From the Schematism to the Typic. How Can We Be moral?
Lara Scaglia·
University of Warsaw, Poland
"Wir lehren nicht blos durch Worte;
wir lehren auch weit eindringlicher durch unser
Beispiel."
(Fichte, 4 Vorl., 1974)
En memoria de Jakub
Kloc-Konkołowicz, mi maestro.
Abstract
Kant’s chapter “On the Typic of the Pure Practical
Power of Judgement” is one of the most obscure passages of the Critique of
Practical Reason and it has often been regarded as a mere appendix.
However, it deals with a fundamental question, namely, how can the pure
practical law be applied to particular cases. In this paper, I would like to
make an original contribution towards a better understanding of this chapter by
comparing it to the Schematism chapter on the basis of their analogical relation
and suggesting how the reference to a sensus communis could help in
solving the (unsolved) aim of the Typic chapter.
Key words
Typic, analogy, schema, common sense
1. How to be moral? The uncompleted task of the
Typic chapter.
In an essay from 1784, Idea for a universal history
with a cosmopolitan aim,
Kant alludes to the distinction between being cultivated, moralised and moral:
We are cultivated in a
high degree by art and science. We are civilized, perhaps to the point
of being overburdened, by all sorts of social decorum and propriety. But very
much is still lacking before we can be held to be already moralized. For
the idea of morality still belongs to culture; but the use of this idea which
comes down only to a resemblance of morals in love of honor and in external
propriety constitutes only being civilized. As long, however, as states apply
all their powers to their vain and violent aims of expansion and thus
ceaselessly constrain the slow endeavor of the inner formation of their citizens'
mode of thought, also withdrawing with this aim all support from it, nothing of
this kind is to be expected, because it would require a long inner labor of
every commonwealth for the education of its citizens. But everything good that
is not grafted onto a morally good disposition, is nothing but mere semblance
and glittering misery. In this condition humankind will remain until, in the
way I have said, it will labor its way out of the chaotic condition of the
present relations between states. (G. i. weltbürg. Abs, 8:
26)
Kant’s words can be interpreted in a mild sense, as if we
are not “perfectly” moral but just half-way there (James 2002, p.341) or in a
more radical sense, which puts blame on the lack of morality affecting
humankind. But can humans be moral at all? If the answer is affirmative, then how?
This is the place to explain the paradox of method in
a Critique of Practical Reason, namely, that the concept of good and evil
must not be determined before the moral law (for which, as it would seem, this
concept would have to be made the basis) but only (as was done here) after it
and by means of it. (KpV, 5:62-63)
Yet, the question is: how can
the will be determined only through the pure practical use of judgement (KpV,
5:69)? This is an important and distinctive problem since it is one thing to
assert that there is a pure universal practical law (KpV, 5:43), and it is quite
another to apply it, thus recognising which of the particular maxims can be
made universal in accordance with the pure laws.
The problem of the Typic, then, is very similar to that of the Schematism
chapter[1], insofar as they both deal with a subsumption of
particular cases under universal rules. However, in the chapter on the Typic
the subsumption is more complicated because: “With pure practical judgement […]
the law is a law of reason, not of understanding, and no intuition can be adequate
to it. We can never be sure, in any experience, whether the full terms of the
moral law have been observed” (Beck 1960, p. 156). To deliver the subsumption,
Kant relies on a method of testing our maxims involving questions such as: what
kind of a world would this be if everybody acted the way I wanted them to?
Would it be possible to act this way in the order of nature[2] laid down by law? As he puts it:
The rule of judgement under
laws of pure practical reason is this: ask yourself whether, if the action you
propose were to take place by a law of the nature of which you were yourself a
part, you could indeed regard it as possible through your will. (KpV, 5:69)
This solution has been regarded as problematic, because
it might lead to mistakes or undetermined results. I believe that many
difficulties could have been solved (or at least limited) if Kant had indicated
a mediating function to help in delivering the mental experiment and detail how
maxims can be made universal in accordance with the pure laws. To find this function,
I will use the analogy to the Schematism and look for procedures analogous to
transcendental time-determinations, able to “translate” particular maxims[3]
in general and eventually – universal maxims.
Firstly, however, I will present
an overview of the use and meaning of analogy in philosophy and of the
similarities between the Schematism and the Typic to justify the legitimacy of
interpreting this case study as an analogy.
