Appendix V

Jesus and Kant: Four Perspectives on Moral Judgment

 

 

1. A Model for Kant-Based Dialogue between Philosophers and Theologians

          In arguing against the common trend in both theology and philoso­phy, whereby philosophers such as Heidegger and theologians such as Barth stand willingly back to back, facing opposite directions, Copleston urges ‘that an adequate understanding of the Christian faith requires philosophical reflec­tion, and that it is not facilitated by a wholesale rejection of metaphysics’ [Co74:53]. Taking into account the theocentric orientation of Kant’s philosophy [see I.3] may help to reverse this trend, which is traceable in both dis­ciplines to various misinter­pre­tations of Kant. Theologians and philosophers might be more willing to stand face to face—the only posture from which meaningful dialogue is possible—­if both recognized that Kant destroyed the old parent-child rela­tionship of theology to philosophy not in order to make them complete strangers, but rather to enable them to work side by side towards a common goal. ‘The ultimate aim’ of such cooperation, Smith suggests, is ‘to overcome the emptiness and formality of philosophy and to frustrate the obscu­rantist and parochial tendencies in theology’ [Sm68:8].

          A thorough study of Kant’s philosophy and its theological and reli­gious implications, such as that carried out in the first two volumes of Kant’s System of Perspectives, can be particularly helpful in stimulating such dialogue because Kant is re­spected almost universally by philosophers as one of the great thinkers in the history of Western philosophy—if not the greatest. Indeed, many would agree that ‘Kant, in modern times, has replaced Aristotle as a kind of intellectual reference system’ [Ge69:135], and would join MacKinnon in hail­ing him as ‘surely the supreme German philoso­pher’ [Ma79:135; s.a. Ma68:22-6 and Le65:16]. The number of theolo­gians and philosophers of religion who would also acknowledge Kant as a major influence on their ideas is virtually unlimited. Even Gilson, who has fundamental disagreements with Kant, re­gards him as the primary philosophical alter­native to Thomas Aquinas for the Christian [Gi41:114]. What Barth says of Kant’s influence on nineteenth-century theolo­gians would apply to most twentieth century theologians as well: ‘He stands by himself ... a stumbling-block and rock of offence ..., someone de­terminately pursuing his own course, more feared than loved, a prophet whom almost everyone even among those who wanted to go forward with him had first to re-interpret before they could do anything with him’ [Ba72:267].

          If indeed Kant is the primary figure in the modern Western philosophical tradition, the theologian can hardly ignore him. For, as Wood suggests: ‘To face up squarely to the prob­lems of the tradition, as Kant did, remains by far the most straightforward and intellectually honest way for a modern theologian to discharge his philosophical responsibilities’ [Wo78: 151]. To interpret Kant in a way that is philosophically acceptable and yet leaves open a legitimate field for the theologian to work would therefore provide an effective basis for inter-disciplinary dialogue by establishing much-needed common ground be­tween philosophy and theology.

          But the respect Kant evokes from philosophers and theologians is not the only reason for embarking on a new, theologically-conscious interpretation of this over-worked philoso­pher. An even more important reason stems from a problem we have already acknowledged [see I.1-2]. Kant is far too fre­quently inter­preted in a one-sided fashion, especially by those who (conve­niently) claim that large portions of his work are irrelevant to or inconsis­tent with the ‘truly Kan­tian’ material. Because of the confusion this creates, es­pe­cially for anyone whose primary concern is not philosophical, many theolo­gians and philoso­phers of religion have ignored or repudiated the importance of Kant. Flew’s book on the philosophy of religion [Fl66] is a typical example: it entirely ig­nores the relevance of Kant’s views on the subject, devoting only two para­graphs [5.44-5] to a brief description and trite criticism [cf. AIV.4]. Rather than pedantically listing other works that suffer from such an oversight, let us examine one case in slightly more detail.

          Hartshorne’s treatment of Kant is even more misleading than Flew’s, be­cause he ac­knowledges Kant’s importance, but fails to give him a fair hearing. With Reese, he voices the common objection: ‘Of all criticisms of philosophical theology, probably none has been so influential as those of Kant.... [How­ever,] Kant’s criticisms depend, more than is commonly noted, on certain features of his own system which are now usually rejected’ [HR53:142]. They then severely misinterpret and trivialize, among other things, Kant’s doctrine of sensi­bility [147]. As evidence of their failure to grasp the essential thrust of Kant’s philosophy, they accuse him of being ‘imprisoned in the half-truths in which the monopolar prejudice, the neglect of the principle of polarity, is bound to result’ [146]. Each of these criticisms, how­ever—especially the latter—betrays an acceptance of an overly simplified or one-sided inter­pretation of Kant. Such interpretations lead naturally to the assumption that theologians who ac­cept Kant must give up most or all of their endeavors. The implications of such an ap­proach are brought out more clearly in Hartshorne’s defense of the onto­logical argument [Ha65], which itself neglects Kant’s principle of perspective [see AIV.2]. Describing Kant as a ‘calamitously overesti­mated German philoso­pher’ [221], Hartshorne explicitly rejects Kant’s Coper­ni­can revo­lution [232] and evinces his lack of appreciation for Kantian methodology in general when he boldly states: ‘Unbelief [in God] is confusion or else belief is confusion. There is no third possibility’ [135]—thus totally ignoring the crucial role of mystery and the recognition of ignorance in Kant’s System [see V.1 and Pa00a:55-8].

