A Sick Imagination: Pathologies and Errors in Judgment
Serena Feloj·
University of Pavia, Italy
Abstract
In this paper I will develop an investigation of
mental illness in relation to errors of judgment. Even based on the
rational/irrational opposition, during the 18th century reason
is seen appropriating madness, and not only whenever it classifies mental
illnesses and develops special scientific knowledge about them. More
importantly, madness lurks in the very workings of modern reason. And of course,
it sneaks into the error of judgment, making all border between the two very
thin. A case can then be made for the complementarity between reason and
madness. In this sense, madness finds a place in Kant's project, from its very
foundations. Recognizing the finiteness of the human intellect and stating
accordingly the need for an exact survey of its limits means at the same time
recognizing the possibility of error in judgment and the danger that knowledge
may turn into madness. Provided one is to accept the methodological assumption
that there is a continuity between the Transcendental Dialectic and
the section of the Anthropology on judgment and mental
illness, a constellation of essential Kantian notions comes to the fore as
underpinning the overall transcendental project. A picture unfolds based on
which error can affect, at the very least, perception, imagination and
judgment. Errors of judgment, illusions, and madness are thus never far apart
in Kant's accounts on human faculties, their dialectical drifts, and the possibility
of psychopathy.
Keywords
madness, transcendental illusion, judgment,
dialectic, anthropology
Madness
is commonly seen as the opposite of reason, especially based on the notion of
mental illness first defined in the eighteenth century in the wake of the
development of modern psychiatry. Among the most famous promoters of this idea,
Michel Foucault, in his famous History of Madness points out how modern
society no longer communicates with the insane (Foucault 2009). Rational people,
who find their essence in enlightened reason, delegate doctors in the dialogue
with the mad person. As a result, a fracture ensues which generates a clear
opposition: on the one side, scientific knowledge, endowed with abstract
universality; and on the opposite side, the person of madness, who rambles off
and breaks with social order and conformity. Any exchange between madness and
reason is thus interrupted.
However,
Foucault's interesting and well-argued position, insisting on the absence since
modernity of a form of language below reason, is no longer the prevailing one
in the current debate and in the specialized studies on mental illness in the
eighteenth century. One could probably still maintain, with Foucault, that
madness is to be understood as "absence of work", and that from the
Renaissance onwards, madness is gradually confined to the realm of mental
illness. However, as I will attempt to show with regard to Kant's texts, in
particular the Anthropology, the transition from madness to mental illness
does not rule out many elements of contact between rational knowledge and the
definition of psychopathy. On the contrary, the border between reason and
absence of reason turns out to be much thinner than one might think. It is
within this framework that I would like to develop an investigation of mental
illness in relation to errors of judgment. In truth, a cue in this theoretical
direction can already be found in the History of Madness. Foucault, in fact,
acknowledges a link between madness and knowledge where too much knowledge or
useless knowledge leads to madness. Madness and science are intriguingly mixed
in the famous painting by Hyeronimus Bosch housed in
the Prado Museum in Madrid.
In the
painting one sees not only the madman who turns to science to have his illness
eradicated, but also the doctor who, perhaps madder than the madman, is engaged
in a completely useless surgery. Bosch's painting says a lot about madness: it
narrates the transition toward its medicalization; it also illustrates blind
and dogmatic scientific knowledge attempting
to stretch beyond its limits. This picture is not so much about the mad person
as about the errors of judgment of science, which believes to be
unconditionally true. All of these elements, though, emerge, rather than
through the language of reason, through the symbolism of the language of the
image, that is to say, the aesthetic language that only in part can be traced
back to clear and distinct knowledge.
Taking
our cue from Bosch's painting, it is then possible to formulate the question of
how knowledge on its way to become science, at least since Descartes, finds its
limit in madness. Even based on the rational/irrational opposition, it would be
hard to locate madness outside of reason. On the contrary, reason is seen
appropriating madness, and not only whenever it classifies mental illnesses and
develops special scientific knowledge about them. More importantly, madness
lurks in the very workings of modern reason, in Descartes' doubt, in Hume's skepticism, in the inventions of the imagination that
preoccupy Montaigne, in the creation of the aesthetic illusion that for Lessing
captivates spectators in the theatre (see Feloj-Giargia
2012). And of course, it sneaks into the error of judgment, making all border
between the two very thin. A case can then be made for the complementarity
between reason and madness. In this sense, madness finds a place in Kant's
project, from its very foundations. Recognizing the finiteness of the human
intellect and stating accordingly the need for an exact survey of its limits
means at the same time recognizing the possibility of error in judgment and the
danger that knowledge may turn into madness. It is not by chance, therefore,
that Foucault himself, in a text very distant from the History of Madness,
namely in an essay on Kant's Anthropology, is able to link the
dialectical errors discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason to some
paragraphs of the Anthropology.
