"If my thesis is correct, Kant was right": Revisiting Kant's Role within MacIntyre's Critique of the Enlightenment Project by Kelvin Knight
"Although Alasdair MacIntyre’s After Virtue is famous for its critique of the Enlightenment project in moral theory, and although Immanuel Kant is usually considered the greatest protagonist of that project, Kant’s role within the argument of After Virtue is far less clear than one might presume. After exploring Kant’s role within MacIntyre’s work — before, within and since After Virtue — this paper will argue that the greatest alternative to Aristotle in contemporary philosophy, ethics and politics is no longer Nietzsche, as After Virtue proposed, but Kant. Kant’s representation by such contemporary Kantians as Paul Guyer is of a figure who presciently anticipated developments in philosophy and politics and has withstood deconstruction by Nietzscheans. Therefore, contemporary Aristotelians still need to find some way to come to terms with Kant’s version of the Enlightenment project and of liberalism — and, indeed, with liberal institutions as justified in Kantian terms."
Now this is well worth reading. I had considered Nietzsche and the Nietzscheans as having delivered some telling, if not fatal, blows to Kant. I see it as a sociological problem rather than an intellectual one, mind - the tendency of Kantian intersubjectivity dissolving into subjectivism coming as a result of social relationships detached from social forms of the good. The emptiness of modern morality is thus inextricably connected with the dominant form of rationality in modern social relations, making community and the good unavailable except in abstract forms. My argument is set out in the works below. That said, in light of this, I have still tended to argue that Nietzsche and the Nietzscheans was right against Kant and the Kantians, and that the ethical project needs to be buttressed by something more substantial - Aristotle and Aquinas. That's a relatively new view of mine. Over the years, I have argued strongly for the cogency of Kant, and would be very happy indeed if Kelvin Knight can prove the worth of his claim. I'd be happier still with an alliance of Aristotle and Kant against the scarcely reasoned nihilisms of the Nietzscheans.
Kant after Virtue by Onora O'Neill
"Maclntyre's refurbishing of Aristotelian ethics aims to restore both intelligibility and rationality to moral discourse. In After Virtue he concentrates on showing how intelligible action requires that lives be led within institutional and cultural traditions. But he does not offer a developed account of practical reason which could provide grounds for seeking some rather than other intelligible continuations of lives and traditions. Despite Maclntyre's criticisms of Kant's ethics, a Kantian account of practical reasoning may complement his account of intelligibility. An appropriate interpretation of Kantian ethics is outlined, which escapes Maclntyre's criticisms, allows both for the universal character of basic moral principles and for the historical variability of intelligible action, and which makes moral worth or virtue the centre of the moral life. The refurbishing of Aristotelian ethics may be achieved by a Kantian completion.”
Wonderful! We can redeem the Enlightenment project after all. I have returned to Aristotle and Aquinas and argue for virtue ethics. Although my thesis was entitled 'Rational Freedom,' I now tend to argue in terms of happiness as flourishing. That said, I am happy to have a value-centred approach that puts freedom at its heart.
Complementing O’Neill is Sebastian Rödl, who argues that Kant's account of practical reasoning is for all relevant purposes the same as Anscombe's in Intention.
Forms of practical knowledge and their unity In Anton Ford, Jennifer Hornsby & Frederick Stoutland (eds.), Essays on Anscombe's Intention. Harvard University Press (2011)
I’ve always read Kant as being an anti-Aristotelian, seeing the Aristotelian thread coming to be reinstated by Hegel (and running through him into Marx). So I am glad of this corrective.
Kant and Aristotle: Epistemology, Logic, and Method by Marco Sgarbi
‘A historical and philosophical reassessment of the impact of Aristotle and early-modern Aristotelianism on the development of Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Kant and Aristotle reassesses the prevailing understanding of Kant as an anti-Aristotelian philosopher. Taking epistemology, logic, and methodology to be the key disciplines through which Kant’s transcendental philosophy stood as an independent form of philosophy, Marco Sgarbi shows that Kant drew important elements of his logic and metaphysical doctrines from Aristotelian ideas that were absent in other philosophical traditions, such as the distinction of matter and form of knowledge, the division of transcendental logic into analytic and dialectic, the theory of categories and schema, and the methodological issues of the architectonic. Drawing from unpublished documents including lectures, catalogues, academic programs, and the Aristotelian-Scholastic handbooks that were officially adopted at Königsberg University where Kant taught, Sgarbi further demonstrates the historical and philosophical importance of Aristotle and Aristotelianism to these disciplines from the late sixteenth century to the first half of the eighteenth century.’
Is it possible to swim in the Aristotelian and Thomist as well as the Kantian, Hegelian and Marxist currents? I do hope so, because it’s what I’ve been trying to do over the years. Kant I see as a Platonist, Hegel and Marx I see as Aristotelians. Then there’s Rousseau, a Platonist I tried to read as an Aristotelian (or as having needed to have been an Aristotelian, try David Lay Williams’ “Rousseau’s Platonic Enlightenment” instead). I’ve criticised Kant as a nominalist, and I’ve argued in favour of Aquinas’ moderate realism against him. Kant ends walled up inside his conceptual prison. I wonder about the lack of serious engagement with the scholastic tradition. But I’m happy to see all that is of value in Kant – which is plenty – getting due recognition.
Self-Made Man and his Undoing in his Self-Made Hell - see my other posts. I need to get back into philosophy, for sanity's sake, this world is mad, and I'm floundering in the shallows. Seeing as it’s semi-official that we’re all going to Hell, I’m going back to reality, I shall see you there if you have any sense.
‘When a thoughtful human being has overcome incentives to vice and is aware of having done his bitter duty, he finds himself in a state that could be called happiness, a state of contentment and peace of mind in which virtue is its own reward.’
The Metaphysical Principles of Virtue, in The Cambridge edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy. Ed., trans. Mary J. Gregor, 1996: 510-511
And it’s about time we revisited Marx, frankly. I remember Terry Eagleton noting the irony that as capitalism has gone big (with the globalisation of economic relations) the Left has started to think and act small. And fragmentary. I loathed the intellectual fashions of the time with a passion. I read how Marx and Marxism are also a part of ‘civilisation’ and hence part of our problem rather than a solution. Complete and utter mindrot like this will get us precisely where we are. It is reactionary drivel, and an evasion, just as we need to step up to the scale of the problem that confronts us.