1. 3. The Multidimensional World of Buffy the Vampire Slayer

3. Two approaches in practice
Desires and interests as framework for scientific study of human behavior
World based on conflicting egos
Duty: transcends this (mechanistic scientific) dimension
Unity of humanity

4. Evidence from morality
Duty and desire, Kant says, imply two worlds: higher and lower.
Experience of duty shows:
“the person as belonging to the sensible world is subject to his own personality as belonging to the intelligible [supersensible] world.”
Note: Kant shifts from perspective of appearance/reality to lower and higher “worlds”

5. Old Argument for Immortality
One traditional argument for immortality: other-worldly establishment of justice.
In this life, the wicked triumph.
But for Kant, Justice, the keystone of morality, is about our duty in this world
Kant: the Highest Good = the Kingdom of God
= Philosophical interpretation of the teaching of Jesus

6. Jesus on the Kingdom of God
1) The kingdom of God is within you
2) The kingdom of God is like “a mustard seed; when this is sown in the earth, no seed on earth is so little; but, once sown, it shoots up and grows taller than any garden herb, putting out great branches, so that all the birds can come and settle under its shade.” Mark 4: 30-1.
= this-worldly kingdom, based on morality: love one another, even your enemies.

7. Kant’s Postulate of Immortality in This World
Duty v. desire (egotism)
>Duty to be dutiful—takes time: more than one lifetime
>Duty to create Highest Good—takes time: more than one lifetime
If we were not immortal, how could we realize our Duty? Ought implies Can.
If a duty is impossible, then there is no duty
>Immortality in this world: reincarnation

8. Buffy on Immortality
She dies and is resurrected by her friends. (Recall The Matrix)
“I was happy. Wherever I was, I was happy. At peace. I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it. Time didn’t mean anything. Nothing had form. But I was still me, you know? And I was warm, and I was loved, and I was finished, complete. I don’t understand about theology or dimensions, or any of it, really, but I think I was in heaven.”

9. Kant on Duty
“Duty! You sublime and mighty name that embraces nothing charming or insinuating, but requires submission,
 and yet seeks not to move the will by threatening anything that would arouse natural aversion or terror,

10. “but merely holds forth a law which of itself finds entrance into the mind,
 and yet gains reluctant reverence (though not always obedience),
 a law before which all inclinations are dumb, even though they secretly counter-work it;

11. What origin? What root?
“what origin is there worthy of you, and where is to be found the root of your noble descent which proudly rejects all kinship with the inclinations;
a root to be derived from which is the indispensable condition of the only worth which human beings can give themselves?

12. A power that elevates us
“It can be nothing less than a power which elevates the human being above herself (as a part of the world of sense),
a power which connects him with an order of things that only the understanding can conceive,

13. “with a world which at the same time commands the whole sensible world,
and with it the empirically determinable existence of humanity in time, 
as well as the sum total of all ends (which totality alone suits such unconditional practical laws as the moral).

14. The power of the free personality
“This power is nothing but personality,
that is, freedom and independence from the mechanism of nature,
yet, regarded also as a faculty of a being who is subject to special laws, namely, pure practical laws given by one’s own reason;
so that the person as belonging to the sensible world is subject to her own personality as belonging to the intelligible world.

15. Belonging to multiple worlds
“It is then not to be wondered at that the human being, as belonging to both worlds, must regard his own nature in reference to its second and highest characteristic only with reverence, and its laws with the highest respect.
On this origin are founded many expressions which designate the worth of objects according to moral ideas.

16. “The moral law is holy (inviolable).
The human individual is indeed unholy enough,
but she must regard humanity in her own person as holy.”

17. Kant on “personality”
“This power [experienced in duty] is nothing but personality. It can be nothing less than a power which elevates man above himself (as a part of the world of sense), a power which connects him with an order of things that only the understanding can conceive [i.e., think, though not “know.”]”

18. What is the personality?
Buffy discovers who she is: “And I was warm, and I was loved, and I was finished, complete.”
The same is true of others: “I knew that everyone I cared about was all right. I knew it.”
= the soul separate from the body, no longer subject to ego-centered desires, producing pain and suffering.

19. Why we must forget who we are
Plato: before rebirth, souls drink the waters of the river Lethe (forgetfulness)
Buffy: if we remembered too clearly, we couldn’t be happy in this lower dimension.
=Awareness of the higher dimension must be limited, to allow us to develop in the sensible world.
= Awareness of moral duty.

20. “In all creation everything one chooses and over which one has any power, may be used merely as means;
the human being alone, and with him every rational creature, is an end in himself.”

21. Two ways of looking
Scientific gestalt (freedom is invisible): we only see determinism
= “knowledge”
We are “quasi-passive” before objects
Moral gestalt (freedom comes to the forefront)
We actively create our reality: we are doing things, following implicit rules or maxims