Guus Duindam is a Michigan Law graduate and a sixth-year Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Michigan. His primary research interests are normative ethics, Kant, and the philosophy of law. He currently works as a law clerk for the Hon. Judge Judith E. Levy on the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan.
What are you working on right now?
Most recently I wrote this chapter for an open-source philosophy textbook. I provide a simple introduction to Kant’s transcendental idealism and analyze the argument of the First Antinomy. This weekend I plan to write a second chapter for the same textbook about the retributivist theory of punishment.
I am also working on a paper about Kant’s virtue ethics, which will be the fourth chapter in my dissertation. The broader aim of my dissertation is to defend the Categorical Imperative’s Formula of Universal Law (“FUL”), i.e., the formula that commands us to act “only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” Kant thought FUL could be used to derive all of our moral duties (see G 4:421). But no interpreter today thinks FUL can do this successfully. Instead, FUL is generally considered hopelessly rigid and subject to many counterexamples.
I argue that modern interpretations of FUL are mistaken for several reasons. First, they rely on an anachronistic and overly technical definition of “maxim,” which in Kant’s time was just another word for “principle.” In part because of this, they wrongly take Kant to be determining the permissibility of an action by reference to its agent’s intentions, which (as Scanlon and others have pointed out) is impossible to do reliably. In my interpretation I try to pay attention not just to Kant’s German primary text, but also to his French and German predecessors, whose work gives us important insight into Kant’s use of key terminology. In so doing I try to connect the standard Continental European interpretations of Kant with their anglophone counterparts.
Second, FUL is generally understood to be a two-step test for the permissibility of actions, whereas it is better understood as providing two separate tests—one for permissibility and the other for virtue. In an earlier paper, I explain how Kant’s contradiction-in-conception test (according to which we cannot act on maxims which we could not conceive of as universal laws) can successfully ground an account of permissibility. In the chapter I am currently writing, I explain how Kant’s virtue ethics can be derived from FUL’s contradiction-in-the-will test (according to which we may not act on maxims which we cannot rationally will to be universal laws).
Meanwhile, I spend much of the working week working on legal issues with Judge Levy at the Eastern District of Michigan. That has been a wonderful and very different experience.
How does legal work compare to writing philosophy?
Legal and philosophical writing are remarkably similar. This is perhaps surprising, because I suspect many lawyers associate philosophy with layabout undergrads who have a “personal philosophy” (one legal interviewer once asked me in genuine bafflement what use philosophy could possibly be)—and I’m sure there are many philosophers who believe legal work is intellectually rote and uninteresting. But the questions I answer in my legal work—was the causal link between an actor’s negligence and another’s harm sufficiently strong to warrant imposition of legal responsibility? What are the proper limits of liability for wrongdoing? What counts as “reliable” science? —are in essence philosophical questions. And it often pays to analyze a legal argument as if one were engaging in philosophy: what are its logical implications? How do a party’s various legal positions interact with one another? This kind of work is extremely engaging and intellectually satisfying. I plan to continue to combine it with my academic work.
What are you reading right now? Would you recommend it?
I’m in the middle of the final volume of Karl Ove Knausgaard’s My Struggle. An experiment in hyper-realistic autofiction of near-interminable length, this is not something I would have normally picked up to read. But a hilariously terrible (and misguided) Guardian review of Knausgaard’s most recent book (The Morningstar) piqued my interest in his work. I went out, bought a copy, and loved it. This persuaded me to give My Struggle a try—and to my own surprise, I am completely sold. It is moving, provocative, brutally honest—and weirdly impossible to put down.
As one reviewer put it: “Why would you read a six-volume, 3600-page Norwegian novel, about a man writing a six-volume, 3600-page Norwegian novel? The short answer is that it is breathtakingly good, and so you cannot stop yourself, and would not want to.” Highly recommended.
What is your favorite sound in the world?
When you ask a lawyer a question, they may provide an answer that is faithful to the letter but not the spirit of the inquiry. An answer that is faithful to the spirit of this question would probably be something along the lines of “The gentle tweeting of the spotted south-Zimbabwean nightingale.” But I love classical music, and especially opera, so that will be my answer. How, for instance, could anyone resist this father’s final goodbye to his daughter, this spectacular ending to the world, or this lovely duet?
This sounds like it could be the title to one of those children’s books in the “When you give a moose a muffin…” series. “When you give a lawyer a question, they’ll want some chocolate to go with it.” If someone wants to write this with me, let me know.
Who is your favorite philosopher and why?
That would be my wife, Mariam Kazanjian, of course!
What would your childhood self say if someone told you that you would grow up to be a philosopher?
I told you so!
This section of the APA Blog is designed to get to know our fellow philosophers a little better. We’re including profiles of APA members that spotlight what captures their interest not only inside the office, but also outside of it. We’d love for you to be a part of it, so please contact us via the interview nomination form here to nominate yourself or a friend.
Dr. Sabrina D. MisirHiralall is an editor at the Blog of the APA who currently teaches philosophy, religion, and education courses solely online for Montclair State University, Three Rivers Community College, and St. John’s University.
