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We've Forgotten Kant's Moral Lesson

We’ve Forgotten Kant’s Moral Lesson

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In the 18th century Immanuel Kant – arguably the most important philosopher of the historical European Enlightenment – gave us what is known as a ‘deontological (duty-oriented)’ moral philosophy, as opposed to, for example, a ‘consequentialist’ variety, or one that assesses the moral rightness of human actions by asking whether the results (consequences) of actions justify the actions themselves. By contrast, Kant argued that duty – not inclination – should be regarded as the sole basis for judging the moral goodness of actions. 

This leaves the question, of course, of ascertaining what actions should be understood as being subject to the ‘call of duty,’ and concomitantly, of the criterion for such actions. Kant’s answer to this question is justly famous and involves something unconditional, or what he termed the ‘categorical imperative.’ The latter, however, should not be placed in a vacuum, as it were, but bears a crucial relation to something that is ‘fundamentally good.’ Kant wrote about this in, among other publications, his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (I use the version translated by Beck, L.W. New York: The Liberal Arts Press, 1959), where he argued as follows (p. 46):

…suppose that there were something the existence of which in itself had absolute worth, something which, as an end in itself, could be a ground of definite laws. In it and only in it could lie the ground of a possible categorical imperative, i.e., of a practical law.

It is noteworthy that there is an important difference between ‘definite,’ in the sense of ‘positive’ laws, such as those governing internet security, and what underpins such particular, state-specific laws, namely the universally valid ‘practical law’ (related to praxis) or ‘moral law,’ which may be used as a touchstone for the former regarding their justifiability. Another way to put this is to say that what is legal and what is moral are often two different things. 

‘Definite laws’ here could either denote ‘positive laws,’ or the kind of ‘laws’ which are themselves universal, because they are the maxims or general principles on the basis of which one acts – such as the prohibition of murder – that can be regarded as expressions of a universal moral law, valid for all rational beings. In Kant’s words, which involve the will, action, the (moral) ‘law,’ universality, and an answer to the question, above, concerning something of ‘absolute worth’ (Kant 1959: 55, 59-60):

That will is absolutely good which…is a will whose maxim, when made a universal law, can never conflict with itself. Thus this principle is also its supreme law: Always act according to that maxim whose universality as a law you can at the same time will. This is the only condition under which a will can never come into conflict with itself, and such an imperative is categorical. 

‘Universalisability’ of a specific principle or maxim – not to tell a lie, or make false promises, or to resist the inclination to homicide or suicide, no matter the degree of suffering one is subject to (Kant 1959: 47-48) – is therefore required for it to be regarded as a universal ‘law’ – one which is compatible with the unconditional ‘categorical imperative’ in the excerpt, above. The same would be true of what was referred to in the earlier excerpt as ‘definite laws,’ which would include all those ‘positive laws’ found in every country and brought into being by the constitutional powers of its legislative body. 

Such ‘positive laws’ have to be formulated in accordance with a country’s constitution, which, in turn, may be regarded as the set of fundamental principles that governs social life in that country. These would include the explicit statement of certain ‘rights,’ such as the right to life, the right to own property, freedom of expression and freedom of movement. Unless such laws pass the test of being assessed in terms of the ‘categorical imperative,’ however, they would not be universally applicable, which is probably the case with laws that are culture- and nation-specific, such as South Africa’s Black Empowerment laws. But any positive law which surpasses the purview of a particular nation or culture, with putative validity for all human beings, has to be compatible with the ‘categorical imperative’ to be regarded as being morally justifiable. 

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It is not difficult to decide whether something – an act which one is about to perform – passes this moral litmus test or not; one merely has to ask whether the maxim or motivating principle which underpins it is compatible with the ‘categorical imperative.’ The latter phrase means loosely ‘a command which is unconditional,’ as opposed to a conditional imperative, such as ‘Vote for Party X if you oppose woke culture.’ The latter clearly states a condition, whereas the categorical imperative does not.

