[ssf] Kant
Warnock Magee
adam at diamat.org.uk
Tue Mar 24 11:45:18 GMT 2009
The following transcript
is based upon
the eighth episode
of a television series called
*The Great Philosophers*
first transmitted
by the BBC, in 1987 [1]
<< Introduction by Bryan Magee >>
For several generations now
the man most widely regarded as
the greatest philosopher
since the ancient Greeks
has been Immanuel Kant
He was born in the town of Königsberg
East Prussia, in 1724
and died there
at an age of not quite eighty
in 1804
Many jokes have been made
about the fact
that he rarely left Königsberg
and never went outside
his native province
in the whole of his life ...
... also about the fact
that he stuck so strictly
to a daily routine
that the inhabitants of Königsberg could
literally, set their watches by him
as he walked past their windows
He never married
and outwardly his life was uneventful
However, he was not the dry stick
that my description so far would suggest
on the contrary
he was a sociable and amusing
elegant in dress
and witty in conversation;
and his lectures
at the University of Königsberg
where he was a professor
for more than thirty years
were famed for their brilliance
Rather surprisingly
Kant was the first great philosopher
of the modern era
to be a university teacher of philosophy
Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Locke, Berkeley, Hume
-- none of these taught philosophy --
Nor did most of the major philosophers
in the century after Kant
the nineteenth century;
the obvious exception is Hegel;
but Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, Karl Marx
John Stuart Mill, Nietzsche
-- none of these were academic philosophers --
In fact Nietzsche gave up
being an academic
in order to be a philosopher
In the modern era
it is only when one gets
to the twentieth century
that nearly all important philosophers
are academics
Whether this recent professionalisation
of the subject
is a good thing
is a moot point ...
... I suspect it is inevitable
However, to get back
to the first of the great professors ...
... although the writings of Kant's youth
and early middle age
made him widely known
all but a few of them
are now virtually unread
His lasting fame rests
on a series of publications
which did not begin
until he was fifty-seven
and which continued into his seventies
We have here a rare spectacle
that of a creative genius
of the first order
producing all his greatest work
in late middle age and old age
His acknowledged masterpiece
*The Critique of Pure Reason*
was published in 1781
At first it was not at all well understood
so two years later
he published an exposition
of its central argument
in a separate, slim volume
usually referred to as the *Prolegomena*
and then brought out
a substantially revised edition
of *The Critique of Pure Reason* itself
in 1787
There followed in rapid succession
his second great critique
*The Critique of Practical Reason* in 1788
and his third,
*The Critique of Judgement*, in 1790
Meanwhile he had also published, in 1785
a little book called
*The Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysics of Ethics*
Despite its unseductive title
this book has had an immense influence
on moral philosophy ever since
Discussing Kant's work with me
is a well-known contemporary philosopher
Sir Geoffrey Warnock
Principal of Hertford College, Oxford
and a former Vice-Chancellor
of the University of Oxford ...
<< Discussion >>
< Magee >
Kant was one of the supreme system-builders
of modern philosophy;
and one notorious difficulty
in expounding any system
-- precisely because everything in it
is held in place by something else --
is choosing at what point to break in
in order to make a start;
because whatever you begin with
already presupposes something else
What do you think
is the best point at which
to break into Kant's system
for purpose of exposition ?
< Warnock >
There certainly is that problem
One of Kant's conspicuous merits
was that he was very good at
making an immense range of views
fit together in a comprehensive
and systematic way
But in embarking on
discussion of Kant
I think it is important
not to start off
in too technical a way;
for example,
he is sometimes represented
as conducting a debate
between the merits and demerits
of rationalism and empiricism,
like a sort of philosophical referee ...
... or discussing how there can be
synthetic necessary truths ...
... some technical-looking issues
of that sort ...
Those are indeed issues
in which Kant was much interested
But, for a starting point
I think one ought to go further back
to the much wider and simpler concern
that really generated these other problems;
and that, I would submit,
was his concern with an apparent conflict
between the findings of the physical sciences
in his day
and our fundamental ethical
and religious convictions
He thought there was
at least a *prima facie* conflict
or inconsistency there
< Magee >
What did he think it consisted in ?
< Warnock >
I think the central
and simplest form
of the conflict
was that it seemed
to be a presupposition
-- and indeed Kant thought
a well-founded
and proper presupposition --
of the physical sciences
that everything that happens
is *determined* by antecedent happenings,
that there is always a law
on the basis of which one can say that,
given the antecedent conditions,
what happened was the only thing
that *could* have happened
< Magee >
We are talking here
about events in the natural world,
the physical world ...
< Warnock >
... in the physical world, yes.
But of course,
when we are thinking
about our own conduct,
and in particular
about moral predicaments
we may find ourselves in,
we believe that we
(and everyone else)
have alternative possible
courses of action before us --
that there are various things
we could do,
and so for that reason
we have to accept responsibility
for what we actually do
That is one theme:
Kant thought that this was *prima facie* contradicted
by a basic presupposition of physical science
< Magee >
So the problem is:
how,
in a universe in which the motion of all matter
is governed by scientific laws,
can any of the motions of those material objects
which are human bodies
be governed by free will ?
