Philosophy's Forgotten Voices

Philosophy often appears to be a male-dominated field, with most of the great thinkers we know and immortalize on our shirts being men. As we mentioned before, philosophy belongs to everyone, and should not be gatekept.

But you could not be blamed if you thought women just didn’t do philosophy, and maybe they just don’t exist. But sometimes people who were not the cultural norm didn’t end up making it into the textbooks and anthologies we know so well today.

A case in point: Maria von Herbert. A well-to-do contemporary of Kant’s, she offered him one of the few devastating critiques of his categorical imperative that is still difficult (if not impossible) to defend against. Let’s take a look at her criticism.

We’d like to put a content warning here as this Memesletter discusses suicide in the context of ethics theory.

The Fangirl and the Categorical Imperative

The daughter of an Austrian industrialist at the turn of the 19th century, Maria von Herbert had both wealth and leisure at her disposal at the time when she wrote her first letter to Immanuel Kant. Von Herbert, a Kant fangirl, wanted to discuss a concern she had with Manny’s famous moral theory, the categorical imperative, from The Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785).

The categorical imperative, one of Philosophy 101’s favorite duty-based ethics theories, is a very rigid formula for moral action. Kant’s categorical imperative has two formulations. The first (and more famous) goes something like this:

Act as though the maxim of your action were to become, through your will, a universal law of nature.

A maxim is a little formula that we create when we want to determine if an action is moral or immoral. For instance, we might say, “When I want money for a microtransaction in a video game, I will steal it from my mother’s handbag.”

Now that we have our maxim, we do the work in the form of a thought experiment. Can we universalize this into a law? It would not make sense for this to become a universal law. A world could not exist in which everyone is stealing from their mothers’ purses to get money for video game microtransactions. Eventually the mothers would catch on and eventually disown you.

That is a bit of a silly rendering of the categorical imperative, but Kant had solutions for unaliving and not keeping promises as well. The second, less discussed formulation of the categorical imperative reads thus:

Act in such a way as to treat humanity, whether in your own person or in that of anyone else, always as an end and never simply as a means.

You should not treat yourself or another person as less than human, or as a way to get something instead of another actor in the world. Looking at it this way, you can see why it would still be bad to steal from your mom’s purse: you are treating your mom as a way to get money to feed your video game addiction.

Kant believed these two formulations to complement rather than contradict each other.

Back to Our Girl Maria

Like any fangirl, von Herbert sent Kant some fanmail , but with some very important and devastating questions. In the first letter, Von Herbert describes her devotion to the categorical imperative, loving the system of duty-based ethics that Kant is so very known for.

However, she remarks upon her own situation, in which she lied to her dear friend for a long time, and finally decided to tell the truth over the matter. She does not detail what she’s lied about, and it’s not necessary to do so, as the moral action in question is the fact that she lied.

She goes on to say that in her deciding not to lie anymore, her friend grew cold toward her, and she had a falling out with him. It’s clear in the letter that her friend is someone about whom she feels passionately, whether platonically or erotically.

Why, she asks, should she have told the truth when the lie better served her? She finishes, lamenting that she does not take her own life because of her firm adherence to the categorical imperative, in spite of her distress.

He Kant Read the Room

Kant, not entirely unmoved, considers this letter and finally responds. Clearly delighted by her flattery in her letter, he describes himself as a physician, and tells her that he prescribes for her a “pure moral sedative.” In other words, find comfort in the categorical imperative itself.

Completely tone deaf, Kant tells von Herbert that it’s obviously her fault that her friend grew cold because she was the one doing the lying in the first place. As a result, she should just enjoy the comforting, Hallmark card quality of the categorical imperative itself and feel its comforting embrace. Right.

One Last Reply

In her next letter, Maria von Herbert continues to mention her friend and the heartache her reveal of her lie caused her. She then dismissively says that he offered later on to extend his friendship, to friends with benefits, presumably.

Morality, von Herbert maintains, is too easy and crushingly boring. Maintaining an imperative is too easy because it doesn’t engage her intellectually, and she hopes that the afterlife is not plagued by the same dull principles.

It is then that von Herbert makes her biggest criticism of the categorical imperative (hinted at in her first letter). She details the reasons why she would like to make short work of her life and commit suicide. Stuck in a state of constant boredom, she says it will “neither get better nor worse.”

She wonders what life Kant has led and if he has ever loved, and mentions wanting to meet him. The joy she had for her friend has vanished, as has the desire for life. She is simply stuck with the desire to end a nihilistic existence.

The Philosopher’s Silence

Kant never replies to this last letter, choosing instead to consult his friends about the reputation of Maria von Herbert. There is an exchange of letters that happens during this time, and eventually Kant forwards von Herbert’s letters to a female friend and basically tells her, “Don’t be like that woman.”

But this silence proves that von Herbert’s criticism of the categorical imperative is difficult to combat philosophically. In the Grounding, Kant suggests that people commit the act of suicide out of self-love, a sense of selfishness. As such, it is always an immoral act.

But von Herbert suggests that there might be other reasons for this. Luckily for us in the 21st century, we know that there are many mitigating factors when it comes to people who want to try to commit this act, and that there are things that we can do to help people who want to make that decision.

What Happened to Maria von Herbert?

Presumably Maria von Herbert moved on with her life after being ghosted by an uncaring Kant. She continued to hold parties at her fancy house. One day, in the middle of one of such parties, she walked away. She never came back, having ended her own life.

While Maria von Herbert presented a criticism of a rigid moral system that is perhaps even more timely today, her curtailed life squashed a potentially powerful intellectual voice.

The rigidity of Kant’s system, which seems sometimes to forget the humanity in us humans, can sometimes forget that there are individuals and situations to take into account, and it might even be accused of lacking empathy. Did he act morally in being dismissive of von Herbert when she was clearly distressed?

A Note on the Subject Matter

Talking about suicide, even theoretically or logically, can be very triggering for anyone. May is Mental Health Awareness Month and if you are struggling with your mental health, please look for help from friends, family, and professionals. Reaching out can save your own life.

Let’s end the stigma surrounding mental health distress and try to be there for our friends and for ourselves when we are hurting. After all, as Kant says, we have to treat ourselves as ends rather than means.