          Such theologians and philosophers of religion remain unaware of—or at least, non­receptive towards—the lasting, though sometimes subtle, contribu­tion Kant has made to their subject. This alone, if nothing else, calls for a fresh statement of just what that contribution is, so that the doors of theological reflection can remain open even (or especially) for the Kantian—and, indeed, vice versa. Making such a fresh statement is the main task of this book. The remainder of this appendix will therefore present one obvious example of how philosophers and theologians can find common ground in Kant.

 

          Jesus’ well-known admonition ‘Do not judge lest you be judged your­selves’ [Matt. 7:1] is often interpreted as a radical principle requiring people not to make moral judgments at all.[1] He apparently puts in the place of all moral ‘absolutes’ (such as the rules found in the Old Testament and Jewish tradition) a pragmatic principle that can be applied more flexibly to each particular situation (viz., the so-called ‘golden rule’): ‘whatever you want others to do for you, do so for them, for this is the Law and the Prophets’ [Matt. 7:12]. Similarly, his summary of ‘the whole Law and the Prophets’ [Matt. 22:40] in terms of the twofold greatest commandment, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart ...’ and ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself’ [Matt. 22:37,39; cf. Lev. 19:18], seems to imply that fixed (and apparently objective) rules to guide our moral judgment are not as important as the more subjective principle that our actions be performed in a spirit of love [see IX.2].

          These three principles seem at first sight to stand in sharp contrast to Kant’s principle of moral judgment, the categorical imperative [Kt4:30]: ‘So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle establishing universal law.’ S.B. Thomas, for example, regards Kant’s principle as implicitly contradicting the first of the above-mentioned admonitions of Jesus, because one requires, while the other forbids, ‘the stance of being the moral-judge of’ [Th70:191]. If regarded as a strict moral principle, the golden rule seems to render morality completely subjective, to the extent that it could border on hedonism (‘what pleases you is what you should do to others’)—two ten­dencies that are obviously contrary to the emphasis on universality and formal­ism in Kant’s moral philosophy. In Kt4:83-5 Kant himself acknowledges the difference between the categorical imperative and Jesus’ summary of the Law in terms of the greatest commandment (which I shall refer to as ‘Love God and man’): he warns against the danger of the latter principle giving rise to ‘a nar­row moral fanaticism’, which is immoral because it involves the ‘overstepping of limits which practical pure reason sets to mankind.’

          These prima facie differences between the moral principles of Jesus and Kant should not, however, lead us to conclude that their viewpoints are incompatible. On the contrary, Kant in his writings on religion shows the deepest respect for Jesus (to the extent that he avoids using his name in Kt8 by referring to him indirectly, with descriptions [see note VIII.21]), and par­ticu­larly for his teachings. He goes so far as to argue that true Christianity (i.e., the teaching of Jesus, properly interpreted) is virtually identical with the ‘universal religion of mankind’, towards which he believes his own moral philosophy points.[2] It seems very unlikely, there­fore, that Kant himself would want to deny the validity of such key teachings of Jesus as the three mentioned above. In the remainder of this appendix I shall argue that if we properly understand these four principles,

      (1) Jesus’ ‘Do not judge’,

      (2) Kant’s categorical imperative,

      (3) Jesus’ golden rule,

     and        (4) Jesus’ ‘Love God and man’,

 

then we can regard them not as mutually exclusive, but as expressing four complementary perspectives on the nature of moral judgment. This will give us a good example of how a perspectival interpretation provides a suitable foundation for cooperation between philosophers and theologians.

 

2. The Transcendental and the Logical Perspectives

          Let us begin by looking more closely at S.B. Thomas’ treatment of this matter, because his way of resolving the conflict between (1) and (2) is quite similar to the method I shall adopt for understanding the relationship between all four principles. He points out, quite rightly, that there is a perspectival difference between the standpoints (or as he calls them, ‘stances’) assumed by these two principles. Jesus adopts a ‘religious’ standpoint, or ‘a way of being’, whereas the moral judgment involved in Kant’s ‘rational’ standpoint ‘appears to belong to a wholly different sphere of thought’ [Th70:194]. ‘The “judge not” of Jesus’ applies only ‘at the religious level’ [196]. Thomas points out that ‘the Christian ... is at a great advantage [over the rational moralist] by virtue of having exis­tential access to the solution to the moral problem’ [196]. He argues that ‘the apparent discrepancy can be reconciled if one first adopts the existential standpoint of Jesus, and then only secondarily takes up the rational position of Kant as expressing the requirements of his [i.e., Jesus’] religion stripped of their religiosity, so to speak’ [194].

          Kant would agree that religiosity and rational moral principles belong to entirely differ­ent standpoints [see VI.2]. Yet Thomas ignores the fact that Kant himself not only rec­ognizes this difference, but develops his system of religion with precisely this perspectival distinc­tion in mind. Although Thomas’ conclusion is therefore not entirely fair to Kant (except as a statement about systemp on its own), its main thrust is unobjectionable:

 

Kant and the Kantians need Jesus and the Jesusians far more than the latter need the former; for it is far more important for the Kantian [i.e., for a proponent of Kant’s practical system] to allow his incipient moral dogmatism to be tempered with the quality of love and acceptance ... than it is for a follower of Jesus to be able to give rational stability to his external actions [199].

