MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (Originally written: Nov. 7, 2019; Revised: May 8, 2025) — As a kid, I loved Dr. Seuss—the books as well as Chuck Jones’s animated productions—and took to heart the messages, though I did not spend much time dwelling on the deeper philosophical implications. The stories struck a chord which informed what I now see as something of a personal Kantian ethic. Horton hears a Who especially hit home, but only now do I realize how relevant that story is to my personal background.
Kant’s philosophy has weaknesses. Kant himself had flaws—serious blind spots relevant to my personal story—but his ethical aspirations set a standard we should strive for even if we all too often fail to achieve it. By recognizing as Horton did that “A person is a person, no matter how small,” (Seuss 1954) we at least attempt to create a just society in which we all are free to seek, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The cover of Horton Hears a Who!
In a sense, I am a Whovian. I grew up mixed-race in the waning days of Jim Crow Louisiana. My parents met in the U.S. Air Force at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts. They married there: They would not have been able to do so in Louisiana because of the anti-miscegenation laws in effect there at the time (my mom was of Chinese and African descent). I was born at Westover.
My mom was discharged from the Air Force before I was born. My dad was discharged in 1962. He took us to Louisiana, his home, and some residents of Shreveport—analogous to the residents of Horton’s home of Nool—threatened my mom and I with death if my dad did not take us away. Our presence seemed to violate Nool’s (Shreveport’s) community standards. As the Sour Kangaroo did not feel that there could be any “person” that small, the majority white residents of Shreveport did not feel that those of us with more than a drop of non-white blood could be considered people, either.
Kant was a person of his time. He, like his contemporary, Carolus Linnaeus, had significant blind spots with respect to race and our common humanity. Yet anyone whose scales have been removed from their eyes so that they can see humanity in all of us members of the species Homo sapiens, can find an aspiration in Kant for ethical treatment of all: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only” (Kant 2005, 39).
My mom and I weren’t seen as human. Our worth was judged by the residents of our personal Nool on the basis of the color of our skin—or, to be more accurate—the presumed color of our skin according to the one-drop rule. The content of our character was irrelevant.
The Whovians likewise went unseen by most of the residents of Nool, therefore were likewise not considered “persons.” The Whovians may have been too small for Horton to actually see, yet he heard them and recognized them as fellow people according to one of his maxims, “A person is a person, no matter how small.”
In the book and movie, the Sour Kangaroo neither heard nor saw the Whovians. She felt threatened by Horton’s insistence that they were people and should be treated as such. Instead of accepting them as ends in themselves, she worked to treat them as a means to enforce the status quo, i.e., to destroy them lest others be tempted to embrace the Whovians’ personhood.
Her conspiracy with Vlad is reminiscent of the threats my mom and I received in the 1960s—and of the African-American family whose abandoned the home they just bought in our neighborhood in the 1970s after racists shot it up. (Fortunately, no one was injured.) But Horton, once he recognized the Whovians as persons, did see them as an end in themselves and fought to protect their right to exist.
Horton’s determination was driven by what Kant would call the “good will.” This is not the “good will” people told me I shared with them after I had had a few beers. Kantian “good will” consists of two parts: 1) knowing what is right to do; and 2) doing it because it is right.[1]
Horton fights to protect the residents of Whoville from destruction. His determination cannot be explained by hedonism or egoism as he does not stand to benefit from it. It likewise cannot be explained by consequentialism, as his fellow Nool residents are equally determined to make him see that his efforts pose a perceived threat to their society. Horton, however, recognizes the humanity of the Whovians and will not budge, even as his well-being is threatened by his neighbors. Like Marshal Will Kane marching to his anticipated doom in his showdown with Frank Miller and his henchmen in High Noon, Horton will do his duty, no matter the cost.
In his determination to do his duty, Horton embodies what Kant would call integrity, or “living in harmony with the principles you believe in,” as Shafer-Landau (2018, 171) described it. Horton referred to it as, “I meant what I said and I said what I meant, and an elephant is faithful 100 percent” (Seuss 1954). Horton had promised the mayor of Whoville that he would protect their community. And he was going to do so, no matter what the Sour Kangaroo and Vlad the vulture had in store for him. Some residents of Nool would have criticized Horton for his stance. Horton could have sold out the Whovians with the backing, or at least apathy, of most of his neighbors.
