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Bookmarks GlossaryKant’s “Copernican Revolution”
Burke:
Hegel:
Kierkegaard:
Schopenhauer:
Nietzsche:
Nietzsche:
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Darren Staloff, Ph.D. Scope: The first phase of nineteenth-century European high culture is associated with romanticism. Romantics rejected the arid rationalism and scientism of the Enlightenment. A reaction against romanticism, known as positivism, had set in by mid-century. The final phase of nineteenth-century thought witnessed the rise of existential themes and issues. Outline I. The long nineteenth century was an epoch of transformation in European and world history. A. Europe and its colonies witnessed an era of growing political unrest and turmoil. 1. The era opened with the French Revolution in 1789 and the ensuing Napoleonic world wars that involved all of Europe and briefly transformed the entire political and social order. 2. Nationalist and parliamentary revolutions broke out in western and central Europe in 1848 and would follow in southern and eastern Europe in the following decades. 3. The aftermath of the Franco-Prussian War saw the emergence of the Paris Commune of 1872, the first large-scale socialist insurrection. 4. The attempt to return to dynastic monarchical government with the Concert of Europe was shattered by the rise of journals espousing radical ideologies. B. The nineteenth century also witnessed a growing expansion and conflict between modern European nation states. 1. The nineteenth century was the great age of empire. 2. Imperial superpowers formed into alliances and struggled to maintain the much-sought-after “balance of power.” 3. The rise of nationalism was often accompanied by violent struggles. 4. The period really comes to a close in the early twentieth century with the “Great War,” World War 1. C. The nineteenth century was also characterized by dramatic economic and technological changes. 1. This was the age of the industrial revolution with the growth of the factory system. 2. The industrial revolution, following the commercial revolution, accelerated the expansion of urbanism with its attendant crowding and alienation. 3. Transportation was transformed as horse-drawn coaches and sailing vessels gave way to steam boats and railroads that were undermined by the development of the internal combustion engine and the automobile in the latter part of the century. 4. Technologies and productive processes based on steam and iron were gradually replaced by those based on fossil fuels and steel, just as agriculture and pharmacology would be transformed by the development of the modem chemical industry. D. The nineteenth century was caught in the throes of intense cultural conflicts as Europeans grappled with their modernity. 1. The dramatic and accelerating rate of change unleashed deep yearnings for the preservation of traditional beliefs and institutions. 2. Religion found itself increasingly under siege from science, especially Darwinian theory. 3. Traditional social roles were subject to criticism from utopian radicals and practical reformers: feminism, abolitionism, temperance.
II. The first phase of nineteenth-century European high culture is associated with romanticism. Romantics rejected the arid rationalism and scientism of the Enlightenment. The most important forms of philosophical romanticism were idealism and historic ism. A. The essential figure in the origins of German idealism is Immanuel Kant. 1. Kant was a transitional figure between the Enlightenment and romanticism. 2. Kant’s idealism was achieved by his “Copemican Revolution,” the fact that our categories of the world do not align with the world itself. 3. Based on the distinction between subject and object, Kant’s idealism gives rise to the distinction between the realm of appearances and the realm of being “in itself.” 4. The notion of the noumenal realm of things "‘in themselves” was critical for his moral thought in metaphysics and religion. 5. Kant’s categorical imperative and his principle of humanity reject the consequentialism and social Epicureanism of the Enlightenment. B. Schopenhauer shared Kant’s idealism but combined it with a profoundly pessimistic posture. His work represents the rehabilitation of speculative metaphysics. 1. Schopenhauer’s notion of the “world as representation” is an obvious reference to Kant’s realm of the phenomenal, while the “world as will” is meant to coincide with the phenomenal world of “things in themselves.” 2. The principle of sufficient reason is intensely anti-scientific and is redolent of the entire Platonic quest to find the real world behind the veil of appearances. 3. Schopenhauer’s Eastern-inspired ethic of renunciation (pessimism) is an obvious rejection of the modem cult of progress and aspiration. C. Hegel’s thought represents the culmination of German idealism in his dialectical mode of reasoning and overarching historicism. 1. Hegel’s conservative historicism was in some ways anticipated by Vico and Burke. 2. Hegel historicized the Kantian insight by arguing that our conceptual schemes are evolving aspects of culture that vary with time and place. 3. Hegel’s philosophy of history, in particular his doctrine that “the rational is the real and the real is the rational,” was conservative, statist, nationalist, and militaristic. 4. Hegel’s idealism has relativistic implications and is anti-scientific.
III. A reaction against romanticism, known as positivism, had set in by mid-century. Positivism shared the Enlightenment’s quest for practical, rather than speculative, knowledge and its belief in progress.
A. Marx’s historical materialism sought to incorporate Hegel’s historicism in a naturalistic worldview. 1. Marx’s analysis of history is empirically grounded and begins with the biological needs of humans to supply their material wants. 2. Marx’s reductionism turns Hegelianism on its head, as philosophy, religion, and art become superstructural epiphenomena to economic forces. 3. Marx’s demand for the unity of theory and practice “radicalizes” historicism and the philosophy of history. 4. Marx’s thought still retains some romantic residues, such as his critique of alienation.
B. Mill’s utilitarianism is another “positive” philosophic perspective, though
drawn 1. Mill’s thought is rooted in English-speaking consequentialism. 2. Utilitarianism is empirical and claims to be a scientific theory of morality. 3. Mill’s consequentialism is thoroughly naturalistic and materialistic in its formulation. 4. The rational calculation behind utilitarianism and its consequentialism both appealed to and expressed a “middle class” ethos.
