Monday, January 09, 2006
Writing to Becoming
Becoming requires courage. Courage is changing one's ways - to mend strife, to heal from past transgressions and move on. I have a passion for writing. It is catharsis meeting creation; confession encountering repression. I can write what I dare not say. At times, the notebook is indeed the thinker's only sanctuary. A clean crisp page does not prejudge. The blank page is receptive to all things. Hence, the neurotic fear of what others may say; the prying gaze of the skeptic - who sees through to uncover 'intentions' and 'motives' - is absent at the origin of any work. But it returns.
When Franz Kafka left Max Brod instructions to destroy all his unpublished writings, did he anticipate the misinterpretations and appropriations that would come stem from the word "Kafkaesque"? The dilemma for the writer, who enjoys the act of writing itself, is that he has no control over what an audience will do with his creation. This is, at the same time, the greatness and tragedy of the writer. In letting it become what it may, the writer is transformed in the process, for better and for worse.
Kafka and Orwell are not known for their day jobs. Their personas are, in most instances, derivations of their literary style. Kafkaesque? Orwellian? These words initiate neophytes into worlds which exist in words and the imaginary. Catchwords, however, are often taken as the "end all and be all", indicative of a Cliff's notes approach to literature so prevalent in modernity.
But what happens to the human person behind the words? He is attached to generalization. He becomes the generalization. He can be described in a single word, a definition in a dictionary or citation in an encyclopedia, or, worse, the inspiration for a psuedo-ideology subscribed to by stauchly loyal, yet utterly oblivious and misguided, admirers. The violence of interpretation cannot be solved by simply abstaining from it. The violence of interpretation is necessary for the act of writing. Interpretations are often, if not explicitly so, present in the work itself. But the valuation of a particular interpretation over and above all others is thoughtless, perverse, and necessarily fundamentalist.
The universe created by a writer, like our own, is imperfect - as Joyce's fascination with meticulous detail in Ulysses exposes. Interpretation provides an aperture of a complex and flawed universe. The skilled writer - or more appropriately, novelist - recreates time and space, distinct, whether minutely or considerably, from the lived "reality". It is not the task of the reader to displace one illusion with another. The interpretative act involves a sense of play, aiming to dissolve the seriousness of dogmatism. Of course, playfulness taken to an extreme, i.e. leaving one with no foundations, establishes relativism as a new seriousness; creating a strict adherence to the the idyl of play. The Dioynesian without the Apollonian is decadent. The Apollonian without the Dioynesian remains sterile. Despite this, criticism plays an integral part in how we read.
Criticism can be lowest form of expression. Conversely, it may also be a most honest and courageous act. Only the honest critic can reveal insight. Those driven by interest, by feelings, or by passions, be it good or bad, are doing a disservice to the work.
Ignorance mars the creature of curiousity. Passion clouds rationality as much as rationality blunts passion. Virile masculinity is empty without silent sureness and poised conviction. To act for the sake of action, without regard to paradox or the consideration of another's claim, is simply bullheaded ignorance and nothing more. But to remain an educated fool, a mute who stands idly by - indulging in safe knowledge rather than stepping forward - is the most cowardly of inactions.
On this page, in this notebook, I can write this with unparalleled conviction. However, when confronted with the situation, would I stand and state this with a similar conviction? Or would I shrink away from confrontation, content only to write in my journal? I don't know. It bothers me to no end. For nothing puzzles me more than this question. Of course, the moment may not have come for me to make that stand. Courage is common for those on the sideline. It, however, is an uncommon quality for those truly confronted with a situation, a dilemma, that demands thoughtful action; when mere capitulation is dangerously inadequate.