This is why the commandment, ‘Thou shalt not kill’ is universalisable. It is therefore reconcilable with the ‘categorical imperative,’ while its opposite – ‘Thou shalt kill’ – taken as a commandment, is not compatible with Kant’s categorical imperative, because that would be a performative contradiction. It follows from this that the categorical imperative is purely formal; it does not prescribe any material, culture-specific actions to be carried out. Such actions may, however, be judged in relation to this universal imperative.  

The reason why I have given such sustained attention to Kant’s categorical imperative is to paint a backdrop for looking at some instances of actions where motives compatible with the categorical imperative are or were clearly not present. The actions on the part of those responsible for manufacturing the so-called Covid ‘vaccines’ – actions which unavoidably preceded the campaign, to administer these ‘shots – are arguably incompatible with the requirement of the categorical imperative, that the maxim or motive of an action be universalisable, in other words, that it should be regarded as a universal law for all rational beings. Consider the following excerpt from an article in The Exposé (March 3, 2024):

In a recent dataset released by the UK Government’s Office for National Statistics (ONS), a surprising pattern has emerged regarding mortality rates per 100,000 in teenagers and young adults, sparking a wave of questions and calls for further investigation from public health experts.

The ONS dataset, available on the ONS website here, details deaths by vaccination status from April 1, 2021, to May 31, 2023. Our analysis focused on mortality rates per 100,000 person-years from January to May 2023 among residents in England aged 18 to 39, and what we found is truly shocking.

Initial observations of the data prove that individuals in this age bracket who had received four doses of a COVID-19 vaccine exhibited higher mortality rates compared to their unvaccinated counterparts.

In every single month, four-dose vaccinated teenagers and young adults were significantly more likely to die than unvaccinated teenagers and young adults. The same can also be said for one-dose vaccinated teenagers and young adults, and two-dose vaccinated teens and young adults in February 2023…

For the remaining months, unvaccinated teens and young adults mortality rate remained within the 20-something per 100,000 person-years. Whereas four-dose vaccinated teens and young adults’ mortality rates only went as low as 80.9 per 100,000 in April and remained within 85 to 106 per 100,000 for the remaining months.

The January to May average mortality rate per 100,000 person-years was 26.56 for unvaccinated teens and young adults and a shocking 94.58 per 100,000 for four-dose vaccinated teens and young adults.

Meaning on average, the four-dose vaccinated were 256% more likely to die than the unvaccinated based on mortality rates per 100,000.

Apologists for the pharmaceutical companies that produced the ‘vaccines’ would probably argue that these glaring discrepancies in mortality are coincidental, or at worst, the manifestation of some technical ‘errors’ that crept into the production process. Such an excuse – because that is what it is – would be purely disingenuous, to say the least. The saying, ‘Correlation is not causation’ hides the fact that, as far as death rates among ‘vaccinated’ individuals are concerned, compared with such figures among the ‘unvaccinated,’ such conspicuously high mortality rates coincide with the (aftermath of the) global event of administering these ‘clot-shots,’ as they are tellingly called these days. 

Ed Dowd, in his book, ‘Cause Unknown: The Epidemic of Sudden Deaths in 2021 and 2022, writes the following Afterword:

A quick thought experiment:

Imagine that thousands of healthy young Americans died suddenly, unexpectedly, mysteriously — and then kept dying at an alarming and escalating rate. (Once upon a time), that would trigger an urgent Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) inquiry to determine the cause of the deaths.

Imagine attentive and curious public health officials discover the decedents had all repeatedly ingested a new and little-understood drug. Next, the officials determine to a certainty that the drug these kids took has a clear mechanism of action for causing inflammation of the heart and other cardiac injuries in some people.

They learn that public health officials in other countries have seen the same thing and stopped recommending this same drug to young people. Next, some of the most senior and revered scientific advisors to the U.S. government publicly recommend the drug be stopped for young people.

