Kant in the Boardroom

Poor Kant! Our foremost western philosopher, so proud of his rationally determined moral imperatives. And yet, in any busy & conceited Boardroom he’d be derided as an irrelevant irrational moralist. Just imagine that board-members, before an important business decision, would not only demand assurance regarding profitability and compliance with legal, fiscal and operational constraints but would also test the decision on its obedience of the Kantian imperative: “ Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end.”

Glad I made you laugh. The “business of business is business” , isn’t it (1). Of course, any successful organization, to ensure its survival and growth, is interested only in what people can contribute to its business ends, and not in their intrinsic worth (whatever that may be). If people don’t perform, they’re out, however good as persons they may be, however great the suffering of being sacked (2) may be. Idem, if a business line would no longer be profitable, then you have to close units down and “make people redundant”.
And “we” all accept that, knowing that the success of our western business models depends on a “rational allocation of resources as dictated by the market” . And in the end, so the reasoning goes, everyone is the better off if resources (ie people and capital) are put to profitable use.
Surely we don’t want wasteful soviet-style inefficiency (or do we)? Surely we prefer economical “creative destruction” which ensures that obsolete activities make way for brave new & innovative industries . And yet, in this “rational allocation” game, it is clear that (all too) often people are not treated as an end, but merely as a means.
So: are we immoral? Or was Kant wrong?

But perhaps we can still wriggle out of our moral dilemma if we formulate Kant’s imperative differently: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”.
This one does permit us to point to a greater collective good down the road, one that would more than compensate for the individual cases of ‘using people as a means”. So we could say it’s just an economic game that we as a society have collectively agreed upon. And each of us individually, by signing a labor contract, accepts the rules of this game. Plus, modern society does try to smooth out the worst effects of this ‘being used as a means’: by sets of labor laws, social protection, redundancy pay etc.

So neither we nor Kant should worry about our business customs: it’s all about a rationally calculated, limited suspension of morality to get the job done. And having qualms about that is against the company’s and the society’s greater good.

Being rational in business terms would then mean you have to suspend your natural emotions of sympathy for your fellow-man so as to be able to take a decision that takes into account only objective factors of performance and suitability to the company’s goals. Yuk. This sounds awful, doesn’t it?
And yet, if I would present this differently, it would sound not horrendous at all but only just and reasonable. Here we go: suppose that you’re a team’s supervisor and that you would leave in place a blatantly incompetent team-member because you feel personal sympathy for him or her: this would be sheer nepotism or favoritism that would be rightly resented by the rest of the team….

So for the time being, let’s leave it at this: by presenting things in black and white, we won’t get anywhere, this is yet again a case where “being good” is a matter of striking a balance, of pursuing ends as efficiently as possible, but while respecting certain minimum standards of human dignity.

Leave it at this???? While we’re living in a time that has exposed the Great Geniuses of Finance, those eminently Rational Allocators of Capital, as incompetent at best and as crooks at worst? A previous post circled around the benefits and risks of greed. And it ascribed the current economic catastrophe mainly to weak regulation failing to keep excessive greed in check.
But maybe one should question further the dominant economic paradigm that equates “Good” = “rational” = “ efficient pursuit of self-interest and greed”. Perhaps one should not meekly accept a definition of rationality in which there is no room for moral feelings or for sympathy.
Perhaps it is this one-sided definition of rationality that got us into this incredible mess in the first place. (3)

Time for a bit of cool-headed, objective analysis. Greed is an emotion, right? Fear is an emotion, right? Greed and fear are powerful primitive emotions having evolved very early on to ensure personal survival. OK, and survival = good = rational. That’s how the reasoning goes.
But! Later on in the evolution moral feelings of sympathy and a sense of justice (4) have evolved too, probably because a sense of community and trust allow people to collaborate, which is no mean evolutionary advantage.
And as Adam Smith himself (thé proponent of self-interest as leading principle) has always pointed out, moral feelings of sympathy for one’s fellow-man are needed to avoid the excesses of greed.

A very interesting blog post argues that the current state of huge global companies does no longer permit the natural checks that spontaneous human sympathy might place on selfish greed, because neither CEOs nor flashy traders ever actually see the people impacted by their decisions. Hence, a structural absence of natural sympathy would explain why the greed-bubble could reach such horrendous proportions.

So lo and behold – perhaps we really should not settle for anything less than a redefinition of economic rationality : Good = rational = “the efficient and just pursuit of self-interest, judiciously balancing the emotions of greed, fear, justice and sympathy”. Granted, not the pithiest & sexiest expression ever. …..

