Aug
1
On Susan Shell’s "Kant’s Theory of Property:" The Possibility of Self-Knowledge
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Note: Major editing complete 8/01/07. It is now possible to learn from this essay.
The whole of Kant is concerned with alienation. Man is alienated from the earth - he returns to it on its terms, and no earthly enterprise is guaranteed success. Further, if reason can be said to be characteristic of divinity, man is alienated from the heavens. The very possibility of knowing involves the phenomena/noumena distinction, where phenomena which constitute experience are contingent on a noumenal realm that can never be experienced in-and-of itself.
These two forms of alienation perhaps signify an even greater alienation. We must posit a united, distinct self to say our representations are our own. But can that “transcendental ego” ever be known?
For Kant, the impossibility of self-knowledge as one would know another object is the key to his transcendental idealism. Knowledge of objects for Kant is only knowledge of accidents, but that still advances the sciences greatly. Self-knowledge must of necessity be knowledge of essence, not merely how one reacts to change. But please note that the impossibility of self-knowledge is not necessary for thought which uses a Kantian logic: ultimately, Hegel is an excellent reader of Kant whose philosophy relies heavily on similar thoughts. Hegel’s starting point is a self-knowledge so deep that all of history is the unfolding of Idea.
For Hegel, subjectivity and objectivity presuppose each other. Take any claim you’d justify on grounds that are subjective. Those very grounds only exist because of opposition to what is “objective.” The problem gets worse if you try to say that all is subjective or all is objective. An example of “everything is subjective” is the relativism so common nowadays, which relies on a formulation of universal tolerance - “don’t judge” - that is strangely beyond all subjective reasoning and has an objective status. An example of “everything is objective” is “it’s obvious I have a hand here” - G.E. Moore’s famous attempt to refute skepticism that invited a million skeptical questions which are more objective than the initial statement or demonstration. To say “well, maybe you and all the rest of us in this room are deluded in thinking you have a hand” is not a statement whose truth is subjective: you could get someone from outside the room to confirm if you were deluded or not. Ironically enough, the initial statement presupposes the subjective knowledge of how conversation works and what Moore is getting at just to be understood.
For Kant, self-alienation is exactly why his thought emphasizes subjectivity. The challenge is for man to see what he cannot know or have, and justify to himself what claims of knowledge or ownership he can make.
Hence, property in a dual sense is the issue: our representations, if they are ours, tell us what the borders of our thought are through consideration of the a priori laws structuring them. Parallel to that is an actual concern with private property: how is it we can make claims upon the earth when the only “claim” we seem to have is sheer control, a “claim” that may involve enslaving others as well as conquering nature?
The answer to how it is we have private property, that different wills are reconcilable with the freedom of all humanity, rests on a “general will” of all mankind which is dedicated to appropriating the earth. As mankind, we have decided to conquer nature so we can rest just a bit easier (this is called having technology in any sense, including having fire). Therefore, we are united as a community in this conquest: our right is not an individual right alone, but the right of all mankind. It seems a right presupposes a responsibility and vice versa, and one can turn to Kant’s thoughts on Newton to defend that logic. All of Nature, which we are a part of and yet is cruelly disinterested in us, destroys and creates in perfect symmetry - i.e. the law of conservation of matter.
Kantian thought takes community, substance and reciprocity and links them to say this: Community is dependent on reciprocity. But what community are we speaking about? It must be a community of substances of some sort. Substance is whatever underlies a manifold of changes: without it, one wouldn’t be able to see changes at all. That seems to imply that the ultimate substance is the transcendental ego, which underlies changes experienced in other objects (to some degree) as well as the self (to the highest degree).
However, do we experience ourselves as “substance?” No: other people in seeing how we change are the ones who presuppose that some “substance” lies underneath our malleable, aging, always-changing selves.
Hence it is ultimately ourselves as substance alienated from itself which allows for community in the sense of reciprocity. The communal recognition of right must of necessity be simultaneous with individual right.
“Substance” also links the right of the will over private property to the right of the mind over intellectual property. For the material substance of the earth is only physically manipulable through its accidents. Knowledge of essence is impossible, and the key to understanding the full significance of “accidents” is to see that a synthesis is at work. An “accident” comes about because reason has brought the noumenal into the phenomenal realm. But reason’s motion is not directed to the welfare of the object of experience as much as the appropriation of the object. Experience comes about because we are fundamentally self-absorbed, and yet experience is reason’s greatest production from which all knowledge stems.
Those formal laws which structure experience have their limits. The biggest limit is inherent in the fact, again, that reason is alienated from itself. Yes, it can appropriate and give us knowledge of the world that is useful. But does it ever truly give us knowledge about ourselves? It is easier to access the formal moral law (do whatever you can imagine everyone else doing and not causing harm) and the concept of freedom than it is to know oneself, for on Kantian lines, self-knowledge is impossible.
