Freedom of Expression
Douglas R. McGaughey, Ph.D.
The question of freedom of expression goes to the heart of a liberal arts education and illuminates a profound manner in which the natural sciences and humanities complement one another. One can investigate the theme of freedom of expression from two perspectives. Freedom of expression can be taken to mean one way among others in which freedom is exercised. In such a case, expression is one particular kind of freedom among others. Grammatically, here the expression is an objective genitive, and it is speaking about the exercise of liberty or free will. In a second fashion, however, one can view “freedom of expression” as a statement about expression itself and its occasion for illuminating something universal about freedom. Here one is concerned with a subjective genitive; that is, speaking about a universal human capacity of creativity itself.
For example, we express simultaneously two profoundly different meanings when we speak, for example, of the “love of God.” Taken as an objective claim, this genitive expresses love felt by someone over against God (e.g., the individual’s appreciation of God). Taken as a subjective claim, this genitive expresses God’s own love (of course, the difference between an objective and a subjective genitive is more dramatic if one uses “fear of God”). Applying this distinction to “freedom of expression,” we are simultaneously speaking of the communication of something (objectively), which the speaker can choose to communicate or not to communicate (liberty or free will), and speaking of creativity (subjectively), which is the ability to initiate a sequence of events that nature cannot produce on its own (freedom). In the objective sense of free will (liberty), expression is one particular kind among other kinds of freedom; in the subjective sense, expression and freedom are profoundly equivalent and illuminate something universal found in all human beings. This essay will not entirely ignore the objective sense of the expression, but it claims that the objective meaning is dependent upon and presupposes the subjective meaning of freedom of expression. Freedom of expression takes us to the core of the task of becoming human (creativity).
Freedom as Creativity
It is important to distinguish freedom from liberty. The latter is taken here to mean the capacity to choose between or among already existing options. For example, in the marketplace my liberty as a consumer is defined in terms of my having options among competitive products. Furthermore, in terms of social contracts, either with respect to my submission to the law of the state or to an agreement with another to perform a certain task for me in exchange for remuneration, I restrict my liberty for the sake of what my society and I take to be a higher goal: the guarantee of rights and the accomplishment of tasks that I cannot perform myself.
Contracts are undertaken to accomplish certain things. Whereas the liberty to engage in a contract of consumption, a social civic contract, or an economic contract may be the framework in which I exercise my freedom, liberty presupposes freedom and must be distinguished from freedom. To be sure, freedom of expression can be treated merely as an example of liberty, but then our question is restricted to the objective genitive and we overlook the significance of the subjective genitive expressed by our theme.
Freedom is taken in this essay to be the capacity to initiate a sequence of events that nature otherwise could not accomplish on its own. Freedom is a form of eminent, in contrast to formal, causality. A formal cause has the tt degree of reality as its effect in contrast to an eminent cause that has greater reality than its effect.1 Formal causality can account for a seed of corn replacing itself through a natural sequence whereas we can wait forever for nature alone to bring the parts of a computer spread out on the floor together to constitute an actual computer in the absence of a human mind to initiate and coordinate the process. However, the mind is not limited to bringing about a computer. In this respect, then, the mind is a greater reality than the effect of the computer.
Because of this extraordinary eminent causal capacity of freedom, we do not have to be satisfied with what is but can imagine what can be.
Furthermore, this eminent causal capacity confronts us with the question of what should be. If we were incapable of changing the way things are (i.e., if we were not free), then we could not speak of our responsibility for our actions. This theme of responsibility must be examined further, but, before that can be done, it is necessary to discuss the conditions that make freedom possible in the first place.
Freedom presupposes a physical world in which we can and do act. However, it requires more than a world of physical objects.2 It requires more precisely, a world of appearances that are not the objects themselves. We can experience freedom because we cannot experience the world from the perspective of the objects themselves. In short, freedom demands that we are limited in our understanding of the world.3 Anything approaching the capacity to grasp things as they are would impose a form of necessity upon us that would deny our freedom (KrV B 564). Without the distinction between appearances and things in themselves, we would not be able to distinguish among what is, might be, could be, and/or should be. We would only experience a world as it is.
