Kant's Way out of the Socratic Paradox

Kant’s way out of the Socratic Paradox Abstract Kant’s moral philosophy is challenged by the so-called “Socratic Paradox”: If free will and pure practical reason are to be identified, as Kant argues, then there seems to be no room for immoral actions that are to be imputed to our individual freedom. But how can we explain our freedom to choose between good and evil maxims? Are evil actions merely irrational, or can we interpret them by means of a special kind of rationality? It was the post-Kantian philosopher Karl Leonhard Reinhold who pointed to this problem, which since then has been called “Reinhold’s Dilemma”. I shall argue that Kant’s conception of rationalizing opens a way out of this dilemma. By rationalizing, a formal coherence of one’s maxims is generated, which, however, only suggests the illusion of morality and conformity to the moral law, but in reality follows material and individual motives. The concept of rationalizing thus seems to give a possible answer to the question of how we can act against the demands of the moral law for reasons that are imputable to us as free agents. Keywords: Kant, Socratic Paradox, Rationalizing, Immorality 1. Introduction Kant’s moral philosophy is challenged by the so-called “Socratic Paradox”: If free will and pure practical reason are to be identified, as Kant argues, then there seems to be no room for immoral actions that are to be imputed to our individual freedom. The so-called "Socratic Paradox," consists in the view that "no one does injustice with will, but all those who do injustice do 1 injustice against will," (Plato, Gorgias, 509e5) so that "no one may freely choose to pursue evil or what he considers evil." (Plato, Protagoras, 358c.) But are immoral actions to be adequately characterized as privative and irrational, or is our judgment of blame not based on the assumption that the respective action took place for certain motives and reasons that are attributable to the free agent? The "Socratic Paradox" is based on the following dilemma of two necessary but seemingly irreconcilable demands: (1) Privation thesis (PT): In the case of immoral actions we seem not to use our reason rightly, to be subject to an error, and therefore to act irrationally or unintentionally immorally. (2) Rationality thesis (RT): We are responsible for our immoral actions, as long as they are freely done, so that we must trace them back to a certain form of reflexivity and rationality. As I will show below, Kant attempted to escape this "Socratic Paradox" by developing an elaborate theory of rational volitional self-deception, thus satisfying both the demand for privation (PT) and the demand for rationality (RT). But how can we explain our freedom to choose between good and evil maxims? Are evil actions merely irrational, or can we interpret them by means of a special kind of rationality? It was the post-Kantian philosopher Karl Leonhard Reinhold who pointed to this problem, which since then has been called “Reinhold’s Dilemma”. I shall argue that Kant’s conception of rationalizing opens a way out of this dilemma. By rationalizing, a formal coherence of one’s maxims is generated, which, however, only suggests the illusion of morality and conformity to 2 the moral law, but in reality follows material and individual motives. The concept of rationalizing thus seems to give a possible answer to the question of how we can act against the demands of the moral law for reasons that are imputable to us as free agents. Kant argues against a privative view of error, according to which it is a mere accident that cannot actually be attributed to the subject of knowledge or action, but can only be traced back to a limitation of it: "Only the guilt of ignorance lies [...] within the limits of understanding, the guilt of error we have to ascribe to ourselves.” (9:54). Yet we err, according to Kant, never deliberately, but always in the mode of self-inflicted deception, of erroneously holding for the truth, in that the subject "confuses the semblance of truth with the truth itself" (9:53). But how can we then understand an error—be it theoretical or practical—in such a way that it is not merely an event attributable to heteronomous circumstances of limitation (that would be a form of fatalism), nor in such a way that we knowingly-willingly commit the error (that would be a form of irrationalism)? So how can we be wrong for reasons that can be attributed to us? But what reasons should we have to deceive and lie to ourselves? Isn't self-deception or error a mere mistake that is due to a lack of reason? In the recent debate, Donald Davidson pointed out that “the possibility of irrationality depends on a large degree of rationality.” Irrationality is not simply “a lack of reason,” but a “perturbation of reason,” and thus cannot be understood privatively alone (Davidson 2005, 123). Davidson speaks in this context of the "paradox of irrationality": "The idea of an irrational action, conviction, intention, inference or emotion is paradoxical. For the irrational is not merely the non-rational that lies outside the realm of the rational, but irrationality is a failure within the house of reason." (Davidson 2006, 285) Irrational actions can be made more comprehensible from the reasons-perspective of the agent, which Davidson also calls "rationalization" (Davidson 2006, 286). Rationalization consists in the fact 3 that the reasons for understanding an irrational action carry with them an "aura of rationality," i.e. that they always claim