But apart from monstrous formulations, the point I do want to insist on: we should no longer accept being ruled by a concept of rationality that is based only on the most primitive urges of greed and fear, and that discounts as irrelevant and irrational our moral feelings and our sense of justice.

Perhaps it’s bit rash for a humble Sunday Blogger to just ditch ruling economic paradigms like that and to pretend to redefine economic rationality itself. So let’s go for a less grand example.

Let’s present a wholly fictitious (5) small scale boardroom drama (to keep in style). Suppose the members of the board of a small subsidiary of a larger group, are invited by the chief commander of this large group to validate his decision to fire the boss of the small subsidiary. The chief commander, of course, is made of steel , does not ever come back on decisions and does not suffer opposition gladly. The board members of the subsidiary are all employees either of the subsiduary or of another entity of the Group (so in the end all subordinated to the chief commander).
The case against the small subsidiary boss, who has a 10 year record of good management and is widely respected , is presented by the chief commander: no fraud, no obvious incompetence but some petty acts of assertive independence and so yes, clearly a matter of clashing characters.

There are those who say it is rational to vote for dismissal of this boss, as asked by the chief commander. There is the personal risk of irritating the chief commander, there is the fact of going against an order of a superior and the decision has been taken anyhow.
Abstention would then be irrational, because it goes against one’s own self-interest in the strict sense and has no impact anyhow. A personal assessment of the presented evidence would be futile and a sense of justice should not enter into the decision, because, again, that would be irrational.

Here I want to yell (yelling ever so demurely & ever so rationally, of course): those “rational followers of the chief commander" are wrong, they delude themselves, they are entirely mistaken about the rationality of their decision : theirs is a decision wholly inspired by fear (and maybe greed too).
And over the ages , it’s that kind of allegedly rational decisions (which abandon personal responsibility and stifle the own sense of justice) that have gotten us in the deepest trouble.

a rationalized set of footnotes
(1) This brilliantly alliterating & deep phrase was coined by the eminent economist Milton Friedman
(2) the psychological suffering of being fired ranks in the top of the stress factors, together with severe illness, divorce, loss of a beloved one etc.
(3) Lovely Wikipedia primer on “rationality”
(4) they are located in a “later” part of the brain
(5) An enlarged opinion, if you will …. “a sensus communis” - Yes, just like Kant’s aesthetical judgment that wants to claim universality.
(6) Any resemblance with real life situations or persons is of course entirely accidental

"a power of resistance of quite another kind"

April is the cruelest month (1) , but January may well be the gloomiest. So let that be my excuse for a darkly brooding post, about vast vacuities , sinister seas, gory crucifixions and an utterly illegitimate use of Kant’s definition of the sublime.

Sitting here safely at my desk on the third floor, with a banal view of backyards, rooftops and windows, all of them easily comprehended by even the dullest of sensibilities, I might just have the right set of mind to be awe-struck by the image of a dark sea, of a stark vastness swallowing the very edges of the world. Partly I may feel terrorized by this infinity (2) which my senses cannot grasp, and yet...., this image gives me delight.... A paradoxical aesthetical delight, in spite of the inadequacy of my senses to comprehend this formless vastness.

The venerable Kant explains that our mind then experiences the sublime, which is a form of mental delight precisely because that wayward mind of ours feels somehow proud that it can conjure up this idea of infinity, that it can have ideas that transcend the limits of our naïve sensibility. (3) “[the feeling] is sublime because the mind has been incited to abandon sensibility, and employ itself upon ideas involving a higher purposiveness”.

And what about the feeling of sublimity we experience when we see nature’s elements fearfully unchained? Again the sublimity does not reside in the sensuous objects as such, which are merely horrible, but in our mind which links them to a ‘higher’ human moral faculty. Says the undaunted closet scholar Kant, about mighty & fearsome natural phenomena : “[…] provided our own position is secure, their aspect is all the more attractive for its fearfulness; and we readily call these objects sublime, because they raise the forces of the soul above the height of the vulgar commonplace, and discover within us a power of resistance of quite another kind, which gives us courage to be able to measure ourselves against the seeming omnipotence of nature.” (4)

So the feeling of the sublime is altogether a more ambiguous and complex feeling than the obviously pleasing feeling of the beautiful. The “beautiful charms”, and all one needs are well-honed senses, taste and a freely, dis-interestedly playing imagination. But “the sublime moves”, and requires more of us than taste & imagination, it also appeals to our faculty of ideas, to our moral feelings. So: “The sensations of the sublime exert the powers of the soul more strongly” (5)

Thus far a well-intentioned (albeit crudely amateurish) summary of Kant’s distinction of the sublime from the beautiful in aesthetical judgments. So what’s with the illegitimate use I announced? In fact I must confess I had always seized upon this notion of the sublime to explain the aesthetical appeal of art works that definitely are not charming but are bloody well moving. And actually I must find that Kant’s analysis of the sublime only relates to the sublime in nature, not in works of art. (6)

But oh well, unhindered by any methodological qualms I will now pass on to the gory crucifixions (also as announced) and qualify them as sublime.

