Kant's Political Philosophy

Introduction

The political philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) favoured a classical republican approach. In Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795), Kant listed several conditions that he thought necessary for ending wars and creating a lasting peace. They included a world of constitutional republics by establishment of political community. His classical republican theory was extended in Doctrine of Right (1797), the first part of Metaphysics of Morals. At the end of the 20th century Kant's political philosophy had been enjoying a remarkable renaissance in English-speaking countries with more major studies in a few years than had appeared in the preceding many decades.

Kant's most significant contribution to political philosophy and the philosophy of law is the doctrine of Rechtsstaat. According to this doctrine, the power of the state is limited in order to protect citizens from the arbitrary exercise of authority. The Rechtsstaat (German: Rechtsstaat) is a concept in continental European legal thinking, originally borrowed from German jurisprudence, which can be translated as "the Legal state" or "state of rights". It is a "constitutional state" in which the exercise of governmental power is constrained by the law, and is often tied to the Anglo-American concept of the rule of law. Kant's political philosophy has been described as liberal for its presumption of limits on the state based on the social contract as a regulative matter.

In a Rechtsstaat, the citizens share legally based civil liberties and they can use the courts. A country cannot be a liberal democracy without first being a Rechtsstaat. German writers usually place Immanuel Kant's theories at the beginning of their accounts of the movement toward the Rechtsstaat. The Rechtsstaat in the meaning of "constitutional state" was introduced in the latest works of Immanuel Kant after US and French constitutions were adopted in the late 18th century. Kant’s approach is based on the supremacy of a country’s written constitution. This supremacy must create guarantees for implementation of his central idea: a permanent peaceful life as a basic condition for the happiness of its people and their prosperity. Kant was basing his doctrine on none other but constitutionalism and constitutional government. Kant had thus formulated the main problem of constitutionalism, “The constitution of a state is eventually based on the morals of its citizens, which, in its turns, is based on the goodness of this constitution.”Kant’s idea is the foundation for the constitutional theory of the twenty-first century.

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Kant's legal-political philosophy has a peculiar interpretive history even by Kantian standards. Not only did it take extraordinarily long to receive much attention by the scholarship at all, but Kantian inspired political theories received much more attention than did Kant's own. For example, two of the most influential political theories of the last few decades are those of Habermas and Rawls -- two Kantian positions that were initially developed without taking Kant's own legal and political writings as their starting point. Although Habermas has increasingly become preoccupied with and inspired by Kant's legal-political philosophy -- and especially Kant's main writing on the issue, the Doctrine of Right in The Metaphysics of Morals -- the same was never true of Rawls. Rawls was clearly inspired by some of Kant's shorter, political essays, primarily in his thinking about global justice in The Law of Peoples, but most of the Kantian ideas developed as part of his theory of "justice as fairness" utilize core ideas in Kant's ethical writings, including some of those captured by the categorical imperative.

One reason for this delay of scholarship is presumably the fact that Kant's main work on the issue -- the Doctrine of Right -- is written in a somewhat extreme form of Kantianese (technical Kant vocabulary) that is both difficult to understand and often presupposes an interpretation of key ideas in Kant's overall philosophical project. Furthermore, according to Kant himself the ideas presented are less worked out than he would have liked. (It was published towards the end of his life when he had less time to devote to polishing it.) In contrast, many of his shorter, political essays are among the most moving, well written, and most accessible of any of Kant's writings. Another reason why his political philosophy received little engagement is simply the fact that in the Doctrine of Right (as well as in the corresponding lecture notes written by his students) we find some of those statements seemingly presenting Kant as a stern absolutist with little or no patience for the poor and who is more than willing to use the whip to uphold his sexist and homophobic prejudices. In any case, whatever the reason for the delay, things have changed dramatically over the last three decades or so, and today there is little doubt that Kant's legal-political philosophy, including the Doctrine of Right, has come into its own.

Looking more closely at the rapidly growing secondary literature on Kant's legal-political philosophy reveals a distinction between two common trends regarding how it is engaged. On the one hand, a significant number of interpretations focus primarily on Kant's political writings (even if they also secondarily draw on other Kant texts). These interpretations typically emphasize the Doctrine of Right with an aim of identifying or developing a coherent overall interpretation of the position. On the other hand, a significant number of interpretations explore the relationship between Kant's legal-political writings and the historical period in which they were written or with regard to other aspects of his philosophy, including his theoretical, historical, educational, anthropological, and aesthetic writings. Since the aim of Elisabeth Ellis' anthology is to "introduce Kant's political thought to a new generation of readers and to demonstrate the fruitfulness and vibrancy of a broadly Kantian approach to political philosophy" (3), it is natural that the anthology includes representatives from both interpretive streams. There's something for everyone, even if everything is not there and if everything that is there is not for everyone.

Kant's Political Theory consists of nine articles as well as one of the currently richest bibliographies on Kant's legal-political thought. The authors are a mix between well-established scholars in the field and newer voices. They include philosophers, historians and political scientists. Moreover, applying the distinction between the two kinds of writings we commonly find in the secondary literature on Kant's legal-political thought yields two groups of papers. Five of the papers (by Onora O'Neill, Arthur Ripstein, Thomas W. Pogge, Louis-Philippe Hodgson, Robert S. Taylor) explore Kant's political thought by primarily focusing on the Doctrine of Right and the political essays. The remaining four papers (by Michaele Ferguson, Ian Hunter, Mika LaVaque-Manty, and John Christian Laursen) explore aspects of Kant's political thought by looking to some of his other writings and/or the historical setting of his academic life.

