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Friday, August 04, 2006
So … What is Enlightenment, Part III
More 'what is Enlightenment?' Kant/Foucault notes. (After this installment I'll take a break; get back to some more literary stuff. I'm reading Jonathan Lethem, The Fortress of Solitude. Good stuff!)Geoffrey Galt Harpham showed up in comments last week, noting that he had written an essay precisely addressng my Kant/Foucault questions: “So … What Is Enlightenment? An Inquisition into Modernity” (Critical Inquiry, Spring, 1994). It turns out to be suitable for my teaching purposes, because it touches on everything I want to be covering. But I disagree fundamentally. But I think it's pretty interesting. So here goes.
I think the trouble Harpham gets into is fairly characteristic - not of him personally, but of a type of philosophic reading ... of the Enlightenment. There's a style to it, and this style is one of the things I actually want to consider in my class. Consider J. Hillis Miller's characterization of the split between 'canny' and 'uncanny' critics in "Stevens' rock and criticism as cure, II".
Already a clear distinction can be drawn, among critics influenced by these new developments, between what might be called ... Socratic, theoretical, or canny critics, on the one hand, and Apollonian/Dionysian, tragic, or uncanny critics, on the other. Socratic critics are those who are lulled by the promise of a rational ordering of literary study on the basis of solid advances in scientific knowledge about language. They are likely to speak of themselves as "scientists" and to group their collective enterprise under some term like "the human sciences" ...
Accent on 'lull'. This is a verb Harpham will use himself. Going over to the uncanny side:
...Nietzsche defined as "the unshakable faith that thought, using the thread of logic, can penetrate thedeepest abysses of being." ... The inheritors today of the Socratic faith would believe in the possibility of a structuralist-inspired criticism as a rational and rationalizable activity, with agreed-upon rules of procedure, given facts, and measurable results. This would be a discipline bringing literature out into the sunlight in a "happy positivism." ... Opposed to these are the critics who might be called "uncanny." Though they have been inspired by the same climate of thought as the Socratic critics and though their work would also be impossible without modern linguistics, the "feel" or atmosphere of their writing is quite different ...
... These critics are not tragic of Dionysian in the sense that their work is wildly orgiastic or irrational. No critic could be more rigorously sane and rational, Apollonian in his procedure, for example, than Paul de Man. One feature of Derrida's criticism is a patient and minutely philological "explication de texte." Nevertheless, the thread of logic leads in both cases into regions which are alogical, absurd ... Sooner or later there is the encounter with an "aporia" or impasse ... In fact the moment when logic fails in their work is the moment of their deepest penetration into the actual nature of literary language, or of language as such. (p. 121-2, Theory, Now and Then)
The fact that you can read 'critic' in a Kantian sense or a literary critical sense is both convenient and consequential. (The Enlightenment was 'the age of criticism', after all.) We are seeing how 'the moment of theory' is a repetition of the turn from Kant to post-Kant. Kant is the canny critic so many uncanny readers (romantics and others) thought through, in a twisty sort of way - Heidegger's Verwindung, if you will. Rational argument will carry us to the limits of canniness, precipitating us into the abyss of the Un.
Specifically, Harpham finds there is a point where Kant's Enlightenment 'affiliates with its other'. The final section of the paper is about the Spanish Inquisition and torture. Although, on the one hand, the Inquisition is
manifestly the 'other' of Enlightenment, the Inquisition is in many respects founded on principles the Enlightenment claimed as its own, and where it is not, the advantage in terms of realism and coherence seems to lie with the Inquisition. The Inquisition is, perhaps, Enlightenment without denial, its 'counter' elements displayed in full view. If Enlightenment consists, as Zizek says, of obedience to 'nonsensical' and ungrounded rules, then the Inquisition, as a prominent historical home of such rules that lay, as it were, adjacent to the Enlightenment, might represent a clarified form of the "traumatic kernel" of the Enlightenment itself. (pp. 549-50)
The counter-Enlightenment is Enlightenment clarified - enlightened about itself. By contrast, the Enlightenment is immature with regard to its own nature. It comforts itself with shadows and myths and illusions about the nature of its own project. I see the appeal of this wonderfully ironic table-turn. But Harpham is just plain working too hard to get Kant in position. Kant is not, in fact, standing exactly on the trap-door he needs to be standing on. He won't speak his villain lines on cue, so this tableau of canniness-into-uncanniness won't come off as choreographed. When you get to the point where Kant is supposed to turn to the dark side, it turns out there is a moderately sensible explanation of what he really meant, so the balloon of uncanniness deflates anti-climactically.
