Fichte and Schelling: Part One

As with almost everything in German Idealism, we must begin with the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, and so it is with the philosophies of Johann G. Fichte and F.W. v. Schelling. It is unfortunate that most students of philosophy do not know Kant's political writings. Kant's political philosophy is not just an add no to his epistemology and metaphysics, but at the very heart of his vision. It is a vision of freedom. Kant often claimed that freedom was the foundation stone of his system, so let us move to Kant's political thought. Kant believed in a republic of sovereign citizens. That each citizen is equal under the law. This does not mean that privileges cannot be earned. For Kant voting is a privilege that must be earned, by becoming a productive member of society. The core of Kant's vision is to establish a free society under external laws. The law is established through the use of reason. Kant understands reason is not innate, but must be cultivated. Kant does not think it is government's responsibility to make people happy. We shall understand the reason for this soon. So reason and happiness are not the same. Kant sees the will (desire) as responsible for actions. Kant like Hobbes does not think society corrupts humans, instead it is society that civilizes humans. For Kant the civilizing of humans is a process that is ongoing. That is why in his essay "What is Enlightenment" he does not think people are enlightened, but become enlightened. The way people become enlightened is through the use of reason. Reason is cultivated by making people free, this causes people to make rules, so they can live together in a society. Now we can see why Kant thinks the worst type to tyranny is a paternalistic government. Paternalistic governments allow people to stay in a state of childlike dependence. So instead of sovereign citizens, you have a society of spoiled children. What is meant by spoiled children is people who cannot control their desires or delay gratification of their impulses. In other words those that do not govern their actions by reason. People in a state of dependence are not forced to cultivate reason. Kant has no illusions about human nature, he realizes people must be forced to develop reason. That is why voting is a privilege that must be earned. One earns the right to vote by being a self-sufficient individual. So Kant's idea of freedom is people who freely accept universal laws governing action. this is of course, the point of the categorical imperative. This is why Kant does not think it is government duty to make people happy, instead it is government"s duty to provide an environment where people can reach maturity. And by maturity Kant means to use reason ( universalizing one's activity). We can now move to Kant's metaphysical problem. Let us examine two views of the place of consciousness in the cosmos; we shall call these two views: objectivism and subjectivism. The reason for adding the "ism" is to distinguish these positions from subjective and objective. There was a lot of interest in the philosophy of Benedict Spinoza at the time Kant lived in. Spinoza is a good example of the view of objectivism. That there is no freedom in human agency. In seventeenth and eighteenth century science matter was thought to be inert, dead, it was totally controlled by the laws of causality. Everything was thought to controlled by cause and effect. An analogy would be lines of falling dominoes. In the theory of objectivism, consciousness becomes an epiphenomenon, any feeling of free choice is an illusion. Objectivism is a position that does not allow for human freedom. The cosmos is the inexorable working out of cause and effect. Subjectivism is the position of Idealism, that humans are centers of causality, that humans can be self-determining. That humans either generate or condition experience. This is of course Kant's view. Kant told us it was reading David Hume that roused him from his dogmatic slumbers.The question becomes why did Hume's philosophy so affect Kant? The answer is of course Hume's skepticism undermined the Cartesian paradigm. The Cartesian paradigm is named after its inventor Rene Descartes. The Cartesian paradigm is a double theory of truth. That both religion and science can both be true in their respective spheres. Descartes did this by positing two substances: mind and body. In the sphere of mind, religion is true, in the sphere of body, science is true. In the sphere of mind, humans possess free will, in the sphere of body, causality rules. This of course led to mind and body suffering a terrible divorce; that western philosophy has been trying to heal or reconcile since: the mind-body problem. Kant wanted to keep the Cartesian paradigm intact: he wanted to keep both the truths of science and religion. For Kant believed that morality could not be fluid, but must be immutable and unchangeable. So we have Kant's dilemma. How does one keep science and religion separate, and provide for human free-will? The answer is found in Kant's metaphysics and epistemology. Kant sets up a duality of what can be known(the phenomenal realm) and what cannot be known(the noumenal or the thing in itself). The phenomenal realm is the everyday world we all live in; this is the world of science, where the laws of causality rule. In this way Kant seeks to save science from Hume's skepticism. Science is the truth of the phenomenal realm, the trouble is the phenomenal realm is not the real world. the phenomenal realm is generated by the transcendental aesthetic; which is the