< Warnock >
Yes.
He was also concerned with the question:
How God would fit in
to an essentially mechanical
and physically determined universe
If physical explanations can always
in principle
be both complete and exhaustive
God seems to be left outside
as it were
with nothing to do
< Magee >
Kant was not the first philosopher
not even the first great philosopher
to see these problems
was he ?
< Warnock >
No, certainly not.
Those problems had been a main preoccupation
of philosophers
all through the eighteenth century,
ever since the great leap forward,
so to speak,
in the physical sciences
at the end of the seventeenth century
Among the empiricists,
for example,
Berkeley had been preoccupied
with this sort of problem;
and among those
in Kant's own Continental tradition
conspicuously Leibniz
No, Kant certainly was not the first
< Magee >
Why was he so deeply dissatisfied,
as obviously he was,
with the attempts made
by his predecessors
to solve these problems ?
< Warnock >
Well, he believed
-- and I think correctly --
that his predecessors
had typically tried to resolve these conflicts
or bring them to an end
by downgrading the pretensions
of the physical sciences
That's certainly true of Berkeley
and I think it's true of Leibniz as well
They had sought to show
that scientists' basic tenets
were not really,
or at any rate not 'ultimately' *true* ...
... so that the physical sciences
could be relegated to an inferior status
and denied any claim
to be an equal contestant
with metaphysical doctrine and argument
Well, for one thing,
Kant thought that the record showed
that this was not the right way to proceed;
one could say, indeed,
that he thought
the boot was on the other foot ...
.... that the physical sciences
seemed to proceed smoothly
and progressively from
triumph to triumph,
with everybody agreeing
what had been established
and what hadn't,
while on the other hand
philosophy looked to him
like a sort of chaotic battlefield ...
... no philosopher agreed about anything much
with any other philosopher ...
... no doctrine was accepted
for more than a few years
before somebody else refuted it
and so on ...
... That's one thing
But then he also thought
-- and I think this is more important --
that Hume, in particular,
had raised serious doubts about
the credentials of philosophy itself:
he had put it seriously in question
whether what philosophers
purported to be doing
was a possible intellectual enterprise
And Kant thought that Hume's challenge,
if one can call it that,
required would-be philosophers
to ask themselves
first of all,
whether what they were
professing to do
was even in principle possible ...
< Magee >
One of the most quoted remarks
is about Hume's having awoken him
from his dogmatic slumbers.
I take it
that this is what
you are now referring to ?
< Warnock >
Yes
< Magee >
What was the awakening,
in fact,
what did Hume awaken Kant to ?
< Warnock >
The problem,
to put it in a crude nutshell,
was this:
Hume, and indeed Leibniz
and other such philosophers
as had thought about it,
had accepted a general view
to the effect that propositions
can be exhaustively divided in to two classes
On the one hand,
there are what were sometimes called
'truths of reason'
(which Kant called analytic propositions)
-- those being, in a sense,
really true by definition,
or true in virtue of the meanings of their terms ...
... simple examples would be
the proposition that a square has four sides
or that a bicycle as two wheels ...
... propositions of that sort,
they said,
could be known *a priori*
that is, independently of experience,
and of course were necessarily true
On the other hand,
there are substantial, informative,
non-trivial propositions
which tell us something
not simply implicit
in the terms we are using
-- these, they said,
were indeed substantial
and informative
but couldn't be necessary ...
... they were always contingent proposition ...
... might be either true or false ...
... and could be established as true or false
only on the basis of experience
observation, or experiment
Now Hume said
-- and Kant thought he was quite right to say --
that, *if that was right*
then philosophy itself
was in a serious predicament
because on the one hand
it didn't put itself forward
as an empirical science
based on observation and experiment
and on the other hand
it would not wish
to concede that all it was doing
was elaborating a set of tautologies,
analysing the terms
in which we speak and think
And Hume's question was:
is there anything *else*
that a philosopher could possibly be doing,
if s(he) isn't doing either of those ?
< Magee >
Didn't Hume realise,
and Kant after him,
that this claim
to divide propositions exhaustively
into those two classes
created a serious problem
not only for philosophy
but also for the natural sciences,
because unrestrictedly
general scientific laws
are also propositions
that are neither analytic
no straightforwardly factual ...
... they can't be deductively arrived at by logic,
nor can they be proved from experience ...
... both Hume and Kant
saw this as a problem
for *all* human knowledge, surely ?
< Warnock >
Yes, I think so
but they reacted,
so to speak,
in quite different ways
I think Hume thought
that the sciences could carry on
pretty well simply
as a body of empirical hypothesis
though of course
without the claim to establish
that anything was necessarily so,
and indeed without any sustainable claim
to constitute a body of *knowledge*
Kant's view, however
was that this belief
in an exhaustive dichotomy of propositions was mistaken.
He had no doubt, in fact
that it *must* be mistaken
because, while one might well question
the credentials of *philosophers*
in claiming to put forward
propositions that were both synthetic and necessary
-- not merely analytic
but not contingent either --
he thought it perfectly clear
that propositions of that sort
were a common form
so to speak
in the natural sciences and mathematics
which were analytic
but were not empirical and contingent either ...