IV. The final phase of nineteenth-century thought witnessed the rise of existential themes and issues.
A. Soren Kierkegaard stressed the conflict between faith and reason to highlight the psychological transformation implicated in the former. 1. Kierkegaard’s fideism echoes that of earlier critics of rational religion, such as Bayle and Pascal. 2. His concern with the life of the individual in its alienated state harks back to Marx and prefigures the thought of Nietzsche, Sartre, and Camus. 3. The primacy of willing and deciding in overcoming angst presupposes a freedom of the will that contradicts the determinism of positivistic materialism. 4. The cool calculus of utilities seems small and petty in contrast to the dramatic “fear and trembling” of true “Abrahamic” faith. B. Friedrich Nietzsche shared Kierkegaard’s concern with the alienation and spiritual impoverishment of modern man and stressed the same conflict between faith and reason. Nietzsche, however, was a naturalist whose perspectivism combined idealism with a historicistic pluralism. 1. The doctrine that “there are no facts, only interpretations” expresses the essential anti-realism and idealism of Nietzsche. 2. The end of the cult of objectivity is summarized in his famous aphorism “God is Dead.” 3. Nietzsche practiced a historicistic (Hegelian) and naturalistic (Marxian) critique of morality. 4. Nietzsche sought self-creation and authenticity, a project that has a powerful aesthetic dimension. 5. Nietzsche rejected Schopenhauer’s pessimism for a Promethean or Dionysian “yea saying,” 6. Nietzsche’s perspectivism is informed by his naturalism, humanism, and commitment to “evolutionary” perspectives. Supplementary Reading: Frederick, S.J. Copleston, A History of Philosophy (New York: 1985), Book III, pp. l—31,421---442. Questions to Consider: 1. What were the most important trends of philosophical romanticism? 2. How did positivism reflect a middle-class ethos? Alienation: For Marx, a sense of estrangement from the product of our work, which leads to a general separation from society and our humanity and the objectification of labor in a way that distorts and corrupts our need for satisfying work. Categorical imperative: The supreme principle of morality, or moral law, according to Jmmanuel Kant. The first formulation: "‘Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law” (for everyone to follow). Dialectic of existence: Borrowed from Hegelian dialectic by Kierkegaard, a method with which to describe the stages of an individual’s existence as he or she develops inwardly toward faith. Existentialism: A philosophical movement concerned with problems of human existence, originated by Kierkegaard and developed by twentieth-century existentialists, such as Heidegger in Being and Time. Fideism (from the Latin word fides, meaning "faith”): A religious or philosophical position that emphasizes faith to the exclusion of reason. Forms of intuition (or sensibility): In Kant’s philosophy, space and time, which are forms imposed by the human mind on experiences and are necessary conditions for having experiences at all. Hermeneutics of suspicion: Nietzsche’s idea that one should be skeptical about everything, especially the highly praised. Hypothetical imperative: A principle stating what a person ought to do if he or she wants to fulfill a certain desire or purpose. Such imperatives play a significant role in Kant’s moral theory. Idealism: The principle that reality is fundamentally mental in nature. Kingdom of Ends principle: According to Kant, the principle that we should act toward all other rational beings as if we were all members of a "Kingdom of Ends” whose free actions and choices are worth respecting. Master morality: According to Nietzsche, master morality is born of strength and self-confidence. The development of self according to master morality emphasizes independence and excellence, much like the ethics of the ancient Greeks. Noumenal world: In Kant’s philosophy, the world of things as they are in themselves and not merely as they appear to us. Perspectivism: Per Nietzsche, the truth of things emerges only when we see as many perspectives as possible. Phenomenal world: For Kant, the world of appearances. Positivism: The description of sensory phenomena as the only sure foundation for knowledge. Practical reason: The capacity to deliberate practically about what we ought to do and how we ought to live. The distinction between practical reason and theoretical reason (reasoning about matters of fact or about what is the case) plays a significant role in Kant’s philosophy. Principle of equality: Per Mill, each person should count as one and only one. Principle of humanity: The second formulation of Kant’s categorical imperative: “Act so that you always use humanity in your own person, as well as in the person of every other, never as a means, but at the same time as an end.” Principle of sufficient reason: Schopenhauer’s belief that every object stands in a necessary relation to other objects. Principle of utility: For Mill, the notion that one should always act for the sake of the greater good. Scarcity: The Marxian idea that every society that has ever existed has been unable to produce enough goods to satisfy everyone in the society. Slave morality: Per Nietzsche, slave morality is born of weakness and is a morality of resentment, of defensiveness. The development of self according to slave morality tends to be a pathetic conformity, a “herd” morality. Synthetic a priori truths: In Kant’s philosophy, truths are synthetic in the sense that they are about matters of fact, not merely about the meanings of words (not “analytic”), and yet are universal and necessary because they are presupposed by all experience (i.e., a priori). Transcendental deduction of the categories: In Kant’s philosophy, the attempt to demonstrate that categories of the understanding, such as substance and causality, are necessary presuppositions of all experiences. Ubermensch: Nietzsche’s concept from Thus Spake Zarathustra; literally, the “superman,” an exemplar of self-creation, free from the influence of the “herd.” Utilitarianism: For Mill, the greatest good for the greatest number. Will: For Schopenhauer, the fundamental basis of the reality that we observe. Will to Power: For Nietzsche, both a limited thesis about the motivation of certain actions and a grand metaphysical thesis about the workings of the universe. In a general way, his emphasis on the Will to Power can be read as a celebration of the passionate (Dionysian) life. Burke, Edmund (1729—1797). Burke was born in Dublin to a Catholic mother and a Protestant father. He was educated at a Quaker grammar school and later studied classics at Trinity College. Having found law not to his liking, he dedicated himself to scholarship and politics. His first two books, A Vindication of Natural Society (1756) and Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas on the Sublime and Beautiful (1756), were respectively a political satire and a book on aesthetics. He also worked for a time on the Annual Register. In 1766, Burke became a member of parliament on the side of Rockingham and the Whig party. During the American Revolution, he was heralded by the American colonists for voicing support in Commons for their efforts to win independence. Although he supported the American war for independence, he condemned the French Revolution. His best-known work, Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790), is an eloquent defense of tradition and an attack on the excesses committed by the French revolutionaries. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1770—1831). Hegel was born at Stuttgart, the son of a civil servant. In 1788, he enrolled at the University of Tubingen, where he studied philosophy and theology. For six years after college, Hegel served as a private tutor. In 1801, he accepted an appointment teaching philosophy at the University of Jena, wherein 1805, he attained the rank of professor. At Jena, he and Friedrich Schelling edited the Critical Journal of Philosophy, and Hegel finished his Phenomenology of Mind. Hegel edited a newspaper during the Napoleonic occupation of Prussia and, from 1808 to 1816, he served as headmaster of an academy in Nuremburg. In 1818, he became a professor of philosophy at the University of Berlin, where he completed his architectonic philosophical system and published his Philosophy of Right (1821). Hegel died of cholera in 1831 at age sixty-one. Kant, Immanuel (1724—1804). Kant was born in Konigsberg, East Prussia, into a devoutly pietistic Christian household. In 1740, he entered the University of Konigsberg, where he remained (except for several years spent tutoring in East Prussia) for the rest of his life. At Konigsberg, he studied theology, philosophy, and the natural sciences and read the works of Newton and Leibniz. He taught logic and metaphysics at Konigsberg for more than thirty years. Kant published a number of works between 1747 and 1781, including his General History of Nature and Theory of the Heavens (1755). After a ten-year hiatus in publications, Kant entered the “critical period” of his philosophical efforts in 1781 with the publication of his Critique of Pure Reason, which espoused his “Copernican Revolution in philosophy.” He followed this with the Critique of Practical Reason (1787) and Critique of Judgment (1790). Kant presented his deontological ethics in his Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Kierkegaard, Sören (18 13—1855). Considered by many to be the founder of existentialism, Kierkegaard was born in Copenhagen, Denmark, into an austere Lutheran family. He earned a master’s degree in 1841 from the University of Copenhagen; his thesis was entitled "On the Concept of Irony."’ Although he gave serrnons for a time in the Lutheran pulpit, he appears to have been unwilling to enter the pastorate full time. Instead, he led a hermitic and melancholy life. Among his most int1uential works are Fear and Trembling (1843) and Either/Or (1843). In 1844, he published his Philosophical Fragments and, in 1846, Concluding Unscientific Postscript. Kierkegaard signed many of his books with pseudonyms, in part because he wished to attack his own work. Marx, Karl (1818—1883). Marx was born in Trier. When he was six years old, his father converted from Judaism to Lutheranism. After studying law for one year at the University of Bonn, Marx transferred to the University of Berlin, where he studied philosophy. He received a Ph.D. in philosophy from the University of Jena in 1841, having written his dissertation on the ancient Greek thinkers Democritus and Epicurus. He then became editor of the newspaper Rheinishe Zeitung, but the German authorities closed down the newspaper in 1843 because of the radical views expressed in it. Marx and his wife then moved to Paris. In 1844, Marx began a lifelong friendship with Friedrich Engels, author of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845). Marx was expelled from France in 1845 because of his radicalism. He settled in Brussels, from which he was expelled following publication of The Communist Manifesto (1848). He and his family finally settled in London, where they depended on Engels for money while Marx conducted his research. During the 1850s, Marx wrote for The New York Daily Tribune. In 1864, he helped found the International Working Men’s Association (subsequently known as the “First International”). Marx became a leading authority among European radicals following the publication of the first volume of Das Capital in 1867. Mill, John Stuart (1806—1873). Mill’s father, the historian and philosopher James Mill, was a disciple of the utilitarian philosopher Jeremy Bentham. John Stuart Mill’s Autobiography (published posthumously in 1873) recounts his extraordinary education, which took place entirely at home. At fourteen, he spent a year in France at the home of the brother of Jeremy Bentham. Back in England, Mill established the Utilitarian Society in 1822. The following year, he assumed a position in the East India Company, which he held for thirty-five years. He wrote often during the 1 820s for the Benthamite Westminster Review, joined discussion clubs, and was active in the London Debating Society. In 1843, he published his System of Logic and, in 1844, his Principles of Political Economy. In 1831, Mill met and became an intimate friend of Harriet Taylor, the wife of a prosperous merchant. He married Mrs. Taylor in 1851 after her husband’s death. Their years of marriage (she died in 1858) were joyous and inspirational for Mill. She may have collaborated with him in writing On Liberty. She also influenced Mill’s Considerations on Representative Government (1861), Utilitarianism (1863), and The Subjection of Women (1869). Mill served in parliament during the mid-l860s, then retired to France. where he continued his writing and study. Nietzsche, Friedrich Wilhelm (1844—1900). Nietzsche was born in Rocken, Germany, the son and grandson of Lutheran ministers. His father died when he was four years old and he was raised by his mother, grandmother, and two aunts. Trained in theology and classical philology as an undergraduate in Bonn, he received his Ph.D. from the University of Leipzig without writing a dissertation, based on the strength of his published writings. The University of Basel appointed him professor of classical philology and he became a Swiss citizen. There, Nietzsche befriended Richard Wagner. Nietzsche obtained leave to serve as a volunteer medical orderly in August 1870, after the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. Within a month, he contracted dysentery and diphtheria, which mined his health permanently. He returned to Basel to resume teaching, but his health continued to deteriorate. He resigned his professorship and, suffering from migraine headaches and partial blindness, continued to write while living in Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. In January 1889, Nietzsche suffered a complete mental breakdown, brought about by syphilis, and spent the last eleven years of his life in a state of insanity. Schopenhauer, Arthur (1788—1860). Schopenhauer was born in Danzig, the only child of a talented novelist and wealthy merchant. Schopenhauer was educated in Hamburg, Austria, England, France, and Switzerland. After his father’s suicide, the teenage Schopenhauer and his mother moved to Weimar, where relations between them were strained and bitter. Having gaining his inheritance and independence at age twenty-one, Schopenhauer studied medicine at the University of Gottingen. He later abandoned medicine for philosophy, moving in 1811 to Berlin, the center of philosophical inquiry on the Continent. The World as Will and Representation (1818) established Schopenhauer’s reputation as a distinguished philosopher and helped to gain him a lectureship at the University of Berlin. Schopenhauer’s difficult personality expressed itself at Berlin—he never married and appears to have had no friends. Vexed by Hegel’s superior popularity, he left the university after a year. Living comfortably off his inheritance, Schopenhauer dedicated himself to his writing. He published On the Will in Nature in 1836, The Basis of Morality in 1841, and Essa vs from the Parerga and Paralipomena in 1851. He died at age seventy-two, having achieved the recognition he believed he deserved.
Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” Robert Kane, Ph.D. Scope: This lecture examines the views of one of the greatest of modem philosophers, Immanuel Kant, on the limits of knowledge, reason, science, and metaphysics, as expressed in his seminal work, The Critique of Pure Reason (1781). Kant’s "Copernican Revolution” in philosophy inverted the order of knowledge as Copernicus had inverted the positions of the sun and earth. Empiricists such as John Locke had held that the objective world impressed its categories on the blank slate of our minds. For Kant, however, objective experience must conform to a priori forms of intuition, such as space and time, and to basic categories of understanding, such as substance and causality, which the mind imposes on experience.
Modern science and mathematics are successful at giving us reliable objective knowledge of the physical world, Kant held, because they stay within the bounds of possible experience defined by these forms and categories. By contrast, the great questions of metaphysics or philosophy—about God, the soul, free will, and ethics—because they transcend the bounds of possible experience and concern “things in themselves,” lead to insoluble puzzles and antinomies when we try to resolve them by theoretical reason alone. Outline I. Immanuel Kant is one of the most influential figures of modern Western philosophy and is regarded by many as the greatest of modem philosophers. A. Kant is also an important representative of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. 1. His life (1724—1804) spanned most of the eighteenth century and his thought reflected many Enlightenment ideals: the importance of reason and science, of thinking for oneself, distrust of authoritarianism, the importance of autonomy, the dignity of the individual, and human rights. 2. Yet ironically, Kant’s critique of pure reason, which we shall discuss in this lecture, tended to undermine Enlightenment beliefs in the power of reason and science. B. Theologian Paul Tillich aptly called Kant a Shiva figure of the Enlightenment. 1. The Hindu god Shiva danced, completing and destroying one cosmic epoch and bringing a new cosmic epoch into existence. 2. Likewise, Kant completed, yet undermined, Enlightenment ideals, then ushered in a new epoch of modem philosophy with his ethical ideas. 3. In this lecture, we consider Kant, the completer and destroyer of the Enlightenment, in his Critique of Pure Reason. In the next lecture, we consider his moral philosophy and attempts to reconstruct philosophy on new foundations of practical reason.
II. Kant’s life and background.
A. He grew up in a pietistic German home that emphasized a stern moral conscience and control of the passions. 1. Kant’s father was a craftsman, a harness-maker. A revealing story is told of his father’s involvement with the harness-maker’s guild. 2. His mother, who died when her son was thirteen (perhaps the most profound event in Kant’s life), encouraged his intellectual interests and taught him to feel awe at "the starry heavens above and the moral law within us.” B. This pietistic background and belief in morality stayed with Kant throughout his life. 1. Being a true representative of the Enlightenment, however, Kant also believed that religion and morality could not be based on mere external authority, as they were for his parents. 2. We had to use our own autonomous reason to decide which authorities to accept and which to reject. 3. Kant’s short essay “What Is Enlightenment?” is discussed in this regard. The motto of the Enlightenment, he said, was “Dare to know”: dare to use your reason and think for yourself.
III. The problem was that by Kant’s time, the course of modem thought had shown that human reason had its limitations.
A. Reason had great success in science and mathematics (understanding “the starry heavens above”), but it had sown skepticism and disagreement over the questions of metaphysics, religion, and the moral law within. 1. Kant was awakened to this problem by many thinkers who preceded him, especially by the empiricism and skepticism of David Hume. 2. In a famous passage, Kant said Hume’s writings awoke him from his “dogmatic slumber.” He learned from Hume that the success of science and math was not going to be extended to other areas. B. As a result, Kant posed (in his famous work, The Critique of Pure Reason [1781]) two central questions for the modem age: I. Why are modern science and mathematics together so successful at giving us reliable objective knowledge of the physical world? 2. Why do we find it so hard to get similar knowledge and agreement about the great questions of metaphysics or philosophy—about God, the soul, free will, and ethics? C. Kant’s answer was equally seminal for modem thought: modern science and mathematics are successful because they deal only with the way things appear to us, not the way they really are in themselves. 1. The world studied by science is the world that can be experienced by our senses. 2. To experience that world, we impose on it certain forms and categories that make experience possible—space and time, causality and substance, action and reaction, and so on. 3. The questions of metaphysics take us beyond the legitimate bounds of these forms and categories of possible experience and, hence, beyond the hounds of understanding by theoretical reason and science.
