Aristotle & Kant in comparison to Gerald Ford and LBJ

Written by Michael Aaronson

In the 1999 New York Times article entitled Inclusive America, Under Attack, former President Gerald R. Ford states that, “At its core, affirmative action should try to offset past injustices by fashioning a campus more truly reflective of modern America and our hopes for the future.” Ford highlights former President Lyndon Johnson’s speech in which he stated, “To be black in a white society is not to stand on level and equal ground. While the races may stand side by side, whites stand on history’s mountain and blacks stand in history’s hollow. Until we overcome unequal history, we cannot overcome unequal opportunity.” While I see their points, I find it hard to believe that the solution to past injustice is more injustice.  From this, it seemed appropriate to examine this concept from various philosophical perspectives in order to truly evaluate the morality of this claim.

I began by utilizing the principles of Immanuel Kant. I was fortunate enough to find an article that actually addressed this theory from a Kantian perspective. According to an article by Stanley Fish entitled, Revisiting Affirmative Action, With Help From Kant, Kant would have most likely disagreed with the claims of our former presidents. According to the article,

“He would have said, as many opponents of affirmative action do say, that it is wrong to respond to past acts of discrimination by discriminating in the present, even if your intentions are good. If discrimination – the unequal treatment of inherently free and equal citizens – is to be condemned when the motives behind it (to preserve power or maintain a way of life) are suspect, it is also to be condemned when the motives behind it (to redress an historical injustice or have the student body reflect the diversity of America) are benign. Otherwise the calculation of happiness (at least by someone’s lights) will have taken precedence over the upholding of principle.” 

From this, it appears that this concept is not morally sound. However, in order to strengthen this claim, I also examined it from an Aristotelian perspective. Unfortunately, I was unable to find an article that presented an aristatelian analysis of this theory, so I was forced to do it the old fashioned way. 

In his work, Aristotle seeks a way to express our goodness through action. He argues that to achieve happiness (eudaimonia) is to become a virtuoso of the activity of being human. The question becomes, how does one accomplish this? According to Aristotle, to attain eudaimonia is to choose to do the right thing because it expresses ones good habits. Additionally, every practice can be done with excellence (Aretē) or not.  This concept of Aretē has a characteristic relationship to the effect that emotions have on us. Because of this, Aristotle would argue that a virtuous relationship is one that enacts a “mean relative to us,” or the balancing of our emotions. To tie everything together, our excellence has to do with how well we handle our emotions, and our excellence is essential to achieving eudaimonia.

In my opinion, by letting the past influence their current decisions, individuals such as Ford and Johnson who aim to offset past injustices are not balancing their emotions. They are letting their feelings of shame and embarrassment for what their ancestors did sway them towards a decision. As justice is a virtue to Aristotle,  the ancestors of these individuals may have acted with deficiency by discriminating against races, but the people who hold these views are acting in excess of this by arguing for more discrimination to right this wrong. Overall, I believe that Aristotle would argue that these claims are unjust as they do not enact a mean relative to us.