Autor: Melchin, R. Kenneth

Buch: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Titel: History, Ethics and Emegent Probability

Stichwort: Ethik und Geschichte 1; Kant, Problem: Autonomie - Natur

Kurzinhalt: ... that Lonergan's account of the patterns and dynamism of history is at the same time an account of the criterion for an ethics, the criterion for distinguishing among more or less valuable courses of action.

Textausschnitt: 6.5 Ethics and History I: Progress and Decline

68/6 Just as Dilthey conceived that an epistemology and a psychology should set a foundation for a comprehensively conceived science of man which would study the structure of historical processes and set the tools and methods for. the writing of history, so too Lonergan has built an account of the dynamic structure of history on the foundation of a theory of cognition. But what may not be immediately obvious is that Lonergan's account of the patterns and dynamism of history is at the same time an account of the criterion for an ethics, the criterion for distinguishing among more or less valuable courses of action. Upon reflection it would seem reasonable that some correlation should exist between a criterion of value and a criterion for historical progress and decline. But during the Enlightenment years a number of substantial concerns arose which resulted in the two sets of criteria being conceived independent from each other.1 And in the work of Immanuel Kant we can see one example of an attempt to deal with this separation. (189; Fs)

69/6 When Kant published the first of his essays on the philosophy of history in 1748, he had already published his Critique of Pure Reason three years earlier, and had worked out much of the material for the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, which would appear in print the following year.2 And so when Kant asks how individual moral action relates to the overarching course of human history he formulates the question in terms of an account of moral action and the norm of morality that has been founded, for the most part, on his account of the autonomous operation of rationality. Kant's vision of moral man presented in the Groundwork and reflected in the essays on history, is of a self-creating creature who constitutes his own life through the free exercise of his rational will. The essence of Kant's notion of rationality is its autonomously constituting character. In the words of Yermiahu Yovel:

In being autonomous, human reason must abide only by those universal rules it sets up by itself, and in which it can recognize the explication of its own subjective structure. Any other attitude will be 'heteronomous' and thereby non-rational [...] According to this theory, reason cannot be conceived of as a system of universal norms that subsist in themselves, but must be seen as constituted by the human subject.3
70/6 Thus the Groundwork begins with a presentation of the good will, the only thing that is unqualified good in and of itself, and the only thing that can ground the worth of any ends that come about through its exercise.4 (190; Fs)

71/6 There are a number of possible explanations for this strong emphasis on the autonomy and the subjectively constituting character of rationality in the work of Kant. In his first Critique, Kant sought a possible foundation for knowledge in a priori claims, claims whose truth value was independent from an appeal to experience. The reliability of truth claims whose truth rested on a posteriori appeal to experience had been shown by Hume to be unreliable and some foundation for certain knowledge had to be found that was not subject to the errors to which acts of perception were prone. Thus Kant looked to the structure of the mind itself for the source of the reliability and permanence of knowledge.5 (190; Fs)

72/6 George Kelly argues that Kant's work in ethics and in history takes up Rousseau's quest for a new beginning to history in a new foundation for morality. In the face of the corrupt course of history and tradition Rousseau proposed an ideal foundation for social order that required nothing more than the free, autonomous consent of rational men. According to Kelly, Kant championed Rousseau's moral voluntarism as a revolt against dogma and status quo politics and as a manifestation of what was most properly human.6 (190; Fs)

73/6 Charles Taylor argues that Kant's emphasis on the autonomy of rational morality is a revolt against an earlier Enlightenment view of man as driven by his desire or appetite to seek his own utility. Such a view of moral man, in Kant's view, was exactly contrary to true moral freedom because it precluded the decision that liberates the subject from the determining constraints of natural necessity.7 (190f; Fs)

74/6 Whatever the reasons for Kant's concern for the autonomy of reason, the fact of his conception of rationality as autonomous remains clear. And so when Kant sets about investigating the relationship between the operation of rational morality and the overarching course of historical process he faces two sets of problems. First, if the exercise of human reason is free and autonomous, then how does this autonomy relate to the laws that govern the processes of nature and set the context in which man works out his life? Is man's reason a radical departure from nature? Or is he, in some way, in continuity with the biological laws that govern physical, vegetable and animal life?8 Second, is there an overall shape or lawfulness to the course of human history, or is history an aimless aggregate of individual persons pursuing conflicting visions of duty? Is there an ideal way that societies can be conceived and organized so as to foster and coordinate individuals carrying out their duties? Is there an overall end or telos to human history and if so does it negate freedom and the autonomous exercise of free will?9 It is these two sets of questions that are the concern of Kant's essays on the philosophy of history. (191; Fs) (notabene)