 

If Jesus’ religion is what he (and Kant!) claim it to be, then this is certainly true; but it ignores the fact that Kant would agree that his moral theory on its own is too narrow to encompass religion. In Kt8:12(11) Kant explains that the historical and revelatory elements of a real (empirical) religion compose ‘the wider sphere of faith, which includes within itself the [sphere consisting of the practical or moral essence of pure religion], as a narrower one (not like two circles external to one another, but like concentric circles).’ He tries to make room for the wider sphere in his philosophical System by expounding what we can ‘hope’ in his third, ‘judicial’ system, to which his theory of religion properly belongs.[3]

          Thomas has, I believe, hit upon the right method for explaining the relationship between the moral principles of Jesus and Kant, yet he has applied that method in the wrong way. Although it is true that much of Jesus’ teaching could be called ‘existential’, and that nearly all of it is intended primarily to encourage a certain type of religiosity (i.e., a certain way of life), this does not mean his teaching is devoid of rational principles. On the contrary, all three of Jesus’ admonitions listed in the previous section ought to be regarded as funda­mental rational principles for moral judgment. This, of course, means that Jesus and Kant are adopting the same standpoint after all (viz., the standpoint of ‘practical reason’). The apparent conflict between their respective principles can be resolved once we recognize that different perspectives operate within the same standpoint [see III.1-2 and AIII.1]. In other words, even though Kant and Jesus are trying to do roughly the same thing (viz., establish rational principles for moral judgment), moral judgment itself can be viewed in different ways, and the character of the principle is determined by the perspective it assumes.

          When Jesus commands ‘Do not judge’, he is not denying the legitimacy of all moral judgment (which would, in fact, contradict what he goes on to say in Matt. 7:3-11 [see note AV.1]); on the contrary, he is laying down what we can call a transcendental principle for (i.e., a necessary condition for the possibility of) all moral judgment. The implications of the condition Jesus lays down are completely consistent with the transcendental condition of moral judgment in Kant’s practical system—viz., freedom. For Kant the moral law itself, as expressed in the categorical imperative, would be impossible were it not for the fact that each individual person starts with a fundamental (though inexplicable [see Kt4:72]) freedom of the will. To judge another person (i.e., to impose one’s own moral maxims onto someone else) is to deprive that person of their right to be judged according to their own maxims, implying that one wills that the other not be free. To do this is to fail to respect the other person.[4] When Jesus adds to his ‘Do not judge’ the explanation ‘For in the way you judge, you will be judged ...’ [Matt. 7:2], he is warning that our own moral freedom depends on our mutual willingness to give moral freedom to other people. However, the full force of his claim is rarely acknowledged: he appears to be saying that God will judge us according to the way we judge others, so that, for example, if we leave others to determine what is right for them, God will leave us to determine what is right for us. In any case, the implication of Jesus’ claim is that our ability to make free moral judgments concerning our own actions depends on the extent to which we give that same freedom to others. In this sense, then, his ‘Do not judge’ is not just a piece of good, ‘existential’ advice; it is the very foundation of the possibility of any real moral judgment (and hence, can be called transcendental).

          When Kant sets forth his categorical imperative, by contrast, he is assuming the freedom of the individual and trying to explain in logical terms just what the self-legislating freedom of the moral law implies for the moral agent. In other words, he is asking: On what basis can we analyze our own moral maxims in order to determine whether or not they provide us with proper rules for the right course of action? Kant’s suggestion that we make such judgments on the logical basis of a consideration of whether or not our maxim can be universalized does not imply that we have to defy the commandment ‘Do not judge’ in order to understand the difference between right and wrong courses of action. Rather it indicates that we have to judge ourselves by our own internal and self-legislative moral law before we act, and that the proper way of doing so is to test each maxim by considering whether or not it would be rational to make it a universal law (i.e., to conceive of it as being a maxim all people naturally legislate to themselves).

          We can avoid Thomas’ problematic assumption that Jesus and Kant are speaking on entirely different levels as long as we recognize that Jesus’ ‘Do not judge’ lays down a transcendental requirement for moral freedom (viz., that moral judgment is first and foremost an individual matter), whereas Kant’s categorical imperative explicates a logical means of analyzing one’s own moral maxims (viz., that we must be able to conceive of them as universal). It may seem as if Kant’s criterion of universality contradicts Jesus’ requirement of not judging others, since the former requires us to determine what maxims others ‘ought’ to hold. However, this is a misunderstanding of Kant’s principle. Kant is not suggesting that the categorical imperative justifies us in forcing everyone else to abide by our maxims, nor in condemning them for not so abiding; he is suggesting instead that it enables us to understand what we ourselves are commanded to do.[5] In other words, the moral law presents its impera­tives to me as categorical (‘I ought to ...’), yet it can never give me anything more than hypothetical knowledge about anyone else’s duties (‘If you were me, you ought to ...’): the moral law does not give me commands about what you ought to do! Hence, it is fully compatible with Jesus’ ‘Do not judge’, though each assumes a different perspective. With this perspectival distinction in mind, we can therefore turn now to the third and fourth principles of moral judgment in order to consider their relationship with each other and with the two discussed in this section.

