Autonomy and Normativity

Investigations of Truth, Right and Beauty

Richard Winfield

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9781351782555
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Philosophy
• Subtopic: Philosophy History & Theory

This title was first published in 2001. Autonomy and Normativity explores central topics in current philosophical debate, challenging the prevailing post-modern dogma that theory, practice and art are captive to contingent historical foundations by showing how foundational dilemmas are overcome once validity is recognized to reside in self-determination. Through constructive arguments covering the principal topics and controversies in epistemology, ethics, and aesthetics, Autonomy and Normativity demonstrates how truth, right and beauty can retain universal validity without succumbing to the mistaken Enlightenment strategy of seeking foundations for rational autonomy. Presenting a compact, yet comprehensive statement of a powerful and provocative alternative to the reigning orthodoxies of current philosophical debate, Richard Winfield employs Hegelian techniques and focus to object to opponents, and presents a radical and systematic critique of the work of mainstream thinkers including Kant, Rawls, Husserl, Habermas and others. The ramifications for the legitimation of modernity are thoroughly explored, in conjunction with an analysis of the fate of theory, practice and art in the modern world. This book offers an invaluable resource for students of both analytic and continental philosophical traditions, and related areas of law, social theory and aesthetics.

I

Truth

One

Freedom from Foundations: The Normativity of Autonomy in Theory and Practice

The Problem of Foundations in Theory and Practice

The fate of freedom stands very much at a crossroads. On the one hand, the call for self-determination has gathered renewed momentum, penetrating all spheres of conduct. At the most rudimentary level of right, the entitlement of ownership has been claimed for all rational agents, excluding slavery once and for all. At the level of moral reflection, the right to an independent conscience has gained ever widening ground, freeing personal conduct from the yoke of elders, clergy, and all other privileged authority. In the household, the family has become increasingly liberated from external restraints that prevent adults from marrying who they wish and from freely co-managing household affairs, irrespective of race, caste, nationality, religion, and, most recently, gender and sexual preference. At the social plane, the clamor grows for universally instituting a civil society, wherein individuals can pursue interests of their own choosing in reciprocity with others, enjoying an equal economic opportunity under conditions of a publicly regulated market. And finally, at the summit of politics, constitutional democracy continues to widen its authority, even as it grapples with the problems of preventing political freedom from being subverted by privileged social interests.

Yet just as the institutions of freedom become more and more the universal goal of practice, the very legitimacy of freedom has come under a growing and insidious challenge. This challenge resides not so much in the backwater efforts of ethnic nationalists and religious fundamentalists to unify the remnants of collapsing empires under principles extraneous to self-determination. The more insidious challenge finds its greatest voice in the heart of the oldest democracies and civil societies, where, under the multiple banners of post-Modernism, the very autonomy of reason and conduct has come under suspicion. The ever more fashionable view is that the long prized autonomy of thinking and action is a delusion, quaintly obscuring how all reasoning and conduct is irreducibly caught within given frameworks that impose standards of truth and right relative to historical epoch and cultural milieu, as well as to particular standpoints within each historical-linguistic community rooted in class, gender, race, sexual orientation and the like. Far from being able to escape the hold of givenness and question reigning authority in theory and practice, reason and conduct are ineluctably foundation-ridden, condemned to lay claim to values that always issue from privileged terms that cannot be questioned precisely because all attempts at justification can only proceed upon their basis or some such other arbitrarily given paradigm.

In this way, the problem of foundationalism, so roundly denounced as a dilemma sabotaging the traditional aspirations of theoretical and practical philosophy, has now been wearily accepted as a fate from which there is no escape. The divide between foundationalists and anti-foundationalists has turned out to be no divide at all. For the self-proclaimed anti-foundationalists have simply abandoned challenging the hold of foundations upon reason and conduct, resigning themselves instead to observing the conversations of mankind, deconstructing philosophy with an edifying metareflection and metaethics, becoming self-conscious of the conceptual schemes that underlie all normative discourse, and at best engaging in a reflective equilibrium that points out how given views might be adjusted to conform more consistently with the given foundations they rest upon.

Many a latter-day anti-foundationalist would like to claim that such sober resignation is the only appropriate basis for a liberal society devoted to enabling all to pursue their vision of the good on an equal footing with others. Yet it is hard to see how the embrace of edification fits any less the new aristocracy of the Übermensch who openly imposes perspectival particular aims upon all others in a consistent exercise of value positing, which, after all, can be little else but a will to power if all values are arbitrary stipulations.

Is the yawning discrepancy between current theory and practice, between the post-modernist denial of autonomous reason and conduct and the pervasive march towards institutions of freedom, a harbinger of a counter-revolutionary upheaval, overturning the fundamental drift of modernity, or might it signify instead a theoretical blindness to an alternative philosophical strategy that overcomes foundationalism without abandoning the autonomy of reason and action?

