A talk about Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

This afternoon I had a talk with Chris about Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. After I stepped into his office and sat down before him, he asked me: what's your question? Actually, I had no ready question about the book because I had too many puzzles about it. It is really hard for me to raise a specific question currently, but I had to give a question to start our talk. Chris was confused by me and did not know what I am asking about. In fact I was also confusing about what I was going to ask. The question I raised was about the relation between formula of universality and formula of autonomy. It seemed very strange to Chris and he asked what exactly it was. Till the moment I began to realize the question I have in my understanding about Kant's work.

The question goes exactly like this: according to the formula of autonomy, one can give herself the law that she should act on all the time, but how is this connected with the formula of universality, which says that act on that maxim through which you can also will it as a universal law. Since each one is autonomous, they may raise different laws which is valid to themselves particular for themselves but might be contradict to each other when these laws are universalized among all rational beings. Chris let me offer examples to illustrate my view. I tried but failed. I tried to use examples of hypothetical imperative to illustrate that if a hypothetical is a moral law for one then it would be contradict to categorical imperative held by another one. But this example is on basis of wrong interpretation of Kant's hypothetical imperative. According to Kant, hypothetical imperative could be moral principles because they are conditional to something outside of person.

Then Chris helped me clarify some important points of this book. The first one is that there are four formulas of categorical imperatives, which are that of universality, of humanity, of kingdom of ends, and that of autonomy. The four of them, according to Kant, are the same one. Each of them is an aspect of the categorical imperative. The single categorical imperative is a formal requirement for morality. All duties derives from it. The second one is the distinction between hypothetical imperative and categorical imperative mentioned above. When we were talking about this issue, I asked another question which was actually clarified by Chris. It goes as follows: once I get a duty which is from the categorical imperative, I will look for means to achieve it. Then, is the action conditional one? Yes, it is. It is conditional to the end of the duty.Then, can we say such an action is also hypothetical. Categorical imperative just give us the end of duty, but can not promise the means directly. But this question is not challenging enough. Then means taken for achieving the end of duty is really conditional to the duty, but the duty is from categorical imperative. Just because of this, the action is considered as moral. The duty is derived from the categorical imperative, so it is internal and therefore action for sake of the duty is not conditional to things outside of person. So, it can not be considered as hypothetical.

Chris is very patient and enthusiastic. He invited me to talk with him every Thursday as I like. I am thankful to his enthusiasm. I believe our talk will be more fruitful in the future.

Comparison between Western philosophy and Chinese philosophy

Today I read two articles concerning comparison between western philosophy and Chinese philosophy. I found that the work of comparison is very helpful for me to understand both of western philosophy and Chinese philosophy. Before I read these two articles, I has been refusing to think Chinese philosophy seriously, especially Confucianism, but now I realize that it is necessary to have a comparing and critical reading of Chinese philosophy even though my main interests are in western philosophy. I note a significant problem in my understanding of western philosophy that my interpretation of western philosophy is often influenced by my covert Chinese traditional cultural background. Therefore, I must face this problem and avoid it by making comparison between them.

The two articles are raised in a collection of conference organized by the department of philosophy,NUS, in 2000. The first article I read is contributed by Prof. Ten. In this article, he criticizes the monist moral claim in Confucian tradition. He begins with conflicts between moral claims of personal relationship in family and loved people and moral claims of public. He raises several typical examples in western and Chinese literatures to illustrate the significant conflicts. He describes the moral development of person as circle in which the more central part means the stronger moral force to particular person, vice versa. For example, in Confucian tradition, the son should protect his father when he found him do wrongs, vice versa. He thinks reciprocity is the core of Confucian philosophy.However, this is dangerous to other moral claims, such as benevolence. He uses Bentham's argument to support the value of benevolence and denies Tu's claim about relation between the love of one's own people and the virtue for public. He thinks in many cases the fact is just contrary to Tu's view, for instance, in Ghandi's case. In the part of conclusion, Ten reminds us of the people left out of the moral circle who deserve respect as well.

The second article is contributed by Nussboaum. In this article, she criticizes Divison's interpretation of the golden rule of judgement in Confucian tradition, that is, if you do not want other to do something on you, do not do it to others. The logic form follows like this: if B expects A to do something to him, if A is superior, then, B should do same thing to his interior. if B expect A to do something to him, if A is interior, then, B should do same thing to his superior. As Nussboaum correctly notes that this form presuppose an order of hierarchy in society. Divison interpreted the golden rule in Kantian perspective, saying it implies that everyone respects others as the person like himself who has the common humanity. Nussboaum doubts the interpretation. Then she reviews the western tradition of moral discourse by citing Greek and Roman story concerning same kind of scene. From those stories, she interprets a missing thought which is absent in Confucian tradition. The mission thought could be found from Cynic, Aristotle and Raussou's works. The core of the thought is that everyone is invulnerable to miseries in life such as illness, lack of food, no mortal of exempt and so on. Therefore, when the king shows his pity to the bagger, he is thinking the possibility that one day he will be in the same situation. The distinctions between people are mainly based on artificial element which should not play role in making judgement. That means no body deserve what he gets from the luck of fortune, no matter it good or bad. However, we cannot find such a thought in Confucian tradition. She even believes that the democracy and the missing thought are dependent mutually. That is to say, people living in a non democratic society has no chance to face the missing thought, for example, in ancient China.

Ideas in these two articles give me a new interpretation of Chinese moral philosophy making me realize that the cultural sources of many severe problems in China.This work is very valuable for a Chinese to understand himself more clearly.