Just finished reading this. I found it very interesting and I have a few critiques of your position. First, I’m not entirely convinced that Kant’s philosophy (that is, if he has a philosophy at all and isn’t simply engaging in the practice of philosophizing as he so often claims) is “apolitical” to begin with. I guess it depends on what we mean by this, but I think there are a set of political circumstances not only giving rise to the writing of critical philosophy, but also internal to the end-points of critical philosophy (e.g., does critical philosophy imply the completion of a system; does it open up onto a historical, political, geological “not-yet”; I wrote about these in the last chapter of my book—sorry for the shameless plug, but I can send you it if you fancy a read!). Kant has an almost metaphysical political view in late texts like “Conflict of the Faculties” for example, and this isn’t to mention that the beginning of his 1798 published lecture notes, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View effectively begin by claiming that “knowledge of oneself” always implies first and foremost “Weltkenntnis”, world knowledge; and this refers not only to the Sinnenwelt of the first Critique but also to the social, cultural and indeed political world. From this he gives us a glimpse into the world from which critical philosophy emerged. So I think there is an internally geared set of political elements infused in critical philosophy almost from the moment of its conception.
Another aspect of this that I thought you’d get into is the role of war in critical philosophy and Kant’s use of metaphors taken from discourses on war: battlefield of metaphysics, interaction of forces, even the metaphorics of war discussed in the third Critique to do with the sublime. I’d go so far as to say (and have said before) that the internal split between Transcendental Analytic and Transcendental Dialectic can be viewed through the lens of war, and, more pertinently to what you’re discussing here, civil war; the war of reason with itself. So a question that stakes out the cultural-political territory you’re looking to situate Kant in might be: how does the civil war of reason project itself onto the landscape of modern political events; this would be the way I think I’d ask this question of politics in Kant, at least. Maybe we can even boil this question down to a fine point, more conducive to a contemporary question: when will there be the next bubbling over of politics into civil war and where will it be? And this is really just to reiterate that Kant isn’t a “largely apolitical precursor to Hegel” but is actually infused with a radical (albeit sometimes oblique) political phrasing expressed most clearly by Clausewitz (an avid reader of Kant): “war is the continuation of politics by other means”, but it’s perhaps automatically reversed in critical philosophy (owing to the situation of reason as the site of civil war): “politics is the continuation of (civil!)war by other means”. So, with this in mind, when you say that practical reason “provides no concrete political project”, I agree, but only on the condition that we view theoretical reason as the site of civil war and that this is a form of politics or, at least, has a politically charged set of implications to the reading of critical philosophy.
Another critique (but this is more of a question) that I have for you is how you draw the line between a politics “in” Kant and a politicisation “of” Kant. Because we can politicise anything we want, any thinker, any text, any event, but I feel as though that’s not what you'’e wanting to do with Kant. So I wonder whether it’s more a question of drawing a politics out of Kant rather than politicising Kant? I think you border on this question at certain points, however.
There are some more specific critiques I have too such as framing critique as imposing “purely epistemological limits”, which is of course a very particular (analytic) way of reading Kant. It follows from Henry Alison’s (in my view neo-Kantian) reading. My issue with this is that while it is commonly accepted in analytic literature it certainly isn’t in the more “continental” literature. In fact, the opposite is maintained, namely, that critique gives us an ontological limit. It’s done by way of Heidegger’s reading, as you know. It’s a move that’s enacted in a number of ways but one of them has some purchase on your paragraph distinguishing Kant's “epistemology” from Hegel's ontology. I really would like to hear/read more of your ideas on how to tease these two apart that isn’t based on this analytic reading. If we read Kant as laying out an ontology of some sort in the first Critique (and we’d have to really stake out all the problems with reading it this way—there are many) then how are we to distinguish Kant’s from Hegel’s ontology?
I’ll leave it there as I know I’ve posted way too many words (apologies!). But I just wanted to give a good amount of space to a very interesting and thought-provoking article!
Thank you for a very thoughtful response! Much of what you say I am in complete agreement on, and I will have to re-read and continue thinking about what you’ve written. A few notes do come to mind right now. Regarding the epistemological versus ontological (analytic versus continental) framing of Kant, I do juggle between both, or at least tried to imply that this question is maybe not the right question (in the context of the essay). I do agree that there are a lot of shorter texts which could be read as Kants critique having a political implication (or rather a political context). Although I would still draw a separation between these and the rationally identical moments of politics-aesthetics-religion etc within Hegel dialectic. The extensive war analyses and indeed Clausewitzs admiration for Kant is really a very interesting point, and one that I will have to think about more. Thank you again for this very stimulating comment.
And I’d also love to read the chapter of your book that you mentioned!