Take Grünewald’s famous Crucifixion for instance. How can we bear to look at it? Suffering depicted in its most gruesome physical aspects. A bleeding man nailed to a cross, surrounded by a stark, vast darkness. Isn’t it just a repulsive image that offends our senses & our finer sensibilities?
And yet, we stand in awe in front of it, we indeed experience something of the sublime. Because, beyond the sensibly repulsive, this image moves us, speaks to our moral faculties that are roused to pity. And it evokes ideas of redemption of human suffering that we may find consoling (religious ideas in which the faithful at least may find consolation, and in which non-believers are moved to recognize a human all too human longing for redemption of unredeemable sufferings).

But still, again, how can we bear to look at it without horror? Well, of course, it’s not we, nor one of our loved ones, writhing on that cross. More, it’s simply not real. A photo of a real life torture would be horrendous to look at. No way we could be looking at such a photo and enjoy the disinterested deployment of our faculties of pity. We would have to act, we would have to do something – we would be under the full horrible stress of facing real life suffering. With Grünewald’s crucifixion, we’re in the safe realm of mere mental representation.
There is a message of suffering, but it is delivered not without sweeteners. (7) There is beauty in that contrast of the red mantle with the white mantle against a black background. There is a moving musical melody in that duet between the fainting Mary and the compassionate John (8) . There is a god given sense and a promise of ultimate redemption delivered by the religious sermon ( the lamb of god carrying our sins, the son of god dying on the cross for us etc. ).

Humankind cannot bear much reality (9). We want artistic beauty and/or religious sense to transform the ugliest aspects of the suffering. In fact we always want our tales of suffering duly packaged: in stories where heroics redeem the suffering, or stories where human dignity and love ultimately prevail over hardship, or in tragedies of fate that with their Greek necessity and ultimate understanding of one’s fate at least spare us the demeaning meaninglessness of most suffering, the revolting meaninglessness of the accidents, the violence , the maladies which are blindly inflicted upon us. So - “the bitterness of greatest grief cannot be expressed by art” (10).

So: away with this foul irresponsible art, however sublime ? Away with all safely experienced catharsis? Away with this artificial outlet for pent up emotions? Shouldn’t we instead do something (take political action, become a medical doctor, etc).

It’s no use to oppose art to action. Of course art is artificial. Of course art shan’t save the world. But, especially in a world without an all-seeing god, humankind is entitled to a mental realm where we tempt to make some sense of the human condition, and where we can find shared forms of mourning and pitying.
We’re entitled to a realm where we are moved by Grünewald’s crucifixion, although we know fully well that the world is full of sufferings that will never find a Grünewald to express them. Art is just another kind of power of resistance, one which we also need. (11)

futilely resisting footnotes

first the image credits:
Caspar David Friedrich; Monk by the Sea


Grünewald's Crucifixion (this webpage actually quotes from Gombrich, but without giving him the credits)

then the musing-credits:

(1) he was so good at that, TS Eliot, coining phrases that acquire their own autonomous afterlife
(2) "le silence éternel de ces espaces infinis m’effraie" (Pascal)
(3) This is how Kant phrases it: “The sublime, in the strictest sense of the word, cannot be contained in any sensuous form, but rather concerns ideas of reason, which although no adequate presentation is possible, may be aroused and called to mind by that very inadequacy itself which does admit of sensuous presentation” (Critique of Aesthetic Judgement)
(4) Critique of Aesthetic Judgement
(5) Kant – Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime
(6) “If the aesthetic judgment is to be pure (unmixed with any teleological judgement which, as such, belongs to reason) […] we must not point to the sublime in works of art, where a human end determines the form as well as the magnitude.” (Critique of Aesthetic Judgement)
(7) “the emotion of the sublime is stronger than that of the beautiful, but that unless the latter alternates with or accompanies it, it tires and cannot be so long enjoyed”
(8) no wonder the Grünewald crucifixion can be found on the cover of Bach-cantata CD’s
(9) yet another of those TS Eliot phrases
(10) said by a Valerius Maximus, as quoted by Lessing in his Laocoön

(11) Granted, not quite the most representative out-of-context Kant-quote to head this post. I suppose I liked its hesitant ambiguity, which may be the only tone suitable to musings about art and unpleasant realities.