Of the papers in the first group, the first two -- by O'Neill and Ripstein -- seek to identify core elements in the basic philosophical structure of Kant's theory and to use them to situate Kant's theory in relation to the historical canon. The main idea suggested by O'Neill in "Kant and the Social Contract Tradition" is that rather than using the prominent social contract ideas of hypothetical or actual (explicit or implicit) consent to understand Kant's basic claim that just impositions on persons' exercise of their external freedom can be consented to by these persons whose freedom is so constrained, we should use a modal notion of consent, meaning that such consent must be possible (36). The implication of this, O'Neill suggests, is that if we want to call Kant a social contract theorist, we should be aware that "he is a peculiar one." (27) O'Neill ends by saying that the main reason why we need justice and the state is that human beings not only have to interact, but have an irreducible "unsociable" aspect (39) and are not "reliably altruistic"

Despite the many agreements between O'Neill's and Ripstein's articles, it is clear that challenging this very last idea -- that Kant affirmed the historically prominent idea that justice fundamentally remedies human beings' typical tendency not to act virtuously (insufficiently altruistically) -- motivates a great deal of Ripstein's interpretation in "Kant and the Circumstances of Justice." Ripstein argues that even if we assume away our "crooked timber," or our typical tendencies to act in ignorant, biased, selfish, or vicious ways, we still need justice. And to fully establish justice, we need states (the rule of law). Against much Kant interpretation (including the majority of the other articles in the anthology) and other prominent theories of justice, such as those we find in Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, Ripstein defends the claim that for Kant "neither justice nor the law is remedial."  The first part of Ripstein's paper aims to demonstrate that this basic assumption fundamentally informs Kant's proposal that establishing the state is constitutive of realizing justice, including why the pre-state condition or the state of nature, at best, is "devoid" of justice. (Because this "remedial/non-remedial" assumption is crucial for how one tries to make sense of Kant's writings, I indicate below which conception of justice and the state the other articles presuppose, if one is presupposed.) In the second part of the paper, Ripstein shows that though justice requires a state (the rule of law) anyone who manages to establish a monopoly on coercion (rule-governed violence) does not thereby also establish a minimally just state. Therefore, barbaric regimes like Nazi-Germany cannot issue political obligations on those subject to its force.

In the third article, "Is Kant's Rechtslehre a 'Comprehensive Liberalism'?" Pogge utilizes Rawls's influential distinction between "freestanding, political conceptions of justice" and "comprehensive doctrines" to explore a particularly puzzling feature of Kant's Doctrine of Right, namely the way in which justice and the law are seen as restricted to so-called "external" freedom. Rawls' distinction is utilized to explain aspects of the way in which Kant separates ethics ("internal" freedom) from justice or right ("external" freedom). Pogge suggests that Kant's conception of justice is freestanding and political in the Rawlsian sense. Consequently like Rawls's theory of "justice as fairness," Kant's legal-political theory is compatible with -- can fit as a "module" into -- many very different comprehensive doctrines and not only Kant's own (as Rawls thought). In addition to making this larger point, Pogge engages some of the more specific aspects of Kant's argument for the establishment of the state, including expressing some worries that Kant's justification of the state does not succeed as an "a priori" (or "non-remedial") argument, but only as the weaker "empirical" ("remedial") argument. (86f) This and other arguments in this paper can be fruitfully engaged by reading it along with the contributions by O'Neill, Ripstein, and Hodgson (next chapter), all of which were written subsequent to Pogge's contribution, which was a groundbreaking piece (originally published in 1998).

In "Realizing External Freedom: The Kantian Argument for a World State," Hodgson engages another central debate in the literature, namely issues concerning global justice. In short, Hodgson utilizes arguments structurally similar to the ("non-remedial") ones Ripstein presents for the domestic case in order to justify the claim that Kant does and Kantians should support the establishment of a world state. The world state is viewed as a legal-political framework with legislative, judiciary, and executive powers restricted to interactions between states and between states and aliens. Within the existing secondary literature, the position Hodgson defends is on one extreme, where the other extreme maintains that Kant rejects the permanent establishment of any kind of a global public authority with coercive powers. Interestingly, as the relevant secondary literature shows, one can end up on either extreme -- and anywhere in between -- regardless of whether one interprets Kant and the Kantian project as "remedial" or "non-remedial." Hodgson's paper is a fine illustration of how one can end up firmly within the world state camp by means of non-remedial arguments.

The four papers already described focus primarily on Kant's Doctrine of Right. In contrast, Taylor explores Kant's thought by making one of Kant's political essays his primary focus. "The Progress of Absolutism in Kant's Essay 'What is Enlightenment?'" explains how Kant's "Enlightenment" essay contributes to the specific debate in his time of how to understand the concept of enlightenment. Taylor also takes us through some of the key arguments in the "Enlightenment" essay, such as Kant's somewhat peculiar distinction between private and public uses of reason. He then argues that understanding Kant's contribution involves seeing how Kant conceived of the possible, historical or developmental transitions from an absolute monarch to an enlightened republic "in a manner wholly consistent with both justice and the short-run interests of the regent himself." To strengthen his case, Taylor draws on several of Kant's other political essays as well as Kant's treatment of historical religions and the Doctrine of Right. Although many of the details of Taylor's argument can be disputed, it is not hard to see that an interpretation along this line is relatively easily made compatible with much of what is claimed in the previous four essays (even with their differences on whether to accept the remedial or non-remedial assumption).

Looking at the first set of five papers together, there is little doubt that they give a good starting point for engaging much of the literature surrounding many of the larger interpretive questions in Kant scholarship. There are a few larger questions that are not addressed by any of the papers, such as discussions of Kant's conceptions of domestic public right, freedom of speech, and punishment, but the papers as a whole yield a solid beginning for new readers to engage many classical systematic issues in relation to Kant's legal-political theory. A second, possible drawback (the anthology is entitled Kant's Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications) is that most of the classical or common applied topics in legal-political philosophy, such as distributive justice (poverty), children's rights, abortion, animals' rights, health care rights, environmental protection etc., are not addressed by these (or the remaining) papers.

Let us turn now to the second set of papers, which are less attentive to a technical exploration of Kant's legal-political writings as such, and instead are more focused on other works or historical facts that may have a bearing on how we consider certain aspects of Kant's legal-political thought. Two of these papers, like Taylor's, consider Kant's theory of justice in relation to issues of history and historical progress. But their approaches are quite different. Ferguson's "Unsocial Sociability: Perpetual Antagonism in Kant's Political Thought" argues that in order to understand Kant's core notion of "unsocial sociability," including what we find in the essay "The Idea for Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose," we must look not only to Kant the "moral philosopher," but also to Kant the "phenomenologist"  As we do, we must notice the distinction and tension in a way that Kant himself and Kantians do not . The problem is that Kant and Kantians conflate human nature (viewed as things about us that pose problems for our morality or cause "moral failure") and the human condition (the morally neutral plurality of humankind) when they consider antagonism's role in human societies and their development . Consequently, Kant typically sees antagonism from the point of view of moral philosophy, according to which antagonism should be overcome. Hence Kant asserts that a united will provides a means for overcoming or, to use Ripstein's language, "remedying" antagonisms (163). Similarly, contemporary Kantian approaches, like those of Rawls and Habermas, mistakenly search for the construction of some procedures, "rational will formation," or "cosmopolitan institutions that could guarantee peaceful and just relations around the globe."