Monday, January 02, 2006
Saner - (incomplete)
Hans Saner - Kant’s Political Thought: Its Origins and Development, translated by E.B. Ashton
In Idea for a Universal History, published in 1784, Kant attributes to society a structure very similar to that of matter. He endow man – the social monad, so to speak – with an “unsociable sociality”, a seemingly paradoxical disposition in which two drives collide: one toward association, and the other toward individualization. (8)
The interplay of forces, their antagonism, has a useful effect: the individual wants to be associated, but so not to give up the individuality of which he will first assure himself by crude means; and he wants to be himself, but so as to hold himself available for association at the same time. (8)
The basic substance, its character, and the first state of the world are thus directly related to God without the necessity of feigning a tangible knowledge about the source of creation. (11)
Any direct intervention of God in the law of those forces is unthinkable. It would be a divine act against the divine intellect – a monstrosity. While matter and its basic forces of attraction and repulsion may thus be presupposed, everything else in cosmogony must be explicable by mechanical laws. The process of creation is turned over to the working of the dynamic principles inherent in matter. But since the existence of matter is the result of the existence of God, it must be considered imperishable. This is why creation is “never finished”. The antagonistic energies of matter are ceaselessly at work, building worlds out of the “boundless space of chaos” and letting world fall back into their central suns. (11-12)
Struggle as such is therefore viewed as no tragedy. For all its cruelty, it is the means of renewal, the creative process. The downfall of a world does not inflict an irreplaceable loss on nature; it is by this sort of waster, rather, that nature demonstrates its surplus of creative vigor. (13)
From a cosmological point of view, his destruction is nothing but “a necessary shading in the diversity of its suns” by which nature “adorns” its eternity. This is true of an individual’s death as of the extinction of a species. (13)
The warfare we see in nature is the consequence of the antagonism outlined in the dynamic concept of matter. Its proper end is not to destroy but infinitely expand creation. If we take it for an end itself, that warfare is destructive; but its function as a means to the ultimate end of creation always involves the destruction of destruction – a creative process. This is its justification. The teleological view of nature projects an element of theodicy into the struggles in nature. (13)
Insofar as they are cultural endowments, gifts for civilization and morality, their development is tantamount, so to speak to the creation of humanity. This creation, unlike the mythical one of man, is conceived not as a singular divine act but as a continuing process in human history. It is the self-creation of mankind, understood as an infinite challenge. The real motivating force to meet the challenge is antagonism, that twofold disposition of unsociable sociality. (13-14)
The first effect of the employment of this means is the war of all against all, with relations between men apparently governed by their passions alone. Then, after necessity has forced individuals to coalesce in civil societies, there will be war between those societies. […] Reason forbids their acceptance as ends in themselves, but both of them are rationally understandable as means of nature: the first type as the instinctual spur to action, the stimulus without which progress would not even be a possibility, and the second type as impelling mankind to create itself where the free will to do so is lacking. Thus struggle and war are sublimated in the creative process of intelligible mankind. (14)
Antagonism in general expands the natural creative process and advances the human one. The idea of political struggle is thus subject to the same determination by laws as the idea of cosmological struggle in natural philosophy. From the viewpoint of philosophical history this may mean that, to Kant, the great lines of natural history became road signs to the history of freedom. Philosophically, it means that the two distinct realms, united in the same determination by laws, spring from one unknown ground that is more encompassing than either one of them. The analogies point to this ground, but they give us neither its name nor a closer definition. (15)
Kant depicts struggle in nature as a chain of giant upheavals in whose constancy evolution is caught up. Revolution and evolution are not things apart; they are interrelated in such a way that revolution is an evolutionary link and evolution is the permanence of revolution. (15)
Only in the politics of law is the analogy breached. In the state the development of legal relations must not be advanced by revolutions, for these always break the law, and the law cannot be improved by being broken. The legal evolution of the state must do without revolution even if revolution would serve its ends. […] From the point of view of the law, Kant sees but one way of thinking: absolute rejection of future revolution as a means of political progress, and absolute protection of the revolutions that has succeeded. (15-16)