justification. In this context, Davidson stresses the importance of reasons for irrationality: Irrationality only appears when rationality is obviously in place, namely where both cause and effect have contents that stand in such logical relationships to one another that accommodate reason or favor its failure. Events which are perceived only in terms of their physical or physiological characteristics cannot be judged as if they were reasons, as if they were in conflict with each other or as dealing with a subject. (Davidson 2006, 303) As Davidson puts it, mere (natural) causes or “[b]lind forces are in the category of the nonrational, not the irrational" (Davidson 2006, 303). Kant was aware of the problem that it is extremely difficult to determine the falsity of a judgement as the result of an imputable operation of the mind—just as it is problematic to understand an evil action as the result of a rational decision. For also here the question arises how we can intentionally and rationally will the morally wrong. But this requires Kant's imputability thesis (IT) in particular: The human being must make or have made himself into whatever he is or should become in a moral sense, good or evil. These two [characters] must be an effect of his free power of choice, for otherwise they could not be imputed to him and, consequently, he could be neither morally good nor evil. (Rel., 6:45) 4 It is, according to Kant, “impossible at all to comprehend [...] how any force should deviate from its own essential laws” (9:53), so that the same rational capacity that gives the moral law could be the reason for its contravention. But what is the reason for this error—be it theoretical or practical? In what follows, I shall explore this question by further analyzing the practical dialectic as an abuse of reason consisting in a practical self-deception. Kant's concept of practical self-deception will open a way to escape the Socratic Paradox and take a third path beyond voluntarism and intellectualism: Mere voluntarism lacks a justification for our error (we would just act arbitrarily) and does not satisfy RT, whereas intellectualism cannot explain how we should err at all once we know what is (morally) right and wrong, which does not satisfy IT. Special reference will be made to Kant's concept of "dialectic" as a "logic of illusion" and to his concept of "rationalizing". Finally, I examine which rules Kant develops in order to escape the dialectic of reason in practical terms. According to Kant, dialectical irrationality is a phenomenon of its own reality. This sheds light not least on Kant's theory of the irrational. 1 2. Kant on freedom as autonomy Kant’s theory of human freedom is motivated by the strong claim of a moral agent’s absolute volitional imputability. In order to argue for his imputability claim, Kant needs to do justice to two requirements. On the one hand, a person’s decision must not depend on external factors, for in this case an action would not be imputable to the person’s will (i.e. heteronomy). On the other hand, a free decision must not be groundless (i.e. indifferentism), but must follow from reasons that stem from the inner person’s will. Kant attempted to fulfil both requirements by introducing his concept of a “pure will” (RBMR, 6:45). The pure will is essentially independent from external influences, and depends only on its own laws (i.e. autonomy). 5 In order to guarantee absolute and radical self-determination, Kant refers to his conception of freedom as autonomy. In his Critique of Practical Reason, which—even more than his Groundwork—is concerned with this problem, Kant formulated the “first question” in the sense of “whether pure reason of itself alone suffices to determine the will or whether it can be a determining ground of the will only as empirically conditioned” (CPrR, 5:15). This question arises from the critical position of the human will, which “stands between its a priori principle, which is formal, and its a posteriori incentive, which is material, as at a crossroads” (GMM, 4:400). Absolute freedom of the will is only possible by the lawful form of pure, that is empirically non-contaminated reason. To decide on the basis of material, that is concrete and contingent motives, however, would obliterate its autonomy insofar as “all laws that are determined with reference to an object give heteronomy” (GMM, 4:458). The first requirement of autonomy is therefore the independence of any material motive, hence “the first concept of it is negative” (CPrR, 5:29). The crucial point of autonomy, however, is its positive freedom—not freedom from but to. Negative freedom alone does not suffice to explain the full concept of an autonomy of the will: “The preceding definition of freedom is negative and therefore unfruitful for insight into its essence; but there flows from it a positive concept of freedom, which is so much the richer and more fruitful” (GMM, 4:446). An entirely indifferent and unlawful will would be independent from the law of nature, however, the will’s decision would not have any determination at all and would be arbitrary in the bad sense (i.e. indifferentism). For that reason, Kant insists that freedom of the will “is not for that reason lawless but must instead be a causality in accordance with immutable laws but of a special kind; for otherwise a free will would be an absurdity” (GMM, 4:446; emphasis mine). 