What might be taken to be a devastating circumstance, then, is in fact a profound advantage. It is necessary in order for us to be who we are in the order of things that we cannot experience the world in any other fashion except through appearances. Furthermore, this limitation to appearances is not restricted to our experience of the physical world. It applies to the self as an identical being through time. This self-identical self is never experienced directly but only indirectly through the way we appear to ourselves,4 The distinction between appearance and self-itself is the necessary condition for all psychological theories about a sub- or pre-consciousness5, but, rather than a condition that makes us powerless over blind mechanical or imperceptible forces not in our control, it is paradoxically crucial for our experience of freedom.6
We are not only situated in the middle between a world of physical and mental appearances, but also, equally important for our discussion of freedom, we cannot experience ultimate causes like energy or freedom directly; we experience such causes only indirectly and they are always to a degree equivocal since the same cause can have multiple effects and the same effects can be the result of different causes.7 Not only does Kant acknowledge that we can neither prove nor disprove our possession of this causal capacity of freedom,8 but he also insists that all that is necessary is its assumption. Not any and all assumptions, however, are necessary. Only those are necessary that are demanded of us by our experience (KrV B 693 f.). Paradoxically, appearances, which seem to imply uncertainty, are the key to certain knowledge— however, this is certain knowledge of the conditions necessary for us to experience appearances as we do and not certain knowledge of what the appearances mediate to us in themselves. Knowledge does not depend upon access to substances (things in themselves) or causes directly, but, rather, it depends upon our capacity to identify the conditions that are necessary for us to experience appearances. This is the Copernican Turn that constitutes Kant’s critical project: Just as Copernicus required the denial of the senses on the basis of the certainty of the mathematical descriptions of the relationships in the appearances that explained the appearances to be just the opposite of the obvious “physical evidence,” so, too, there are structural elements to consciousness that are necessary for us to experience appearances that are more certain than the appearances themselves.
The point of the Copernican Turn with respect to freedom: it is not necessary to prove freedom as a cause. However, if we deny that we have this capacity, we turn ourselves into, at worst, marionettes and at best mere mechanical automatons.9
Incompatibilism, Compatibilism, and Deontology
Although there is not space here to examine adequately all the arguments that question the existence of freedom, our discussion of freedom of expression is aided by distinguishing among three options for thinking about freedom.10
The first option maintains that freedom is incompatible with physical causality. Incompatibilism acknowledges only physical causality, and the very notion that there could be a causality in addition to physical causality is an illusion that suggests a metaphysical dualism that would undermine the coherence of physical causal explanation. Although this sounds very contemporary and is frequently articulated in neurobiology today11, Kant already defused the argument in the “Third Antinomy” in his KrV (B 472 f ) as an example of “pre-critical” confusing of appearances for substances. Incompatibilism makes three errors: 1) It assumes that there is a proof for causality grounded in our access to cause (i.e., it denies that experience is limited to appearances), 2) it substitutes an ontological for a merely epistemological dualism, and 3) it overlooks the social and political consequences of the denial of freedom.12
Compatibilism, however, relativizes freedom by proposing that we cannot understand ourselves without some acknowledgement of this causal capacity, but it is not only compatible with but also subordinate to physical causality.
Deontology agrees with Compatibilism that there is no freedom without material causality, but rejects the relativizing of freedom by Compatibilism. Freedom is the condition of possibility for both the categorical and the hypothetical.13 In other words, freedom is a form of causality that is entirely independent of, though necessarily compatible with, physical causality, and it can even be applied contrary to our physical interests. Whereas Incompatibilism denies freedom and Campatibilism relativizes freedom, Deontology insists upon the absolute nature of freedom capable of acting contrary to any and all personal interests. The crucial question for Deontology is what criteria does one use to govern this categorical capacity?
Expression and the Symbolic
Before examining the issue of moral principles and the criteria for their self-legislation by the individual in an act of establishing shoulds, it is necessary to turn our attention to the other side of our coin. We are reminded by Ernst Cassirer that humanity not only has the mental capacity to reproduce but also the capacity to represent reality:
Acquaintance means only presentation; knowledge includes and presupposes representation. The representation of an object is quite a different act from the mere handling of the object. The latter demands nothing but a definite series of actions, of bodily movements coordinated with each other or following each other. It is a matter of habit acquired by a constantly repeated unvarying performance of certain acts. But the representation of space and spatial relations means much more. To represent a thing it is not enough to be able to manipulate it in the right way and for practical uses. We must have a general conception of the object, and regard it from different angles in order to find its relations to other objects. We must locate it and determine its position in a general system (Cassirer 1977, 46, emphasis added).
While other life forms interact with their environments out of a dyadic interactive structure of a receptor (outward stimuli) and an effector system (response), we find to varying degrees in humanity a connecting symbolic system between these two systems (Cassirer 1977a, 46). This symbolic system is not to be reduced to a mere linguistic sign system that points outside itself to the physical world. Rather, this system can even substitute for the physical world: “Physical reality seems to recede in proportion as man’s symbolic activity advances. Instead of dealing with the things themselves man is in a sense constantly conversing with himself ” (1997a, 25).