Resolving this question requires reconsidering how foundations pose a problem for theory and practice that is neither fortuitous nor unavoidable. Although the endeavor of moving from opinion to knowledge is not entirely akin to that of moving from given convention to valid conduct, each involves parallel challenges of justification, eliciting common strategies in response. These approaches fall into three fundamental varieties, of which two encompass the entire foundationalist/anti-foundationalist spectrum of current fashion, and of which one remains the ignored odd man out, whose character and validity can best be understood by following out the breakdown of its two more familiar competitors. As it turns out, the status of freedom in theory and practice is determined by the very outcome of exploring each of these strategies in succession, first in the field of theoretical philosophy and then in the field of ethics.

The Appeal to Privileged Givens in Theoretical Philosophy

Whether it be in regard to thinking thinking or to thinking what is other to thought, philosophy has traditionally found it natural to base the validity of its claims in some privileged given, providing the foundation of ultimate justification for the conception of valid reasoning or of true reality. Any other option has appeared hopeless. For if the uncertainty, the particularity, the subjectivity, the conventionality, and the otherwise conditioned character of belief is to be overcome, how else can it be accomplished other than by discovering a given content that is immediate and thereby dependent on nothing else, that is unconditioned and thereby free of any relativizing factors, that is universal and not limited by particular circumstance, and that is in all these respects, presuppositionless. Insofar as truth appears to require presuppositionlessness, universal validity, and self-grounding, what else could command such authority other than some given content that is what it is by nature, rather than as a product or construct of some other factor? Moreover, such a content must not only be immediate, but serve as a first principle, providing a self-evident, self-grounded foundation from which all other truths are determined. If other contents cannot be shown to be grounded in such a privileged given, then how can they possibly rise above the uncertainty of opinion and share in the objectivity and unconditioned universality that such a first principle can alone command?

This applies as much to conceiving thought as to conceiving reality. If reason cannot be shown to rest upon one or more self-evident principles, from whom all other logical moves are derived, how can reasoning claim to have any validity? Analogously, if reality cannot be shown to rest upon a fundamental structure presupposing no other, given immediately to a passive contemplation of what is, how can philosophy pretend to offer a theory of reality that is not marred by a reliance upon unsubstantiated factors that are simply taken for granted?

Such are the considerations that have led what has been alternately labeled metaphysical, dogmatic, or precritical philosophy to appeal to privileged givens as the foundation of truth. Whether these privileged terms comprise first principles of reasoning or first principles of reality, they represent contents that are understood to be immediately given by nature rather than by convention, and thereby to be presuppositionless, unconditioned, universal and self-grounding. As such, they are apprehended by a contemplation that passively receives them, rather than constructs them, doing so not in virtue of any demonstration, but rather by direct intuition. Accordingly, this metaphysical approach characteristically begins its inquiry by asking what is and directly discovering the fundamental nature of things.

However, whether this investigation take the form of an ontology of being as such, or an ontotheology of the highest being on which all else depends, or regional ontologies of different spheres of existence, it cannot help but be plagued by a dilemma that equally afflicts any effort to establish the first principles of reason. If fundamental normativity resides in some privileged given, how can any content be certified to qualify as the sought after foundation? What can possibly decide which given content commands exclusive authority as that presuppositionless, unconditioned, universally valid term upon which all justification is rooted?

Clearly, to search for mediating reasons would only be self-defeating, for if the putative foundation owes its privileged role to something else, it forfeits its own constitutive primacy.

Can the first principle then be identified regressively, by certifying that all else, be it logical reasonings or all other beings, rests upon it? Yet, how, without reliance upon the foundation of justification, can one certify that all else rests upon any given content? On what basis can one determine what is the totality of reason or being, or for that matter, what constitutes a proper derivation of that plenitude from the putative foundation?

Appeal to an indirect proof is of little avail. Showing how all known given alternatives collapse through their own incoherence can hardly certify the absence of other unknown options. Moreover, even if one somehow could rule out every other alternative, that still would not legitimate the remaining candidate unless one appealed to a further principle, such as a law of excluded middle, whose own justification would not only remain in question, but whose supporting role would once again undermine the alleged primacy of the term it legitimates. And even if, following Aristotle in his argument for the principle of contradiction, one might show that no determinate opposing view could be advanced without endorsing the vaunted candidate, this would still rest upon prior assumptions about the conditions for something to be or be meant.

The Foundational Dilemmas of Teleological Ethics

Completely parallel difficulties apply in ethics, when the justification of conduct is sought in privileged givens. This is the basic strategy defining teleological ethics, which follows the all too plausible path of distinguishing between valid and invalid conduct according to whether it embodies the antecedently determined form of the good.

