Kant Book

In Training for the Twin Towers of Philosophy

This is step four in a personal project in which I had hoped to learn about Kant's philosophy, without necessarily reading the original works, at least to start with.

My original goal was to help understand the issues that the inverted, but towering, twins of Hegel and Marx confronted after Kant, to some extent, in response to him. Then I intended to move onto the Continental Philosophers.

However, I found that Kant too is intrinsically interesting. Besides, a cursory glance at the index of any modern philosophy book will reveal that Kant remains an influence on not just the subject matter, but the methodology.

My review of Stephan Körner's book on Kant, in which I tried to summarise my understanding of some of Kant's basic concepts, is here:



This review is intended to be complementary to the earlier review.

The two together show the path of my development, so that if you're interested in a similar project, they might give you some comfort, if not guidance.



Graye's Folly

While I'm accumulating some sort of understanding of Kant's basic concepts, the more secondary works I read, the more I'm convinced of the folly of my project.

You can only avoid the lure of the original for so long. Hopefully, what I have assembled is some sort of tool kit that will help me navigate the deep ocean waters that Kant himself tried to chart.

On the other hand, perhaps my project is like a philosophical flight simulation. If the truth be told, there is no purpose in it, unless you eventually get into the cockpit and endeavour to fly the spatio-temporal or even the astral plane.

Immanuel, I think I'm ready, but I'm still nervous. I haven't totally overcome my fear of flying yet.

Intelligibility Without Censure

The problem with Kant in the original, apparently (see, I haven't even looked), is the complexity of his prose, whether in German or in English translation. While his lectures and conversation were entertaining, his writing varied in quality, and declined towards the end of his life.

However, the reality is that Kant was trying to express in concrete language concepts that are highly abstract and obscure. In order to do so, he created a new vocabulary, which makes comprehension even more difficult.

Many academics find confusion and inconsistency in Kant's works. Those who strive for clarity are accused of missing the nuances of Kant's thought. Many others find that "the only way to escape academic censure is to fall into the verbal mannerisms of the original."

Roger Scruton aims for intelligibility, while usually quoting Kant in his support. In contrast, Körner's book was much denser and relied more on Kant's own writing to establish his point.

I recommend that anyone who is prepared to read both books start with Scruton. He supplies an accessible overview that I found beneficial after reading shorter summaries by Bertrand Russell and Thelma Z. Lavine.

Körner presented Kant's thought fairly, but not uncritically. He usually concluded with a commentary on how Kant's successors had dealt with the essence of his Critiques.

Scruton is more prepared to paraphrase in pursuit of clarity, even if he risks censure. He is more accessible and populist in style, occasionally betraying a playful, if slightly egotistical, sense of humour. This is what he says of one attempt to explain an aspect of Kant's thought:

"None of those thoughts is clearer in the original than in my brief resume."

Then later:

"Many scholars do not accept this interpretation; but it seems to me that, if we do not accept it, we attribute to Kant more inconsistency than his dexterity can sustain."



Bust of Roger Scruton by the Scottish sculptor Alexander Stoddart, Sculptor in Ordinary to The Queen in Scotland


Interview:

After finishing this book, I holed up in a hotel room with Roger Scruton and a modestly stocked minibar.

The purpose of this interview is to document some of the aspects of Scruton's explanation of Kant that I felt was most helpful or brought out nuances I hadn't appreciated in my other readings.


The Collaboration of Experience and Reason

Ian:Roger, what's more important: experience or reason?

Roger:Neither experience nor reason alone is able to provide knowledge. Experience provides content without form, while reason provides form without content. Knowledge requires the synthesis of experience and reason.

Ian:If this knowledge depends on the individual's reason, can it be objective?

Roger:Such knowledge is both genuine and objective. It transcends the point of view of the subject and makes legitimate claims about the outside world.

Ian: You say "legitimate claims". Does our point of view limit what we can claim?

Roger:It is impossible to know the world "as it is in itself," independent and free of all perspective.

Ian:So how we think affects how we see the world?

Roger:Yes. The world is as we think it, and we think it as it is.

Ian:Is it our thought that determines the a priori nature of the world? Or is it the world that determines how we must think of it?

Roger:The answer, I believe, is "neither, and both."

Ian:I thought you might say that.

Roger:You have to go back to the two "L's": Leibniz and Locke. Kant pointed out that "Leibniz intellectualised appearances, just as Locke...sensualised the concepts of the understanding." In fact, however, there are two faculties here, irreducible the one to the other; they "can supply objectively valid judgements of things only in conjunction with each other."