6 Kant explains this special kind of law in terms of a special kind of causality that he refers to as a “causality of reason” (CPrR, 5:80) or “causality through freedom” (CPrR, 5:47). It is the will under the moral law that establishes such a causality as “a true higher faculty of desire, to which the pathologically determinable is subordinate, and then only is reason really, and indeed specifically, distinct from the latter, so that even the least admixture of the latter’s impulses infringes upon its strength and superiority” (CPrR, 5:25). According to Kant, the “[w]ill is a kind of causality of living beings insofar as they are rational, and freedom would be that property of such causality that it can be efficient independently of alien causes determining it” (GMM, 4:446). This entails the “reciprocity thesis” (Allison, 1996), according to which “a free will and a will under moral laws are one and the same” (GMM, 4:447). 3. Reinhold’s dilemma Kant’s theory of autonomy raises a serious issue when it comes to moral imputability. This “imputability problem” (Hudson, 1991: 179) stems from a conflict between Kant’s general imputability thesis (IT) and his autonomy thesis (AT), which serves to justify IT. (IT): The free agent is morally responsible for her morally right and wrong actions and has free choice between the alternatives of good and evil. (AT): The absolute cause of the autonomous action lies in the causality of pure practical reason and its moral law. 7 From IT and AT follows the so-called “autonomy problem” (AP) (Prauss, 1983: 82, 84), which can be explicated in a strong (AP1) and a weak sense (AP2) (Noller 2019). (AP1) A causality of free action that contradicts the moral law cannot be thought consistently for this causality itself stems from pure reason. The category of evil cannot be consistently explained as a “modus” (CPrR, 5:65) of a causality of freedom on the “basis” (RBMR, 5:66) of the moral law; hence, an evil action cannot be a product of autonomous reason, and therefore is not an autonomous action. (AP2) A practical cognition of evil means to decide at the same time to give up one’s autonomy by jumping from autonomy to heteronomy. This leap itself, however, cannot be explained within the framework of a conception of autonomy and therefore seems to be a groundless event. A voluntary free leap to heteronomy falls short of autonomy, for it happens within a lawless sphere. In Anglophone scholarship, Henry Sidgwick was the first to hint at AP1: “Kant, either expressly or by implication, identifies Will and Reason; for this identification obviously excludes the possibility of Will’s choosing between Reason and non-rational impulses” (Sidgwick, 1888: 411). Sidgwick identified a “confusion” between two different conceptions of freedom in Kant’s theory, namely “(1) the Freedom that is only realised in right conduct, when reason successfully resists the seductions of appetite or passion, and (2) the Freedom to choose between right and wrong, which is, of course, equally realised in either choice” (Sidgwick, 1888: 405). 8 Almost one hundred years earlier, however, Karl Leonhard Reinhold had already pointed to AP1 in the Second Volume of his Letters on the Kantian Philosophy from 1792. Especially in the Sixth, Seventh and Eighth Letter, Reinhold provides a subtle analysis of the imputability problem, and then attempts to solve it by introducing a modified action theory as well as an elaborated concept of freedom of the will in order to perfect Kant’s account of autonomy. Already in his letter to Jens Immanuel Baggesen, dating from March 28 of 1792—immediately before the First Section of Kant’s Religion appeared—he gave an overview of his most important points of criticism, and also revealed his new and different understanding of freedom as individual autonomy in opposition to Kant’s general account: “I utterly distance myself from Kant and the Kantians concerning the concept of will, which I neither take for a causality of reason, nor a faculty to act according to given laws and so forth, but for a person’s faculty, equally distinct from reason and sensibility, to determine oneself towards the satisfaction or nonsatisfaction of a desire (claim of the self-interested drive).” After this mostly negative definition, Reinhold goes on specifying his concept of positive freedom: Indeed, this self-determination takes place by rules, and insofar by reason; but thereby reason behaves as a mere faculty that can be used by the willing subject in two different ways, for it depends on the subject whether the rule is used as a mere means for the satisfaction of the selfish drive, or as an end” (Reinhold, 1831: 168‒169). Aside from the modified concept of the use of reason, we find here a crucial modification of the relationship between empirical and rational motives of the will. For Reinhold adds in the 9 aforementioned letter: “I even distance myself from Kant concerning the concept of morality […] for I cannot conceive of morality without sensibility” (Reinhold, 1831: 168). Reinhold also highlights some problematic implications that seem to follow from Kant’s theory of the autonomy of reason. The “friends of Kantian Philosophy,” as Reinhold puts it, “attempted to save the will from the slavery of the instinct only in that way insofar as they made it the slave of the force of reason.” These “friends,” according to Reinhold, “attempted to escape will’s necessitation of sensibility only by conceiving the will as being inevitably necessitated by reason” (Reinhold, 2008: 200). According to this conception, however, “a moral action could only be understood as a mere effect of reason” (Reinhold, 2008: 200). If “the will were only free with regard to