2. Analogy
Analogies are one of the fundamental kinds of reasoning.
The history of science and philosophy provides innumerable examples of their
fruitful use as a kind of ampliative reasoning [4].
However, a cautious evaluation of analogy – which was used already in ancient
Greek thought, especially in the Aristotelian Logic – is found in many
philosophical works: for instance, in his Novum Organum Bacon states
that analogies are useful, although they should be used with discretion (Bacon
2000, p.180), whilst Newton stresses their value in the improvement of knowledge
(Newton 1999, p. 795). Later on, Locke considers analogy as a way to drive
considerations on missing, unknown elements that have effects in nature (Locke
1976, pp. 412-413)[5].
Kant, who is in debt to
Aristotle for most of his general logic, refers in his Lectures on Logic
to analogy as being a procedure, similar to induction, delivered by the power
of judgement[6]:
Induction infers, then, from
the particular to the universal (a particulari ad universale) according
to the principle of universalization: What belongs to many things of a genus
belongs to the remaining ones too. Analogy infers from particular to total
similarity of two things, according to the principle of specification […] One
in many, hence in all: Induction; many in one (which are also in others), hence
also what remains in the same thing: Analogy. (Log. 9:133)
Apart from that, in the Lectures on Metaphysics
analogy is regarded as a sort of mathematical proportion[7] or a
way to infer unknown properties of a known term from known properties of another
term that shares properties with the known term (L1,
28:287).
Analogical arguments are structured as following[8]:
(1) S is similar to T in
certain (known) respects.
(2) S has some further feature
Q.
(3) Therefore, T also has the
feature Q or some feature Q* similar to Q.
(1) and (2) are premises. (3) is the conclusion of the
argument. In this ampliative argument – the conclusion of which is not
guaranteed to follow with necessity[9] from
the premises – we begin by indicating the most significant similarities
(and sometimes differences) between S and T.
I will now identify the main
similarities and some differences between the Typic and the Schematism
chapters, and then construct the analogy between them.
3. Similarities between the Schematism and the
Typic chapters
The analysis of these very short and dense chapters –
which are part the Analytic, because only after the presentation of the draft
of categories (of pure understanding in the first Critique and of
freedom in the second Critique) was it legitimate to investigate how
they can be applicated – the following similarities can be found: a)
absurdity, b) homogeneity and subsumption, c) the role of the power of
judgement, d) obscurity and the emergence of psychological topics.
a) Absurdity
Both chapters are regarded as dealing with an impossible
or absurd problem. In the Schematism chapter, understanding and sensibility are
so heterogeneous that, considered as such, they cannot belong to a common kind.
However, the Transcendental Deduction demonstrates that the empirical use of
the categories is not only possible, but it is also the only use which can
provide categories with a meaning. But then, the question is: how? How
are categories applicable to intuitions (KrV A138/B177)? Given the necessity of
the application of categories to the intuitions and the impossibility of an
immediate subsumption, what is needed is a mediating function, something
homogeneous[10]
to both faculties:
Now it is clear that there
must be a third thing, which must stand in homogeneity with the category on the
one hand and on the appearance on the other, and makes possible the application
of the former to the latter. This mediating representation must be pure
(without anything empirical) and yet intellectual on the one hand and sensible
on the other. Such a representation is the transcendental schema. (KrV
A138/B177)
This absurdity of the distinction between two
heterogeneous functions that must nevertheless cooperate is addressed in the
Typic chapter, too, where Kant states that the judgment of pure practical
reason is subject to the very same difficulties as pure theoretical reason,
insofar as a non-empirical rule (a law of freedom) has to be applied to the
empirical level:
all cases of possible actions
that occur can be only empirical, that is, belong to experience and nature;
hence, it seems absurd to want to find in the sensible world a case which,
though as such it stands only under the law of nature, yet admits of the
application to it of a law of freedom and to which there could be applied the
supersensible idea of the morally good, which is to be exhibited in it in concreto.
(KpV, 5:67)
b) Homogeneity and subsumption
As anticipated, the problem that the Typic and the
Schematism chapters aim to solve seems absurd. Both chapters deal with a mismatch
between elements that are not homogeneous and must be subsumed one under the
other. But what is meant by homogeneity? ‘Homogeneity’ (Homogeneität) is
used by Kant to refer to things sharing qualitative properties (KrV A657/B685;
14: 366; 14:.410). For instance, ‘table’ belongs to the kind of the empirical
concepts, while ‘quadrangle’ to that of geometrical ones: they do not belong to
the same class, but rather are inhomogeneous and therefore cannot be subsumed
one under the other.
