Kant and Etzioni: Towards an Interdisciplinary Bridge

Kant and Etzioni: Towards an Interdisciplinary Bridge

Miguel J. LLofriu Terrasa

First, I’d like to thank Amitai Etzioni for the invitation to this congress and the interest that he’s showing in my work. Secondly I’d also like to thank Jose Antonio Ruíz and Tom Haslett for their availability to facilitate the coordination that has made possible my being here today. I’m very grateful for the opportunity to be here

Before sharing my viewpoint, I would like to note that I strongly believe in Amitai Etzioni, but even more in his message. Thus, keeping in mind Etzioni’s methodology, I consider that messages should be always improved (sometimes from a critical frame of mind) in order to strengthen their mission to change the world.

Now I’m going to analyze “The Moral Dimension” from a perspective of foundation. We will see that Etzioni has a strong Kantian base, although he doesn’t take advantage of the possibilities that Kant offers. Also we will observe that there was a moment in time when Etzioni abandoned Kant and to my judgment this was a mistake. I think and I will try and show, on the one hand, that Kant is compatible with Etzioni, but on the other hand the former is an important foundation both in socioeconomics and communitarianism.

I will begin by remembering that the socioeconomic paradigm was trying to overcome the neoclassic paradigm, which, as Etzioni demonstrates is based on utilitarianism. In short it can be established that utilitarianism is a doctrine that tries to calculate the consequences of  actions. If the result of the calculation favors the majority, then actions can be carried out. It is necessary to do two observations on this statement. The first one is that not every consecuencialism is an utilitarian one (for example Aristotle’s ethics), the second one is that “favoring the majority” means ” more pleasure for the majority “, as Etzioni and Amartya Sen point out.

Thus, for Etzioni’s socioeconomic proposal to overcome the neoclassic paradigm it was necessary to be done with the utilitarianism as well. And to overcome an ethical – political theory that stresses the consequences, the option was another theory that was centring on the opposite end, that is, the intentions.

In this line, the Kantian deontology offers a forceful overcoming to the utilitarianism. And this one is the same base that Sandel, Sen and Etzioni have taken, though they adopted a moderate deontology. Thus the consequences of an action may  be beneficial for the majority, but  they can be, however, bad. For example, we can vote in a meeting and decide that the X attendee should be the slave of the rest. We fulfil the utilitarian maxim: rule of the majority, more pleasure and well-being for the rest and, again the end justifies the means. But this voting is unacceptable. It is wrong. Though only it is, in a  Rawlsian way, because anyone before the voting might be the X attendee.

Kant is the author who, based on the noumenic world, overcomes the tyranny of the consequences. From our practical reason it is possible to know what is good and to know what is wrong. The problem with the practical reason is it has to undress any phenomenic load. Thus, we have on the one hand a noumenic world where we can know how to act and on the other hand a phenomenic world where to act well does not guarantee positive consequences.

Etzioni focuses on Kant to establish his socioeconomic anthropology. The divided Self between the commitment with ultimate values (noumenic) and the pleasure (phenomenic) is a reflection of the human nature postulated by Kant. And thanks to the defense of another source, those founded in ultimate values, it is possible to overcome the utilitarianism. From this new conception of the subject socioeconomics emerges. Thus, socioeconomics is possible because from his expositions we understand that the commitment to a few certain values is superior to simply letting ourselves go by the calculation and the pleasure (though we do not deny his influence).

With all of this, it seems that without Kant’s contribution we might not have a socioeconomic self that is an alternative (because he extends, he never denies) to the neoclassic self.

Now I am going to show how the Kantian thought is present in Etzioni. For example, Waters holds that in the second stage of the social economy in America four routes can be detected. One of them is the so-called “Kantian economy”. That way was highly popular for his similarity with the Social Doctrine of the Church.  The “Kantian economy” was developed, according to Waters, by three important social economists: Lutz, Ellerman and Etzi

Now we are going to see some coincidences. On the one hand let me remember the second formulation of the categorical imperative, and on the other hand some of Etzioni’s quotes. Thus, according to Kant:

“Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means to an end”

And on Etzioni, already in the sixties we can come across the following definition of active societ

“The active society, the association of members who treat each other as goals and non-members as if they were members, offers a basis for social action in which values are realizad without humanity being objectivized”.

But not only in the sixties. Let us note the following definition of good society:

“A good society is one in which people treat one another as ends in themselves and not merely as instruments, a society in which each person is shown full respect and dignity rather than being used and manipulated”.

