Rosmini on Kant’s
Foundation of Ethics
Ramón Caro Plaza·
Universidad
Francisco de Vitoria, Spain
Abstract
What are the signs from
which we get our bearings in life? Can we count on some objective point of
reference? In this paper I explore two ways in which those questions can be
answered. Each one represents a different paradigm in relation to the bases of action. Kant seeks
objectivity without object-in-itself and a moral law independent of empirical
reality. Rosmini claims that moral objectivity comes from an ideal object
which, in turn, is linked with reality. The third part of the article obtains
some results from the comparison of both approaches: the Kantian way opens a
door to nihilism due to its essential ambiguity; the weakness of moral law impels
us to wait for a brighter light. My analysis develops along the elementary
lines of Rosmini’s reply to Kantian thought. Some keys for dialogue with the
various interpretations of the German philosopher’s work are thus proposed.
Keywords
Kant, Rosmini, ethics, epistemology, natural law
In the story You Can’t Be Poorer Than Dead, O’Connor tells us
that the only thing Francis Marion Tarwater had been asked by his great-uncle
was to bury him and set up a cross over him. The boy, however, does not feel like
obeying orders. Moreover, when his uncle dies, Tarwater starts talking to a strange
voice that invites him to question everything:
Ain’t you old enough to have learnt that yet for yourself? Don’t everything you do, everything you have ever done, work itself out right or wrong before your eye and usually before the sun has set?[1]
The words evoke
the ones with which Kant introduces the modern way of thinking:
Enlightenment is man’s emergence from his self-imposed immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to make use of one’s understanding without direction from another … ‘Sapere Aude! Have courage to make use of your understanding!’ is therefore the motto of enlightenment.[2]
Kant’s words
have a philosophical tone, but the basic message is identical to that of the fictitious
character. Although we find it difficult to understand that message exactly:
does “for yourself” mean “totally alone”? Is the “without direction” absolute?
Or to take a different angle: what have the “sun” and the “light” got to do
with this? Are they just rhetorical devices? Is there really a light or must we
create it?
This
article intends to study two man’s most significant attempts to find the rule
that guides our actions to rightness and perfection. The perspective will be genealogical.
I will attempt to stand back from the starting point of the “transcendental way”[3] in Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and determine where it leads.
Then I will examine the alternative way of Antonio Rosmini (1797-1855).
1. Ethical Assumptions of the “Transzendentaler Weg”
1.1. Objectivity Without Object
Up to Kant’s
time all efforts to justify morality seemed to have failed. And, according to
him, the reason was clear: all prior ethical systems had been heteronomous.[4] In such systems, the moral law of man “did not
arise from his will; in order to
conform to the law, his will had instead to be constrained by something else to act in a certain way.”[5] In Kant’s opinion, any object must be kept
apart from the foundations of morality: the moral law must order “without
regard for all object of the faculty of desire.”[6]
Rosmini
criticises this position. He argues that discounting any object in morality is
equivalent to preventing moral law from being objective, to excluding the
possibility of objectivity from the very beginning. What is more, it makes the
very existence of a law impossible. The Italian philosopher explicitly states
that
it is a useless exertion that of trying to consider the action of will as stripped of all its objects and, therefore, of any matter with which it deals, and to claim to find the law only in will’s mode of operating, without need for the object to intervene.[7]
And he goes
on: law “can come from nothing other than objects themselves, from it being
objective.”[8] To understand Rosmini’s criticism
we only have to consider the common use of the word “object.” It refers to
something different from the subject, to something which is opposite (objectum) the subject, opposed to it.
But, if the law is not linked with an object,
how can it be objective? How do we
tell the difference between law and subject? How do I justify that law is not a
mere invention of mine which coincides with my interests? Without any kind of
universal and necessary object it is almost unavoidable that ethics ends in subjectivism
and relativism, exactly what Kant works to overcome.
Here we
will explore the reasons which might have driven Kant to separate any object
from the principle of morality. But, first of all, the meaning of “object” must
be clarified further. In ethics, Kant uses the term with respect to our will
and action as a synonym of “end,” “purpose” or “matter.” We should understand
it in a general sense: as something which
is known, and a real effect related to it.[9] That effect would consist in a creation, modification
or destruction of that “something.”
