Real child abuse

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 146078

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "horridporrid03" 
<horridporrid03 at y...> wrote:

> Betsy Hp:
> I'm really uncomfortable with that sort of philosophy.  Rather than 
> using rules fairly applied to everybody, some rules are made for 
> one sort of person and other rules are made for another sort.  So, 
> Draco deserves to be physically tortured because of who he is.  But 
> Neville should never be challanged because of who he is.  Hagrid is 
> allowed to physically endanger his students.  Snape is not allowed 
> to emotionally endanger his.

Someone posted something not long ago in response to this statement 
or one like it bringing up Kant, but I think they typoed/got it off 
incomplete, so the search doesn't find it.  (Chocolate to anyone who 
finds it for me, because I like to cite things?)  Yeesh, go on 
vacation mostly netless for a week, and see what happens.

But it got me thinking.  What Betsy proposes here is very Kantian: 
rules are rules and they apply perfectly equally to everyone.  
There's profound reason behind Kant's argument for principles pretty 
much like this, and it's an attractive thing to think about in many 
ways.

But getting to what Lupinlore posted about JKR and individuality 
(145707), I have to bring up *the* major hole in Kant: social 
relations.  Kant doesn't talk about government.  He doesn't talk 
about civil society, and he doesn't deal with things like trust 
issues and relationships.  And this, as I see it, is much of what JKR 
is really interested in.

[The famous reductio in Kant is that he argues in complete sincerity 
that it's immoral to lie about your friend's location to someone who 
has come to kill them, because lying is utterly contraindicated by 
the categorial imperative.]

And her morality really *is* quite situational and considers 
character as a fundamental issue.  I'd say yes, some things are okay 
when done by some people and not by others, thanks to the context.  
Correct motivation matters a great deal, for one thing (and we can 
use Kant there, for sure).  Methods, too.

However, what sets this apart from the DEs is that a different set of 
criteria is used, based on people's character and actions rather than 
any abstract blood quality.  You may find that a distinction without 
a difference, but it's the one I see running through the books.  
[Maybe what's hard rather than easy is to recognize that the same 
actions mean different things and have different values in different 
hands? :)]

-Nora goes to do some more brushing up on virtue ethics, which seems 
to be the best fit (if any) for JKR