[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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