I guess my old man was really immoral! He told me later that he paid his two carpenters not only to keep them fed and everything, but also so they would be with him when things got busy again! (They also ignored all of the various labor strikes too!)
Interesting viewpoints from Kant. I’ve heard of the guy, but didn’t realize he was that far out there. I imagine if someone were drowning I wouldn’t have too much time to think about it. Would probably either go for the closest one first, or the one having the most trouble.
The hypothetical drowning men have gotten a lot of mileage in moral philosophy, but Dads who employ temporarily useless carpenters (or metaphysically congruent equivalents) are a lot more common, and a lot more useful to the debate, and the world. For all of their differences, I believe Ayn Rand and Jesus would have agreed (for vastly different reasons) that your Dad was, in fact, a moral man.
“I guess my old man was really immoral!”
No. Jesus said to do unto others as we would have done unto us. The Bible says we are our brother’s keeper. There are laws about leaving some of your harvest available for gleaning by the poor, the principle being, don’t hold on to every cotton picking dime.
Your dad sounds as though he had a pretty good handle on things.