< Magee >
In other words
these were propositions
which applied to the world
yet could not be derived
from observations of the world
< Warnock >
Yes, which we could establish
simply by argument
He called them
'synthetic *a priori*'
< Magee >
If such propositions
apply to the world
yet are not read from the world
by any observation or experience
how do we arrive at them ?
< Warnock >
Well, that of course
is exactly the crux ...
One has to introduce here
a distinction to which Kant
attached the utmost importance --
the distinction between
what he called 'things-in-themselves'
or the world as it is 'in itself'
and 'appearances'
Now, on the question
of things-in-themselves
Kant would have said
-- we just can't make any demands --
... that is
things-in-themselves simply are as they are
and there's nothing we can do about that
But if you move
to the topic of the world
as we experience it ...
... as it presents itself to us
as an object of experience ...
... to the world of what he called 'appearances'
then, he said
it's a different matter
because there are certain conditions, he claimed
which *any* world must satisfy
if it is to be
a possible object of experience at all
< Magee >
For us
< Warnock >
For us and
-- it is vitally important to add --
anybody and everybody
He thought it a crucial fact
that the world is
-- any 'world' *must* be --
a *common* object of experience
to an indefinite array
of subjects of experience
And if there is to be such a world
one that can be experienced
talked about
and known about in common
by a community
of subjects of experience
then, he argued
there are conditions
which must satisfy ...
... and so we can say *a priori*
that 'appearances'
must satisfy conditions ...
< Magee >
Would it be correct
to express what you have just said
in the following way ?
What we can experience
or perceive, or know
must of course depend
on what there is to experience
or perceive, or know ...
... but it must also depend
on the apparatus we have for experiencing
and perceiving and knowing ...
... and what that apparatus is
is a contingent matter
To use a modern example:
We happen to be equipped
to interpret electromagnetic waves
of some frequencies
but not others:
our bodies are able
to translate their reception of light rays
into perceptions of their surroundings
but we cannot do this with radio waves
or X-rays
Yet it is imaginable
that we might have been able
to apprehend reality
in terms entirely different
from those in which we do
Now Kant is saying
that this being so
for us to be able to experience
anything at all
it has to be such
as can be coped with
by the apparatus we have
This is not to say
that nothing else can exist
but it does mean
that nothing else
can be experienced
or perceived
or known *by us* ...
< Warnock >
Well, I would qualify that in one way
Kant didn't, I think
want to get into
purely empirical considerations
about what our sensory equipment
specifically is
-- what kind of eyes and ears
and other sense organs we have --
I think he was trying
to say something more general than that
-- that the notion of a subject of experience
presented with a world as an object of experience
requires that such a subject should have
sensory capacities of some kind
and intellectual
and conceptual capacities of some kind --
But he didn't want to say that
except in certain very general respects
they must be of this specific kind
or that ...
He wouldn't have been interested
in whether our eyes are different
from those of a kestrels
or badger, for example ...
... his general claim
was that an experiencing subject
must have some way of perceiving
some faculty of what he called
'sensible intuition'
< Magee >
So the point, then,
is that perceiving subjects *as such*
cannot but bring certain predisposition to bear
and only what fits in with those predispositions
can be experienced
< Warnock >
That's absolutely right, yes
< Magee >
This, I believe
was something the very nature of which
had never occurred
to any philosopher before
< Warnock >
No, genuinely novel, I think
There are certain passages in Hume
which look in a way
like anticipations of Kant
on this point ...
... passages in which he describes how
on the basis of experienced data
or 'impressions'
we come to construct our picture
of a world of objects ...
... but Hume put all that forward
as just a bit of empirical psychology
The idea that we have here
is not just some facts about experience
but necessary conditions
of the very *possibility* of experience ...
... that was Kant's fundamental
and genuinely original contribution
< Magee >
What was the new view
of the nature of human knowledge
that this lead him towards ?
< Warnock >
Well, he put forward the claim that
if one thought carefully enough
and argued long enough
one could specify
what he called
the Form of any possible experience
He gave this enterprise
the name of
the 'Metaphysics of Nature'
or sometimes
the 'Metaphysics of Experience'
What he called the 'Matter of Experience'
that was a contingent question
and there might be this or that
actually happening
as a matter of sheer empirical fact
But he thought one could spell out
and think out
what the Form
-- as he called it --
of any possible experience
must be ...
... and this would be
a body of doctrine
that would tell you
something about the world
of course
because it's telling you
what the essential form is ...
... but would also
tell you something necessary
that couldn't be otherwise ...
< Magee >
... and because there are propositions which do this
Leibniz and Hume had it wrong to insist
that all meaningful propositions
must be either:
analytic and *a priori*
( true or false by nature of the terms used
and the rules governing their use
and thus knowable in advance
of their external application )
or
synthetic and *a posteriori*
( true or false according to how things are observed to be
in the empirical world
and therefore knowable only after the event
because such knowledge depends on experience )
We now have a proposition of a third kind
synthetic yet *a priori* propositions
( which are about the world
yet are not validated by experience
-- true or false about the world
yet knowable in advance -- )
Can you give any examples
of propositions of this sort ?