 

3. The Empirical and the Hypothetical Perspectives

          The perspectival interpretation of these four principles of moral judgment, as interacting within the standpoint of practical reason, has several benefits: it not only clarifies the compatibility between the principles of Jesus and Kant, but also provides the basis for a reconstruction of Kant’s moral philosophy that renders it more credible than on the standard formalistic interpretation. A good exam­ple can be seen by considering Kant’s claim that the human will, as subject to the moral law, cannot contradict itself [e.g., Kt5:424]. This doctrine is often regarded as evidence of the inadequacy of his moral philosophy, since in ordinary experience it is not unusual for us to come face to face with apparently irresolvable ethical conflicts. Nevertheless, if we place this doctrine in its proper, perspectival context, then the difficulty can be resolved. When Kant says duties cannot contradict each other, we should in­terpret him as meaning that the moral law is a logical law, a law that defines moral worth and in so doing commands us to do one thing and not its opposite. Kant would admit, though, that in real human situations we are often simply incapable of reasoning consistently enough (or perhaps, of being open enough to the law of freedom) to ‘hear’ the voice of conscience clearly. As a result we are often torn between two or more options and left more or less empty handed in difficult ethical situations. Kant’s moral philosophy is not meant to suggest that all moral decisions are straight­forward, but only that if we could open ourselves completely to the voice of the moral law in each situation, then the way would be clear. That human weak­ness often prevents us from achieving such clarity should not detract from the fact that morality is inherently rational (and thus, not self-contradictory).

          The golden rule is a principle designed to help people cope with such human weakness. In contrast to the apparently ‘iron’ rigidity of the moral law, the golden rule, like pure gold, is pliable and readily applicable to virtually any situation. This principle can therefore be regarded as offering an ‘empirical’ or ‘existential’ guideline. Regardless of what Kant himself may have thought about the golden rule,[6] it is quite consistent with a perspectival interpretation of his moral system. For the command ‘whatever you want others to do for you, do so for them’ really boils down to something quite similar to Kant’s emphasis on respect.

          Kant describes respect for the moral law as an unpleasant feeling, or even a ‘pain’, that arises because the moral law ‘humiliates’ our ‘self-conceit’ (or ‘self-love’) by disciplining us to subordinate our desire to be happy (by fulfilling our inclinations) to our obligation to do our duty (by following the moral law) [Kt4:73-82]. Such respect makes us aware of the fact that ‘the idea of the moral law deprives self-love of its influence and self-conceit of its delu­sions’ [75]. This ‘moral feeling’ of respect [76] ‘does not serve for an estimation of [the moral worth of] actions or as a basis of the objective moral law itself but only as an incentive to make this law itself a maxim.’ Nevertheless, it is not merely an ‘incentive to morality; it is morality itself, regarded subjectively as an incentive’ [76]. In other words, respect for the moral law is not identical with the moral law (which, as we have seen, is primarily logical), but can be regarded as the moral law viewed from the empirical perspective of its effects on our life.

          The golden rule, properly interpreted, actually functions in much the same way as Kant’s doctrine of respect. It tells us that, if we want something, the right course of action is to respect the rights of others by giving up our self-centered inclinations and humbly showing the other person the generosity we wish they would show us.[7] The golden rule is wrongly interpreted when it is regarded as a kind of ‘tit-for-tat’ principle, for it says nothing about the ‘other’ actually doing anything in return for us. If we truly follow the golden rule, we will discipline ourselves to give to others without ever requiring anything in return. The problem, of course, is that the things a person does for others on this basis may not actually be in their best interest—they may even be immoral—especially if ‘what you want others to do for you’ is to fulfill your inclinations! This, in fact, is why it is crucial to see the golden rule as an empirical principle which, in order to be truly effective, must be subordinated to, and thus informed by, some higher level (i.e., logical and/or transcendental) moral principle(s). Thus, if a person who understands and accepts the superiority of the moral law over inclinations attempts to follow the golden rule in everyday (empirical) situations, then that person will, at the same time, be showing Kantian respect for the internally prescribed, categorical demands of the moral law.

          Peter Carmichael argues against Thomas’ perspectival interpreta­tion by pointing out that Jesus breaks both his own moral principles and the categorical imperative whenever he pronounces judgment on people such as the Pharisees.[8] His argument is defective, however, because he fails to consider the implications of the fact that Jesus’ moral judgment is always directed against hypocrites—i.e., against people who condemn others for breaking rules they themselves break. Jesus’ harsh criticism of such people always proceeds by pointing out that they are not matching up to their own standards (e.g., ‘the Law and the Prophets’). The principle ‘Do not judge’, as I have interpreted it [see note AV.1], requires that we not judge others by our standards, but allow them to obey their own conscience; it does not disallow a critical attitude towards those who do not live up to their own standards, provided the person judging is abiding by his or her own standards [see Matt. 7:5]. Thus an important exception to the ‘Do not judge’ principle is that those who break this absolute, transcendental standard for all morality—e.g., by imposing their own moral maxims on other people, as the Pharisees did—are thereby making themselves worthy to be judged.

          Likewise, the categorical imperative bids us to judge ourselves (not others) according to the form of universal law. Judging hypocrites would transgress this imperative only for someone who believes people should not be judged by their own standards, but solely on the basis of some absolute empirical standard, such as a fixed set of written laws. Yet this is contrary to the moral theories of both Jesus and Kant, because it takes away the freedom of the individual, and thus breaks the fundamental condition for all truly moral judgment. If the point of Jesus’ ‘Do not judge’ is indeed that people should judge (and be judged) only accord­ing to their own standards, then his judgment of hypocrites is entirely consistent with the categorical imperative. In fact, Jesus’ criticism of hypocrites does not even break the golden rule (adapted in the form ‘in whatever types of situation you would want others to criticize you, criticize them when they are in such situations’), since those who strive to live consistently with their conscience should welcome any criticism that awakens them to a situ­a­tion wherein they are inadvertently doing something that is inconsistent with their own rules.

