Tags
expressive individualism, Friedrich Nietzsche, Georg Simmel, Immanuel Kant, J. David Velleman, law, Onora O'Neill, Patrick O'Donnell
In response to my discussion a while ago of the problems between Buddhism and qualitative individualism, Patrick O’Donnell suggested that J. David Velleman’s Self to Self offered a possibility of bridging the gap between the two. My reaction was skeptical, since Velleman explicitly situates himself as a Kantian, and I have taken Kant as exactly the opposite kind of individualist, a quantitative individualist. I said as much in response, claiming that for Kant “ethically most significant about human beings are those characteristics we all share, not our differences – the right way for one person to act in a given context is broadly the right way for any other person to act in the same context.”
Patrick’s response was where the discussion got really interesting. For this is the first time I’ve seen someone question the very distinction between qualitative and quantitative individualism. In his words: “I’m not at all drawn to the putative merits of this distinction between ‘quantitative’ and ‘qualitative’ individualism if only because I don’t understand Kantian autonomy, human dignity, and practical rationality associated with the individual person in the manner you have sketched it.” Since my current thought relies pretty heavily on this distinction (a relatively obscure distinction from the works of Georg Simmel), I think it’s on me to say more.
I do think it’s essential to distinguish qualitative from quantitative individualism. If anything, one of my problems with Simmel’s way of putting the distinction might be that it makes the two ideologies sound too much alike, by treating the two of them as species of a singular genus called individualism. Other terms used to name qualitative individualism – “Romanticism”, “expressivism”, “the ethics of authenticity” – do not share this feature, and they might make it a bit clearer how little qualitative individualism has in common with Kant.
Regarding Kant, my own understanding of Kant’s ethics – derived primarily from reading and teaching the Grounding many times – ties closely to his own first formulation of the categorical imperative: “Act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” We should only act in ways that can be universalized. And this is so because universality is characteristic of reason – and it is reason that makes us truly autonomous. Kant says:
What else, then, can freedom of the will be but autonomy, i.e., the property that the will has of being a law to itself? The proposition that the will is in every action a law to itself expresses, however, nothing but the principle of acting according to no other maxim than that which can at the same time have itself as a universal law for its object. (Grounding 447, Ellington translation)
The opposite of this autonomy is “the heteronomy of nature”, which Kant identifies with “the natural law of desires and inclinations” (453). Our desires and inclinations of course vary from individual to individual; universal law, qua universal law, does not. It is not that we must always act against our particular inclinations, but rather that they are unimportant in determining autonomous right action; that action conforms to a universal moral law.
All of this, I think, stands in sharp contrast to the views of the qualitative individualists. The qualitative individualist treats “be yourself” as an ideal, the actualization of one’s difference and specificity as distinct from others: in Nietzsche’s phrasing, one becomes what one is. Where Nietzsche or Emerson say to be more individual, Kant tells us to be more universal – to act according to the same moral law that everyone else should act under.
Patrick’s response quotes heavily from the work of Onora O’Neill, but I don’t think O’Neill’s work falsifies any of this. I think this passage from Patrick’s response is instructive:
O’Neill clarifies how Kantian ethics is “far from being empty or formalistic,” nor does it lead to “rigidly insensitive rules.” Rather, it is able to “take account of differences between cases.” How so? “ … [U]niversal principles need not mandate uniform treatment; indeed, they may mandate differentiated treatment. Principles such as ‘taxation should be proportionate to ability to pay’ or ‘the punishment must fit the crime’ are universal in scope but demand differentiated treatment. Even principles that do not specifically mandate differentiated treatment will be indeterminate, so leave room for differentiated application.”
I agree with all of this. Kantian quantitative individualism is quite able to handle differentiated treatment. But Kant’s differentiated treatment – as it is described in O’Neill’s examples – has entirely to do with different cases or situations, and not with different people and their different natures, their personalities or cares or desires or inclinations. So I stand by my original claim that for Kant “the right way for one person to act in a given context is broadly the right way for any other person to act in the same context.” Different contexts and situations demand different actions; of course Kant understands that. But does he think different people should act differently, based on their different natures as different people, when placed in the same situation? Not as far as I can tell.