The paradoxical stand on revolution results from an insolubly paradoxical basic datum on philosophy: that something which is above time (the idea of law) comes alive from man only in time (in positive law). (17)
The absolute ban on revolution compels the individual to bow to whichever power happens to rule at the time – yet freedom is morality’s reason for being. What is asked here, in the name of law and morality, jeopardizes the very root of morality. (17-18)
What man seems in this course to be doing arbitrarily is subject to natural mechanisms; what he freely creates is a free fulfillment of natural laws. Man thinks of himself as planning one way or another, but nature has always included him in its design already; it steers him systematically and, if need be, by force. (19)
What guides Kant in this way of thinking is no longer a regulative analogy of nature and politics. In a sense, it is a new breach laid into the analogy, in the direction of materially including all things in the natural realm. Here the unifying element is not a lasting likeness of conditions, but a passing sameness of the ways of looking at different things. […] It calls human freedom into question and seems to simulate a knowledge it cannot provide. In interpreting politics we shall have to ask, in principle, how to understand that breach. (19)
Political concepts as well as all discussions of them are thus moved into a realm of many layers, a realm in which the definitions of the concepts come to be, and in which relative statements about them must remain in flux. (19)
In mathematics, an object is conceived as it is a priori represented in visuality. It is the only case in which concept and representation are congruent, because the concept is originally given by the representation. […] Philosophical definitions are mere expositions of given concepts, expositions that can be explicated in analyses without ever being apodictically certain of completeness. As a matter of principle, they leave a margin for error. Mathematical definitions are constructions of concepts accomplished by a volitive synthesis. Their completeness is apodictically certain. They leave no margin for error. (24)
Mathematics begins with a complete definition, which is also the genesis of the concept; in philosophy, the concept always precedes the definition. […] This is why in philosophy the definition must conclude the work rather than open it. Philosophy is a road to definition, not a road that starts out from definition. […] Philosophy requires us to keep an open mind for the marginal conceptualities, and yet this openness must be balanced by critical delimitation. It takes a kind of “conceptual musicality”. Without this, a supposedly scientific rigor will keep us in a state of permanent outrage at philosophers’ inconsistencies. (24)
Our judgment, which always conceives the particular as covered by the universal, has two ways to proceed in regard to natural data. If the universal, the concept, is given, definition and knowledge will enable us to put the single thing in its place. But if only the single thing is given, if the universal is what we are looking for, our judgment has yet to design the universal and will subsume the particular under it later, as under a regulative principle which allows man to create an effective unity without defining the particular. (24-25)
The second chapter entitled “The Road to Unity” explicates the relationship between sovereignty and order. Saner succinctly explains that Kant posits that coexistence (coexistenia) must be established by a divine intellect, the common primal ground of their existence (27). This appears to lead into the larger discussion regarding the primacy of the form of law over its substantive content later on in the chapter. The substantive content of law, I would think, falls under the principle of succession, as Saner calls it (27). Although, as Saner explains, “a change is substances can occur only insofar as they are linked with others”, irregular interaction, i.e. interaction without the divine intellect, “could do no more than bring forth a dynamic chaos” (27). Chaos is contrary to unity.
“If the principle of interaction is to engender an orderly community, not mere coexistence or accumulation, it must be established by the divine intellect, the common primal ground of the existence of substances. This is the establishing and preserving force of dynamic community.” (27) This short exegesis of part of Kant’s metaphysics helps lead the reader into a discussion of the Hobbesian problem: the establishment of human society over and against the natural chaotic state of man.
“Man, the substance of mankind, does not live in isolation. His mere existence always relates him to other men. But in a state of nature this relation is chaotic. The community has yet to be founded. It is founded by nature and man at the same time – by nature insofar as it invests man with the antagonism that is his spur to unity; by man insofar as he establishes the law, without which no general external freedom would be possible.” (28) But, in elaborating on Hobbes, not every man is given this right to legislation. If every man were allowed to promulgate laws, these laws would have no efficacy or coherence, since others would not be compelled to follow. Rather, this capability for intentional establishment is the “exclusive province of the omnipotens, the sovereign” (28).
