Actions That Affect the Rights of Other Men, Essay Example

Emmanuel Kant’s perspective of public, in particular the humanity that he talks about is quite a renowned concept in the philosophy of morality.  This particular sentence was quoted from Kant’s To Perpetual Peace  where he elaborates a complex argument introduced to people by Socrates in Plato’s book called Republic. In my opinion he took that idea and modified and clarified it with some personal touch on it.   The passage can be elaborated in  a more deconstructed way which sounds something similar to this: If there are actions  made which can impact on the rights of others  it can be wrong if it is not beneficial for the moral knowledge.   In my opinion I think he is not speaking of humans per se but something higher than humans and it is moral knowledge.  Kant believed, like many others before him and after, that one cannot live a good life unless he knows what virtue is. According to David Luban there can be several meanings for Kant’s “publicity” but I think moral knowledge is best fit for this.   But if, for the arguments sake, publicity does not stand for “moral knowledge, ” I believe it is the humanity he is talking about. In both cases the argument is quite relevant.  Kant, himself being a humanist rejected the value that one should help those who are worthless, but one should not touch them or hurt them if they did not do anything. In addition,  Kant claims that all men, regardless of any out of ordinary element,  are equal and they have one common concept in them- virtues. So to go back to the original passage Kant says that if one commits an action that affects the rights of others if their maxim (principle) is not consisted with publicity. If one commits a bad crime, and if the public knows about it, obviously it would affect the way people think about it and therefore it would affect their relationship towards publicity or virtue.  So in the aftermath of the event, the importance of virtue will decrease and so the human principles will decrease.