IV. Consider space and time.
A. Is it any accident that everything science can deal with is in space and time? No, says Kant. 1. Space is not like a large box we peer into. It is a projection of our own consciousness that makes it possible to experience objects to begin with. 2. Without time, we would have no experience either, because experience is something we “go through” or “undergo.” An idea may be timeless, but not an experience. 3. Space and time are, thus, forms of the human mind that experiences must conform to just to be called “experiences.” Kant calls them “forms of intuition” or “forms of sensibility.” B. In addition, he speaks of space and time as a priori forms of intuition, by which he means that we must have them in our mental arsenal from the first—a priori—to experience a world at all. 1. This idea also explains why mathematics and geometry can have necessary truths and proofs; according to Kant, they are about these necessary forms of all experience. 2. Geometry is about space; arithmetic and the number series are about succession in time. C. So it is, Kant argues, that the truths of arithmetic and Euclidean geometry can be synthetic a priori truths. 1. “A priori” means that they are necessary and universal truths, because they are about necessary forms of all experience. 2. “Synthetic” means that they are about something real, not merely about the meanings of words (not “analytic”). 3. Kant lived before the discovery of non-Euclidean geometries and believed Euclidean geometry was the geometry of real space. The same could also be said of his relationship to Newtonian, as opposed to modem, physics. For Kant, mathematics was based on spatial imagination.
V. Kant’s account of space and time provides the first clue to the meaning of what he called his ‘"Copemican Revolution” in philosophy.
A. Kant inverted the order of knowledge as Copernicus had inverted the positions of the sun and earth. 1. Instead of the objective world impressing its categories on the blank slate of our minds, as such empiricists as John Locke had held, our mind is anything but a passive receptor or blank slate. 2. The objective world must conform to our a priori forms of intuition and basic categories of understanding, not the other way around. 3. Thus, Kant rejected the empiricism of preceding thinkers, such as Locke and Hume (the view that all ideas and truths come after experience—a posteriori—and are derived from experience). B. Copernicus dispersed humans to the periphery of the physical universe; Kant put them back in the center regarding knowledge of that universe.
VI. In addition to forms of intuition such as space and time, Kant also argued that a priori “categories of the understanding,” as he calls them, must be imposed by us on the world, if experience is to be possible.
A. These basic categories include substance (persisting things), causality, plurality, unity, and existence, among others. 1. Kant derives the full list of his categories somewhat artificially from the possible forms of judgment in Aristotelian and medieval logic. 2. Yet we do have reason to believe that many of these categories are involved in our experiencing the world. B. To show that these categories are a priori, however, Kant must prove the stronger claim that without them, experience would not even be possible. 1. Kant undertakes this proof in the longest and most difficult part of the Critique of Pure Reason. He calls it the "transcendental deduction of the Categories.” 2. There has been much dispute among scholars and philosophers about whether this deduction works or, indeed, about just what it amounts to. 3. Consider Kant’s transcendental deduction in the concrete terms of an example involving a series of pictures that tells a continuing story of a man burning down a warehouse. C. This explanation of the deduction throws further light on the meaning of Kant’s Copernican Revolution in philosophy. Rather than the mind conforming to the objects of experience, the objects of experience must conform to the a priori categories of our understanding.
VII. We are now in a position to return to the seminal questions with which Kant began the Critique of Pure Reason. A. How is it that science and mathematics together are so successful in giving us objective knowledge of the world, while we cannot obtain similar objective knowledge and agreement in matters of philosophy or metaphysics concerning the soul, God, free will, ethics, and values? 1. Kant’s answer is that science and mathematics stay within the bounds of possible experience defined by the forms of intuition and by the categories of the understanding. 2. Yet these very strengths of science and mathematics are the sources of their limitations. 3. They tell us only about things as they are experienced by us, hence as they appear to us (the phenomenal world), not things as they really are in themselves (the noumenal world). 4. By contrast, the great questions of metaphysics are about things as they are in themselves and go beyond the bounds of possible experience. B. To illustrate this last point, the third long part of the Critique of Pure Reason shows how we get into trouble when we try to press the human mind beyond possible experience into the realms of metaphysics. 1. With regard to the soul and its supposed immortality, scientific psychology can understand the phenomenal self—the one that appears to us. 2. But science cannot understand the soul as it is in itself—the noumenal self—nor can science say whether the soul can survive bodily death. Of such matters we can have only faith. 3. In addition, when we try to think about the cosmos as a whole, e.g., whether it was created, we encounter insoluble puzzles that Kant calls “antinomies of reason. 4. One of these antinomies concerns free will. Science seems to tell us that everything is governed by laws of cause and effect, yet we believe we can act freely without being determined by the laws of nature. This contradiction cannot be resolved by theoretical reason. 5. Finally, Kant argues that attempts to prove the existence of God by reason have failed for the same reason—hey try to extend the categories of the understanding to matters, such as the cause of the world as a whole, that go beyond the bounds of possible experience.