This is a brilliant article. I have read it again. Its points are so well contextualized, and it sets out the paradox at the heart of the Critique of Judgement so simply. I had no idea Kant's Critique of Judgement could be expressed in such a way. (I got put off the book in various aesthetics discussions on whether aesthetic experience contains knowledge that I had back in the day with Roger Scruton, who thought the ideas in Kant's Critique fundamentally inert and uninteresting.)
Besides that, as I mentioned below, something akin - but I am unsure how akin - to this use of Kant's idea of aesthetic judgement is taken up by Lustig. (And in the process garnering great praise from Jameson).
It is intriguing to wonder what follows from it. Kant's critique of aesthetic judgement seems related to "What we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence". Conceptually, it expresses a form of ignorance, not knowledge, if to have such an experience is to know without being able to say what that knowledge is. It is paradoxical, as you say, to know without knowing. To know without being able to articulate that knowledge despite articulating a response to it, even. Which I think is an accurate summation. Articulating the sense of the piece of music, or whatever it is, however descriptive that articulation, in the form of say an evocative use of words, it contains nothing of what the music itself is or what it does. Not as cognitive description.
But what comes next? If we can't articulate that which we know in this aspect of our lives, but it represents our only escape, as you seem to imply, from the Capitalist hegemony? I think that this summation too is accurate, but I am also mystified.
This is such a great demonstration of why philosophy is essential to political critique. Your argument seems to me to present Kant as anticipating Benjamin's call for a left politicisation of the aesthetic in response to the right's aesthetisation of politics. The idea of the unthinkable also points to a rethinking of "trauma" as not being of the past but as a call of the unthinkable from the future. Fred Jameson's utopian dreaming as trauma of the unthinkable future.
This is really interesting on Kant's Critique of Judgement. It reminds me of a book I recently read, Makers of Worlds, Readers of Signs, by Kfir Cohen Lustig. It has an introduction by Jameson. Lustig's interpretation or use of Kant is similar but less interesting or less comprehensive. Lustig says for example "... if according to Kant, the aesthetic object becomes autonomous by concealing the rule that created it, then I propose that the subject becomes autonomous by concealing the political rule (klal) , or antagonism. [This is as applied to the novel.] Therefore, in Kant's understanding, the aesthetic involves disavowing the rules that bind or fetter the aesthetic act as well as the subject." pg 107.
Just finished reading this. I found it very interesting and I have a few critiques of your position. First, I’m not entirely convinced that Kant’s philosophy (that is, if he has a philosophy at all and isn’t simply engaging in the practice of philosophizing as he so often claims) is “apolitical” to begin with. I guess it depends on what we mean by this, but I think there are a set of political circumstances not only giving rise to the writing of critical philosophy, but also internal to the end-points of critical philosophy (e.g., does critical philosophy imply the completion of a system; does it open up onto a historical, political, geological “not-yet”; I wrote about these in the last chapter of my book—sorry for the shameless plug, but I can send you it if you fancy a read!). Kant has an almost metaphysical political view in late texts like “Conflict of the Faculties” for example, and this isn’t to mention that the beginning of his 1798 published lecture notes, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View effectively begin by claiming that “knowledge of oneself” always implies first and foremost “Weltkenntnis”, world knowledge; and this refers not only to the Sinnenwelt of the first Critique but also to the social, cultural and indeed political world. From this he gives us a glimpse into the world from which critical philosophy emerged. So I think there is an internally geared set of political elements infused in critical philosophy almost from the moment of its conception.
Another aspect of this that I thought you’d get into is the role of war in critical philosophy and Kant’s use of metaphors taken from discourses on war: battlefield of metaphysics, interaction of forces, even the metaphorics of war discussed in the third Critique to do with the sublime. I’d go so far as to say (and have said before) that the internal split between Transcendental Analytic and Transcendental Dialectic can be viewed through the lens of war, and, more pertinently to what you’re discussing here, civil war; the war of reason with itself. So a question that stakes out the cultural-political territory you’re looking to situate Kant in might be: how does the civil war of reason project itself onto the landscape of modern political events; this would be the way I think I’d ask this question of politics in Kant, at least. Maybe we can even boil this question down to a fine point, more conducive to a contemporary question: when will there be the next bubbling over of politics into civil war and where will it be? And this is really just to reiterate that Kant isn’t a “largely apolitical precursor to Hegel” but is actually infused with a radical (albeit sometimes oblique) political phrasing expressed most clearly by Clausewitz (an avid reader of Kant): “war is the continuation of politics by other means”, but it’s perhaps automatically reversed in critical philosophy (owing to the situation of reason as the site of civil war): “politics is the continuation of (civil!)war by other means”. So, with this in mind, when you say that practical reason “provides no concrete political project”, I agree, but only on the condition that we view theoretical reason as the site of civil war and that this is a form of politics or, at least, has a politically charged set of implications to the reading of critical philosophy.
