Pedants who lived centuries ago didn't have access to Wikipedia. We are more fortunate. There is no reason why we should not draw on advances in Mathematics, Logic, the Natural and Social Sciences as well as the Science of Law, to see how and why those pedants went wrong. In doing so, we stand on surer ground in deriding and reviling those pedants and public intellectuals who, relying on obsolete arguments and imbecilic availability cascades, continue to make a nuisance of themselves.
As a case in point, consider Kant's claim that the only innate right is freedom- 'Freedom (independence from the constraint of another’s will), insofar as it is compatible with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a universal law, is the one sole and original right that belongs to every human being by virtue of his humanity.' Sadly, Kant meant that this 'right' only existed if his categorical imperative was true. It wasn't. It was stupid shit. What more could you expect from Kant who- as he said- was a member of a 'lower faculty' (Philosophy) looked down on by those in higher faculties (Medicine, Law, Divinity).
Since Socioproctology is so high a faculty that, as yet, no University has attained an altitude where even its highest faculty could afford it hospitality, it follows that my categorical imperative is greatly superior to that of Kant. Briefly, it states that everybody should do what is best for me. This is because I am super special. If everybody believed me- or if this wasn't an obviously stupid claim- I'd be better off or at least not considered a moron.
Kant's categorical imperative runs thus-
“Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end.”
Thus if you are raping and decapitating a person, be sure that you enjoy raping and killing that particular person rather than regard killing and raping simply as a means to pass the time.
Kant believed that
“[I]t is manifest that a violator of the rights of man intends to use the person of others merely as means without taking into consideration that, as rational beings, they ought always at the same time to be rated as ends….”
This is not manifest at all. People violate rights accidentally, negligently, or with the best of intentions. Moreover, it is a violation of rights to rape and kill a person even if the end you aim at is that the person gains a senior position on the staff of his Satanic Majesty and thus would be very grateful to you.
Kant writes-
Any opposition that counteracts the hindrance of an effect promotes that effect and is consistent with it.
Sadly that same opposition may counteract both the hindrance and the effect itself. Only time will reveal what forces are 'consistent' with each other.
Now, everything that is unjust is a hindrance to freedom according to universal laws.
Everything that is just may be. We don't know. Only time will tell. It would be nice if things we like are all mutually compatible and consistent. The reason I hesitate to invite Beyonce and Rihanna for a sleepover is because though I am sure both will want to be my best friends forever and ever, they may not get on with each other. Beyonce will want to braid my hair- which is fine with me- but what if Rihanna isn't content to do my nails? There could be tears before bedtime.
Coercion, however, is a hindrance or opposition to freedom.
It may be. It may not.
Consequently, if a certain use of freedom is itself a hindrance to freedom according to universal laws (that is, is unjust),
then you can be sure those laws aren't universal.
then the use of coercion to counteract it, inasmuch as it is the preservation of a hindrance to freedom, is consistent with freedom according to universal laws; in other words, this use of coercion is just.
In other words, the Prussian King should suppress the fuck out of any Revolution on the French, or even the American, model.
It follows by the law of contradiction
which does not apply to epistemic objects because the 'intension' has no well-defined extension. Thus, Borges isn't Borges precisely because he is Borges. Indeed, nothing is what it is from some point of view.
that justice [a right]
is epistemic and changes as the knowledge base changes such that it forbids the very act that it previously enjoined or, like 'halachah vein morin kein' forbids the action iff it is known that the action is required.
is united with the authorization to use coercion against anyone who violates justice [or a right]
Authorization flows from Authority. It may be delegated to Judges or Executives or Legislators. The latter may affirm but do not establish Authority. In the US, the People are the source of authority. In the UK it is the Crown in Parliament. There is no 'authorization' to use coercion even in self-defence. There is a defeasible 'immunity' which a Court of Law may accept on the basis of delegated authority.
Kant
distinguishes a duty of virtue from a juridical duty (by) the fact that external compulsion to a juridical duty is morally possible, whereas a duty of virtue is based on free self-constraint.
Any system of morality can permit 'external compulsion' in any situation simply by stipulating for different facts in the case. Even if a moral theory is categorical, i.e. has a unique model quid juris, still the person holding the theory is free to decide, quid facti, that coercion even of an extreme type is justified. In other words there has to be categoricity both re. principles and re. facts. This does obtain in plenty of things. We agree that is an elephant and this is a mouse. But nothing becomes justiciable unless there is a dispute either about facts or about what law or principle applies. More generally, Kant's theory is useless when it isn't mischievous because it is 'anything goes'.
Consider freedom of thought or expression. Should the State be allowed to use coercive methods to curb this? In 'the conflict of the faculties', Kant admits that in the higher University faculties (Law, Medicine and Divinity) are vital to the State and thus must be strictly supervised but, he says, the lower faculties (e.g. Philosophy & Natural Science) aren't important and thus can be given more freedom to speculate. But this also explains why the 'natural law' of the philosopher is lower than 'positive' law (i.e. law as command). The latter matters. It is vital to the state and the safety of the population. Natural law & natural religion don't matter. They are just things pedagogues in lower faculties talk about to adolescents who, if they are smart, will go on to a higher faculty. If they are stupid, however, they may be school teachers or tutors to rich kids.
To be fair, Kant had to write the way he did because he was a subject of the Russian King and a 'beamte' civil servant by virtue of his employment as a Professor. He hints at his own views when he quotes the story of a French politician Minister who asks a group of leading merchants to suggest ways of stimulating trade. The younger merchants make various suggestions. Then the old merchant speaks up. He says build good roads, mint sound money, have good laws and, for the rest, leave us alone!
This isn't exactly 'laissez faire' and there were already Listian arguments for 'infant industry' protection. Still, this was the 'common sense' the Scots were propounding. But the Scots were safe from invasion or oppression by a tyrant. Prussians were not. Beamteliberalismus- the liberalism of the civil servants- couldn't be too full throated. As with Justice, Liberty too must cut its coat according to its cloth.
Kant applies a common judicial tool in considering the most salient motive for an action as the motive that must be considered. If you do a thing mainly because it is profitable, though you also know it is morally the right thing to do, then your motive is profit not morality. Where Kant goes wrong is that he thinks what is moral is always what is dictated by a principle- that too one that is 'universalizable' or symmetric in every way. This is not the case. It may be that we may get to general principles by induction but those principles will evolve as our knowledge and experience increases. True, we can deduce things from axioms which may, at one time, seem intuitively true. Sadly, those intuitions are misleading. There are no such things as apodictic synthetic a priori judgments. One reason is the 'intensional fallacy'. Saying 'x is x' is false if x is 'epistemic'. It does not coincide with itself because it changes as the knowledge base changes.
If by 'a priori knowledge' we mean 'background knowledge' or 'conventional wisdom', no great harm is done. We may equate the thing with Bayesian priors and move on. Kant, however, defines it thus- By the term “knowledge a priori,” therefore, we shall in the sequel understand, not such as is independent of this or that kind of experience, but such as is absolutely so of all experience.
It is fine to say this of Revealed Scripture which being wholly imperative has no alethic component of which we could have experience- e.g. harrowing Hell or chatting to God. Indeed, the major religions consider their Holy Book to be 'uncreated'. What Kant is suggesting is that there is some experience we all have which is independent of any contingent circumstance of our own existence. But what experiment can we do which assure us this is the case? Some say that if you die and are brought back to life you will have a particular type of experience which is proof of the afterlife. Others say that if you take drugs and suck their cock you will lose your 'false consciousness' and 'materialistic delusions' and overcome the hegemony of Patriarchy & Neo-Liberalism such that you will give all your money to your pimp rather than meanly keep back some for yourself in order to buy a burger.