In contrast, Ferguson argues that if we see antagonism from the point of view of phenomenology, we can appreciate how the pursuit of a cosmopolitan future -- perpetual peace -- "both requires and is undermined by antagonism." (164) For example, she argues that even though antagonism as a result of moral failure (human nature) makes peace difficult, antagonism as a result of the plurality constitutive of the human condition (our unsocial sociability) drives much of human progress, including our recognition of the need for the rule of law and public institutions at both the domestic and global levels . As we have seen above, some of the prominent interpretations of Kant today challenge the remedial interpretation of Kant's justification of the need for justice and the state. If they are correct in maintaining that Kant provides both remedial and non-remedial justifications for justice and the state, then, correspondingly, Kant may not have been confused about this, and Ferguson's interpretation may be closer to getting Kant right on "unsocial sociability" than she thinks.

Contrary to Ferguson who thinks that much can be learned if we merely untangle various confusions found in Kant's and Kantian legal-political thinking, Hunter's "Kant's Political Thought in the Prussian Enlightenment" is much more ambitious. He seeks to uncover the true structure of Kant's legal-political philosophy -- a structure that is invisible if one reads only Kant's legal-political and moral writings. Consequently, it is unappreciated by currently prominent Kant scholars. Hunter's first task is to inform contemporary Kantians of "the complex cultural-political terrain" Kant was operating in -- a terrain that is "largely terra incognita in studies of Kant's moral philosophy" (175f). He aims to show that Kant's political and religious writings, despite appearances, seek to defend Kant's ideal of the intellectual as "the Protestant German university metaphysician" (185)

 against various competing moral-religious programs. Second, he employs this historical knowledge to uncover Kant's real purpose in the Doctrine of Right, which he summarizes in the following way:

Kant's Rechtslehre is thus based on the metaphysical anthropology of man the self-determining pure intelligence that he elaborated in his metaphysics of morals. In fact Kant's political and legal doctrine is formed on the basis of the extraordinary conception that right or justice originates when this pure intelligence, existing outside space and time, seeks to exercise its freedom 'externally' by occupying the global surface of the earth. (182)

There is almost no end to the interpretive puzzles and controversies raised by this statement (and statements of its kind throughout the paper), some of which readers may discern from consulting the other papers in the volume. That this statement and many other interpretive claims throughout the paper are textually implausible gives Hunter little pause, however, since what Kant appears to be saying is not so important. To understand what Kant really means in his legal-political writings, we need to look elsewhere. In particular, we need to appreciate a particular (also controversial) interpretation of Kant's Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, the plausibility of which is seen as stemming from a particular interpretation of various historical facts that influenced Kant deeply (including in ways Kant himself wasn't aware).

LaVaque-Manty's "Kant on Education" explores aspects of Kant's view of education. It starts by explaining how Kant was particularly influenced and supportive of the Philanthropinen education movement (founded by Johann Bernhard Basedow) before moving on to the way in which Kant's conception of education complements his moral philosophy -- both his ethics and his legal-political philosophy. Of particular importance, LaVaque-Manty points out, is the emphasis Kant puts on children being treated as children whose aim is to learn to master their freedom -- both their internal and their external (including embodied) freedom. LaVaque-Manty does not explore whether or how this impacts the issue of children's rights or public law issues concerning education, but clearly it points to many concerns such an account will consider.

The final paper, Laursen's "Kant, Freedom of the Press, and Book Piracy" primarily focuses on Kant's argument for book piracy, though at the very end it touches upon the question of freedom of the press. Laursen begins by arguing that Kant's small section on book piracy in the Doctrine of Right ("What is a Book?") contains arguments he had presented in an essay in Berlinische Monatsschrift a decade earlier -- an essay aimed at refuting his contemporary, Martin Ehler. According to Ehler, book piracy should be outlawed because it involves stealing the author's thoughts or ideas, whereas Kant proposes that piracy should be outlawed because it involves "the transaction of business in the name of another without his consent." (230) Laursen's paper is particularly useful for learning about the historical setting in which Kant was formulating his piracy arguments.

To me, a general drawback of these last four papers is that they do not reveal an intimate familiarity with the kinds of positions defended in the first five papers and hence that they do not try to draw any connections to them. Therefore they are unconnected from currently prominent interpretations of Kant's Doctrine of Right and his legal-political essays. At least this seems to be the reason why these last four papers do not utilize the kinds of interpretations found in the first five papers as they develop their own. Then again, this disconnect is prominent in the literature, so perhaps Ellis is quite right in making this selection in her effort to represent the current literature accurately. In sum, then, although the selection of some of the papers puzzles me somewhat and, as mentioned above, although there are some types of papers I believe the anthology would have benefitted from including, in my view it certainly succeeds in its aim of providing new readers with a good starting point for approaching the literature surrounding Kant's legal-political thought. These new readers should be fairly well versed in legal-political philosophy beforehand, but to such readers the anthology provides a very good sense of the current variety of approaches to Kant's theory of justice.

Plato : The Theory of Forms

In many of his dialogues, Plato mentions supra-sensible entities he calls "Forms" (or "Ideas"). So, for example, in the Phaedo,  we are told that particular sensible equal things—for example, equal sticks or stones (see Phaedo 74a-75d)—are equal because of their "participation" or "sharing" in the character of the Form of Equality, which is absolutely, changelessly, perfectly, and essentially equal. Plato sometimes characterizes this participation in the Form as a kind of imaging, or approximation of the Form. The same may be said of the many things that are greater or smaller and the Forms of Great and Small (Phaedo 75c-d), or the many tall things and the Form of Tall (Phaedo 100e), or the many beautiful things and the Form of Beauty (Phaedo 75c-d, Symposium  211e, Republic V.476c). When Plato writes about instances of Forms "approximating" Forms, it is easy to infer that, for Plato, Forms are exemplars. If so, Plato believes that The Form of Beauty is perfect beauty, the Form of Justice is perfect justice, and so forth. Conceiving of Forms in this way was important to Plato because it enabled the philosopher who grasps the entities to be best able to judge to what extent sensible instances of the Forms are good examples of the Forms they approximate.

