[Music] Depending on your perspective, Immanuel Kant was either the most boring person on the planet or a productivity hacker's wet dream. For over 40 years, he woke up every morning at 5:00 a.m. and wrote for exactly 3 hours.

He would then lecture at the same university for exactly 4 hours. He followed that up with lunch at the same restaurant each day. Then in the afternoon, he would go on an extended walk through the same park on the same route, leaving and returning home at the exact same time every day.

Kant spent his entire life in Königsberg, Prussia. I mean that literally. He never left the city.

Despite the coast being an hour away, he never saw it. Kant was efficiency personified. He was so mechanical in his habits that his neighbors joked that they could tune their clocks based on when he left his apartment each day.

He would leave for his daily walk at 3:30 p.m., have dinner with the same friend every evening, and return home to finish work and go to bed at exactly 10 p.

m. It's easy for us to scoff at a guy like this.

What a loser, seriously, get a life, dude. But Kant was one of the most important and influential thinkers in modern history. He did more to steer the world from his single room apartment in Prussia than most kings and armies ever did before or since.

If you're living in a democratic society that protects individual rights, you have Kant to partially thank for that.

He was the first person to ever envision a global governing body that would guarantee peace across much of the world. He prescribed space-time in such a way that it later inspired Einstein's discovery of relativity.

He came up with the idea that animals could potentially have rights themselves. He invented the philosophy of aesthetics and beauty and resolved a 200-year philosophical debate in the span of a couple hundred pages.

He reinvented moral philosophy from top to bottom, overthrowing ideas that had been the basis of Western civilization since Aristotle.

Kant was an intellectual badass. If brains had balls, Kant would have been made out of steel. His ideas, particularly about ethics, are still discussed and debated in thousands of universities today and that's what I want to talk about.

Kant's moral philosophy and why it matters now. You might be saying, really, moral philosophy? Who 
cares, man? Show me a shiny sunset, inspirational  quote, or a cat meme.

Well, that right there is 
moral philosophy. Anytime you say, who cares, or 
what's the big deal, you're essentially questioning 
the value of something. Is it worth your time and  attention?

Is it better or worse than something 
else? These are all questions of value, and they 
all fall under the umbrella of moral philosophy. 
Our moral philosophy determines what we value, what  we care about, and what we don't care about, and our 
values determine our decisions, actions, and beliefs.

Therefore, moral philosophy applies to everything 
in our lives. Got it? Kant's moral philosophy is  unique and counterintuitive.

Kant believed that 
for something to be good, it had to be universal. 
That is, it can't be right to do something in one 
situation and wrong to do it in another. If lying  is wrong, it has to be wrong all the time.

It has to 
be wrong when everyone does it, period. If it isn't  always right or always wrong, then it cannot be a 
valid ethical principle.

Kant, these universalized 
ethical principles, categorical imperatives, rules 
to live by that are valid in all contexts, in every  situation to every human being.

Well, holy [__]. 
Universal laws that dictate all morality for every 
human being? Sure, you want fries with that? It's 
so impossible, it sounds ludicrous, but Kant made  a hell of an attempt.

In fact, he made a number of 
attempts at creating categorical imperatives. Some 
of those attempts were quickly ripped to shreds 
by other philosophers, but others have actually  held up the test of time to some degree.

One of 
them in particular has kind of stuck, and in all 
of my years reading and studying philosophy, 
psychology, and other sciences, it is one of  the most powerful statements that I've ever come 
across.

Its implications reach into every part of 
each person's life. In a single sentence, it sums 
up the bulk of all of our ethical intuitions and  assumptions, and in each situation, it points to a 
clear direction of how we should be acting and why.

Okay, enough foreplay. Here's Kant's rule: Act that 
you use humanity, whether in your own person or in  a person of any other always at the same time as an end and never merely as a means.

Okay, what the actual [__] Let's back up for a second. Can't believe that rationality was sacred. When I say rationality, I don't mean like Sudoku or chess grandmaster rationality.

