ES3220
Last updated 11.03.11.
We have encountered some of the ways in which the search for universal and eternal truth is not only seen as outdated but central to forms of domination and control.
Rorty argued that the philosophical foundations of higher education have resulted in forms of imperialism that closes down the possibility of an education that teaches for hope (and thus an open future). The search for Truth, he argued is associated with a closed future which reveals a need for us to accept ourselves, not as rational beings who are sharers of an intrinsic human nature whose ultimate aim is to discoverer Truth, but as ever re-creating, re-describing individuals who see others as ‘fellow sufferers’ (Rorty, 1993).
For Lyotard and Barnett, the scepticism and incredulity with which all knowledge claims are now met has not only brought many changes to higher education but also to ideas about rationality. External forces now pull the university in different directions and higher education increasingly falls further into performativity with ‘excellence’ becoming its currency of exchange. Thus knowledge and the forms of thinking we employ (including the way that thought understands itself) have, in many ways, become increasingly ‘instrumental’.
For many recent thinkers, the traditional foundations of the university are problematic and for some they are completely outdated leading some to argue that the University is nearing a state of ruin (Readings, 1996).
Is it enough to deconstruct the foundations of the Academy?
Does the scepticism and incredulity of postmodern offer us a way forward?
In the translator’s introduction of Fichte’s The Vocation of Man, Peter Preuss says,
‘It doesn’t really matter whether we see the history of modern philosophy as a series of failures in face of skepticism or as progress spurred on by skepticism, for the progress is only the ingenuity of the failures anyway.’ (Preuss, cited in Fichte, 1987:ix).
As we work through the final weeks of the module (and the final weeks of your degree) we must also ask ourselves how the ‘end’ of higher education can, at the same time, be a new ‘beginning’ for the graduate.
To do this some difficult questions must be asked, questions about what it is to be human, about our relationships with others, about our experiences of those things; about the things we can know and those we can’t and so on. In other words, we need to address and explore questions that, whilst never being able to resolve, know or own the answers as such, might enable us to gain clarification and greater understanding of ourselves, the world and our place within it and, relative to this module in particular, to gain some ideas about what is educative about higher education, and indeed about the most fundamental aspects of our own lives (Rose, 1999).
If the aim of higher education is to provide for the performative and bureaucratic society/system which hosts it then perhaps theory has great difficulty justifying itself and its educational significance. But if the aim of higher education includes the enquiry into the most profound questions and entails thinking about the meaning of life, about our relationships with each other, about social, moral, ethical, philosophical and political issues then perhaps it is to social theory and philosophy that we must still look (albeit a little differently now perhaps).
What is Reason?
Whilst the notion of reason has always been important in philosophical thought, during the Enlightenment era, reason gained a somewhat different significance. The “humanist” thinkers who had emerged in the 14th and 15th Centuries brought an emphasis to humanity as being worthy of thought in its own right (because human beings have the ability to reason) - although at that time such thinking was still mixed with a darker side (witchcraft and so on). The legacy of the Renaissance period was a powerful one for Europe.
The Enlightenment movement is known for its emphasis on rational thought and for bringing into question the traditions and assumptions that had dominated society previously, particularly religion and the authority of the Church. There was, certainly in Kant’s thinking, a particular emphasis on the development of rationality as freedom.
What is Reason? We take reasoning to mean thinking clearly and logically, to think through different sides of an argument perhaps, to work something out, to deliberate and to reach a decision...
Is this not then the universal significance of reason? And is this universal significance its strength or its weakness?
Problems?
Reason is far from straightforward. Theodore Adorno and Max Horkheimer warn us about the dangers of reason when they say, ‘Reason contributes only the idea of systematic unity, the formal elements of fixed conceptual coherence.’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1997:82). This is, or can be, problematic because whilst creating the idea or appearance of systematic unity some things may well be hidden or suppressed.
Adorno and Horkheimer are suspicious of Enlightenment thought and say, ‘For the Enlightenment, whatever does not conform to the rule of computation and utility is suspect.’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1997:6).
Adorno warns of reason,
‘Its principles are the principals of self-preservation. Immaturity then is the inability to survive. The burgher, in the successive forms of slave owner, free entrepreneur, and administrator, is the logical subject of the Enlightenment.’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1997:83).
Adorno and Horkheimer are particularly critical of the ways in which reason has ‘progressed’.
In the most general sense of progressive thought, the Enlightenment has always aimed at liberating men from fear and establishing their sovereignty. Yet the fully enlightened earth radiates disaster triumph. The program of Enlightenment was the disenchantment of the world; the dissolution of myths and the substitution of knowledge for fancy. (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1997:3).
But is it also not reason (as the foundation of free speech) that offers the enslaved (the dominated voice) not only the right to speak but also the right to be heard?
Diderot (1733-1784)
For Diderot it was in man’s ability to reason that the possibility of equality lies. He argued
‘No man has by nature been granted the right to command others. Liberty is a gift from heaven, and every member of the same species has the right to enjoy it as soon as he is in possession of reason’ (Diderot, 1992:6).
And, for Diderot, it was the suppression of reason by other forces, such as the church, that prevented such freedom and equality being realised.
For Diderot, in many ways religion was a barrier to the exercising of one’s own reason and to the freedom to think for one’s self. What is more, it was that which appeared to be working for the protection of the people that was in fact their domination and oppression.
‘People who have frequently been oppressed are accustomed to look to the priests as their protectors, for they intercede on their behalf to God,...’ (Diderot, 1992:83).