- The
problem of illusion
Provided
one is to accept the methodological assumption that there is a continuity
between the Transcendental Dialectic and the section of the Anthropology
on judgment and mental illness, a constellation of essential Kantian notions
comes to the fore as underpinning the overall transcendental project. A picture
unfolds based on which error can affect, at the very least, perception,
imagination and judgment. Errors of judgment, illusions, and madness are thus
never far apart in Kant's accounts on human faculties, their dialectical
drifts, and the possibility of psychopathy.
Among
recent Kantian studies, Michelle Grier's book, Kant's Doctrine of
Transcendental Illusion, argues convincingly for the "inevitability
thesis," that is, it embraces the idea that illusion is a necessary
derivative of reason (Grier 2004). Needless to say, caution is due here and one
should also keep in mind what exactly transcendental illusion is for Kant. It
is true, however, that as soon as mental illness is investigated from the
viewpoint of anthropology, a close connection between potential errors
originating in human faculties, illusion and madness becomes clear.
Even more
clarity can be achieved by following, step by step, the path that leads from
the Transcendental Dialectic to the paragraphs on madness in the Anthropology.
In the Dialectic
we read:
Even the
wisest of men [...] will never be able to free himself from the illusion [Schein]
which unceasingly mocks and torments him. (KrV A339 |
B397)
Michelle
Grier recalls how Kant admits that metaphysical doctrines derive from an
inevitable and necessary illusion, and that criticism is developed as a remedy
for metaphysical errors. It is metaphysical illusion, namely the mistaken
belief that one can access the unconditional, that provides the foundations of
error. Grier's inevitability thesis finally links transcendental illusion to
systematic unity and the critical project as a whole.
Despite
not having been met with unanimous consensus, Grier's claim closely fits the
purposes of this essay and an interpretation of Kant's doctrine of transcendental
illusion as aiming both to limit the metaphysical claims of reason and to
define the necessary and regulative role of illusion. The metaphysical
temptation to go beyond the limits of experience, one should bear in mind, is “grounded in
the nature of human reason, and which gives rise to an illusion which cannot
be avoided” (KrV A341 | B399).
The
errors of judgment to which metaphysical illusion gives rise can of course be
classified into various types. One should remark, however, that the doctrine of
transcendental illusion is intended to provide a unified view of metaphysical
errors in terms of misapplication of faculties. Nevertheless, transcendental
illusion is not identified with error in judgment, as it is, if anything, its
foundation (see the opening sections of the Dialectic).
Whereas
errors of judgment are a misapplication of the faculties and especially of the
intellect (see KrV A296 | B353), the transcendental
illusion concerns the very essence of reason and ensues from a transcendental
use of rational ideas, maxims, and principles (KrV
A297 | B354).
Transcendental Illusion [Schein] […] does not cease even after it
has been detected and its invalidity clearly revealed by transcendental
criticism […] This is an illusion [Illusion] which can no more be
prevented than we can prevent the sea from appearing higher at the horizon than
at the shore; […] or to cite a still better example, than the astronomer can
prevent the moon from appearing larger at its rising, although he is not
deceived [betrogen] by this illusion. (KrV A297 | B354)
The transcendental dialectic will therefore content itself with exposing the
illusion [Schein] of transcendent judgments, and at the same time take
precautions that we be not deceived [betruge]
by it. (KrV A298 | B355)
Kant
discusses errors in judgment in numerous texts. However, the Transcendental
Analytics of the First Critique, which will be briefly summed up here, is
certainly the main reference on this topic. For Kant, there are primarily two
types of errors in judgment: those that arise from confusing sensible principles
and intellectual principles (the surrections) and
those that arise solely from the intellect. The error of surrection,
which leads to mistaking what pertains to the object for what belongs exclusively
to the subject is based on a metaphysical consideration confusing sensible
objects (phenomena) and intellectual objects (noumena). Surrection,
which involves phenomena collapsing on the things in themselves, is closely
related to transcendental illusion, even though the mode of their connection
remains essentially obscure (Grier 2004, p. 70). What is clear, however, is
that the error of judgment arises from the rational temptation to go beyond the
possible objects of experience and to place a metaphysical object as the
foundation of appearances.
