As-if Honneth were one Kant (and not another)…

It is quite serendipitous to me that Axel Honneth begins his book Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory with a look at Immanuel Kant’s essay “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose.” As an undergraduate, I lived and breathed Kant’s transcendentalism. I kept my heavily underlined copies of the Meiklejohn translation of Critique of Pure Reason in my backpack. “As-if” was my mantra, as one professor or another listed their arguments against Kant. “You make ethical decisions as-if you could will them universally.” “Judgments of taste are subjective, they are only willed as-if everyone would agree.” The Kantian world I inhabited was a mystical place of uncanny “as-ifs” and sublime negative pleasures connecting harmoniously with scientific reason and synthetic a priori knowledge.

When I read “Idea for a Universal History,” however, everything changed. Kant’s desire to prove the inevitability of progress and the connection between progress and nature annihilated my carefully positioned “as-ifs.” “[I]f it considers the play of the freedom of the human will in the large,” Kant argues, “it can discover within it a regular course; and that in this way what meets the eye in individual subjects as confused and irregular yet in the whole species can be recognized as a steadily progressing through slow development of its original predispositions” (10). I had little interest in a “in the large” deterministic Kant. Much of the disillusionment came from my inability to historicize either Kant’s development as a thinker or his place within the prejudices of the Enlightenment. As time wore on, and I entered graduate school, I thought less and less about Kant and more and more about thinkers like Benjamin, Derrida, and Badiou. 

Honneth’s chapter brings me back to Kant for two related reasons. First, Honneth aligns Kant with historical awareness and critical social theory. This succeeds in showing an alternative Kant whose model of social progress might be fragmentary, but who is nevertheless interested in the historicity of social and political change. Second, by sketching this portrait of Kant as a social and historical thinker, Honneth places Kant in the tradition of not only the Frankfurt school but also more contemporary thinkers like Alain Badiou. Willing the universal through the powerful and critical figure of the “as-if,” Kant’s ideas of progress become invaluable in thinking the importance of the event as a critical model of historical awareness.  

It is important, I believe, to point out that Honneth’s Kant is a Kant constructed by fragments: not a satisfactory systematic model. Honneth admits, “a satisfactory model of historical progress cannot be constructed from these fragments of an alternative explanatory model in Kant’s writings” (17). He portrays a Kant always almost on the verge of historical thinking, ambivalent, stretched between explanations for why progress makes theoretical and methodological sense. “[I]ndeed,” Honneth writes, “the impression is not entirely unjustified that Kant hesitated between these different alternatives right up to the end of his life” (3).  One Kant believes in an explanation for progress based on the tendencies of our reason. Human beings are, like Kant, caught between believing in laws of nature and insisting upon the freedom to make moral choices. For this Kant, our cognition (always wanting unity instead of chaos) bridges this paradox in accordance with the expectation of purpose. Purpose is cognitive, reflective, retroactive, and cultural. Random events are reordered by a purpose-directed rationality to synthesize the opposition between freedom and order. The cosmopolitan state that Kant mentions in his essay is a practical necessity emerging from the need of human beings to imagine better and better purposes for themselves.  

Honneth’s second Kant believes in historical purpose stemming from our practical reason. Those who act as moral agents must, in Kant’s view, believe in social progress. Instead of relying upon a theoretical argument about cognition, Kant instead appeals to the ability to will an act universally. Moral agents must act as-if they could will that everyone (past, present, and future) act in the same manner. In this sense, those who act morally and will their moral acts universally must admit that history is turned towards progress. Note that, at least for Honneth, Kant’s argument means that one’s attitude toward history has an impact on one’s ability to be a moral actor. One cannot act morally without willing that act universally and, by doing so, affirming the belief in progress. Even those who eschew the concept of progress, yet act to promote the welfare of others (Honneth mentions Moses Mendelssohn), secretly believe in the possibility that their work will lead to social progress. For Honneth, this is due not to any inevitable transcendental plan but “the narrative organizational principle of historical self-reassurance in the politically-driven process of enlightenment” (10). Acting with regards to political improvement, for Honneth’s second Kant, makes historical awareness of progress a practical (though not theoretical) inevitability.