Scholars disagree about the scope of what is often called "the theory of Forms," and question whether Plato began holding that there are only Forms for a small range of properties, such as tallness, equality, justice, beauty, and so on, and then widened the scope to include Forms corresponding to every term that can be applied to a multiplicity of instances. In the Republic, he writes as if there may be a great multiplicity of Forms—for example, in Book X of that work, we find him writing about the Form of Bed (see Republic X.596b). He may have come to believe that for any set of things that shares some property, there is a Form that gives unity to the set of things (and univocity to the term by which we refer to members of that set of things). Knowledge involves the recognition of the Forms (Republic V.475e-480a), and any reliable application of this knowledge will involve the ability compare the particular sensible instantiations of a property to the Form.

Immortality and Reincarnation

In the early transitional dialogue, the Meno,  Plato has Socrates introduce the Orphic and Pythagorean idea that souls are immortal and existed before our births. All knowledge, he explains, is actually recollected from this prior existence. In perhaps the most famous passage in this dialogue, Socrates elicits recollection about geometry from one of Meno's slaves (Meno  81a-86b). Socrates' apparent interest in, and fairly sophisticated knowledge of, mathematics appears wholly new in this dialogue. It is an interest, however, that shows up plainly in the middle period dialogues, especially in the middle books of the Republic.

Several arguments for the immortality of the soul, and the idea that souls are reincarnated into different life forms, are also featured in Plato's Phaedo (which also includes the famous scene in which Socrates drinks the hemlock and utters his last words). Stylometry has tended to count the Phaedo among the early dialogues, whereas analysis of philosophical content has tended to place it at the beginning of the middle period. Similar accounts of the transmigration of souls may be found, with somewhat different details, in Book X of the Republic and in the Phaedrus,  as well as in several dialogues of the late period, including the Timaeus and the Laws.  No traces of the doctrine of recollection, or the theory of reincarnation or transmigration of souls, are to be found in the dialogues we listed above as those of the early period.

Metaxy

Metaxy (Greek: μεταξύ) or metaxu is defined in Plato's Symposium via the character of the priestess Diotima as the "in-between" or "middle ground". Diotima, tutoring Socrates, uses the term to show how oral tradition can be perceived by different people in different ways. In the poem by Socrates she depicts Eros as not an extreme or purity; rather, as a daimon Eros is in-between the divine Gods and mankind. Diotima thus exposes the flaws of oral tradition; it uses strong contrasts to express truth, thus revealing vulnerability to sophistry. This portion of the dialogue points to the idea that reality is perceptible only through one's character (which includes one's desires and prejudices and one's limited understanding of logic). Man moves through the world of Becoming, the ever changing world of sensory perception, into the world of Being—the world of forms, absolutes and transcendence, by Metaxy. Man transcends his place in Becoming by Eros, where man reaches the Highest Good, an intuitive and mystical state of consciousness. Neoplatonists like Plotinus later used the concept to express an ontological placement of Man between the Gods and animals. Much like Diotima did in expressing that Eros as daemon was in-between the Gods and mankind. Love (Ἔρως Eros) as the thing in between or child of Poverty (Πενία Penia) and Possession (Πόρος Poros)

Plato: Dialectics

Plato uses the term dialectic throughout his works to refer to whatever method he happens to be recommending as the vehicle of philosophy. The term, from dialegesthai, meaning to converse or talk through, gives insight into his core conception of the project. Yet it is also evident that he stresses different aspects of the conversational method in different dialogues.

The form of dialectic featured in the Socratic works became the basis of subsequent practice in the Academy—where it was taught by Aristotle—and in the teachings of the Skeptics during the Hellenistic Age. While the conversation in a Socratic dialogue unfolds naturally, it features a process by which even someone who lacks knowledge of a given subject (as Socrates in these works claims to do) may test the understanding of a putative expert. The testing consists of a series of questions posed in connection with a position the interlocutor is trying to uphold. The method presupposes that one cannot have knowledge of any fact in isolation; what is known must be embedded in a larger explanatory structure. Thus, in order to know if a certain act is pious, one must know what piety is. This requirement licenses the questioner to ask the respondent about issues suitably related to his original claim. If, in the course of this process, a contradiction emerges, the supposed expert is revealed not to command knowledge after all: if he did, his grasp of the truth would have enabled him to avoid contradiction. While both Socrates and the Skeptics hoped to find the truth (a skeptikos is after all a “seeker”), the method all too often reveals only the inadequacy of the respondent. Since he has fallen into contradiction, it follows that he is not an expert, but this does not automatically reveal what the truth is.

By the time of the composition of the Republic, Plato’s focus had shifted to developing positive views, and thus “dialectic” was now thought of not as a technique of testing but as a means of “saying of each thing what it is.” The Republic stresses that true dialectic is performed by thinking solely of the abstract and nonsensible realm of forms; it requires that reason secure an unhypothetical first principle (the Good) and then derive other results in light of it. Since this part of the dialogue is merely a programmatic sketch, however, no actual examples of the activity are provided, and indeed some readers have wondered whether it is really possible.

In the later dialogue Parmenides, dialectic is introduced as an exercise that the young Socrates must undertake if he is to understand the forms properly. The exercise, which Parmenides demonstrates in the second part of the work, is extremely laborious: a single instance involves the construction of eight sections of argument; the demonstration then takes up some three-quarters of the dialogue. The exercise challenges the reader to make a distinction associated with a sophisticated development of the theory of Platonic forms (see below The theory of forms). Even after a general understanding has been achieved, repeating the exercise with different subjects allows one to grasp each subject’s role in the world.