In the Transcendental
Analytic, Kant mainly warns us about the risk the intellect runs as soon as
it makes material use of its pure and formal principles, and as soon as its
judgments do not correctly distinguish their objects, including objects that
are not given to us or that can never be given to us either. The Transcendental
Analytic is in this respect a statement on the limited nature of the
intellect, showing that its judgment cannot be generally and unrestrainedly
applied whenever formed, based on the pure intellect alone, synthetically and a
priori. In this respect, the use of the intellect has to be seen as dialectical
(KrV A63-64 | B88). And the task of Kant's Transcendental
Dialectic is precisely to expose the metaphysical sophistries and their
corresponding arguments.
- Errors
of judgment and Anthropology
Granted
that what has been accounted for so far is convincing, namely, that errors of
judgment are mainly about errors of surrection or
mere inventions on the part of the intellect and that these errors are rooted
in the transcendental illusion of being able to access the unconditioned, one
should now have a look at the paragraphs in the Anthropology. In the
section of the Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view on the
faculty of knowledge, Kant states that "correct understanding, practiced
judgment, and thorough reason constitute the entire range of the
intellectual cognitive faculty; especially if this faculty is also judged as
competence in promoting the practical, that is, competence in promoting
ends" (Anth, AA VII, p. 197).
Kant also
adds that "correct understanding is healthy understanding, provided that
it contains an appropriateness of concepts to the purpose of its use,"
judgment is the ability to think the particular underlying the general,
"it proceeds in accord with 'sound intellect and acts as a link between it
and reason," while "wisdom, as the idea of a practical use of
reason" is guaranteed by the three maxims, thinking for oneself, thinking
in the place of others, and always thinking in accord with oneself (Anth, AA VIII, p. 200). To these three "healthy"
uses of the faculties correspond their distortions.
As Kant
states in the opening of §52 of the Anthropology, "it is difficult
to bring a systematic division into what is essential and incurable
disorder". The section titled "On the weaknesses and illnesses of
the soul with respect to its cognitive faculty" aims to bring order
and classify the deviations of the three higher faculties of knowing, while
building on what has already been achieved in the pre-critical writings and based
on Kant's long and frequent engaging with the scientific knowledge of his
time.
First, a
distinction is introduced between deficiencies of the faculties and diseases of
the soul. The deficiencies of the faculties seem to correspond, though not exactly,
to some of the errors of the faculties that already appeared in the First
Critique. The deficiencies of the faculties are numerous and varied in their
empirical manifestations: dullness, stupidity, simplicity, distraction,
imbecility. These deficiencies, which are very common, can degenerate into
diseases, for example, the inability to distract oneself from a representation
of the imagination can lead to delirium.
Illnesses
are then divided into hypochondria and mania. Hypochondria is the illusion of being
sick when one is healthy, mania corresponds to madness and can be reduced to
three species: amentia, in which the representations do not correspond in any
way to the connections of experience and are communicated in an
incomprehensible way; dementia, in which the sick person is able to communicate
in a coherent way but the representations produced by the imagination are
mistaken for perceptions; insania, in which the
imagination gives the illusion of universality and analogies between
incompatible representations; vesania, in which the
sufferer "flies above the criteria of experience" and deludes himself
into understanding the incomprehensible.
These
types of unreasonableness are essentially distinguished from deficiencies in
that they are not simply a lack of reason, but rather a positive form:
"there is not merely disorder and deviation from the rule of the use of
reason, but also positive unreason, that is, another rule,
a totally different standpoint into which the soul is transferred, so to speak,
and from which it sees all objects differently. And from the Sensorio communi
that is required for the unity of life (of the animal), it finds itself transferred
to a faraway place (hence the word ‘derangement’) – just as a mountainous
landscape sketched from a bird's eye view prompts completely different judgment
about the region than when it is viewed from level ground" (Anth, AA VIII, p. 216).
