The Life of the Mind (73 page)

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The links between [the] two parts [of
The Critique of Judgment]
...are closer connected with the political than with anything in the other Critiques. The most important of these links are
first
that in neither of the two parts Kant speaks of man as an intelligible or cognitive being. The word truth does not occur. The first part speaks of men in the plural ... as they live in societies, the second speaks of the human species.... The most decisive difference between the
Critique of Practical Reason
and the
Critique of Judgment
is that the moral laws of the former are valid for all intelligible beings whereas the rules of the latter are strictly limited in their validity to human beings on earth. And the 2nd link lies in that the faculty of judgment deals with particulars which "as such, contain something contingent in respect to the universal" which normally is what thought is dealing with. These particulars ... are of two lands;
the first part
of the
Critique of Judgment
deals with objects of judgment properly speaking, such as an object which we call "beautiful" without being able to subsume it under a general category. (If you say, What a beautiful rose! you don't arrive at this judgment by first saying, all roses are beautiful, this flower is a rose, hence it is beautiful. ) The other land, dealt with in
the second part,
is the impossibility to derive any particular product of nature from general causes: "Absolutely no human reason (in fact no finite reason like ours in quality, however much it may surpass it in degree) can hope to understand the production of even a blade of grass by mere mechanical causes." (Mechanical in Kant's terminology means natural causes; its opposite is "technical," by which he means artificial, i.e. something fabricated with a purpose.) The accent here is on "understand": How can I understand (and not just explain) why there is grass at all and then this particular blade of grass.

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Judgment of the particular—
this
is beautiful, this is ugly, this is right, this is wrong—has no place in Kant's moral philosophy. Judgment is not practical reason; practical reason "reasons" and tells me what to do and what not to do; it lays down the law and is identical with the will, and the will utters commands; it speaks in imperatives. Judgment, on the contrary, arises from "a merely contemplative pleasure or inactive delight
[untätiges Wohlgefallen].
" This "feeling of contemplative pleasure is called taste," and the
Critique of Judgment
was originally called Critique of Taste. "If practical philosophy speaks of contemplative pleasure at all it mentions it only in passing, and not as if the concept were indigenous to it." Doesn't that sound plausible? How could "contemplative pleasure and inactive delight" have anything to do with practice? Doesn't that conclusively prove that Kant ... had de cided that his concern with the particular and the contingent was a thing of the past and had been a somewhat marginal affair? And yet, we shall see that his final position on the French Revolution, an event which played a central role in his old age when he waited with great impatience every day for the newspapers, was decided by this attitude of the mere spectators, of those "who are not engaged in the game themselves," only follow it with "wishful," "passionate participation," which ... arose from mere "contemplative pleasure and inactive delight."

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The "enlargement of the mind" plays a crucial role in the
Critique of Judgment.
It is accomplished by "comparing our judgment with the possible rather than the actual judgment of others, and by putting ourselves in the place of any other man." The faculty which makes this possible is called imagination.... Critical thinking is possible only where the standpoints of all others are open to inspection. Hence, critical thinking while still a solitary business has not cut itself off from "all others."...[By] force of imagination it makes the others present and thus moves potentially in a space which is public, open to all sides; in other words, it adopts the position of Kant's world citizen. To think with the enlarged mentality—that means you train your imagination to go visiting....

I must warn you here of a very common and easy misunderstanding. The trick of critical thinking does not consist in an enormously enlarged empathy through which I could know what actually goes on in the mind of all others. To think, according to Kant's understanding of enlightenment, means
Selbstdenken,
to think for oneself, "which is the maxim of a never-passive reason. To be given to such passivity is called prejudice," and enlightenment is first of all liberation from prejudice. To accept what goes on in the minds of those whose "standpoint" (actually, the place where they stand, the conditions they are subject to, always different from one individual to the next, one class or group as compared to another) is not my own would mean no more than to accept passively their thought, that is, to exchange their prejudices for the prejudices proper to my own station. "Enlarged thought" is the result of first "abstracting from the limitations which contingently attach to our own judgment," of "disregarding its private subjective conditions ... by which so many are limited," that is, of disregarding what we usually call self-interest and which according to Kant is not enlightened or capable of enlightenment but is in fact limiting.... [The] larger the realm in which the enlightened individual is able to move, from standpoint to standpoint, the more "general" will be his thinking.... This generality, however, is not the generality of concept—of the concept "house" under which you then can subsume all concrete buildings. It is on the contrary closely connected with particulars, the particular conditions of the standpoints you have to go through in order to arrive at your own "general standpoint." This general standpoint we mentioned before as impartiality; it is a viewpoint from which to look upon, to watch, to form judgments, or, as Kant himself says, to reflect upon human affairs. It does not tell you how
to act....

In Kant himself this perplexity comes to the fore in the seemingly contradictory attitude in his last years of almost boundless admiration for the French Revolution, on one side, and his equally almost boundless opposition to any revolutionary undertaking from the side of the citizens, on the other....

Kant's reaction at first and even at second glance is by no means equivocal....He never wavered in his estimation of the grandeur of what he called the "recent event," and he hardly ever wavered in his condemnation of all those who prepare such an event.

This event consists neither in momentous deeds nor misdeeds committed by men whereby what was great among men is made small or what was small is made great, nor in ancient splendid political structures which vanish as if by magic while others come forth in their place as if from the depths of the earth. No, nothing of the sort. It is simply the mode of thinking of the spectators which reveals itself publicly in this great game of transformations....

