of cold, pure and unconcerned logical argumentation, whereas the
latter are usual y marshaled after the fact in order to give form to
a mystical inspiration or filter and make abstract “a desire of the
heart.” Nietzsche is not denying that he and Spinoza might share
an essential y similar “desire of the heart”, he is simply criticizing Spinoza for demanding that everyon e should recognize the ‘truth’ of his values. To the contrary, on the grounds of the metaphysics of
power (first proposed by Spinoza), Nietzsche believes that his values
are his own, even though they are also the highest. Spinoza does not have the strength for this. However, in addition to accusing Spinoza
of “personal timidity and vulnerability”, Nietzsche ends by calling
him a “sick hermit”. An interesting accusation, given that Nietzsche
spent most of his own life ill and in profound solitude.
In section 25 of Beyond Good and Evil, in addition to reiterating his description of Spinoza as one of “the compulsory recluses”, he
levels a more serious accusation against Spinoza, namely that the
latter had become one of the “sophisticated vengeance-seekers
and poison-brewers”, calling on us to “lay bare the foundation of
Spinoza’s ethics and theology.” The comments come in the course
of a warning to philosophers not to be deluded into believing that
their struggles and persecution in the world are sacrifices in the
name of defending truth. Their inability to openly and forceful y
confront and defeat their enemies breeds a poisonous craftiness
in them and robs them of the playful innocence and good humor
that characterizes a truly free spirit. If they ultimately go from
being outcasts to being “martyrs”, then they have ceased to be
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tragic philosophers and have instead become farcical “stage-and
platform-bawlers.” In the following section Nietzsche elaborates
on this idea in a way that makes clearer his criticism of Spinoza in
particular. Nietzsche acknowledges that choice human beings strive
to create “a citadel and a secrecy” of solitude that saves them from
the disgusting masses. Spinoza, the recluse, is certainly the kind of
figure that he has in mind here. However, Nietzsche claims that it is
even more exceptional to “go down” and live amongst men, to study
them, but also to test oneself and become a more inward (more
‘spiritual’) person, for the lack of an external fortress. Those who
lack the strength for this, such as Spinoza, were “not made… not
predestined, for knowledge.”
It should be noted that in his preface to Human, all-too-Human, Nietzsche describes a “great separation” as the most decisive event
in the life of a man who is to one day become a genuinely free spirit.
He describes this need to “go off into some desert” as symptomatic
of spiritual illness. Here, as in many other passages throughout his
works, Nietzsche speaks of the uncanny state of mind brought about
by such an illness as a womb of creativity and a path to liberation.
An especial y vivid example of this is in Thus Spoke Zarathustra, when after returning to his hermetic solitude, Zarathustra fal s ill
only to realize that the common man or ‘last man’ must also be
affirmed as necessary and that he must descend once again amongst
men to learn from them. Thus it is clear that Nietzsche suffered
from the same hermetic illness that he identifies in Spinoza, so
that even Nietzsche’s most vitriolic criticisms of Spinoza appear on
closer examination to be another example of Nietzsche’s painful y
intimate relationship to his predecessor. He chastises himself by way
of chastising Spinoza, because he suffers from the same wounds,
from having followed the same perilous and solitary mountain path
to spiritual freedom. Nietzsche concludes his July 30, 1881 letter
describing his ‘discovery of Spinoza’ with these telling words: “In summa: my solitariness which, as on very high mountains, has often made me gasp for breath and lose blood, is now at least a solitude for two. Strange!”
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ALIENS AND THE MORAL LAW
Beginning in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals,
Immanuel Kant attempts to fashion a genuinely universal
ethics – a moral law which would apply to all the types of
alien intelligence that he was convinced fill the heavens.
To this end, namely in order to ground a moral law relevant to all
rational beings, Kant needs to first define what it is that all and only rational beings share in common. He claims that this is the existence of a rational being as “an end in itself.” However, in the relevant
passages it is unclear who or what is the “end in itself”. Is it the rational being(s) as entities that Nature ultimately aims to produce,
or the “own” existence of each and every rational being? The first section sets out this problem and ventures a provisional solution to
it.