While Kant hesitates between the cognitive and the practical framework for political and social progress, Honneth does not. Honneth, acting in accordance with his own historically situated political awareness, chooses the interventionist Kant over the cognitive-theoretical Kant. He suggests, for example, several models Kant proposed as mechanisms for continuing social progress. One is social antagonism that, for Kant, develops “a heightened sense of honor […] kept continuously alert by the constant threat of war” (13). Another is embedded within Kant’s theory of education. While nature gives human beings the ability to think freely, the culmination of successive generations of free thinkers creates “the cognitive process of progress” or history as “the unfolding of moral rationalization” (15).  Kant argues that such an unfolding depends upon the ability of individuals to not be dulled by conventional thinking or bullied by “intimidation, the threat of violence, and state censorship” (16).

The cognitive-theoretical Kant sees progress emerging from a cognitive necessity: whether necessity comes from a desire for unity or a vanity. The interventionist Kant sees progress between moral actors aware of their place within a history of social progress and suppressive, conventional powers who keep thinking dull and safe. One cannot help but see progress in Honneth’s interventionist-Kant erupting in much the same way Alain Badiou describes the event. While Badiou would be critical of Kant’s description of history, the method whereby moral actors become part of history represents – I believe – a proto-Badiouian elaboration of what he will later call the fidelity to the event.  Here, I believe, the description of moral actors acting as-if they could will an act to be universal is key.

Badiou’s description of the event, one’s fidelity to the event, and universalism are probably well known to many people on this site. I will, therefore, attempt to briefly define all three before showing how Honneth’s interventionist Kant fits into this tradition.  Badiou describes the event in Ethics as “whatever convokes someone to the composition of a subject […] something that happens in situations as something that the usual way of behaving cannot account for” (41). The subject, in Badiou’s analysis is formed outside of conventionality by something absolutely outside its situation. This something is the event. A little down further on the page, Badiou distinguishes “multiple being, where it is not a matter of truth (but only of opinions), from the event, which compels us to decide a new way of being” (41). The event ruptures the situation and compels a new existence. While creating this new being is a subjective act (in that it creates a subject), the truth of the event is a willed universalism, outside of all opinion. Fidelity to the event is fidelity to this universalism: an act of indifference to opinion and situation that nevertheless fits entirely within the situation of the subject.  

Honneth’s and Kant’s work are not reducible to Badiou’s event. I want to suggest, nevertheless, that Honneth’s contribution in this first chapter is formulating Kant as an interventionist social theorist whose commitments to willed universalism, progress, and moral action form analogues to Badiou’s later formulation of the event. The interventionist power of the “as-if” retains an awareness of multiplicity while also asserting the universality of moral and political acts. The non-teleological work done by Kant’s formulation of progress places moral actors within a history whose meaning is established by their actions and decisions. The possibility of moral action depends upon formulating knowledge that erupts convention and, while also relying upon awareness of one’s place within history, also positions itself against the stupefying powers of conformity. Kant’s moral actor chooses progress over cynicism by seizing the power of the “as-if” and willing universality. Likewise, Honneth reconfigures Kant as an interventionist social thinker by seizing the event of his work and choosing the power of decision and fidelity over ambivalence. Honneth’s Kant reminds me of the interventionist power of the “as-if” which, like any political or moral action, must be chosen, willed, and formed out of the chaos of ambivalence.

Works Cited
Badiou, Alain. Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil. Trans. Peter Hallward. New York: Verso, 2002.

Honneth, Axel. Pathologies of Reason: On the Legacy of Critical Theory. Trans. James Ingram. New York: Columbia UP, 2009.

Kant, Immanuel. Kant’s ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim: A Critical Guide. Ed. Amelie Oksenberg Rorty. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2009.

