Autonomy of Reason and Practical Cognition

Autonomy of Reason and Practical Cognition Thomas Buchheim Kant’s philosophy is arguably the most decisive and powerful philosophical attempt ever to assert freedom as the essence of man that distinguishes him exclusively. No other being, whose existence we are objectively aware of, has according to this Kantian conception, if remotely true, traits that are similar to freedom, and thanks to it man determines everything that goes beyond mere nature. However, Kant pays dearly for this determining power of human freedom insofar it is not situated within a common context with nature but can only become real practically – in human actions –, so that it cannot be cognized theoretically as objective reality or given property of man. Moreover, it concerns practically only what is morally practical, whereas for example artistic or creative freedom, but also freedom of action, which determines the political and liberalist concept of human freedom remain out of consideration. For they are, if we want to trust Kant, nothing more than meshes of natural processes that occur under heteronomous laws that have at most indirectly to do with freedom. For that reason, I myself do not think and cannot endorse Kant’s conception when it comes to freedom, even if I deeply admire the almost indefeasible fortress that Kant built for the practical power of freedom in his sense. 1. Two arguments against Kant’s conception of freedom The almost indefeasible fortress of Kantian freedom has been subject to heavy attacks through one of its indispensable contravallation, where it seems to be most vulnerable, not only by Kant’s contemporaries, but also in most recent times, namely concerning the problem of how freedom, morally determined, is related to freedom of immoral actions, whereby ‘immoral’ has to be understood as counter- or anti-moral, that is condemnable or evil, not as merely amoral or morally neutral. Defining freedom morally implies the necessity of conceiving everything that is immoral as being unfree or not free. This problem is well-known and discussed in the context of the problem of “positive evil”, that is an evil that is not conceived privatively as a mere occurring or relative defect of something good, but as a freely committed, freely intended and only therefore imputable evil. Kant writes on this issue in his famous note to the First Section of his Religion: 2 [1] “If the good = a, the opposite contradicting it is the not-good. Now, this not-good is the consequence either of the mere lack of a ground of the good, = o, or of a positive ground antagonistic to the good, = -a; in this latter case, the not-good can also be called positive evil. (With respect to pleasure and pain there is a similar middle term, whereby pleasure = a, pain = -a, and the State in which neither of the two obtains is indifference, = o.) Now, if the moral law in us were not an incentive of the power of choice, the morally good (the agreement of the power of choice with the law) would be = a, and the not-good, = o; the latter, however, would be just the consequence of the lack of a moral incentive, = a x o. In us, however, the law is incentive, = a. Hence the lack of the agreement of the power of choice with it (= o) is possible only as the consequence of a real and opposite determination of the power of choice, i.e. of a resistance on its part, = -a; or again, it is only possible through an evil power of choice. And so between an evil and a good disposition (the inner principle of maxims) according to which the morality of an action must be judged, there is no intermediate position“ (RBR AA 6, 22 f. Fn.) Kant’s conception of freedom is therefore committed to be able to consistently think such a positive evil as freely acted subversion of the morally good. For if immoral actions fell out of freedom, and if hence our actions were under heteronomous laws of nature, then also the reverse, namely morally good actions would not be imputable to the individual agent’s realization of freedom but to his merely unimpeded autonomy of universal practical reason. Karl Leonhard Reinhold and Kant’s early critics coined the term “intellectual fatalism” for this condition of will, which cannot be assumed to be free. Their argument goes as follows: Where the universal autonomy of reason is confronted with few heteronomous obstacles, there the morally good realizes itself as a kind of fortune, whereas in all other cases the heteronomous conditions remain prevalent that we call “immoral” or “evil” with regard to human beings. Strictly speaking, however, these conditions are actually not “evil”, since heteronomous conditions are not imputable to the free decision of the subject. What is currently discussed under the label “moral luck” – a concept introduced by Bernard Williams – resembles the intellectual fatalism in different ways. In recent times, Reinhold’s striking argument against Kant’s conception of autonomy has been introduced in the contemporary debate by Jörg Noller, who has explored the different ways of how the post-Kantian philosophy, Kant included, attempted to escape intellectual fatalism. 