The ‘Critique of Judgment’- Habermas- the lacking god of Sartre- Jennifer A. McMahon- Ruairidh Gray
‘The concept of
freedom determines nothing with regard to our theoretical cognition of nature,
just as the concept of nature determines nothing with regard to the practical
laws of freedom; and in this respect it is not possible to throw a bridge from
one domain to the other’. (1)
Among the Catholics
when there is no priest are the ‘seroras’ (female sacristans) who are in charge
of giving communion. Similarly, when the philosophers are hidden are the
thinkers who are bound to take their role. In a correct way or not, that is
another question. Rorty differentiates two types of philosophy: systematic
philosophy and edifying philosophy (2). The first one is rooted in tradition
and the second one tries to be part of the conversation of the Mankind, through
unknown ways. It is not heard much, lately,
about the systematic philosophy, and that lead us to exercise in the ground of
the edifying philosophy. This ‘serora’, me, has read at last the ‘Critique of
Judgement’ of Kant.
Nowadays thinking is
pushed to keep in the trench, because the reason is not as its best moment. To
express that situation no one best than the famous philosopher citizen of the
extreme northwest of Prussia and now the isolated west extreme of Russia,
Immanuel Kant. What would say the citizen of Königsberg/Kaliningrad if he would
live the situation of Germany in 1940 or of the actual Russian situation, the
very one who wrote the ‘’Perpetual peace’’ (‘Zum ewigen Frieden’)?
The autocracy had not
any room in his work. We find ourselves
today in the Western culture facing an odd triangle. A sweaty US former
president, while he uses all kind of lies, not shows the slightest fear of
overthrowing the largest democracy of the world. At the other end a president with
a life tenure, attacks those he once considered brothers, destroying their
lives, homes and infrastructures, using for it poor excuses. Finally, in-between, other countries close
their frontiers at all cost, in order to become their countries the exclusive
playing field of a little oligarchy.
In that situation I
decided to read the book I had been waiting so long to do. After reading his ’Critique
of Pure Reason’, his ‘Critique of Practical Reason’ and his political writings,
I had before me unopened waiting for his ‘Critique of Judgment’. To know the
philosophy, it is necessary to read the work of philosophers, listen to their
own voice.
Some historians of philosophy take a lot of work in
order to eliminate contradictions, turning the philosophy into a clear and too
simple subject, defacing the work of the philosophers. Because of this, if we
must know the philosophy, we should read the works of the philosophers. If it
must continue to be science, it should not hide its content in the arms of
historians of the philosophy.
Before moving forward,
it is necessary to make a small mention. Although in the translations of the
book the appearance many times of the word’ spirit’ could seem to relate it
with Hegel, it has no relationship in that sense. The word that in Kant is
translated as ‘spirit’ is the word ‘Gemüt’, and not the word ‘Geist’. And the
dictionary Duden defines ‘Gemüt’ as ‘the totality of a person’s mental and
spiritual powers’.
It is not that kind of
idea that began with the ‘absolute I’ of Fichte to became that general
phantasmagoric instance of Hegel. Kant
is an honest philosopher and always moved within reality. He needed not any
‘ladder’ to make his analysis, a simple ‘chair’ was enough for him. As he said
the first task of the reason was to stay away from poetic delusions (3).
He devoted all his life
to establish the limits of the thinking. In the book appears the power of
Judgment, an instance between understanding and reason. The existence of such an instance contradicts
the Hegelian statement that what is real is rational. The existence of Judgment
with its own features between what the senses perceive and what reason develops,
unbalances Hegel's equation.
The power of Judgment
has two kinds of thinking. A conceptual, discursive one, that is, under the law
of causality of nature. That is the determinative judgment.
