After a week of turmoil and total pandemonium, I finally took a deep breath and enjoyed my life.
I binge-watch a lot, like a lot, but one thing really captured my attention these past few days. It was so strong and binge-able that I finished all the episodes of its four-season run within the span of five days: The Good Place.
The Good Place is a show that explores various dynamics of goodness and philosophical concerns that surround virtue while raising some controversial concerns. It is a philosophisticated drama that highlights the importance of ethics and philosophy in general. One of the highlighted philosophers is Immanuel Kant and his theory of Categorical Imperative.
After Kristen Bell’s Eleanor first realizes that she doesn’t belong in The Good Place, she asks Chidi to teach her how to be a good person. Chidi has some qualms and questions about such a morally ambiguous undertaking, including: “Is there a moral imperative to help you?” He’s referring to Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative.
The Categorical Imperative is devised by Kant to provide a formulation by which we can apply our human reason to determine the right, the rational thing to do – that is our duty.
Human reason is principally constituted by the search for universality and necessity. For Kant, this search for “natural laws” in science is the crucial aspect, the constitutive element of rationality per se. And just as the discovery of universal laws is absolutely central to natural science, so is the search for universal laws central to human morality.
It is this aspect of reason which is at the heart of the demand for impartiality and justice. When a judge makes his/her decision in applying the law, we hope and trust that s/he is not driven by his or her feelings, or passions, or biases, or ambitions. No, we want the Judge to be rational – to put aside those personal attachments which might influence his or her ability to ignore such things as the color of your skin, or the shape of your body, or the spelling of your name, or the patterns of your clothing, or the length of your hair. What matters is the law. What matters is the Judge’s unbiased reason.
For Kant, the basis for a Theory of the Good lies in the intention or the will. Those acts are morally praiseworthy that are done out of a sense of duty rather than for the consequences that are expected, particularly the consequences to self. The only thing GOOD about the act is the WILL, the GOOD WILL. That will is to do our DUTY.
What is our duty? It is our duty to act in such a manner that we would want everyone else to act in a similar manner in similar circumstances towards all other people.
Kant expressed this as an act according to the maxim that you would wish all other rational people to follow, as if it were a universal law.
Kant’s philosophy is the raw and uncut law that governs our life. However, Categorical Imperative alone is the universal law: Ethics jabbed itself for being contradictory.
The show “Good Place” even stated that it is not one’s mere ethics that make humans not suck, but rather their balance of different ethics.
“What matters isn’t if people are good or bad. What matters is, if they’re trying to be better today than they were yesterday. You asked me where my hope comes from? That’s my answer.” – NWI