Comments

[old - Doug Johnson]

Thanks for getting us started, Roger, with a terrific post. I especially appreciated the last sentence of your first paragraph. I took this first Kant chapter as a bold essay on numerous fronts. Not only did he take on Kant while fronting his unified theory of Frankfurt philosophy, but he did so while trying (at least initially successfully in my estimation) while trying to incorporate seemingly outlying texts such as Adorno's *Minima Moralia.*

I read somewhat fast, but also somewhat differently than you with respect to the history arguments. I took it that he sees Kant as having a theoretical and practical (or ethical) argument for history as progress, but that Honneth rejects each of these in favor of a third, more obscure Kantian argument that by the mere act of writing one assumes the possibility that the future can and will be better. In fact, Honneth seems to me to suggest that this is where a revamped Critical Theory ought to make landing. It seemed to me at the time of reading to be an awful lot to stake on such a small beginning, but I felt open to giving it a chance. When I'm not typing in the dark, I'll have to reread to see if your understanding of Honneth as advocating for the entire second option of an ethical justification for history-as-progress works better than my initial take.

Your connection with Badiou's event didn't occur to me, but is intriguing. I'll keep it in mind certainly as well as I reread.

[John Ransom]

Roger Whitson says, quoting himself from earlier days, “You make ethical decisions as-if you could will them universally.” And Whitson is right to put the point this way: a great deal of Honneth's article is showing us the various ways -- and not only the particular way just mentioned by Whitson -- that Kant urges us to think of our progressive activity as necessary, as things that have to happen. I don't just will, for myself, opposition to a fascist regime, nor do I will in favor of a moral ought in my own name. For Kant there is something futile about that, isn't that right? It can't just be that I, personally, posit my will against, say, the "right wing" clerics in Iran by joining street protests against them, demanding to know "Where is my vote?," as we saw their banners and leaflets proclaimed. No. My right to vote has to be grounded in a universal right.

Now, why the "has to"? And let me provide some support for the claim that Honneth's reading of Kant is of someone who requires the kind of universality just mentioned. But prior to that let me also retreat another step to provide an even broader context. Honneth, in his Preface, tells us that "through all their disparateness of method and object, the various authors of the Frankfurt School are united in the idea that the living conditions of modern capitalist societies produce social practices, attitudes, or personality structures that result in a pathological deformation of our capacities for reason" (vii).

It is around the above theme that Honneth writes. The real purpose of the opening essay on Kant -- "The Irreducibility of Progress: Kant's Account of the Relationship Between Morality and History" -- is establishing the sense in which Kant is a critical theorist

One way is the one mentioned at the beginning of this post, and provided by Whitson: the moral law, and the demand that it be universal. And why must it be universal? So that the pursuit of it will not be *futile* -- or inefficacious. Let's say we lived in the world described by Glaucon in the Republic at 360e-361d. In such a case, the unjust man will get all the rewards that rightly belong to the just man, while the just man receives all the punishments the unjust one deserves. Kant's thinking -- this is my "take," anyway -- is that this would be intolerable, to the point where the motivation needed for just acts would dissipate.

Our acts must be universalizable not only so that we will come up with laws that benefit ourselves and that really aren't "laws" at all, but so that my fidelity to them is not made pointless by a social world and its practices that do not reduce the possibility of a just world to nothing.

And then, Honneth is saying, if I'm reading him right, that this is one way that Kant is a member of, why not just come out and say it, the Frankfurt School, precisely because his reasoning when it comes to the categorical imperative pushes him in the direction of society-wide, rather than partial solutions of society's ills.

We might be a little incredulous at the thought that Kant is a founding member of the Frankfurt School. We might think instead, and in an opposite direction, that the greatness and sweep of Kant's thought made possible something called "the Frankfurt School."

Whichever direction we prefer, we have certainly heard a version of this treatment of Kant before -- in Foucault, and perhaps others my ignorance keeps me from knowing about. In the unlikely event someone hasn't come across it before, I think it would be natural to read Honneth's essay on the prominence or even the dominance of "the social" in his moral thinking along with Foucault's essay, "What Is Enlightenment?"

