Kant,
Buddhism and the
Moral
Metaphysics of Medicine
Antonio Palomo-Lamarca, University of Minnesota
and
Prof. Stephen Palmquist, D.Phil.
(Oxon)
Department of Religion and Philosophy
Hong Kong Baptist University
Abstract
This paper examines Kant's moral theory and compares it with certain key
aspects of oriental (especially Buddhist) moral philosophy. In both cases, we
focus on the suggestion that there may be a connection between a person's
physical health and moral state. Special attention is paid to the nature of
pain, illness, and personal happiness and to their mutual interrelationships.
A frequently ignored feature of Kant's approach to morality is his preoccupation
with health, and his attempt to interpret it in terms of the moral law. An
obvious antithesis of the health-moral imperative would be an
illness-pathological imperative; we will regard both as forms imposed on our
experience by the human mind. We demonstrate that the Kantian path to
understanding the "moral metaphysics of medicine" can be supported by
Tibetan medicine and Buddhist ethics.
What Buddhism understands as moral law, or "Sila",
corresponds directly to Kant's theory. In both cases, health is the supreme
judge that demonstrates whether or not our moral state is justifiable. Our
principal intention is to show that, through the power of mind, a
person’s moral state can--and in fact does--influence the body, having as
its expression either health or illness. By considering the relevance of the
Kantian interpretation of morality to medicine, we regard proper attention to
the former as the surest path to the goal of maintaining personal health.
"Every man his own doctor, every man his own lawyer,
every man his own priest--that
was the ideal of Kant."[1]
I. Kant and the Problem of Health
Can there be a Kantian philosophy of health? At first sight an insurmountable
obstacle would seem to prevent even the most sympathetic interpreter from
developing such a theory. The problem is that physical health, as a species of
what we might call "personal well-being", is usually assumed to be
closely correlated to a person’s happiness. And for Kant happiness, as is
well known, stems from a person’s inclinations, which are heteronomous in nature and so should not be taken into
consideration when determining the moral status of any given action. For Kant,
right and wrong must be determined purely on the basis of the moral law,
without taking matters of personal happiness (and by extension, one’s own
physical health) into consideration. By giving practical (goodness-producing)
reason primacy over theoretical (happiness-producing) reason, Kant appears to
be sidelining issues of health and happiness, if not banishing them from
philosophy altogether. In this paper we shall attempt to resolve this problem,
by demonstrating that both happiness and health have a crucial role to play in
Kant’s moral philosophy.
The first step is to question the common assumption that happiness is nothing
but a relative feeling. This view is supported by a huge amount of
anthropological research showing that what one culture condones as acceptable
behavior, behavior worthy of producing happiness, another
culture decries as blameworthy. For example, most western cultures tend to
associate felicity with gaining money and power, whereas many traditional
eastern cultures, such as the Tibetans, tie it more closely to poverty and
humility. Nevertheless, for Kant, as for Buddha, there must be at least an
element of happiness that is universal, because happiness is eventually brought
back into his moral system as an equal constituent, with virtue, of the highest
good. That is, even though Kant excludes happiness (in the sense of
inclinations) from the issue of how to make a moral decision, he fully
recognizes its importance when dealing with the issue of what it means to live
a "good life". And as we shall see, this can be extended to the issue
of health as well. Indeed, we shall use Kant himself as our primary example of
someone who sought to maintain personal health and well-being by living a
"good life"--i.e., by fulfilling the moral law.
A question that has vexed readers from Kant’s day until now has been:
What is this "moral law"? The standard answers have been so
complex and uninspiring that newcomers often find it difficult if not
impossible to grasp the hard meaning of such a law. The perspective adopted in
this article will be that Kantian ethics is related more to our own
self-understanding than to our environment. The moral law is a law I make for
myself and apply to myself. As it happens, this is also the first step in the
teaching of Buddhist morality. The first being I hurt with my unhealthy
behavior is not the other(s) to whom my action is directed, but my own self. The
morality of my behavior is related to the "other" only at a secondary
level. The priority of this "toward-myself"
is what has all too often been misunderstood by interpreters of Kant. Indeed,
we are not aware of any significant previous research on a Kantian approach to
health and illness, even though this is a pivotal concern for Kant’s own
understanding of philosophical practice.
