I’ll Stick by You Small Folks through Thin and through Thick!
It seems intuitive that we cannot be morally required to sacrifice our own life for another. This contention is supported by the “ends in themselves” formulation. We are to respect humanity, including that of our own person. Each of us is due equal respect insofar as each of us is autonomous. This entails that no person can be morally required to sacrifice himself or herself for another. Taking action that sacrifices your life, like a parent for a child, is invariably heroic. The lengths to which Horton goes to protect the Whos also borders on heroic sacrifice. He might be suffocated by the ten miles of rope or find himself in the Beezle-Nut stew! But remember that heroic behavior is above and beyond the call to duty. Heroic acts are thus not morally required.
This interpretation has some interesting implications. First, it provides insights into how Kantian rules might be recrafted generally. Consider again the inquiring murderer. The dilemma is that you are duty bound to protect the life of your innocent neighbor but also duty bound to answer the murderer’s question honestly. No matter what you do (assuming no third alternative and that your beliefs regarding the inquirer’s murderous intentions are well justified), something morally unfortunate will result. Here, Kant advises you to tell the murderer the truth; he requires you to disclose your neighbor’s whereabouts so as to allow the murderer to make his own autonomous decision, about which you are absolved of the consequences. However, this leaves us with no principled way to deal with conflicts of duties generally. On the interpretation proffered here, and even if Kant would disagree, it seems that you should allow the “ends in themselves” formulation to trump the “universal law” formulation. So, the rule of thumb here might be: whenever faced with two conflicting (Kantian) duties, always perform that action that disrespects persons the least. Telling a solitary lie to the murderer is not as serious as giving up the life of your innocent neighbor. Furthermore, you might now derive a new maxim, one more sensitive to the circumstances: whenever someone can tell a small, isolated lie to save the life of an innocent person (especially if you are quite certain that you will be believed), then one ought to tell the lie. Not only does this revision pass the “end in themselves” requirement but it also (arguably) passes the maxim test because it doesn’t obviously have the self-defeating ramifications of a more expansive policy of dishonesty (at least in terms of making an exception for yourself that you wouldn’t be willing to grant others).
Second, this interpretation helps to clarify the thorny issue of determining the extent to which we are duty bound to provide assistance to others in their attempt to lead autonomous lives. Our negative duties—what we ought not to do—are rather well-defined in Kant’s system; however, our positive duties—what we ought to do—are not. What lengths are we required to go in offering aid? Reconsider Horton. Surely he is obligated to find the speck a safe resting place as he splashes in the pool. His obligation is not obviated by the mere fact that some gossipy denizens of Nool find him eccentric for carrying around a speck. None of this presents any great danger to Horton. However, as we just saw, it’s not clear whether he’s obligated to protect the speck if it requires him to be tortured to death with hot Beezle-Nut oil. Thus, the rule of thumb is that you, as an autonomous person, cannot be obligated to become a mere tool or means to another person’s autonomous projects. Your autonomous projects are just as important as theirs. Drive an injured friend to the doctor when you’re not doing anything? Yes. Donate a kidney to your brother when both of his are failing and you can live with one? Probably. Subsequently donating your only remaining kidney to your sister? No.
Third, this interpretation interestingly conveys the conceptual benefits of combining Kant’s two categorical imperatives. Recall the maxim test from the “universal law” formulation: if an implicit maxim, once universalized, has contradictory or self-defeating ramifications, you may not do the action you are considering. Also recall the only explanation for why you would be willing to employ such a maxim: you must allow an exception for yourself that you would not be willing to grant others. If you allowed the relevant exception generally, your maxim becomes unworkable. This uncovers the irrationality of your proposal. But the core moral reason why you ought not to proceed with your act is solidified once we supplement the “universal law” formulation with the “ends in themselves.” By allowing the exception only for yourself, you are implicitly saying that you are more important than everyone else. You are deserving of the exception, but no one else. But what makes you alone morally deserving of this benefit? Aren’t you simply one autonomous person among many? Aren’t you just as, but no more so, deserving as anyone else? The relevant rational error you make is that you are placing yourself morally above others, even though you have absolutely no good reason for doing so. In addition, by treating yourself as an exception you’re basing your decision on that which makes you exceptional—not your reason, but your desires or inclinations. Acting on these alone, for Kant, is undignified. You’re not behaving as a free, rational being; that is, autonomously. Instead, you are treating yourself as a mere thing, acting solely from bodily whims and desires. Thus, acting contrary to the “universal law” formulation proves you are acting irrationally and thus contrary to the “ends in themselves” formulation as well. This behavior not only disrespects others, it disrespects you as well.
