Kant, and Fun with Counterfactual Hypotheticals

This is an old post (Dec 2009) of mine from a different blog, but I like the passage so much I thought I would share it again. If anyone reads this, maybe you will have a more interesting way to interpret it?

This excerpt is from a strange little section of Kant's Second Critique called "On the Wise Adaptation of the Human Being’s Cognitive Faculties to His Practical Vocation". He is imagining what it would be like if could somehow peer into the noumenal realm:

Instead of the conflict that the moral disposition now has to carry on with the inclinations, in which, through after some defeats, moral strength of soul is to be gradually acquired, God and eternity with their awful majesty would stand unceasingly before our eyes…[H]ence most actions conforming to the law would be done from fear, only a few from hope, and none at all from duty, and the moral worth of actions, on which alone in the eyes of supreme wisdom the worth of the person and even that of the world depends, would not exist at all. As long as human nature remains as it is, human conduct would thus be changed into mere mechanism in which, as in a puppet show, everything would gesticulate well but there would be no life in the figures.

The phenomenal realm is law-governed, and, as such, our freedom is not found in this realm. If we could see into the noumenal (which we can't), there too we would not find the locus of our freedom. Instead, Zizek suggests that the interplay between the two is where our freedom is operative. I prefer to see the noumenal as the "Real" void of the phenomenal, an excess. Since moral worthiness is a matter of determining the will according to duty for duty's sake instead of determining the will according to inclination, something must account for this choice, and the freedom to make this choice ex nihilo. Since the noumenal realm, and god and the afterlife for that matter, is a necessary thought without positive (perhaps very minimal) content, then why not locate spontaneous freedom to self-determine the will on the side of the noumenal -- again as a necessary thought -- rather than the interplay Zizek prefers? I don't see what is gained from Zizek's take, other than that it fits nicely with his "parallax".

Reading Kant makes me happy.

I also added this gem to the comments on that blog post:

While we're talking Kant... I recall reading this joke from Kant's third Critique. (I grabbed it from wiki this time.) He says, "Laughter is an effect that arises if a tense expectation is transformed into nothing." Here is Kant's 219-year old joke and his analysis:

An Englishman at an Indian's table in Surat saw a bottle of ale being opened, and all the beer, turned to froth, rushed out. The Indian, by repeated exclamations, showed his great amazement. - Well, what's so amazing in that? asked the Englishman. - Oh, but I'm not amazed at its coming out, replied the Indian, but how you managed to get it all in. - This makes us laugh, and it gives us a hearty pleasure. This is not because, say, we think we are smarter than this ignorant man, nor are we laughing at anything else here that it is our liking and that we noticed through our understanding. It is rather that we had a tense expectation that suddenly vanished...

Kant really does make me happy!

The Conservatism of Protest Ideology

I had originally written up a much longer post about the recent G20 “crisis” in Toronto. Instead I’ll give you the most interesting point, and cut the chaff. There are two aspects to what I find interesting about the outrage people express toward the G20 security response. One aspect is that many innocent people were arrested and detained. Most of this sort of dimension of the problem rests on something like “punishment doesn’t fit the crime” logic. Fair enough in many cases. Though I think most people got "cool" war-stories out of it and suffered very little to get them. No matter, I will leave that issue for the time being. The other dimension of the outrage is something much less obvious.

People are very concerned with the ways in which their civil liberties have been compromised. The security force was either allowed to operate outside the law or to write the law on the fly. This flies in the face of juridico-legislative due process. The way the security response worked to shut down the protest denied many (approx. 900) their “right to protest”. It is around the loss of this right that there is so much fervor. But what is this right really? This sacred right to protest is all smoke and mirrors. Of course the police state will never wholly deny the right to protest, they want you to protest.

There is a common, and really quite genius, strategy of sterilizing threats by integrating them into the systems that they are designed to unsettle. I’ve recently been told that Noam Chomsky makes frequent reference to this phenomenon. MIT, an otherwise quite conservative institution, allows him to work there with all his radical leftist propaganda. They can’t really be that opposed to his politics if they allow him to give voice to his positions in their institution, can they? Well, his point is that one of the best ways to take the subversive edge off something like this, is to allow it, give it a home, and to do so in ways that are acceptable to the system. The police state allows protest because it is an ineffective and generally apolitical way to blow off steam without threatening real change.

For all those worried about your sacred right to protest, don’t be. It’s yours for as long as you want it. Of course, in order for the game to function, the police response has to be there. You have to feel like you are combating some oppressive regime for you to have the proper experience. This is as ideological as it comes. The police say, “no don’t protest, we’ll lock you up…lousy youth. Learn some manners, and pull up your pants!” This creates the space in which young people can feel political without being political.