3 Already Fichte, in his System of Ethics from 1798, had famously attempted to escape this dilemma by opposing an intellectual “laziness” or “inertia” to the morally reflecting understanding of each subject. Those who overcome this laziness conscientiously to sufficient extent act morally good out of individual freedom; those who follows his laziness all too fast and without full moral consciousness act morally evil in the same free manner. However, Michelle Kosch has recently pointed to the fact that this kind of evil would not be any more an individual and positive opposition to the morally good (although Fichte calls this laziness explicitly “positive” (System of Ethics, ed. Breazeale/Zöller, 189), and identifies it with Kant’s radical evil), but rather understood in a privative way that, according to Kosh (and here I agree with her), would not any longer merit the label of a “positive evil”: „[...] the intellectual element which it was so important to preserve (to distinguish human evil from mere animality) really does have to be present in limited quantity (or with limited effectiveness) in order for evil to be possible.” And so it wasn’t “an alternative to the picture on which evil is a deficiency, and particularly a deficiency in the exercise of the intellect”. Michell Kosch has used this argument as an objection to Schelling’s attempt to establish a positive evil, but Kant is, as mentioned earlier, equally committed to consider the moral alternative to good as being positive or stemming from practical reason, if freedom itself is to be defined morally. What kind of solution does Kant offer, in order to prevent Fichte’s abandonment of individual evil and endorsement of a non sufficiently reflecting action as privative immoral, or to escape intelligible fatalism, according to which the morally good alone is grounded in the full autonomy of reason, whereas the positive evil remains utterly erratic and incomprehensible? In her above mentioned talk, Michel Kosch has interpreted these alternatives in terms of a dilemma of two “claims”, one of which would obviously have to be denied, although both should actually be preserved both from a Kantian and a morally rational point of view: (a) the rationality of an action is a necessary condition for the freedom of this action. (sofern eine böse Handlung frei ist, muss sie notwendigerweise vernünftig sein) and 4 (b) the rationality of an action is a sufficient condition for the moral goodness of that action. (vernünftig zu sein ist für sich hinreichend, um eine Handlung als moralisch gut zu qualifizieren) It seems that we need either to give up the connection between rationality and freedom of an action or to deny the relationship between rationality and morally goodness. Or, as a third option, we could argue that evil differs from good in terms of its lower degree of rationality. However, in this case the moral definition of freedom would become problematic. In what follows I want to examine whether and how Kant can escape this dilemma and both objections of intelligible fatalism on the one hand, and the impossibility of a positive evil on the other hand. The core of the solution that Kant claims in my eyes consists in the argument, that practical rationality and theoretical understanding and all logical operations being directed towards cognition are not of gradually but of vectorially distinghished relevance, depending on whether it logically apprehends the right or wrong. To logically apprehend the wrong is in its full sense a mode of understanding and rationality, even if one is not aware of its being failed or wrong. Reason is already rational before it rationally conceives either what is right or what is wrong. And for that reason also the logical and rational conception of failure is necessarily a mode of reason. Rationality would not be what it is if it were not the same in the case of failure and in the case of truth. 2. Good and evil as objects of practical reason The section in which Kant discusses this internal difference of practical reason and on which he builds his conclusions can be found in the second chapter of the Critique of practical reason, a centerpiece of Kant’s moral philosophy, which remarkably is one of the hermeneutically least understood parts of Kant’s conception of freedom.1 Whereas the First Chapter deals with the “Principles of Pure Practical Reason” and constitutes the “autonomy” of pure practical reason (= Theorem IV, AA 5, 33-39), the Second Chapter deals with “the concept of an object of pure practical reason”. Objects are generally and especially in Kant something that is cognizable under certain transcendental conditions (like for example 1 Recently two dissertations on this section (Stephan Zimmermann: Kants ‚Kategorien der Freiheit’, Berlin/Boston 2011 and Heiko Puls: Funktionen der Freiheit. Die Kategorien der Freiheit in Kants ‚Kritik der praktischen Vernunft’, Berlin/Boston 2013) and a new collected volume on the categories of freedom (Stephan Zimmermann Hg.: Die ‚Kategorien der Freiheit’ in Kants praktischer Philosophie. Historisch-systematische Beiträge, Berlin/Boston 2016) have substantially contributed to a better understanding. 5 intuition and functions or categories of the understanding.2 And in fact Kant speaks in this Second Section of practical “cognition” (KpV AA 5, 66.8) of good and evil as objects of practical reason: [2] „by this it happens that, since all precepts of pure practical reason have to do only with the determination of the will, not with the natural conditions (of practical ability) for carrying out its purpose, the practical a priori concepts in relation to the supreme principle of freedom at once become cognitions […] (KpV AA 5, 66.3-8) However, it is something quite different to have certain principles under whose obedience one operates rationally, and to cognize objects on which one directs oneself rationally and in accordance with those principles. The latter is not contained in mere autonomy or selflegislation of reason per se. The object that provides the content of my will is not already good insofar as I or practical reason gives itself a purely formal principle autonomously, and otherwise: Practical reason is not the autonomous master of its principles insofar as the object that provides the content of my volition is good. From the beginning of his Second Critique Kant argues in the quite opposite direction: Will’s determination according the law of reason must not be obtained from what characterizes an object of my volition. No possible object must be the ground of the determination of the will but rather the universal form