The Spelling Bee Hero

Consider an episode that took place some years ago at the national spelling bee in Washington. D.C. A thirteen-year-old boy was asked to spell echolalia, a word that means a tendency to repeat whatever one hears. Although he misspelled the word, the judges misheard him, told him he had spelled the word right, and allow him to advance. When the boy learned that he had misspelled the word, he went to the judges and told them. He was eliminated after all. Newspaper headlines the next day proclaimed the honest young man a “spelling bee hero,” and his photo appeared in The New York Times. “The judges said I had a lot of integrity,” the boy told reporters. He added that part of his motive was, “I didn’t want to feel like a slime.

When I read that quote from the spelling bee hero, I wondered what Kant would think. Not wanting to feel like a slime is an inclination, of course. So, if that was the boy’s motive for telling the truth, it would seem to undermine the moral worth of his act. But this seems too harsh. It would mean that only unfeeling people could ever perform morally worthy acts. I don’t think this is what Kant means.

If the only reason the boy told the truth was to avoid feeling guilty, or to avoid bad publicity should his error be discovered, then his truth-telling would lack moral worth. But if he told the truth because he knew it was the right thing to do, his act has moral worth regardless of the pleasure or satisfaction that might attend it. As long as he did the right thing for the right reason, feeling good about it doesn’t undermine its moral worth.

The same is true of Kant’s altruist. If he comes to aid of other people simply for the pleasure it gives him, then his action lacks moral worth. But if he recognizes a duty to help one’s fellow human beings and acts out of that duty, then the pleasure he derives from it is not morally disqualifying…

Sandel, J. Michael (2009) Justice: What’s the right thing to do? New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.