The categorical imperative and the Nazi at the door

[sylvar]

Jodi was explaining to me this evening that ethicists find fault in Kant's categorical imperative, the first formulation of which is (if I'm paraphrasing correctly) that you should act in a way in which you can will everyone else to act. The problem, they say, is that Kant forbids lying because nobody really wants to live in a world in which

Comments

[creases]

Two quick points

[tealfroglette]

we discussed this in political philosophy in my class at franklin college in switzerland for several days. Essentially if somebody asked, will you make frog legs i will not lie and i will tell them hell no, and no they can't bring them to my house. IF somebody brings them anyway i would probably refuse to serve them and make them take them out of my house even tho it's wasting something that's already dead

[tacit]

Heh. Funny you should mention this; I've had this exact conversation, with this exact hypothetical scenario, on a mailing list about six years ago

[guaharibo]

I've got nothing for you regarding theory. If I had people hidden in my house and Nazis asked me if I knew where they were I'd say "No" with the comfort of having not lied because at that exact moment I did not know where they were standing, huddling, etc. Simple, evasive, not 100% the accurate but still true.

Kant...arg.

[watamelonmonkey]

I think Kant's response to this would be, "Okay, say I lie and tell the SS officer 'nope, no Jewish people here.' The SS officer takes my word for it and leaves. The Jewish family upstairs is freaking out about an SS officer downstairs and decides to flee the house. While they are escaping into the alley, they run right into the SS officer as he is leaving the home. They are then captured and all because of a lie. Had I said 'yes, I am hiding Jews in my attic' the officer would have gone upstairs to check it out, thus giving the family the opportunity to escape

Re: Kant...arg.

[paravinda]

I remember hearing something like this in college - do you know if anyone has written about this hypothetical response of Kant? There has to be more to this line of argument.

While on the topic, why is refusing to answer not an option, if we are strictly speaking of ethics, should we answer a question that the person had no right to ask? Is that not the thing we would want everyone to do?