I mean rationality as the fact that we are the only known creatures in the universe that are able to make the decisions, weigh options, and consider the moral implications of each and every action, basically consciousness.

The only thing that distinguishes us from the rest of the universe is our ability to process information and act consciously in the world, and this to him is special, it's exceedingly special.

For all we know, we are the only shot the universe has at intelligent self-organization. Therefore, we need to take it seriously, and therefore rationality and protecting conscious choice must be the basis for all of our moral reasoning.

Kant wrote that quote, without rationality the universe would be a waste in vain and without purpose.

To Kant's mind, without intelligence and the freedom to exercise that intelligence, we might as well just be a bunch of rocks. Nothing would matter.

Therefore, Kant believed that all morality is derived from the protection and promotion of rational consciousness in each individual. So how do you do that? Well, Kant's rule above, let's restate, state Kant's rule in a more modern language to make it more easily digestible.

Quote, each person must never be treated only as a means to some other end, but also be treated as an end themselves.

Okay, let's say I'm hungry and I want a burrito. I get in the car and I drive to Chipotle and I order my usual double meat monster that makes me oh so happy on a weekly basis.

In this situation, eating the burrito is my end goal. It's ultimately why I'm doing everything else, getting in the car, driving, buying gas and so on.

All these things I do to get the burrito are the means, i.e. the things that I must do in order to achieve my end.

If you call a friend to find out how they're doing, calling them is a means, finding out how they're doing is your end. If you leave a party early so you can wake up in the morning, leaving the party is the means, and waking up early is your end.

Means are things that we do conditionally. I don't want to get in my car and drive, but I want a burrito, therefore driving is the means to my burrito end.

An end is something that is desired for its own sake. It is the defining motivating factor of our decisions and behaviors.

If I wanted to eat a burrito only because my wife wanted a burrito and I wanted to make her happy, then the burrito is no longer my end, it is now a means to an even greater end, making my wife happy.

And if I only wanted to make my wife happy so I could hopefully get laid tonight, now my wife's happiness is a means to a greater end of sex.

Likely that last example made you squirm a little bit and think I'm kind of a dirt bag, and that's exactly what Kant is talking about. His argument, hell, his rule states that treating any human being as a means to some other end is the basis of all unethical behavior.

So treating a burrito as a means to my wife's end is fine, after all, as far as I know, burritos don't have rational consciousness.

But if I treat my wife as a means to the end of sex, now I am treating her as a means, and Kant would argue that that is some shade of wrong.

Let's give Kant's rule the common sense check.

Lying is wrong because you are misleading another person's conscious behavior in order to achieve your own goal. You are therefore treating that person as a means to your own end, therefore lying is unethical.

Cheating is unethical for a similar reason. You are violating the expectations of other rational and sentient beings for your own personal aims.

You are treating the rules and expectations agreed to with others as a means to your own personal end. That is wrong. Violence, same deal. You were treating another person as a means to some greater political or personal end, bad, very bad.

Kant's formulation checks all the boxes that we would expect from a theory of morality, but it goes way, way beyond common sense morality. In fact, I will try to argue that Kant's rule plausibly extends to pretty much everything that we value is right and good today.

Check it out. The moral implications of Kant's rule, the list below, is incomplete. Some of the items Kant explicitly wrote about, but others are extrapolations that I've taken from his work and applied to my own values. My hope is that by the end of it, you will see the incredible flexibility of the single moral maximum to extend almost all areas of human life.

Example one, laziness. Okay, I can be as lazy as the next guy, full disclosure, and I often feel guilty about it, but we all know that blanking off in the short term inevitably harms us in the long term, but for whatever reason this short-term gain versus long-term loss calculation never seems to inspire or move us.

But that's not why Kant thinks it's wrong. In fact, Kant would say that this is the wrong way to think about laziness.

