On Sat, 9 Oct 1999 12:55:36 -0400 Yoshie Furuhashi <furuhashi.1 at osu.edu> wrote:
> There is no forbidding of the absolute in Kant.
"Diabolical being [diabolical evil, evil for the sake of evil alone, evil willing, KM] is [not] applicable to the human being... the human being (even the worst) does not repudiate the moral law..." Religion, 58.
and
"To look for the temporal origin of free actions as free is... a contradiction; and hence also a contradiction to look for the temporal origin of the moral constitution of the human being, so far as this constitution is considered contingent..."
So here are two things which are forbidden in Kant's system. First, knowledge of the temporal origin of evil, morality and freedom and, second, devilish being or diabolical evil.
> What is the 'ultimate evil' for Kant? The formal
execution of a dethroned monarch by revolutionaries...
Actually, this is just an example of radical evil, which abounds everywhere. The "ultimate" evil, an evil will, is unthinkable... as Kant notes, "men (sic) are not demons."
Kant notes explicity, on pg. 132 of MofMorals (Cambridge edition) that regicide is a 'radical evil' (I actually don't have a copy of the Cambridge MofMorals in my hands... I'm relying on Zupancic's discussion of Kant and radical evil and regicide ("Kant with Don Juan and Sade") in Radical Evil, edited by Copjec.
> Given Kant's political morality, one might say that the
'Good German' was a good Kantian.
This is highly problematic - precisely because Kant is either ambiguous or inconsistent on this point. For Kant, the categorical imperative is empty - it is a purely formal and tautological command. But he also insists on the need to 'pass' the act through the formula ("you must!") - indeed, Kant argues that one must go beyond the mere call of obedience and identify her or his own will with the principle behind the law - the source from which the law sprang. I agree with you though, Kant is guilty of being a bit naive with his version of a goodwill. But the categorical imperative remains relevant for another reason, a less naive reason. So I submit here two versions of Kant. One with Sade and one against Sade (to make reference to Lacan's essay on Kant and Sade).
First, when one actually runs content through the moral imperative, and detects no contradiction, then Kant would identify this as the good, as the moral thing to do. This is one reading, the reading of Kant with Sade (this coincides with Horkheimer and Adorno's reading of Kant in their essay on Sade in Dialectic of Enlightenment.
The second reading, Kant against Sade, a reading that is more consistent with the spirit and letter of Kant's work... could argue that in doing so, in fulfilling the categorical imperative itself, the law disappears. Once you fulfill the law, it goes missing from view (there is no longer any criteria for what is and is not moral). So, once the "highest good" is achieved, morality disappears. Kant doesn't consider this but it can be read consistently from his religious understanding of the categorical imperative . He doesn't really believe that radical evil can be overcome without divine intervention because the ground of our reasoning is corrupt. So, fulfulling the categorical imperative is impossible (necessary, but impossible through the use of practical reason alone). However, despite this, religion functions within the realm of reason alone. So divine intervention plays no role in this. In effect, human beings are always caught within the bind of radical evil, always.
This second reading is actually opened up by Hannah Arendt. Arendt shows how Eichmann's Kantianism protected him from responsibility, placing him "beyond" good or evil by the fact that he was simply the executor of the will of the group (the will of the Other) (see Juliet Flower MacCannell, "Fascism and the Voice of Conscience" in Radical Evil). But Eichmann here is relying on the first reading of Kant, a serious misreading. Eichmann assumes that the 'will of Hitler' of the 'common good of the fatherland' *is THE highest good* - in Kantianese - divine intervention (what Kant would call the revolution / transformation of consciousness) (which he explicity notes *could* happen but quickly brings to bear the fact that it is of no relevance here for the purposes of practical reasoning). In effect, Kant actually disavows this possibility, esp. in his essay on the immortality of the soul. We're stuck with a political problematic, not a theological one (which is why Kant's proof for the existence of God and his essay on immortality are postulates, which have no logical or rational function in regards to his moraltheory). For Kant, ethics is a matter of practical reason, "mere reason" alone. In this sense, Kant is political, not theological. The problem here, stemming from Kant's naive politics, is that Kant does not envision the similarity... actually, the identical nature of, diabolical evil and the highest good. Once the law is fulfilled, it disappears (as Zizek notes in Plague of Fantasies and as Zupancic notes in her essay "the subject of the law" in Cogito and the Unconscious (ed. Zizek). Zupancic writes: "what made it possible for the Nazis to torture and kill millions of Jews is not simply that they thought they were gods and could therefore decide who would live and who would die, but the fact that they saw themselves as instruments of God (or some other Idea), who had already decided who could live and who must die. Indeed, what is most dangerous is not an insignificant bureaucrat who thinks he is God, but rather the God who pretends to be an insignificant bureaucrat." What we encounter here is this: the highest good and diabolical evil are, in fact, symmetrical. In Kant wants to exclude the highest evil, he must also exclude the highest good and vice versa. Far from demanding that one fulfill the Other's Will, this is precisely want a Kantian ethics prohibits (Zizek, Plague, 223). And this coincides with Agnes Heller's reading of Kant too, in Beyond Justice. Interestingly, what Zizek calls an "ethics of the real" or an "ethics beyond the good" coincides almost completely with what Heller calls "an ethics of personality" (see her book of the same name).
> What fascist would disagree with Kant here?
Any fascist who thinks they are right ("beyond good and evil")!
Thanks for putting so much time into this Yoshie. I'm still thinking about this... there are good arguments on both sides - for and against Kant. My underlying interest in this is whether a Lacanian reading of Kant with or against Sade applies to Habermas's appropriation of Kant (esp. in light of the aggravation of Benhabib's Hegelian critique of Habermas as well). For Habermas, consensus has the same logical role as the highest good in Kant. So I'm trying to figure out how this reading of Kant might affect Habermas's discourse ethics... actually, that's what I'm doing my thesis on....
ken