The Kant Variations- Critical Songs on the Texts of Immanuel Kant © 1997

2007-09-16T11:40:00.000-07:00

Contents

A- Note on Method and Interest
B- Introductory Comments

1- Synthesis in Kant’s Aesthetical Idea (1988)

2- Making and Comparison- The Arena of Judgment in the Third Critique (1996)

3- Negative Dialectics- Composition on the Threshold of Tragic Sympathy (1990)

4- Scenes From the Theater of a Moral Desire-Mission in the Critique of Practical Reason (1991)

5- Emmanuel Levinas and the ‘Love’ of Knowledge (1989)

6- Contest and Justification- Judgment Within and Beyond the Limits of Reason (1996)

7- Unity in the House of Reason (1997)

A- Note on Method and Interest

2007-09-16T11:38:00.000-07:00

From the very beginning of my classes in the Philosophy department at SIU, strong emphasis was placed on the primacy of the text under consideration in any academic writing, so that was the origin of my method in any philosophy paper I wrote for class. This element was strong in the teaching of Professors John Howie, Garth Gillan, George Schedler, Robert Hahn, Mark Johnson, and Stephen Tyman. I read the book at least once through and then go to secondary books and then to philosophers index and find any articles I could that appeared to have connection to my topic. Then on the second and subsequent readings I would write 1) what I thought to be ‘key’ sections of the text, as notes on notecards, and 2) any thoughts that would pop into my head relating to that section of the text and the subject of the text. In this way I could be assured that what I wrote was based on the text, and was not any attempt to manufacture or connect meaning that was not text related. From these 2 sets of notes, I then attempted to find a coherent thread to compose my piece. In my mind and in my heart this then made my attempt an effort at what I considered to be ‘authentic Philosophy’- either academic or however slightly original the writing might be- at least it was my authentic best effort at writing authentic scholarship and philosophy.

So this was the method I diligently executed in writing all the essays in the Kant Variations. This then explains the condensed nature of the writing. I made no attempt to write in any particular tradition, but just wrote what I found in the text, on the topics in the text that seemed important to the meaning of the book. In the end, especially for me, understanding the text is primary, and the work comes from there, and then the kind of philosopher you naturally are is revealed after the fact.

Now, From a review of my comments throughout the essays, it is clear that what I focused on in the texts of Kant, Adorno, Levinas, Derrida, Gadamer, and others, were sections of the text that describes and relates to some sort of direct experience, that explains complex phenomenon of thought, and/or human experience, and/or evidence of god in experience, in the overall understanding of the book, and in the overall contribution to understanding how the text contributes to the wisdom of life. This then, as a Philosopher, first and foremost makes me a Pragmatist, even though the subjects focused on were from the tradition of Kant, Adorno, and Levinas. In retrospect, I believe that it was the Pragmatic aspects and religious orientation of Ricouer’s writing and descriptions that drew me along through his work

So what I’ve written then is a Pragmatist philosophical/theological reading/meditation of sections of the Critique of Judgment, the Critique of Practical Reason, the Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, Mein Kampf, Negative Dialectics, and Totality and Infinity. This puts me squarely in the midst of the Pragmatist, Kant, and recent continental traditions.

This is quite funny to me- because even though I have read Dewey’s ‘Nature and Experience’, and some book of William James. I have no extensive training or experience with Pierce, or Dewey, or Rorty or any of the other Pragmatists. And apparently I need to read Victor Anderson (Vanderbilt) ‘Pragmatic Theology (1992), as well as his dissertation which covers another subject of pragmatic theology. Here I spend all this time on Kant, and I am a pragmatist. But I guess that’s how it goes if you are to honestly discover the type of thinker you are, that your method of Philosophy doesn’t exactly match that of tradition of your subject.

Sincerely,

Rick Luczak

B- Introductory Comments

2007-09-16T11:33:00.000-07:00

The following essays comprise a series of Critical ‘Songs’ on texts of Immanuel Kant and others where the writing intersects with Kant’s. They are critical in the traditional sense of beginning from scholarly investigation. They are also songs in the sense that they vary from the traditional form of expository essay and venture into modes of poetic description, exhortation, and imperative.

I hope that they add both to the Critical understanding of the Kantian tradition of scholarship, as well as to an appreciation of the majesty and mystery of existence that coarse through his writing.

The ‘song’ mode will undoubtedly be confounding for many- skipping in the midst of a section to other areas where the strain of thinking follows. There are passages where the author- in attempting to make clear an area of text- will cause the reader to think that what is before them further obscures the issue by taking the issue farther out on the edge of clarity, and varying from Kant. But if the reader returns to the original text and then back to mine again, he/she will find that what Kant writes becomes more clear after reading this book. Kant might probably have called this book a ‘mere Rhapsody’.1 This is not a book for the Kant beginner, nor for the casual student.

Much has been written, of course, since the time of his death, beautiful- intricate- illuminating original philosophy and also secondary scholarship. I do not pretend to eclipse any of what these authors have written, but wish to join them- both in argument and in the tradition of writing- in order to contribute on page to the understanding of this life we share.

Richard J. Luczak II
Chicago, 1997

Chapter 1- Synthesis in Kant's Aesthetical Idea

2007-09-16T11:32:00.000-07:00

The purpose of this paper is to highlight an aspect of Immanuel Kant's aesthetic theory treated in the Critique of Judgment, and to present this aspect in such a way that will lead towards work that shows an anticipation of later currents in western philosophy. The aspect I wish to highlight is depicted within the tension of his discussion between the requirement of the judgment of the beautiful to possess a subjective universality, and the requirement that the product of Genius, beautiful art, be exemplary. This aspect of his theory will first be shown within the frameworks of personal and cultural development, and then will be brought into much sharper focus within the technicalities of discussion in Kant's notion of an aesthetical idea. The significance of this notion will then be sketched to illuminate its importance in current work on language and meaning, and a unity with that work and Hegel's presentation of spirit.

For Kant, the judgment of something as beautiful comes about through a passive reflection on the object which is submitted to the cognitive faculties for mere estimation. Without determination by any concept, but in mere play, the cognitive faculties estimate the form of the object, and then come into an accord that produces the pleasure known as beauty. The object is therefore termed 'beautiful". This reflection is subjective for Kant because a concept does not determine the course of reflection; the object is presented for a passive estimation and not a conceptual determination. the reflection can be universal for Kant because we seem to be able to communicate this act of reflection, its feeling, and conceptual determination as well. Because we do communicate, Kant infers that there must exist a common ground of this ability.

"But if cognition’s are to admit of communicability, so must also the state of mind, i.e. the accordance of the cognitive powers with a cognition generally and that proportion of them which is suitable for a presentation (by which an object is given to us) in order that a cognition may be made out of it admit of universal communicability 1."

Because we all possess this 'common sense', the judgment of an object as beautiful can be demanded of everyone. For Kant as well, the beautiful object is exemplary; it is that towards which we strive as a culture. Genius, as the productive faculty of the beautiful, communicates this feeling for Kant in the following manner.

The ideas of the artist excite like ideas in his pupils if nature has endowed them with a like proportion of mental powers. 2

Something must be communicated here, some intellectual transformation must be undergone by the receiver of the beautiful. And while Genius is bestowed upon the artist as a gift of nature, attaining this exemplary level of production does not seem to occur by accident, as Kant shows.

"That for beautiful art in its entire completeness much science is requisite, e.g. a knowledge of ancient languages, a learned familiarity with classical authors, history, a knowledge of antiquities, etc. And hence these historical sciences, because they form the necessary preparation and basis for beautiful art". 3

What the text implies here is that there must be some commonality between learning advanced by conceptual means and the experience of the beautiful. Otherwise, the historical sciences Kant mentions would not be the 'necessary preparation and basis' for beautiful art. This implication carries with it that the experience of the beautiful produces a development along the lines of a learning, or of at least a pre-learning. Kant further enforces this view that genius is not a mere stumbling upon, but an effort; a labor, and at the same time, a transformative ordering, a development.

"Taste, like the judgment in general, is the discipline (or training) of Genius; it clips its wings, it makes it cultured and polished; but at the same time, universally assented to, and capable of being followed by others, an of an ever progressive culture". 4

Genius for Kant is a production through freedom, but the freedom unleashed does have a direction. The problem I find is this. How can the exemplary, that towards which we strive as a culture to attain, be universally communicable, and demanded of as being so. The terms exemplary and universal seem to exclude each other by their very meaning.

The exemplary work of art, the exceeding activity needed to attain the level of beautiful production, seems to exclude an appreciation for those not developed or attuned to a like degree of the artist. For an uneducated, untrained person to grasp the beauty in the incredible complexity of a work of a Mozart or a Van Gogh, seems highly unlikely. Although the language of particular parts of the text demands universal assent and an opposing exemplariness, other language in the text shows a more appropriate, although not staticly determinate conception of the situation.

To say that there is a possibility, of universal communicability rather a necessity of it, would not exclude the judgment of an object as beautiful from being extended to the average or underdeveloped mind. I would suggest that Kant's criterion for universality in the agreement of the judgment of the beautiful is not to be taken as an aesthetical ubiquity to be immediately demanded of, but that the purposive ordering experienced when contemplating the object occurs for different people according to their particular level of development. This development may eventually reach a culturally accepted level of exemplariness at a later date.

It seems then, if we accept this interpretation, that the opposition created in the text by the nature of the Kantian terminology and method, creates a dynamic, ascending scale of ability in the grasping powers of appreciation of the object of beauty. In this way any individual can feel purposiveness requisite with his or her point of development of mental disposition, and then the exemplary in culture need not be fettered. It can be viewed as more of a case of exemplary for.

I think that Kant would disagree with this interpretation of his theory of productive genius. A strict, more narrow reading demands a level of exemplariness incompatible with the grasping powers of the ordinary individual. And although the ordinary man may produce an object through toil which presents a new ordering for those near his level of development, it still may be far from exemplary for the standards of the best in a culture. It is the emphasis on the apprehending in the ordering quality of the exemplary and not the effort aspect of the art, in the Kantian treatment of the beautiful; that in the end renders Kant's theory antagonistic towards, and hence irreconcilable with, a universal aesthetic immediacy. This ordering activity that we have examined in the cultural arena comes into much sharper focus upon examination of the powers of apprehending and producing found in Kant's elaboration of the "aesthetical idea".

Genius, for Kant, is a gift of nature. It is an innate mental disposition of the subject which schematizes in freedom, and can then be followed thereafter as a rule of action for production of beautiful art. It is a willful occurrence that is not confined in its outburst, but is channeled into a direction and quality of production. The outflow is not an explosion, not a mere force that does not discriminate for appropriateness, but is a kind of taking-in that is simultaneously a giving-out, a kind of feeling-force. The gathering process, the occurrence of ordering, is on the point of an activity that exists, for Kant; for a feeling indicative of a commonality and also an individuality.

Kant focuses this roundabout view of being by juxtaposing different general statements about beauty and productive Genius, and then closes in this view by illuminating its conceptual structure, then further by illuminating its sub-conceptual structure. One juxtaposition is found in the structure of meaning in the statement of beauty as production through freedom. Freedom carries with it an implication of not being constrained, a type of non-confinement. However, willful production is only recognizable according to a direction that shows a traceable pattern, a delineation of sorts, and thus a restraint. The tension between will and freedom is illustrated by Kant in the following statements.

"By right we ought only to describe as art, production through freedom, i.e. through a will that places reason as the basis of its actions". 5,

and

"in a product of beautiful art, we must become conscious that is art and not nature; but yet the purposiveness in its form must seem to be as free from all constraint of arbitrary rules as if it were a product of mere nature". 6

thirdly,

"Nature is beautiful because it looks like art, and art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as art while yet it looks like nature". 7

What Kant is pointing to is that the will is not always knowable by conceptual means, but can be grasped in the sense that there is a grasping inherent in feeling, and vice versa. He thus shows that production also exceeds the boundaries of a conceptual format and must be dealt with as willing that can be grasped by other means, and that the production immanent in willing, must simultaneously be a grasping. that is how he focuses the discussion towards its apex in the working of the aesthetical idea.

Kant's elaboration of the aesthetical idea is one pole of a juxtaposition between animation and structure inherent in being as a knowing-feeling; in striving as a gathering. For Kant, Genius is the faculty for production of aesthetical ideas. This is accomplished via the spirit, which for Kant is the animating principle of the mind. By following the animating principle of the mind we are made aware of the power of the faculty of imagination. Through the imagination, we take the materials of experience and rework these orders, these structures, through freedom, into new orders which surpass the precious manners of recognition and production. The representations of the imagination that do this are called 'ideas'.

"Such representations of the imagination we may call ideas. Partly because they least strive after something which lies beyond the bounds of experience and so seek to approximate to a presentation of concepts of reason (intellectual ideas), thus giving to the latter the appearance of objective reality, but especially because no concept can be fully adequate to them as internal intuitions. The poet ventures to realize to sense..." 8

The dynamism immanent in Kant's depiction brings forth a reality, shows to the knower a reality not previously possible. It makes real, according to the rules of sense. It brings sense out of the noumena through productive activity the static markings of a concept, it opposes the static aspect of structure that helps make our world knowable. Through Kant's critical structure we begin to see the dynamic concept of flux as a knowing. Here we find similarities to Hegel's concept of spirit as it is presented in the workings of the negative in the chapter on perception in his Phenomenology of Spirit.

"Supersession exhibits its true twofold meaning which we have seen in the negative: it is once a negating and a preserving. Our nothing, as the nothing of the this, preserves its itself sensuous, but it is a universal immediacy. Being, however, is a universal in virtue of its having mediation or the negative within it; when it expresses this in its immediacy it is a differentiated, determinate property". 9

In the statement Nature is beautiful because it looks like art, and art can only be called beautiful if we are conscious of it as art, while it looks like nature, we see art as a willing, an effort produced in freedom without conceptual determination. It shows purposiveness followed freely, and placed in contrast to the very same freedom in another moment that produces a work that looks like a will, an effort, is behind the production. The tension in this juxtaposition brings about the feeling of contact with the dialectical development of transcendental consciousness, in a recognition along the lines of a restriction, a limiting moment of will that allows a thing to emerge in meaning form the unordered flux, that must also afford a transcendence in order for art to be a new, or re-ordering. This effect, in combination with the striving/gathering power illuminated in the workings of the aesthetical idea at the point of this emergence(shown also in Hegel's quote above), and with the statement at pg. 163 about an ever progressive culture, all show the working of an idea very similar to Hegel's world spirit as he develops it in the Phenomenology of Spirit.

This dynamic characterization being depicted in Kant’s elaboration of the aesthetical idea thus makes it very difficult to see his theory of common sense along such plain lines as those found in a very strict reading of the text. I think that Hegel is depicting the same aspect of being, but from the generation of spirit described through a phenomenology. Kant depicts this similar view through the meaning created between the tension of this critical language, by what he would call an analogical method.

The presence of a type of development associated with the judgment of the beautiful indicated by the passages cited here, contradicts a traditional Kantian reading. The assertion in question is that nothing is learned by the judgment of the beautiful. Although development may not proceed conceptually through the experience of the beautiful, there must be some grasping factor in the gathering process that constitutes the estimation of the object. Without this apprehending and reordering there would only be a blank stare, the object as not-beautiful does not make sense. If this were the case, the entire process of an ever progressive culture referred to in the text would not be possible. This is the objection that Gadamer raises in what he calls the 'radical subjectivization of the aesthetic in his work Truth and Method.

"Is there to be no knowledge in art? Does not the experience of art contain a claim to truth which is certainly different from that of science, but equally certainly is not inferior to it? And is not the task of aesthetics precisely to provide a basis for the fact that artistic experience is a mode of knowledge of a unique kind, certainly different from all moral rational knowledge and indeed from all conceptual knowledge, but still knowledge, i.e. the transmission of truth"? 10

Although there is a contradiction in the text between a grasping cultivation inherent in the experience of beauty, and Kant's insistence that nothing is learned, I would suggest that the text tends to support a Hegelian view of spirit. Gadamer rightly turns to Hegel for this resolution.

"It is necessary to take the idea of experience more than Kant did, so that the experience of the work of art can be understood as experience. For this we can appeal to Hegel's fine lectures on aesthetics. Here the truth that lies in every artistic experience is recognized and at the same time mediated with historical consciousness . Hence aesthetics becomes a history of world views, i.e. a history of truth, as it is seen in the mirror of art. It is also a fundamental recognition of the task that I formulated of justifying the knowledge of truth in the experience of art itself" 11

I assert that one can find this type of historical consciousness, that of an ever progressive culture, in the meaning of Kant's text. We see that my interpretation of Kant, through the references to 'development' in the text, along with its focus on the apprehending and ordering qualities illuminated by the working of the aesthetical idea, answers Gadamer's objection along lines that he himself turns to rectify the 'radical subjectivization of the Aesthetic'. I also assert that Gadamer's turn to Hegel for this historical consciousness merely reinforces the appropriateness of Kant's not so apparent view. Kant presents an entire construction of a view by which something must be learned in the experience of beauty, and this does not preclude his demand that the experience of beauty be non-conceptual. We find with Johnson 12, that there must be some pre-conceptual experience that is communicable, grasping, and this is reinforced upon an examination of the intricacies of the ordering and grasping immanent in Kant's notion of the aesthetical idea. This meaning can be conveyed, as Kant shows, through the vehicle and process of symbolic presentation. The examination of symbolic presentation is needed to clarify Kant's notion of an aesthetical idea.

For Kant, analogy is the structure, the vehicle, by which the aesthetical idea is conveyed. The form of reflection normally associated with one work is applied to another term and the ordering that subsequently occurs produces a pleasure indicative of an accord in the purposiveness of the form with the cognitive faculties. This applies to Kant’s critical structure because the form of reflection solidified previously by a determinative statement, undergoes a modification by further statements about the subject. 'Genius is', in a previous section, is modified by a later 'Genius is', or 'Genius is not'. Either way, the original form of reflection on the term and its meaning is applied by the latter, and a construction of new meaning emerges. In this way, critical works undergo what Kant depicts in his treatment of analogy. The aesthetical idea is at the heart of where this appropriateness is communicated symbolically.

"All hypotyposis(presentation, subjectio sub aspectum), or sensible illustration, is twofold. is either schematical, when to a concept comprehended by the understanding the corresponding intuition is given, or it is symbolical. In the latter case, to a concept only thinkable by reason, to which no sensible intuition can be adequate, an intuition is supplied which accords a procedure of the judgment analogous to what it observes in the schematism, i.e. merely analogous to the rule of this procedure, not to the intuition itself, consequently to the form of the reflection merely and not to its content". 13

There is an elaboration of being and meaning treated in the text that presents a meaning that anticipates later work on metaphor and the creation of meaning in language. Paul Ricoeur is one scholar noted for work in this field. Although not to be taken as exhaustive, a quote from his book The Rule of Metaphor, offers a glimpse at the seminal nature of Kant's work by showing strong similarities in a division of meaning by a language scholar, and one that can easily be found in Kant's elaboration of the aesthetical idea.

"So what Jean Ladriere has termed the power of signifying in order to stress its operative and dynamic character, is the intersection of two movements. One movement aims at determining more rigorously the conceptual traits of reality, while the other aims at making referents appear. This circularity between the abstractive phase and the concretizing phase makes this power of signifying an unending exercise, a 'continuing odyssey’". 14

Here there is a clear correlation between meaning and the gathering together of reality referred to previously in this paper. There is a division along the lines of gathering as determinative knowing that ideas strive to realize, and the production immanent in Kant's theory. There is a strong similarity to the negation and determinativeness indicated in Hegel earlier, and there is also its realization in language that Kant properly, but not exhaustively, indicates in the text by the reference to analogy.

In Kant's critical structure and language on the judgment of the beautiful and productive Genius, Kant creates a metaphor that first allows the reader to feel the tracing of this dynamic ordering as his own mind generates it, and thus conveys a much deeper, and intricate conception of meaning that a strict reading will allow.

The aesthetical idea stands at the very heart of Kant's conception of meaning as its unifying moment, as a touching of the supersensible that we can possess and share. It is a reaching, a striving, a gathering, and a feeling that reminds us of our freedom and its makeup. It is the indicator that spirit is present, and thus is the life of our thought.

"It can be only that in the subject which is nature and cannot be brought under rules of concepts, i.e. the supersensible substrate of all his faculties, and consequently that with respect to which it is the final purpose given by the intelligible of our nature to harmonize all our cognitive faculties. thus alone is it possible that there should be a-priori at the basis of this purposiveness, for which we can prescribe not an objective principle, a principle subjective and yet of universal validity". 15

The development of the text from discussion of more general forms of a progressive, cumulative consciousness, to its workings at the heart of a discussion of meaning in language, shows the aesthetical idea at the point of synthesis of these two separately treated subjects. It shows a way in which a phenomenology of consciousness needs not exclude an analysis of language of meaning. It shows how the latter provides a more intricate dynamism to the original depiction of the former. When reflecting about the subject matter and methods of Hegel's work and Ricoeur's later work on metaphor, it seems as it this work were intended as a more general attempt to show the point of unity of these two subjects. This then answers an unneeded objection by Gadamer, but agrees with sensitive insights he has that show a more appropriate significance of aesthetics, that a more traditional reading that Kant offers.

Kant wishes to show a division along the lines of a gathering animation that feels, a life giving principle to structure, that searches for a way to make real, to schematize that which cannot be sufficiently schematized. It is the not simple gathering at the edge of our abilities that lets us know that we are alive, creative creatures.

"In the most universal signification of the work, ideas are representation referred to an object, according to a certain principle, but so that they can never become a cognition of it. They are either referred to an intuition, according to a merely subjective principle of the mutual harmony of the cognitive powers, and they are called aesthetical; or they are referred to a concept according to an objective principle, although they can never furnish a cognition of the object, and are called rational ideas. In the latter case the concept is a transcendent one, which is different from a concept of the understanding, to which an adequately corresponding experience can always be supplied and which therefore is called immanent.
An aesthetical idea cannot become a cognition because it is an intuition(of the imagination) for which an adequate concept can never be found. A rational idea can never become a cognition because it involves a concept(of the supersensible) corresponding to which an intuition can never be given". 16

The aesthetical idea is the feeling of this initial bringing forth of sense form out of the noumena. It is at the point of our development forced on by a willed apprehension. It shows us, and inclines us towards, a shared commonality. Kant wishes to show the tracings, the real indications, of being by tracing it to the point where we begin to bring sense out of the noumena. At this point Kant thinks we cannot go further. Beyond this point by which we think and can speak about being and how this emerges in meaning, Kant thinks there is only speculation.

Notes
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, (New York: Hafner, 1972), pg. 75.
2. Kant, pg. 152.
3. Kant, pg. 114.
4. Kant, pg. 163.
5. Kant, pg. 145.
6. Kant, pg. 149.
7. Kant, pg. 149.
8. Hans Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method (New York: Crossroads, 1975), pg. 87.
9. Gadamer, pg. 87.
10. Kant, pg. 157.
11. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977), pg. 68.
12. Mark Johnson, The Body In the Mind, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987), pg. 161.
13. Kant, pg. 197.
14. Paul Ricoeur, The Rule of Metaphor, (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1977), pg. 298.
15. Kant, pg. 189.
16. Kant, pg. 187.

Chapter 2- Making and Comparison, The Arena of Judgment in the 3rd Critique

2007-09-16T11:30:00.000-07:00

"In order to distinguish whether anything is beautiful or not, we refer the representation, not by the understanding to the object for cognition, but by the imagination (perhaps in conjunction with the understanding) to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or pain." 1

Kant thus begins the great third critique. In order to distinguish whether a thing is beautiful or not. In order to distinguish whether anything, anything at all, is beautiful or not. And thus begins the odyssey to describe what it means to say that some thing is beautiful and to describe the arena of judgment.
To distinguish. To perceive as being separate or different. To set above or apart from others. In the case of the beautiful to definitely set above. To exalt a thing, as beautiful. To exalt a thing. But what type of judgment is this judgment of taste, this setting apart, this exaltation- in saying that something is beautiful?
The purpose of this essay is to highlight two principal themes in the Critique of Judgment2 that are at the root of this book. These themes are Comparison and Power which taken together in process are the principal components of Kant’s use of the notion of ‘Purpose’ and ‘Purposiveness’ so fundamental to the 3rd Critique. My thesis here is that ‘Purpose’ is treated by Kant as Making in the 3rd Critique, and that the process of Making is best elucidated as the dialectic between Comparison in the work of reflection, and Power. In this work I hope to color, a bit, the framework of the concept of ‘purpose’ presented in the text of the Critique of Judgment, and by this add to the body of scholarship that has helped us to understand and appreciate what we can of this philosophical masterpiece.
Comparison is approached first in the process of distinguishing whether anything is beautiful or not, in the comparison of the object to the order of experience. Secondly, comparison is at the heart of the feeling of the sublime considered mathematically and considered dynamically, and through this feeling we learn much about the dynamics of the power to-make as a consequence of comparison. This sense of power to-make we find constitutive of judgment itself. The power of judgment to make sense, of the inner sense received by the sensory apparatus and capabilities of man. This power of making sense is twofold in reflection. It is first the power to show in the presenting of the phantasm as phenomenon, and secondly it is the power to connect this intelligible barrage into an object, into a thing of reflection. Power is then also approached as the external power to-make treated in the Kant’s elucidation of productive Genius.
Collisions occur at the limits of the judging consciousness in the dialectic of reflection and making, in the dialectic of making and touch, in the perception and active participation in the phenomena of extension, and in the perception and making sense of dynamic interplay of flux. There is the collision in the design of competitive interdependence in the social dialectic and finally there is a collision of judgment with its own limits in the design and social value of the arc of the time of life. These scenes comprise both outer and inner boundaries for the arena of judgment. The attempt of this work is to briefly outline these boundaries.
First I will write on the structure of making in the judgment of taste. Next I will write on the connection between reflection and feeling that forms the basis of judgment for Kant, in the form of making sense. From here I proceed to elucidate the workings of power involved in the judgment of the sublime- first considered mathematically and then considered dynamically. Finally I will write on the anthropological parameters that bind the theme of making in the third critique together, and give this grand project of making its’ teleology a certain vector- its’ eschatology.

1)-Reflection and Making
Kant introduces purpose in the Third Critique, according to it's transcendental determinations with regards to, and special emphasis on, causality. The definition of purpose strikes a delicate balance between the reflective aspects of cause with reference to the object as effect, and the aspect of cause as agency. The emphasis here though is not the full spectrum of agency, but of agency as making. Certainly other aspects of agency, mainly the aspect of 'doing' enter into the equation of Kant's notion of purpose, but the emphasis in the definition, and the import for the entire book, is on the notion of the power of making. Through effort and results, the object as effect, and the effect then as intelligible observation.

"If we wish to explain what a purpose is according to its transcendental determinations (w/out presupposing anything empirical like the feeling of pleasure) we say that the purpose is the object of a concept, in so far as the concept is regarded as the cause of the existence of object (the real ground of its possibility); and the causality of a concept in respect of its object is its purposiveness. Where then not merely the cognition of an object but the object itself is thought of as an effect only possible by means of the concept of this latter, there we think a purpose. 3

So even though the approach of the text is a critique of the Reflective Judgment, the notion of purpose conveyed is that of what sits in the center of the dialectic of reflection and making. In the section the Analytic of the Beautiful the perspective is from reflection and the reflective judgment.
The judgment of taste deals with the effect of form on feeling. For Kant the imagination and the understanding come into accord in the passive reflection upon the form of the object. In the object known as beautiful the symbolic element comes into play. The aesthetic idea is an idea that produces thought without having a definite concept for it. So that the feeling of the beautiful refers to the mind’s dynamic tracing of the form- the flight of thought. The mark of form that carries the weight of the aesthetical idea is named by Kant the aesthetic attribute. This is a definite form that carries with it no definite idea, but works as a symbol, an indefinite idea that causes more thought, or an excess of thought. The aesthetical attribute is a type of form without concept, a mark that bears no definite concept but produces a symbol. This passive estimation brings us into contact with productive Genius, and in the act of productive Genius Kant deals with producing, form-ing, with making form. In form-ing we cause the existence of the object, the never-before object. Genius produces the object, the reflective judgment of taste produces this feeling.
Desire is thus manifested in the notion of purpose as making, in Nietzschean terms as will-to-power as making. In the universal voice what is communicated is the international supra-linguistic language of making, and the assertion that this power can be communicated through reflection. In making we all 'speak the same language'. The strange and cryptic Idea of 'purposiveness without purpose' in Kant is thus not strange at all, in fact very common to judgment. In general all it means is that we cannot view an object without thinking of it as having been 'made' somehow. In science we view an objects properties by observation, but also by taking the object apart to 'see how they are made'. So that reflection upon an object, even without interest in the existence of that object, will render a common, universal voice from the very nature that it is a made object, and the object itself, through passive reflection on its form, will 'say' something that is the same to all of us, because to-make is common to all of us.
So even though we possess no interest at all in the existence of the object, by passive contemplation the structure, the play of the mind in apprehending the delineation, excites the cognitive powers by the power of making. It is this power which 'speaks' in the work of art. The form Kant uses to describe the reflective act of taste is agreement, the harmony of assent between at least two. It is this power of agreement which says something through mere reflection upon the object. It is the power of agreement which we exalt.

A representation which, as individual and apart from comparison with others, yet has an agreement with the conditions of universality which it is the business of the understanding to supply, brings the cognitive faculties into that proportionate accord which we require for all cognition, and so regard as holding for everyone who is determined to judge by means of understanding and sense in combination (i.e. for every man). 4

The Agreement of the faculties with form is a contract with the world. This Agreement about the world, an agreement with the form of things. In the first sense, present in the agreement of the faculties is a promise to act, in the second sense of agreement is the contract we have with things, a corporeal recognition of that which we have in common with things. Within and beyond the structure of the self- in a common sense, to-gether.
Because of our own will and our own process of making the lines of order we see in an object, in a group of objects, and in a process are seen precisely as the markings of purpose. Because to be free means to act, through self-legislation, and the anthropological root, the history of such action is work. Action-doing with a purpose- to work, making a chair, making clean, making safe, making a more pleasant environment.

But now why is it that teleology usually forms no proper part of theoretical natural science, but is regarded as a propaedeutic or transition to theology? This is done to restrict the study of nature mechanically considered to that which we can so subject to observation or experiment that we are able to produce it ourselves as nature does, or at least by similar laws. For we see into a thing completely only so far as we can make it in accordance with our concepts and bring it to completion. But organization, as an inner purpose of nature, infinitely surpasses all our faculty of presenting the like by means of art. And as concerns the external contrivances of nature regarded as purposive (wind, rain, etc.), physics, indeed, considers their mechanism, but it cannot at all present their reference to purposes, so far as this is a condition necessarily belonging to cause, for this necessity of connection has to do altogether with the combination of our concepts and not with the constitution of things. 5

In the function and act of domiciliation, judgment compares the new object or experience to the order of experience, and that order of experience is precisely a place or category where the current object or experience ‘belongs’. Although the eidetic markings, the pure, flat empirical markings of the phenomenon are not within the control of the judging subject, -- so much so that it seems that within the order of comparison the phenomenon under observation orders itself- the ‘Belonging-to’ involved is formulated in the very act of observation and driven by the sense that it- the identity- is ‘mine’. The gravity, then, of pure intellectual categorization, this sense of order, is precisely bound by my own sense of identification as having, as possession. What presents this order of experience to my judgment is a unity which in each and every case is ‘mine’. This sense of order is precisely a belonging-to, and this sense drives the process of unifying experience, in the making sense of things.
Therefore the ‘necessity of connection’ mentioned above is due not to the constitution of things but by the character of the understanding through the use of judgment and the use of things. Once again we find that Not only our conception of the world is ‘bound’, no- our entire structural framework of understanding, is bound and conditioned by the practical application of the concept. Reflection brought to concept in this sense facilitates reason’s place in the world, facilitates both the transposition of sense to meaning, and also facilitates the launching of the attempt to try, a type of fixing of coordinates in the approach of understanding towards reason. The concept has use only so far as it enables us to produce a thing, its very orientation arises out this concern for practical application, out of reason’s demand for totality. It can be said that the very nature of understanding, through judgment, in and of itself demands connection- demands making sense- regardless of the constitution of things. So far as we ‘see into things’, this is the character of that ‘seeing’.

