ACTION MUST BE REGULATED BY THE GOOD

ACTION MUST BE REGULATED BY THE GOOD

1. WE ARE OBLIGED TO BE MORAL BY GOODNESS

Immanuel Kant, Former Professor-Konigsberg, LECTURES ON ETHICS, 1963, p. 82.

W are obliged to be moral. Morality implies a natural promise: otherwise it could not impost any obligation upon us. We owe obedience only to those who can protect us. Morality alone cannot protect us. Blessedness is an obligation is an identical proposition because all our moral actions secure through religion completudo. Without religion obligation is motivelessness. Religion supplies the condition under which the binding force of the laws can be thought. But how then are we to explain that there exist men who do good though they have no religion? They do so not from principle but for sensual reasons.

The ground for doing a good action should not lie in the reward but the action should be rewarded because it is good; the ground for not doing an evil action should not lie in the punishment but the action should be done, because it is evil. Reward and punishment are merely subjective incentives, to be used only when the objective ones are no longer effective, and they serve merely to make up for the lack of morality.

Immanuel Kant, Former Professor-Konigsberg, LECTURES ON ETHICS, 1963, p. 211. Furthermore, all acts and duties which follow from the rights of others are the most important of the duties we have towards others. An act of generosity is permissible only if it does not violate anybody’s right; if it does, it is morally wrong. It is wrong, for instance, to help, to help a man in financial distress and thereby incur heavy debts to others. There is nothing in the world so sacred as the right of others. Generosity is a superfluity. A man who is never generous but never trespasses on the right of his fellow is still an honest man and if everyone were like him there would be no poor in the world. But let a man be kind and generous all his life and commit but one of injustice to an individual, and all his acts of generosity cannot wipe out that one injustice. At the same time the duties dictated by right or by generosity are inferior to the duties we owe to ourselves.

MORALITY IS/SHOULD BE UNIVERSAL

1. MORAL IMPERATIVES ARE UNIVERSAL

Immanuel Kant, Former Professor-Konigsberg, LECTURES ON ETHICS, 1963, p. 5.

It is characteristic of the moral imperative that it does not determine an end, and the action is not governed by an end, but flows from the free will and has no regard to ends. The dictates of moral imperatives are absolute and regardless of the end. Our free doing and refraining has an inner goodness, irrespective of its end. Thus, moral goodness endues man with an immediate inner, absolute moral worth. For example, the man who keeps his word has always an immediate inner worth of the free will, apart altogether from the end in view.

2. HIGHEST MORAL GOOD IS UNIVERSAL

Immanuel Kant, Former Professor-Konigsberg, CRITIQUE OF PURE REASON, 1929, p. 31. When the Schools have been brought to recognize that they can lay no claim to higher and fuller insight in a matter of universal human concern than that which is equally within the reach of the great mass of men (ever to be held by us in the highest esteem), and that, as Schools of philosophy, they should limit themselves to the study of those universally comprehensible, and, for moral purposes, sufficient grounds of proof, then not only to these latter possessions remain undisturbed, but through this very fact they acquire yet greater authority.

3. HIGHEST IMPERATIVES ARE UNIVERSAL

Robert Johnaesen, Communication Professor-Northern Illinois University, ETHICS IN HUMAN COMMUNICATION, 3rd ed., 1990, p. 47.

As touchstones to guide ethical behavior, Kant presented two forms of his Categorical Imperative. First:

“Act only on the maxim which you can at the same time will to become a universal law.” We must ask ourselves, is the ethical principle which I am using to justify my choice a principle that I would want everyone to follow in similar situations? Is the ethical standard that I am following in a particular case one which I would agree should apply to everyone?

Martin Luther King, Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. is hailed as one of the predominant leaders of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and 1970s. While he is best known for his "I Have a Dream" speech, delivered on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the August 28, 1993 March on Washington, King spoke and wrote on issues ranging from the role of the church in the Civil Rights Movement, to the importance of non-violent civil disobedience, and the necessity of coalitions between the Civil Rights Movement, Women's Movement, and Anti-Vietnam protesters.