< Warnock >
Well, putting it in the most general terms
they divide into two broad classes
First of all
Kant tried to deal
with what he called
the 'Form of Sensibility'
or rather the two Forms
Space and Time
He argued that
these were imposed upon our experience
upon the world as object of experience
by the nature of our sensibility
< Magee >
I'm sorry, I want to interrupt you here
because I think
this is an extraordinarily difficult idea
for many people to grasp
Kant was arguing
that Space and Time
do not characterise things
as they are in themselves ..
< Warnock >
.. yes indeed ..
< Magee >
.. but are inescapable
modes of experience
for us
< Warnock >
That's right
< Magee >
So although it is only in those dimensions
that we can experience the world
they cannot be said to exist
independently of us
and of our experience
< Warnock >
That's certainly right
If you raise the question:
'What about the creation as it is in itself
what kind of spatial and temporal order
does it display ?'
Kant would say:
'Not a discussable topic'
All we can talk about, he insists
is that world which
is an object of experience to us
-- the world as it appears --
but the claim is that we can say
of any conceivable such world
whatever objects it may happen to contain
and whatever events may occur there
that objects will be spatially extended
and located in space
and that events
will both take time
and occur in an ordered temporal sequence ...
That must hold, he argues
for any conceivable objects
and any possible happenings ...
And, if that is not ambitious enough
he adds another striking
and certainly controversial claim:
the detailed specification of the form of Space
he says, is provided by geometry
and that of Time, by arithmetic
That, he says
is how geometry and arithmetic themselves are 'possible' ...
... both are bodies of propositions
which are neither contingent nor analytic
but 'synthetic *a priori*' ...
... and they have that character
because they specify Forms of experience
that is
conditions of its possibility
< Magee >
They are bodies of knowledge
and the knowledge they give us
is given to us *in advance of*
any possible application in experience
< Warnock >
Well, that was his view, yes
But it is, I suppose
particularly debatable
whether spatial and temporal concepts
are really limited
in the rather direct and simple way
he seems to suggest
to geometry and arithmetic
< Magee >
You imply that it is still controversial
in our own day
< Warnock >
Oh absolutely yes
< Magee >
Now, given synthetic *a priori* propositions ...
< Warnock >
Could I just intervene ...
I was going to say
that Kant's synthetic *a priori* propositions
divided into two broad classes
We've only dealt with one of them
those that spell out
the Forms of Sensibility
If I could just briefly bring in the second ...
He thought that there are also
what he calls
Forms of Understanding
or forms of thought
as one might say
I think the fundamental principle
of his argument here
is that any possible world of experience
any world about which objective statements can be made
and (sometimes) known to be true
must necessarily be
in certain respects
*orderly*, and predictable
He tries to show that on this basis
we can derive,
as conditions of the possibility of Understanding
of objective knowledge,
the Newtonian principle
of universal causal determinism;
and then
rather implausibly
he also tries to show that
Newton's law of conservation of matter
states a condition of the possibility of experience too ...
So he's trying to bring in physics, you see
-- rather as he sought to bring in mathematics
in relation to the Forms of Sensibility --
he now tries to bring in
the fundamental principles of physical science
in relation to the
Forms of Understanding
Ambitious undertaking ...
< Magee >
We are beginning to get
the outline of a total picture
of human knowledge
but the picture is so large
that I want to pause here
for a moment
to bring out
some of its main features
Kant argues that because
all our perceptions and experiences
comes to us
through our sensory
and mental apparatus
they come to us
in forms which are sense-dependent
and mind-dependent
We can have no direct access
to things as they are in themselves
by which he means things unmediated by
the Forms of our Sensibility, and
the Forms of our Understanding
< Warnock >
And it would make no sense
to suggest that we might have
< Magee >
I'm glad you emphasised that
Now,
no matter what Forms of Apprehension
we may happen to have,
possible experience
must be conformable to them
to be able to be experience
for us, at all
< Warnock >
Yes, absolutely
< Magee >
Part of the programme
which Kant then sets himself
is to carry out
a thoroughgoing investigation
into what the nature
of those Forms is
If that investigation
is both complete and successful
it will tell us
what the limits of
all possible knowledge are
Is that right ?
< Warnock >
Yes
< Magee >
And anything that falls outside those limits
is simply not knowable by us
Among his conclusions are:
that any experienced world perceived
by experiencing subjects
must appear to be ordered
in the dimensions
of space and time
but that space and time
have no reality
independent of this ordering
of appearances
and therefore no reality
independent of experience
and the same with causes:
that events in such a world
must appear to be causally interrelated
but it makes no sense
to speak of causal connections
existing independently of experience;
and, that these facts
make possible the success of science
for they are what make it possible
for us to have unrestrictedly general knowledge
of the world of all actual
and possible experience
and science is solely about
the world of actual and possible experience
not about the world as it is in itself ...