To Kant, morality is the key to genuine happiness. That is, if we seek
happiness through the immediate fulfilling of our inclinations, then we are
bound to lose the very thing we seek. This is the sure path to an unhealthy life.
It may be obvious that for Kant genuine happiness does not refer merely to
satisfying one’s own desires; but what may not be so obvious is that it
is also not obtained merely by obeying the moral law just for the sake of being
legally "good". The deepest and somewhat esoteric sense in which
Kant’s moral law is bound up with human happiness is directly related to
the issue of health. Never, before Kant, had a western philosopher
connected health and illness so closely to ethical issues.
The proof of this bold claim begins with the observation that Kant explains the
possibility of happiness in terms of the possibility of the
senses. As biological beings, we are inextricably bound to our bodies and to
the feelings they generate. We act and indeed we even think much of the time on
the basis of what we feel. On the perspectival
interpretation of Kant, this is expressed by saying that the third Critique,
the Critique of Judgment as it arises out of the faculty of pleasure and
displeasure (i.e., the feelings), is the standpoint of critique
itself.[2]
Moreover, in the first Critique thought is a slave of senses, in the
sense that concepts arise out of synthesized intuitions, and senses are slaves
of experience, since "intellectual intuition" is not possible.[3] Yet Kant
says that in another sense, will has primacy over thinking; and will can
therefore impede our thinking from reaching accurate conclusions.To
prevent this from happening, thought must first of all be subjected to
critique, and from this perspective, thought is regarded as pure reason.
To take pure reason in this way is to regard it as a "tool" that
helps us control and regulate our will. This will must
take the form of a pure will in order for us to fulfill the moral law. Pure
reason as a "tool" is reason in its criticized and purified form. The
next step, therefore, is to use it for a moral purpose. This can be a practical
means to an end, for practical reason in essence is the pure will. Thus,
in Kant’s System pure reason transforms itself into a practical end, and
this "practicality" becomes a reality when it is manifested as pure
will. Pure reason, then, has to reflect upon itself and its relationship with
the external world. I gain insight into this external world only through
my will, which obviously is not yet pure in this application. It becomes pure
only as I begin to grasp the ultimate essence of reality through reflection on
my moral nature. The irony is that, although Kant refers to such an application
of pure reason as "practical", reason without such a practical
grounding in morality would give rise to a dull and unrealistic system. Indeed,
the only proper application for pure reason is practical.
II. Health and Meditation:
Theology and Revelation in Perspective
If morality is guided by practical reason, then it must tend toward an end; but
this paper’s thesis is that Kant’s theory of happiness is not
merely teleological in its orientation, but theological.[4]
Moreover, as we shall see, Buddha does the same with his philosophical system:
he encourages us to see our world and its environment as a sacred end, this
sacredness being what makes it a theological path. (To Buddha there is
nothing more sacred than a simple life, whatever its forms or spiritual level.)
The theological orientation of Kant’s moral theory is particularly
evident in its stress on love and respect for other beings.[5] This is
theological because it points us to the sacred: the "sacrament" here being the moral law, which is found inside each person.
The next step is to try to answer the question: is this moral law found inside
of me due to revelation, or due to meditation? Our contention,
like Kant’s, is that it can be reached in both ways. Likewise, one of the
main milestones on the Buddhist path is to reach the supreme truth through a
method called "analytical meditation", which is a point reached
through the use of a pure reason, not requiring a special revelation.
Our claim is that revelation can only be understood once reason has been
purified, and this can only be done when one has understood the proper role of
the senses, through transcendental Critique. At first sight, it may seem that
Kant focused more on the moral law than on God. In his moral theory as such,
that is of course true. But, this is not the point. The crux of our argument is
that in Kantian ethics the sacredness of life is the respect for other
beings. And this naturally directs us--as well as Kant himself--down a
theological path.