Unfortunately, in Kant’s texts
the terms implied in the subsumption are very ambiguous: some passages of the
Schematism chapter suggest that it refers to the relation between (empirical)
intuitions and categories (A137/B176), while others address appearances and categories
(A138/B177) or objects and concepts (A137/B176). Within the debate concerning
the nature of the heterogeneity of the terms presented in the Schematism
chapter, Kemp Smith and Curtius deny that schemata deal with subsumption of a particular
case under class concepts, instead stating that schemata concern the relation
between form and content. As Curtius stresses, Kant’s example[11]
of the homogeneity between the roundness thought in the empirical concept of a
plate and that what is intuited in the geometrical concept of circle is
completely misleading[12].
The two are not connected in terms of the relation between class and member:
taking Kant’s passage literally, it suggests that the homogeneity regards not a
class concept and a member but rather what is intuited in the pure
concept of a circle and what is thought in the empirical intuition of a plate,
i.e. the roundness. The procedure of subsumption[13]
described here concerns, therefore, elements that share a relation to a common
characteristic term Merkmal,
which permits to relate them, thus delivering a sort of translation/mediation
from one level to another.
In the Typic chapter, the
subsumption encounters even more difficulties than in the theoretical use of
the judgement because, as Kant puts it: “the morally good as an object is
something supersensible, so that nothing corresponding to it can be found in
any sensible intuition” (KpV, 5:68). In a similar way to the schematism, some
unclear passages in the text had sparked a large debate concerning the identification
of the terms of the inhomogeneity. The discrepancy could be interpreted as
concerning:
1) natural causality and
freedom (Beck 1960 p.156-7; Pieper 2011 p.109)
2) form and matter (Johnson
1985, p.270; Marty 1997, p.248; Dietrichson 1969, p. 167ff)
3) subjective and objective
ends (Johnsson 1985, p. 270)[14]
4) characteristics of human
beings belonging to two worlds. (Westra 2018)
This last interpretation is in
my view more comprehensive and helpful in understanding the practical problem
of the chapter. Namely, human beings – insofar as they are characterised by
both empirical and non-sensible dimensions – are affected by a sort of epistemic
finitude, according to which the need to exhibit thoughts through sensible
intuition and the inability to exhibit them in any other way go together. These
are two sides of the same coin, which constitutes a specific limitation of the
human mind interpretable as representational finitude (Westra 2018,
p.38). As Kant puts it:
Now, a human being really finds in himself a capacity
by which he distinguishes himself from all other things, even from himself
insofar as he is affected by objects, and that is reason. This, as pure
self-activity, is raised even above the understanding by this: that though
the latter is also self-activity and does not, like sense, contain merely
representations that arise when we are affected by things (and are thus
passive), yet it can produce from its activity under rules and thereby
to unite them in one consciousness, without which use of sensibility it would
think nothing at all: but reason on the contrary, shows in what we call “Ideas”
a spontaneity so pure that it thereby goes far beyond anything that sensibility
can ever afford it. (GMS, 4: 452)
c) The power of judgement
In both the Schematism and the Typic chapters, the power
of judgement plays a fundamental role. The former belongs to the Transcendental
Doctrine of the Power of Judgement (KrV A137/B156f.); since categories are
valid and necessary but lack content, they are still insufficient to justify
judgements that are objective (i.e. determinately true) or false criteria to
evaluate actual cases of truth or falsity. To achieve this purpose, a
Transcendental Doctrine of Judgement is required as part of a Transcendental
Logic[15].
As Kant stresses, one of the peculiarities of Transcendental Logic[16]
lies in its capacity to indicate a priori the cases to which the rules (pure
concepts) must be applied. In order to apply a rule while avoiding the
reference to another rule (and then a regressus ad infinitum), Kant
introduces a special talent (KrV A133/B172), which allows the application of
the rules: “[…] the power of judgement is a special talent that cannot be
taught but only practiced. Thus is also what is specific to so-called mother-wit,
the lack of which cannot be made good by any school” (KrV A133/B172).
