2008-01-19

Morality

I'm in some ways very much against Kant, because I don't think rationality is such a great thing, so to speak. Or let me put it this way: imagine somebody seriously remorseful; there could be hardly a more sober moment in the moral life when someone is lucid, then seriously remorseful, and you imagine that person saying, 'My God, what have I done?' when there's a kind of realisation of the awfulness of what one has done. And then I've felt that if you put into the mouth of that person as an elaboration, what so many official accounts say, it comes out as parody, 'My God, what have I done? I've been a traitor to reason', you know, or 'My God, I've violated the social contract; negotiated behind a veil of ignorance' and so on. It might sound like a cheap shot but I think it's a very serious question as to why, at such a sober moment as in the moral life, the official accounts of what it is to have wronged somebody seem like caricatures.

Raimond Gaita, on The Philosophers Zone.