The End and the Means

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
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Kant said that man should be treated not as a means to an end but as an end in himself. In Luther’s conception, is man ever an end or just a means? Well, I think that central to the problem is Paul’s letter to the Romans and how he uses the Potter analogy. But let’s get behind that. What essentially is the difference between taking man as an end or as a means?

Taking man as a means demonstrates a sort of concealed nihilism about the prospects of human history. As we see in Paul, it is predicated by the notion of predestination, or that man is what he is, he is as he was made and nothing can change that. I say nihilistic because while Paul admits that God is a Potter that designs noble and ignoble pots, he insists that no one is righteous, therefore he finds no noble pottery by him. Man cannot change himself, nor can history redeem itself and man. Paul of course is criticised, as he should be, by proto-kantians, who asks about the justice of a potter destroying pots for being ignoble when it is the Potter Himself that made them so. Yet, Paul asserts, He created them for this very purpose, destruction, in order to show His Glory. So to Paul, the pot is a means to the ends of the Potter, be it to show His glory, His strenght, His talent.
History is then understood as a means for the realization of a Divine Plan, His end. God is the Potter of men but also the Creator of History, and so what happens happens in accordance with his plans, which are the end of History. History, with all it’s sufferings, is a means to an end. Think of Job. He undergoes many sufferings, not because he deserved them, but because he was the means for God to prove a point to Satan, which was His end, His plan. One could wonder, since Job IS righteous in the eyes of God, if the resolution was ever in doubt.

Now, on the other hand, you have the prophets, who had man at the forefront of history and there is no Plan. Here man is exhorted, invited, pleaded with, that he might choose and thus make his own destiny, to be just, to be noble. He is not created noble but becomes either noble or ignoble, or if you so choose, he is created innocent and becomes righteous or unrighteous in respect to his or her obedience to God’s will. Man is treated as an end because of the freedom here implied. Man determines himself. God, in this selection, becomes the means and man the end. God is relegated to administaring what man deserts, what man has earned. His actions are to the benefit of man. He is the caretaker of man.
This theology, I believe, is actually older than the former, and it was tied to the history of man. It was confirmed by success. This is the theology of nobility, of Kings. Man, as end, can hold God accountable, which is what David did on occassion

Kant’s assertion that man is to be taken as an end in himself is a foundation for later existentialist thought and philosophy. It put man at the center, made man relevant again. It takes nothing as granted except for the necessity to will. Thus the future is what man makes it and his suffering his own making as well. It is up to man to end suffering. It is as if God no longer was satisfied with creating noble or ignoble pots, for that would be too easy, but demands that pots beautify themselves. This is a progressive account of history that denies that suffering is our destinity, that history is bruttish and without remedy and instead sees our future to be only what we determine. Thus man is an end, in part because he is indeterminate enough to ever be capable of serving as a means. God is a means because He is determined.

I am not saying which one is correct because I don’t think that I could prove either one or be sure of either one enough to hold as a conviction. But I do believe that believing in a particular one of these is the result of certain beliefs about man, and further I qualify these beliefs as negative/nihilist or positivist/progressive. Each one delivers a certain conclusion about the future. No every person subscribes to the conclusions, however inevitable either because of lack of courage to face up to the fruits of their beliefs or because they don’t have the stamina to pursue the consequences to the beliefs that they hold. It matters only that they are pleasurable. I do find pleasure in the idea that man is the end, that man is free, not just for the honor it confers to man, but also because such a view, correct or not, does less damage to the image of God as the Father of Justice.

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Paul wrote that God has the right to make noble and ignoble pots. That was in answer to those who might say that he does not have that right. But God actually does no such thing, in Paul’s view, because he goes on to write that God bears ‘with great patience the objects of his wrath’. One does not have patience toward or wrath against an agent that has no decision, any more than one blames a clay pot for being the ‘wrong’ shape.

Paul’s point is precisely that humanity has choice, but only because of the salvation offered through Christ. So while God shows his glory in Christ, the object of that glory is the eventual glory of some of mankind:

‘To make the riches of his glory known to the objects of his mercy, whom he prepared in advance for glory.’ Ro 9:23 NIV

So for Christianity, for Christ, man is indeed the end, not the means.

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Hello ochaye,

— Paul wrote that God has the right to make noble and ignoble pots. That was in answer to those who might say that he does not have that right.
O- The subject he treated was the value of works, the value of following the Law, not in one but in several letters. The critique was not about whether God had the right, but whether man had the right, whether man had earned God’s blessing by his obedience.

— But God actually does no such thing, in Paul’s view, because he goes on to write that God bears ‘with great patience the objects of his wrath’. One does not have patience toward or wrath against an agent that has no decision, any more than one blames a clay pot for being the ‘wrong’ shape.
O- The point is not in that the potter bores with great patience but that the the pot becomes noble or ignoble by the Potters intentions alone. Nothing in the clay (it is the same clay) sets it appart. So the selection of the jews was not based on what they were genetically, or through careful breeding, but what they were according to the wishes, selection of God. And the great majority of the pots that are created, regardless of the skill and care it required, were destined for destruction. Why? To show the Potter’s glory to the remnant pots.

— Paul’s point is precisely that humanity has choice, but only because of the salvation offered through Christ.
O- Jesus comes to secure the salvation of a few, the remnant. Not by their choice because, as Jesus says in John 17:9, he had come for a few, he prayed only for the few and not for the world at large. John 15:16 has Jesus saying explicitly that they did not choose Jesus but that Jesus chose them who were to be saved, as they were destined to be saved.

— So while God shows his glory in Christ, the object of that glory is the eventual glory of some of mankind:
O- Nothing in man is glorious. God follows the long pattern of making the last first. The few are clothed in glory as a means to display His Glory, which the end, the purpose, the designed effect reached by this exaltation. The exaltation of manking is a means to display the Virtue of the one One that exalts. God determines certain pots for ignoble uses, like a Pharaoh, moldened and patiently hardened for the ignoble duty of oppressing His People, to serve as a foil in which God can display His glory even to the few pots he has carefully set aside for Himself. God in all of this remains the goal of human history. The few are kept as witness of Greatness. The are the means, and that Greatness be known and glorified is the Goal of human History…according to this view.

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That is very plainly not the context.

If anyone who has actually read the context wishes to discuss this, and it’s an interesting subject, then please do so. But read the context first, otherwise one is just time-wasting.