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The Great Thinkers of Western Philosophy |
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"Critique of Practical Reason" In the Critique of Pure Reason Kant makes the essential elements of all knowledge (universality and necessity) dependent, not on the content of experience, but on a priori forms. Likewise, in the Critique of Practical Reason he makes the universality and necessity of the moral law dependent, not on the empirical act and the end that we might intend in our actions, but on a categorical imperative, in the will itself. For an act to be morally good, the will must be autonomous; it must be determined to act, not in view of the result of its action but only in view of its duty. "Duty for duty's sake": this is Kantian morality in all its rigidity. This means that among all the imperatives that can determine the will to action it is necessary to distinguish the hypothetical from the categorical. Hypothetical imperatives impose a command in order to attain an end and are hence conditioned on that end; for example, you must take the medicine required if you wish to be cured. Categorical imperatives impose themselves automatically, by force of duty, without regard to the good or evil that might result from them -- for example, "Do this because it is your duty." Only categorical imperatives enjoy universality and necessity, and hence only they can be the foundation of morality. An essential difference must be noted between the a priori forms of the intellect (categories) and the a priori forms of the will (categorical imperatives). The former, deprived of their material element, are void; they need an empirical element in order to be determined. The a priori forms of the will, on the contrary, are not empty; they possess the determining element in themselves. In other words, an inversion must be made: It is not the empirical element which determines the form (the imperative); rather, it is the form which determines the empirical element and makes it moral. For example, the command "Do not lie" is determined, not because people do not lie (empirical element), but because this command comes from the will itself as the regulator of the empirical element. The will is an autonomous legislator in the field of action. "So act," says one of the Kantian categorical imperatives, "that your will can be considered as instituting a universal moral legislation." But if we act thus, we are already in the suprasensible and unconditioned world. This conclusion deserves examination. According to the Critique of Pure Reason we cannot attain the suprasensible (noumenon) because our forms of knowledge (categories) are empty: their content is only phenomenal, conditioned matter. Now, instead, the form of the will (categorical imperative) possesses the content independently within itself; it is not conditioned by any material element. It is the will itself which makes the human act morally good, and not vice versa. In fact, according to Kant, the empirical act will be good only on condition that it be done for the sake of duty. Hence the will is beyond the phenomenal and mechanical world; it pertains to the world of noumena, of the unconditioned. Once having attained the world of the suprasensible (note well: through practical exigency, not by way of cognitive reason), Kant undertook to examine what might be the postulates (necessary conditions) that make morality possible. In this investigation Kant maintains that there are three postulates that establish morality, namely, liberty, the immortality of the soul, God. These are the three supreme realities of traditional philosophy; and Kant, who had denied our ability to attain them through theoretical knowledge, believed that he could affirm their existence by practical exigency.
Thus Kant believed not only that he had reconstructed the world of traditional metaphysics but also that he had established it on a more solid basis, on a foundation above and beyond any doubt. For Kant, the will has primacy over the intellect. Both the Critique of Pure Reason and the Critique of Practical Reason have established a dualism -- of phenomenon and noumenon, of the sensible and suprasensible, the conditional and unconditional, mechanical necessity and liberty. No acceptable philosophy can conclude with such a dualism, for the ego is at one and the same time the subject of both the theoretical and the practical world. Hence it is necessary that the two aspects -- theoretical and practical -- through which reality is revealed, be synthesized in a unity centering in the ego. Kant maintains that such a synthesis is possible through the judgment of sentiment, the study of which he presents in the Critique of Judgment. The judgment of sentiment is not to be confused with the synthetic a priori judgment already considered in the Critique of Pure Reason. This latter presupposes an empty or void form of the intellect (category), which is determined by the particular element grasped by the sense. Hence Kant calls the synthetic a priori judgment a determining judgment, and it is that which gives us true and proper but phenomenal knowledge. The judgment of sentiment, on the other hand, consists in referring the apprehended object to a form that is not in the intellect, but in the affective power of the will (emotion). The form which appears in sentiment is intermediate between the theoretical and the practical. Such a judgment of sentiment is possible because the subject (the ego), by reflecting on the apprehended data, judges these data to be adapted to the sentimental activities of the subject. Hence Kant calls this operation a reflecting judgment. It is to be noted that the reflecting judgment has its origin outside the a priori forms of the intellect. Consequently, it does not give us true and proper knowledge, but only manifests an exigency of the ego. In the Critique of Judgment Kant presents only two reflecting judgments -- that which arises from the finality of nature, and that which is called aesthetic. 