Let us
begin by focusing on the object inasmuch as a known thing, as a concept. We will see that Kant’s first reason for
rejecting any object in morality has its roots in his theory of knowledge. In
it Kant realises that our concepts seem to have something which is not
empirical and sensory. They appear to us as objective, as universal and
necessary; but universality and necessity do not fit with the particular and
contingent experience. How is this mismatch resolved? Kant designates the
objective nature of our knowledge as “pure” or “a priori.” And his solution, proposed in his Critique of Pure Reason, lies in resorting to a special subject:
the transcendental subject. That subject is the source of all that is pure and a priori about our knowledge. However,
one question can be raised: how can something objective stem from a subject? Is
some subjective universality and necessity possible? That is precisely the
great challenge that Kant has to face: proving that the “subjective conditions”
of our concepts are “at the same time objectively valid” (A125).
In reality,
Kant’s solution is proposed right from the outset without “safety measures.”
Before starting his deduction, Kant has already stated that the conditions of
thinking, i.e. of the “possibility of all cognition of objects,” are “subjective
conditions of thinking” (A89/B122). He has considered its sources just “subjective
sources” (A97). And, finally, he has pointed at reason as the faculty that “provides
[an die Hand geben] the principles of
cognition a priori” (A11/B25).[10] But let us elaborate on how Kant formulates
his solution:
In his “Deduction
of the Categories,” Kant mentions a transcendental use of the apperception as “the a priori ground of all concepts” (A107).
That faculty is possible because of our self-consciousness―“the
I think”―that “accompany[ies] all my representations” (B131). Kant will
call this transcendental apperception “(pure) understanding” (see A119, B134),
its act: “think” (A68/B93), its logical function: “judge” (see B141-42) and the
elements through which it acts: “pure concepts” or “categories” (see B143).
The product
of the pure faculty of understanding is the form of knowledge, “the form of
experience.” The philosopher defines this form as “the synthetic unity of
appearances in accordance with concepts” (A110). It is about a subjective
function that transforms what is given in our sensory representations into a
concept. In the first edition, we find an excerpt where Kant calls that form “transcendental
object,”[11] suggesting a “merely
intellectual” object.[12] However, his tendency to
reduce any object to the sensory intuition is patent: “intuition in general[13] through which objects can be given to us, constitute the field, the whole object, of possible experience”
(A95; emphasis added). In fact, it is coherent: how can a subjective function
be regarded as “object”? Anyway, according to Kant, this function provides our
concepts with universality
and necessity.[14]
Kant brings
into play an enigmatic voice: the “transcendental subject,” but we become
suspicious of its true identity. From the epistemological framework suggested
by Kant, we cannot circumvent two disturbing questions. The first one concerns
the nature of the “pure” and “transcendental” applied to the elements of
knowledge. What kind of being is the pure and transcendental one? What is its
origin? To which field does it belong? Can it be reduced to a physical
dimension?[15] Maybe that is the great question of
philosophy. Plato invokes a separate ideal world to explain it. Kant takes
another way: after ascribing the pure and transcendental to a subjective
function, he reduces it to a kind of research. This research places itself on
an ontologically ambiguous level defined as “the mode of cognition” or “the
conditions of possibility of knowledge.” With such terms (“mode,” “conditions,”
“possibility,” “mode”) and others (“origin,” “employment,” “validity”) he seems
to avoid the “pure” and “transcendental” turning into an ideal ontological
field, distinct from the empirical one.[16]
Regarding
this criticised ambiguity of Kantian “transcendental,” it is significant the
changes made by the author from edition A to B. In A Kant had said that
transcendental is concerned with “our a priori concepts [Begriffen] of
objects” (KrV A11-12;
emphasis added). Later, in B, maybe eschewing an ideal or conceptual separate
dimension, he replaces “concepts” by “mode of cognition.” In the same
perspective, it is understandable that the concept of the “transcendental
object” does not reappear in edition B, insofar as it could suggest an ideal objective
unity, especially if we take into account that the concept has been assimilated
to that of the thing itself[17]. The ontologically ambiguous and immanent
reading of various interpreters will therefore be coherent, showing Kantian
rejection of an ideal objective dimension, both as regards the transcendental
object and the transcendental subject. [18] In this way, we can qualify Kant’s evolution as “an epistemological
turn.” It is a question of bracketing the ontological, to speak in terms of knowledge:
“As Kant moved toward the theory of the Critique, he progressively
subordinated all questions of being to questions of knowing.” (Wolff 1963,
315).