We may say 'a priori knowledge' is an 'intension'. But its 'extension' is empty or only knowable at the end of mathematical time. Consider the 'black cabbie' in London who has done 'the Knowledge'- i.e. was tested on his ability to get from any street address to any other by the shortest route. He did not have posteriori knowledge but a 'skeletal' knowledge base which he found it useful to update from time to time.
Opposed to this is empirical knowledge, or that which is possible only a posteriori, that is, through experience.
Fuck off! We gain empirical knowledge by updating an epistemic map or model in a routine or protocol bound, manner. As for what we experience, we forget it if it isn't 'mission critical' or confirm it if it is.
Knowledge a priori is either pure or impure.
If one thing exists a priori, then the existential predicate entails the necessary existence of at least one thing. But this means there is an ontological proof of at least one thing- even if it isn't the God of St. Anselm. If that thing necessarily exists then either it is everything or there is some sufficiency condition by which all things are within its web of predication.
That's why claiming 'a priori Knowledge' exists (unless you are a mystic or a Theist) is pure horse-shit.
Pure knowledge a priori is that with which no empirical element is mixed up. For example, the proposition, “Every change has a cause,” is a proposition a priori, but impure, because change is a conception which can only be derived from experience.
If so, the same thing could be said about 'cause' and 'every' and 'has'. Indeed, since Knowledge is not a priori, nothing in it can be so.
'Kant's dove', famously, thinks it can fly better if there were no air. But doves and fishes aren't stupid. They know that if the tide or the breeze are in their favour, they get to their objective faster. It is only when they turn against them that they might wish to transcend the element in which they must have their life.
Kant believed that
III. Philosophy stands in need of a Science which shall Determine the Possibility, Principles, and Extent of Human Knowledge “a priori”
Sadly, nobody stood in need of Philosophy. If you want to get rid of Kings and Bishops, just chop their fucking heads off and repent your sins at leisure. Philosophy can slay no dragons. It can merely foul its own nest.
Mathematical science affords us a brilliant example, how far, independently of all experience,
The cunt didn't get that geometry or analysis weren't independent of all experience. They arose because they were useful in improving empirical outcomes
we may carry our a priori knowledge.
Gauss and Grassmann and Galois, not to mention Hamilton and Lobachevsky etc. carried it yet further by rejecting the dogmatic straitjacket of 'synthetic a priori' truths. They prevailed because their work was useful. The shibboleth of 'necessary truth' wasn't. Sadly some remained in thrall to it and wasted everybody's time.
It is true that the mathematician occupies himself with objects and cognitions only in so far as they can be represented by means of intuition.
Thankfully, that had never been the case.
But this circumstance is easily overlooked, because the said intuition can itself be given a priori, and therefore is hardly to be distinguished from a mere pure conception.
The Brits tended to be 'conceptualists', in Mathematics, and thus fell behind the Continent. Anal-tickle philosophy inherits that Misology.
Deceived by such a proof of the power of reason, we can perceive no limits to the extension of our knowledge.
There are none. It isn't the case that just coz a dude is bleck, we can't learn a lot from him. Sadly, we can't learn much from Kant however racist he might have been.
The light dove cleaving in free flight the thin air, whose resistance it feels,
Why would it feel resistance if the wind is at its back?
might imagine that her movements would be far more free and rapid in airless space.
No. Its wings would be useless in a vacuum. This silly cunt didn't get that Galileo, Newton etc. were able to get to better equations of motion by abstracting from air-resistance and wind velocity etc.
just in the same way did Plato, abandoning the world of sense because of the narrow limits it sets to the understanding, venture upon the wings of ideas beyond it, into the void space of pure intellect.
Fuck off! He ventured, upon the wings of words, into the space of Musaeus from whom his patrician ancestors would have been partially descended on the distaff side.
He did not reflect that he made no real progress by all his efforts; for he met with no resistance which might serve him for a support,
Socrates met with resistance. Plato was careful to keep clear of 'resistance' which is why he lived long and died of natural causes.
as it were, whereon to rest, and on which he might apply his powers, in order to let the intellect acquire momentum for its progress.
Plato's big idea was that Math was important. Since there still are Mathematical Platonists, he succeeded. Kant failed. There was no 'bridge' between his Metaphysics and actual Physics which is why in his last fascicles he thinks perhaps his system reduces to 'galvanism' or 'Zoroaster'. In other words there must be some being, or energizing principle, which incarnates Transcendence. The trouble here is that Christ is good enough for this purpose and there's a pretty decent Church within walking distance for the vast majority of Europeans.
It is, indeed, the common fate of human reason
there was little of that commodity in Kant's neck of the woods.
in speculation, to finish the imposing edifice of thought
pile of shite more like
as rapidly as possible, and then for the first time to begin to examine whether the foundation is a solid one or no.
It is shit. What you are actually doing, when you establish a 'necessary' truth, is shitting in, not just your pants, but also the Professorial chair which you occupy.
The Formula of the Universal Law of Nature
Kant’s first formulation of the CI
the categorical imperative. Categorical means having a 'unique model'. This is fine for a first order logic in which case the model must be finite. The problem is that many second order logics can be 'observationally equivalent' but this does not necessarily mean they are identical. This is like the problem of 'multiple realizability' which arises when we think of supervenience.
states that you are to “act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”
Universal means 'unrestricted comprehension'. If the law or maxim has a restricted application it is local, contingent and, if challenged, plastic or almost immediately defeasible
The other problem is to differentiate which acts are 'eligible' for review under a universal law or maxim. Unless all fall within that rubric, we are back to 'restricted comprehension' because eligibility is a matter of fact not law. Anyone at all can will anything at all to be the law provided they can also stipulate that the facts are whatever it is they say they are.
Suppose there is an universal law or maxim which applies to all actions. Then either you should not piss or shit or even breathe the air because there can be no maxim or universal law with respect to such things or else some maxims are ridiculous or concerned with trivialities.
In any case, it is a fact that there are places where it is not safe to breathe or piss or shit. Having a right to do so does not mean a remedy will be provided if that right is violated. Moreover, a maxim with respect to farting- e.g 'better out than in'- is farcical or infra dig.
On the other hand a person who thinks sex is evil, like Mahatma Gandhi, or that Jews are evil, like Hitler, may indeed want the law to ban sex or the existence of Jews. There is a story that Hitler asked Deiter Eckhart if there had ever been a good Jew. 'One,' that evil cunt replied, 'Otto Weininger. He killed himself at the age of 23.'
Is there a way around this problem?
(G 4:421). O’Neill (1975, 1989) and Rawls (1980, 1989), among others, take this formulation in effect to summarize a decision procedure
this could be a juristic procedure rather than an economic calculus. If it is juristic, it could either be protocol bound or 'lawless' and either 'buck stopped' or only terminable if there is a 'natural'- i.e. non arbitrary- 'canonical' solution.
This is not to say that the thing can't be a pure deontic logic. However in that case it must have a mathematical representation, or model, in a first order language or else it is itself 'second order'. But, if 'second order', then it can't itself be a first order duty.
for moral reasoning, and we will follow their basic outline: First, formulate a maxim that enshrines your proposed plan of action.
That is easier said than done. Any maxim I might come up with would be inferior to what a smarter dude with better Language skills could do. Alas, even so, the maxim may be mischievous or meaningless.
Second, recast that maxim as a universal law of nature governing all rational agents,
i.e. it has 'naturality' and is unique and thus has 'categoricity'. In other words, these fools are saying 'first do something impossible for any human we know off to do. Then do something we know it is fucking impossible to do- viz. produce a 'theory' which has a first order mathematical model which is categorical AND complete for Peano Arithmetic.
and so as holding that all must, by natural law, act as you yourself propose to act in these circumstances.
