Kant's idealism

The freer humans get, the more idealist they become – philosophically, epistemologically, and practically. Relative freedom from want makes possible all kinds of human projects, while individuality is less tightly grasped by communal imperatives.

When there isn't as much freedom, philosophical dogmatism results. The idea that we are dominated by things, that the mind is their product rather than vice versa, is especially well-suited to a world where survival requires society's full attention, where the only "ideal" is found in heaven.

Kant's Critique of pure reason is an example of the turn to idealist philosophy in the wake of a long and powerful wave of creativity and intellectual independence made possible by Europe's increasing prosperity, especially as it was shocked by the accelerant called "the new world." Boy did people in Europe start to make a lot of money. Either they or their children can afford to go to school, indulge in romantic love affairs that highlight pesonal feelings rather than tactically-dictated marriages, read Sorrows of the young Werther by Goethe, become less directly and intimately tied to that great slave-owner and declared enemy of the individual, the land. Historically, Kant's Critique of pure reason was exquisitely situated: first version 1781, second substantive revision in 1787, the very year the founding parents were revising the Articles of Confederation in Philadelphia, and just two tiny, tiny years before the whole five or so centuries-long European game of Risk (those games seem to go on forever!) was upended by – would everyone please rise – the French Revolution of 1789. Please listen to the following short version of the French national anthem.

I have said it was a shame-faced idealism. I think of his immediate successor, J.G. Fichte as "Kant + French Revolution." His first work, The Science of Knowledge (Wissenschaftslehre) came out in 1794. It is a lot more unapologetically idealist.

Kant points to the quickness of the times himself: "No more than a century and a half has elapsed since Bacon's ingenious proposal partly initiated that discovery, partly gave a new impetus to it as others were already on the right track – a discovery which, like the former, can be explained only by a rapid intellectual revolution." "es sind nur etwa anderthalb Jahrhunderte, daß der Vorschlag des sinnreichen Bacon von Verulam diese Entdeckung teils veranlaßte, teils, da man bereits auf der Spur derselben war, mehr belebte, welche eben sowohl durch eine schnell vorgegangene Revolution der Denkart erklärt werden kann." (Bxii-xiii). As we can see, Kant is very concerned to include a lot of references to key figures from the Scientific Revolution when explicating his idealist project:

When Galilei experimented with balls of a definite weight on the inclined plane, when Torricelli caused the air to sustain a weight which he had calculated beforehand to be equal to that of a definite column of water, or when Stahl, at a later period, converted metals into lime, and reconverted lime into metal, by the addition and subtraction of certain elements; a light broke upon all natural philosophers. They learned that reason only perceives that which it produces after its own design . . .
Als Galilei seine Kugeln die schiefe Fläche mit einer von ihm selbst gewählten Schwere herabrollen, oder Torricelli die Luft ein Gewicht, was er sich zum voraus dem einer ihm bekannten Wassersäule gleich gedacht hatte, tragen ließ, oder in noch späterer Zeit Stahl Metalle in Kalk und diesen wiederum in Metall verwandelte, indem er ihnen etwas entzog und wiedergab; so ging allen Naturforschern ein Licht auf. Sie begriffen, daß die Vernunft nur das einsieht, was sie selbst nach ihrem Entwurfe hervorbringt . . . (Bxiii)

And a little later:

Even the science of physics owes the beneficial revolution in its character entirely to the happy thought that we ought to seek in nature (and not import into it by means of fiction) whatever reason has to learn from nature and could not know by itself, and that we must do this in accordance with what reason has originally placed in nature.
Und so hat sogar Physik die so vorteilhafte Revolution ihrer Denkart lediglich dem Einfalle zu verdanken, demjenigen, was die Vernunft selbst in die Natur hineinlegt, gemäß, dasjenige in ihr zu suchen (nicht ihr anzudichten), was sie von dieser lernen muß, und wovon sie für sich selbst nichts wissen würde. (Bxiii)

If, when we 'look' at nature, "we must do [so] in accordance with what reason has originally placed in nature/was die Vernunft selbst in die Natur hineinlegt", then we are thinking idealistically.

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the convenience store 03

I've constructed a simple thought experiment: someone walks into a convenience store, with lots of money spilling out of the cash register, poor convenience store worker dead from a heart attack, and different 'people,' motivated by pure philosophic principles, enter the convenience store. What do they do?

There's two Hobbes: simple and slightly more complex. The simple Hobbes is found in Chpater VI of Leviathan

But whatsoever is the object of any man's appetite or desire, that is it which he for his part calleth good: and the object of his hate and aversion, evil; and of his contempt, vile and inconsiderable. For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so; nor any common rule of good and evil, to be taken from the nature of the objects themselves; but from the person of the man (where there is no commonwealth;) or, (in a commonwealth,) from the person that representeth it; or from an arbitrator or judge, whom men disagreeing shall by consent set up, and make his sentence the rule thereof.

We're driven by appetites and aversions, but we're immediately quite different from animals. Animals are driven by appetite and aversion, and that's it. But humans immediately put a moral connotation on what they like and dislike, calling them 'good' and 'evil.' And so a Hobbesian walks into our fictional convenience store. He certainly takes the money (all surveillance cameras are dead; think of New Orleans), but he also finds some way to justify and rationalize what he's done. "Well, this money ain't no good to the dead convenience store worker," or "Insurance company will just reimburse the corporation behind the convenience store anyway; no harm no foul."

In a New Orleans-type situation, the basis of political obligation has been ripped apart:

To this warre of every man against every man, this also is consequent; that nothing can be Unjust. The notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice have there no place. Where there is no common Power, there is no Law: where no Law, no Injustice....It is consequent also to the same condition, that there be no Propriety, no Dominion, no Mine and Thine distinct; but onely that to be every mans that he can get; and for so long, as he can keep it. Lev. Ch. 13

In New Orleans there was no 'common power,' or at least it was awfully weak. All bets are off: I take what I can get.

That's the simple Hobbes. And perhaps even this simple Hobbes is too simple.

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