We can now better understand the depth of Dr. Seuss’s moral insights via Mayzie’s failings and Horton’s heroics. On the one hand, Mayzie not only acted on a maxim she couldn’t universalize but also she used Horton as a mere prop or tool in her selfish project. Her ploy would only succeed if she kept from Horton the full truth about when she intended to return. She failed to provide Horton the respect due to him. She might have asked Horton for help with full disclosure about the facts and her intentions, but she chose not to, thereby disallowing any chance Horton had to respond as an autonomous person. Treating Horton with respect “as an end unto himself” entails that he be allowed to autonomously choose whether to aid Mayzie in her project, thereby adopting (or coadopting) her project. Of course, Mayzie would expect that others so treat her, which again explains how she illicitly makes an exception for herself.
Horton, on the other hand, makes it clear just how important human dignity is. Yes, what Mayzie did was wrong, but Horton’s interactions with the Whos provide the underlying reasons. Furthermore, Horton’s example makes something else clear: oftentimes, we fail to offer aid to others in need simply because we are lazy or apathetic. Many of us hide behind the excuse that keeping a promise or doing a chore is asking too much. At best, this is mere self-deception. At worst, this is an implicit affirmation of selfishness. Too often, we behave as Mayzie—on some level we falsely believe that our (nonmoral) projects are more important than those of others. Consequently, Horton’s heroism lies not in the fact that he was willing to become an ingredient in the Beezle-Nut stew but rather in the fact that he was not quick to shirk his responsibilities. In this sense, Seuss and Kant agree. Horton was willing and able to keep his word insofar as he could. If that is all it takes to be a hero, implicitly argues Dr. Seuss, then all of us can be that sort of hero. We should be more like Horton (and less like Mayzie). Dr. Seuss convincingly demonstrates this by furthering the story of Horton—from faithful egg sitter to courageous Who protector. By reexamining the “story” of Kant’s categorical imperatives—from the “universal law” to “ends in themselves” formulations—we can better appreciate the depth of Dr. Seuss’s moral genius. In this way, these two literary greats reciprocally facilitate an enriched appreciation of the ethics of respecting persons.
We Are Here! We Are Here!
It’s true that Horton’s heroism causes unrest in Nool, at least temporarily. However, Horton’s neighbors are to blame for the disruption. They are the ones who have failed to properly investigate the facts. Indeed, note why we see Sour Kangaroo as the antagonist: by single-mindedly valuing her personal project�
�even one that brings general harmony to Nool—over the Whos well-being, she fails to respect their inherent worth as persons. She thereby affirms that the denizens of Nool and the contentment they enjoy are more important than the Whos and their livelihoods and, indeed, their very lives. Therefore, although hers is not a completely selfish project—unlike Mayzie’s—she still commits the gravest of Kantian moral errors. However, upon realizing her error, she quickly makes amends. She exclaims to Horton “from now on, I’m going to protect them with you!” (“And the young kangaroo in her pouch said, ME TOO!”) (Horton). Sour Kangaroo changes her ways because of the obviousness that “a person is a person, no matter how small.”