At any rate, that's my story and I'm sticking with it (until someone shows me I'm wrong.)
Let me address Harpham in two stages. First, some extensive quotes, to outline his position. Then I will offer an alternative reading of Kant, which departs from Harpham's (and Foucault's) on pretty much all essential points.
I. Harpham on Foucault on Kant on Enlightenment
Harpham writes:
But for Foucault the most bewilderingly unsatisfactory moment in Kant’s essay is the famous and fateful distinction between the realm of obedience and the realm of reason. One can argue about the system of taxation, but one must pay one’s taxes; or one can maintain reservations about some points of religious belief, but if one is a religious official, one should, for the good of the congregation, preach the approved doctrine. The result, as Foucault paraphrases Kant, is that reason “must be free in its public use, and must be submissive in its private use. Which is,” he notes with some vexation, “term for term, the opposite of what is ordinarily called freedom of conscience.”
It does appear that, in this founding text, Kant has for some reason simply given things the wrong names, for what he calls the public use of reason, which “alone can bring about enlightenment among men,” actually consists of private thoughts, discoveries, research, and reflections that happen to have the advantage of print publication: “By the public use of one’s own reason I mean that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing the entire reading public.” The chilling consequence is that, for Kant, most people simply do not have access to the public sphere; for them, the public exists only in the diluted and distorted form of aftereffects. Moreover, the private, which today we might think of as a realm of introspection, self-knowledge, affective movements, or one’s relations with one’s friends and family is, for Kant, similarly restricted not to scholars but to men in some position of public responsibility, “a particular civil post or office with which he is entrusted.” Kant’s private realm seems, to a modern liberal sensibility, simply a specialized form of the public, a form from which, once again, all but a few are excluded. The whole epochal challenge, the entire management of “the age,” is effectively reserved for scholars and public officials. This creates what Foucault describes as a “political problem” that seems sharply at variance with the universalism of Enlightenment itself—which has, as Foucault notes, found itself from the beginning “struggling with attitudes of ‘countermodernity’.”
Skeptical about Kant’s analysis and dismissive of his politics, Foucault asks bluntly “how the use of reason can take the public form that it requires, how the audacity to know can be exercised in broad daylight, while individuals are obeying as scrupulously as possible.” (pp. 526-7)
At this point, as Harpham notes, Foucault abruptly turns his back on Kant and draws Baudelaire into the conversation. The implication seems to be that Kant has written himself into a corner, concerning what Foucault terms “the undefined work of freedom.” That is, both Kant’s ‘public’ and ‘private’ spheres are paradoxical messes. And, in some sense, the turn to the counter-Enlightenment is a necessary response to this mess. Harpham proceeds to quote the passage from Kant that causes the trouble—a passage which, he says, can be most generously regarded as ‘conveying a powerful sense of lulling’ (cf. Hillis Miller on canny critics). Harpham hints that Kant on Enlightenment can at best be an open invitation to dogmatic slumber. Ergo, it is only the counter-Enlightenment that can possibly shed light on the subject (if that is what we desire). Here is Kant (here's an online version):
I have portrayed matters of religion as the focal point of enlightenment, i.e. of man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. This is firstly because our rulers have no interests in assuming the role of guardians over their subjects so far as the arts and sciences are concerned, and secondly because religious immaturity is the most pernicious and dishonourable variety of all. But the attitude of mind of a head of state who favours freedom in the arts and science extends even further, for he realizes that there is no danger even to his legislation if he allows his subjects to make public use of their own reason and to put before the public their thoughts on better ways of drawing up laws, even if this entails forthright criticism of the current legislation. We have before us a brilliant example of this kind, in which no monarch has yet surpassed the one to whom we now pay tribute [Frederick the Great].
But only a ruler who is himself enlightened and has no fear of phantoms, yet who likewise has at hand a well-disciplined and numerous army to guarantee public security, may say what no republic would day to say: “Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like, but obey!”