HISTORICAL CONTEXT, LIFE, AND WORK

King was born January 15, 1929 in Atlanta, Georgia, to Reverend and Mrs. Martin Luther King, Sr. In 1948, King Jr. followed his father by being ordained into the Baptist ministry as he was simultaneously getting his B.A. in sociology from Morehouse College. Following his graduation from Morehouse, he attended and graduated from Crozer Theological Seminary, focusing his studies on the life and teachings of Mahatma Gandhi, who activism in India greatly effected his writings on civil disobedience later.

King grew up amid segregation in the South, shaped by the Plessy v. Ferguson Supreme Court decision in 1896, in which the court ruled that public institutions for black and white people can be "separate but equal." When King was 25 years old, the Supreme Court reversed that in Brown v. Board of Education, ruling that segregation of public schools created inherently unequal educational opportunities. The Brown decision, while appearing to signal a fundamental change in the government's position on segregation, had little real effect in the South. Lacking an effective enforcement mechanism, schools remained segregated until years later. This discrepancy between official government policy and the reality for black people in the South caused frustration in black communities that legal action would not change racist policies, inspiring a desire for direct action.
On December 1, 1955 Rosa Parks refused to relinquish her bus seat to a white man, and was subsequently arrested. Four days later King was unanimously elected president of a group named the Montgomery Improvement Association; the Montgomery Bus Boycott began, with over 90% of the black community refusing to ride the busses. 381 days later, the Supreme Court ruled that segregation on public carriers was unconstitutional. King emerged from the Boycott a national leader.
A decisive date in Kings career as a Civil Rights leader was August 28, 1963, the date of the March on Washington, the first large integrated protest march, held in Washington D.C. After meeting with President John F. Kennedy, King and other leaders delivered speeches on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. King delivered his "I Have a Dream" speech, which along with his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is considered his definitive statement of purpose. The march was the greatest example of his abilities as an organizer, a leader, and an orator. Later in his career, King became outspoken about the need to form coalitions between the Civil Rights Movement and the Anti-War Movement, but due in part to how powerful his "I Have a Dream" speech was, that aspect of his advocacy is seldom discussed.
In the years leading up to his assassination on April 4, 1968, King survived being stabbed in the chest, multiple bombing attempts, and many jailings. He was elected president of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC), graced the cover of Time magazine, led sit-ins, marches, voter registration drives and freedom rides, wrote multiple books, and won the 1964 Nobel Peace Prize. Throughout his life, and in all of the protests he led, he maintained consistent advocacy of and philosophy he read. His reading of Reinhold Neibuhrs work Moral Man and Immoral Society led him to reject the philosophy of liberalism, believing that it was too optimistic in its description of human nature, ignoring the power of reason to rationalize sin and bigotry. After reading Kierkegaard, Neitzche, Jaspers, Heidegger and Sartre, King developed a new respect for existentialism. He particularly valued the concept of "finite freedom," and came to the realization that the world is fragmented, and peoples existence often seems to lack meaning, and that recognition of these facts of human life is critical to discover why people act in certain ways.
One of the most important literary influences on King was Christianity and the Social Crisis, by Walter Rauschenbusch, one of the founders of the Social Gospel Movement. While he believed Rauschenbusch to be too idealistic about human nature and the inevitability of positive progress, King did adopt many aspects of Rauschenbuschs theory. Rauschenbusch advocated that the Church take on some sense of social responsibility; religion must not only address peoples spiritual well-being, but their material well-being as well. He wrote that spiritual self-actualization is impossible when people are in poverty. Furthermore, Rauschenbuschs praise of Jesus forgiving approach, epitomized by such statements as "turn the other cheek" and "love your enemies" was cohesive with Kings approach to reconciliation and nonviolence.

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