Kant wrote in "Fundamentals for the Metaphysics of Morals": "A third finds in himself a talent which with the help of some culture might make him a useful man in many respects. But he finds himself in comfortable circumstances and prefers to indulge in pleasure rather than to take pains in enlarging and improving his happy natural capacities. He asks, however, whether his maxim of neglect of his natural gifts, besides agreeing with his inclination to indulgence, agrees also with what is called duty. He sees then that a system of nature could indeed subsist with such a universal law, although men (like the South Sea islanders) should let their talents rest and resolve to devote their lives merely to idleness, amusement, and propagation of their species--in a word, to enjoyment; but he cannot possibly *will* that this should be a universal law of nature, or be implanted in us as such by a natural instinct. For, as a rational being, he necessarily wills that his faculties be developed, since they serve him, and have been given him, for all sorts of possible purposes." Here Kant's anti-hedonistic inclination interferes with his reason. On one hand, he realizes that rational beings may so wish that an abundance of free time and pleasure be universally enjoyed by human beings; on the other hand, such a desire must in Kant's eyes reduce a European man to the moral equivalent of the South Sea islanders--a big no-no for the Protestant work ethics and capitalism. On one hand, even Kant must concede that a desire for enjoyment is compatible with and in fact exists in nature and society (or a natural history and a historical nature); on the other hand, what exists in nature but is incompatible with the progress of capitalism has to be outside of the second nature: the nature that is willed into being by the social norms which are historical products of capitalism. And Kant chooses the latter, unlike his fellow Enlightenment thinker Denis Diderot (see, for instance, Diderot's _Supplement to the Voyage of Bougainville_ [1772]). Free time, according to Kant, is idleness, a waste of one's faculty, whereas from the beginning of capitalism, workers have often fought tooth and nail for more free time, yes, for rest & idleness, the enjoyment of life, and also the cultivation of the mind (an argument which was very common in the early labor movement). For intellectuals such as Kant, work and enjoyment in fact often overlap; whereas most workers must of necessity seek enjoyment elsewhere. Further, the repetitive, monotonous character of most kinds of work in fact waste the talents of many. For this reason, anti-hedonism and morality based upon it are not in the interests of the working class. three cheers for manatees, Yoshie