VIII. In summary, we see why Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason both enlightened and terrorized his time. In the next lecture, we will try to understand how Kant himself dealt with these great questions, especially about ethics and values, that were beyond the scope of science. Essential Reading: Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason, translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York: 1965), pp. 63—275. Supplementary Reading: Frederick, S.J. Copleston, A History of Philosophy (New York: 1985), Book II, Vol. VI, pp. 211—276. S. Korner, Kant (New York: 1990), chapters 1—5, pp. 13—126. Michael Friedman. Kant and the Exact Sciences (Cambridge, MA: 1992). P. F. Strawson, The Bounds of Sense (London: Routledge, 1966). Questions to Consider: 1. Explain what Kant means by his Copernican Revolution in philosophy. Is the analogy with Copernicus’s revolution in cosmology an appropriate one for Kant’s revolution in philosophy? 2. Explain what Kant means by his “transcendental deduction of the categories” of the understanding. Why is this deduction crucial to his project in the Critique of Pure Reason? Kant claims that we are capable of gaining knowledge of an objective world, even though we only know things as they appear to us. Are these claims consistent and, if so, how? Robert Kane, Ph.D. Scope: This lecture examines Kant’s views about morality and value as embodied in such works as Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and the Critique of Practical Reason (1789), which appeared after his Critique of Pure Reason. We examine Kant’s derivation of his famous categorical imperative: "‘Act only by that maxim by which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” We will also consider the meaning and significance of alternative formulations of the categorical imperative, including Kant’s “principle of humanity”: “Act so that you always use humanity in your own person, as well as in the person of every other, never as a means, but at the same time as an end.”
As a true representative of the Enlightenment, Kant held that belief in the moral law and ethical decisions could not be based on mere external authority, religious or otherwise, but must be based on one’s own autonomous reason. Through the exercise of practical reason, human beings are capable of self-legislation, of making laws that they themselves should follow; this capacity for self-legislation not only leads to the categorical imperative, but is also the source of humans autonomy and free will. Humans are free of determination by nature’s laws because they are capable of acting in accordance with laws of our own making. Science and theoretical reason cannot grasp or prove these truths, but practical reason and morality must presuppose them. Outline
I. Kant went on to write other works after the Critique of Pure Reason, the theme of which was that the limitations of theoretical reason and science should not lead us to despair about the possibility of addressing philosophical questions concerning how to live and what to believe. A. If these philosophical questions could not be accessed by theoretical reason, they could be accessed indirectly—through practical reason. 1. Science deals well with the starry heavens above but is limited to the way things appear to us. 2. To penetrate beyond appearances, Kant’s idea was that we must begin with that other object of awe and imagination, the moral law within us. B. If we could show that practical reasoning about how to live and act necessarily presupposes a moral law, we would have reason to believe in such a law, though it was beyond the understanding of science or theoretical reason. 1. Because belief in the moral law could be shown to require free will, we would also have reason to believe in free will as well, despite the fact that science seems to rule it out. 2. By this indirect route through practical reason, we could vindicate Enlightenment ideals of individual dignity and universal human rights. 3. We might also, Kant thought, get further clues about the human soul, God, and our ultimate destiny. C. This was Kant’s project in the major works that came after the Critique of Pure Reason, such as the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason.
II. To address the big questions about morality and philosophy through practical reason, however, Kant thought we had to expand our vision beyond our own personal desires and purposes.
A. Practical reason is concerned with how we ought to live. I. The concern must not merely be with how we ought to live and act if we wanted or desired this or that, because humans have different desires and purposes. 2. We would thereby fail to gain the desired universality of perspective that morality and metaphysics require. B. Kant expressed this point by saying that the moral law cannot be concerned merely with hypothetical imperatives or hypothetical ought’s—those with an "if’ in them. 1. Such hypothetical imperatives are the stuff of everyday practical reasoning—if you want to stay healthy, you ought to eat right and exercise; if you want to become a doctor, you ought to study hard; and so on. 2. Hypothetical imperatives apply only to those who have the wants or desires in question. Human desires differ; some are even evil. (If you want to become an effective terrorist, you ought to learn to make bombs.) C. Morality or ethics, for Kant—represented by the idea of duty—must be different. 1. It concerns what everyone ought to do, period—no if’s, and’s, or but’s. 2. Kant calls an imperative of this sort a categorical imperative—what all persons ought to do without qualification, no matter who they are or what they desire. 3. Such an imperative would not say, “Don’t lie, if you want to be trusted,” but “Don’t lie, period.”
III. Kant asks what could motivate people to accept such a categorical imperative, because doing so cannot depend, as hypothetical imperatives do, on any particular desires or on the consequences their actions might have. A. Kant argues that the only inducement left to us to obey such an imperative would be “the conformity of our actions to universal law as such.” 1. That is, as he puts it, “I ought never to act except in such a way that I can will that my maxim [or ought] should become a universal law” for everyone to follow. 2. This turns out to be the initial formulation of Kant’s famous categorical imperative: “Act only according to that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” (for everyone to follow). B. Kant’s argument for this famous imperative is difficult to understand and controversial, as is the imperative itself. Scholars have disagreed about what it is arid whether it works. C. Keeping in mind the difficulty and controversy involved, we will attempt to understand Kant’s argument for the categorical imperative and throw light on the meaning of the imperative as well. 1. Kant’s goal is to arrive at some universal and necessary laws that apply to everyone about what is good or right. 2. To do this, Kant is suggesting, we must be willing to rise above all our particular desires and purposes just as scientists must be willing to rise above their particular biases to find the objective laws of nature. 3. We must, in other words, be willing to legislate (or make laws) universally for everyone, not just hypothetically for ourselves, like a judge or a wise King Solomon. 4. To do that, in turn, we would have to adopt principles of action we could will that everyone followed, which amounts to the requirement of the categorical imperative. D. Kant further emphasizes that only rational beings are capable of legislating in this way—imaginatively placing themselves above their particular desires and purposes and rising above their physical and biological beings. Only by the exercise of human reason can we obtain such an objective.