1. Teleological Judgment The creative activity of nature develops itself in a successive series of phenomena connected with one another mechanically, that is, through the laws of causality. Reflecting upon this mechanical succession, one soon notes that the individual elements of the series are harmoniously coordinated toward a common end, as if the parts were disposed by a regulating Mind for the actuation of a determined purpose (finality). Such a finality can be observed especially in living organisms, in which it is easy to note how the parts develop toward the production of the perfect living organism. Kant extends this view to the whole of nature and sees it culminating in the advent of spirituality, which is to be attained through culture and civilization, technical abilities and moral education. This teleological view, in which we consider the world of beings and of events as ordained to an end and ultimately to our spiritual exigencies, finds its reason in sentiment and not in the intellect. As in the Critique of Practical Reason, the solution is found in an exigency of the unconditioned, and not in the knowledge of the unconditioned. 2. Aesthetic Judgment Aesthetic judgment, by which we judge an object to be pleasurable, begins by our separating the object from every determined concept and from every practical interest, and by referring the object thus freed to the subject. The subject then finds the satisfaction of its spiritual faculties in the object thus referred to it and expresses this satisfaction in an aesthetic judgment: "This field is beautiful." In aesthetic judgment, therefore, there is lacking (1) all judgment of knowledge (e.g., "This field is broad"), and (2) all judgment of interest (e.g., "This field is useful for grazing cattle"). The object of an aesthetic judgment is the "form" of the object considered in itself (e.g., the composition of colors in a landscape) and referred to the subject. The subject finds therein the satisfaction of his spiritual faculties. In becoming aware of aesthetic pleasure, the subject (ego) feels himself free of any theoretical or practical interest; he feels himself to be one, a person, the subject of spiritual activity. Thus we are in the sphere of the unconditioned. It is to be noted that aesthetic judgment is not true knowledge. It is an exigency of the subject expressing his aesthetic sentiment in the manner described. The only true and proper knowledge, for Kant, is that which is scientific, i.e., that obtained through the categories of the intellect, whose office is to organize sensible data according to their mechanical succession. Ideal reality (noumenon), God, the immortality of the soul, the external world are not objects of sensible intuition, and hence are not objects of that knowledge which is proper to the intellect. Without doubt, for Kant, the existence of the suprasensible, God, and the immortality of the soul are absolutely certain; it is their conceptual determination that is impossible. For this reason, Kant was forced to demonstrate their existence as postulated by practical reason and as an exigency of faculties operating in the sphere of finality and of aesthetics. But once a true and proper understanding of the existence of God and of the soul is denied, who can assure us that the postulates and the exigencies of which Kant speaks so eloquently are not mere illusions of the subject? Will it not appear more logical to present the subject, the human spirit, as creator and absolute legislator, and then derive all reality from man by logical deduction? This is the trend that has gradually followed Kantian Criticism, and for this reason Kant is without doubt the father of modern Idealism.
The positive
contributions of Immanuel Kant to None. But despite errors, absurdities, and contradictions, Kant's philosophy has exercised a tremendous influence upon human thinking for over a century and a half. It exhibits the roots of those weaknesses we have come to regard as characteristic of what is loosely called "the German philosophy." It refuses to face reality (witness the wholly subjectivistic character of knowledge); it unduly stresses the ego (witness the inner and autonomous character of knowledge and morality); it proclaims the perfectibility of the will, upon which the followers of Kant were soon to harp most strongly -- and from Nietzsche to Hitler we are to hear of "the will to power," the will which makes "the superman" and "the master race." In The Radical Academy
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