Judgement[17] is
involved in the Typic chapter in a similar way: “The rule of judgment under
laws of pure practical reason is this: ask yourself whether, if the action you propose
were to take place by a law of the nature of which you were yourself a part,
you could indeed regard it as possible through your will” (KpV, 5: 69). The
moral Law and its object (the highest good) are still not sufficient for the
actual moral appraisal (Silber 1966, p. 198):
[laws a priori] still require
a power of judgment sharpened by experience, partly to distinguish in what
cases they are applicable and partly to provide them with access to the will of
the human being and efficacy for his fulfilment of them; for the human being is
affected by so many inclinations that, though capable of the idea of a
practical pure reason, he is not so easily able to make it effective in
concreto in the conduct of his life. (GMS, 4: 389)
Here, like in the Schematism
chapter, the faculty of judgement cannot make use of the determinate rules ad
infinitum (if a rule to use the judgement is needed, then another one is
necessary to apply the rule, etc.) nor merely try to reply examples[18].
Therefore, Kant does not introduce rules or commandments, but rather a
procedure the judgement must follow to determine the will in a sort of a moral
schematism (Silber 1966, p. 200)[19].
d) Obscurity and the emergence
of psychological topics
Another point of similarity is provided by the general
obscurity affecting the procedures to which the Schematism and the Typic
chapters refer. More specifically, in the Schematism chapter, the concrete
process of time determination cannot be unravelled, and Kant himself admits
that it is something difficult to understand and mysterious (KrV
A141–142/B180–181). He limits himself to focusing on the transcendental
determination of the domain of the possible experience, thus providing a
criterion for discriminating among possible objects of experience and other
kinds of objects (ideas, objects of thoughts with no actual realisation in
experience). Kant, then, leaves the empirical/psychological question aside,
because it is not relevant nor necessary to fulfil coherently the aims of the
first Critique. In this way, he leaves it to psychologists to determine
the specific topic of their investigation[20].
Similarly, obscurity affects
the Typic chapter insofar as ultimately nobody can be sure[21] that
his will is determined only by the pure laws: even if we can apply the test to
universalise our maxims and determine our will according to the pure moral law,
there is always a degree of self-obscurity concerning our profoundest motives.
Kant sticks to this point repeatedly in his works, referring to the opacity and
unfathomability affecting the depths of the human heart (GMS, 4: 398-9; KpV,
5:35; Rel, 6: 446-7). This resembles the obscurity of the Schematism chapter,
opening one path towards a psychological investigation concerning
self-knowledge and the analysis of our deepest motives.
3. Distinction between the Schematism and the Typic
chapters
Having highlighted the main similarities, we can focus on
the fundamental difference between the chapters – and the solution to their
shared problem – which regards the use of and relation between the faculties in
the first and the second critique. I shall not delve into a detailed comparison
between the two, but just point out that while categories of the understanding
have real significance only in their empirical use – i.e. sensibility and understanding
are both necessarily implied in the process of objective cognition (KrV,
B146f.) – categories of freedom do not need intuitions to be significant (KpV,
5:65-66;). Namely, they concern exclusively the determination of the will and
not the natural conditions of the practical faculties: practical reason, which
is the grounds of the categories of freedom, is pure. From this derives the
impossibility to schematise the moral Law:
To a natural law, as a law to
which objects of sensible intuition as such are subject, there must correspond
a schema, that is, a universal procedure of the imagination (by which it
presents a priori to the senses the pure concept of the understanding which the
law determines). But no intuition can be put under the law of freedom (as that
of a causality not sensibly conditioned) – and hence under the concept of the
unconditioned good as well – and hence no schema on behalf of its application in
concreto. Thus the moral law has no cognitive faculty other than the
understanding (not the imagination) by means of which it can be applied to
objects of nature, and what the understanding can put under an idea of reason
is not a schema of sensibility but a law, such a law, however, as can be
presented in concreto in objects of the senses and hence a law of
nature, though only as to its form; this law is what the understanding can put
under an idea of reason on behalf of judgment, and we can, accordingly, call it
the type of the moral law. (KpV, 5:69)
A schema, then, cannot be useful[22] in the
practical moral appraisal because: 1) it restricts an intelligible rule (the
category) to sensibility, while the suprasensible nature of the law of freedom
cannot be denaturalised; 2) it belongs to the theoretical use of the power of
judgement, which deals with action in nature under the law of causality and not
of freedom. In the Typic chapter, namely, Kant draws explicitly a sharp
contrast between theoretical and practical judgment and the respective
interests regarding actions:
Subsumption of an action
possible to me in the sensible world under a pure practical law does not
concern the possibility of the action as an event in the sensible world;
for, it belongs to the theoretical use of reason to appraise that possibility
in accordance with the law of causality, a pure concept of the understanding
for which reason has a schema in sensible intuition. Physical causality,
or the condition under which it takes place, belongs among the concepts of
nature, whose schema transcendental imagination sketches. Here, however, we
have to do not with the schema of a case in accordance with laws but with the
schema of a law itself (if the world ‘schema’ is appropriate here), since the determination
of the will (not the action with reference to its result) through the law
alone without any other determining ground connects the concept of causality to
conditions quite other than those which constitute natural connection. (KpV,
5:68-69).
