This week, the humanities crash course had me grappling with three key texts in the history of philosophy: book one of Spinoza’s Ethics (1661–1675), Descartes’s Discourse on the Method (1637), and Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).
Although all three are important and influential, Kant’s was my favorite — perhaps because it’s the easiest to map onto day-to-day choices. By coincidence, this week’s movie choice perfectly illustrated some of Kant’s key points.
Readings
Spinoza’s Ethics is a logical analysis — definitions, propositions, axioms — presented in an outline, much like Euclid’s. But instead of geometry, the subject here is the nature of reality. The goal: grounding philosophy on the same level of certainty enjoyed by mathematics.
Book one deals with the nature of God, which Spinoza considered an infinite substance that permeates the universe. Unlike the Biblical God, this ”God of Nature” is wholly impersonal. Still, it’s the primal cause of everything: Spinoza denied free will, which he considered illusory.
Discourse on the Method is one of the foundational texts of modern philosophy. It broke with past approaches to philosophical inquiry, which looked to Aristotle and religious texts. Instead of these authorities, Descartes looked to reason and logic coupled with a radical (for the time) skepticism.
He grounds his explorations in his famous first principle: “I think, therefore I am.” But skepticism and first-principle thinking don’t imply a free-for-all: one must conduct such inquiries within the legal and religious frameworks of one’s society. In contrast to Spinoza’s monism (God’s all-pervasive influence,) Descartes’s mind-body dualism influenced the reductionism that gave rise to the scientific revolution.
In the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant’s goal was to lay foundations for a pure moral philosophy — that is, one based on reason alone and not on utility. His argument spans three parts:
- Kant started by considering common ideas about what is moral. He offered “good will” as the only thing that can be absolutely good. This is because other actions we consider good might be motivated by some ulterior benefit to the person rather than from a sense of duty.
- Moral laws must be universal and necessary. Kant introduced the concept of “categorical imperatives,” which he contrasted with hypothetical imperatives that are subject to personal desires. The test for a categorical imperative is whether we’d be willing to have it become a universal law.
- Freedom is a necessary condition for morality. Why? Because you need autonomy to act morally. (Contrast this with Spinoza’s denial of free will.)
Human dignity is a key idea here. Everybody is worthy of respect and value just because they exist — a foundational principle of the (lowercase-l) liberal societies that emerged from the Enlightenment: that we should treat people as ends, not as means.
Audiovisual
Music: Highlights from W.A. Mozart’s operas. These are familiar works; I listened to a collection in Apple Music as work background.
Arts: Gioia recommended Japanese art and architecture. I listened to a lecture by Yale School of Architecture Lecturer Dr. Yoko Kawai on the relationship between space in traditional Japanese architecture and mindfulness:
Cinema: Alexander Mckendrick’s SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS. Burt Lancaster plays J.J. Hunsecker, an influential New York gossip columnist. Tony Curtis plays up-and-coming press agent Sidney Falco. Hunsecker wants to end his sister Susan’s relationship with a jazz musician. Needing Hunsecker’s column, Falco signs up to do the dirty work.
I’d long wanted to watch this film and decided this was the right time. I didn’t plan it, but the movie perfectly illustrated a key idea from one of this week’s readings.
Reflections
That idea, of course, is Kant’s Formula of Humanity: that one ought to treat people as ends and never as goals. The film illustrates what happens when people don’t follow the formula.
The Hunsecker–Falco relationship is purely transactional. Hunsecker needs someone to do his dirty work. Falco needs to advertise his clients in a popular column. Neither cares about each other as people, only for what they can do for each other.
Most relationships in the movie follow this pattern, but one illustrates it even more strikingly. At one point, Falco prostitutes his girlfriend Rita to obtain a disreputable favor from another columnist. She does it reluctantly since the columnist can help her regain her job, but her face shows the loss of dignity.
In contrast, the movie offers Susan’s love interest, Steve — a man of deep integrity. Steve loves what he does and he loves Susan — and he says what he thinks, even when it might hurt him. And he does hurt. But so do Rita, Susan, J.J., Sidney, and everyone else in their milieu.
The lesson: we shouldn’t treat people as pawns. Everyone has dignity, and we ought not to put them (or ourselves) in situations that compromise us — no matter how sweet the promised outcome might be.
Notes on Note-taking
This week’s materials sparked an insight about the role of different media in my learning journey.
Books, movies, music, and interactive media all do some things better than others. Books are best at conveying complex ideas, whereas movies can help us feel their impact on our lives. Books for the head, movies for the heart.
As a text-based medium, books can flow more naturally into our knowledge gardens. As I’ve shared previously, I write a note in Obsidian whenever I finish a book. It includes quotes from the text, and I use GPT to augment and clarify my thinking. I also annotate books as I read, highlighting passages and adding snippets of text. These highlights and notes also flow into my Obsidian vault.
These workflows are harder to do with movies, if not outright impossible. Although I’ve also made Obsidian notes about some of the movies I’ve seen, they’re not as comprehensive as my book notes. I don’t reflect as much on the cinematic (or musical, for that matter) material than on texts.
This has long felt like a blind spot in my knowledge garden. But perhaps I shouldn’t approach movies or music like books. They play different roles, complementing each other — but that doesn’t mean they need to be annotated with equal rigor.
Up Next
Gioia recommends Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther. I’ve read this short novel twice before, the last time around two decades ago. I was entranced both times and am excited to revisit it now.
Again, there’s a YouTube playlist for the videos I’m sharing here. I’m also sharing these posts via Substack if you’d like to subscribe and comment. See you next week!