How Confession Contradicts Kant

By John M. Grondelski. But first a note from Robert Royal: We're getting into the final stages of this fundraising campaign - and those last few thousands will make all the difference. If you're tired of these messages there's an easy way to stop them. Click the button. And if you don't like buttons, there are mailing addresses for checks, wire transfers, monthly, quarterly, and yearly automatic pledges. We've made it easy for you. So what are you waiting for? Support your favorite Catholic Thing. Now for today's column... This year marks the 300th anniversary of the birth of German philosopher Immanuel Kant. There's no doubt the philosopher from Königsberg has been hugely influential (even if hugely wrong) in modern philosophy. It's arguable that one reason contemporary German Catholic theology has the problems it does is its exaggerated effort to accommodate Kantian "insights." One of Kant's "contributions" to modern philosophy was his demand for "disinterestedness" in ethics. According to Kant, ethics cannot incorporate personal considerations; their admixture contaminates ethics. Ethics must be grounded purely in principle, without personal consideration. One does the good out of duty. That makes one's ethics "autonomous" rather than "heteronomous." To do something because it might in any way be personally beneficial is illegitimate and unethical. Of course, ethics needs to stand on principles - on moral norms - and not just on personal considerations. In opposing the reduction of ethics to personal benefit, Kant anticipated another cancerous ethic that would soon be born: the calculations of Bentham's and Mills' utilitarianism. Against their approach of morality-by-headcount ("the greatest benefit for the greatest number") stands Kant's categorical imperative: persons are always ends and never means. But to say that morality is not constructed just on personal considerations does not mean that the personal does not figure into morality. Like the Sabbath, morality is made for man, not the other way around. But a proper understanding of the person does not entail a subjective view of morality. Man, as an objective being in an objective moral world, flourishes by aligning with that moral order, not attempting (futilely) to subvert it. As I have written previously here, Karol Wojtyła's late 1950s Elementarz etyczyny [Ethics Primer] addressed the real implications of philosophical issues for his times. One of the essays in the Elementarz, "The Problem of Disinterestedness," is a direct shot at Kant and his approach to ethics. Kant's disinterestedness doesn't just eliminate "conflicts of interest" in ethics. It also eliminates traditional Judeo-Christian ethics. It does so by impugning the idea of eschatological judgment. That God "will repay each man according to his deeds" (Romans 2:6) puts God at odds with Kant, because a Deity who judges - and, therefore, rewards or punishes - is a Deity who makes being morally good a personal benefit. The Kantians claim that such a morality makes man "inauthentic" by giving him a personal interest in moral goodness. Man is good not because he values good but because the good benefits him in the afterlife. Wojtyła rejected that analysis as simplistic. It's simplistic because the good and man's good are ultimately in tandem, not opposition. It's because God, who is the Source of all Good, is also man's Greatest Good (Summum Bonum). For man to do the good and to love - which means to want - Him as my good are one and the same - and cannot be separate. It's that insight that is lost on modern man. In the process of losing it, there creeps in the temptation of a human "autonomy" that allows man to define his good independently of the good, and thus splits the two. "What God has joined man together must not be put asunder." Flowing from this insight also arises another contemporary conceit: that religion somehow "alienates" man from himself. According to that vision, the degree to which man i...