A Gandhi could say all rational beings would find sex icky and abstain from it. That way, Humanity will die out and we would all get reborn on a paradisal planet.
Third, consider whether your maxim is even conceivable in a world governed by this new law of nature.
Hitler would have been happy in a World without Jews and Homos and Darkies. Also women would be barefoot and pregnant to blonde beasts dressed in SS uniforms.
If it is, then, fourth, ask yourself whether you would, or could, rationally will to act on your maxim in such a world. If you could, then your action is morally permissible.
So Hitler and Eichmann etc were acting in a morally permissible fashion. Obviously, both should have topped themselves at some point because they weren't blonde enough.
If your maxim fails the third step,
I just farted. Yet, I myself admit that there can be no universal law governing passing wind.
you have a “perfect” duty admitting “of no exception in favor of inclination” to refrain from acting on that maxim (G 4:421).
I just farted again. This was a condign criticism of the notion that I had a 'perfect duty' not to stink up my own house to my heart's content.
If your maxim fails the fourth step, you have an “imperfect” duty requiring you to pursue a policy that can admit of such exceptions.
E.g. don't try to exterminate Jews if their Bubbee's will beat the shit out of you.
If your maxim passes all four steps, only then is acting on it morally permissible.
This is merely a claim. It can be countered by the claim that it is itself morally impermissible unless the guy making the claim had properly inserted his head up his own rectum and was appreciatively breathing in his own farts.
Following Hill (1971), we can understand the difference in duties as formal: Perfect duties come in the form “One must never (or always) φ to the fullest extent possible in C”,
Presumably 'perfect' means 'indefeasible'. But the perfect duty my be to never have perfect duties save in so far as fools are welcome to display their foolishness more particularly if they are pedants teaching worthless shite.
while imperfect duties, since they require us to adopt an end, at least require that “One must sometimes and to some extent φ in C.”
No. Speaking generally, an 'end' is 'multiply realisable'. You only have a duty to do φ if there is a binding stipulation to that effect. True, you may have a defence against a charge of dereliction of duty if you did not do φ but achieved a superior outcome in some other way. But, this defence may fail.
So, for instance, Kant held that the maxim of committing suicide to avoid future unhappiness did not pass the third step, the contradiction in conception test.
Kant was wrong. A guy who kills himself may want everybody to do likewise.
Hence, one is forbidden to act on the maxim of committing suicide to avoid unhappiness.
Unless one wants everybody to commit suicide.
By contrast, the maxim of refusing to assist others in pursuit of their projects passes the contradiction in conception test,
There has never been any such maxim. We may refuse to assist others save for adequate recompense or by reason of affectional tie or some other psychic benefit. But the relevant maxim is 'look out for number one' or, less brutally, 'charity begins at home'.
but fails the contradiction in the will test at the fourth step.
It doesn't fucking exist. Looking out for number one involves taking jobs which advance other people's projects.
Hence, we have a duty to sometimes and to some extent aid and assist others.
Only in the sense that we have a duty to sometimes and to some extent pretend we have a duty in the same way as we have a God given right to suck ourselves off.
Kant held that ordinary moral thought recognized
that pedants have shit for brains. It's okay if the Pastor talks bollocks on Sunday. That's what he is paid to do and we get a good reputation by pretending to give ear. But Professors of shite subjects are merely glorified child-minders unless, like Kant, they are Prussian Civil Servants.
moral duties toward ourselves as well as toward others.
You have a moral duty not to use your dick as a means to pleasure rather than an end in itself. This means you should not lay rough hands upon it. Simply suck it off in an empathetic and psychologically supportive manner so that it gains confidence to pursue its own project of qualifying as an Actuary- like Novalis.
Hence, together with the distinction between perfect and imperfect duties,
which only exists by arbitrary stipulation
Kant recognized four categories of duties: perfect duties toward ourselves,
e.g. the duty to give yourself a blow-job
perfect duties toward others,
unless they beat you or run away
imperfect duties toward ourselves and imperfect duties toward others.
As a matter of fact, something like this does arise in the case of the duties of a 'bonus pater familias' who is expected to show a higher standard of care and diligence with respect to the law of trusts, torts and certain Civil functions or duties. This would be 'in abstracto' i.e. at a 'universalizable' level. The problem here is that 'factorization' of duties is non unique, i.e. lacks categoicity, because of the de juris/de facti distinction. In other words, what is fact and what is law are impredicative and so multiple realizability obtains.
Kant uses four examples in the Groundwork, one of each kind of duty, to demonstrate that every kind of duty can be derived from the CI, and hence to bolster his case that the CI is indeed the fundamental principle of morality.
Poor fellow, he was neither an actual lawyer, nor had access to the sort of results in mathematical logic we have had for almost a century. He was bound to fuck up. Why is this failed research program, or availability cascade, still trundling on? Why not ask Physicists to disprove the Wu experiment so as to re-establish 'incongruent counterparts' instead? Better still, why not campaign for Alchemy and Voodoo to be taught at M.I.T?
To refrain from suicide is a perfect duty toward oneself;
In Kant's time, a gentleman who couldn't pay his gambling debts had a duty to blow his brains out. The same was true if he was caught taking it up the arse from his footman.
to refrain from making promises you have no intention of keeping is a perfect duty toward others;
Nonsense! It is wholly defeasible when it isn't highly entertaining. Anyway, without the passing of consideration, no promise is a contract. Either the promise pertains to a pre-existing duty or it is mere puffery. Kant's problem was that he hadn't studied or, better yet, practiced, Law
to develop one’s talents is an imperfect duty toward oneself;
whereas sucking yourself off is a perfect duty
and to contribute to the happiness of others is an imperfect duty toward others. Again, Kant’s interpreters differ over exactly how to reconstruct the derivation of these duties. We will briefly sketch one way of doing so for the perfect duty to others to refrain from lying promises and the imperfect duty to ourselves to develop talents.
There is a perfect duty to others to kill your colleagues if you say 'I'll fucking kill you, if you help yourself to the cookies I bought'. On the other hand gaining the skill to suck yourself off is only an imperfect duty though sucking yourself off is a perfect duty because it is wrong to treat your dick as just a means to the end of pissing or jizzing. You must show it empathy and be emotionally supportive, by sucking it off regularly, of its project to qualify as a Chartered Accountant or Professional Actuary.
Kant’s example of a perfect duty to others concerns a promise you might consider making but have no intention of keeping in order to get needed money.
In which case you won't get the money. Only people with no fucking money will lend on the basis of a promise. Alternatively, they will also hand over cash in exchange for some magic beans. Why borrow, when you can defraud?
Naturally, being rational requires not contradicting oneself, but there is no self-contradiction in the maxim “I will make lying promises when it achieves something I want.”
That is not a maxim. It is stupid shite. When making a promise, it is better if you yourself believe it is sincere because, in that case, there is a greater likelihood of being believed.
An immoral action clearly does not involve a self-contradiction in this sense (as would the maxim of finding a married bachelor).
Narendra Modi is a married bachelor because though his marriage was not binding on him by reason of non-consummation and 'brahmachari' status, his wife chose to be 'pativrata'. Thus, GoI is obliged to provide her the level of security mandated for the spouse of the Head of Government even though, legally, Modi is a bachelor.
Stupid cunts who teach useless shite don't know what is or isn't 'self-contradictory'.
Kant’s position is that it is irrational to perform an action if that action’s maxim contradicts itself once made into a universal law of nature.
Coz we can make up universal laws of nature any time we like- right? Fuck you, Newton for inventing Gravity! But for your, darkies like me could just float in the air shitting on the heads of peeps wot iz smarter than us.
The maxim of lying whenever it gets you what you want generates a contradiction once you try to combine it with the universalized version that all rational agents must, by a law of nature, lie when doing so gets them what they want.