Reflection and Touch

For Kant to subsume a particular under a universal is a determinant judgment, to find a universal for a particular, is a reflective judgment. The case of the beautiful though is enigmatic in regard to this categorical separation. For in Kant "In order to distinguish whether anything is beautiful or not, we refer the representation,...to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or pain." If the form of the object causes the imagination and understanding to come into accord we feel the pleasure known as the beautiful. Although we do have a universal- the 'beautiful' to begin with, it is not a determinant judgment, in Kant's terminology to call something beautiful. But by his own definition, is it a reflective judgment? In the act of taste, do we find the universal (beautiful) for the particular(object)? If we have found this universal, what is the character of the universal that we have found?
In order to distinguish, we reflect. In the process of ordering experience, we submit the representation of the object to the subject and its feeling of pleasure or pain. To reflect upon an object in order to distinguish whether an object is beautiful or not, we refer the representation to the subject for reflection. We submit the representation of the object to reflection- we re-collect experience and submit the object’s representation to the subject and feeling, and in doing so we submit this feeling to the order of experience.
In the judgment of the beautiful the imagination is employed in reflection precisely to find, if it can, a new universal, a standard of sense, by which to compare others. The part of imagination employed in the judgment of taste is that of finding, of looking for something, of discovery. We could say that the term beautiful is the ‘new’ universal for the faculty of discovery, of imagination as discovery. The imagination in the reflective act of taste is some type of tool in the faculty of discovery, but it is a 'new universal' each and every time, a new standard of sense. The beautiful here is always a discovery, we must always find it.
Following Lyotard6, reflection Domiciles through the tautegorical character of feeling ( as both message and content) and in the process of this attempted domiciling, the feelings of both the beautiful and the sublime arise as the imagination attempts to structure - with understanding or reason, the affectation- the feeling of pleasure or pain produced by the reflection in this act.
Feeling, touch, then is the center between the faculty of the natural concepts and the concept of freedom transposed into the will. If all impact of a generating will on the world is received as purposive, as if it were generated by an understanding, conversely all reception of sense data is touch and is also seen as purposive, but in a different way. Not only is the reception of this data seen as arising from an understanding, but also from a reflective judgment, driven not only by concept and logic, but by reflective feeling- a certain sense of rightness that indeed is housed- domiciled, determined or in discovery- determining. Touch points the way so to speak, brings us to find, shows forth, in that the contact made directs with a yes or no the continued course of the contact or its cessation. Nevertheless the sense of touch, bears its marks as affective and brings these marks to meaning in judgment, either determinately or reflectively. This is the import of feeling, a knowing through touch, being affected and impacted, and also directed. It is to this sense and its application in the world of nature that the notion of purpose is bound, and therefore the judgments of beauty and the sublime are bound. It is from this feeling that purpose arises, and from this feeling that sense, for Kant, can be called common.
Within and beyond the flight of thought, within and beyond the realm of the adorned, surpassing effort beyond effort, surpassing surpassing, extant. Within the very reason of acute, convulsive pain, carrying and dissolving within itself the fragile rationalization of election. Touch is a negative surpassing, a warmth and strength, where everything reaches in and enlarges, where everything else fades and goes away. Bound Celestially, gravely suspended, there is only you, and I.
Materials and riches arise and appear, and the physical structure of the world becomes visible, and I am laid bare. And all that I can give seems so small compared with that what I wish to give. To share. At all. What possible measure, what measure. All languages become one, and all sense becomes the same, and I see you in the mirror of this touch. And the depth of touch comes over me, moving through my wrapped skin and boiling flesh like a wave through water and settles with warmth or cool, scintillates, and appearance transforms itself. And I am transformed. In a perfect moment of clarity, to-gether, through the visceral and gnawing tactile edge of will coming to try. In any moment, the letting be, the allowing to be, in a lightning crystallization, where time is now fleeting, and now eternal, where every thing is one. To-gether. In a common sense. We.
Without this touch I am always falling apart, and it is this touch that makes me part of something greater, the only thing in this world that holds me together at all. Parts, separate, distended. Within all this a calm, a cool soothing, a floating silence, suspended. A sense of being held together, held. Calm your soul. The lifetime of chance, the opportunity of life In touch. Each other.
In fact it is the weight of the will, or as I will say- the sensible import of the act- that carries in itself the power to span the leap between the concept of freedom into the world of sense. This is the kernel present in the aesthetic attribute. Kant will say later in the teleological judgment in the section on final purposes that in the end the value of life is ‘nothing but the value we give to life’ - the value we give it. So that the degree to which we are able to span the gulf between freedom and the world of sense is in no way predictable, but may be observed only after we have acted. It is not here raised to the level of principle- but this differentiation must be acted out, and then observed. This differentiation must first be given.
Freedom means to act of our own- means to actualize in the world of sense. Order is not a theoretical imposition but is constantly being acted out, brought to order like the first drawing of the first map of the world. The exemplary as never-before so well suited, the never-before so adorned. The teleological principle is then the baggage carried by a will in the act of observation, but is also the uncanny chance of so much agreement with the principle of order as it is observed, of agreement with things. We carry purpose as if we are the bearer of a flag into uncharted territory, as if we indeed make the map of purpose ourselves. Each experience of the beautiful is compared with what we know, reorders experience -and makes of the world each time a new world.

“The concept of freedom is meant to actualize in the world of sense the purpose proposed by its laws, and consequently nature must be so thought that the conformity to law of its form at least harmonizes with the possibility of the purposes to be effected in it according to laws of freedom. There must be therefore, a ground of the unity of the supersensible, which lies at the basis of nature, with that which the concept of freedom practically contains; and the concept of this ground, although it does not attain either theoretically or practically to a knowledge of the same, and hence has no peculiar realm, nevertheless makes possible the transition from the mode of thought according to the principles of the one to that according to the principles of the other.” 7

Extension and Dominion –the Comparison of Power

The feeling of the sublime considered mathematically, and the sublime judged dynamically have to do with the feeling aroused by the comparison that occurs as a consequence of the imagination’s struggle and failure in the attempt to render to form, the comparison of power. In the Judgment of the Sublime, the imagination submits the representation to reflection and in the attempt to render the representation to form, the imagination fails. The representation is formless, boundless. So why would there be aesthetic feeling at all in the passive consideration of this boundlessness, because the lack of boundary brings the course of reflection upon what remains, and what remains is the estimation of the power in the formlessness, in the struggle to bring to form.
In passive contemplation the very nature, the strength of the boundless movement apprehended, and the overwhelming magnitude of the comparison brings forth a communication of the power of making. It is as if that power were a will at work. So through the notions of magnitude, and might, what is being communicated is the strength of the will, because making, because willing, is common to all of us.

'The faculty of desire, so far as it is determinable to act only through concepts, i.e. in conformity with the representation of a purpose, would be the will. But an object, or a state of mind, or even an action is called purposive, although its possibility does not necessarily presuppose the representation of a purpose, merely because its possibility can be explained and conceived by us only so far as we assume for its ground a causality according to purposes, i.e. in accordance with a will which has regulated it according to the representation of a certain rule. There can be then, purposiveness without purpose, so far as we do not place the causes of this form in a will, but yet can only make the explanation of its possibility intelligible to ourselves by deriving it from a will. 8

The Sublime Judged Mathematically-the Power of Extension and Fantastic Desires

For Kant, the root of the feeling of the sublime judged mathematically is the estimation of magnitude converted and reduced to the power of extension. Theoretically we can extend numbers, and therefore size, however in any sense of practice if we wish to physically extend, or physically extend anything within our own practical means, and within others practical means, then the notion of infinity disappears before our eyes. Sequences we extend do not go on infinitely, do not go on forever. Sequences we extend go on indefinitely, beyond definite, but not forever. Extension occurs, or can occur, or can- the possibility occurs not because of infinity, but because the finite that we know is not completely defined- it is indefinite. Here I differ with Kant.
Can we make a parallel between extension mathematically and the effort of the will. Mathematically can we say that extension stops with effort, if nothing else than the exertion it takes to continue that theoretical extension. So that the infinite, and the indefinite are practically the same at the point where apprehension fades and fails and the mind that thinks of infinity accepts the extension’s relation to reality not only as absurd, but as gibberish, as unrecognizable. The mathematically sublime does violence to the purpose of the concept, to the purpose of any concept, to the point where the concept meets the indefinite.
Now Kant will accept this definition of human extension only partially, he approaches the principle of extension as apprehension and accepts the principle to extend- and allows this principle to infinity. This process of having infinity in ourselves for Kant is the supersensible because the extension he speaks of is not a product of effort, but a product of the scenario of flux and the dynamic separation of things. This sense of extension we share with things more than with our sense, for we know that things and motion go on and extend beyond our sense. This structure is given, prior to experience. So this principle of extension is accepted by Kant as a principle of phenomena, but also a principle of noumena as well. I will say here that Hegel traces in the Phenomenology of Spirit, in the chapter Perception, the dynamic workings of the Negative in the production of separation and flux9. The negative creates flux, motion creates extension and the suspension /separation of objects. The given thus is prior to experience, but it is also a product of generation.
Furthermore, the extension- of this generation and of this apprehension- is not limited to the vector concentrations of the will, it sprays out upon the initiative of the will, and its initial verberations of the negative. The will explodes upon movement, creating in wonder and in mystery upon the fragment of apprehended support. Experience seems magnified, larger as we look, more important as we act, tragic as we suffer, haunted as we fear, brilliant as we see, and exalted as we rejoice. Behold!! The arena of apprehension is exaggerated as it forms. Happiness becomes everlasting joy, sadness becomes unending despair. The force of experience carries this always, this explosion which swallows all awareness of temporality. This explosion completely dominates the now, this force of import in the explosion of experience, and all seems ever so real.
Here though I will bind this principle of extension to generation in the anthropological realm of knowledge, for as our life is human life, we participate in this flux, in the supersensible, as humans. We only participate so long as we act, so long as we move, so long as there is effort, so long as we live. The suspended flux of separation and of things and the infinity of extension can be bound to motion anthropologically this way: distance as extension is that which is traveled, either physically or in the act of observation, so without this travel there may be an accepted principle of infinity- but this principle in itself makes no sense, because this principle’s structure is that of the possibility of every thing and every space being present to sense.
The principle of ‘jumping’ to accept the principle of extension, the absolutely large as a unit in progress thus means nothing, is absurd, but also means everything. It means nothing in the sense of practice of extension, in making the quantity in unit real in magnitude. Infinity in this second sense means everything in the project of existence generally. Infinity in the second sense means really to never stop extending, to extend eternally. Infinity therefore accepted in the generated, structured power of apprehension is the wish, and the tautegorical character of this wish is to not die, to always be.
Infinity is the feeling of the power to not-die, to always be. This is the universal voice expressed in the wish of the infinite will, and expressed in the acceptance of the formula for mathematical extension, in the unit, as apprehending the infinite. This is the incredible role and power of the wish- given power to accomplish in thought, and in the phantasm, what cannot be accomplished in any real conception. We believe we see it, the infinite, especially in a will, the infinite in the phantasm, the noumena. Absolutely strong, absolutely large, absolute power, absolute will. If ever....for-ever. The wish- a kind of eschatological extension and coloring to the ought projected in the common sense. Adorno writes- ‘The physical moment says that suffering ought not to be’10. I will now say that in this negative expression of the derivation of the ‘ought’ from the ‘is’, that there is underlying this another principle, both negative and positive. The physical moment of suffering here also says that it ought not to die, that ‘it- the physical moment itself- ought to go on forever’.
Time as extension collides with the feeling of the sublime judged mathematically as infinity extended numerically, and thus infinitely extended space. Infinity means really however to never stop extending, to extend eternally. Therefore infinity does not take mathematical extension as its proper model, but succession. Augustine’s framework of threefold present time. Time of the past present, time of the present present, and time of the future present.
What we can wish is infinite, in extension and in might, what we desire is infinite in extension and in might. But this wish collides with what we see and what we know.

Objection has been brought against a similar procedure of mine, and my definition of the faculty of desire has been found fault with, viz., that it is (the being’s) faculty of becoming, by means of its representations, the cause of the actuality of the objects of these representations; for the desires might be mere cravings, and by means of these alone everyone is convinced the object cannot be produced. But this proves nothing more than that there are desires in man, by which he is in contradiction with himself. For here he strives for the production of the object by means of the representation alone, from which he can expect no result, because he is conscious that his mechanical powers, which must be determined by that representation to bring about the object, are either not competent or even tend toward the impossible, e.g. to reverse the past or to annihilate in the impatience of expectation the interval before the wished for moment. Although in such fantastic desires we are conscious of the inadequacy of our representations for being causes of their objects, yet their reference as causes, and consequently the representation of their causality, is contained in every wish; and this is peculiarly evident if the wish is an affection or longing..... For we commonly learn to know our powers only by first making trial of them. 11

In this note Kant describes the structural limits of the wish and its notion of infinity. The wish here has a firmament of sorts in the notion of extension, a firmament that arches at the top and points beyond, but it also has an atmosphere of results and expectations that fall within the arc of this power. The measures, the traces, of this extension as human distance are motion and time, with time dependent on motion, as a road traveled. So long as we live, though, this principle of extension as succession, this thrownness of Dasein can be considered a principle of the structure of phenomena and noumena. But now this principle is bound to our participation in it, bound to how we know it, bound to apprehension as part of feeling- affectation. The base of infinity is thus eternity. To extend forever. Ubiquitous extension. This wish is the model for the infinite of Kant. Space extended at absolute speed and absolute measure, forever, pushing the arch forever upward. Infinity extended infinitely. Infinity, in human time, is thus the wish inherent in the very physical structure of feeling, the wish and the power to not-die, to always be.

The Dynamically Sublime- Power and Order

Might is that which is superior to great hindrances. It is called dominion if it is superior to the resistance of that which itself possesses might. Nature, considered in an aesthetical judgment as might that has no dominion over us, is dynamically sublime. 12

Now that which we are driven to resist is an evil and, if we do not find our faculties a match for it, is an object of fear. Hence nature can be regarded by the aesthetical judgment as might, and consequently as dynamically sublime, only so far as it is considered an object of fear. 13

The very definition, though, of the dynamically sublime brings us quickly to the root of physicality in the practical world. Might is defined in the first paragraph above by Kant as the ability to overcome great hindrances and the definition of the dynamically sublime is that which is absolutely great with regard to might. What is ‘hindered’ is a purpose though, either by some type of mechanical obstacle to the objective of this purpose, or more importantly by a conscious material resistance to that purpose, a will. This definition brings purpose into the arena of the contest. The ‘hindrance’ is a point at which purpose is contested, opposed, and the point at which this resistance is met is a point of overcoming. At this point the ability to overcome this hindrance is a facility, a power. The point of the ‘hindrance’ here is juncture where there is a comparison of powers, one contestant is superior, and the outcome has already been decided in that the point of the ‘hindrance’ is a contest won, and the opponent can be called a ‘hindrance’ rather than an opponent or conqueror. The definition of might here is therefore not so much that of force, but a definition and language of might from the position of the ‘victorious’.
Once again we are thrown into the very same analysis of the mathematically sublime grafted onto the physical world by what constitutes the ‘infinite’. Practically once again we run into the very same aporia as before as far as the perception of the infinite, however the effort of will implied redoubles not into my different form or argument, but it does seem so different. There is so much more allure to this idea of the absolutely great will, of a will absolutely large, absolutely extended- infinite- in all respects- even if it is beyond all our ability to conceive.
At the time of the sublime judgment it is the estimation of a power too-great, of a form yet-to-come, or a size beyond our power, an object yet-to-be that reflects a massive will. The turbulence of the sublime reflection for Kant, is then the reflection of the power of making, of the power of the will, in its formlessness, in its nature as possibility, coming to form as making.
The introduction of comparison of magnitude and the comparison of might, or as Kant calls it, the introduction of 'superiority', brings forward both a fundamental lack underlying the entire analysis of the analytic of the sublime, and also the fundamental strength. The fundamental lack we speak of here is tied into the spectrum of what it means to be great. The need for comparison, with regard to others, but more importantly to oneself is the issue. What does it mean to be great? Why is it a concern to be a better person than another? 'Greatness', to say that something is 'great' from mere passive contemplation, is a claim that carries a universal voice, recognizable by all as necessary. This point seems to locate the psychic lack, the flaw that corresponds with the physical moment of suffering, its physical equal. The point of the notion of greatness is also the point of defeat- the vanquishing of opponent, the diminishment of the good that stands alone, now brought into comparison.
Awe at the power of something we cannot make. Awe in the face of a power that just engulfs my power, your power, our collective power and all of humanity's power combined. Therefore the awe of a power of making so vast, so detailed, so destructive, so driven, so exquisite. Here we look at objects as being made somehow, here also we equate a power so overwhelming with our practical door to the world, our will; and think of a will so large, and purpose so much greater than ours, and a unity, a concept behind such a purpose. Such a power, such a will. The sweep of the power and its formlessness, and then the form that this power settles toward. In such a power a tremendous object is being made, and we know not what.
The preservation inherent in Hegelian supercession14 , that negates as well as preserves, while under threat. And- so- slowly- dies. And there is fire, blue and white, all around, a boiling heat. And there is a howling roar, in a tempest so strong that lightning lashes, blisters and scars the sky and a rumble thunder that shakes loose even the souls of the dead and makes them seem mortal once more. Torment upon torment, unending, this stench and hatred that can lie in me and looks at me. Destroyer. Life occurs within this pandemonium, but not all is despair- not beating back death.
Sinister and truthful is Kant who places the dynamics of comparison at the center of the analysis of the sublime- But roots its origins in the battle of the sensible standard- might. The battle involved in the feeling of the sublime is the battle of the imagination with reason, not with the understanding but with reason, with the principle of construction and the comparison of powers. Reflection upon a power of will so great as to cause the sublime feeling brings to mind greatness of purpose and greatness of will. In the attempt to bring to form, the formless nature of the apprehension shows forth a strength present in the formlessness which we cannot be adequate to.
Death from physical collision, from the storm, from the tornado. Destruction from the heat, from freezing, from the flood. Death from the lion attack, from the snake's bite. Having fear becomes the fear of destruction, it is the fear of death through force, the fear of suffering through pain. However Kant proceeds to show that direct fear cannot produce the movement of the mind called sublime. But so long as what is being considered is an object of fear, it is sublime. The movement of the sublime is then produced in the shadow of fear.
This fear does end, though, and as the long night of the terrible withdraws we are left with the full knowledge of the terrible, and possibilities of power. In repose Fear leaves its shadow, and it is this shadow we see when we contemplate the power of nature, in safety. When we contemplate the dynamically great and its kind and terrible nature, we no longer are in fear directly as Kant says, we are 'fearful', we are in deaths shadow, as fear. In the face of death but without fear, so terrible, but raising to ideas so noble. The battle of dominion the crucible of the beautiful. While not in fear, the relation of a smaller will to that of a larger will, and thus a smaller power to that of a larger power, this relation, this comparison carries with it an ever mindful consciousness of the possibility of the former, of us in the estimation of the formless sublime, as prey. Thus there can be no beauty without mercy from the monstrous, without repose from the terrible. The threat hangs as a promise to be fulfilled later. To make peace and not be prey. The 'power' of making, in the grace of mercy. Be still your heart now, calm your soul.
For in the power of making, however benevolent the purpose, part of the process is always somewhat the destruction of the material used in the making. Material used is changed in the making, the cutting of trees for wood, fire for the sword, etc. prey is used in the making of a meal. Now we face nature as might, as a power, a sheer power with the capacity to destroy.
Destruction in the collision of might towards making is either destruction of the object we have made, we have caused, or the destruction of ourselves and loved ones, therefore loss of self and destruction of capacity. Destruction here as death. In the feeling of the dynamically sublime what is destroyed is our power to bring to form. So it is no mistake that Kant acknowledges War as having something sublime in it. For the battle surely lost is near to the heart of comparison in the feeling of the dynamically sublime. For the comparison of might is nothing if not Battle at every successive juncture, from the schoolyard fist-fight, to the battles of Belfast, the West Bank, Bosnia. To the Battles of Korea & Vietnam, to Austerlitz and Antietam to Dresden, to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Then to the possibility of the great and catastrophic nuclear war. What is the horizon, the possibility for War?

But the infinite is absolutely (not merely comparatively) great. Compared with it everything else (of the same kind of magnitudes) is small. And what is most important is that to be able to think it as a whole indicates a faculty of mind which surpasses every standard of sense. For to represent it sensibly would require a comprehension having for a standard bearing a definite relation, expressible in numbers, to the infinite, which is impossible. Nevertheless, the bare capability of thinking this infinite without contradiction requires in the human mind a faculty itself supersensible. For it is only by means of this faculty and its idea of a noumenon - which admits of no intuition, but which yet serves as the substrate for the intuition of the world, as a mere phenomenon- that the infinite of the world of sense, in the pure intellectual estimation of magnitude, can be completely comprehended under one concept, although in the mathematical estimation of magnitude by means of concepts of number it can never be completely thought. The faculty of being able to think the infinite of supersensible intuition as given ( in its intelligible substrate) surpasses every standard of sensibility and is great beyond all comparison even with the faculty of mathematical estimation. Not of course, in a theoretical point of view and on behalf of the cognitive faculty, but as an extension of the mind which feels itself able in another (practical) point of view to go beyond the limits of sensibility. 15

The flight of thought beyond the limits of sensibility progresses from the limited structure of the tactile, gravity-bound body to the flight of thought involved in a generating consciousness. Boundless, limitless, there is always a beyond to any fixed thought, or physical point of reference. Beyond standards of sense, the sensible standard. But so far as consciousness IS generating, it does contain within itself this beyond, or so it thinks. There is always thought beyond what can be made. The domain of power is thus limited, eclipsed by an idea that can always go beyond it. The sensible standard, that which is already made, possesses a limit, the end of its object. The frame, the parergon. The origin of the sensible standard- the power of making, possesses then not a limit, but a lack, a fundamental deficiency- in that there is always a beyond. The horizon of real power is thus possibility. This is power's objective nature from the standpoint of consciousness.
There is always a beyond to the advances of power, always an idea that eclipses it. The irony and paradox here is that because of the nature of possibility as always the horizon, the real aim of power in itself is hopeless from the standpoint of comparison and magnitude, the sensible standard!! Power, in comparison, from the viewpoint of magnitude possesses an innate structural deficiency for comparison, for greatness. Power for its own sake is structurally deficient, is hopeless. Reason cannot totalize because of the structure of possibility as the horizon beyond its marker, its limit. Dominion is always thwarted by the specter of the possible. Because of the possibility involved with the real indefinite, the limitless aim of power is unachievable. Power in itself, in reflection, is hopeless.
However an interesting shift occurs in the text. The spectrum of comparison moves from the treatment of sheer difference in magnitude, and difference in might, to that of a frame of mind compatible with apprehending the divine greatness. We can frame the progression here. In the analytic of the beautiful, in passive contemplation, we focused on the question what it means to call something beautiful, the exemplary work of art. In the analytic of the sublime we were brought to the analysis of the dimension of size and the dimension of strength, and the sheer notion of magnitude in comparison. Now in this part of the analysis the experience of the sublime is expanded to include estimating the divine greatness, which clearly includes morality. So we move from the comparison of sheer magnitude, to the comparison of works of art, to the notion of divine greatness. From magnitude to morality, from greatness in size to the greatness of god.

The man who is actually afraid, because he finds reasons for fear in himself, while conscious by his culpable disposition of offending against a might whose will is irresistible and at the same time just, is not in the frame of mind for admiring the Divine Greatness. 16

Comparison and the Mystery of Election

The fundamental strength of judgment in the dynamics of comparison is in the transition from magnitude to morality. In this transition is the return of purpose, reintroduced in the notion of the great. Although Kant makes no literal connection here, there is not a divorce between the notion of greatness, or the comparison of magnitude, of superiority, and the notion of good- what pleases through the concept. The loop here reties purposiveness. Kant’s definition of the Good is that which pleases through the concept. Then what is the ‘better’- that which pleases more through the concept. Pleases more, more suitable, the good is really, for all intents and purposes, the better-than. The better suited-than. It is rooted to purposiveness because in the effort to attain an aim, the ‘better’ is that which we choose.
Quality reflects the inner judgment of the good in the sense of touch we spoke of earlier, in the agreement of our senses with a thing, function, and the world. Quality also reflects a public judgment, a comparison of things and function, in a utilitarianism of sorts. Quality is measured through an externalization that reflects this mystic at root sense of ‘yes’. Quality is somewhat a choice, a decision, and decisions can be recorded- through the ballot box, through polls, and through the marketplace. In this way the inner perfection of quality is reflected publicly, if the product serves a purpose better, if it is ‘superior’, people will choose it, and we can count that choice.
In the workings of the mystery of election, Kant speaks of mystery as knowledge that cannot be shared publicly, but is present in the individual. From there Kant goes on to elaborate the structure of election as choice and the dual type of judgment- merit & condemnation that are contained within the arena of hope.
What is present here in this structure of election, is the nature of choice as contest, as a contest between two contestants. The comparison of choice. Possession is congealed throughout the nature and outcome of the contest. The mystery of election is an election not only of what is chosen, but just as much who is chosen - who will have and who will not. It is the election of the condemned- translated materially to those deprived of having.
Perhaps though what is equally the mystery is that which is described in the dynamics of the ‘mystery’ itself in Kant. The individual paradox of identification and the public arena. That which is known individually, cannot be shared. Here the sense of the individual is captured in the dynamics of force of possession, where the claim of ‘mine’ follows the model of ingestion, follows the model of the lion guarding its kill, not as an object, but an object of food. Possession here is a sense of ‘mine’ which if lost, can never be regained, and if lost- deprivation and hunger follow. In other words, the judgment of condemnation follows. ‘Mine’ in this sense is that which we need- to live, and this sense is present in every level of material success, up to the point where although there is plenty of food and means of resources to feed everyone in the world- this will not be done. It is at this point where the judgment - ‘cannot be shared’ meets that spoken of in the paragraph above. It is known individually and by all, and cannot be shared, and will not be spoken. We could even say that this at-root unspoken and universally known sense is a type of gravity which holds the sphere of power together. The purpose involved in the senses of making is always a ‘mine’, and it is this sense that binds and drives all making. This aspect of ‘mine’ is equally a part of the ‘common sense’, equally a part of the we- within and beyond the we. Where we ‘belong’, there also, belongs to me alone.
‘Cause’ is precisely the word we use to ascribe a sense of possession, a sense of having to the order of a particular event. A cause is that particular place or thing or action which ‘makes’ an event. Cause binds the chain, the sequence of absolute motion and physical change to the sphere of having. Cause looks at a sequence of appearances as a thing, a unit, the event, in order to see how the event is made. Cause implies to each event a maker, a central actor or set of actors which combine to produce what we observe as an event, as if a will were at work. Cause, responsibility, ownership.
This sense of possession is tied directly to physical suffering, and the contest- the election- occurs precisely between two who will not share, between two who participate in the same arena of hope, contesting in this arena for the order among men. The contest occurs, and is absolutely urgent for both.
In what way though could we say that this mystery is what is known but never said, present but cannot be said- not for lack of facility but for lack of courage- for fear of- a fear that cannot even be approached. Twisted throughout the tissue of flesh and nerve, as much a part of us as our hands. The sense of ‘we’ and ‘belonging’ is something away from the drive of speech, but to which every speech appeals- within and beyond the import of the voice.
The market is full of a tremendous amount and array of choices(comparisons), of elections, where on the other side of the transaction is a competing economic hope. The supplier offers his product or service to the market in hope of...., in hope of compensation. And this compensation is called fortune. Each purchase brings a judgment, however small & insignificant to the buyer, that brings a degree of ‘fortune’ to a supplier. The hope of capitalism is a ‘fortune’, captured in the dynamics of success as chance. The mystery of election- to elect to choose- to choose one is not to choose the other, and in the arena of marketplace the judgment of the buyer comes down as if it were a judgment rendered by god, like rain. It seems a power, vast and without form. Our Making is here brought to comparison, in ‘Quality’ in the arena of consequence, the arena of the tragic, therefore seemingly juridical judgment.
There seems to be a dual hyperbole in the term greatness. This hyperbole can be seen in attempting to understand the gap between the good and the great. The good -that which pleases through the concept, brings the notion of the pleasant as physical sensation into relationship with purpose, with purposive activity. Now given a multiplicity of choices with which to pursue our purpose, the dynamics of any election demand that we choose that which suits our purpose best among those choices. But does this make our choice ‘great’ in the spectrum or options, or merely better-suited-than. In the course of normal making and choosing the category greatness has no part. Why do we say that anything is great.
It seems that greatness comes into play when the consequences of the choice are heightened, so that the choice made, the effort expended, the power of will at hand, is absolutely necessary. Greatness seems to be what is needed to prevail over a far stronger predator or adversary- that without greatness, death is immanent. As the collision of paths seems ineluctable this hyperbole reflects the despair in the term greatness, the absolute urgency- that without greatness there will be death. The hyperbole is that greatness is necessary for survival. Greatness here is an inflamed state, where urgency is absolute, where adequacy is life, inadequacy death.
The second part of this hyperbole belongs to the order and comparison among men. In the great battle of bringing ourselves to order, the consequences become all the more exaggerated. What is at stake is one’s role in society, one’s place in the social strata, what can be won or lost in this the battle of self-interest. How much can be effected, be influenced. How are we going to be viewed in comparison with other human beings. Anarchy is always the politics of the truly disaffected, for the frustration and hatred that comes from not being effective, from disempowerment, is raised to a principle, and that principle says to destroy everything.
‘Great’ as we know it- is in one sense the immediate sensible interest of the self brought to wish. It is the ‘me’ not ‘you’. The inadequacy of the ‘not me’, this elected disapproval becomes the hatred towards ‘you’. The frustrated wish of the ‘no-not-me’ involved with the stymied effort will be shown forth in ‘what I will do to you, and you will be rendered powerless, paralyzed, and impotent. You will be rendered less a man as I destroy your power, because of the greatness of my power, and your pain will be so great, and you will see that ‘I AM LORD’, and the other will see my greatness and love me, want me. And my terribleness will be great beyond anything you can do, and my rage will be a weapon, and you will fear me, again and again. And I will take this from you, and have your place’. Thus is the twisted real time of the frustrated wish and thought of power turning in on itself, with no real curb, with no reference outside itself. It is the totally self-interested, the terror and desperation of the ‘mine’.
Being disaffected politically really means here to be completely effected materially, but to effect no one. Turbulence, chaos, and wound rule in the attempt to ride something of which we have no control. This the disaffected know, and the wish that springs from this then is to bring chaos to all, to make impotent everyone. To annihilate the world. Greatness here has to do with the comparison of our power of making in relation to the whole, to all other human beings and the order among men. Greatness here is the hyperbole of the wish of self-interest in the immediate, to find our place in the order among men.
The analysis of the process of productive Genius and the sub-conceptual breakdown of beauty into the aesthetical idea and rational concept are located in the analysis of the dialectic of the sublime. The judgment of taste is aesthetical, a passive estimation of the representation of the object to the subject and the feeling of pleasure or pain. However the production of the beautiful for others to estimate is a different story. First the artist has no object to reflect on, there is no object, yet, per say that the artist refers to, or estimates. What does the artist refer to, or where does the artist look for the new object of beauty? The artist attempts to realize to sense, to bring to sense a never-before sense of order. The artist attempts, struggles, battles to bring about a new order. This battle produces order, reorders experience in the making of the new, in the bringing to existence of the new object- the never-before. In this struggle of the act to Make in the production of the work of beautiful art, the artist is submitting to reflection the representation of an object of a new and different order of willing, the order of a will that is much greater than his or hers, the order of the noumena. This is what reflection compares in the act of making a new order and bringing this to sense, this is what the artist estimates. The process of making beautiful art has to do with reflection, and with will in the act to Make. To make here is both to make order and to make a sensible thing through effort. Therefore understanding, reason, and imagination are all involved in the struggle- the battle- of Productive Genius in the making of beautiful art.
The hyperbole of greatness involved in single self-interest comes into conflict in the presence of others. This conflict reorders experience, and also the dynamic of the comparison among men. Understanding becomes Wisdom. The eternally driving nature of desire with its twofold character of striving for greatness- to be more than adequate in comparison- in the face of the dynamics of the battle of the mystery of election-, with others who possess power as well, comes into an internal conflict with the anthropological root of man in our mutually interdependent nature. The battle is structured as a battle for the more adequate amongst those that are exactly the same. In the desire for approval of the other what have we won- is destroyed in the fighting. The love desired is vanquished. Mutually interdependent, we depend upon each other. Because we need this from each other, we will kill each other for it. It is a family fight that seems to produce a victor, but destroys the home and setting by which, and in which, we wish to live. Greatness is determined in the crucible of comparison, in the battle of comparison, to determine the order among men.
However the link to purposiveness roots the notion of superiority, of greatness, because it implies a scope of real function, a realness in everyday life and material, in everyday suffering and need. The passive estimation of the awesome, with the effort of the will in the making of an object, in the effort of a life. What makes a work great? What is a good life? What, if anything, do the greatness of man and the divine greatness have in common? Is there such a thing as a great man?

For judgment can be interpreted in two ways, as concerning either merit and lack of merit, or guilt and absence of guilt. God regarded as love ( in his son), judges men so far as merit is attributable to them over and above their indebtedness, and here the verdict is : worthy, or unworthy. He separates out as his own those to whom such merit can still be accredited. Those who are left depart empty-handed. On the other hand the sentence of the judge in terms of justice (of the judge properly so called, under the name of the Holy Ghost) upon those for whom no merit is forthcoming, is guilty or not guilty, i.e., condemnation or acquittal. This judging signifies first of all the separation of the deserving from the undeserving, both parties competing for a prize (salvation). By desert is here meant moral excellence, not in relation to the law (for in the eyes of the law no balance of obedience to duty over and above our indebtedness can accrue to us), but only in comparison with other men on the score of their moral disposition. And worthiness always has a merely negative meaning (not unworthiness), that is, the moral receptivity of such goodness.
Hence he who judges in the first capacity pronounces a judgment of choice between two persons (or parties) striving for the prize (of salvation); while he who judges in the second capacity (the real judge) passes sentence upon one and the same person before a court (conscience) which declares the final verdict between the prosecution and the defense. 17 Religion Within ...pg. 136-137

Final Purposes

Teleological judgment is a reflective judgment to determine whether a thing or process reflects design or not. Kant begins with the distinctions of types of design in the design of a thing, the design of an event as cause, the dialectical design of an organism, and then an unspoken analysis in the section on Final purposes on the design of the arc of life, the span of life in the design of a ‘lifetime’. The analytic of teleological judgment begins with an analysis that is in the midst of the analysis of design, in the midst of design theory. We ‘find’ ourselves in the midst of the judgment of design. But we judge from reflection, in looking for the marks of making, of purpose.
Parts of the text that do reflect a collective purpose occur in two places in the teleological judgment and one place in the aesthetic. 1) Man is assumed to be meant to live on the earth. 2) The value we have for life is the value we give to it. 3) Our mutually fallible interdependent nature. Design for Kant is found not on the level of the social whole, but on the level of the individual in a competitive dialectic of interdependence. Purpose and design are worked out here, so to speak.
The dynamic design of an organism describes the initial simple dialectical relationship of life. The description of an organism- an organized being is that of parts integral to the well being of the whole, and the well being of the whole is equally integral to the well being of the parts- where the relationship is interdependent. This description of interdependence also describes in effect the social dialectic between the individual and society. What differs between the two types of interdependence though is an additional layer of consciousness, of judgment, an activity that is not present in the relationship between part and organism.
The individual members amongst the social whole possess judgment, and thus the possibility of contest amongst the members constantly exists. Competition amongst the members makes the environment antagonistic towards the individual and yet the social dialectic still exists. The whole in this relationship does not possess singular judgment as in the case of the organism, where the whole subsumes the individual and particular purposiveness of the extremity. The whole possesses an active collection of judgment whose purpose as a unit is undefined, where the activity of the individual is subsumed within the whole, but the purpose of the individual is not directed from the whole. Therefore the teleological judgment does not deal with the design of the social dialectic but concentrates on the formulation of a final purpose at the level of the individual judgment- at the level of the person.
Let us return again to the dynamics of election as ‘contest’. The primary contest in election is between at least two who wish to be chosen through the offering of a product or service. But what that product or service appeals to is in at least some sense, a need of an individual or market. There is a sense of urgency then in the nature of the product as it serves some need. This is expressed in the economic term ‘demand’.
It is a public ‘demand’ that makes rise the contest of offering- the election of offering. Urgent, as well, on the other side, is the state of urgency behind the offering. Welfare hangs in the balance, so that great attention must be focused on the ‘inner perfection’ - the quality of the product or service. What this means is that the layer of individual judgment- and therefore feeling- that exists in the social dialectic- and absent in the interdependence dialectic of an individual organism- provides an energy or antagonism that drives the individual/social dialectic of interdependence. The appeal of need appeals to many voices, not the whole as one- appeals to us in the form of each other- and makes election of those that respond to that need. This is the dialectical agitation implied, concealed, in the demand- the urgency- that is present in the famous question ‘What ought we to do?’ What we will do, will be chosen- through the crucible of election. Individual need drives the social dialectic, so then design is not found on the level of the whole, but on the collected individual level, appealing and responding to each other. The only design that can be found in the tracing of the form of this dialectic is in the need- and therefore purpose- of each individual man to ‘live on the earth’.
In the teleological analysis of the arc traced by the span of a man’s lifetime, the teleological judgment becomes eschatological judgment because of the fact that each man dies. The reflective judgment on the limited form of this design, the design of the ‘lifetime’ of a man in relation to his work, his ‘purpose’- brings the course of reflection to the notion and positional value of ‘last things’, of a purpose for the lifetime of a man, and therefore for mankind as a whole.