Madness
is finally provided with a general definition as what corresponds to a use of
reason in which the relationship between representation and object is elevated
to universality, as happens in the errors of surrection
defined in the Transcendental Analytic. Kant states it clearly: unreason
"is, just like reason, a mere form into which objects can be fitted, and both
reason and unreason are therefore dependent on the universal" (Anth, AA VII, p. 218).
What distinguishes madness
from reason is thus only one general trait: the absence of communicability, or,
in transcendental terms, an illegitimate claim to universality.
The only universal characteristic of madness is the
loss of common sense (sensus
communis) and its replacement with logical private sense (sensus privatus);
for example, a human being in broad daylight sees a light burning on the table
which, however, another person standing nearby does not see, or hears a voice
that no one else hears (Anth, AA VII, p. 219).
In this
regard, it is interesting to remark that precisely within the framework of the Lectures
on Anthropology the relationship between genius and madness, later further
developed by the Romantics, is first articulated. In the Anthropology Friedländer one reads, in fact, that imagination can go
beyond perception and can become "erratic" making us see what is not
there. For example, through the action of passion, the imagination can push us
to see a beautiful forest as terrifying because of our state of mind (V-Anth, AA XXV, 514). Imagination is therefore pushed to go
beyond the limits of experience and in this sense it can give rise to madness
as a tendency to assume images as real objects. The imagination becomes
fantasizing. Fantasizing, however, is also the capacity of the genius who is
able to transform images and poetic inventions into real objects. In this
sense, their fantasizing is even twofold since the genius creates both concepts
(ideas) and sensations (objects): “This perfect concept of a thing is the idea,
but if one fabricates an image in keeping with this idea, then this is an
ideal” (V-Anth, AA XXV, p. 529). The genius,
according to the definition provided in the Critique of Judgment, is in
fact the one who is able to create an aesthetic idea and give it expression
through the creation of an archetype, or an ideal. The creation of the work of
art therefore seems to be a kind of legitimate fantasizing that allows the
imagination to move beyond the limits of experience and to confront the
supersensible. What, however, distinguishes the activity of genius is precisely
its communicative capacity: it is not a private fantasy, but an expressive
activity of public character that is recognized by the community of reference
(KU, AA V, p. 313-17).
The
communicability of the activity of genius then allows us to highlight even more
how the public or private character constitutes a discrimen between the healthy
and the sick intellect. And, even more, it allows us to emphasize how the
tendency to illusion is typical of the very development of reason.
The
general definition of insanity and its distinction from reason taking place in
common sense suggest a connection not only with errors of judgment but also
with the inevitability of the transcendental illusion of reason. It is
therefore possible to read the paragraphs of the Anthropology devoted to
madness in the light of the Introduction to the Transcendental Dialectic
in the First Critique.
3.
Madness and transcendental illusion
In
defining dialectics in general as the "logic of illusion," Kant sets
out to expose the illusions that reason incurs in its transcendental use,
concluding that "hence truth, as much as error, and thus also illusion as
leading to the latter, are to be found only in judgments, i.e., only in the relation
of the object to our understanding" (KrV A 293 |
B 350).
The
illusion of reason therefore refers to "principles that actually incite us
to tear down all those boundary posts and to lay claim to a wholly new territory,
that recognizes no demarcations anywhere" (KrV,
A 296 | B 352). In its empirical translation, this tendency echoes Kant's
anthropological insight, according to which unreason consists precisely in
crossing the line: insane is the person who crosses the line of sensibility.
Nevertheless,
the transcendental illusion, which does not disappear even when revealed,
"cannot be avoided at all," in the same way that madness in the Anthropology,
though a "degeneration of humanity," is "entirely natural"
and must be duly taken into account in an empirical inquiry of reason. The
"natural and unavoidable" dialectic "irremediably attaches to
human reason, so that even after we have exposed the mirage it will still not
cease to lead our reason on with false hopes, continually propelling it into
momentary aberrations that always need to be removed" (KrV
A 298 | B 354).
In the Transcendental
Dialectic, what is at stake is "a natural and unavoidable illusion,
which itself rests on subjective principles and passes them off as
objective" (KrV A 298 | B 354). Reason, in its
transcendent use, "seeks the universal condition of its judgment" (KrV A 302 | B 358), that is, it seeks to demonstrate that
the judgment is universally valid, without the verification of experience, nor
of the concept of the intellect. The judgment bridled in the transcendental
illusion mixes up objective and subjective, becoming entangled in surrection. The task of the Transcendental Dialectics
will be to demonstrate whether the propositions that extend to the
unconditional have objective and universal validity.