The revolution of a gifted people which we have seen unfolding in our day may succeed or miscarry; it may be filled with misery and atrocities to the point that a sensible man, were he boldly to hope to execute it successfully the second time, would never resolve to make the experiment at such cost—this revolution, I say, nonetheless finds in the hearts of all spectators (who are not engaged in this game themselves) a wishful participation that borders closely on enthusiasm ... with what exaltation the uninvolved public looking on sympathized then without the least intention of assisting.

 

...Without this sympathetic participation, the "meaning" of the occurrence would be altogether different, or simply non-existent. For this sympathy is what inspires hope:

 

the hope that after many revolutions, with all their transforming effects, the highest purpose of nature, a
cosmopolitan existence,
will at last be realized within which all the original capacities of the human race may be developed.

 

From which, however, one should not conclude that Kant sided in the least with future men of revolutions.

 

These rights ... always remain an idea which can be fulfilled only on condition that the means employed to do so are compatible with morality. This limiting condition must not be overstepped by the people, who may not therefore pursue their rights by revolution, which is at all times unjust.

 

...And:

 

If a violent revolution, engendered by a bad constitution, introduces by illegal means a more legal constitution, to lead the people back to the earlier constitution would not be permitted but, while the revolution lasted, each person who openly or covertly shared in it would have justly incurred the punishment due to those who rebel.

 

...What you see here clearly is the clash between the principle according to which you act and the principle according to which you judge.... Kant more than once stated his
opinion
on war ... and nowhere more emphatically than in the
Critique of Judgment
where he discusses the topic, characteristically enough, in the section on the Sublime:

 

What is it which is, even to the savage, an object of the greatest admiration? It is a man who shrinks from nothing, who fears nothing, and therefore does not yield to danger.... Even in the most highly civilized state this peculiar veneration for the soldier remains ... because even by these it is recognized that his mind is unsubdued by danger. Hence ... in the comparison of a statesman and a general, the aesthetical judgment decides for the latter. War itself ... has something sublime in it.... On the other hand, a long peace generally brings about a predominant commercial spirit and, along with it, low selfishness, cowardice, and effeminacy, and debases the disposition of the people.

This is the judgment of the spectator (i.e., aesthetical).... Yet, not only can war, "an unintended enterprise ... stirred up by men's unbridled passions," actually serve because of its very meaninglessness as a preparation for the eventual cosmopolitan peace—eventually sheer exhaustion will impose what neither reason nor good will have been able to achieve—but

 

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 ... a motive for developing all talents serviceable for culture to the highest pitch.

 

...These insights of aesthetic and reflective judgment have no practical consequences for action. As far as action is concerned, there is no doubt that

 

moral-practical reason within us pronounces the following irresistible veto:
There shall he no war.
...Thus it is no longer a question of whether perpetual peace is possible or not, or whether we are not perhaps mistaken in our theoretical judgment if we assume that it is. On the contrary, we must simply act as if it could really come about ... even if the fulfillment of this pacific intention were forever to remain a pious hope ... for it is our duty to do so.

 

But these maxims for action do not nullify the aesthetic and reflective judgment. In other words: Even though Kant would always have acted for peace, he knew and kept in mind his judgment. Had he acted on the knowledge gained as a spectator, he would in his own mind have been a criminal. Had he forgotten because of this "moral duty" his insights as a spectator, he would have become what so many good men, involved and engaged in public affairs, tend to be—an idealistic fool.

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Since Kant did not write his political philosophy, the best way to find out what he thought about this matter is to turn to his
Critique of Aesthetic Judgment
where, in discussing the production of art works in their relations to taste which judges and decides about them, he confronts a similar, analogous problem. We ... are inclined to think that in order to judge a spectacle you must first have the spectacle, that the spectator is secondary to the actor—without considering that no one in his right mind would ever put on a spectacle without being sure of having spectators to watch it. Kant is convinced that the world without man would be a desert, and a world without man meant for him: without spectator. In the discussion of aesthetic judgment, the distinction is between genius which is required for the production of art works, while for judging them, and deciding whether or not they are beautiful objects, "no more" (we would say, but not Kant) is required than taste. "For judging of beautiful objects
taste
is required ... for their production
genius
is required." Genius according to Kant is a matter of productive imagination and originality, taste a ... matter of judgment. He raises the question, which of the two is the "more noble" faculty, which is the condition sine qua non "to which one has to look in the judging of art as beautiful art?"—assuming of course that though most of the judges of beauty have not the faculty of productive imagination which is called genius, the few endowed with genius, lack not the faculty of taste. And the answer is:

 

Abundance and originality of ideas are less necessary to beauty than the accordance of the imagination in its freedom with the conformity to law of the understanding [which is called taste]. For all the abundance of the former produces ... in lawless freedom nothing but nonsense; on the other hand, the judgment is the faculty by which it is adjusted to the understanding.

Taste, like the judgment in general, is the discipline (or training) of genius; it clips its wings ... gives guidance, brings clearness and order ... into the thoughts [of genius], it makes the ideas susceptible of being permanently and generally assented to, and capable of being followed by others, and of an ever progressing culture. If, then, in the conflict of these two properties in a product something must be sacrificed, it should be rather on the side of genius—without which nothing for judgment to judge would exist.