In Louisiana, this happened to residents who—as I did—passed for white despite a “shady” racial history. A busybody could report to a government agency that the person was not white because they had an ancestor—such as a great, great-grandfather—who was black. The person targeted by such a revelation would then be told that, no matter how they identified, they were black and—back in the days when Jim Crow laws were enforced—they would have to go to the back of the bus (both figuratively and literally). The state’s authority to define (and enforce) racial classifications was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court (Diamond and Cottrol 1983).
Horton was not a busybody who would abandon or betray others merely because they were different, nor was he dissuaded by the actions of such busybodies. He kept the faith with the Whovians until his fellow residents of Nool came to accept that they were persons, too.
Until now, I had never given Horton hears a Who much thought in terms of its deep relevance to my personal history, but I see now that, while it is primarily a story for children, it yields quite a reward when subjected to a more adult examination from the perspective of ethics and human rights. It powerfully alludes to a number of the core principles of Kantian ethics. While this essay focused on Kant’s views on humanity, goodwill, and integrity, there is much more that can be mined from this deceptively slight lode.
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally written for an ethics class at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and submitted on Nov. 7, 2019.
Dr. Seuss. 1954. Horton Hears a Who! Nook ed. New York: Random House.
Kant, Immanuel. 2005. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. Nook ed. Dover Philosophical Classics. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Shafer-Landau, Russ. 2018. The Fundamentals of Ethics. Fourth ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
[1] In Kant’s words, “For in order that an action should be morally good, it is not enough that it conform to the moral law, but it must also be done for the sake of the law, otherwise that conformity is only very contingent and uncertain; since a principle which is not moral, although it may now and then produce actions conformable to the law, will also often produce actions which contradict it” (Kant 2005, 9).
When suitably inspired I will write something, maybe about a breaking story in science, maybe about my career as a scientist (specifically, a biogeographer). I may wage war against the forces of ignorance from the dubious bully pulpit of this blog. Or I may just tell some war story from my past in which I should have ended up dead as a result of my own stupidity.
Kantian Ethics in Horton Hears a Who!
Posted by AbyssWriter on 11/07/19 • Categorized as Children's Literature,Commentary,Ethics,Kantian Ethics,Literary Criticism,Politics,Race
MECHANICSVILLE, Va. (Originally written: Nov. 7, 2019; Revised: May 8, 2025) — As a kid, I loved Dr. Seuss—the books as well as Chuck Jones’s animated productions—and took to heart the messages, though I did not spend much time dwelling on the deeper philosophical implications. The stories struck a chord which informed what I now see as something of a personal Kantian ethic. Horton hears a Who especially hit home, but only now do I realize how relevant that story is to my personal background.
Kant’s philosophy has weaknesses. Kant himself had flaws—serious blind spots relevant to my personal story—but his ethical aspirations set a standard we should strive for even if we all too often fail to achieve it. By recognizing as Horton did that “A person is a person, no matter how small,” (Seuss 1954) we at least attempt to create a just society in which we all are free to seek, as Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
In a sense, I am a Whovian. I grew up mixed-race in the waning days of Jim Crow Louisiana. My parents met in the U.S. Air Force at Westover Air Force Base in Massachusetts. They married there: They would not have been able to do so in Louisiana because of the anti-miscegenation laws in effect there at the time (my mom was of Chinese and African descent). I was born at Westover.
My mom was discharged from the Air Force before I was born. My dad was discharged in 1962. He took us to Louisiana, his home, and some residents of Shreveport—analogous to the residents of Horton’s home of Nool—threatened my mom and I with death if my dad did not take us away. Our presence seemed to violate Nool’s (Shreveport’s) community standards. As the Sour Kangaroo did not feel that there could be any “person” that small, the majority white residents of Shreveport did not feel that those of us with more than a drop of non-white blood could be considered people, either.
Kant was a person of his time. He, like his contemporary, Carolus Linnaeus, had significant blind spots with respect to race and our common humanity. Yet anyone whose scales have been removed from their eyes so that they can see humanity in all of us members of the species Homo sapiens, can find an aspiration in Kant for ethical treatment of all: “So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only” (Kant 2005, 39).
My mom and I weren’t seen as human. Our worth was judged by the residents of our personal Nool on the basis of the color of our skin—or, to be more accurate—the presumed color of our skin according to the one-drop rule. The content of our character was irrelevant.
