Immanuel Kant is making my life miserable. Let me tell you why...
Before Immanuel Kant was born, the world was a nice place. There weren't any classes about Kantian ethics. There weren't any lectures in universities about the Categorical Imperative. No one had decided that they needed to shove bogus ethical systems down other people's throats (ok, so that last statement is false. Lots of people think they know the right way to live). But still. Before Kant was born, no one could say that his life was made more miserable by being forced to listen to things written by Kant (by the way, that's a true statement. Before Kant was born, humans probably didn't know that Kant would be born...well, up until about 9 months prior to his birth, but they still wouldn't have had any idea that years after his birth students would have to sit through 3 hours of lecture a week about the man just because they want to graduate...but I digress). Unfortunately, Immanuel Kant was born. Kant decided that he would write a book about a system of morality that was supposedly desirable. However, Kant's system of morality doesn't work in the real world. That seems to be a little tidbit that he left out of his book. So, his system of doing the morally "right" thing is based on an ideal where humans can be perfectly rational. The rational man will only be moved to action by his desire to do his duty (notice that it's rational man...even Kant recognized that "rational woman" is a contradiction...). Unfortunately for us men, even we are rarely purely rational. We like to think that we can make the rational choice on a regular basis, but our rational minds are kind of connected to our emotional minds (assuming you only have one brain, and therefore one mind). We make choices based on both reason and emotion. To wrap this up, I'd like to thank Kant for coming up with a completely irrational system of morality that is oddly appealing to some people. Sadly, it really doesn't affect my life much, which upsets me because my professor insists on spending week after week talking about Kant.
This was probably not a very fun post to read...so head on over to Emma Anne's blog for some light-hearted goodness.
Tune in tomorrow for an exciting, spontaneous short story. And if you would like to get in contact with me for any reason email me at breadcrumb124@gmail.com
~The Piebald Penguin