The "home" toward which this path leads us is nothing other than
happiness! Here "happiness" refers not to the first type of happiness
discussed in Kant’s moral theory, the fulfilment
of one’s own inclinations, but rather to the second type, happiness that
must follow upon virtue in order for the highest good to be achieved. In
other words, the Kantian goal is reached not by seeking after one’s own
wellness, but by attending first to the wellness of others. Oddly, this result
(i.e., happiness) still boils down to a bunch of feelings and sensations, which
come from the physiological masterpiece of the brain and sense organs. Sensations
and feelings conducted through neural vibrations give to human (and all animal)
beings the possibility of neurobiological life. (We could perhaps refer to this
more accurately as "neurochemical", since
those vibrations can be regarded as a manifestation of "pure"
chemistry.) This makes human beings dependent, to some extent, on their
emotions and physiology. Feelings or emotions are, from one perspective, an
ensemble of bio-molecules interacting with our nervous system.
Emphasizing the bio-chemical roots of all happiness and sadness need not be
problematic from a Kantian standpoint. As Wike
states: "Kant explains that human beings desire happiness because their
nature is such that they are dependent on circumstances of sensibility."[6] Kant
would therefore welcome this way of understanding such biological feelings, for
it goes hand in hand with his idiosyncratic approach to overcoming certain
negative emotions and health problems. But this raises a more philosophical
question: Does the bio-chemical root of our emotions leave any room for spirit
(Geist)? The answer, if Kant is to be our
guide, must be: yes. But how is this possible?
The answer can be found by recalling that, although human beings are undeniably
dependent on "physical happiness", as manifested in our biological
needs, this dependency is directed by what Kant calls our
"inclinations". For "when these inclinations
are satisfied, when the person has a pleasant life, the person is happy".[7] This is
the philosophical basis for the point mentioned at the outset, regarding the
relativistic nature of happiness. For without yet entering
into the realm of moral law, we can regard this as a relative feeling
(see note 6). Happiness as fulfilment of
inclinations is obviously relative from culture to culture, or even
from person to person.Nevertheless,
happiness as an outcome of virtue is universal in its character,
provided it appears as an end and a "product" of our moral law, as
Buddha and Kant both understood it. This distinction holds the key to
understanding when a person is most susceptible to illness. The initial
susceptibility comes from our mind, since we are spiritual beings endowed with
flesh. That is, when our mind becomes susceptible to the inclinations, it acts
upon the body and its organs, giving rise to a potentially unhealthy physical
state. But when our mind gives first priority to virtue, it predisposes the
body toward health.
As mentioned above, Buddhism already has a well-formed theory of the
psychosomatic relationship between the mind and body. When this relationship is
pure, it is called awareness, but when it is pathological (which
it is for most people most of the time), it becomes a deceiver of our
analytical meditation. By meditating on my body, however, I can gain control
over it through increased awareness. This has a striking similarity to the
purpose of controlling the morbid feelings that Kant talks about in The
Conflict of the Faculties, especially in his example concerning the problem
he experienced with his chest:
I myself
have a natural disposition to hypochondria because of my flat and narrow chest,
which leaves little room for the movement of the heart and lungs; and in my
earlier years this disposition made me almost weary of life. But by reflecting
that, if the cause of this oppression of the heart was purely mechanical,
nothing could be done about it, I soon came to pay no attention to it. The
result was that, while I felt the oppression in my chest, a calm and cheerful
state prevailed in my mind, which did not fail to communicate itself to
society, not by intermittent whims (as is usual with hypochondriacs), but
purposely and naturally. And since our joie de vivre depends more on
what we freely do with life [i.e., on morality and pure will] than on
what we enjoy as a gift from it [i.e., on fulfilment
of inclinations], mental work can set together another kind of heightened vital
feeling against the limitations that affect the body alone. The oppression has
remained with me, for its cause lies in my physical constitution. But I have
mastered its influence on my thoughts and actions by diverting my attention
from this feeling, as if it had nothing to do with me."[8]
This variability of the concept of happiness is actually correlated to
bio-chemical differences. For one person can be happy with just a simple,
humble life, whereas others would be forever dissatisfied with such a state.