No. We evolved by natural selection. Screening out liars is something which is evolutionarily adaptive. Spotting rogues and cheats is an useful skill. It also helps us identify occasions when we are likely to lie to ourselves or see what we want to see in the data.
Here is one way of seeing how this might work: If I conceive of a world in which everyone by nature must try to deceive people any time this will get them what they want, I am conceiving of a world in which no practice of giving one’s word could ever arise and, because this is a law of nature, we can assume that it is widely known that no such practice could exist.
Fuck off! There will be a 'separating equilibrium' based on 'costly signals'. The 'cheap talk' pooling equilibrium may be good enough for 'non-material' transactions. I give a quid to a beggar who fervently calls down God's blessings on me though I know that he knows that I know that he thinks I'm a low income, low I.Q, shithead.
So I am conceiving of a world in which everyone knows that no practice of giving one’s word exists. My maxim, however, is to make a deceptive promise in order to get needed money.
Because peeps just hand out cash to anyone who makes deceptive promises- right?
And it is a necessary means of doing this that a practice of taking the word of others exists, so that someone might take my word and I take advantage of their doing so. Thus, in trying to conceive of my maxim in a world in which no one ever takes anyone’s word in such circumstances, and knows this about one another, I am trying to conceive of this: A world in which no practice of giving one’s word exists, but also, at the very same time, a world in which just such a practice does exist, for me to make use of in my maxim.
In the real world, Banks lend money on security or on the basis of objective credit-worthiness.
It is a world containing my promise and a world in which there can be no promises.
The promise does not matter. You will gladly lend money to a guy whom you know will pay you back with interest.
Hence, it is inconceivable that I could sincerely act on my maxim in a world in which my maxim is a universal law of nature.
These cretins can't conceive shit.
Since it is inconceivable that these two things could exist together, I am forbidden ever to act on the maxim of lying to get money.
In the same sense that you are forbidden to have a wank. On the other hand, it is a perfect duty to suck yourself off.
By contrast with the maxim of the lying promise, we can easily conceive of adopting a maxim of refusing to develop any of our talents in a world in which that maxim is a universal law of nature.
I refused to develop my talent as a guy who proves the Reimann hypothesis while simultaneously being crowned Miss Teen Tamil Nadu.
It would undoubtedly be a world more primitive than our own, but pursuing such a policy is still conceivable in it.
if you have nothing better to do and are terminally stupid- sure.
However, it is not, Kant argues, possible to rationally will this maxim in such a world. The argument for why this is so, however, is not obvious, and some of Kant’s thinking seems hardly convincing: Insofar as we are rational, he says, we already necessarily will that all of our talents and abilities be developed.
Like our talent and ability to stab people?
Hence, although I can conceive of a talentless world, I cannot rationally will that it come about, given that I already will, insofar as I am rational, that I develop all of my own.
It is not rational to will anything which is not in your actual control. Of course, there are exceptions to this rule. I am currently willing the Planet Neptune to bump uglies with Uranus.
However, mere failure to conform to something we rationally will is not yet immorality.
Unless we willed that morality. There is a circularity here. Kant's morality has to be subjective but what is subjectively immoral may be no such thing from any intersubjective or 'common sense' point of view.
Failure to conform to instrumental principles, for instance, is irrational but not always immoral. In order to show that this maxim is categorically forbidden, one strategy is to make use of several other of Kant’s claims or assumptions.
But what one has shown is stupidity.
First, we must accept Kant’s claim that, by “natural necessity,” we will our own happiness as an end.
Even though we don't do any such thing.
This is a claim he uses not only to distinguish assertoric from problematic imperatives, but also to argue for the imperfect duty of helping others.
Why not the imperfect duty of breathing?
He also appears to rely on this claim in each of his examples. Each maxim he is testing appears to have happiness as its aim.
You don't need to do stupid shit to be happy.
One explanation for this is that, since each person necessarily wills her own happiness,
in between willing their own respiration and willing the evacuation of their own bowels and then willing themselves to go for a walk.
maxims in pursuit of this goal will be the typical object of moral evaluation. This, at any rate, is clear in the talents example itself: The forbidden maxim adopted by the ne’er-do-well is supposed to be “devoting his life solely to…enjoyment” rather than to developing his talents.
Plenty of epicureans were good economists and good poets. Cicero praised one such. Those who devote themselves to being a misery-guts may contribute nothing to the world.
Second, we must assume, as also seems reasonable, that a necessary means to achieving (normal) human happiness is not only that we ourselves develop some talent, but also that others develop some capacities of theirs at some time.
The problem here is that we don't know whether a thing can only be realized in one way- i.e. there is a 'necessary' condition for its existence without which it simply would not obtain. But 'multiple realizability' appears ubiquitous in the human and social world. There are no 'necessary' or 'sufficient' conditions. Thus this whole line of reasoning- or the notion that there could be a 'natural' religion or 'natural' law- was useless.
For instance, I cannot engage in the normal pursuits that make up my own happiness, such as playing piano, writing philosophy or eating delicious meals, unless I have developed some talents myself,
No. You can enjoy all those things even if your Mummy cajoled you into taking part in those activities and they gradually became habitual.
and, moreover, someone else has made pianos and written music, taught me writing, harvested foods and developed traditions of their preparation.
You can make your own piano, write your own music, invent your own alphabet, grow your own food etc. There are no 'necessary' conditions.
Finally, Kant’s examples come on the heels of defending the position that rationality requires conformity to hypothetical imperatives.
Which is not the case. Rationality requires us to tell Kantians they are stupid and useless unless it doesn't because it is in our interest to pretend otherwise.
Thus, we should assume that, necessarily, rational agents will the necessary and available means to any ends that they will. And once we add this to the assumptions that we must will our own happiness as an end, and that developed talents are necessary means to achieving that end, it follows that we cannot rationally will that a world come about in which it is a law that no one ever develops any of their natural talents. We cannot do so, because our own happiness is the very end contained in the maxim of giving ourselves over to pleasure rather than self-development.
But we would be happier if we didn't bother with any of this shite. There's a reason Utilitarianism- which is what Hume championed- prevailed while Kantianism became a cul de sac of virtue signaling imbecility. Money is a good enough proxy for utility. Governments, sooner or later, have to follow a simple rule- spend on stuff which will end up boosting tax revenue, not on stuff which will end up reducing it. The one problem with Utilitarianism was that it didn't recognize that disutility means 'opportunity cost' and only disutility matters. So, in the end, everything in this field just cashes out as positive econ, mechanism design etc. On the other hand, we may well have a duty to will that God create us and that it is necessary to chop off our own heads and shove them up our poopers lest the Sky fall on our heads.
The Point has a good article on Kant's 300th birth anniversary in which different philosophers highlight different quotations from the great philosopher which they personally found enlightening.
It begins by looking at Kant's notion of an aesthetic idea-
By an aesthetic idea … I mean that representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking though without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which, consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible.
Suppose I hear that the auditors are going to make a surprise inspection tomorrow. I start imagining various scenarios. Maybe, they are going to check the Sales ledger. In that case, I am safe because I'm in charge of Purchasing. But what if they focus on office expenses? They might find out I am buying toner from my brother-in-law. So what? I'm actually getting a discount and can prove it. Still... they might get suspicious. They might uncover some thing else. What if they frame me? Could that happen? No. I'm getting worked up over nothing. Nevertheless, I have a vague sense of unease. I can't put my forebodings into words. You could say, I have a visceral intuition rather than anything reasoned or effable.