of the law is meant to be the sufficient reason for it. If this is the case, and if both the goodness of the object and the autonomy of the principle of practical reason are independent, then what matters is to cognize whether and how something that I can will, that is an action, is in accordance with this autonomous law of reason or not. According to Kant, this cognition is a practical cognition which produces the objects of practical reason (good and evil), or more precisely: the relevant object according to the concepts for good and evil – other than in the case of speculative or theoretical reason, without being dependent on a preceding empirical intuition of these objects at all: [3] “the practical a priori concepts in relation to the supreme principle of freedom at once become cognitions and do not have to wait for intuitions in order to receive meaning; and this happens for the noteworthy reason that they themselves produce the reality of that to which they refer (the disposition of the will), which is not the business of theoretical concepts.” (KpV AA 5, 66.8-11) 2 Cf. especially Jochen Bojanowski: „Kant über praktischen Gegenstandsbezug“ in dem erwähnten Sammelband (S. 107-128) and idem.: Kant’s Categories of Practical Reason as Categories of Practical Cognition, in: Kantian Review 20 (2015), S. 211-234. 6 For practical cognition of its object (what, which action do I have to want in my situation most likely?), reason needs no empirical intuition of such objects, since it rather produces the object (that it wants) by means of a pertaining cognition. However reason needs, as Kant goes on, certain categories (= practical concepts a priori), in whose application on empirically underlaid representations it formulates the object so that is cognizable in its status in relation to the highest principle of freedom. A cognition, be it practical cognition or theoretical cognition like in the First Critique cannot exist without a formulation of the object by means of categories. This performance of formulation is not exercised by the universal reason as the provider of autonomous principles, but it is rather the matter of an individual subject of cognition. Kant calls the relevant categories, that is root concepts of our practical reason, as “categories of freedom with respect to the concepts of the good and evil”. The do not concern pure practical reason (as does the principle of autonomy), but “practical reason in general” (AA V, 66), that is reason within a subject that has also to consider empirical conditions and that is directed towards possible actions and intentions within the empirical world. Kant writes: [4] „One quickly sees that in this table freedom is regarded as a kind of causality which, however, is not subject to empirical grounds of determination - with respect to actions possible through it as appearances in the sensible world, and that consequently it is referred to the categories of their natural possibility," while yet each category is taken so universally that the determining ground of that causality can be taken to be also outside the sensible world in freedom as the property of an intelligible being, until the categories of modality introduce, but only problematically, the transition from practical principles in general to those of morality, which can only afterwards be presented dogmatically through the moral law.“ (KpV AA 5, 67) Dealing with these categories and considering actions that are possible through freedom as appearances in the empirical world, each subject’s practical reason cognizes the relevant maxim or rule in relation to the supreme principle of freedom as being permitted or forbidden or at least exceptionally allowed or forbidden or as duty of contrary to duty, maxims or directions of actions that are either rules of volitions or of omission or of making an exception of actions that are in turn either directed to the personality or merely to the condition of person or mutually to a person with regard to the condition of another person. Reason always begins with a formulation of such actions, informed by empirical representations, that is sufficiently specific in order to be caused in a determined way, but also sufficiently general, in order to allow a supersensible causality; for example to insult someone, which requires a certain tone of voice or certain words that are to be produced, although in this case their cause 7 would be to imputed to my free causality, and although people insult others without being aware of it (there exists something like a pathological, automatically triggered compulsion to insult). To cognize that such an insult is allowed for me here or even required, however, does not mean in any case that this is also true and in a moral sense good and right. The question of truth related to the cognition gained through the formulation is rather, as Kant puts it, “problematically introduced” with my practical judgment. On closer consideration it could be morally reprehensible having insulted the person, as if she had to accuse herself of moral misconduct that she is not willing to see. Even I myself could realize it if I did not have already accepted an evil maxim and affirmed and prolonged it with this deed. By cognizing something as something, I cannot ensure that it is what I cognize, even if we speak of a “cognition” in the definite sense of the word only if what we grasp is really true and the same as how we conceive of it. All possible acquisition of cognition is only be possible by passing through possibly error; cognition is problematic as long as it cannot be dogmatically demonstrated out of valid laws and theorems. In case of practical rational cognition, however, we do not speak of “wrong” or “mistaken”, but of “misguided” or “damnable” or “evil”. This becomes obvious, at least according to Kant, since even the criterion of truth and of what is right