The second
question to be considered is the “subjectification” of pure concepts. Kant has
recognised that in our knowledge of objects there is some part―the pure
concepts―which is not sensory and empirical. But he asserts that these
concepts can be reduced to a subjective operation. It is the understanding that
gives these concepts. Nothing can be given directly to our understanding.[19] The only reasons offered by Kant to justify
this are: the subject is what executes the
cognition[20] and what is conscious of it.[21] We find here a petitio principii in the
foundation of the transcendental theory, a claim that interpreters are
struggling to clarify.[22] In conclusion, since, for Kant, sensory data also are
mediated by subjective forms of sensibility, our knowledge consists in the sensory
data as mediated by subjective functions of both sensibility and understanding.
It is easy
to guess the consequences of this approach. Firstly, we cannot know any object
in itself but always a “representation of it” (A68/B93) through the double
subjective mediation of sensibility and understanding. Secondly, in knowledge “objective”
will mean more “coming from a built object” than “from a given object.” And,
finally, the intellective order and structure of nature is constituted by the
subject: “thus we ourselves bring into the appearances that order and
regularity in them that we call nature”
(A125).[23] The loss of the object as
such, i.e. insofar as it is opposed to the intelligent subject, is actually the
main criticism made by Rosmini of German idealists: “the German philosophers
dreamt of a thinking without object.”[24] And he points at Kant as the originator: “this
most crucial [capitalissimo] mistake
has its origin from the pure reason
of Kant, the only father of the whole modern philosophy in Germany.”[25] Thus, Kant’s system drifts easily towards subjectivism.[26]
The Kantian
subject takes possession of the rights previously reserved to the objects,
which is called the Copernic revolution in metaphysics. In Kant’s intellective
field no idea or rule can ever set itself against our understanding because
they are formed by it. It is the form
itself: “the understanding is thus not merely a faculty
for making rules through the comparison of appearances; it is itself the law [Gesetzgebung] of nature […] as
exaggerated and contradictory as it may sound” (A126-27).
1.2. Autonomy of the Moral Law
The
Copernican revolution is not an expression of despotic power. We know only too
well that, apart from his scientific interest, there is an underlying pragmatic
motive that drives Kant towards his revolution. Kant speaks of a “positive utility
of critical principles of pure reason” (Bxxix) and of a “practical extension of
pure reason.” (Bxxx). Beyond the mechanical world known by theoretical reason Kant
wants to be able to “think freedom”
(Bxxviii) and, in doing so, make room for faith and morality.[27] Will that room be finally filled? It is questionable whether
the Kantian revolution will really protect freedom and morality. This remains
to be seen. But now we turn our attention to the second reason why Kant makes
the moral principle independent from every object.
Kant’s
ethical theory derives in continuity with his theory of the object of knowledge[28]. We have shown how, in Kant’s epistemology,
any object of our mind is the union of the matter given to our sensibility and
the form operated by the subject. It is impossible for us to know an extrinsic
object which can serve as absolute guide for our will and actions. If the
limits of our knowledge of objects
move morality away from them, the reality
of every object constitutes another reason for this exclusion. The real,
empirical and sensory base of every known object is, then, the second reason
that makes the moral principle independent from them. Kant is clear in his
words: “an action done out of duty […] does not depend on the reality [Wirklichkeit] of the object of the
action,”[29] and later: “I cannot have respect
for inclination as such, whether it is mine or that of another.”[30]
But,
whatever do reality and inclination have against ethics? To understand Kant’s position,
we must remember that he is looking for a universal and necessary moral law. In
his opinion, any object of will, insofar as it is sensory, is self-interested.
So, the law of any ethics reliant on an object would be particular and
contingent. And therefore, it would not actually be a law[31]. Is Kantian analysis of action sound? It is
true that this object had to involve some pleasant effects. But, are those real
effects irreconcilable with a moral behaviour? Three questions can be raised
here. Firstly, it is possible that happiness and
morality converge at some point. Secondly, it seems that it is moral to do what is right
just for a real situation. If so, reality is involved
to some extent in morality. Finally, we find an analytical interpretation of
the Kantian formal law which holds that there are logical conditions intrinsic
to an act.[32] However, these conditions point to the reality of the person as
an absolute and definitive condition. Without this direction, the mere logical
law lacks practical force, and would leave situations of double effect
unresolved.[33]
We have
shown how Kant also opts for a moral order autonomous of any empirical
experience, for “an own order” that reason “makes for itself with complete
spontaneity [Spontaneität]” (A548/B576).[34] He also proposes in his Groundwork
of the Metaphysics of Morals a “Formula of Humanity” as an expression of
the categorical imperative of ethics (GMS 429). Does Kant himself finally find
that order? Does he succeed in justifying that the human person is to be
treated absolutely as an end? Unfortunately, this is not the moment to examine
Kant’s deduction of moral law and the result of his attempt. That would require
an internal study of his ethics.[35] For the time being, and on the basis of his assumptions,
we might suggest the kind of law towards which his system leans: a law without
content, confused with freedom and mysteriously grasped. Kant’s unlimited
formality, autonomy and rejection of all intellectual intuition hint at this.
