The Political Implications of Kant's Theory of Knowledge

Rethinking Progress

G. Lahat

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781137264381
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica pubblica

Based on an insightful and innovative reading of Kant's theory of knowledge, this book explores the political implications of Kant's philosophical writings on knowledge. It suggests that Kant offers a stable foundation for the reconsideration of the idea of progress as crucial in matters of political management at the outset of the 21st Century.

Part I

What Can We Know? Regulative Idea

Just as we limit reason so it does not abandon the thread of empirical conditions, and stray into transcendent grounds of explanation ... so on the other side we limit the law of the merely empirical use of understanding, so that it does not decide the possibility of things in general, nor declare the intelligible ... to be impossible (Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, B, 590)

1

Kant’s Theory of Knowledge

1.1 The synthetic premise

Somewhat oddly, just before the end of the Critique of Pure Reason, after he has finished discussing the main issues of his Theory of Knowledge at the beginning of the “Transcendental Doctrine of Method,” Kant chooses to present the premise that guided him all along. He exhibits it as the viewpoint from which he regards “the sum total of all cognition of pure and speculative reason as an edifice,” and our task is to design a plan for it “in relation to the supplies given to us that is at the same time suited to our needs” (B, 735).

Indeed, Kant built for future generations of scholars a grand philosophical edifice that can be seen from many theoretical viewpoints. But did he keep his own promise? That is, did he create an edifice that is “suited to our needs”? Could he have done all this using “the supplies” that he defined? And, most of all, what can be gained from a tour in the riches of ideas of our reason? Should one even attempt to tour them? Those questions have echoed – in varying degrees – in the Western philosophical discourse for more than two hundred years.

Since my intention is for this book to claim the political implications of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, I am most certainly required to provide an answer to these questions. Yet, before I do so, I wish to clarify what these “supplies” are, from which Kant tried to mould his edifice. What architectural plan was to accompany this project of philosophical engineering?

Due to its uniqueness, philosophical demands and frequently incoherent technical nature, this task may be harder to carry out than initially thought. The Kantian Theory of Knowledge is composed of such a complex texture that those who study it cannot even agree on answers to such elementary questions as where to begin discussing it. In fact, every discussion on Kant’s Theory of Knowledge heritage must – either intentionally or not – choose a starting point for reading Kant’s texts. This starting point, as I will shortly show, is crucial for the way we eventually judge this philosophical edifice.

A very common¹ outset for the discussion of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge argues that it is a revolutionary epistemic theory. This commentary is based on, among other things, what Kant himself claimed, in the preface to the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, that his method attempts to bring about a shift in people’s thought as dramatic as “the first thoughts of Copernicus” (B, xvi). While most of the pre-Kantian theories of epistemology assumed that human reason is directed by the objects around it, the Critique of Pure Reason stated that the same reason institutes (only figuratively) the world of objects around it. This interpretive point of view emphasises Kant’s claim according to which his Theory of Knowledge is directly linked to the interruption from his “dogmatic slumber” made by Hume’s critique. Following this interruption, Kant directed his efforts at freeing metaphysics from the claws of scepticism on the one hand, and dogmatism on the other. Most interpreters of the first Critique that embrace this point of view believe that this opening claim holds its most convincing points – or, at the very least, most important points, are the transcendental aesthetic and transcendental analytic. Both sections appear already in the first third of the first Critique, making its other parts superfluous.² Yet, I believe that Kant’s Theory of Knowledge, has moral and political implications that reach far beyond the epistemic discourse, into the realms of philosophical discourse that concern people’s obligation and possibility to make social progress. Thus, an interpretive outset that focuses only on human epistemology is much too narrow for my intents.

