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Something that’s weirdly stuck with me (even though he’s not my favorite philosopher) is Kant’s Categorical Imperative which says, briefly, do only the things that would still be okay if everyone did them.
I think it fills in a nice gap left by the golden rule (treat others as you’d like to be treated) in drawing attention to how some things which don’t seem to do much harm would be a major problem if broadly adopted.
But not everyone wants to do the same thing or be treated the same way. In fact, people all want to do different things. You can't get 100% of people to agree on anything. If you walked down the street with a hammer and asked 100 people "do you want to be hit in the head?" you couldn't get them all to say "no".
There are other objections that are more specific:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Categorical_imperative
Basically, the categorical imperative is too inflexible to be practical.
I can't disagree, except to the extent that I don't personally view the CI as a means to reaching some objective, universally "good" set of actions. I think Kant was way off the mark with a lot of that pursuit. I do think, however, that an action which fails to satisfy the CI (meaning as I see it, "I want to do this but I don't think others should") is often one that should be re-evaluated.
But also I took like 3 philosophy courses so I'm officially in way over my head now but enjoy the discussion!
The categorical imperative is cute but doesn't work. It ignores all context for actions and assumes all people are pretty much the same.
A surgeon is allowed to cut open people in an attempt to save them, me a person not medically trained is not allowed to do that. If you applied the rule "to save a person I am allowed to attempt to operate on them and do my best" to every person we would be in serious trouble.
If I do a small bad thing it will prevent a very bad thing from happening. The categorical imperative forces me to ignore that fact.
Also doesn't really match how social animals operate and instead demands that we ignore how we are treated in our responses.
Basically it puts way too much on people and demands that they be lawful stupid.
Somebody who isn't a pedant would interpret that as "All trained surgeons performing this procedure on their respective patients with the same condition would be fine. So me, a trained surgeon, performing this procedure is also fine."
Sure you can do that and you can keep doing that until you get whatever result you want.
People shouldn't steal, people shouldn't steal unless it is emergency, people shouldn't steal unless it is an emergency or a very strong need, people shouldn't steal unless it is an emergency or a very strong need or the ownership is disputed...
The problem with the categorical imperative is that it isn't contextual, advocates will argue that it is its strength, the solution is to just add context which of course you are free to do, but it is no longer the categorical imperative.
Edit: worth noting that Kant was a Christian who really emphasized salvation through morality. Which would mean if Kant saw a chance for you to do the right thing even if it kills you he would say do it since your soul matters much more than your body ever could. This type of non-contextual lawful stupid morality was very common in that tradition.
For the first I think not being trained and having the knowledge of surgery is categorically different, so I don't think that critiques holds up.
For your last point i think the rationalzation would be: "Punishing people for bad behavior is something that if everyone did would be good."
Your second point holds more water and is the standard critique (and my personal stance) on it though. My only critique against it use is that I think too often people think they and their circumstances to exceptional and they more clever then they are.
Rule is don't do anything unless you want it to be universal. It doesn't say if the training levels are different.
Right except this won't work. We can't have the entire population be judge, jury, and executor. Which means we have to designate certain segments of the population to be specialized in punishing people. Breaking the universal nature of the categorical imperative.
The whole thing can't be fixed. It lacks all context so what people try to do is add context in. And the reason why it lacks all context was Kant was working backwards. He wanted the thou shall and thou shall nots morality of the bible without God given revelation. The only way to pull this off was make man replace god, all powerful and all weak at the same time. Humans were to be their own judge of what was right and wrong with no one's opinion better than anyone else's. At the same time any rule they declared they were bound so strongly that it crippled them. Morality isn't a way for humans to live happy lives with each other, morality is to be a chain that we ourselves made and bound ourselves with.
Don't worry however, sure you had to watch your kid die of starvation rather than steal bread, Kant is firmly convinced God will even the score in heaven.
I interpret the categorical imperative differently than you do. I agree that one of the most straightforward readings of it seems to be advocating for everyone to be lawful stupid — "lawful stupid" is the perfect phrase for how I first interpreted Kant when I'd only heard about fragments of his ideas.
I find this lawful stupid conclusion to be a useful step towards thinking about the categorical imperative in a useful way. Sort of like "what would need to be true in order for this to make sense?".
For example, in your second point, I think the categorical imperative might ask us to "zoom out" and consider why we're in a situation where we have to make a bad choice. After facing such a choice, people may ease their conscience afterwards by convincing themselves that the bad thing they did was actually good because it prevented a worse thing. I feel like a more Kantian response would be to let oneself be uncomfortable with the small bad deed, in order to understand how to prevent that from being necessary again in future.
I think that zooming out to get more context is often the solution to lawful stupid. Your final example resonated with me because that situation is something I've struggled with a few times in my life. When I have cut harmful people from my life, it was because it was clear that they were hurting me to an unreasonable degree, and diminishing my capability for kindness. One of those times, I didn't so much decide to cut someone off, more to just spend my energy where it would be more useful, which led to me cultivating a network that helped me to realise how toxic that friendship had been.
Personally, reading Kant has led me to take a more "ecological" view in areas like this, where I consider myself as one small part of a much wider system. I haven't read Kant in too much depth though, so I'd appreciate any input you might have — I'm very much a scientist dabbling in Philosphy, so I have a lot to learn. In particular, I'm curious about if there's an alternative philosophical framework that you find does work for you.
Please read a basic guide on deuontological ethics. It is so clear that context really doesn't matter to Kant. All morality flowed through duty and not even the agent mattered. For me to do action x (according to Kant) has the same moral value as anyone else doing it.
It's kinda nice what you people are doing. You are taking something clearly broken and fixing it. It is a lot less nice to retrocon it. We know what the man said.
I think the CI is far from a universal law that solves all problems. But I do think it can be among a set of useful tests to judge an action. I'm not sure the surgeon example is in good faith - a reasonable interpretation might be "Help others to the extent that you are trained and able to", which gets you pretty close to most Good Samaritan laws.
Most imperatives taken literally and expected to fit every situation and interpretation will fall apart quickly, I think this one is no better or worse than others. Probably the way I've internalized it is different from how it was originally intended, too!
Cool. Except the man who came up with it doesn't agree with you.
As I mentioned before. Do what you want but unless you are following it universally you aren't following it.
What might have stuck with me the most from Kant is the simple principle of treating people as ends, not as means.
Partly because when reading it I didn't immediately understand the meaning of "ends" in this context, so I had to think about it for a while in order to just understand what was going on. Still though, I think it's a valid principle, and one that everyone should strive to live by.