The Enlightenment challenged this, it challenged the idea that man is not free to think for himself.
The Enlightenment was a time for man to take responsibility for himself through exercising his own reason and it was reason that would free him from the chains of ignorance and superstition by which he were ruled.
Instead of being reliant on the traditions of society to teach knowledge, reason came to be understood as the faculty through and by which human beings not only make sense of the world, but through which truth can be sought and found. It is reason that enables conscious thought to emerge, it enables communication, societies to thrive and so on… it is also reason which enables us to understand the laws of nature and of human existence free from the traditions, beliefs and superstitions of society.
Thus, Diderot claimed, ‘Reason is the enemy of faith,’ (Diderot, 1992:83). We’ll explore the relation between reason and faith in more detail in week 8.
Kant (1724 – 1804)
One theorist that you have all come across previously is Immanuel Kant. For Kant it is only through having the courage to use our own reason without direction from another that we can be free to think for ourselves (moral autonomy).
Remember from ES1202 that an objective principle is one where ‘…the maxim of your (personal) will could always hold at the same time as a principle establishing universal law’ (Kant, 1956:30).
Here, then, we must look beyond the particular. For Kant the possibility of always doing what is objectively ‘right’ comes through the education of, and the right use of, reason. We must always act not only for ourselves but also in the universal interest. To choose to act in the universal interest - or for humanity - is, for Kant, the basis for the equality of all people. Thus we should ‘act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of another, always at the same time as an end, and never as a means’ (Kant, 1990:46).
For Kant, a person should always choose to obey objective principles independently of anyone else’s view. Moral autonomy means making choices that are independent and free. This means it should always be our decision to do the right thing, not because of the fear of punishment or because we are told to. Acting through fear of punishment or because we are told to (heteronomy) can never be the free thinking individual who acts freely for himself in a way that respects and preserves the freedom of others.
In What is Enlightenment Kant tells us
‘Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! “Have courage to use your own reason!” - that is the motto of the enlightenment.’ (Kant, 1990:83)
Rationality then is central to Kant’s enlightenment (education) and thus the freedom to learn to think for oneself and to be able to exercise one’s reason freely is essential in the university (Kant, 1979:23).
Kant’s University
Kant defends the right to autonomy in the university and argues that there is a distinction to be made between the government’s right to influence and the necessity for the autonomy of the faculty which uses “its own judgement about what it teaches.” (Kant, 1979:27). This he says is essential for the progress of science, understanding and truth.
The higher faculties (which are influenced by government) are the means the government has to ‘secure the strongest and most lasting influence on the people’ (Kant, 1979:27) the government can sanction teaching and so on (without teaching itself). But it is the lower faculties, where decisions and judgements are left to the rational judgement of the scholars – and it is this that offers the possibility of progress. For this, such a faculty must exist autonomously and independently of government command for only then, says Kant, ‘reason is authorized to speak out publicly.’ (Kant, 1979:27-29).
The rational voice which speaks out publicly is not necessarily ‘the True’ but it is through having the courage to exercise our reason that freedom can be gained from domination by others.
It is absolutely essential that the learned community at the university also contain a faculty that is independent of the government’s command with regard to its teaching; one that, having no commands to give, is free to evaluate everything, and concerns itself with the interests of the sciences, that is, with truth: one in which reason is authorized to speak out publicly. For without a faculty of this kind, the truth would not come to light (and this would be to the government’s own detriment); but reason is by its nature free and admits of no command to hold something as true (no imperative “Believe!” but only a free “I believe”). (Kant, 1979:27-29).
But are our rational thoughts ever as free as we assume them to be?
‘Even before its occurrence, the perception which serves to confirm the public judgment is adjusted by that judgment’ (Adorno and Horkheimer, 1997: 85).
In one sense, the emphasis on reason implies that objective judgements, without emotion or prejudice are possible and, as we have already said, this is both a strength and weakness of reason.
But we must think carefully about this, can we ever make objective judgements? Or do all of our judgements always ‘begin’ from what Rose calls ‘the political ‘I’? Whose ‘natural’ rational knowledge of things is not what it appears or assumes itself to be. (Rose, 1995) – (we’ll come back to this in week 10).
Whilst there is much scepticism about the notion of universal reason, for Kant, the universal is not as far away from us as we might think.
‘Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and awe, the oftener and more steadily we reflect on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not merely conjecture them and seek them as though obscured in darkness or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon: I see them before me, and I associate them directly with the consciousness of my own existence. The former begins at the place I occupy in the external world of sense, and it broadens the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude of worlds beyond worlds and systems of systems and into the limitless times of their periodic motion, their beginning and their continuance. The latter begins at my invisible self, my personality, and exhibits me in a world which has true infinity but which is comprehensible only to the understanding… The former view of a countless multitude of the planet (a mere speck in the universe) the matter from which it came, the matter which is for a little time provided with vital force, we know not how. The latter, on the contrary, infinitely raises my worth as that of an intelligence by my personality, in which the moral law reveals a life independent of all animality and even of the whole world of sense…’ (Kant, 1956:166).
References
Adorno, T. and Horkheimer, M. (1997) Dialectic of Enlightenment, London: Verso
Dierot, D. (1992) Political Writings, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Fichte, J. (1987) The Vocation of Man, Indianapolis: Hackett
Kant, I. (1956) Critique of Practical Reason, New York: Macmillan
Kant, I. (1990) Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, London: Macmillan
Kant, I. (1979) The conflict of the Faculties, New York: Abaris
Rose, G. (1997) Mourning Becomes the Law, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