Ian:So we sense an object and we think about it as well?

Roger:Almost, but not exactly like that. Objective knowledge has a double origin: sensibility and understanding. And, just as the first must "conform to" the second, so must the second "conform to" the first; otherwise the transcendental synthesis of the two would be impossible.

Transcendental as Anything

Ian:What do you mean by "transcendental"?

Roger:Kant uses the term to describe the conditions of our experience of objects, the way we experience objects. Transcendental knowledge is occupied not so much with the objects themselves as with the mode of our knowledge of objects.

Ian:What's the difference between a real object and a transcendental object?

Roger: The notion of a transcendental object is misunderstood when considered as referring to a real thing.

Ian:So I stuffed up?

Roger:Yes. The idea is posited only as a "point of view", in order to make clear that "the principles of pure understanding can apply only to objects of the senses…never to things in general without regard to the mode in which we are to apprehend them."

Ian:What do you mean by an "object of the senses"?

Roger:It's what Kant calls a "phenomenon". An object of possible experience or an empirical object. Empirical objects are real, whereas transcendental objects are ideal. A transcendental object or a noumenon is not perceivable.

Ian:So, a noumenon doesn't belong to the physical world, the world of space, time and causality?

Roger:Yes. I was just about to say that. A noumenon is an object knowable to thought alone.

Ian:Are there really such objects?

Roger: The concept of a noumenon can be used only negatively, to designate the limit of our knowledge, and not positively, to designate things as they are in themselves…in which case, the "thing in itself" is not an entity, but a term standing proxy for the unrealizable ideal of perspectiveless knowledge.

Ian:Is a noumenon the concept of an object that's in our mind?

Roger: No, a noumenon is not the concept of an object, but a problem unavoidably bound up with the limitation of our sensibility.

Ian:So we can only "know" things within limits?

Roger:Yes. There is no description of the world that can free itself from the reference to experience. Although the world that we know is not our creation, nor merely a synopsis of our perspective, it cannot be known except from the point of view that is ours.

Ian:Is my experience at the heart of knowledge?

Roger:Our own perspective on the world is in some measure a constituent of our knowledge. Transcendental deduction establishes the objectivity of my world while assuming no more than my point of view on it. The essence of Kant's "transcendental" method lies in its egocentricity. All the questions that I can ask I must ask from the standpoint that is mine; therefore, they must bear the marks of my perspective of "possible experience".

Ian:Do you mind if I have a drink? This is making my brain hurt.

Roger:Sure, just help yourself to the minibar.




Moral Law

Ian:This is all what Kant called "Pure Reason". What did he mean by "Practical Reason"?

Roger:Pure reason leaves, as it were, a 'vacant place' in its account of the world, where the moral agent should be.

Ian:What's a "moral agent"?

Roger:You or me. We're moral agents or free agents. Rational beings. Rational beings exist not only as self-conscious centres of knowledge, but also as agents.

Ian:Does reason affect the actions of rational beings?

Roger:Their reason is not detached from their agency, but forms a constitutive part of it; which is to say that, for a rational being, there is not only action, but also the question of action (the question "What shall I do?"), and this question demands a reasoned answer...This question asks, not for a cause or explanation, but for a reason...Reasons are designed to justify action, and not primarily to explain it. They refer to the grounds of an action, the premises from which an agent may conclude what to do.

Ian:So the vacant place you were talking about...

Roger:This vacant place is filled by pure practical reason with a definite law of causality in an intelligible world. This new "law of causality" is called "transcendental freedom".

Ian:What sort of law is the law of causality?

Roger:It's a moral law. The laws are practical laws, concerning what to do. The free agent is bound by them in all his practical reasoning, since acceptance of them is a presupposition of the freedom without which practical reason is impossible.

Ian:What is freedom?

Roger:Freedom is the ability to be governed by reason. The imperatives of reason are "laws of freedom": principles whereby reason determines action. I am constrained by reason to view the world as a "field of action", and hence to postulate the freedom of my will.

Ian:Does freedom of your will mean you can do anything you desire?

Roger:No. An autonomous agent is able to overcome the promptings of all heteronomous counsels, such as those of self-interest and desire, should they be in conflict with reason...a "transcendental being"...defies the causality of nature and refers the grounds of his actions always to the "causality of freedom".

Ian:To reason?

Roger:Yes. Freedom means autonomy, and autonomy necessitates rational choice. Only an autonomous being has genuine ends of action (as opposed to mere objects of desire), and only such a being deserves our esteem, as the embodiment of rational choice.