According
to Kant, Hume had already glimpsed that there is something strange about
knowledge, something that escapes our attention. He had recognised the need for
some “origin a priori” inside our
concepts and laws about reality. But he “could not explain [them] at all” and
he had to reduce them to empirical experience (B127). After Hume’s failed
attempt to “go beyond the boundary of experience” (B127), Kant addresses the
issue afresh. As we have seen, he has recourse to the human subject, to the
transcendental subject. However, the outcome―an objectivity which is
subjective and totally independent of real content―leaves us bewildered.
Is there not an alternative path, some middle way?
At the end
of his “Deduction of the Categories,” Kant searches for what he calls a “middle
way” between empiricism and subjectivism. Through this new way we should find
the pure categories neither “drawn from experience” nor drawn from the subject
as “self-thought a priori first
principles” (B167). Reading this extract of Kant, we cannot help but feel a
sense of anticipation. However, perhaps in the end our impression will be that
of Plato, who realized that his “marvellous hopes” after nurturing some hope
for Anaxagoras’ cosmological rationalism “were dashed.” (1975, 98b and 99c).
After Kant
and the German idealists, Rosmini later suggests that there is actually a third
path to be discovered. In truth, the Italian philosopher follows the ancient
group of thinkers who, from Pythagoras and Plato, appealed to some ideal
element to explain reality. However, we could say that very few people have
trodden Rosmini’s idealist path, and those who that did so have left it without
clearing dense undergrowth.[36] It is about a new Copernican revolution in metaphysics different from
Kant’s: now it is neither the stars nor the spectator who beat the rhythm,
neither the real things nor the intellective subject, but an object that
connects both of them. Inasmuch as it is an object, it must be said that it is “derived
from experience”―but from another experience, which is not empirical but intellectual.
However strange that may sound nowadays. In effect, if Kant thinks that Locke “opened
the gates wide to enthusiasm [Schwärmerei]” (B128) by deriving pure
knowledge from empirical experience, Rosmini thinks that Kant has closed the
gates tight to any intellectual experience by dismissing it as enthusiasm.[37] Nevertheless, according to Rosmini, objectivity can arise only from
intellectual experience.
2.1. Objectivity from a Formal Object
In Kantian
theory, the subject is the protagonist of his own knowledge. This is correct in
a sense: the combination of sensory manifold in order to form concepts “can be
executed [verrichten] only by the
subject itself” (B130). However, is that sufficient to explain
conceptualization or ideation? Are we
able to turn that particular manifold, received through senses, into universal
and necessary? Rosmini does not think so: to form a universal and necessary
representation it is not enough that “the manifold of a given [empirical]
intuition is united” (B137). Simply
unifying some concrete sensory intuitions does not make this combination
universal. Something else is required, “something
more [quid di più] that is not in our
sensations and sensory perception” but “exceeds [eccede]” them.[38]
It will
likely be point out in this connection that when Kant speaks of the transcendental
subject and faculties, he is not referring to the physical brain, to the
empirical mechanism. He is referring to a spiritual principle, to the mind [Gemüt] (see B 33) and, specifically, to
self-consciousness. This can be considered
as universal and all-encompassing.”[39] Rosmini replies that a self-conscious mind cannot by
itself ideally connect multiple data.[40] Firstly, because self-consciousness is individual,
whereas ideas are universal. And secondly, because self-consciousness is a changeable
feeling that can increase or decrease —under the effect of dreams, anaesthetic or
brain damage, for example—whereas ideas are “rigid,” necessarily always the same. Therefore, if
the subject is incapable by itself of universality and necessity, what are the
grounds for saying that our mind produces “an absolutely universal rule”[41] and our will “immutable laws”[42]?