          Jesus’ summary of all moral commandments in the maxim ‘Love God and man’ is related to Kant’s categorical imperative in much the same way as is the golden rule: both stand in danger of being misused, but can have a very important proper use if employed in conjunction with their complementary moral principles. Thus, in Kt4:83-5, where Kant discusses the relationship between his moral theory and Jesus’ ‘Love God and man’, he not only warns against the misuse of this principle (as mentioned earlier), but goes on to claim that, if properly employed, it is entirely consistent with his own moral theory [s.a. Kt8:160-161(148)]. He claims that this ‘law of all laws ... presents the moral disposition in its complete perfection’ [Kt4:83]. This ‘kernel of all laws’ is an ‘ideal’ principle [83], one that is properly considered not as a law of morality or virtue (which would take human limitations into considera­tion), but rather as a law of ‘holiness’ [84]. The real danger, according to Kant, is that some people misinterpret this princi­ple as meaning that we should obey God by inclination (‘pathological love’), rather than out of respect for the moral law we find in our hearts (‘practical love’) [cf. Kt5:399]. Not only is it ‘self-contradictory’ to ‘command that one do something gladly’ [Kt4:83], but such an assumption can lead to a fanatical devotion to inclination that ends up choking out morality itself [84-5]. ‘To love God means in [its proper, practical] sense to like to do His commandments, and to love one’s neighbor means to like to practice all duties towards him’ [83]. The problem is that only a holy being can be so free from inclinations contrary to the moral law that such obedience always results in pleasure. Because a person’s natural self-conceit is humbled by the respect for the moral law that accompanies human obedience, all such obedience is not holiness, but virtue [84].

          Kant’s rather cautious attitude towards Jesus’ ‘Love God and man’ command should not be regarded as outright skepticism. If we recall that for Kant ‘ideal’ does not mean ‘impossible’, but rather, something transcendent that can regulate, but does not constitute our action (or knowledge) [see Kt1:595-599,675], then we can see how even this command has its proper place in a Kantian system of moral principles. Kant is not joking when he calls the greatest commandment the ‘kernel of all laws’; rather he is alluding to the fact that it is so great that we must view it as a hypothetical moral principle—i.e., as a principle that cannot constitute the difference between right and wrong in any given situation, but should nevertheless regulate the way we go about performing all our moral actions. We should aim for the ideal of a holy will by acting as if our disposition is perfect, so that our acts tend more and more to display a holy inclination to love God, an enjoyment arising out of our obedience to and respect for the moral law. Kant emphasizes the role of happiness in systemp only in its final stage for the same type of reason: although our own happiness cannot serve as a motivation for virtuous action, it can (and should) be introduced hypothetically by anyone who is already obeying the moral law in order for morality to reach its ‘final end’ in ‘the highest good’.[9] In the same way, love of God and of the duties commanded by God (via the moral law we find in our hearts) should not be regarded as a logical principle defining the difference between right and wrong; yet those who seek to act morally can (and should) work towards perfecting that action by subsuming it under what might be called an ‘irrational rational principle’ of morality—i.e., by regarding it in the idealized context of a hypothetical love for God and all human beings. (See IX.2 for a more detailed discussion of this possibility.)

 

4. An Analytic Map of the Four Perspectives on Moral Judgment

          Kant’s doctrine of the moral law and its application in the categorical imperative has traditionally been interpreted as requiring a rigid formalism in ethics, whereby particular ethical rights and wrongs are, and can be known to be, absolute. Indeed, Kant’s reason for stressing the categorical character of the moral law’s prescription of duties is to bring home precisely this point: our knowledge of moral rights and wrongs comes first and foremost in a rational and necessary (or absolute) form, rather than in the form of hypotheses (if-clauses) regarding the particular situations we may or may not be in. This fact about Kant’s doctrine of moral judgment (i.e., that it is possible because the moral law within us commands duties categorically) may seem to render invalid everything I have said so far about the relation between the moral principles of Kant and Jesus. In other words, it may look as if I have taken Kant’s doctrine so far out of its original context that it no longer remains Kantian. The best reply to such an objection is to direct attention to the perspectival character of all Kant’s thought,[10] and to show how an appreciation of the perspectival character of the particular relation between the four moral principles we have been considering reveals that such a treatment of the categorical imperative does not involve, after all, a compromise with regard to its categorical nature (which would indeed be untenable as an interpretation of Kant). Let us therefore briefly review the perspectival interrelationships between the four principles of moral judgment we have been examining.

          Each of the four principles suggests quite a different answer to the ques­tion ‘How should we make moral judgments?’ Yet they do not contradict each other, because each views the question from a different perspective and to­gether they constitute a 2LAR. Thus, their per­spectival relationship has the same form as all such fourfold distinctions [see note AV.10], each running parallel to Kant’s fundamental distinction between the four perspectives on knowledge (viz., ‘synthetic a priori’, ‘analytic a priori’, ‘synthetic a posteriori’ and ‘analytic a posteriori’ [see Fig. III.4]). This can be made clear by describing each of these four principles as either an ‘objective’ or a ‘subjective’ principle (i.e., as either valid independent of the indi­vidual judging person or valid only as applied individually to oneself), and as either ‘absolute’ or ‘relative’ (i.e., as giving rise to maxims that are either independent of the con­text, or de­pendent upon it).[11] So the subjective/objective and absolute/relative distinctions correspond (but are not identical) to Kant’s analytic/synthetic and a priori/a posteriori distinctions, respec­tively: both sets contain two first-level (i.e., twofold) distinctions that combine together to form a single second-level (i.e., fourfold) distinction.