“Only if we assume that men are to live upon the earth, then the means must be there without which they could not exist as animals.” 17

Death brings judgment into the arena of the ends of man in the apocalyptic literature of the bible, where the end of earthly mankind comes from a judgment, as does man’s individual destination- heaven or hell. So much does our concept of the world depend on the nature of any event deriving the source of the event as if it were generated from a will. The judgment of God in the Book of Revelations is the end of the world, a judgment of wrath. Actually it is the judgment of wrath, of total annihilation and of the annihilation of all human futures. The narrative in this sense is an explosion of the dynamics of defeat, of judgment at the point of choice on one side and the finality and totality of defeat on the other.

And I heard a great voice out of the temple, saying to the seven angels: Go and pour out the seven vials of the wrath of God upon the earth.
Revelations- Chapter 16, verse 1 18

What is present in the narrative is the sense of helplessness and weakness reflected upon in the telling. Man is here totally inadequate before God, and there is now nothing which we can do. Man compares himself to God here mortally, and in relation to only the power of God in relation to his power and our mortality. But what is exploded in the narrative is precisely the point of defeat in the dynamics of the contest of life, with death. We have been defeated, because each man dies. In the arena of hope, the contest of dominion, the arc of life as contest, as fighting death is in each instance and forever lost by the judgment of God. Wrath here is the comparison of power, raised to a principle. Our darkest thoughts, and our darkest fears are brought before all judgment itself. We are guilty and nothing is beautiful before God. Every hatred and every fear are now infinitely present to sense and exploded, and every hope vanquished. The end of the world in Revelations explodes the fear of man to the ineluctable nature of death and also expiates the wrath of God, showing the dynamics of wrath raised to a principle. Such is the nature of juridical judgment in a treatment of equity, and violation of the covenant. Judgment is brought not only to the price of crime, but to expiate the wrath of the victim. The narrative in this sense is an explosion of the dynamics of defeat, of judgment at the point of choice as defeat.
The logic of superabundance 19 of St. Paul, described by Ricoeur in the essay ‘Interpretation of the Myth of Punishment’, seems to offer a more alluring description of hope in the concept of ‘more’- in the “How much More?”... Here the benefit of participation in the logic of the gift is a reaping, the offering of a higher compensation rather than the mere price paid in the equity structure of punishment in the arena of abstract right. However, contrary to Ricoeur, the judgment of merit and the judgment of guilt or innocence meet in the arena of hope and expectation. Here, in the arena of hope, both judgments form extremes of the same judgment. In the arena of hope and expectation, for the God of love, the meritorious judgment awards or does not award a prize, and juridical judgment of the God of wrath condemns or does not condemn. The judgment of grace and the judgment of wrath thus enjoy the same spectrum. In the arena of hope and expectation the judgment of merit from the God of love means abundance, health, wealth, compensation, happiness. In the juridical judgment the condemnation of the God of wrath means deprivation, means inadequacy, means punishment. The marketplace is precisely an arena of hopes for the participants, where man literally attempts to live on the earth. The judgment of merit- quality, the better, of a product or a service comes as grace, as good fortune. The judgment of the market player to choose another product, for the supplier offering such a product, this judgment shares the material conditions of a judgment of condemnation, of deprivation and punishment. The juridical logic and the logic of superabundance thus share the same spectrum of judgment in the spectrum of hope, both present in the prayer of hope to the highest power.

“Give us this day our daily Bread, and forgive us our trespasses,...”20

Yet individual purpose surges with capability and wanes with incapacity, failure, old age etc.. Individuals in the social dialectic grow old and die, and the force of their purpose peels off and vanishes from the social sphere of power in contest. The Darwinian model of natural selection comes to mind here If the purpose is indeed for man to live from the earth. But that Is no longer a question!! Nature is no longer a true adversary, but merely a hindrance. That purpose is forever exhausted, defeated. Man as a whole easily lives from the earth. There seems to be then no primary value anymore in the design of this complicated social dialectic, no logic but that of an aimless runaway desire of individual need. To wake up just once more.
But because each man dies perhaps it is that man was not meant to live on the earth, but to live with each other. Can we assume that man is not meant to live in dominion of the earth, but with each other. Can we assume this because of the universality of death in the death of each man, or does our own temporary and immediate sense of possession, our own sense of life as fighting death , does this condition the impossibility of this approach. Let us say this anyway- because each man dies man is not meant to live on the earth, man is meant to live with each other.
Design assists in living, with design we live on the earth. Dying however dissolves all force of individual possession & dissolves all sense of having and dominion. All that remains here is what we have given and what we have made for others. To live in accordance with the principle of death, for each man to accept the notion of living with their own death places the value of purpose in action towards the other. It is a different type of exaltation, an exaltation of ‘for the sake of others’, and changes the dynamic workings of the social dialectic.
What explodes the knowledge and structure of the logic of punishment and equity is not in the logic, as Ricoeur believes, but in a transportation from the scene of the logic (punishment)- of the scene of the broken covenant- to the scene of the reception of grace only.
But what really occurs in the transportation from one scene to another in the absurd logic of superabundance is not only a transportation from one exaggerated scene to another, not only a transportation from the scene of the tragic and retribution to the scene of grace. What occurs is a total transportation from the scene of the contest of the market. In the logic of superabundance the contest of one ‘mine’ against another, and the outcome of this contest are not the goal. Hope and expectation are not placed on the success of the offering, the goal in a logic of superabundance is the focus on the inner rooted sense of quality of the offering in the comparison with oneself- to give our best. To act according to this transports us once more, from the scene of grace and the gift received to the scene of giving.
In this scene and in the act of giving I become the work and the work becomes other, the other- now a piece- becomes as a sign and transforms and reorders upon observation and becomes we. Perfection then is merely a component of agreement, a completion of work in the step towards the other21 Perfection as a work and as grace completes some others need, never mine. Perfection as grace received not only alleviates a need, but also enables-me-to. Therefore the value of life is not only the value I give My life, but the value which we give our life, our common life, the value we give to the life of others. To exalt a thing as beautiful exalts agreement, and to exalt agreement sacrifices the self in order to exalt the other. Perfection is then not that substance that is without need, as Heidegger describes it,22 but has everything to do with need, addresses need, rushes to anothers need, and perfects the self in the process by becoming perfect in our work for others. Within and beyond the self of my life is the otherlife, the life of giving- an exalted life, and within and beyond the self of my world is the otherworld- an exalted world.
A final purpose for Kant is that purpose which needs no other as a condition of its possibility. According to Kant, Man is the final purpose of creation.

The value of life for us, if it is estimated by that which we enjoy, is easy to decide. It sinks below zero, for who would be willing to enter upon life anew under the same conditions? Who would do so even according to a new, self chosen plan, if it were merely directed to enjoyment? We have shown above what value life has in virtue of what it contains in itself, when lived in accordance with the purpose that nature has along with us, and which consists in what we do, in which however we are always but means toward an undetermined final purpose. There remains then nothing but the value which we ourselves give our life, through what we cannot only do but do purposively in such independence of nature that the existence of nature itself can only be a purpose under this condition. 23

The beautiful in the 3rd Critique is the exemplary23- that which we can make example of. But an example of what? An example of acting, an example of making perhaps, an example of doing work. The beautiful is that product of making which we aspire to, it is that to which we give our best. The 3rd Critique thus in one sense answers the famous question at the center of the 2nd critique- What ought we to do?- in this project of mankind. The beautiful provides a surplus of thought, gives rise to thought, while simultaneously saying “make beautifully with me”. Hope and kinship are thus built into the 3rd Critique’s notion of beauty in the vector of purpose. The hope provided by an example, a nudge, “this is what can be done”, kinship and fraternity are present in the notion of example, in the arena of the public- “with me”- from one who is “just like you”, in a common sense. Above all perhaps what is most exemplary about the beautiful is that it is a work of agreement. A work that is a working towards the other, a dissolution of the self and a pouring of the self towards some other. The harmony, the agreement occurs both within the self and beyond the self- in a work and in a material that are released from what I consider mine and dissolve away, that slip from all sense of ownership. It is the cacophonous yes by which the chord comes to be- in song then- to extend and lift up the very existence of the word, of the voice, with that of each other.
As individual man is the final purpose of creation- what is the final purpose of man? This, as Kant shows, is left undetermined, left as indefinite. It would be much easier for our own sense of certainty if this path was clear and already illuminated, if this map were already made. But man is autonomous, and thus self-legislative, so no definite map is present.
With all this in mind in one sense however, there is a map left behind. If we will look closely and carefully into the structure of what we know, and how we judge, and how it comes to be that we act, we will see how defining this map is. The purpose of man on earth is making, bound by our understanding, imagination and sense, and bound by our competitively interdependent suffering fallible nature. We have each other, and there is no one else. And what we make, and therefore what we make- of man- is left to our freedom. This puts beauty in question for a different reading of the Critique of Judgment. What will we give our life for? Who will we give our best to? Will anything be judged beautiful in our modern times, anything at all?

Notes
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, (New York: Hafner, 1972) pg. 37.
2. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment, (New York: Hafner, 1972).
3. Kant, pg. 54-55.
4. Kant, pg. 54.
5. Kant, pg. 231.
6. Jean-Francois Lyotard, Lessons on the Analytic of the Sublime, (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1994)
7. Kant, pg. 12.
8. Kant, pg. 55.
9. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1977)
10. Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics, (New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1973) pg. 202.
11. Kant, pg. 14.
12. Kant, pg. 99.
13. Kant, pg. 100.
14. Hegel, pg. 68.
15. Kant, pg. 93-94.
16. Kant, pg. 102.
17. Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, (New York: Harper, 1960) pg. 136-137.
18. Revelations, Chapter 16, Verse 1.
19. Paul Ricoeur, “The Interpretation of the Myth of Punishment, in Conflict of Interpretations, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974) pg.
20. The Lords Prayer.
21. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), pg.
22. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pg. 125.
23. Kant, C. of J., pg. 284.
24. Kant, C. of J., pg.

Chapter 3- Theodor Adorno and Negative Dialectics

2007-09-16T11:27:00.000-07:00

Theodor Adorno has long had the reputation of a thinker whose work concentrates on the influence of thought on society and its structures. Central to his most famous composition, Negative Dialectics1, is a critical method which leads one through a critique of society and its structures to a type of direction that brings the reader to a more affective reading within that critique, where critique becomes song. The melody central to Adorno's approach in Negative Dialectics is that of suffering. This melody is towering, and leads through the effort of the criticism in the book, to the Philosophy of negative dialectics, to what Adorno calls the threshold of tragic sympathy.
The purpose of this essay is to recompose Adorno's sense of the influence of thought on suffering in Negative dialectics, and to show parallels in the direction of his philosophy presented in the text with tragic sympathy. First I attempt to present the manner in which Negative Dialectics as philosophical method is a valid approach to understanding. As this unfolds I show parallels to Kant2 that provide the reader with one of the historical antecedents of Adorno's contribution and gives evidence for what Adorno calls his 'axial turn' to the 2nd Copernican revolution.
Next I focus on elements in Adorno's criticism of Heidegger which show the import of the influence of his thought on suffering and thus contributes to the somber tone of Negative Dialectics. Then I show how Adorno's text converges in on, and then pivots on the origin of communication as existentially and thus experientially rooted and also having the form of a moral imperative. This occurs in his treatment of what Adorno calls suffering physical. These elements have distinct parallels to the structure of tragic sympathy. It is at this point that we show a convergence of Adorno's thinking with the Deliverance Within the Tragic, in the tragic sympathy examined by Paul Ricoeur in the Symbolism of Evil3. Let us begin with an investigation of why it is called Negative Dialectics, and how it can be a valid method towards understanding.
Why is it called Negative Dialectics? The movement of knowledge for Hegel was one of unifying particular experiences and objects within the manifold under universals, in order to have a connected experience. For Hegel this was the problem of knowledge itself, and the direction of movement was from particular to universal. It is the process of making an identity between a concept and a particular. Negative Dialectics distinguishes differences between a universal and a particular, dictated by the universal, by recognizing the emergence of elements that cannot be exhausted by the concept. thus there is a fundamental lack in the structure of each and every concept. The direction of dialectics, the synthetic movement from particular to universal is reversed. The movement now proceeds from universal to particular, particular. The general term Adorno uses for this process is 'determinate negation.'
Originated as a response to the fallen Hegelian philosophy, Negative Dialectics takes primary aim at revealing the oppressive structure of identity thinking. Adorno shows that concepts do not go into their objects without leaving a remainder. Although many instances are treated by Adorno, the paradigmatic instance of identity thinking which Adorno uses to base his critique on is found in the section on the critique of positive negation.

Oscillating between the most profound insight and the collapse of that insight is Hegel's line: "Truth also is positive, as knowledge coinciding with the object, but it is this self-sameness only if knowledge has reacted negatively to the other, if it has penetrated the object and has voided the negation which it is."
The qualification of truth as a negative reaction on the part of the knowledge that penetrates the object--in other words: extinguishes the appearance of the object being directly as it is-- sounds like a program of negative dialectics as a knowledge "coinciding with the object." But the establishment of this knowledge as positivity abjures that program. By the formula of "self-sameness," of pure identity, the knowledge of the object is shown up as hocus-pocus, because this knowledge is no longer one of the object at all: it is the tautology of an absolutized .. Irreconcilably, the idea of reconcilement bars its affirmation in a concept.4 pg. 160

For Kant, similarly, to subsume a given particular under a universal that we already possess is a determinate judgment. To find a universal that we do not possess, for a particular that is given, is a reflective judgment. The critique of what it means to say that 'something is black' or that 'something is beautiful' from a reflective standpoint leaves room between the two types of judgment for activity. It is on this pivot, this bifurcation of judgment that Adorno gives the second Copernican revolution an axial turn. For what is at stake for Adorno is the structure of synthetic judgment, and his turn will have a qualitative effect on the essence of what it means to make a determinant judgment. We will thus attempt to find in Kant the parallels that warrant Adorno's axial turn.
For Adorno, then, concepts refer to what is properly non-conceptual. They make an identity with something non-identical to them. This establishes a unity in experience and enable us to connect experience into the sequence of meaning. There is then a contradiction immanent in the very presentation of Negative Dialectics- how can we present a unity if we seek to dismantle unity?, if we seek to show differences?
For Adorno, this process of determinate negation occurs in an activity he terms “discrimination”.5 Discrimination is first an activity that distinguishes differences at the micrological level. Secondly, discrimination accomplishes this through the experience of an object turned into a form of what Adorno calls subjective reaction.
In the first sub-moment, discrimination is the distinguishing of differences at the micrological level. Discrimination accomplishes this through the disintegration of the relation of affinity between a previous set of concept and object. This occurs when the element of nonidentity with the concept emerges in reflection, and in resistance to identity, and explodes the subsuming cover concept. It is the disintegration of antiquated affinity in the identifying process. It is why negative dialectics is called a logic of disintegration. It seems here that the process of disintegration leads one into an infinite series of determinate negations concerned with an ever smaller object of knowledge- minimalism. Another charge leveled has been that negative dialectics is only a philosophy of destruction in an attempt to portray the world of the Jewish European of W.W.II. However discrimination in the first moment of discrimination is accomplished through the second activity of discrimination, where elements of a experience begin to unify and meaning emerges.
In the second aspect of discrimination, as the experience of the object turned into a form of subjective reaction, there is further reduction into complementing sub-moments. The first moment is a moment of extension towards the non-identical in a mimetic movement that destroys both the organization character of the previous instance of discrimination and the previous mimetic arrangement;6 while simultaneously finding likeness in the non-identical element. The second moment is one that logically relates these non-identities into a rational unity. These two moments of the synthetic function of discrimination thus gather non-identical remainder particles to form new models.

Even in the conception of rational knowledge, devoid of all affinity, there survives a groping for that concordance which the magical delusion used to place beyond doubt. If this moment were extinguished altogether, it would be flatly incomprehensible that a subject can know an object; the unleashed rationality would be irrational. In being secularized, however, the mimetic element in turn blends with the rational one. The word for this process is discrimination. It contains the faculty of mimetic reaction as well as the logical organ for the relation of genus, species, and differentia specifica. pg. 45 7

Discrimination thus disintegrates and unifies simultaneously. For Adorno, if the thinker becomes aware of the nature of the contradiction involved in arriving at a concept, at arriving at a unified experience, if the thinker reflects upon this process of determinate negation in the act of a particular judgment, then the thinker has begun to think in a manner befitting a negative dialectics. Further elements of Adorno's thought point toward unified experience, this can be found in the notions of constellation, reconcilement, and happiness.
In Adorno's notion of constellation, the lack in each concept leads it to refer to other concepts,8 and thus in a unity of reference, concepts together illuminate the specific side of the object, the side cut away by the violent identifying activity of the concept. The model for this is the conduct of language, for Adorno. In the interrelation of the stasis of conceptual identification and the dynamics of reference to other concepts, we can know the object completely. Although the process is one of disintegrating and unifying at the conceptual level, it is one of dynamic unity at the level of the constellation, or the sentence level. It is a way for us to make binding statements in a logic of disintegration and thus have a unified experience.

To comprehend a thing itself, not just to fit and register it in its system of reference, is nothing but to perceive the individual moment in its immanent connection with others. pg. 25 9

To perceive the individual moment in its connection with others not only shows a dynamic schema in this mode of understanding,10 it limits the authority of the subject position in the constellation. the result of this is a recognition of value among all the members of the constellation. Thus value can be seen as deriving not from the subject but with the subject in relation to objects. Another element of unified experience is present in his notion of reconcilement.
The reconcilement of the concept and object, for Adorno, can come about by the subject releasing the non-identical element in the concept by tolerating differences between the identical and non-identical.11 But reconcilement does not occur in a single concept, for Adorno. The idea of reconcilement in a single concept is violence because reconcilement in the concept is always a unilateral affair. It is an attempt to negate the non-identical and to make it identical. The attempt is thus totalitarian. Rather reconcilement for Adorno is found where the subject coincides with the object, and thus an objective element is needed for reconcilement to occur. where we experience reconcilement and unity is combined in feeling and completion, in a coinciding of our thinking with objective reality. The indication that reconcilement can occur is located in a feeling, in Adorno's notion of happiness.

Happiness, the only part of metaphysical experience that is more than impotent longing, gives us the inside of objects as something removed from the objects. pg. 374 12

Happiness gives us the inside of objects, but it is also a sensual fulfillment which obtains its objectivity in that fulfillment.13 Thus we have a unity of experience, but it is not experienced subjectively, because for Adorno, reconcilement is objectively experienced and also sympathetically felt.
There are parallels in this presentation with Kant's presentation of sub-conceptual combination in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment. The second activity of discrimination mentioned earlier has a strong parallel with the presentation of now men communicate their thoughts in the third critique.

The skill that men have in communicating their thoughts requires also a relation between the imagination and the understanding in order to associate intuitions with concepts, (Adorno's mimetic element) and concepts again with those concepts, (Adorno's rational moment) which then combine in a cognition. pg. 138 14

These complementing functions of associating intuitions with concepts, and then these concepts with other concepts, have the same structure as the structure of Adorno's second aspect of discrimination. Kant later elaborates this process towards the formation of cognition. The aesthetical idea in Kant serves in a similar role as that of Adorno's mimetic moment in discrimination as the object turned into a subjective form of reaction.15 The rational concept in Kant serves in a similar function to that of Adorno's moment of logical relation, logically organizing the symbolic framework with concepts to form an aesthetical cognition. In the aesthetic context the passive estimation by the individual of the artistic object conveys the accord of the imagination and the understanding. The feeling of this accord, for Kant, is beauty. However the act of aesthetic judgment is a passive estimation of the object in a free play of the cognitive faculties, and the rightness that we feel in the estimation of the beautiful object is due to the accord of the judgment and the understanding in passive estimation. So how can this presentation of Kant be a turn toward the non-identical in effort that both disintegrates and unifies? Because this presentation is located not in the reflective estimation of an object, but in the act of aesthetic production.
In aesthetic production, what does the artist estimate? It is not an object per se, that the artist estimates because the object has not materialized. The artist has estimated other objects in the past for the hope of finding a direction, but a direction in what? In aesthetic production there is a turn toward the non-identical, where the estimation of past objects and the ordering that arises from such estimation by the artist is used to discover sense in an estimation of the supersensible, in an estimation of the noumena. Kant writes:

It(poetry) strengthens the mind by making it feel its faculty- free, spontaneous, and independent of natural determination- of considering and judging nature as a phenomenon in accordance with aspects which it does not present in experience either for sense or understanding, and therefore of using it on behalf of, and as a sort of schema for the supersensible. pg. 53-54 16

In the act of aesthetic production, not discussed up to now by Kant, the artist's hand reaches to picture the noumena and creates in sense, realizes to sense, a 'manifold example’17- the material element- the hitherto non-identical element- the aesthetical attribute that conveys the aesthetical idea. The aesthetical idea is not associated with a definite concept, but is conveyed by a surrogate framework, the symbol.
In aesthetic production, passive estimation of the object is turned into estimation of the noumena, and this realization of felt purposiveness is a transposition of sense through practice. Thus Kant's notion of beauty from the position of the artist finds it completion through an objective manner, in a realizing to sense-through labor, in a transposition of judgment and understanding through reason. It is a practice in the middle voice sense. Not static like a pre-formed concept and not disinterested like mere reflection, the activity of the artist is more akin to a 'rendering born', both active and receptive. It is not a concept, nor a reflection, but a conceiving. Kant first elaborates, and Adorno then expands upon what may be called a crude phenomenology of the miracle of birth, in a practical sense. The object then through the aesthetical attribute, must possess something that conveys the aesthetical idea; i.e. subjective purposiveness; to us in it's objective markings independent of the presence of the artist.
After the artist has produced, his object speaks to us, in the form of the beautiful object, the feeling of which is beauty. Thus beauty for Kant, is the experience of the accord of the subjective faculties, but in relation to objective impetus. Although only implied in Kant, this notion of objective communication, the object's dynamism, is recognized by Adorno, who writes;

What the objects communicate in-....-is the trace of the objects definition in themselves, pg. 25 18

Adorno's notion of completeness does not originate solely from the subject, but realizes itself in an objective manner. Kant's notion of beauty, although shown by Kant to occur as an effect in the subject, comes to be only in relation to an object, the object that is the realization of art. The turn to non-identity is present not only in the incomplete character of the complementing functions of cognitive formation in the aesthetic judgment, but in the direction of concept-making. In the realizing to sense of an intuition, the artist reworks reality and brings about a new order. The aesthetical idea is the feeling of the artist extending into the supersensible and returning what it has found in symbolic form. It is the feeling of the returning of the non-identical element.
The feeling of beauty in Kant is parallel to one aspect of Adorno's presentation of reconcilement as happiness, as giving us the inside of objects, as a feeling of completeness and rightness. But the presentation of happiness as also sensual fulfillment ; as fulfillment of suffering is not present in Kant's presentation of aesthetic judgment in the third critique. Kant's presentation also does not account for the violence of the synthetic function in the mimetic activity of the subject.19 For now two distinctions between the philosophies of Kant and Adorno are found in happiness as the negation of suffering, and in the violent character of the dynamics of affinity.

All pain and all negativity, the moving forces of dialectical thinking, assume the variously conveyed, sometimes unrecognizable form of physical things, just as all happiness aims at sensual fulfillment. A happiness blocked off from every such aspect is no happiness. pg. 202 20

Nevertheless we have presented evidence can provide a unified experience, and we have explored how it is that Adorno's claim to give the second Copernican revolution an axial turn has merit. So with reference to this rudimentary understanding of the functioning of a negative dialectics, and in relation to its affinities with Kant of the third critique, how have I arrived at this analysis?
As Adorno unfolds the universal to the particular in his criticism and in his philosophy, he stops at points where the critical method yields to phenomena. It is at these points that he shows the influence of thought on suffering. It is at these points that Adorno shows that reconcilement does not simply end the matter, but is momentary. It is this aspect of Adorno's philosophy that conditions the manner of negative dialectics as not merely haphazard, but directs it to the threshold of tragic sympathy. These points in the text reflect the primary object of critique for Adorno, the relationship between need and thinking-

But thinking, itself a mode of conduct, contains the need, the vital need, at the outset- in itself. The need is what we think from, even when we disdain wishful thinking. The motor of the need is the effort that involves thought as action. The object of critique is not the need in thinking, but the relationship between the two. pg. 408 21

I now turn to the examination of Adorno's criticism and his philosophy following this line of inquiry. I will begin by presenting four examples of the influence of thought on suffering in Adorno's criticism of identity thinking. The first and most famous example of the influence of thought on suffering in Negative Dialectics is the spell cast by the subject in the false identity of subject and object in idealistic conceptual construction. By virtue of the subject's dynamic nature, the subject endows the object with qualities, and the with the character, of a thing that has a life of its own.22 This is due, for Adorno, by acceptance of the concept in a static manner during the occasion of thought, solidifying the appearance of the thing in the hope of a permanence.23 This develops a polarization of subject and object into dynamic subject and static object that combine to show four instance of false consciousness for Adorno in the interaction of subject and object. The totalitarian and the abstract are instances from the domain of the subject while the barbarous and the lifeless are the instances in the domain of the object.
In the first instance identity thinking polarizes the subject and object, and thus does not recognize the permeation that occurs in their interaction. In one instance of this polarization according to Adorno, the subject sees itself as wholly dynamic and thus wholly legislative, wholly magisterial. In this instance of false consciousness the subject focuses on its generating ability, and has mistaken this generating ability for all there is. The subject says what the object is, and in this surge does not yield to the material of the object, the subject does not listen. Its saying is thus by decree and its affirmation is not a balanced listening from a source of heterogeneity, but is an affirmation of 'because I say so'. The subject has become totalitarian,24 the concept has become ideology.
In the second instance the correlate of this particular false consciousness is that in the focus of its self-dynamism, the subject is carried by the specter and the momentum of its dynamism and does not perceive this action as mediated. In the faith in this self-dynamism, the subject has lost hold of that which balances the thinking force of the subject, heterogeneity. Life becomes wholly abstract25 when the self-focusing subject has lost the aggression of its magisterial side. what becomes of the object in this system of identity?
In the correlate to the first instance of the totalitarian subject, the object as shown by Adorno, is treated as a lifeless entity, a dead piece of matter to be formed, ruled, and dominated. Edicts are delivered as to what the object is and should be, and efforts are put forth to coerce the object to conform. In this urge to make alive, in this effort to incorporate the object into the system, the distance of tolerance, of heterogeneity, is eliminated. The object is under attack. For the object this burden is not seen as emanating from an action, but from a system, and thus it becomes a condition is seen as inevitable, as inescapable. The condition becomes as life for the object.26 It is a false life within reality.
The instances of false consciousness of the barbarous and the lifeless come into view when elements of non-identity emerge from the object. They have the effect of dislodging, of an imbalance of the ungrounded subject. These elements appear as something which we wish to go away, as something which with we cannot cope. The predominant faith of the subject here is in the objects as we have made them and as we think they are, objects are then foreign, something other, something barbarous. For the totalitarian subject, the object becomes an instigating adversary, for the subject in vertigo, the object becomes wholly concrete, the source of despair and impending doom.
In the next example Adorno criticizes Heidegger for developing a philosophy whose definitions block the memory of the miseries of humankind.27 This is accomplished by Heidegger, according to Adorno, in his insistence of 'Being" as having the property of resistance to definition. This resistance to definition acts as a blinding mechanism28 by which the subject is unable to reach a clarity. Heidegger's construction points to a mythical superiority beyond the real human miseries that constitute an element of this so-called superiority, and thus beyond these miseries and their memory, finally away from suffering.
In our third example of Adorno's criticism of Heidegger, Adorno takes aim at what he calls Heidegger's 'Ontologization of the Ontical'. According to Adorno the move to ontologize the Ontical is a blatant move to eliminate otherness within Heidegger's existential scheme. By showing the Ontical as an element of the ontological, Heidegger strikes the pose of a philosophy by identity in the manner of the authoritarian. It's focus is on dynamic characteristics of the Ontical that are translated into a function of the ontological, and thereafter has no opposing element to balance the purified assertion. The philosophy thus becomes the most horrible of affirmations, the affirmation of sheer power.
The example we shall present lastly, is Adorno's criticism of Heidegger in the section on the copula. Adorno criticizes Heidegger for taking the sense of 'is' in each particular synthetic judgment, and then raising it to a principle of synthesis generally. Adorno points out that the synthesis cannot occur but in particular judgments and in particular circumstances. Thus Heidegger's move to raise the element of synthesis to a principle without a context is an ignorance of the value of particulars in a particular judgment. For Adorno there is no real synthesis without the elements of subject-synthesis-predicate. Heidegger thus, for Adorno, is caught in a move of reified thinking by raising 'is' to a general principle of synthesis by decree. This false elevation of the synthetic element binds us from these particular moments by pointing to the mythical brighter light of synthesis without context of the real. It is thus totalitarian. I will now move to show how elements of Adorno's philosophy add to this reading of negative dialectics as being at the threshold of tragic sympathy.
The first element of Adorno's philosophy that points us toward tragic sympathy is in his analysis of suffering physical. In the analysis of suffering physical Adorno makes a claim which both raises existence to the form of an imperative and also gives existence a tragic pose.

The physical moment tells our knowledge that suffering ought not to be, that things should be different. pg. 202 31

In this statement, existence affirms itself but only in a movement to negate an aspect of its being. It shows existence as a being-towards in a buried nature, which emerges in the labor to language. The 'ought' is derived from a negative form of 'is', from a lack in being itself which reaches outward and demands of others, that carries a kernel of action, an imperative to both sympathy and action. We can see existence as an affirmation, through negation in this claim if we can agree that suffering is a form of non-being, of death itself, and of disempowerment. This can be seen in the example of non-being that we have in the death of a loved one, where our experience of non-being is felt as loss of experience. Therefore the affirmation of existence is carried in a negative, and thus can be seen as a transposition from non-being to being, as human existence and action itself is a movement away from suffering. The affirmation of being as away from non-being must be unearthed and resurrected through a negative. Here Adorno roots purposiveness in human existence. This principle of communication can be seen as a heuristic principle according to need32.
In the sense that existence is directional for Adorno, in this notion that 'suffering ought not to be', is seen the emergence of purposiveness in negative dialectics while simultaneously being the emergence of speech as both imperative and conduct toward others. Existence, for Adorno, is directional outside of itself. It has the form of a cry. In this principle of communication , in this transposition of suffering to sympathy, Adorno roots existentially what Kant proposes as hypothesis, and thus maintains in a supersensible orbit. That is the possibility of the origin of communication, the sensus communis.

Now this common sense cannot be grounded on experience, for it aims at justifying judgments which contain an ought. It does not say that everyone will agree with my judgment, but that he ought. pg. 76 Critique of Judgment 33

The sensus communis is at the basis for the possibility of communication, for Kant, which we must possess or communication could not occur. But for Kant the common sense is not found in experience, but in a supposition, and is thus the possibility of communication which is derived after the fact.34 Kant argues that 'we must possess a common sense because we do communicate'. Kant's common sense is thus a pure intellectual notion with an undefined supersensible axis. Although physical suffering as a driving force to thought is not thematic in the third critique, the notion of lack is present. The want of accordance that characterizes the feeling of the sublime35, and the feeling of incapacity characterizes respect36, both leave the underlying framework of what can be considered the proper ground, the proper impetus of a moral action wholly negative. There is a parallel here in that Adorno describes his notion of suffering physical as having the characteristic of incompleteness. Thus lack is central in both Philosopher's structure of thought and willed action. To show the congruence more clearly between the supersensible orbit of the unity of the faculties, with the existential axis of Adorno's emergence of language, a presentation of the influence of physical suffering on Kant's notion of the supersensible as unity is in order, which I will take up in a following essay.
Adorno simultaneously roots not only the origin of communication but the notion of imperative in an existential manner, in an experience that speaks. The origin of communication not only emerges from human existence in a rising above sense, but emerges with a twofold imperative imbedded in it's axis, the imperative to sympathy of suffering, and also an imperative to eliminate suffering. Human existence reaches outside itself towards others as speech in the imperative and as the indication of sympathy with the imperative of sympathy. In this manner of rooting the common sense existentially, Adorno attempts to bring concreteness and unity to a fundamental supersensible notion of Kant- the twofold condition, and unity, of humanity as communicative and sympathetic.

