Question

Hello all,

1) Apply the categorical imperative (Kant) to the Bernie Madoff affair.

Answer 1

German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) accepted the basic proposition that a theory of duties—a set of rules telling us what we’re obligated to do in any particular situation—was the right approach to ethical problems. What he set out to add, though, was a stricter mechanism for the use of duties in our everyday experience. He wanted a way to get all these duties we’ve been talking about to work together, to produce a unified recommendation, instead of leaving us confused between loyalty to one principle and another. At least on some basic issues, Kant set out to produce ethical certainty.

Bernie Madoff always claimed that the Ponzi scheme wasn’t the original idea. He sought money from investors planning to score big with complicated financial maneuvers. He took a few losses early on, though, and faced the possibility of everyone just taking their cash and going home. That’s when he started channeling money from new investors to older ones, claiming the funds were the fruit of his excellent stock dealing. He always intended, Madoff says, to get the money back, score some huge successes, and they’d let him get on the straight and narrow again. It never happened. But that doesn’t change the fact that Madoff thought it would. He was lying temporarily, and for the good of everyone in the long run.

Sheryl Weinstein had a twenty-year affair with Madoff. She also invested her family’s life savings with him. When the Ponzi scheme came undone, she lost everything. To get some money back, she considered writing a tell-all, and that led to a heart-wrenching decision between money and her personal life. Her twenty-year dalliance was not widely known, and things could have remained that way: her husband and son could’ve gone on without the whole world knowing that the husband was a cuckold and the son the product of a poisoned family. But they needed money because they’d lost everything, including their home, in Madoff’s scam.

A categorical imperative, is something you need to do all the time: there are ethical rules that don’t depend on the circumstances, and it’s the job of the categorical imperative to tell us what they are. Here, we will consider two distinct expressions of Kant’s categorical imperative, two ways that guidance is provided.

Kant’s categorical imperative shows is that lying cannot be universalized. The act of lying can’t survive in a world where everyone’s just making stuff up all the time. Since no one will be taking anyone else seriously, you may try to sell a false story but no one will be buying.

Kant sees it he has to make a basic decision: should I lie to investors to keep my operation afloat? The answer is no. According to the categorical imperative, it must be no, not because lying is directly immoral, but because lying cannot be universalized and therefore it’s immoral.

The same goes for Sheryl Weinstein as she wonders whether she should keep the lid on her family-wrecking affair. The answer is no because the answer is always no when the question is whether I should lie. You might want to respond by insisting, “She’s already done the deed, and Bernie’s in jail so it’s not going to happen again. The best thing at this point would be for her to just keep her mouth shut and hold her family together as best she can.” That’s a fair argument. But for Kant it’s also a loser because the categorical imperative gives the last word. There’s no appeal. There’s no lying, no matter what.

The first expression of the categorical imperative—act in such a way that the rule for your action could be universalized—is a consistency principle. Like the golden rule (treat others as you’d like to be treated), it forces you to ask how things would work if everyone else did what you’re considering doing.