Reflections on Kant; Freedom from the World, Freedom in the World

I want to address some of the topics that have been brought up on the blog so far. Since communicating in written media is different from conversation, it is possible that some different directions can be explored here.

One issue that is of interest to me was brought up by Jonelle in the second week. In her discussion of Kant and Foucault she asked something like [I'm paraphrasing], "as humans can we ever escape from our world through Enlightenment? Is it possible to ever see the objects of the world as they really are and therefore somehow free ourselves from the world through knowledge?" She used a complete consciousness of the political system and political situation as her example, I believe.

This is a central problem that Kant was concerned with. In the Critique of Pure Reason, he began by asking how synthetic a priori judgments are possible. That is, whether we can bring together various objects under categories and concepts prior to any experience of those objects. In order to understand the conditions of knowledge "prior to experience," the Kantian subject set itself off from objects, and established a relation with them that opened up the possibility of knowledge. This setting off of the subject from the object is referred to as "the subject/object split" in philosophy.

The problem, as Jonelle suggested, is that once we set ourselves off from objects in an attempt to see things as they truly are, we presume ourselves free from the very conditions we are trying to understand. If we are completely free from those conditions in this manner, however, there is nothing to guarantee that our ideas about them can have any sort of objective validity. In other words, once a person says, "I am completely free from the various objects that I understand," it is unclear what constitutes the connection between ourselves and what we supposedly understand. Although I am being a bit crude and a bit brief here, this is more or less why Kant introduced "regulative ideas" in the Critique. Regulative ideas [or "transcendental ideas"]surpassed any possible experience. They were completely hypothetical, not constitutive (to use his distinction). Nothing related to an object is necessary for a regulative idea, as in those ideas that have a constitutive use. The purpose of regulative ideas is to expand the understanding to its greatest unity and extension. This does not mean that they free the mind from any consideration of truth. Rather, the understanding can only be extended and unified by a careful consideration of the various illusions that can emerge in our reasoning.

The regulative idea is a focal point (focus imaginarus) where the conditions of knowledge and the objects of knowledge would be adequate; therefore, it allows us to organize our knowledge and thoughts reasonably, by way of the ultimate purpose for producing our knowledge. In this sense, the antinomic question of whether the subject is completely free from the world or is completely determined by it (which appears in the Critique of Pure Reason) can only be "solved" through the free hypothesizing of ideas that are not random ruses, but will rather lead the subject to the greatest possible truth about the world to which s/he belongs. Ideally for Kant, it seems, we would belong, in an entirely free manner, to a world which we adequately understand as a totality. (BTW, in Kant's idiom, only such a totality could properly be called a "world"; that is why he states that transcendental philosophy is concerned with cosmological ideas). But, Kant suggests that this is not so easy because reason continually foists illusions onto us that we have to grapple with and clear up.

In Foucault's reading of Kant as I understand it, the empirical study of man is haunted by the same possibility of infinite transgressions on the part of reason. In others' behaviors, temperaments, feelings, and ideas we confront a dispersed time in which no two people seem to cognize the world in the same way at any given moment. If this is the case, what is the regulative principle that can guide a variety of subjects to a use of their freedom that is also truthful? In other words, the reasoning subject can regulative himself or herself according to the ultimate goals of knowledge, but how can the thoughts and feelings of others arrive freely at the same truths? Pragmatic anthropology, with its ultimate goal of defining "man" empirically, steps in to describe man in his actions as a free being, and to also establish what the most truthful of those free actions are. This is accomplished through communication and speaking, a kind of deliberation.

The question of whether we can ever be both Enlightened and free in the world, therefore, is taken up in two ways by Kant, in a fashion that was not recognized until Foucault's penetrating analysis. The first is through transcendental philosophy and the hypothesizing of regulative ideas, and the other is through an infinite empirical analysis of man as the locus of this possibility for self-regulation. By the way, the most prevalent modern concept dealing with the relationship between the free human being and the world which determines him/her is the concept of "culture." Culture suggests both a passage to freedom and those determinations of ourselves that seem the most intractable. Interesing problem...

This is how I have come to understand Kant and Foucault. In order to come to a better definition of freedom, I agree with Foucault that freedom has to be de-linked from the question, "What is man?" or "What does it mean to be human?"