Likewise, one person can be happy while being tortured in prison, while others
in the same circumstances would suffer miserably. Moreover, many rich people
are not happy; this may be because they suppose happiness consists
solely in "power". They would then feel empty and vain as a result of
lacking power. We human beings, though supposing ourselves to be guided by
"reason", seem to have a resistance to facing pain. Thus, even though
our sensations are culturally relative, there seems to be a built-in potential
in all of us to overcome such relative conditions of happiness through an
awareness of our moral nature.
In short, Kant regards happiness as a basic goal of human beings, with its
deepest expression being bound up with the moral law. The relationship between
morality and health is precisely that both are pillars of felicity. A person
with a high level of concern for fulfilling the moral law is likely to be not
only happy, but also healthy. To fulfill the moral law is to make oneself
predisposed against illness. This is not so easy, because the moral law is an a
priori law; consequently, it transcends the ordinary empirical world. Kant
believed in two worlds: the physical world, or ectypal world as he called
it, and the ideal or archetypical world.[9]The
latter is the home of everything a priori, including the moral law
itself. Indeed, the archetypical world, as Kant remarks, is where the answers
to every genuine philosophical problem are to be sought, where people can
analyze the limits of reason and expose its illusory application. Thus, Kant
reaches the conclusion that the physical world can be apprehended only through
time and space--time, as well as space, because mental projections must be dissected
or analyzed in order for us to grasp the significance of the human mind.
Now the question is, if the moral law belongs to the "a priori
system", and so to the archetypical world, how can it be practical? Or, to
express the same question from the opposite perspective: how can we apply praxis
to the ideal world? In answering this question, we shall turn to a more
detailed look at Buddhism.
III. Buddhism and the Practice of
the Moral Law
In Buddhism the problem of happiness is quite simple: every living being wants
to be happy and to avoid suffering, and our happiness is what determines our
lives. But, this happiness has to be sought very sincerely in order for our
goals to be satisfactory--especially our moral goals. These moral goals
are essentially for the benefit of other sentient beings. Buddhists are always
careful not to hurt either the feelings or bodies of other beings. This constitutes
a person’s moral path. Along these lines, a Buddha once remarked
that we have to be ruthlessly honest with ourselves and to question our own goalsand motives. A proper motive, in the Buddhist sense,
must be humble, not selfish: our motives should work for the sake of other
beings. Living in this way need not require an appeal to revealed truths as its
basis. Thus the Dalai Lama asks
whether it is possible to formulate an ethical system
without having to make any appeal to religious principles. Without accepting
God or any mysterious forces, without accepting previous lives or karma, simply
on the basis of the present life, is it possible to make some demarcation
between virtue and non virtue, or to distinguish right from wrong?[10]
The Buddhist can answer this
question in terms of "felicity", provided this refers to a form of
happiness based on virtue. For Buddha, as well as for Kant, religion and
happiness must be intimately connected with a moral disposition as their
universal basis. To be happy in this sense has little if anything to do with
acquiring more and more material things, but involves constructing our inner
"building" with the simple "bricks" of moral actions.
In Buddhism all we do or say, as well as all we think, should be considered
from a practical standpoint. Thought itself has a practicaldimension,
and the possibility of practice is what makes us moral beings. Whatever
we think should be applicable to our daily life. If what we think is good or
bad, its applicability will also be good or bad, respectively. Everything
depends on our actions and on the appropriateness of our thought to
potential actions. For the Buddhist, therefore, as for the Kantian, reason is
fundamentally practical and human beings are fundamentally moral
beings with moral actions. These actions have repercussions for our
stream of actions (i.e., our karma), and can have a positive or a
negative influence on it. In this way, our karma influences our health. As Yeshi Donden points out,
illnesses such as cancer originate in part because of an accumulation of bad
karma. For example, he concludes his description of types of cancer by
referring to "cancers that have their origin in a negative action
committed in a previous lifetime," adding that "this final type of
cancer cannot be cured by any physician."[11]
That this can apply even to a normal illness with a well accepted physical
cause can be shown by the following illustration. If we have a feeling of
hatred for somebody, that feeling can cause us to quarrel with that person, and
the quarrel can in turn affect us either economically or physically. In the
first case, if the person is an important person with respect to our future,
she or he could (for example) fire us or keep us away from a good project. In
the second case, the quarrel could affect our mental state, and through it, our
physical health. Yet--and this is the more important part--in Buddhism the
first case is more substantial: one must not be nice with others just
for the sake of keeping a job, or for keeping a friendship that benefits
oneself, but just for the sake of the moral law! This is called sila, that is, a performance of virtuous actions
that will affect our spirit and future actions, as well as our life.