All concepts
which purport to relate to anything that can be known
must be derived
from actual or possible experience;
otherwise
either they are empty
or they can never be validated
The implications of all this are radical
not only for what is asserted
but what is predicted
are they not ?
< Warnock >
Yes
That's certainly true
and fundamentally true
Knowledge, for Kant
is bounded by
'possible experience'
and I find it hard to believe
that it wasn't, so to speak
something of a disappointment to Kant
that this is the position
he got himself into
One gets the impression
from the way he embarks on his inquiries
that he would have liked, ideally
to build a firm foundation
for theological speculation
about God and the soul
and metaphysical speculation
about the cosmos ...
Having shown, as he thinks
how it is that mathematics and science
can constitute impregnable bodies of knowledge
it would have been splendid
to be able to do the same
for a reformed theology
and metaphysics
But what he actually finds himself obliged to say
is that there can be no such foundation
-- all we can establish foundations for
is 'possible experience', and
what can be the object of possible experience --
And if you try to go beyond that
if you try and raise questions
about how the cosmos should be categorised
quite independently of the limits
of any possible experience
or if you try to talk
about God and the soul
then you enterprise must collapse
and be in principle vacuous
Kant is saying that, certainly
however unhappy he may have been
to reach that conclusion
< Magee >
Now although Kant argues
that is is permanently impossible
for us to know
whether or not God exists
and whether or not we have souls
he did himself believe
that God does exist
and that we have souls
didn't he ?
< Warnock >
Yes, indeed
< Magee >
But he was clear
that these beliefs
are a matter of unsecured faith
not of possible knowledge
Even so, how
-- on his own premises --
can he regard talk about God
or the soul
as even intelligible
Why is it not vacuous ?
< Warnock >
Yes, that is a very good question
and one on which
he is in fact slightly shifty, I think
What Kant does
could be described
as turning the whole issue upside down
in a rather interesting way
Some, at any rate, of his predecessors
had made the supposition
that our moral convictions and attitudes
and our religious convictions
stand in need of
some kind of metaphysical foundation
and they tried to provide
one in the form of theology
and philosophical ethics ...
... whereas Kant finishes up
putting the thing
exactly the other way up
He says that
we are not only *entitled* to moral convictions
and religious convictions
-- he thought it inescapable that we should have them --
he also argues that
such convictions must lead us inescapably
to essential metaphysical unempirical doctrines
about God and the soul
Those doctrines themselves, however
so far as they have any foundation at all
are founded directly on our
primitive moral convictions themselves ...
... so that it's those that are
the really fundamental thing
while theology and metaphysics
are a rather frail
high-flying superstructure
on that foundation
< Magee >
I'd like to go over that again
because it is important
interesting
and startling
Kant is saying this:
that it is an undeniable empirical fact
that most of us
have some moral convictions
which we find ourselves
unable to ignore
even when we want to
Now, for these convictions
to have any validity or even significance
-- and for the basic moral concept
such as *good*, *bad*, *right*, *wrong*, *ought*
and so on,
to have validity or significance --
we must have some freedom of choice ...
... there must be some area,
some space, however narrow
within which we can exercise
our own discretion ...
... for if there is not,
( if it is *never* true to say that
we could have acted otherwise than we did )
any attempt at moral evaluation
is empty and meaningless ...
... so if moral concepts
posses any significance at all
some degree of free will
has to be a reality ...
... and for *that* to be so
there must be at least some part of our being
which is independent
of the empirical world of matter in motion
governed by scientific laws
for it must be possible for us
to move some of the material objects
in that world
namely our bodies, 'at will'
I suspect that 'free'
in the context of this discussion means
'not governed by scientific laws'
and we are forced to the conclusion
that we must be possessed of at least
partially free spirits or souls
Now I see the argument very clearly
up to that point
and it seems to be enormously powerful
in fact persuasive
But how does Kant justify
the further giant stride
from that conclusion
to the existence of God ?
< Warnock >
Well, in trying to deal with that
I'm not quite sure that
I'm not going back a stage
You raised the point a minute or two ago
that Kant's conclusion
appeared to be coming out
rather like this:
that when we try to talk about God and the soul
what we find ourselves saying
is not just not provable
( in any sort of empirical way
or any *a priori* way either )
but actually not really meaningful
I don't think
we've quite dealt with that yet
but I think it's absolutely true
and something that Kant
was very unwilling to admit
What he says about himself
in relation to theology
and religion is that,
in a much-quoted phrase
'I have denied knowledge
to make room for faith'
he had simply shown
why it was
that the subject matter of theology
is not a possible topic of knowledge
But then, he says
no one need be alarmed by that
because surely we all have known all along
that it's essentially a matter of faith
But, as you rightly say
one could insist that his arguments
had really been more radical than that
'It isn't just that
when I talk about God
I am saying things
that I don't know to be true'
his argument really seems to lead
to the conclusion that:
'I don't know what I'm saying
or that what I'm saying
doesn't really mean anything'
It's clear that he was very reluctant
to draw that conclusion
What he tries to say is that
all he has done
is to show
it's not a matter
of knowledge or proof
< Magee >
Yes
And I suppose *his* point
on that issue is that
whereas it is superstitious to rest on faith
in a question that can be decided
if that question cannot be decided
then it is not irrational
to entertain a belief
on one side of it
< Warnock >
Absolutely. Yes
< Magee >
At the very beginning of this discussion
you suggested that
the problem which really launched Kant
on his philosophical enterprise
was the apparent conflict
between Newtonian physics
and the existence of ethics
How,
in the light of everything we have said up to this point,
did he attempt to solve this problem ?