Humanity constructs epistemological and social symbolic systems to understand its world, and this capacity is the source of our extraordinary constructive as well as destructive power.14 On the basis of our communal symbol systems, we develop litmus tests to determine who is in and who is out of a specific social system (e.g., an academic discipline, a social institution), and such artificial identities have been the basis for exploitation and genocide throughout history. To be sure, our symbolic systems provide us with a sense of coherence that serves as the deep background for identifying the anomalous. However, once an indispensable survival strategy for identifying what is different and potentially threatening, our symbolic systems have become shockingly destructive as they have made it possible to combine technological power with mass media to shape individual and corporate identities to perform horrendous atrocities. Deontology provides an invaluable corrective to such distorting use of symbolic systems.
It is precisely here where expression and freedom find their common core. Symbolic expression is as much what it means to be human as is our creativity, since symbolic expression is a product of creativity. Both symbolic systems and freedom are dependent upon our not having access to the world as it is in itself. Just as our freedom demands that we ask what should be, so, too, do our socially constructed symbolic systems.
The Social Dimension of Freedom
The human condition is most dramatically illuminated where our capacities for freedom and for expression in and through symbolic systems meet. Neither is possible, however, without our anchor in a physical world, and this is why Kant’s “Doctrine of Method”15 insists that, before turning to any other form of causal explanation of experience, we should exhaust our options for a physical causal explanation. However, when we do turn to nonphysical causal explanations, they are never justification for undermining our acknowledgment of our dependence upon the physical order.16
Nonetheless, both our freedom and our dependence upon symbolic systems of understanding and expression confront us with our capacity not only to ask what should be but also to assume our personal responsibility for what should be. Given the social nature of symbolic systems, though, this level of personal responsibility is not immediately obvious.
As social animals, we are easily drawn to seeking recognition and honor from our social groups even when such recognition and honor is dependent upon our violating our own sense of what should be17. Here, the social aspect of our epistemological and social systems is as threatening to our personal responsibility as material reductionism and divine predestination. Nonetheless, the moral conflict that emerges in our quest for recognition and honor in our social groups illuminates the crucial moral component to the human condition. It becomes most clear that the individual alone is culpable and responsible precisely when the individual’s choice of her/his moral principle places her/him in conflict with her/his socially constructed reality.
Our moral culpability and responsibility is the consequence of our capacity of freedom, which the individual alone can exercise, and only the individual knows whether or not s/he has acted on the basis of a moral principle. Neither can I establish for you nor you for me what you or I must do in a situation. The challenge of freedom is the risk connected with the individual’s autonomous self-legislation of moral principles, which s/he alone knows have or have not been embraced. Were any agency other than the individual to have control over the exercise of freedom, we would have a condition of heteronomy (external determination), not autonomy (internal determination).18
For this reason, Kant identifies the capacity of freedom as the key to individual dignity, which is irreplaceable by, and un-substitutable for, anything else. Kant speaks of the dignity rather than the worth of the individual since the latter is dependent upon a system of exchange among things (1998b, 68). Unlike a system of honor that determines the individual in light of the notion of worth established by means of corporate interest, and unlike racism that determines individual worth by a physical criterion19, Deontology defines the individual in terms of the radically personal and exclusive sovereignty of the extraordinary imperceptible and intangible cause that is freedom. Furthermore, human dignity involves a personal responsibility that accompanies freedom and expression.
To be sure, there is a crucial social component to Deontology. However, the role of culture in morality is not to establish a heteronomous system of moral principles to which the individual must conform, as in the case of a system of honor, which can be horribly distorted. Rather, culture, Kant proposes, is the extent to which a social group encourages the individual to make decisions and to take responsibility for those decisions on the basis of selflegislated moral principles regardless of the individual’s personal interest. In other words, culture does not consist of some objectively measurable standard of living or capacity of consumption. Rather, the level of culture is established by something far more intangible: the extent to which a community encourages the individual to be moral.20
The presupposition for the exercise of personal virtues is the presence of a system of civic law that is not to be confused with moral principles.,sup>21 There can be no adequate social system without the restriction of liberty since no individual is capable of satisfying her/his needs in complete independence of others.22 However, a system of juridical duties cannot guarantee justice any more than a list of moral principles can guarantee virtue. As laudable as the legal principle that one is innocent until proven guilty is, it can encourage deception. Both juridical duties and lists of moral principles require, in addition, ethical duties (Deontology) in order for there to be any hope of justice. No civic law or list of moral principles can make the individual act in terms of a higher end above the law and/or above even personal interest.
In short, one cannot legislate morality, and one cannot circumscribe the subjective freedom of expression. Only the individual can do both—even when there is the encouragement of culture. Education and repeated personal effort are the only strategies available to the individual and to society.23 The motivation to do so is no less than the desire to become human.
