HUMBLE CORRECTION

Philosopher John Troyer tells me that the Mulberry Street in Dr. Seuss's first book is actually in Springfield, Mass, where Theodore Geisel was born and raised. I guess since my parents lived not far from Mulberry Street in Lower Manhattan when my sister, Barbara, was born, I just assumed that was the locus. Who knew???

AND TO THINK THAT i SAW IT ON MULBERRY STREET

While I am pondering what I might next attempt in the way of a serious tutorial, perhaps I can continue these rather personal remarks, more appropriate to a FaceBook page than to a serious blog called "The Philosopher's Stone."

When I was a little boy, one of my favorite books was the very first Dr. Suess title, And To Think That I Saw It On Mulberry Street. Published in 1937, when I was three and a half, it is the story of a little boy who walks home from school each day along Mulberry Street, in lower Manhattan. Every day, when he gets home, his father asks him what he has seen, and even though it is Lower Manhattan, the answer, which clearly disappoints his dad, is "nothing much." So one day, desperately wanting to have something to tell his father, the little boy starts to imagine what he might have seen, and by the time he approaches his house, he has conjured in his mind a Dr. Seussian extravaganza, with brass bands, elephants, drum majorettes, and all. But when his father asks him the daily question, it all evaporates, and he answers, disconsolately, "a horse and a cart on Mulberry Street."

When I do my early morning walk, I look for anything interesting that I can tell my wife about when I get home. There is a wonderful blue heron that frequents several ponds in our area, and on rare occasions, I see him as I walk past the little pond behind the parking lot, or the larger pond that is part of the golf course past which my walk takes me. I always see squirrels, of course, but there are also two places where, like as not, I will see a rabbit. Once, as I passed the golf course clubhouse and slogged up Mason Farm Road on my way to my turn-around point, Highway 54, three young deer burst out of the woods a hundred yards ahead of me and bounded across the road, one after another. For the most part, though, it is just joggers and cyclists, cars and the HU Express bus, and of course plenty of mockingbirds, this being the South.

And so, as I walk along, sometimes, like that little boy, I conjure up wonders to report to Susie -- a herd of deer, a fox, two herons flying by, a mother and father rabbit with three little ones in tow. But as I cross Meadowmont Village Circle Road and punch in the door code to my condominium building, they evaporate, and I am left with the Chapel Hill equivalent of "a horse and a cart on Mulberry Street."

OCCUPY WALL STREET

I have signed up to attend a meeting of the Occupy Wall Street movement here in Chapel Hill this Sunday. I shall report afterwards. I am rather pleased to be able to say that there are five cities in North Carolina where such meetings will be held. Perhaps there is hope for the Upper South after all.

I INDULGE IN SOME NAVEL-GAZING

Having just finished possibly my most recherche "tutorial" ever -- the four part post of my paper THE COMPLETION OF KANT'S MORAL THEORY IN THE TENETS OF THE RECHTSLEHRE -- I thought I would try a sharp change of pace by talking about what is happening to me personally right now.

I am on a diet. I got back from Paris on September 21st and discovered to my dismay that I was a scant pound from the dreaded 190. On a frame barely 5' 9" tall like mine, that is a lot of flab. So I summarily stopped drinking all wine [about half a bottle of red a day], stopped eating my daily lemon poppy seed muffin at the Carolina Cafe while doing the NY TIMES crossword puzzle, stopped eating all cheese, and the little Weight Watchers icecream pop I have after dinner every night, stopped going out to dinner several times a week [since I do the cooking, that is always a real night out for me], and upped my exercise regimen to a daily four mile one hour walk.

My body always responds to my dieting efforts by losing several pounds instantly in a desperate effort to convince me that the whole idea is a mistake. After fourteen days, I have lost nine and half pounds. I tell myself that I will keep this up until we return to Paris in early December, which means another eight weeks. If I can average a pound and a half a week, which is reasonable, I think, I can bring my weight down to the high one sixties.

Then, maybe I will run for President!

THE CONCLUSION OF KANT'S MORAL THEORY IN THE TENETS OF THE RECHTSLEHRE CONCLUSION

We can now see that in the text of the Rechtslehre, Kant finally provides what was missing from the argument of the Foundations, namely a demonstration that such obligations as faithful promising are not hypothetically, but are rather categorically, imperative.

Kant's argument is open to criticism at every stage, of course, though it is nonetheless, in my estimation, extremely interesting. Before sketching some of those criticisms, let me call attention once again to an implication of the argument that goes directly counter to the most common impression concerning Kant's ethical theory. Kant is generally viewed as a rigorist, an objectivist, a universalist, a theorist who claims to be able to demonstrate a priori the universal validity of very powerful moral principles that are binding on all agents regardless of their nature or circumstances. And this impression is quite correct. But readers of Kant almost always draw the natural conclusion that he believes these moral principles to be binding on us even in the absence of a legitimately established state. In the familiar language of liberal political theory, Kant is seen as siding with Locke on the question whether the moral law is binding on agents in a state of nature. But it should now be clear that Kant's argument actually entails the opposite conclusion. The procedural obligation to enter into a social contract is certainly binding upon agents in a state of nature, but the moral principles enacted into law by the Legislature of a state thus established are binding only after, and on the condition of, the establishment of the legitimate state.

