January 17, 2005

• Step Ten of Twelve

  “10.  We continued to take personal inventory, and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.”

  While I was watering my plants Sunday night, I was doing a tenth
  step.  I don’t ordinarily set aside a particular time for step
  work, I just do it when the spirit moves me.  The tenth step is
  one I do almost constantly, examining my behavior and motives.

  I had posted my previous blog, then talked to Greyfox about it after
  his gun show was finished.  After that, I did the law search he
  suggested and posted my update.  As I watered the plants, I
  thought over what I had written.  I realized I’d done a couple of
  things wrong.

  First, I said I hate all lies.  That’s not true.  I knew at
  the time it wasn’t true, but just as sometimes in fear or frustration I
  forget I’m enlightened, that time in my indignation I forgot how I
  really feel about Immanuel Kant’s Categorical Imperative.  I’ve no
  excuse for forgetting, either.  Greyfox reminded me of it recently.

  He had read me (on the phone) a quotation he thought I’d appreciate:

  “Truthfulness in
  statements. . .is a human being’s duty to everyone, however great the
  disadvantage to him or another human being that may result from
  it.”–Immanuel Kant, “On a Supposed Right to Lie from Altruistic
  Motives”

  I liked it.  I’m somewhat of a fanatic about telling the
  truth.  I even disapprove of parents scaring their kids into being
  “good” with the Santa myth.  I asked Greyfox to post the quote so
  I could copy it into my favorites list.  He didn’t get that done
  right away, so I went to Google to look for it for myself. 
  Finding it wasn’t easy.  Kant wrote in German, I think.  No
  matter what the language of the original, that word one translator
  rendered as “altruistic” has also come out as “humanitarian” and
  “benevolent” in English. 

  If I’d found the quote quickly, I’d have copied it and posted it in
  ignorance.  As it was, before I found the quotation I found its
  larger context and decided the quote wasn’t one of my favorites after
  all.

  It started with Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals,
  in which he described his theory of the Categorical Imperative: 
  “Act only according to that maxim by which you can at the same time
  will that it
  should become a universal law.”

  One of the first major challenges to Kant’s reasoning came from the Swiss
  philosopher Benjamin Constant who asserted that since truth
  telling must be universal according to Kant’s theories, one must (if asked) tell a known murderer the location of his prey.

  This challenge occurred while Kant was still alive and his response was the now infamous essay On a Supposed Right to Tell
  Lies from Benevolent Motives. In this reply Kant argued that it is indeed one’s moral duty to be truthful to a murderer, a
  statement which seems to contradict Kant’s earlier assertions that his moral theory is the one that people practice
  subconsciously anyway. The scholar Paton, usually a great Kant fan, has called this letter a temporary aberration, and the
  petulant reply of a 73 year old man.

  (from wikipedia.org)

  Those few words that Greyfox quoted me from the essay sounded good,
  but the more I read of the essay the less I liked the idea, and the
  more I recalled of my original response to Kant’s Imperative when I
  read it as a teenager.  I
  don’t suppose I’d reveal the location of an intended victim to someone
  intent on killing him, even if by lying I incurred legal liability for
  his death in the event that the guy had meanwhile left where I thought
  (and refused to tell the killer) he was and had gone somewhere that the
  killer would run into him.  I’d keep my mouth shut or perform some
  form of prior restraint on the potential killer.

  It’s a far-fetched scenario and largely irrelevant anyway to my own
  personal view of the categorical imperative.  I have often said
  that I won’t lie to my kid, my friends, my readers or myself about
  anything, but I would readily lie under oath in court to keep someone I
  don’t consider a menace to society out of jail — for example, for any
  of a host of “victimless” crimes such as possession of marijuana. 
  How I feel about jail is, I suppose, stronger than how I feel about
  lying.

  I hereby retract my earlier statement that liars are the lowest form
  of life.  I think that title goes to some unicellular organism or
  maybe a mycoplasm.  I was definitely using hyperbole there. 
  My bad.

  My other bad move was in forgetting in the heat of the moment that
  I’m enlightened, that it is equally unevolved spiritually to take
  offense as to give it.  I choose to forgive the liar for the lies.

  I feel ever so much better now. I just hope I can call off the Old Fart before he wreaks havoc.
  

  • 5:23 am
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