FATHOM Remove


 

It could be objected that nothing removes risk of natural disaster from human life for bad people either, and that the difference is that Nature's second, culture or society, makes it no accident when good people fare well. I agree that we have found a problem in a social order if it turns out that its institutions (e.g., its juridical institutions) do not work to prevent manmade blocks to flourishing in the lives of decent people. But Kant's question concerns individual practical reason, i.e., what the individual has good reason to hope will be the case, and (1) the lone individual is not generally in a position to engineer social institutions so that they will reward his good conduct, and (2) there is good evidence that social institutions can and have operated in ways that reward institutional and private viciousness and also actively prevent decent people from faring well. There are too many examples of work on this topic to list, as any casual inquiry into, e.g., the operation of race as a category of social organization will attest.