Dr. Seuss and Philosophy - Jacob M. Held [97]
The Grinch’s Metamorphosis: Seeing the Light of Reason?
One possibility is that the Grinch suddenly grasps some truth that he didn’t see or only saw dimly before. For instance, think of the way that geometrical or logical proofs can often work for us. As any student of math or logic can recall, you can puzzle over a problem for a long, long time, turning it around this way and that way, and then suddenly the solution can hit you spontaneously (or sadly, not). In this kind of case, your mind suddenly tracks the geometrical truth, and once it does, you see it all clearly. Reason somehow shows you the right direction, illuminating the understanding in a new way.
Of course, this geometry example is a case of abstract thinking, a case of what you might call theoretical reasoning, as opposed to practical reasoning about how to live and what sort of person to be. This difference might seem like a big one, but not all philosophers believe so. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), the eighteenth-century German philosopher, acknowledged differences between theoretical and practical reasoning, but he thought that in the ideal, practical reasoning should heed the dictates of reason just as strictly as theoretical reasoning. As he saw things, the main difference between the two was that the former required the assistance of the will, while the latter didn’t. Think of it this way. When you think about “7 + 4,” your mind immediately goes to 11 as the correct answer. There is no two-step process where you think your way to 11 and then decide whether you are going to believe what your mind tells you. You simply see 11, and that’s that. And if you don’t come to 11, then you’re simply not a very good mathematician. Of course, you might not want to give someone the right answer when questioned, so you might say the will could still be involved in this way, but this is a different issue. The will certainly plays a role in giving the right answer, but no role in arriving at 11 as the right answer in the first place. On the other hand, when reason tells you what you ought to do (practical reason) as opposed to what you ought to think or believe (theoretical reason), the will must join forces with reason to produce an action. Thought without the will would be inert. Thus, Kant thought that doing the right thing, as opposed to thinking the right thing, required reason and the will to join forces, with reason directing the will down the correct path.
Now if Kant were to think about the Grinch, he’d surely take him to task for his nasty Christmas scheme. Kant thought that the moral law commanded respect for each and every rational being. In one famous formulation of the law, Kant insisted that rational beings must always be treated as “ends in themselves,” not as a means to our own ends: “Act so that you use humanity, as much in your own person as in the person of every other, always at the same time as end and never merely as means.”1 Hence, just as the Grinch wouldn’t want the citizens of Who-ville to take his stuff and to revel in his unhappiness, neither should he treat them in this way. After all, they matter every bit as much as he does. Kant had various versions of his moral law, but he thought they all came to the same thing: A rational being must prize the inherent dignity of equally worthy rational beings. As a rational being, I must pursue my life, duly constrained by the moral law. I express my rational autonomy by choosing to follow the law, rather than being ruled by mere inclination. All sorts of creatures can have desires, but only a moral being