Harpham comments:
What could this bizarre injunction mean? From a perspective formed both by Lacan and by decades of life in “really existing socialism,” the Slovenian philosopher Slavok Zizek sees in these words the precise definition of “cynicism,” a prescription for lip service. Beneath this “political problem,” however, Zizek discovers the psychological problem presented by a law determined from the outset as given, “traumatic,” unfounded, nonsensical. “In the traditional, pre-enlightened universe,” Zizek writes, “the authority of the Law is … always illuminated by the charismatic power of fascination. Only to the already enlightened view does the universe of social customs and rules appear as a nonsensical ‘machine’ that must be accepted as such.” Only a law that, like the categorical imperative itself, does not pretend to rational justification can free us for theoretical reflection and enable us to “enjoy” our obedience. This hidden dimension of Kantian obedience anticipates not liberal democracy but totalitarianism. If we ask now, What is “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” the possible answers might be: (1) a piece of flattery thrown off by a tame intellectual; (2) a shrewd effort to circumscribe the sovereign’s recognized appetite for the suppression of (especially religious) dissent; and (3) a prescient disclosure of the (totalitarian) obscenity of Enlightenment itself. (p. 529)
Harpham underscores this rather scathing either/or/or conclusion by quoting the most puzzling passage in Kant’s essay, which continues the problematic passage quoted above. Kant provides his own gloss on ‘argue as much as you like, but obey!’
This reveals to us a strange and unexpected pattern in human affairs (such as we shall always find if we consider them in the widest sense, in which nearly everything is paradoxical). A high degree of civil freedom seems advantageous to a people’s intellectual freedom, yet it also sets up insuperable barriers to it. Conversely, a lesser degree of civil freedom gives intellectual freedom enough room to expand to its fullest extent. Thus once the germ on which nature has lavished must care—man’s inclination and vocation to think freely—has developed within this hard shell, it gradually reacts upon the mentality of the people, who thus gradually become increasingly able to act freely.
Admittedly, this is pretty obscure. Harpham’s gloss on this gloss is, likewise, a bit obscure due to thickness of the husk metaphor:
It is paradox itself, naturalized by the figure of the germ within the hard shell, that lies deeply and productively encased within the hard shell of an argument that otherwise may appear confused (as Foucault says), cynical, or obscene (Zizek.) For paradoxes only appear to conflict with themselves—as Kant says things inevitably do when considered “in the widest sense,” the sense cultivated by enlightened thought. (p. 530)
But basically it comes down to this:
Ultimately, however, and most paradoxically of all, the triumphant overcoming of paradoxes concludes by affiliating the Enlightenment itself with its other. (p. 531)
That is, Kant himself has effectively written out all the anti-Enlightenment heresies in advance. He has anticipated Adorno and Horkheimer.
Adorno and Horkheimer argue their case as though it were a new discovery, a radical overturning of received wisdom about Enlightenment, but in fact they merely retrieve Kant’s figure of the “germ” or “seed.” Enlightenment, they write, is not only indispensable for “social freedom” but also “already contains the seed of the reversal universally apparent today,” in 1944, when the well-disciplined and numerous armies Kant prized had secured “hierarchical,” even “totalitarian” structures in both thought and social organization. Thus while the only cure for the mutilations of the Enlightenment is more Enlightenment, the cure only inflicts more wounds. The result is that within the regime of Enlightenment, certain things must—again, as Kant seems to intuit—be misnamed, an imperative Adorno and Horkheimer follow by bluntly describing Enlightenment itself as “mass deception”. (p. 532)
And now Harpham returns to Foucault, and tries to explain how there can be a 'second Kant', not so terroristically and obscenely uncongenial as this first one looks to be. But rather than considering that question, let me rebut the portrayal of the 'first' Kant.
II. What is Kant Actually Saying?
Kant can be made to sound as though he is obscenely 'affiliating the Enlightenment itself with its other,' i.e. totalitarianism, because he is offering a (maximally respectful) reductio on Frederick’s status as enlightened despot. It basically goes like so: the best thing you can say about enlightened despotism is that it may offer the straightest, fastest road to general enlightenment. But, by the same token, enlightened despotism is ideally speeding towards its own obsolescence, its own voluntary self-abdication in favor of republicanism. Frederick is the husk of the seed, protecting the germ of Enlightenment while it pushes to the light. When the plant emerges, the husk must fall away. If enlightened despotism refuses to yield to republicanism after the populace is ‘mature’, it is not enlightened, i.e. not what it has been stipulated to be. (See Kant's "Perpetual Peace" - the section subtitled, "The Civil Constitution of Every State Should Be Republican".)