Liberty is restricted to establish a social order in which individuals can express their freedom. However, the relationship between liberty and freedom must be clear: liberty does not and can not guarantee freedom; rather, freedom is what makes the restriction of liberty necessary. This is the context in which Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes’ famous dissenting opinion in favor of the free expression of ideas is perhaps best understood.24 On the one hand, the constructive response to what is shocking and disturbing in free expression is not silencing the speech but a heightened call to culture (i.e., the moral improvement of individuals and, hence, humanity). On the other hand, when society is understood by the individual to be systematically distorted, society needs personalities (not just individuals driven by appetites and/or rage) to remind us not only of the nakedness of the emperor but of the injustices perpetrated in the name of order and self-interest. Conformity to a socially constructed system of norms can neither be imposed on individuals nor can consciences be shackled, but we cannot expect dominant socially constructed systems (particularly when systematically distorted) to welcome criticism enthusiastically. Freedom not only demands responsibility but, at times, martyrdom.
While it is possible to identify four cornerstones of Kant’s moral system25 as consisting of two prohibitions: 1) Do not lie and 2) Do not commit suicide26 and of two commands: 1) Develop one’s talents and 2) Aid the needy. Even when such a kernel of principles is laudable, their moral status is not because they come from Kant or from having some privileged status of objective moral principles because of their divine revelation or cherished embrace by the community. Rather, their moral status comes from their conformity with Deontology’s criteria for the self-legislation of moral principles.
Criteria for Moral Principles
It is an unfortunate commonplace today to speak of morality as culturally relative.27 In addition to Otfried Höffe’s correct observation that there are universal core moral principles, and insistence that morality is not a matter of mere social convention or natural impulse (2007, 30, 70), it must be underscored that neither the origin of one’s principles nor the consequences of one’s actions provide the criteria for the authority of morality. Both knowledge of origins (e.g., divine revelation) and of consequences (e.g., Utilitarianism/Consequentialism) require an omniscience28 that we cannot possess as well; they are profoundly hypothetical since they are dependent upon dimensions independent of us and not categorical, which alone is anchored in the individual and within our capacity.
If we can count neither on the authority of the origin of our moral principles nor on our calculation of the consequences of our selection of a moral principle to govern our action, we must seek to establish criteria for the personal selection and self-legislation of our moral principles that acknowledge that moral principles can come to us from multiple sources (Kant 1974b, 132-33).
Just as only the individual can know whether or not s/he has acted on the basis of a moral principle, the authority of a moral principle cannot come from any source other than the individual. It is not because the moral principle belongs to some privileged list that we acquire either by divine revelation, social convention, or family expectation that gives the moral principle its authority any more than a system of civic law in and of itself gives justice. Justice is something higher than the civic law that holds the law accountable. Similarly, no empirical list of moral principles can guarantee virtue (Kant 1998b, 35-41). We can misuse virtues just as we can misuse the civic law for unjust ends.
Kant proposes criteria for the autonomous self-legislation of a moral principle in the three modes of the Categorical Imperative (CI) (1998b, 51, 61, 63) and in the three Maxims of General Understanding (1974b, 145- 147). The criteria for the selection of a moral principle must be in conformity with the conditions that make it possible for us to be moral agents. Hence, not only must the criteria be compatible with individual autonomy, but also any form of heteronomy (over the other or the self ) must be rejected as a possible criterion for the selection of a moral principle.
Kant’s three modes of the Categorical Imperative and three Maxims of General Understanding are compatible with autonomy and incompatible with heteronomy. The first mode of the CI eliminates moral anarchy: we should choose to act on the basis of a moral principle that we would want to be a universal law analogous to a law of nature. By insisting that the moral principle is, in fact, a law and not a subjective whim, one is reminded that laws are universal, not capriciously individual.
Further, the second mode of the CI eliminates imposition of or subservience to heteronomy: we should treat the other (and ourselves) as an end and not as a mere means. A human being acts according to unconditional ends (self-selected goals); other species act according to the means that fulfill an instinct (i.e., there are hypothetical, natural conditions that determine goals, rather than the autonomous, categorical, selection of goals). In order to fulfill a goal, one must know the appropriate steps to accomplish one’s end. These steps are the “means” one requires in order to accomplish one’s intended end. Hence, to treat the other and oneself as an end and not a mere means is to treat the other and oneself as an autonomous agent capable of acting according to ends and not as a mere instrumental means for accomplishing one’s selfish ends. To be able to establish an end is to be able to initiate a novel sequence of events that nature can not accomplish on its own. To be treated as an end is to be treated as one capable of establishing such autonomous ends (i.e., as a creative, autonomous individual able to initiate a novel sequence of events). Hence, to treat the other (and oneself ) as an end means to take into consideration his or her (or my own) goals in a given situation and not to focus exclusively one’s own (or the other’s) goals for the other (or myself ) in a fashion that turns the other (or myself ) merely into a blind instrument.