          Moral judgment is a complex human activity with many facets. Its four primary facets are governed by the principles we have been considering, each of which answers the question of the nature of moral judgment from a distinct perspective. We can now summarize the fore­going discussion by describing these four perspectives on moral judgment in concise terms:

 

   1. Transcendental. ‘Do not judge’ is an objectively absolute principle establishing the very possibility of moral judgment. It is ‘absolute’ in the ‘objective’ sense that without it (and the freedom it implies) the boundaries of what can be included as ‘moral judgment’ will be drawn incorrectly. It establishes that truly moral judgment must be prescribed freely—i.e., only by individuals and only to themselves.

   2. Logical. The categorical imperative defines all such moral judgment as the placing of individuals (by themselves) under a universal law, so that all their moral maxims (not those of others) can be regarded as subjectively absolute.[12] Such maxims are categorical because they speak to our innermost being, which is abstracted (as much as any theoreti­cally logical law) from the empirical (and largely hypothetical) world of our everyday situations. Because they are absolute (and hence, abstract), (1) and (2) are necessary, but not sufficient principles to guide a person in making concrete moral judgments in actual human situations.

   3. Empirical. The golden rule provides what could be regarded (loosely, on analogy with respect for the moral law) as a schematization of the moral law: like (1), it is an objective principle; and like (2), it gives rise to real moral judgments. Yet it has a pragmatic advantage over both (1) and (2), because it is not absolute (in the sense of being abstracted from particular situations); rather it assists us more directly in making concrete moral judgments, the precise nature of which is entirely relative to the situation.

   4. Hypothetical. The principle ‘Love God and man’ unites all these in an ideal picture of the holistic moral life (i.e., the one that presses on from virtue towards holiness), in which the nature of one’s moral judgment in each situation is regarded as relative to (i.e., regulated by) the absolute task of continually learning more and more about how to enjoy pleasing God and other persons, within the limits prescribed by the moral law.[13]

 

          Picturing a 2LAR in the form of a ‘map’ [see III.1 and KSP1:III.3-4] is often a helpful way of clarifying the perspecti­val relationship between its components, because in such cases the map (if properly understood) can lay bare at a single glance the logic that governs the fourfold distinction. From the above summary of the four principles of moral judgment, the map shown in Figure AV.1 can therefore be constructed, using the subjective/objective and absolute/

 

Figure AV.1: The Four Moral Principles as a 2LAR

 

 

relative distinctions to define the first and second terms of each component.[14]

          This diagram enables us to see at a glance all the fundamental relationships (similarities and differences) between the principles arising from the four perspectives on moral judgment.[15] Thus, if we assume the above discussion has established the connection between each moral principle and the description given to it in the above diagram, then all the interrelationships between these principles can be stated as follows:

 

   1. Both (1) and (2) are absolute conditions for moral judgment (i.e., both concern the formal conditions that apply to moral rules universally), but (1) prescribes an objective principle whereas (2) prescribes a subjective principle.

   2. Both (1) and (3) are concerned with objective moral judgments, but (1) is itself an absolute rule whereas the rules derived from (3) will be relative to each situation.

   3. (1) and (4) rest on opposite defining characteristics, yet they share a similar (and complementary) function: they are both ideal principles that give rise to corresponding real principles [see note AV.14].

   4. (2) and (3) rest on opposite defining characteristics, yet they share a similar (and complementary) function: both principles enable us to tell the difference between right and wrong in the real world.

   5. Both (2) and (4) are subjective principles, in the sense that they define rules that are primarily internal to the human subject; but (2) prescribes its rules in an absolute form, whereas (4) prescribes its rules in a form that is relative to the situational context.

   6. Both (3) and (4) are principles the character of which is relative to the situational context, but the rules derived from (3) will be objective, whereas those derived from (4) will be subjective.

 

          I am not arguing that this map of the four perspectives on moral judgment exhausts all possible fundamental moral principles, nor would I claim that the foregoing discussion has succeeded in making their interrelationships entirely clear. However, I do believe I have demonstrated that these four principles are related, and that (viewed perspectivally, as answer­ing different sorts of questions about the nature of moral judgment) they can be regarded as mutually compatible without straying from a basically Kantian and Christian framework. The extent to which philosophers and theologians will be able to engage in meaningful dialogue will be largely dependent on their willingness to adopt just such shared frameworks of think­ing on various key issues.

          A possible objection to this whole line of argument is that any talk of moral ‘principles’ seems out-of-date during these days when nearly everyone thinks (or at least, acts as if) morality is nothing but a matter of personal preference. If ‘right and wrong’ is something entirely determined by each individual, then are we forced to do away with all absolutes? Perhaps not. On the contrary, my interpreta­tion of Jesus’ ‘Judge not’ reveals it to be in a sense a fundamental principle that itself establishes a kind of relativism! But the resulting relativism is not one that replaces the dogmatic absolutes of traditional religio-cultural systems of ‘Thou shalt nots’ with the opposite extreme of an unprincipled chaos of skeptical rule-lessness (i.e., ‘anything goes’). Rather, it offers a balanced, ‘Critical relativism’ that recognizes an absolute foundation for moral judgments, even though the validity of each particular judgment we make may be properly described as relative. Thus, when viewed together, as constituting a system of principles, the four perspectives on moral judgment discussed above, far from being outdated, may constitute a much-needed standpoint for criticizing and evaluating our own ethical decisions in the modern age of relativism. And this is a task that both philosophers and theologians ought to pursue with the utmost urgency.