That the temporary civil unrest in Nool was caused by willful ignorance highlights an important feature of doing moral philosophy: one must be sufficiently informed by getting the relevant facts straight. Horton and Sour Kangaroo disagreed about what ought to be done with the speck because they disagreed about whether it contained persons. (“On that speck—as small as a head of a pin—persons never have been!” [Horton]) But once the Whos “yopped” loud enough and Sour Kangaroo was sufficiently attentive, her disagreement with Horton disappeared. Ethically speaking, they didn’t disagree. Both agree with Kant that persons are of utmost moral value and deserving of respect.
Unfortunately, civil unrest caused by disagreements about the facts is not reserved to Dr. Seuss stories alone. The dignity of actual persons has not always been, nor is today consistently, respected. Blind (and willful) ignorance is often the root cause of the injustices associated with not respecting the inherent worth of persons. Those in the Jungle of Nool were blind to the Whos due to the fact that Whos can’t be seen with the naked eye. But we must remember that Dr. Seuss published this story in 1954, in the midst of the controversies of the civil rights movement. Although African American civil rights activists like Martin Luther King Jr. did their best (like the Who-ville mayor) to organize chants akin to “We are here! We are here!,” all their “yopps” to achieve social recognition went unheard for far too long. Many Americans remained “blind” to the plight of African Americans. At least Sour Kangaroo couldn’t see the Whos standing in front of her. Yet, people in this country could obviously see African Americans and the injustices they faced. Horton pleaded with Sour Kangaroo to try just a little harder—listen just a little more carefully—if her eyes failed her. Perhaps Dr. Seuss was pleading with his readers: just look and listen a little more carefully to what is going on right in front of you. So, perhaps the real beauty of Horton Hears a Who! is that once you realize that Whos are persons, you can better see that persons are “Whos.” As “Whos” and not “Whats” or “Its,” persons are deserving of your respect because they possess inherent worth. When “Whos” are treated like things, this is the gravest of moral errors.
Accordingly, what grounds the importance of human dignity is that human beings are persons. What Seuss recognized so clearly is that being a person—being a “Who”—is not merely a biological category. It is a moral category. In this sense, all the inhabitants of Nool are persons. Yes, they look like animals and insofar as they are kangaroos, monkeys, elephants, and eagles, they are animals. But they are also persons because they represent creatures who are autonomous—rational agents possessed of volition and foresight. In ways that only Dr. Seuss can, he was reminding us that persons come in all shapes, colors, and sizes. Claiming that color, shape, or size does morally matter is to fail to recognize that persons are “Whos.” Horton recognized that the Whos are persons. He listened, he heard, and he acted—heroically. In doing so, he hears me and he hears you. We, too, are “Whos.” We, once again, should be more like Horton the elephant.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Pragmatist Ethics with John Dewey, Horton, and the Lorax
Thomas M. Alexander
Pragmatism is an unfortunate term, especially when it comes to the subject of ethics, for its popular sense connotes someone who is self-centered and shortsighted whereas the philosophical version means just the opposite: developing long-range, shared goals and ideals that expand meaning in our lives. While both William James (1842–1910) and Charles S. Peirce (1839–1914), the founders of pragmatism, had important things to say about ethics, it was John Dewey (1859–1952) who developed the most encompassing and profound ideas on the subject. Ethics, for Dewey, blended in with his whole social philosophy, which included his theory of the role of education in democracy and his view of democracy itself as social intelligence applied to all aspects of life.
Dewey’s ideas were frequently misunderstood—to the point of being taken as saying the opposite of what he meant (as in the case of the term pragmatism itself). He was accused of denying there were any intrinsic values, of making success the end of life, of advocating whatever was crudely expedient, of being a nihilist and believer in social Darwinism. Each one of these claims is perfectly false; Dewey rejected these notions and affirmed their exact contraries. Part of the reason for this misjudgment was that people had such a fixed idea of ethics as a set of absolutes that any other view was thought to come down to “nature red in tooth and claw.” People often want a feeling of security in the values they prize the most. Many such people did find Dewey’s ideas threatening, especially those who thought that ethics had to be a preordained set of fixed beliefs and an infallible way of discerning good from evil—that is, people who turned to a dogmatic outlook as a way of not having actually to think about the complexity of existence. Like Socrates, Dewey thought that morality was all one with what he called “reflective conduct.” People who view ethics as unquestioning obedience to commands (either God-given or coming from social institutions or traditions) exhibit what Dewey called “the quest for certainty.” Not only did he think this quest futile but also he thought it actually made people less able to deal with ethical issues as they arose in life. Such people, after all, are like the German soldiers at the concentration camps who pleaded they were “just following orders.” The ethical life, for Dewey, was one of constant reflection and risk. Neither obedience nor good intentions were enough to help us evade the responsibility of moral reflection or the possibility of tragic error.
