The Categorical Order and the Nazis
Good evening!
There is a famous criticism of the categorical imperative that the Nazis allegedly used, that Eichmann, in the West, said he was not guilty at all since he acted according to the imperative that made whatever you want a general law, and he truly wanted the weak not to survive, and as Hitler, in the West, said at the end of the war, that Germany deserved to lose because they were weak (although Nazi philosophy was mixed with Darwinian arguments of natural selection, and a mixture of Nietzschean philosophy of slave morality and the superman, as well as Norse mythology and Heidegger’s philosophy of nature, etc., but much was based on the categorical imperative and not, as Arendt believed, on the banality of evil).
And my question is one that, in my understanding, has nothing to do with Kant, since, in my understanding, the Kantian structure is constructed differently, as I will explain below:
1- A person must be moral, since this is the fulfillment of a person, just as it is of being intelligent.
2- Morality is not a relativistic feeling, but an intelligent, educated decision that does not necessarily correspond to the feeling (and therefore one must refer to morality).
Only after these arguments did Kant formulate what constitutes a moral act by the command.
And from the perspective of the Supreme Court, it follows that Eichmann was wrong because the order assumes a priori assumption that a person must be moral and only for the Supreme Court does the order formulate what a moral act is, whereas Eichmann understood that all morality is merely the existence of the order without the a priori assumption that a person must be moral.
Or to put it another way: Kant did not mean that the command is morality itself, but only formulates a moral principle, and in any case, whoever disbelieves in morality itself (which Kant did not define, and Kant himself is not clear enough about the reasoning behind why one should be moral and what not) then the command means nothing to him (and Eichmann understood that the command is morality itself and morality has no meaning of its own, and indeed this argument is more consistent with Nietzsche’s that man creates autonomous morality, but I do not think Kant intended this).
I would like to know if I am correct in this analysis?
Thank you very much!
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Thank you very much, the Rabbi did indeed formulate it well.
But it is still possible to comment that the Rabbi offers Kant a teleological interpretation, i.e. that the moral act is defined according to the results and therefore if the world is less good then it is bad, but perhaps he meant deontology, i.e. that the main thing is the act itself, whether it is good or not, and according to this it does belong to the judge whose actions will be considered good?
The question of whether or not this is teleology is discussed at length in column 122, see there. In principle, Kant is not a consequence of them. This is a common interpretive error of the categorical imperative. The categorical imperative does not say that one should act so that the world would be better, but rather that the way to define the moral act is in the form of a thought experiment: what would happen if everyone acted like me. If in such a hypothetical situation the world would turn out better, then this is the proper act. But the act must be done out of respect for the moral imperative and not to achieve results. And it is judged deontologically and not teleologically. See there where I explained that the imperative is valid even where you actually have no results. See also column 344 and much more.
What happens in a situation where a person mistakenly thinks that situation X is good and he acted in a way that general behavior would have led to situation X, but he was wrong: situation X is bad. In such a situation he himself is a proper person, despite the error in his actions. A person's judgment is according to his own system (see more on this in column 372).
But this is of course if he is wrong and thinks that this is the right situation. If he acts out of self-interest and not because he believes it is the right thing to do, then of course he should be judged with contempt.
But it's impossible that the Nazis define good differently, and therefore, in their opinion, the implementation of Nazi ideology is the implementation of the decree?
If they thought that was what was appropriate - that's absolutely true. They were wrong of course, but they should be judged by their own standards.
Thank you very much.
1- Even if we say a teleological definition, the question will still be what kind of good result should there be, is good equal to pleasure and happiness or, say, survival, etc.?
2- The Rabbi identifies deontology with Kant's words that there should be a good intention, but does it have to go together? Perhaps we can believe that morality is derived from the intention and is still aimed at a good result and not at actually being good?
3- Even if good is determined by the good for the world, can Eichmann still say that the question is who is the world and maybe they are the survivors?
So there is an assumption in Kant that there is an essential good.
4- Regarding what the Nazis would have taught according to their system, one could perhaps answer that evolutionary morality (I mean the expression in the sense of survival and not of cooperation between groups) is a factual and not a value-based argument, and therefore is necessarily not included in the concept of morality (since Kant posited an essential morality that perhaps realizes an idea of ‘good’).
Thank you and sorry for the length.
“He meant that one should act in such a way that if it were a general law then the world would be good. If you want something else, you are wrong.”
That is, actions that would bring about a better world only if there were no general law are invalid according to Kant?
So what comes first? That there would be a general law or that the world would be better?
Rabbi, you wrote, "A person's judgment is according to his own system... and he thinks that this is the right thing to do." And, in my opinion, if the judgment is made according to a person's system, then he will always come out righteous! And furthermore, this is a direct contradiction to what you explain thoroughly throughout the columns on freedom and liberty, that there is a standard that does not depend on the person's choices by which I judge him (and in this sense it is rabbinical) and as you write there and elsewhere, that the path itself must be worthy. The judgment regarding the path is made according to some external standard, which does not depend on the person himself.
Asks,
I see no point in examining the moral doctrine of the Nazis. I very much doubt whether there was such a thing, and certainly something general. There is a point in discussing the questions themselves.
1. The best that should be is that the situation of the majority of people will be good and they will be happy. As the saying goes: Your world is my world. It seems to me that a corrected social situation ultimately comes to this bottom line. However, the action itself is not done from a utilitarian motivation but from a motivation to act correctly. I explained the reason in column 122.
2. I did not understand.
3. Anyone can determine everything. There is no point in engaging in such hypotheses. If someone determines this, he will be mistaken and that is it.
4. See my opening.
EA,
See at length in the above column (372).
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