The mediating role of
imagination in the schematism is replaced here by the understanding, which can
present the law of freedom as a law of nature (according to its form), thus
producing the “mental experiment” of which the Typic consists.
4. An open problem
There have been many criticisms concerning the validity and
the meaning of the mediations developed through the Schematism and the Typic
chapters. I will not delve into the details here, but rather present some
open-ended debate points and then use the analogy with the Schematism chapter
to elucidate the characteristics that maxims must have to be universalizable.
According to the lessons of
the Typic chapter, in order to apply pure practical rules correctly, we should
ask ourselves: should I, as the creator of a world of ends, wish that the
maxims I am considering be laws themselves? However, this test has been
regarded as problematic, insofar as it might lead to mistaken or undetermined
results: Hegel, for instance, alludes to the uselessness of the test, insofar
as it delivers no results or ones that are mistaken (NL: 127–8 [II: 465–6]; LHP
III: 460 [XX: 368] NL: 127–8 [II: 465–6]; LHP III: 460 [XX: 368]).
Moreover, another difficulty
concerns the conditions to develop the test: is a test delivered by means of a
particular presupposed moral sense (“insight”) or arguments of the same kind as
the epistemic judgements? More specifically, in his discussion with Martin
Heidegger at Davos, Cassirer regards the Typic (that he contrasts with the
Schematism) as an example of an approach to ethics through “insights” that are
not “bits of knowledge”. As he puts it:
The extraordinary significance
of the Schematism cannot be overestimated. […] In the ethical, however, he
forbids the Schematism. There he says: our concepts of freedom, and so on, are
insights (not as bits of knowledge) that no longer permit schematizing. There
is a schematism of theoretical knowledge but not of practical reason, there is
in any event something else, namely, what Kant calls the Typic of Practical
Reason. And he makes a distinction between Schematism and Typic. (Heidegger
1973, pp. 276-7)
Cassirer, then, seems to suggest a non-cognitivist
interpretation according to which the main distinction between Schematism and
Typic is given by the assumption that moral statements do not concern beliefs to
which truth and falsity apply, but rather rest on specific “insights”, and that
one could wonder what is the faculty or sense responsible for accessing these
insights.
Moreover, Kant's theory of
Typic can be considered in light of the debate between realists and
constructivists[23].
While the former state that the moral Law is independent from reason (Ameriks
2003, Guyer 2000, Schönecker 2013, Stern 2012, Wood 1999), the latter emphasise
that moral obligations are the result of a process of human cognitive activity
(Rawls 1980, Hill 1989, Korsgaard 1996, O’Neill 1989, Reath 1994). The chapter
on the Typic can provide useful arguments to enlighten this debate: as Kant
states, we have to test the universality of our maxims and this test could be
interpreted as a construction. Particular moral obligations, too, might be
interpreted as the result of a kind of construction, but this does not
necessarily mean that the moral Law itself is constructed (nor the contrary).
That is to say, the question concerning realism or constructivism regards the
maxims, not the moral Law (Kleingeld & Willaschek 2019).
Assuming that the moral Law is
self-legislative and does not depend on something more fundamental, how can we
determine the characteristics of possible moral judgements and deliver the test described in the Typic
chapter?
5. In search of a mediating function
Both the Schematism and the Typic deal with a tension
concerning inhomogeneous functions that must be mediated.
In the first Critique,
the mediation works through the reference to time, which shares similarities
with both categories and appearances (KrV, B177-178/A138-139)[24].