 

  [1].  The next verse reads: ‘For in the way you judge, you will be judged; and by your standard of measure, it shall be measured to you.’ The Old Testament contains a text that is similar to Matthew 7:1. Ezekiel 7:27 reports God as saying: ‘According to their conduct I shall deal with them, and by their judgments I shall judge them.’ Quotes from biblical texts in this Appendix are taken from the New American Standard Bible (Carol Stream, Ill.: Creation House, Inc., 1960).

                  When read in conjunction with the parallel passage in Luke 6:37 (‘do not pass judgment and you will not be judged; and do not condemn, and you shall not be condemned; pardon, and you will be pardoned’), Jesus’ principle is often regarded simply as a specific warning not to condemn others. However, his statement can also be interpreted more generally as laying down an absolute principle banning all moral judgment whatsoever. Thus, for example, Schweizer suggests that Matthew 7:1-2 asks us ‘to forgo judging entirely’, because ‘we are lost as long as we live at all by the categories of weighing, measuring, and classifying’ [Sc75:168-9]. He continues [170]: ‘When we realize that we no longer have to judge, that is, assign people to higher or lower positions, then we will no longer judge ourselves—no longer be judged, and we will be able to stand confidently and fully before the judgment of God.’ (In Th70:188-199 Thomas adopts an interpretation similar to Schweizer’s, which I shall criticize below.)

                In this appendix I adopt a position midway between these two traditional interpretations by treating Jesus’ words as putting forward a moral principle that primarily requires us not to impose our own moral maxims on other people. The context clearly supports such a mod­erate interpreta­tion, since Jesus goes on to talk about paying attention to ‘the log that is in your own eye’ (i.e., your own inability to follow your own moral maxims) before presuming to ‘take the speck out of your brother’s eye’ [Matt. 7:3-5]. Schweizer notes (but glosses over the fact) that the strict interpretation of ‘Do not judge’ actually contra­dicts the implication in Matthew 7:2 that some kind of moral judgment is permissible [Sc75:168]. But he fails to mention the even clearer implica­tions in verses 3-5, which seem to require that if we have cleansed our own eye, then we ought to help our peers to cleanse theirs. Just how the ‘Do not judge’ can be consistent with the moral judgment needed to do the latter is one of the main issues to be discussed below.

  [2].  See VIII.1-3. In the Preface to Kt8 [6(5)], Kant proclaims: ‘Morality thus leads ineluctably to religion’ [s.a. 8n(7n) and 155(143)]. In Kt65:9 Kant describes his attitude to­wards Christianity quite clearly: ‘I have evidenced my great respect for Christianity in many ways ...  Its best and most lasting eulogy is its harmony, which I demonstrated in [Kt8], with the purest moral belief of religion.’ The sense in which Kant’s system of religion can be regarded as an attempt to portray Christianity as ‘the universal religion of mankind’ is examined in detail in Chapter VIII, above.

  [3].  Kant explains on several occasions that the standpoint of his System’s third divi­sion is determined by the question, ‘What may I hope?’ [see note III.5]. That his theory of religion is a crucial part of this third division, and not a mere appendage to systemp, is defended at length in VI.2-4 and throughout Part Three.

  [4].  Respect, of course, is also an important element in Kant’s moral theory. It applies not only to our attitude towards the moral law (see below), but also to our attitude towards persons. Thus, Kant’s second formulation of the categorical imperative incorporates this factor: ‘Act so that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of another, always as an end and never as a means only’ [Kt5:429].

  [5].  Kant does assume the moral law will appear to each individual in the same way, so that ethical absolutes (such as ‘Do not lie’) can be estab­lished. Establishing such guidelines is possible, he maintains, only if the negation of the maxim in question (e.g., ‘Sometimes it is right to lie’) gives rise to an irrational conception of the world. Kant’s views on the application of his moral philosophy to the determination of such ethical absolutes have given rise to considerable debate. For our present purposes, however, this debate is irrelevant, because within the confines of Kant’s practical system (as opposed to his view of its application to real situations) the moral law is strictly intended to be applied only by individuals to make moral judgments for themselves.

                In this connection it is worth noting that Jesus offers a fourth moral principle that can be taken as performing the same function in the Sermon on the Mount as Kant’s categorical imperative performs in systemp. After showing with several examples how the ‘letter’ of the Law must be intensified by attending to its true ‘spirit’, Matthew 5 concludes with Jesus’ summary of his message in the form of a principle: ‘Therefore you are to be perfect, as your heavenly Father is perfect’ [Matt. 5:48]. Most of Chapter 6 then deals with the proper relationship between external actions and internal motivations. Seen in this context, the point of Jesus’ statement is very similar to Kant’s point in arguing that duty must be done only for the sake of the moral law, not in order to fulfill one’s inclinations. Indeed, Kant would fully accept Jesus’ repeated warning to those who follow the latter way: ‘Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full’ [Matt. 6:2,5,16].

  [6].  In Kt5:430n Kant calls the negative form of the golden rule (i.e., ‘quod tibi non vis fieri, etc.’)—sometimes called the ‘silver rule’—a ‘banal’ principle that ‘cannot be a universal law’. In Ca73: 412 Carmichael cites this text (though he incorrectly claims it comes from Kt4:48) as the primary evidence for rejecting Thomas’ claim (discussed above) that ‘the Categorical Imperative and the golden rule are two sides of the same coin’ [Th70:199]. Unfortunately, by not quoting Kant’s en­tire footnote, Carmichael hides the important fact that Kant is here referring only to the negative form of the golden rule, whereas the form Thomas is interested in is the quite different positive form used by Jesus [see note AV.7]. He also fails to consider the possibility that the golden rule might have its proper place as one basic principle in a rational system of moral prin­ciples that contains the categorical imperative as a necessary precondition. Kant’s criticism of the golden rule is directed only against those who regard it as replacing the categorical impera­tive.