moral actions, and the ground of immoral actions laid outside the will in external obstacles and barriers,” Reinhold goes on, so also the reason of moral actions would by no means to be found in the mere selfactivity of practical reason but rather in the absence of these obstacles that are entirely independent from this reason. The whole freedom of this reason, and by it also of the person, would only consist in an accidental independence from external force and restricted to certain cases that would by no means be in the control of the person. The moral action would follow inevitably by an entirely involuntary effect of practical reason as soon as there would not be any obstacle; and the moral or immoral action would have to be imputed to the sheer presence or absence of this obstacle (Reinhold, 2008: 200). Intelligible fatalism and empirical determinism are, according to Reinhold, only two sides of the same coin for neither can explain how a person can both rationally and freely decide to act 10 against the moral law. Hence, the conceptual challenge for Reinhold consists in developing a complex concept of individual freedom that avoids (i) intelligible fatalism, (ii) empirical determinism, and (iii) indifferentism. The faculty of the will must, on the one hand, not be hypostatized and conceived of as something absolutely distinct and separated from reason, which would lead to indifferentism. On the other hand, it must not be fully identified with reason, which would lead to a rational determinism that would render any voluntary deviation from the moral law conceptually impossible. 4. Kant on rationalizing Kant does not understand the occurrence of moral error as something privative but rather as something active and imputable, in which the will uses reason to construct an illusory rational order. Sensuality alone cannot be the source of error, since according to Kant sensuality has no propositional structure: “Inclination is blind and servile, whether it is kindly or not; and when morality is in question, reason must not play the part of mere guardian to inclination but, disregarding it altogether, must attend solely to its own interest as pure practical reason.” (CprR, 5:118) Error must therefore have its ground in the relationship between sensuality and reason: The origin of all error will therefore only have to be sought in the unnoticed influence of sensuality on the mind, or to be more precise, on judgement. For this influence makes us, in judgement, consider merely subjective reasons to be objective and consequently confuse the mere illusion of truth with the truth itself. For this is the very essence of appearances, which is to be regarded as a reason to consider a false knowledge to be true. What makes 11 the error possible, then, is the illusion according to which, in judgment, the mere subjective is confused with the objective." (9:54; my emphasis) In error, we are not simply passively subject to the heteronomous influences of sensuality and inclination, but refer to them reflexively in our always deliberately interested judgement. However, here the question arises to what extent reason itself can be the reason for error. Kant thereby refers to a lack of concentration of our understanding: In a certain sense, one can also make the understanding (Verstand) the originator of the errors, in so far as, for lack of necessary attention to that influence of sensuality, it allows itself to be misled by the appearance arising therefrom to regard merely subjective determinants of judgment as objective, or to accept that which is true only according to the laws of sensuality as true according to its own laws. (9:54; my emphasis.) The ultimate responsibility for error lies in the free subject that uses her understanding in the wrong way, on the basis of an individual tendency of man to transcend the epistemic limits of reason: Only the guilt of ignorance therefore lies within the limits of understanding, the guilt of error we have to attribute to ourselves. Although nature has denied us much knowledge, it leaves us in an inevitable ignorance about many things, but it does not cause error. Our own tendency to judge and decide leads us to this, even where we are not able to judge and decide because of our limitations. (9:54; my emphasis) 12 Kant notes, however, that in every false judgment there must always be something true and positive, for "a total error would be a complete conflict against the laws of the understanding and reason". (9:54) The structure of judgment, which consists in synthesizing of subject and predicate by our understanding, is already a logical achievement that bears traces of truth, insofar as it is formally intended as an—albeit apparent—correspondence relation.2 According to Kant, "rationalizing" generally means a propensity of reason to generate a false and illusory order that transcends the critical limits of our knowledge. By rationalizing, reason generates a transcendental illusion and therefore requires a critique, which is predetermined by the constitution of the transcendental conditions of cognition of the finite subject. As Kant further explains in the Critique of Pure Reason, the logical illusion consists "in the mere imitation of the form of reason". Reason is thereby "subjectively regarded as a human cognitive faculty," so that here only an illusion of objectivity is produced (B 353). Kant characterizes this phenomenon as a "natural and unavoidable illusion which itself rests on subjective principles and passes them off as objective” (B 354). At the same time he emphasizes that the disposition of this illusion of reason is structurally immanent and does not consist only in an individual incapacity: So there is a natural and inevitable dialectic of pure reason, not one in which, for example, a blunderer gets himself involved through a lack of knowledge, or which some sophist has artificially devised in order to confuse rational people, but which is indomitably attached to human reason (B 354). 