As we can see, Kant is present in Etzioni’s social theory. Let us see now his role in socioeconomics. In the construction of the socioeconomic paradigm we can meet a series of articles before ” The Moral Dimension ” with titles as explicit as the following ones:

Toward a Kantian Socio-Economics

Toward Deontological Social Sciences

Toward a Deontological Socioeconomics

In those articles, in spite of these titles, in the bibliographical references there is not even a single reference to Kant’s work. I repeat: not even a bibliographical reference to Kant’s work. Neither do we find an analysis on Kant’s works. If anything we can find a certain recognition in those scanty occasions in which Etzioni names Kant. For example:

“Kant is the leading deontologist; we draw here on some of his positions to indicate the ethical basis for a new economics and, more generally, a new social science” .

Even in occasions the abandonment of the Kantian theses is manifest:

“Kant took numerous other positions, and those cited here are intertwined in his work with extensive metaphysical assumptions. Many of those are either irrelevant to the issue at hand or may be rejected without losing the important observations we draw upon”.

Last, in “The Moral Dimension” there is not a unique reference to Kant, neither in the bibliography nor in the Name index. Nevertheless a close reading gives us a Kant’s comment on page 12. In it we can estimate a partial position. On the one hand it appreciates Kant but on the other hand it leaves Kant. But all this in scarcely five lines and without further justification.

Then, we meet an inversely proportional relationship: despite Kant being extremely important in Etzioni’s work, fewer foundation on him we find.

In consequence, all that reveals “The Moral Dimension” has been constructed based on Kant but without Kant, that is to say, from certain interpretations of other authors. And the most important problem of not having developed the Kantian contribution, we find it, when Etzioni receives criticism for incorporating the theses of Kant, a thinker that most researchers associate with the individualistic tradition.

These criticism together with a misreading of Kant on the part of Etzioni led him to abandon Kantian theories, specially in “The New Golden Rule”:

“At the core of the main schools of individualism is the notion that all human beings have the same basic individual rights –a universal principle not contextualized by any community or culture. This position is powerfully captured in Kant’s version of the old golden rule, the categorical imperative”.

In my opinion Etzioni committed a serious mistake. An understandable mistake because of not having known the whole Kantian work and his interpretations he could not give an alternative.  On the other hand, if Etzioni leaves Kant where does the foundation of the socioeconomics and The Good Society stay?

Then, the critique that here develops is not for the content of “The Moral Dimension” (that is a net Kantian dimension) but for his absence. There is no clear and forceful appeal to Kant and there is no development that overcomes Kant’s individualistic interpretation.

For this reason, I have demonstrated elsewhere that besides Kant’s reading in a universalistic and “individualistic” way, we can do also a reading of a communitarian Kant. In other words, opposite to the Kant of the “Critique of Practical Reason ” we find the Kant of posterior works as “Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone” and “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”. In the above mentioned works, according to Guyer, there is an evolution of Kant. He was realizing that it was not enough to know how to act, but needed something more.

Elsewhere have I developed based on the proper Kant that Phenomenic conditions are needed so that the good will and the autonomy can be performed.

I am going to end with some Kant’s quotes to demythologize his individualism. I would like you to pay special attention to them. Let us consider if they correspond to an individualistic thinker:

“The man is destined, due his reason, to be in a society surrounded by people and within it, and by means of arts and sciences, to cultivate, to become civilized and to moralize”.

Due to lack of time I will include one more:

“If no means could be discovered for the forming of an alliance uniquely designed as a protection against this evil and for the furtherance of goodness in man–of a society, enduring, ever extending itself, aiming solely at the maintenance of morality, and counteracting evil with united forces–this association with others would keep man, however much, as a single individual, he may have done to throw off the sovereignty of evil, incessantly in danger of falling back under its dominion. As far as we can see, therefore, the sovereignty of the good principle is attainable, so far as men can work toward it, only through the establishment and spread of a society in accordance with, and for the sake of, the laws of virtue”

They are only examples proving that another reading of Kant is possible.

Before I conclude, in Etzioni’s interesting research on the question of “the other Adam Smith”, Etzioni and others show that neoclassical paradigm was based on the “The Wealth of Nations” by Adam Smith, but we do must not forget he wrote another book: “The Theory of Moral Sentiments” (and we can add that he was a Chair of Moral Philosophy). Thus, there is “another” Adam Smith, the moral one. We forgot him; nevertheless, he precisely offers the sense to understand the economic Adam Smith.

I think that Etzioni remains to work on another Kant. Precisely, the Kant based on socioeconomics and communitarianism. Elsewhere have I developed the above mentioned work, but I consider important that this line of investigation should be assumed by Etzioni because thus The Moral Dimension, specially in the configuration of the socioeconomic self and in the foundation of the communitarianism can come out enormously reinforced and to answer a lot of criticism.

Thank you for your attentio