Plausibly, Kant is adopting a typical strategy for the philosopher unsure he can get away with saying exactly what he thinks (even though Frederick is fairly tolerant about this sort of thing). Kant finds a way to imply what he wants to say, using only statements censors will have to allow. It ends up being a bit pie-in-the-sky wishful, in its idealism; a bit turtle-in-its-shell professorial in its prudent restraint; not sinister in the way Harpham suggests. (Why didn't Kant worry about getting in trouble for writing "Perpetual Peace"? I'm not sure. I should look into that.)
Setting "Perpetual Peace" to one side, let me just run through the key elements of Kant's "What is Enlightenment?" essay, for purposes of considering Harpham's reading.
The Public/Private Flip-Flop
First comes Kant's reversal of the public/private distinction. Harpham presents it as chilling, naive and cynical. Chilling because, he hints, Kant is basically making 'reason' the province of those who can find a publisher, i.e. this is an elitist view. Naive and cynical like so: "The fact is that the Inquisition was
highly sensitive to facts of which Kant seems blithely unaware. The
widespread public cynicism that Kant seems to commend as a political
attitude was held by the Inquisition to be not simply a crime by
criminality itself ... What strikes a modern eye most forcibly is the
firm political rationale for the Inquisition as compared to fatuous
Enlightenment assertions of a free private realm secured by submission
in a public realm by which it is magically untouched" (p 547, 8).
I think Harpham is just mislabeling as 'mass deception' the rhetorical logic of Kant's ironic reversal of the standard private/public distinction. (It's not thoughtless, it's thought-provoking.) For comparison purposes, let's consider, say, J.S. Mill's presentation of the public/private distinction in On Liberty. Mill lays out public/private the way we expect. He lays down his famous harm principle: " the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others." In short, personal liberty is defended on the grounds that what I choose to do properly concerns only myself - including what I write and think.
But there is a sphere of action in which society, as distinguished from the individual, has, if any, only an indirect interest; comprehending all that portion of a person's life and conduct which affects only himself, or, if it also affects others, only with their free, voluntary, and undeceived consent and participation. When I say only himself, I mean directly, and in the first instance: for whatever affects himself, may affect others through himself; and the objection which may be grounded on this contingency will receive consideration in the sequel.
To make a long story short, the sequel is not fully satisfactory. Rhetorically it may be effective to say, 'what I do in my business and none of yours. You are not the judge of me.' Getting people to grant only this much may place them on a nice, slippery slope to just the sort of non-conformist, cosmopolitan progressivism that Mill wants them to adopt. But intellectually there is a problem: namely, the utilitarian justification for the 'harm principle', i.e. for leaving everyone to themselves, is that letting everyone do what they like "serves the interests of man as a progressive being." That is, liberty is defended BOTH on the grounds that it does NOT affect others, and on the grounds that it DOES affect others. Mill never squares this circle (so far as I can see).
Harpham's criticism is most likely to score against the likes of Mill (although even that is not such a straight shot.) But Kant precisely does not take Mill's line. He labels what we (following Mill) would call 'private' intellectual activity - i.e. all the various products of the private operation of my free conscience - as 'public' because he wants to make explicit that all this can be expected to have a major effect. The function of it is 'to serve the interests of man as an progressive [enlightened] being'.
It is rather cheeky for Kant to label as 'private' all the things that people do in their official public capacities, as cogs in some administrative/institutional/legal machine. But Kant's point is not that I have no life beyond 'my life as a cog'. He is denigrating the role of (let's update our idioms) the public spokesperson, relative to that of the whistleblower. The public spokesperson is speaking in a merely 'private' capacity. That's kind of funny. It's a way of saying: the really important people, from the point of view of 'enlightenment' - the true 'public' figures - are not the official apologists for the status quo, but reformers working on behalf of the future.
In a sense Kant is being more forthrightly utilitarian than Mill. (This is no contradiction, however. Kant would defend the right to freedom of conscience, on non-consequentialist grounds, even though he is presently approving the consequences of freedom of conscience.) Kant is most definitely playing for effect with the paradox that 'that which is most private - i.e. the operation of free individual conscience - is also of the greatest public importance.' That is, Kant is juggling with this thing, whereas Harpham wrongly accuses him of dropping the ball. (This is also the paradox Kant is playing with in The Conflict of the Faculties. But that's a slightly different story)
“Argue as much as you like and about whatever you like, but obey!”
