On Kant's "Bad Arguments"

A recent posting made over at The Splintered Mind makes great hay out of the view that Kant makes a number of "bad arguments" by which is meant that he defends or attacks a number of things, particularly in The Metaphysics of Morals that would not, now, generally be viewed as acceptable. Pretty sweeping things are thought to follow from this, including that it is quite possible that Kant is generally indulging in what the author refers to as "gobbedly-gook". (Like the reference to "bullshit" in the citation given in the previous posting it is intriguing to find philosophers using such terms as if they were, in some sense, state of art, that is, defined something.)


There are a number of things at issue here which are rather odd even assuming, as very likely, that Kant did make a number of "bad arguments" and defended things that should not have been defended as well as attacked a number of things that should not have been attacked. The first thing at issue concerns whether something of philosophical value arises when Kant, or any other confessedly "major" philosopher says something that, on reflection, seems clearly wrong. In the cases at issue in the posting there are remarks Kant makes concerning wives and servants, masturbation, organ donation, homosexuality, the killing of bastards and tyranny. Now, even before attempting to go into any detail here, the first point would be that the cases at issue here are quite varied. So, whilst the status of wives and servants has undoubtedly changed considerably since Kant was writing, the nature of that change has, amongst other important elements of it, reflected a sense of how "property in one's person" should be understood. This is no small change and grappling with the nature of that change might well be worth some philosophical time rather than simply thinking that the citation of a passage from the history of philosophy on this topic was sufficient to close down consideration of the question of whether this philosopher has made an important contribution to the area of philosophy in question. 


Masturbation is a topic that concerns "duties to oneself" and, on this, I hope I am not immodest if I point to the discussion of this in my book Kant's Practical Philosophy as indicative of a way a serious approach to this topic can both bring out the means by which Kant's response here does draw on deep resources of his practical philosophy that point to the conclusions he draws whilst also enabling discussion of how a different conclusion could have been drawn. Without work of that kind I struggle to see how we can learn at all from the history of philosophy unless, that is, name-calling is thought an appropriate response to a position on which disagreement with historical positions is pretty manifest.


Organ donation remains a subject on which there are varied and serious philosophical options open and when Kant here tries to tackle the question of the boundaries of the self he is surely doing something important even should the way that he does it be thought problematic. It is hardly, in any case, a settled business this topic. No more is the topic of homosexuality even though the stand adopted here by Kant is one that would not tend to be adopted by Kantians today. That serious work on this area is decidedly necessary is manifest today and whilst I would certainly not want Kant's view here to become one widely adopted I would hope it worth attending to the rationale for what that view was. The question of resistance to tyranny and rebellion is a decidedly complex one that, once again, we do a disservice to if we simply reject Kant's position since here he does raise a serious problem about the basis of right.


Going through the cases is one thing, however, adjudicating the charge of "gobbledy-gook" quite another. This does, again, partly come back to questions of what "clarity" involves. The author of the posting I am here replying to seems to think it is "elitist" to write in a way that many people find difficult though it is hard to think of any philosopher who is not seriously difficult quite a lot of the time. That would, after all, be part of the point of being a philosopher! Another element of the charge made in the posting in question is that Kant can attain no greater insight on moral topics than anyone else, as is shown by his "bad" judgments on the topics in question. Now here there is surely some serious conflation. On the one hand there are the "judgments" of Kant, the guy. On the other, there is a question about what, if anything, is enduring in the body of works signed by this person. To infer from the view that the former misjudged things that the latter is untrustworthy is a sure fallacy. Secondly, the arguments cited from the Metaphysics of Morals are not all equivalent within the logic of the work since the discussion of homosexuality has no place in the strict position of right for example whilst that on tyranny and rebellion has a very important role there. Given this difference insight into the structure of the work and the basis of the positions in this structure would be of signal help in evaluating the results achieved. Amongst other points here would an assessment of how far Kant has followed his own guidelines for procedure in reaching his conclusions and what the general alternative positions, considered within that procedure, might well be. In fact, without work of that sort it is only by reference to previously assumed standards that the arguments can even be viewed as "bad". 