Another reading of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge views it, again, as a revolutionary Theory – not of the epistemological kind, but of morals. Most commentaries³ that promote this reading usually emphasise Kant’s own assessment, years before the first Critique, that it was Rousseau who “brought him around” by insisting on the utmost necessary to honour every human as an autonomic being, with practical reason. Put differently, as a being with cognitive ability to be a pure source for moral imperatives rather than just an epistemic vessel for accumulating and organising empirical knowledge.⁴ Kant, according to this commentary, wished to reject Hume’s scepticism – not because he pointed to the impotency of reason – but because he failed to see its calling as practical reason (that is, maker of moral imperatives). By the same token, he rejected Leibniz’s dogmatism – not because he made the claim for omnipotent reason – but because he wished to use reason as nothing but a means to obtain knowledge. Under this interpretation, Kant’s emphasis on the autonomous-practical nature of reason, also explains why Kant called morality the “fact of reason,” which expresses the superiority of practical reason over speculative reason. This is implied in Kant’s famous proclamation that “I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith” (B, xxx).⁵ If I had chosen this starting point, I probably would have had to change the title of this book to something like Epistemological Implications of Moral Progress – Kant’s Theory of Knowledge. That is, I would have had to argue that Kant’s epistemic discussion is a product – perhaps even a by-product – of the moral-political discussion that encompasses his entire Theory. In fact, my argument is just the opposite. In this book, I will seek to reveal how Kant’s speculative claims both limit and allow a moral-political discourse of progress; this, along with historical findings that undermine this “moral revolution” reading,⁶ explains my decision not to embrace this interpretive line of thought. Nevertheless, I will pick up this interpretation again later in the book – mostly in Part II – and confront its potential criticism of my views.

My suggested reading of Kant’s Theory of Reason is based on a different point of view. In the following book, I will argue that Kant is a synthetic philosopher who proposes a coherent theory, in which the various parts of it complement each other, not in a unidirectional hierarchical manner, but interactively. A synthetic philosopher will be defined, for our discussion, as a philosopher who holds synthetic positions. A synthetic position is made by synthetic claims, according to which separate parts form a complex whole. In Kant’s case, we are usually asked to consider prerequisite conditions, each autonomously defined without regard to the others that still must be met along with the others. Let’s take, for example, Kant’s argument, referring to human reason, in the opening words of Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics:

But pure reason is such an isolated domain, within itself so thoroughly connected, that no part of it can be encroached upon without disturbing all the rest, nor adjusted without having previously determined for each part its place and its influence on the others. (P, 4: 263)

Another fine example is given by Kant’s transcendental synthesis, according to which distinct prerequisite epistemological conditions – space, time, cogito and the categories – are manifested together in a given empirical object. Kant’s synthetic thought⁷ is therefore most evident in the Critique of Pure Reason, but it is also present throughout all of his later critical writings, whether they deal with morality, aesthetics or politics. In Part II of the book, we will note, for example, how speculative and practical reasons are, at the end of the day, different aspects of a single reason that states and guides actual human actions in an empirical, social and political entity. We will conclude the moral discourse as one that cannot take the place of the speculative or political discourses, and vice versa.⁸ Each part of Kant’s Theory of Knowledge has a unique and independent role and stands in its own right. At the same time, since these are different parts in one “body,” each part must accommodate its peers without losing its own uniqueness and independence. How can this be done, and what is the meaning of such a statement?

The answers to these questions are found throughout this book. But we can begin by saying that their main issue is Kant’s perception of the human being as a hybrid single entity with a twofold, phenomenal-cognitive character. According to the hybrid thesis, the individual is considered to exist as an empirical object – one of many other empirical objects – while having the unique talent to cognise ideas in a way that is not limited by this phenomenal reality. On the one hand, the individual is torn between her phenomenal and cognitive modes of existence (and so on, between her wishes and aspirations to what she can obtain materially),⁹ while on the other, she is compelled to accommodate different façades while understanding that they are all hers. The ambition to bridge the gap between different worlds that live together in the human consciousness, without losing the void between them, has become the trademark of the Kantian method.

Reading Kant as a synthetic philosopher is a dialectic development of the two former readings. On the one hand, it leans on them (it borrows from the first reading the notion that the Copernican Revolution is an epistemic revolution, and from the second reading it takes the importance of practical reason), while on the other hand it negates them without completely disqualifying them. (It does not settle for just an epistemological account, while it does not commit itself to a necessary superiority of practical reason over pure reason.) Viewing Kant’s philosophy as synthetic reveals him to be a unique philosopher, mainly because it charges his philosophy with political-moral aspects that are not seen in the first reading, yet it does not commit to a radical revolution of future plans that may be detached from reality, as may be the impression from the second reading.