.., probably because humanity on the one side indicates the universal feeling of sympathy, and on the other the faculty of being able to communicate universally our inmost (feelings). pg. 201 CJ 37

Therefore communication, for Adorno emerges from a lack, a negative, but it is in the sharing of this lack that the lack is negated. This reconcilement is contingent for Adorno, but it has a model in the 'conduct of language'. In the conduct of language in constellation, we possess the model for reconcilement. Thus constellation is another element of unified experience in Negative Dialectics.
The individual lack inherent in the nature of the concept necessarily lends it to refer to others. It is thus in constellation, in the mutual sharing of lack; in the sympathy that suffering ought not to be that the object can be wholly known and reconcilement can occur. Adorno writes-

More essential, however, is that to which Weber gives the name of "composing", a name which orthodox scientivists would find unacceptable. He is indeed looking only at the subjective side, at cognitive procedure; but the "compositions" in question are apt to follow similar rules as their analogue, the musical compositions. These are subjectively produced, but they work only where the subjective production is submerged in them. The subjectively created context- the "constellation"- becomes readable as sign of an objectivity: of the spiritual substance. pg. 165 38

In constellation, in reference to others we find the sharing of a lack; a communication of sorts; in the shared sympathy that suffering ought not to be. Thus we find the sign of an objectivity, of spiritual substance. This reference towards others has the form of a type of completion, where place is interpenetrated among the members, the universal place of sufferer. In the sharing of our lack, which is only contingent for Adorno, our lack is for the moment overcome. Language serves as the model for this communion, a co-mingling that cannot be arrived at in the immediate clutching of an identity thinking, but in the 'holding lightly’39 of self-reflection, when 'things in being are read as a text of their becoming'. It is a language in symbolic presentation, a 'chorus' of lack so to speak. Thinking becomes as a song.
It is here where we can show Negative Dialectics on the threshold of tragic sympathy as parallel to philosophy outside the tradition of the Frankfurt School.
We show here the parallel between Adorno's sense of suffering to sympathy in his existential imperative in combination with the model of the completion of lack- the constellation, and Paul Ricoeur's presentation of tragic reconciliation in the Symbolism of Evil.40 In determinate negation, of thinking rising to speech, there is a point of unity of the sympathy of suffering and suffering's tracing in the concept, and also the unity of the concepts reference to other concepts in constellation. Language, for Adorno, has its own sense of tragic reconciliation. In the Ricoeur of the Symbolism of Evil, tragic reconciliation occurs in the aesthetic transposition of terror and pity that constitutes the sympathy of suffering in constellation.41 It occurs in a communion, in an Interpenetration of members in the participation of suffering through sympathy. Tragic reconciliation has the form of a constellation that cleanses the cry that is human communication. This 'chorus' completes the individual lack that is the song of human communication, in a universal song of sympathy.

There remains the tragic spectacle itself, to purify whoever yields himself to the sublimity of the poetic word. It is neither counsel in the Apollonian sense, nor an alteration of personality in the Dionysian sense, except, perhaps, in a very remote sense- for example, in the sense that the spectacle fosters 'illusion'. Through the spectacle the ordinary man enters into the "chorus" which weeps and sings with the hero; the place of tragic reconciliation is the "chorus" and its lyricism. Ricoeur, pg. 231 42

The constellation in this sense is Adorno's moment of song of sympathy as model for the solitary subject. This is the moment that provides the 'more' of Adorno. This 'chorus' of the constellation for Adorno, is not a stasis condition for Adorno, but only a moment. In the arena of the objective world it is a moment that requires the objective participation of an other. This cannot be guaranteed for Adorno, no matter what Herculean effort by the single subject. We have only the chance of joining the 'chorus', the limited chorus of others in their song of sympathy. In fulfilling the subjects half of conditions necessary for reconcilement; in thinking--, and in bringing this to voice, to will, we have the possibility of joining the chorus.
Two conditions for Adorno block off reconcilement as permanence and as utopia, and also therefore as a static ideal. The first condition is possibility, the possibility arising in the horizon of the future and thus the negation of any kind of stasis. The second condition is the present conditions which would yet be changeable by human action43 -that others do not participate in the song of sympathy, but clutch in fear to immediate permanence-identity thinking. The common ground of this anti-utopian stance and a type of 'deliverance within the tragic’44 is found in Adorno as the negation of need in the moment of reconcilement. The negation of need in reconcilement is the survival of man, and is therefore the survival of need, the condition of human existence. The continuation of need is therefore the continuation of the tragic pose.
For Adorno we must not look to this reconcilement as an ideal, for this does nothing to bring about the reconcilement. The manner that will place us in a position for this reconcilement to occur, is total self-relinquishment in the particular, in the determinate negation of false identity, with the requirement of a sympathy that suffering ought not to be. It is why he says that for man to be a believer in god he must not believe.45 Reconcilement can become in the determinate negation of suffering that constitutes this no; so we can focus on the particular and reconcilement-God- to become in sympathy with the human side; in sympathy with suffering, in self-reflection on suffering, in the effort of a negative.

What thinking performs in it is a mimicry of the spell of things, of the spell from which it has endowed things, on the threshold of a sympathy that would make the spell disappear. pg. 270 46

Through this negation of need, need survives. This is the element that places Negative Dialectics in the position to be read as only on the threshold of sympathy in the form of the tragic.

Yet the need in thinking is what makes us think. It asks to be negated by thinking; it must disappear in thought if it is to be really satisfied; and in this negation it survives. pg. 408 47

To hold something for Adorno is not a double-one handed affair, where to hold the object is to hold it away from the other in one hand, while pointing towards something else, or beating him, as adversary, with the other. Rather holding in an ordering but non-economic sense is holding in the manner of a holding of a note, a holding with two hands and the object open, as if in an offering. It is an active sharing in the effort that understands, that will relinquish its object. This is the 'holding lightly' that Adorno refers to. However until conditions change, for Adorno, the passage through a negative dialectics can facilitate the advancement towards the threshold of this sympathy, in resistance to the totalitarian nature of the status-quo. So this song of cannot sing affirmation,48 the conditions of a 'chorus', for Adorno have been suppressed. But the model for the 'chorus' is in language, and thus there is possibility. But while there is unneeded suffering in the world, and to those who clutch to the stasis of what is immediately given, Adorno's song sings in its internal resistance that suffering ought not to be. Adorno's song sings No!!

If indeed the earth alone among all the heavenly bodies were inhabited by rational beings, the idiocy of such a metaphysical phenomenon would amount to a denunciation of metaphysics; in the end, men would really be gods- and what gods!--only under a spell that prevents them from knowing it, and without dominion over the cosmos.- pg. 400

Notes
1 Theodor Adorno, Negative Dialectics(New York: Continuum Publishing Company, 1973).
2 Adorno, pg. 160.
3 Paul Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil(New York: Paul Ricoeur in arrangement with Harper & Row, 1967).
4 Adorno, pg. 12.
5 Adorno, pg. 45.
6 Adorno, pg. 270.
7 Adorno, pg. 45.
8 Adorno, pg. 102.
9 Adorno, pg. 25.
10 Adorno, pg. 52.
11 Adorno, pg. 160.
12 Adorno, pg. 374.
13 Adorno, pg. 202.
14 Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment(New York: Hafner, 1972), pg. 138.
15 Adorno, pg. 45.
16 Kant, pg. 53-54.
17 Kant, pg. 155.
18 Adorno, pg. 25.
19 Kant, pg. 96.
20 Adorno, pg. 202.
21 Adorno, pg. 408.
22 Adorno, pg. 346.
23 Adorno, pg. 33.
24 Adorno, pg. 96.
25 Adorno, pg. 91.
26 Adorno, pg. 347.
27 Adorno, pg. 119.
28 Adorno, pg. 104.
29 Adorno, pg. 131.
30 Adorno, pg. 101.
31 Adorno, pg. 202.
32 Hans Jonas, The Imperative of Responsibility(London: University of Chicago Press, 1984), pgs. 26-27 & 202-203.
33 Kant, pg. 76.
34 Kant, pg. 135.
35 Kant, pg. 96.
36 Kant, pg. 96.
37 Kant, pg. 201.
38 Adorno, pg. 165.
39 Adorno, pg. 391-392.
40 Ricoeur, pg. 231.
41 Ricoeur, pg. 231.
42 Ricoeur, pg. 231.
43 Adorno, pg. 190.
44 Ricoeur, pg. 231.
45 Adorno, pg. 401-402.
46 Adorno, pg. 270.
47 Adorno, pg. 408.
48 Adorno, pg. 402.

Chapter 4- Scenes From the Theater of a Moral Desire

2007-09-16T11:25:00.000-07:00

Given that Kant denies inclination from the senses as a proper incentive for pure practical reason, how does Kant treat desire throughout the main works involving morality? In the exposition of the table of the higher faculties of the mind in the introduction to the Critique of Judgment, Immanuel Kant presents a schema of these faculties as to the manner in which they facilitate the systematic unity of his philosophical project 1. According to this schema the higher faculties of the mind are divided into the faculty of cognition, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the faculties of desire. Kant further delineates the direction of his project in the next subdivision, where from the heading of 'cognitive faculties' is derived the subdivision to the faculties of understanding, judgment, and reason. This does not mean that in his philosophical project the higher faculties of pleasure and pain are not treated. What it does mean is that these faculties are treated in the course of the study of cognition. This makes sense for Kant, because philosophy can be seen as the study of mind in relation to the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the study of the faculties of desire, as these faculties are manifested through the cognitive faculty. Kant might say that we can know these faculties as effects, or as they appear in the reflection of experience.
Thus the Kantian critical project is divided according to works devoted to the critique of these cognitive faculties. The first work, the Critique of Pure Reason 2, is devoted to the critique of pure theoretical cognition as the faculty of understanding. Another work, the Critique of Practical Reason 3, is devoted to the critique of how cognition is made practical, how cognition emerges through both faculties which constitute the faculty of desire- the faculty of desire through reason, and the faculty of desire through inclination. A third work, the Critique of Judgment is devoted to the critique of cognition as judgment in relation to the feeling of pleasure and pain as it effects judgment. Since there is an exhibition of the manifestation of desire to cognition, generally, in the first subdivision of the faculties of the mind, desire must then be manifested in the work of the latter two faculties, which are distinguished from pure theoretical cognition.
The purpose of my larger project is to examine evidence of the manifestation of desire, as it arises in the texts of these latter two works. I will examine evidence of the manifestation of desire in the Critique of Practical Reason in this article first. Move to examine evidence of the manifestation of desire in the Critique of Judgment next, then finally I will examine evidence of the manifestation of desire in the text of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. 5 The examination of this third work will deepen our understanding of the causality of the will and add evidence for a coherent reading of the Kantian enterprise as a whole.
I will proceed by describing the orientation of the text, and the development of each text, in each section, to the structure of Kant's project and then describe how desire is manifested in this framework, in relation to the framework, and sometimes outside this framework. I will also draw both on the work of commentators of Kant, and other philosophers whose work impacts sections of the text I treat, both in order to clarify the area of focus and to clarify my own specific and limited comments. I begin by examining evidence of the manifestation of desire in the text of the Critique of Practical Reason. I will proceed to elaborate from the scene of the introduction to this work, from here we advance to examine evidence of desire in first the principles of pure practical reason, then show evidence of desire in the concept of the object of pure practical reason, and show evidence of desire in the incentives of pure practical reason, and then finally show evidence of desire in the Dialectic of Pure practical reason.

Desire as Mission in the Critique of Practical Reason-The Introduction to the 2nd Critique

"is pure reason sufficient of itself to determine the will, or is it only as empirically conditioned that it can do so?” 6

A missionary perspective emerges in the introduction to the 2nd critique. Here the subject of inquiry is not practical reason as an object, but the use of reason 7, reason in exercise. Therefore what is being explored is not an archaeology of the subject, nor a tour of dysfunctions. It is clear that the position and direction of inquiry are much different from cognitive psychology, operational psychology, mechanistic psychology, or psychoanalytic inquiry. Rather Kant begins with the position of the will directed toward use, as the will effects cause, with the will as it determines itself, and thus this desire brought to effect is then called a faculty of desire. The subject matter is thus limited to the differentiations in the ways that the will effects causes, or brings objects into the world. Kant does not treat how or why the will is frustrated or inhibited, but treats what the rules and forms are by which the will becomes effective when it is effective. Kant thus demonstrates how the will is effective either subjectively for the individual, objectively in the empirical world, or universally for all rational beings. Thus a full theory of psychology is not developed in this work. Kant's demonstration of pure practical reason focuses on desire in its relation to the act, and the act's relation to the world and others.
Here Kant states that the task of the work is to show that pure reason can be practical of itself, and that this will be shown in an examination of its entire practical faculty 8. The task of the work then is to show how ideas can rise to causality, to effects in the empirical world. This view will elaborate on the manifestation of desire as it exists in the dialectic of decision and inclination, and how this arises to a coming to power, or from the wish to exertion. It is thus a critique of the causality of the will in relation to ideas. In a footnote in the preface explaining the faculty of desire to a contemporary critic, Kant writes that

"The faculty of desire is the faculty such a being has of causing, through its ideas, the reality of the objects of these ideas.” 9

Therefore in this demonstration of pure practical reason the appropriate nature of the causality of the will lies in causality from pure reason and not from sensual inclination. The Critique of Practical Reason then is a critique of the causality of the will in relation to principles. In this movement from principle to sense can be seen how ideas become concrete, come to sense as an effective cause in the empirical world. The noumenal nature of man is then affirmed in the coming-to-be that is elaborated. This follows then the overall method of the development of the book as laid out by Kant in the preface, to begin with principles and proceed to concepts, and then from concepts to the senses 10.
We move from this opening to a twofold examination of the text in the first chapter. The first examination will trace the chronology and form of argument as it is presented in the text, and the second examination will attempt to unpack this sequence to show the manifestations of desire in the text.

Principles of Pure Practical Reason

The process in this chapter is one of definition, and then a spinning away from this notion by a negative delineation of practical principles and their relation to sensuous inclination. There is then a gathering in these negative delineations, and of these negative delineations, in order to define what practical reason might be. Also in the process of this spinning away and negative gathering, a tremendous enlarging of the project occurs as new terms and relations emerge in each theorem, in each problem and each remark. Through this process Kant hopes to demonstrate how pure reason can be practical, and thus show the existence of a higher faculty of desire.

"All material practical rules place the ground of the determination of the will in the lower faculty of desire, and if there were no purely formal laws of the will adequate to determine it, we could not admit (the existence of) any higher faculty of desire." pg. 21 14

We see immediately that there is a manifestation of desire in the text, conveyed by the different forms of the determining ground of the will. What Kant calls practical principles of the will, refer to the stages which differentiate the variety of possibilities for the determining ground of the will. The range by which the will can find a determining ground is thereby limited to the extent by which the individual can effect order. The determining ground of the will refers to the position and orientation of the self in relation to the world and other wills in the exercise of the will. Therefore the direction of the analysis in this section is one of principles toward the act, and the concern of the section is then what form these principles take and how they differ. Furthermore the orientation of the analysis of these principles is from an I-think outward 15, in relation to others, and toward the act.
Practical principles then for Kant are propositions which contain a general determination of the will 16. When the condition of the principle is valid for the subject's will alone, the principle is called a maxim 17. When the condition of the principle is valid objectively for every rational being, the principle is called a practical law 18. There is then another arena of the will depicted in the determining ground of the causality of the will and that is the sphere of the will in relation to objectivity generally. This causes a diffraction in the Kantian terminology, and this sphere is what is indicated by the distinctions of maxim, hypothetical imperative and then categorical imperative.
For an analysis of desire, the notion of principle as a determining ground of the will shows a directionality of notion towards the will, towards the act, but from varied orientations and relations toward the will. It shows a directionality of notion towards efficacy in the empirical world as perishable and thus of import, and shows directionality towards this efficacy in connection with others and how we come to connect with others. A practical principle of the will is a proposition which contains a determination of the will, and thus it is the determination of the will as it rises to form in language, and through language, as how we can recognize the determining ground of the will. To speak of desire in relation to the orientation of principles must necessarily occur in a fragmented manner, for it is in the framework of the demonstration of pure practical reason that principles, and therefore desire is encountered.
Maxims indicate the personal nature of the determining ground of the will. As universal thought is an I-think, so universal action is an I-act. A maxim indicates the orientation of the will insofar as it is not necessarily congruent with others, but carries the possibility of congruence with other wills- but is determinative for it-self. Kant limits treatment of the maxim here to the form it takes as a principle of the pure practical reason.
The hypothetical imperative indicates the orientation of the will in relation to efficacy in the particular instance. This describes the objective nature of the will's coming-to-power as an effect in the empirical world. This indicates the stringent nature of the efficacy in the particular instance. To say that 'whoever wills the ends also wills the means', means that ends are not approachable by indiscriminate types of activity. It means that an end is a specific goal conditioned by the structure of thinking, by pathological affectation, and by the physical structures which govern the accomplishment of the end. An end is specific, and there are only a limited number of ways to achieve an end. Thus the notion of telos not only emerges in the hypothetical imperative, within the structure of action towards the world, but also what emerges is the notion that action takes on specific structure in effective action in this world. This specific structure is that of labor, and of specific labor. It is thus missionary. But we shall not deal with labor yet for we are not yet discussing the practical part of the genesis of sociality, but the formal part of the genesis of sociality. For Kant we come to this formal part of the genesis of sociality in the notion of the categorical imperative, which commands both universally and prior to experience.
How the categorical imperative commands both universally and prior to experience seems to be somewhat unclear. Aside from a postulate which is derived from the hope of a higher faculty of desire, how does the notion of a categorical imperative have a working connection with reality that is more than theoretical construct? What comes clear in this analysis toward the act is that Kant is not speaking from the experience of the I toward the world in his depiction of the categorical imperative, nor is he speaking of the rising of desire towards speech within the I. What Kant speaks about in his depiction of the categorical imperative is the emergence, the formulation of the notion of the we that takes place prior to any experience of the we.
What Kant means to depict in the development of the categorical imperative is that there is no experience of the we prior to the recognition of the other as same 19. All sensory reception before this is pre-cognition and is either a blank stare or confusion. It is in this higher faculty of desire that the moral form of choice originates, and that any notion of morality exists. Prior to this categorical synthesis, man, by necessity, is alone in the world because prior to this recognition man sees no other than himself. In the recognition of another as same man enters into the experience of another, and thus enters the sphere of conduct proper or improper, good or evil. Without the recognition of the we man is not presented with any real choice at all, for all his knowledge is about himself, all his choices are about himself, and all his choices are about inclinations or rules of prudence, about the means to survival. Without this recognition of the we man is completely alone. There are no others, there is no society. The recognition of the we is thus a radical reordering, a categorical synthesis.
This primordial recognition of the we is what Kant means by "the moral law is what first presents itself to us” 20. This is the a priori character of the moral law, and it also shows why the imperative is categorical, for this recognition initially brings about the consciousness of the me belonging to a category of me's, to a category of sameness which diminishes the value of the view of the me in relation to the now new reality of the world. Here the notion of community emerges as a completely new reality from the view of the I towards the empirical world. We can see that this notion of community is parallel to the notion of community as Professor Charles Taylor develops it through Hegel and the analysis of what he calls the 'qualitative view of action'- the ontological inseparability of action and purpose. This view is opposed to another which distinguishes actions by the kind of cause that brings them about. In this analysis the genesis of community has parallel with the demand developed by a categorical imperative, and this notion of community is found within the chapter 'Hegel's Philosophy of Mind' in Taylor's Human Agency and Language 21. Professor Taylor writes-

"By contrast, the qualitative view does not tie action only to the individual agent. The nature of the agency comes clear to us only when we have a clear understanding of the nature of the action. This can be individual; but it can also be the action of a community, and in a fashion which is irreducible to individual action. It can even be the action of an agent who is not simply identical with human agency. pg. 93
Hegel, of course, avails himself to both of these latter possibilities. In his conception of public life, as it exists in a properly established system of objective ethics (sittlichkeit), the common practices or institutions which embody this life are seen as our doing. But they constitute an activity which is genuinely common to us; it is ours in a sense which cannot be analyzed into a convergence of mines." 22

This ontological inseparability, this emergence of community is found in the voice of the categorical imperative as it elaborates the demand, and thus the desire, towards the social in the determination of the will. As I argue, Kant speaks of imperative as it rises from the very receptive capabilities that construct intelligibility. Kant speaks of imperative as it arises in the form of the universal plea of experience, and it is a reception that cannot be received in a form other than dramatic. It is the listening quality of recognition that brings imperative to rise, for Kant, from apprehension and its context. For Kant this type of understanding is imparted to the individual by the very structure of communication. Imperative for Kant is not a projected imperative that wishes to dominate, but the blind imperative of the cry of the other. It is an imperative brought to the fore, an understanding evoked. One might say that for Kant the categorical imperative is heard before it is spoken. In this sense it is heard from the structure of voice, in general, as cry, not as articulated conceptualized demand.
If the categorical imperative is the command to act so that your maxim conforms to universal law giving, then the reception of the imperative takes the form of the reception of the universal itself as, the 'intrusion' of the universal. This is what I believe is the common ground of Kant and Taylor when Taylor speaks of language creating a common sphere, a public space that did not exist before. This is found in the Chapter ‘Theories of Meaning' later in the same book.

"One might say that language enables us to put things in public space. That something emerges into what I want to call public space means that it is no longer a matter for me, or for you, or for both of us severally, but is now something for us, that is for us together." pg. 259
& "But the crucial and highly obtrusive fact about language, and human symbolic communication in general, is that it serves to found public space, that is, to place certain matters before us." pg. 259 23

Therefore what arises in an understanding is a community. Here we find why the notion of universal law-giving is the standard by which our maxim must arise, and not the sensible notion of a utilitarianism. The experience of the we arises in understanding as the receiving of the universal law, of the law of the universal. It is the unshakable law that we are not alone, that we are a public. From here, how does a maxim change so that its form towards the material world and others can hold as a universal law?
The categorical imperative therefore indicates the orientation of the will in relation to other wills and the efficacy of the particular instance for the whole. The categorical imperative indicates that all immediate objectivity and coming-to-power does not have the same consequence for all wills universally, and the very character of this coming-to-power demands that this is so. Thus carried in the demand of conformity to universal law giving is the demand to be efficacious in the particular instance, the hypothetical imperative.
The distinctions Kant makes between maxim and imperative are not completely separate in the treatment of the determining grounds of the will, the principles of pure practical reason. In the formulation of the categorical imperative there is contained a maxim. The maxim is a subjective determining ground of the will that in its primitive stage is not a law. The task demanded by the structure of this imperative is to make your subjective determining ground of the will congruent with a determining ground of the will effective not only objectively, but universally. This does not mean that the maxim aspires to be both objective in the particular instance of application and universal for all persons in its application. What a will does when it conforms to the demand of universality is to take on other than what it is in the particular instance. The will thus keeps an ear to the voice of the other, and does not act from the position of self-love. In this aspiration there is evidence of what Kant calls the higher faculty of desire. Kant writes-

S7 Fundamental Law of Practical Reason
So act that the maxim of your will could always hold at the same time as a principle establishing universal law. 24

The subjective principle is congruent with the objective principle, which shows that what is being articulated is how the universal can articulate itself in the subjective. The I of the maxim thus changes form, it con-forms, rises to imperative not for the viewpoint of making its subjectively pleasing condition universal to all, but by accepting the universal form of law-giving generally. The I of the maxim thus conforms to the ought necessitated by the objective sphere, to efficacy in the objective sphere. Only then for Kant can the personal determining ground of the will change and rise to universality as law.
From the viewpoint of the manifestation of desire this is a preliminary statement of the ought as the communication of desire in the form of an imperative. Here, from the viewpoint of the causality of the will, the ought itself is the manifestation of desire in the structure of action as seen in the sign. The ought is a demand articulated upon the other, and it is a demand from dynamic objectivity. The ought is speech as it demands action. We can say in this way that the energetics of language always carries with it a demand, and it is the form of this demand which rises to action, and is carried, transposed by action to the word, and sensibly by the sign. But to describe the ought in terms of sign character and teleology is incomplete, for the imperative ought that expresses the kernel of desire and its directionality, also carries the content of action and telos as having a mission character. 25 That action carries with it an end, a purpose, is transferred to the linguistic field by the word ought. In this way the word ought is a compacted instance of the notion of teleology, directed towards a specific yet common endeavor. In other words both the vector and face of desire as desire comes to appear, as it comes to act, as it appears and is effected, is missionary. Desire comes to reason and to act as use, as labor in the specific.
Aside from the specific relations stemming from this treatment, there are implications from this type of accounting. One implication is that desire is only desire if it can be checked, formed, regulated. Desire must be manifested through a medium if it is to appear. Another implication is the tremendous negation of desire, the ascetic quality of desire in the immediate, for desire to be effected toward an end, and thus take the form of a will. The determining ground of the will is described from a value relation standpoint of mutual effects, it is not unilateral from a subject or self, but in conjunction, or in relation to a subject or self. And yet another implication is the opportunity structure in the tenor and direction of Kant's philosophy, this structure is apparent in the famous 2nd question, "what ought I to do?” 26 We can say then that one of the themes in this direction of Kant's project is the opportunity character of life, played out through desire as reason brought to use. This labor of reason can be seen as the opportunity of desire. 27
In these instances we are dealing with the will determining itself, with desire turning back on itself. Determining itself in this way is desire whereupon desire comes to be a faculty. Human desire is limited. It is through the objects which we bring forth and the causes we effect that desire takes on a face, and it is through this passage that desire, will, and then reason come to use. When desire turns on itself, when it checks itself, when it negates itself, when it briefly focuses elsewhere, only then does it become directional, and thus a will. Thus in an analysis of desire in Kant, desire is not coherently treated, but refracted through the theoretical and practical uses of reason. This is what we can gather in working towards a treatment of desire in this first section.

The Concept of An Object of Pure Practical Reason
The section on the concept of an object of pure practical reason begins with the relation of the will to action whereby either action, or an object is brought into being. 28 Kant then moves from the question of whether something is an object of pure practical reason to the question of whether we should "will an action directed to the existence of an object if it were within our power” 29
The chapter thus takes its task from a twofold orientation. (1) What ought we to do?, (2) From the position of power. The Chapter thus takes its position within the structure of power itself, from within the act itself. 30 "What ought we to do?" is then reframed to a 'Should we do?' when viewed from vantage point of high efficiency rate of success with regard to aims. From the viewpoint of virility we move to the expectation of consequences, consequences of which we are at risk, consequences of which we and others are at stake.
The moral possibility, for Kant, takes precedence when capability of the act is not a question, and when humanity is at stake. From this reduction we arrive at how we determine whether an action is to be done or not. We must then face the destiny of our actions as effects, as either good or evil. The missionary character of Kant's approach is clear again, in that action has its final end for Kant in whether it is good or evil.
But there is a second order uncertainty in this posture by Kant. Given the efficiency of the will in effecting a concrete action from the viewpoint of a particular individual, the options of good or evil present yet another layer of efficacy which is to be achieved. Should the action be done? This viewpoint of a power suspended, a power ungrounded then pervades the approach to the remainder of the chapter and the entire Kantian enterprise. Power is suspended, is not grounded as it faces a humanity at stake. An effective action can be good or evil, and is thus suspended. This suspension of power prior to the moral determination of the will is an appropriate description of the nature of desire. Encapsulated but suspended, directed but suspended, brought to efficacy through matter, but suspended, desire in its manifestations is always incomplete. Desire comes to its proper end with an other whose character is also a form of desire.
The concept of an object of pure practical reason then is the idea of an object both as aim and effect, as an appearance. In reducing the object to its effect Kant renders objectivity to the form of cognition generally. This does not refer to the cognition of the subject who initiates action, nor does this refer to the cognition of the receiving subject, to the subject who listens. Rather the seemingly neutral character of the concept of an object of pure practical reason as both aim and effect shows that Kant is aiming at some third term, some other ground where both the initiator and the recipient of action share common territory.
Sole objects of pure practical reason are then the products of good and evil. The reference to objects does not refer to objects which are good and evil, but refers to these objects as effects of actions as good and evil. Good and evil are then presented as objects made by the will. How Kant articulates this is not so much be describing what the good concretely is, but by describing what the good concretely is not, thus delineating negatively what the good is. The effect of the will is not seen in relating to the initiating self, but in relation to an other. The general direction of duty, and thus the movement toward society is the orientation Kant here speaks from. Making an object of the will is making good or evil for the whole generally. Kant's orientation does not then presuppose pure reason as practical for the self, but for others first, and thus also for the self. Desire is thus manifested in the concept of an object of pure practical reason as aim or as effect, good or evil. If there is a possibility for an action to be good or evil then there is no necessity for an action to be good, and also there must be some bifurcation between end and efficiency in accomplishing this end.
One reason I choose the Kantian tradition is that Nietzsche reduces the debt of morality to the model of the exchange relationship 31. I believe Kant goes deeper to the root of the sublime and the moral tenor of life in showing the nature of debt, of obligation, as deriving from the reverberating character of pathological affectation and its rising to speech in the form of imperative. It is not whether an action is good reflectively, or can be rationalized as good, but whether an action carries a specific character which determines it as good, as it occurs. It is a power in permanent suspension that gives hints to its nature by the very way it unravels, and not by any other means of evidence in the immediate.
Desire is present in this process of idea coming to effect in the description of an efficacious self, and thus an objective worth. It is the desire of coming to mastery, as it emerges from the orientation of the causality of the will, and facing the uncertainty of its power. Here Kant shares ground with Professor Taminiaux. Professor Taminiaux treats the emergence of mastery in the specific within the parallel and contrasting analyses of the Hegel of the Jena period and Hobbes of the Leviathan in the chapter 'Hegel and Hobbes' in his book Dialectic and Difference 32.
From the parameters of the larger comparison and contrast between the German school of natural right and the development of political philosophy as exemplified in Hobbes, from this analysis we narrow to the comparison of the 'practical part of the genesis of sociality'. Specifically we narrow to Taminiaux's recounting of Hegel's view of this genesis. Professor Taminiaux shows in Hegel the emergence of mastery in the specific as the separation of Ego and drive in the making of an article of use, the tool.

"For his own part, Hegel also takes pains to demarcate the human Trieb from animal desire. But he demarcates it otherwise. And it is precisely here that there appears in the most striking fashion the import of the speculative correction of empiricism. According to Hegel, Trieb severs its ties from animality by the production of tools. While animal desire plods along in the repetition of wants and satisfactions, human desire has this specific trait, that "the Ego", the titulary of the conatus, "detaches itself from drive and makes of it an object". This object is the tool, in which the conatus transposes and transforms itself(cf. RP, 204-205). 33

Here Professor Taminiaux speaks of the transformative powers of the tool. We know that it is not so much the tool that transforms, but labor in possession of the tool. The tool is the embodiment of the missionary character of reason. This physical embodiment of reason, the labor of reason, is what I find as the unstated condition, the material indicator of the hypothetical imperative and the practical use of reason. This labor of reason is found in Kant's definition of the concept of the object of pure practical reason where either action or an object is brought into being. In this definition there is a threefold dynamic that exists between the notions of object and action. The first part of the definition refers to action as some 'thing' which is brought into being. This hints at the concrete character of action, its thing-like character as it is received by the sensory apparatus of the other. Action as it is received feels like a thing. The second part of the definition refers to the object of pure practical reason as matter, as the sheer physical support which possesses attributes and meaning. Intertwined in this interplay, and preserved by Kant's definition and context is the sense in which an object is an aim, or an object of desire. Here the definition's references to both action and object lends toward the sense in which both the concrete object and action are carried within the larger framework of desire as an objective. Therefore Kant's definition of the concept of an object of pure practical reason can be said to be about the notions of object and action as they operate in a working framework, in the framework of working. This once more shows the sense of mission in this section as desire towards labor.

The conatus transposes itself in the tool inasmuch as it is henceforth the tool that transforms the conatus: thanks to the tool, the pure and simple animal repetition of the single conatus transforms itself into a universal possibility for the transformation of things and for the transformation of desires. By means of the tool, the desiring individual breaks open his limits and universalizes himself. 34 pg. 21

Where Taminiaux shows in Hegel the universalizing of man through the production of an article of use, we see that Kant develops this type of universalizing in the character of the I-act towards the world embodied by the object of pure practical reason. For Kant the product of individual labor then is only a partial universalizing.
Therefore what we can gather from this section about the treatment of desire is that Kant shows the manifestation of desire as it lends toward the genesis of sociality as a product, and an effect, and the aim of the object of pure practical reason. It is the desire of labor. Labor, however, for Kant, can be good or Evil.

Incentives of Pure Practical Reason

Prior to this chapter Kant began with a demonstration of desire as principle towards action. Desire as pure practical reason manifests itself finally as action. From desire towards the act, and from desire within the framework of power, within the act, Kant now moves to an analysis from the history of the act. The character of events is thus reached in Kant not by pure assertion, but from the observation of events and their root. Thus the procedure implicit in Kant's strategy is one of a reduction from all events, to what constitutes moral events, to the indeterminative nature of consequences as being the ground of moral events, finally to the determining ground of events as they relate to moral events as they can be distinguished from moral events. It is thus not only an analysis from the act, but from the history of the act to the origin of moral act. It is a genealogy of the moral event.
Why is this genealogy not readily apparent? Kant's comments on inclination and the moral law heretofore have come within the context of these different orientation of analysis towards he act. Morality is treated in the 2nd critique in its emergence in the demonstration of practical reason. It is a demonstration from the orientation of principle toward the act, from the orientation of the act as a suspended power, and from the orientation of the genealogy of the act as moral event. The difficulty then in piecing together a clear position on the moral relation is due to its appearance in these scenes, and due to the different orientation of these scenes toward the demonstration of pure reason as practical.
Kant begins this third chapter on the incentives of pure practical reason by again delineating the missionary character of pure practical reason. Here the text shows that Kant is not so much concerned with the pure dynamics of the use of pure practical reason as with its use in relation to the notion of moral worth. 35 Furthermore the fact that moral worth emerges in his philosophy in a section on incentives and not consequences shows that the act as event is described by a regressive analysis temporally. Incentives influence the will and the will impacts the world in the form of events. The focus of Kant’s third chapter then is the moral event as it occurs and can occur from its root in the incentives of pure practical reason. Here is the starting point and direction of the third chapter of the 2nd critique.
At the origin of moral events Kant further delineates the incentive which determines an event as having the character of good. This incentive is the moral law, and it is singular in the determination of what makes an event good. It is a singular incentive that determines universally among men, the character of the event as good. Kant's procedure is then a demonstration of the moral law, from the act, in relation to other types of conduct as derived from the history of the act and their respective determining grounds. I call this procedure critical demonstration.