Two last points. Even if none of the above compels conviction it would still be surely bizarre to find an extension from the passages cited to a general conclusion about Kant's work. There is no way any body of work can be treated in such a summary fashion. Finally, if there is any point to a notion of "common sense morality" then the relation of philosophy to it needs to be evaluated from both ends. That is, whilst philosophy should surely attempt to make such morality more explicit it should also provide a critical riposte to it. On the other hand, if there is a robust sense to such morality then it should, in its turn, provide an image by which to test philosophical criticism. So the relation should be mutual without it following that nothing particular has come from the philosophical end of the argument.

Clarity and Philosophy (III)

My previous postings on this topic have tended to concentrate on responses that have been made, and thought justified, in response to works of Jacques Derrida. For some reason, his "style" is thought to be irritating by a number of people and this irritation has been rationalised by means of allegations of obscurity and, with this, an allegation of "wilful" attempts to mislead by means of such alleged obscurity. Previous postings gave short shrift to this reaction.


A thoughtful posting over at Pea Soup pursues this question from a slightly different angle, though, once again, taking off from a response to the writings of Derrida. As is pointed out here the canon of philosophical writings includes many, not least Kant, who are writers whose work is by no means evidently "clear" and yet who we take to be worth the effort required to try to work out the sense of the texts they wrote. This does instantly show that if clarity is a mere synonym for "accessibility" then there would be a serious problem with defending quite a considerable number of works in the history of philosophy. The fact that this attitude is generally not adopted does suggest that standards of what should be understood to be examples of "clarity" in philosophy can also be very varied. Is Aristotle, for example, more or less clear than Kant? Even if "clarity" is taken as a synonym for "accessibility" then there would be varied answers here depending on which works were focused on and, even within the works, which passages and stretches of argument. Also, given that the reputations of philosophers rise and fall at different points it would seem that the basis of appreciation is not clearly tied to standards of "clarity".


A second point made in the piece referred to above is that the irritation some feel when reading Derrida is one that rises from what the author calls: "the posturing, the pretense, the thin layer of bullshit that covers such exercises of coded insider-talk". Whilst this may well indicate sentiments felt the notion of the writing in question itself containing something that clearly corresponds to this attitude is disavowed by the author of the posting. Since the writing in question is effectively "innocent" of such "crimes" then what is it that lies behind such responses? After all, some of us might feel that the prose of, say, Quine, is rather more rebarbative than that of Derrida and that it certainly addresses an "in-crowd" through its own mode of "insider talk".


The sense of "insider talk" might well get at the problem better as it suggests a feeling of exclusion on behalf of certain readers when confronted by certain types of writing. Again, that exclusion can hit different readers differently since I, for one, feel much more excluded from the writings of Quine than those of Derrida. So this sense of exclusion might well have something to do with a certain kind of expectation when confronted with philosophical prose, an expectation that is at issue in the demand for "clarity". What this expectation would refer to is a model of writing that has been picked up from certain types of philosophical writing that the reader has grown habituated to such that when a different type of style is presented the search for comprehension of the piece gets disappointed. In this case, however, the problem surely lies with the reader for importing an expected standard that might well be the right one for getting published in journals of academic philosophy and for being taken seriously at conferences held in certain places with certain types of people attending. However, surely that reflects the generalisation of a certain model without accompanying argument for the basis of this model and simply assumes the greater transparency of this model based on the experience of a selective group? In which case the standard of "clarity" has itself, as I suggested in previous postings, been significantly left under-determined.

Philosophy and Clarity (II)

Some time ago I wrote a posting on this subject in response to some musings of Nigel Warburton who tops his web-site with the citation from John Searle, "If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself". The question I addressed there was not one of arguing in some sense "in favour" of obscurity, whatever that would mean. It was rather one of positing the question of what is meant by appeals to the value of "clarity" in philosophical disputes between variant traditions. Generally speaking, the appeal to it is made by analytic philosophers arguing that some European thinker who they refer to is simply not worth reading or engaging with (and the appeal to Searle is particularly interesting in this connection given the "exchange" between him and Jacques Derrida).


