Abstract
This article builds on Arendt’s development of a Kantian politics from out of the conception of reflective judgment in the Critique of Judgment. Arendt looks to Kant’s analysis of the beautiful to explain how political thought can be conceived. And yet Arendt describes such Kantian reflection as an empirical undertaking that justifies itself only in relation to the abstract principle of the moral law. The problem for such an account is that the autonomy of the moral law appears to be at odds with the social cohesion of Kantian political life. The ensuing contradiction can be deemed the antinomy of political judgment. Kant’s conception of reflective judgment offers such an inquiry considerably more to work with than Arendt uncovers. In particular, the regulative principle of the purposiveness of nature that is shown to direct all reflection can be seen to offer the solution to this antinomy.
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Notes
Arendt (1968a, p. 235).
Arendt (1968a, p. 259).
Arendt (1968a, p. 246).
Hegel (1991, §135, pp. 162–163; v. 7, 252–254; the second, bracketed reference, in this and other footnotes, is to the original language text. See bibliography for details).
Arendt (1982).
In describing this realm that stands apart from the political, Arendt explains that it requires “non-commitment and impartiality, freedom from self-interest in thought and judgment” (Arendt 1968a, p. 262). She uses Kant’s categorical imperative as an example (Arendt 1968a, p. 244), as well as “Plato’s philosophical truth” (Arendt 1968a, p. 263), although her general emphasis is on factual truth (Arendt 1968a, p. 263). Amongst the “politically relevant functions” (Arendt 1968a, p. 262) that Arendt associates with truth insofar as it “stands outside the political realm” are those of the philosopher, scientist, artist, historian, judge, witness, and reporter (Arendt 1968a, pp. 259–260). Arendt explains that this emphasis on impartiality can be seen to precede even the philosophical tradition. She locates its sources in Homer who “chose to sing the deeds of the Trojans no less than those of the Achaeans, and to praise the glory of Hector, the foe and the defeated man, no less than the glory of Achilles, the hero of his kinfolk” (Arendt 1968a, pp. 262–263).
Arendt (1968a, pp. 263–264).
Arendt (1968a, pp. 244 and 241, respectively).
Arendt (1968a, p. 235). Arendt explains that religious truth has been deemed insignificant for the political realm by means of the “separation of church and state,” and the philosophical has long since ceased “to claim dominion” except in the case of the use of ideology in the twentieth century in which the philosophical search for truth has been abandoned. I will set aside the question of the accuracy of these claims, limiting myself to the theoretical claim concerning the relation of truth and politics insofar as it helps to elucidate the Kantian position.
Arendt (1968a, p. 260).
Ronald Beiner seems to miss the conclusion that Arendt draws, emphasizing her description of the historic conception of morality and politics as “two diametrically opposed ways of life” (Arendt 1968a, p. 232, quoted by Beiner 2008, p. 124), rather than her conclusion that morality, in setting limits to politics, offers “politically relevant functions [which] are performed from outside the political realm” (Arendt 1968a, p. 262).
Arendt (1968a, p. 264).
Robert Pippin asks a similar question (Pippin 2006, p. 423). He focuses on the specific case of the role of the state in not only protecting but designating the “boundary between me and others” (Pippin 2006, p. 436), a political necessity that cannot be distinguished by the moral law. While Pippin does not describe such political designations in terms of Kant’s conception of reflective judgment, as Arendt does and as I do in this paper, his account of the Kantian commitment to both the moral law and the state’s designations is in line with the account that I am offering (Pippin 2006, pp. 433–437).
Kant (2000, §31, p. 162; AA 5, 281); references to Kant’s works include the volume and the page of the Akademie-Ausgabe (AA). Following accepted practice, references to the Critique of Pure Reason will give the ‘A’ and ‘B’ pagination of the first and second editions (first edition AA 4, second edition AA 3).
See Kant (2000, First Introduction, section v, pp. 15–18; AA 20, 211–214) for a discussion of the difference between determinate and reflective judgment and the role of regulative principles in the latter.
See Kant (2000, First Introduction, section v, p. 19; AA 20, 216). I will address this concept further in the coming pages.
Kant (2000, First Introduction, section x, p. 41; AA 20, 241).
Arendt (1982, p. 53).
Arendt (1982, p. 40).
Arendt (1982, pp. 70–72).
Kant (2000, §40, pp. 173–174; AA 5, 293–294).
Kant (2000, §41, p. 176; AA 5, 296).