Ian:So reason is respectable?

Roger:Yes. Autonomy is "the ground of the dignity of human nature and of every rational nature."




Aesthetic Judgement

Ian:Does art have to follow the same rules of reason and morality?

Roger:Art is within the arena of the imagination. Kant thought that imagination could be "freed from" concepts (that is, from the rules of the understanding). It is this "free play" of the imagination that characterizes aesthetic judgement.

Ian:Do we still think about or judge a work of art that we like? Don't we just know what we like, without thinking about it? Just like I'm enjoying this gin and tonic?

Roger: The pure judgement of taste "combines delight or aversion immediately with the bare contemplation of the object..." Aesthetic pleasure must therefore be distinguished from the purely sensuous pleasures of food and drink. It can be obtained only through those senses that also permit contemplation (which is to say, through sight and hearing).

Ian:If I like it, does it mean that it is good for me?

Roger:Aesthetic judgement abstracts from every "interest" of the observer, who does not regard the object as a means to his ends, but as an end in itself (although not a moral end). The observer's desires, aims, and ambitions are held in abeyance in the act of contemplation, and the object regarded "apart from any interest".

Ian:If it doesn't have to be good for me, why do I like it?

Roger:Let's use music as an example. When I hear the formal unity of music, the ground of my experience consists in a kind of compatibility between what I hear and the faculty of imagination through which it is organised. Although the unity has its origin in me, it is attributed to an independent object.

Ian:The music?

Roger:Yes. In experiencing the unity I also sense a harmony between my rational faculties and the object (the sounds) to which they are applied. This sense of harmony between myself and the world is both the origin of my pleasure and also the ground of its universality.

Ian:Do we have to consciously think about it in order to feel pleasure?

Roger:No. In aesthetic experience we view ourselves in relation to a supersensible (that is, transcendental) reality that lies beyond the reach of thought. We become aware of our own limitations, of the grandeur of the world, and of the inexpressible good order that permits us to know and act on it.

Ian:It sounds almost religious.

Roger:You're not the first person to say that...Kant's remarks reinforce the interpretation of his aesthetics as a kind of 'premonition' of theology. Aesthetic judgement directs us toward the apprehension of a transcendent world, which is indeed an intimation of God.

Ian:Perhaps God is at the very limit of our understanding?

Roger:God is at the limit of knowability.

Ian:Awesome!

Roger:God is like nature in this regard. A person who can feel neither the solemnity nor the awesomeness of nature lacks in our eyes the necessary sense of his own limitations. He has not taken that "transcendental" viewpoint on himself from which all true morality springs.

Ian:So God and nature put us in our rightful place?

Roger:Yes. Practical reason and aesthetic experience humble us. They remind us that the world in its totality, conceived from no finite perspective, is not ours to know. This humility of reason is also the true object of esteem. Only this is to be reverenced in the rational being, that he feels and acts as a member of a transcendental realm, while recognizing that he can know only the world of nature. Aesthetic experience and practical reason are two aspects of the moral: and it is through morality that we sense both the transcendence and the immanence of God.

Ian:Does all moral law derive from God?

Roger:"The ideal of a supreme being is nothing but a regulative principle of reason, which directs us to look upon all connection in the world as if it originated from an all-sufficient and necessary cause."

Ian:Um, I'm not sure I understood that. Is it still OK to worship God?

Roger:The worship due to God becomes reverence and devotion for the moral law…The object of esteem is not the Supreme Being, but the supreme attribute of rationality.

Sexuality, Desire and Wedded Bliss

Ian:Is it true that Kant never got married? What did he think about sex?

Roger: That's right. Kant described the married state as an agreement between two people for the "reciprocal use of each other's sexual organs".

Ian:Did he think that was a good thing or a bad thing?

Roger:Kant didn't think there was anything wrong with sex per se. Though he did think there are sexual acts in which the other is treated not as a person but as a thing, in which the subject is, so to speak, eclipsed by the object. This is a perversion, and it violates a fundamental duty to the other and to oneself. Kant thought we could be jeopardized by another's desire. In these cases, our personality is at risk in our sexual encounters.

Ian:So, in summing up...

Roger:Kant's philosophy describes the limits of knowledge, including objects-in-themselves about which we can know nothing. He recognised that we're nevertheless tempted to transcend these limitations. His advice was like that of Wittgenstein: "That whereof we cannot speak, we must consign to silence."