< Warnock >
He resolved it
even in his own view
to a really quite minimal extent, I think ...
... I think this was something
of which he himself was perfectly aware
What he would claim
is that by making clear
the distinction between:
the world as appearance
( as an object of experience )
and
the world of things-in-themselves
He is in a position
to say that:
On the one hand
there is the world of appearances
and the physical sciences in principle
give us the whole truth about that
( as he believed they did ...
... he had no doubt
that Newton had got it absolutely right
and that a physicist's description
of the world as an object of possible experience
was essentially correct
and could be exhaustive )
But, he says
bear in mind
that we are there talking about
the world of experiences ...
... there is also,
on the other hand
the topic of things-in-themselves
and here,
there is room
so to speak
for other sorts of concepts altogether
-- of free will
of rational agency
right and wrong
good and bad
the soul --
there is room for these concepts
not in the world of appearances
but outside the world of appearances
Of course he saw that,
on his own principles,
he would have to say
that these matters
couldn't be topics of knowledge
Had you said to him:
'Do you know that there is such a thing as free will ?'
he would consistently have said:
'No, I do not know any such thing
All I know is that there is room for that possibility'
He claims no more
< Magee >
But he would also have said
that he could not help *believing*
that there must be such a thing as free will
< Warnock >
Oh, certainly
Yes, he would have gone on to say that too
< Magee >
On this view
ethics comes to us
from outside the world of all possible knowledge
Does Kant have a view
about where it comes from ?
How do we get it ?
< Warnock >
Well, the short and, by itself
rather unilluminating answer is that
he thought it came out of reason
But is removal
so to speak
of moral concepts out of the world
leaves him, of course
with a battery of awful problems
which in fact
he hardly gets round to handling seriously
For instance
if you say that the 'will'
( and moral thought
and moral consciousness generally )
operate in some way
outside the world of appearances altogether
then one fairly obvious enormous problem
that you have
is that of
how moral decisions
( the 'will'
moral thought )
impinges on the real world
as we experience it at all ?
How can it make any *difference* ?
He seems to have separated
the will and the world
so radically,
that while perhaps he created room
for moral thought
and religious thought to exist,
he has made it impossible for them
to make any difference
to what actually happens
That is one major difficulty
which he does not,
I'm bound to say,
really face
< Magee >
It will help people
to understand the problem further
if you say
what the main conclusions
of his moral philosophy were ...
It is not possible
in the short space of time we have left
to go in to the arguments
with which he supported
those conclusions ...
But if you outline the conclusions themselves
it will contribute
to an understanding ...
< Warnock >
I think one can say something useful
quite briefly about that:
What he really tries to do
in his moral philosophy
is somehow to extract
the essential morality
from the pure concept of rationality
The essential thing
about any agent
of whom one can think or speak
in moral terms
is that s(he) must be a *rational* being,
capable of thinking of reasons for and against
doing this or that, and 'willing' accordingly
Kant tries to argue that:
The essential requirements of morality
are really built into the concept of rationality itself ...
... that those requirements must,
*a priori*,
be acknowledged
by any rational creature
as binding
Essentially
he tries to show that:
Only a body of principles of action
corresponding to our principles of morality
could consistently
and therefore rationally
be universally adopted
by a community of rational beings ...
< Magee >
And from that
he derives his famous
Categorical Imperative ...
... which perhaps
I should ask you to formulate
< Warnock >
'Act only according to that maxim
by which you can
at the same time
will that it should become a universal law'
The idea is that
if as a rational being
one cannot ( consistently )
will that a 'maxim'
should become a universal law
( that is, should be universally adopted
and acted upon
by everyone alike )
then that maxim
cannot be an acceptable moral rule
( for a rationally accepted moral rule
*must* be such
that everyone could adopt it )
He wants to say that:
What morality really imposes on us
are conditions on conduct
which demand the assent
of any possible community
of rational creatures
and, he further maintains
and rather sketchily tries to show, that:
There is a single determinate set
of such conditions
which alone pass the test
so to speak
of rational acceptability
That, in outline at any rate
is what he is trying to do
< Magee >
Kant's philosophy
is notoriously difficult to understand
at first encounter
and I suspect
some of the people
following our discussions
are experiencing that difficulty
at this very moment
Fundamental to the difficulty
is his contention that:
We simply have no way
of acquiring knowledge
of things as they are in themselves ...
We are permanently screened off from them
by our own limitations
and that these are partly the limitations
of our subject-dependent
( and this means us-dependent )
forms of sensibility and understanding
which include space and time
Is it helpful
do you think
to say people who find
all this hard to grasp:
'Look,
you are already familiar
with some of these ideas
in a different context ...