How does Rosmini
explain conceptual knowledge? He starts his system of thinking with
epistemology. Together with his modern contemporaries, Rosmini recognises that we
must first make sure of what we can know,
then we can progress to what is and
only then can we reach what must be.[43] His analysis of knowledge runs in parallel to
that of Kant. Regarding elements: empirical intuitions, concepts and
judgements; regarding faculties: sensibility, understanding and reason.[44] However, this parallelism does not hinder him
from moving beyond the subject and taking the step towards objectivity of
reality.
For
Rosmini, philosophy is first and foremost a science of observation. He thinks
that any possible investigation must firstly begin with the observed facts.
Only after this can we use reasoning to argue that the observed is true or is a
delusion. Criticism is always a second step.[45]
The first
fact we find by observation is our sensations. In his New Essay on the Origin of Ideas, Rosmini describes sensory
perception as a twofold experience. It is about a passion where a subject simultaneously
has experience of “itself” and of “that which acts on it.”[46] In effect, any sensation modifies our feeling
of self-consciousness and, moreover, lets us undergo something not controlled
by our will, the influence of an external agent. With this second experience, sensory
perception can be called “extrasubjective.”[47] In this sense, Rosmini can be considered a realist
thinker.
But the
great contribution of Rosmini’s epistemology resides in having called attention
to the first ideal object that forms all our ideas. This is the second
fundamental fact in human knowledge. Applying the principle of the “minimo
mezzo,”[48] he reduces to only one element the
explanation of that which is a priori
in knowledge. The philosopher calls it the “idea of being.” This first idea is
what lends to our individual and contingent sensations a universal and
necessary character. We found it by means of a radical abstraction that takes
all the qualities out of any of our particular ideas. In effect, just by
analysing language we discover that the first property of things is their
existence: before having any other property, things are. To disagree with this would be to “deny [rinnegare] language.”[49] Our observation also suggests us that this
idea which is absolutely universal and necessary cannot be reduced to sensations,
self-consciousness, Lockean reflection or Kantian spontaneity of mind.[50] Therefore, it must be considered innate and
directly grasped by the understanding, that is, intellectually intuited.[51] This idea can also be recognised from a historical
investigation of human traditions “starting from the most ancient times of
which we have memory.”[52] As I have indicated above, pre-critical Kant also
comes close with his concept of the “transcendental object.” Anyway, there will
always be those who will struggle to reduce that idea to the spheres where it
appears: subject, mind, culture, language,… and so to avoid giving an identity
in itself. Idealists try to show that this idea is the stepping stone to being
able to explain such expressions of humanity as knowledge, aesthetics, ethics
and religion. And, maybe for that reason, that idea also becomes the litmus
test for the credibility of the idealist currents themselves.[53]
Throughout
Rosmini’s work the “idea of being” is characterized with different terms that
highlight some of its distinguishing features. By calling it the “formal
object” of our mind,[54] the philosopher expresses that it is
intrinsically objective (extrinsic or transcendent to us), formal (empty of any
reality, unfit for sensation), formless (without shape or structure) but informing
of our understanding (constitutive of it); therefore, it is a true “object,”
absolutely different from the subject, although ideal. The idea of being is
called “ideal being” insofar as it is regarded as something with its own
identity. The metaphor of “light of our understanding” emphasises that it is
received and permits our mind to see, that is, to know.[55] With these terms and metaphors Rosmini describes the
first “other,” the true “stranger” with which every human person is confronted[56]. As Prini comments, Rosmini changes the terms of
the Kantian solution. The core of knowledge does not lie in a subject that
gives objective form, in the “subjectivity as a purely formal function or
modality itself.” It lies in an object that informs the subject:
a form informing the subject himself was needed, rather than just a formal subjectivity; in other words, the “forma essendi” of the subject was needed, rather than only its “forma operandi.”[57]
2.2. Relation between Law and Reality
Here we
will wonder what the connection is between moral law and reality. In Kant’s
ethics we saw that sensory reality is absolutely separated from law. In his
opinion, an action which pursues an object that gives us pleasure is
necessarily amoral or immoral. But is that really true? Does acting for a real
end always imply looking for a personal benefit?