Therefore, for the purpose of giving the moral law influence of the will, nothing remains by to determine carefully in what way the moral law becomes an incentive and, since the moral law is such an incentive, to see what happens to the human faculty of desire as a consequence of this determining ground......Therefore, we shall not have to show a priori why the moral law supplies an incentive but rather what it effects in the mind, so far as it is an incentive. 36

In this critical demonstration a major theme to be addressed from the direction of analysis and its missionary character is the notion of morality arising as worth, as value. A moral economy, so to speak, is set up in the first two pages of the third chapter. The occurrence of the notion of value 37 in the first sentence, in conjunction with the non-necessity of subjective determining grounds conforming to the objective law as presented in the third sentence of the chapter 38 leads to this conclusion. Therefore with a spectrum of action ranging from subjective determining grounds of the will to those that conform with the objective law, and with the notion or moral worth as determined within this spectrum, and limited to specific criterion, we have the general structure for the outline of a moral economy and the standard by which to discriminate its various types of action. It is because of this structure and direction of the landscape that what is required as Kant sees it, is a critical demonstration.
In the midst of this critical demonstration, the notions of moral worth and the implicit non-worth set the parameters for the spectrum of a moral economy through action. In this scene desire is manifested through the depiction of moral worth as moral worth is spread throughout the spectrum of moral worth in both degrees of strength, or the percentage of effort one gives to the moral act, and also throughout an effort completely exhausted in relation to other effective wills. The parameters for a moral economy are the scene here. Professor Stephen Engstrom shows a moral economy, and thus the possibility of moral improvement in an analysis of the bifurcation between aims and efficiency, and the description of moral strength in his article 'Conditioned autonomy’. 39
In this article, Professor Engstrom delineates the economy of occurrence between heteronomous and autonomous actions from the viewpoint of the Kantian tradition. In the adoption of maxims, morality is not a necessary condition for the adoption of each and every maxim. In other words, since there are many instances in which self-love is integrated into the maxim of an action, the degree of involvement of self-love in this ground indicates a scale of autonomy, both in the number of instances of action in the course of life, and in the degree of strength that the subject has in withstanding the attractiveness to act from inclination. The aim of this argument, as Professor Engstrom shows, is to demonstrate the realistic possibility of the concept of moral improvement over time 40. In this manner Engstrom indirectly develops the notion of an economy of desire.
From the strict Kantian viewpoint moral improvement is seen over the continuum of a lifetime, and not in the degree of autonomy in each act as regarding the mixture of self-love and duty. Kant might say that Engstrom obscures the notion of autonomy with efficiency in regard to the whole. By continuously adopting principles of action in an autonomous manner, for Kant, we gradually become more proficient in becoming efficacious. Engstrom, however, convincingly shows that if there is to be moral improvement, the axis upon which this improvement depends is located in the notion of strength during the concrete instance of the act, or in the ability of the individual to have differing degrees of self-love involved in each and every moral choice. Moral strength is therefore not a constant, as Engstrom shows.
For Kant, however, action grounded upon ever decreasing amounts of inclination only makes the action less evil, but evil nonetheless. Strength as the relation between self-love, in acting from inclination, and duty, which is action in regard for the whole- or from respect, is seen by Kant to not be strictly evil, and not strictly good. But for Kant the moral act, the action done from duty precludes the possibility of inclination mixed in the determining ground of a maxim. This is because duty springs from respect, from the mutually dependent nature of our condition, and is thus completely contrary to the self-centered focus that occurs from the structure of inclination. Professor Engstrom's structure of conditioned autonomy for Kant seems to be arguing from a position of a will acting according to duty but not acting from duty. According to Kant these actions are then good in letter, but not good in spirit. 41
Although this is the strict Kantian response to Professor Engstrom's notion of conditioned autonomy, it fails to adequately treat the entire scope of Professor Engstrom's notion. It is from Kant's notion of conversion as presented in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone that Professor Engstrom receives the strength of his position, which I find to be thorough and correct. It is here that the concept of moral strength receives textual support that goes beyond the position developed by Kant in the incentives of pure practical reason. I therefore speak with Engstrom and not against him. We must then resume this examination in the analysis of desire in the text of Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.
To return to our treatment of the chapter, it is then within the parameters of an economy of moral worth, and in the interplay of the individuals action as the action impacts both self and community(as this community is based on recognition) that the comments Kant makes on inclination must be framed.
Inclination for Kant is the form of desire as it arises from the senses. Inclination is based on sensuous feeling, it is pathological affectation, and for Kant can in no manner be part of the determining ground of the will if the action is to be moral, if the will is to be autonomous. Kant's denial of a decision as moral arising from inclination is the ground of attack for those that charge Kant with developing an empty formalism.
However for Kant, the negative feeling of inclination, unpleasantness, serves in a positive way when it is brought to self-consciousness in the form of respect. Negative inclinations brought to consciousness serve to humiliate man in the face of his self-conceit, in attempting to make the conditions of his maxim universal by exposing the root of fallibility in man. Physical suffering brings about the conditions for respect itself, for Kant, by showing man his fallible nature and bringing this to understanding. Physical suffering deepens further the principle of universal law by showing the benevolent side of universality and the road towards an overall positive conception of action done from duty. Kant writes in a most illuminating passage-

Such is the nature of the genuine incentive of pure practical reason. It is nothing else than the pure moral law itself, so far as it lets us perceive the sublimity of our own supersensuous existence and subjectively effects respect for their higher vocation in men who are conscious of their sensuous existence and of the accompanying dependence on their pathologically affected nature. 42 pg. 91

But the suffering as the condition of respect is not the suffering of myself, but the suffering of others. Respect is thus practically effected by the will by deciding and acting from the mutual dependence this implies. 43 This does not mean that actions grounded upon the negative inclination are then to be regarded as moral and autonomous, but to the contrary for Kant these actions play as much role in actions done from self-love as do actions grounded upon the inclination of the physically pleasant. It is not so much suffering that is the condition of respect for Kant, but a suffering brought to consciousness, that suffering as we know it is one half of bringing to consciousness. Thus suffering is the ground of the notion of sense rising to ideas, to the supersensuous and thus the ground of the ought.
'Bringing to consciousness' is the other ground pole of action for Kant here. What grounds an action, a power in its suspended state, is others and our relation with others. It is not pain which serves as the ground point for Kant of the moral law, of duty, of the ought. My suffering is not the condition of respect per se, because the suffering of the I gives rise to inclinations. However suffering and the relation of suffering to the other combined with the recognition and the ability to communicate this interplay, bring about the proper conditions of respect for Kant. The self-consciousness of suffering and its reaching to another of its kind is the structure of the condition of respect as it presents itself in the Kantian philosophy.
The pain of others and the death of others is the vital juncture which determines the nature o the dynamic concept of duty. It is pain understood. It is the material issue of demand, of imperative coming to recognition. It creates an objective nature towards which the will in its efficacy receives meaning in relation to others. This Theatre of understanding is not a point of view, equal among others and it does not change the suspended nature of power as it emerges, but it gives power a medium by which to exhaust itself, and a shadow by which to see itself in its grand dance with suffering and death. Then the value of power changes from its immediate focus and expands to an economy in relation to its community. Thus the recognition of the other as same- as dependent- and then conforming to this objectivity from the power of its voice is what leads to the type of act Kant calls respect for the moral law.

Rather, sensuous feeling, which is the basis of all our inclinations, is the condition of particular feeling we call respect, but the cause that determines this feeling lies in the pure practical reason; because of its origin, therefore, this particular feeling cannot be said to be pathologically effected, rather it is practically effected. Since the idea of the moral law deprives self-love of its influence and self-conceit of its delusion, it lessons the obstacle to pure practical reason and produces the idea of the superiority of its objective law to the impulse of sensibility; it increases the weight of the moral law by removing, in the judgment of reason, the counterweight to the moral law which bears on a will affected by the sensibility. Thus the respect for the law is not the incentive to morality; it is morality itself. 44 pg. 78

It is through the pain of others that we recognize the other as same, and its through the death of others that we learn of our own. And in relation to this pain and this death we observe that our acts as appearance can stop this pain and halt this death. The moral law thus emerges from a higher faculty of desire as it develops from recognition and then principle, and only then does the imperative of moral desire speaks its mission.

The Key of the Work in the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason

Death casts a shadow of imperative upon existence. Existence assumes a very different character when the horizon of its continued state is viewed as limited. Limited in this sense does not mean limited in the configurations of its being, or limited to a specific type of organism structure, or communication, but limited in that the existence that we know of will fail as time advances, and then will cease. The fact of death is that our bodies will fail in a way that will not accommodate our current states of being, our current states of consciousness, and our current states of experience that we know as human, from what we can observe. As time advances, so death advances and the space of life as opportunity grows smaller. Time as human time, becomes a life-time.
Acts however, effect the dimensions and character of this mortal Theatre that is both mine and others, and it is in this Theatre that the moral act reflects a value, a brilliant form. The moral act comes to be in a way that attempts to extend the structure of existence, to extend time as opportunity, to extend time as hope, for specific others and for the whole. This 'is' of concrete existence thus not only tends toward the dynamic character of desire as 'ought' by the structure of pathological affectation, but the 'is' finds a value in a type of assistance that becomes possible only when mortality is both near or present, when while alive death is always and everywhere here but not here, and impends to the point of feeling, and to the point of paralysis. There is a value when the 'is' comes into being in contrast to something else entirely, and when the whole of existence is at stake. Thus death provides a parameter to existence, as an encroaching boundary of human existence as we know it, as advancing towards us ineluctably and relentlessly. We do not see it from an internal experience of consciousness, we feel it as pain, we know we feel it as loss, and we learn of it from the death of others.
Thus death and the other provide the screen by which the act can be seen as having value. The act radiates a brightness in the Theatre of death. The nihilism that nothing matters, that for all our efforts we die, this nihilism is balanced by the hope that springs from within death, that no act would matter unless we do die and others live on, or live better in some part by our effort. Thus it is not only because we are pathologically affective creatures that the moral law is binding and legislative, but also that we are dependent creatures, creatures that die without the hand of the other. This is what I gather from the direction and boundaries of analysis of practical reason and its relation to desire in the analytic portion of the 2nd critique. Desire manifests itself here not visibly, but audibly, by its tone, measure and decibel level. In this voice we hear desire manifested in the face of death as anxiety, not as imperative as the anxiety towards death, but imperative as anxiety towards the possibility of the act, towards the value that arises from an act done from the voice of duty in the face of an advancing death. The condition of death is here that of time as it changes from the unconditioned of raw experience to that of a life-time, and only in this sense do the anxiety and the stringency, do the demands of imperative make sense. We thus extend Professor Paton's development of teleology in the text, to the text's invisible but audible parameters which give the 'key' to the Critique of Practical Reason.

The Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason- Possibility and Extension

We move from the history of the act at the point of its inception, to the point of inception and the delineation of the sphere of its emergence. We move to the as yet uncertain structure of the parameters of condition for human subjectivity. The suspension of power we encountered earlier is amplified in this chapter of the dialectic. A third efficacy is delineated in the notion of the highest good. It is the efficacy of the act in relation to a certain future, a certainly limited future. From this perspective Kant explores the wish character of the will inherent to practical reason. Here power is not only suspended, but the advent of power does not emerge, is suspended as we have not impacted boundaries by which to measure the efficacy of the effort.
One of the forms desire took in the analytic was the anxiety of the act in the face of an advancing death, rebellious to this consequence of order. Kant develops a desire resistant to a harsh reality, in preparation and anticipation to the conflict with this harsh reality. From this point of view, the structure of practical reason is unlimited upon self-reflection, and demands the totality of conditions for itself. In its very character it demands to transascend and to supersede the limits of pathological affectation through which it operates. Towards this, in the heart of the power of the act, from the history of the act, and in relation to death reason continues as a form of desire. Reason aspires beyond the boundary of death. The certainty of aspiration, of exertion in relation to its operation as extension is the scene of analysis here.
The parameters of power, as we showed in the chapter on the incentives of pure practical reason are stretched further in the dialectic. Efficacy and empowerment are a question with regard to the attainment of an aim, and with regard to the extension of practical reason towards the unknown. But the root of possibility becomes a focal point in the analysis beyond the question of efficacy, as do the limits of life and the limits of moral system in relation to the very character of morality. This is found in the self-extension of practical reason, in the postulates of the immortality of the soul, the existence of God, and of freedom affirmatively regarded.
From these parameters and the manner in which they are treated we can discern the outline of what I call the 'wish coming to try' as the primary heuristic device by which to understand the import of the dialectic of practical reason with regard to an analysis of the manifestation of desire in this section. Of course Kant's analysis of the antinomy of practical reason, its resolution, and the problem of the extension of practical reason are the immediate focal points of the section. However these analyses rest upon a more fundamental analysis, it is an analysis of wish as it emerges as possibility through a self-transformation towards exertion, towards its extension then as will. Through this foundation and this passage Kant then argues for the existence of the highest good.
From the resolution of the antinomy of pure practical reason comes the aim of the dialectic- to show that "the actions which are devoted to realizing the highest good, do belong to this world.”45 The task then is then further divided to show what is "immediately in our power, and that which is beyond our power.” 46 It is thus between what is in our power and what is beyond our power that the structure of analysis attempts to do is to establish the possibility of the highest good, the importance of possibility and necessity as developed in the previous section in the argument for the necessity of a higher being, Kant shows that if the possibility of the highest good is proved then its existence is necessary. Desire is present as the exhausting of effort within the limits of death, and thus as the honesty and courage of a life as it faces its limit. It is at this point where the import of the refutation of Anselm's ontological argument in the Critique of Pure Reason intersects with Kant's notion of practical reason.
In Kant's refutation of the ontological argument he denies that the notion of existence adds something to the predicate of a purely logically necessary statement47. This is so for Kant because the predicate does not effect the reality of the nature of the subject involved. Nothing is added to the subject area by saying that the subject exists, or the subject area is not enlarged by the predicate in any way. The point Kant wishes to make is not that a logically necessary statement is invalid, but that it has no import for practical reason.
In the analysis then on the possibility of the extension of pure practical reason we find that Kant argues for the possibility of the highest good through a structure that parallels the flight of thought found in Anselm's argument, if the possibility of the highest good be admitted, then its existence is necessary due to the very structure of possibility itself48. In other words any true possibility must include what can be attained at the fringes of subjective engagement, or the upper limits of possibility, as these fringes expand. Rather than being a mere logic game, Kant's argument in the dialectic of practical reason turns the notion of logical necessity and modifies it towards use, towards the act. From the fruits of this discovery between the logic of possibility and necessity then, Kant's notion of the highest good as it sits in relation to the extension of pure practical reason can be formulated as 'that than which nothing greater can be achieved’49. This then exhausts effort within desire. The pivot then in the interpretation of Anselm by Kant on the import of the ontological argument lies between the notion of existence as expressed in Anselm's logically necessary statement and the translation of this formula towards existence as action, as possibility, and thus of practical import.
Using the form of a critique that categorically evaluates the progressively inclusive philosophical positions of Kant, Aristotle, MacIntyre, and Apel, Gamwell arrives at this translation of existence as action after performing a critical reduction of these positions in order to delineate the parameters of his own undertaking. He then articulates his own position following the work of Charles Hartshorne. Beginning with the denial of a moral teleology to the affirmation of a moral teleology. He then reduces, within these more specific parameters, from the denial of the position of transcendental teleology to the affirmation of transcendental teleology, and then further reduces the parameters within this to the discussion of the denial of metaphysical teleology as opposed to the affirmation of a metaphysical teleology. From this reduction and a survey of the problems of these positions Gamwell articulates the argument for a metaphysical teleology from the viewpoint that his negative analysis implies, but for Gamwell,

"To complete the redemption of this alternative(metaphysical teleology), one must give positive reason that his can be coherently affirmed.”51

The last two chapters attempt this positive redemption of metaphysical teleology.
From this critical reduction, transition is made between the Kantian development of phenomena and noumena where noumena appears in Kant's ethic, for Gamwell, as a priori freedom or a constitutive understanding that is independent of all purposes and ends.(thus non-teleological). From this transition Gamwell then attempts to translate Kant's phenomenal/noumenal distinction and display its implications for a philosophical discourse in the area and terms of logic. From this translation, which Gamwell calls the critique of completely negative existential statements, Gamwell develops a moral metaphysical teleology off of the work done in this field by Charles Hartshorne.
The language that binds Gamwell's work to our discussion of existence and action is found in Hartshorne's logical display, and Gamwell's elaboration of the notions of possibility, actuality and creativity. By bringing possibility, actuality and creativity within the domain of the discussion of the logic of existence, Gamwell's rendering of this work intersects with the analysis of the structure of possibility that underlies this chapter on the extension of pure practical reason. Within this structure of possibility his notion of a comprehensive variable thus takes on the similar role and responsibility developed by Kant's notion of the highest good. This work also gives the notion of existence the practical undergirding needed for the logical gymnastics involved in the intricacies involved in the analysis of the structure of possibility, while Kant argues for the possibility of the highest good. This I derive both from the focus on possibility in the section, combined with the argument Kant constructs in the previous section, combined with the argument Kant constructs in the previous section, that the possibility of a highest being leads to is necessity due to the structure of possibility itself. Given this, I find affinity with Gamwell's notion of the divine individual and the area we have delineated that encompasses the analysis of possibility as taking the form of the 'Wish coming to exertion' in the formulation of what constitutes the highest good, as projected by Kant in the postulates of pure practical reason. Gamwell writes,

"Thus, the identity of the divine individual, namely, that each of its activities compares all actuality and possibility with respect to some particular temporal reference, is itself metaphysical. Notwithstanding that all nondivine activities are exemplification’s of the comprehensive variable, no other individual (e.g., no human individual) can be distinguished by it. In contrast to the all-inclusive character of the divine relativity, the relativity of any human individual can only be partial, inclusive in some measure of other things, and the specification of this partiality so as to identify a given individual is contingent. Hence, we may say that one of the transcendental conditions of existence is a transcendental individual." pg. 169. 52

and then, "Moreover, I have sought to argue for the conceivability of 'relative to all actuality and possibility' by showing that the divine relativity is implied by the moral enterprise. Because reality as such must be 'good without qualification,' the comprehensive variable must have a supreme exemplification that concretely evaluates, and thus defined by its complete relativity to, all things.' pg. 173 53

Thus Gamwell's work can serve as a bridge joining the logical necessity involved with Anselm's ontological argument and the practical objection Kant voices in his refutation and then reformulates in the dialectic of practical reason as the highest good, or as I have reformulated, 'that than which nothing greater can be achieved'. Moreover from the reverse side, Kant's own analysis of the extension of practical reason begins with the uncertainty of the attainment of an aim. It begins with a wish, and a wish in principle is a conception. Evidence of this lies in Kant's own formulation of the extension of pure practical reason beyond the reality we now possess, in the postulates of pure practical reason.
From this we return to the 'Dialectic'. Desire as it comes to the limit of its power, as it is exhausted, comes face to face with the structure of life as it confronts the working of desire. We find then that the theoretical conditions of experience as time and space possess correlates in practical reason in the form of hope, fear, and duty as these reflect from the structure of possibility-1) from bringing the 'wish' to 'try' in the turning of inspiration, 2) from the enveloping paralysis of despair, and 3) from duty, which impacts the first two at another level, in the reverberation of participation in community.
In this section Kant makes a connection between need, pathological affectation and the logical notion of condition. Condition thus refers to the dependent nature of man's existence, or the mortality of human existence, and properly delineates the limit character of human subjectivity as it occurs to theoretical reason. Since theoretical reason is confined to the employment of concepts as they are given, this limit character of existence manifests itself as conditioned, as occuring in time and space. However practical reason demands the uncondtioned.
The model practical reason takes for the possibility of its extension is the model of its everyday working, or the model of its appearance character as we observe it in our actions towards others and in the reflection of our maxims as the root or our noumenal nature as a thing in itself. The death of others is real, and every time we assert our 'wish to try' in efforts toward the extension of the others state of being, we assert and affirm the extension of practical reason. For a time we have defeated death in this very 'wish to try'. In attempting to extend the state of anothers being we become effective for the world. Practical reason thus reveals its character as from the wish to try in the face of an advancing death. What real possibility we receive is not just the reflection upon the exertion of the will in the mirror of its appearance, but the view of our action as an appearance victorious in the extension of a life. In affirming the conditions of the good we contribute to the development of a moral life.
So what is it in the character of the moral law that warrants extension, if not the very quality of understanding itself. The moral law descends upon one as the plea of community by which we attempt a changing of the world. Beyond our focus on power in the actor, dependency is a reaching, a stretching, an exertion towards efficacy. Dependency is evocation towards fecundity, a radiation of sort. Dependency is an uneven pulse and indicates beyond our power toward another.
The phenomenon of the extension of pure practical reason through exertion for Kant thus takes the form of hope, fear, and duty. If we can conceive of the idea of possibility then the idea of God is necessary because necessity beckons to the dependent, and thus beckons to the referential structure of possibility. Desire as respect then comes to its end in the allowing to be of recognition. The reprieve, the mercy of recognition is the an accord of understanding. It is not commonality as a path to an excess and as the way outside the self. Desire of the other as it comes to be shared is then the opportunity for a self towards the world, and is the opportunity of the self through the nature of pathological affectation and thus away from the nature of pathological affectation. Here desire tends toward fulfillment provided by opportunity in the structure of dependency.
The 'wish to try' is practical reason in extension, and this then again becomes effective in its power, as man becomes effective for the structure of community, for the structure of the conditions of good. This structure is assistance, giving, and sacrifice as they emerge from the directionality of communication. Thus we affirm and create the good from duty, from the demand of understanding, the claim of reason, and not from the demand of a selfish communiqué towards the world. Then do we articulate the conditioned phrasing of an unconditioned 'wish to try'. We affirm in this both the fantastic and the real in this life of good from labor towards the other. This is the reality of ideas through exertion, of an idea brought to labor, of a love exhausted. And so contributing to this structure of good is objectively participating in the building of an eternity which lasts beyond the limits of a single lifetime to the lifetime of those that follow.

And Then,

The Critique of Practical Reason is an analysis that deals principally with the rhapsody of a moral desire in relation to the act. It is a tracing of desire as desire changes forms, as it becomes will, as will brings itself into existence, as it causes, through, the reality of the objects of these ideas, from both duty and inclination, and all in the face of an advancing death. It details the emergence of desire from the wish to exertion. So does the critique of both faculties, the lower from inclination and the higher from duty, show the efficiency of action from principles. So crucial is the elaboration of desire to this project of pure reason that Kant writes-

.....the a priori principles of two faculties of the mind, cognition and desire, are to be discovered and their scope and limits determined. Thus the firm basis is laid for a systematic philosophy, both theoretical and practical, as a science. pg. 12, Cr. of Pr.
Reason 54

Thus then is the manifestation of desire to sense through the idea. Each and every labor receives value from its relation to another, and bears an efficacy due to the perishable nature of the other. Each and every labor also bears a mission character which must be directed toward some aspect of our pathologically affected, mutually dependent nature. The final ground points for the will can then be found from unspoken coordinates we have taken from the parameters of Kant's urgency, anxiety and anticipation, and thus establish a missionary character to the Critique of Practical Reason. This then extends the legal notion of teleology by the inner parameters of understanding in the experience of time and space as these parameters emerge with death. Time is then a medium of possibility by which we can effect a most curious beauty, and space is then the space of this time as it closes in towards death we have learned of, and thus foresee, from the death of others.
The conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason reflects in awe of the ability of pure reason to be practical, on the rhapsody of this moral desire. In this awe there is seen the outline of the connection between the causality of the will and the feeling of the sublime. It suits our purpose nicely that the conclusion of the Critique of Practical Reason is not a full thematic presentation of a theory of desire, but a form of expression of desire, and it points the way nicely. Here in this section the interconnected nature of desire, morality, and the sublime is shown from the viewpoint of the demonstration of pure practical reason we have traced above. But we find it present as well in the Critique of Judgment, Kant writes-

"So the sublime must always have reference to the disposition, i.e., to the maxims which furnish to the intellectual (part) and to the ideas of reason a superiority over sensibility." pg. 115 Cr. of Judgment. 55

We are justified then in anticipating an analysis of the Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone for its statements on the nature of the maxim in relation to radical evil. That will come later. We now move from the demonstration of the manifestation of desire in the text of the Critique of Practical Reason, to the demonstration of the manifestation of desire in the text of the Critique of Judgment.

Notes
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment(New York: Hafner, 1972)
2. Critique of Judgment, pg. 34.
3. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason( New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1965)
4. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason( New York: MacMillan, 1956)
5. Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone( New York: Harper & Bros., 1960)
6. Critique of Practical Reason, pg. 15.
7. “ “ , pg. 15.
8. “ “ , pg. 3.
9. “ “ , pg. 9, footnote 7.
10. “ “ , pg. 16.
11. “ “ , pg. 17.
12. “ “ , pg. 19.
13. “ “ , pgs. 20-21.
14. “ “ , pg. 21.
15. In league with Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity( Pittsburgh:Duquesne University Press, 1969), pg. 36.
16. Critique of Practical Reason, pg. 17.
17. “ “ , pg. 17.
18. “ “ , pg. 17.
19. Levinas, pg. 39.
20. Critique of Practical Reason, pg.
21. Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985)
22. Taylor, pg. 93.
23. Taylor, pg. 259.
24. Critique of Practical Reason, pg.
25. Jurgen Moltmann, Theology of Hope(San Francisco: Harper Collins, 1991), pg. 338.
26. Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.
27. H.J. Paton, The Categorical Imperative(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1971)
28. Critique of Practical Reason, pg. 59.
29. Critique of Practical Reason, pg. 60.
30. Critique of Practical Reason, pg. 60.
31. Charles Scott, The Question of Ethics(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990)
32. Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals( New York: Vintage Books, 1967), pg. 70.
33. Jacques Taminiaux, Dialectic and Difference( New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1985)
34. Taminiaux, pg. 21.
35. Taminiaux, pg. 21.
36. Critique of Practical Reason, pg. 74.
37. “ “ , pg. 75.
38. “ “ , pg. 74.
39. “ “ , pg. 74.
40. Stephen Engstrom, ‘Conditioned Autonomy’, in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, March 1988, pg. 435-453.
41. Engstrom, pg. 450.
42. Critique of Practical Reason, pg. 84.
43. “ “ , pg. 91.
44. “ “ , pg. 78.
45. “ “ , pg. 78.
46. “ “ , pg. 124.
47. “ “ , pg. 124.
48. Critique of Pure Reason, pg. 505.
49. Critique of Practical Reason, pg. 124
50. Charles Hartshorne, Anselm’s Discovery(Lasalle: Open Court, 1965), and The Logic of Perfection(Lasalle: Open Court, 1962).
51. Franklin Gamwell, The Divine Good(San Francisco: Harper, 1990).
52. Gamwell, pg. 156.
53. Gamwell, pg. 169.
54. Gamwell, pg. 173.
55. Critique of Practical Reason, pg. 12.
56. Critique of Judgment, pg. 115.

Chapter 5- Emmanuel Levinas and the 'Love of Knowledge'

2007-09-16T11:23:00.000-07:00

In the book, Totality and Infinity, Emmanuel Levinas explores the structure of the Ethical in his depiction of the I-other relation. In this intricate song, Levinas weaves a contextual web that points toward a remarkable conversion in the deepest recesses and at the most elevated heights of human experience- at the point where reception halts and initiation irrupts. The purpose of this essay is to illuminate the structure and working of this remarkable conversion.
I hope to accomplish this assistance by first indicating the point of origin where this implication arises. Then I will magnify it by depicting this conversion with regard to a focus of the act; which Levinas resists; in a moment necessary to the structure of the I-other relation. This avenue of inquiry will then lead us to a presentation of language needed to affect this conversion. We will then elaborate on our findings and explore an avenue within the dynamics of the act that can expand the range of Levinas theory and bring about a balance that does not erode or explode the structure of Levinas work.
The context in which this conversion arises begins to emerge in the very beginning of the text. Levinas takes the I-other relation as a presupposition for his approach to metaphysics. He speaks of the I-other relation as a reciprocal process, a movement that pre-exists the very reaching of the I inherent in and necessary for this relation. Levinas does this by establishing the I-other relation in a contextual fashion by juxtaposing the dynamic nature of metaphysical desire at the outset of the book with an already achieved, already presupposed ethical relation.

"The effort of this book is directed toward apperceiving in discourse a non-allergic relation with alterity, toward apperceiving Desire-where power, by essence murderous of the other, becomes, faced with the other and "against all good sense", the impossibility of murder, the consideration of the other, or justice. Concretely our effort consists in maintaining, within anonymous community, the society of the I with the Other-language and goodness".1

I have no dispute with Levinas critical exposition, nor the point of origination, however there is a profound reaching in the separation from the I in the I-other relation that is as necessary to expound as the relation itself. It is part of the fabric of the relation itself and thus cannot be presented completely in a contextual format. The relation of I-other as ethical occurs through an effort, through a stage, a moment that centers on the soliloquy of the I in its reaching toward the other, in an act that becomes relation, and thus is a negative anti-violent act. We must begin form the language of egoism and then move to that of the ethical relation.
The 'face' is thus already a recognition in Totality and Infinity, therefore respect is presupposed. We wish to show the I-other in its struggle for recognition, its struggle toward the relation. The movement of complete separation Levinas espouses; which demands an upsurgence of the I; allows distinction out of the flat mass of content. It is the I-other relation that is to be achieved. The I-other must be presented as possibility, as hope. Discourse is an achieved relation.
I dispute the presentation on the basis that it leaves unexamined an essential element in the I-other relation. Before the I comes to be other, it is found alone. Levinas shows this2 but evades how the soliloquy towards dialogue and thus the relinquishment of egoism of the I-other relation comes about.3 Pluralism is not always realized, does not always emerge.
An example of the difficulty of Levinas project to present a non-allergic relation as the metaphysical relation is shown in his analysis of the act. Levinas includes an extensive analysis of the act in Totality and Infinity, and what characterizes this presentation is that acts cause a violent uprooting for Levinas, which is directly contradictory for him and his presentation of the metaphysics of the ethical relation. He wishes to show the emergence of the I as non-allergic.

Levinas, pg. 109. "if cognition in the form of the objectifying act does not seem to us to be at the level of the metaphysical relation, this is not because the exteriority contemplated as object, the theme, would withdraw from the subject as fast as the abstractions proceed; on the contrary it does not withdraw enough. The contemplation of objects remains close to action; it disposes of its theme, and consequently comes into play on a plane where one limits another. Metaphysics approaches without touching. Its way is not an action, but is the social relation. But we maintain that the social relation is experience preeminently, for it takes place before the existent that expresses himself, that is, remains in himself."

What Levinas misses is that in the soliloquy of the I in its relinquishment of egoism there can be a nonviolent act. This is an act that becomes relation in its negative motion and is thus a negative, anti-violent act.
Conversion is merely implied, is not constitutive, in Levinas' exposition of the I-other relation in Totality and Infinity. First in the claim to reach the other, the emphasis in the analysis is on the trace of what has already been absolved in the circuit of communication to insure his idea of invocation as a maintenance. This is the result of a reflective stance toward speech because there are instances where the other is not respected in the face-reaching-toward-face encounter. There is an intention of intimidation in some moments of spoken word, and there are also efforts to eradicate and terrorize through the face to face encounter.

"The claim to know and to reach the other is realized in the relationship with the other that is cast in the relation of language, where the essential is the interpellation, the vocative. The other is maintained and confirmed in his heterogeneity as soon as one calls upon him, be it only to say to him that one cannot speak to him, to classify him as sick, to announce to him his death sentence; at the same time as grasped, wounded, outraged, he is "respected". The invoked is not what I comprehend he is not under a category. He is the one to whom I speak-he has only a reference to himself; he has no quiddity." 4

The turn to language for maintaining the alterity of the other without consuming him is only an ideal. What Levinas misses is that the initial dynamic in the constitution of the I presupposes a completely haphazard relation with the other. It is not a constant relationship, but something to be achieved. His analysis is of a language already respectful, a language that does not devour or repel the other in its hideousness. Communication is always an opportunity, an effort and a chance. It is language at the beginning of a sentence, at the beginning of new speech. Metaphysics in the act, and in the word can wield a feather and/or a hammer. Will Levinas' song as call be heard, be answered? Will it be recognized as respect or terror?
The second point where we differ with Levinas is in his attention toward limiting the upsurgence of the I to language alone. Conversion is present in his depiction here, and an appropriate focus is directed toward the irruption inherent in speech as giving. The subtle distinction I wish to show is the plunge Levinas takes toward the transitive aspect of the I-other relation, as centering on the soliloquy of the I as well as a contextual presentation. This transition occurs properly in all acts. He attempts to show it contextually here. However the emergence of the initiative-I in solitude is inescapable. In the abundance of attention in the ever renewed effort, the I-other relation as ethical is in the reaching stages, and has yet to be achieved. This leads us closer to where reception halts and initiation begins.

"The signification of beings is manifested not in the perspective of finality, but in that of language. A relation between terms that resist totalization, that absolve themselves from the relation or that specify it, is possible only as language. the resistance of one term to the other is not due to the obscure and hostile residue of alterity, but, with contrary, to the inexhaustible surplus of attention with speech, ever teaching brings me. For speech is always a taking up again of what was a simple sign cast forth by it, an ever renewed promise to clarify what was obscure in the utterance.
To have meaning is to be situated relative to an absolute, that is, to come from that alterity that is not absorbed in its being perceived. Such alterity is possible only as a miraculous abundance, an inexhaustible surplus of attention arising in the ever recommenced effort of language to clarify its own manifestation. To have meaning is to teach or to be taught, to speak or be able to be stated."5

Here the terms absolve themselves in reflection because they have already absolved themselves. The reflection is merely a review of it.
Another area where the soliloquy of the I- in its relinquishing of egoism- as the passage through conversion, is shown is in Levinas' exposition of the dynamics of Infinity and totality, in the dynamics of contraction converted to giving, to creation. After presenting the structural version of this dynamics, where the I diminishes, Levinas converts this presentation to the ethical reading, but does not show how the passage occurs.

