Subject: Re: HAB: #2: Autonomy as dogma
Date: Mon, 24 Jul 2000 12:43:10 -0400 (Eastern Daylight Time)



On Mon, 24 Jul 2000 18:00:39 +0300 (EET DST) Antti M Kauppinen 
<amkauppi-AT-cc.helsinki.fi> wrote:

> We have to be precise about the inside/outside-distinction. For Kant, we are 
'in the world' as real psychological subjects. In so far as we belong to the 
phenomenal world, we are subject to (deterministic) causal explanation. 
Considered as subjects for the phenomenal world, that is, as transcendental 
subjects, we belong to the noumenal realm, for which the category of causality 
is not applicable. What the precise relationship between transcendental and 
empirical subjectivity is I'll leave for Kant experts to worry about - Foucault 
and Habermas among others have argued that the split is not tenable.

For Kant, 'the thing that thinks' is situated on the level of the noumenal - 
the subject's disposition (Gesinnung). The transcendental "I" (which is neither 
phenomenal nor noumenal) is the empty place from which the subject 'chooses' 
her or his Gesinnung. The empty place is an embodiment of the blind spot that 
sustains the difference between phenomena and noumena, it is because of the 
blind spot that the acting subject cannot be transparent to his or herself - 
barring access to the 'thing-in-itself-in-her/him' (Habermas does not deny 
this when he notes that subjects cannot be completely transparent to 
themselves or one another). Kant's distinction between the psychological ego 
(phenomenal), the subject's Gesinnung (as related to practical freedom, the 
incorporation of drives into maxims), and transcendental freedom is not simply 
a matter of the difference between noumenal freedom and phenomenal necessity, 
but is, rather, that practical freedom as well as necessity is possible only 
against the background of transcendental freedom. Zupancic expresses it thusly: 
The choice of the Gesinnung opens the dimension of the subject of freedom. The 
subject of freedom is indeed the effect of the Other, but not in the sense of 
being an effect of some cause that exists in the Other. Instead, the subject is 
the effect of the fact that there is a cause which will never be discovered in 
the Other; she or his is the effect of the absence of this cause, the effect of 
the lack in the Other. In other words: the 'circular' logicl of practical 
reason is to be accounted for with reference to the structure of subjectivity, 
as split: creatio ex nihilo.

If one eliminates the Gesinnung, then one is left with material determinism and 
freedom appears to be pure illusion (an idea that Foucault, in some of his 
writings, does not shy away from). In effect, responsibility and guilt cannot 
be explained at all, if it is to be conceived of as a "free" choice without 
something (the Gesinnung) that we "choose" (however "forced" this choice may 
be). We are stuck between tyranny (no freedom) and terror (the "forced choice" 
of freedom and responsibility). It is only because of the paradox of freedom 
and necessity that ethical responsibility can be sustained. In other words: if 
we do not "choose" freedom then there is no ethics.


> > The defining feature of a 'free act' is precisely that it is entirely foreign 
> > to the subject's inclinations. It could be said, with Kant, that the 'self' 
> > does not really'live at home' since the foundation of subjective freedom 
> > resides only in some 'foreign body' - we are strangers in our own houses. 

> I'm not sure if we agree or disagree here, but clearly Kant considers  
inclinations, wants, desires etc. as _given_, something with regard to which 
the self is passive, something that comes from the outside. The self is at home 
on the realm of rational thought.

For Kant, the moral law is rational - and our encounter with the moral law 
engenders and affect - a very singular feeling that Kant calls 'respect' 
(Achtung). This notion of respect is, in analogy, close to what Lacan calls 
anxiety. Kant writes, in his Critique of Practical Reason, "In the boundless 
esteem for the pure moral law... whose voice makes even the boldest sinner 
tremble and forces him to hide himself from its gaze, there is something so 
singular that we cannot wonder at finding this influence of a merely 
intellectual Idea on feeling to be inexplicable to speculative reason" and 
"Respect is a tribute that we cannot refuse to pay to merit, whether we want to 
or not..." Here respect is pretty clearly linked to fear and horror... Kant 
uses the term Ehrfurcht, wonder (defined as 'respect linked to fear'). I'm not 
sure this counts as "being at home" with the moral law...

> > Approached this way Habermasian ethics is essentially an ethics of alienation, 
> > since it forces us to reject that which is most truly ours and to submit 
> > ourselves to an abstract principle that does not take our private 
> > (non-generalizeable) interests into legislation.

> I can see where you're going, but it doesn't straightforwardly follow
> from the above, not even for Kant. The question is precisely what is
> most truly ours - is it desire, with regard to which we are passive, or
> (say) conviction, which we have actively formed? Instinctive inclination
> to feel fear or disgust for people who look different or the considered
> belief that people have a right to cut their hair or pierce their body
> parts the way they want to?

We are responsible for both, desire ("I do not want to choose!") [in the case 
of Sophie's Choice] and conviction ("My fate was given to me, I'm not guilty!") 
[in the case of Oedipus].

> > Habemas's formulation above entails an extraordinary paradox: "human beings
> > act as free subjects only insofar as they obey."

> Well, this is as old as moral thinking (you'll find something like it in
> Plato or Aquinas or whoever). As Kant might put it, insofar as we act at
> all, we follow a rule (we do not make random body movements); this rule
> is either given by ourselves, if we are autonomous (self-legislating),
> or by someone or something else. What Habermas says would be better
> phrased as "human beings act as free subjects only insofar as they obey
> _themselves_". 

Kant argues that our deepest convinctions are radically pathological: they 
belong to the domain of heteronomy. The defining feature of a free act, on the 
contrary, is precisely that it is entirely foreign to the subject's 
inclinations (which is why we're dealing with an ethics of alienation). In a 
strictly Kantian sense, all that we know of freedom revolves around the notion 
of guilt. Kant is persistent in his attempt to persuade us that none of our 
actions are really free, that we can never establish with certainty the 
nonexistence of pathological motives affecting our actions - which is why we 
feel guilty. And it is only this experience of guilt which indicates to us that 
we are, in fact, free. Coincidentally, this is simultaneously counted as 
necessary: "The freedom of the will is of a wholly unique nature in that an 
incentive can determine the will to an action only so far as the individual has 
incorporated it into his maxim; only thus can an incentive, whatever it may be, 
co-exist with the absolute spontaneity of the will." In effect, for the 
collective to be free, with Habermas, the collective will must incorporate into 
their maxim an incentive that is identical with the demands freedom. As I noted 
yesterday, although there is consensus or "successful moral acts" there is no 
such thing as a "holy will." In short: democracy is stuck with the paradox of 
consensus without any sure means of examining the absolute coexistence of 
freedom and incentive.

> > But this isn't just blind obedience since only "those laws they give themselves 
> > in accordance with insights they have acquired intersubjectively" are binding. 
> > However, thinking with Kant here, those things which have been acquired 
> > intersubjectively are, at least to some degree, foreign. 
> 
> Yes, and this is where Habermas parts ways with Kant. Our true self is
> not a transcendental one, not an inner core that nobody can touch, but
> something intersubjectively formed. A self is not private property, as
> he puts it (in Postmetaphysical Thinking, the article on Mead).
> Interaction with others does not contaminate the self from outside, but
> rather forms it in the first place.

The subject is that which takes responsibility for the 'other' on the inside, 
freely. In effect, we have the property of the self which requires that we 
recognize the other 'in us' in the first instance. At the same time, the self 
is not reduceable to the other, there is a remainder.

ken



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