“We can therefore extend our equation: the will of God as the world’s creator is to the community of substances what the sovereign’s will is to the community of citizens, and what the will of God as a moral person is to the community of rational men.” (28) Note the qualifier “rational” that is applied to men; this becomes problematic later on in this section. Once again, Saner points out, there is an exception or, as he puts it, a breach in the analogy Kant employs. This breach occurs when one deals with International law. Saner explains that for Kant states “interact simply by coexisting” (29). The contradiction becomes clearer when Saner explains that Kant’s “league of nations” has no coercive power, and hence, “always rests on the free will of moral persons” (29). Note once again the qualifier “moral” that is applied to persons. Saner tries to explain this very simply: “in the first case (domestically), the law goes before freedom; in the second (International), freedom goes before the law” (30). If freedom were placed above law, the state would, in such a case, renounce its coercive power, possibly leading to anarchy and hence, in principle, voids itself. “It is not possible to place freedom above the law of a state,” Saner explains (30). But the situation within the International is slightly more complex.
“International law is another matter. There it is not a physical person but a moral person, a state, which is claiming freedom. With other states it lives in conditions of nature, but internally it remains a system of law. Its freedom poses no threat to the law’s existence, but the law might pose one to the existence of freedom. Kant’s seemingly contradictory combination allows him to safeguard the law while granting freedom, as much as remains possible, on a cosmopolitical level.” (30) But how again is the state a moral person?
The question of equality is broached in the next section; a question of high importance in relation to that of sovereign law. “The state can place no citizen under an obligation that is not equally and mutually obligatory for all. No one has the right to compel others and at the same time to evade compulsion.” (30) And returning to an earlier point, Saner contends that it is the form and not the material content that is most important for unity in Kant’s estimation. “In those, mutuality lies not in assuring all citizens of an equal share of goods but in guaranteeing that all are free to own property. Kant is aware that in fact the inequality of possessions results in unequal power to command and rule. He does not mind this, for the form of reciprocity, and thus of equality has been preserved.” (31)
Thus, equality is a formal possibility of order and not a universal assurance. “Laws are reciprocal when the same possibilities are open to the freedom of all subjects of the state.” But, as Saner points out at the end of this section, these possibilities are not given in a truly universal way. The exploration of Kant’s views on retributive law serves to debunk the view that he is a “philanthropist whose cozy humanitarianism always makes him think promptly of the individual’s welfare in the world” (33). It also proves the point that Kant believed law must be applied equally in order for it to sustain order. But, once again, there are exceptions to the analogy, namely the two Saner lists: “upward in the citizen’s relation to the chief of state, and downward in their relation to the dependent” (33).
“In a word, the sovereign is above the law as God is above duty.” (34) The obvious parallel to Hobbes’ Leviathan is not the most interesting part of this. The sovereign, by definition, must not be equal to others; he must be inviolate and unassailable (34). Or as Saner puts it, “One man is in possession of all power, then, and all the people are at his mercy, for good or ill, not matter what he may do” (34). But Saner is careful to indicate the contradictions this brings about in Kant’s thought. The clearest contradiction is that Kant’s conception of sovereign exposes people to the potential of tyranny as a means of maximizing freedom.
“The consequences are clear. Kant does not wish to deliver subject to tyranny; he would really like to hand them a tool for their protection; but he does it in a manner that invites abuse. Expecting better times to come, he accepts the abuse along with violence and despotism. The permanent aim is freedom, but passing violence must be suffered. Kant’s formal legal thought shows no ways out of this dilemma.” (35)
Saner then examines the breach that occurs “downward”, the relations between citizens. As he points out, not every member of the stat is a citizen in a legal sense. This part gets a little archaic, as it deals with voting requirements, i.e., age, property, sound judgment, and independence. “What makes one a colegislator is the capacity to vote.” (35) The difference between the individual in nature, human equality, and the individual in society, civil equality, is made quite evident. A passive member of the state, one not independent, may “always lay claim to human equality, he can no longer claim civil equality” (35). The radical inequality this produces is cited by Saner: “There remains the offensive fact that in one respect the disadvantaged, the unpropertied, are disenfranchised to boot – and this in the name of law” (36). Hence, the permanent aim indeed is freedom guaranteed within the political forms and passing violence must be inflicted upon those who are not “independent’.
The next two sections deal with resistance and oppositions inherent in Kant’s precritical and critical periods. The thought forms of the metaphysical philosopher, as Saner reminds us, still do apply to the political thinker (42).