"Infinity opens he order of the good. It is an order that does not contradict, but goes beyond the rules of formal logic. The distinction between need and desire cannot be reflected in formal logic, where desire is always forced into the forms of need. From the purely formal necessity comes the force of Parmenidean philosophy. But the order of desire, the relationship between strangers who are not wanting to one another- desire in its positivity- is affirmed across the idea of creation ex nihilo. Then the plane of the needy being, avid for its complements, vanishes, and the possibility of a sabbatical existence, where existence suspends the necessities of existence, is inaugurated."6

This passage illuminates the conversion from pure dynamics to the possibility of the ethical horizon; from one type of desire to another, where the pulsation of the I presented within the fluctuating aspects of the master-slave relation are relinquished, merely let go by the I in a manner not dependent and not magisterial, but nevertheless creative. In this passage, this passing through, is shown the location where healing meets giving in the I-towards. But only in a certain way. Where in the act does this occur?
Another element of the practical dimension of conversion is shown in Levinas' exposition of enjoyment as a derivative of need. Enjoyment as a derivative of need places need

"Pure existing is ataraxy; happiness is accomplishment, enjoyment is the mode of the memory of its thirst; it is a quenching. It is the act that remembers its "potency". It does not express the mode of my implantation-my disposition -in being, the tonus of my bearing. It is not my bearing in being but already the exceeding of being; being itself "befalls" him who can seek happiness as a new glory above substantiality;"7

How does this 'quenching ' occur? How is it that one can 'seek happiness' after traumatic injury and horrible assault is incurred? How does one find happiness above substantiality. How can a person injured acquire and develop this marvelous and fantastic way Levinas shows? If joy is derived from its relation from pain, how do we live from pain, from suffering? A hint is found in Levinas' depiction of recollection.

"Recollection, in the current sense of the term, designates a suspension of the immediate reaction the world solicits in view of a greater attention to oneself, one's possibilities and the situation. It is already a movement of attention freed from immediate enjoyment, for no longer deriving its freedom from the agreeableness of the elements" 8

Levinas comes very close here to describing the nature of a physical process that allows one to live from pains, for the structure of suspension and solitude depicted in the core of recollection occurs at the core of every act. There is a break with reception at the decision of every act, a repose of the self to itself. In fact recollection differs from other acts because of its attention to the self as past. Other acts, in the focus toward the other; its possibilities, and the situation, belie an even more benevolent and horrible situation where focus is proper toward the other, and where the terms absolve themselves in the act, and thus become relation. To live from pains one needs a type of material 'recollection'.
The real fecundity of the will, its magic and its transformative character is shown when malice is transformed in the ethical in the act of human forgiveness. In the divine-like sweep of forgiveness, malice is transformed into the Ethical. It is here where the act becomes relation, in the negative act of anti-violence. Here is where we create something, ex nihilo, in an ethical effort towards another. It is how man lives from pain. It is context meeting its opposite in a moment where man becomes/ approaches, God; and God becomes/approaches man. It is formation and reformation, an emergence and affirmation simultaneously. Forgiveness is the only beauty, the only creation.
At the root of our being; where reside our most violent, malice oriented acts; the solitude and repose of a self-to-itself can be found. Man pulls away from his injury, moves from it, transascends it, forgets it in a just flash that shows that it is left behind in the course of the act. This repose is a summoning that comes from the self. It is an absorption of being, a congealed and condensed moment, where dynamics become opaque, and opacities become dynamic. This moment is both at rest and initiative of being, it can be called making peace and is at a point where participation in substance occurs. This is the moment of truth in forgiveness. It is healing and divine, while at the same time an inhuman turning away asceticism of the self. It is where suffering and evil can come to nothing.
Violence from hatred stops itself-comes to rest as all outside knowledge does, as recollection does. Its progression occurs in junctures, and at each juncture it takes a decision to perpetuate this causal chain. A break occurs in the priority of focus from receptivity to initiation of new action in an acknowledgment of the existential nature of decision.
I should mention now that it is here where we evoke the Aristotle of the categories, where primary ousia is revealed as the logical subject and secondary ousia is revealed in the logical predicate. This emphasis shows the fluctuation of concrete experience between the determinate character of the subject as noun-- its reified character-- and its dynamic characteristics as actor. The subject location in the sentence at times has bearing on how the predicate becomes. Is this not what Levinas means when he writes "Being occurs as multiple, and as divided into same and other."10 This is why the relation from subject to predicate is not linear but dialogical, interwoven between both subject and predicate. The relation is beyond dialectics. It is originary, not from opposition but in concert, a chorus of prayer, suffering, and grace. This is what we can derive from the passage on pg. 275

"Interpenetration of instants in duration, openness upon the future, "being for death": these are ways of expressing an existing not in conformity with the logic of unity. This separation of Being and the One is obtained by the rehabilitation of the possible. No longer backed up by the unity of Aristotelian act, possibility harbors the very multiplicity of its dynamism, hitherto indigent alongside of the act accomplished, henceforth richer that it."11

This cannot occur with a completely reflective opacity, but in an ‘Interpenetration of instants’, in a metaphysics of permeation that simultaneously allows separation, in a metaphysics that touches as well, in a soliloquy of the I that dissolves its egoism. It is where affinity presents itself as both ‘like’ and ‘Same and other’. It is here that we take issue with Levinas’ overly platonic rendering of existence. By emphasizing the predominantly receptive12 aspects of Plato’s thought, in combination with the contextual presentation of the ethical relation, Levinas inadvertently skips the relinquishment of egoism in the soliloquy of forgiveness; the passage from egoism to the Ethical; and thus preserves egoism. The passage is as equally important in the equation. The passage is ignored as essential from the standpoint of the I-as-egoism throughout the text, however it is admitted in an inadvertent portrayal of the unity of the Aristotelian act in Levinas’ exposition on pg. 51,

“The Aristotelian analysis of the intellect, which discovers the agent intellect coming in by the gates, absolutely exterior, and yet constituting, nowise compromising, the sovereign activity of reason, already substitutes for maieutics a transitive action of the master, since reason, without abdicating, is found to be in a position to receive.”

It is now that we take issue with Derrida in his essay, violence and Metaphysics. Derrida’s position with regard to Husserl’s version of analogical appresentation revolves around the analogical version of synthetic apperception as symmetrical from a permeating opacity, a metaphysics that comes in contact with an almost perfectly reflecting violence. This is not Derrida’s intent, for he attempts to portray a metaphysics that touches, that wounds. His is a presentation of flux and reflection, of permeation, however it is a reflection from a permeating opacity that behaves as if it were perfectly concrete, as if there were not permeation. His presentation is more adequate to a metaphysics of complete separation- there is a symmetry in distance. By showing reflection as symmetrical, Derrida presupposes experience as concrete, his thought reaches the object, but does not reach the object as actor. It does not touch him- does not do justice to the irruption that is violence. Derrida’s reflection does not suffer. A presentation of affinity must leave room for the pain in the emergence of experience, symmetry does not.
We see that Levinas’ presentation of the I-other relation proceeds in a very special way which does approach Husserl’s analogical appresentation. Levinas’ attempt shows the first person affinity of the I-other relation as same in third-person, contextual terms. It is an inverted image of analogical apperception by a large scale, full text juxtaposition that brings one closer to this experience of recognition. Levinas creates distance in a revelation of affinity- shows the rupture- enlarging affinity this way. He says that metaphysics approaches but does not touch, however his presentation, of absolute separation, is of a metaphysics that touches, but does not permeate. “Being occurs as multiple, and as divided as same and other.” This is the pregnant paradox of the term ‘Like’.
As Levinas process of transascendance, as learning advances, the relational poles of the I-other change qualitatively. The I is not what previously was the I completely, and the nature of what a thing is changes as well. As rationality and its opposite both advance, the nature of the ‘thing’ seems to melt, to liquefy. How can a ‘thing’ change if vision is not a revision. How can ‘things’ change without a permeating of the I. Permeation supposes violence only where the act has not become relation, where it has not forgiven. How this comes about from the unity and separation of the I-other is the very power, the creation, the divine and absurd caress know as human forgiveness, but we must decide whether to follow its path.
Within the play of inscription and meaning for the reader, is a play, a float between the anchoring, the opacity with which written signs convey at bottom, and which, through the hierarchy, the height by which they convey other shades of meaning. The absolution between terms occurs both underneath language and above it, in a resonance that show the life in language. It is shown in the correct by differing presentations of affinity- an affinity in fluctuation. It is a reflecting, a confirmation of the opacity as mirror, and as initiative. There is life in this distance. Each sign is not only a note, but the possibility of a chord, the register of which is displayed, preserved and concealed by the- a- moment, the spatiality of which, is the moment itself. Permeation occurs between the life of the letter and its binding, it’s having in the word. In this interplay is depicted the resonance in opacity and permeation, a translucence. Contemplation shares in, touches the, pain of experience, the pain of the object. The likeness, the sameness that we find in things and people, is the forgiveness we find for the violence they do to our thinking.
A limit, and hope of philosophy is the fact that its spirit, is found other than in its lines. It is found above and below, in a resonance. Writing per se is not in itself forgiveness, and easily cannot be written from the caress. Writing and philosophy both reach their peak in the teaching of and leading to- forgiveness. How to forgive and how to love in the act, how to be patient in your fear and in your wound. There is a belief in western thought that the very doing of philosophy leads one to this forgiveness by itself, that there is teleology towards forgiveness. This act needs to be decided, again and again. The thinking of teleology is inherent in every decision of every world leader that is committed to their thought, that believes that it is right, and orders that uprising crushed by force, or its dissenters imprisoned- or think that health care, education and housing should be ransomed for a lifetime of hard labor; because the logic of their power demands it. Violence will not be stopped by violence, it will only wish its power were greater in the next battle. Each moral possibility always presents itself as a horizon. A painting to be made. It is decisive. This risk must be taken.14
The decision to forgive in the act, a healing of the self, can show where we differ from Hegel15, where we think most of the western philosophical tradition has concerned itself not with assisting itself but with feeding its fears in developing a science of the experience of consciousness, in attempting certainty. We concur that Levinas eclipsed dialectical lines and made the passage from egoism through the idea of forgiveness in the act. This is implied in the work of this great master, and can lead philosophy to the point where philosophy can teach; can finally be, the love of knowledge.

Notes
1. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity ( Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1969), pg. 33.
2. The relation here precedes action, but the Ethical places oneself outside of history.
3. Levinas, pg. 69.
4. Levinas, pg. 97.
5. Levinas, pg. 104.
6. Levinas, pg. 113.
7. Levinas, pg. 154.
8. Levinas, pg.
9. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment ( New York: Hafner Publishing Co., 1951), og. 156, and Remark I, pg. 187, the sections on the aesthetical idea.
10. Levinas, pg. 269..
11. Levinas, pg. 275.
12. Levinas, pg. 51.
13. Levinas, pg. 51.
14. Jacque Derrida, “Violence and Metaphysics; an Essay on the Thought of Emmanuel Levinas”, in Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), pg. 130.
15. G.W.F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), pg. 3

Chapter 6- Contest and Justification

2007-09-16T11:14:00.000-07:00

Inclination is not entirely determinate for the will in Kant’s ‘2nd critique’1 because we have the ability to decide otherwise than from inclination- desire born from the senses- and thus to act otherwise than from inclination. Inclination is dealt with in a diffracted manner because it is the relevance of inclination to the act, of desire in the act, for the use of pure practical reason, that is to be determined for Kant. The analysis must be open ended because it is finally in the act that the decision of whether self-love or duty reveals itself, and as there are still acts to come, decision becomes the focal point of value in this Theatre. Kant’s theory of morality is thus constitutional, a general framework in relation to the continued use of pure practical reason. As every act has not been acted, and as we have the ability to decide otherwise than from the incentive of inclination, it is then finally up to us, in the self-determination of each man in each concrete decision we make- to make and determine ourselves, and thus to make and determine our world.
The purpose of this essay is to describe what constitutes the arena of judgment in Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone2. Judgment is a decision that takes the form of contest at the point of the adoption of a maxim, a traumatic contest that develops a dialectically bound relationship of justification. Through this piece I hope to contribute to the understanding of the nature of judgment and the anthropological limits of Reason in Kant. First I will write on the dynamic nature of sovereignty and how it effects structure through judgment. Next I will briefly sketch the scale and the trauma of human comparison in the notions of worth and value. From there I will attempt to sketch some marks of what constitute the belief in Greatness- first in the system of today’s Capitalism, and then in the system of the Religion... in relationship to that of the most infamous system of the Belief in Greatness.
And so I sing this song to Kant.
Sovereignty and Structure
He adopts, indeed, the moral law along with the law of self-love, yet when he becomes aware that they cannot remain on a par with each other but that one must be subordinated to the other.3 pg. 31-

Decision is contest. The nature of decision itself is such that options form heuristically in front of an agent in real form as limited options within the arena of what can really be accomplished, or what really seems possible. For any possible scenario judgment weighs out, plays out, the possibilities of each path and comes down to a handful of serious options. Judgment itself makes contest of options, agentless or not, in order to determine the ‘best’ course of action. The nature of decision itself is thus presented as struggle, as the contest of the self, in the comparison to the self of what is better. What is better between options. Bad decisions mean loss of self, suffering, and Death. The contest between judgment and itself is thus completely ineluctable, completely not only unavoidable, but inescapable. The combatants in the arena of man vs. himself, are really then man vs. his own mortality. This is the meaning and context of the definition of ‘solicitude’,4 and the structure of it’s judgment is then the structure of contest, of inescapable mortal contest where only the ‘best’ wins.
In the working and in the interest of a life in the battle of dominion, greater might is to the advantage and necessary for sovereignty. For function- resources labor and ‘intellectual capital’ combine in a strength of efficacy, in a mastery of function in the division of labor so clearly examined by Adam Smith5. It is clear from this analysis, and history itself, that an organization’s results benefit from a division of labor. More can be accomplished. This however is nothing more than the subordination of all the interests of life to one, specialized and focused in order that the entire organization and its mission will benefit more. This division and subordination thus order the world twofold. It organizes the world by function, and more importantly it also organizes the world by people- in the manner of agreement. Agreement brings the world to order- in a subordination and diffraction of the immediate self. Without subordination the world is merely noise- a cacophony without beauty, without order.
In this process it is clear that the individual participates in a greater power. And as the participation in the group binds the individual to others that share his interest, the participation involves him in a combination of forces that work toward his interest. The individual is totally engaged, and thus his power is totally engaged, caught up in focus- and so the combination with others that have the same interests has an enlarging effect, not only in power, but also in purpose. The individual becomes ‘greater’ vicariously through participation in a ‘greater’ purpose and a greater power. Participation in a greater good thus always seems like it is also a better good, because it completely enlarges and enhances the values, and the value, of the individual involved. This is what Kant means in the 3rd component of a ‘predisposition to animality’6- what Kant calls ‘community with other men’ or ‘the social impulse’.
That ‘One must be subordinated to the other’- is precisely the principle that brings order to the group, forms the group, form in Reason as the group as unit. The generation of order, so to speak, brings the world under dominion for our use, wins the battle of might- and thus dominion- with the world, thus has dominion ‘over’ the world. The mantra of this is ‘together we participate in a greater purpose, a greater power, a greater sovereignty- together we participate in Greatness. The participation in a greater good Is followed out in the logic of Kant’s formation of the highest good, through a ‘Kingdom of God on Earth’ 7 , the notion of a greater good through an organized purpose, an organized mission.
This social forming is nothing less than the forming process, the coming to form of the dialectic of sovereignty or as Hegel termed it, the master slave dialectic8. But where is freedom in the dialectic? Hegel shows that all are still bound in the relationship. Whether the master is master of his domain, he still is bound to the domain by his sovereignty, and is still dependent, even more dependent because he is dependent to all. He needs the agreement of all underneath him to remain sovereign. Further still the sovereign is bound by the welfare of those in the group - bound by each, by their own relationship to the sovereign as the representative of the whole. As the sovereign claims sovereignty and assent from those in the whole. But the manner in which the system is formed is from the charge of movement involved in the process of power in movement, from those involved in its sweep, as they come to power in the cloak and perception of ‘Greatness’.
Sovereignty is making sovereign. The entire mode of Necessity in any thinking stems precisely from the solicitude spawned from the ineluctable day-to-day mortal contest of thinking. The demand involved in subordination- the ‘you must’- will always then be a necessity from the position of victor. The process makes subordinate those that have lost the contest of the battle for sovereignty, for after the battle has been waged, the resources and means are on the side of the victor. The other has been ‘shown his place’, has been ‘put down’, and is in full feeling of the defeat. Victory and defeat thus effect enormously the frame of judgment, the place and color by which judgment frames the world.
The sovereign gives the rule- legislates- but this is because through the pulse of a real life the sovereign has been chosen, either through election or by the battle of election to give the rule. But the battle for sovereignty is fought precisely in the process of making- in the making of a thing, the making of a world. Making binds efficacy, sovereignty and possession. In the making of a life, in the making of a world, in making these things and processes mine.
After the struggle of contest with the other, subordination offers this sense of making the world to the individual no longer sovereign. One can participate in the sovereignty of making the world by being the member of a kingdom. By being subordinate, you become better than yourself, you are associated with greatness. This we offer you.
But when a man does not give the rule, when man does not make his world, it is not his, it is never his world. So even if what is offered by the now sovereign other is in material almost exactly the same, it is not only other, but alien. It is not even alien- the world of the other is not even present, does not even exist, because for all intents and purposes this world has been made to vanish. The Other says ‘I will make you’, and in the process destroys the value of what has been made by the other. The world of the other is present like some monster sent to devour9, no matter how strong and shining the advantages of his world. So in all instances the battle for sovereignty is not only the battle for the very existence of myself, but always and forever equally the battle for the very existence of the world. It always takes the form of my world vs. destruction, and the vision of all judgment sees it this way. My thinking is always urgently involved, and the defeat of my thinking is made apparent by this difference.
The conflict of interpretations10 is fought with missiles as much as with discourse, the fusion of horizons11 occurs after the heat has burned and fused the weaker. What does the pain and labor of the negative12 look like when the advancing stage of spirit is dominated by a tyrant. If anyone anywhere has ever believed in a mission, the defeat of this mission is then always total defeat. ‘The world is at stake! The consequences are forever! The time is now!’
Solicitude brings this ‘sense’ of life to the very structure of a thinking in contest, sooner or later judgment always takes up arms, for it must. For as men will die, the battle of every battle is the battle against death, and this is a battle that eventually I will join, and I will fight, no matter who, no matter where, no matter how. Now it must though be you, for you are my opponent and thus my death. So long as I am in contest.
The formation of a maxim thus comes from contest, and the result of this contest of thinking- should the individual in contest be victorious over death- is thus always both sovereignty and subordination. Sovereignty, and thus freedom, are inescapably always first won, no matter how else they may be defined, and subordination brings mission to form in the ‘you must’.
Traditional forms of Sovereignty have been a claim of dominion over people within the designated area of what constitutes a place. Where geographical place once played a large part and defining role in the determination of economics, that now is no longer the case. The advent of the corporation and share ownership combined with the advance of communications technology have allowed distance to be eliminated. The dynamics of share ownership diffract and disperse dominion, so that it is merely the efficacy of the powers of dominion that matter in the market contest. People are from a place, but place no longer has concrete value in the life of a nation, because there is no longer distance. There is no place left on earth but only the place in the order among men in the contest of dominion, of power. Without distance, every place is now the same, and the earth has been made to vanish, and the oceans of the world are only the oceans of mankind.
There is no place on earth, but only the place among the order of men. As a predisposition toward humanity man compares himself towards others in a way driven by each his own self interest. Man’s world is now a common world in the arena of men. Meaning is derived from a social common value, accomplishment is measured only in relation to others!! Where once preparation to get through winter was a common social goal- it is not so anymore. The storms and catastrophes that occur now are those constructed in the relations among men. From the structure of down-sizing to the elections of need, the choices within the market create an arena of contest which decide the fate of individuals vying to meet the call of a need projected into the swirling phantasm of mankind.
So for Kant, the lifelong sovereignty of the good principle over the evil principle, in a life well pleasing to god, leads to a sovereignty over death. Freedom from dominion leads to freedom from the dominion of death. To be free means to be sovereign and salvation means to be free and to live. Thus all liberation theology is thus soteriological in nature. Liberation and salvation thus both are for Kant a path traveled and an end, in the time of a life well pleasing to God expressed so well by Dickinson- “Some keep the Sabbath going to church, I keep mine at home.... instead of getting to heaven at last- I’m going all along.”13
Victory constitutes freedom in this our modern age, and if not then the present is always and everywhere filled with the black portents of apocalypse. The Portents of apocalypse pull me towards the battle, and I will charge, and will try, and everything in my effort will be exhausted. Here it does not matter what I fight, for I will fight, and I will try, and I will. And for attacking what I love “you will pay, and you will cry, and you will see, you will- understand”.
When one finds oneself in the ‘bosom of the covenant’1 4, in the social contract15- in agreement already given- the choice presented is from the position of Sovereign to the position of subordinate. It is the choice of agreement as being less, as affirming others as greater or you will receive nothing. Deprivation becomes a condition of the social contract, and a condition of affirmation itself. Thus the structure and balance of agreement involved in covenants and thus in any sense of order is never that of equals, but of the agreement of inequality, in subordination and its acceptance. The master slave dialectic is thus a dialectic damaged,16 wounded17 by the battle for sovereignty in which the sovereign is ‘dependent’, but not nearly so much as the slave, or constituency. The pact, the agreement involved in the social contract, in the pact of employment, in the pact of purchase, in the covenant of man with God, is always in some sense an agreement of surrender. It is an agreement to not be master, to submit to the demand, decree, order and thus to not contest the social order present. “Submit to my power, for it is good.”

Worthiness Before God
If indeed the question of whence comes evil centers around whether in a maxim the principle of self-love is subordinated under the principle of morality, then the notion of value- the notion of worth- becomes magnified and places under extreme scrutiny the principle assumed by society of what constitutes worth. How do we justify discrepancies of worth, of value as man is under a predisposition of a self-love which is physical yet compares. To judge a man worthy or unworthy means that conditions have been fulfilled which allow us to include or exclude someone from society, from the us.
Kant states in the ‘Religion..’18 that it is in the inversion of the form of the maxim, in adopting the principle of self-love as a maxim, that man acts in a manner that results in evil, the example of which given by Kant is physical suffering. Let us explode and examine then the point at which the maxim is adopted, and how and why a maxim is adopted, within the limits of reason alone, within the very voice of reason itself.
Wanting to do more places ambition in the role of action or labor, in a direction that is accepted at each level of exchange- commodity, price, market, nation, world. It speaks to others in their own language and exhausts their own reason, overruns their own reason, leaving the position of judge impotent with regard to the further presentation of evidence- further justification.
But to use this excess to advantage falls back on the ineluctable weakness, the affective fragility, of man that allows his own value to be placed in question- to allow the question of value to be valid. Am I worthy?? Am I worthy, of my own, by myself, of the world??- Am I worthy, of my own, by myself, of God?? Do I, on my own, constitute any kernel of worth at all in the arena and the eyes of the absolute??!!
This question is thus first always a question posed to a higher power, to a higher judge which in-relation-to determines the response. If the answer to this question is yes, then life is the determination, if not- then suffering life. This question recreates the conditions of contest, by placing the self in suspension. But in this question of dominion over life, the answer is always resoundingly NO!!! I am not worthy! I am never worthy!! There is always greater, always higher, always more. In comparison to the absolute I am always unworthy, always guilty. “Just look at how much more, in God, look at the mountains, the sky, the sea, the stars...”
Wanting to do more and wanting to have more both possess the kernel of excess in ambition or greed. But the excess here comes from within a natural part of the drive of man, and of reason, and of judgment. In the depths of the soul, hidden and protected from the sight and knowledge of the world, at the point of each and every decision, of each and every thought- is where the battle of justification is fought. This is the point at which the maxim is adopted- sometimes so very unconsciously. A free and floating, an unsettled comparison of worth in relation to others, of self worth. Thoughts of anger, feelings of frustration- at the point of decision these are worked out, weighed out, scaled and at this point of decision others are exalted or degraded prior to the act. Focus is brought to what is of import to us, and this scaling places others in the background- forgotten. We choose at this point what we care about, we choose what is of import.
At each and every instance of judgment there is a free comparison, a comparison in which a man must constantly measure, must assess power and the use of power or the possibility of its use on himself. If this instance of judgment is multiplied by active contest from another, then the measurement is always that of oneself in comparison with another. In every negotiation of price, in every decision of purchase, in the acceptance of another days work, in how man executes an everyday routine, in the very manner in which he addresses another, man is in constant measurement of himself with others. The world constantly confronts man as contest in these instances- as force, as resistance. Man exalts himself and degrades others in the minutiae of all life by the very structure of judgment.
Appearance and pain, experience and desire flash from scene to memory to thinking to scene in the confrontation of one with another. The world seems to wrestle with itself, utilizing all the science, experience, wisdom, planning and desire of the world- from both sides of the conflict. The contest is like a fissure, a fracture in the soul of the world, for one wonders why the work that benefits us all, the work done after the contest, cannot be done before such contest.
This is the point where worth is established, in what we value of our self, in the import we can find in ourselves and in the world. Man in touch with his own wretchedness, his frailty, his weakness, his mortality, his ugliness. Man pulsates his own suffering and anxiety, hates himself. It is this, the man of every man, that comes to participate, that must decide and choose, that must compare, and there is no guide present to tell him what to compare to. The wretched, the malignant, the wounded self battles whether there is worth- decides whether there is worth, and so is asked to judge at each decision and each moment the worth of his own humanity and doing so judge the worth of the entire world. Alone in the wretchedness of the self, and without relation, without form or order, man may find the world wretched.
The world becomes aswirl in contest not because we view the other as alien, as wholly other, but because we do view the other as the same. The sanctity and coherence of selfhood dissolves as we view ourselves in this image. We know, we know absolutely the other as same, as exactly the same, but are confronted by this image as now monster. It is as if the world I know liquefies before my eyes and I see myself devoured. I see myself as other. I see myself as master, I see myself as monster, I see myself as King, and I know absolutely the difference. I know the difference, but am confronted by this and cannot escape it- I am in contest. And I loathe myself in the image of this weakness, and I love myself in the image of the exalted- in the fantasy of greatness, in the pleasure of the adorned.
It is precisely this absolute difference that allows the bifurcation, that creates the distance between Merit and Guilt, for it is precisely in the self dynamics of contest and its own reflection that these distinctions come about and become magnified. It is I that is deserving and it is also I that is guilty. The defeated I sees no difference between the victor and himself, no qualitative difference but only the force imposed by such a victor, and the weakness of his own self. In the core of comparison and contest, of a self in contest with itself, thus with its own death, this self comes to hate itself for this death, comes to hate itself for this weakness, and thus comes to hate others.19 This split reflects the range and vectors of thinking formed from the generative structure of affective fragility and solicitude, and thus value-worth- the sacred20- is a dialectic of comparison formed from a humanity that both loves and hates.
In contest with others, the world becomes loose, an arena swirling and spinning, with no earth to stand on and no firmament to gaze at, and all the world is only the opponent, and all life depends on victory. ‘Come with me for we must strengthen our resolve, hurry we must join the battle- for we believe in our cause and know it to be just. Rush for the enemy is near, looking to take what is ours from us, looking to bring us evil, looking to make us slaves’. With victory comes freedom, with defeat bondage. With victory comes sovereignty, with defeat comes tyranny. With victory comes justice, with defeat comes evil. Contest with others- in the same bright sun and the same caressing sky- makes of peace a tempest, makes of silence a howl that haunts the soul, and makes dark the sun. Contest makes dead the living and takes from them their things.
Contest brings death toward the living and out of it comes mastery of function. Death as contest makes science, brings science into the service of man. Both forms of Contest- of judgment as contest with itself, and of my judgment with the judgment of another- comprise the arena of practical reason and bring mankind into the full capability of its powers. Contest brings to life its urgency. The world is at stake, the consequences are forever, the time is now.
By himself and all alone, having left the world in his solitude, it is here where man must listen for the voice of the world as his own, as his voice at this point speaks for the world. In each and every action, man makes the world in his own image, with how he acts and how he judges, with what he degrades. This dynamic is at work at each moment of a humanity that is radically- and in severe question- of itself.
Kant, in the ‘Religion’ frames the question of worthiness to God- to the highest power this way- ‘Am I more worthy than my neighbor, in comparison to my neighbor am I more worthy of God, and for God.21 Thus this fragility is redirected and placed within my sphere of power. Am I less worthy than my neighbor? Kant thus places the direction of justification not towards an impossible absolute suspension, but back upon itself in the sphere of a measured humanity- a humanity with a self-love that yet compares its’ self to others. That is why Kant’s theology of justification- why his ‘Religion’ is ‘Within the Limits of Reason Alone’22- as judgment compares man to man, and it will be for Kant, the better man that wins the favor of God, in an evangelism of what I call, the ‘Religion of the Great’.
Self-worth, within the dynamics of comparison, becomes radically altered by the individuals place in the dynamics of any society. Self-worth becomes inflamed in the involvement with those of a group with similar interests, purposes and goals. Because of the participation and the increase in power, the individual is involved in something ‘greater’ and his feeling of self-worth experiences this, is inflamed by this involvement and multiplication. This dynamic of an inflamed self-worth, combined with a material increase to the individual, further compounds this feeling of self-worth, of exaltation and change in social place. With attention from society, by vehicle of the groups power, and influence on the national and world stage, this further inflames this notion of ‘rightness’, and gives the individual then a feeling in the participation of what they believe to be an objective reality, a ‘destiny’- of events. It is as if the world, and the events themselves, justify not only the position of the individual in the system, but the rightness of the system itself. The system conversely seems ‘justified’, regardless of the sufferings or deprivation of those that do not benefit from it. The degradation of others become then invisible to those- not in power- but successful within the system. The sufferings of others become- ‘justified’.
The analysis of value theory in Capital23 is from the viewpoint of the individual involved at the micro point of the exchange of money for a good, and the exchange of labor on a thing and the assignment of value to that thing- it’s price. This level of value at first seems to be all there is of interest for the purchaser of the good, but not so for the interest of the supplier. The supplier’s interest also is focused on these points of exchange which are common in others, that share common ground with others. The scope of the capitalist’s interest is measured by the scope of the market he intends to exchange with, so that what occurs is at each and every point of individual exchange is an implied justification of profit, in that the interest of the owner/supplier is larger, at the point of each individual transaction, than that of the purchaser- and larger than that of the employee. Ambition- aggression- here ‘justifies’ itself, sanctifies itself by showing that its own need is larger than others, whether this need is material or not. that it’s need is larger, and therefore more important, than the life of others. Justification means- attempts to diminish the negotiating position of the individual contesting in the exchange, in relation to my position, by the inflation of my position. Justification attempts- means- to degrade others, by an inflation of the value of the self of the worthiness of the self, by clothing it’s logic in the values and idioms of the opponent, and leaving the opponent thus smaller in relation. This type of justification subsumes the entirety of the claim of the opponent, completely accepts the claim, and then shows that it’s own position is that of ‘also’.
But the exchange of commodities in its original state is precisely the contest between parties to determine the exchange value of goods, and as contest more importantly- through this contest- to determine, to set in place, the conditions of relation by which this exchange will effect the well being of both in the future. The Micro economic process of price targeting assumed, it is precisely this relation- this social relation- which Is determined in the exchange. Therefore exhange value is a use value for the owner- for in the approach of this exhange value, what the owner wishes to accomplish is the establishment of the master-slave relation in which he- the owner- is master, is sovereign. This being effected through the negotiation of price and wage, the two parties in the exchange of money and commodity/labour, agree in effect to the structure of the social relation itself.24 By buying the product, the purchaser also ‘buys’ that the owner of the product is the owner- and also therefore master/sovereign, By buying the product, the purchaser accepts- as well- to perpetuate this relation. And if the purchaser of the product is not also an owner in his own right, then by purchasing the product and by selling his labour he also accepts his position in the agreement, in the arrangement, as “slave”, as less. So therefore what is being determined are the very conditions of exchange which have been established in the battle of worth, ownership, sovereignty, and these conditions of exchange then calibrate the aggregate demand a product may have, and the relative value that the exchange value has. The first and foremost demand set forth therefore, is that the very nature of the exchange of the product makes the owner of the product master- that he benefit more from the exchange.
This is nothing less than the economic arena in the battle for autonomy, for self-determination in the material world. This battle materially determines the structure of the material form of social relation, of social order, and thus determines the value of a particular self in the social order.
The very nature of the exchange then- no matter what is said in the matter of how a person is addressed in the approach to the act of exchange- from one person to another- the manner then of this exchange is a voice that says ‘you are not yet, you are less’. From the side of the purchaser- the voice says ‘we are here equals, I agree’, and no more. On one side there is an exchange of equivalences, on the other side what occurs is an exchange of completely different interests. In the area of my interest, due to the structure of the system of exchange- ‘you are less than I ’- here, at this point, we are equal.
This justification rises up, makes itself larger, becomes angered, fights to win the character of the exchange. This justification withholds involvement, denies involvement until it is satisfied that it has won the exchange. Until I am paid, I will not... Such is the fight, the war, that is involved in every exchange throughout all material life in today’s capitalism.
In another type of justification just as sacred to Reason, what seemed to Marx like the arbitrary addition of surplus value of the profit in the price of a commodity, really hinges on the Market’s collective individual common spirit of judgment to not pay, to pay less- ‘lower prices!!’- to degrade a commodity and its producer materially. This spirit sets in motion the process by which individuals in the Market become subject to those in the positions of power- of employer and of production- where labor is a commodity. ‘Why should I pay for labor when I could pay less or not pay’. This is the universally understood feeling inherent in the self-interest of the consumer, of Reason, to not pay- and thus degrade.
Here the universal appeal of judgment is to the wish of sovereignty, placed in the service of self-interest. The self-interest of the consumer and employee to degrade a product, so inherent to the structure of judgment, is harnessed by the producer to his own advantage. It is the consumer and employee’s own self-interest, this structure of judgment to degrade, that allows the employer to degrade the wage of his employees. The employee cannot deny his lower place on the scale because he is in contest here also, because he is attempting to do the same. His wish to be sovereign, to be higher on the scale is so strong that it condemns him to his spot. The strength of justification put forth by the sovereign isn’t so much that the inequity of the relation is proper or good in itself, or that it would be the best for society, but that if the subordinate were in the position of sovereign, he would do the same. In the contest of value and the social relation, this is a justification the subordinate cannot deny, because the subordinate himself wants the sovereign’s position. The subordinate- if he could- would be master.
The meaning and involvement of the self in contest is affected by this involvement. The self rises up, inflates to the feeling of the truth of the position of the individual involved, clouding and diminishing the consequences of the contest. Another type of justification justifies itself by sheer power. By backing the claim of Reason with sheer force, resolve is tested to the extreme in this justification. This type of justification attempts to find the level at which opponents will cease to risk welfare to support their claim, then it goes further so far as to attempt to eradicate completely opponents with other claims. To win the contest of dominion through sheer will, to determine value by withholding exchange until the desired value is received. The value is this...because it is so.
‘All you want to do is make a good living?!! That is not enough!! ..... and We want to provide cars with better brakes and navigation systems so that the whole world will be a safer place to drive!! ....and We want to provide our city with better education’s so that the next generation of citizens in our whole city will have a better life!! ..... and We want to provide excitement and entertainment to the depressed citizens of our country so that the daily worries and fears subside for a while. .....and We provide health coverage for thousands of businesses, that’s alot of peace of mind!! We make better!!!! ....Just look at how much we do!!! and We are doing something special!!! Haven’t you ever wanted to do something more??!! Something special??? We work hard, we deserve it’. Ambition and aggression, all ever-present.
“ I am a leader, I empower others to reach for their full potential, teaching skills and bringing out performance in others, I effect more in a positive manner. I should be paid more.”
“ I allow others to make decisions for themselves, I ask them about process and get them to look at this process and function. I show others the way, I hold them accountable. My position deserves to be paid more.”
“ I want to have more, I want to do more, I want to become more.” This is the primary mode of justification in a humanity that possesses a physical self-love yet compares, a justication that is common to our sense. This justification is central to what may be called a ‘Religion of the “Great” ’.
What today’s capitalism wishes- through sovereignty of private property- is to control the nature and conditions of individual exchange for an entire market, to have sovereignty over the exchange of goods and money. Through the sovereignty of private property the owner of a business has sovereignty over the labor pool which provides labor for the product of the business. The owner has sovereignty over his employees and therefore wishes to control the character of exchange. In a free market thus only the owner- only the capitalist is free, only he has sovereignty- the remainder of his employees reside in his dominion. The capitalist thus wishes to have sovereignty over a type of exchange, the conditions of the exchange. To win the election of offering of all others at each and every moment of choice, to make this particular type of exchange ‘mine’.
The hope in this future is to be rich, to easily afford a comfortable life. To send kids to college, to be able to purchase things, to be able to travel, to have leisure time, to be on top. The realities of this particular vision of life mean that you wish to have a great many people working as much for your benefit as for their own, so that you make money as they work, so that each and every household participates in your product, so that your market is the whole world. Today’s Capitalism is totalitarian in nature25, wanting dominion over men as employer, wanting control over markets as supplier, wanting everything to be in its possession.
Today’s Capitalism is totalitarian in nature, but no more than any other kind of belief or thinking- Democracy wishes to promote democracy throughout the whole world, capitalism wishes to open markets- throughout the whole world, communism wished to revolutionize- the whole world, and so it is with technology, so it was with Hitler & the Aryan Race, and so it is with what Kant calls “The Kingdom of God- throughout all of humanity”. Reason, thinking, belief, all demand totality, demand the absolute, proclaim the “Better” life, the “more” for you.
In giving our best we make the best, in wanting to have more, in wanting to have- to receive- the best for ourselves, in comparison of what others have, we simultaneously also make the wretched more in number. The ‘Pathetique of Misery’26- the pathos, the tears in the nature of judgment, in the nature of comparison. Such is the sadness of judgment in election, with those amongst the choices vying as if not to die, like the children of the choice given Sophie in ‘Sophie’s Choice’- who will live and who will die. Those chosen bear the burden, the responsibility of the wretched more, and the guilt of sameness and common ground. This is what it means to materially judge value- to choose the best, to exalt one and to make the wretched more.
Judgment does possess a teleology, a teleology of greatness, formed within the dialectically bound, inescapable logic of contest- within the inextricable logic of victory and defeat.27

