feotakahari

In a philosophy class I once took, one of the students said that Kantian ethics seems to encourage you to act like a superhero. Given the choice between lying or letting an innocent person die, the most Kantian action would be to tell the truth, then swoop into action and save the person anyway. The teacher had a fondness for Kant, and interrupted him before he could say much, but I think he was onto something.

Superman, in terms of powers, is a character who can solve problems any way he wants. He has the capability to defeat villains without killing them, or the capability to kill everyone who stands in his way. This means that whatever he does or doesn’t do is limited by the decisions he makes and the sort of person he is.

In many continuities, Superman frames himself as everyone’s role model. His job is decide what virtues people should have, then behave in such a way as to inspire people to follow those virtues. He’s universal, even multiversal, inspiring people across the globe, into space, and thousands of years after his death. This means that it’s not enough for him to act according to the situation–he needs to present a model that people can follow all the time. In other words, he needs to act according to maxims that he would will to be universal law!

To the larger world, Superman seems flawless, but his most emotionally powerful scenes tend to involve him connecting to and inspiring flawed human beings. He understands that they can’t always be like him, but they understand that by trying to be like him, they can be better than they currently are. He’s a guidepost, not an endpoint, and his very existence makes the whole world better.

This is the closest I’ve come to respecting Kantian ethics, because it gives me a framework to compare it to my own beliefs. As a Utilitarian, I’ve seen a lot of criticism of how a perfect Utilitarian would need to know everything and accurately predict the outcome of any action. In a similar way, a perfect Kantian would need to be able to do anything and resolve situations while following every virtue. But no one is ever a perfect Utilitarian, and no one is ever a perfect Kantian, either. You simply need to be as good as you can be, with all your flaws and limitations.