Q&A: The Categorical Imperative
The Categorical Imperative
Question
Hello Rabbi,
A great deal has been written here on the site about the categorical imperative. My question is whether one can suggest an idea like this. For example, in elections, a person asks: why should I vote? After all, one vote doesn’t make a difference. The answer is that the public places on you something like a mandatory tax to vote, and you shouldn’t say that my actions won’t matter, since the only way this can exist is if an unconditional obligation to vote applies to you. That is, it’s not that there is some irrational imperative in the world to do non-rational acts; rather, your subordination to the public compels you to heed its voice, and it is like a kind of tax.
I feel that something here is not formulated well. Maybe someone can read this and phrase it better. Thank you very much.
Answer
That just pushes the question back to a more fundamental one: why should I pay taxes that the public imposes on me? You haven’t solved the problem. Here you would have to return to the categorical imperative.
Discussion on Answer
But what do you gain from that if in the end you get to the categorical imperative anyway? Are you discussing the question of what the categorical imperative does, or trying to offer a substitute for it?
One can discuss whether paying taxes or voting in elections is a categorical obligation because there is an obligation to obey the public, or because if everyone didn’t pay or vote the situation would be bad, but both possibilities are based on the categorical imperative.
As for that, I don’t think there is any real difference between the possibilities. Clearly, if the public had not imposed a duty of tax or voting, there would be no obligation to do so voluntarily. But the public imposes it because without it the situation would be bad.
To tell the truth, maybe I’m not adding anything.
It’s just that the emphasis here is that there isn’t some abstract, incomprehensible imperative; rather, there is an imperative in order to bring about the desired result, namely the election of a certain person, except that the only way to realize this is to impose on each individual an independent imperative.
As an aside—not from your school of thought—it could be that God created the world this way so that people would serve for its own sake.
One must vote in elections, otherwise there would not have been an obligation to pay taxes.
And one must pay taxes because according to the categorical imperative, one must finance parasites and their families with public money.
An Unclear Person replied:
The reason a person is obligated to pay taxes is understandable, because he is obligated to obey the public, since he is obligated to them. And don’t ask me that if one person evades tax nothing will happen, because I’ll answer you the same way I answered regarding elections. The only point I wanted to introduce is that by virtue of his subordination to the public, a person becomes obligated to them—not obligated to care for them, because then you’d ask, after all, one vote doesn’t make a difference—but obligated to obey their demands, just as one is obligated to obey a commandment.
An example of this is among those who say that “you shall not deviate” applies to the sages of the generation; in any case, I am obligated to vote in order to obey the voice of the great sages of Israel.