What would (Aristotle, Kant or Jeremy Bentham) Do?*

COMM 317: More on ethics.

First, this message. It's a story in The New York Times on philosophy students. According to Times staff writer Winnie Hu:

Once scoffed at as a luxury major, philosophy is being embraced at Rutgers and other universities by a new generation of college students who are drawing modern-day lessons from the age-old discipline as they try to make sense of their world, from the morality of the war in Iraq to the latest political scandal. The economic downturn has done little, if anything, to dampen this enthusiasm among students, who say that what they learn in class can translate into practical skills and careers. On many campuses, debate over modern issues like war and technology is emphasized over the study of classic ancient texts.

Hey, if it's in The Times, it's got to be true. Right? (Never mind all those little WMD stories in 2002 and 2003.) I especially liked the part about job skills.

Speaking of "classic ancient texts," I've been looking at Aristotle. Well, not Aristotle himself, but the article on Aristotle in Garth Kemerling's "Philosophy Pages." To Kemmerling, a longtime philosophy teacher with a gift for simple explanations of complicated, longwinded topics, ethics is practical -- it's about how we live life. And the key to it is moderation. Says Kemerling:

Although the analysis may be complicated or awkward in some instances, the general plan of Aristotle's ethical doctrine is clear: avoid extremes of all sorts and seek moderation in all things. Not bad advice, surely. Some version of this general approach dominated Western culture for many centuries.

Kemerling's explanation of German philosopher Immanuel Kant is the best I've seen. He quotes the only thing I've ever read of Kant's that I understood, when he said only two things inspire awe: "der bestirnte Himmel über mir und das moralische Gesetz in mir" ("the starry sky above and the moral law within"). Unfortunately, in ethics we deal with the moral law rather than the stars. But Kemerling brings it down to earth (the law, not the stars). Kant's "categorical imperative" Kemerling quotes as follows: "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law." And he explains, "That is, each individual agent regards itself as determining, by its decision to act in a certain way, that everyone (including itself) will always act according to the same general rule in the future." This may sound like just so many words, but Kemerling says:

The essence of immorality ... is to make an exception of myself by acting on maxims that I cannot willfully universalize. It is always wrong to act in one way while wishing that everyone else would act otherwise. (The perfect world for a thief would be one in which everyone else always respected private property.) Thus, the purely formal expression of the categorical imperative is shown to yield significant practical application to moral decisions.

Elsewhere, he brings it down to earth a little more: "Thus, the Kantian imperative agrees with the Christian expression of 'The Golden Rule' by demanding that we derive from our own self-interest a generalized concern for all human beings."

British thinker Jeremy Bentham's utlitarian philosophy only gets a brief dictionary entry in Kemerlin'gs Philosophy Pages. But his doctrine of acting for the greatest good of the greatest number is pretty clear. It doesn't need as much explanation.