Another critique (but this is more of a question) that I have for you is how you draw the line between a politics “in” Kant and a politicisation “of” Kant. Because we can politicise anything we want, any thinker, any text, any event, but I feel as though that’s not what you'’e wanting to do with Kant. So I wonder whether it’s more a question of drawing a politics out of Kant rather than politicising Kant? I think you border on this question at certain points, however.
There are some more specific critiques I have too such as framing critique as imposing “purely epistemological limits”, which is of course a very particular (analytic) way of reading Kant. It follows from Henry Alison’s (in my view neo-Kantian) reading. My issue with this is that while it is commonly accepted in analytic literature it certainly isn’t in the more “continental” literature. In fact, the opposite is maintained, namely, that critique gives us an ontological limit. It’s done by way of Heidegger’s reading, as you know. It’s a move that’s enacted in a number of ways but one of them has some purchase on your paragraph distinguishing Kant's “epistemology” from Hegel's ontology. I really would like to hear/read more of your ideas on how to tease these two apart that isn’t based on this analytic reading. If we read Kant as laying out an ontology of some sort in the first Critique (and we’d have to really stake out all the problems with reading it this way—there are many) then how are we to distinguish Kant’s from Hegel’s ontology?
I’ll leave it there as I know I’ve posted way too many words (apologies!). But I just wanted to give a good amount of space to a very interesting and thought-provoking article!
Thank you for a very thoughtful response! Much of what you say I am in complete agreement on, and I will have to re-read and continue thinking about what you’ve written. A few notes do come to mind right now. Regarding the epistemological versus ontological (analytic versus continental) framing of Kant, I do juggle between both, or at least tried to imply that this question is maybe not the right question (in the context of the essay). I do agree that there are a lot of shorter texts which could be read as Kants critique having a political implication (or rather a political context). Although I would still draw a separation between these and the rationally identical moments of politics-aesthetics-religion etc within Hegel dialectic. The extensive war analyses and indeed Clausewitzs admiration for Kant is really a very interesting point, and one that I will have to think about more. Thank you again for this very stimulating comment.
And I’d also love to read the chapter of your book that you mentioned!
This is a brilliant article. I have read it again. Its points are so well contextualized, and it sets out the paradox at the heart of the Critique of Judgement so simply. I had no idea Kant's Critique of Judgement could be expressed in such a way. (I got put off the book in various aesthetics discussions on whether aesthetic experience contains knowledge that I had back in the day with Roger Scruton, who thought the ideas in Kant's Critique fundamentally inert and uninteresting.)
Besides that, as I mentioned below, something akin - but I am unsure how akin - to this use of Kant's idea of aesthetic judgement is taken up by Lustig. (And in the process garnering great praise from Jameson).
It is intriguing to wonder what follows from it. Kant's critique of aesthetic judgement seems related to "What we cannot talk about we must pass over in silence". Conceptually, it expresses a form of ignorance, not knowledge, if to have such an experience is to know without being able to say what that knowledge is. It is paradoxical, as you say, to know without knowing. To know without being able to articulate that knowledge despite articulating a response to it, even. Which I think is an accurate summation. Articulating the sense of the piece of music, or whatever it is, however descriptive that articulation, in the form of say an evocative use of words, it contains nothing of what the music itself is or what it does. Not as cognitive description.
But what comes next? If we can't articulate that which we know in this aspect of our lives, but it represents our only escape, as you seem to imply, from the Capitalist hegemony? I think that this summation too is accurate, but I am also mystified.
This is such a great demonstration of why philosophy is essential to political critique. Your argument seems to me to present Kant as anticipating Benjamin's call for a left politicisation of the aesthetic in response to the right's aesthetisation of politics. The idea of the unthinkable also points to a rethinking of "trauma" as not being of the past but as a call of the unthinkable from the future. Fred Jameson's utopian dreaming as trauma of the unthinkable future.
Looking forward to digging into this one. Recently been thinking a lot about Kant and war so this comes at just the right time for me!
I hope you find something worthwhile in it!
This is really interesting on Kant's Critique of Judgement. It reminds me of a book I recently read, Makers of Worlds, Readers of Signs, by Kfir Cohen Lustig. It has an introduction by Jameson. Lustig's interpretation or use of Kant is similar but less interesting or less comprehensive. Lustig says for example "... if according to Kant, the aesthetic object becomes autonomous by concealing the rule that created it, then I propose that the subject becomes autonomous by concealing the political rule (klal) , or antagonism. [This is as applied to the novel.] Therefore, in Kant's understanding, the aesthetic involves disavowing the rules that bind or fetter the aesthetic act as well as the subject." pg 107.