By which I do not mean to say I did not learn from Whitson or Honneth. One thing Honneth makes clear in his essay, and that I benefited from in particular, was the idea that the universal law and the categorical imperative was by no means the only way in which Kant insisted on the primacy of the social over the "individual" centered critique. I'll clarify the "individual" centered critique phrase in a moment, but first, these other ways of "socializing" critique found by Honneth in his reading of Kant.

Kant maintains, according to Honneth, that if someone engages in a progressive act today -- say by writing a letter to an editor that protests recent government actions -- the unavoidable consequence of such an act is to assert, even if not in so many words, that all of human history up to that moment is pointed in this direction of human freedom, and that human freedom *will* reach that goal.

Honneth's reading of Kant has several other very valuable permutations. Whitson comments on them with valuable insight. At one point he writes it is important "to point out that Honneth’s Kant is a Kant constructed by fragments: not a satisfactory systematic model." I wonder if Whitson thinks Honneth goes a bit too far and tries to do too much with overly fragmented material from Kant? Is Honneth guilty of "recruitment" -- where thinkers put their ideas in the mouth or the head of a prominent voice, claim it she who is saying it, thus giving the ascribed position an enhanced credibility?

But the question I would really like to ask has to do with Kant's strong desire to "universalize" oppositional thought, followed by an equally strong desire (see Honneth for the details) to socialize and historicize it as well, since these two additional venues make possible the pursuit of the universal in different modes; on different stages.

Isn't oppositional thought usually played out in the context of the individual rather than the universal? We think of oppositional signposts like Martin Luther King or Gandhi and, no doubt, they had followers, plus effects that outlived them. Another counter-example would be transcendentalists like Thoreau and Emerson. These actors did not encourage us to act "as if" the whole thing could be universalized, because otherwise, what's the point? No -- they urge us to be self-sufficient centers of oppositional thought and practice who refuse to wait on the kind encouragement promised by "progress."

[Roger Whitson]

Doug: I can definitely see the point you are making with writing, though I'm not sure the extent to which Honneth sees that as an alternative to practical reason. The most telling section on writing was, for me, the argument against Mendelssohn. The act of writing is, in itself, a statement of faith in the ability of writing to enact some change in the future. So, I saw writing as an act of belief in progress stemming from the practical necessity of taking a universalist, moral, progressive stand for the better.

John:
I don't have any problem with Honneth "using" Kant at all. Apart from the fact that he isn't following the categorical imperative, I see the act as something akin to willing the universal. And my sense is that the universal (in Honneth's sense at least) is neither individual nor based on some metaphysical grounding -- but is, in fact, social. One constructs the universal by participating in social change and believing as if one's individual moral choices were part of a larger history of progress. Honneth's work writing Kant is definitely a political act.

I'm intrigued about your discussion of the two universalisms. But I would suggest that Kant's universal is (at least in Honneth's reading) already historical.

[John Ransom]

Hello Roger. You write, in your response above:

my sense is that the universal (in Honneth's sense at least) is neither individual nor based on some metaphysical grounding -- but is, in fact, social. One constructs the universal by participating in social change and believing as if one's individual moral choices were part of a larger history of progress.
[end Roger snippet]

Kant is "famous," wouldn't it be fair to say, for providing an individualistic, metaphysical grounding, which is established via the categorical imperative. Famous for it even if some injustice is done to his thinking in the process. But the move (by freedom, or the universal) from the individual to the social level still retains a commitment to "the universal" in Kant and, I suppose, the Frankfurt School as well. The question I have is, how important it is for theorists but also "actors" that they "construct the universal by participating in social change [while] believing as if one's individual moral choices were part of a larger history of progress."

