Problems of moral philosophy 0804739366, 9780804739368, 9780804744720, 0804744726

Table of contents :
Cover......Page 1
Title Page......Page 4
Copyright......Page 5
CONTENTS......Page 6
Lecture One......Page 10
Lecture Two......Page 21
Lecture Three......Page 31
Lecture Four......Page 42
Lecture Five......Page 53
Lecture Six......Page 64
Lecture Seven......Page 76
Lecture Eight......Page 87
Lecture Nine......Page 98
Lecture Ten......Page 109
Lecture Eleven......Page 119
Lecture Twelve (transcript)......Page 130
Lecture Thirteen......Page 135
Lecture Fourteen......Page 145
Lecture Fifteen......Page 155
Lecture Sixteen......Page 166
Lecture Seventeen......Page 176
Bibliographical References......Page 188
Notes......Page 191
Editor's Afterword......Page 223
Acknowledgements......Page 226
Index......Page 227

Citation preview

PROBLEMS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Adorno's writings published by Stanford University Press The poSthumous works

Beethoven: The Philosophy of Music Introductron to Sociology Kant's Crilique of Pure Reason

Metaplrysics; Concept m1d Problems Problems of Moral Phi/osoplry

PROBLEMS OF MORAL PHILOSOPHY

Theodor W. Adorno Edited by Thomas Schroder Trauslated by Roduey Livingst01ze

Stanford University Press Stanford, California

2001

Stanford, Calilornia 2001 Stanford University Press Stanford, Califorma First published in paperback Ln 1001 F1rst published in the U.S.A. by Stanford Universny Press, 2000. This o:anslation © 2000 Polity Press. Originating publisher of English edition: Polity Press in asSOCLatLOR with Blackwell Publishers Lc:d. First rml:llished 10 Germany as Probleme der Moralphdo.soph1e by Suhrkamp Verlag© 1996 Published WLth the assistance of Inter Nationes Printed m Great Britain on acid-fr� paper Cloth ISBN 0-8047-3936-6 Paper ISBN 0-8047-4471-6 LC 2001090736 L1.st f1gure �low md1cates the year of this printing 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 01

CONTENTS

LECTURE ONE Moral philosophy as a theoretical discipline • The concept of practice • Theory as resistance and a 'resring of reality'; against practicism • Naivety and reflection • On the tension between theory and praCiice • Spontaneity and resistance • The irrational • Hosnliry to moraliries confined ro particulars • Ethics as bad conscience; on behalf of a morality bluntly incompanble with our experience LECTURE TWO

12

'Moraliry and its Discontents' • The problem of e1hos and personality • The ethical is no natural category • Moraliry and social crisis • The sociology of the rej:lressJVe character • The general and the panicular • Plan of the lecture course • Texts to be studied LECTURE THREE

22

Arguments ad homines • Lectures: auemprs at critical models • The dual nature oi reason in Kant: theory and practice, ep1sremology and metaphysics • The problem of freedom • On the theory of antinomies • Dialectics • The disrincrion berween scepticism and 'rhe sceptical method' LECTURE FOUR The narure of the :tnrinomies • Causality and fceedom; spomane1ty • The thesis of the third antinomy • The proof of the thesis • The motif of a causal.ry born of freedom • The amithes•s

33

vi

CONTENTS

LECTURE FIVE

44

The principle of cAusality and the necessity of tbe anlinomies • Dialectics in Kant and Hegel • Problem of the p,-inra philasophta: the 6rsr cause • Causality, law and freedom • External nature of the concept of causalny • Freedom as a given • Summary: causallty born of freedom

LECTURE SIX

55

The dual character of Kantian philosophy; the one and the many • Once again: theory and practice • On the Doctrine of Melhod: 1. The nature of reason • 2. Speculation • 3. Freedom and the dominanon of nature • 4. The disappointing of metaphysical expectations • 5. The rejection of philosophical indifference • 6. The idea of God and the rights of criticism • 7. The priority of practice

LECTURE SEVEN

67

Theory and praC{ice of the 'Doctrine of Me1hod' • Form and comenc in practical philosophy • Praccice as the exclusion of experience; freedom as reason • What is primary and what is secondary? The moral law as a given • Can social contradictions be resolved? Bourgeois optimism • Can 1he moral law be learnt through experience?

LECTURE EIGHT

78

Difficul1y of distinguishing berween a priori knowledge and knowledge from experience • Necessity and universality; a 'second-order g1ven' • The coercive character of empincally given morality • Psychoanalytical objection • The ethics of conviction • The rerum of releology; the element of heteronomy

LECTURE NINE The laws of freedom • The principle of exegesis; the 'extinction of mtcntion' • The dual character of nature • Kam 'breaks off' rhe argument; Resistance ro and acceptance of heteronomy • The clement of the Absurd • The historical d1alectics of moraliry; the 'growing old of morality'

89

CONTENTS LECTURE TEN

vii

100

The intolerable dualism of freedom and law; The Protestant tradirion • The experience of spirit and nature as opposed ro dominarion • Methodological excursus: hreral imerpretarion versus the history of ideas • Kanrian ethics is the moral philosophy par excellence • Formalism and rigorism

LEcnJRE ELEVEN

110

The grounding of morality in reason: Against 'rhe education of rhe heart• • Prince Hamlet • The element of non-identity; coercion by a rhird party • Reason as practice • The resrricted narure of Kanrian ethics; bourgeois calculus and bureaucratic virrue • The ambivalence of rhe unmediated good • Autonomy and hereronomy

LEcnJRE TWELVE

121

Self-determination • No cult of values • The absence of balance between freedom and law • Formalism and social conrexr • Kant's wntings on moral philosophy • The Groundwork of the

MetaphysiC of Morals

LEcruRE THIRTEEN

126

Excursus on phenomenology • The concept of dte will • Psychological aspect: Good will and ill will • Duty and reverence • The element of repcession • The disappearance ot freedom • Transirion to the problem of an ethics of responsibilitY and conviction

LECTURE FOURTEEN

136

The suppression of instinct as the general philosophical attitude • Self-preservatioo and compensarion • The fetishiution of renunciation • The idea of humanity: a hypothesis • The rotalirauanism of ends • Reason as an end in itself

LEcnJRE FIFTEEN Kanr's elhi could starr by s:tying: 'W.,-.11 rht>n, ht" w�ntc;: causality because on the basis of the doctrine of categories, causality is a universal law to which absolutely everyrhmg is subject and which tolerates no exceptions; and he wants freedom because with­ out freedom there would not really be anything like reason and

