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PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2.2

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PHILOSOPHICAL ANTHROPOLOGY 2.2
Figures:

  • Cassirer (Enlightenment intellectual progress)
  • Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz (system philosophy)
  • Galileo, Newton, Descartes etc. (mathemathization of the universe)
  • Kant

Aims:

  • explore the Enlightenment
  • see the ideas Burckhardt and Nietzsche were responding to
  • explore the universal man further
  • see where the civilized bourgeoise came from

PERIODS, FIGURES, EVENTS:

The overlapping ‘periods’/‘movements’:

  • Modernity (1492/1517-1700) / epoch →
    [Ancient Times/Medieval Age/Renaissance/Modernity]
  • Enlightenment (1650-1815) / politico-cultural-scientific movement
  • Humanism(Renaissance); Neohumanism (19th Century German School Reformers) / purely cultural movement

Figures:

  • Early Enlightenment (‘Modern’ philosophers) (1650-1730):
    Descartes, Hobbes, Spinoza, Kepler, Galilei, Newton, Locke, Leibniz
  • High Enlightenment (French Revolution) (1780-1815):
    Voltaire, Rousseau, Hume, Diderot, Thomas Jefferson
  • Late Enlightenment (realization/aftermath of the French Revolution):
    Kant, Napoleon, Fichte, Hegel

What is the Enlightenment?

  • reasonable independence (Mittelstrass)
  • autonomy of reason
  • thinking complies only with the authorithy of REASON itself (Kant’s metaphysical laws and a priori groundings, for example)
  • [!!!] REASON AS A SELF-GOVERNING ENTITY
  • implies methodology, revival of logical thinking, collective discussion, we must critically engage with axioms and premises
  • implies no single person’s authority, but the authority of collective reason, methodological foundations, the process of rationality is now INTERPERSONAL and TRANSHISTORICAL
  • in the sciences: Kepler, Descartes, Galilei, Newton (collective striving towards understanding the universe, instead of fragmented scientific work)
  • destruction of dogma, theological power, tradition-dependence
  • the democratization of knowledge
  • Kant: ‘DARE TO KNOW’
  • one of its main goals is ‘intellectual progress’: acquiring more knowledge (quantity), but also qualitatevly changing the way science is conducted
  • this discovery of new knowledge-framework leads to a fundamental change in the Subject [CENTER OF KNOWLEDGE] conducting science
  • thus the thinking subject is born

System Philosophy:

  • In the early Enlightenment system philosophy (Descartes, Leibniz, Spinoza) becomes a major way of conducting the science, but by the 18th Century this begins failing → the system can no longer synthesize philosophy
  • At some point the system becomes INCAPABLE of comprehending new information, examining the rules under which it functions, etc. It can turn VERY reductive
  • A system happens in the head of one philosopher, trying to explain every issue he encounters, this it is no trans-individual
  • Enlightenment Philosophy: thinking beyond the system, going for proper DISCOVERY

The two sources of Man’s Universalization:

1. Reason and The Mathematization of Nature

  • Cassirer: Enlightenment’s idea of progress (quantity of knowledge, quality of methodology)

  • new paradigms, new epistemological frameworks

  • Diderot’s idea of the Encyclopedia as a force for collecting knowledge and advancing future generations

  • REASON UNITES ALL OF HUMAN THINKING: science, epistemology, philosophy, morality, aesthethics, ethics

  • Nietzsche and Burckhardt’s skepticism of universal reason is starkly different from the Enlightenment’s idealization of it (think of perspectivism)

  • in the Renaissance (Pico) you had a self-production of man, which in the Enlightenment turned into the self-production of universal transindividual reason

  • Man is now the AGENT OF REASON, not the other way around

  • movement from individual to COLLECTIVE self-understanding

  • ‘Critical’ in Kant: freeing what was once bound, what is fundamentally transparent through the force of reason (mathemathics)

  • maths as a pragmatic example of progress

  • figures like Bacon, Descartes, Galilei, Kepler, Newton… freed humanity from the SCHOLASTIC telos-led way of understanding nature

