Kant is agnostic on the question of whether we are free. He merely pointed out that though all our actions may appear determinate, still, in some transcendent sense, nothing is an action or no compulsion is.
This is the opposite to what we currently think. Appearances are just appearances. You could pretend that they appear to contain loads and loads of paranoid information such that the whole is non-dissipative. But, why bother? All that matters is that what appears to us to be the case is a good enough appearance for us to get on with what we need to do. It might be entertaining, or useful, to change how things seem and that is certainly something we might spend money on- either beavering away in the Laboratory or getting blotto at the Student Union bar.
I suppose one could say that there is a specific type of appearance which has 'naturality'- i.e. it is the canonical, non arbitrary, solution to the question of what 'appearance' we would all accept if we were rational enough. But this 'naturality' needn't be causally complete. Indeed, if it is, the question would arise as to why everybody doesn't receive the same 'appearance' or why everybody isn't equally 'rational'. This is like saying that a bunch of 'first order' interactions which, by Yoneda lemma, capture everything about the 'natural' appearance, can't include a 'second order' or impredicative element. There can't be 'unrestricted comprehension' here because of Russel's paradox.
Kant's exiling 'freedom' to some unknowable 'transcendent' realm is a bit like the Brits, who founded the Indian National Congress, telling the 'natives' that they were being led to freedom, or already had leaders who were actually aiming at freedom while giving every indication of being a costly nuisance, but that Demesne or Dominion of Freedom would be entered not now, never now. At any rate, this is what Radhakrishnan might well have thought. He wrote-
Kant holds that man is both determined and free; determined, with regard to his relations as a member of the phenomenal realm, and free, with regard to his relations as a member of the noumenal realm. The same act is determined when regarded as belonging to the em- pirical series, and free when we consider it due to the underlying cause, the noumenon. Freedom, therefore, is vested in man, the noumenon; the cause is noumenal, the effect phenomenal. The empirical series of antecedents and consequents is but the phenomenon of the noumenal self.
This is the opposite of what Lord Krishna says in the Gita. Arjuna is free. He can do what he likes. It turns out that what Arjuna wants is the full blown gnosis of Theistic Devotion without change in conatus- i.e. his carrying on as before.
What shall we say by way of a relative estimate of the two theories?
Krishna is for common sense and freedom and being happy and getting on with your life. Kant is a deeply boring German civil servant who thinks some despot might be enlightened and thus a tedious type of slavery is actually transcendental freedom.
For Radhakrishnan, Tagore- who rejected British style Higher Education- and Gandhi- who rejected the Law Courts and Legislative Assemblies- were exercising freedom and making choices which made them happy. Both may have been somewhat silly but those who chose to follow them probably enjoyed themselves and did less harm than might otherwise have been the case.
What have the two systems in common? To the question of determinism or freedom, both systems reply, determinism and freedom; but the similarity ends there.
Not really. The Bhagvad Gita is restricted to the agent who doesn't want to be a principal. Indeed, Arjuna's own 'nature' inclines him to adore the Lord of Yoga. Moreover, because he was a great warrior who received boons from Gods and Gandharvas, the Gita's theophany was multiply realizable for him. The Comedy here is that you get a maximally happy ending though some apparently stupid philosophy gets talked. But if you look at the 'dhvani' of the Scriptural references in what Devakiputra says, we see that this is just exceedingly good poetry, that is all.
On ultimate analysis, we find that Kant offers us only the semblance of freedom 'and not the reality of it.
Germans truly were as stupid as shit. Kant, Hegel, Marx... there was literally nothing good or desirable that Teutonic pedants couldn't shit on. Look at what the cunts had done to the Vedas!
It must be said that there is a redemptive pathos to Kant- who had access to a pretty decent theistic Religion but who was obliged to shit higher than his arsehole coz he was a 'beamter' Civil Service pedagogue. What I mean is, this was a man who, lacking any means to certitude, nevertheless knew he was fucked. Consider the following-
There is no freedom, but everything in the world takes place entirely according to nature
In which case, nature must be free. Otherwise everything takes place according to whoever controls nature. Anyway, what's wrong with seeing ourselves as part of nature?
Transcendental freedom is therefore opposed to the law of causality,
in which case there can be no 'therefore' about it.
and represents such a connection of successive states of effective causes, that no unity of experience is possible with it. It is therefore an empty fiction of the mind,
like the 'mind'
and not to be met with in any experience.
except in experience which is itself and doesn't have to meet it or avoid it or buy it a birthday present.
We have, therefore, nothing but nature,
as opposed to what? Fantasy?
in which we must try to find the connection and order of cosmical events.
Nobody is forcing us to do stupid shit of this sort. Comical events may need a certain amount of stage-management. Cosmic events either don't matter to us or have a way of forcing us to acknowledge their 'connection and order' if we want to survive as a species.
Freedom (independence) from the laws of nature is
Magic or having Supernatural powers coz you were bitten by a radioactive spider.
no doubt a deliverance from restraint, but also from the guidance of all rules.
A German who is released from subservience to the law of gravity would float around shitting on the heads of his colleagues. Kant's categorical imperative was designed to avert this outcome.
For we cannot say that, instead of the laws of nature, laws of freedom may enter into the causality of the course of the world,
why not? There must be 'lawless' choice-sequences or else choice sequences whose law can never be known. In any case, the number of 'independent' variables determines the 'degrees of freedom'. In that sense freedom and independence are linked in the various phenomena we observe and about which we must make decisions.
because, if determined by laws, it would not be freedom, but nothing else but nature.
But nature can have degrees of freedom determined by the number of independent variables whose interaction describe it.
Nature, therefore, and transcendental freedom differ from each other like legality and lawlessness.
But legality only exists if lawlessness is undesirable. In practice, Justice is a service industry and resource availability determines its demand and supply. Justiciability may wax and wane depending on whether lawless 'spontaneous orders' are desirable to those with the means- i.e. a 'Stationary Bandit'- to replace them with 'legality'.
The former, no doubt, imposes upon the understanding the difficult task of looking higher and higher for the origin of events in the series of causes,
It's God- right? What's so fucking difficult about saying that?
because their causality is always conditioned.
Only stochastically. But we live under Knightian Uncertainty.
In return for this, however, it promises a complete and well-ordered unity of experience;
so does stupidity.
while, on the other side, the fiction of freedom promises, no doubt, to the enquiring mind, rest in the chain of causes, leading him up to an unconditioned causality, which begins to act by itself, but which, as it is blind itself, tears the thread of rules by which alone a complete and coherent experience is possible.”
This is like Krishna's theophany in the Gita. But threads easily mend themselves. We have a 'peak experience'. We are exhilarated. Then we go to sleep and wake to a new day of work and habit and familiar, affectionate, relationships. What's so wrong with that?
Radhakrishnan could have joined the Audit and Accounts Service or become an Actuary or gone to work for a Chettiar business house. Plenty of his peers were administrators or accountants of one sort or another. In any case, like Einstein and his chums, smart kids at College in India were reading Karl Pearson. Gokhale was a Professor of Math and the Servants of India were like a Jesuit order dedicated to collating useful statistics. My point is, that Radhakrishnan's reception of Kant wasn't very different from our own. Since he was concerned with both Freedom and Independence, he appreciated people as different as Tagore and Gandhi and Nehru and a host of others. But, more importantly, he appreciated himself and did well for himself while copiously shitting on Christianity. What more can we ask for from an immanent God? Or, since Gods die the lives of mortals and mortals live the deaths of gods, why not admit a transcendent incarnation must be either impassible or, in the bowels of Christ, wherever any two are gathered, God is the turd?
No comments:
Post a Comment