A great many serious religious people
have always believed something of this sort,
and you know this,
even if you are not religious yourself ...
Such people have always believed
that this world of our experience
is a fleeting world of appearances only
and that what one might call *real* reality,
where all permanent significance resides
is outside this world ...
And that means,
amongst other things,
outside space and time ...
Now what Kant,
being a philosopher,
is trying to do
is to arrive at these ideas
by pure rational argument'
Do you think
it is helpful to say that
or do you think
it just obscures the issue ?
< Warnock >
No
I don't think it does
And one might throw
some light on the issue
by putting it
in this way,
consider the question:
( and don't be put off
by its seeming to be
an excessively hypothetical
and perhaps idle question )
What sort of being
would one have to be
to be acquainted with
things as they are 'in themselves' ...
... that is, to transcend
'the bounds of sense'
and the limitations
of possible experience ?
Well, I believe that
the only possible answer
you can get out of Kant
is that
you'd have to be God ...
For that would involve
your being acquainted with things
in some completely timeless way
without a point of view in space
or any other kind of spatial limitation
with no particular sensory limitation
on the mode of acquaintance
and of course
not thinking in French
or English, or any particular language
not even in any specific
conceptual form at all ...
Your acquaintance with the universe
would be entirely freed
from any of these limitations ...
And if one asks:
'Well, what would I have to be
to be like that ?'
the only answer is:
'I'd have to be God'
< Magee >
It is a most striking feature
of Kant's philosophy
that although he is deeply versed in mathematical physics
and strides forward
in the central tradition
of science-and-mathematics-based philosophy
exemplified by Descartes
Leibniz, Locke and Hume
and sticks strictly to its rules
( that is to say
he relies solely on argument
appeals only to rational criteria
rejects any appeal to faith or revelation )
he arrives at conclusions
which are in line
not just with religion
but with the more mystical forms
of religious belief,
Eastern as well as Western
< Warnock >
Well, yes
except for the uncomfortable fact
which we mentioned earlier
that Kant would say:
Strictly speaking
all discourse on these topics
is unintelligible to us ...
We don't really know what we mean
And that's a proposition that
-- although he claimed to be their ally --
theologians have been a bit chary of accepting
< Magee >
Until recently
May one not say that nowadays
many theologians
accept precisely that ?
< Warnock >
That may be true
< Magee >
Besides the difficulty
of what he has to say
a quite different problem
about reading Kant
is his prose style ...
There are great philosophers
Plato, Hume, Schopenhauer
who are beautiful writers
and a pleasure to read ...
But not even Kant's best friend
could claim that for him ...
Everyone finds his writing difficult
it is nearly always obscure
and sometimes it borders on the impenetrable ...
Why did he write so badly ?
< Warnock >
I think there are three things
one might say:
I think it's partly due to the fact
which you mentioned right at the beginning:
That he was by profession
( and very single-mindedly by profession )
an academic ...
he certainly does write
in a very heavily academic style
with a great taste for technical terminology
and jargon ...
for elaborate dichotomies
and tabulations ...
for what he called 'architectonic'
it's all very academic
But another important point to remember
about the *Critiques*
( and this again connects
with something you said
at the beginning )
is that by the time
he was seriously launched on writing
what he knew was his master works
he was nearly sixty
he was constantly dogged
by the thought that he might die
before he'd got it all down
There's no doubt
that those many hundred pages
written between the ages
of sixty and seventy
were written extremely fast
He was working in a hurry
and I think that
has a lot to do
with the awkwardness
and at times
almost impenetrability
of his writings
< Magee >
Two hundred years ago
the expectation of life
was so much shorter
than it is today
that it was in fact
perfectly natural for a man
of the age Kant was then
to suppose he was likely to die soon
< Warnock >
Yes, his feeling
of the need to hurry
wasn't unreasonable
Another point,
a less obvious one
is that he was writing in German
which was still
at that date
a somewhat unusual thing
for a man of learning to do
The German language
had bearly become accepted
as a language for academic
and learned use ...
Leibniz, for example ...
I don't believe Leibniz ever wrote
a serious work in German
< Magee >
It was always either Latin or French
< Warnock >
Either Latin or French, yes
And the effect of that
was that there was not
an established style
or tradition, of academic
learned German prose
for Kant to adopt ...
The position was quite different for
for example, Berkeley and Hume
in their time
English had become a thoroughly manageable
well-established language
for that kind of learned use ...
And I think
that must have been a problem to Kant ...
He had no good models to follow
in the language
in which he was writing
< Magee >
The unnecessary difficulty
of Kant's writing
constitutes an intellectual tragedy, I think
because it places an obstacle
which for many individuals proves insuperable
in the way of understanding the work
of possibly the greatest
of all modern philosophers ...
And that means
that his work
even after two hundred years
is still unknown territory
to most educated people ...
I referred at the beginning
to the fact that
he is widely regarded
by serious students of philosophy
as the greatest philosopher
since the ancient Greeks ...
Why does his reputation
stand at quite such a pinnacle ?