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LECTURE FIVE

humanity.' But this accounr IS roo superfiCLal. What lies behind it and this is hinted at in a passage in the doctrine of the antinomies char I shall perhaps discuss briefly in the next lecture - is rhe idea rhar behaviour that is quire devoid of causality and is therefore absolurely free, in other words, behaviour without any rules ar all, would be sunply chaotic. In rh.u event an amorphous, unformed nature would in fact triumph over the principle of reason ro which Kam quite unambiguously confides the rask of resisrmg that same chaonc disorder of nature in a number of passages m the Crrtlque of judgement. On the other hand, if the law is universal, then this pms an end to the possibility of any1hing higher rhan narure. That means in irs tum that human beings are nothing but a piece of this blind nature and are unable to �ape from it. Therefore, reason requires something like a universal conformity to law, because only if there is such a conformity to law can reason resist this blind, amorphous force. By rhe same token it requires freedom because in the face of rhe amorphousness of narure freedom is the only possible countervailing force. This twofold difficulty, the fact that the sphere of the human can exist neither in absolute conformity to law, nor i n absolute freedom, i s the true and profound reason why Kant 6nds himself forced imo this paradoxical construct of a causality born of freedom.H Thank you.

LECTURE SIX 30 May 1963

Ladies and Gentlemen, I must stan with an announcemem. I shall have to cancel rhe lec1ure m nvo wttl.:s" rune because I am raking part in the Europa Symposium in Vienna.• Thtre will be no lecture the following Thursday anyway because of the hol1day on Corpus Chrisri, so we shall next meet in three weeks' rime.

I should hke to begin by summarizing some of rhe things I may have said a lirrle too hurriedly at the end of the last lecture, and shall then use the rest of the lecture to rake a relatively close look at Kam's rexr in ordt>r ro say a few things about rhe reJdrion between theoretical and pracrical philosophy in Kam. The first poinr1 then, is rhat I should remind you that the difficulties we have been experiencing with Kanr's doctrine of rhe anrinomies can be traced back ro the facr thar Kant's philosophy has a dual characrer. On rhe one hand, there is a critical strand of thoughr, rhat is, the dissolution of dogmatic ideas that had simply been handed down and rhar he overcomes by recourse ro a consrirurive subjectivity. At rh� same nme h� sers limirs by establishing rhat rhe knowledge rhe naive consciousness rends to rhink of as the knowledge of things is in reality knowledge that arises merely in the subJective mind and cannor therefore be said to be rhe direct knowledge of exist�nce. On rhe Q[her hand, opposed to this and ar l�asr as powerful, there is the orh�r strand of thoughr accord­ ing ro wh1ch he would like ro rry ro salvage rhe ob1ecrive characrer of thoughr through this subJective analysis. Moreover, he aims ro go even further than this since he strives ro rescue what before him was known as ontology, and what we are again inclined ro call ontology today. And he hopes to rescue it in a particular sphere, namely the

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LECTURE SIX

sphere of the Intelligible - and rh.is means for him the sphere of morality or freedom. This dual character is what actually muriva1es rhe strange auitude rhat Kam adopts towards rhe problem of fre«ased on the unified will of a creator. In a sense tl1is is rhe suture joining Kamian philosophy and the Christian tl1eology which in facr comes to permeate the closing sections of rhe Critique of PrtJctta-11 Reason. He says r11en that the final result of speculation concerns 'three objects - freedom of rl1e will, the immortality of rhe soul and tl1e existence of God' - and 11e adds the very remarkable consequence of t11is that I should like to read you now: In respecr of all three rhe merely specular•ve interest of reason ,s very small; and for us sake alone we sho1.1ld hardly have undertaken rhe labour of rranSdom.'1� Wdl, modern science appears at this point to have paid Kant back in full for his strange procedure, by proving tO him that in the realm of our progressive understanding of natwe, in other words, precisely :u the poim where he supposed the laws of cause and effect to be absolutely inviolable, this concept of universal causality no longer holds good in the traditional manner. I have now told you a certain amount about the auirude of indif­ ference that characterizes rhe spe.:ulative interest according to Kant; and I have also said that no maner how we acr, nothing 1s more important for us than those 1deas which Kant claims are only of significance for our actions. In certain circumstances, for example, they may prevent us from raking any action at all, and the concept of actiOn may tall by the wayside, as IS the case wtth monks of vanous kinds, with quietist movements, or else with Schopenhauer's philos­ ophy. 5o rhese are ideas that can no longer be sustained. Kant rhen goes on to say: 'If, again, we should be able ro obtain msight imo the spiritual narure of the soul'- while in the chapter on paralogisms in the Critrque of Pure Reason this was the very thing he had doubted - 'we could make no use of such insight in explaining [ . . . J the appearances of this present life [ . . . )'.17 So no particular inference could be drawn from this because, in so far as the soul is the object of our knowledge and therefore a part of the world in space and rime and bound up with the world in space and time, it cannot be thought of as an absolute. Now, we m1ght well say that there is a vasr dif­ ference, even for cheoreric::�l propositions 3bouc the pos:sibilicy of tmmortalicy, between saying, on the one hand, chat the very idea of the soul is a mere idea, a hypostasis, char we merely assign an absolute status ro rhe synthesizing of phenomena in conceptual form, and, on the other hand, asserting that such a synthesis is the

