Category: Commentary, Critique, and Response

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.htmlWAS KANT AN ENLIGHTENMENT LIBERAL?

> Curt Doolittle

If you consider the enlightenment an effort to escape the church and mysticism once again, then perhaps.

If you consider the enlightenment a time period, then maybe.

If you consider the enlightenment the restoration of scientific or empirical thought after Justinian’s initiation of suppression of it, then no – he is a member of the counter enlightenment.

We tend to treat the anglo, German, French and Jewish enlightenment programs as different approaches to the advent of literacy and prosperity, and the admission of cultural failure after the European wars, and/or escaping the church.

But the French, German, and Jewish efforts were just as much a reaction to anglo island empiricism as they were to the church, wars, literacy and prosperity.

As human beings we like ideal types and single axis of causation.

But that desire is merely one of our many cognitive biases.

It reduces the cost of contemplating complex things.

But truth, if we desire it, is not bounded by the pragmatism of costs.

Just the opposite.

>Curt Doolittle

(Sorry Stephen. Didn’t realize you were the author of the original post. )

>Shane Young

Yes. Kant is an Enlightened Liberal. However, it’s important to understand that “Enlightened” is not synonymous with “Liberal”. If it were, the question becomes: “Was Kant an Enlightened enlightened or a Liberal liberal?”

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>Curt Doolittle

Shane: Requires definition of both enlightened and liberal. Does liberal mean universalist, or simply that the franchise should be extended? If the franchise should be extended, to what extent. Does universalist mean unscientific (non-correspondent with reality)?

Kant’s statements above, are not universalist. They are limitations on enfranchisement.

An anglo Classical Liberal wanted to enfranchise all property owners.

That was an easy point of demarcation.

>Shane Young

Curt: Ad Fontes.

http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/CCREAD/etscc/kant.html

Kant. What is Enlightenment

Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one’s own understanding without another’s guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one’s own mind without another’s g…

COLUMBIA.EDU

>Curt Doolittle

Yes, well, why don’t we look for an NPV, rather than Kant to supply his own circular definition. It’s not like he he was giving us a scientific analysis. He was doing the opposite: looking for an excuse to preserve authority.

>Shane Young

I take Kant for his word.

>Curt Doolittle

OK. But that doesn’t have much to do with the question.

Was he an enlightenment liberal? To answer that question requires that we have definitions of The Enlightenment (not ‘personal enlightenment’) and of ‘liberal’. It’s true that the term enlightenment evolved in response to the french use of it, which in turn was a reference to Kant’s essay, but the scholars who used and still use the term, refer to the time period and the SET of philosophers across all of Europe who transformed the discourse on ‘the good’ away from middle-age mystical-metaphor, and returned it to its origins in western correspondence with reality, and individualism.

Now when we get to the term ‘liberal’ the term was intentionally appropriated and abused at several stages. As far as I know, the original term referred to extending the franchise, even if the term ‘liberty’ in its original meaning meant the preservation of local law and custom. The purpose of the use of the term was propaganda: that the emergent middle class that now was more economically important than the landed aristocracy, was justified in taking political power from that aristocracy, while preserving aristocratic culture themselves by adopting it.

This term was later extended to all classes, and the general term equality.

Then later, to that of universalism.

“Meaning” (an analogy) is quite different from “a sequence of operations” (a name). The latter exists and the former does not. Or more precisely, the latter is informationally independent, while the former is loaded and fungible.

>Shane Young

Historically, The Age of Enlightenment and the Age of Reason are not equal. From this perspective, there is little difference between the Middle Ages and the Enlightenment.

>Shane Young

To clarify, Enlightenment (notice Cap) is synonymous with Germano-mysticism. In a Germano-enlightened culture, one is free to be an authoritarian mystic i.e. an Enlightened Liberal. One could say, it is one’s Duty to act as such.

>Curt Doolittle

Exactly, just as mystical analogy(meaningful), rationalism(internally consistent), empirical (externally correspondent), and operational (existentially possible sequence) are not equal – in the beginning of that sequence is largely imaginary, and the end of that sequence prohibits the imaginary and depends entirely on the existential.

So again, the categories by which we attach meaningful names to these things are one thing (an effort at communication by analogy) and the categories of necessary operational properties and causal relations are something else.

Which is why this matter is one of constant debate:

The difference between the experience of meaning, the internal consistency of our terms, the external correspondence of those terms, and the operational possibility that such events could have occurred.

The French, German and Jewish enlightenments were reactions as much to the Anglo Empirical enlightenment as they were to the opportunity to displace the church and justify and secure political power from the aristocracy.

They wanted to secure the power just as the island-dwelling British had done. But since they were ether landed peoples (french catholic and german protestant) or diasporc (jewish) they could not adopt anglo empirical and commercial universalism without preserving authority. Because if they did, they would lose group cohesion – they would lose local moral authority of their traditions ,and therefore control over one another as a competitor to other groups. They had no ocean to protect them.

Hence why americans Canadians and australians are the world advocates of universalism: they carry with them the anglo island tradition into sparsely populated territories.

And as population has increased, the friction between groups of dissimilar interests that affected Europe, now has started to affect america and Canada.. with Austraila lagging behind.

All verbal argument is justification of group evolutionary strategy, or individual reproductive strategy.

Science is not necessarily advantageous.

That is why the french, germans and jews rebelled against empiricism in the age of enlightenment.

To preserve their groups.