For instance, how important is it for those resisting the electoral coup against the Iranian people that they (a) construct the universal (b) by participating in social change (that is, rallies against the Iranian regime) while believing (c) the moral choices they make are part of a larger history of progress? Does preparing a banner that reads, "Down with the electoral coup against the Iranian people!," and then parading around the streets with it, commit individuals or groups to the reasoning and motivations Kant suggests? In the same way that moral acts commit one to the much broader task of framing laws that (by definition) apply universally?

Part, perhaps not all, of what we are talking about is simple motivation. Without the above structure of belief concerning the meaning, point, and direction of one's actions the "mood," if you will, will no longer be "as if" but "who cares"? Those two options in the face of repression, tyranny, what have you, are what is at least in part at stake in the discussion.

And so I ask myself, "how much of that structure of belief concerning a particular kind of efficacy for my actions – namely, the kind that is linked to progress – do I think people need to have in order to get up out of their oppositional beds in the morning?" And my answer is, "not much, and certainly not as much as Kant, or Honneth's Kant, thinks." It was in light of this idea that I mentioned some thinkers and actors who do and do not ground their oppositional activity this way. One could make the argument that, for instance, MLK fits the kind of Kantian structure for making sense out of oppositional activity. The "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" and other pieces and concrete actions certainly can be made out to correspond to the full sentence of the snippet from Roger I quote above – though I also think King can be read differently.

-- John

[IceSword]

Rev. Kant's sunday school, er Long Sunday school.

Isn't it sort of PoMo tradition to include at least a few bon mots of Nietzsche contra-Kant, and Kant's grand dream of the Imperative? Seems appropriate. At any rate, IK insisted on transcendental Freedom (or intentionality as philo-types say), but didn't really establish it.

[John Ransom]

Honneth in this essay stresses the importance of Section 83 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment for his account of Kant's thought. That emphasis is made clear right around p. 4 of the essay. I thought there might be some interest in looking at it ourselves. A link to the version I found can be found here:

http://tiny.cc/okxtf

Here it is:

§ 83.
"Of the ultimate purpose of nature as a teleological system"

We have shown in the preceding that, though not for the determinant but for the reflective Judgement, we have sufficient cause for judging man to be, not merely like all organised beings a natural purpose, but also the ultimate purpose of nature here on earth; in reference to whom all other natural things constitute a system of purposes according to fundamental propositions of Reason. If now that must be found in man himself, which is to be furthered as a purpose by means of his connexion with nature, this purpose must either be of a kind that can be satisfied by nature in its beneficence; or it is the aptitude and skill for all kinds of purposes for which nature (external and internal) can be used by him. The first purpose of nature would be man’s happiness, the second his culture.

The concept of happiness is not one that man derives by abstraction from his instincts and so deduces from his animal nature; but it is a mere Idea of a state, that he wishes to make adequate to the Idea under merely empirical conditions (which is impossible). This Idea he projects in such different ways on account of the complication of his Understanding with Imagination and Sense, and changes so often, that nature, even if it were entirely subjected to his elective will, could receive absolutely no determinate, universal and fixed law, so as to harmonise with this vacillating concept and thus with the purpose which each man arbitrarily sets before himself. And even if we reduce this to the true natural wants as to which our race is thoroughly agreed, or on the other hand, raise ever so high man’s skill to accomplish his imagined purposes; yet, even thus, what man understands by happiness, and what is in fact his proper, ultimate, natural purpose (not purpose of freedom), would never be attained by him. For it is not his nature to rest and be contented with the possession and enjoyment of anything whatever. On the other side, too, there is something wanting. Nature has not taken him for her special darling and favoured him with benefit above all animals. Rather, in her destructive operations,—plague, hunger, perils of waters, frost, assaults of other animals great and small, etc.,—in these things has she spared him as little as any other animal. Further, the inconsistency of his own natural dispositions drives him into self-devised torments, and also reduces others of his own race to misery, by the oppression of lordship, the barbarism of war, and so forth; he, himself, as far as in him lies, works for the destruction of his own race; so that even with the most beneficent external nature, its purpose, if it were directed to the happiness of our species, would not be attained in an earthly system, because our nature is not susceptible of it. Man is then always only a link in the chain of natural purposes; a principle certainly in respect of many purposes, for which nature seems to have destined him in her disposition, and towards which he sets himself, but also a means for the maintenance of purposiveness in the mechanism of the remaining links. As the only being on earth which has an Understanding and, consequently, a faculty of setting arbitrary purposes before itself, he is certainly entitled to be the lord of nature; and if it be regarded as a teleological system he is, by his destination, the ultimate purpose of nature. But this is subject to the condition of his having an Understanding and the Will to give to it and to himself such a reference to purposes, as can be self-sufficient independently of nature, and, consequently, can be a final purpose; which, however, must not be sought in nature itself.

