I just joined Public Reason (having met Simon at a conference) and am looking forward to participating.  I’ve already seen lots of terrific material, and realize that I should have joined long ago.

I have what may seem a strange problem.  I’ll be teaching an undergraduate lecture course in Political Ethics next Spring quarter, as I have in the past.  This is a conceptual rather than a practical course, it covers not bribes and whistleblowing, but the basic theoretical works relevant to political ethics issues (though we will treat a few actual cases).  We’ll be reading Pitkin on representation, Machiavelli’s Prince, Weber’s “Politics as a Vocation”–and a bit of moral philosophy on an introductory level: utilitarianism, deontology, Bernard Williams on integrity and personal projects and shooting one to save ten, that sort of thing.  While the course is nominally upper level, there are no prerequisites (UCLA’s bureaucracy won’t allow it), and UCLA has no core requirements in moral and political philosophy such that I can count on students’ knowing some.   Nor is this a course for philosophy (or political theory) majors.  The students are political science or public policy majors interested in the substantive issues, not in ethical theory.

My problem is Kant.  When I’ve taught the course in the past, I’ve tried teaching Kant through the Grounding and a few of the writings on lying, but it hasn’t worked out.  The students find my lectures clear; they like Korsgaard on the right to lie; they get the murderer at the door stuff and enjoy debating it–but the Grounding is just over their head.  Spending two weeks on it (out of ten) doesn’t help: that’s of course not enough time, and it’s not the right students, and they’re just not able to take it in.  But I don’t really know how else to teach Kantianism.  “Theory and Practice” is lovely but deceptively allusive and not on the main topics of deontology; the same is true in spades of “Towards Perpetual Peace.”

I’d welcome any suggestions: an unknown piece of Kant (e.g. a public lecture) that I’m not familiar with?  (If it’s in German only and not too long, fine: I’ll happily translate for the class and with luck for publication in Teaching Ethics or something.)  A standard introductory piece on Kantianism, with a few key quotations and some down-to-earth yet serious explication?

In this I may be handicapped by never having taken an introductory ethics course myself.  I took a whole course on the First Critique and read lots of Kant’s (and others’) ethical works in advanced-undergraduate and graduate seminars, but never had to learn as an undergraduate what I’m now supposed to convey.  (The famous Justice class at Harvard doesn’t count: I’m looking to convey a bit more than is expected in that entertaining but not egregiously substantive course.)

To some extent, Mill’s Utilitarianism, while nowhere as baffling as Kant, is also hard to teach in such a context, and I’d welcome suggestions for substitutes or supplements to that too.

Many thanks in advance,

Andy.

1. Nietzsche seems to suggest contradictory things as to what sort of social arrangements his view would prescribe (if it would prescribe anything; more on this next). On the one hand, he indicates that the oppression of the “free spirits” by the moral codes of the herd (”one long coercion”) are necessary for the development and fruition of the greatness of spirit and exfoliation of the will to power in those spirits. On the other hand, he also indicates that hierarchical societies — with abundant sacrifice of the lower forms of human life for the sake of the development of the higher forms — are a precondition for the highest development of the type “human being.” These seem like contradictory prescriptions. The best I can do with them is to think that his view is analogous to Marx’s on the communist revolution. The idea in that case is that capitalist societies overproduce to a point at which, after the revolution, the superabundance of material goods “launches” the new communist arrangements successfully. Here, the idea would be that the “long coercion” does likewise for the development of free spirits or “philosophers of tomorrow” — in effect the hierarchical societies would build on the obstructive “capital” of the long period of “rule of the rabble” under the usual run of moral codes. Beyond this, I am stuck.

2. I wonder what prescriptive force the view has for individuals at all. Suppose, on the one hand, you are (or take yourself to be) one of the free spirits. Then what the hell do you care what Nietzsche thinks? You are in the business of creating your own values, you accept no one’s rules or values but your own, etc. Nietzsche is just another source of noise; in fact, his is just another will for yours to overcome. So there’s no normative point to his view if you’re one of the free spirits.

On the other hand, if you’re not a free spirit — if you’re one of the herd — Nietzsche has, so far as I can see — given you absolutely no reason to accept any of his ideals. It may be that some ideal of human greatness is possible only through your exploitation and slavery, but on the other hand by hypothesis such ideals get no grip on you (if you could appreciate them, you would be noble, not despicable). So, once again, who the hell cares what Nietzsche has to say?

So: is there any prescriptive point to the view at all, by its own lights?