But now we get to this formula, which Harpham and Foucault and Zizek find so repugnant. Is it? Let's consider why it might not be. The formula is categorical in its renunciation of the possibility of civil disobedience, but probably we all agree there is a place for civil obedience as well. So let's start from that side. We agree that, if the election was fair, we should abide by the results - even if our guy didn't win. Then, after the election, we get to criticize the policies of the winner. We work to win the next election, rather than refusing to accept the results of this one. Or suppose your department makes you to teach a class that you don't really think is as interesting or useful to the students as a class you might have taught instead. Well, if you want to keep your job, you teach the class, so long as the demand isn't intolerable. (If you are being told you have to teach 'Hilter is Great 101', presumably you tender your resignation.) But you make your feelings known, and you speak up in faculty meetings, so forth. You work to change the curricular structure under which you were required to teach the course you didn't like. Maybe you even talk to your students a bit about it. Or suppose you are in the army, and you think your commander is ordering you to violate the Geneva Conventions. Well, maybe you do what your commander says (or else you face a court martial.) But you write your congressman, telling him that your commander is out of control. Or suppose you are working in private industry. You are a chemist who is being told to dump stuff in the river. If you don't do what you are told, you can be fired. So, possibly, you do what you are told - if the violation is not so egregious that you feel obliged to quit on the spot - but you become a whistleblower. You tell the EPA what is going on. These cases are not always clear. Jury nullification? Kant is obviously going to be against it. (Me? I'm in favor, if conscience dictates.) But, for a wide range of cases, 'argue as much as you like and about whatever you like, but obey' is a plausibly correct response to a problem.
What makes the difference between cases? Well, the simplest rule is this: if there is some way to correct the abuse, or effect a reform, while working within the system, you stay within the system. Because presumably smashing the system will cause more problems than it fixes. It certainly isn't the very definition of 'cynicism' to think this way. [UPDATE: I can see now this is a bit imprecise, although I'll bet the point is clear enough. The issue isn't whether 'the system works'. The issue is whether arguing is likely to do any good. 'Argue all you want, but obey' makes sense when arguing all you want might get you what you want without you HAVING to disobey.]
This may seem exquisitely irrelevant to Kant's actual situation, however, because there is precisely no avenue by which argument can effect reform in Prussia. Frederick can just ignore you. You can't vote him out of office. This is why Harpham thinks Kant is being cynical. He thinks arguing about how things should be is put forward as a sorry second prize, in place of any possibility of actually changing things. But pretty clearly this is not what Kant is saying. He is effectively stipulating that you have an absolute ruler "who is himself enlightened and has no fear of phantoms," ergo he will in fact give an open-minded, fair hearing to any reasonable, public proposal. To suppose things could really work this way may seem naive - but Kant himself shows he is at least aware of the artificiality of it in "Perpetual Peace". (Which contains the wry phrase "as when Frederick II at least said he was merely the first servant of the state." Kant's so-called 'secret article for perpetual peace' is also rather tongue-in-cheek, even while it may be a bit head-in-clouds. It is 'secret' because kings may be embarrassed to admit they consult philosophers - but they should consult them.) Is there any point to assuming anything so patently counterfactual? Well, maybe there is a point to implying: IF Frederick is what he says he is - a perfect enlightened absolute ruler, THEN he is working to make himself obsolete. Obviously Frederick isn't actually interested in being obsolete. But then that says something, too.
But what about Kant's claim that there is a sense in which military dictatorship is better than republicanism, at least in the sense that the former can permit more freedom than the latter - so long as it is all talk, no action: 'argue about what you want, but obey'?' To put it another way ...
What about that weird seed/husk metaphor?
Let me quote again:
This ['argue all you want, but obey' formula] reveals to us a strange and unexpected pattern in human affairs (such as we shall always find if we consider them in the widest sense, in which nearly everything is paradoxical). A high degree of civil freedom seems advantageous to a people’s intellectual freedom, yet it also sets up insuperable barriers to it. Conversely, a lesser degree of civil freedom gives intellectual freedom enough room to expand to its fullest extent. Thus once the germ on which nature has lavished must care—man’s inclination and vocation to think freely—has developed within this hard shell, it gradually reacts upon the mentality of the people, who thus gradually become increasingly able to act freely.
