others","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/2020\/11\/11\/you-mean-i-kant-act-on-my-disagreements-with-others\/","title":{"rendered":"You mean I Kant act on my disagreements with others?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Are individuals justified in wishing death upon Donald Trump?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

TL;DR:<\/em><\/strong> This person\u2019s question is quite straightforward. They are wondering if wishing death on the person and president Donald Trump is justified. Perhaps this question must be broadened to include wishing death on any person and whether or not that is justified at all. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Kant, yes, individuals may wish death upon Donald Trump because it requires no action. Consider utilization: if everyone were to simply wish death upon Donald Trump (but not actively try to kill him) there would not exist a contradiction. The world would continue to function normally. If we were to take this one step further and ask what would happen if everyone wished death upon everyone else, would there be a contradiction? Our group thinks not because this is not an action, people would not go around killing everyone. Instead, they would have private internal desires for everyone else to die. This does not mean that anyone would die, instead it would foster an individualist society in which we wish death upon others but still partake in cultural norms for our own personal benefit. Most people will choose duty over acting on these wishes and maintain a moral life anyway. Meaning, we can wish death upon others without erupting into chaos. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kant\u2019s definition of a maxim reveals that morals depend on action, he writes, \u201cAct only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become universal law\u201d (37). He calls the reader to act with a maxim that can be universalized, but thinking about something would not qualify. Since Kant only deals with actions, individuals are justified in wishing for that death upon Donald Trump so long as they do not act on these feelings.
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Can I still be friends with someone who does not believe in gay marriage?<\/h5>\n\n\n\n

TL;DR:<\/em><\/strong> This person has an acquaintance who is a part of the Latter Day Saints Church and does not believe in gay marriage. They have been friends since they were kids and now only know that their friend does not share the same beliefs they do. This person is wondering whether or not they should stay friends or not due to differing beliefs. <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Kant, this would result in an impossible world because the maxim is contradictory, meaning that it would be immoral to do this. Kant reasons that every situation can be made into a short statement or maxim, which for this case would be \u2018I will not be friends with someone if they have a different worldview than me\u2019. After forming a maxim, Kant says that we should universalize or make it applicable to everyone. The new maxim resulting from this would be \u2018Everyone should not be friends with someone if they have a different worldview\u2019. Now, we must assess the universalized maxim and look for any conceptual contradictions. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the context of this specific situation, Kant would advise this individual to continue being friends with his friend because this maxim is internally contradictory. This individual takes issue with the fact that their friend does not support the fundamental rights of another group of individuals. In this particular context, the outgroup here is the LGBTQ+ community but any other racial, cultural, or social group could be imaged as well for the purposes of this analysis. As previously stated, the maxim here is contradictory because if we universalize the act of unfriending someone for having negative beliefs about certain groups of people, no one would have any friends. As Kant states in a similar situation, <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“The case could sometimes arise in which [an individual] needs the love and sympathetic participation of other, and where, through such a natural law arising from his own will, he would rob himself of all the hope of assistance that he wishes for himself.”<\/p>Kant, 40<\/cite><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

If individuals become completely individualized and the maxim of not being friends with someone because of their different worldview becomes universalized, people would have very little friends. Because humans rely on other humans for \u201clove and sympathetic participation\u201d, this maxim is contradictory to will. Therefore, Kant would say that there is an imperfect duty for this person to keep being friends with his friend who does not believe in gay marriage.
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Are individuals justified in wishing death upon Donald Trump? TL;DR: This person\u2019s question is quite straightforward. They are wondering if wishing death on the person and president Donald Trump is justified. Perhaps this question must be broadened to include wishing death on any person and whether or not that is justified at all.  According to … Continue reading You mean I Kant act on my disagreements with others?<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1604,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[9],"class_list":["post-200","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reader-submissions","tag-kant"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1604"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=200"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":217,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/200\/revisions\/217"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=200"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=200"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/edblogs.pugetsound.edu\/moral-philosophers\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=200"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}