To return to the Buddhist context of the original post, I think a Kantian understanding of the self is in important ways less compatible with a Buddhist understanding than is a qualitative individualist one of the sort I have been articulating elsewhere. (My putting my claim in this way is probably tantamount to daring Justin Whitaker to jump in with objections, and I look forward to these.) Specifically, I claimed that the qualitative individualist self is divisible, mutable and not autonomous, all of which bring it closer to Buddhist views of the self. And I don’t think the Kantian self is any of these. In my understanding of it, it is identified with a will constituted by a single capacity for rational decision-making, which needs to be understood as indivisible and immutable. I suppose that’s somewhat arguable, but the last one hardly seems so: if a good Kantian self is anything, it’s autonomous. So, as far as trying to bridge between Buddhism and qualitative individualism goes, I see no reason to pursue Velleman’s work – because as far as I can tell it is neither of the two.
Cross-posted on the Indian Philosophy Blog.
EDIT, 17 Apr 2023: The passage on the Kantian self previously said: “In my understanding of it, it is identified with a will constituted by a single capacity for rational decision-making, which needs to be understood as divisible and mutable.” In the last clause I meant the opposite: indivisible and immutable.
It seems to me that Kantianism is not incompatible with qualitative individualism. It would be coherent to maintain that Kant’s categorical imperative supplies us with moral duties, but that on top of those moral duties, our fulfillment and perhaps also our greatest benefit to others is best realized through developing our unique individuality. One could even recognize a universal moral duty for each person to develop and express their own unique capacities in beneficial ways.
I’m not sure where I personally fall on this. As someone raised in the context of the pervasive qualitative individualism (thanks for giving me a name for it!) of contemporary American society, I’ve found that I’m actually happier as I’ve relaxed its stranglehold on me by exploring other approaches to the good life. The “be yourself” injunction can create a lot of pressure to make a unique contribution rather than just a helpful one, and can also be frustratingly empty and tautological. Reading ancient accounts of virtue gives me a menu to choose from in developing beneficial personal qualities. I don’t know that I’m ready to reject qualitative individualism entirely, but I have found it limiting.
Thanks, Asa, and welcome. I think you’re right that it’s not incompatible, but it is a very different thing; I don’t think Kant himself was a qualitative individualist, as above.
I would probably also agree with you that qualitative individualism is important to explore other approaches to the good life – and that I’m not ready to reject it. I think it does have a dark side, of the sort that is often summed up by (but not exhausted by) the term “relativism”.
It’s interesting that O’Donnell and O’Neill believe that there’s no conflict between situational dependence and Kantian ethics. I mean, I’ve always felt the same way, but Kant himself would apparently have disagreed (see his response to Benjamin Constant re lying to a murderer; his answer was not to “take account of differences between cases”, but rather, “you’re right, we should never lie, even to a murderer”). I had heard that modern Kantians were less ethically reductive than he was, and I guess this is one of those cases.
On the other hand, by Chris Fraser’s reading of the Zhuangzi, one’s natural inclinations and preferences are no less of a situational consideration than the external environment; at least in his estimation, my high opinion of chocolate cake is a brute fact, even if not a very important one. I realize that Chinese philosophy is not your primary area of interest, and in any event a Daoist text is not really germane to either Kantianism or Indian Buddhism, but maybe this could provide a workaround. Food for thought, anyway.
That’s a good point about Kant. I suspect that lying is a case that is more cut-and-dried for him than the ones that O’Neill might be thinking of: lying is a “perfect duty”, but most of our duties (like benevolence) fall under the rubric of “imperfect duties”, which are much more variable and don’t command our allegiance all the time.
Daoism raises its own complications. I think it’s often read in a qualitative-individualist way, but I’m not sure that’s how it was in the original context. When I was trying to wrangle out an interpretation of the Zhuangzi – taking off from Fraser’s – I was noting how Zhuangzi tells us to “make no room for the personal (si 私)”, and noting Fraser’s point that _si_ “potentially refers to all aspects of individual identity, motivation, and judgment.” That seems pretty antithetical to qualitative individualism.