kant

[Angry Young Man]

i have heard immanuel kant described as a bourgeois philosopher and am looking for some justification of said statement. my argument against this is that kant's motto of 'dont use ANYONE as a means to an end' contradicts the capitalist motto ' the ends justify the means'. my interpretation is that said statement means that their should be no moral obligations to attain the highest yields, which kant would disagree with.

[tolstoyevski]

We have to remember that bourgeois has a progressive role over the feudalism. So today we can say that in 18. century, Kant's philosophy showed new ways for idealism. An idealism that is rational and secular, which progressed towards Hegelian dialectics.

Bourgeois philosopy doesn't always mean Machiavellianism, violence and intrigue. But it is clear that transcendental idealism is not the philosphy of proletariat, nor the philosophy of church. For me, this philosophy correctly reflects the moral values of bourgeois: extremely individualist (he argues that freedom is an idea, so only way to be free is to think; acting is social, thinking is asocial), non empirical (according to him, it's impossible to reach the world of ideas with our actions; this is what we call metaphysics), so non materialist.

Above all, I am suspicious about Kant if he had an idea about capitalism or proletariat.
So, his ideas must be seen as a development in philosophy without judging Kant morally for he is on the side of bourgeois. He had no idea about Darwinist evolution, cell structure, energy conversion, surplus value.

According to me, as a result, Kant must be described as a bourgeois philosopher. But he is not an evil one, saying "exploit the proletariat!" :P

[Angry Young Man]

exactly. the REAL arsehole was john stuart mill with his weird ideas of zero state intervention, giving anybody the right to tread on as many ppl as possible. anyway, why do they say socialism has to follow capitalism? why couldnt peasants take the power? and why does marx describe peasants as 'petty middle-class'?

[tolstoyevski]

So you're asking questions about nearly all Marxist-Leninist ideology, under the topic of Kant. I think you can find your answers under the relevant topics in the theory headline, besides according to me, these main points must be read from Marxist-Leninst works themselves rather than reading interpretations.. Especially at the beginning.

[mikelepore]

Originally posted by [email protected] 17 2006, 05:16 PM
i have heard immanuel kant described as a bourgeois philosopher and am looking for some justification of said statement. my argument against this is that kant's motto of 'dont use ANYONE as a means to an end' contradicts the capitalist motto ' the ends justify the means'. my interpretation is that said statement means that their should be no moral obligations to attain the highest yields, which kant would disagree with.
If you want to see what Kant meant by not using people as a "means", you'll find that in his book "Critique of Judgment", which was his third and final book entitled "Critique of ..." (after "Critique of Pure Reason" and "Critique of Practical Reason"). This is where he developed his moral theory as well as his aesthetic theory (beauty). I would summarize the answer to your question like this: whatever is good is good for its own sake as a universal principle, for example, the real reason that I don't want to kill my neighbor should be my feeling of duty to the larger generality of no one killing anyone, or, to invert that, to realize how bad it would be if everyone were in the process of killing everyone else. Each act should be judged in light of what would happen if it were done universally. We shouldn't use other people as a means to a selfish end because that makes a particular case the focus, what's expedient for one person at one moment, ingoring what would happen universally if everyone did the same to everyone else all the time.

[mikelepore]

It's not really wise for anyone to dismiss Kant as a bourgeois philosopher. I don't know of his views on economic systems, but he served a progressive role in his own time. it was the age of the debate between rationalism versus empiricism. Rationalist philosophers said that we learn about nature and all of reality just by thinking about a subject. This has led to such problems as people believing the earth is the center of the universe, etc. The empiricist philosophers said that real knowledge comes through the senses. Bacon showed that empiricism is the basis of the scientific method. Kant wanted to save empiricism from some damage that had been done to it. Hume gave empiricism a bad name by claiming that there is no reason to believe in cause and effect, since all we know directly is the sequence of perceptions, which doesn't prove causation. Berkeley, another so-called empiricist, made the stupid argument that physical reality doesn't exist at all, since sensory impressions can't provide any proof of where they came from. Kant brought empiricism back down to earth, so to speak, by accepting as obvious the existence of physical reality and also cause and effect.