LECTURE S I X

65

necessary precondition of rhe plurality of souls. In other words, these so-called metaphysical questions are crucially dependent on the theoretical de6nition of the rerm 'soul'. And the attirude of indiffer­ ence that Kant supposes to exist berween these idea5 and rheory, an indifference felt on both sides of the equation, is anything buc dommant. Finally. he says in connection with God that we can indeed take the idea of 'a supreme intelligence', as he somewhat coyly terms it, from which we would be able w 'render what is purpos1ve in the con­ SIItUiion and ordering of rhe world comprehensible in a general sort of way, but we should noc be in the least warranted in deriving from it any particular arrangement or disposnio� or in boldly inferring any such, where it is not perceived'.18 Now this rhird assumption makes a k-girimare critical point, bur ir is one- we- can st't asidr ht"re, since ir is really aimed at a very limired form of rationalism of the kmd that was formulated in rhe so-called Woi£6an philosophy, rhar is, in rhe systematic adaprarion of Leibnizian rarionalism for pedagogic purposes. In Wolff rhe prem1se of a central monad and a supreme intelligence was used in a direct, naive and narrow-minded way w show how all sores of natural phenomena were purposively arranged for the convenience of human bemgs. Thus Wolff actually states rhar 'the moon shines at night in order that men should not find everything so dark' . 1" So it is obviously Illuminating and pia us· ible to find such ideas repudiated here, bur ir has no bearing on the question of whether the existence of God has any relevance for theoretical reason. Once again, ir is necessary lor you to rhink of what h.as happened here from its own terminus ad quem. For this entire, really rather srrange line of argumenr wirh irs dallying over genuine abysses can really only be explained by pointing our that what he wants 10 say, come hell or high water, is that these three cardinal terms - the exis­ tence of God, freedom and immonahty - are not necessary for our knowledge, that is, in theory. In other words he Wishes to assert that they do nor need to interest us in theory, but at the same rime 'they are strongly recommended by our reason', and therefore he stares that 'their importance, properly regarded, must concern only the prac­ ticaf.!0 And with that we have reached one of the pivotal points of Kantian philosophy in general. This concerns the so-called mera­ physic:JI ide:1s which he c::mnor s:1lvage for theory, nor can he :1ccepr rhar rhey have a constitutive importance for theory. Instead he intro­ duces them simply and solely because they are postulates of prac­ tical reason. This means that accordmg ro the Kantian doctrine rhe moral law is g•ven to me, it is a fact; experience teaches me rhar I

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should act morally. BU[ lest this experience lead me inro inconsisten­ cies, it also contains the implication that I should reckon with the existence of these metaphysical entities so that - and this is one of the great paradoxes of Kantian philosophy - I cannot act freely for the sake of the existence of God, but rhar God exists only in order char I should act freely.11 This rela1ionship has been completely inverred, and in consequence practice has gained the absolute prior­ ity. That is the actual justification for the thesis that I have developed here, namely the idea that in the philosophy of Kane practice has priority over theory. Bur we can continue this discus:;ion in the next lecture. Thank you for your auemion and I hope you have an enjoy­ able holiday.

LECTURE SEVEN 18 june 1 963

Dear Colleagues, I hope that we shall now be able reach rhe end of rhis semester in a vecy concentrated way without further inrerruptions. I shall cerrainly do my utmost in this respect, now char rhe Whitsun holidays are behind us, and even rhough I was forced by a prior commirmenr of long srandmg ro cancel one hour, ro my very grear regret.' I think the best way to piCk up the threads of our previous argument without regurgitating the whole rhmg once again, would be for me to use this hour to explain again - or rather not again, bur m principle - rhe strucrure of Kant's moral philosophy in rhe sense that I wish to give ir here, and to do so in conjunction with the text from the 'Doctrine of Method' that we have begun to interpret, but without makmg much progress up ro now. So I want to kill two birds with one srone, and both re1terare what we have said from the point of view we have been unfolding and at the same time take the argumenr a few steps further. I should like to remind you, then, thar the three cardinal propositions that Kant regards as the cardinal propositions of ethics are those that maintain the existence of freedom of the will, the Immortality of rhe soul and the existence of God. Accordmg to Kant, these three proposHions have their decisive meaning nor m theoreti­ cal philosophy, in other words, not in our knowledge of what is the case, but in practical philosophy. This means thar, followmg the Kanrian rheory, they are strictly, necessarily bound up With the question 'What shall we do?' and can really only be understood and explained m connection with what we should do. Last rime I explamed in some detail that the separation of this question from the realm of theory seemed to me to do violence ro rhe problem, that is

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LECTURE SEVEN

to say, Kanfs disclaimer rhat theory has no inrerest in these propo­ sitions does not seem ro be emirely convincing. For if anyrhing marrers ro a man m his own life, aside from his acrions, then ir muse be the question whether or not everything comes ro an end with his death. I do not wish w repeat rhis entire complex of arguments here, but would just like ro remind you rhar I criticized rhis distinction in the last lecture, or one of the earher lecwres. Kant says, as you will recollect, that the rheorerical imeresr in rhese propositions is very slight. I should like now to anempr ro interpret Kant's argument in a perhaps more fairhful sense rhan I did in the last lecture. His claim rhar the theoretical or specularive interest in these cardinal proposi­ tions is slight may possibly be interpreted to mean rhat there is no real connecrion between these propositions and our scientific experi­ ence together with the foundations of our scienrifi.c experience. The question of interest relates simply to the idea thar these propositions fall outside the framework of theoretical knowledge, and that it is in fact a matrer of indifference to us what their status is. What Kant's way of formulating rhe matter leads to can indeed be linked ro rhe general tenor of Kantian philosophy, and specifically, with the prioriry he gives to practice. In such a context knowledge that has no consequences may well appear nugatory. Bur it is probable that Kant would nor have spoken quite so insisrendy on this point as I did last rime and char all he meanr was that theorerical reason, char is, our knowledge of nature, has no great inrecest in those propositions because it could not hope to provide a proper explanation of rhem. There is something in Kant's philosophy char inrimates ro us rhat the ideas that we have been discussing are matcers char we should not concern owselves about, that it cannot be in our inter�t to pursue questions that appear insoluble from the outset in the sphere to which we have ass1gned them. I regard this line of thought as highly prob­ lematic. In the course of the development of modern philosophy it is this line of thought that has increasingly led to the elimination of rhose questions worthy of human beings, the questions that have led people to philosophy in the first place. And while in this way what we might call the process of convening philosophy into a science has advanced inexorably, philosophy itself has increasingly declined in 'interest', to use Kant's rerm, that is, it refuses increasingly to make any slatemenr or 1udgemem on those m.aners about which we expect philosophy to have something ro say. Now this rejection of the three crucial propositions, the three cardinal propositions, relates both to experience itself and to the constirurive forms that organize it. In other words, according ro Kant, we can neither obrain any answer ro rhese questions from our experience, nor do they really enrer effec-