It should be noted that Kant is only echoing Augustine in making this claim. God knew Augustine better than he knew himself, and thus brought Augustine to the Truth through the Providence governing his life.
Philosophy in the Socratic sense, though, starts not with appropriating the world but with self-knowledge. The oracle at Delphi said “Know thyself” and however ironically Socrates treats that suggestion in the Apology, he seems to take it very seriously in terms of the other Socratic dialogues. Certainly such a knowledge is dependent on an investigation into the thoughts of others. But it is their thought, and not their material selves and their exercise of right, which matters most. There are no good guys or bad guys in this debate, but the classical sense of philosophy has been lost in our age for something wholly revealed, whether that revelation takes the form of the Bible or Providence (of God or Idea) or modern empirical science defended from Humean skepticism.
References
Shell, Susan. “Kant’s Theory of Property.” Political Theory Vol. 6 No. 1. (Feb. 1978) 75-90
Jun
26
On Blogging, Having An Opinion, and the Quality and Trustworthiness of Your Voice
Filed Under blogging, kant, media | 3 Comments
Way too long: the essential point is that bloggers were paid to not merely run ads, but promote the content of those ads
I feel sorry for Jeff Jarvis, because he’s fighting the good fight, and I’m not sure how this war is to be waged. Can we tell people that getting paid to promote stuff is bad for blogging? That the promotion of stuff requires a credibility with one’s readers that is established independent of an ad campaign, if not opposed to the very concept of being an ad?
The deep problem Jarvis is running up against is that blogging does have to become profitable in some way to the people blogging. This blog you’re reading now is partly the result of years of education, and I still do research, check sources, and ask people questions before I sit down to write anything.
The idea that quality blogging can just emerge out of nowhere at no cost to anyone is preposterous. But many of us who do blog well are putting up with minimal rewards because we recognize how new the medium is, and how much potential it has.
We also recognize that the medium has inherently found a way of exploiting the labor that makes it worthwhile, and that this state of affairs cannot last. Web search companies that drive traffic to my site get something far more valuable than mere money from my writing: they get the credibility that comes from my knowledge, openness, and ability.
Jarvis can see this issue a mile away, to his enormous credit. If we want diverse, quality voices on the Net, we need to reward people substantially at some point. Intangible rewards aren’t going to cut it - the money needs to get to the writers at some point. The main reason for this isn’t elitist, but rather democratic.
We can’t expect people who have seriously busy lives to be on here reading and responding well for little or no reward. I mean, we need to consider why pay-per-post programs “work” - why so many people flock to them. They’re not selling their voice because they’re evil, or even because they’re wrong. They figure, quite rightly, that the only reward that can be had is one that is guaranteed and that they shouldn’t lose out.
Not everyone is going to have a voice as powerful as the WSJ’s editorial board. And why should one labor in the delusion that hearts and minds can be changed when there is money to do things like “eat” readily available?
It’s at this point I need to bring up a related issue. Gracchi has written on the concept of “public reason” in Kant: roughly, the idea is that everyone can discuss legislation/policy in their capacity as a scholar, as someone willing to commit his views to writing.
I urge all of you to read at least the first paragraph of Kant’s “What is Enlightenment?” I’ve written out a bunch of notes on Kant’s article that will become a longer piece, and the key to that first paragraph is essential for our considerations here. Notice that Kant isn’t really talking about “reason.” He’s talking about being willing to use one’s understanding. In classical terms, that’s more “spiritedness” than “reason,” and note the irony of the words “public reason.” One man alone doesn’t get things entirely correct.
I bring this up because the central task of democratic life is for those who know better to teach those who don’t - see Lincoln’s “Temperance Speech” for this teaching. That doesn’t mean we who may know better dominate, but it also means that all bloggers are not created equal. Even in Kant’s gushing over a “will” to “reason,” one’s capacity as a scholar is what allows one to argue one position or another. A soldier is much better at talking about military issues than another, a pastor on religious issues, etc. are examples Kant uses in “What Is Enlightenment?”
Of course, Kant flirts with relativism and perhaps too much accountability for those who do know. Those who are willing to write are going to be condemned - that’s probably the deepest lesson I’ve learned on the Internet. And Kant does imply that a citizen will be able to say whatever he wants about taxes, since he’s a “scholar” in the sense he pays them.