This understanding of dialectic gives a central place to specifying each subject’s account in terms of genus and differentiae (and so, relatedly, to mapping its position in a genus-species tree). The Phaedrus calls the dialectician the person who can specify these relations—and thereby “carve reality at the joints.” Continuity among all the kinds of dialectic in Plato comes from the fact that the genus-species divisions of the late works are a way of providing the accounts that dialectic sought in all the previous works.

Habermas and Communication Theory

Introdcution

Jürgen Habermas (born 18 June 1929) is a German sociologist and philosopher in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. He is perhaps best known for his theories on communicative rationality and the public sphere. In 2014, Prospect readers chose Habermas as one of their favourites among the "world's leading thinkers.’

Associated with the Frankfurt School, Habermas's work focuses on the foundations of social theory and epistemology, the analysis of advanced capitalistic societies and democracy, the rule of law in a critical social-evolutionary context, and contemporary politics, particularly German politics. Habermas's theoretical system is devoted to revealing the possibility of reason, emancipation, and rational-critical communication latent in modern institutions and in the human capacity to deliberate and pursue rational interests. Habermas is known for his work on the concept of modernity, particularly with respect to the discussions of rationalization originally set forth by Max Weber. He has been influenced by American pragmatism, action theory, and even poststructuralism.

Communication is a central concept in the philosophy of the German philosopher Jürgen Habermas.

This term is also about misunderstandings because it is often associated with the ordinary meaning. However, the concept of communication is the opposite of the same concept used in the science of communication. It is not in this case a strategic activity to present a project or aspects of reality in one hand, by optimizing the admissibility of those who are the object and on the other hand, to minimize or even hide the disadvantages or consequences. Habermas, communication is contrary to the basic activity in which two or more subjects are able to spontaneously get agreement on a draft joint action or a shared reality in the public sphere.

Habermasian definition of communication:

We can therefore define communication as strictly what happens between two or more, talking seriously about something that exists or should exist in the world, but no one disputes the validity of the statements or suggestions made by and each other. Communication therefore uses a medium in and through which it occurs: the language.

In this sense, communication is commonplace and everyday, but it is also vital and is, indeed, a necessary condition for the symbolic reproduction of the world, sharing information, learning process, etc.. We can therefore say that it structures the world of everyday life.

Communication and discussion:

It should not be confused,  communication and discussion, even if the contact points between the pragmatic of Apel and the philosophical Habermas partly explain this assimilation.

The discussion in the German thinker, is not communication in the strict sense, however, it is communicative in the sense that communication and understanding are its purpose, it should be noted, however, that the communication is interrupted by the disagreement  and the conflict or dispute. There is no solution of continuity between communication and discussion in the strict sense, because the argumentative discourse that unfolds in the discussion is latent in communication, it is present as a regulator underlying, but we do not use it itself.

Thus, the validity claims are issued in the communication in the strict sense.

Kierkegaard: On Why Anxiety Powers Creativity, Rather Than Hindering It

“Because it is possible to create — creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self… — one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever.”

“Anxiety is love’s greatest killer,” Anaïs Nin famously wrote. But what, exactly, is anxiety, that pervasive affliction the nature of which remains as drowning yet as elusive as the substance of a shadow? In his 1844 treatise The Concept of Anxiety , Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard (1813–1855) explains anxiety as the dizzying effect of freedom, of paralyzing possibility, of the boundlessness of one’s own existence — a kind of existential paradox of choice. He writes:

“ Anxiety is a qualification of dreaming spirit, and as such it has its place in psychology. Awake, the difference between myself and my other is posited; sleeping, it is suspended; dreaming, it is an intimated nothing. The actuality of the spirit constantly shows itself as a form that tempts its possibility but disappears as soon as it seeks to grasp for it, and it is a nothing that can only bring anxiety. More it cannot do as long as it merely shows itself. [Anxiety] is altogether different from fear and similar concepts that refer to something definite, whereas anxiety is freedom’s actuality as the possibility of possibility.”

Anxiety may be compared with dizziness. He whose eye happens to look down the yawning abyss becomes dizzy. But what is the reason for this? It is just as much in his own eye as in the abyss, for suppose he had not looked down. Hence, anxiety is the dizziness of freedom, which emerges when the spirit wants to posit the synthesis and freedom looks down into its own possibility, laying hold of finiteness to support itself. Freedom succumbs to dizziness. Further than this, psychology cannot and will not go. In that very moment everything is changed, and freedom, when it again rises, sees that it is guilty. Between these two moments lies the leap, which no science has explained and which no science can explain. He who becomes guilty in anxiety becomes as ambiguously guilty as it is possible to become.

He captures the invariable acuteness of anxiety’s varied expressions:

“Anxiety can just as well express itself by muteness as by a scream.”

Kierkegaard argues that, to paraphrase Henry Miller, on how we orient ourselves to anxiety depends the failure or fruitfulness of life:

“ In actuality, no one ever sank so deep that he could not sink deeper, and there may be one or many who sank deeper. But he who sank in possibility — his eye became dizzy, his eye became confused. . . . Whoever is educated by possibility is exposed to danger, not that of getting into bad company and going astray in various ways as are those educated by the finite, but in danger of a fall, namely, suicide. If at the beginning of education he misunderstands the anxiety, so that it does not lead him to faith but away from faith, then he is lost. On the other hand, whoever is educated [by possibility] remains with anxiety; he does not permit himself to be deceived by its countless falsification and accurately remembers the past. Then the assaults of anxiety, even though they be terrifying, will not be such that he flees from them. For him, anxiety becomes a serving spirit that against its will leads him where he wishes to go.”

Core to this premise is the conception of anxiety as a dual force that can be both destructive and generative, depending on how we approach it. Like Nin herself observed in her reflection of why emotional excess is necessary for writing, Kierkegaard argues that anxiety is essential for creativity. Perhaps the most enduring and thoughtful interpretation of his treatment of the relationship between creativity and anxiety comes from legendary existential psychologist Rollo May’s The Meaning of Anxiety (public library), originally published in 1950.