“Behold, I set before you this day a blessing and a curse” 11:26
“Behold I set before you this day life and good, death and evil.” 30:15 Deuteronomy 28

The Religion of the Great-Belief in Greatness

Religions of the great appeal to the notion of Greatness, both in personality and in function, and thus belief. The appeal to excellence in function has an objective quality. The common material realities of disease, alimentation, dwelling- all necessary for the support of human life- possess a character that is independent of fiat, whim, and the subjective decisions of any one individual in power. The material truth character in decisions of making are thus beyond tyranny. Excellence in the domain of any one of these categories of material life thus appeal to- and serve- all of us. Thus there is a type of meritocracy in this practice, and the value of contribution of any person in the work of material life is viewed both as somewhat independent of the dialectic of compensation- the limited pool of people and resources. Function brings its own reward- this is the hope of functional greatness. Also attached to this perspective is an open horizon of hope, in that the workings of functional excellence are not determined by place, the past, or by reputation, but determined solely by performance. The landscape of the functionally great is determined only by performance and action. Performance determines the field of excellence and nothing else- therefore performing excellence, and therefore greatness, is open to anyone.
Religions of the Great also appeal en masse to the notion of a place, a social place, more exalted- higher- than the one currently occupied by the recipients of the appeal. One becomes greater through us... one becomes stronger. The appeal of the belief in greatness appeals to a change in the scale and distribution of valences, in the arrangement of power in the social order. The appeal of all religions of the great is that this order will changed and that every individual spoken to will be exalted- through the bearers of this word. The social order of power and place will be changed- corrected- to its ‘proper’ place, its ‘proper’ arrangement. And its ‘proper’ place is always one in which the individual receiving the appeal is exalted.
The cult and hyperbole of the ‘Great’, of those successful in the system, is such that no group or class, outside of function or performance, is excluded by any other basis. This thinking however becomes blind to the social process of power and benefit, so that those deemed unworthy are deprived of materials and benefits. The unconscious degradation goes as such. The focus and the wish of the individual is to achieve the great deed, perform the great feat- and the accompanying exaltation of worth, power and material (monetary gain) that accompanies this position of greatness makes the individual unaware of the deprivations and sufferings brought on by the change in social relation to others, by reaping the material benefit of his ‘great feat’. It is not, in the structure of this dynamic, the conscious decision of those- the ‘great’- to deprive the lower class, the ‘unworthy’ of materials. In fact, the class of the ‘great’ claim -once again- ‘worthiness’ to the benefits due to their ‘achievement’, the fact that they receive a monetary increase seems incidental to the position of their achievement. However, depriving an individual of a needed benefit, whether consciously or unconsciously, voluntarily or involuntarily, is felt by those deprived merely as deprivation, and also as either conscious degradation, even if their is no face attached, or worse yet as fate, felt in an unconscious self-degradation of themselves.
There is no exaltation of excess material worth in the name of ‘greatness’ that is materially benign- and therefore there is no extreme worthiness, that does not simultaneously deprive and degrade. So the claim put forth by those that have ‘achieved the great’, that their contribution has benefited society more, is chimerical if indeed their increase in material denies more people availability to those resources. The ‘great’ then merely make more vertical the sense of subordination, and the sense of ‘enslavement’, of those subordinated in the social relation. Such is the reason for the increase in poverty, crime, homelessness and incarceration, as the ultrawealthy grow in the increase, and the remainder of the world becomes poorer. It is natural, it has been- ‘justified’.
Religions of the great, in the effort to encompass an attitude or way of life appeal en large. At the point which these movements become articulated in detail, they become a philosophy which can be critically opposed, supported, studied and researched. At this point however the detailed character of philosophical enterprise and understanding of them make the larger aspects of the particular religion belief unappealing to those in the general public.
For any belief to have a wide appeal, the structure of its tenets must be constitutional, sweeping in nature, general in scope. The extent of individual involvement, in the action of the details, fills out, determines the fullness of he constitutional shell and brings to reality the promise of the appeal. Involvement fills out and crystallizes the shell of theory, brings reality to words, brings blood to words. With involvement, with action, words become the nerve system of desire, words become the harbinger of a shared truly human spirit, a shared physical way of life. Electric in nature, the words of a philosophy become a flow, and in involvement these words become larger and become life- animate all on their own, and then become large enough to carry a person, to carry a group, to carry a nation, to carry us all- away. With involvement- words step out and walk from the page, turn into a living feeling, a living thing. With involvement words transport a common love, words transport a common pain, words transport can carry the vitality of the world. In ‘appeal’ the word becomes God.
When the word becomes an involvement in action, the word becomes ‘more’. The glimmer and brightness of exaltation is electrified by involvement. Scintillated and lifted, light as a feather, the tickle throughout every single nerve and throughout all senses. There becomes a hyper-aware state of ecstatic supercharge, and the world is lifted. The cool air seems to tickle, the sun seems to bathe, the wind seems to whisper in a frequency that is meant only for you- that only you can hear. The colors of the earth warmly laugh and caress the soul and the flux of physics and power come together in a billion swirling sparkling fragments, form and extend like a giant and clear hand, held open in offering.
The magic of appeal is that the wish becomes what it wants, and out of the air comes a rich material, a substance, not previously present. The antagonism of contest- the opposing energy of each combatant- get turned in the same direction and converted to the same frequency, and multiply in valence. Appeal soothes the storm of conflict and combines energy in the same direction. ‘Look, we are the same’. Resistance surges into a rush, force combines with another and becomes more in flow, collision becomes vector and then becomes some-thing. Life quickens as one is with another and force moves in a wondrous tumble-dance, rolling and thrusting forward with what we know is our best, and we are certain. Reorder always is reorder, but here it also matches rightness, feels right, one becomes with another and thus becomes the world. ‘Come~!! Join with me’ !! Together- in a common sense, we!!
It is this way, in which power forms to value, and in this way that man experiences it.
The same light is brighter, the same burden lighter, the same touch closer to skin, the same sound sweeter. Joined with another, everything is made different, the world has become more. Thus real, terrestrial, solid. Joy makes the world materialize out of nothing, crystallizes flow, and gives it form. With you, the pleasure of God. Thus the same properties present in Hegel’s description of the dialectical properties of the ‘also’, do not exist independently of each other in a state of exclusion, but exist together, and allow each the other to exist. The world as material exists because it is asked to, and because it is joined.
The strength of evangelical appeal of any Religion has the appearance of clarity, and this clarity fades when the action and detail of what the general position means in reality comes into play- prohibitive decree must then be very general so that the individual can determine what the living reality of any belief will be.
Greatness and excellence both mean to be greater than others and to be more excellent than others. To be rich as an individual participant in the realm of economics means nothing more than to be richer than almost anyone else.

Capitalism and the ‘Great Man’

The substrate of the Religion of the Great of Capitalism centers around the figure of the ‘Great Man’- the leader. Modern management theory makes an evangelical appeal based on the notion of individual greatness in the form of leadership. The notion of success drives this theory of leadership, but success is nothing but the form of rationale, the justification by which the conqueror has won.
This theory of success is objectified by lists of characteristics common to leaders by which success can be yours. The theory of success is a static theory, whereby if one succeeds, one obviously possesses leadership characteristics, if one does not, then something was missing. This theory is extended throughout, from the achievement or non-achievement of the stated goals of the mission to the rationale of individual promotion. Leadership theory thus possesses an exclusive sense of choseness, of destiny or innate greatness. ‘Leaders are born’ is the mantra of Y.P.O., and the proof is in the success itself. Success justifies itself.
Leadership theory is thus an ideology of Victory from the standpoint of power and justification, from the standpoint of a contest won, but it becomes dynamic because it is done in the form of appeal. The objective reasons for victory simultaneously serve as an appeal to subordination and the justification for the deprivation or resources. “You too can realize your destiny, you too can be the chosen, just follow me”- follow the ‘great’ man, follow the ‘great’ idea. “You, however, are not yet a leader”, “you have yet to have achieved”.., you are not yet chosen, you do not yet belong to the exclusive group of the great, but you can be. The ideology of leadership is thus also a vehicle of subordination, a means of battle in the arena and feeling of self-worth. Leadership ideology is a sublimated rationale for degrading those in the organization and outside the group, and for depriving them of resources, and simultaneously an appeal to greatness and the participation in it. ‘You are not yet, you are less’, but it is possible’- ‘just look at us’.
The ‘path’, the way in which the individual can achieve this greatness in the Ideology of Leadership is first through the individual function under the sovereign, in the mastery of this function, and then repeating the steps of the leader up the ladder. The individual becomes involved in the Mission and dynamics of the organization, learning new function and developing new skills, and this process of individual development is then used to further justify the position of the ‘Leader’. The effects of the initial defeat of being told that ‘you are less’ are thus turned back upon those in subordination and made appeal to as a wish, and as certain as defeat was, how sound the Rationale seems now. You are still not the leader, but you are becoming a leader.
The ideology of leadership resurrects in part the doctrine of Kings, in that the authority of the king was seen to come directly from God. The claim of the King in the order of dominion was that the King was a personified form of God, and his authority was therefore absolute and beyond question. Through the claim of greatness, the sovereign in Capitalism aspires to be God. Mastery of function is not enough reward, nor is even just more wealth than others. It must be exorbitant wealth that proves the greatness of the sovereign, it must be the forceful bending of wills to his, it must be an absolute difference in the quality of life, a different life- an adorned life- in order to demonstrate this greatness in difference between you and I. Greatness of power is the absolutely great in the battle of dominion in the order among men. The sovereign’s power must cause the death of others. The sovereign aspires in order to choose who lives and dies and pretends its ‘just business’, -the sovereign wants to make this choice. The subordinate accepts subordination here because he wants to be the sovereign. The sovereign wants to be God.
Religions of the Great offer their pinnacle to everyone, to all within the whole, tell them - their whole- that all of them can be greater than others, greater than the rest. To be successful in the United States means precisely to be more successful than others. These dynamics constitute the real parameters of hope and thus the very structure of possibility in the world of material life- of economics and power. Possibility as it exists is offered within the crucible of social contest with others vying for a greatness, a more exalted social place and material life. The real arena of possibility and opportunity is thus limited in the realm of the Religion of the Great we know as Capitalism. It is the religion and belief in Great Wealth through the hope of being the Greater Man, by being the ‘Great Man’. You can be greater than others, you can be richer than others, you can be the one that is chosen.

Two Systems of the Religion of Greatness

There is what I call an evangelism of the ‘Religion of the Great’ that is professed by Adolph Hitler in the written exposition of his philosophy, in Mein Kampf 29. Hitler elaborates what I would like to call a teleology of dominion, within a Religion of the ‘Great’. He writes a philosophy of dominion within the religion, the belief, in the social dynamics of what he thinks it means to be ‘Great’. Kant in the ‘Religion’ Within the Limits writes on the individual and social characteristics of judgment that speaks its desire through the greatness of God. They both, believe, then, in one sense, in a ‘Religion of the Great’. So whence comes evil? Is it in the racism? Undoubtedly yes, but the similarities- that are striking in the nature of how each thought elaborates itself- suggest to me that we have found a deeper and more common source, a source in the heart of thought itself. Perhaps what makes Evil so ‘Radical’ in the Kantian sense, is that Evil may be an irrevocable part of the very structure of all material judgment. Perhaps racism is thus only a manifestation- one form- of the deeper, immediate and universal character of material judgment to degrade others. Greatness on one pole, and the degraded on the other pole, thus form the scale and valences of the dialectical relationship of justification for both the form of any social order formed from contest, and also the sufferings that those on the bottom of this order bear.
It seemed to me from the beginning of writing this essay that Mein Kampf may show more to me than the extreme nature of the hatred and racism that has been the single most central theme of the holocaust. This hatred and racism of one man does not come close to explaining the overwhelming mobilization of the great part of a nation and the great part of its people in order to accomplish the organized murder of millions. It seems to me that The power involved in message involves elements much more central to humanity- to the structure of thought itself, to how people organize themselves- to enable this level of complicity, to allow the incalculable amount of decisions and individual acts to allow this to occur, and to make the events of the holocaust seem almost natural, the long and increasing degradation of others almost invisible to those involved in the power structure, even when the remainder of the world was aghast at its glaring and striking extent and nature of this degradation. And Now to make the poverty, crime, and incarceration invisible, almost justified to us in the United States, for the vast number of people that we have defeated.
Kant asks the question whence comes Evil?30 And if indeed it is a radical evil, it is present in the very core of man, perhaps within the very core of judgment. Philosophy must look itself directly in the heart here and come to grips with what self-proclaims to be ‘one of its own’, Evil within the limits of Reason. Philosophy will want to deny and shy from this comparison, deny that Mein Kampf elaborates any philosophy at all. But we must look at the forms and power of a thought in order to send the warning when we see similar structures, so that it never happens again, and maybe, perhaps, see the ever so subtle evil, present, dormant, and buried in our own reason, buried in the justification of our system and those that suffer from it. This is a brief outline of what I believe to be central to the social dynamics of the evangelical character- the appeal- of a ‘Religion of the Great’ in the text of Mein Kampf.
Let us now look at the similarities of language in word and in appeal in each category, first in Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, then in Mein Kampf.

1) The exaltation of the individual and the changing of the existing social
relation in relationship to others, this change places you in power, reorders society, corrects injustice, exalts the feeling of self worth.

Kant
pg. 106- A Saving Faith 31

pg. 85-no greater advantage than freedom from the sovereignty of evil. To become free, to be freed from bondage under the law of sin 32.

pg. 85-This is the highest prize he can win. 33.

Mein Kampf
pg. 343-in restoring a German Reich of greater power and glory 34

pg. 683- People are not freed by doing nothing, but by sacrifice. 35

pg. 577- The National Socialist doctrine is not the servant of individual federated states, but shall some day become the master of the German Nation. It must determine and reorder the life of a people, 36

pg. 353- on the veneration of genius and an uplift and enlightenment by his example. 37

pg.- 353- when human hearts break and human souls despair, then from the twilight of the past the great conquerors of distress and care, of disgrace and misery, of spiritual slavery and physical compulsion, look down on them and hold out their eternal hands to the despairing mortals! woe to the people that is ashamed to take them! 38.

pg. 577- The more complete the victory of its ideas will be, the greater may be the particular liberties it offers internally. 39

pg. 572- A powerful national ..., which takes into account and protects the outward interests of its citizens to the highest extent, can offer freedom within, 40

2) The appeal to the universal socialization dynamic of involvement. Together-With others- greater purpose, greater power, and thus greater reward - and the inflationary effect this has on individuals sense of worth- involvement in a great power makes you great, sweeps you up in a sense of importance.

Kant
pg. 89-Again, just as the state of a lawless external (brutish) freedom and independence from coercive laws is a state of injustice and of war, each against each, which a man ought to leave in order to enter into a politico-civil state 41

pg. 89-But because the highest moral good cannot be achieved merely by the exertions of the single individual toward his own moral perfection, but requires rather a union of such individuals into a whole toward the same goal- into a system of well-disposed men, in which and through whose unity alone the highest moral good can come to pass42

pg. 86-As far as we can see, therefore, the sovereignty of the good principle is attainable, so far as men can work toward it, only through the establishment and spread of a society43

pg. 86-At the same time there is a certain analogy between them, regarded as two commonwealths, in view of which the former may also be called an ethical state, i.e. a kingdom of virtue. The idea of such a state possesses a thoroughly well-grounded objective reality in human reason (in man’s duty to join such a state), 44

pg. 114 K- Such, therefore is the activity of the good principle, unnoted by human eyes but ever continuing- erecting for itself in the human race, regarded as a commonwealth under laws of virtue, A power and kingdom which sustains the victory over evil and, under its own dominion, assures the world of an eternal peace. 45

Mein Kampf
pg. 572- A powerful national Reich, which takes into account and protects the outward interests of its citizens to the highest extent, can offer freedom within, without having to fear for the stability of the state. 46

618- Natural destinies are firmly forged together only by the prospect of a common success in the sense of common gains, conquests; in short, or a mutual extension of power. 47

509- Once such a movement has been called to life, it possesses a certain practical right of priority. It should really be obvious that all men who fight for the same goal should join into such a movement and thereby add to its strength, this better to serve the common purpose. Especially every active mind must feel that the premise for any real success in the common struggle lies in such coordination. Therefore, reasonably, and presupposing a certain honesty, there should be only one movement for one goal. 48

3) You are the chosen, by being a member of a class that is limited to you and those like you, and this condition is natural and permanent, you are the one chosen for greatness, or the participation in greatness. The combination of #1 above with #2 above, is a multiplication effect in the stream and sweep of power, and gives the an overwhelming feeling that your rising is a ‘destiny’, that these events themselves conspire by some other power, by God, that this is a reality of the world- as objective as the principles of gravity and chemistry.

Kant
pg. 114 K- Such, therefore is the activity of the good principle, unnoted by human eyes but ever continuing ( Destiny)- erecting for itself in the human race, regarded as a commonwealth under laws of virtue, a power and kingdom which sustains the victory over evil and, under its own dominion, assures the world of an eternal peace. 49

pg. 105 The token of the true church is its universality; the sign of this, in turn, is its necessity and its determinability in only one possible way. 50

pg. 88- Now here we have a duty which is sui-generis, not of man toward men, but of the human race toward itself, for the species of rational beings is objectively, in the idea of reason, destined for a social goal, namely the promotion of the highest as a social good51

pg. 86-At the same time there is a certain analogy between them, regarded as two commonwealths, in view of which the former may also be called an ethical state, i.e. a kingdom of virtue. The idea of such a state possesses a thoroughly well-grounded objective reality in human reason (in man’s duty to join such a state), 52

Mein Kampf
pg. 343- The goal of a political reform movement will never be reached by enlightenment work or by influencing ruling circles, but only by the achievement of political power. Every world moving idea has not only the right, but also the duty, of securing, those means which make possible the execution of its ideas. Success is the one earthly judge concerning the right or wrong of such an effort, 53

pg. 577-578 - The National Socialist doctrine is not the servant of individual federated states, but shall some day become the master of the German Nation. 54

pg. 618- Natural destinies are firmly forged together only by the prospect of a common success in the sense of common gains, conquests; in short, or a mutual extension of power. 55

4) The appeal to contest and to mission, Vigilance.
Kant
pg. 86- For only thus can we hope for a victory of the good over the evil principle. 56

pg. 85- The combat which every morally well-disposed man must sustain in this life, under the leadership of the good principle, against the attacks of the evil principle57

He continues to be exposed, none the less to the assaults of the evil principle; and in order to assert his freedom, which is perpetually being attacked, he must ever remain armed for the fray. 58

pg. 86-for the sake of, the laws of virtue, a society whose task and duty it is to rationally impress these laws in all their scope upon the entire human race 59

pg. 85-This is the highest prize he can win. 60

Mein Kampf
pg. -635- it must teach our people to look beyond the trifles and see the biggest things, not to split up over irrelevant things 61

pg. 423- The struggle that rages today is for very great aims. A culture combining millenniums is fighting for its existence. 62

pg. 511- For nature itself in its exorable logic makes the decision, by causing the different groups to enter into competition with one another and struggle for the palm of victory, and leads that movement to the goal which has chosen the clearest, shortest, and surest way. 63

pg. 586- For being convinced of the inferiority of an existing condition does not suffice to entitle one to speak of a conviction in the higher sense; no, the latter is rooted only in the knowledge of a new condition and in the inner vision of a condition the achievement of which one feels as a necessity, and to stand up for whose realization one regards as one’s highest life task. 64

635- never to forget that the aim for which we must fight today is bare existence of our people, and the sole enemy which we must strike is and remains the power which is robbing us of this existence. 65

5) The urgency and exaggeration of appeal as mission: the world is at stake, the outcome will be forever, the time is now. a) Urgency of your involvement- we need you, the difference in outcome hinges on you, you can save the world

Kant

pg.92-Rather must man proceed as though everything depended upon him; only on this condition dare he hope that higher wisdom will grant the completion of his well intentioned endeavors. 66

Mein Kampf
pg. 683- People are not freed by doing nothing, but by sacrifice. 67

b) Exaggerated Consequences as either/or: salvation or damnation, freedom or slavery, reward or deprivation

pg. 85- no greater advantage than freedom from the sovereignty of evil. To become free, to be freed from bondage under the law of sin 68

pg. 114 K- Such, therefore is the activity of the good principle, unnoted by human eyes but ever continuing- erecting for itself in the human race, regarded as a commonwealth under laws of virtue, a power and kingdom which sustains the victory over evil and, under its own dominion, assures the world of an eternal peace. 69

Mein Kampf
pg. 516- Great, truly world shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions. 70

pg. -635- never to forget that the aim for which we must fight today is the bare existence of our people, and the sole enemy which we must strike is and remains the power which is robbing us of this existence. 71

pg. 423- The struggle that rages today is for very great aims. A culture combining millenniums is fighting for its existence. 72

pg. 640- salvation of an embattled Aryan Humanity 73

pg. 427- Assuredly this world is moving toward a great revolution. The question can only be whether it will redound to the benefit of Aryan humanity or to the profit of the eternal Jew. 74

6) The mode of ‘we are under attack’ from the evil invader- slavery, injustice and importance of involvement-

Kant
pg. 85- The combat which every morally well-disposed man must sustain in this life, under the leadership of the good principle, against the attacks of the evil principle 75

pg. -86 ...gain the upper hand over evil which is attacking them without rest. 76

pg. 85- He continues to be exposed, none the less to the assaults of the evil principle; and in order to assert his freedom, which is perpetually being attacked, he must ever remain armed for the fray. 77

Mein Kampf

pg.- 635-never to forget that the aim for which we must fight today is the bare existence of our people, and the sole enemy which we must strike is and remains the power which is robbing us of this existence. 78

pg. 65- Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the almighty creator: by defending myself... I am fighting for the work of the lord. 79

7) Consecration of the deprivation, evil/suffering of others as 1)- sacrifice necessary for success- as struggle and casualties of war or 2)- part of God’s work 3)- for their own good. 4) As ‘purification’.

Kant

pg. 86- for the sake of, the laws of virtue, a society whose task and duty it is to rationally impress these laws in all their scope upon the entire human race. 80

pg. 86- morally legislative reason also unfurls a banner of virtue as a rallying point for all who love the good, that they may gather beneath it. 81

pg. 86- may also be called an ethical state, i.e. a kingdom of virtue. The idea of such a state possesses a thoroughly well-grounded objective reality in human reason (in man’s duty to join such a state), even though, subjectively, 82

Mein Kampf

640- For the rest, may reason be our guide, may our will be our strength, may the sacred duty to act in this way give us determination, and above all may our faith protect us. 83

pg. 65- Hence today I believe that I am acting in accordance with the will of the almighty creator: by defending myself... I am fighting for the work of the lord. 84

pg. 583- when the new philosophy of life as far as possible has been taught to all men, and, if necessary, later forced upon them85

pg. -516- Great, truly world shaking revolutions of a spiritual nature are not even conceivable and realizable except as the titanic struggles of individual formations, never as enterprises of coalitions. 86

pg. 577-578- Moreover a young victorious idea 87

8) The unworthiness of those you replace in the change of social relation, the devaluing of others, very much a part of the justification of the change in social relation- very natural to the judgment process of man, could be called the aggression in judgment, the aggression involved by the suspension of the self in the core of comparison.

Mein Kampf
pg. 635- never to forget that the aim for which we must fight today is bare existence of our people, and the sole enemy which we must strike is and remains the power which is robbing us of this existence. 88

The sense of mission, of import of social task and purpose brings people together, forms groups into hierarchies, and the extent to which the individual is involved and benefits in the process determines the extent to which we voluntarily become more subordinated to the process, the sweeping up of the individual in the process becomes a type of invisible justification not noticeable by those benefiting from the system. It is this sense of mission and inclusion in the mission that makes all the difference between subordination or slavery, salvation or damnation, between destiny and fate. This is why both books possess strong evangelical elements to them, part of what I have referred to in a previous essay as the hyperbolic character of thinking, in the social dynamics of an evangelism of the great- and it’s invisible -sublimated- process of justification.
First I should say that the first four headings in the outline can be considered components in what Kant calls ‘self-love’ or what comprises self-love. Here the self-interest of the individual participates in a process which completely absorbs, effects and distorts the ability to compare events and scenarios. The individual in this process is empowered, in-power, and experiences the swirl of this inflammation as exaltation.
Next, in the process of justification, how effectively the first 5 headings are implemented, how thoroughly a people are subordinated to the sense of mission and involvement and benefit, determines more how much the last category can be converted to physical degradation and deprivation- to the point which the enemy can be considered nothing human at all, nothing like ‘us’. This was not only the structure of the philosophical appeal in Mein Kampf, this was supported materially through the power of the state.
Kant splits the domain of power into state power and sovereignty, and Ethical power in the form of an Ethical Commonwealth. Kant ‘s ethical system offers the promise of an exaltation after the lifetime of ethical action, of making oneself worthy in the course of life, in a life well-pleasing to God. This domain of power is not only unified in Mein Kampf, but also exacerbated by the urgency and time frame of the appeal. So the appeal character of Mein Kampf seems at first to be materially stronger than that of an Ethical Commonwealth separated from the seat of material power.
Kant’s Ethical Commonwealth is not however completely separated. Kant admonishes those against the evil principle present in a political system, evidenced by the reference to the sufferings and depravity of the people in North America. Suffering and depravity of others are results of action done from evil. So for Kant this sense of the suffering of others will be our guide to the limits of our own power. For as we cannot thus see it as it is made invisible to us, the voice, the audible character of duty in the voice of the other, demands that we listen, for the Ethical call, with our ears and our hearts. If our system is truly great, we will hear no great cries, we will build no great prisons, we will kill none of those in our system, we will deprive no others of basic involvement, there will be no great death to justify. If our system is truly great we will not make the wretched more.
‘Look at the price I demand to be Great!! and feel that it equals the depth of my hate!’

Of Gifts and Difficulty

Some will say that in matters of purpose and efficacy that all individuals are not born equal- that some possess innate gifts and talent that others do not. In some there is a facility for math and science and the understanding of abstract and complex equations, in others the facility for organization, for medicine. In others there is a facility for music, in others for languages or painting. In athletics there is the phrase ‘You can not put in what God has left out’. Sometimes the role chooses you as the facility comes so easily, so naturally to the level of function- absent in almost all other people. Difficulty in function is overwhelmed by gift, by the rare facility, by the uncommon, so much so that indeed it is not even the same level of difficulty which two people speak of. For every person on earth, to some extent this is so.
No Race has advantage over any other here, nor does either sex have advantage, nor does any Nation.
Perhaps as a man I find that I possess a gift of function- why must I demand more money from this when this is precisely the level I am good at- because I can master more functions than others? Why must I deny others of the dignity of life when I am merely meeting up to the level of my own capability? If I can try more- shouldn’t I? If I can do more- shouldn’t I? if I can make more for others shouldn’t I?
But as we now clearly hold our temporary domain over the world, dominion is only a question in the order among men, and has no real function in the survival of the species. The level of competence, function, and power of a position is compensation in itself. The work is more challenging, more interesting, more engaging, and the individual so capable. On line monitoring markets in London at 5:30 a.m., meeting with managers of different properties discussing systems at 9:00, at 10:00 overlooking reports and the details in the system-looking for glitches; phone calls to subordinates giving feedback and then monitoring decision processes through 11:00....
Perhaps as a man I look and see others less capable, or with a different facility and say that I would not want their life because mine is more exciting, because mine is more challenging, because theirs is menial, elementary labor, unskilled and exhausting, because I see no creativity or imagination- Why then must I degrade their material life?? Why must I place these gifts in the service of dominion, for my own self interest?? What is this contest that I need to make myself- not the better, but feel the better?- and use my reason and intelligence as if they were only the instruments of a supreme lullaby, as if their supreme use were to sublimate the trauma of human comparison, to justify the material judgment in the ordering of other men for our benefit.
Out of the womb without food or care You came, You would not have lived one week. But came a common woman, your mother, and doing nothing extraordinary, but with a common gentle care, she nurtured your frailty and your Possibility but with a common love. As it was her duty to do her best, so it is your duty to do your best- to nurture the world by the possibility of your gift- to give your best but with a common love.
Why should anyone expect any less of me?? Why should I demand more for myself because of this gift?? Why should I make less of others because of it? Why should I demand more money and make the wretched more?? Have I really done all I could??!! Justify yourself to yourself and to the possibility of your gift.

The ‘Kingdom’ of God
What then could possibly constitute a Kingdom of God, and in what way could we possibly relate to this Kingdom? For it seems that any sense of dominion seems silly as man views death, and therefore all life, as struggle with an enemy.
Perhaps there is a place- in the heart, where one give oneself over to the certainty of death and human processes and work. It is a place that has no place in the order of men, but has a place in the real concrete life of man. A place that relates to each man his own, in relation to each his own other.
A kingdom of God appears in the instance of an act, and in this place, in an act and in a time. In a time where the order of men vanishes- dissolves before your eyes and there are only others. There is no master. The time of life truly lived is a life with no time, and no epoch, where the conditions of all humanity are the same and have always been the same, and what is given to and for others constitute an absolute relation that presents itself to others over and over and over again. The Kingdom of God arises within and beyond all contest, in the hearts relation to the act itself- in the rise beyond the acts’ own history as act- but for the sake of others. It is this Kingdom of God in act that reorders the history of the personal act of man according to its own chance and capability, and becomes one with the structure of finite possibility, in a finite eternity. With no crowd and no cheers, no trophies. The reward of this Kingdom of God is in the beauty of what has been done for others sake. The gift of oneself resolves the conflict with death by an act that passes another beyond his death, and thus crosses the individual over from the life and time of a world in contest, over to a different time, and thus human eternity. For as time is only motion in relation to a motion of standard appearance, the time of the act of eternity leaves its own time for the sake of others, and becomes the real in the time of God. The Kingdom of God is the time of God, in the place of an absolute time, in an absolute suspension, in a place within comparison- the heart, and beyond comparison, beyond judgment, thus without social place, where the earth appears once more.
There is a justification that does not Degrade? it is one that does not contest to compare to others, but contests with itself to do it’s very best. There is a justification, of others, to lift others for no other sake but theirs. There is a justification that struggles to do all it can, but for the sake of Others. Not for the profit they pay, but for their sake. To lift up others for their sake does not degrade because it is not in the relation of man to man, but of a man to himself, to the order of what he can make- to the possibility of others and to the time of his life. Come!! Join with me!! The World is at stake!! The consequences are forever!! The time is Now!!
Lift up you hearts.
With a common love the ordinary becomes the extraordinary worthy of a dignity. An extraordinary performance for one’s own wealth is indeed a great performance, yet also only a common justification, a common degradation, a common greed.
Lift up your voice.
The spirit throughout all of Kant’s work is that of limits. The limit of thought to know the object, the limit or thought to itself in antinomy, and now in the limits of the individuals sense of power limited by the call and the voice of the other, limited by the recognition of the other as same. Kant’s ‘Religion of the Great’ limits the idea of power of the great in man. Kant stops short of saying that only the great is the good, but the structure of his Ethical commonwealth claims rather that the good throughout is what is truly great. So from Kant I will vary, vary from the place of the social world to that of a truly exalted world, beyond the limit of Reason.
Lift up your life.
Through a life of moral discipline, in living a life well pleasing to God- through action, after action, after action after action- for others. Throughout the time encapsulated by a life, throughout the time of life. So that there is no unit measured but the span encapsulated solely by this action. Perhaps it is the quality of this action that is present to God, present perhaps directly before the face of God. But it is a time that is compared, and what is this time, this life-time compared to? This life-time is compared to the time of God, moves in the time of God, comes to touch God, and effects God in a way that can be called pleasure. Within and beyond action, through the course of a life, through the path of life. So that a life placing others above the interest of itself- approaches God, comes to touch God- be with God- as a moment in the life Divine. And so this is the type of exaltation I mean when I first listen to, and then speak of, the ‘greatness’ of God- in a dazzling exaltation of the whole of mankind, an exaltation that is without compare.

