[PEN-L:32587] Rawls and Kantian thinking

[Doyle Saylor <djsaylor@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Greetings Economists,
Eric Nilsson quotes Louis Proyect,
LP,
The reason it sounds individualistic is because it is rooted
in Kant. It is really an updating of the notion of the categorical
imperative . . .

and

It was only after being exposed to Marxism that I figured out
that it was nonsensical to talk about justice without talking about
political economy.

Then Eric responds
This dropping of names still shows a failure to understand Rawls. Saint
Karl himself assumed
....
Rawls failed to reject (in fact
built upon) the individualist perspective of Kant; BUT Rawls still made a
major contribution to the understanding of justice and political theory.


Doyle
A good place to bring up a commentary on Vehement Passions.  First however,
the reference to KM as a saint is peculiar in the context of the discussion
(though a common enough reference to Marxist).  In what sense is religion an
issue here (with respect to the theme of this email which is
passion)?  I don't think that religion has anything to do with this point
other than that one assumes that 'faith' matters to a materialist.

In the book "Vehement Passions", Fisher writes that Kant was the biggest foe
of passionate states of mind (faith) after Spinoza, and Kant's influence had
a major impact upon how we understanding passion.  I.e. to eschew
passionate states of mind such as faith.  So it is peculiarly appropriate to
say that KM is a saint if one is attacking passionate states of mind.

Page 239, Vehement Passions, Fisher, 2002, Princeton press
Kant discusses the experience of respect or reverence (Achtung) for the
moral law as the only possible moral feeling; that is, the one feeling that
defines human nature as "personality" rather than a mere assembly of
inclinations directed toward happiness.  Respect, the one moral passion
acknowledged by Kant, is seen by him to be related to wonder and admiration.
Respect (Achtung) occupies the unique place in his moral system that anger
(thumos) does in Plato or that Wonder (L'Admiration) does in Descartes.
Respect and its counterpart, the destructive blow to self-conceit,
slef-love, and pride that he calls Demutgung (humbling or humiliation) is
constitutive for moral identity, for location in the world, for Kant's new
term for the self, "personhood,: Just as man learns in Descrates, or just as
man, angered, pursues justice in Plato, so here the respect addressed to the
moral law and the humbling of the self that follows is the single
constitutive experience involving the passions.  "Reverence (Achtung) is
properly awareness of a value which demolishes my self-love." Note 16"

Doyle
So Kant is commenting on Vehement Passions, but what are we to make of some
poor person living on the streets who is raging against the world?  That
they find 'Actung'?  So much better to have the cop bellow 'Achtung'.

Fisher continues on page 238,
"Demutigung is a far stronger word that "dispiriting," even though the
central part-mut-is clearly our English word "courage", and Gemut is the
spirit or heart.  Equally, our word "disheartened" would be too mild for the
German Demutigung.  The German word carries the sense of being dejected,
cast down, humble, meek, submissive, lowly all the words that are the
antithesis of pride or self-worth.  The phrase sich demutigen means to
humble, prostrate, abase, or degrade oneself; to grovel before, submit.
Kant's choice of this one approved feeling is a powerful, even a
distasteful, medicine.  Like Hisrchman's evocation of avarice as the one
passion in an economy-driven culture that turns back against all others,
taming them in the interest of the Interests, Kant has defined a therapy
against the passions, desires, and inclinations that arises, not from
reason, but from an impassioned state, humiliation, that is affirmed just
because it undermines all other vehement states based on self-love, pride,
self-affirmation, or any merely personal search for happiness.  The moral
law humbles and humiliates our self-conceit.  It reverses the self-expansion
of the spirited self and denies the value of those acts that define the self
as energetic and confident."

Doyle
Which in my view gives us some sense of how considering the Vehement
Passions we can freshly understand what is being given to us in the
Capitalist State in terms of meaning.  We start with the reality of how
really existing human beings feel.  Their feelings shaped by the injustice
of a class system, and we then say that those feelings are only valid in
certain forms such as Sich Demutigen.  We then are clear enough that Kant
means a society of such and such moral structure whether or not we agree
with LP about Rawls.  But certainly LP makes it clear that understanding the
political economy led him out of the abyss of Sich Demutigen.