Genuine politics doesn’t operate under the condition of being granted the right. It is never the case that the-powers-that-be give you the means (at least not on purpose) to compromise their power. You take it. You declare your right to effect change, and proceed according to your right. You act in such a way that the situation changes according to the right that directs your political intervention. The whole worry about them taking our right to protest away misses the entire point, which is exactly what prevents any really politics from taking place.

Zizek gives an excellent and very accessible discussion of ideology that I think may be helpful for interpreting the G20 and its aftermath. (His point about the “self-mockery” of pornography [35 min in] is exactly the kind of play I had suggested goes on in much of the cheesy MTV programming, though I didn’t really say anything about censorship in and through this play.)

A few final notes about politics:

I don’t have perfectly clear theory of political change, but I do have certain intuitions. Some of which (I had originally planned to discuss) are:

1) Politics operates at a distance from the state. You don’t effect radical change by following the rules.

2) Insofar as it is political, it must be radically so. Politics is not a negotiation of interests, but the bringing into being of a radically new structure/situation.

3) Spontaneous organization is a pipe dream. The new anarchisms that envision a cooperative but anarchically coordinated mass movement is about as passive as awaiting the second coming, and a kind of bad faith excuse. Radical politics must be undertaken by a subjectivity at least loosely organized around some kind of centre. My speculation is that this has to be some kind of charismatic leadership.

4) Radical change must occur in response to a kind of break or gap in the structure/logic of the situation. Also, although we cannot simply will into being a political event, we can exploit openings when they are presented. The degree to which we can create openings is still somewhat fuzzy to me. This is a point very much worth exploring.

I suppose this all makes me some kind of revolutionary vanguardist. So be it. I don’t see another way to bring about the kind of break necessary for real change. As suggested, I haven’t a very clear or detailed political program, but these are my intuitions about politics. If you see a lot of Badiou in these points, it is because I’ve been submerged in his works for well over a year. As I go forward with other thinkers, I will continue to flush out these insights.

Advice

For those students who haven't come across Graham Harman's blog, stop reading this and go look at his posts filed under "advice". I'm somewhat interested in the Speculative Realism and Object-Oriented Ontology movements in "post-continental" philosophy these days, so I've had philosophical reasons to follow Harman. His analysis of Heidegger's "Tool-Being" in Being and Time is excellent, and the conclusions he draws from it incredibly creative. But what I've come to appreciate most about his blog are not his philosophical musings, or the details about whatever random thing is happening in his life or interests. Rather, what keeps me coming back are his advice posts aimed at young academics. I find them both inspiring and comforting. I don't always agree with the things he says, but they always feel a bit like a pat on the back.

As I re-read his newly posted "old posts" (which were lost in switching from one version of his blog to another version of it), I am coming across many of his advice posts, and will inevitably post some of my favorite insights as I go. One that I came across just now that I particularly like has to do with when we have "theoretical reversals". There are times where we make a 180 degree turn with respect to some key feature of a theory we endorse. Besides all the other interesting things he has to say about them, I particularly like the idea that "It often takes 'calendar time' to bring them about rather than 'work time.' You need time to become bored with a theory before it’s easy to see the holes in it." I've been working on one project for well over a year now, and only in becoming bored with it have I been able to begin questioning much of what I had taken for granted all along.

We all get swept up in new and exciting ideas. This is one of the most enjoyable times to be a philosopher. But, it seems to me that during the euphoria of having these sorts of really exciting new opportunities for thought may not be the best time to be overly critical of them, nor to expect yourself to be. You will inevitably be somewhat blinded, which is perhaps a sort of enabling condition that allows us to put in the work that is required to learn something new. Roll with the new thing, see where it takes you. There will come a time down the road where the passion turns to sober consideration. This is the time to really make your lasting evaluations. I think it is also during these times when one ought to reevaluate their allegiances in general.

I've always been particularly interested in theories of ideology. Through investigating these interests, I've branched into psychoanalysis, political theory, and much of what I work on today, especially Badiou and Zizek. But having come to the end of my current project on Badiou, I'm finding that I am no longer certain that Badiou has the answer to the problem I thought he did in the beginning, and I am again feeling the need to re-engage with my lasting interests. This is not to say that I don't support Badiou on many points, or that my interest in him will not last. But in this post-excitement period, I am getting a renewed sense for what is really important to me in philosophy.

We often think that we need theoretical or "work" distance in order to be able to be critical of our own ideas. I think this is true. But, it is also true that we need "time" distance, or distance from the initial period of fervor to see where we really stand. I'm going to try to keep this in mind and allow myself the giddiness I feel when I take on something new, leaving the self-examination for later.