There is
still a third original fact in the foundations of Rosmini’s theory. In his
epistemology, the author emphasises the observed relation or concordance
between sensory data and universal concepts. This relation translates into
Platonic participation or imitation[58], and also into the ambiguity of Aristotelian ousia
as essence and substance[59]. Such a relation, which can be traced in
earlier philosophical systems as far back as Parmenides, is also identified by
Kant (see Caimi 2007, p. XXXV). He himself will consider this relation in his
famous letter to Marcus Herz in 1772 as “the key to the whole secret of
metaphysics”, the key which will drive him towards is critical system. It is about
discovering “the ground of the relation [Beziehung] of that in us which
we call ‘representation [Vorstellung]’ to the object [Gegenstand].”
Kant makes it explicit that he understands “representations” not in the sensory
meaning but in the intellectual meaning, i.e. as pure concepts of the understanding
[reiner Verstandesbegriff]:
However, I silently passed over the further question of how a representation that refers [beziehen] to an object without being in any way affected by it can be possible. I had said: The sensory representations present things as they appear, the intellectual representations present them as they are. But by what means are these things given to us, if not by the way in which they affect us? And if such intellectual representations depend on our inner activity, whence comes the correspondence [Übereinstimmung] that they are supposed to have with such objects – the objects that are nevertheless not possibly produced thereby? […] In the case of relationships involving qualities – as to how my understanding may, completely a priori, form for itself concepts of things with which concepts the facts should necessarily [notwendig] agree [einstimmen]. […] This question, of how the faculty of the understanding achieves this agreement [Einstimmung] with the things themselves is still left in a state of obscurity (2009, pp. 313-314).
Thus, in
the Critique of Pure Reason, this referential relation constitutes the core
aspect to be justified in the “Deduction of the Categories”: “I therefore call
the explanation of the way in which concepts [Begriff] can relate [beziehen]
to objects [Objekt] a priori their transcendental deduction”
(A85/B 117).
We have
already seen that Rosmini distances himself from the Kantian proposal with his
own solution. First, it is an idealist solution, finding the foundation of the
universality of concepts in the idea of being. Secondly, it is an
objective-realist solution, demonstrating the independence of sensory effects
and concepts with respect to the subject. These two elements being different
from the subject, their relation will also be different. Hence Rosmini also
gives this relation an ontological character of its own, calling it “moral
being.” This will be one of the great systematic innovations of the philosopher.[60]
According
to Rosmini, any idea of our mind is the connection between the matter given by
the senses and the universal form intuited by the understanding. The essence of
things is nothing other than the content of those ideas. It is through that
combination that we grasp the essence and order of things. Therefore, the form
of being has an epistemological function inasmuch as it permits us to know real
things. But it has also a moral function insofar as, by giving us the essence
of things, it reveals their order in nature. Let us note that the idea of being
offers us knowledge and moral order precisely when it comes into contact with
reality. According to Rosmini, morals lie neither on that first idea of being
nor in the reality but in the meeting of them. At that meeting both the idea of
being and reality are “infected” by fusion of the one with the other and, thus,
become the idea of every order and perfection in nature (natural moral law) and
the agreeable reality respectively.[61]
From this
three-form ontology, an important feature of moral law emerges: its intrinsic dynamism.
Moral law shows us the objective order of things that we must respect and
promote, but we discover it progressively. We could say that the order of
reality is latent in our idea of being. Thus, each man must tread his own path
through history in search of that order: “[idea
of] being does not exhibit [manifesta]
its intrinsic order to intuition but implicitly [virtualmente]. So, since this order is disclosed, man must have
applied [idea of] being to every real thing and have practiced a lot of
abstractions. In this way, [idea of] being starts to show a part of that order
that was hidden in its bosom.”[62]
In
Rosminian perspective, Kant’s statement that “the moral worth of an action does
not depend upon the reality of the object of the action but merely upon the principle of volition”[63] must be revisited. On the one hand, we must
stress that before becoming an “effect of my proposed action”[64] the object is the end [termine] of my knowledge and volition; and it is through knowledge,
through cognition, that we find the moral order of things. On the other hand, reality
has its own role in morality: the cognition of that moral order occurs in the relation
with reality, when applying the a priori idea
of being to the sensory data.
Did Kant not
recognise that relationship between the idea and reality? We cannot say that
the German philosopher was uninformed about the idea of perfection itself.[65] However, he was perhaps unaware of the potentiality
of that idea in relation to reality and its order. In effect, he says that its
emptiness makes it “useless for
finding, in the immeasurable field of possible reality [möglicher Realität], the greatest sum appropriate to us.”[66] Or maybe it was precisely its
relationship with reality that made Kant disregard the idea of perfection―as
though he was looking for a purer idea.