“We can understand Kierkegaard’s ideas on the relation between guilt and anxiety only by emphasizing that he is always speaking of anxiety in its relation to creativity. Because it is possible to create — creating one’s self, willing to be one’s self, as well as creating in all the innumerable daily activities (and these are two phases of the same process) — one has anxiety. One would have no anxiety if there were no possibility whatever. Now creating, actualizing one’s possibilities, always involves negative as well as positive aspects. It always involves destroying the status quo, destroying old patterns within oneself, progressively destroying what one has clung to from childhood on, and creating new and original forms and ways of living. If one does not do this, one is refusing to grow, refusing to avail himself of his possibilities; one is shirking his responsibility to himself. Hence refusal to actualize one’s possibilities brings guilt toward one’s self. But creating also means destroying the status quo of one’s environment, breaking the old forms; it means producing something new and original in human relations as well as in cultural forms (e.g., the creativity of the artist). Thus every experience of creativity has its potentiality of aggression or denial toward other persons in one’s environment or established patterns within one’s self. To put the matter figuratively, in every experience of creativity something in the past is killed that something new in the present may be born. Hence, for Kierkegaard, guilt feeling is always a concomitant of anxiety: both are aspects of experiencing and actualizing possibility. The more creative the person, he held, the more anxiety and guilt are potentially present.”

Both The Concept of Anxiety and The Meaning of Anxiety endure as excellent reads in their entirety, timeless and increasingly timely in our age of anxious wonder.

Confucianism: beliefs, thought and ethics

 History

K'ung Fu Tzu (commonly pronounced Confucius in English) was born in 551 BCE in the state of Lu (modern day Shantung Province). He lived during the Chou dynasty, an era known for its moral laxity. Later in life, he wandered through many states of China, giving advice to their rulers. He accumulated a small band of students during this time. The last years of his life were spent back in Lu, where he devoted himself to teaching.

His writings deal primarily with individual morality and ethics, and the proper exercise of political power by the rulers.

In China, and some other areas in Asia, the social ethics and moral teachings of Confucius are blended with the Taoist communion with nature and Buddhist concepts of the afterlife, to form a set of complementary, peacefully co-existent and ecumenical religions.

There are approximately 6 million Confucians in the world. About 26,000 live in North America; almost all of the remainder are found throughout China and the rest of Asia.

Beliefs:

Confucian ethical teachings include the following values:

1.      Li: includes ritual, propriety, etiquette, etc.

2.      Hsiao: love within the family: love of parents for their children and of children for their parents

3.      Yi: righteousness

4.      Xin: honesty and trustworthiness

5.      Jen: benevolence, humaneness towards others; the highest Confucian virtue

6.      Chung: loyalty to the state, etc.

Practices:

Confucianism does not contain all of the elements of some other religions, like Christianity and Islam. It is primarily an ethical system to which rituals at important times during one's lifetime have been added.

Since the time of the Han dynasty (206 CE) four life passages have been recognized and regulated by Confucian tradition:

Birth: The T'ai-shen (spirit of the fetus) protects the expectant woman and deals harshly with anyone who harasses the mother to be. A special procedure is followed when the placenta is disposed of. The mother is given a special diet and is allowed rest for a month after delivery. The mother's family of origin supplies all the items required by the baby on the first, fourth and twelfth monthly anniversary of the birth.

Reaching maturity: This life passage is no longer being celebrated, except in traditional families. It takes the form of a group meal in which the young adult is served chicken.

Marriage: This is performed in six stages:

1.      Proposal: the couple exchange the eight characters: the year, month, day and hour of each of their births. If any unpropitious event occurs within the bride-to-be's family during the next three days, then the woman is believed to have rejected the proposal.

2.      Engagement: after the wedding day is chosen, the bride announces the wedding with invitations and a gift of cookies made in the shape of the moon.

3.      Dowry: This is carried to the groom's home in a solemn procession. The bride-price is then sent to the bride by the groom's parents. Gifts by the groom to the bride, equal in value to the dowry, are sent to her.

4.      Procession: The groom visits the bride's home and brings her back to his place, with much fanfare.

5.      Marriage and Reception: The couple recite their vows, toast each other with wine, and  then take center stage at a banquet.

6.      Morning after: The bride serves breakfast to the groom's parents, who then reciprocate.

Death: At death, the relatives cry out aloud to inform the neighbors. The family starts mourning and puts on clothes made of a course material. The corpse is washed and placed in a coffin. Mourners bring incense and money to offset the cost of the funeral. Food and significant objects of the deceased are placed into the coffin. A Buddhist or Taoist priest (or even a Christian minister) performs the burial ritual. Friends and family follow the coffin to the cemetery, along with a willow branch which symbolizes the soul of the person who has died. The latter is carried back to the family altar where it is used to "install" the spirit of the deceased. Liturgies are performed on the 7th, 9th, 49th day after the burial and on the first and third anniversaries of the death.

 Schools of Confucianism

There are six schools: Han Confucianism, Neo-Confucianism, Contemporary Neo-Confucianism, Korean Confucianism, Japanese Confucianism and Singapore Confucianism.

Sacred Texts

These were assembled by Chu Hsi (1130-1200 CE) during the Song dynasty. They include:

1.      The Si Shu or Four Books:

2.      The Lun, Yu the Analects of Confucius

3.      The Chung Yung or the Doctrine of the Mean

4.      The Ta Hsueh or the Great Learning

5.      The Meng Tzu the writings of Meng Tzu (371-289 BCE) a philosopher who, like Confucius, traveled from state to state conversing with the government rulers

6.      The Wu Jing or Five Classics:

          

                  7.Shu Ching or Classic of History: writings and speeches fromChinese  rulers

                  8.The Shih Ching or Classic of Odes: 300 poems and songs

                 9.  The I Ching or Classic of Changes: the description of a divinitory system involving 64 hexagrams. The hexagrams are symbols composed of broken and continuous lines; one is selected to foretell the future based on the casting of 49 sticks

                

                  10. The Ch'un Ch'iu or Spring and Autumn Annals: a history of the state of Lu from 722 to 484 BCE.

    

   11. The Li Ching or Classic of Rites: a group of three books on the LI the rites of    propriety

Confucian Thought

K’ ung Fu-Tzu. Leadership of the Confucian school centers around its foremost teacher, K'ung Fu-Tzu (551-479 B.C.). Though not the founder per se, as the transmitter and true embodiment of the Confucian Way, "Kung the Master," the "supreme editor of Chinese culture," is without peer.

