How Confession Contradicts Kant
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 is religious and the degree to which man is genuinely human stand in inverse, not direct ratio: the more we are religious, the less we are human. It is a rejection of Irenaeus’s truth that “the glory of God is man fully alive,” alleging instead that human living requires the death of God.
Religious teaching may supplement and better illumine rational ethical analysis, but faith – while going beyond – is never opposed to reason. That a believer may have additional reasons for doing good does not negate the rational reasons for doing good.
Kant’s desiccated “rationalism” in ethics is arguably a cousin to our current “proceduralist” obsessions, which imagine what is ethical is what is concluded after following the “rules,” without necessarily saying anything about the result those “rules” supposedly produce. It produces the “ethics” that applauds procedures yielding incompatible and irreconcilable conclusions. It’s no accident the father of contemporary American proceduralism – John Rawls – was a Kantian.
Against Kant’s disinterestedness, let’s consider an insight not just from theology but the basic Catholic catechism. One of the essential elements of a valid Confession is contrition, the supernaturally motivated sorrow for sin that makes one renounce the evil one has done.
But what supernatural motivations can fuel that sorrow for sin? The Church has always taught that there are two: contrition and attrition. Contrition is sorrow for sin motivated by the pure love of God. Attrition is sorrow for sin driven to some degree by self-love: I am not so much concerned about having offended God as being liable to punishment, even damnation.
Contrition (AKA “perfect contrition”) in itself is sufficient for the remission of sins (even though, in the normal course of events, it presupposes recourse to the sacrament of Reconciliation). Attrition in itself does not, but in conjunction with the sacrament of Penance, suffices. So, in conjunction with Jesus’s Sacrifice, our personal interestedness in our salvation leads to the forgiveness of sins. In other words, with attrition Confession corrects Kant, at least when it comes to man’s ethical interest.
Starting from different grounds in terms of who is man and what he can know, Kant would, of course, reject this analysis. On the other hand, realistic Christian philosophy would reject numerous Kantian presuppositions and, measuring them against that realism, find them wanting. Which leads us back to a basic insight where Catholic and contemporary thought part ways: whether or not the good and my good are, can, and should be different.
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