[PEN-L:8806] Re: Re: Marx and 19th century racism

[Peter Dorman <dormanp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Again, I don't care much what Kant's motives were, as long as the concepts he
left me can be useful for *my* purposes.  In the case of what I called the
"nonexploitation principle", it is empirically verified in the risk perception
literature, at least within those communities that have been sampled.  I found
lots of support for it in my reading of labor history wrt dangerous work.
While I have made a few arguments in its behalf, I am not so naive as to think
that it represents an exclusive, unassailable ethical position.  It's just a
value to place alongside other values.  Whether it will continue to guide
human behavior in the future or whether it is applicable to the great variety
of non-western cultures across the globe -- well, I don't know.  These things
will require more study, I would imagine.

Peter (aka Dorman)

Ricardo Duchesne wrote:

> > So in the case of Kant, I find it useful in my own work to bring in
> > concepts of Kantian moral reasoning.  I've looked at them and checked to
> > see if there is hidden baggage, but I haven't found any.  Like many
> > others on this list, I suspect, I was drawn to Kant because philosophers
> > use his perspective as a pole of opposition to utilitarianism -- and the
> > critique of economic utilitarianism is an important part of the critique
> > of neoclassical economics generally.
>
> Dorman,
>
> Recall that Kant sought to find a moral law based on reason and
> reason alone, as the only way one could formulate a universal
> criterion of moral value. He argue against Hume that an
> empirical study of morality, of the customs and values of different
> cultures, would forever remained trapped within  the relativity of
> such values. But Hegel was correct that Kant only gave
> us the *form* of this law - as if such a law arose strictly out
> of the genius of Kant's mind,  rather than being an expression of the
> self-knowledge that the human community had come to achieve at that
> time.
> -