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“The basis of a democratic state is liberty.”
“He who is unable to live in society, or who has no need because he is sufficient for himself, must be either a beast or a god.”
The final meeting of this semester’s reading group on Aristotle’s Politics will be on Friday, December 2, 3 p.m., at the Center for Ethics and Entrepreneurship. Click on the image for details.
Some readers of Explaining Postmodernism object that I over-interpret Kant’s skepticism. Some prefer a gentler, more objectivity-friendly Kant. So while I quote Kant a lot in making the argument that Kant’s philosophy is radically subjectivist and the critical step down the road to postmodernism, not everyone is convinced.
So I am grateful to Quee Nelson for the following fine collection of quotations from various of Kant’s works, all supporting the Kant-as-subjectivist thesis. The quotations are included in the Appendix to Nelson’s (recommended) The Slightest Philosophy.
“It still remains a scandal to philosophy and to human reason in general that the existence of things outside us … must be accepted merely on faith, and that if anyone thinks good to doubt their existence, we are unable to counter his doubts by any satisfactory proof.” Critique of Pure Reason, B519.
“All objects of an experience possible for us are nothing but appearances, i.e., mere representations, which … have outside our thoughts no existence grounded in itself. … The realist … makes these modifications of our sensibility into things subsisting in themselves, and hence makes mere representations into things in themselves.” Kant, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 13, Note II.
“The senses … never and in no single instance enable us to know things in themselves.” Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, Part I, Book I, Chap. I, sec. II, 55.
“Things in themselves … cannot be objects of experience.” Critique of Pure Reason, A385.
“Matter … is nothing other than a mere form or a certain mode of representation of an unknown object.” Critique of Pure Reason, B45.
“Nothing intuited in space is a thing in itself … what we call outer objects are nothing but representations of our sensibility the form of which is space. The true correlate of sensibility, the thing in itself, is not known, and cannot be known, through these representations; and in experience no question is ever asked regarding it.” Critique of Pure Reason, A370.
“External objects (bodies) are merely appearances, hence also nothing other than a species of my representations.” Critique of Practical Reason, Part I, Book I, Chap. I, sec. II, 54.
“The objects with which we have to do in experience are by no means things in themselves but only appearances.” Critique of Pure Reason, B520.
“Appearances are not things, but rather nothing but representations, and they cannot exist at all outside our minds.” Critique of Pure Reason, B235.
“Phenomena are not things in themselves, and are yet the only thing that can be given to us to know.” Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Part One, Remark II, 288-289.
“The non-sensible cause of these representations is entirely unknown to us.” Critique of Pure Reason, A494/B522.
“As we have just shown that the senses never and in no manner enable us to know things in themselves, but only their appearances…we conclude that all bodies together with the space in which they are, must be considered nothing but mere representations in us, and exist nowhere but in our thoughts.” Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, Part One, Remark II, 288-289.
“Your object is merely in your brain.” Critique of Pure Reason, A484/B512.
“It is also false that the world (the sum total of all appearances) is a whole existing in itself … appearances in general are nothing outside our representations.” Critique of Pure Reason, A507/B535.
“Since space is a form of that intuition we call outer … we can and must regard the beings in it as real; and the same is true of time. But this space and this time, and with them all appearances, are not in themselves things; they are nothing but representations and cannot exist at all outside our minds.” Critique of Pure Reason, A492/B520.
“The understanding itself is the lawgiver of Nature; save through it, Nature would not exist at all.” Critique of Pure Reason, A126.
“If I remove the thinking subject, the whole corporeal world must at once vanish.” Critique of Pure Reason, A383. [See: Primacy of Consciousness]
“If then, as this critical argument obviously compels us to do, 
we hold fast to the rule above established, and do not push our questions beyond the limits within which possible experience can present us with its object, we shall never dream of seeking to inform ourselves about the objects of our senses as they are in themselves.” Critique of Pure Reason, A380.
“I had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” Critique of Pure Reason, Bxxx.
Source: Quee Nelson’s The Slightest Philosophy at Google books. Also available at Amazon.
Related on Kant:
My interpretation of Kant’s epistemology in Chapter Two of Explaining Postmodernism.
Kant on collectivism and war.
Is commerce rendering war obsolete?
Education: Locke versus Kant.
Philosophy’s longest sentences, Part 2.
Kleist: How Kant ruined my life.
On “giving back”.
Kant and modern art.
Is modern art too complicated for us? [with quotations from Kant's Critique of Judgment].
Heine on Kant: The Department of Great Putdowns.
More precisely: Who is the most loathsome philosopher in his or her personal life?
Let me set the bar high by naming my top two candidates.
1. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who fathered several children and had them abandoned to orphanages, and of whom David Hume wrote in a letter to Adam Smith: “Thus you see, he is a Composition of Whim, Affectation, Wickedness, Vanity, and Inquietude, with a very small, if any Ingredient of Madness. … The ruling Qualities abovementioned, together with Ingratitude, Ferocity, and Lying, I need not mention, Eloquence and Invention, form the whole of the Composition.” (David Hume, letter to Adam Smith, October 8, 1767 [Correspondence, 135])
2. Martin Heidegger, who was a Nazi and who, his lover Hannah Arendt said, “lies notoriously always and everywhere, and whenever he can.”
I am open to other suggestions.
Some follow up questions. When one disagrees profoundly with an intellectual’s philosophy, as I do with Rousseau’s and Heidegger’s, is it legitimate to look for a connection between the philosophical and the personal? Or can deep philosophy vary completely independently of personal behavior? Is ad hominem ever a legitimate argument strategy? One should expect integrity, especially from philosophers — i.e., that they will live what they teach and teach what they live — but we also know that hypocrisy is widespread. Should it matter now that influential philosophers were personally immoral, or do only their ideas and arguments matter now?
Related posts on Heidegger:
Nazism and education [Section 14 of Nietzsche and the Nazis].
Heidegger, anti-humanism, and the Left.
Heidegger and postmodernism [Excerpt from Chapter 3 of Explaining Postmodernism].
Interview with director Jeffrey van Davis on Heidegger and Nazism.
Related posts on Rousseau:
Rousseau’s Counter-Enlightenment [Excerpt from Chapter 4 of Explaining Postmodernism].
Rousseau’s collectivism and statism.
Rousseau and the French Revolution.
Elizabeth Warren’s recent remarks offer a striking glimpse into a prominent strain of American political thought. Warren is a Harvard law professor and U.S. Senate candidate, and she has been a White House presidential assistant. An excerpt:
“There is nobody in this country who got rich on his own. Nobody.
“You built a factory out there? Good for you. But I want to be clear: you moved your goods to market on the roads the rest of us paid for; you hired workers the rest of us paid to educate; you were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory, and hire someone to protect against this, because of the work the rest of us did.
“Now look, you built a factory and it turned into something terrific, or a great idea? God bless. Keep a big hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.”
What gives this argument rhetorical force is its appeal to a principle of economic justice: You should pay for the benefits you get from others. Don’t be a freeloader. Warren combines that principle with a list of benefits an imagined factory builder has received from others to get the implicit conclusion and policy recommendation: The factory builder has unpaid debts that justify increased taxation.
Five observations and questions:
1. On the seriousness of the economic justice claim: If we’re to conclude that the factory owner (let’s call her Jill) has unpaid debts, are we to (a) estimate how much benefit Jill the factory builder has received from others, (b) determine how much she has paid for those benefits (since presumably she paid her employees, truckers, and taxes), so that (c) we can determine whether she has paid too much, too little, or the right amount? Are we to make that serious accounting effort, or is this argument meant to generate an unspecified debt claim and a blank check for politicians and the IRS to fill in as they judge best?
2. On the transfer of debt: Warren points out that, for example, many of the factory’s employees were educated in government schools. The government has taxed its citizens and used that money to educate, say, Jack. Interestingly, Warren does not say that Jack now has a debt to society that he should pay. Instead, the debt seems to shift to Jill when she hires Jack. How does that work?
3. On disingenuous application: Warren targets her argument only against the prosperous. Yet middle and low income people also receive the same benefits as the factory builder—they use the roads, enjoy police and fire protection, use the services of those educated in public schools, and so on. Why is Warren not also hectoring middle and low income people for apparently violating the social contract?
4. On the compatibility of the economic justice principle with the rest of Warren’s political philosophy: Warren here suggests strongly that Jill the factory builder has freeloaded on unpaid benefits from the rest of society and that justice requires that she pay for what she received from others. Does Warren therefore favor abolishing the welfare state? I rather doubt it. So we end up in an odd position: Those who live on or profit from government welfare get a pass in Warren’s system, while those who build factories are considered freeloaders.
5. On the doulos and a historical echo: In Plato’s Crito (50d), Socrates argues that he has no right to escape from prison, even if he is innocent. Socrates imagines himself in conversation with the Laws of the State and has the Laws say to him, ‘”In the first place did we not bring you into existence? Your father married your mother by our aid and begat you. Say whether you have any objection to urge against those of us who regulate marriage?” None, I [Socrates] should reply. “Or against those of us who regulate the system of nurture and education of children in which you were trained? Were not the laws, who have the charge of this, right in commanding your father to train you in music and gymnastic?” Right, I should reply.’
Socrates has agreed that the State made possible his existence and upbringing. Consequently, he is in debt to the State, as the Laws go on to conclude forcefully:
“Well, then, since you were brought into the world and nurtured and educated by us, can you deny in the first place that you are our child and slave, as your fathers were before you?”