This example plainly shows how Kantian ethics is very close, if not the same,
as Buddhist ethics. If we are not happy, it is due to our unwholesome actions,
and this is because of our ignorance, our hatred, our greed, etc. But the
solution to this problem is to cultivate morality, and this morality is
proportional to our searching for wisdom. To be deeply moral is to be a sage.
Wisdom and morality are ultimately united. The Buddhist-ethical practice is
called Dharma, which refers to the path of the disciples of Buddha. If we are
honest with ourselves and follow the Dharma, then we will be happy, and we will
live in a constant state of wellness.
In Buddhism the moral law is so thoroughly practical that there is no room left
for purely theoretical thought. It is nonsense to think about things that
cannot be practical or useful for our karma. Nevertheless, we must clarify that
people should not do certain actions just for the sake of securing a good
future, but should do them only out of an awareness that any virtuous person
must act in that way, to wit, for the sake of the moral law: indeed, our
actions must be a means and an end at the same time. This "for the sake of
the moral law" is not merely a legalistic "obligation" that has
nothing whatsoever to do with one’s appetites. The Buddhist acts out of
an awareness of how his or her karma is being affected by the action(s) in
question. This is called mindfulnesswhen
directed to thought and actions and awareness
when directed to the physical state of a person’s own body.
The concept of mindfulness is implicit in Kant as well. Kant talks about
obligations as benefiting others, in the sense of doing to others what we would
like to be done to us.[12] This is
not an external form of legalistic obligation, but an internal form of
mindfulness. To act in this way, one must overcome emotions, which is to a
large extent why Kant is sometimes portrayed as a "cold" person
promoting a "rigid", "formalistic" approach to morality.
Yet a proper appreciation of Kantian obligation as a form of mindfulness
reveals that Kant is not the "Mr. Scrooge" of philosophy after all![13] This is
rather a label that a certain brand of outmoded interpreters have projected
onto him--similar to the belief some interpreters of Nietzsche once put
forward, that portrayed him as a Nazi philosopher, just because some Nazis used
him in their service.Such interpretations reveal
little more than how difficult it can be to grasp those philosophers’
true intentions.
IV. Toward
a Kantian‑Buddhist Theory of the Emotions.
Having asserted the close connection between Kantian happiness and the moral
law, and having emphasized the internal focus of the latter by
connecting it with the Buddhist concept of mindfulness, let us now proceed to
examine Kant’s concept of emotion. For Kant, emotion is an affection, that is, a physiological stream in our souls.
As in Buddhism, Kant regards the emotions as potential hindrances to following
the moral law. In the Buddhist path, the hindering function of the certain
emotions is explained by regarding them as attachments to worldly (i.e.
"apparent") things. Bad emotions should be overcome, while good ones
should be used to benefit others. This "should be used" must be
regarded not as a means, but as an end. The first kind of emotions can hurt us
and give rise to an imbalance in our health, while the second can improve our
well-being and strengthen our resolve to fulfill the moral law: "These
afflictive emotions impel actions (karma) that establish potencies in the mind,
ripening later as specific diseases."[14]
Kant scrutinizes emotions with the exactitude of a Buddhist initiate: he tries
to avoid those emotions that could impede the moral life. This moral life must
be based on the maxim "do to others what you
desire to be done to yourself." This is a far cry from selfishness, but
encourages a humanistic and philanthropic position instead. Thus to Kant, one
of the main purposes of morality is to work toward the happiness of others as
ends-in-themselves; that is to say, humanity is never to be regarded merely as
a means, but always as an end. This is the same kind of statement we might
expect a Buddhist to make. In the Buddhist theory of morality, human beings as
well as animals and plants, are treated as ends-in-themselves; they are not means
through which I reach my desires. Desires are said to be rooted in human
ignorance and attachment to non-eternal things, and to interrupt our moral
goals and impede our quest for ultimate knowledge. With suitable qualifications
regarding the inevitable limitations of such a quest, this is essentially the
same as the Kantian doctrine. Perhaps Kant’s interest in the study of
chemistry and medicine was motivated by the hope of finding an explanation for
the emotions and their relationship to illness through morality. Along these
lines, Stuckenberg says Kant "studiously
investigated the means of preserving health and diligently practised
the art of prolonging life."[15]
Furthermore, "Kant made frequent experiments with his body, and in the
course of time gained such control over it as to make it the obedient
instrument of his mind"[16] As we
have seen in sections I and II, such control over the body by the mind is only
possible using the will, and in particular, the pure will. Indeed, Kant
uses his pure will in order to gain control not only of the functions of his
body in general, but also of the affections and emotions in particular:
"His [Kant’s] power of abstraction was of great service to him in
mastering his sickly feelings."[17]
Emotions, in a certain sense, are a negative force drawing us away from the
moral law. Here it may seem dangerous to think about emotions as a positive stream
of feelings, such a love. But this would be misplaced caution. The way Kant
understands emotions is first of all in their negative and corrosive sense.