I have pasted below a short commentary from JKS which appears elsewhere that
is interesting in regard to Rawls.
Thanks,
Doyle Saylor

Rawls is a very dull writer, in the tradition of
Dewey. As for the cliches, well sorry, it was 12 am
when I got back fromw orking amd I wasn't up to
sparkle when I discovered than one of my intellectual
heroes has gone.


It is difficult to transport oneself back to the
situation where Rawls found moral and political
philosophy in America in the early 50s. Moral
philosophy was concerned pretty much exclusively with
the study of the meaning of ethical language. To the
extent that anyone discussed right and wrong, all
there was was utilitarianism. There was no political
philosophy, zip, zero, nothing. There was Isaiah
Berlin, but he felt he had to leave philosophy to do
political philosophy. Rawls' work, first in papers
like Two Concepts of Rules and (later) Justice as
Fairness, put moral philosophy that people could care
about back on the map, created a space where real
issues could be discussed (laying the groundwork for
"applied ethics" and journals like Philosophy and
Public Affairs), and eorked on an alternative to
utilitarianism.


Then came The Book: A Theory of Justice (1971). All of
us who do moral and political philosophy live in its
shadow (or maybe its light). Political philosophy
since has been (a) lively, and (b) a series of
responses to, comments on, and criticisms of ToJ.
These points are connected. It's generally agreed that
Rawls' detailed argument in ToJ doesn't work, but his
method is very important--I don't mean the Original
Position, etc., that's the stuff that doesn't work.
Rawls showed how to develop and apply the
neopragmatist "epistemology" implicit in the
philosophy of science of his colleagues Quine and
Goodman to ethics in the method of reflective
equilibrium, thsu sttating the correct theory of
knowledge and justification for the first time in
human history. It's also widely thought that even if
Rawls' derivation doesn't work, his "two principles of
justice" (mysteriously so called, because there are
three of them), are pretty much right, or at least a
pretty good approximation to the truth.


Rawls' later work, including Political Liberalism,
developed the insights of the ToJ in important ways,
articulating (aming other things) political
justification is different from, and prior to,
philosophical justification.


Rawls was never an activist, but while 70s radicals
attacked him as being a defender of welfare state
capitalism, this was not correct. He was politically
progressive. He considered the only choices of
economic order that comported with justice to be
either (1) market socialism, or (2) what he called
property owning democracy (in Marxist lingo, petty
commodity production). Rodney Peffer wrote a fine book
arguing in one long section that (1) was the Rawlsian
way to go. Robert Brenner once told me that Rawls,
whom he knew well, was personally quite radical, but
tempentally incapable of waving banners or (say)
joining PL, as his colleague Hilary Putnam did for a
while.


Rawls is not a non-philosopher's philosopher. Of
course someone like Doug who likes Judith Butler can
hardly complain about technical writing and turgid
prose, but Rawls' work _is_ technical and his prose
_is_ turgid. The non-Ps and continental Ps among us
will get their Rawls through interpreters and
translators (like Richard Rorty whose is accessible
and literate and bilingual--speaks analytical and
contintental). And through the influence of anyone who
studied with the man, or who, like me, studied with
people who studied with him. In my case, I was trained
by Allan Gibbard, Peter Railton, Elizabeth Anderson,
and many other students of Rawls.


Without exactly intended to, I have devoted a big
chunk of one paper I wrote and practically all of
another to his work; it's just the natural starting
place in talking about liberalism, justice, democracy,
a host of topics.


Anyway, let me sum up my saying that he was far and
away the most important Anglo-American, indeed,
Euro-American, political philosopher of the last
century; only Habermas (with whom he has a number of
important similarities, bad writing not least among
them), could rival him. (I do not denigrate Lukacs and
Gramsci, but because of the failure of the Bolshevik
and Eurocommunist projects, their importance is
lesser.) I think Putnam is not wrong to suggest that
his work will be read for centuries. Everone who knew
hima lso says he was a really wonderful human being. I
never met him myself.


jks