It is based in the
unity of nature under empirical laws. Its knowledge is under the possibilities
of the experience. It is a faculty that directs experience in its direction towards
the universal. The understanding is the legislator of this law, object of the
senses of nature. Its concepts originate in the theoretical knowledge of a
possible experience. This kind of judgment is ’under the laws of a possible
experience in general’ (4)
The other one, complex,
richer, and difficult to define is the reflective faculty of judgment. Beauty,
taste, esthetic, infinite, the sublime, liberty, what is further than senses
gave us its acting camp. Its basis is the capacity for speculative judgment,
judgment that has no relation to the senses. It moves according to the principle of
finality, that is, our faculty of knowledge must find the universal that suits
the particular human understanding. (5)
The goal dreamed in
'Big Bang Theory' by Sheldon Cooper and Amy Farrah Fowler of a single theory
that explains everything, shows in a theatrical way the principle of purpose
that there is in science.
But Kant, with his
honesty, clearly shows that it is only a desire. We live in a phenomenal world,
and what is below or above them is unattainable for the senses. That is no
excuse for not investigating the characteristics of our faculty of knowledge.
These characteristics shape our knowledge and the importance of such analysis
comes from it. It is not an excuse to refrain the work of knowledge, because
only through it we will expand it, in the process of correspondence between the
particular and the universal. And that leads us to the following conclusion:
for our understanding everything has a purpose.
Some words of the work
of Homer, the so-called Homeric glosses, have an unknown or conjectural
meaning. In Kant's book a word appears again and again, the exact content of
which is difficult to determine. In the English translation I have seen, by
creating a word following the structure of Kant’s word, leaves the question at
its original point. (6) The Word is ‘Zweckmässigkeit’ and its English
translation following the same structure is ‘purposiveness’, leaving its
translation so as it were finished. But thus, the radical question remains
unanswered, that is, what does Kant mean by it?
That word takes a great
role in the faculty of reflective judgment. In general, that word has two
meanings. The first one, a plain meaning, will be’ suitable’, something that
fits for a purpose. But Kant associates that word with the nature. There it takes
on another sense, the sense of ‘purpose’. Specifically, the purpose of nature.
This one is for him an ‘a priori’. Such a principle cannot be observed in
nature, since in nature we only see a mess. But our reason in order to agree
with itself (7), sees the nature as something far from chaos that would have
and ultimate purpose.
From the contingency of the universe, Kant deduces the existence of a higher creative being, as a necessary deduction from an ordered universe and the principle of purpose. But that here is just a small mention, without further ado.
The power of
determinative judgment follows a law. It is under empirical laws. Some are
known and others yet to be known. The nature is under the law of causality. Its
knowledge is based on possible experience. The power of reflective judgment,
however, it is outside the narrow and limited field of the power of
determinative judgment. Although reason always plays its role to avoid excesses.
The faculty of
reflective judgment is based on the laws of freedom. The totality of a person's
mental and spiritual powers is felt within an organized environment and is
found within a purpose-directed universe. The most important tool of the
faculty of reflective judgment is analogy. With this humble tool must fill his
task. We must not forget that the reason is always there to keep it away from
excesses.
Taking into account
that what we know through empiricism is limited, the faculty of reflective
judgment helps us getting out of that limitation. It is a huge work, but
necessary. Judgment has this double task, on the one hand, determining what
those limitations are and on the other hand moving beyond those limitations, in
the supersensible.
As a note another brief
mention. In that freedom he is aware of his moral law. That is what his
categorical imperative is based on, that unconditional law. The person who
follows the law for some reason, that is, out of grave necessity, to appear
righteous, out of fear of punishment, or for any other reason, does not fulfill
the categorical imperative.
Among the ideas that
appear in this Kantian work, one of them would deserve a deep analysis. With
that gaze of his, at the same time directed towards the mind and at the same
time directed at society, he affirms the following: ‘it is only as a moral
being that the person can be a final purpose of creation’. (8) What should that
‘moral being’ be like? We do not see many traits of 'morality' among the rulers
of the world. Seen how they manage the 'creation' it seems that we are far from
the 'moral being'. Suddenly, today, we find ourselves in the need to recreate
that 'moral being'.