subject puts time and space into the world, and the transcendental analytic, which is Kant's famous table of categories, such as causality, reciprocity, etc. In other words the the phenomenal realm is only the world of appearance and not reality. The phenomenal realm is generated by the subject. The thing in itself is the real world, and is not bound by the categories or time and space. The real world or thing in itself lies below reason. This is a very important point; that the real world cannot be reached through the use of reason. Before Kant, thinkers had always seen God or the ultimate reality a in reason or a supra-reasonable realm. Kant philosophy in many ways was a reverse Platonism. The thing in itself is not bound by space and time(transcendental aesthetic) or the categories(transcendental analytic). The thing in itself is not bound to the laws of causality; therefore it is a realm in which freedom can exist. We must now move to the transcendental dialectic. The transcendental dialectic is the realm of illusion. It is when we try to take logic or reason beyond experience or observation. In other words it is when we speculate on topics that are beyond direct observation. The purpose of the categories is to create the phenomenal ream: the objective world. Kant illustrates the illusion of logic in the antinomies of pure reason. There are several antinomies, but we shall only examine the first one. The first antinomy is whether there is a first cause or whether the cosmos is eternal; has no beginning. In other words, it is an argument against the cosmological argument. That one cannot use reason to discover whether the cosmos had a beginning or not. We shall move to Kant's theory of personal identity; the transcendental unity of apperception or the t.u.a. for short. The t.u.a. is the "I think" of consciousness. It is the compass that orients a person in experience. According to Kant we cannot abstract ourselves out of experience or imagining; there is always a point of view. An example would be no matter where a person is or imagines oneself there is always a left, right, past, future, and now. As the reader familiar with Kant knows when Kant says something is transcendental it is created by the subject and does not exist in the object. Transcendental means it is not part of the real world. We now move to another very important point for this essay; the categories that reside in the subject do not reside in the t.u.a. but in the noumenal "I." In other words, the categories do not reside in the phenomenal realm, but in the real world or thing in itself. This means the categories are not subject to the laws of causality. This allows humans to be a causal center or a source of causality Humans condition or generate the phenomenal realm, but the noumenal "I" is not subject to the laws of causality, and thus a free agent. What Kant has done is to give humans a metaphysical thickness that allows them to be free of the laws that govern the phenomenal realm. This because the noumenal "I" is in the real world or thing in itself. Remember the thing in itself is not governed by the categories, or time and space. This is Kant's justification for human free-will. Kant claimed he had just left mop up work for his successors, he never seemed to appreciate the magnitude of the problems left to those that would follow in his large footsteps. Let us turn to some of the problems that were left. The two realms is of course a problem; how they interact of do not interact. The unknowable thing in itself is a huge hole right in the middle of Kant's system. Then there is the transcendental deduction. The transcendental deduction is where Kant announces the categories. Kant claims the categories are necessary for the phenomenal realm to exist but how are they generated, where do they come from? Then there is the problem of freedom. Kant wants us to restrict our free choice to universal reason; why should we?Why is restricting our activity to universalizable maxims moral or free? Kant has spent much of the "Critique of Pure Reason" arguing reason cannot go beyond experience, but is that not what we are doing when we try to confine our activity to universal maxims? For is it not true that each situation in life is unique. Before moving to Solomon Maimon's criticism of Kant let us see what the problem is with making freedom the highest value, and why Kant did not move to the obvious conclusion. The obvious conclusion is freedom is the best way to gain power. Let us look at an example from our own age: those societies that oppress their women. The first thing one notices is a society that oppresses their woman has cut the talent and intellectual pool in half, thus already handicapping the society. Then the half that is not oppressed must use its resources to oppress the women. Thus one has a society that can barely meet the basic needs of the people, much less accomplish anything. Kant was trying to keep Christian morality that is why he did not take the obvious step that power is the highest value. Let us move to our last issue the criticism of Maimon. Maimon attacks the heart of the Kantian philosophy by using Kant against himself. Maimon says when Kant says that we cannot use reason or logic to move beyond experience he has violated his own principle in the transcendental deduction. For by saying that the categories are the necessary forms of experience, Kant used causality to make the deduction! Remember the categories are in the thing in itself, which we cannot know through the use of reason or logic. Now we are ready for Fichte END OF PART ONE