Justice_ What's the Right Thing to Do_ - Michael Sandel [61]
Another way of putting this point is to say that morality is not empirical. It stands at a certain distance from the world. It passes judgment on the world. Science can’t, for all its power and insight, reach moral questions, because it operates within the sensible realm.
“To argue freedom away,” Kant writes, “is as impossible for the most abstruse philosophy as it is for the most ordinary human reason.”33 It’s also impossible, Kant might have added, for cognitive neuroscience, however sophisticated. Science can investigate nature and inquire into the empirical world, but it cannot answer moral questions or disprove free will. That is because morality and freedom are not empirical concepts. We can’t prove that they exist, but neither can we make sense of our moral lives without presupposing them.
Sex, Lies, and Politics
One way of exploring Kant’s moral philosophy is to see how he applied it to some concrete questions. I would like to consider three applications—sex, lies, and politics. Philosophers are not always the best authorities on how to apply their theories in practice. But Kant’s applications are interesting in their own right and also shed some light on his philosophy as a whole.
Kant’s case against casual sex
Kant’s views on sexual morality are traditional and conservative. He opposes every conceivable sexual practice except sexual intercourse between husband and wife. Whether all of Kant’s views on sex actually follow from his moral philosophy is less important than the underlying idea they reflect—that we do not own ourselves and are not at our own disposal. He objects to casual sex (by which he means sex outside of marriage), however consensual, on the grounds that it is degrading and objectifying to both partners. Casual sex is objectionable, he thinks, because it is all about the satisfaction of sexual desire, not about respect for the humanity of one’s partner.
The desire which a man has for a woman is not directed toward her because she is a human being, but because she is a woman; that she is a human being is of no concern to the man; only her sex is the object of his desires.34
Even when casual sex involves the mutual satisfaction of the partners, “each of them dishonours the human nature of the other. They make of humanity an instrument for the satisfaction of their lusts and inclinations.”35 (For reasons we’ll come to in a moment, Kant thinks marriage elevates sex by taking it beyond physical gratification and connecting it with human dignity.)
Turning to the question of whether prostitution is moral or immoral, Kant asks under what conditions the use of our sexual faculties is in keeping with morality. His answer, in this as in other situations, is that we should not treat others—or ourselves—merely as objects. We are not at our own disposal. In stark contrast to libertarian notions of self-possession, Kant insists that we do not own ourselves. The moral requirement that we treat persons as ends rather than as mere means limits the way we may treat our bodies and ourselves. “Man cannot dispose over himself because he is not a thing; he is not his own property.”36
In contemporary debates about sexual morality, those who invoke autonomy rights argue that individuals should be free to choose for themselves what use to make of their own bodies. But this isn’t what Kant means by autonomy. Paradoxically, Kant’s conception of autonomy imposes certain limits on the way we may treat ourselves. For, recall: To be autonomous is to be governed by a law I give myself—the categorical imperative. And the categorical imperative requires that I treat all persons (including myself) with respect—as an end, not merely as a means. So, for Kant, acting autonomously requires