But, what
kind of order and perfection is Rosmini speaking about? Firstly, there is an intrinsic
and pleasant order: every being in nature exists as a unity gathered from a
multiplicity of elements. This multiple unity shapes the essence of those
beings. This is a horizontal point of view. Secondly, there is a comparative order
that is discovered when one being is contrasted with the rest. From this
relative point of view, animal beings stand out by their subjective unity;
human beings stand out absolutely, because they only keep inside something
which is transcendent: the idea of being. This is, therefore, a vertical point
of view. Both perspectives about perfection are also contemplated
by Kant, but he swiftly removes them from morals by declaring that “we are not
concerned with that here.”[67]
3.1. Towards Oversight of Being
Rosmini
thinks that the transcendental way leads us to a similar end: subjectivism and decline
of law.[68] In his opinion some empirical prejudice has clouded Kant’s vision and, consequently,
ethical objectivity has begun to fade away.
To Kant it
appeared beyond doubt that there was no third way. According to him, everything
in our knowledge comes from the world of sense and from the subject. That is
the reason why things in themselves, that is, objective things, are considered
prohibited from the very beginning. The philosopher poses the question: “if the
objects with which our cognition has to do were things in themselves, then we would
not be able to have any a priori
concepts of them at all. For whence should we obtain them?” And he himself
answers: “if we take them from the [empirical] object […] then our concepts
would be merely empirical” and “if we take them from ourselves, then that which is merely in us cannot determine
the constitution of an object distinct from our representations” (A128). As we can see, Kant
declares as a matter of uncritical principle that there can be just two sources
of our knowledge: empirical intuition or subjective forms. Our intuition of
objects is solely empirical because, for Kant, intellectual intuition can only
be creative of the object and,
therefore, divine. Ascribing some
intuited or innate ideal objects to human being would mean giving in to a false
enthusiasm.[69] But could there not be some given
object in our own understanding?[70] And could there not be some true enthusiasm in the origin of
philosophy?[71]
Rosmini
criticises the use of this starting point by Kant and his followers from a methodological
angle:
‘What is in the human mind is subjective and receives its mode of being from mind’ […] this sophism, that belongs to transcendental idealists, springs from the gratuitous and material supposition that what is in mind or is learnt by an act of mind can be nothing other than a mind’s production or something that conforms to its limited mode of being.[72]
And he
invites them to first observe: “make first a provisional observation of what is
and is given in your spirit; make it without conceding any credibility [autorità] at first.”[73] Only after this can one judge and raise objections
about the reality or “appearance” of what has been observed.
3.2. The Essential Ambiguity of Kant’s Approach
Kant’s
transcendental voice appears ambiguous. As Norman Kemp Smith argues, this
approach “adopts a non-committal attitude.” (1923/2003, p. lii). It can
actually be read in an objectivist way. Some strong currents of interpretation
would point to this. In this way Heidegger: “transcendental philosophy denotes nothing but ontology […] As synthetic
unity of apperception, the self is the fundamental
ontological condition of all being.”[74] However, we must pay a price
for that objectivist interpretation, namely, some clarification or new reading
of Kant’s concepts. Firstly, the transcendental subject (pure reason and
freedom) should be understood simply as an ideal dimension or field separate
from us. Secondly, that ideal field should be somehow linked to the categorical
imperatives, so that moral law does not depend on the individual subject.
Despite
everything, we wonder if the objectivist interpretation would not mean taking a
very different way from the one taken by Kant, who tries to move away from
appealing to any external thing. And we wonder if it would be worthwhile.