Is this an 'aesthetic idea'? No. It is an intension whose extension is unknown. Indeed, the elderly janitor, who doesn't know what the word 'auditor' means, might share this feeling with the Purchasing Manager. If we have little knowledge of future states of the world, our thinking is bound to be 'uncorseted by concepts'. However, in an aesthetic field, we might have a lot of knowledge about what will happen next. We may gain pleasure from some novelty or 'surprisal' in how that inevitable sequence is played out. We may not have a good structural causal model of how the trick is worked, in which case we might say 'this moves me for a reason I can't put into words' but we might nod our heads politely if a Scientist says 'I measured your brain waves. At time t, the singer introduced a surprising micro-note , this stimulated such and such receptor in your amygdala. That's why you liked this song so much.'
Michel Chaouli takes a different view. He asks us to
savor the fact that this man, so maniacally devoted to conceptual rigor, opens the view to a field—an “immeasurable field,” he adds a page later—of a form of thinking uncorseted by concepts. This thinking that happens in aesthetic experience is of a kind that “no language … can make intelligible”—unintelligible thinking. Yet it is not nonsense; it is not madness or divine possession or Bacchic transport or any of the other things philosophers have called the experience of art. No, it is thinking. And take Kant at his word: thinking is active, continuous, present. Often it stiffens into thought, which is just thinking in the past. But not here.
A lot of our brain activity isn't linguistic. Equally, we may be talking without thinking or while thinking of something else. Kant wasn't a fool. He understood this.
Here the imagination is in the driver’s seat.
Just as it is if you are alone at night in a spooky place.
It is productive. It is poetic, in the word’s ancient sense, which is why Kant says that poetry is the true home of aesthetic ideas.
Surely that is rather a banal observation? Poetry is supposed to be beautiful or profound or some such thing. Sadly, that is seldom the case.
Poetry produces poetic thinking, thinking that eludes the grasp of concepts. It puts into words what cannot be made intelligible by words alone.
Because though we can name feelings or describe them well enough, there is no verbal formula which is interchangeable with a feeling or an experience.
Now you pause and relish the reward of slogging through 49 sections: a vista of an immeasurable field of thinking out of the reach of the very philosophy that discovered it.
Sadly, there is no such reward. Kant was a boring pedant in a deeply provincial shithole.
Sergio Tenenbaum draws our attention to the following passage from 'Religion within the bounds of Reason'-
'We may presuppose evil as subjectively necessary in every human being,
this may be a dogma of our religion. We may pay it lip service but we need not ponder the matter too deeply. Dogmas are merely shibboleths or 'uncorrelated asymmetries' enabling us to distinguish those of our sect from others.
even the best. Now, since this propensity must itself be considered morally evil,
Why? We train our soldiers to kill. We endow them with a propensity which, ordinarily speaking, would be evil. But we do so for a good purpose. The fact that our soldiers are known to be very good at killing might itself prevent any large scale violence. A propensity or natural tendency is not good or evil if some check upon it supervenes. Our soldiers are trained to only use violence when the rules of war permit.
hence not a natural predisposition but something that a human being can be held accountable for,
I have a natural tendency to fart. However, at some point in childhood, I was taught to repress this natural tendency when in the company of others. I might be forgiven for inadvertently letting one rip on one social occasion but I may find myself ostracized if I make a habit of it.
and consequently must consist in maxims of the power of choice contrary to the law and yet, because of freedom, such maxims must be viewed as accidental, a circumstance that would not square with the universality of the evil at issue unless their supreme subjective ground were not in all cases somehow entwined with humanity itself and, as it were, rooted in it;
Nonsense! Kant's problem was that he hadn't studied the law. He didn't understand that judgments are defeasible. To be fair, it wasn't till relatively recently that mathematical category theory showed why 'naturality' or 'non-arbitrariness' is far to seek. The Eighteenth Century had a naive faith in 'natural law' and even 'natural religion'.
so we can call this ground a natural propensity to evil, and, since it must nevertheless always come about through one’s own fault, we can further even call it a radical innate evil in human nature.
One can call anything by any name. That does not alter reality.
Sergio writes-
Kant’s views here are taken by many philosophers to be an impossible attempt to have it both ways. Kant seems to be arguing that evil is necessarily attributed to each of us, apparently rooted in human nature. And yet at the same time he claims that evil is freely chosen: each of us is fully responsible for this unavoidable human predicament. But how is this possible? How could a condition “entwined with humanity itself” be something that “come[s] about through one’s own fault”?
Negligence or malice. I should have taken a shit before attending your dinner party. My negligence caused me to fart and stink up the place. However, my shitting myself was a definite act of malice.
Nonetheless I always found this passage to contain a powerful insight into the human condition. It is not only Kant who needs to have it both ways; we all do.
No. We have a propensity and receive training to suppress it. However, we may suffer an accident though there may be a degree of personal negligence. The law clarifies such matters. If I didn't shit myself on purpose, you may still have a have an action in tort against me. I was negligent in not emptying my bowels before attending your dinner party. My defense is that I was drunk off my head. Sadly, since I had no business rendering myself so hopelessly intoxicated, my defense fails.
The high ideals that we set for ourselves are indeed unattainable,
which is why we keep shitting ourselves at dinner parties- right?
and yet we betray our freedom if we do not own up to every particular failure of our agency.
No. We misuse our freedom. A dinner party isn't the right place to take a shit.
Not seeing that these ideals are unattainable, let alone thinking that one has attained them, is a form of moral arrogance or fanaticism that blinds us to the real obstacles for moral progress.
That's a stretch. Still, it is true that by focusing on not shitting ourselves at dinner parties, we neglect our duty to show solidarity with trans people by undergoing gender reassignment surgery.
Yet not seeing that our failures are imputable to us is a form of self-satisfaction that lets us rationalize our shortcomings as vicissitudes of human nature.
My failure to chop my own balls off is a vicissitude of human nature.
It is certainly difficult to find a path here between arrogance and rationalization. Whether or not Kant succeeded in doing so, it is undeniably to his credit that he saw that such a path must be there.
There is no such path. There is merely virtue signaling. The fact is I have vowed not to undergo gender reassignment surgery till every last starving disabled Guatemalan lesbian goat has been provided with this vital service.
Keren Gorodeisky highlights Kant's notion of '“sensus communis,” which Kant identifies with taste. What is this sensus communis? It is “the idea of a communal sense, i.e., a faculty for judging that in its reflection takes account (a priori) of everyone else’s way of representing in thought.”'
We say a person has 'good taste' if they correctly identify the Schelling focal solution to coordination and discoordination games. Thus if you are dining with snobs, you show good taste by praising the vintage wine that has been carefully selected by your host. You show bad taste by demanding Coca Cola.
If Kant is right,
He isn't. He lived long ago and thus didn't know about game theory.
our widespread aesthetic sociality and the risk of aesthetic alienation are not a happenstance—a result of the way we happened to organize our lives, the fact of the vast world of beauty or the shortness of our lives.
The fact is we have prudential or mercenary reasons for wishing to be part of this clique or else to clearly advertise that we will have nothing to do with it. Economics explains this.
They are already there every time each of us appreciates beauty, whether we are alone or together.
It is useful to cultivate a propensity for correctly identifying 'focal solutions' or more simply to have good 'Tardean mimetics'- i.e. an instinct to copy superiors. If everybody is drinking vintage wine and talking about Proust, drink wine and say 'honestly, I feel I was walking through the world like a blind man till I read 'Remembrance'.'
To appreciate, for Kant, is already to speak to you as a “you” and as different from “me”;
No. Kant wasn't stupid. He knew that people with good taste like to appreciate good things with other decent people. He feels there is a 'we' which gains greater enjoyment than could be possible on a solitary or adversarial basis.
it requires that I acknowledge others as those who can either agree or disagree with me, as other members of the same potential community.