Humanism after Darwin (short & frivolous post)

Let me confess right away, I’m a “humanist” – my heart leaps, my mind exults, whenever I read phrases like:

“one should treat humanity in oneself and others always as an end and never merely as a means” (1)

'Humanitas' signifies “man’s proud and tragic consciousness of self-approved and self-imposed principles, contrasting with his utter subjection to illness, decay and all that is implied in the word ‘mortality’” (2)

“humanism is an attitude [suffused by] the conviction of the dignity of man, based on both the insistence on human values (rationality and freedom) and the acceptance of human limitations (fallibility and frailty): from this two postulates result – responsibility and tolerance” (3)

Humanism, in this interpretation, takes the ambivalence of the human condition fully into account: on the one hand we are but a product of a chance combination of genes. Our deepest emotions, our loftiest thoughts are nothing but chemical interactions and electric charges in our brain cells. We are driven by our selfish genes in the struggle for life. And we are amongst the feeblest creatures of nature – a mere gust of wind or a banal bacterial infection can wipe us out.(4)

And yet, on the other hand, as human beings, we have feelings beyond our primal survival-urges, we can reflect on our condition, we are endowed with sensitivity, reason and empathy.
Therefore we cannot merely hide behind biological or cultural determinism – we can observe and sense, we can learn, we can reflect: so we can and have to take up responsibility for our lives.

And we may not exploit others for our needs, nor physically or mentally hurt or humiliate (5) them - should they be in our way, or should they be in our view too different from us, or too fallible or too frail: because we know that ultimately the other is a self too, who at the very least shares with us a common human vulnerability and sensitivity that our empathy asks to spare.

So no, I don’t in the least see how this humanist attitude of responsibility, tolerance and empathy should be threatened by the findings of genetics or of neuro-science. Humanism is not about the adulation of the Human Being as some perfect metaphysical divinity, humanism is on the contrary very pragmatic in its acknowledgement of our limitations as well as of our possibilities. The materialist basis of our being does not take away the fact that we have these 'feedback systems' - reason, sensitivity and empathy - that create our responsibility towards ourselves and others.

Speaking of “reason”, “sensitivity” and “empathy” as the foundations of this humanist attitude, I hope to avoid being caught in the fallacious dualism of “emotions” versus “ratio”. A dualism that may be obsolete (6), now that is shown that 'good' decision- making involves both emotions and ratio. And what matters, is how 'we' (we = our self-reflective feedback-systems) deal with our emotions, what we do with our rational intellectual capacities. Both emotions and ratio can be used for evil ends.

So this is where the humanist moral imperative enters: the imperative of respect and responsibility towards ourselves and others, a call to summon up whatever grace and dignity we can muster, even when defeated, even at death (7).

(and this is where trumpets should blaze, violins should swell, a choir should burst out in a Beethovenian ode!)

But so, though I don’t at all see positivist science as a menace for Humanism – I fear some moral interpretations of Darwinism and of economic rationalism do pose a threat.
We all know that we are creatures governed by selfish genes that are bent on their survival & reproduction. We all know that in the end only those traits and genes survive, that, well hum that survive, at the expense of other les well adapted, less aggressive variations.
We all know how economics got hold of this “survival of the fittest” principle and of the rule of self-interest to posit a Rational Man and a system of “laisser faire” in which the sum of all these individual pursuits of self-interest in the end produces the best results, as if directed by an “invisible hand” . We all know now that utopian state controlled economics did not work.

And so, yes, evolutionary biology and classical economics alike wrestle with the problem of “altruism”. Altruism! Moral Values! Shock! Horror! The menace of Irrationality!
Indeed, how to explain altruism, how to explain morality in a conceptual framework which posits the selfish struggle for life or the maximization of self-interest or profits as the ultimate driving forces? Self-interest as the one principle that guarantees the most efficient system to arrive at the best results, so the one and only principle that any rational person should heed.

Oh yes, biologists and economist alike are at great pains to find somewhere some selfish reason for altruism - not a year goes by without another theory showing how display of some altruistic behavior might be good to attract potential mates (because it’s a sign of abundant strength, or of good caring skills for off-spring), a theory that therefore can unmask altruism as yet another ploy of the selfish gene. And ah the relief when yet another economic theory shows that “trustworthiness” is nothing but a good strategy to optimize economic interactions and thus to maximize wealth – so yes, yet again rational enlightened self-interest at work!