However, in order to address this question in the most
interpretively charitable way, the second section considers
innovations of Kant’s later moral philosophy, in the Critique of
Practical Reason and the Metaphysics of Morals, which affect the meaning of key concepts in the Groundwork and modify certain
of its central claims. Among these is the transformation that Kant’s
concept of “wil ” ( wille) undergoes with the later development of the concept of the “power of choice” ( willküre). Such a transformation of the concept of will has significant consequences for the Groundwork’s notion of freedom, a notion which Kant claims is somehow
inseparably connected with his definition of a rational being as
a being whose existence is an end in itself. There is also a related
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change in Kant’s view of whether the moral law can allow for (or
indeed, requires) the happiness of others and one’s own perfection to
be objects of the faculty of desire and material determining grounds
of the wil .
In the third and final section, after having ascertained how we
are to understand an end in itself with respect to the existence of
beings, its relationship to Kant’s single innate Right of freedom is determined. An attempt is made to draw out the empirical claims
about the nature of extraterrestrial intelligence that are implicated
by Kant’s apriori attempt to develop a universal moral philosophy
– both an ethics and political principle of Natural Right that would apply to any and all non-human rational beings. To this end the
reader is asked to patiently immerse himself for a time in a world
of truly alien intelligence, without which it is not possible to be
struck by the boldness of Kant’s claim that all extraterrestrials would be persons whose power of free choice renders them individual y responsible to one another under the moral law.
I.
Kant refers to non-human intelligence no less than eleven times
in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and he draws an explicit distinction between human beings and rational beings in
general on six of these occasions (see 4:389, 4:408, 4:425, 4:428-4:29, 4:447-448, and 4:449). When we view these references through the
lens of the third part of Kant’s 1755 astronomical work Universal
Natural History and Theory of the Heavens, it begins to become clear that applicability to extraterrestrial intelligence was the key
motivation behind Kant’s attempt to develop an apriori moral philosophy.
Kant’s Universal Natural History is famous for two novel
astronomical theories that more or less proved to be true: the disc
shape of the Milky Way and the idea that distant nebula are actual y
other ‘universes’ (real y, other galaxies). However, in the long
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suppressed third section of this work, Kant develops a theory of
aliens of varying degrees of rationality, depending on the empirical
conditions of their development (with distance from the sun being
the key factor). There are some beings so perfect in their physical
and spiritual constitution that they adhere to the moral law virtual y flawlessly, while there are others so malformed and pathological y
driven that they are incapable of sin only because they lack the
capacity for responsible actions. Between these extremes, there are
beings out there like ourselves – fallible, but capable of resisting our sensuous inclinations and obeying the single moral law within us
all.1
This core insight remains a background for the development
of Kant’s moral philosophy, even if he eventual y dismissed the
specificities of his theory of extraterrestrial intelligence in the third part of this speculative work and consented to its suppression within
his own lifetime. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant writes: I should not hesitate to stake my all on the truth of the
proposition – that, at least, some one of the planets, which we
see, is inhabited. Hence I say that I have not merely the opinion,
but the strong belief, on the correctness of which I would stake
even many of the advantages of life, that there are inhabitants in
other worlds.2
We also have a passage towards the end of the Critique of Practical Reason, where Kant suggests that were it not for the moral law within each man, his perishable physical being as an animal creature
alone would render him insignificant in the face of the vastness of
the cosmos. It is the fact that the heavens are populated by beings
capable of acting on the moral law that renders contemplation of
the vastness of the heavens edifying, rather than cause for a sense of 1 Michael J. Crowe, The Extraterrestrial Life Debate: Antiquity to 1915 (University of Notre Dame, 2009), 149.
2 Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998), A 825 / B 853.
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terrifying absurdity. Significantly, the first lines of this passage from the Second Critique, are quoted on Kant’s tombstone:3
Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration
and awe, the oftener and more steadily they are reflected on: the
starry heavens above me and the moral law within me... The former...
broadens the connection in which I stand into an unbounded
magnitude of worlds beyond worlds and systems of systems... The
former view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates, as it
were, my importance as an animal creature, which must give back
to the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter from which
it came.4
Now, bearing in mind Kant’s firm belief in a plurality of worlds,
let us return to the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and trace the line of argument that leads to his definition of rational
beings as beings the existence of which is in an end in itself. Kant
begins by arguing that it is inherent to the idea of duty, and of moral law, that it holds not only for human beings, but for all rational
beings. Consequently, whatever the ground of ethical obligation
may be, it cannot be sought in empirical y conditioned human
nature. Anthropology is only useful in humans’ application of moral
rules effectively in the conduct of their daily lives.5 Thus an action from duty must set aside or even run against all inclinations, or
habitual sensual desires. The will of rational beings must be able
to be determined objectively solely by the law and subjectively by
pure respect for the law.6 This law must not be derived from any
special tendency of human reason. This point is emphasized by
characterizing it as an objective principle on which we would be
directed to act even if it went against the grain of “every propensity, inclination, and natural tendency of ours (i.e. of we homo sapiens)”.7
3 Crowe,
The Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 151.