Kant (2000, §41, p. 177; AA 5, 297).
Kant (2000, §41 p. 177; AA 5, 297).
Kant (2000, pp. 178–179; AA 5, 298–299).
Kant (2000, §41, p. 177; AA 5, 297).
See the Third Moment of the Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment (§§10–12) where Kant investigates the a priori role that purposiveness plays. See also the First Introduction to the Critique of Judgment where purposiveness is introduced in section v in discussing the principle of all reflective judgment, or what he describes as “a special [eigentümlicher] concept of the reflective power of judgment” (Kant 2000, First Introduction, section v, p. 19; AA 20, 216); see also sections vi and x in the First Introduction, and sections v–viii in the originally published introduction). Below I will address the Antinomy of Taste (§§55–58) where Kant explains that the a priori claim of purposiveness is that of a principle [Prinzip] (§58). On the role of purposiveness as the regulative principle of reflective judgment see Mertens (1975, pp. 107–114).
Kant (2000, §10, p. 105; AA 5, 220).
Ibid.
Kant (2000, §11, p. 106; AA 5, 221).
Arendt (1982, pp. 70–72). Arendt follows her discussion of Kant’s “sensus communis” with one of the empirical interest in the beautiful, in §41, without going on to address the intellectual interest in the beautiful in §42 that Kant raises as the focus of the inquiry into the a priori elements of taste (Arendt 1982, pp. 73–77). Lyotard describes Arendt as offering one of the “sociologizing and anthropologizing readings of aesthetic common sense” (Lyotard 1994, p. 18), and more pointedly as an example of an abusively sociologizing reading of Kant’s “sensus communis” (Lyotard 1993, p. 162). While it is true that Arendt describes such others whose positions aesthetic judgment takes into account as “potential,” and merely “anticipated” (Arendt 1968b, p. 220), she goes on to describe them as those “without whom it never has the opportunity to operate at all” (Arendt 1968b pp. 220, 221). This empirical emphasis is reiterated when she describes such a common sense as permitting us a reflective judgment whose validity will reach as far as the community of which my common sense makes me a member (Arendt 2003b, p. 140).
Arendt connects purposiveness only with the Kantian conception of teleological judgment and not with his aesthetic judgment (Arendt 1982, pp. 12–13). This should not be surprising because the expectation of progress that such a regulative principle promises is precisely what Arendt goes on to reject (Arendt 1982, p. 76; and see the discussion of progress in Kant in Sect. 5 of this paper).
Arendt writes about the Critique of Judgment: “The links between its two parts are weak, but such as they are—i.e., as they can be assumed to have existed in Kant’s own mind—they are more closely connected with the political than with anything in the other Critiques” (Arendt 1982, p. 13).
See the Critique of Judgment, §55–§58 for Kant’s Dialectic of Aesthetic Judgment. For further discussion of Kant’s antinomy of taste see my paper Goldman (2004, pp. 215–218).
Kant (2000, §56, p. 214; AA 5, 338).
Ibid.
Kant (2000, §56, p. 215; AA 5, 338–339).
Kant (2000, §57, p. 215; AA 5, 339).
Kant (2000, §57, p. 216; AA 5, 340).
In the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic Kant explains the way that the theological idea can be seen to function after the critique of all possibility of knowledge. He writes:
The third idea of pure reason, which contains a merely relative supposition of a being as the sole and all-sufficient cause of all cosmological series, is the rational concept of God…the idea of that being, like all speculative ideas, means nothing more than that reason bids us consider every connection in the world according to principles [Prinzipien] of a systematic unity, hence as if they had all arisen from one single, all-encompassing being, as supreme and all-sufficient cause (Kant 1998, A686/B714).
Another is teleological judgment. While both aesthetic and teleological judgment depend upon the regulative principle of purposiveness, Kant distinguishes the aesthetic power of judgment, as directed by subjective purposiveness, from the objective purposiveness of the teleological power of judgment in which the reflective judgment is made about an object rather than about a subjective state (Kant 2000, First Introduction, sect. xii, pp. 48-49; AA 20, 249–250). Kant writes that
…all judgments about the purposiveness of nature, be they aesthetic or teleological, stand under principles a priori, and indeed such as belong especially and exclusively to the power of judgment, since they are merely reflective and not determinative judgments (Kant 2000, First Introduction, sect. x, p. 41; AA 20, 241).
Kant (1996b, pp. 80–81, translation altered; AA 4, 430).
Kant (1996f, pp. 18–19; AA 8, 36–38).