< Warnock >
I think I would mention
chiefly two qualities
as entitling him to
his pinnacle of fame:
I think he was quite exceptionally *penetrating*
in the sense
that he was able to see
an intellectual problem
in something which had previously
been taken for granted
as not worth much attention ...
He had an extraordinary capacity
to see where the problems were
( and that's one of the greatest
most fundamental philosophical gifts
-- to be able to see
that there is a problem
where everyone else
is going along quite happily
not thinking about it much )
Then I think the other thing
( and this connects perhaps
with his academic professionalism )
is that he was
extremely good at seeing
how the whole compass of his arguments
fitted together
-- how what he says
on this topic or that might repercuss
so to speak
on what he's said
somewhere else
or in some other connection
He was very self-conscious
and professionally methodical
in that sort of way ...
... there was nothing piecemeal
or makeshift, or hand-to-mouth
about his way of going to work
One has the feeling
that the whole huge enterprise
is firmly under control
He does, I must say
make writers like Locke and Berkeley
and indeed Hume
excellent though they are
look to me
rather like amateurs ....
-- Warnock-Magee
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Footnote
========
[1] *The Great Philosophers* :: Brain Magee :: ISBN 0-19-282201-2
<< Preface >>
In the English-speaking world
philosophy is not part
of the mental furniture
of most people
even the most educated at universities
I suppose the majority
of intellectual women and men
regardless of education
read novels and see plays;
they take a newspaper-reading interest in politics
and through that
and their work-experience
pick up some economics;
many of them read biographies
and thereby learn some history
But philosophy remains a closed book
except to the few
who make a study of it
Partly this is due to Anglo-Saxon pride
at not being too concerned
with abstract ideas
Whatever the reasons in full
most well-read Anglo-Saxons
are familiar with the names
of the great philosophers
throughout their adult lives
without ever knowing
what their fame rests on,
what indeed
any of the famous philosophers
is famous *for*
Why are Plato and Aristotle household names
more than two thousand years
after their deaths ?
A similar question
can be asked about certain philosophers
of more recent times
The answer, of course
is that their work
is part of the foundations
of Western culture and civilisation
But how ?
This book offers the beginning
of an answer to that question ...
If you were to go to a university
to study philosophy
you would almost certainly find
that the core of the curriculum
was about the nature, scope and limits
of human knowledge,
something which
( after the Greek word 'episteme'
meaning knowledge )
is called epistemology ...
For most of the subjects history
certainly many centuries
this has constituted
its main preoccupation
and for that reason
it dominates university courses ...
But subsidiary branches of philosophy
can be fascinating too
For some people
the most interesting of all
are moral and political philosophy;
but there are also aesthetics, logic
and philosophy of language
philosophy of mind
philosophy of science
philosophy of religion
and many others ...
Several are touched on
in this book;
but in the nature of things
it has not been possible
to do justice to them all
in so short a space;
so for clarity's sake
I have stayed close
to the central stream
of the subject's development
and followed that through
and looked at subsidiary aspects of it
only when they compelled attention
Resisting temptation to digress was difficult
for there were so many things
I would like to have included
but, alas, could not find the space for
This book is based on a series
of television programmes
first transmitted
by the BBC, in 1987
It does not consist
merely of transcripts
of the programmes;
the contributors and I started with those
but treated them with the irreverence
that we would treat any first draft
The chief point
which I as editor reiterated
was that the book
would have a life of its own
independent of the television programmes
and therefore
that we should take trouble
to make it as good as we could
in its own right
unconfined by what we had said
on screen
The contributors responded
with improvements at every level
from detailed polishing
to radical restructuring
The need to publish the book
at the time that
the television programme
went on air
meant that the complete manuscript
had to be rushed
to the publishers
immediately after
the last of the programmes
(which happened to be
the one on the American Pragmatists )
had been put on tape
This was particularly hard on
the protagonist in that programme
because he wanted to recast
his whole contribution
whereas the exigencies of time
were such that
responsibility for seeing it to press
had to be undertaken immediately by me
in London,
he being in New York
He gave me detailed notes and guidelines
and I did my best
but that is one discussion in the book
for which we would
have liked more time
The television series
was prepared and put on tape
over a period of two and half years
but the most important decisions
were the earliest;
how to divide up the subject matter
and which contributors to invite
Different and equally defensible answers
were available to both questions
and on both
I went through changes of mind
During this period
I conducted running conversations with
a private think-tank
consisting chiefly of
Bernard Williams and Isaiah Berlin
but including Anthony Quinton
and John Searle
As often as not
these four gentlemen
would give me four incompatible
pieces of advice
on the same issue
and for that reason alone
they can none of them be blamed
for the decisions
I actually took
But their help was beyond price
for it meant that every decision
was subjected to critical evaluation
by someone other than myself
and compared with viable alternatives
before being adopted
I extend my warmest gratitude
to them all
I want to thank also
the producer of the series
Jill Dawson who managed
the very extensive
administrative arrangements involved
as well as
directing the studio crews
and cameras
in most of the programmes
Lastly, I would like to thank Susan Cowley
for her typing of the manuscript
and David Miller, of the University of Warwick
for his reading of it
and his many useful suggestions
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