[lit-ideas] Re: Sunday's Revelation
- From: Henninge@xxxxxxxxxxx (Richard Henninge)
- To: <lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 27 Sep 2004 04:48:33 +0200
It took me a while to find Erin's Kant quote in Kant since there's
absolutely nothing 5-ish or 118-ish about this segment of text, which is
actually in Part 2 or the Second Major Piece of Book 2--on page 213--of the
1788 first edition of _Kritik der praktischen Vernunft_.
> Erin Holder quotes Kant:
>
> "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. Even this feeling of
> compassion and tender sympathy, if it precedes consideration of what is
> duty and becomes the determining ground, is itself burdensome to
> right-thinking persons, brings their considered maxims into confusion
> and produces the wish to be freed from them and subject to lawgiving
> reason alone.
>
> >From this we can understand how consciousness of this ability of a pure
> practical reason (virtue) can IN FACT produce consciousness of mastery
> over one's inclinations, hence of independence from them and so too from
> the discontent that always accompanies them, and thus can produce a
> negative satisfaction with one's state, that is, contentment which in
> its source is contentment with one's person." (5:118 Critique of
> Practical Reason)
Let's have a little fun at the translator's expense on this "in fact": Like
apparently all translators of Kant, this one is blind to the simplest
expressions and ready to change the meaning of a sentence to smooth out a
translation. The sentence containing "in fact" in the paragraph above
*seems* to say that "consciousness of the ability of pure practical reason"
can produce "consciousness of mastery over one's inclinations," whereby
"virtue" is in some way equated with the former. The words "in fact" only
intensify the fact of this production. In fact, however, the words "in fact"
are not, as one would expect, the translation of "in der Tat," but of
"durch Tat," and, more importantly, these two words in the original
_precede_ the parenthetical "(virtue)"! In other words, what you've really
got here is more like:
> >From this we can understand how consciousness of this ability of a pure
> practical reason can IN DEED (i.e. THROUGH THE ACT) (the virtue) produce
consciousness of mastery
> over one's inclinations, hence of independence from them and so too from
> the discontent that always accompanies them, and thus can produce a
> negative satisfaction with one's state, that is, contentment which in
> its source is contentment with one's person." (5:118 Critique of
> Practical Reason)
>
> and then adds:
>
> "Sure, if you're content with being a SOCIOPATH."
>
>
> Oddly, I would have thought the textbook definition of a sociopath is
> precisely that which Kant is here rejecting.
>
> Sincerely,
>
> Phil Enns
> Toronto, ON
Of course, what Erin sees as sociopathic in Kant's apparent
"self-centeredness" and his, at least superficial, "lack of moral sense"
(two symptoms of the Antisocial Personality Disorder known as sociopathy) is
indeed only one pole of the "antinomy of practical reason" that Kant seeks
critically to *aufheben* (relieve, overcome, cancel, lift, remove, rescind,
supercede) in this section of the Second Critique (that's the title of the
section--"Kritische Aufhebung der Antinomie der praktischen Vernunft").
Kant's point is that the best practical morality, the best way to obtain the
greatest good through actions, is not to follow one's inclinations, even if
those inclinations are to do good. Even the satisfaction at having done
something good, say, contributed to a charity, is a hollow satisfaction
since the circumstances can be such that, say, the money would not reach the
intended persons or the alms would weaken their initiative to make it on
their own, or X, or Y or zed other unpredictable consequences in the real
world (Kant's Sinnenwelt), whereas the following of one's "considered
maxims"--while turning one's back on all inclinations, even to being
charitable, empathetic, merciful--results indirectly in a personal
"self-satisfaction" or "self-contentedness" independent of "inclinations and
needs" and analogous to the "self-contentedness" attributable only to "the
highest being." This is not to say that following one's charitable
inclinations will always result in the lesser good for world; only, by
always following one's maxims (loving one's neighbor as oneself, not just
treating others as means to one's ends but as ends in themselves, etc.), you
will not be plagued with the burdensome doubt that some stone has been left
unturned since, in other metaphors, it's out of your hands and in somebody
else's, it could get into the wrong hands, the buck gets passed, one hand
washes the other, etc, etc.
Richard Henninge
University of Mainz
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