LECTURE SEVEN

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tively into rhe apparatus of our ottegories, that is, the preconditions in whose absence it would nor be possible for us w experience any­ thing at all. This in irs turn brings a particular difficulty in its wake. This is the difficulty char our practical philosophy cannor really be separated from experience in any absolute way because it is related to our actual actions, which are inevitably concerna:l with the material of ex­ perience. You will all of you have the obvious riposte on your lips: 'Of course, 1f anything at all is connected with experience, it must surely be whatever has to do with my own actions.' And you are all aware rhar in the realm of ordinary behaviour we are accustomed co ralk about our experience, for example, when we make disrincrions ber.veen good and evil. That is ro say, if you are inexperienced, as it is callecl. you rnay do all sons of things that turn our to be highly dubious, whereas convenrion would have it that if you are experi­ enced and able to grasp a siruarion as a whole, you ought to be in a berrer position ro acr righdy- including in a higher sense. I need not enter into a discussion about whether or not there is any truth in this piece of popular wisdom. I would only point our to you that here as elsewhere the rationale ol moral philosophy in Kant does make formidable demands upon us. Kant, however, would be opposed to this entire line of argument. Nevertheless, we 'ould well imagine that just as there is such a thing as the form and contenr of knowledge ­ a disrincrion Kant makes - so roo there could well be form and content 10 the realm of practice. That is to say, I cannot imagine any action tbar does not, by the very facr of becoming an action, relate in some way or mher ro empiricdlly existing beings, be they things or peOple. I mean to say that even rhe noblest, most sublime acrion is only possible because, in becoming rhe sacrifice of rhe man who carries it out, it presupposes his sacrifice as an acrual empirical person; and the very worst action involves empirical realiries in the same way. Thus if someone wishes (0 commit .1. murder he needs firstly a person he can kill, and secondly some such implement as a hammer with which to carry out the deed. So the separation of fonn and content, this absolute separation, seems to be just as problem­ atic in the realm of practice as it is in that of theory, where, accord­ ing co Kane, che forms of knowledge only retain their validiry to the extent that they relate to rhe material of experience, to living sensa­ tion. To put it rather less loosely and irresponsibly than I have JUSt done, action has both a form and a content. We can speak of the form and content of moral action in rhe much weightier sense that here too there is a distinction between universal rules, the universal norms io accordance with which we act, however problematic they

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may be , and rhe specific acrion rhat results and that then, precisely because it is a specific action, necessarily enrails rhe principle of indi­ viduation, char is, it includes some concrete element of the rnarerial of experience. If this is correct, then the distinction Kanr makes between speculative or theoretical interest and practical in reresr is by no means so rad,cal. Jn rhas connection it is perhaps worthwhile my reminding you rhar he could only arrive at this radical distinction because he had once dec1ded come hell or high water to deny any theoretical inrerest in tl1ese cardinal propositions. lr is always valu­ able to be able to construct such aporetical SitUations, rhar is, to clarify for oneself what difficulties there are, on rhe one hand, and to discover rhe thema probandmn, on the orheti thar is to say, whar Kanr actually wished to demonstrate. I believe that afrer rhese brief remarks you wtll have understood both. Whar is at tssue here is the way in whtch Kant extricates himself (rom rhis entire situation when he ralks of practice - and you must recollect rhat when Kant speaks of a critique of practical reason he has a very defintte and highly tendentious idea of practice in mind. Practical reason in Kant alwoys means practical pure reason, in orher words, rhe a priori ability to distinguish between righr and wrong, good and eva], and not what we mean when we say of someone rhat he is a practical or an unpractical person. In this highly tendentious sense rhar the words 'practice' and 'practical' have m Kant it is as good as laid down and sripulared from rhe outset rhat this kind of practice has nothing to do with experience. This exclusion of ex­ pcnence of which [ have rold you and rhe difficulties that come an irs train are so organized in his philosophy thar tf he were here amongst us, and if he did nor disdain ro explain himself ro us - and it is my belief that Kanr would be rhe lasr person to rhink it beneath him ­ then I rhmk he would probably say, 'Indeed, what you mean by practice is utterly different from what I mean; when I use rhe term "practice" in this precise way, 1 would say quire stmply that 1t is defined by rhe fact that it is independent of experience.' And I believe that if you are to understand this entire complex of problems that we are concerned with in this semester, you should try to give an accounr ro yourselves of the significance of this undervaluation of rhe role of experience, something we might also claim for Kanr's trearmenr of it 1n rhe realm of theoretical reason roo. In short, we mtghr ask what significance it has wtthin the Kantian system as a whole. The mater­ ial of my feelings, therefore, and indeed everything thar comes ro me from ourside, everything that is not me in the seru;e of being my own reason, is really no more than a stimulus, a view that is gtven a much blunrer and more radical form in Fichte, his immediate successor. An

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action is supposed ro be rhe direct product of rny mind and must be independent of any material that is tied to it. And I can only con­ ceive of it as practical if it is independent, if it is my own act and is bound ro nothing that i s not determined by me as a thinking, rational being. Regarded socially, what that means - and it will perhaps be of assistance to you to think of these rarher abstruse ideas in shghrly more concrete terms - what thar means is thar something like a supreme metaphysical principle has been created our of rhe idea of the emancipation of the bourgeois individual - rhe idea of bour­ geois autonomy. Humanity at rhe end of rhe eighteenth century was caughr up in a struggle for bourgeois emancipation from tutelage, and i r is as if rhis struggle were reflected in philosophy in such a way that rhis freedom, rhe freedom that had yer to be achieved, became rhe supreme principle, the principle in which philosophy reached irs pinnacle and was equated wirh reason. You can only understand Kant and particularly Kant's practical philosophy properly once you realize that for him freedom and reason are acrually the same thmg. And simdarly, the entire construction of rhe categorical imperative, about which we shall perhaps be able to say something today in this contexr, can only be understood if the very strange coupling of freedom and law that is contained in rhe categorical imperative is arrived at in such a way thar the principle of freedom should itself be nothing bur reason, pure reason, and that i t should not be subject to constraints by anything external, alien to it that is itself not rational. And rhe kernel of the Kantian idea here is rhat everything that I do nor recognize as a purely rational being, and every rule that is not derived from my own reason actually restricts the principle of freedom. Ir does rhis because it binds me to something that is not myself, something rhar is alien to me and upon which [ make myself dependent. Kant's so-called rigorism, the massive and almost inhuman harshness and severity with which Kanr excludes from h1s moral philosophy everything to do wirh happiness and everything that carne to be regarded by his successors as an integral element of practice, all of that is excluded essentially for rhe sake of freedom. You have this very curious and paradoxical construction in Kant that in a cerrain sense the two contlicting impulses of moral phi­ losophy, namely the idea of freedom and rhe idea of suppress1on no better word occurs to me - the suppression, above all, o f every natural impulse, the suppression of affection and the suppression of sympathy - both are really suppressed for rhe sake of freedom. The entire realm of impulses and inreresrs, all of that is suppressed by Kant with a theoretically very cruel harshness, and really only so that I should not make myself dependent on anything that is