What does this say? Again, let's start with Mill, who has some admittedly rather illiberal-sounding things to say about populations that have not yet attained a sufficient level of enlightenment to be self-governing:
The early difficulties in the way of spontaneous progress are so great, that there is seldom any choice of means for overcoming them; and a ruler full of the spirit of improvement is warranted in the use of any expedients that will attain an end, perhaps otherwise unattainable. Despotism is a legitimate mode of government in dealing with barbarians, provided the end be their improvement, and the means justified by actually effecting that end. Liberty, as a principle, has no application to any state of things anterior to the time when mankind have become capable of being improved by free and equal discussion. Until then, there is nothing for them but implicit obedience to an Akbar or a Charlemagne, if they are so fortunate as to find one. But as soon as mankind have attained the capacity of being guided to their own improvement by conviction or persuasion (a period long since reached in all nations with whom we need here concern ourselves), compulsion, either in the direct form or in that of pains and penalties for non-compliance, is no longer admissible as a means to their won good, and justifiable only for the security of others.
Suppose our enlightened dictator is ruling over two primitive groups - the A's and the B's. The A's want to kill all the B's and vice versa. If he has a limited police power, the dictator will perhaps be obliged to make 'hate speech' a crime. No one is allowed to talk about the whole A/B strife business, because letting anyone even make an angry public speech/sermon/pamphlet is likely to be an incitement to immediate violence. And the police won't be able to keep a lid on. On the other hand, suppose you have a cop on every corner, a barracks on every third block. Then you can let the A's and B's say anything they want. They can have endless angry public discussions because there is no danger whatsoever of them being able to act on their animosities. When talk starts to spill over into violence, the police intervene immediately and overwhelmingly. Who will reach 'enlightenment' first? Kant's idea is that the population under the heavy military yoke will. If they talk long enough, without fighting, they will eventually come to their senses and see the value of talking without fighting. The more boots you have on the ground right at the start, the faster you can 'enlighten' the populace. And the faster you can then lift the military yoke. Because - this is important - it would be 'unenlightened' to maintain a military presence past the point when it was strictly necessary. All enlightened dictatorship is merely a movement in the direction of enlightened republicanism. (If it is not, then it is not enlightened.)
This may seem like a preposterously artificial pair of scenarios. But it answers the question: does Kant think there is some freedom that dictatorships can extend to citizens, which republics cannot? In which case there is some sense in which the combination of dictatorships and armies with reason is ideal? Kant says yes, but we have to remember that this is within the scope of the following question/answer pair: ""Do we presently live in an enlightened age?" the answer is, "No, but we do live in an age of enlightenment." If we lived in an enlightened age, it would not be true that dictatorship could offer any advantage that republicanism could not. And so Frederick II, if he is an enlightened ruler, is working for his own obsolescence, in effect.
And in large part, the artificiality of this whole presentation is due to Kant's attempt to find some way to say 'Frederick II is the best of rulers' while meaning 'republicanism is the best of governments'. You can deplore the tameness of it, or appreciate the rather neat irony of it - or both - but I don't see that attempting to portray it as ''totalitarian' makes much sense. And it is anything but 'cynical'. It is republican, Enlightenment idealism trying to work its perhaps overly-prudent, self-protective Apollonian rebelliousness through the interstices of Frederick's Prussian efficiency. It's thin stuff, as 'obscene kernels' go.
III. Conclusion
How interesting is all this? Regarding Harpham, I can see the charm of the narrative-line he is trying to push: the whole 'sleep of reason breeds monsters', canniness-tipping-into-uncanniness thing. But, as I said at the start, I think you have to falsify Kant to get him to speak his villain lines on cue. (Although this is a somewhat separate question, I think Foucault has the same problem Harpham does. It is too grand to be true to imagine that he is subverting Kant precisely by being true to him.) The real problem with Kant is not that his notion of 'enlightenment' is secretly akin to the Spanish Inquisition, but that it is ultimately too thin. There's more to 'becoming who you are' than just becoming rational (This feels to me like an incredibly obvious point, but that's ok. I'm planning to teach it to undergraduates. Musn't neglect the obvious.) Let me close by setting, side-by-side, the opening of Kant's essay with my favorite passage from Nietzsche:
Kant:
Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one's understanding without guidance from another. This immaturity is self-imposed when its cause lies not in lack of understanding, but in lack of resolve and courage to use it without guidance from another. Sapere Aude! [dare to know] "Have courage to use your own understanding!"--that is the motto of enlightenment.