For an interesting review that makes this point at some length and with some amusing moments see this piece by Mark Champagne over at Philosophy's Other.

Clarity and Philosophy

I recently had a disagreement with Nigel Warburton on Twitter concerning the topic of the relationship between clarity and obscurity in philosophy. Warburton tweeted that you should never trust philosophers who can't explain their ideas to intelligent people. That this statement is not just a one-off is confirmed by the fact that his blog is headlined by a quote from John Searle that states: "If you can't say it clearly, you don't understand it yourself". Warburton appeared surprised that anyone would challenge these comments and suggested, in response to my arguing against these views, that it would be odd to favour obscurity.

The problem with the statements by Warburton is manifold and goes further than responding merely to him. It would be possible to begin by arguing that it is not an appropriate relationship to any philosopher to "trust" them. That is, that trust involves a relation in which one responds to the integrity of someone and perhaps questions of integrity should not be at the forefront of responding to a philosopher. After all, there is nothing about moral qualities that determines the interest of thought one way or the other. This might be thought too sweeping though since surely there are some cases where one might say that revelation of some sort of moral defect prohibited serious consideration? The classic example would be Heidegger's relationship to the Nazi Party but then shouldn't we include the anti-semitism of Frege as well in such evaluations? This kind of point effectively seems to get us nowhere when considering the worthiness or otherwise of contributions to philosophy.

The second question concerns the appeal to the verdict of "intelligent people" whoever they might be. Presumably what is meant here is the notion of the "intelligent public" being people of a certain standard of education, who, despite perhaps knowing little or no philosophy, could hear something and have a basis for evaluating its importance. It's odd that this kind of standard should be invoked at all with regard to philosophy. After all, could the Principia Mathematica meet it? Is it plausible to claim that Book Zeta of Aristotle's Metaphysics could really fit it? Or that the Critique of Pure Reason which Kant declares "could never be popular" could be held to such a standard? All these works involve a technical vocabulary that has to be learnt to read them and require serious study over a long period to really be responded to with any seriousness. Nor are they alone in this as who, after all, could even claim to have got the real point of John Locke's Essay Concerning Human Understanding without a lengthy period of reading?

Why, given that the evidence of need for continuous and dedicated study for philosophical works to be responded to, is there even the pretense that ones of any quality could easily be retailed to a general (albeit "intelligent") public? The reason appears to reside in the citation from Searle that Warburton gives, the impression that there is some form of clarity that philosophy needs to aspire to and which can be held as a test for "good" philosophy. What this clarity consists in and how it is to be measured are rarely, if ever, themselves articulated. The citation of Searle reminds some of us of one notorious occasion in which the quest for "clarity" was itself exposed to some very detailed and difficult questions, the occasion of the "debate" (if such it really was) between Searle and Derrida. The original spark of this was Derrida's piece "Signature Event Context", part of which included a response to J.L. Austin and concerned, indeed, questions about the conditions of communication. John Searle's response to this piece suggested a series of failures on Derrida's part to understand J.L. Austin and, in return, in Limited Inc Derrida demonstrates in serious detail all the ways in which his original article had been misrepresented by Searle. This dispute is one of the sources of Searle's more emphatic commitment to a "clarity" that he had apparently defended in a dispute in which he failed to show the standards of clarity that he was the the titular defender of.

Calls for clarity in philosophy are in themselves obscure since underneath them is a view of what such clarity has to consist in. It must involve the ability to translate thought into a general common medium whose own conditions of possibility are never made transparent. There is evaluation here that does not speak its own name and which can be traced back, in Anglo-Saxon countries, to an implicit approval of a standard of "common sense" that has its own institutional and historical conditions, conditions that the advocates of such a standard of intelligibility have no interest in making apparent. Only under the condition that such conditions can themselves be made stakes of a debate would be it possible to address the question of whether some philosophers are, or are not, more "obscure" than others.