It's insufficient. Kant believed that we all had a moral imperative to do the best that we can at all times, but he didn't say to do your best because of self-esteem or personal utility or contributing to society or whatever.

He went even further than that. He argued you should do your best because anything less is to treat ourselves as a means rather than an end. Yes, you can treat yourself as a means as well.

You're sitting on the couch refreshing Twitter for the 28th time and you're treating your mind and your attention as a mere pleasure receptacle.

You are not maximizing the potential of your consciousness. In fact, you are using your consciousness as a means to stimulate your emotional ends.

This is not only bad, Kant would argue, but it's unethical. You are actively harming yourself. Example two, addiction. Believe it or not, Kant wasn't a total party pooper. He enjoyed some wine with his lunch.

He smoked the pipe, but only at the same time each morning and only one bowl of tobacco. Kant was not necessarily anti-fun, what he was against though, was pure escapism.

He wrote that using alcohol or other means of escaping one's own life was unethical because it requires you to use your rational mind and freedom as a means to some other end. In this case getting [__] up.

Kant believed in facing one's problems. He believed that suffering is sometimes warranted and even necessary in life. We tend to judge the immorality of addiction by the damage it causes to others, but Kant believed that first, overindulgence was fundamentally the act of being immoral to oneself. The harm it did to others was merely collateral damage. It was a failure to confront the reality of one's own mind and consciousness, and this failure is akin to lying to oneself or cheating oneself out of precious life potential.

And to Kant, lying to yourself is just as unethical as lying to others.

Example three: people pleasing and seeking approval. Okay, I know it's not a good strategy to be kissing people's asses all the time, but unethical, really?

Isn't being really nice to people and making them happy an ethical thing to do? Well, not necessarily. Seeking approval and people pleasing forces you to alter your actions and speech to no longer reflect what you actually think and feel.

So right there, you are already treating yourself as a means rather than an end, but it gets worse because if you alter your speech and behavior in order to make others like you, then you are also treating them as a means to your end.

You are altering and manipulating their perceptions of you in order to garner a pleasant response from them.

Kant would undoubtedly argue that this is also unethical. How dare you tell me my shirt looks good on me, you ethical piece of [__]. I've written at length about how people pleasing and seeking approval leads to toxic relationships, but again, as usual, Kant takes it even further because Kant was [__] hardcore like that.

Example four: manipulation or coercion, even if you're not lying, but you're communicating with an attitude and a purpose of gaining something from someone without their full knowledge or explicit consent, then you are being unethical.

He believed it was the only way for there to be healthy interactions between individuals. It was radical for his time, and it's something that people still struggle to accept today.

There are two areas in the modern world where I think that consent issue is huge, and Kant would have a lot to say about it. The first is obvious: sex and dating. Under Kant's rule, anything short of explicit, fully informed, and fully sober consent is ethically out of bounds.

This is a hot button issue today, and I personally think people make it far more complicated than it needs to be.

It basically just means being respectful. People assume this means asking for permission 20 times on a date, but it's not. All you have to do is state how you feel, ask them how they feel, and then respect whatever response comes back to you.

That's it, it's not complicated. Respect was also sacred within Kant's moral framework because Kant believed that all conscious creatures have a fundamental dignity that must be respected at all times and by everyone.

For Kant, consent was the act of demonstrating respect. Anything that didn't lead towards consent between two people was to some degree disrespectful.

I know that makes Kant sound like an angry grandmother, but the implications of the consent issue are far-reaching and wide, touching every human relationship that we have.

The other modern area that is problematic is sales and advertising. Pretty much every marketing tactic is built around treating people as a means to some end, that is, making money. In fact, Kant struggled much of his life with the ethical implications of capitalism and wealth inequality.

He believed that it was impossible for anyone to amass a fortune without some degree of manipulation or coercion along the way.

Therefore, he was dubious of the entire system. He wasn't anti-capitalist per se, and communism didn't exist yet, but the staggering wealth inequality of his time did make him uneasy.