Laziness and cowardice are the reasons why so great a proportion of men, long after nature has released them from alien guidance (natura-liter maiorennes), nonetheless gladly remain in lifelong immaturity, and why it is so easy for others to establish themselves as their guardians. It is so easy to be immature. If I have a book to serve as my understanding, a pastor to serve as my conscience, a physician to determine my diet for me, and so on, I need not exert myself at all. I need not think, if only I can pay: others will readily undertake the irksome work for me. The guardians who have so benevolently taken over the supervision of men have carefully seen to it that the far greatest part of them (including the entire fair sex) regard taking the step to maturity as very dangerous, not to mention difficult. Having first made their domestic livestock dumb, and having carefully made sure that these docile creatures will not take a single step without the go-cart to which they are harnessed, these guardians then show them the danger that threatens them, should they attempt to walk alone. Now this danger is not actually so great, for after falling a few times they would in the end certainly learn to walk; but an example of this kind makes men timid and usually frightens them out of all further attempts.
Thus, it is difficult for any individual man to work himself out of the immaturity that has all but become his nature. He has even become fond of this state and for the time being is actually incapable of using his own understanding, for no one has ever allowed him to attempt it. Rules and formulas, those mechanical aids to the rational use, or rather misuse, of his natural gifts, are the shackles of a permanent immaturity. Whoever threw them off would still make only an uncertain leap over the smallest ditch, since he is unaccustomed to this kind of free movement. Consequently, only a few have succeeded, by cultivating their own minds, in freeing themselves from immaturity and pursuing a secure course.
A traveler who had seen many countries, peoples and several of the earth's continents was asked what attribute he had found in men everywhere. He said: "They have a propensity for laziness." To others, it seems that he should have said: "They are all fearful. They hide themselves behind customs and opinions." In his heart every man knows quite well that, being unique, he will be in the world only once and that there will be no second chance for his oneness to coalesce from the strangely variegated assortment that he is: he knows it but hides it like a bad conscience—why? From fear of his neighbor, who demands conformity and cloaks himself with it. But what is it that forces the individual to fear his neighbor, to think and act like a member of a herd, and to have no joy in himself? Modesty, perhaps, in a few rare cases. For the majority it is idleness, inertia, in short that propensity for laziness of which the traveler spoke. He is right: men are even lazier than they are fearful, and fear most of all the burdensome nuisance of absolute honesty and nakedness. Artists alone hate this lax procession in borrowed manners and appropriated opinions and they reveal everyone's secret bad conscience, the law that every man is a unique miracle; they dare to show us man as he is, to himself unique in each movement of his muscles, even more, that by being strictly consistent in uniqueness, he is beautiful, and worth regarding, as a work of nature, and never boring. When the great thinker despises human beings, he despises their laziness: for it is on account of their laziness that men seem like manufactured goods, unimportant, and unworthy to be associated with or instructed. Human beings who do not want to belong to the mass need only to stop being comfortable; follow their conscience, which cries out: "Be yourself! All that you are now doing, thinking, and desiring is not really yourself."
You substitute 'art' for 'reason', not because 'reason' was secretly too bloody-minded but because in fact it was - rather unsecretly - too thin and bloodless.
Comments
The hardest-working man in blog business collapses onstage a third time, and his lackeys come out to usher him backstage to be refreshed by his groupies. A life the rest of us can only dream of.
No fair, John. You’re using irony.
It’s very interesting. I’m not quite convinced that the point of the seed/husk metaphor is that Frederick is setting up the conditions for a true republic.
(Why didn’t Kant worry about getting in trouble for writing “Perpetual Peace”? I’m not sure. I should look into that.)
“What is Enlightenment” is from 1785, and “Perpetual Peace” from 1795. In the interim:
1) Frederick the Great died
2) The French Revolution occurred
3) Kant was prohibited from public pronouncements on religion by Frederick Wilhelm II
4) The partition of Poland was either mostly completed, or completed.