  [7].  Confucius’ negative form of the golden rule, ‘Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you’ [Analects 12:2], comes closer in form and function to Jesus’ ‘Do not judge’ than to the positive form of the golden rule, with its implied emphasis on self-giving. Schweizer [Sc75:174-5] points out that the negative form of the golden rule can also be found in Greek tradition as early as the fourth century B.C., but adds that Jesus seems to be the first to put it in the ‘terse and universal form’ found in Matthew 7:12, where it ‘represents the most radical of summons to love one’s neighbor.’

  [8].  Ca73:414. Carmichael’s criticism of Thomas’ interpretation (discussed in the previous section) is based on two mistaken assumptions. The first is that the ‘judge not’ of Jesus is identical to ‘the golden rule’ [412], which, as we have seen, it is not. (The fact that Kant criticizes the golden rule [see note AV.6] is therefore irrelevant to Thomas’ point.) Carmichael’s second assumption is that Jesus’ teaching ‘is a formalization of [the same kind as] ... the Categorical Imperative’ [413]. Yet Thomas never says the two positions are supposed to ‘match’ [413] or to be ‘virtually identical’ [415], as Carmichael assumes, but only that they represent compatible standpoints, the latter being the rational formalization of the former. I have suggested a sense in which these two principles do ‘match’ in AV.2.

 [9].      These doctrines, too complex to describe in detail here, are developed in the Dialectic of Kt4, where Kant sets out the fourth and final stage in systemp. (As shown in KSP1:VIII.2-3, the three chapters of the Analytic establish the first three stages.) The ‘highest good’ is Kant’s term for the ideal of a perfect correspondence between virtue and happiness.

[10].    See III.1-2. As we have seen over and over again in this volume, Kant himself was a great lover of 2LAR-type perspectival distinctions in particular. See e.g., Kt1:95,106,200,348; Kt2:303; Kt4: 66; Kt7:197; Kt6:398,413. Kant uses other types of diagrams in Kt10:103(109),108(114),126 (130). His most common use of geometrical figures, however, remains implicit: he uses metaphors such as ‘line’, ‘circle’, ‘sphere’, ‘horizon’, etc. on many occasions [see KSP1:I.3].

                An instructive example comes in Kt4:39-40, where Kant not only makes a fourfold distinction between different types of ‘material determining grounds in the principle of morality’ (which his formal ground—the categorical imperative—is intended to supersede), but also specifies the two first-level distinc­tions (viz., between ‘subjective’ and ‘objective’ and between ‘external’ and ‘internal’) that give rise to the 2LAR he has in mind. Then, as he often does, he constructs a table that ‘visually’ represents ‘all possible cases’ of material principles.

[11].    The precise meaning of ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’ is discussed in notes AV.12-13, below. This distinction could also be formulated as a distinction between the ‘formal’ and the ‘material’ principles (i.e., those defining in themselves a necessary condition for all moral judgment as opposed to those requiring the individual to supply some additional content from the situation at hand). According to Kant’s terminology in the second Critique, the former would be ‘categorical’ and the latter would be ‘hypothetical’. Kant pays little attention to the latter (material, or hypothetical) type because his search in Kt4 is for the one principle that is ‘universal’ in the sense of being (subjectively) absolute (see below). However, by distinguishing carefully between their perspectives, we can see that, as long as we do not confuse one type of fundamental principle with another, it will be possible to view both types as working together with each other and with the opposing pair to form one coherent system of moral principles.

[12].    The word ‘absolute’ here has the logical meaning: ‘Of such a kind that I can conceive of (and therefore will) that my maxims be applicable to everyone’ [cf. Kt5:424]. It does not mean I can actually judge that they are empirically applicable to everyone. (Kant sometimes seems to lean towards the latter [see note AV.5], but in his best moments I believe he plants himself firmly in the former position.)

[13].    The ‘relative’ nature of both (3) and (4) is suggested by the fact that Jesus refers to both of these principles as summing up the essential content of ‘the Law and the Prophets’ [cf. Matt. 7:12 and 22:40]. These two are ‘relative’ not in the sense that they apply only to some cultures or certain individuals, but in the sense that they directly give rise to the particular laws that are relative in this (ordinary) sense—laws such as those in the Law and the Prophets used by the Jews as practical guides to everyday living. The same distinction could be made by using the terms ‘abstract’ and ‘concrete’ in place of ‘absolute’ and ‘relative’, since in one respect all four principles are absolute (i.e., universally applicable to all human beings).

[14].    The arrows in this diagram suggest that not judging our neighbors by our own self-set standards leads to (or implies) doing to them what we would have them do to us, and that the ideal of loving God first and our neighbor as ourselves leads to (or implies) acting in such a way that we could will our maxims to be universalized. These are interesting sug­gestions, but this is not the place to argue either for or against them.

[15].    I should also point out that this diagram actually supports Thomas’ real point (though his terminology is misleading), that Jesus’ ‘Do not judge’ is experiential (horizontal), while Kant’s categorical imperative is rational (vertical). Thomas’ shortcoming was to separate these principles from each other too radically by neglecting the fact that Jesus’ principles have to do with practical reason just as much as Kant’s.

 

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