Kant y los trabajos basura-: Ser un mero medio y ser un verdadero medio

• Autores: Julia Muñoz Muñoz (trad.), Martin Stricker
• Localización: Revista de filosofía, ISSN-e 2954-4602, ISSN 0185-3481, Vol. 58, Nº. 161, 2026, págs. 198-247
• Idioma: español
• DOI: 10.48102/rdf.v58i161.657
• Títulos paralelos:
  • Kant on Bullshit Jobs: -Mere Means and True Means
• Enlaces
  • Texto completo (pdf)
• Resumen
  • español

    En años recientes ha habido una gran discusión pública y académica acerca de los trabajos inútiles, siguiendo la concepción de David Graeber sobre los trabajos basura. Immanuel Kant sostiene que debemos ser medios para otras personas y que es un deber ser de provecho para otros. Tanto Graeber como Kant se preocupan por el tipo de daño que a menudo es ignorado en la ética y filosofía política contemporánea, a saber, la inutilidad impuesta o forzada. El fenómeno de los trabajos basura puede ayudarnos a entender mejor lo que está implicado en el deber de ser de provecho para otros o de fungir como medio para otras personas. En este artículo sostengo que, para Kant, los agentes deben ser verdaderos medios para otros. Propongo que, para ser un verdadero medio, un agente debe funcionar como un medio para los fines de los demás, independientemente de si al hacerlo está motivado por el respeto a la ley moral. A esta interpretación del ser de provecho la llamaré Beneficencia Externa. Una de las razones por las que los trabajos basura son moralmente problemáticos es que impiden el ejercicio de la beneficencia externa.

  • English

    Following David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs, there has recently been academic and public discussion about useless work. Immanuel Kant maintains that we ought to be means for others and that there is a duty to be useful. Graeber and Kant are both concerned with a form of harm often overlooked in contemporary ethics and political philosophy, namely, enforced uselessness. The phenomenon of bull-shit jobs can help us understand better what it means to have a duty to be useful or function as others' means. In this paper, I argue that for Kant, agents ought to function as true means for others. I propose that a true means is an agent who functions as a means to others' ends regardless of whether the agent is motivated by respect for the moral law. I will call this the External Beneficence account of usefulness. One of the reasons why bullshit jobs are morally problematic is that they do not allow us to exercise external beneficence.

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