Negative emotions such a hatred are considered in
Buddhism to be the greatest hindrance to mindfulness that the beginner must
overcome. This concern is looked at thoughtfully as essential in the path of
the warrior--especially the warrior of the moral law, the boddhisatva.[18] Those
negative passions are the bad spirits or monsters that the boddhisatva
has to fight with the power of his/her pure will under the tool of the mind.
The path is dangerous and painful to follow, but its fruit will be great and
very tasteful. For it must be necessary to pursue rules that can help us
prevail over the monsters of reason. Thus, as we have seen, Kant
"applied his moral rules to himself, both for the formation of his
character and for the government of his life ... thought was to him the essence
of life ... when the theory was found, its practical application was for Kant a
matter of course."[19]
Consequently, as in Buddhism so also for Kant, everything must point toward a practical
purpose in order to be meaningful: an exclusively theoretical use is per se, a
non-use. In Buddhism praxis is the core of the teachings. Anything found in the
path of enlightenment should be practical, since Buddha himself was a
thoroughly practical person. Buddha said we need to take things not because he
says so, but because we experience them in our life, and therefore they
have a practical and meaningful sense for us.
The
Buddha further classified questions into meaningful and meaningless and stated
the principle of verification as the criterion of meaning. If a person says
that "I am building a staircase to climb up to a mansion" but fails
to show where the mansion is, or if he cannot show how the existence of the
mansion can be verified through experience, then his statement becomes
meaningless. Thus the Buddha’s epistemological approach was empirical and
anti-metaphysical.[20]
Much the same could be said for the core of Kant’s moral philosophy.
Moreover, the path against those negative emotions must be taken just as a tool
in our travel across the land of morality. The end is to arrive at a peak
called Nirvana, but meanwhile we will stop on lower peaks that are going to
announce to us the existence of that higher realm of existence. Those little
stops are what Zen Buddhism considers as satori,
a flash of insight in our mind that tells us we are on the right path, the path
of the boddhisatva. Satori
will tell us its secrets without telling us anything; satori
shouts in the mystery of silence with the voice of stillness. When we hear this
voice, we will experience the self-awareness Kant describes when he says:
I have
purified my soul from all prejudices; I have destroyed every
blind devotion which ever crept into my mind for the purpose of creating
in me much imaginary knowledge. Now I esteem nothing as of consequence or
worthy of respect except what honestly takes its place in a mind which is calm
and accessible to all evidences, whether confirmative or destructive of my
former opinions. Wherever I find anything that instructs me, I accept it. The
verdict of the man who refutes my arguments is my verdict after I have weighed
it against self-love and my reasons, and then have found its evidence the
stronger. Formerly, I viewed the common human understanding only from the
standpoint of my own; now I put myself in the place of a reason foreign to me
and outside of me, and view my opinions, together with their most secret
occasions, from the standpoint of others.[21]
FOOTNOTES
[1]William
Wallace, Kant (Edinburgh: William Blackwood and Sons, 1901), p.47.
