(November 28, 2013 at 9:38 am)apophenia Wrote: Kant makes some good points about the relationship between pragmatism of moral duties and the morality of those duties. In particular, he argues that a duty which is incapable of being fulfilled is not a duty at all, moral or otherwise, that a duty must be capable of being realized to invoke an ought. God's morality, according to that specific phase of Kant's ethics, then doesn't qualify as moral at all. And I think he's right. We don't fault a lioness for eating a human being, for she cannot possibly be conscious of any imperative not to do so, or at least would not, in her natural state, be cognizant of such. She has no duty to be more "moral" and not eat a human, and to claim that she has "sinned" by not living up to our standards of goodness is not only wrong, it is evil itself. To punish the lioness for not being more ethical is as absurd as to claim that we "fall short" of god's standard; the standard does not apply unless you first equivocate on multiple things, including its relevance as a duty. We have no prima facie duty to god on account of him having such standards, such standards aren't moral, nor do we have any justification of any duty toward god based on his standards alone. This simply doesn't work; his standards, and our duty to them, can only be justified elsewhere and elsewise, thus the story of Job, which, for all its appeal, portrays a fascist and ethically bankrupt monster of a god.
Does Kant say anything about the theoretical impossibility of followong a moral system vs the practical impossibility of doing so?
As far as I can tell from Drich's arguments, it is not literally impossible for a man to live up to god's morality. He believes Adam and Eve to have done so and I think he'd argue that Jesus had done so as well. So, while a person may be theoretically capable of living upto god's morality, for all intents and purposes, it'd unreasonable to assume that he'd do so in his long and varied life. Thus, the assumption that it is practically impossible for a man to live up to god's morality.
If this argument is correct, then it means that god's standard does qualify as a moral standard, albeit one extremely difficult to adhere to.
However, the crux of Drich's argument - the part that's the dumbest of all - is where he says "it doesn't matter either way". What's the point of giving a person an impossible task to perform and, in the end, saying that even if he does manage it, it wouldn't make any difference?