In the case of time, categories become a sort of general time determinations
constituting the grounds for principles, i.e. synthetic a priori judgements.
Schemata, then, can be regarded as being the most general characteristics (Merkmalen)
that objective judgements must have to be possible in reference to experience,
which is unified through pure laws justified universally through the transcendental
deduction.
In the Typic chapter, by contrast,
the mediation works not through a “rule of time-determination” (KrV,
B184/A145), but rather through a rule of the judgement to change our
perspective in the moral appraisal:
The rule of judgment under laws
of pure practical reason is this: ask yourself whether, if the action you
propose were to take place by a law of the nature of which you were yourself a
part, you could indeed regard it as possible through your will. Everyone does,
in fact, appraise actions as morally good or evil by this rule. Thus one says:
if everyone permitted himself to deceive when he believed it to be to
his advantage, or considered weary of it, or looked with complete indifference
on the need of others, and if you belonged to such an order of things, would
you be in it with the assent of your will? […] Such a law is, nevertheless, a type
for the appraisal of maxims in accordance with moral principles. If the maxim
of the action is not so constituted that it can stand the test as to the form
of a law of nature in general, then it is morally impossible. (KpV, 5: 69-70)
In contrast to the schemata, Kant does not provide a
table of the types, but limits himself to the claim that we should use the
universal form of the law of nature to deliver the test, thus imaging or representing
a world in which our maxims hold the validity of principles of nature. Then,
the function assumed by time in the Schematism chapter is assumed by the form
of the law of nature that we should use to test our maxims. However, this is
not sufficient to explain how this mediation actually works, i.e. how we can
change the perspective. To do that, there must be a faculty through which we
can elevate ourselves from a particular, egocentric perspective to a more general
one.
In both the Schematism and the
Typic chapters, the faculty of the judgement plays a fundamental function: in
decision making, as well as in cognition, we use judgements to relate a subject
and attributes or particular and universal perspectives. To elaborate the test
in the case of moral appraisal, we elevate ourselves to the position of a lawgiver:
while in the Schematism chapter pure laws are, so to say, temporalised (and
thus realised), in order to apply moral laws according to the Typic chapter, we
have to elevate ourselves to a noumenal dimension, i.e. assuming the position
of a lawgiver. But how is that possible?
To answer this question, I
will refer to the third Critique, where Kant refers to a particular
sense
through which we can try to assume the lawgiver’s position.
6. Sensus communis as a mediating function
As mentioned above, many critics regard Kant’s formal
ethics as insufficient to provide hints about elaborating judgments that can
guide action. Onora O’Neill (O’Neill 1989) comments
on this criticism by referring to Kant’s discussion of a sensus communis
(KU, 5: 293ff.; L, 9: 57, 63):
[…] the sensus communis
consists of three principles or maxims that constrain understandings, indeed
practices of communication, that can be shared in any possible community. These
maxims do not presuppose that standards or principles of communication are
either antecedently established or actually shared: They articulate the
self-discipline of thinking that will be required if there is to be communication
among a plurality whose members are not antecedently coordinated, who form a
merely possible community. (O’Neill 1989, p.25)
That is exactly what is needed to develop further what
Kant left undetermined in the Typic: namely the characteristics that maxims
must have to be morally possible. To adopt these Merkmalen means to make
use of the three “maxims of common human understanding” (KpV, 5:294)[25]
and change the perspective from a subjective-egocentric one, to a
general-ethical one, thus making proper use of one’s own reason:
To make use of one's own reason
means nothing more than to ask oneself, with regard to everything that is to be
assumed, whether he finds it practicable to make the ground of the assumption
or the rule which follows from the assumption, a universal principle of the use
of his reason. (Was heißt: s. i. D. or.?, 8:146n)
I will not delve here into the details of the relation
between common sense (Gemeinsinn) and common human understanding but
just stress that they might be confused with each other insofar as they are
both addressed to a sensus communis and are presupposed as grounds for
communication[26].
However, while we judge by feeling using the former[27], we
always judge by concepts using the latter – although obscurely (KU, 5:238).
