The Proper Telos of Life: Schiller, Kant and Having Autonomy as an End
2011; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 54; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1080/0020174x.2011.608881
ISSN1502-3923
Autores Tópico(s)Kantian Philosophy and Modern Interpretations
ResumoAbstract Abstract In this paper I set the debate between Kant and Schiller in terms of the role that an ideal of life can play within an autonomist ethic. I begin by examining the critical role Schiller gives to emotions in tackling specific motivational concerns in Kant's ethics. In the Kantian response I offer to these criticisms, I emphasise the role of metaphysics for a proper understanding of Kant's position whilst allowing that with respect to moral psychology, Kant and Schiller are in agreement about the importance of emotions in our moral lives. I conclude by returning to the themes broached in the introduction to consider the extent to which the teleological concerns that motivate Schiller can be addressed within Kant's autonomist ethics. Notes 1. One notable exception is Korsgaard (2009 Korsgaard, C. M. 2009. Self-Constitution, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 35–37). Usually, it is those who cast themselves as critics of autonomy, in particular of its atomistic assumptions and individualistic consequences who focus on the topic of life, a classical reference is MacIntyre (1985 MacIntyre, A. 1985. After Virtue, 2nd, London: Duckworth. [Google Scholar], Ch. 15); for criticisms see Williams (2009 Williams, B. 2009. Life as narrative. European Journal of Philosophy, 17(2): 305–14. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). 2. See Schiller's "What are the true effects of the properly run stage" (20:87–100) and "On Bürger's poetry" (22:245–64). 3. Although Schiller's work in ethics is not exactly neglected, serious engagement with it in Anglophone philosophy has remained a rarity; see Allison's treatment of Schiller's criticisms of Kant in Allison (1990 Allison, H. 1990. Kant's Theory of Freedom, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 180–84), and Gauthier (1997 Gauthier, J. A. 1997. Schiller's critique of Kant's moral psychology. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 27: 513–44. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]). In this context Beiser's recent book-length study that covers Schiller's entire philosophical range stands out as an important exception; see Beiser (2005 Beiser, F. 2005. Schiller as Philosopher. A Re-Examination, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) and also Beiser (2008 Beiser, F. 2008. Schiller as Philosopher: A reply to my critics. Inquiry, 51(1): 63–78. [Taylor & Francis Online], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]); see too Deligiorgi (2006 Deligiorgi, K. 2006. Grace guide to morals? Schiller's aesthetic turn in ethics. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 23(1): 1–20. [Google Scholar]). An important German reference remains Prauss (1983 Prauss, G. 1983. Kant über Freiheit als Autonomie, Frankfurt am Main: Klostermann. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 240–308). 4. See Beiser (2005 Beiser, F. 2005. Schiller as Philosopher. A Re-Examination, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 149–50; 234–36); I discuss this in Deligiorgi (2005 Deligiorgi, K. 2005. Kant and the Culture of Enlightenment, New York: SUNY Press. [Google Scholar], pp. 149–57). 5. The role of the play-drive is not sufficiently clear. Sometimes, Schiller describes the play-drive as a boundary keeper that keeps the formal and the sensuous drives confined to their proper objects so that they do not encroach upon each other's territory (20:350–52; AE, pp. 91–93), as a harmonising influence bringing about a unity between the other two (20:352; AE, p. 95), and as a balancing force which brings the other two drives into a state of equilibrium which he also describes as a "nought" (20:375; AE, p. 141) and also as a reciprocal dissolution of "compulsion" that gives rise to "freedom" (20:373; AE, p. 137). The ambiguities of Schiller's argument and the implications of these ambiguities for his aesthetics are discussed in Saville (1988, pp. 195–254) and Gauthier (1997 Gauthier, J. A. 1997. Schiller's critique of Kant's moral psychology. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 27: 513–44. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar], pp. 322–23). For an interesting contemporary attempt to naturalise Kant's aesthetics see McMahon (2009 McMahon, J. 2009. Aesthetics and Material Beauty, 2nd, London: Routledge. [Google Scholar]). 6. See also Schiller's description of the collaboration between the two drives in terms of the concept of grace introduced at the very end of the Aesthetic Education (20:412; AE, pp. 217–19), which is central to the most famous version of the desirability argument, in "On grace and dignity" (20b:251–308); this is discussed in Gauthier (1997 Gauthier, J. A. 1997. Schiller's critique of Kant's moral psychology. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 27: 513–44. [Taylor & Francis Online] , [Google Scholar]) and Deligiorgi (2006 Deligiorgi, K. 2006. Grace guide to morals? Schiller's aesthetic turn in ethics. History of Philosophy Quarterly, 23(1): 1–20. [Google Scholar]). 