  • through maths and the scientific method we can free ourselves from final causes

  • understanding God’s universe as a mathemathical universe (Spinoza’s axioms, for example)

  • distinction between ideal conceptions (forms, ideas, absolutes → geometric entities) and empirical observations (individuals)

  • ‘MAN’ is an ideal conception, an incarnation of the form of reason which manifests itself empirically

  • Mittelstrass: Enlightenment began already with figures like Descartes or Galilei and their mathemathical thinking

  • A distrust of phenomena in Descartes (i.e. of empirical entities), we must break phenomena down to ideal states to analyze them concretely/properly

  • maths was a proof of reason’s autonomy

  • ‘analytic method’ - breaking phenomena down to reasonable elements (understanding the movement of planets through numbers, for example)

  • Cassirer: calculus is a major force for this, allowing the comprehension of qualitative differences

  • Cassirer: the cosmos’ structure is now penetrated

  • this same method then gets applied to morals, ethics, psychology, politics…

  • Hobbes: mathemathically necessated statesmanship in Leviathan

  • there is always a hidden rationality behind things

  • IN PSYCHOLOGY: Hume, Locke, Berkley, Melbranche, Condillac, Diderot: strains of causality underlying passions and affects (even Spinoza does this)

  • IN POLITICS: Hobbes, Condillac, Montesquieu: Hobbes’ calculation of means and ends in a calculus fashion

    1. Man as subject to Natural Law

  • in the Renaissance (and Early Enlightenment) there was no abstract, universal man

  • the individual was a man

  • universality meant the universal extension of individuals, not the universal properties of the abstract ‘Man’

  • it is priori to the French Revolution that essentialist humanism is created in revolutionary/bourgeois movements

  • Rousseau and Paine

  • tension between the transcendent level of abstract man and the empirical level of individual men

  • Natural Law theory emerges from this new conception of an abstract man

  • now its all about this TRANSCENDENTAL MAN

  • truly universal laws must be grounded on something beyond the empirical
    [Husserl’s critique of psychologism follows a similar train of thought: the very laws of logic could be broken by a mandman]

  • universal, natural rights of man: liberty, property, security, resistance to oppression

  • these are fundamental to man’s nature

  • THOMAS PAINE (‘Rights of Man’): universal rights; for Kant these are the Rights of Reason, self-governed reason

  • Lumieres: destroying sex, race, class particuliarities, uncovering a universal binding force essential to human nature; theres a priori humanism underneath all differences and dividing forces

  • High Enlightenment: MAN BECOMES TRANSCENDENTAL, A PRIORI, IDEAL NORM

  • Kant’s transcendental subject and his transcendental humanism

  • Kant’s universal man: Quid juris vs Quid facti

  • Quid facti - what the fact is (a posteriori, empirical)

  • Quid juris - what the underlying law is (a priori)

  • all events refer to some legal grounding

  • we justify things by refering to a priori legal conditions

  • in morality its different. With morality law and fact don’t always coincide, and fact must be brought to the submission of universal laws of morality

  • Kant’s 3 main powers: Understanding, Reason, Imagination, they all a priori legislate certain domains of reality

  • Understanding - a priori nature; Reason - a priori morality; Imagination - a priori aesthetics, historical scientific progress

  • Kant’s question is how to free and realize the a priori condition of mankind, the transcendental man’s destiny

  • our empiricalcondition restricts us from all becoming kind of global citizens, with the Transcendental Man as our blueprint

  • the Universal, Transcendental man is self-same, ahistoric, aindividual

Recap:

  • Enlightenment’s universalism includes all men on the basis of their legal and reasonable condition (transcendental, a priori)…but excludes some on the basis of their empirical traits—not their transcendental traits
  • virtually all-inclusive, factually exclusive
  • Transcendental Man as a formalistic measure of all things
  • in Kant it ends up sexist, racist, ableist… only Europeans, preferably Germans
  • Enlightenment are dangerous in many ways, but with Heidegger we see something even more dangerous in their abandonment

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