But in order to find out where in man we have to place that ultimate purpose of nature, we must seek out what nature can supply to prepare him for what he must do himself in order to be a final purpose, and we must separate it from all those purposes whose possibility depends upon things that one can expect only from nature. Of the latter kind is earthly happiness, by which is understood the complex of all man’s purposes possible through nature, whether external nature or man’s nature; i.e. the matter of all his earthly purposes, which, if he makes it his whole purpose, renders him incapable of positing his own existence as a final purpose, and being in harmony therewith. There remains therefore of all his purposes in nature only the formal subjective condition; viz. the aptitude of setting purposes in general before himself, and (independent of nature in his purposive determination) of using nature, conformably to the maxims of his free purposes in general, as a means. This nature can do in regard to the final purpose that lies outside it, and it therefore may be regarded as its ultimate purpose. The production of the aptitude of a rational being for arbitrary purposes in general (consequently in his freedom) is culture. Therefore, culture alone can be the ultimate purpose which we have cause for ascribing to nature in respect to the human race (not man’s earthly happiness or the fact that he is the chief instrument of instituting order and harmony in irrational nature external to himself).

But all culture is not adequate to this ultimate purpose of nature. The culture of skill is indeed the chief subjective condition of aptitude for furthering one’s purposes in general; but it is not adequate to furthering the will1 in the determination and choice of purposes, which yet essentially belongs to the whole extent of an aptitude for purposes. The latter condition of aptitude, which we might call the culture of training (discipline), is negative, and consists in the freeing of the will from the despotism of desires. By these, tied as we are to certain natural things, we are rendered incapable even of choosing, while we allow those impulses to serve as fetters, which Nature has given us as guiding threads that we should not neglect or violate the destination of our animal nature—we being all the time free enough to strain or relax, to extend or diminish them, according as the purposes of Reason require.

Skill cannot be developed in the human race except by means of inequality among men; for the great majority provide the necessities of life, as it were, mechanically, without requiring any art in particular, for the convenience and leisure of others who work at the less necessary elements of culture, science and art. In an oppressed condition they have hard work and little enjoyment, although much of the culture of the higher classes gradually spreads to them. Yet with the progress of this culture (the height of which is called luxury, reached when the propensity to what can be done without begins to be injurious to what is indispensable), their calamities increase equally in two directions, on the one hand through violence from without, on the other hand through internal discontent; but still this splendid misery is bound up with the development of the natural capacities of the human race, and the purpose of nature itself, although not our purpose, is thus attained. The formal condition under which nature can alone attain this its final design, is that arrangement of men’s relations to one another, by which lawful authority in a whole, which we call a civil community, is opposed to the abuse of their conflicting freedoms; only in this can the greatest development of natural capacities take place. For this also there would be requisite,—if men were clever enough to find it out and wise enough to submit themselves voluntarily to its constraint,—a cosmopolitan whole, i.e. a system of all states that are in danger of acting injuriously upon each other.1 Failing this, and with the obstacles which ambition, lust of dominion, and avarice, especially in those who have the authority in their hands, oppose even to the possibility of such a scheme, there is, inevitably, war (by which sometimes states subdivide and resolve themselves into smaller states, sometimes a state annexes other smaller states and strives to form a greater whole). Though war is an undesigned enterprise of men (stirred up by their unbridled passions), yet is it [perhaps]2 a deep-hidden and designed enterprise of supreme wisdom for preparing, if not for establishing, conformity to law amid the freedom of states, and with this a unity of a morally grounded system of those states. In spite of the dreadful afflictions with which it visits the human race, and the perhaps greater afflictions with which the constant preparation for it in time of peace oppresses them, yet is it (although the hope for a restful state of popular happiness is ever further off) a motive for developing all talents serviceable for culture, to the highest possible pitch.3