Before leaving the book
aside, it is obligatory to mention the most implacable criticism of Kant's
philosophy. The impossibility of crossing the border between the determinative
judgment linked to the senses and the reflective judgment linked to the
supersensible, forced post-Kantian philosophy to look for other ways.
To express that
criticism in the words of Felix Gotthelf:’ Kant could certainly destroy
knowledge, but construct belief based on higher knowledge, he could not do so’.
(9)
From the current point
of view, reflection should be that force that crosses the border. This
reflection takes place in a historical and technological context. To this we
should add that she should have the commitment not to be interested and not to
deny the truth. All that for this reflection to be correct.
Another side
note. In self-consciousness Kant did not worry about the realization of the
judgment, ‘’since nothing seemed safer to him than the self-consciousness in
which I surrender myself as the "I think" that accompanies all my
representations’’. (13). For Hegel, on the other hand, the driving force of self-consciousness
is the struggle for recognition (14). He exemplifies it in by the mastery-servitude
relationship. Therefore, through the 'eyes' of others we obtain our self-consciousness.
But that would require another separate chapter, not this one.
Continuing on
this little journey through history, we can return to Kant in order to explain
a curious statement of Sartre.’
Everything happens as if person…succeeded in realizing only a lacking god ‘writes Sartre. (15) The possible explanation for this can be found in
this book by Kant. What better than to base a philosopher's statement on the
philosophy of another previous one?
On the one hand, nature
does not act as if we were a privileged being. (16) When nature shows its anger,
it does not show us any special mercy. On the other hand, we find ourselves
trapped in a world of phenomena, and we have scarce resources to move in the
supersensible. We are in the middle, tirelessly trying to scrutinize the distant
skies and the supersensible underworld with a clouded brow. Saying that we are a lacking god does not seem
like a bad metaphor.
To finish, three
mentions with nothing to do with the book in question. On August 8, I received
an obituary on my cell phone indicating the death of philosopher Jennifer A.
McMahon. She was of the lineage of Aspasia of Miletus, Clea, Thecla, Sosipatra,
Macrina the Younger, Hypatia of Alexandria. Unfortunately, I haven't read any of her work,
although it would have been nice since she is an expert on Kant's work. There are still women and men philosophers in
the world, although their work does not appear in the media. May she always be
with us! And at sight of everybody!
In Glasgow on June 20th,2023
I witnessed a superb performance. Ruairidh Gray was before us singing in a bar.
With his wonderful voice he was singing the song ‘Black Velvet Band’, as he
wiped his lips from time to time with a yellow handkerchief. Superb! There are
rare instances of this type that someone has the opportunity to see in life.
But later I stopped
thoughtfully at the lyrics of the song. An apprentice to trade meets a pretty girl wearing a
black velvet band. One day the girl puts
in the hands of the trade apprentice one golden clock who has taken before from
one man’s pocket. As a result, they take the apprentice before the judge and he
sentences the trade apprentice to 7 years in prison, in a place far from his
land. Through a song or through the narrative of the earthly paradise, the girl
in the black velvet band or Eve, the false myth of the woman who leads man to
perdition appears again and again in our culture. While in Scotland, in order
for the statue of Adam Smith to be respected, they have to defend him against
accusations of being pro-slavery, in taverns wrong messages are sung daily as
if they were funny.
In that painting the body of some members of the family appear with their
bodies in motion, foreshortened, while their faces appear from the front,
static, as if they had left a hole in the head and had inserted there their
medallions.
(1) ‘Der Freiheitsbegriff bestimmt nichts in
Ansehung der theoretischen Erkenntnis der Natur; der Naturbegriff ebensowohl
nichts in Ansehung der praktischen Gesetze der Freiheit; und es ist insofern
nicht möglich, eine Brücke von einem Gebiete zu dem anderen hinüberzuschlagen’. Kant, I.