13 In this respect, the dialectic of reason and its tendency to create illusions affects all finite subjects of cognition, just as the propensity to evil affects all subjects of freedom. In the Preface to the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant continues to comment on this general tendency of reason: [T]here is a natural and unavoidable dialectic of pure reason, not one in which a bungler might be entangled through lack of acquaintance, or one that some sophist has artfully invented in order to confuse rational people, but one that irremediably attaches to human reason (B 354) The phenomenon of rationalizing thus occurs precisely where the general capacity of pure reason conflicts with the finiteness of the subject of knowledge and its transcendental limitations. Thereby, reason’s inner tendency to the unconditional and the general is illusorily compensated by the subject’s finiteness and individuality that contrasts it. This compensation stems from the fact that the finitely conditioned moral subject is confronted with unconditional commandments of the moral law.3 The finite subject therefore attempts to systematically weaken them through the strategy of rationalizing. It wants to allow itself exceptions that are to be justified, for which a certain form of rationality is necessary. The systematic problem here consists in the following dilemma: Does a morally evil decision result from (i) a mere lack of reason or an incapacity due to our inclinations? Or is it not precisely (ii) a special form of (immoral) rationality? Here another dilemma arises, which I shall call the "dilemma of evil": In the former case, the evil action would be the result of a defect that itself can hardly be considered imputable. In the latter case, the problem arises that the same 14 reason prescribed by the moral law can hardly be the reason for circumventing its own law. Kant had the dilemma clearly in mind when he wrote: “Sensuous nature […] contains too little to provide a ground of moral evil in the human being, for, to the extent that it eliminates the incentives originating in freedom, it makes of the human a purely animal being" (Rel. 6:35). The empirical constitution of man cannot provide a reason for the freedom of evil, for it only provides facts about his natural condition through desires and inclinations. But the reason of evil cannot lie in reason itself either. Kant writes in this regard: “[A] reason exonerated from the moral law, an evil reason as it were (an absolutely evil will), would on the contrary contain too much, because resistance to the law would itself be thereby elevated to incentive (for without any incentive the power of choice cannot be determined), and so the subject would be made a diabolical being” (Rel. 6:35). The concept of rationalizing as a “propensity” of reason returns prominently in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason. What is the activity of this "propensity"? It consists in the attempt to argue, with the help of reason, against the demand of the moral law, i.e. to abuse reason. Those who rationalize attempt to find reasons to justify their individual interests as being exempt from the requirement of the moral law, i.e. to cast doubt on the "purity and severity [of moral laws] and, where possible, to make them more appropriate to our desires and inclinations, i.e. to basically corrupt them" (GMM, 4:407). Such a construction of reasons, however, which makes one's own actions appear in a morally good light, is nothing more than a practical self-deception, of course a self-deception which must be traced back to one's own will and is thus attributable according IT. A further central concept besides that of "rationalizing" is the concept of "selfconceit". It means the deliberate superordination of the individual interests over the moral law, which concerns "the dear self" (4:407) in contrast to the generality of pure practical reason. 15 According to Kant, the interests of an individual, which conflict with the demand for universalization, manifest themselves in rational self-conceit. But how can this obstacle of self-conceit be described in more detail in terms of freedom? Kant understands this as a "propensity" on the part of human beings "to rationalize against those strict laws of duty and to cast doubt on their validity [...]" (4:405). This propensity consists in "making oneself, according to the subjective determinants of one's choice, the objective determinant of the will in general" and "the supreme practical condition" (5:74). So it is not a question of different predispositions prevailing or not within man, and reason being overwhelmed by inclinations. According to Kant, we are not passive spectators of an innerpsychic conflict of forces; rather, the propensity for self-conceit must be understood as willfully structured—not as a mere defect, but as something active that is itself morally imputable to the agent. 