Kant and Snape and Ethics and Everything

[nrenka]

No: HPFGUIDX 150254

--- In HPforGrownups at yahoogroups.com, "pippin_999" <foxmoth at ...> 
wrote:

<snip>

> The humor for me is in imagining Snape as trying to live according 
> to this extremely lofty and noble but utterly impractical vision of 
> law and perfect rationality. 

Hey, I'm not the one who brought up Kant as an explanatory model for 
Snape's actions--I'm the one who thought "That doesn't sound like the 
Kant I had to read, struggled with, and loved back in college..." :)

It's an interesting moral model to try out in different situations.  
It's one that, a few books ago, I thought was more integral or 
applicable to the Potterverse than it turns out to have been.  YMMV.

<snip>

> If you think about it, what could Snape have said to support 
> Sirius's story? He *didn't* see any sign of Pettigrew in the shack. 
> (And why would a rational human being take his eyes off a Death 
> Eater to look at a rat anyway?) 

For one thing, he could have shut up and stayed disengaged from the 
situation in the Hospital Wing.  It's never been resolved (and may 
never be brought up again in the books), but the language he uses in 
trying to shut up Hermione, both in the Shack itself (refusal to 
listen and consider other possibilities) and afterwards in the 
Hospital Wing...well, "silly girl" does ring a bell, doesn't it?  And 
then his commentary to Fudge reeks (at least to me) of someone who's 
trying to go behind Dumbledore's back to get something done.  It's 
his active engagement in the situation which leads me to doubt his 
more sterling motivations, although there's room for that possibility.

-Nora remembers those halcyon days when the DISHWASHER made a modicum 
of sense, because Snape couldn't have possibly just gone crazy with 
rage or be acting primarily out of self-interest