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incomparible wi1h the principle of m y own freedom, my own reason. 1 shuulJ Jraw yuur ancntion en pas:..:ml tu tht: (a�r that this sysrcm is predicated on rhe idea that we live in a world in which the fulfilment of my narural impulses or whatever we may call them my need for happiness, affection and everything else - is incompar· ible wi1h reason as a universal pri nciple. And all th1s happens without his ever really asking himself whether the absolute making real of reason does not entail rhe fulfilment of all rhe desires rhar have been suppressed. This problem only really surfaces in Kant in an extremely indirea and tortuous manner, namely in rhe conception of immor­ laliry, which is one of the three cardinal propositions." It emerges here when Kanr 6nally does concede that the world would be a helP if it were not possible to achieve - and were it only in a transcend4!nral realm - something like a unity of reason and the impulses it has sup­ pressed . It would be a hell if this were not to lead to rhe absolute elimination of that dualism wh1ch reflects in Kant's philosophy the antagonistic, dualistic nature of the world in which we live. There­ fore, if as acting human beings we make ourselves dependent on some material factor or other, if my action does no1 depend solely on my idea, and more partiCularly on my idea of the universal law, then it really ceases to be practical; it IS no longer free. Thanks to this line of argument the sphere of morality in Kant is in general construed as the sphere of freedom, because u would otherwise come within the sphere of mere nature in which, as you have now heard at some length, causality holds sway co the exclusion of freedom and which for that reason belongs entirely to theoretical reason and nor to pure practical reason. With that in mind, Ladies and Gentlemen, we can consider a sentence from rhe chapter we are examining here, 'The Ultimate End of the Pure Employmem of our Reason', from section 1 of 'The Canon of Pure Reason'. You will perhaps be in a beuer position to understand it now since 1f you did not carry in your minds the arguments 1 have pur before you it might well appear somewhat forced, but now, following the work we have put in on it, I hope it will be quite transparent to you: 'By "rhe practical" I mean every­ lhing 1har is possible through freedom.·� If you now think through whar I have said then this statement will be comprehensible ro you as a cornerstone of Kantian philosophy in general. There are, of course, certain difficulties w1th it, logical diflicuhies, lor the situation in K11nr '" th;u tht> mareri11l of theort>tical reason, in so far as it is mere material, is supposed 10 be quire indeterminate; it only assumes particular shape through me as a thinking being, thanks to the appa­ ratus of 1he categories. This contradiction can itself only be explained in terms of 1he tension we have repeatedly returned to between

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the Enlightened strand of thought in Kant that des1res to expand rhc fromicrs of nature as far as possible, and h.is w.ish to rcinstarc an e:�rlier state of affairs, to call a halt to Fnlighrenmem in whrch norhmg would remain but blind nature and the blmd domination of nature. The entire problem that Kant's moral philosophy now finds nself con(romed by is how to derive (rom his practical philosophy those three cardinal propositions or principles about which I spoke 10 you at the outset. I should draw your attennon to the (act 1hat Kant is continuing here a historical trend that began wtth Descarres. In this tradition 1he absolute i1self, rhe existence of God, is not placed at the very starring-point of philosophy, but instead has to be inferred from that mitial philosophy. In short, the existence of God has ro be proved . This has the truly remarkable consequence, ORf 1hat strikes the unprejudiced observer as paradoxical in the extreme, that the very thing that ought to be the xp&TOv, the very 6rsr thing 10 1he hierar­ chy of ideas, is reduced ro the sratus of something secondary and derivative. 1 Now if you pause to think about what lies behind the concept of reason in Kanr, namely the freedom of human beings in

acrion, then we can truly say thar in 1his entire philosophy the ex­ is1ence of God is made co depend on the human principle, namely the principle of human reason. And ever since philosophy has con­ cerned itself with providing proal of 1ts supreme metaphys1cal prin­ ciples, that is, with making rhem commensurable with reason, as was already the case with the classical Thomist doctrine of the analogra

entis, from that rime on rhere has been an inherent tendency in phi­ losophy to make its first and absolure principle dependenr on some­ thing that should really be secondary. For reason cannot itself be conceived of except as somerhing absuacted from finite human beings and made corporeal in them. From rhis vanrage-poinr you can assess the programme rhar Kant embarked on when he stared rhat 'If, rhen, these three cardinal propositions are not in any way necessary for knowledge, and yet are strongly recommended by our reason, their importance, properly regarded, can concern only th.: practica/.'6 This remarkable sentence rhat 'their importance can concern only the practical' really means, even though it 1S not expressed as blundy as I have he�, that because they are important {or practical reason, they must follow from practical reason, or, as it is stared later on in rhe �me charter, 'he proved through exrerience'.7 Kam now land!i himself in a terribly difficult and disagreeable quandary, as happens nor infrequently to us philosophers when we rry to grapple with such matters. Remember that these three cardinal propositions or princi­ ples may not be inferred from pure thought alone. You have to think

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back r o rhe suucrure of the Kantian system which o n its negative side consisted of a cririque of the philosophy of Leibniz and Wolff. They had set our ro deduce the existence of just such entities as God, freedom and immortal icy from pure thought alone, that is, from rhe pure principles of reason. Now in the entire negative parr of the Cri· tique of Pure Reaso11, Kam show� in great detail that this was not possible, that it leads m conuadiccions. And I have discussed at length the decisive contradiction, the one relating to the idea of freedom, in connection with rhe third antinomy. On the other hand, however, these pnnciples - and this is nor something we need to discuss further - cannot be taken from experience either, for we are dealing with absolute principles, and to derive these absolute and universally valid principles from experience would mean making absolutely perma­ nent, eternal, necessary and unchanging principles dependent on expenences th;tt were themselves accidental and contingent. In the philosophical tradition we are dealing with here, and given the nature of Kantian philosophy itself, this would be a highly paradoxical demand that Kant could not accede to in any circumstances. In order to unders1and that in Kant ethics is constructed as an aporetical construct, 1hat is 10 say, as a system thai arises from the difficulties inherent in 1ts inilial situation, you need to understand how Kant extricates himself from this dilemma. He does so by establishing the principle of ethics - and we may say, in anticipation of what comes later, that this principle of ethics is none other rhan the moral law, chat is, the categorical imperative - as a principle that is ne1ther deduced from reason, since that would place him in the camp of the rationalises, nor from experience. lnsread he s.ays, 'The moral law is a fact, the moral law is a given.'� And rhis is the point on which the entire argument hinges. I have already told you of a number of pivotal points in Kant, but this is probably the most important of all; It is the decisive crux in the entire structure of moral philosophy in Kant. You will only be able to understand the Grou11dwork of the Metaphysic of Morals and the Crtt1que of once you have grasped why he has co regard it as a given and with whar

