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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume II: A Kantian Conception 437 Germanness because the Germans I have known tend to have deep passions and an amusingly fatalistic sense of humor; and that I then meet a shallow and phlegmatic German with no sense of humor at all. In the absence of other, unexpectedly attractive personality characteristics I may appreciate, just what is it about being German in itself that is supposed to confer worth on this particular individual? Either we must be able to spell out an answer to this question in terms of other properties that are only contingently connected, if at all, to this one - for example, having been socialized within a certain culture "from the inside", being part of a certain historical tradition, etc. - or else we are appealing to a mysterious and ineffable, non-natural property of Germanness. For purposes of this discussion I ignore the range of cases in which my valuation of, for example, Germanness is rooted in the status or worth I expect my choice of German friends to confer on me. This may occur either where the primary valued property is one shared by oneself, or where it is not. Thus it may happen that one's choice of a European American, Anglo-Saxon Protestant spouse is made in part with an eye to reinforcing to others and to oneself the primary value of one's own status as a European American, Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Or, alternately, one's contrasting choice of an African American, Methodist spouse may be made with an eye to proving to others and to oneself one's "cool", sophistication, or commitment to civil rights. These are all cases in which the property is valued as a source of instrumental value or competence, namely for its ability to confer value on the reciprocal first-order political discriminator. So I leave them aside here. Then suppose there are ineffable, non-natural properties such as Germanness, and that we may arguably appeal to them. To what degree might Germanness outweigh the person's other properties that, by hypothesis, I deplore? Surely the mere fact of Germanness can provide no consolation at all, in practice, for other properties of the person that offend me. It will not compensate, for example, for a failure to laugh at my jokes, or a tendency to discuss the weather at excessive length, or to fall asleep at the opera. And then it is hard to see in what its purported value consists. Independently of the other, genuinely valuable properties with which they are only contingently, if at all, conjoined, properties such as race, gender, sexual orientation, class background, or religious or ethnic affiliation are in themselves always irrelevant to judgments of a person's noninstrumental value or competence. This holds whether they are considered as primary disvalued or valued properties, and even where they are used as epistemic rules of thumb for detecting such properties. We may in fact feel compelled to make such judgments, in the service of expediency, or what we imagine to be our self-interest, and screen our circle of associates accordingly. But it is nothing to be proud of. © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
