Carl and John, regarding “popular Kantianism,” I was simply riffing off Eberstadt herself on this stuff. She mentions the Categorical Imperative several times with regard to attitudes toward sex and food and smoking and pornography. I thought it was an odd (and probably inapt) formulation, and I just went with it in my post.

My knowledge of Kant extends to superficial readings of the Groundwork of Metaphysics of Morals, Perpetual Peace, an attempt to read the first critique, and a completed though difficult slog through the second. I never made it to the Critique of Judgment, but I’ve read some Arendt on that. I’ve read some basic accounts of Kant, but I make no claims to profundity in matters Kantian–let alone Lutheranism.

Still, both of your comments are intriguing.

Popular Kantianism…a law school criminal sentencing symposium, where deontological ethics are contrasted with utilitarian justifications?

“If sexual desire must act in conformity to a universal maxim in a Categorical Imperative, it is always going to have a hard time seeing action has having any purpose beyond itself.”

If there is such a thing as popular Kantianism then there is no such thing as a sexual revolution problem. Or at least not in the same individuals.

The “must” of course in the must act, is a duty revealed by reason. There is however no natural compulsion to any of these philosophical duties. Man doesn’t have to be reasonable.

For Kant it seems man finds his telos by being reasonable. Being reasonable, or acting according to duty is certainly an end in itself according to Kant.

Kant’s tombstone reads “Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the more often and steadily we reflect upon them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me.”

Seems teleological to me! In fact Kant is probably the most teleological philosopher, if the moral law or the dictates of reason are accepted as an end in themselves.

For popular Kantianism(a certain form of Lutheranism?) in any case, it seems to me that a thing should be done because it is right, and not necessarily because it maximizes a particular outcome. Knowledge of duty, or the moral law or rule is the end in itself, because it is in accordance with reason.

So if you are outcome/profit maximizing, then you are utilitarian. Your action aims at a cause that is not necessarily final, but simply an a means to an end. Making lots of money for example.

Of course there is also the problem of non-profits, or religious institutions which are often times structured to be outcome maximizing. That is these non-profits are somewhat Pop-Kantian, that is they often times have “moral aims” that are codified as “rules”, and obediance of the “rules”(or maybe moral law) is more important than money.

There might even be a sort of Constitutionalism that is just pop-kantian. Interested in good Constitutional Law as an end in itself. A certain version of Utilitarian is always cooking up schemes and policy rather indifferent to “constitutionalism”. Kantian ethics in this way is sort of Constitutional Law for the individual, and pop-kantianism is in some sense Legal Ethics as differentiated from Business Ethics.

So in some sense pop-Kantian ethics is entwined with legalism, as it is concerned primarily with doing your duty as an end/telos in itself.

I haven’t read the book, but in some sense all of this is pop Kantianism, or a sort of appeal that only makes sense if you have some level of agreement with Kantian Ethics/Lutheranism.

I use Lutheranism in part because in thinking about/inventing pop-Kantianism, there is a recent debate over the fact that the Lutheran Pensions decided to trust in God, and reflect a sense of christian mission instead of taking a more pragmatic utilitarian focus concerned primarily with maximizing investment returns.

To a Kantian and perhaps only to a Kantian this is an acceptable loss. In addition these sort of funds that exist in part because there are so many wealthy non-profits… They just seem loosely Kantian, so pop-Kantianism seems to fit.

On the other hand there are plenty of pure utilitarians concerned only with maximizing profit, who are more than happy to buy up shares of Altria with the healthy dividend that the Lutheran Pensions is unwilling to touch.

You have to be somewhat Kantian, that is you have to have some sort of heavy bias for seeing reason as principled form of constitutionalism that comes close to being an end in itself, or else you are just not going to care.

She may not be Kantian, but she is giving a sermon to a Kantian/Lutheran choir.

The “utilitarians” are still more than happy to invest in Altria, accept donations from the Porn business and otherwise maintain a teleology narrowly tailored to profits, without this Kantian concern for the so called negative externalities that get willed as a universal in the process.

You’re so right that the analogies that Eberstadt draws are pretty limited. The very idea, for example, that since we now know that Revolution-style sexual promiscuity is harmful for us, that we could retreat from it with the sort of public disapproval such as now greets cigarette smokers, since we had a similar learning experience there, is pretty preposterous. To mention only one obvious problem with this, someone having one-night stands in their room doesn’t obviously effect others the way second-hand smoke does. I think we can learn little by asking in such as case, “Why is the public attitude different with casual sex?”

Classical philosophy did suggest in a number of ways that the problem with eros-connected pleasures was far more complex than that involving typical bodily ones, but Eberstadt’s analogies don’t seem to point to that so well.

Still, I don’t see those sorts analogies as being central to Eberstadt’s arguments, although unlike you I haven’t gone through the book, only a couple of the essays.

I’d be grateful if you could provide more of the bottom-line evidence for her Kantian-ism.