Because what sense would it make to call that which is ideal and objective
“subject” or “freedom”? We can remember the Kantian thesis according to with it
is “we, or the nature of our mind [Gemüt]”
that introduces the order of nature (A125). What actually is that “we” and that
“nature of our mind”: an isolated individual, an instinctive common structure
or a universal object? Insofar as Kant speaks of “subject” and “appearances” it
is difficult to answer that question. Thus, Kant’s claim to an objective validity
for truth and for moral law is left somewhat “up in the air” and his system is
open to a subjectivist reading,[75] or even to a nihilist one.[76]
For many
Rosminian specialists, Kant’s transcendentalism opens the door to the
disappearance of a metaphysical foundation of morality. In this sense, Nocerino
declares, mentioning the neo-Kantian philosopher Juvalta:
What Juvalta called the self-axis [autoassia] of moral values, or, also, the self-axiomaticity [autoassiomaticità] of moral assessments, could not, as expected, resist the nihilistic criticism, which, in its many and diverse formulations, has played an important role in reducing the transcendental a priori to a metaphysical residue to be overcome, precisely because, as Rosmini had understood, it retained very little of the metaphysical.[77]
We could
say with Prini that Kant brings to a climax the “vigorous effort of modern
thought to resolve the antinomy” of knowledge and moral law, i.e., the antinomy
between the simultaneous immanence and transcendence in their object[78]. To this end, the philosopher proposes his “doctrine
of ‘transcendentality’ or a ‘priori formality’”, whose core could be summarized
in
a) that science or objective knowledge exceeds the limits of individual subjects, and is founded by a purely formal Subject, common to all, which is precisely “Consciousness in general” or the “transcendental I”
b) that the objectivity of knowledge expresses only the immanent agreement of the transcendental Subject with itself, since the laws or the objective relationships of experience are the same a priori structures or forms of that Subject.[79]
However, as
we have pointed out, after Kant’s proposal, that antinomy remained unsolved.
Rather, it “is renewed even more deeply in the interiority of the cognitive act”[80]. According to the Rosminian interpreters, the Italian
philosopher would have found a way to connect epistemology with ontology
through a deepening of Kantian doctrine. As we have seen, this way will be
dedicated to completing the “insufficient development of the concept of the ‘form’
of knowledge.” Thus, he would
represent a decisive deepening of the Kantian exigence of the “transcendental” and a link between modern philosophy and the most valid tradition of classical philosophy.[81]
3.3. Weakness of Natural Law
Rosmini
assures us that he has found that universal law that guides each of us towards
our own perfection. If we all succeeded in seeing and following it, we could
build that longed-for kingdom where everyone lives harmoniously and peacefully.
Nevertheless, it does not seem that this dream will easily come true. Rosmini
highlights the indeterminate and mediatory nature of law that keeps it out of
our conscious attention and demands of us an endeavour of contemplation.[82] Besides, its quality of being exterior to us
requires our will in order for it to be recognised.[83] On several occasions Kant also notices the elusiveness
of the epistemological and moral concerns.[84]
All in all, Kant and Rosmini represent two very different, if not opposite, methods of proceeding towards law. Kant opts for a critique of reason by initially suspecting observation. In this way, he changes course on the issue: he strives to prove that what is regarded as an abstract and ideal object, is in fact subjective.[85] Some Kant’s followers go a step further drawing the predictable conclusions: that which is ideal and objective does not exist, everything is just real.[86] Rosmini opts for observation before any judgment on reason. He considers that a critical pretension of the judgment of reason on itself is “presumptuous and absurd”; and he justifies it: “reason can criticise particular human cognitions, but it cannot criticise itself, because with itself it cannot disagree [dare torto].”[87]
The weakness
of natural law is such that it forces us to make a fundamental choice. Each of
us must answer the question on our own: “is there or is there not some
objective order outside of myself?” Let’s go back to the beginning of the
article: from the moment that he finds himself alone, Tarwater invites on stage
a “stranger” to whom he can talk. This stranger does not inspire us with any
confidence. We do not know who he is, or even if he is really someone other
than the protagonist himself; we are not told that his voice was that of a
stranger but only that it sounded like the voice of a stranger.[88] Kant also brings into play an unknown voice:
the “transcendental subject,” but we become suspicious of its true identity in
the same way as the story.
The uncle
of Tarwater had advised him to stay in the country instead of going to the city.
It surprises us that the stranger agrees with the uncle about the deprived
state in which Tarwater has remained. The uncle advises him:
And when I’m gone you’ll be better off in these woods by yourself with just as much light as that dwarf sun wants to let in than you would be in the city![89]
The stranger’s
voice expresses himself in very similar words. However, his outlook is
negative, the very opposite of uncle’s. He suggests that Tarwarter is alone,
and it is not worth living there. If fact, as can be read in the story, that
point of view will lead the boy to nihilism:
You are left by yourself in this empty place. Forever by yourself in the empty place with just as much light as that dwarf sun wants to let in. You do not mean a thing to a soul as far as I can see.[90]
We also
journey through this “empty place” and contemplate this light that our “dwarf
sun” wants to let in. This dim light forces us to sharpen the gaze of reasoning
and dialogue, only thus being able to illuminate our path. As we move forward,
we hope that light shines more brightly on us someday.
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