IV. Having arrived at Kant’s categorical imperative or moral law, we encounter further controversy when we consider what the imperative means and how it applies to concrete questions of morality and ethics. A. Kant tried to explain these matters by offering four (now-famous) examples. 1. One example concerns the immorality of breaking promises. Kant argues that the maxim “one ought to make a promise without intending to keep it” cannot be made a universal law for everyone to follow. 2. If everyone followed such a maxim, he argues, the very institution of promising would be undermined. 3. We consider common misinterpretations of Kant’s reasoning and assess various criticisms of his argument. Was Kant merely begging the question? B. Another much-discussed ethical example considered by Kant concerns suicide. I. He argues that suicide is always and everywhere wrong, without exceptions. 2. The maxim “out of love of ourselves, we should destroy ourselves” Kant regards as a practical self-contradiction, which could not be made a law for everyone to follow. 3. Consider this example in the light of cultural differences concerning the moral rightness of suicide. Consider also Kant’s view about the possibility of exceptions to moral rules, which he never seems to allow. Modem Kantians have amended his philosophy, maintaining nonetheless that his core position is very productive.
V. Kant defended two other related versions of his categorical imperative.
A. The most famous of these is the so-called principle of humanity: “Act so that you always use humanity, in your own person as well as in the person of every other, never merely as a means, but at the same time as an end.” 1. We examine what is involved in using people as a means rather than as an end, according to Kant. 2. Kant claims that this second formulation of the categorical imperative, the principle of humanity, amounts to the same as the first formulation in different words, but many subsequent thinkers have doubted this. B. What links the two formulations of the categorical imperative is the idea that human beings are capable of self-legislation, of making laws that they themselves should follow. 1. This capacity for self-legislation or autonomy (giving laws to oneself) is linked by Kant to the idea of free will. 2. We are free of determination by nature’s laws because we are capable of obeying laws of our own making. 3. Science and theoretical reason cannot understand this freedom of the will, but practical reason and morality must presuppose it. 4. This free will and autonomy is also the source of our dignity as individuals expressed by the principle of humanity: we are to be treated as ends in ourselves, because we have the power (through free will) to be the sources of our own ends. C. In this way, Kant feels he has vindicated the Enlightenment ideals of individual dignity and universal human rights through practical reason. 1. These ideals are further expressed in a third formulation of the categorical imperative that is closely related to the principle of humanity. 2. This formulation is the “Kingdom of Ends”: we should act toward all other rational beings as if we were all members of a Kingdom of Ends, a society in which everyone was worthy of being treated as an end rather than a means.
VI. Kant, in his later philosophy, tried to extend these ideas about morality and practical reason to the issues of metaphysics. A. Practical reason presupposes the moral law, he reasoned, in the form of the categorical imperative. 1. Practical reason, therefore, also presupposes belief in free will or autonomy and, hence, freedom from nature’s laws. 2. This means that as practical beings we are required to think of ourselves as something more than physical beings in space and time subject to scientific study and nature’s laws. B. There can be no scientific proof of these matters, of course, because they transcend the bounds of possible experience. Nonetheless, we have some reasons in our practical lives to believe them. C. In such ways did Kant seek to fulfill his project of denying reason to make room for faith. Essential Reading: Jmmanuel Kant, Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (Hackett, 1993). Supplementary Reading: Frederick, S.J. Copleston, A History of Philosophy (Image Books, 1985), Book II, Vol. VI, pp. 308—348. S. Korner, Kant (New York: 1990), chapters 6—7, pp. 127—174. Paul Guyer, ed., Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: Critical Essays (New York: 1998.) Questions to Consider: 1. Explain how Kant attempts to derive his categorical imperative in its first and second formulations. Do you think his arguments for the imperative in either form work; if not, where do you think they go wrong? 2. Do you think Kant’s categorical imperative is an “empty formalism,” as some of its critics have claimed? Does it allow too many maxims or rules of behavior that would normally be regarded as immoral or rule out any that seem to be moral?
Burke - The Origins of
Conservatism Jeremy Shearmur, Ph.D. Scope: Edmund Burke was a politician and orator, not a professor. As a result, his political thought was developed in speeches, pamphlets, and occasional writings and in the style of a rhetorician rather than an academic. Burke himself was, through much of his life, a moderate reformer, speaking up about abuses of British colonial power in Ireland and India and arguing on the side of the Americans at the time of the break with England. And yet, he is today best known for his hard-hitting critique of the French Revolution and of the revolutionaries’ appeal to issues of abstract principle and to the rights of man, ideas that have had a significant impact on conservatism. At a time when many of his colleagues were welcoming the French Revolution, Burke was raising doubts and objections and forecasting that no good would come of it. Not only were his worst predictions vindicated by what took place, but the way in which he argued has proved a source of intellectual inspiration for conservatives ever since.
In this lecture, we will examine some of the key elements in Burke’s argument against the French Revolution. We will also pose the broader problem of how his support for the American Revolution can be squared with his denunciation of the French Revolution. This, in turn, leads us to conclude with the difficult problem of the overall character of Burke’s views. Outline I. Background. A. Burke was a fascinating, but contentious figure. 1. Who was he? He was Irish, had legal training, and made his career as a writer and a British politician. He was a great orator and a powerful political writer, but he served very much as a spokesman for senior aristocratic figures. 2. He developed striking ideas, much at odds with attitudes current today; he is a key source for conservatives. 3. Yet his views were developed in an unsystematic manner, by way of reflections on particular events with which he was concerned, and he was strongly critical of those who accorded priority to philosophical abstractions. 4. As a result, there is still ongoing debate about the underlying character of his ideas. B. Is Burke a paradox? 1. Through much of his career, Burke was known as a supporter of moderate reform. 2. He was also on the side of the underdog, notably the Irish and East Indian sufferers from colonial exploitation. 3. He favored the American case, in the revolution. 4. Yet he was passionate in his denunciation of the French Revolution, even at the point where it was championed by moderate and progressive opinion in England.