1.2 The crisis of the “queen of the sciences”

Kant opens the presentation of his Theory of Knowledge, which he calls “transcendental idealism,” lamenting the poor condition of metaphysics at the end of the eighteenth century. He writes the following on the first page of the preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason: “There was a time when metaphysics was called the queen of all the sciences. ... Now, in accordance with the fashion of the age, the queen proves despised on all sides; and the matron, outcast and forsaken, mourns like Hecuba” (A, viii). Then Kant lists those who are to blame for the state of metaphysics. This list includes both the “tyrannical” dogmatists and the “wrecking” sceptics. Just a few years later, Kant admitted that the philosophical tension between these different metaphysical stances, and mainly the sceptical “hint” was what “interrupted” him in his “dogmatic slumber” and “gave a completely different direction to my researches in the field of speculative philosophy” (P, 4: 260). But can these encounters with dogmatism and scepticism explain the birth of transcendental idealism? What is the main motivation behind Kant’s central philosophical project?

Of course, we mustn’t discard the crucial metaphysical-personal¹⁰ influence of Hume on the one side, and of Leibniz and Wolff, on the other. These philosophers demonstrated the tension between the two prominent philosophical schools in the latter third of the eighteenth century. At one point, Kant called these schools faulty – or, at the very least, unsatisfactory. In one corner, the dogmatic tradition is popular (B, 494), yet rules the philosophical world tyrannically (A, ix). It claims to create a world not from experience but by the use of pure conditions, whose origin, validity and character could not have been previously examined (B, xxxv). In Kant’s view, dogmatists philosophise rigorously, but their philosophy lacks criticism and constantly assigns false and misdirecting intellectual properties (B, xxxii). In the opposite corner is scepticism, which, according to Kant, properly retaliates dogmatism and highlights its invalid ambitions. Yet, scepticism is only the initial step needed on the path towards a satisfactory philosophical critique. Due to this, Kant claimed that Hume rightly narrowed (einschraenken) the range of pure reason, but did not limit (renzen) it; in other words Hume, according to Kant, censored reason, but did not take it to the level of a discipline.¹¹ “Going half-way” as Hume did, brought forth general distrust, specifically in reason and generally in metaphysics, and did not leave it any sort of habitable space (B, 795) aside from “feeling in the dark” (B, xv). Kant described in a dark and poetic manner – which unsurprisingly used nautical terms¹² – the state of metaphysics prior to forming the transcendental idealism: “This is [metaphysics – G.L.] a shoreless sea, in which progress leaves no trace behind, and whose horizon contains no visible goal by which one might perceive how nearly it has been approached” (RP, 20: 259).

Yet, beside the personal-metaphysical motivation for proposing his theory, Kant offered another motivation, a general-universal one, according to which the history of human reason can be seen as a three-part journey: infancy of dogmatic reason; sceptical stage of adolescence;¹³ and, finally, the age of adulthood, manifested in a critique of pure reason (B, 788–9). Elsewhere Kant notes the infancy-dogmatic stage as the stage of over-confidence in metaphysics and in its ability to emulate the character and efficiency of mathematics. He then moves on to portray the sceptical stage as proof of the bitter loss that was part of all the metaphysical methods to prove the existence of their real objects – God, freedom and the eternal soul. These false attempts explain, according to Kant, why the critique of reason, in and of itself, should be considered as the symbol of its maturity (RP, 20: 259–64).

Kant significantly predates Hegel when he seeks a distinct dialectic relationship between the coming into existence of his method to the history of pure reason. To begin with, Kant forms an idea that is schematically similar to Hegel’s, in the sense that the theory rests on a triangular formation, in which each side both affects and is affected by the other’s.¹⁴ Under this construction, scepticism grows directly out of dogmatism and attempts to negate it, while the critique of pure reason – as I will show in a moment – grows out of dogmatism and scepticism in a manner that is both negative and positive.¹⁵ Kant’s dialectic process points at progress not just by negating past notions, but also by remembering these negations:

Even if it were only the removal of a deep-seated error, spreading far and wide in its consequences, something can still be done thereby for the benefit of metaphysics; just as a person who has strayed from the right path, and returns to his starting point in order to pick up his compass, is at least commanded because he did not go on wandering up the wrong road. (RP, 20: 261)

Secondly, the “subject” that develops throughout history is a general “spirit” of pure reason that extends beyond a specific period or personality. Thirdly, and more importantly, long before Hegel’s dialectic idealism, Kant noted that historical development is an immanent procedure for reason, throughout which reason learns about itself without the aid of anything external ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Introduction: On the Idea of Progress
• Part I What Can We Know? Regulative Idea
• Part II What Ought We Do?
• Part III What Can We Hope For?
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index