More specifically, the first
is defined as being the feeling caused by the disposition of our cognitive
powers when we are given objects bringing the imagination to a free play (KU,
5:218; 238), whilst the second is the healthy understanding, presupposed in every
human being, no matter how cultivated he is. As Kant puts it:
By ‘‘sensus communis,’’
however, must be understood the idea of a communal sense, i.e., a faculty for
judging that in its reflection takes account (a priori) of everyone else’s way of
representing in thought, in order as it were to hold its judgment up to human
reason as a whole and thereby avoid the illusion which, from subjective private
conditions that could easily be held to be objective, would have a detrimental
influence on the judgment. […] Now perhaps this operation
of reflection seems much too artificial to be attributed to the faculty that we
call the common sense; but it only appears thus if we express it in abstract
formulas; in itself, nothing is more natural than to abstract from charm and
emotion if one is seeking a judgment that is to serve as a universal rule. (KU,
5:293-294)
Actually, the ambiguity of the expression sensus
communis is helpful in underling its mediating function in analogy with the
Schematism chapter, in which transcendental time determinations hold characteristics
making them homogeneous to both sensibility and understanding. As I interpret
the chapter, however, the schema is improperly regarded as a third thing,
whereas it would better be described as a procedure by which inhomogeneous elements
cooperate in grounding experience (Scaglia 2020). Just as transcendental time
determinations are sensible and universal, the common sense is double-sided:
both a disposition of faculties and the feeling accompanying this disposition.
Given the sensible and intellectual
nature of the sensus communis, its maxims can help in elucidating how
it is possible to deliver the test exposed in the Typic chapter and change the
perspective from a mere subjective one to a general one. More specifically, the
first maxim concerns thinking for oneself:
The first is the maxim of a
reason that is never passive. The tendency toward the latter, hence
toward heteronomy of reason, is called prejudice; and the greatest
prejudice of all is that of representing reason as if it were not subject to
the rules of nature on which the understanding grounds it by means of its own
essential law: i.e., superstition. Liberation from superstition is
called enlightenment, since, although this designation is also applied
to liberation from prejudices in general, it is superstition above all (in
sensu eminenti) that deserves to be called a prejudice, since the blindness
to which superstition leads, which indeed it even demands as an obligation, is
what makes most evident the need to be led by others, hence the condition of a
passive reason. (KU, 5:294)
This maxim remarks not only that we are and have to be
autonomous, i.e. can determine our will independently from empirical motives,
but also that our process of judging cannot but start from our individual position.
It is we – with our particular motives, impulses and stories (our rooted
rationality) – that are on stage. Those who do not reason for themselves elude
their status as thinking subjects, thus rejecting the very nature of rationality,
namely autonomy. It is not surprising that this maxim (called the “never
passive reason” KU, 5:294) is the core of the motto of enlightenment (W. i.
Aufklär.?, 8:35)
The second maxim addresses the
capacity to think from the standpoint of everyone else:
As far as the second maxim of the way of thinking is
concerned, we are accustomed to calling someone limited (narrow-minded, in contrast to broad-minded)
whose talents do not suffice for any great employment (especially if it is
intensive). But the issue here is not the faculty of cognition, but the way
of thinking needed to make a purposive use of it, which, however small the
scope and degree of a person’s natural endowment may be, nevertheless reveals a
man of a broad-minded way of thinking if he sets himself apart from the
subjective private conditions of the judgment, within which so many others are
as if bracketed, and reflects on his own judgment from a universal
standpoint (which he can only determine by putting himself into the
standpoint of others). (KU, 5:295)
Through such a maxim “of enlarged thought” (KU, 5:294),
the subject reflects on his own judgement by shifting from a private position
to the standpoint of others (KU, 5:295): reasoning, then, does not depend on
external standards but is the result of an autonomous process delivered by (and
possible for) the individuum.
Finally, the third maxim
regards consistency:
The third maxim, namely that of the consistent way of
thinking, is the most difficult to achieve, and can only by achieved through
the combination of the first two and after frequent observance of them has made
them automatic. One can say that the first of these maxims is that maxim of the
understanding, the second that of the power of judgment, the third that of
reason. (KU, 5: 295)
This maxim is more difficult to achieve than it might
appear: each change[28]
in the standpoint brings with itself the possibility of new inconsistencies.
That is why Kant states that it is the hardest maxim to attain and that doing
so is only possible in union with the other two maxims (KU, 5:295).
A perfect application of the
maxims should be regarded as a possible – although never-ending – task: the
more accurate and broader our capacity to enlarge our perspective and be
coherent and consistent, the more adequate our maxims will be to the moral Law.