“Doulos: In ancient Greece, a slave (δοῦλος).” In the above translation of Plato’s text, doulos is translated as either child or slave. Thus we have an argument for paternalism and slavery: Socrates, his ancestors, and presumably his descendants, are creatures and chattels of the State.
Is Warren’s position that different?
Perhaps hers is not meant as a serious argument, though, and only as red meat thrown to the “Tax the rich!” political base. But what if Warren is serious?
The Portuguese translation was published in Brazil, a Serbo-Croatian translation of the first chapter was published, and a new, expanded edition was published last month in Kindle 
and this month in a snazzy hardcover.
Samples from the scholarly reviewers of the first edition:
“By the end of Explaining Postmodernism, the reader may remain ill at ease with postmodernist malaise, but Hicks’s lucid account will demystify the subject.” Curtis Hancock, Ph.D., Review of Metaphysics
“With clarity, concision, and an engaging style, Hicks exposes the historical roots and philosophical assumptions of the postmodernist phenomenon. More than that, he raises key questions about the legacy of postmodernism and its implications for our intellectual attitudes and cultural life.” Steven M. Sanders, Ph.D., Reason Papers
“Refreshingly, Hicks does not take it as given that the poststructuralist viewpoints have been demonstrated to be in error. Rather, he seeks to trace them to a powerful ressentiment directed against the partisan of the Enlightenment and of capitalist achievement, and to provide the Enlightenment thinker with openings for serious intellectual engagement.” Marcus Verhaegh, Ph.D., The Independent Review
“This is not a book review but a flat out endorsement. Stephen R. C. Hicks’ Explaining Postmodernism is a great but very scary read.” Tibor R. Machan, Ph.D., Hoiles Chair of Philosophy, Chapman University
“Stephen Hicks has written an insightful and biting commentary on the nature of postmodernism and its revolt against the Enlightenment. He situates the movement in a larger historical context and analyzes its cultural and political implications. Even when one disagrees with Hicks’ interpretations, his work will challenge and provoke. This is must-reading for anyone interested in philosophy-by-essentials.” Chris Matthew Sciabarra, Ph.D., Department of Politics, New York University
“Explaining Postmodernism is extremely valuable for understanding postmodernism from a standpoint outside of and critical of it. Perhaps the most important value of the work is Professor Hicks’s analytical skill in isolating the essential theses of postmodern writers, in summarizing the relevant historical background, and in tracing the lines of development that led to postmodernism. In addition to wonderfully clear expositions of Hegel, Heidegger, and other influential thinkers, the book has what I think is a brilliant analysis of the different pathways by which skeptical questions that Enlightenment thinkers asked about reason led to the nihilism of Derrida and Foucault.” David Kelley, Ph.D., Executive Director, The Objectivist Center
“Explaining Postmodernism offers a concise and convincing argument that post-modernism is not primarily about epistemology. If postmodernism were about science as a ‘hegemonic discourse,’ then postmodernists would endorse any political viewpoint that tickled their subjectivities. Yet every postmodernist is on the Left politically. Hicks concludes that relativism is not what motivates postmodern thought—but is a device that postmodernists have adopted for strategic purposes. Explaining Postmodernism will be of value to anyone who seeks to understand where postmodernism originated, what impulses motivate it, and how it can be challenged.” Robert Campbell, Ph.D., Department of Psychology, Clemson University
“Stephen Hicks has written a very fine book, one that reveals both the historical roots and the current strategies of postmodernism. He has helped to reduce the puzzlement of those of us who have wondered how the truly amazing form of madness called postmodernism has managed to take over the minds of people who in other ways seem both sane and intelligent. Buy two copies and give one to a postmodernist acquaintance. It will ruin his week.” Max Hocutt, Ph.D., The Journal of Ayn Rand Studies
The expanded edition also includes my Free Speech and Postmodernism and From Modern to Postmodern Art: Why Art Became Ugly essay. Images of the art works discussed and referred to in the latter essay are available at a dedicated page at my website here.
The Expanded Edition of my Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault is scheduled for release mid-August in both hardcover and Kindle versions.
The first edition did well (for a philosophy book), going through two hardcover and nine softcover printings. The expanded edition includes the original text, though with many new footnotes and two additional, previously published essays of mine, Free Speech and Postmodernism and From Modern to Postmodern Art: Why Art Became Ugly.
The scholarly reviews of the first edition were mostly very kind. Excerpts from them can be seen in the book’s brochure, and links to the full reviews can be found toward the bottom of my Explaining Postmodernism page. As well, the Amazon page for the first edition has a lively debate over the book’s merits or demerits. Thanks to all who have posted there.
The expanded edition of my Explaining Postmodernism: From Rousseau to Foucault is being published late this summer. In preparing the manuscript, I re-read several transition figures, i.e., those twentieth-century intellectuals whom I judge to be important in preparing the groundwork for postmodernism.