(1922). Kritik der Urteilskraft. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.p. 33
(2) ‘The mainstream
philosophers are the philosophers I shall call "systematic," and the
peripheral ones are those I shall call "edifying." These peripheral,
pragmatic philosophers are skeptical primarily about systematic philosophy,
about the whole project of universal commensuration’ Rorty,
R. (1979). Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.pp. 367,368.
(3) ‘with this kind of explanation we lose ourselves in
the exuberant, where our cognition of nature cannot follow us and where reason
is tempted to rave poetically, which is precisely its primary purpose to
prevent’ (wo wir uns mit dieser Erklärungsart ins Überschwengliche verlieren,
wohin uns die Naturerkenntnis nicht folgen kann, die Vernunft dichterisch zu
schwärmen verleitet wird, welches zu verhüten eben ihre vorzüglichste Bestimmung
ist). Kant, I. (1922). Kritik der
Urteilskraft. Leipzig: Felix Meiner. p. 277
(4) ‘because the judgment was made in accordance with the
universal conditions of the determinative power of judgment under the laws of a
possible experience in general’ (weil er dieses Urteil, nach den allgemeinen
Bedingungen der bestimmenden Urteilskraft ,unter den Gesetzen einer möglichen
Erfahrung überhaupt gefället hat). Kant, I.
(1922). Kritik der Urteilskraft. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.p. 28.
(5) ‘Judgment in general is the ability to think the
particular as contained within the general… But if only the particular is given
and judgment has to find the general for it, then this power is merely
reflective’(Urteilskraft überhaupt ist das Vermögen, das Besondere als
enthalten unter dem Allgemeinen zu denken…. Ist aber nur das Besondere gegeben,
wozu sie das Allgemeine finden soll, so ist die Urteilskraft bloß
reflektierend). Kant, I.
(1922). Kritik der Urteilskraft. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.p. 15.
(6) I refer
to the following translation by Werner S. Pluhar: Kant, I. (1987). Critique
of Judgment. Indianapolis /Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Company
(7) ‘that the antinomies compel us against our will to
look beyond the sensible and to seek the unification point of all our faculties
a priori in the supersensible, because there is no other way out of making
reason agree with itself’. (die Antinomien wider Willen nötigen,über das
Sinnliche hinaus zu sehen, und im Übersinnlichen den Vereinigungspunkt aller unserer
Vermögen a priori zu suchen; weil kein anderer Ausweg übrigbleibt, die Vernunft
mit sich selbst einstimmig zu machen. Kant, I.
(1922). Kritik der Urteilskraft. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.p. 200 .
(8) even the commonest judgment of sound human reason agrees
completely with this view: namely, that it is only as a
moral being that the person can be a final purpose of creation’.(Auch
stimmt damit das gemeinste Urteil der gesunden Menschenvernunft vollkommen
zusammen: nämlich daß der Mensch nur als moralisches Wesen ein Endzweck der
Schöpfung sein könne) Kant, I. (1922). Kritik
der Urteilskraft. Leipzig: Felix Meiner.p.306.
(9) ‘Kant konnte wohl das Wissen zerstören, aber den
Glauben auf dem Fundament eines höheren Wissens aufzubauen, das vermochte er nicht’. Felix Gotthelf . (1914). Über
indische und deutsche Philosophie. Mainz. Jahrbuch der
Schopenhauer-Gesellschaft 1914 https://www.philosophie.fb05.uni-mainz.de/ fs_ schopenhauer_ jahrbuecher/
#Jahrbuch_der_Schopenhauer-Gesellschaft_1914
(10) ‘Otherwise, they would not have been able to escape
from the experience of reflection originally developed by Hegel in the
Phenomenology…In self-reflection, knowledge for the sake of knowledge comes to
coincide with the interest in maturity; the completion of reflection knows
itself as a movement of emancipation.’ (Sonst
hätten sie sich jener Erfahrung der Reflexion nicht entziehen können, die Hegel
einst in der Phänomenologie entfaltet hat….In der Selbstreflexion gelangt eine
Erkenntnis um der Erekanntnis willen mit dem Interesse an Mündigkeit zur
Deckung;den der Vollzug der Reflexion weiβ sich als Bewegung der Emanzipation). Habermas,J. (1973). Erkenntnis und Interesse.
