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Difference between ubuntu and dignity 227
But clearly, and despite Kant’s waffling, there must be a connection
between the two. If there were no connection, there would be no moral
ground for the realm of external freedom in which we coordinate our ends
with one another. Kant’s hypothetical experiment in the imagination, in
which we configure the conditions in which human beings could aspire to
the great ideal of the Kingdom of Ends, turns on the possibility that as
creatures of practical reason we can harmonise our interests. For Kant, we
represent the realm of external freedom through a hypothetical experiment
of the imagination in which we configure the conditions of a social
contract rooted in the respect for all other human beings. Under this
experiment in the imagination, we imagine the conditions in which
individuals are given the greatest possible space for freedom, as long as it can
be harmonised with the freedom of all others. The social contract
imagines us as moral beings that can exercise their practical reason and
potentially guide their actions in accordance with its mandates. In his
essay ‘On the common saying: “This may be true in theory but it does not
apply in practice”’, Kant argues that the Hobbesian social contract will
always falter precisely because the basis for that contract is not rooted in
our potential to act morally. 8 Hobbes’s social contract imagines human
beings as forsaking their natural liberty and yielding to the coercive power
of the sovereign and of the positive law only out of the drive for security
and the protection of expectation. Thus, simply put, if the only basis for
abiding by a legal system is fear and security with no moral reason for
obligation, there will always be a reason for opting out of the social
contract.
3 Criticisms of the Kantian defence of dignity
It is impossible to rehearse the rich critical literature on Kant in my short
talk today. But let me paint some of the most well-known critiques of
Kantian dignity with a broad brush. I will focus particularly on those
criticisms that will help us bring into focus the similarities and differences
between ubuntu and the Kantian notion of dignity.
The first criticism is that since our dignity lies in our potential to abide
by the dictates of pure practical reason, and most of us do not do this most
of the time, dignity so defended is out of touch with the reality of human
nature. Secondly – and many feminists have passionately asserted this
criticism – what of human beings who for some reason cannot act
rationally, even as a potential? Do they not have dignity? Even if dignity is
an ideal attribution it turns on a potential or possibility that some people
do not have because they lost it at birth or have yielded to the physical
realities of old age or illness that undermine rational capacity. Dignity so
8
I Kant ‘On the relationship of theory to practice in political right’ in HS Reiss (ed) Kant’s
political writings (2001).