[2]This point
is defended in Stephen Palmquist, Kant’s
System of Perspectives: An architectonic interpretation of the Critical
philosophy (Lanham: University Press of America, 1993), pp.355-6.
[3]See e.g.,
Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Norman Kemp Smith (London:
Macmillan, 1929), pp.268-72 (=B307-11). This point is discussed in detail in
Stephen Palmquist, Kant’s Critical Religion:
Volume Two of Kant’s System of Perspectives (Aldershot,
England: Ashgate, 2000), section V.1 (pp.86-90).
[4] That a
theological orientation pervades Kant’s entire System is argued at great
length in ibid.; see especially Chapter I
(pp.2-16).
[5]See e.g.,
Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, p.399; Critique
of Practical Reason, p.82-6; and Metaphysics of Morals, p.450-2. The
issue is also discussed in detail, comparing Kant’s treatment with the
traditional conception of Christian love, in Palmquist’s
Kant’s Critical Religion (op.cit.),
section IX.2.B (pp.258-67).
[6]Victoria
S. Wike: Kant on Happiness in Ethics (New
York: State University of New York Press, 1994), pp.2-3. This “physical
happiness” is what makes human beings earthly dependent. But this
dependency is directed by our own inclinations and emotions; emotions and
felicity are therefore a relative feeling and tend to be unbalanced.
[7]Wike, p.5.
[8]Kant, The
Conflict of the Faculties, tr. Mary J. Gregor
(New York: Abaris Books, 1979), p.189. Admittedly,
this passage could be interpreted to mean that Kant simply ignored the pain.
But we maintain that it implies more than this: Kant was able to treat
the paid “as if it had nothing to do with me” only because he had
first overcome it through his willful awareness.
[9]Kant uses
the term “ectypal” only once in Critique of Pure Reason (at
B375), in connection his reflections on Plato’s method of philosophizing.
But he reintroduces the term at one point in the second Critique. See Critique
of Practical Reason, tr. Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1956), p.44 (p.43 in German
pagination). Our use here corresponds more to the latter than to the former.
[10]XIV Dalai
Lama in, Healing Emotions: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on Mindfulness,
Emotions, and Health, ed. D. Goleman (Boston: Shambala Publications, 1997), p.17.
[11]Yeshi Donden: Health Through Balance (Ithaca: Snow Lion Publications, 1986),
p.19.
[12]For a
thoroughgoing comparison between the Golden Rule and Kant’s principle of
the Categorical Imperative, see Stephen Palmquist,
“Four Perspectives on Moral Judgement: The
Rational Principles of Jesus and Kant”, The Heythrop
Journal 32:2 (April 1991), pp.216-232. A revised version of this paper is
also included in Appendix V of Kant’s Critical Religion (op.cit.,
pp.441-52).
[13]This more
sympathetic approach to interpreting Kantian ethics has been supported by an increasing
number of interpreters in recent years. For one of the earliest and best
examples, see Lo Ping-cheung, “A Critical
Reevaluation of the Alleged ‘Empty Formalism’ of Kantian
Ethics”, Ethics 91 (January 1981), pp.181-210. See also, Palmquist’s Kant’s System of Perspectives,
pp.273-5.
[14]Health Through Balance (op.cit.),
p.16.
[15]J.H.W. Stuckenberg: The Life of Immanuel Kant (Lanham, MD: University
Press of America, 1986), p.100.
[16]Ibid., p.102.
[17]Ibid., p.107.
[18]A boddhisatva is a person who is fully aware of what
must be done in order to attain illumination and struggles to live in
accordance with the requirements of the ethical life (in the Buddhist sense).
[19]Ibid., p.107.
[20]Gunapala Dharmasiri: Fundamentals
of Buddhist Ethics (Antioch, Ca.: Golden Leaves
Pub. Co., 1989), p.4.
[21]The Life of Immanuel Kant (op.cit.),
p.114, quoting Kant. One of the authors of this paper, Stephen Palmquist, would like to thank the Research Grants Council
in Hong Kong for their generous support of his research on issues relating to
Kant's philosophy of science.
This
etext is based on a prepublication draft of the
published version of this essay.
Send
comments to: StevePq@hkbu.edu.hk
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