Frankfurt am Mein:Suhrkamp.pp. 243,244.
(11) ‘Die Erfahrung der Reflexion hält jene
ausgezeichneten Momente fest, in denen das Subjekt sich gleichsam über die
eigene Schulter sieht und wahrnimmt, wie sich hinter seinem Rücken das
transzendentale Verhältnis zwischen Subjekt und Objekt verschiebt;sie erinnert
die Emanzipationsschwellen der Gattungsgeschichte’
Habermas,J. (1973). Erkenntnis und Interesse. Frankfurt am Mein:Suhrkamp.p.31 .
(12) ‘Daβ
wir Reflexion verleugnen, ist der Positivismus’
Habermas,J. (1973). Erkenntnis und Interesse. Frankfurt am Mein:Suhrkamp. p. 9 .
(13) ‘Kant did not worry about the creation of the court;
for nothing seemed more certain to him than the self-consciousness in which I
am given to myself as the “I think” that accompanies all my representations.’
(‘Über das Zustandekommen des Gerichtes machte Kant sich keine
Gedanken;denn nichts schien ihm gewisser zu sein als das Selbstbewuβtsein , in dem Ich mir als das alle meine
Vorstellungen begleitende’Ich denke’gegeben bin’) Habermas,J. (1973). Erkenntnis und
Interesse. Frankfurt am Mein:Suhrkamp. p.25.
(14) ‘Each is the
middle for the other, through which each mediates and joins itself with itself,
and each is, to itself, and in that of the other, an essence immediately
existing for itself which at the same time is so for itself only through this
mediation. They recognize themselves as mutually recognizing each other’(‘Jedes ist dem andern die Mitte, durch welche jedes sich mit sich
selbst vermittelt und zusammenschliesst, und jedes sich und dem Andern
unmittelbares fuer sich seiendes Wesen, welches zugleich nur durch diese
Vermittlung so für sich ist. Sie anerkennen sich als gegenseitig sich
anerkennend. Hegel, G.W.F.
(1988). Phänomenologie des Geistes. Hamburg: Felix Meiner, p.129.
(15) ‘Everything happens as if the world,
person, and person-in-the-world succeeded in realizing only a lacking God ‘ (Tout se passe
comme si le monde, l'homme et l'homme-dans-le-monde n'arrivaient à
réaliser qu'un Dieu manqué.) Sartre, J.P.
(1943). L’être et le néant. Paris: Editions Gallimard . p. 671
(16) ‘Although, as the most
careful examination of the remains of those natural devastations seems to show
(according to Camper's judgment) person was not involved in these revolutions; person
is so dependent on the other creatures on earth that if a mechanism of nature
is granted that has a general control over the others, the person must be
considered as included in it, even though the person’s understanding was able
to rescue her/him (for the most part, at least) from those devastations..(
Wenngleich der Mensch, wie die genaueste Prüfung der Überreste jener Naturverwüstungen
(nach Campers Urteile) zu beweisen scheint, in diesen Revolutionen nicht mit
begriffen war; so ist er doch von den übrigen Erdgeschöpfen so abhängig, daß
wenn ein über die anderen allgemeinwaltender Mechanism der Natur eingeräumt
wird, er als darunter mit begriffen angesehen werden muß: wenn ihn gleich sein
Verstand (großenteils wenigstens) unter ihren Verwüstungen hat retten können.. Kant, I. (1922). Kritik der Urteilskraft.
Leipzig: Felix Meiner.p. 297.