There is no such notion in Kant. He was cool with the Enlightened despot or the refined 'Beamten' or Civil Servant who sets the pattern for society. He didn't think anybody had any obligation to acknowledge the alterity of the Lesbian Guatemalan goat.
And it is by experiencing beauty and art that we experience this fundamental connection between us and our necessary “separateness” (in Stanley Cavell’s coinage).
Bullshit! We like watching our favorite films while cuddling with our wife or kiddies on the couch. Equally, our enjoyment of a soccer match is greater if we are part of the crowd.
Simone de Beauvoir calls it “the miracle of literature”:
that miracle is that her books can't actually bore you to death though they can put you to sleep quickly enough.
“that an other truth becomes mine without ceasing to be other. I renounce my own ‘I’ in favor of the speaker; and yet I remain myself.”
Sartre started off as a stand-up comic. Sadly, Simone would keep interrupting him to say 'I'm renouncing myself!' Thus the fellow was obliged to take up philosophy.
No wonder, then, that Kant’s aesthetics influenced thinkers like de Beauvoir and Hannah Arendt,
who lacked a penis and thus had to pretend to understand Heidegger- whom Arendt had actually fucked.
who explore the political and social aspects of human existence.
because exploring Outer Space requires actual intelligence
No wonder it is still relevant for us today.
Coordination and discoordination games are important. As David Lewis points out, Conventions are Schelling focal solutions to the former. The 'moral inversion' we see on woke campuses is a 'discoordination game' which will end when non-STEM subjects are defunded.
Perhaps, had Frank Ramsey had lived, we Anglo-Saxons would have a Pragmatic, game theoretic, 'Law & Econ' which would 'de-Kant' (as Binmore puts it) Social Choice and Political Philosophy. But anyone can figure out what that would be for themselves. It is easy enough to decant Kant's wine and get rid of two centuries of holier-than-thou cant.
Personally I found this passage from a paper by Prof. Gier illuminating-
Though this representation [of heaven and hell] is figurative, and, as such disturbing, it is nonetheless philosophically correct in meaning. That is, it serves to prevent us from regarding good and evil, the realm of light and realm of darkness, as bordering on each other and as losing themselves in one another by gradual steps. . . but rather to represent those realms as being separated from one another by an immeasurable gulf
'...there is the belief in the coincidence of eschaton and noumenon, that means that the "end" already exists in an atemporal state of moral perfection. We find this view in works as far apart as Lectures on Philosophical Theology, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (hereafter Foundations), and parts of Religion. In these passages the operative phrase is "kingdom of ends," an ideal moral realm in which each rational being is automatically a member. During the winter of 1783-84 Kant introduced this idea: "If all men speak the truth, then a system of ends is possible among them" (LPT 140; cf. 41). This view continues in Foundations, where the noumenal kingdom of ends, consisting of self-legislating rational beings, contrasts with a phenomenal realm of heteronomous beings obedient to an external law. Again, membership is not granted by God, but is acquired by reason: "He is fitted to be a member in a possible realm of ends to which his own nature already destined him" (F, 54). Even though Religion introduces a significantly different eschatology, Kant's initial view is still present: "The constant seeking for the kingdom of God would be equivalent to knowing oneself to be already in possession of this kingdom"; and we must "consider ourselves always as chosen citizens of a divine ethical state" (R 61, 93).'
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?
Amartya Sen writes in the Guardian-
Nothing is as important, the philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed, as the “freedom to make public use of one’s reason on all matters”.
This isn't true. Nothing is as important as staying alive. Kant lived at a time and a place when it was reasonable to believe that an 'Enlightened Despot' could lift up his Principality's fortunes. Fredrick the Great was 'Enlightened'. He was Kant's King and Kant wrote 'what is enlightenment?' as a paean to him. Catherine the Great, too, was Enlightened. But Prussia led Germany into the abyss. Russia was even worse. Kant's notions of 'Enlightenment' were foolish. The Anglo-Americans knew this. They didn't babble about Aufklarung. The got on with making money and extending the Rule of Law and making sure there was no Taxation without Representation. In private, considerable latitude was permitted. But what was done in public was effectively policed.
What Kant actually said was 'We find restrictions on freedom everywhere. But which restriction is harmful to enlightenment? Which restriction is innocent, and which advances enlightenment? I reply: the public use of one's reason must be free at all times, and this alone can bring enlightenment to mankind.'
With hindsight we can see Kant was completely wrong- indeed, he was wrong about everything. Nowhere in history do we find a Society we might consider relatively advanced which did not have more effective restrictions on freedoms which mattered. Sen should know this. When he was a kid, his relatives in East Bengal were safe. Why? The Brits would curb the freedom of Muslim militants itching to slit kaffir throats. Indeed, Communists were safer under the Brits than in Moscow. M.N Roy fled Stalin to enter the safety of a British prison cell from which he was soon released. Sen emigrated to Britain and now lives in the US. Both countries are quick to lock up terrorists or those who incite genocidal violence. True, there were instances when this did not happen but both countries have cause to regret this now.
Contra Kant, it is always better to have more constraints on the public, as opposed to the private, use of a faculty. You shouldn't greatly care if I chose to shit on my carpet or masturbate naked in the kitchen. On the other hand, you should certainly get me locked up if I do it on the subway.
Unfortunately, as Kant also noted, the opportunity to argue is often restrained by society – sometimes very severely.
Sen either hasn't read Kant or he is being disingenuous.
What Kant said was ' On the other hand, the private use of reason may frequently be narrowly restricted without especially hindering the progress of enlightenment.
WTF! How is it good to stop people doing something in private which you allow them to do in public? It turns out Kant isn't speaking of private, but official, actions.
By "public use of one's reason" I mean that use which a man, as scholar, makes of it before the reading public. I call "private use" that use which a man makes of his reason in a civic post that has been entrusted to him. In some affairs affecting the interest of the community a certain [governmental] mechanism is necessary in which some members of the community remain passive. This creates an artificial unanimity which will serve the fulfillment of public objectives, or at least keep these objectives from being destroyed. Here arguing is not permitted: one must obey.
So Kant is saying- obey, but- if you are a scholar- you can publish what you like. The problem here is that we consider a guy who publishes liberal shite while quietly obeying a totalitarian government to be not a scholar but a hypocrite. Sen himself may feel that 'Scholarship' is a Wonderland where he himself is a magical Cheshire Cat or Mad Hatter. But no sensible Alice would want to waste her life down that rabbit-hole
Insofar as a part of this machine considers himself at the same time a member of a universal community--a world society of citizens--(let us say that he thinks of himself as a scholar rationally addressing his public through his writings) he may indeed argue, and the affairs with which he is associated in part as a passive member will not suffer. Thus it would be very unfortunate if an officer on duty and under orders from his superiors should want to criticize the appropriateness or utility of his orders. He must obey. But as a scholar he could not rightfully be prevented from taking notice of the mistakes in the military service and from submitting his views to his public for its judgment.
In Kant's milieu, his argument wasn't wholly foolish. The beamtenliberalismus were an educated bureaucratic elite which, in between extending serfdom and persecuting Jews or heretics, might write a pamphlet quoting Adam Smith and calculating the higher tax yield achievable under a free market for labor and a policy of tolerating Religious minorities.
Even in the USSR or Communist China, a few high officials were permitted to read Western literature and argue the case for market based reform. But, it is only a totalitarian regime which may think it needs 'free public expression' (i.e. publishing discussion papers for one's fellow elite) while restraining 'private' freedom (i.e. what you say to your relatives or friends).
The citizen cannot refuse to pay the taxes levied upon him; indeed, impertinent censure of such taxes could be punished as a scandal that might cause general disobedience.