Finally, the third mode of the CI is the presupposition of the first two: we should always treat the other as an autonomous self-legislator of moral principles. In other words, universal moral laws (the first mode of the CI) governed by ends (the second mode of the CI) both assume that we are autonomous (free) individuals capable of initiating a novel sequence of events according to moral laws that nature cannot accomplish on the basis of mere physical laws.
In addition to these three modes of the CI, Kant describes three maxims that govern general understanding: think for oneself, think from the position of all others, and be consistent. Although similar to the CI, the three Maxims of General Understanding are not categorical but hypothetical. First, in order to think for oneself, one must be in a given social condition that seeks sovereignty over one’s autonomy. In other words, it presupposes a social condition. Second, to think from the position of all others does not mean one must be able to assume the social condition of the other. More importantly, this maxim of general understanding insists that we act as if there were a commonness to understanding (an objectivity, hence, necessity) to which we all are accountable and by which we are liberated from our subjective narrowness. Hence, this second maxim is also hypothetical and not categorical since it presupposes a certain condition (the social situation and perspective of all others). Third, to think consistently is also hypothetical because it assumes the concrete condition of the individual and demands that, whatever one understands and does in that concrete situation, one should be consistent with one’s highest capacity, freedom.29 In other words, to be consistent does not mean to be merely coherent. A coherent system can be systematically distorted (i.e., it can involve a horrible inconsistency that everyone in the society holds to be consistent) (Habermas 1970). The maxim of the understanding that calls for our being consistent demands that we not be blindly systematic but that we be consistent with our freedom in our understanding and actions.
If we apply the three modes of the Categorical Imperative and the three hypothetical maxims of the understanding in the process of self-legislating our moral principles, we will and must avoid moral anarchy. Above all, we will have important strategies to discern absolute (categorical) moral principles upon which to base our actions and not merely hypothetical norms derived from the pursuit of self-interest as shaped, for example, by cultural norms. Categorical imperatives are not, but can be, compatible with hypothetical imperatives. However, hypothetical imperatives are best when grounded in the unconditional and not merely hypothetical. Our capacity of autonomous freedom establishes the unconditional moment as the highest expression of the human. To be human is to autonomously self-legislate moral principles to guide our capacity to discern and to accomplish what should be and not merely reflect what is. An individual becomes human not at birth (birth gives us dignity, not our full humanity) but only with the exercise of her/his moral capacity (Kant 1998e, 87).
Freedom of Expression: The Core of a Liberal Arts Education Contrary to Karl Popper’s reading of Plato’s Republic as a project in totalitarianism30 that includes a theory of justice merely as a propaganda theme for the support of totalitarianism,31 the thematic structure of the Republic is exactly the opposite. We encounter a project concerned with discerning the meaning of justice that is neither merely aiding one’s friends and harming one’s enemies nor merely a plaidoyer for the strong (those who are unjust) to dominate over and exploit with impunity the weak (those who are just). Not only are virtue and justice defended in the face of the generally recognized ways of the world, but also Plato ends his project with an extraordinary story with the central line spoken by Lachesis, the second of the three fates who is responsible for establishing the length of one’s life: “‘[…] now is the beginning of another cycle of mortal generation where birth is the beacon of death. No divinity shall cast lots for you, but you shall choose your own deity. Let him to whom falls the first lot first select a life to which he shall cleave of necessity. But virtue has no master over her, and each shall have more or less of her as he honors her or does her despite. The blame is his who chooses. God is blameless.’”32 (Republic 617d-e) (emphasis added)
There could be no more emphatic embrace of freedom. Although the material and intellectual conditions are given, the individual chooses her/his own destiny since each individual is the self-legislator of virtue. We cannot blame God, the gods, or the fates, but only ourselves for our moral lives, for there is no master over virtue but the efforts of the individual. The Republic contextualizes this extraordinary challenge by offering a description of justice not in terms of distributive or retributive justice with which we are all too familiar but, rather, with a description of justice as the process of establishing internal rational sovereignty over one’s appetites and rage.33 The just individual is like a charioteer driving with two horses. The charioteer neither denies the appetites in ascetic rigor nor flees from rage as merely destructive but, rather, knows that there is no life without the appetites and that rage can be a motivator for positive achievement. Yet only the individual knows whether or not s/he has been successful in the pursuit of inner justice, only the individual knows whether or not s/he is sovereign over the team of horses, since the effort of sovereignty over the inner self is not accessible to the senses. Nonetheless, the Republic is Plato’s proposal that were all to “look after her/his own affairs and not meddle in the affairs of others,” in other words, were all to seek just sovereignty over her/himself, society itself would be just.34
Despite his rejection of “happiness” as the goal of the moral life (1974a, 24, 29, 32, 40, 77, 107-08, 131, 132-33, 149), Kant, too, insists that the pursuit of virtue has its own reward. However, in the case of our experience of beauty in nature, a vista out over the Cascades is not beautiful because we are interested in it; rather, we are interested in it because it is beautiful. The same is true of virtue: it is not because we are interested in it that the moral principle is good; we are interested in the moral principle because it is good. On the one hand, the pursuit of virtue with its corollary of justice is not done out of interest in one’s personal happiness. On the other hand, one can experience an extraordinary happiness unmatched by any experience in the appetites when one knows that one has acted on the basis of a self-legislated categorical principle independent of personal interest. Kant spoke of this happiness not as a goal of morality but as the by-product that comes from being worthy (1983, 776; 1998b, 84-85) of it by knowing that one has acted on a moral principle regardless of the consequences for one’s personal interest (happiness). As Kant proposes in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft: the goal of creation is neither happiness nor praise of God but the highest good that can make us worthy of happiness (1974a, 150-51).
