Critical Social Theory

“Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. … Sapere Aude! ‘Have the courage to use your

own reason!’—that is the motto of enlightenment.”

Kant, “What is Enlightenment?”

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Answering Hume: Kant and the synthetic a priori

Hume’s empiricist starting point: there are only two kinds of propositions—‘relations of ideas’ and ‘matters of fact’.

What do ‘relations of ideas’ and ‘matters of fact’ mean?

How do we know that propositions belonging to those categories to be true?

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Answering Hume:

Kant: “Although all cognition begins with experience, not all of it springs from experience.” (Introduction, 7)

Perhaps there are truths about the world that can known without reference to experience.

We need to make one more distinction: ‘a priori’ and ‘a posteriori’

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A priori and a posteriori

Both terms are used in relation to how statements are known to be true

A priori means without reference to experience—e.g. ‘the sum of the interior angles of a triangle is 180 degrees’ is known to be true a priori

A posteriori means with reference to experience—e.g. ‘grappa tastes like ___’ is known to be true a posteriori

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Kant’s response: synthetic a priori

A priori A posteriori

Analytic ‘All bachelors are unmarried adult males’

Impossible

Synthetic Hume: not possible

Kant: ‘every event has a cause’

‘The beaches in the Caribbean are white and the water blue’

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Synthetic a priori

Kant: by submitting Reason to critique, we can find out how much our reason can know apart from experience.

Synthetic a priori propositions represent the conditions of the possibility of knowledge of the phenomenal world (the world as it appears to us).

What could we know of the world if it isn’t the case that every event has a cause?

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Synthetic a priori

However, there are limits to how much reason does know apart from experience.

When we overreach the limits of reason, we find only illusions.

Put another way, we have no knowledge of the world of things in themselves (nouemenal world).

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Critique and autonomy

What is the implication of critique (i.e. submit everything to criticism)?

One has to use one’s own reason, think for oneself

A person is no longer subjected to the reasoning of another

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Autonomy

What does ‘autonomy’ mean? The idea that governing oneself by one’s own

rules, i.e. self-government. Kant: “The touchstone of everything that can

be concluded as a law for a people lies in the question whether the people could have imposed such a law on itself” (What is Enlightenment, 7)

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Autonomy

Kant: No age can dictate rules to another. Why?

Each age decides for itself the rules under which individuals, as rational beings, will abide (provided that everyone consents to the rules for themselves).

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Kant: Public vs. Private use of reason

What is needed in order that a people could impose a law on itself?

Kant: individuals be free to make ‘public’ use of one’s reason at every point.

Kant’s distinction between ‘public’ and ‘private’ use of reason.

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Kant: Public vs. Private use of reason

There are limits in the use of reason however for Kant. What are some of those limits?

Suppose you are a Catholic priest but are in favour of ordaining female priests. What are you supposed to do?

Question: Do Kant’s observations about the private use of reason just leads to compliance?

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Sapere Aude

Kant: his age is not yet an enlightened age because “much is lacking which prevents men from being … capable of correctly using their reason” (8).

Maturity is needed. But if everyone uses reasoning correctly, this

would “affect the principles of government, which finds it to its advantage to treat men, who are now more than machines, in accordance with their dignity” (10).

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Kant and enlightenment

But in the meantime, Kant seeks to temper how quickly an enlightened society can be achieved:

First, a special ruler is needed to usher in an enlightened society: The ruler must be enlightened himself (What is Enlightenment, 10)

Second, “The public can only slowly attain enlightenment” (What is Enlightenment? 4). Too much too fast could lead to disaster. Why?

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Kant and enlightenment

“Here is a strange and unexpected trend in human affairs in which almost everything, looked at in the large, is paradoxical. A greater degree of civil freedom appears advantageous to the freedom of mind of the people, and yet it places inescapable limitations upon it; a lower degree of civil freedom, on the contrary, provides the mind with room for each man to extend himself to his full capacity” (What is Enlightenment? 10)

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Kant and enlightenment

Does Kant’s conclusion about a just society require any consideration of actual social and economic relations?

Marx seeks to answer these questions. He introduced a new approach: instead of starting from existing concepts, say ‘justice’, Marx looks at the material conditions in which these ideas were made possible.