So, what is ethics concerned with? Dewey affirms that there is no separate sphere of our existence that is “ethical”; that is, ethics is concerned with all forms of conduct, or is so at least potentially. To use one of Dewey’s examples, it may seem outside of the concerns of ethics to decide to open a window to get fresh air. But if there is a sick person in the room, someone with asthma, say, whether to open a window or not might well be a decision to reflect upon. Nor is Dewey saying that each and every decision we make is of equal moral value—this would make us as incapable of action as Hamlet, riddled with existential anxiety about each choice. One of the features of ethics, says Dewey, is being able to distinguish between relatively important matters that do call for reflection and relatively trivial matters that do not. But this ability is the result of experience, not a function of a prefabricated formula, and it is fallible.
Besides rejecting the idea that there is a special domain of “the ethical” marked off from other pursuits, Dewey rejected the idea that ethics was something imposed from outside, something not only set apart from nature but also fundamentally at odds with it. Such views like to see human existence as constantly challenged to choose between following “natural desires” or to obey what conscience or God dictate. There is an episode in the film The African Queen in which Katharine Hepburn’s character, Rose Sayer, a teetotaling missionary, objects to Charlie Allnut’s drinking. Charlie wakes up to see the last of his liquor being poured overboard. “Aw, miss,” he says, “It’s only human nature to want a drop now and then.” “Human nature, Mr. Allnut,” Rose replies, “is what we are put in this world to rise above.” Or we can think of the story of the prophet Elijah in I Kings 19: having defeated the priests of the god Baal, Elijah flees for his life to Mount Horeb (i.e., Mount Sinai, where Moses received the Ten Commandments)
. There, alone, he finds God not in the wind and storm, but in the “still, small voice” within himself, asking, “Elijah, what are you doing here instead of doing My work?” This story could be read as Elijah struggling to overcome his “natural” desire to live in order to obey the call of conscience. Dewey would say that the call of conscience, like temperance, is also part of human nature, and what the voice within him was doing was limiting a very narrow, selfish desire with a desire for a more inclusive good and higher value. If we cut off morality from human nature, we turn the whole moral life into one of conflict; if, on the other hand, we have a complex and broad view of human nature we can see ideals growing naturally out of our daily experience, capable of being encouraged, modified, or, if necessary, countered with other forms of conduct.
This, in fact, is how we grow up. A small child may selfishly claim a toy as hers and refuse to share. A parent could simply order the child to share and threaten punishment if she did not. What the child learns in that case is fear of punishment and blind obedience. Instead, one could try to teach the child to imagine what it is like for other children never to get to use the toy. What the child may learn then is to use her imagination in order to understand how other people feel; the child may develop sympathy and kindness. From the act of sharing the child may learn to play with others rather than alone and so develop a more complex and social personality. New values, like friendship, emerge to limit the earlier desire to keep the toy. This, in turn, gives the child a broader range of experience by which to judge actions and options in the future. In Green Eggs and Ham, Sam’s friend has the initial belief that he dislikes green eggs and ham. This judgment is changed by the simple experience of trying them. New experiences can be the basis of new “prizings,” but they can also make us reevaluate our old beliefs. If we see human life as the ground from which such new and richer values can grow, we cease trying to “master” a resistant nature and learn to cultivate fertile ground.
Dr. Seuss and Philosophy Page 19
