Q&A: What Is Hateful to You vs. the Categorical Imperative
What Is Hateful to You vs. the Categorical Imperative
Question
Is there an essential difference between “what is hateful to you” and the categorical imperative?
For example, in a case where what I do does not harm my fellow but harms me, then seemingly according to “what is hateful to you” — it is only to your fellow that you should not do it, but to yourself you may do it.
And in the opposite case, for example if there is a case where I do something that does not directly harm my fellow, but if everyone did it that would be problematic (maybe the example of a false alarm fits), then according to the categorical imperative it would be forbidden, while according to “what is hateful to you” it would seemingly be permitted.
The question is whether this is necessary, or perhaps there is a deeper difference behind the scenes. (Many people like to say that Kant is really already found in our sources, and therefore there is no need to learn anything, just as everything is supposedly already found in the Vilna Gaon and in Rabbi Tzadok through equidistant letter skips.)
Answer
Obviously these are different imperatives. What is the question? All the examples I gave in the columns on the categorical imperative (tax evasion, voting in elections, use of the rabbinical court’s produce repository) do not fit Hillel the Elder’s principle.
There are demagogues who like to present it as if it’s the same thing, and that really everything is already written by us. I don’t like when people say that, because usually it isn’t true. After they’ve already found something, you can always dress it up onto some vague text from the sources, or onto equidistant letter skips. (The Rabbi once said that this criticism is not always fair, since before it happens you don’t know what to look for. That’s the gist. But even if the Rabbi is right, what is that worth? If I have a magic book with everything written in it, but you can’t know anything from it until it becomes irrelevant, then it’s just not useful and it’s equivalent to nothing being written there at all.)
What I really wanted in the question was to make sure there is an essential difference between them, and that what I understand is not just case-by-case variation but something fundamental.