The rationale for measuring conduct by the good simply translates into another idiom the same line of reasoning that leads metaphysical philosophy to seek foundations for reality and reason. Since all conduct, being voluntary, aims at some end, how else can action be evaluated other than by determining a privileged goal, not only of inherent worth, but providing the rationale for the pursuit of all other ends? Only such a sovereign end-in-itself can provide an unequivocal standard for conduct that does not fall into either the infinite regress of instrumental action, for which no aim can be found whose value does not lie in serving as a means to something else, or the insoluble quandary of choosing among a plurality of ends-in-themselves. To avoid condemning action to an endless pursuit for some reason to choose one goal rather than another, a highest good must be discovered, whose validity lies nowhere else but in its own content, which, drawing its validity from no other source but its own immediate givenness, occupies the privileged role of first principle of conduct. Accordingly, ethics can be nothing other than a science of the highest good, which, given its sovereign character as the subordinating end of all other pursuits, is ultimately a form of political life. Conduct will therefore be valid not by exercising its own autonomy in determining its ends, but by embodying the given content that reason prescribes for this self-sufficient, unconditioned rule of living.

Yet, just as first principles of reason and reality are ready victims of sceptical challenge, so the highest good eludes any satisfactory determination. Defined simply as the sovereign end-in-itself to which all other pursuits are subordinated, the highest good is nothing but the formal scaffold of any prevailing political rule that succeeds in lording over all activity, reducing ethics to a nihilism of might makes right. This formality cannot be overcome by appealing to human nature and trying to discover a given function whose best fulfillment might give content to the highest good. Not only can the identity of a human function be questioned, but so can its prescriptive status. For if it is simply a fact of species being, how can it possibly have any independent normative significance? Even if one were to characterize the privileged human function as a matter of acting in accord with reason, this remains an utterly empty injunction, since all it does is place us once more before the problem of ethics, namely, of determining what indeed it is to act in a rationally justified manner.

The basic problem is that any attempt to legitimate a particular content as that of the highest good will require appeal to other factors. If these themselves are normative grounds, they undermine the supreme primacy of the highest good, whereas if they are devoid of normative significance, they cannot play any legitimate role in specifying what is of paramount intrinsic worth. Moreover, although the highest good, as that end-in-itself to which all other activity is subordinated, comprises a ruling activity that is for its own sake, it still serves as an antecedent form that conduct needs to embody in order to be valid. Yet how can conduct both embody something determined prior and apart from itself and be action for its own sake? Further, if the mere existence of a mode of conduct cannot supply it with normative validity and no given content can unequivocally qualify itself as the highest good, how can any goal be certified as a valid measure of conduct without appealing to the manner of its selection?

The Appeal to a Privileged Determiner

On all accounts, be it in theory or practice, the metaphysical strategy of rooting ultimate justification in a privileged given ends up revealing that the only reason for one content rather than another serving a foundational role is that it has been conferred that position by the theorist. No matter how the foundation be formulated, it is presented by a direct reference to what is that perennially takes for granted the adequacy of the knowing that claims primacy for its reputed givenness. Consequently, the failure of the appeal to privileged givens naturally shifts attention to the positing responsible for producing the putative foundation. Instead of relying upon a passive contemplation making direct reference to what is by nature, ultimate justification must be sought elsewhere, and where else but in that determiner capable of determining what counts as true and objective, not by offering privileged contents, but by engaging in a privileged act specifying the very domain of normative validity?

In this way, philosophy has made its transcendental turn away from any dogmatic direct reference to reality, choosing instead an indirect route that supplants the appeal to privileged givens with an appeal to a privileged determiner. In theoretical philosophy, this move entails a foundational epistemology that mandates as the first task of philosophy uncovering the structure of knowing or reference responsible for constructing what counts as true.

The embrace of a foundational epistemology as a preliminary for making possible objective knowledge might appear paradoxical at first glance. Since any direct reference to things in themselves must be ruled out, how can the turn to investigate knowing in its own right possibly establish the objectivity of knowing’s claims? The very standard for adjudicating between competing beliefs seems to be wanting, for if all that can be legitimately considered is knowing and the truth of knowledge resides in correspondence to its object, how can that correspondence ever be certified by an investigation that restricts its gaze to cognitive structure?

Although the transcendental turn offers itself as the necessary preliminary to a valid conception of reality, the only way it can serve that role is if its conception of knowing ceases to be such a preliminary and instead contains within itself the determination of the object of knowledge to the extent that it can be known with more than pragmatic assurances.¹ For only if objectivity is determined by the structure of knowing can an investigation of knowing apart from reference to objects in themselves possibly bear upon the objectivity of knowledge.²

In this way, the transcendental investigation of knowing skirts the dilemma of the representational model of knowing. That model rendered knowledge unattainable by construing knowing and its object as given independ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• A Note on the Text
• Introduction
• Part I: Truth
• Part II: Right
• Part III: Beauty
• Conclusion
• Index