Perhaps Kant changed his mind about the worth of the Prussian form of government upon the death of Frederick. Perhaps he changed his mind on the value of republicanism upon the events in France. Anyway, it’s plain that censorship was harsher under FWII than before, and that the focus of that censorship was religion.
Thanks, Mike. I probably should have made more noises of uncertainty myself about my Kant reading. (But the post was long enough already.) I’m really grappling with this text for the first time, so I will suffer no especial shame if I have to change my mind. I do know the basic historical background about what happened between 1784 and 1795. But looking at the post now, I see that I slipped and got my Fredericks wrong. I wrote Fred II when I meant Fred the Great. Gotta go back and edit that. The thing I was wondering about “Perpetual Peace” was specifically that it seemed to be more daring than “What is Enlightenment?” Yet it was written under a censorship regime that was surely more severe. But maybe because it didn’t concern religion, it wasn’t a problem? That seems a bit surprising, but I don’t really know about it. As to whether Kant’s attitude toward republicanism changed after the revolution? Could be. I tried not to make my argument about “Enlightenment” hinge too vitally on the later text.
Wait, Fred II WAS Fred the Great. I was right the first time. Never mind.
The thing I was wondering about “Perpetual Peace” was specifically that it seemed to be more daring than “What is Enlightenment?” Yet it was written under a censorship regime that was surely more severe. But maybe because it didn’t concern religion, it wasn’t a problem?
It still is a problem for your claim that Kant was a republican when he wrote “What is Enlightenment?,” but didn’t say so because he was afraid of censorship, I think.
My suggestion is that “Perpetual Peace” was more daring because Kant’s views had become more daring, mostly because he was much less pleased with the Prussian king, but partly because autocracy had led to universal war, and the criticism of republics in “What is Enlightenment?” is that they can’t give both freedom of thought and public security. (How exactly the details should be filled out here depends on Kant’s precise attitude to the Napoleanic regime, which I don’t know.)
On rereading the last sentence of “What is Enlightenment?,” I’m more sympathetic to the view that there’s some crypto-republicanism going on there. Perhaps the thing to say is that “What is Enlightenment?” is a defense of republicanism for future. “Perpetual peace” may either be thought of as a slight change of view (republicanism now) or as pony-in-the-sky daydreaming about ideal states and the relations between them.
‘argue as much as you like, but obey!’
In a very real sense the maxim demonstrates the problems, if not the unworkableness, of the Kantian variety of ethics. And perhaps dialecticians more astute than myself have noted that this “obedience maxim” seems to conflict with, if not contradict, the Kantian imperative itself (act as if every action was itself a maxim, i.e. universalized, and thus made public). The superficial relativism is obvious enough, but perhaps more importantly the obedience maxim, taken together with the imperative, reveals that Kantian ethics, like any real ethica; programme, reduces to a type of consequentialism in disguise: there is no way the Kantian can really show how the maxim does bring about more “good” (justice, pleasure, order, intelligence etc.) without recourse to an inductive argument.
Kant seemingly holds that Obedience is good for the stability of the state (or monarchy, republic, etc.); of course if the state is run by the Waffen SS or KGB or baptist theocrats, then obedience (obey the laws asking for persecution/imprisonment of jews and other groups?) could in itself be “evil.” Similar cases could be made for other types of ethical “institutions” such as promises. “Always tell the truth”, that is until like the mafia (or nazis, communists, baptist boneheads, what have you) controls the police department and courts: then telling the truth (say ratting out someone) could be in a very real sense dangerous and foolhardy ( as was the case in say Chicago in the 20s and 30s as well). However trite, Milgram’s studies also demonstrate the problems with this sort of rationalist “obedience maxim” in a fairly convincing manner.
I strongly recommend: Elisabeth Ellis, _Kant’s Politics_, ch.1-- I think pushing in the same direction as a number of the remarks in your post.
Thanks, Jacob and Peter. Jacob, I will check out Ellis. Peter, I do think you are sort of right. For Kant the fantasy of an ideally enlightened dictator is attractive because it allows him to model the passage from unenlightenment to enlightenment in perfectly law-abiding fashion. That is, there is not just a rationalism at the end of the rainbow but at every intermediate step on the way. There could be something brilliantly Hegelian about that, but it is probably just ... not very helpful in the real world.