OF THE QUESTION OF THE INTERDEPENDENCE
OF SCIENCE AND MORALITY
p The fact that science is the destroyer of fictive omniscience (that scientific knowledge simultaneously is the pitiless awareness of the limits of cognitive authenticities), and that a condition for preserving this intellectual honesty is the moral independence of those to whom science addresses itself—was profoundly understood in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Having no intention of tackling the task of writing an historical-philosophical work on Kant, we do consider it possible to attempt conscious improvization, the general direction of which we would like to clarify from the outset.
p It has often been mentioned in Marxist philosophical literature that the teachings of Kant are interesting in terms of their internal contradictions. Many of the latter were consistently and honestly recognized by Kant himself. But in the summary formulations of his works, the issues were sometimes presented in such a way that it appeared as if the proposed and tautly drawn alternatives of human thought concerned not Kant himself but an alien, objectively chosen subject. In the attempt to free the Kantian analysis of this imposed “ aloofness”, we have resorted to a certain dramatization of Kantian concepts. The use of situational methods toward this end does not, we believe, do violence to Kantian thought, for the latter itself inclines toward situational and historical clarifications and illustrations.
p Kant often called his teachings "authentic enlightenment”. Its accent (separating it from "naive enlightenment”) was placed on the effort not only to free man from the power of traditional superstitions, but also to purge him of superstitious reliance on the strength of theoretical reason, of faith in the ability of reason to resolve any problem emerging in the context of human life. Above all Kant demanded that "theoretical reason" (reason as it is realized in science) itself gave no stimulus to the emergence of this reliance and faith.
p The Kantian teaching on the limits of theoretical reason (as distinct from the superficially sceptical agnosticism of David Hume) was directed not against the investigative boldness of the scientist but against his unfounded pretensions to prophecy and to govern individuals’ personal decisions. The question of the limits of true knowledge for Kant was not only a methodological but also an ethical problem (the problem of 96 “discipline of the reason" to restrain science and the scientific community from a scientistic conceit).
p “That natural dispositions and talents...” wrote Kant in his The Critique of Pure Reason, "require in many respects the corrective influence of discipline, everyone will readily grant. But it may well appear strange, that reason, whose proper duty it is to prescribe rules of discipline to all the other powers of the mind, should itself require this corrective. It has, in fact, hitherto escaped this humiliation, only because, in presence of its magnificent pretensions and high position, no one could readily suspect it to be capable of substituting fancies for conceptions, and words for things.” [96•1
p Kant considered as a typical form of such a game the attempt to “scientifically” construct various types of general regulative principles which could minister the human being up his fundamental life-choices. Kant opposed the basic form of scientism in his time, the scientific foundation of the idea of the existence of God and the idea of the immortality of the soul (to which not only theologians devoted their energies). The Critique of Pure Reason exposed the fact that these substantiations did not meet the requirements for theoretical verification, that honestly pursued, they led to a higher manifestation of indeterminateness—to antinomies and metaphysical alternatives.
p Kant (and this was not totally unfounded) began to be accused of standing in opposition to the spiritual guidance of mankind. It was argued that his critical philosophy (and this was totally unfounded) leaves the individual face to face with unresolvable doubts and in so doing brings him to the border of despair. A few years later Kant in The Critique of Practical Reason demonstrated that the developed personality stands in need only of knowledge, but not of knowledge’s protection, for in terms of “goal” and “meaning” the personality already possesses an internal reference point—"me moral law within us”.
p Providing a foundation for individual moral independence, Kant decisively rejected the vulgar postulate that human behaviour is unavoidably based on “expedience” (“ practicality”). In the works of Kant the notion of “practicality” has a distinctive meaning differing strongly from that’ usually imparted to the words “practice” and “practicalness”. By 97 “practical activity" Kant understood not "productive activity" marked by an orientation towards a given expedient result, but simply an action, that is to say, any event stemming from human decision and intent. This action is a manifestation of human activity which is not necessarily connected with a certain “positive” material completion (such as the erection of a building, the derivation of a new formula, the writing of a book). "Practical activity" in the Kantian sense can also consist in the rejection of practical activity in the ordinary sense (in the refusal to build a house of a certain type or the refusal to write a book with a prescribed content). The individual acts when he declines to carry out any given activity, when he maintains a distance. Examples of such self-disengagement sometimes merit no less praise than do models of the most inspired creativity and most zealous labour. Individuals earn praise not only for the products of their hands and mind, but also for the determination with which they refused to participate in an unworthy undertaking, refused even when this undertaking promised to be entertaining and tempted with a wealth of creative tasks.
p Many things, Kant loved to repeat, are capable of arousing surprise and admiration, but authentic respect is only evoked by the individual whose sense of what is proper remains constant, in other words, he for whom there exists the impossible: who does not undertake that which must not be done and chooses himself for that which must not be left undone.
p Denial and personal fortitude may also be present in practical activity in the usual sense of the phrase. Creative activity often includes them in the form of self-limitation for the good of a consciously chosen calling. However the final material product of creation frequently conceals from us the fact that it was the result of a human action, of a personal choice signifying the rejection of an alternative and internal deprivation or external prohibition. What meets the eye in this product is the play of capabilities, effort, endurance, etc. The facts surrounding the rejection of an action demonstrate more clearly the structure of the action than does the simple action itself.
p Kant from the start defined the uniqueness of the second Critique as the fact that in it "practical activity" is categorically and uncompromizingly contrasted to prudently-calculating activity (that which is oriented toward success, happiness, survival, empirical expediency, etc.) and illustrated precisely by examples of rejected unworthy causes. Correspondingly the intellectual capability upon which "pure practical activity" 98 relies turns out to be radically different from those intellectual tools employed by the "pragmatic worker”. If the latter relies upon "theoretical reason" as a means for calculating expediency or success, then the subject of "practical activity" proceeds from indications of reason, demonstrating the impossibility of specific decisions and the events stemming from them.
p From this follows the important conclusion that structure of a truly human deed is independent of the cognitive faculty of the individual. The individual would remain true to his obligation (to the consciousness of the unconditional impossibility of carrying out—or not—specific actions) even if he could know nothing in general about the objective long-range prospects bearing upon his life situation.
p Beyond the domain of indeterminateness and multiple alternatives to which The Critique of Pure Reason led, unfolded the domain of clarity and simplicity—the self-sufficient world of personal conviction. "Critical philosophy" demanded the recognition of the limitations of human knowledge (it is limited to scientifically verified knowledge), in order to make room for a purely moral orientation, for trust in unconditional moral axioms.
p Kant himself, however, formulated the basic content of his philosophy somewhat differently. "I must, therefore, abolish knowledge,” he wrote, "to make room for belief.” [98•1
p In our opinion, this oft-repeated aphorism from the second foreword to The Critique of Pure Reason is an example of laconic but inadequate philosophical self-accounting. In the first place Kant had in reality no intent of "eliminating knowledge”. In the second place, ne would have been much more faithful to the objective content of his own teachings if he had spoken not about faith but rather of moral conviction, of the recognition of responsibility and the necessity of moral decision.
Why did not Kant do just this? May we call accidental the circumstance that in the summary formulation of the essence of "critical philosophy" which has acquired the significance of a signature of Kantianism, the notion of faith replaced that of morality?
Notes
[96•1] The Critique of Pure Reason (Great Books of the Western World, 42). Encyclopaedia hritannica. 1952, p. 211.
[98•1] The Critique of Pure Reason, p. 10.