In this way, we hope to moralise the natural world assuming the realm of ends
as a task. Teleology plays a fundamental role here: as is well known, assuming
purposes is subjectively necessary for Kant to interpret nature as well as
history (KU, 5:397-98; G. i. weltbürg. Abs, 8:18). Since, however, history
consists of external deeds, inner moral progress cannot be perceived nor demonstrated,
but only hoped (Rel, 6:76). In turn, inner morality set as a goal of human
history can be trained and inspired through legal and external means, such as institutions,
culture and education. From this perspective, empirical forms of historical progress
are necessary preparatory steps for moral progress, which is to be regarded as
a long-term goal provided by history to moral agents (Louden 2000, p.152). Therefore,
suprasensible noumenal dimension should be regarded as prior or more
fundamental to the natural one, but not in a metaphysical-mystical sense: there
is no pre-established harmony, but rather it is our duty to harmonise the world[29]
according to the Law.
Some conclusions
Recently, Westra and Kisner have presented their
interpretations of the Typic chapter: while the first tends to interpret the
type of the law as a third thing (Westra 2016, p. 61), the second rejects the
tripartite view (in which there are two elements that need to be mediated through
a middle term) and regards the mediation in light of an analogy between the law
of nature and the moral law. Both laws are formally the same (as laws, they
share the same objective validity), but are differentiated insofar as the law
of nature is not merely formal – it also has a
sensible representation and a schema of sensible intuition. Therefore, on the
basis of its analogical relation to the law of nature, the moral Law can be
applied by the practical judgement representing it through the reference to the
law of nature:
Consequently, we can represent
the moral law, which is per se non-sensible and non-representational, only
through reference to the law of nature. So in the process of representing the
moral law the practical judgment borrows via the analogy from the law of nature
its material part which is missing in the moral law. (Kinser 2019, p. 150)
I am sympathetic to this
interpretation, because it helps in understanding the procedure behind the
moral appraisal to which the Typic alludes. The maxims of the common
understanding provide constraints on the moral appraisal, indicating how we can
change our standpoint: to put ourselves in the positions of lawgivers, namely,
means to abandon our private standpoint and formulate maxims that are sharable
by a plurality of rational subjects as if it were a law of nature. The sensus
communis, then, provides characteristics that every judgement must have to
be morally possible: if a maxim is incoherent, non-sharable and derived from a
passive use of reason, then it cannot be properly moral.
One could wonder whether these constraints are exclusive
to the moral judgement. Since, as already stated, they are recurrent in Kant’s
works as criteria to avoid error (Log, 9:57; Anth, 7:228-229), they should be
regarded as identifying the correct use of reason in general. More
specifically, the three maxims give normative orientation to all kinds of bottom-up
rational exercises: to corroborate the legitimacy of judgements, their
coherency, shareability and derivation from an active use of reason must be
verified. Nevertheless, I am convinced that it is not by chance that in the
third Critique Kant ascribes these maxims to the common sense (and not,
for instance, to pure reason or the understanding): the question on moral
appraisal, namely, concerns subjects “situated” in a context that has particular
features – not relevant for scientific or aesthetic assessment – which are
salient in the case of practical judgements. Therefore, the reference to a sensus
communis as a capacity to abstract from subjective charm and look for a
judgment that is to serve as a universal rule (KU, 5:294) can be regarded as a point
of departure to identify what Barbara Herman regards as procedural rules of
moral salience (RMS) that help in identifying the aspect of a situation that
raises moral questions and find their source of legitimation in the respect for
persons as ends-in-themselves (Herman 1985, p.428-429). To treat others as
ends-in-themselves implies considering humanity in all its features: not only in
its rationality, but also its emotional, historical and social dimensions. The
self-discipline promoted by the maxims of the common human understanding as local
and context-sensitive, however, does not threaten the formality and
universality of Kant’s ethics and leaves the way open for a manifold of
different contents: the moral appraisal does not rest on a dictate[30], rather it is reason putting
formal constraints on itself and thus preserving the authority and autonomy of
reason. Kant’s ethics is an ethics of autonomy. One's duty is not defined by some
set of legalistic or substantive duties (Silber 1966, p. 221), but rather consists
in exercising and realising one’s own rational and autonomous capacities in
the natural, emotional and social dimensions (see Herman 1996).
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