7. See too the quote from Rousseau that heads the Aesthetic Education: "Si c'est la raison, qui fait l'homme, c'est le sentiment, qui le conduit [if it is reason that makes a man, it is feeling that leads him]" (20:309). There is a significant amount of contemporary research into the nature of emotions that aims to provide empirical support for motivational internalism, the position that moral judgements are "intrinsically action-guiding" (Prinz, 2007 Prinz, J. 2007. The Emotional Construction of Morals, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 30). Whilst this research, its methods as well as its vocabulary, may seem alien to Schiller, his discussion of the "drives" owes a lot to contemporary medical theories; see Dewhurst and Reeves (1974). 8. Schiller's third criticism reflects his earlier point in "On grace and dignity" that the imperatival form of Kantian ethics makes it appear as something "alien" to us, as a positive law, not one that springs from our "rational essence" (20:280). 9. One aspect of this discussion concerns the feeling of "contentment with oneself" (6:391) another aspect the cultivation of virtue and the role of emotions in this (6:392–93; 406; 456–57; 473; 484; see too the discussion of friendship, 6:470–71, the virtues of social intercourse 6:473–74 and methods of moral education 6:480f). But more directly relevant to the argument I develop in this section is Kant's explicit differentiation between a doctrine of virtue and moral metaphysics (6:376). In the Anthropology, Kant treats emotions and passions negatively, but still considers what he describes as aesthetic elements of virtue in the Metaphysics of Morals to be important; see the discussion of taste and remarks on good living (par. 69, Anth:244; and par. 88, Anth:276–82). Herman (1993, pp. 184–207; 208–40) and Louden (2000 Louden, R. 2000. Kant's Impure Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Google Scholar]) make the most of these references, Frierson (2003 Frierson, P. 2003. Freedom and Anthropology in Kant's Moral Philosophy, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar]) shows, conclusively I think, the outer limits of these arguments. For detailed discussion on the role of sympathetic feelings see Baron (1999 Baron, M. 1999. Kantian Ethics Almost Without Apology, Ithaca: Cornell University Press. [Google Scholar], p. 171f). 10. See the famous claim in the Groundwork that the moral law holds "not merely for men but for all rational beings as such … with absolute necessity" (4:408). 11. Our empirical perfectibility and corruptibility are functions of our metaphysical aptitude. So Kant would agree with modern externalists that "moral motivation … can be widespread and predictable, even if it is neither necessary, nor universal, nor overriding" (Brink, 1989, p. 49). For Kant this says nothing about the nature of moral demands, which are necessary, universal and overriding. 12. Kant's exasperation with reductive explanations is also signalled in 6:378. This is not to say that psychology and metaphysics do not relate to each other; Kant argues both that we are so constituted, i.e. our "nature" (5:152) is such, that we can be powerfully motivated by duty as opposed to pleasure and avoidance of pain, and that there is a metaphysical context for this that relates to freedom, rather than say to naturalistic explanations such as preservation of the species or altruistic instincts. 13. There is an antecedent to the use of phenomenology to support metaphysics in the 1786 Metaphysical Foundations discussion of motion; see Friedman (1992, p. 142). Although a full discussion of freedom exceeds the scope of this essay, I want to claim that this thought experiment provides us with the means to begin to fill the gap of the theoretical discussion of freedom Ameriks identifies; Ameriks (2003 Ameriks, K. 2003. Interpreting Kant's Critiques, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 183–85). 14. The key reference for this comes from the first Critique: "Freedom in the practical sense is the will's [Willkür] independence of coercion through sensuous impulses … The human will is certainly an arbitrium sensitivum, not, however, brutum but liberum. For sensibility does not necessitate its action. There is in man a power [Vermögen] of self-determination independently of any coercion through sensuous impulses" (B562). 15. Cases of agents who are incapable of resisting (just as in general, psychological cases of agents who are incapable of doing anywise otherwise than x, e.g. Reid's Cato) do not affect the thought experiment which only requires that we grant the possibility of resisting some motive and so the probability of a type of agency (not a psychological type). Note also that the agent in the experiment need not identify correctly the right thing to do; in the story he happens to do so but Kant is not concerned here to give the full epistemological story he develops elsewhere. What matters for the broader point about the spontaneity of choice is that the agent is conscious (bewusst) or has present in his mind as a candidate for doing a thought entertained under the description "the right thing to do", when this right thing goes against all natural ends. 16. In the philosophical tradition Kant is familiar with, freedom is captured by the notion of voluntariness. In the Hobbesian version, voluntary acts are free because the will is determined by whatever appears to the agent as desirable: "In Deliberation, the last Appetite, or Aversion, immediately adhering to the action, or the omission thereof, is that we call the WILL" (Hobbes, 1987 Hobbes, Thomas. 