And here, as a humanist, I disagree. I object to “rational behavior” being exclusively claimed as a utilitarian strategy. I don’t accept that taking a moral stance would only be acceptable if there’s a utilitarian value to it, be it in biological survival terms or in economic profit terms. I object, in the name of humanism, in the name of the humanist concept of human dignity and responsibility. Maximization of wealth is not the only end. I even dare say that for a humanist not even sheer personal survival is the only end … not at whatever price. … not when human dignity, of ourselves or of others is at stake (8).

Empathy may well have evolved as a useful social skill to help along the selfish gene – but now it also presents us, sensitive and pensive humans, with a responsibility that goes beyond the mere self-interest. There is man’s amazing “ability to step out of the food-chain”, to have an altruistic “affection for his fellow creatures of chance’s kingdom”. (9)

So I’d like to conclude with a quote from Richard Dawkins ( the evolutionary scientist par excellence), from his book “The selfish gene” ( the Darwinian book par excellence) :
“We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators”.

(trumpets, violins, choir!)


Edifying quotes & notes (so please, do read them!)

(1) yes, this is one of Kant’s famous categorical imperatives!
(2) Erwin Panofsky in “The History of Art as a Humanistic Discipline” (a 1940 essay collected in “Meaning in the visual arts”
(3) Ibidem
(4) Paraphrase of Pascal’s pensée : “L’ homme n’est qu’un roseau, le plus faible de la nature; mais c’est un roseau pensant. Il ne faut pas que l’univers entier s’arme pour l’écraser: une vapeur, une goutte d’eau, suffit pour le tuer. Mais, quand l’univers l’écraserait, l’homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue, parce qu’il sait qu’il meurt, et l’avantage que l’univers a sur lui ; l’univers n’en sait rien. Toute notre dignité consiste donc en la pensée »
(5) On human vulnerability to cruelty and humiliation as a shared human condition that we always ought to be sensitive to, I would like to quote Richard Rorty in ”Contingency, irony, and solidarity”. RR is so post-modernly relativist that he shies away from admitting the existence of any universal values, but he does accept this physical and moral vulnerability of the human being as a universally shared trait. I’m happy to quote him at length, so as to prove that postmodernism does not need to preclude humanism!
So here goes: “The idea that we all have an overriding obligation to diminish cruelty, to make human beings equal in respect to their liability to suffering, seems to take for granted that there is something within human beings which deserves respect and protection quite independently of the language they speak. It suggests that […] the ability to feel pain, is what is important, and that differences in vocabulary are much less important. […] Metaphysicians tell us that unless there is some sort of common ur-vocabulary, we have no “reason” not to be cruel to those whose final vocabularies are very unlike ours. […].
The morally relevant definition of a person, a moral subject, to be “something that can be humiliated ”. [Our] sense of human solidarity is [thus] based on a sense of a common danger. So [we] need as much imaginative acquaintance with alternative vocabularies as possible, not just for [our] own edification, but in order to understand the actual and possible humiliation of the people who use these alternative vocabularies […] . What unites [us] with the rest of the species is not a common language but just susceptibility to pain and in particular to that special sort of pain which the brutes do not share with the humans – humiliation."
(6) As far as I am aware of the findings of neuro-science as they get reported in the popular press, it seems that “emotions” and “ratio” collaborate far more in judging and deciding than traditionally was posited. For instance, there’s the case of a man whose brain got damaged in an accident. The damage was done to a part of the brain associated with the emotions. After this accident the man was no longer able to take decisions: he could analyze a problem, draw up long lists of determining elements and of arguments for and against – but he could no longer reach a decision.
(7) This is a paraphrase on some sentences out of Fay Weldon’s “Letters to Alice” . I can’t right now locate them exactly, ….maybe a fine reason to read that book again! I remember it as so erudite and moving a plea for the reading of novels as exercises in empathy and in the finding of moral significance, + its’ an excellent introduction to Jane Austen . Someone who made it all through the Richard Rorty footnote, will have noted note that RR too pleads for the widening of our empathy (through, amongst other things, the reading of novels).n
(8) of course the smart Darwinian can here suffice with a single smug remark: being a humanist then does not seem to be such a good survival strategy amongst the selfish, so in the end these naïve humanist variations will simply get extinct. Euh.Well. Should anyone have a suitable retort, thanks for sharing!
(9) Richard Powers in his “The Goldbug Variations”