As concerns the discipline of the inclinations,—for for which our natural capacity in regard of our destination as an animal race is quite purposive, but which render the development of humanity very difficult,—there is manifest in respect of this second requirement for culture a purposive striving of nature to a cultivation which makes us receptive of higher purposes than nature itself can supply. We cannot strive against the preponderance of evil, which is poured out upon us by the refinement of taste pushed to idealisation, and even by the luxury of science as affording food for pride, through the insatiable number of inclinations thus aroused. But yet we cannot mistake the purpose of nature—ever aiming to win us away from the rudeness and violence of those inclinations (inclinations to enjoyment) which belong rather to our animality, and for the most part are opposed to the cultivation of our higher destiny, and to make way for the development of our humanity. The beautiful arts and the sciences which, by their universally-communicable pleasure, and by the polish and refinement of society, make man more civilised, if not morally better, win us in large measure from the tyranny of sense-propensions, and thus prepare men for a lordship, in which Reason alone shall have authority; whilst the evils with which we are visited, partly by nature, partly by the intolerant selfishness of meu, summon, strengthen, and harden the powers of the soul not to submit to them, and so make us feel an aptitude for higher purposes, which lies hidden in us.1

[John Ransom]

Honneth says it is "only in section 83 of [Kant's] Critique of Judgment (1790) that we find the formulations that must have halfway satisfied Kant methodologically" (4). A little lower on p. 4 section 83 is mentioned again, and Honneth says its significance is that with it, "this thought of 'purposiveness,' conceived through reflective judgment" can be applied "to the field of human history." Honneth reminds us that a similar argument is made in "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" (1784).

The dynamic of Kant's argument, if I've understood it, is simple. Humans are purposive beings. We say we want things to be arranged in such-and-such a way. This is true all the way down to the level of adopting as one's purpose the securing and consuming of an ice cream cone. (And to this extent we share our purposiveness with animals, insects, and vegetation. Bacteria and germs too, I suppose.) He writes: "The concept of happiness is not one that man derives by abstraction from his instincts and so deduces from his animal nature; but it is a mere Idea of a state, that he wishes to make adequate to the Idea under merely empirical conditions (which is impossible). This Idea he projects in such different ways on account of the complication of his Understanding with Imagination and Sense . . . ".

Even in the realm of the mere appetite, we put before ourselves desires and projects for satisfying them. Humans "project" a scheme for the pursuit and satisfaction of desires. There is already something about this activity that transcends the supposed purpose in mind; that is, the satisfaction of desire. The struggle secure the objects of desire throws up institutions, skills, inventions, and so on, and the creation of this "culture" – of so many more or less refined tools – can seem to be more valuable than the actual object they were first designed to secure.

But then there comes into view a gap between what we "propose" and the actual result. We look at that gap and we are dissatisfied. Our dissatisfaction with the gap urges us on to close it. The effort to close the distance results in *progress*. (Animals and insects can be observed working to obtain something they want differently from a way that has failed them. But the result is not progress because it does not lead to the self-conscious possession of it.)

Humans might pursue progress in this way simply on the level of the pursuit of desires. "Well, here I am in ancient Rome and I can't supply it with enough water using old methods now that it is so much larger, and yet I want it to be supplied with water, and so what to do about the gap between what I want and what I'm getting? Aqueducts!" Other animals, insects, and fauna can't do that; at least, not in a way that leads to a permanent cultural possession of the species.