Practical Reason

juscificanon he does in fact regard it as given. The further element of the argwnent is that if the moral law tS a given, chat is, if it stmply exists and rcsisrs any furrher question as co irs ongin, irs source, if in shon it is an ultimate reality that underpins all knowledge, then it cannor d•spense with those three principles or emiries- God, freedom and immonaliry - if it is ro be valid. And that is precisely the point which I drew to your arrention in connection with Descanes, who likewise .:kmonstrared the existence of God from rhe idea of rhe logical coherence of reason. Because for Descartes roo if we were

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deceived m rhis regard it would be incompatible wnh the logical coherence of reason - and that is why we are in need ot God. Nat­ urally, this is only one side of the very complex argument abour God in Descarres who at chis poinr also has recourse to anorher traditional 1dea about the existence of God, namely the ontolog�cal argument." At any rare, this is the point at which Kanr \apses inro the rational­ ist tradition of philosophy. If rhe moral law truly is a given, if, there· fore, there is an absolute, unambiguous obligation 'so to act that the maxim or the supreme principle of my action could at rhe same rime be made the principle of a universal law', 10 then - and I should like you to take note that, once you have entered into the spirit of this K.anriao tradition, these things do obey a v�ry strict logic - the con­ clusion about freedom does follow in a very strict way, because this irresistible injunction to act in accordance with the categorical Imper­ ative would be quire senseless unless I also had the ability to act as I am required to by this simply g1ven and absolutely existing moral law. For if I did nor have that ability, Kant would maintain, the ex­ Istence of th1s moral law would be nothing more than a demomc, blind acc1dent. The problem - and for us today, this is a very serious and relevam problem - is whether there might be a real contradiction between such a law, between rhe idea of a good and moral action and rhe ability 10 put it inro practice. However, the question of whether there are circumstances when that ability is not available is slmply absent from Kant's theory. Whereas for us, if we can be permined to regard Kafka as a philosophical writer, we can see chat one of the chief sub-­ jeers o( his writing starts at this po1m and trom there it has moved into rht so-called philosophy of Existentialism. In Kant, on the other hand, there IS no s1gn of the absurdity that the idea of the good can �xist, and the obhganon to do good and act in conformi1y to the law likewise, bur rhar human beings might be denied the poss1bihry of so acting by the general social context from which they cannot escape. When Kant says, 'I must be free so rhar rhe moral law can be (uiJilled', he is expressing an indescribable and to our ears almost naive opti· mism that is in fact the optimism of the early bourgeoisie. We can hear ir in rhe music of the young Beethoven which also comains the idea that Omeone to investigate the dif­ ferent meanings of rhe concept of nature in Kanr's philosophy and ro show what he means by nature in general - a piece of research rhar would be primarily philological and which we have not had the bene6r of up ro now. Kanr's concept of nature is ambiguous. You may perhaps find a clue ro this ambiguity in rhe ambiguiry of the word 'thing' in Kam. On rhe one hand, it means the Dmg an sicb, the thing 1n itself, rhar is, rhe unknown, so-called cause of all rhe things I per· ceive as phenomena. Thus It is something transcendent, something never fully given to me. On the other hand, a thing is something con· stuuted, an object which comes into being as something that endures through the interaction of my sensations, that is, of the marerial of ex1stence with my forms of perception and thought. If nature is nothing but the embodiment of evetything that occurs in the realm of things, or if nature is a world concept, to use the term K.am employs in the essay on Enlightenment, then the same dualism th:u applies, as is generally known, to such concepts as rhe thing in itself, could also be extended to the concept of nature.' This would mean rhar in his philosophy nature would be as ambiguous as the world viewed as the totality of all things, which as such is never presem ro

me. Therefore, nature in Kam 1s on the one hand that which is con· stitut�d. conditioned, the embodiment of experience. And in •Reli· gion within the Boundaries of Me� Reason', as an internal human principle, the faculty of desire, it is �ven bluntly equated with radical evil.8 On the other hand, however, as a thing in itself, ir is the very foundation of existence, 1f you w11l permit me this rather kitschy expression. In other words, it is the absolute that holds sway in us all and is supposed to indicate to us what is good and what evil. And these indiCations are themselves equated with the good because they have their origins in whar characterizes mankind as such, namely his

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reason. In this context you must recollect rhar i n Kanr reason is itself the organ of the good and in his moral philosophy 1here is no organ of the good O[her rhan reason. It follows rhar reason cannot be divorced from self-preservation, from the satisfaction of human needs. For reason is supposed ro provide us with the law that accord­ ing to Kant is unconditional and absolute - and Kam is the last person to have deceived himself about this, given rhar the enrire history of philosophy in modern rimes has asserted it - I need onJy remind you of Spinoza and his extreme opposite, Hobbes. The essence of that reason is self·preservarion. We can even hear this prin­ ciple of self-preservation in the Kantian concept of the ' "'1 think" that must be able co accompany all my representations',' even though here it appears sublimated into the purely logical principle of identity, the idea of self-preservation, of the preservation of an identical self. On rhe other hand, this same self-preservation is actually denounced by h1m as an inferior principle. There is a celebrated passage in the Grormdwork of the Metaphysrc of Morals where he describes the efforts to preserve one's own life as wise and rational, bur as non­ moral in an exalted and even absolute sense because they do nor follow purely from the moral law.10 So here we have rile contradic­ tion that, on the one hand, reason cannot be separated from the interest in preserving one's own life because reason is really the identity of the self-preserving subject, while on the orher hand, reason should be able to oppose the interests of self-preservation. This simple, even flagrant connad1ction will perhaps enable you to see clearly why Kam cannot tolerate rhe dualism of the two concepts of nature which we have been discussing, and why he feels impelled ro sublate them [aufheben], to use a term that came into use sub­ sequenrly, imo a higher concept. It is not so much the need for harmony or synthesis in a higher principle or unity, or any of these things about which the histories of philosophy regale us with such platitudes by way of explanation. It is rather the case, quire simply, that he finds himself confronted by the ambiguity of the concept of reason - as something thar is based on the model of self· preservation, on rile one hand, and on the need to restrict the par­ ticular manifestations of that self-preservation, on the other, because of the calamitous consequences and contradictions it leads to. And this ambiguity compels us to go beyond that dualism and at leasr ro consider carefully whether such a procedure would suffice to eliminare this emire glaring contradicrion. In other words, rhe element of reconciliarion arises not so much from rhe famous need for harmony or for a coherem sysrem or anyrhing of the sort, as from the fact that a comradiction of rhe kind I have been describing is