His integrity of person and perseverance in answer to a call set the example for followers to emulate. His vision centered on respect children show to their parents; the high regard given elders and lawful authority figures; and an appreciation for learning, protocol and ceremony. Confucian practice became the characteristic world view and practice of the Chinese people for over 2,000 years.

Mencius. Mencius (372-289 B.C.) systematized Confucius's teaching. Believing in the innate goodness of all people, he popularized the 'five relationships' (father-son, ruler-minister, husband-wife, old-young, friend-friend) concept.

Hsun-Tzu. Hsun-tzu (shuhn-dyuh, 298-238 B.C.) was another early leader in Confucian philosophy. Thinking all individuals were essentially evil, he promoted the cultivation of ritual as antidote to humankind's depravity.

Kung te Cheng. Today, Kung te Cheng (b. 1920), a direct descendant of Confucius and resident of Taiwan, is a leading spokesperson for Confucian values.

Sun-tzu . The Sun-tzu is a Chinese classic on military tactics and strategy. It dates from the era 400-320 B.C. The Sun-tzu shows how superior mental attitudes can effect military/political change. Emphasis is on unsettling the enemy’s mind and upsetting his plans.

Confucian Belief

" The fundamental concern of the Confucian tradition is learning to be human."

--Tu Wei-ming.

 Three dimensions of the human condition--the self, community, and tradition--are expressed in Confucian spirituality.

 Self-cultivation. A healthy body, mind-and-heart alert, pure soul and brilliant spirit, are seen as good for their own sake. This self-transformation draws resources from cultural tradition, a sympathetic society, the energy of nature and power of heaven. Confucius sought dignity for all humankind, a sense of respect for oneself and understanding of the humanity found in all.

Tu Wei-ming, Professor of Chinese History and Philosophy at Harvard University, identifies three characteristics of the "human rootedness" of Confucian thought.

1.      

       Cheng designates the state of absolute quiet and inactivity, being sincere, authentic, real. One can be genuinely human without engaging in a flurry of activities.

2.      Shen signifies spirituality. Crucial Shen concerns are the "heavenly aspect of the soul" and its development.

3.      Chi (jee). Based upon the cumulative effect of self-transformation, Chi, an "originating power, an inward spring of activity...a critical point at which one's direction toward good or evil is set" can be identified and used to further 'flourish the soul.' (Tu Wei-ming)

Community. The community is necessary for this self-transformation to occur. It broadens and deepens the self, expressing the fundamental integration of all segments of our world. Once rooted, the soul contributes to the four visions that identify the classic Confucian vision of the world. The four visions are:

 1. ability to respond to the world in a poetic sense

2. social sense of ritual as means for verbal and non-verbal communication within the "human community"

3. historical ability to relate to the collective memory

4. politics as responsive and responsible to the whole community

Tradition. Throughout their shared history spanning millenniums, the people of China valued harmony and mutual consensus rather than conflict and individual exertion. Historian Barbara Tuchman writes,

"The people of China...stayed in one place, enclosed by a series of walls, around house and village or city. Tied to the soil, living under the authority of the family, growing their food among the graves of their ancestors, they were perpetuators of a system in which harmony was more important than struggle."

During Confucius’s life, societal conflict, rather than harmony, was the norm. Believing there had been an earlier period of prosperity and peace in China Confucius advocated a return to the traditions and values of that earlier time. These traditions--which maintained peace and social order--became the focus of Confucian thought.

Professor Samuel Huntington describes China’s reliance upon her traditional (Confucian) culture even today.

"Since the late 1970s, Chinese leadership chose a new version of Ti-Yong: capitalism and involvement in the world economy, on the one hand, combined with political authoritarianism and recommitment to traditional Chinese culture, on the other." At the end of the superpower competition, China "set two goals: (1) to become the champion of Chinese culture...and (2) to resume its historical position, which it lost in the nineteenth century, as the [supreme] power in East Asia."

Confucian Texts

The Five Classics:

The Four Books. Chu Hsi (joo-shee--A.D. 1130-1200) emphasized the Four Books: Ta-hsueh, Chung Yung, Lun Yu, and Meng Tzu. Two chapters, originally from the Li chi, comprise books one and two of the four Books (the Ta-hsueh [great learning] and Chung Yung [Doctrine of the Mean].)

The Lun Yu (luhn yoo--Discussed Sayings) is known to most Western audiences as the Analects (AN ehlekts) or recorded actions and saying of Confucius. Most of the twenty Analects books describe Confucius as he answers questions, discusses issues and lives his beliefs.

The Meng Tzu  by Mencius  systematized Confucian teaching, advocating study of the Classics, practicing moral disciplines and developing natural ying/yang energies.

Shu-ching (shoo-jing--"Book of History/Documents")

This text compiles historical documents of the ninth to sixth centuries, B.C. It describes the political vision of Confucian thought, outlining an ethical foundation for humane government.

Shih-ching (shuhr-jing--"Book of Poetry/Songs")

Common human feelings, expressed in some 300 poems and religious hymns from the early Chou Dynasty (1027-402 B.C.), comprise the Shih-ching.

Li chi (lee-jee--"Book of Rites")

Consciousness of duty pervades the ceremonial rituals collected in Li chi. A cooperative society, organized by four principle occupations--scholar, farmer, artisan, merchant--is the ideal.

Ch’ un-ch’ iu (chuhn chyoh--"Spring and Autumn Annals")

This text emphasizes history and the significance of the collective memory in individual and societal identification.

 Confucian Ethics

" It is these ethics which even today we meet all over East Asia."

The question, "What is the character of the social life Confucian education should engender?", addresses the ethical center of Confucianism. Historian of world religions, Huston Smith, specifies the following four terms which designate this heart of the Confucian ethical tradition.

Jen , chun-tzu , li  and wen alike are ethical/motivational topics, influential in the folk/Confucian tradition of the family, government bureaucracy, and village life especially.