He believed anyone who had amassed a fortune had a moral imperative to give much of it away to the starving masses. Example five, bigotry, might as well throw it in here, especially since Enlightenment thinkers were infamous for having pretty racist views, which were common in the time.

Interestingly, Kant, despite saying some pretty awful things about race early in his career, turned the intellectual corner and realized later in his life that no race has any right to subjugate any other.

It makes sense, after all. Racism and other forms of bigotry are textbook cases of treating other people as means rather than ends.

Kant came to the conclusion that if all rationality is sacred, then there's nothing permitting European special privileges over any other nations or races.

he also became vehemently anti-colonialist. 
Kant argued that regardless of race, the violence  and oppression required to subjugate populations 
would destroy people's humanity in the process.

It was the ultimate unethical institution. This 
was completely radical for the time, radical to  the point of being considered absurd by many. 
But Kant reasoned that the only way to prevent war and oppression was to form an international 
government that organized and bound nation states  together.

Centuries later, the United Nations would 
largely be based on his vision. Example six, the duty of self-improvement.

Most philosophers of the 
Enlightenment believed that the best way to live  was to increase happiness as much as possible and 
to reduce suffering as much as possible as well.

This approach to ethics is called utilitarianism 
and is still the predominant view held by many  thinkers today. Kant had a completely different take 
on how to go about improving the world. Let's call it the Michael Jackson Maxim because Kant, like 
Michael, believed that if you want to make the  world a better place, take a look at yourself 
and make that change.

But instead of grabbing his crotch, Kant made his argument with brutal 
rationality, and here's how he argued it.

Kant  believed that generally it is impossible to 
know whether a person deserves to be happy or suffer because you can never truly know what their 
intentions and aims were when they acted.

Similarly,  even if you should make others happy, there's no 
way to precisely know how to make them happy. You do not know their feelings, values, or expectations.

You do not know the implications your actions will  have on them. On top of that, what actually 
constitutes suffering or happiness in most non-extreme situations is unclear.

Your divorce 
may cause you incredible pain today, but in a year  it might be the best thing that ever happened 
to you. You may relish the joy of a celebration with friends, but maybe it's distracting you from 
pursuing something that would prevent more future  suffering.

Therefore, Kant argued the only logical 
way to improve the world is through improving ourselves.

This is because the only thing we can 
truly experience with any certainty is ourselves. 
Kant defined self-improvement is developing 
the ability to adhere to the categorical imperative and he saw self-improvement as a duty, an undebatable obligation put on us all to, the reward or punishment for not following one's duty was not in heaven or hell, but in a life made for oneself.

Adherence to morality produced not only a better life for yourself, but a better life for all those around you.

Similarly, failure to adhere to morality would produce unnecessary suffering for oneself and for those around you. Kant's rule has a ripple effect. Your improved ability to be honest with yourself will increase how honest you are with others, and your honesty with others will influence them to be more honest with themselves, which will then help them improve their lives.

This is true for all aspects of Kant's rule, whether it's honesty, productivity, charity, or consent. The Michael Jackson maxim suggests that Kant's rule, once adopted by enough people, will generate a snowball effect in the world, enacting more positive change than any calculated policy or institution.

The duty of self-respect. Kant intuitively understood that there is a fundamental link between our respect for ourselves and our respect for the world.

The way we interact with our own psyche is the template which we apply to our interactions with others, and little progress can be made with others until we've made progress with ourselves.

He would likely be disgusted with the self-esteem movement today, seeing it as just another way of treating people as a means to some end of feeling better.

Self-respect isn't about feeling better. Self-respect is about knowing your own value, knowing that every human, no matter who they are, deserves basic rights and dignities, that every consciousness is sacred and must be treated as such.

The ONE RULE for LIFE - Immanuel Kant's Moral Philosophy - Mark Manson

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The ONE RULE for LIFE - Immanuel Kant's Moral Philosophy - Mark Manson

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