In madness, understood as
unreason, judgment mixes up objective and subjective, applies a rule in the
juxtaposition of representation and object, and wants to enforce it as
universal. The most important means of correcting our thoughts is through the
comparison with others (according to the second maxim of judgment):
For it is a subjectively necessary touchstone of
the correctness of our judgments generally, and consequently also of the soundness
of our understanding, that we also restrain our understanding by the understanding
of others, instead of isolating ourselves with our own understanding
and judging publicly with our private representations, so to speak (Anth, AA VII, p. 219).
And again, in the Anthropology
Kant goes on to define madness:
For we are
thereby robbed, not of the only, but still of the greatest and most useful
means of correcting our own thoughts, which happens due to the fact that we
advance them in public in order to see whether they also agree with the understanding
of others; for otherwise something merely subjective (for instance, habit or
inclination) would easily be taken for something objective. This is precisely
what the illusion consists in that
is said to deceive us, or rather by means of which we are misled to deceive
ourselves in the application of a rule.
He who pays no attention at all to this touchstone,
but gets it into his head to recognize private sense as already valid apart
from or even in opposition to common sense, is abandoned to a play of thoughts
in which he sees, acts, and judges, not in a common world, but rather in his
own world (as in dreaming). – Sometimes, however, it is merely a matter of
terminology, through which an otherwise clear-thinking mind wishes to
communicate his external perceptions to others that do not agree with the
principle of common sense, and he sticks to his own sense. (Anth, AA VII, p. 219)
As Kant recalls
quoting Lawrence Sterne, “Let everyone ride his own hobbyhorse up and
down the streets of the city, as long as he does not
force you to sit behind him” (Anth,
AA VII, p. 204). What is at
stake here is the same mechanism that governs transcendental illusion, a term
that is explicitly mentioned. Of course, the task of anthropology is quite
different from that of transcendental dialectics: it is not a matter of
delimiting the use of reason but of describing the empirical effects of its
misuse. There is no need to go so far as to claim that unreason and the transcendental
use of reason are one and the same. One would risk to have to conclude that
anyone who falls into transcendental illusion is to be considered insane.
What I wish to
argue, however, even if only briefly, is that the Transcendental Doctrine of
Illusion provides the transcendental foundation to the anthropological
account on the deficiencies in the faculties of knowing and mental illness.
This amounts to saying that Kant's interest in madness as unreason does not
only match the scientific trends of his time but is also key to an empirical
account on the distortions of reason.
This
interpretive idea has at least two consequences. First, it establishes a strong
link between the Anthropology and the first Critique, providing
systematic support to Kant's empirical observations. What is at stake then is not only a matter of making order in the
classifications of madness, but also of explaining unreason as a misuse of
reason in juxtaposing representation and object in judgment, mixing up
objective and subjective, claiming universality for what is private.
This approach
also has another, decidedly more general consequence. If one accepts
transcendental illusion as inevitable, and if one agrees with the idea that the
doctrine of illusion provides the foundation to errors of judgment and even
insanity, then Kant seems to be decisively eschewing the opposition between
rational and irrational. Illusion, error, and even insanity are included in the
very definition of the use of reason. However, this does not mean, as Foucault
claimed, that the Enlightenment advocates a submission of madness to reason
according to a process of assimilation to mental illness.
Rather, it seems to me that the Enlightenment encompasses even the
darkest degenerations of reason. The Enlightenment reveals, perhaps more than
contemporary thought, an ability to make peace with the fact that healthy and
sick do not belong to two distinct worlds.
Madness, error, and the ill use of faculties are instead theoretically
unavoidable for reason and are necessarily to be posited as empirical
possibility. As Kant writes in the Lectures on Anthropology: “Mad children do not exist, rather madness arises with reason” (V-Anth, AA XXV, p.
528). The condition of possibility and ground of error is the transcendental
illusion of reason, which is natural and inevitable. In this perspective, in
which Kant fits well, to lose one's wits is not to lose one's reason. Madness
rather means losing the sense that we have in common with others, losing the
ability to communicate one's own judgment to others, locking oneself in one's
own way and going against the Enlightenment idea of the universality of reason.
What emerges
then is not an abstract reason devoid of obscurity, but rather a universal
reason shared by all, even empirically.
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