One is anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009), whom I first read as an undergraduate. Lévi-Strauss formally studied philosophy and law, but because the bulk of his influential career was in anthropological field studies and theory he is sometimes labeled the father of modern anthropology. He is enough of a metaphysical realist not to be a postmodernist, but his positions on other major philosophical issues put him among the forerunners.
Here are three excerpts from his The Savage Mind (University of Chicago Press, 1962).
First, on his and Jean-Paul Sartre’s common inheritance from Karl Marx: “Although in both our cases Marx is the point of departure of our thought, it seems to me that the Marxist orientation leads to a different view, namely, that the opposition between the two sorts of reason is relative, not absolute” (p. 246).
Second, on his anti-humanism, which he shares with Martin Heidegger: “I accept the characterization of aesthete in so far as I believe the ultimate goal of the human sciences to be not to constitute, but to dissolve man” (p. 247).
Third, on his carrying on Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s glorification of the primitivism: “we therefore remain faithful to the inspiration of the savage mind when we recognize that the scientific spirit in its most modern form will, by an encounter it alone could have foreseen, have contributed to legitimize the principles of savage thought and to re-establish it in its rightful place” (p. 269).
So: Lévi-Strauss is a post-Marxian anti-humanistic primitivist, and thus one of the gurus of the emerging postmodern movement that took off in the late 1960s and is still with us.
For more on the postmodernists and postmodernism, see my Explaining Postmodernism page.
For this year’s conference of the Association of Private Enterprise Education, I am organizing and chairing a session on two giants of the twentieth century — Friedrich Hayek and Ayn Rand — with four scholars comparing their views on values and political economy.
Chair: Stephen Hicks, Ph.D., Rockford College, Illinois
Panelists:
Emily Chamlee-Wright, Ph.D. Elbert Neese Professor of Economics, Beloit College, Wisconsin
Title: “Cultivating the Economic Imagination with Atlas Shrugged”
Abstract: In this paper I describe my use of Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged in an undergraduate comparative economic systems course. I argue that the novel is the ideal vehicle for cultivating what I call the “economic imagination,” by which I mean the ability to see the systematic outcomes that emerge under different political economic rules of the game. Further, I argue that the novel is particularly well-suited to animate discussions of essential comparative systems topics, including Marxism, the various phenomena associated with the soviet-type economy, and fascism. Finally, drawing upon student writing, I argue that though Rand’s view of reason and epistemology are often at odds with Austrian economics, these tensions are productive in conveying Austrian insights regarding the extended order.
Steve Horwitz, Ph.D., Professor of Economics, St. Lawrence University, New York
“Hayek, Rand, and the Ethics of the Micro- and Macro-worlds
Abstract: Hayek and Rand both supported capitalism, but their ethical systems were different. This paper explores the differences and how they apply to the institution of the family. It concludes that Rand’s ethical system matches very well with what Hayek sees as necessary in the “Great Society” of the macro-cosmos, but that our understanding of the institution of the family seems better suited to a more altruistic ethical code. The challenge for a Hayekian ethics that pays attention to institutional contexts is how to ensure that the complex process of making those distinctions is learned as children pass into adulthood.
Edward Hudgins, Ph.D., Director of Advocacy, The Atlas Society, Washington, D.C.
Title: “Is a Moral Foundation Necessary for Spontaneous Order?”
Abstract: F. A. Hayek argued that social order and institutions—markets, money, law—arise spontaneously out of the actions of individuals seeking their own interests but not through specific planning by individuals. Further, because it is impossible in markets for any individual to know what mix of goods and services will best satisfy consumer demands, attempts at central government planning will result in adverse unintended consequences.
But it can be argued that such a system will only operate to protect individual liberty and limit government if enough individuals, reinforced by the culture, accept and live by certain moral principles and the Objectivism provides such a foundation.
William Kline, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Department of Liberal and Integrative Studies, University of Illinois, Springfield
Title: “Individualism and Interdependence”
Abstract: When do we need other people? Both Hayek and Rand agree on the importance of the division of labor. People need other people to produce what they cannot or will not do themselves. Hayek and Rand also broadly agree on the importance of property rights that make the division of labor, and the market in general, possible. Yet, theses authors deeply disagree on the degree of interdependence necessary for establishing valid property claims. This paper explores Hayek’s use of a Humean conception of property that emphasizes tradition and cannot exist independently of others and contrasts it with Rand’s use of a Lockean/Cartesian approach that argues for the existence of objective, nonconventional property rights. This paper argues that the two authors can be reconciled by distinguishing between what Hume identifies as the need for property rights versus the actual rules that protect them.
The session is scheduled for Monday, April 10 at the bright and cheery 8:10 a.m. time slot.
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