This distance between what we have and what we want does not only apply to physical needs, such as a reliable supply of water. As Kant puts it in 83: "As the only being on earth which has an Understanding and, consequently, a faculty of setting arbitrary purposes before itself, he is certainly entitled to be the lord of nature; and if it be regarded as a teleological system he is, by his destination, the ultimate purpose of nature."

With this idea in mind, Kant defines culture: "The production of the aptitude of a rational being for arbitrary purposes in general (consequently in his freedom) is culture."

The culture we have created, however willy-nilly, points to something greater than the lower purposes for which it was designed. It calls out for protection and refinement. "The formal condition under which nature can alone attain this its final design, is that arrangement of men's relations to one another, by which lawful authority in a whole, which we call a civil community, is opposed to the abuse of their conflicting freedoms; only in this can the greatest development of natural capacities take place." (I am struck by the similarity of this kind of reasoning with Hobbes's argument in Leviathan.)

But of course as we all know the cure so often is worse than the disease. No doubt, the "abuse of . . . conflicting freedoms" points in the direction of the formation of a political community that can rein in all these merely self-interested beings. But it doesn't take long to see that this new product of culture can be redirected in favor of individuals and groups who employ it on behalf of factional or oppressive ends. But even here, of course, the dynamic of progress can make...progress, and the arguments by Hobbes are countered by those from Locke.

It's easy to see how a dynamic like this works in oppositional settings. Kant would want to argue, I imagine (and I'm certainly open to learning I've misunderstood some or all of what is going on), that the dissatisfaction and resistance offered by large segments of the Iranian people to the recent electoral coup works along the same lines of a gap between what one wants the world to be and what is actually going on in one's world. And if those elements of Iranian society retain their vigor and pursue their demands, they will be working for an adequation between (to put it in the simplest possible terms) "their ideals" and "reality."

Unsurprisingly, there's more to be said about 83 but now I'll stop.

[IceSword]

Hobbes opposed teleological thinking, really, and like most empiricists viewed reason in more instrumental terms (not saying that's proper, but quite different than Kant, Hegel et al). People work out the basis for civil society because it's in their best interest to do so, supposedly.

Reason for IK replaces religion, really, and there is a dialectical aspect: "if [nature] be regarded as a teleological system he is, by his destination, the ultimate purpose of nature." Or is it just more Aristotle nostalgia. A bit different flavor of Weltanschauung than Hobbesian contracts, at any rate. Grandly speculative, hyper-rational, yet poetic and visionary: c'est Kant. That said, he cannot really get around the empiricist skepticism regarding universals (ie Hume's points on fact-value distinction--) . Act "as if" may be prudent, proper, even rational but not an obligation, or some axiomatic definition of justice.

[Roger Whitson]

JR: I see your comparison between Hobbes and Kant, but I see them (perhaps) starting at the same point and going very different places with their logic. Hobbes is talking about the establishment of the state as the only thing that can stop the war of each against all -- with the supreme ruler as that which we all submit to so we don't die. Kant is talking about the civil state as the space where desire can be channeled into the development of institutions to cultivate progress. In my view, Hobbes saw individual self-desire as something that must be quelled and submitted to the will of the state (because it only led to war), while Kant sees desire as something to be channeled into the larger civil vision of progress. Culture, as you said, refines our desires -- and by that I think Kant sees this refined desire as a collective desire for the better. This is why, I believe, for Honneth's Kant Universality is social (as I said previously).

And I don't have my Honneth in front of me, but I do seem to remember that he said he wasn't interested in constructing a teleological vision of progress with Kant. This is, of course, what makes him see Kant's vision of history as more interesting (perhaps) than Hegel's, right? Progress is not teleological, but merely refers to the ability to see that history is choosing the better over the worse.

IceSword: Why can't Kant's "as if" be axiomatic? Perhaps it can only emerge as a reflective pragmatism. That being said, I believe his vision of progress does attempt a different response to Humean skepticism. Sure, we understand that the universal is impossible -- but, we all act in the act of making a decision as if it were not only a possible but also a necessary part of the decision.