Q&A: The Holocaust and the Categorical Imperative
The Holocaust and the Categorical Imperative
Question
Following a video by Elinson in which he explains why most people did not revolt during the Holocaust and went like sheep to the slaughter, he says this was a moral choice: family. A father or a teenage boy could have escaped from the ghetto; a teenage girl could have jumped from the train car. But they chose to remain with the children, the mothers, and the elderly, and to die.
I wondered whether, in an ideal situation, every person should have acted according to the categorical imperative—what is good for the collective: that they should revolt, flee, all join the partisans, and try to change the situation, even at the cost of abandoning weaker family members?
Answer
I very much doubt that this is the correct explanation for most people, though clearly there were some for whom it was.
As for your question, I do not accept your assumption that the categorical consideration leads to a different conclusion. If everyone takes care of his family, the overall situation could be better as well (see, for example, Column 188). Beyond that, I have written more than once that someone who conducts himself solely according to the categorical imperative will not get very far. Kant himself said that one must die rather than lie, because the general law forbids lying. Well, he was a Yekke, but any reasonable person understands that this is nonsense. There are additional considerations beyond the categorical imperative, and they must be taken into account. This is aside from the fact that the imperative itself is open to different interpretations, each with different practical implications, and I have also noted that more than once in the past.
And after all that, it is בהחלט possible that at least in some cases the decision to stay with the family was not the right decision. Better that at least one person survive. This is somewhat connected to the tension between emotion and reason in moral contexts. In general too, it is important to distinguish between the appreciation due to someone who made such a decision and the judgment of whether it was the correct decision (as I have written more than once about Roi Klein).
Discussion on Answer
I have written several times that Kantian morality has two components: 1. Its autonomy (that is, the act is done for the sake of morality and not for the sake of some other goal, utility, satisfaction, and the like—as opposed to heteronomous morality). 2. Its practical content: do whatever you would want to be a general law. There is no morality that does not satisfy 1. Other theories (heteronomous ones) are not talking about morality at all but denying its existence. But there certainly are additional moral rules beyond 2 (to the extent that 2 is even well defined—it is not). I gave the example of lying.
I understand. A methodological note: I am fairly sure that Kant's innovation is component 2. Component 1 is trivial and has been known forever. So the wording "there is no morality that is not Kantian" is a bit misleading.
I no longer remember the context you are quoting. I think I usually say this in that context. That component is far from trivial, and proof of that is that many people speak of heteronomous morality. I argue that heteronomous morality is an oxymoron. If it is heteronomous, it is not morality. It is merely equivocation. By the way, a significant part of Kant's work in ethics was to reject heteronomous morality. So this is indeed considered his innovation, although of course he did not invent it. He is the figure with whom it is associated. Just as Aristotle did not invent logic, because everyone knew it before him as well. But he is the one who conceptualized it (in the Organon), and so it bears his name.
Nice! You taught me something new. Thanks.
A question for Rabbi Michi.
The categorical imperative requires that if you see a girl drowning in a river, you must save her.
But if I know that this girl is Hitler's mother, what should be done with her?
Why is this connected to the categorical imperative? Was it Kant who originated the idea that if one sees a person drowning, one should save him?
It is a hypothetical question. You cannot know such a thing, so there is no point discussing it.
Kant did not originate it, of course, but the tool he devised for determining what the moral act is indicates that one should act that way, and that is why I phrased it like that.
So what if it is a hypothetical situation? It seeks to clarify a principle regarding the way we identify behavior as moral or not. Are there not plenty of invented and improbable situations through which we critique one principle or another?
It is not improbable but impossible. About a person with free choice, it is impossible to know in advance what he will choose. So either way: either this is not a person (he has no free choice), or your knowledge is not certain.
Once you said that there is no non-Kantian morality. Here you are limiting the absoluteness of the categorical imperative. What did you mean?