KANT GET THERE FROM HERE (via Ed Bush)

Sapere Aude!: Anja Steinbauer introduces the life and ideas of Immanuel Kant, the merry sage of Königsberg, who died 200 years ago. (Anja Steinbauer, Philosophy Now)

“Have the courage to use your own reason!”, (in Latin sapere aude!) is the battle cry of the Enlightenment. It was articulated by Immanuel Kant in his famous article ‘What is Enlightenment?’ (1784). Obstacles that can stand in our way in achieving ‘maturity’, i.e. thinking for ourselves, are manifold and have to do with: the self, politics and society, as well as culture. These are problems that concern academics as much as anyone else: In a letter to his sovereign Kant declared freely that he believed Rousseau to be correct in saying that rulers only tolerate those intellectuals who are happy to simply “adorn our chains with flowers” – as many do. The greatest difficulty lies in motivating people to shake off immaturity: “It is so easy not to be of age. If I have a book which understands for me, a pastor who has a conscience for me, a physician who decides my diet, and so forth, I need not trouble myself. I need not think, if only I can pay – others will easily undertake the irksome work for me.”

Heinrich Heine once said sarcastically that “the history of Immanuel Kant’s life is hard to describe, because he had neither a life nor history.” In many ways, Immanuel Kant seems to have been exactly what you’d expect a German professor to be like, a parody of himself, so to speak: pedantic, punctual, rigid. [...]

Kant published widely, on a large number of subjects, including science, resulting for instance in the Kant-Laplace theory, or the ‘nebular hypothesis’ concerning the origin of the solar system. In philosophy, his interests were also manifold, and since Kant was very widely read so were the influences on his thought. Famously, he declared in the Critique of Pure Reason that David Hume had awoken him from his “dogmatic slumber”. Another important influence was Jean-Jacques Rousseau, whose Emile fascinated Kant so much that he even gave up his daily walks for a few days.
So what does Kant want to do in his philosophising? Kant himself declares: “it is metaphysics which it is my fate to be in love with” because on it rests “the true and enduring welfare of humanity.” Therefore we cannot be indifferent to it. There are three respects in which metaphysics is important to Kant: Is there something in human beings that transcends their contingent existence? Is the world a realm of pure causality, or is there the possibility of uncaused acts? Is there anything on which the world is ultimately based? These considerations lead Kant to ask the questions which he believes metaphysics cannot avoid: the questions of immortality, freedom and God. It is no secret that these questions are difficult to answer, and Kant acknowledges that there has been much “tapping in the dark” by philosophers who have tried to find answers. Therefore, we cannot simply begin by straightforwardly answering these questions, but there is a lot of philosophical preparation that has to be carefully worked out beforehand: Why is metaphysics so elusive, what makes it so? This is the question to which Kant dedicates the Critique of Pure Reason. Finally Kant discovers that there cannot be any certain answers. His approach is that of ‘transcendental’ philosophy, i.e. the enquiry into the conditions necessary for the possibility of something, such as knowledge or morality. What has to be in place for us to be able to acquire knowledge, or to make moral judgements?

Kant believes critique to be the true task of his era, including criticism of religion and legislation. Kant extends this approach to his own philosophical tradition, Rationalism, which he significantly calls ‘dogmatism’, as well as Empiricism, which he calls ‘scepticism’. The Critique of Pure Reason reveals that both approaches have merit but need to be put in perspective: We need experience to acquire knowledge but process the information experience gives us through human faculties. No matter how hard we try, we are therefore never going to know what the world is like per se but only how it presents itself from a human perspective. The idea that our minds shape our world rather than vice versa was a significant reversal of what had previously been assumed – a ‘Copernican revolution’. [...]

As we have seen, Kant posits the human being as caught up in an insoluble tension: Wanting to know and yet by our very nature being unable to know. This is the dilemma which we see portrayed in Goethe’s Faust. Faust seeks knowledge with such passion that his insight that true human knowledge is impossible distresses him to the degree of contemplating suicide (and ultimately entering into a contract with the devil). It was a tension that the Idealist philosophers of the 19th century could not bear, hence for instance Hegel’s hope of overcoming in history by means of the dialectic. Kant, however, tells us that we have to live with this conflict, it is the human condition.

Another conflict that makes us human is the conflict between culture and nature, between our rational insight into the moral law and our natural desire to act in our self-interest. As human beings we have to constantly check and correct our own behaviour. Kant faced the same problem Plato had faced. Why had the Sophists been so successful? Was it because people were too stupid to see through them? Plato might have thought so. But Kant didn’t. The Sophists had been successful because they met with the expectations that people had, with the wishes they wanted fulfilled. Kant admits that as an academic he was tempted to be sceptical about the abilities of “ordinary” human beings, but reading Rousseau had taught him very powerfully that morality was not the exclusive field of expertise of philosophers but that there could not be any experts in this area: Human beings act morally quite independently of philosophers philosophising about it. What moral philosophy can do is help us achieve clarity about what motivates us in our moral behaviour and can give us reasons and confidence. This is what the critical method is designed to do in the field of ethics. Reason, common to all human beings, must be properly controlled: Reason itself is not an unqualified good but must be employed critically to lead to moral principles.

One of his main arguments in Kant’s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason is that people can understand the moral law without the aid of organised religion. It is simply redundant as a moral aid. He goes even further: There is an inherent tension between morality and religion because there is a danger that people may act morally not because it is the right thing to do but because their religion prescribes it. This would take away the value of a good act: Kant is convinced that we can do the right thing for the wrong reasons, which would be devoid of moral merit. Achieving desirable outcomes is not enough; moral merit lies in the right intentions that are freely willed. Freedom is the necessary ground for the existence of the moral law.

Where Kant goes most dangerously wrong is in imagining that we can know what the right thing is without God. Once you have God telling us that we are each made in His Image and must therefore be treated with dignity it's easy enough to cook up rational theories for how to try and get people to do so, but Reason can not supply the foundation. Morality requires freedom but it is the freedom to choose to behave morally, not to choose for ourselves what is moral.

Posted by Orrin Judd at March 7, 2005 11:47 AM