Kant (1996f, p. 20; AA 8, 39).
Ibid.
Otfried Höffe connects Kant’s “transcendental formula of public right” in “Toward Perpetual Peace” to his later Doctrine of Right [Rechtslehre] in the Metaphysics of Morals as an unstated categorical imperative of law (Höffe 1989, p. 159).
Arendt describes maxims that fail such a politically oriented categorical imperative as transgressing the “original contract [ursprünglichen Vertrage]” (Kant 2000, §41, p. 177; AA 5, 297; quoted in Arendt 1982, p. 74) that binds us together in communities in which we expect others to judge with a view to taste. Arendt is referring to Kant’s discussion of the manner in which we discuss the beautiful in community with others, expecting that they too will not only share in the sensus communis but will also actively pursue such “universal communication,” “as if from an original contract dictated by humanity itself” (Kant 2000, §41, p. 177; AA 5, 297). Arendt formulates what she calls a “categorical imperative for action” based on this “contract or compact” (Arendt 1982, p. 75): “Always act on the maxim through which this original compact [contract] can be actualized into a general law.” Such a formulation would demand that we act in ways that permit ever further inter-action, and so promote “the greatest possible enlargement of the enlarged mentality (Arendt 1982, p. 74). And yet, in so doing, Arendt moves beyond Kant’s own claim that a maxim must admit of publicity, and embraces an imperative born of an interest in promoting this “contract.” As is discussed above Kant’s interest in society refers to an “empirical interest in the beautiful,” one which, he states, does not allow us to uncover anything that is “related to the judgment of taste a priori” (Kant 2000, §41, p. 177; AA 5, 297). Clearly an analysis of political deliberation will need to address interests as they relate to society but the categorical imperative would seem not to be the place for such an analysis, and so too the Critique of Judgment, with its emphasis on reflective judgment, even in its discussion of the intellectual interest in the beautiful (in §42), would seem not to be the place to locate the political version of the categorical imperative.
Kant (1996e, pp. 347–348; AA 8, 382).
Kant (1996c, p. 491; AA 6, 354–355).
Ibid.
Ibid.
Arendt (1982 , p. 72).
Kant (1996e, p. 351, translation altered; AA 8, 386).
Kant (1996e, p. 351; AA 8, 386).
Ibid.
Arendt (1982, p. 49).
Arendt retreats to the moral sphere, explaining that the moral law tests whether our private maxims can be expressed publicly and so marks “the coincidence of the private and the public” (Arendt 1982, p. 49). In so doing she misses what is offered in this positive version of the political, categorical imperative, for Kant’s claim goes beyond that of the negative test of the categorical imperative, arguing that the moral and the political come together not in the moral law, when what is shown is that a maxim could withstand publicity, but in the maxim that can only succeed when it is expressed publicly.
Kant (1996e, p. 331; AA 8, 360–361).
Arendt (1982, p. 45).
Kant (1963, p. 144; AA 7, 85).
For a discussion of revolution see Kant (1996c, pp. 465–466; AA 6, 321–323).
Kant (1996e, p. 346; AA 8, 379).
See Kant (2000, §70, pp. 258–260; AA 5 386–388).
Arendt (1968a, p. 259).
Arendt (1968a, p. 264).
Kant (1996a, p. 269, translation altered; AA 5, 161).
Arendt (1982, pp. 50–51).
Arendt (1982, p. 77).
Arendt (1982, pp. 50–51).
Kant (1998, A651/B679).
Kant (1998, A654/B682).
For Kant’s discussion of the role of the regulative principle of cosmology see Kant (1998, A508-515/B536-543).
Kant (1996d, pp. 305–306; AA 8, 308).
Kant (1998, A737/B765); Kant describes such a property of his philosophical analysis as that of a “perpetual circle [beständigen Zirkel]” (Kant 1998, B404/A346, translation altered). On this issue see Heidegger (1987, pp. 241–242; 187–188); Kerszberg (1997, p. 87); Baum (1979, pp. 12–13; and 1986, pp. 188–190); Piché (1995, p. 259); Sturma (1985, p. 41); Bubner (1974, pp. 15–27; and 1975, pp. 462–465); and my paper Goldman (2007, p. 416).
On this issue I have benefited from comments by Surti Singh on a related presentation.
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Goldman, A. An antinomy of political judgment: Kant, Arendt, and the role of purposiveness in reflective judgment. Cont Philos Rev 43, 331–352 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9147-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-010-9147-4