1987. Leviathan, Harmondsworth: Penguin. [Google Scholar], p. 127). Locke concurs: "All our voluntary Motions … are produced in us only by the free Action or Thought of our own Minds … For example: My right Hand writes, whilst my left Hand is still: What causes rest in one, and motion in the other? Nothing but my Will, a Thought of my Mind" (Locke, 1979, p. 629). See too "Man's Heart beats, and the Blood circulates, which 'tis not in his Power by any Thought or Volition to stop; … Convulsive Motions agitate his Legs, so that though he wills it never so much, he cannot by any power of his Mind stop the Motion, (as in that odd Disease called Chorea Sancti Viti) … Voluntary then is not opposed to Necessary; but to Involuntary" (ibid., p. 239). 17. Note that Hobbes has no problem with this conception of freedom: "Liberty … is nothing else but an absence of lets and hindrances of motion; as water shut up in a vessel is not therefore at liberty, because the vessel hinders it from running out; which the vessel being broken, is made free" (1972 Hobbes, Thomas. 1972. Man and Citizen: Thomas Hobbes [De Homine and De Cive], Edited by: Bernard Gert. Atlantic Highlands: Humanities Press. [Google Scholar], p. 216). 18. Because this interpretation has a long Christian tradition, we may call it the divine interpretation of human freedom, or divine freedom for short. One version of this can be found in Grotius: "The law of nature is a dictate of right reason, which points out that an act, according as it is or is not in conformity to rational nature, has in it a quality of moral baseness or moral necessity; and that in consequence such an act is forbidden or enjoined by the author of nature, God" (1925 Grotius, Hugo. 1925. The Law of War and Peace, Edited by: Kelsey, F. W. New York: BobsMerrill. [Google Scholar], pp. 38–39). 19. See too the discussion of following the law because of fear, in 5:152; here Kant brings the motivation, the "pure motive of duty", together with metaphysics, as the man who is taught to "feel his own worth" discovers in him a "power" (Kraft, this is the psychological context) to "loose himself from all sensuous attachments" and find compensation in the independence of his "intelligible nature" (5:152, this is the metaphysical context, which Kant describes elsewhere in terms of the power, Vermögen, to act). 20. There is a profound connection between Kant's conception of freedom and his conception of reason as an active force; reason is "not like a pupil" who indiscriminately copies his teacher's words, but rather like "an appointed judge who compels witnesses to answer the questions he puts to them" (Bxiii), it is this element of judgment that is absent from the rationalist model. 21. The reference is from the Remark in the Metaphysics of Morals where Kant claims that "Virtue is always in progress and yet always starts from the beginning. It is always in progress because, considered objectively, it is an ideal and unattainable, while yet constant approximation to it is a duty" (6:409). 22. In his notes on Baumgarten's Metaphysica, in the section Theologia naturalis, Kant discusses the idea of God in terms of a need of the will as well as of the understanding to deal with a lack of a common ground from which can be derived both a judgement with respect to morality and what is destined in terms of happiness (Refl. 4243, 17:477). 23. See Hill on this topic; although I disagree with him in matters of formulation, I agree in matters of content (Hill, 2002 Hill, T. 2002. Human Welfare and Moral Worth, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 165–69). 24. There is of course also a Nietzschean response possible of disgust at the life-denying element of the Kantian telos. Still there is an element of self-affirmation in Kant description of the "sublimity" of the inquiry that lends a Nietzschean flavour to it also found in some neo-Kantian defences, such as in early Korsgaard, for example Korsgaard (1996 Korsgaard, C. M. 1996. Sources of Normativity, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], p. 98). For detailed criticisms of this variety of Neo-Kantianism see Ameriks (2003 Ameriks, K. 2003. Interpreting Kant's Critiques, Oxford: Oxford University Press. [Crossref] , [Google Scholar], pp. 277–79). 25. Kant is more sympathetic to Epicurus (6:485) than he is to those who act on faith alone. He is also rather scathing on the grim moralism of asceticism (6:485; see too the catechism example, 6:480–84). Nonetheless, moral reflection for Kant has a foothold in our pre-philosophical appreciation of the value of morality as a motive (5:163, pp. 165–66). 26. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the Institute of Philosophy (London), with support from the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.
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