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Value and idealism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
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This paper is concerned with the attempt to base a general theory of value on an idealist metaphysics. The most explicit and fully developed instance of this approach is, of course, found in Kant, on whom I shall concentrate, though I will also suggest that the account I offer of Kant has application to the later German idealists. While the core of the paper is devoted to commentary on Kant, what I thereby wish to make plausible is the idea that Kant's endeavour to base a general conception of value on an idealist metaphysics is of contemporary, not merely historical, interest. Specifically, my suggestion will be that a correct understanding of what is demanded by our ordinary, pre-philosophical grasp of value shows there is reason to think that something along the lines of Kant's transcendental idealism (or, like absolute idealism, developed from it) is required for a fully adequate metaphysics of value. Essential to the case I will make is a distinction between Kant's moral theory and his broader account of value, my claim being that, whether or not Kantian moral theory is ultimately dependent on any metaphysics, the broader conception of value to be found in Kant cannot be detached from his doctrine of transcendental idealism.
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References
1 Critique of Practical Reason, 5:6, in Kant, , Practical Philosophy, trans, and ed. Gregor, M. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 141Google Scholar. Young, Julian, in Willing and Unwilling: A Study in the Philosophy of Arthur Schopenhauer (Dordrecht: Martinus Nijhoff, 1987), pp. 6–7CrossRefGoogle Scholar, refers to Kant's statement that ‘the antinomies [of each of the Critiques, including that of practical reason] compel us against our will to look beyond the sensible to the supersensible’ (Critique of Judgement, trans. Pluhar, W. [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987], §57, 341Google Scholar) as showing that ‘from the perspective of, at least, the third Critique, transcendental idealism is itself a postulate of practical reason’. This point is insufficiently considered in discussion of transcendental idealism.
2 Kant, , Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone, trans. Greene, T. and Hudson, H. (New York: Harper, 1960), pp. 4–5Google Scholar.
3 Kant certainly thinks that he is no less within his rights to make this move than he is to make his earlier move from the moral law as fact of reason to the reality of transcendental freedom. The latter turns on a conceptual connection between the moral law and transcendental freedom: analytically, a principle of pure practical reason in application to a finite, sensible being is a principle applied to a subject with transcendental freedom, such that, if I know the moral law to apply to me, as Kant's account of the fact of reason affirms, then I know myself to be transcendentally free. Kant's further move, from the moral law to supersensible teleology, is intended to consist similarly in unpacking what is presupposed in moral consciousness: though there is not the same kind of direct conceptual relationship - the concept of a practical law that is unconditionally valid for me does not contain that of a purposive relation to the supersensible - there is in its place, Kant supposes, a necessity of practical reason: if I am to represent the law that binds my will as maximally rational, as rational in all respects, then I
4 It is to be noted that the anti-metaphysical school of Kantian ethics, to the extent that it may be attributed with any view of reason's teleology, appears to endorse the identification of reason as its own final end. must bring it under a further description - I must reconceive it in a way that gives my moral will a purposive character; thus, if I know the moral law to apply to me (as, again, Kant's account of the fact of reason affirms), and if I exercise the rights of my reason, then I can know myself to be purposefully related to the supersensible.
5 It is irrational - contradictory - for reason to do what there is no point in doing; and if reason has no final end, then there is nothing to validate its non-final ends, i.e. it has no end at all.
6 And this representation is composed of something over and above desire: to represent one's desires and activity of desiring as purposive is not equivalent to merely desiring that one's desires be fulfilled.
7 Schopenhauer, , On the Will in Nature: A Discussion of the Corroborations From the Empirical Sciences that the Author's Philosophy Has Received Since is First Appearance, trans. Payne, E. F. J., Cartwright, D. (ed.) (Oxford: Berg, 1992), p. 20Google Scholar; The World as Will and Representation, trans. Payne, E. F. J. (New York: Dover, 1966), vol. I, pp. 294, 105Google Scholar.
8 Note that this argument aims to defend the general concept of a supersensible teleology, rather than the specific conception of it expressed in ant's postulates of practical reason; in the present context, what matters is not the specific formulation of our thoughts of the supersensible but their general warrant.
9 This is what we find in Kant's aesthetics, where morality supplies the ground of aesthetic value but no reduction of aesthetic to moral value is made.
10 See Critique of Judgement, §83, 434 n29 (321)Google Scholar.
11 Hegel, G. W. F., Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. Miller, A. V. (Oxford University Press, 1977), §§596–632Google Scholar. Also relevant is §60 of The Encyclopaedia Logic, trans. Geraets, T. F., Suchting, W. A. and Harris, H. S. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1991), 104–5Google Scholar. I will not attempt to evaluate Hegel's criticism here.
12 Phenomenology of Spirit, §630.
13 ibid., §609.
14 ibid., §602.
15 ibid., §603.
16 ibid., §613.
17 Hegel's line of thought might be glossed as follows: What ought to be presents itself to us as necessarily distinct from, and set over against, what is the case in nature (as per the famous passage from the first Critique where Kant says that it is as absurd to ask what ought to happen in the natural world as to ask what properties a circle ought to have; Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Guyer, P. and Wood, A. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)Google Scholar, A547/B575); but according to Kant all that we know determinately to be the case is contained in nature; so the question is, How can the moral law be thought to have any sort of reality, given that it presents it self in a form essentially distinct from and opposed to that in which only
18 See Critique of Judgement, §77, esp. p. 408 (292). This conception is prefigured in Kant's early Dreams of a Spirit-Seer Elucidated By Dreams of Metaphysics, in Kant, , Theoretical Philosophy, 1755–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), trans. Walford, D. with Meerbote, R.Google Scholar.
19 ibid., §622.
20 Nietzsche, F., Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of Morality, trans. Hollingdale, R. J., intro. Tanner, M. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982), p. 190Google Scholar; The Will to Power, §95, trans. Kaufmann, Walter and Hollingdale, R. J. (New York: Vintage, 1968), p. 60Google Scholar.
21 See for example Fichte's opposition of ‘dogmatism’ and ‘idealism’ in the First Introduction to The Science of Knowledge, trans, and ed. Heath, P. and Lachs, J. (Cambridge University Press, 1982)Google Scholar, and Book One, ‘Doubt’, of The Vocation of Man, trans. Preuss, P. (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1987)Google Scholar.
22 I would like to thank Christopher Hamilton for comments on an earlier draft of this paper.