In the face of these dual concerns - people needing to be paid while not selling their voices, but also a type of expertise being required and respected by a mass audience generally - I wonder if this medium will ever be something more than a mere chaos. Something tells me blogging is a stepping-stone, and nothing more than that. Make friends here, enjoy yourself and learn, but don’t think this can ever be genuinely new media in the sense of “media” being “stable.” The entry costs, ironically enough, are too high to sustain for long, and the ability to think about issues at the highest level leads directly to solipsism here: people will literally see what you write, and then move on, like nothing has been said.
Don’t sell your voice because this medium needs you as dispassionate; rather, don’t sell your voice because you need the credibility in all other endeavors you’ll have beyond this.
Aug
22
Note on "Perpetual Peace"
Filed Under kant, philosophy | 2 Comments
What makes Kant’s short essay remarkable is the light it sheds on Rousseau’s “general will.”
For Kant, reason is the general will - hence, Rousseau’s talk of a legislator begins to make more sense. There can be one person who understands what is best for the many; the trick is to bring the many to that state of Enlightenment, where they can be truly free, and avoid demagoguery.
To this end, classical and Machiavellian notions of how statecraft should proceed are rejected. The classical is rejected as it does not sufficiently take in to account how self-centered man is, and posits happiness as something to do with contemplation of ends. The problem with having “ends” in this life, for Kant, is that such sorts of goals must of necessity be material. Freedom lies in the purely formal principle, which is not unlike the categorical - you want to act in such a way that one’s action can be reproduced publicly.
The Machiavellian notions are rejected based on an appeal to “publicity” (nations should have open-ended dealings and declarations of policy so that the world, the cosmopolis, can judge), and an appeal to “trade” as something that can soften the harsher in man.
The criticism I placed against Kantian thought in the last post is that it does not take politics seriously - for Kant, politics is about persuasion, which I agree with, but a persuasion that is so complete it can only happen on a personal level. He wants sentiments to change, and when he talks about incentives and how they will affect a people’s reasoning, I wonder if he realizes that sentiments are harder to change than reasons.
Where “reason” as the general will gets a peculiar strength is in its treatment of Revelation. A footnote in the appendices implies that if one believes in a particular religion, one really believes in a universal religion. Your God, after all, has to be able to account for all the false gods around; they must have been part of His providential plan. Reason as the general will can actually, then, gain strength via belief. Kant uses the issue of Providence very skillfully - he does not argue for progress as much as use progress as a lead-in to what is objective. What is objective is not love or virtue, but literal respect for another’s right. That respect for right, when fully realized, unites the Kantian concept of politics with morality completely.
And if you buy into this stuff, I think what you can see is Kant saying to me that I’m a pessimist, and that I discount the possibility of a truly moral politics for no “reason,” and thus discount the possibility of a truly workable democracy.
Aug
17
Does Power Corrupt?
Filed Under kant, philosophy | 2 Comments
“That kings should be philosophers, or philosophers kings is neither to be expected nor to be desired, for the possession of power inevitably corrupts reason’s free judgement.”
- Kant, Perpetual Peace
Kant is an amazing thinker, but this quote is nowhere near subtle enough to get at the truth. The truth is that someone must always wield power in this world, and to say “power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely” is just name-calling.
The consequences of distrusting the very holding of power have been fatal for us. We, as Americans, can barely say as a whole “terrorism is bad,” because that means fighting and other mean things. We incessantly ridicule the people we elect for office merely because they ran for office. Anarchism is an ideal for both those on the Left and the Right, and morals are perceived as a relic of an age where power was necessary.
So the question is this: What is it about power that looks corrupt, or is corrupt, that causes even the wisest of us to indulge in such idiotic aspersions?
One answer is that moral purity is possible in private roles: my Mother can do no wrong as my Mother, for she is accountable only to my sense of expectation, or a few others at most. This isn’t possible in public roles, because the sense of expectation is not the same for all individuals. Everyone feels differently about the same action, and you can do the right thing as a public figure, and someone else can concede its the right thing, but feel queasy.
Which brings us to the big issue: political power depends on persuasion. But in the private, the possibility of persuasion is far greater, especially in the case of the family, where one can be trained to have a certain sense of value. In the public, that complete control over one’s sense of ideals is impossible, and so we give great credit to someone like Pericles who can persuade large numbers of people all at once. The only thing is, that the persuasion is never complete. Pericles doesn’t live in my house, helping me clean the place and explaining to me all the time why Athens warring with Sparta is a good thing.
And so Kant is suffering here from a private/public conflation - the family is not the political order. These differences, which start out as quantitative, “few” versus “many,” are actually qualitiative. You need a different standard with which to judge the political. You can say it is an inherently corrupt enterprise, but to say it can and should be transcended is mere gibberish, and to say that wisdom can’t rule well in some way is to deny what wisdom is.