Kant clearly does not intend this consequence of his moral theory. Quite to the contrary. But his failure to provide a satisfactory theory of obligatory ends forces anyone wishing to embrace his moral theory to rely upon the legislation of the legitimate state as the only source of morally binding substantive principles of practical reason.

And this leads us ineluctably to the question sketched above, whether a legitimately established state, based upon a unanimous social contract and committed to embodying the fundamental principle of justice in its laws, is thereby constrained to a single structure of justice that thus constitutes the objective, universal, unconditionally binding system of principles of practical reason? This, I take it, is essentially the question originally posed by John Rawls in the earlier versions of his theory, before he drained it of its force and interest by an endless series of ad hoc adjustments, concessions, baroque elaborations, and qualifications.

If the answer to the question is yes - if, let us say, a legitimately established republic of rational agents in search of principles compatible with the fundamental postulate of justice must necessarily come upon and agree to Rawls' Two Principles of Justice - then by combining Kant's argument and Rawls', we would have a very powerful defense indeed of a universal system of moral principles. The argument, in a nutshell, would go like this:

1. Rationality as such entails consistent willing.

2. Consistent willing, for a phenomenally appearing agent, entails the possibility of property.

3. The possibility of property entails the necessity of establishing a state through a social contract.

4. A legitimate state composed of rational agents will necessarily enact one and only one set of fundamental principles of justice, namely the Two Principles of Justice.

5. Therefore, we are all, as phenomenally appearing rational agents, obligated universally and unconditionally to form legitimately grounded political communities with those with whom we come into contact, and in those communities to enact the Two Principles of Justice as the fundamental laws governing our interactions.

There are three stages in this argument: the derivation of the requirement of consistent willing from an analysis of what it is to be an agent; the deduction of the necessity of entering a social contract from an analysis of the preconditions of property; and the demonstration that reason dictates one and only one system of principles as the content of a legitimate state.

My own view is that the first stage in the argument, which as I have indicated we find in the pivotal portion of the Second Section of the Foundations, is essentially sound. To be an agent is to be moved by reasons, and the logic of reasons requires consistency of willing. What counts as a good reason for me necessarily counts as a good reason for any agent in relevantly similar circumstances.

The third stage of the argument, I am convinced, is mistaken. Neither Rawls nor anyone else has, to my knowledge, made a convincing case for the claim that free and equal rational agents must, insofar as they are rational, coordinate on a single system of substantive principles regulating their interactions with one another.

It is the second stage that I find especially interesting, in part, I confess, because I have managed to make it clear to myself only recently. Can the material circumstances of human existence - our spatio-temporality, our dependence for the pursuit of our ends on inanimate nature - ground an argument that we have a standing procedural obligation to attempt rational community with those agents with whom we interact? Can we, as Kant claims, compel such rational community?

I think we can conclude immediately that we cannot compel others to enter with us in a social contract, for the essence of such an agreement is that it represents mutual willing, and that implies that it is voluntary. But am I required, simply by the constraints of rational consistency, to seek such community with others, or is it consistent with my status as an agent to adopt nothing more than an instrumental stance vis-a-vis those with whom I interact? Is this, after all, the real content of the injunction to treat humanity as an end and not simply as a means?

I honestly don't know. My pre-philosophical inclination is to believe that the answer is yes, that there is something about construing myself as a rational agent that requires me, in all consistency, to attempt to achieve rational community with others whom I consider to be agents as well - though I do not consider myself bound, should they reject that attempt, to treat them as I would have agreed to treat and be treated, had we actually achieved rational community. But at this point, I do not see an argument that can make that conclusion plausible.

LEITER RULES

By the way, those of you who, as an idle amusement, keep track of the counter at the top of this blog that records visits may have noticed an extraordinary spike in the past two days, from 400-500 a day to 2500 a day. Why, you may ask. Simple. Brian Leiter mentioned on his blog that I had reviewed the McGinnis book on Palin. The spike occurred immediately. Talk about influence!

LACHRYMA CHRISTIE

So Chris Christie is not running. I don't really have much to say about that, but the chance to use the title of this post was too tempting to pass up. I think Mitt Romney will win the nomination, simply because there doesn't seem to be anyone else who can sustain some elevation for more than a month or two. I pin my hopes on a third party defection by the clear majority of Republicans who really dislike and mistrust him.

Now, let's put our efforts behind the metastisizing Occupy Wall Street protests, which could, in the next six to ten months, change American politics. [I really am an incurable optimist.]