Kant and Snape and Ethics and Everything

[Sydney]

No: HPFGUIDX 150210

Nora:

> Your bitter and duty-bound Snape is very much the approach to duty 
> which Kant is talking about as being inadequate, though.  He starts 
> things off "For it is not sufficient to that which should be morally 
> good that it conform to the law; it must be done for the sake of the 
> law."

Well, exactly.  I don't understand how this conflicts with my view of
duty-bound Snape.  He's doing what he's doing for the sake of moral
law, and not for any other reason.  By it 'not being sufficient that
it conform to law', Kant was referring to someone who had ulterior
motives for his good deed, not to the person doing it solely out of
duty.  

> 
> Then, when talking about duty, he says "duty does not rest at all on 
> feelings, impulses, and inclinations; it rests merely on the relation 
> of rational beings to one another..."  This leads directly into the 
> discussion about dignity--the intrinsic worth of the human being, 
> which the person acting according to the Categorical Imperative 
> cannot violate (no, really, it's impossible if you're genuinely 
> acting according to the CI and your will is thus never in conflict 
> with itself).
> 
> The idea of respect for dignity has a great deal of force in Kant's 
> moral system; there's something incredibly high and beautiful about 
> it.  It's what holds us together as a community of rational beings, 
> when we have respect for those things which must apply to all of us 
> and thus connect all of us.

I totally agree that it's beautiful and high; that's why I like it so
very much myself.  And I think we're having the same difficulty as we
always run into with Snape.  You can't get past his manner;  I see
someone struggling to do the right thing.  The idea of the struggle
was very important to Kant.  

I think Snape is trying to conform to the categorical imperative, in a
human as opposed to a perfect way, in that he doesn't treat anyone in
a way that his reason tells him is incompatible with it.  This is the
difficulty with Kant.  Just exactly what IS a CI is hardly universally
agreed on by everyone, and it runs you into oddities like helping
murdrers find their victims.  To the very beautiful idea of the
rational communtiy: I see Snape as treating his students as ends, and
respecting at least their potential ablities to keep up with the
difficulties of his class; that he's mean to them you can argue is bad
technique, but I don't think it clashes with his recognizing his
students importance anywhere near as much as you think it does.  If
Snape didn't think Neville was important, he wouldn't care if his
potions worked or not.
 
> > Suffice to say, I think in Snape's mind, he is putting considerable 
> > effort into fullfilling his duty as a teacher, against his natural 
> > inclinations.  Your view of what the duties of a teacher are 
> > obviously aren't the same as his. 
> 
> Well, unless Snape were to by his will make his treatment of his 
> students into a universal law and see perfectly rationally that it 
> would hold valid, he's failing the CI in that case.  (And it does 
> fail that test because of how it treats other people, such as the 
> favoritism.  It's irrational to will favoritism into being a 
> universal law--I trust the contradiction is obvious.)

As Pippin said, Snape is hampered by his very human brain.  I'm not
positing Snape as a Kantian saint, if such a thing were even possible.
 I'm saying there's a reason Kant is often brought up in relation to
this character, because it's all about how someone can be a not
kind-hearted person but do good things at the same time.  That is, to
me, the beauty of Kant-- that our obligations to each other as human
beings is something nobler and higher than animal affections, and that
it's demanded of us even if it goes against our feelings, and that
even if we possess damaged souls our will and reason can allow us to
aspire to something better.  


> I think you are really, really shortchanging the beauty and 
> complexity of Kant's concept of duty and everything which goes into 
> generating it.  

Well, obviously I don't think I am.  I think you are.  But there you
go.  Typical HP for Grownups discussion!


> -Nora herself thinks that Rowling tends to be a virtue ethicist, and 
> that's part of why she's *totally OK* with what comes across to 
> listies as unfair double standards

--Sydney, who thinks JKR is, more than anything, someone who is aware
that we live in a fallen world, and is asking herself all sorts of
interesting and unsolvable questions about how we all can live in it.