can be found in a person’s reason (other than in case of theoretical cognition) so that there is a need of a certain “positive antagonist” in our operations of cognition (that is the necessary performance of formulation) in order to arrive at a faulty result, that is in practical terms: to produce an evil disposition of the will.3 3 This antagonist that leads us to a faulty result in practical cognition is what Kant calls in his Metaphysics of Morals an „incapacity“ (MdS AA 6, 227). However, it is not the case that we always need to understand the word “incapacity” as a deficiency or a restriction of a capacity, and hence as something merely privative; for example we speak of the “incapacity” to acknowledge the merits of someone else or the “incapacity” to show gratitude, where the word is used for a inner refusal that is internal to the capacity. We need to understand the passage in this sense. The positivity of evil is not suspended by the fact that it must not be used for a definition of the essence of freedom according to Kant. 8 3. Objective and possible self-corruption in the process of practical cognition According to Kant, moral cognition means “to subject” all our different intentions of actions that we want to realize (including acts of omission) to “the manifold of desires to the unity of consciousness of a practical reason commanding in the moral law, or of a pure will.” (KpV AA 5, 65.25 f.). [5] „since actions on the one side indeed belong under a law which is no law of nature but a law of freedom, and consequently belong to the conduct of intelligible beings, but on the other side as also events in the sensible world yet belong to appearances, the determinations of a practical reason can take place only with reference to the latter and therefore, indeed, conformably with the categories of the understanding, but not with a view to a theoretical use of the understanding, in order to bring a priori the manifold of (sensible) intuition under one consciousness, but only in order to subject a priori the manifold of desires to the unity of consciousness of a practical reason commanding in the moral law, or of a pure will.“ (KpV AA 5, 65) This unity of consciousness is to be produced by ourselves by means of those categories, in which we formulate the intended actions. And this unity can be formed in different ways, depending on whether the moral law is given the supreme condition in a maxim or not the supreme but one that is affected by another condition that is not by all means made explicit. Not all conditions of the of the validity of a sentence need to be made explicit in order to consider the sentence as valid. And precisely this is according to Kant what constitutes the evil, namely to acknowledge the validity of a general sentence or law without explaining the subjective reservations under which it stands despite the approved universality. According to this picture I cognize an action as quite allowed that could be convicted as illegal and contrary to duty according to a dogmatic account. For example the safety regulations of oil drilling on deep sea are in best interest of the oil company that have the license and potential to produce such oil; which is the reason for the fact that a relaxation of safety regulations must be allowed in situations that heavily interfere with this interests, in order to sustain their legitimacy and recognition in general. For otherwise the safety regulations would have to be lowered, in order to even attract producing companies and hold them profitable. By the mere formulation in relevant categories of what is allowed, bidden and forbidden, it is given the rationally justified impression that particular exceptions of the safety regulations be allowed. And this permission is accepted. It is not just apparent but becomes evident by the formulation. 9 In this case, the universal rule is corrupted by its formulation with regard to concrete empirical conditions of a an action that is possible through freedom by an interest, that is the universal law does not hold the supreme condition of the maxims of action in this reasoning, although it is acknowledged with regard to its validity. A positive antagonist against the universal law as an incentive of action realizes itself by the mere formulation of maxims or a framework of prescriptions and legal actions under universal empirical conditions in certain categories. In his paragraph on autonomy (§ 8) of the First Chapter, Kant described this quite clearly as follows: [6] “Thus the moral law expresses nothing other than the autonomy of pure practical reason, that is, freedom, and this is itself the formal condition of all maxims, under which alone they can accord with the supreme practical law. If, therefore, the matter of volition, which can be nothing other than the object of a desire that is connected with the law, enters into the practical law as a condition of its possibility, there results heteronomy of choice, namely dependence upon the natural law of following some impulse or inclination, and the will does not give itself the law but only the precept for rationally following pathological law“ (KpV AA 5, 33) The kind of formulation of actions under conditions of sensibility allows to put a certain matter of volition as a rational condition of the possibility of the practical law itself.4 This leads (due to corrupting, but not lesser reason) to heteronomy of choice (Willkür), namely out of freedom with regard to the sensible conditions, under which one has to act; it leads to heteronomy of choice, that is to a form of patronizing along the guidance of an interest or a matter of volition. However, this introduction to heteronomy is therefore not to a lesser degree free than a sincerely enduring formulation of the object of practical reason. Hence we have shown that Kant does not succumb to the argument of intelligible fatalism, that is that neither the conceivability of a free action that is contrary to the order of the moral law must be abandoned, nor must he hold that evil actions can only be realized by a kind of erratic leap into heteronomy and thus non-freedom. Rather, according to Kant, both follows in the course of an operation of practical reason that is generally indispensable with regard to practical cognition, whereby it is impossible to identify practical reason as autonomously 4 Fichte has overseen this in his conception of evil or immorality as ultimately being based on a laziness to moral „reflection“: the formulation that has to be performed in order to arrive at the cognition of what is duty or permitted and forbidden. In my opinion he explains everything else perfectly – only this slipped his attention. 