So, Sen's hero is a guy who says 'Sen can publish any shite he likes coz he is a scholar. But if you grumble about your tax dollars being pissed away in Iraq, or by racist cops who have been indoctrinated in 'killology'- you must be punished.
Nevertheless, this man does not violate the duties of a citizen if, as a scholar, he publicly expresses his objections to the impropriety or possible injustice of such levies.
So, you are welcome to write a 'scholarly'- i.e. unreadable- paper of any type, but mustn't say- 'stop pissing my tax money away on trigger happy racist cops'. This is a convenient doctrine- if you are an academic.
A disturbing fact about the world today is that authoritarian tendencies have been strikingly on the increase in many countries – in Asia, in Europe, in Latin America, in Africa and within the United States of America. I fear I have to include my own country, India, in that unfortunate basket.
Why? Sen was promoted by the last Administration. The present one won't give him the time of day. However, it is in Mamta's Bengal that authoritarianism has always been most salient. The place is a thugocracy.
After India secured independence from British colonial rule,
There was massive ethnic cleaning and massive crack-downs on the Communists. Then some Communists went mainstream at which point the Maoists started killing all and sundry till Jyoti Basu got the Police and the Army to massacre the 'Naxals' and the Ananda Margis and the Marichjhapi refugees and anyone else the Left Front could get away with killing.
it had for many decades a fine history of being a secular democracy with much personal liberty.
Nonsense! Economic Liberty decreased. So did any political type of Liberty which the State did not like. Prior to 1937 it was not clear that Democracy would be a game featuring 'uncorrelated asymmetries'. People thought they could talk any sort of bollocks. After Partition, it was obvious that Majorities would decide what solutions to coordination games were focal. India would become more centralized. The first Amendment to the Indian Constitution goes in the opposite direction to America's. Thus India had a McCarthyism at the same time as the US. The difference was that our Communists would tamely lick the hand of the Dynasty. The Moscow faction supported the Emergency- which was entirely constitutional- but Sen, who knew perfectly well what was going on, had emigrated by then.
People showed their commitment to freedom and their determination to remove authoritarian governance through decisive public action, for example in the general elections in 1977, in which the despotic regulations – dressed as “the emergency” – were firmly rejected by the people.
This is a fantasy. Indira thought she would win precisely because 'despotic regulations' are popular if they increase efficiency Moreover, she believed her Cabinet would back her. She miscalculated. 'Forcible sterilization' had pissed off the people of the North. But Indira's debacle turned out to be a blessing in disguise because she was able to topple the 'Janata' coalition three years later. When she returned to power, it was clear that her son would succeed her and his son would succeed him and so on. The Dynastic principle had been established.
The government obeyed promptly.
Nonsense! Jayaprakash Narayan had spearheaded the popular revolt. But after the election, he was sidelined. The Constitution was further amended to reduce freedom. But why reduce freedom when law enforcement is costly while extra judicial killing is cheap? Elections are all very well, but if the guys protesting corruption can be bought more cheaply than the entrenched elite, why get exercised by ideology?
Sadly, one organization- the RSS- wasn't corrupt or dynastic. It tapped into Hindu patriotism. It is now recognized as the backbone of the one genuinely National Party. This does not mean it will have a monopoly of power. But it does mean that other parties have to get better at 'last mile delivery' of entitlements so as to remain competitive.
However, in recent years the priority of freedom seems to have lost some of its lustre for many people,
Freedom as some Kantian shite was only meaningful to Sen and his ilk. It never had any lustre for anybody who had to actually live in India.
and the current government gives striking evidence of the inclination to promote a different kind of society.
Yup. One which isn't ruled by corrupt, cretinous, dynasts and isn't as poor as shit.
There have also been strong attempts to stifle anti-government protests, which, strangely enough, have often been described by the government as “sedition”, providing grounds for arrest and for locking up opposition leaders.
No. The notion was that seditious protests consolidate the Hindu vote. Then the local Hindus lost patience with 'chakka jaam'- i.e. blockaded roads. In future, the Government will have to take timely action to abate such nuisances.
Aside from the despotic tendencies implicit in this approach,
not to mention the despotic and mendacious tendencies explicit in Sen's career of gobshittery.
there is also a profound confusion of thought here, since a disagreement with the government need not be a rebellion to overthrow the state, or to subvert the nation (on which the diagnosis of “sedition” must depend).
D'uh, Captain Obvious! But you yourself quoted Kant who affirmed that 'impertinent censure...must be punished as a scandal that might cause general disobedience.'
When I was in school in British-ruled colonial India, many of my relations, who were nonviolently agitating for India’s independence (inspired by Mahatma Gandhi and other champions of freedom), were in British Indian jails under what was described as “preventive detention”, allegedly to stop them from doing anything violent.
Or just being a nuisance. What was the result? Hindus, including property owners and lecturers at Dacca University, were safe. Then the British left. Sen's dad had been smart enough to get out a year or two before the shit hit the fan. No wonder, Niradh Chaudhri, also from East Bengal, wrote a book pleading for Whitey to return and rule over the Bengalis.
After India’s independence, preventive detention as a form of incarceration was halted;
Nonsense! It was limited to 3 months at a time but could be extended. Still, extra-judicial killing has always been more effective.
but then it was reintroduced, initially by the Congress government, in a relatively mild form. That was bad enough, but under the Hindutva-oriented BJP government now in office, preventive detention has acquired a hugely bigger role, allowing easy arrests and imprisonment of opposition politicians without trial.
Rubbish! The thing peaked under Indira Gandhi. No 'political opponent' of the current regime is currently 'in jail without trial'. Perhaps Sen is thinking of Kashmir. But Sheikh Abdullah spent most of the Fifties and Sixties locked up! On taking power he passed the draconian act under which his son and grandson ended up under house arrest.
Indeed, from last year, under the provision of a freshly devised Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), the state can unilaterally declare someone to be a terrorist, which allows them to arrest this alleged terrorist and place them in incarceration without trial. A number of human rights activists have been designated as terrorists and are in jail already under this arrangement.
This Act has been around for 50 years and has been frequently amended. But extra-judicial killing is the safer course. The mistake made by the previous administration was to lock up Hindu nuns and such like as 'terrorists'. That provoked a backlash. Nobody gives a shit about the senile 'human rights activists' now getting their comeuppance.
When someone is described as being “anti-national”, this can be seen as a big philosophical denunciation anywhere in the world, but in today’s India it may mean nothing more than the person has made some critical remarks about the government in office.
Just as when Sen describes someone as 'despotic' we understand he just means he prefers some other politician. The problem with equating Hinduism with Fascism is that, in a Hindu majority country, you come to be seen as anti-National. Similarly, the 'secularists' in Muslim majority countries who spent all their time ridiculing Islam soon found that they had to face a violent backlash.
The confusion between “anti-government” and “anti-national” is typical of autocratic governance.
No. Stalin was an autocrat. He saw some who were against his Government would nonetheless fight the Nazis because they were Nationalists. Even drunken autocrats aren't as stupid as Sen. They know an 'anti-national' (e.g. a separatist) may support the Government while a patriot might oppose it.
What Sen should say is 'Modi is an autocrat who deliberately labels all opposition to him as anti-national'. It isn't true, but it isn't a stupid thing to say- if you hate Modi.
The courts have sometimes been able to stop such abusive practices, but given the slow movement of the Indian courts, and the differences of opinion within India’s large supreme court, this has not always been an effective remedy. One of the most prominent defenders of human rights in the world, Amnesty International, has been forced to leave India as a result of governmental intervention.
The 'intervention' occurred under the previous Administration. International NGOs are obliged to spend most of the money they get from abroad on doing good not 'admin'. Amnesty broke the rules. It has turned into an Anti Semitic organization in bed with Islamic nutters. Nobody in India will fund it, so it has shut down.