II. Burke opposed the French Revolution and its supporters. His key work was Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790).
A. He starts with a critique of the English radical Richard Price. 1. Price claimed that the “Glorious Revolution” of 1688 (in which William and Mary replaced James II on the British throne) had established the following rights: to choose our own governors, to cashier them for misconduct, and to frame a government for ourselves. 2. Burke argued that this was a misleading historical account and that the basis of claims to such rights was not—as he took Price to claim—abstract principle, but rights specific to Englishmen. B. What underlies Burke’s claim? A critique of natural rights. 1. Burke claims that if people appealed to natural rights, “the commonwealth itself would, in a few generations, crumble away... into the dust and powder of individuality.” He is critical of appeals to abstractions. 2. By way of contrast, what did Burke favor? Burke on this is difficult to sum up, but it is worth referring here to several ideas. C. Government should be a matter of prudential management and practical statesmanship, not rule by abstract principle. D. Those with political power should respect—and take into account—the opinions and patterns of behavior of the people. E. Above all, Burke stressed the significance of the British constitution and other constitutions and bodies of traditional law. Why? 1. They were seen as historical achievements, the authority of which depended on their age, rather than on abstract rights. 2. The best rulers were, in his view, aristocrats, people who had behind them a tradition and historical heritage, who had substantive property—and thus a real stake in the country--and who had specific local knowledge and attachments to particular places. 3. At the same time, those with political power had a duty to govern in the interest of the population as a whole, not just in their own narrow interests. 4. This—the historical heritage of the constitution and rulers’ obligations to the population—should be seen as the basis of reform. That is, reform should be conservative, restoring what was good in the past, not calling the constitution into question; at the same time, it should be pragmatic. F. The constitution itself was seen as precious, yet vulnerable. 1. It is vulnerable to plausible-sounding appeals to reason and to populist appeals. 2. It is also vulnerable to being unbalanced, and Burke was, for many years, worried about the danger of corruption of parliament by the wealth and influence of the Crown.
III. A key interpretation of natural rights was fundamental to his critique of the revolution.
A. The British academic lain Hampsher-Monk has a plausible explanation: what is going on relates to a contrast between two interpretations of natural rights. 1. In one view—which some people attribute to John Locke—people have rights in a state of nature (an imagined situation, before government was established); these rights offer the basis for an adequate life there. The rights are preserved by, and form the basis of, the powers of government. Indeed, government can be called into question if it infringes these rights. 2. In another view, which one finds in Thomas Hobbes (and John Selden), natural rights sustain only the grimmest of forms of life—a dog-eat-dog situation in which, as Hobbes put it in a well-known phrase, “life [in the state of nature] is nasty, brutish and short.” In this view, natural rights are—and must be—given up when people move into government, which rescues them from this grim state of nature. Natural rights are destructive if appealed to against government and to do so risks getting us back into the horrors of the state of nature. 3. In form of this second view given by Selden, to whom, as Hampsher-Monk argues, Burke retorts government rests on traditions and conventions that are internalized by the population (they form their habits and expectations; what Burke called “prejudice”). 4. In Burke’s view, these traditions and conventions are the basis of the real rights of man; but they are, obviously, specific to particular countries and traditions. 5. They are conventional, not capable of rational demonstration. They may rest on historical fictions, but for Burke, it is enough that they are believed and that they work. 6. Burke claims that the alternative to such conventions and traditions is not—as its supporters claim—the rule of reason, but instead, the rule of brute force and the violence of the state of nature. In Burke’s view, we will get to this state if we try to conduct politics on the basis of an appeal to abstract principle. 7. He forecast that the French Revolution would lead to violence at a time when it was favored by all “progressive” opinion. B. Burke also expressed concern about attacks on religion. 1. Burke was a sincere religious believer. 2. He saw religion as having an important political role: religious authority keeps ordinary people in order and is an important check on those who have political power. 3. Burke was shocked by open atheism in France and upset by the confiscation of Church property. These actions undermined the role of religious institutions as corporate bodies in the state-important as elements of continuity and a check on arbitrary government. C. Burke was also worried about radical political reform in France. 1. He was concerned about an electoral system that undermined links between constituents and their representatives. Burke argued that MPs were representatives, not delegates with independent judgment. 2. He was worried about the weakening of local attachments, which he felt posed a risk of atomization. 3. He was worried that the new representatives were lawyers and doctors without political experience. 4. He was concerned about the loyalty of the army if traditional allegiances were broken.
IV. What are Burke’s underlying views?
A. At various points, Burke makes appeals to natural law and to utility; he also makes common cause with Adam Smith’s economics. B. These have been used as the basis of (conflicting) interpretations. Each interpretation seems plausible, but none is fully satisfactory. C. What do we make of the following: 1. His appeal to natural law in respect to colonial injustices in India? 2. His approval of the American Revolution? 3. His critique of the French Revolution? D. Let me move in where angels fear to tread and offer a suggestion: 1. In Burke’s view, good government depends on traditions and conventions; ideally, for him, it is Aristocratic and Christian. 2. One faces terrible dangers if one undermines this, by appealing to natural rights—because rights, for Burke, are matters of tradition and convention, not natural, and depend on habit and prejudice. If conventional rights are undermined, the result is likely to be the rule of violence, not of reason. |