THE TWILIGHT OF GOOD INTENTIONS

A philosopher's insight into a lost aspect of our humanity

It has become a cliché that we live in fraught times. Our political life, which informs our public sensibilities overall, has become fractured, coarse and angry. With emergent tribalism creating loyalties among those of similar persuasion and making enemies of those who are not, with ideological walls growing thicker, dialogue and civil conversation have all but collapsed. From Congress all the way down to neighbors and family members we suffer under the pain of strained relations.

One unfortunate consequence which disturbs me greatly, and which I have written about elsewhere, is the emergence of the cancel culture. Affirm a position or a thinker on the “wrong side” of the ideological divide, engage an act that runs against the “correct” norm, say something once, even if it was years in the past, and you can find yourself without a job, shunned by others and cast down a black hole. Careers and lives are gratuitously ruined, lost to the excoriating judgment of self-appointed perfect people, whether they be on social media or have the ear of your peers or administrators. There is no place for forgiveness, for a wider understanding of contexts, and there are no second chances. Reality is reduced to moral binaries and absolutes. We have become too prone to judgment with little room for understanding or compassion.

I see this fretful trend as an attack on our basic humanity. An existential fact about us is that we are by nature fallible creatures; we all make mistakes, and no one is exempted. The reality of fallibility makes forgiveness necessary. Without the spirit and possibility of forgiveness, human relations become too brittle to sustain. I fear that in too many circles this is where we have arrived, or at a minimum are trending.

I want to bore down a level deeper. The penchant for judgment, which I contend is component of the coarseness of our times, is targeted most often at the actions of others, and I am including here what people say among their actions. In a quickness to judge, we have cast aside an interest and forbearance to look behind people's actions, and the alleged sins they commit, to understand and appreciate their motivations. The manifest consequences of what people do is all that counts and the motivations that lie behind what they do has increasingly fallen out of the equation. As manifest actions become more harshly judged, the underlying intentions go unconsidered.

Yet I believe that people's motivations, their intentions, need to be included when we assess the behavior of others. Without such consideration the moral picture is only partially drawn, the humanity of those doing the deed for which they are judged, and too often condemned, is critically disregarded. We need to become more sensitive to the inner life.

Let me go on a brief excursion through basic ethics. Ethically speaking, there are two divergent ways to assess human behavior. The first, utilitarianism, looks to the consequences of a person's actions to assess their moral content. In the formulation of John Stuart Mill, if a deed brings the greatest happiness to the greatest number of people, counting each person including oneself as one and only one, then such a deed is moral worthy. In the strictest sense, the motivations inspiring such deeds are irrelevant. Therefore, we may conclude that utilitarianism, so understood, proclaims no prior bias to what we normally assume to be ethical standards for our conduct. There is no prior need to be honest, tell the truth or keep our promises. If lying brings the best results for the greatest number, then lying is morally neutral or justified.By obviating motivations for our actions, utilitarianism takes no notice of a person's character. One's inner life makes no difference. Utilitarianism is ultimately a calculus, and it is not hard to imagine that a computer could readily replace a human being in determining which acts are moral or not.

The second way to think about assessing the conduct of others – and our own – does not look to the consequences of our actions. It looks within. This is the deontological tradition in ethics, whose most important figure was the German luminary of the Enlightenment, Immanual Kant. Kant absolutely disavowed utilitarianism on several grounds. First, he reasoned that we could never be fully confident about the future, and therefor what consequences our choices would bring. I may choose to give a donation to charity on the assumption that my generosity will help people in need, only to find that the charitable organization unbeknownst to me is corrupt and donations line the pockets of greedy administrators. I may buy a friend a gift of a blue scarf with the loving intention of increasing her happiness and to bring us closer, only to find that she can't stand the color blue, and she becomes vexed that I didn't know that when she thinks I should have.

But Kant also concludes that utilitarianism doesn't do justice to the inner lives of people. It overlooks or doesn't give enough regard to our freedom and autonomy. And our freedom and autonomy is the basis for our dignity. A moral theory based on happiness, Kant reasons, still leaves us ultimately driven by our passions, and while, as creatures of the flesh, there is nothing necessarily wrong with that, such actions so determined are not morally worthy. Prudential yes, but, strictly speaking, not ethical.