4 Immanuel Kant, “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals” in Practical Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 5:161.
5 Ibid., 4:389.
6 Ibid., 4:400-401.
7 Ibid., 4:425, my emphasis.
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For it to do so would only render the command in a duty more
sublime and dignified, according to Kant, while taking nothing away
from its validity. After having stripped away all inclinations and or
motives relevant only to human sensibility, nothing can be left other
than action in conformity with the universal law itself – a law whose
representation must determine the will without regard for any effect that could be the object of desire.8 It is at this point that Kant first introduces the Categorical Imperative: I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a
universal law.
Kant goes on to claim that this requires us to accept that no
possible experience could be grounds for inferring an apodictic,
universal law of this kind. Given his reiteration that such a law must hold for all rational beings, the implication here is probably that the conditions for subjective experience could be radical y different for
non-human rational beings. Kant also makes reference to a passage
from the Gospels, Matthew 9:17, in which Jesus asserts that even
the example of his life is not sufficient for inferring the goodness of God. Kant claims that reason frames apriori the idea of God as the
supreme good, and that it is real y an idea of moral perfection.9
All moral concepts grounded in reason apriori are as present
in the most common reason as they are in the highest degree of
speculative reason.10 This further circumscribes the idea of a rational being as such, by asserting that one cannot be a rational being by
degrees. One either is or is not a rational being capable of adhering to the moral law. This prepares us for the following claim, namely that,
not only is the moral law unconditioned by any human sensibilities,
but in order to hold for all rational beings, moral laws must not
be derived from any empirical y contingent cognitions pertaining
to the special nature of human reason. Whether by the latter Kant means a generic rational faculty geared to function in the context of
human sensibilities, or some distinctly human cognitive faculty that
8 Ibid., 4:402.
9 Ibid., 4:408-409.
10 Ibid., 4:11.
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is a variation on the theme of rational faculties in general, either way this further criterion requires Kant to seek “the universal concept of a rational being as such”.11 Only then can we real y understand what
a Categorical Imperative is, or wherein its ground lies.
Ever
ything in nature works according to laws. What is unique
about those beings that are rational, is that they have the capacity to act in accordance with their representation of these laws. If the will of a rational being were perfectly determined by reason, then that
being would have a perfectly good – or “holy” – wil . However, in a
being whose will is not perfectly determined by reason, actions that
are cognized as objectively necessary are imperatives, or commands of reason – they indicate an “ought”. (There would be no “ought” for
a “holy” being.) Imperatives are either hypothetical or categorical.
Hypothetical imperatives are those that command actions
undertaken toward some other end, actions which are means toward some end beyond themselves, whereas the Categorical Imperative would be an action represented as objectively necessary in-itself.12
We cannot know in advance what the content of a hypothetical
imperative may be, but we always already know what a Categorical
Imperative will contain, since it cannot be limited by any empirical
condition, the maxim of action under the Categorical Imperative
conforms solely to the universality of law as such. This universal
lawgiving is what the Categorical Imperative represents as necessary.
Kant argues that this means that there is, strictly speaking, only a single Categorical Imperative: act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can also will that it become a universal law.13
Now we are very close to Kant’s definition of a rational being as
a being the existence of which is an end in itself. The move towards
that definition comes through consideration of the type of ends
at which the two kinds of imperative aim. Subjective ends rest on incentives. They are material ends in the sense that they can be
effects of one’s actions. These are consequently only the grounds
11 Ibid., 4:412.
12 Ibid., 4:412-14.
13 Ibid., 4:420-21.
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of hypothetical imperatives. All of these are only relative. On the other hand, objective ends hold for every rational being. It is at this point that, in order to define an objective end, Kant rhetorical y asks whether there could be something: “the existence of which in itself has an absolute worth, something which as an end in itself could be a ground of determinate laws.”14 He claims that the ground of a
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