10 commanding with it being practically cognizing. Pure practical reason cannot command other than the moral law; but “practical reason in general” can (with regard to sensible circumstances under which one has to act) cognize other as being feasible than what is morally right. By the mere imperative, practical reason has not yet cognized anything as being right. But freedom, under the conditions of sensibility, seizes the opportunity afforded by the commandment, as Paul says (Rom 7,8), and therefore realizes either freely the morally good or freely the morally evil. Since practical reason as law-giving cannot be within the same mode of operation than pure practical reason as cognizing, and since both morally good and wrong can be cognized as rationally feasible, both propositions given by Michelle Kosch can be maintained without contradiction – by a mere clarification of their meaning: (a) The rationality of an action is a necessary condition for the freedom of this action. and (b) The rationality of an action is a sufficient condition of the moral goodness of this action. We must merely concede in Kant’s sense that practical reason necessarily operates on two stages, namely first as autonomously law-giving reason and second as reason that cognizes what is feasible. Since the latter is rational in two differently directed versions, we are entitled to say the following: (a*) The rationality of an action (in the sense of a its two stage form as reason being law-giving and cognizing what is feasible under sensible conditions) is a necessary condition for the freedom of this action. and (b*) The rationality of an action (in the sense of a its two stage form as reason being law-giving and cognizing what is feasible under sensible conditions without selfcorruption) is a sufficient condition of the moral goodness of this action. In contrast to a divine being that unconditionally follows the moral principles, man stands under empirical conditions of his existence. For that reason he cannot avoid to observe moral principles other where than in a sensible world and under sensible conditions. 11 For this purpose he needs to cognize what sensible actions satisfy the moral principles most likely, under which his reason stands a priori. And for this cognition he needs to perform formulations with regard to possible actions, as they confirm with the moral principles, that are inaccessible to him. However such formulations are quite accessible by means of categories of freedom, in order to give a good and evil disposition an expression that is rationally compatible with the individual consciousness of the moral law. An evil disposition arises from the positive antagonism of the umbrage that a sensible being takes to the law that is imposed to it regardless of its sensibility. Finally I want to return to the general topic of freedom after Kant. I think I have shown that Kant himself did not hold that human freedom consists merely in the autonomy instead of heteronomy of pure practical reason, but rather in its preservation in everyone’s practical cognition of what is most likely to do under his or her circumstances, that is what is in conformity with this autonomy of pure practical reason. Each cognition, however, presupposes inevitably a conceptual or propositional formulation of that context on which the intention of cognition is directed. It is only by virtue of such a formulation that what is grasped by cognition can either conform with what is true or wrong, that is go wrong. Such a failed conception of the conditions is based on a somehow distorting representation of them by that performance of formulation that remains even lesser undetected the less the relevant cognition is part of a formulated and verified theory or doctrine of even the entire context of that cognition. Whoever is not inclined to difficult or controversial areas of practical cognition can always, by application of the categories of freedom, cognize what is right without distortion of the conditions. He can also expose it to a more or less obvious distortion so that other appears to be feasible than in the case of others in his place. But whoever is looking for the cognition of what is right in difficult or controversial areas of the practical risks to be misled by delusions that he himself does not realize although others may note them. 12 In any case, in my opinion the Kantian argument is of special importance, although it is often neglected in today’s interpretations of his moral philosophy, that, despite the admitted autonomy of our pure practical reason, what is morally right and wrong cannot, as a challenge of distinction, be subject to negotiation of our freedom and the pertaining reasoning of practical reason in general, but binds our freedom, in some circumstances without our awareness. In my opinion, this element of Kant’s moral philosophy has not been taken seriously enough in contemporary critical discussions. From its neglect follows that we are quite evil although we consider ourselves to be in perfect accordance with the Kantian autonomy of freedom.