The Subject of Freedom
in Kant’s Practical Philosophy
WILLIAM J. URBAN
The Categorical Imperative
We can approach the problem of the status the moral Law by drawing on a similar difficulty Kant poses in the first Critique. In broad terms, there is a great divide to human cognition: on the one hand, there is empirical reality in which phenomenal objects of possible experience appear in certain sets of associations; on the other hand, the subject perceives empirical reality haphazardly without an application of an a priori concept of causality (and other categories) of the understanding. The problem is that these ‘pure concepts of the understanding, however, in comparison with empirical (indeed in general sensible) intuitions, are entirely unhomogenous, and can never be encountered in any intuition.’ (A137/B176) This cannot be overemphasized, as many readers assume that Kant’s famous metaphor according to which ‘[t]houghts without content are empty, intuitions without concepts are blind’ implies a complementarity where each provides what the other lacks. On the contrary, because objects of experience and the categories of the understanding are two absolutely heterogeneous elements of our cognition devoid of any immediate link, Kant theorizes the necessity for some ‘third thing... a mediating representation’ between them, which he calls the ‘transcendental schema.’46 (A138/B177) This involves a ‘transcendental determination of time’ which is the necessary condition of both experience and concepts. (A138–9/B177–8) Moreover, the ‘schema is in itself always only a product of the imagination; but since the synthesis of the latter has as its aim no individual intuition but rather only the unity in the determination of sensibility, the schema is to be distinguished from an image.’ (A140/B179) He goes on to tell us that a schema is something which establishes a set of co-ordinates for a successful encounter between categories and objects of experience. Zupančič provides a useful topological image when she expresses how Kant’s notion of a schema involves creating the ‘space’ for a successful ‘leap’ from the side of causality to the side of an object of possible experience. (Zupančič 2000: 161)
But if this far-from-smooth, non-linear ‘leap’ of a solution is comprehensible in his theoretical philosophy, when we move to the practical realm, things become much more complicated and difficult to grasp. Indeed, we are faced with an analogous problem to solve – how do we ‘combine’ the empirical reality of an action with the a priori determination of the will by the ‘law of freedom’ – since ‘all cases of possible actions that occur can be only empirical, that is, belong to experience and nature; hence, it seems absurd to want to find in the sensible world a case which... yet admits of the application to it of a law of freedom.’47 (CPrR 5: 68) But Kant tells us that an analogous solution involving the transcendental schema will not solve this dilemma and provide a link (as it did in the first Critique) because the ‘law of freedom’ is independent of time and space. Hence, ‘we have to do not with the schema of a case in accordance with laws but with the schema of a law itself (if the word schema is appropriate here).’ (ibid 5: 68–9) Since no intuition (nor schema) can be supplied to the law of freedom, the moral Law must look to the understanding to mediate its application to the ‘objects of nature.’ However, the understanding cannot supply a schema, but a law and only ‘such a law, however, as can be presented in concreto in objects of the senses and hence a law of nature, though only as to its form; this law is... [called] the type of the moral law.’ (ibid 5: 69) Instead of a schema, we have the type qua natural law taken only in its universal-formal character. The type of the moral Law is formulated thusly: ‘[A]sk yourself whether, if the action you propose were to take place by a law of the nature of which you were yourself a part, you could indeed regard it as possible through your will.’ (ibid) This should immediately recall to one’s mind the categorical imperative (in the formulation of the law of nature) first articulated in the Grounding: ‘Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.’ (GMM 4: 421) It should be clear that the categorical imperative is none other than the type of the moral Law.
Now that we have derived its official status in Kant’s text, we can ask those obvious questions which must occur to the subject whenever he feels (via respect) the unbearable pressure of the moral Law: What exactly is the moral Law? What does it want? What does it command? The answers lie in the paradoxes implied in the empty form of the Law. At the most general level, the paradox is that despite its ‘categorical’ character, it somehow still leaves everything wide open to a subject who must still decide, for all that, how to act. This is so because the categorical imperative does not tell us what to do, but rather how to do it. The fact that it is a pure, empty form means precisely that it cannot deliver any guarantee that an action taken, even in strict compliance with the categorical imperative, will turn out ethical.48 This also means that the ‘it’ in the ‘how to do it’ remains enigmatic as well. It has no pre-existence of its own and may or may not occur in an act, even in a strict application of the categorical imperative, since we know from our analysis above that mere conformity with the law is not sufficient for an act to qualify as ethical. What we must conclude is that the type of the moral law – the categorical imperative – is not some mysterious shadow of a ‘noumenal law’ projected into the field of sensibility which Kant happened to stumbled upon. Kant’s achievement, rather, was to conceptualize how ‘the type is the law, but not “the whole” law (since it is a law of nature taken only in its form). The type is a “half-law”... a paradigmatic example of a “half-said” which, in order to become a law, has to be supplemented with an actual act of the subject.’ (Zupančič 2000: 163) Kant’s own ethical topology requires us to properly conceive the atemporal moral Law as itself dependent upon a temporal act of the subject, an act which has no guarantees in that Law, for it is only in this act that the Law itself is constituted.49 It is at this point where a fair critique of Kant is in order and simultaneously opens up a possible future course of exploration of his practical philosophy. More specifically, the need arises to examine the unfortunate ramifications of his virtual identification of the (ethical) subject with his will. That is, since he links the ethical subject of the act to the will of the subject, he thereby misses how a temporal act supports the transcendental dimension of the moral Law. In a word, Kant’s articulation of a (internal) division of the subject’s will50 is already a consequence of the fact that Kant failed to recognize fully the fundamental alienation of the subject in his act in the determination of the moral Law. If Kant had foreseen this conclusion as necessitated by his own logic, his conception of a successful ethical act would not have required a holy will.
Lacanian-themed puzzles