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intolerable ro che process of rational thought and is simply nor to be eudurcd. But now that K.:wl has carried chrough this line of thought with a rigour whose workings I hope I have been able 10 show you, he dismisses rhe mauer wich a gesture, as much as co say 'Thus far and no furrher', and rhen adds 'Well, perhaps just a lin!e more', and chis is when you reach the specific bourgeois element of Kanr: 'This is of no practical importance to us and hence we have no need to concern ourselves with it further.' Now I should like to say a few words about this process of 'break­ ing off', of rupture. First, because 11 is such a ubiquitous fearure of rhe strucrure of Kane's philosophy and because it is precisely this aspect of Kanr that his successors rebelled agamst. For I would S3Y rhat it we wished co summarize rhe distinction between Kanr and Fidue and all succeeding idealists in a single gesture it would be this momenr of ruprure, rhe moment when Kant says, 'This need nor concern us', that they were unable ro stomach. And whar they said was, 'What you have said about this being of no concern to us ts precisely what concerns us most.' Moreover, the reason I have given you for rhis rupture is not even the most important one, for in essence it is the emlre structure of his moral philosophy itself that ts founded in a decisive way on this rupture, rhar is, on Ais insistence rhat the given narure of rhe moral law should nor � open to further questioning. In rhis respect it reminds us, somewhat paradoxically, of rhe situation wnh sense-data such as 'red'. For here, roo, no further debate is possible when ir manifesrs irself, simply because 1t is rhere. This gesture o( breaking off is so pivotal for the structure of Kanr's cnri1·c mora l philosophy that we neeJ to dwell on Ll for a few moments, for it represents a condensed version of his.hly complex elements. Whar will strike you ar once after what I have said already is rhe authoritarian gesrure that asserrs that when the moral law cells you to do your dury, you must not dither, or as Kam is wonr to express il, you shonld nor quibble (verniit�{tei"J further, bur should rrear ir wtth the same respect char you would show co any other given (act, in other words, you should just 'dwell in rAe land, and lead an upright life'. This should not be taken to mean you should just obey the moral law and not bother your head about why ir is there. It means rather that the fact that it exists is actually the mosr powerfu l proof of Lts validity. Of courne, we muse be enrided ro ask not only about the nature of its prescriptions bur also about irs legitimation. If, horribile drctu, a pSychologist were co scrurinize Kant's argument at this point he mighr say, not unreasonably, thar we are in the pres­ ence of a defence mechanism. We perceive thar Kant feels a little queasy when he contemplates the ongins of duty and conscience

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because here ar r h e heart o f autonomy an elemenr o{ heteronomy has bc.:omc entrenched. It IS for this reason that he re it is conceived in thest> very formal terms, it is nevenheless given a mediating link co reason as soon as 1r is orga· nized in terms of ranonal ends and IS subordinated to rhem. And, like

all mediating categories, rhis acr of mediation is of V1tal importance m Kant because ir is only with its aid that the original sensuous faculty of desire, intention - which is normally rhe very thing that moral behaviour is disringuished from - can be given the opportu­ nity tO be derermined by reason. lr is the only way in which the moral law, rhecategorical imperarive and our behaviour as empirical beings can all be reconciled. This, then, is rhe reason for this peculiar intermediate link, this intermediate derermination of the will as a faculty of des1re, but as one that is simultaneously gutded by reason. Moreover, this theory is not so unerly remote from psychology as miglu appear at first glance. The med1ating category of the will is nor, as it is in Ariscotle, a mediation between inremal and exter­ nal, but is purely Internal. This means rhat it is rhe force by which the moral 1s able to realize Itself wirhom regard to empirical realiry. If you will allow me to make a concession to the language of

psychology: reason in the shape of the will takes possession of the instinctual drive, or in the language of psychology, the ego takes possession of che id. This means rhat the will is the elemem of avail­ able instinctual energy that is diverted and subjected to the conscious willi and the concept of the will does in fact always conram something of this:� It is not the least testimony to Kan('s greatness that even when he prov.des such verbal definitions as rhis one of the will - and this is why you should always scrurimt.e such deli nirions very carefully - they do not have that arbitrary quality that you find so often in •nsuumemal defimtions nowadays. Instead, you could say that rhey also correspond to a phenomenological reahry; in other words, they satisfy as far as possible Plaro·s old demand

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rhat they should strive ro resemble rhe nature of rhe phenomenon bemg defined. Thus what characrerizes the moral is that the will should be qune fete of any consideration of intentions of any kind. Hence what Kant is concerned wuh is that I should behave in accordance with rhe moral law and that the quesnon of 'he effects of my acnons, if I may put it like that, should not play an essenrial role in this . According ro the Grotmdwork, An accion done from dury has 1ts moral worth, not , the purpost to be aua1ned by 1t, but m rhe maxim in accordance with which it is decided upon; It depends therefore, nor on rhe reahzatron of the ob,ecr of the actron, hut so!ely on 1he prinaple of t�olition, m accmdance w1th which, rcrespecnve of all objects of the faculty of desire. 1he accron has been performed.1