Moses Mendelssohn took first place in an essay contest sponsored by the Berlin Academy of Sciences in 1763, in which Kant was ranked second. There are several themes in Mendelssohn’s first place essay that take on central significance in Kant’s subsequent work.35 Among them is the proposal that humanity is not expected to be perfect but to do its best,36 for Kant speaks of the open-ended process of moral improvement not merely in terms of the goal for the individual, but also in terms of the goal for the species (1998c, 35; 1998e, 92, 102; 1998a, 683-84; 1998h, 356v-57; 1998j, 702). Rather than our humanity being something established by birth,37 Deontology challenges us to become human reflected in the constant effort to be moral beings. In other words, becoming human is what it means to exercise fully the freedom of expression.
Freedom of expression is not some tangential aspect to humanity. Rather, freedom of expression is precisely what humanity is all about. We are a species capable of and dependent upon symbolic systems for understanding and creating our worlds. However, this is not a capacity that is a vague indeterminism over against material determinism. Our own creativity confronts us with the question of what should be done since we do not and cannot be satisfied with what is? This creativity is adequately exercised only when the individual in the silence of her/his inward life learns to self-legislate moral principles independent of (but never separate from38) personal interest. In other words, this creativity is a challenge to pursue the good.
Pursuit of the good can only occur in the physical world, and humanity’s extraordinary capacities of freedom and symbolic mediation are dependent upon the appearances of the physical world even as they are not reducible to that physical world. The theme of freedom of expression, then, is the crucial bridge uniting the natural sciences and the humanities in a liberal arts education and not only because the physical world of appearances is the condition of possibility for any and all creativity. It is not enough to ask what is?; humanity is fully human when it asks what could and what should be? We can become human only by pursuing justice, which is at the core of our freedom of expression.
[1] — See Meditation II of René Descartes (1983), 27, n. 2.
[2] — One can distinguish among technical, pragmatic, and moral imperatives (i.e., three kinds of necessity). The first two are shaped by one’s physical circumstances, the third is self-legislated and self-imposed as a consequence of the extraordinary original causality of freedom. See Immanuel Kant (1998b), 43—46. The first two are exclusively hypothetical (i.e., demanded by a particular situation—e.g., if I want to accomplish a task “x,” then …). A technical imperative is demanded by the physical conditions in order to accomplish a specific task (e.g., if I want to undertake a construction project, then it is necessary to have the appropriate tools, materials, and plans). A pragmatic imperative demanded for the pursuit of happiness in one’s personal life is called cleverness, and is always merely subjective in its goals (stochastic) although happiness is universally pursued (e.g., if a particular profession is desired to make one happy, then it is necessary to acquire the appropriate education and experience for that profession). In contrast, a moral imperative is categorical because independent of one’s situation — it is not determined by interest in particular things or persons (e.g., to be consistent with myself as an autonomous selflegislating moral agent [i.e., my freedom], it is necessary that I not lie). On the distinction between hypothetical and categorical, see Immanuel Kant (1998f, 201; 1974a, 22) and Ernst Cassirer’s discussion (1977, 249).
[3] — See Kant, Kritik der reinen Vernunft [KrV] B 567-569; (1998b, 86—88; 1974b, 267—69) as well as Hans Feger (1995, 74).
[4] — Paul Ricoeur distinguishes between what he labels “idem-identity” and “ipse-identity” as the key to understanding the self. Idem-identity is that notion of the self that is self-identical, universal, and articulated by the “I” in the sense of “permanence in time.” Ipse-identity is not concerned with an “unchanging core of the personality,” but rather with “the dialectic of self and the other than self.” See (1992, 2—3, 85, 116, 118-119, 121, 124, 137, 149-150).