Finally, thousands of doctors around the world sign petitions and write op-eds opposing the drug for young people. Experts from Harvard, Yale, MIT, Stanford and Oxford universities come forward to voice their concerns.

Alas, that thought experiment doesn’t require any imagination, because it’s exactly what’s occurred — except for the part about attentive and curious CDC officials rushing in to inquire. That part I had to make up [writes Dowd].

In the pre-Covid-19 world, wouldn’t inquisitive reporters chase such a story, and wouldn’t the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) pause administration of the new mystery drug until a comprehensive inquiry was complete?

And above all, wouldn’t such a drug have quickly become a leading suspect worth considering for its possible role in the deaths?

Lower down Dowd adds parenthetically:

(If you have any doubt as to whether the mRNA vaccines cause cardiac problems, see Appendix Four, Page 190, for a sampling of 100 published papers on vaccine-induced cardiac injuries to young people.)

If this is not sufficient to disabuse anyone of the naïve belief, that there is no causal connection between deaths on a massive scale (highlighted by Ed Dowd, among others) and the Covid jabs, they merely have to peruse available evidence of malfeasance, such as that referred to below. This demonstrates that it is appropriate to apply Kant’s categorical imperative to the actions that gave rise to the creation of these ‘experimental’ pharmaceutical products – with the ineluctable verdict, that the motive behind their manufacture was not morally universalisable or justifiable. 

In a video discussion which exposes criminal malfeasance, we are informed that Pfizer’s mRNA ‘vaccine’ contains billions of programmable nano-scale ‘bots’ – that is, ‘nanobots’ which can be turned on and off once they have been injected into the human body, and even have an IP address, so that they are connected to the internet. They were developed by Israeli Professor Ido Bachelet of Bar-Ilan University, in cooperation with Pfizer, and as Bachelet explains in the video, these nanorobots can deliver different ‘payloads’ to the human body – which can then be released when those controlling the nanobots wish to do so. 

As the presenter in the video points out, this biotechnology marks the actualisation of Klaus Schwab’s so-called ‘Fourth Industrial Revolution,’ which has as its goal to connect the bodies of human beings to the internet and to other ‘smart’ devices which can ‘communicate’ with their bodies. In fact, we are reminded that Bill Gates and Microsoft were (supposedly) granted the exclusive right to the human body to function as a computer network. 

Moreover, this nano-biotechnology could be used for benign purposes, such as delivering a cancer treatment drug to people, but it could also be employed to do the opposite; namely, to deliver malignant, extremely harmful materials to their bodies – such as, most significantly, those arguably contained in the mRNA pseudo-vaccines administered to billions of people across the globe. The so-called ‘fact-checkers’ in the service of the global cabal intent on harming the rest of humanity – whom they regard as ‘useless eaters’ (see from 7 minutes into the video) – routinely deny that the Covid ‘vaccines’ increase the risk of death, of course. This is the case with the work of Ed Dowd, discussed above, for example. 

Does it seem as if the actions that make these far-reaching biotechnological interventions possible can be reconciled with Kant’s categorical imperative? Certainly not. The people who have orchestrated such interferences, and are still in the process of doing so, could never claim that the motive of their actions is universalisable; that is, that it could be understood as a universal ‘law’ for all rational human beings.

If they should make such a claim, it would be performatively contradictory, because it would mean that they would justify democide, implicating themselves as victims, too. In sum: the conspicuous absence of moral justifiability of the actions by the globalist neo-fascists is a saddening indication that human society has significantly deteriorated in moral terms. Fortunately, that is not true of the human species in its entirety. 



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Author

  • Bert Olivier

    Bert Olivier works at the Department of Philosophy, University of the Free State. Bert does research in Psychoanalysis, poststructuralism, ecological philosophy and the philosophy of technology, Literature, cinema, architecture and Aesthetics. His current project is 'Understanding the subject in relation to the hegemony of neoliberalism.'

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