I believe that Kant is intuitively correct about this. If we make our choices based simply on the basis of a calculus, what will be more advantageous or bring greater benefits, we can ask, what is specifically ethical about our choices? If I give a boatload of money to a hospital in order to have a wing named after me and thereby enhance my ego, from a utilitarian perspective my donation can be assessed as very good. But we can rightly ask, what is specifically moral about it? If as a businessperson I adopt the operative maxim “honesty is the best policy” I have transformed honesty into nothing more than a utilitarian strategy to enhance my profit, and thereby have drained the concept of honesty of its moral content. Ethics becomes reduced to a cost-benefit analysis, and the distinctive ethical content is removed from it.

Kant, as many students have lamented, can become very esoteric. He believed that our reason is a product of our freedom. In a conclusion that is certainly debatable, he saw reason as independent of the drives and impulses that fuel our emotions. And reason, which brooks no contradictions, frames rules or laws of conduct. Kant discovered the supreme moral law, which he referred to as the Categorical Imperative, in other words, an absolute command. We create the Categorical Imperative out of reason, which again, is an expression of our freedom. In short, we formulate a law which, as free beings we choose to obey.

And what is the content of the supreme moral law? Kant elaborates three versions, but it is the second that I think is most tangible. In fact, it perhaps is the most important ethical dictum ever rendered, and I believe sublime. It simply states “Treat the humanity in others and in oneself and as an end and not merely as a means.” In short, humanity is not to be transformed into a tool, an instrumentality to satisfy the needs, desires and lusts of another. Rather we need to respect – respect is the highest value for Kant – the humanity resident in people which requires that we do not enslave them, abuse them, deceive or degrade them or lie to them -- all lapses from the respect with which we need to regard and treat them. Indeed, if people so acted, we would have a better world.

But Kant goes further. He begins his seminal work in The Metaphysics of Morals by saying: “Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good without qualification, except a good will.”

By “a good will” Kant means acting out of duty to the the Categorical Imperative. Here his anti-utilitarianism becomes apparent, indeed absolute. If we act morally out of a motive to bring about a beneficial result, such as to foster greater justice or to make a friend happier or even to enable ourselves to feel good by performing a righteous deed, Kant would conclude that we have performed a prudential act, and that is certainly okay. But strictly speaking, we have not performed an ethical act. In short, for Kant, being ethical, doing the right thing, only results when we do the right thing because it is right, and not for any extrinsic or utilitarian reason. We tell the truth not because we will thereby benefit, but because telling the truth is the right thing to do in and of itself – period.

Now, I must admit that Kant is an ethical rigorist. In fact, I conclude, given that we are creatures of need always yearning for gratification, and cannot be motivated by pure duty, Kant's ethics is, in practice, an impossible one. I would speculate that the most selfless mother, who would sacrifice anything for her child, still harbors in the back of her mind the hope that when her child grows up he will be nice to her. In short, our ethics cannot be based on pure altruism. There will always be some self-interest, however minimal or sublime.

But this entire excursus through ethics 101 is to make an important point related to the pervasiveness of the harshness of our times and the quick assessments of the actions of others who fall into disfavor. For Kant, we should not judge the ethical quality of an act based on consequences or our acts, but solely on our motives. Why? Because we can never be certain as to where our actions will lead. The only thing we can be certain about are our inner intentions; whether we have acted out of the best intentions or perhaps otherwise.

I believe there is wisdom and much humanity in this, humanity which is too often absent these days. As mentioned, we are all fallible creatures, We all have our vulnerabilities and make mistakes. In a world of striving we both succeed and fail in our undertakings. Things we do with the best of intentions often turn out badly through no fault of our own.

When this is the case, which too often it is, would not each of us want others to understand that we acted out of good intentions, despite the negative consequences, and thereby open the door to forgiveness and reconciliation?

To be judged on the consequences of a person's action alone is to isolate the other. But to be sensitive to their motivations and intentions is a way to open the door to dialogue and understanding. When we understand the motivations of others, even in their failed actions, we perhaps see aspects of ourselves. It is a way to understand and respect their humanity. And as such, it is a vehicle toward softening human relations and thereby strengthening the human bond.

Though it may not be in vogue in our times, I continue to believe that our intentions count, and should count for a great deal.