[5] — The distinction between the self as appearance and in reality by no means originates with Sigmund Freud. It is as old as Plato’s distinction among the three parts of the soul in the Republic 439d, 57ld-572a, and 580d-58lc, and is a central insight in Kant. See for example, Kritik der reinen Vernunft, B 37, 69, 152-159, 277, 293-294, 334, 383, 404, and A 356, 402; and it is a consistent theme throughout Kant’s corpus. See (1998f, 205; 1983, 772; 1998b, 87; 1998a, 430, 438; 1998i, 205).
[6] — Kant attributes our freedom to this incapacity to experience the self directly. See (1998a, 425n).
[7] — This is the lesson Kant learned from Hume that awoke Kant from his “dogmatic slumbers.” (Kant 1998f, 118). See David Hume (1963).
[8] — See KrV B 586, and (1974a, 109, 152—53, 155, 159, 163—65). Nonetheless, among the three “ideas of reason” (God, Cosmology/Freedom, and the Soul) inaccessible to the senses, Kant speaks of freedom as the one “fact of reason” confirmed by our action in the world. See (1974a, 36—37, 122; 1974b 349).
[9] — See (Kant 1974a, 117, 169). The opposite of mechanical necessity or material determinism is not indeterminism. Freedom in the sense of the ability to initiate a sequence of events that nature cannot produce on its own does not presuppose chaotic indeterminism but absolute self-determination.
[10] — For a discussion of these three options, see Jochen Bojanowski (2006, 4—17).
[11] — See for example, John R. Searle (2007).
[12] — Not all Neurobiologists overlook these consequences. See, for example, Christian E. Elger (2004, 30-37). See, as well, Chapter 19 “Einspruch 2: Hirnforschung” in Otfried Höffe (2007, 246—61).
[13] — With respect to freedom as the condition of possibility for the hypothetical we are not , of course, talking about human but, rather, divine freedom, which is a necessary presupposition for any and all experience. This is the basis for Kant’s insistence that symbolic, though not literal, anthropomorphic language for God is a necessary presupposition both for our understanding of the world and for morality. See (1998f, 233; 1974b, 265, 340; and “Allgemeine Anmerkung zur Teleologie,” 349-361. Already in the Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (Kant 1974a), God is one of the three necessary (391, 699), yet unprovable (669), “ideas of reason.”
[14] — Already in 1774 (i.e., in the so-called “pre-critical” period prior to the publication of the Kritik der reinen Vernunft in 1781), Kant warns that freedom gives us the capacity to destroy everything (2004, 177) and he states that in the absence of a principle, freedom is our greatest threat (179).
[15] — See “Des Kanons der reinen Vernunft” (KrV B 825-859) and “Der transzendentalen Methodenlehre” (KrV B 860- 884). See as well, (Kant 1974b 251) and ¤78 “Von der Vereinigung des Prinzips des allgemeinen Mechanismus der Materie mit dem teleologischen in der Technik der Natur” (276-282) and “Anhang. Methodenlehre der teleologischen Urteilskraft” (283 f).
[16] — This is precisely why Kant questions miracles. It is not that we can disprove or prove that a miracle can happen since we are concerned with causal explanation and we only have access to appearances. Rather, miracles undermine our search for a physical explanation for phenomena by encouraging the folding of our hands in the face of the miraculous (1983, 871), and, more importantly, miracles undermine our own assumption of responsibility for our freedom since a miracle presupposes an ultimate intentionality behind and above events that turns moral effort into a matter of mere self-interest, since finding favor with (or fearing punishment from) this ultimate intentionality becomes the motivator for moral action (see 1998g, 871n).However, Kant does not recoil from employing non-physical causal explanation in order to understand physical phenomena. He insists that we must use “top-down” causal explanation (teleology) and not merely “bottom-up” causal explanation (efficient causality) to understand organic phenomena (e.g., the liver fluke). (See 1974b 235,272—273). However, such “top-down” causality never justifies drawing conclusions about (divine) intentionality behind such phenomena. See “Allgemeine Anmerkung zur Teleologie” in (1974b, 349—61).