And this converges with what I have jusr said, namely thar the will is the faculty of desrre, but subordinated ro the primacy of reason, the primacy of the moral law itsdf. Now that we are talking about the W11l, I should hke to note that the concept of will, even in Kant, is rudimentary. That IS to say, he consrstendy resists the claims of psychology, bur in order to be able

to say anything at all, and ro give some kind of underpinning to his laws, his principles and his postulates, he 1S compelled ultimately to indude some elements of psychology - an d this too is a bas1c srruc­ tural feature of the Cntique of Pr1re Reason. Thus we lind creeping mro h1s own ph1!osophy somethmg that really ought not to be there, namely the idea of fixed faculties of the soul chat ultimately amount to an oncological interpreranon of the soul, according ro which the soul is said to conSISt of various essences. In the same way the theory of desiring or logical faculties in Plato, the so-called Platonic psy­ chology - which is the source of this entire way of thinking - is ned to his ontology and his theory of ideas. That is to say, in Plato's phi­ losophy the soul of man has migrated into rhe faculties wh1ch are objecrrve e�ences in their own right along the lines of the Idea, and it is exphcrtly stated at one point in the Phaedo that 'the soul is related to the Idea by its lack of corporal icy'.�> Kant could not say rhis because, given h1s critique of the so-called rational theory of the soul, the objeclificanon or reification of the capacittes, forces or faculti es of the soul was to be repudiated from the outset - such faculties were nor co be regarded as things exasring in cherr own righr, but rather as functional aunbutes of rhe experiential content to which these cat­ egories of the soul were applied. Bur by his very use of such a concept

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as '1he will'- and it is interesting ro see 1har he canno1 quire disptnse wi1h i1, that he cannor really eliminate i1 - he ralks as if the soul were an exisring rhing rhat broke down imo faculries such as undersrand­ mg. desire, will, and the like. We should add rhar of course the concept of the will in panicular includes an infinite number of things, and should not be hyposratized imo a single autonomous thing. h is a facr - and since the will is a psychological caregory, l must inevitably have recour-se once again to psychology - rhar we see again and again that this hypostasis of the will has something arb1trary and feeble about it when compared with the realities of mental life in general and the ways in wh1ch people actually behave. We often see this in connection with talk about someone being especially strong-willed or weak-willed. We may think in this connection of Marcel Proust's novel, a work from which we can all Jearn how to make indescrib­ ably subde distinctions about all such matters, and from which philosophers in particular could pro6t a great deal. Not the least of the points made there is that there is a deep irony in the fact that his father ceaselessly reproaches him with being weak-wtlled, and rhar he Jacks will-pawer while the emire work resri6es to the presence of an immensely pawerful will, even though not a word is wasted on it. However., there are circumstances in which a strong will can only express itself as a weak w1ll, in terms of the convent1ons accepted by his father. For his will is directed at completely different ends from those of self-preservation, which is supposed to be the proper concern of the will according to the traduional view. At any rate, I should hke to repeac that in his rheory of rhe will Kam very rightly perceived that this concept of the will is not a mat£er of being obst1nate and pri1mtive, bur that in it instinctual energy, the instinctual impulse and as rational control, all belong together. And in implementing this process of med1ation - and I think Jt is Important to msist on rh1s the will appears in Kant as somethmg good. At the beginning of the Groundwork, in the celebrated 6rst sentence, we read that 'It is impossible to conceive anything at all in the world, or even out of it, which can be taken as good without qualification, except a good Wtl/.'7 If we read Kant's overtones here correctly, this means that the will is good as long as it is the facuhy of desire gutded solely by reason; and that evil is whatever has no will at all: the will-less, the diffuse, everything that drifts in the face of that centralizing, organ· izing authority. For this reason we can say that m Kant's ethics the bourgeois principle of dominion over nature ts reflected, at the very pinnacle of philosophical achievement, in the focusing of instinctual energies on the self that directs them. We might almost say that some­ thing like ill will is not really conceivable in Kant because the will as

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self�onsistent rational desire is in fact the good; reason and good­ ness l:Oim.:u.le. If you read th� Exl:ursus un 'juliette' in the Diulecl'c of E,J/ightenment, you will find thts idea developed further in great detail. 8 We could express the same idea by saying that if the will is 1n fact the mediating category berween desire and reason, rhen reason itself has an affinity with the Will, that it IS related to the will. If we look closely at Kanuan philosophy and Kandan epistemology, we shall find this confirmed. We shall di�over that the central concept of the theory of knowledge and hence the rrue definition of reason in Kant is in fact something very like the will. This is the idea of origi­ nal apperception, that tS, of pure productive power. Reason for Kant - and this 1S one of the most crucial innovations of h1s philosophy ­ IS not really measured against rhe objectivities of logic and objective logical laws, but is conceived from the outset as an activity, as producf1V1ty, from which logical laws are then supposed to arise. In that sense we could say rhar the rheory of the primacy of practical over rheorerical reason that I firsr explained to you in connection with the relevant chaprer from the Cntique of Pure Re11son, could be caken a lot further. For in effect reason is nothing other than che will, except that it is pure will, that is, a kind of activity, of primal activity £hat has wholly purified itself of all dependency upan pre· existing obJects. To that extent you can see how Kamian philosophy, especially his pracucal philosophy. his moral philosophy, contains within it the seeds of the entire subsequent philosophical tradition. This includes Fichte's philosophy, and in particular we can see that in the light of Kanr's own posit1on Fichte's famous or noronous claim that he could interpret Kane's philosophy better than Kant himself is nor really as outrageous as it mtght have first appeared. If we were ro express what I have just said in social terms - and that, roo, is a way ro concrerrze the abstracr or formal Kantian ethic - we might say that what Kant has done IS to haYe taken the work ethic of hour· geois society, that is, the standord governing the process of produc­ tion of goods that presides OYer bourgeois sociery as a whole, and to have adopted it as his own supreme philosophical standard. In other words, the necessity of social labour as the supreme, binding norm has become an absrracr principle in his thought, and we would almost have to say that what he really means by radical evil is nothing other than laziness, the failure to sarisfy this requirement of bourgeois socit"ry. Let me now say a few words about Kant's concept of dury, and in pamcuJar, the way in which th1s concept is introduced in 1ts bas1c form m the Grout�dwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. He writes there: 'Duty IS the necesstry to act out of reverence for

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the low_•'� Readmg once again with a microscope, as it were, I would

draw your attention to the 1wo terms (or 'lawfulness' m this sentence, namely 'ne«.ember 1�64),

pp. J....-1 9.

Lecture Seventeen See Lecture I on 7 May 1963, n. 4 .

3 4 5

6 7

See Heidegger, Bemg and Trme, pp. 3 1 2 -4 8 . For Adorno's cnri