The pursuit of authoritarianism in general is sometimes combined with the persecution of a particular section of the nation – often linked, in India, with caste or religion. The low-caste former “untouchables”, now called Dalits, continue to get the benefits of affirmative action (in terms of employment and education) that were introduced at the time of India’s independence, but they are often very harshly treated. Cases of rape and murder of Dalits by upper-caste men, which have become shockingly common events, are frequently ignored or covered up by the government, unless pressed otherwise by public protests.
Sen is referring to the Hathras atrocity which does look pretty damning.
Update- it appears there was a relationship between the girl and one of the accused who has been sentenced. However three other defendants were acquitted. Perhaps a higher court will intervene.
The Indian authorities have been particularly severe on the rights of Muslims, even to the extent of restricting some of their citizenship rights.
Nonsense! The Supreme Court initiated action against Bangladeshi immigrants. Modi gave citizenship rights to non-Muslims who came before 2014- though, in practice, they had this anyway. Foolishly, some elderly Muslim women objected to this. But no Muslim citizen's rights were restricted.
Despite centuries of peaceful co-existence between Hindus and Muslims,
where? Bangladesh? What happened to Hindus, like Sen, whose ancestral home was there?
there have been striking attempts in recent years by politically extremist Hindu organisations to treat indigenous Muslims somewhat like foreigners and to accuse them of doing harm to the nation.
This was a big feature of the Forties, Fifties and Sixties when the 'Custodian of Enemy (previously Evacuee) Property would harass the fuck out of rich Muslims till they emigrated.
This has been fed by cultivating disaffection and inter-religious animosity through the rapidly increased power of extremist Hindu politics.
Whereas in France and Germany and the UK and America, extremist Islamist politics didn't pose any sort of threat at all. Macron must be, as Erdogan, says out of his mind to wish to 'combat extremist Islam'.
The fact that the celebrated poet Rabindranath Tagore had a Hindu background was not contradicted by his self-description in Oxford (when giving the Hibbert lectures) that he came from the confluence of three cultural streams, combining Hinduism and Islam, in addition to western influence.
But Tagore's novel 'Home and the World' ends with Muslims slitting the throats of Hindus. The guy wasn't stupid. He warned his people that if the British left they would be driven out of Muslim majority East Bengal and Buddhist Burma. Incidentally, the guy was the head of a Hindu sect which claimed to be based purely on the Vedas.
Indian culture is a joint product of people of different religious faiths, and this can be seen in different fields – from music and literature to painting and architecture.
No. Indian culture is the product of Indian people working within Indian cultural idioms. Some may have had a religious faith. Some may not.
Even the very first translation and propagation of Hindu philosophical texts – the Upanishads – for use outside India was done on the active initiative of a Mughal prince, Dara Shikoh, the eldest son of Mumtaz (in whose memory Dara’s father, Emperor Shah Jahan, built the Taj Mahal).
Nonsense! Shikoh was not concerned with 'propagating' Hindu philosophical texts outside India. However, Al-Biruni had already given an account of such texts centuries before. It is likely that there were other similar translations floating around in Baghdad at an even earlier date. Hinduism itself spread to South East Asia with its full complement of Sacred texts. Sen appears ignorant of this.
Led by the government’s current ideological priorities, many school textbooks in India are being rewritten now to present a thoroughly revisionist history, reducing – or ignoring altogether – the contributions of Muslim people.
Muslims made a great contribution to reducing the Hindu population. Why is this not being properly celebrated?
Despite the government’s power, armed with the UAPA, to call anyone a terrorist, those accused are typically committed to nonviolent protests in the way that Gandhi had advocated.
He also advocated forming an orderly queue to get beaten on the head and be shipped off to jail. This curbed a nuisance.
This applies particularly to newly emerging secular resistance in India, led by student leaders. For instance, Umar Khalid,
son of a SIMI member who is now from a microscopic party which Dalits have resigned from protesting discriminatory treatment. Khalid may have a much brighter political future thanks to the time he has spent in jail.
a Muslim scholar from Jawaharlal Nehru University who has been arrested and imprisoned as an alleged “terrorist” through the use of the UAPA, has eloquently expressed this secular movement’s commitment to peaceful protest: “If they beat us with lathis [sticks], we will hold aloft the Tricolour [the Indian national flag]. If they fire bullets, then we will hold the constitution and raise our hands.”
but that is not what he has been charged with. It is interesting that Kanhaiya Kumar, previously Sen's blue eyed boy, doesn't seem to have rallied to his buddy's side.
While the growth of authoritarianism in India demands determined resistance
in Mamta's Bengal? Are you kidding me? If even BJP Councilors are getting pumped full of bullets, which Commie or 'Human Rights activist' will dare wag his tail?
the world is also facing a pandemic of autocracy at this time, which makes the Indian lapses look less abnormal than they in fact are.
If the same thing happens everywhere than that thing is 'normal'. Sen saying otherwise suggests his brain is very abnormal indeed.
The justification for imposing tyranny varies from country to country, such as reducing drug trafficking in the case of the Philippines,
but there is no greater 'tyranny' in the Philippines than in Thailand or Indonesia- all countries in the region are tough on drugs.
curtailing the flow of immigrants in Hungary,
but there is no 'tyranny' in Hungary anymore than there was tyranny in the UK when it decided to curtail the flow of immigrants from the New Commonwealth.
suppressing gay lifestyles in Poland,
but there is no 'tyranny' in Poland anymore than there was tyranny in the UK at the time when Sen voluntarily chose to emigrate to it
and using the military to control allegedly corrupt behaviour in Brazil.
the military may indeed intervene there, but it hasn't happened yet. Sen is lying.
The world needs as many different ways of defending freedom as there are attacks upon it.
But it doesn't need Sen-ile shite.
Dr Martin Luther King Jr noted in a letter written in 1963 from Birmingham jail: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.”
But nowhere can injustice threaten, let alone prevail over, God.
He also insisted that all resistance has to be nonviolent.
No he didn't. He said non-violence was the best way forward for his people because they were a minority and had influential White backers from Church and State.
So do the young student leaders of today’s India.
In the opinion of a very old man. Yet, we can all watch Sharjeel Imam baying for blood on You Tube.
If there is a commonality in the distinct manifestations of autocracy, there is also a shared reasoning in the resistance.
The problem here is that the majority of Indians are Hindus. They support the police crushing 'resistance' to Hindu majoritarianism. If the police won't do it, they will take the law into their own hands. Ethnic cleansing will return to the sub-continent. Sen is as stupid as those Uncles of his who clamored for the Brits to leave. The Brits left and then Sen's people had to run for their lives from East Bengal.
Kant's essay ends thus-
'But only the man who is himself enlightened, who is not afraid of shadows, and who commands at the same time a well disciplined and numerous army as guarantor of public peace--only he can say what [the sovereign of] a free state cannot dare to say: "Argue as much as you like, and about what you like, but obey!" Thus we observe here as elsewhere in human affairs, in which almost everything is paradoxical, a surprising and unexpected course of events: a large degree of civic freedom appears to be of advantage to the intellectual freedom of the people, yet at the same time it establishes insurmountable barriers. A lesser degree of civic freedom, however, creates room to let that free spirit expand to the limits of its capacity. Nature, then, has carefully cultivated the seed within the hard core--namely the urge for and the vocation of free thought. And this free thought gradually reacts back on the modes of thought of the people, and men become more and more capable of acting in freedom. At last free thought acts even on the fundamentals of government and the state finds it agreeable to treat man, who is now more than a machine, in accord with his dignity.'
In other words, a poor country should curb nuisances occasioned by 'public reason'. The thing itself does not matter a damn because senile cretins like Sen will shit all over it and thus put off everybody else.