Jen (ruhn). This basic virtue, as outlined in the Analects, signifies benevolence, humaneness and human-heartedness. Cultivating courtesy and unselfishness promotes the dignity of human life wherever it appears. Public displays focus upon diligence, steadfastness, and a magnanimity of heart which pursues a mission, that of redeeming the world through human effort. This sense of mission makes the world safer and more livable, improves the quality of life, and transforms society into a moral community. Jen is not only a humanistic objective, but also a profoundly spiritual goal of Confucian ethics.

Chun-tzu (juhn-dyuh). This term refers to the mature, cultivated, humane person. It is the opposite of petty, mean-spirited individuals. A chun-tzu person aims to live by the highest of ethical standards. He/she seeks to answer, by action and attitude, the question "what can I do to accommodate others?"

Li (ritual, mores, ceremony). Li finds its origin in religious ceremony and rite. Its broader meaning describes the way things are done. Attitude becomes as important as correct conduct. Manners, an order to behavior and family relations, honoring elders, and the concept of the golden mean, all describe Li. The family, still the single most important social institution in imparting ways of learning to be human, is the framework for establishing graceful interactions with others. It is the glue for social solidarity.

Filial piety--relations encompassing not only children to their parents but generations to each other--is the underpinning for all other interactions. Cultivation of genuine feelings for parents and siblings--rather than estrangement and alienation between them--is the principle. This family/communal orientation also plays itself out in salvation schemes. Individualistic approaches are frowned upon. Family, society, country or the whole world must be included in such appeals. We see the depths of family devotion in death and grieving practices. After a parent dies, the child (son) may retire from public affairs, simplify living arrangements and devote himself to grieving for as long as three years. Li further expresses itself through the five relationships.

Father-son

Ruler-minister

Husband-wife

Old-young, and

Friend-friend

These bonds and practices are not only critical to a well-ordered society but provide a training ground for the effective development of a humane, flourishing soul. Critics sometimes describe the "three bonds"-- ruler over minister, father over son and husband over wife--as promoting despotic, autocratic, patriarchal, and male-chauvinistic practice. A Confucian response sees these bonds not as confining or limiting practices. Rather, when seen from a broader perspective, the patterns of social stability, maintenance of the social order, and a world at peace overcome particular frustrations of such hierarchical relations.

Wen refers to the "arts of peace"--music, art, poetry, the aesthetic and spiritual aptitudes. The mark of a cultured person is the knowledge and appreciation of culture, breeding, and grace. The Analects record:

"By poetry the mind is aroused; from music the finish is received. The odes stimulate the mind. They induce self-contemplation. They teach the art of sensibility. They help to restrain resentment. They bring home the duty of serving one's parents and one's prince." (XVIII:9)

 Neo-Confucian Practice

The neo-Confucian movement, developed in response to Buddhism, was dominant in East Asia from the twelfth to early twentieth century. It honed and perfected early Confucian thought.

Chu Hsi (joo shee, 1130-1200), with his School of Principle, saw a pattern running through all material. By practicing asceticism or moral discipline, followers could ascertain this inner design.

Wang Yang-ming (wahng yahng-ming, 1472-1529), another major neo-Confucianist, established the School of Mind. Innate knowledge, found within the mind, is the basis on which to view humanity, rather than pursuing external patterns.

A Third Wave Confucian movement seeks to explain the current economic revival in East Asia in terms of application of Confucian principles to the post-modern world. This school of thought seeks to outmaneuver competitors, based on superior self-knowledge and knowledge of others.

Harvard professor Tu Wei-ming discusses the impact of Confucian thought on the East Asian economy. After describing the economic growth taking place in East Asia, Dr. Wei-ming discusses the human factor involved in the process:

"What they [East Asian] have shown is that culture matters, that values people cherish or unconsciously uphold provide guidance for their actions, that the motivational structure of people is not only relevant but also crucial to their economic ethics, and that the life-orientation of a society makes a difference in the economic behavior of its people."

 Women

The Confucian Tradition. "Traditional Chinese society was male-centered. Sons were preferred to daughters, women were expected to be subordinate to fathers, husbands, and sons. A young woman had little voice in the decision of her marriage partner (neither did a young man). When married, it was she who left her natal family and community and went to live in a family and community of strangers where she was subordinate to her mother-in-law. Far fewer women were educated than men, and sketchy but consistent demographic evidence would seem to show that female infants and children had higher death rates and less chance of surviving to adulthood than males. In extreme cases, female infants were the victims of infanticide, and daughters were sold, as chattels, to brothels or to wealthy families. Bound feet, which were customary even for peasant women, symbolized the painful constraints of the female role." (L. of C. Country Studies: China.).

Author John Hersey, in his novel The Call, elaborates on the practice of foot binding.

"A binder had come on her monthly visit to wash and rebind the feet of a little girl of about eight... The binder unwound wide bandages and finally the ‘golden lilies’ were uncovered...The toes had been relentlessly curled back under the soles...sometimes bones were broken, but they mended while bound... The little girl had been given to believe that she was a person of great importance, to be inspected in this way. She never whimpered, but when the work was done, she sat holding her feet in her hands...When she was fully grown, the binder said, her feet would be very beautiful...she would walk like a willow, the binder said, with seductive mincing steps...so as to cause great excitement among all the young men!"

Confucian practice concerning women--delegating their position to that of subservience to men--stems in part from the following nature of its thought.

Yin/yang. Yin and Yang interact harmoniously. As part of this balance, traditionally men were associated with "yang," women with "yin." Yin displays qualities of darkness, cold, death , ghosts, graves and fear--often traits acquiring a negative status. The linkage of the feminine with "yin" seems to color women in this negative light as well. Over the centuries, such thought influenced practice towards them.

Family Filial piety--the relations guiding children with their parents and past generations-- delegated responsibilities and importance to eldest sons. Two of the five relationships--father/son and husband/wife--promote social mores of male superiority. The woman’s status becomes one where she obeys and serves her parents, her husband and husband’s parents, and produces a male heir.

The ideal woman becomes someone who is retiring, silent and fertile. She possesses inner strength and is known for her forbearance and patient sense of restraint. In South Korea, the cumulative effect of the Confucian tradition led Harvard professor Tu Wei-ming to write, the "blatant insensitivity in deprecating gender equality reflects an East Asian mentality with deep Confucian roots."