[17] — Kant distinguishes among three predispositions in human character. Animality is the predisposition to live merely for the satisfaction of one’s appetites; humanity is the predisposition to seek honor among one’s peers; and personality is the predisposition to act on the basis of self-legislated moral principles. Animality and humanity are predispositions driven by hypothetical imperatives; personality is a predisposition driven by categorical imperatives (1998g, 672—75). To be sure, given the limits to reason, there is no perfect character of personality, but Kant maintains that even a character ostensibly defined purely in terms of animality (sensuousness) possesses the capacity of freedom to become a moral agent (690). Sensuousness alone is too little to account for evil in humanity because it would make evil a matter of animality alone, and reason alone is too much to account for evil in humanity because it would elevate evil to a diabolical principle equal to the other ideas of reason: God, freedom, and the soul (683—84). The capacity of freedom that enables the determination of one’s moral disposition is good (693). Hence, evil presupposes the good (freedom).This is precisely why we experience the paradox that good can come from evil. However, rather than the degree of evil illuminating a larger amount of good, the good presupposed by evil is a challenge to individuals to exercise more rigorously and responsibly one’s freedom.
[18] — Though note: autonomy does not mean some kind of absolute knowledge by means of instrumental reason. Deontology is a moral understanding that acknowledges, unlike any other ethical system, that reason is profoundly limited. Kant uses the metaphor of an island in the middle of a stormy ocean to speak of reason. See KrV B 294-296.
[19] — It is not from where one comes or with whom one is allied that establishes one’s dignity, but whether one becomes who one is as a unique agent of freedom, and only the individual knows whether or not s/he has. See “From Hero Worship to Race Worship,” Chapter XVI in Ernst Cassirer (1946, 280—310).
[20] — See (Kant 2004, 204, n. 134; 1974a, 175; 1974b, 300, 330; 1998d, 516—17, 522—23; 1998a, 681—182, 684; 1998j, 706, 740); Preisfrage, 167
[21] — For example, Kant’s Die Metaphysik der Sitten is divided into two parts: “Part I: Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrine of Right” (i.e., juridical duties) and “Part II: Metaphysical First Principles of the Doctrine of Virtue” (i.e., ethical duties). Ethical duties presuppose a system of juridical duties
[22] — This is already recognized by Plato long before either Hobbes or Rousseau. See the Republic 359.
[23] — That we are born with a moral capacity that must be developed is at the heart of Aristotle’s ethics. See especially Book II of Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 27—28, 35. See, as well (Kant 1974b, 132).
[24] — See Abrams v. U.S., 250 U.S. 616 (1919).
[25] — See (Kant 1998b, 52—54, 61—63). See as well, (Höffe 2000, 206) and “Kant über Recht und Moral,” in Kants Ethik, in ed. Karl Ameriks and Dieter Sturma, (2004), 258. Three of the four (absent self-development) are found in (Kant 1974a, 81). Development of one’s talents is stressed in (1998d, 552, 580).
[26] — Kant is not talking about end of life decisions as engaged by the “Right to Die” movement.
[27] — See, for example, (1996a, 224—25; 1996b, 309—98; 2005, 88, 93—94).
[28] — Kant identifies the role of omniscience with respect to the grounding of the authority of morality in revelation (1974b, 311, 355—56) and rejects the omniscience implied in Utilitarianism/Consequentialism (1998b, 47— 48).
[29] — (Kant, 2004, 180). Suicide, for example, is inconsistent with one’s freedom since it is using this extraordinary causal capacity to destroy itself (174).
[30] — See The Spell of Plato, vol. I of The Open Society and Its Enemies (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966), 87, 101, 104, 107, 169.
[31] — See The Open Society, 92.
[32] — See Ernst Cassirer’s discussion of the ethical significance of this passage in Zweiter Teil. Das mythische Denken, vol. 12 of Philosophie der symbolischen Formen (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 2002), 157, 202.
33 “Thumos” is translated by Grube and Reeves as “spirited.” I prefer Richard Broxton Onians’ translation of “rage” (1994, 44, 49).
[34] — Plato includes a discussion of the state in his investigation of the meaning of justice not because individual justice is dependent upon the justice of the state but precisely the other way around. We can learn something about individual justice (what is closest to us and hence hidden) by examining something larger (i.e., the state). See Book II of the Republic 376e.
[35] — Not the least is the distinction, but not the labels, between analytic and synthetic judgment and what came to be the core three “Ideas of Reason” (God, Cosmology/Freedom, and the Soul) in the Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Mendelssohn and Kant 1764, 41, 58—59).
[36] — See Preisschrift 1763, 61.
[37] — Again, dignity is a product of birth; yet, we must become human by practice and habit (i.e., by application of the capacities given at birth) (Kant 1974b, 132). The moral law is discovered through our actions and encouraged by the cultivation of the habit of pursuit of the good. (Bojanowski 2006, 64).
[38] — In “Metaphysik Mrongovius” (1983, 1015—16), Kant insists that interest (stimuli) always have a role to play even in morality for in the absence of interest we would always act according to the law (1016). On the ubiquitous role of interest in Kant’s understanding of morality, see Höffe (2006).
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