5. Conclusion: Avoiding rationalizing How can we escape the dialectic of reason—be it in theoretical or practical regard? It is significant that Kant has dealt with this question, which concerns his first and second Critique in his Critique of the Power of Judgment, which should conclude his critical philosophy. In order to escape theoretical and practical dialectic, Kant develops in his third Critique three rules of "common sense" (sensus communis), which are intended to prevent us from making errors in our use of reason: 1) to think for oneself, 16 2) to think in the place of another, and 3) to think anytime with oneself unanimously. (5:294) Kant describes the first rule as the "maxim of self-thinking" or "the enlightened" maxim. It refers directly to Kant's Answer to the Question: What is Enlightenment? from 1784, in which he had already described the immaturity of man as "self-inflicted" (8:35) and had explicitly ascribed it "not to the lack of reason" but to the individual decision of the subject and its "incapacity". The "self-inflicted immaturity" that Kant diagnoses, lies in our propensity to rationalize. Therefore, the mere individual use of reason must be extended to a general, and that is, public use. Kant thus defines the second maxim as an "extended maxim," as the ability to "put oneself in another perspective in thinking". This is intended to break through the immanence of reason, insofar as the mere monological coherence of the dialectical illusion can now be questioned in intersubjective dialogue. Finally, Kant refers to the last of the three maxims cited as the "consequential or concise way of thinking". Its purpose can be seen in the fact that the subject enters into an inner dialogue with itself and questions its judgements sincerely and critically. It is about being coherent in one's judgement as well as entering into an inner-subjective conversation, reflecting critically on oneself from the outside, like “at the bar of a court” (6:439 n.) In their interaction, these three maxims constitute the sensus communis, which Kant also calls the "idea of a communal sense, i.e. of a capacity to judge". Thus it is guaranteed that the rationalizing subject sees itself in a position "as it were to hold its judgment up to human reason as a whole and thereby avoid the illusion which, from subjective private conditions that could easily be held to be objective, would have a detrimental influence on the judgment." (5:293) 17 Kant describes the sensus communis in his essay on Enlightenment of 1784 as the freedom "to make public use of one's reason in all respects". (8:36) Its mode of operation can be realized "by one holding his judgment up not so much to the actual as to the merely possible judgments of others, and putting himself into the position of everyone else, merely by abstracting from the limitations that contingently attach to our own judging" (5:294). This abstraction of common sense leads to the fact that only "the formal peculiarities of his representation or his representational state" are to be taken into account, so that "one is seeking a judgment that is to serve as a universal rule". This is precisely the demand of the categorical imperative, which now, however, in its anti-dialectic mode of operation—be it in the theoretical or practical use of reason—can be newly perspectivated. The public use of reason ultimately implies a political dimension and the perspective of avoiding the dialectic of reason through a social (re)form by transcending the self-referential individuality towards a free society of giving and taking of reasons, which can also manifest itself medially and institutionally. 18 References Works cited by abbreviation Citations of Kant’s works refer to the volume and page number in the Academy Edition of Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter and predecessors, 1900–). CPrR: Critique of Practical Reason. Edited and translated by M. Gregor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997, orig. 1781. GMM: Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. Edited and translated by M. Gregor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1997, orig. 1785. MM: The Metaphysics of Morals. Introduction, translation, and notes by Mary Gregor. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1991, orig. 1797. 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Rüdiger Bittner also stresses that "unreasonable acting on reasons will have to be admitted on any account of reasons" (Bittner 2001, 57). 2 Joëlle Proust has pointed to the importance of the phenomenon of error from the perspective of the philosophy of mind and animal intelligence. The possibility of error does not describe a mere defect, but rather represents a 22 "significant step in evolution" (226). The reason for this lies in the fact that in rational living beings "representation can be activated even when what it represents is absent. Translated into everyday language, this means [,] [...] that an animal with a mind must be able to occasionally (erroneously) believe that this or that circumstance exists, and must be able to act according to its conviction." (226) The phenomenon of error thus implies convictions that do not correlate directly with the world but are nevertheless formed, in which a rudimentary form of freedom appears (Proust 2005). Schelling, too, characterizes the phenomena of error and evil after Kant not as privations, i.e. signs of deficiency, but as "something highly positive"; error “is not a deficiency of spirit (Geist), but a reversed spirit" (Stuttgart Private Lectures, 51). 3 In the more recent literature, this problem is dealt with under the term "(over)demandingness". See Marcel van Ackeren/Martin Sticker (2015). 23