The Whovians likewise went unseen by most of the residents of Nool, therefore were likewise not considered “persons.” The Whovians may have been too small for Horton to actually see, yet he heard them and recognized them as fellow people according to one of his maxims, “A person is a person, no matter how small.”
In the book and movie, the Sour Kangaroo neither heard nor saw the Whovians. She felt threatened by Horton’s insistence that they were people and should be treated as such. Instead of accepting them as ends in themselves, she worked to treat them as a means to enforce the status quo, i.e., to destroy them lest others be tempted to embrace the Whovians’ personhood.
Her conspiracy with Vlad is reminiscent of the threats my mom and I received in the 1960s—and of the African-American family whose abandoned the home they just bought in our neighborhood in the 1970s after racists shot it up. (Fortunately, no one was injured.) But Horton, once he recognized the Whovians as persons, did see them as an end in themselves and fought to protect their right to exist.
Horton’s determination was driven by what Kant would call the “good will.” This is not the “good will” people told me I shared with them after I had had a few beers. Kantian “good will” consists of two parts: 1) knowing what is right to do; and 2) doing it because it is right.[1]
Horton fights to protect the residents of Whoville from destruction. His determination cannot be explained by hedonism or egoism as he does not stand to benefit from it. It likewise cannot be explained by consequentialism, as his fellow Nool residents are equally determined to make him see that his efforts pose a perceived threat to their society. Horton, however, recognizes the humanity of the Whovians and will not budge, even as his well-being is threatened by his neighbors. Like Marshal Will Kane marching to his anticipated doom in his showdown with Frank Miller and his henchmen in High Noon, Horton will do his duty, no matter the cost.
In his determination to do his duty, Horton embodies what Kant would call integrity, or “living in harmony with the principles you believe in,” as Shafer-Landau (2018, 171) described it. Horton referred to it as, “I meant what I said and I said what I meant, and an elephant is faithful 100 percent” (Seuss 1954). Horton had promised the mayor of Whoville that he would protect their community. And he was going to do so, no matter what the Sour Kangaroo and Vlad the vulture had in store for him. Some residents of Nool would have criticized Horton for his stance. Horton could have sold out the Whovians with the backing, or at least apathy, of most of his neighbors.
In Louisiana, this happened to residents who—as I did—passed for white despite a “shady” racial history. A busybody could report to a government agency that the person was not white because they had an ancestor—such as a great, great-grandfather—who was black. The person targeted by such a revelation would then be told that, no matter how they identified, they were black and—back in the days when Jim Crow laws were enforced—they would have to go to the back of the bus (both figuratively and literally). The state’s authority to define (and enforce) racial classifications was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court (Diamond and Cottrol 1983).
Horton was not a busybody who would abandon or betray others merely because they were different, nor was he dissuaded by the actions of such busybodies. He kept the faith with the Whovians until his fellow residents of Nool came to accept that they were persons, too.
Until now, I had never given Horton hears a Who much thought in terms of its deep relevance to my personal history, but I see now that, while it is primarily a story for children, it yields quite a reward when subjected to a more adult examination from the perspective of ethics and human rights. It powerfully alludes to a number of the core principles of Kantian ethics. While this essay focused on Kant’s views on humanity, goodwill, and integrity, there is much more that can be mined from this deceptively slight lode.
Editor’s Note: This piece was originally written for an ethics class at J. Sargeant Reynolds Community College and submitted on Nov. 7, 2019.
Literature cited
Diamond, Raymond T, and Robert J Cottrol. 1983. “Codifying Caste: Louisiana’s Racial Classification Scheme and the Fourteenth Amendment.” Loyola Law Review 29: 255–285. https://digitalcommons.law.lsu.edu/faculty_scholarship/286.
Dr. Seuss. 1954. Horton Hears a Who! Nook ed. New York: Random House.
Kant, Immanuel. 2005. Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Morals. Translated by Thomas Kingsmill Abbott. Nook ed. Dover Philosophical Classics. Mineola, New York: Dover Publications, Inc.
Shafer-Landau, Russ. 2018. The Fundamentals of Ethics. Fourth ed. New York: Oxford University Press.
[1] In Kant’s words, “For in order that an action should be morally good, it is not enough that it conform to the moral law, but it must also be done for the sake of the law, otherwise that conformity is only very contingent and uncertain; since a principle which is not moral, although it may now and then produce actions conformable to the law, will also often produce actions which contradict it” (Kant 2005, 9).
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