To me, Kant's most interesting idea (although I don't know whether or not it was socially progressive) was to identify twelve "categories", such as space, time, causation, increase or decrease, possibility, necessity, and so forth, as the building blocks of thought. As developed in "Critique of Pure Reason", he believed that whatever we take in through the senses gets processed and filed away in these terms. It's as though the mind at birth is blank, as the empiricist Locke had said, but, unlike Locke, Kant is saying that this initially-blank mind is like a filing cabinet in which the folders are pre-labeled. To put it in modern terms, although Kant said "mind" and not "brain", Kant is arguing, in effect, that the brain is hardwired to store knowledge and think about concepts in the form of these categories as its alphabet. (I wouldn't accept his claim that he could tell for certain that these categories were exactly twelve in number.)

A modern person would appreciate Kant's point that we never perceive the "thing in itself" (German: Ding an sich), that is, the noumenon. We only know what he called "sensitive intuition", that is, the phenomenon. To give a modern example, when we see colors, and hear the pitches of sounds, our impression isn't of what the thing really is (wave frequency). Kant certainly erred in stating that we can't make any valid statements about the thing in itself, as this example shows (we do now know that the thing in itself, in those examples, is wave frequency).

Kant is difficult to read, because of his specialized terminology for everything, and because he almost never gives examples to illustrate general statements, but I find it enjoyable.

Mike Lepore - lepore at bestweb dot net - http://www.deleonism.org/

[Vincent]

Originally posted by [email protected] 20 2006, 04:09 AM
exactly. the REAL arsehole was john stuart mill with his weird ideas of zero state intervention, giving anybody the right to tread on as many ppl as possible.
You're joking right? The central idea of Mills goes something like this I believe...

'Each person has the right to act in accordance with his or her own will, unless his or her actions will infringe on the rights and ability of another person to act in accordance with his or her will.'

[Angry Young Man]

Originally posted by Vincent+Feb 8 2006, 06:06 AM--> (Vincent @ Feb 8 2006, 06:06 AM)
[email protected] 20 2006, 04:09 AM
exactly. the REAL arsehole was john stuart mill with his weird ideas of zero state intervention, giving anybody the right to tread on as many ppl as possible.
You're joking right? The central idea of Mills goes something like this I believe...

'Each person has the right to act in accordance with his or her own will, unless his or her actions will infringe on the rights and ability of another person to act in accordance with his or her will.' [/b]
yes but he was used by the capitalists who of course, misinterpreted his work. he also defended private property

[Hegemonicretribution]

Originally posted by [email protected] 8 2006, 04:14 PM
yes but he was used by the capitalists who of course, misinterpreted his work. he also defended private property
It is not exactly valid to view someone's ideas based on how they have been manipulated.

Can we dismiss Marx based on Stalin?

If you look at the times of his writings, he was presenting groundbreaking ideas that we now take for granted. Marx wasn't even born, and capitalism was still developing. I bet that Marx would have approved of Mill in the time that he wrote. Mill also actively desired challenge to his ideas, and saw them as progressive. At the time he saw the immediate threat as that of the state, not the relatively weak capitalist class of the time.

For private property see above^ also in a developed society it could be argued that Mill was more left leaning. Furthermore he was not laissez faire, far from it, arguing against freedom of certain areas of free trade that would likely cause harm.


Anyway with regards to Kant, he presents some useful arguments, especially against Hegel, and to some (small) extent the church of the time. I have in the past skimmed over a fair ammount though, I just take what I see as useful, and leave other parts. He is quite dated, but is interesting still for his arguments, his politics I am not interested in.

[ColinH]

Immanuel Kant defending the French Revolution and the arguing against the claim that the terror that followed was proof that the people were not ready for freedom:

"If one accepts this assumption, freedom will never be achieved; for one cannot arrive at the maturity for freedom without having already acquired it; one must be free to learn how to make use of one's powers freely and usefully. The first attempts will surely be brutal and will lead to a state of affairs more painful and dangerous than the former condition, under the dominance but also the protection of an external authority. However, one can achieve reason only through one's experiences, and one must be free to undertake them. . . . To accept the principle that freedom is worthless for those under one's control and that one has the right to refuse it to them forever, is an infringement on the right of God himself, who has created man to be free."

[gilhyle]

WHile I think it is entirely legitimate to view Kant as a bourgeois philosopher, he was a philosopher anticipating the emergence of capitalism within German society. His conception of society (see Perpetual Peace) embodies more of the ideals to which the bourgeoisie aspires and less of the apologetics necessary to sustain an established capitalism society.

Two excellant (if difficult books from broadly within the marxist tradition on Kant are Lucien Goldman's book on Kant (long out of print) and Adorno's recently published lectures on the Critique of Pure Reason. Althusser's book on Kant btw is abysmal.