What I Have learned This Year?

The greatest thing I have gained from this course is the reading experience. It is just amazing that ancient philosophers have already discussed all the important questions of human life and our universe. And the most important thing I gained through the one year visiting program is my experience communicating with Christians. Let me talk about the two things seperately. First, I love the reading assignments so much. The wisdom of ancient philosophers inspired me a lot. I read Paedo, Nicomachean Ethics, Symposium, and other presocratics. They discuss the topic of love, virtue, death, wisdom and happiness, which sometime really get me touched. Especially Paedo, the scene in which Socrates at first failed to give a good argument about the soul of human. With several seconds of silence accompanied by the sorrow of people around him, Socrates just smiled and said that there is no need to be sad about me, because what I was doing is just for the sake of truth and to convice myself, by no means to win others. Also, the idea of doing philosophy as the practice of love and death is appealling to me, for we as limited creatures in the universe are all afraid of deathe and have the quest for being loved and loving others. These important matters of life are the basis and motives of philosophical studies, at least for myself. I hope to lead a decent and meaningful life which is not filled up with materials and products, but spiritual enjoyment. For the sake of such happiness, I believe most of us would say that puzzlements and difficulties brought about by the contemplative works are worth paying.

Second, my experience of communicating with Christains gives me two important knowledges. One is that Christian emphasis on the sinfulness of human beings is illuminating, which is one of the weakness of Chinese philosophy. My Christian Chinese friends here are always emphasizing this important aspect of Christianity in our bible study. The other thing is that Jesus is love, and God is love. Also I believe the Christian notion of love is unique and profund. Compared with Confucious notion of love, Jesus’s love is the one that is based on very intimate relationship amoing god and human, human and human. I think I will go on investigating this problem and do some further studies in Christianity.

Where Does Objectivity Come from?

I have talked about Hume’s interpretation of moral actions, which are caused by human passions and emotions. The reason why we go to save the kid falling into the well is that we cannot bare seeing the scence and feels tortured at the picture. In other word, we don't do virtuous actions because of reasoning and refecting, but something rooted in our human nature that is called emtions. Then it is a problem for him regarding how to argue against those whose emotions are different from normal people. And I think Kant’s interpretation of rationality can be helpful for us to do that job.

Kant starts with the notion of “good will”, and good will is intimated related with rationality. One essential point for us to understand the objectivity of morality in Kantian can be made clear by differentiating between humanity and rationality. For Kant, the objectivity of the goodness of human will does not consist in humanity, because human weill is only subjectively imperfect. (Grounding of morality, 414) In addition, Kant claims that the reality of moral principle cannot be derived from the special characteristics of human nature:

For duty has to be a practical, unconditioned necessity of action; hence it must hold for all rational beings and for this reaon only can it also be a law for all human wills. On the other hand, whatever is derived from the special natural condition of humanity, from certain feelings and propensities, or even, if such were possible, from some special tendency peculiar to human reason and no holding necessarily for the will of every rational beings— all of this can indeed yield a maxim valid for us, but not a law. This is to say that such can yield a subjective principle according to which we might act if we happen to have the propensity and inclination, but cannot yield an objective principle according to which we would be directed to act eventhough our every propensity, inclination, and natural tendency were opposed to it. (G, 425)

While the Hume’s interpretation of morality regards human dispositions and natural conditions as the most fundamental elements in our thinking and action, Kant thinks very differently. First, humanity has its grounding in rationality because rationality holds fro all rational beings including human beings as one of the species. While humanity has in its root both subjective inclinations and rational capacities, Kant’s conception of rationality is a transcendent and a priori capacity, without any subjective consitution. Kant does not deny that dispositions and feelings can lead us to make right choice, but he is strongly objecting to grounding moral judgment only on humanity, since it is is subjectively imperfect because of its special inclinations and dispositions.

In addition, Kant regards the rationality used as tools and means to get to another purpose as only contingetn and arbitary. Such rationality is what Williams uses to satisfy the actualization of agent’s projects and desires. But for Kant, “rational nature exists as an end in itself”, (G, 437)and only this kind of rationality is the grounding of categorical imperative. Kant claims that the practical imperative will be that “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means.” (G, 429) Other imperatives and rational capacities manipulated for other purposes rather than themselves are only hypothetical, which means they are always under the test of universal law and have to practical necessity. Thus we can see that what draws the line between the Kantian and the Humean moral philosophy is that Kant provides an objectvie grounding of human nature in terms of univeral rationality, while Hume does not appeal to anything beyond the disposition and feelings withn human nature.

Expression of Emotions?

I am thinking of the criticism of Hume that moral behaviors turn out to be just expressions of one’s feelings and passions. And I don't think that is the right understanding of Hume. The emotivist standpoint of Hume needs an appropriate understanding—not in terms of expression of feelings—but in terms of a logical point of view about the justification of moral judgments.

I think the passions as justificatory grounding of moral conclusions should be distinguished from the mere psychological states accompanying the process of making moral judgments. For when we consider moral conclusions as mere expression of our dispositions and passions, it is like thnking of the reason for me to sing songs to my husband in his birthday as the mere expression of my emotions, or thinking of the moral decision to salvage the kid falling into the well as an expression of one’s feeling distress. But both sounds strange. In the case of the kid, the sense of sympahty is deeply rooted in our human nature, and our decision to save the kid is not expressions of our own feeling bad about this situation. What Hume is really arguing is that the fact that “I am feeling bad about the situation” itself is not sufficient for me to conclude that I ought to save the kid unless it is supplied with a major moral principle, which is “I ought to always help those in danger”.

Here we can see the difference in Hume’s sketch bewteen two kinds of emotions: E(1) is the psychological states accompanying our thought and behaviors. E(2) is the moral justificatory reason which constitutes the sources of the major moral principle. For illustration, now the moral argument(A) of my singing songs at my husband’s birthday is like this：A(1) Major premise: I ought to do something making him happy. A(2)Minor premise: Singing songs will make him happy. A(3)I ought to sing songs. What Hume means about E(2) is that the reason why one starts with the Major premise is that one will find out the approbation of this idea rather than rational reflections. But E(1) is the one that appears in the A(2) and A(3).

To sum up, E(2) as the justificatory reason for the agent to engage into the major premise is the fundamental one for Hume. Therefore what we should ask Hume is the question of the objectivity of human emotions. In other word, what if the agent feels happy about killing and hurting people? On what grounding we can blame the agent for feeling wrongly and defectively?