Notes
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, ( New York: MacMillan Publishing Co, 1956).
2. Immanuel Kant, Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, (New York: Harper, 1960)
3. Kant, (Hereafter ‘Kant’ is in Reference to Religion Within...) pg. 31-32.
4. Paul Ricoeur, Oneself As Another, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), pg. 193.
5. Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations, (New York: Random House, 1937), pg. 3,
Chapter 1, ‘The Division of Labor’.
6. Kant, pg. 22.
7. Kant, pg. 85.
8. G.W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit, (New York: Oxford University Press, 1977) pgs. 111-119.
9. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, (London: Penguin Books, 1985).
10. Paul Ricoeur, The Conflict of Interpretations, (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1974).
11. Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, (New York: Crossroads, 1986),
pg. 273.
12. Hegel, pg. 72-76, sections 119-129.
13. Emily Dickinson, ‘J. 324’, in The American Tradition in Literature, (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1974), pg. 97.
14. Paul Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil, (New York: Paul Ricoeur in Arrangement with Harper & Row, 1967) pg. 70.
15. Jean-Jacque Rousseau, The Social Contract, (Middlesex: Maurice Cranston, 1968).
16. Carl Von Clauswitz, On War, (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1976)
17. Elaine Scarry, The Body in Pain, (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1985)
18. Kant, pg. 136-137.
19. Jacque Lacan, ‘Aggressivity in Psychoanalysis’, in Ecrits, (New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1966), pg. 20
20. Mircea Eliade, The Sacred and The Profane, (New York: Harcourt Brace Javonovich, 1959).
21. Kant, pgs. 136-137.
22. Kant, pg. 136-137.
23. Karl Marx, Capital, (New York: Random House, 1906).
24. Marx, pg. 83.
25. Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979, copyright Mary McCarthy West) pg. 302.
26. Paul Ricoeur, Fallible Man, (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986), pg. 10.
27. Martin Heidegger, Being and Time, (New York: Harper & Row, 1962), pgs. 305, 306.
28. Book of Deuteronomy, Vs. 11:26 & 30:15.
29. Adolph Hitler, Mein Kampf, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1971).
30. Kant, pg. 86.
31. Kant, pg. 106.
32. Kant, pg. 85.
33. Kant, pg. 85.
34. Hitler, pg. 343.
35. Hitler, pg. 683.
36. Hitler, pg. 577.
37. Hitler, pg. 353.
38. Hitler, pg. 353.
39. Hitler, pg. 577.
40. Hitler, pg. 572.
41. Kant, pg. 89.
42. Kant, pg. 89.
43. Kant, pg. 86.
44. Kant, pg. 86.
45. Kant, pg. 114.
46. Hitler, pg. 572.
47. Hitler, pg. 618
48. Hitler, pg. 509.
49. Kant, pg. 114.
50. Kant, pg. 105.
51. Kant, pg. 88.
52. Kant, pg. 86.
53. Hitler, pg. 343.
54. Hitler, pg. 577-578.
55. Hitler, pg. 618.
56. Kant, pg. 86.
57. Kant, pg. 85.
58. Kant, pg. 85.
59. Kant, pg. 86.
60. Kant, pg. 85.
61. Hitler, pg. 635.
62. Hitler, pg. 423.
63. Hitler, pg. 511.
64. Hitler, pg. 586.
65. Hitler, pg. 635.
66. Kant, pg. 92.
67. Hitler, pg. 683.
68. Kant, pg. 85.
69. Kant, pg. 114.
70. Hitler, pg. 516.
71. Hitler, pg. 635.
72. Hitler, pg. 423.
73. Hitler, pg. 640.
74. Hitler, pg. 427.
75. Kant, pg. 85.
76. Kant, pg. 86.
77. Kant, pg. 85.
78. Hitler, pg. 635.
79. Hitler, pg. 65.
80. Kant, pg. 86.
81. Kant, pg. 86.
82. Kant, pg. 86.
83. Hitler, pg. 640.
84. Hitler, pg. 65.
85. Hitler, pg. 583.
86. Hitler, pg. 516.
87. Hitler, pg. 577-578.
88. Hitler, pg. 635.

Chapter 7- Unity In the House of Reason

2007-09-16T11:12:00.000-07:00

We find that we share with others despite our own want, that others possess this spray of consciousness, glorious in the unity of how it feels to know, terrible in the certainty of how it thinks to fear, perfect in the unity of what it means to love and be loved.
The purpose of this essay is to describe three themes of Unity in the Critique of Pure Reason1 and therefore in the process to illuminate the arena of Unity that encompasses the entire Kantian critical project. The three themes I take up are Likeness, Necessity, and Relation, and the unity which arises through each theme. This piece does not comprise a complete exposition of these themes, but rather is a critical song, an expression and description of three fundamental notions.
The first notion of unity in the Critique of Pure Reason is the ‘affinity of the manifold’ unified in the synthesis of intuition. The second element is the active judgment of reason in bring concepts to action with another, in bringing Reason to the world through the wish to try. The third is the architectonic of Reason in the notion of subordination of concepts to a category through a common sense, and thus the unity in the subordinate relation. Reason doubles itself socially in the workings of the world, as we find likeness in the structure of our thinking with that of the structure of the cosmological world.

The Affinity of the Manifold

we are now the sons of God: and it hath not yet appeared what we shall be. We know that when he shall appear we shall be like to him; because we shall see him as he is. 1st john Ch. 3 Vs. 2 2

And ‘we shall be like to him’.
What is postulated in the Critique of Pure Reason is the possibility of the unity of consciousness, and the process of synthesis is precisely the attempt to make consciousness a unit, a thing- not just any thing, but each and every time through our efforts the ideal thing. The purpose in reason is to unify the structure of apperception to make consciousness seem one with itself. As this perception is mine, as that perception is mine, as this is the consciousness I see, the consciousness I hear, I think, I feel- is not only mine, but is me. In so far as this consciousness can be certain, I am certain.
As I consider this current state of consciousness in reflection, I am not in the present, and am not in the moment, but outside the moment, not acting in the world, but solely with myself. Reflection comes to itself as a totally self-encompassed act, therefore selfish in its very existence.
But what precisely makes this unity a project is the proliferation of what constitutes experience and what this does then to a sense of place in the world. Without unity, the certainty of self dissolves in the shotgun spray of experience, and what this means to me and thus my safety.
This consciousness I find is the same, although the experience is different, so thus the filament of intuition which brings this to consciousness constantly changes in the instant. But in fact it is indeed not a single experience but a variety of experiences which are mine, and in fact it is thus not a single experience that constitutes the unity of consciousness; but a variety of different consciousness and different colors of consciousness. So the segments of consciousness that I call mine come to the end of each day. So then that each day constitutes a new day, each day constitutes a new world, but still a world and a day that both are mine in the structure of time.
What changes this consciousness is experience in the reception of apperception as the action of another, so it is that the present can disappear and so it is that the world becomes a new world. But still it is the same new day of the same time, and as the earth spins so as to make its day into the time of a same time, so appearance becomes a standard appearance, again and again. It is a single consciousness that exists in the instant -currently-, and exists again and again and again. And in the ‘again’ of each new experience there comes sense under the fabric of dynamic flux, an ear that hears a silent language in the past, each again becomes ‘once more’. There is voice in the past of the threefold present3. This voice informs the present, gives it consul, warns the present of hidden dangers, soothes the present of its suffering by saying the suffering shall pass, exhorts the present to attain ‘the’ level of effort. The present is a collection, then collected again in reflection, collected and recollected. Kant shares this ground with Levinas4, ‘Same and other’, like. United- the affinity of the manifold.
For consciousness to exist once more, I cannot rest.
But this space and this time, these conditions of the form of experience, have been passed to me, from others, like to me, and in their existence prior to mine, compose and recompose the manifold through words. The manifold speaks as my eyes see, as my nose smells, as my tongue tastes, as my hands are touched. Existence itself resounds through-out the manifold I find before me. And so this affinity of the manifold first takes the form of appearance that promises phenomenon to be composed of things. Secondly the reach of this appearance, this view is a feeling itself, a field of domiciliation, a whisper, a voice throughout reason- a cry and song that carry with this voice a place that becomes filled not with objects, but with words that make each space such as it is. Strength in voice, as the common in choice, creates the world as a space, and carries the world through words.
Seeing is shared, hearing is shared, taste is shared, smelling is shared, touch is shared- feeling, is shared in the faculty of pleasure and pain, same and other, and ‘we shall be like to him, in the tactile weight of the skin and things, in the press of flesh and the thump of a felled body, in the flight of birds and in the suspended state of planets and the pirouette of dancers.
So the sky itself is full of feeling throughout, reaching out and touching me, painting blue throughout my eyes, soothing me just to look. I open my eyes to the touch of God, awaken to hear songs in the sounds of every-thing, played to me. Space is present to let me breathe , reaches to my lips and lungs with abundant smell. The sky exists to let me look, the soil exists to let me be nourished. The ground holds me up to let me run, to let us come home, run home, to loved ones. Everything is as it comes upon me, be-comes, and it becomes as it is revealed to us. As the world be-comes, it becomes revealed, and in being revealed we are allowed.
The bird is like to us in so far as it sings to us, as it flies for us, as its feathers are soft for us. The ground is like to us as it gives us firmness like our bones, as it gives life as we do in the birth of a child. The sky is like to us as it gives us spectrum and backdrop of light, as it gives us our breath, our fresh air, as it gives to us our rain- warm soothing, cold stinging. Shelter is like to us as our skin, as our bones. Another is like to us in all these things, and in all these ways, making for us the world more, and making our world and our view of it, every-thing. God is like to us for all these, pure, reasons, so we are like to God- but when we give- to others, when we sing, for others, when we make soft, for others, give light, for others, nourish, others, shield, others, heal, others. As God is love-(charity) in first John, so love is God in feeling, providing life for others, and is thus not only in everything, but is present through every-thing. We are like to him in unity with another, to-gether as unity- in a common sense, we- United.
In the making of space and time- the conditions of intuition- in the apriori unity of consciousness, we are like to God as words are like to the field of intuition, and we carry with these words weight like objects, and carry with them feeling, falling on us and others like a shower. As we speak to others only then does the manifold unify in the object, and not only is the object reproduced, but the manifold itself is reproduced in a spectrum. Speech presents both the form of intuition of inner sense as outer sense and the unity of this intuition, to both me and others. Shared by all like light and darkness, shared by all like the whisper and howl of the wind, sweet and sour to all alike, soft or hard to all just as well. Not only does the symbol give rise to thought, but so do things, and from the consciousness of this thing as I find myself now, I cannot rest. The ‘drawing’ of the line that reproduces the intuition that I find in myself, the unity of my thought as it comes to try, this action is a saying, a saying that points at the thing itself and says ‘this is so’, and determines the thing as the declaration to all. We know all intuition as saying, it is what we share with the extant manifold of God, it is how he is like to us, in the drawing of the object and in the act of saying, not only is the structure of consciousness unified, but the entire structure of the manifold itself is unified, reproduced, not just the object itself. So the testimony referred to in 1st John is the very deepest type of ecstatic sharing, a Glorious touch of the breadth of existence in the miraculous spray of intuition that declares, in touch, that ‘God hath said’..... And so we know this overwhelming abundance, this super-abundance of sense and perception as a saying and a singing- shine, shine, shine sings the sun.....- Blue, blue, blue, sings the sky..., wash, splash, cool, sings the ocean....whisper, howl, cry cries the wind. ‘Hello Hello Hello’ is the first thing sang by the new thing. All thinking is transposed in the form of concepts to data and vision, to the inscribed. Thinking becomes words, and thus becomes things. Weight turns the press of flesh and lifting into dials and digital data, thus the thing in vision becomes pronounced. All intuition, all perception becomes as if it were composed of words, words that we find and cannot, words that stumble and withdraw, words that become hands, enveloping the world in gentle grasp and suspended caress, and that make for us each time the ideal thing.

Absolute Necessity
The notion of logical necessity is a process of logical building from the past. What we do now logically follows from what we have done- so that what we are doing now has been certified by some sort of map. This necessity is a type of flashlight into the darkness that is the present. It Is not the future that is dark, but the present. It is ‘here’ that we find ourselves, it is ‘here’ that we do not know what to do, it is ‘here’ that we fully believe that what we have done is right. It is ‘here’ that we are told no. ‘Here’ and ‘not here’, in the space created ‘here’ and ‘not here’.
Space is a product and relation of motility, and therefore of trying, and only has meaning in relation to motility. Therefore space is the first condition of possibility. Space indicates this possibility of movement by its speaking, within the dynamic interplay in the separation and togetherness of flux. Space is that which separates us, it is distance. But distance is always a distance traveled, a distance covered, whether traveled by the work of my eyes in vision, whether traveled by the distance of hearing in calling to you, or whether it is the distance already measured and now imagined between you and I, space is that which is traveled. Space is the pirouette of the two shining hands of God, spinning a dialectical matrix of atmosphere that encompasses capability, in the projected blown kiss of the ‘Yes You can’. Space is the ache of distance, the enclosure of the ‘we’, and in the face of the other I first and always see myself. In the distance between sensation and reflection, between feeling and Reason, this firmament I see- this sky of my thought is a mirror, a mirror that looks like a sky, an exaggerated sky- from the hyperbole of thinking. Space is the first condition of possibility, and is thus charged, live. Space is within and beyond you and I, in a common sense- the spray of light of the ‘we’. Space is a condition of possible experience, our experience, and thus the light within which all experience occurs.

Space is not a discursive or, as we say, a general concept of relations of things in general, but a pure intuition. pg. 69 5

Intuition is framed in this the dynamic arena or apperception, meaning that the edge of apperception is within the space created by the dynamics of flux. The notion of extension is created, is followed out in the act, forming this arena. Space is not discursive, it is pronounced, created itself by the dynamics of relation and the valences of power, so it is not the relation of things which defines space, but the forming relations of power, of the dynamism between things, which creates space, which makes space exaggerated, as pronounced. All space is thus the second part of creation and the first part of possibility, simultaneous with the firstness of all other things, simultaneous with the firstness of all other feeling, simultaneous with the firstness of all other love.
Things appear to us- we cannot know them in themselves, but only through the framework of this intuition. Does this mean that things are only as they appear to us, perhaps, but the structure of intuition and apprehension, the force of these say that things are for us, and they are determined necessarily. Things are to us as we need them to be, things are necessarily. Throughout all the fabric of our need, present in the manner of our intuition, throughout all sense and the need of our sense, throughout the structure of intuition. Things are necessarily, as we need them to be..... certainty, certainly, in relation to the structure of our need. So As things are, this is why we love them, and so must we love them.
Separation is determined as a word- as one or two, over there, far and near- and in this distance the thing becomes not only as pronounced, but becomes subordinate to the function of need. The word of number extends this distance even more, subordination becomes equal to sublimation, as the word ‘tries to’ throw itself outside the tragic drama of suffering life. The word of number is not devoid of sympathy, but to the contrary is completely interested- self-interested- overwhelmed with sympathy to the point that sympathy must be denied. The overwrought edge of sympathy and feeling becomes the ‘you must’ of survival. Need becomes terrible, becomes necessity, and the beauty of my thinking becomes as a Razor, an instrument, and even if the ‘I’ of myself cannot escape the structure of terrible need, my thinking ‘tries to’. Terrible is the need, the incessant scratch in words of number. The transposition from word to verbal sign in mathematics is thus not only for ease of reading, but denies speech, masks the terrible need, the howling need of the words of number. The need in Mathematics is deafening, and its’ writing a howling terrible poetry, and so we try to make it silent, remove it from the signs of speech. Necessity becomes absolute.
The absolute part in absolute necessity finds an equivalence between the need in necessity and the gradation of effort, of exertion. What becomes equal to need is effort, in the rising of the will in trying, in struggling to attain the object, the objective of that need. The angst of need seems absolute, seems endless, beyond measure, and so it is. But this ache is met on the cosmological scale equally by effort. The pain of labor makes of need not ‘nothing’, but makes of need a purpose, makes of need some-thing. Effort changes need- and makes it a goal, transforms need into its own possibility. The pain and labor of exertion makes of necessity, possibility, and thus the logic of need approaches an incredible reversal, a re-order that turns inside out the valences of power in the encapsulated sphere of gravity, the hyperbolic character, the need of thought. This is the hope, the absolute hope, that arises out of the absolute depravity of need. Through need we work, through need we try, through need we help, through need we love. Within and beyond. Again and again, and again and again.
It is now that I absolutely must and it is now that I absolutely try. I bring all my effort and strain to meet and vanish the need that rises. And the effort I give becomes heavy and hard, and smells like an animal, and sounds like a beast, and I become like to objects. The effort I give brings a pain in itself, like a pain caused. In the pain of my effort I know myself, I know the ‘I’ as a thing, and I come together with the world as a collection of things. I become common with things, and become common to the need of others-and I am certain. It is the ‘I’ that can no longer carry this effort, as pain and incapacity come together upon the ‘I’ and make of me weary, make of me exhausted, make the surge of this need vanished. I find the thing-like quality of my existence both inner and present in exertion, and the excess of need becomes the vanished, becomes the ‘no more’. The urgency once absolute- through effort- becomes the ‘no more’, and all that I have done is ‘no more’. And all my labor is vain.6
In our common contest we find that the ‘I‘ is not enough, that there will be a time, that there is a time when I call out, when I ask for help, when I plea. I find in my weakness and in my dying that ‘you’ are the one that feeds me, that ‘you’ are the one that protects me, that ‘you’ are the one that heals me, that ‘you’ are the one that loves me, that ‘you’ are the one that saves me. Your labor becomes the object of my need. I find that there is no ‘I’ without ‘you’, that there is no mission without ‘you’, that there is no life without ‘you’. I find originally that- yes- ‘I’ am the one, but then I find also that ‘you’ are the one. Within and beyond the power of the ‘I’ resides the ineluctable ‘you’. All my effort and all my making are the absolute same- for through my effort all I have done is to ‘make ease’, have made the ache of the other’s need ‘no more’. And all my labor is vain, but through effort I become common with things, and through effort I become common with others. Through effort two needs become vanished and through effort I be-long. Through effort this vanity is exhausted- finally. Again and again.

A similar experiment can be tried in metaphysics, as regards, the intuition of objects. If intuition must conform to the constitution of the objects, I do not see how we could know anything of the latter a priori; but if the object (as the object of the senses) must conform to the constitution of our faculty of intuition, I have no difficulty in conceiving such a possibility. Since I cannot rest in these intuitions if they are to become known, but must relate them as representations to something as their object, and determine this latter through them, either I must assume that the concepts, by means of which I obtain this determination, conform to the object, or else I assume that the objects, or what is then something, that the experience in which alone, as given objects, they can be known, conform to the concepts. pg.-22 7

Capability is a primary vision, and in it the world changes before my eyes. However the nature of this is not idealistic in any way. What this means is that the horizon of possibility open to seemingly everyone- is not open to everyone in the same way, and remains closed contingent upon the level of capability of the individual under consideration. The world as it is, is a world of possibility, and this possibility differs so much from one to another.
Real possibility is governed by the structure of probability, by the probability that comes from contest with another, and another, and another. With the shine of possibility is the exaltation experienced with expectation, and the distance between possibility and this expectation is a series of contests with others just like me. There seems an invisible wall between the possibility of an aim and achievement of it, with unseen obstacles, with puzzles to figure out, with predators to conquer. ‘Can it happen’, this is the question affirmed in the notion of possibility. This question however is not an accurate picture of the arena of hope- it will happen, someone will be victorious in the pyramid structure of hierarchy in any competitive sphere. A team will win the NCAA tournament, a man will be #1 income earner in his or her field. So this person, this victor of the social contests of income and achievement will say look- anyone can do this- it is possible, but the reality of the whole spectrum is not that which is possible, but what happens to the whole in this distribution- and so this is how we have built our arena of hope, as materially false.
But what is before me now is open, a new day, and what is it that I want to accomplish, to do, what is it that I want to achieve. And in this wish the probabilities before me vanish, and I am set to endure what I must to achieve this end. Perhaps what the central truth of possibility is, is that to have possibility means that one is able to try to accomplish what one wishes, to try to accomplish one’s aim. How an individual confronts the steps necessary to accomplish this aim is up to the m. Here the structure of probability does not present itself as incapacity or failure, as paralysis, but as an adventure, the journey of which is not possible without trying, without effort.
This edge of effort, this horizon of capability is not however merely a conceptual border which a different perspective changes, but is a border built by the pain of negative feedback, and the disintegration of failure. The horizon of capability operates as a border of safety, of safe operation within which an individual is successful, and outside of which there seems no possibility. This is behavior the individual clings to desperately, for outside this border risks destruction. Capability frames and conditions what one sees in the world and what one can see, and thus a horizon presented by another may appear sound conceptually, but for all intents and purposes is a fantasy- is not real in any sense, for the individual can not really see it.
The negative is a closed door on the horizon of capability. Present on its face is always a way that can allow us to identify how not to do something. The negative, if we wish to use it, in this manner, then shows us how to do something, how to accomplish something, how to perform better. Possibility is always present somewhere within the negative, just where the path of possibility lies, what that possibility is, and where it will take us, these are unknown. Paths open upon trying to accomplish something that which in itself may not be achievable, but in the striving for brings incremental achievement of other aims and learning which now open other unforeseen paths and opportunities, and paid for in pain and risk. Behind every negative is a reason why not, and if we listen to this reason we can use it to map what we are doing wrong. Possibility may shine, but its path is in most instances invisible and strenuous.
Fear makes nothing. Fear learns nothing. Fear does nothing, joins nothing, loves nothing. And the sky has claws throughout, swiping down, staring at me always, watching me like prey, and the winds hiss and whisper, talking about me, conspiring to get me. Each path I walk is mined, and as I walk this path I can hear the hideous laugh rise from the mantle of the earth and I know that I am stalked. It is this way everywhere under the firmament of Terror, everywhere throughout the sky of Terror, and throughout all of this, everywhere and at all times there is no-thing, and all of this is no-thing.
Fear sits in the anguish of nothing and says that it is everything. Fear withdraws exposure of the self from the act, and paralyzes the self. There is no unity in fear, but only when we move from it. The production of fear by violence never unifies those to its cause, because there is no unity in the message. Defeat experienced in the contest of living may indeed feel like degradation but it does nothing to tell us how to live, it shows us not another way, but focuses on a pain that no other can ever take away, and that all men must live with. Terror attempts to paralyze, to stop the judgment of the world, but enters a world in which men do fear, but act anyway, do fear, but make anyway, do fear, but work anyway, do fear, but love anyway.
Terror has no voice, can say nothing but only that it has been wronged, that it is victim. Terror does not try again. The mistaken belief of Terror is that violence is power. What Terror wishes to change it cannot, for through violence there will change none of the production and capability of the world. Terror is a magnification of the weakness of the self, an attempt to show others a degradation and weakness that when felt, will change thinking. Terror thinks that the world will see it as capable and it will be restored. Terror sees its position only, and sees no difference between themselves and others, but sees itself less for it. Terror feels degraded and wishes others to feel degraded as well, only then according to Terror will the attitude change that ‘causes’ the degradation to occur. What Terror does not see is that its’ message does not connect, not because we are distanced and do not see, but its message does not connect because we have felt our own weakness, and we allow it.
We work from our weakness, and see the possibility that arises from it. Once death is accepted as a principle throughout the structure of life then No violence can ever make us feel less than dead. I do die, once I accept this the violence of what you do to me will never make me feel that you are great, will never bring approval, will never bring me together with you, will never make you capable, will never make you more. The ‘I’ is weak, I accept this about myself, but together ‘we’ are more, and in this more there is nothing that violence and terror can do.
Terror calls its own ‘victim’ in a type of attention that does not help because it exalts the incapacity of its own. Terror is a magnification, an explosion of the anticipation of suffering into the very firmament of thought- the hyperbole of weakness. Terror cannot accomplish what it wants because its focus is to bring the ‘I cannot’ into relief through the effort of others, through its violence. To make others choose, to make others love, through violence. For assistance Terror must look to itself to move into the realm of making, into the realm of doing, into the realm of the ‘I can’. So long as I am victim I do not make, so long as I am victim I do not learn, so long as I am victim I do nothing.
The ’you’ does not make solely the suffering of the ‘I’. Suffering is constitutive of the ‘I’ from the very start, and no act of another can remove all of this suffering. But an act of the ‘I’ can re-move suffering, by moving from suffering, and thus making of it some-thing. If I work to become a doctor, I move from my own suffering, when I try and help others, I move from my own suffering, when I immerse myself into the details of life, I move from my own suffering. Terror- fear, must allow itself to die to become victor, it must move from itself, and become something other, become one with the need of the other. So the light of ‘you’ takes me from fear, leads me through fear, and ‘I’ make it something other, as a shadow.

Though I should walk in the midst of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for thou art with me. Psalm 22 vs. 4 8

The relationship between possibility and necessity is thus a logical one, and thus is a relationship between need and effort in the cosmological arena of human endeavor, in the dialectics of human interdependence and capability, whereas logic attempts a linguistic mathematics of need and its subordination in the structure and order of the world. Knowledge is what we hope for through the path of reason, but through it we find that certainty is what we need, from this path- this use- of Reason. The Unity in knowing is found in the feeling of what it means to know, the certainty of knowing what to do. Certainty is the need of reason, the need to know, the need to belong. This need is not exhausted by knowledge, but informed by it, and exhausted by effort. Again, and again, and again. Capability is a primary vision, and the light of capability is effort and exertion, and through effort I become more capable and move from fear, and in this light the world as possibility opens before my eyes.

Unity and the Triune

Time as a condition of experience does not refer to the fleeting nature of experience, but refers to the formal properties of condition in the recollected nature of time’s measurement. The ability to place into suspension the dynamic nature of movement by a relation, a relation of movement to that of another movement, to the that of another movement. The dizzying whhrrrr of movement becomes clear, establishes a clarity in relation to the appearance of another such movement. Only then does there become a standard appearance, only then does the nature of time make sense- become one to the feeling of sensation and sensibility. So motion for us is a knowing in itself, becomes our way of knowing in the suspended character of the present, and enters us into a state of condition by sub-ordination- by action we enter into relation. So it is that we can know, in and through the likeness we have in and through dynamic relation, and thus the sense of different experience becomes the same experience, and brings to me the feeling of identity, the certainty of identity, all in the face of a tenuous suspended present. Through action, and thus in the midst of this type of Love, Relation becomes the lens by which our knowing is held together. Triune is the structure of dynamic relation and the clarity of synthesis, thus motion is a knowing and action becomes a unity.
Agreement occurs between the I, the other as subordinate/master and the structure of things as a common spirit, and thus common sense. There is no unity without active engagement with the structure of things- that you and I agree on the state of things does not constitute active unity per se but provides a basis to join into a unity. Agreement as unity is taken up in the Antinomy of pure reason and its resolution, in a Triune structure of synthesis. The resolution of antinomy is the use of reason to find order in the situation of conflict, to determine the proper order of subordination of concepts when presented with competing interests. Perhaps the triune structure can be better described through an elevated version of the master/slave dialectic, in a dialectical relationship of subordination to the social common sense, in a relationship of action.
The dynamics in the language of ‘God the Father, God the Son, God the Holy Spirit’ in triune theology speak directly to the dynamics of authority and subordinate relation that comes to be autonomous, that differentiates a concrete role and then comes to operate independently within and under the structure of authority, of order. The subordinate relation rests on the fractured axis of victory and defeat in the social contest of sovereignty, and thus determines the terrain and makeup of the entire social dialectic- the capability and atmosphere of social thinking, of what people can see as possible and thus how the world appears- thus the structure of hope. Order, and thus its symbol- agreement, come about through a working relationship to the larger world, through a working relationship together with a larger common spirit, common sense. Relation occurs between sets of action, between sets of use, between things as we judge them in use.
‘God the Father’ in the trinity is a symbol of the omnipresence of authority and love within the order of man- within this ordering of men- and the fracture that occurs throughout the relation between men in the midst of this love- within and beyond the relation between men.
The symbol of ‘God the Son’ subordinates the human material condition to the structure of life in general. Material human life is subordinate to the principle of life, and to life itself as a principle- the principle of approach. The material condition of ‘God the Son’ is subordinate but equal to the invisible condition of ‘God the Father’, with familial likeness active between the spheres. The principle of authority exists throughout creation, throughout the structure of love.
The pole of ‘God the Holy Spirit’ universalizes this unity and brings it to the indefinite, brings the level of likeness and power beyond the reach and capability of our action and understanding. The character of this power, its source- is elusive, over-arching, all encompassing, within and beyond the sphere of material life. Dynamism carries this life principle, but the principle does not exist solely through a dynamism alone- through an animism alone- it is shared, present in us, outside us, empowering, mysterious.
Suffering, dependent, physical, ‘God the Son’ becomes God while dying, becomes God in dying. The symbol of the ‘God the Son’ is exalted to the ultimate power, exalted to power as an ideal- as a principle, and that power as a principle is sacrifice. Sacrifice unifies, cements togetherness, exalts its power by exalting its weakness, by exalting the interest of another, by finding a strength where there was weakness. Sacrifice differs not one bit in structure from the social frame constructed by subordination, the difference however lies in the autonomy of participation, in the dissolution of contest that characterizes subordination and thus a freedom from the subordinate relation. Thus the very character of this bind is radically different.
The Architectonic of Reason, the order of Reason is formed from the order of subordination. This is the order we find in the world, this is the order we share with and bring to others, this is the order we find throughout our Reason. But this order in subordination is not the end of things. The order of men through subordination, this form, this structure finds itself subordinate to the larger common spirit, the larger common sense. Subordination comes about- not in itself- but in the collective of endeavor, of mission to serve others. It is a common mission that binds us, binds the ordering of ourselves to the order of function. Subordination is then next the subordination of contest into the structure of order. Subordination does not eliminate the contest in the spirit of man, but integrates this contest into the form of the common.
Common is our rage, common is our effort, common is our joy, common is our suffering, and common is our aim. Through contest itself we become like to others in ways so humanly basic that the identity of the other is undeniably present, and undeniably like ours, same yet other. We find ourselves like in fragile need, and in this need we find each other same. So it is that we find ourselves, together, in a common sense, we.

In the latter case the outlook is more hopeful. For experience is itself a species of knowledge which involves understanding; and understanding has rules which I must presuppose as being in me prior to objects being given to me, and therefore as being a priori. They find expression in a priori concepts to which all objects of experience necessarily conform, and with which they must agree. pg. 23 9

Agreement is the hard duet of contest that dissolves, that comes to see the opposition of the other as an asset, a value, through the course of real opposition, through struggle. The cacophony of talking at someone, in the disorder of double one way conversation, changes form, con-forms on each end and transfigures to the rhythm of a discourse, but through labor. This alternation of voices thus teaches each the common song, brings each voice to sing then at the same time, and in this singing the order of subordination becomes invisible through the focus of work, of common labor. Each comes together, sees together, speaks together, works together. The voice of each becomes then a harmony, directed by an invisible third, not middle, but higher in voice- a common voice, the silent voice of Reason. ‘Come with me’. So it is that unity between the three poles is found in real agreement, where the binds of subordination dissolve but remain clear, and the interests of each participant find an equal valuation in a common goal and come into agreement with a common spirit, the common sense that grounds the truth of power.
The agreement present Is thus first the agreement to this subordinate relation, in a clarity of human relation, of human action. Thus we become like to each other in the agreement of non-equivalence, through our own choice and its power. This Choice is a judgment, a common judgment that comes through the music of thoughts and words, and from their power. No violence ever changes this structure. Thus the voice of the civil rights movement spoke a language so powerful that none could deny, so beautiful as to make a nation tremble, to wilt guns and hate, if only for a short time. The words of these people became one with the need of others- with the common need of dignity in a song of soaring display, and others throughout saw themselves in the marchers, saw themselves in their order and this new relation. Through their choices- through their voices- the people in the civil rights movement found a common power and became victims no more.
The triune structure crystallizes in symbols the mystery of the dynamics of separation and power, with the omnipresence of authority and likeness throughout the three poles of relation- with the omnipresence of authority and likeness throughout all creation. The more we look, the more likeness we find, the more our condition remains the same. The opponent character of experience itself remains the same through the contest of each judgment. There is no present opponent, thus there is no-thing for us to conquer, there is no-one for us to conquer. Through the use of reason there is no final escape from the contest of judgment and thus from all experience. Reason is a vehicle that never escapes itself, that stays within the elements of condition no matter what the analysis produced, no matter what the analysis rendered. This changes the valences of value in the approach to life that suffers with each other, and brings us to the end of Reason and to the beginning of action. The triune structure remains- and remains as a vehicle for the preparation of faith. Reason can bring us to the advent of life anew, bring us to the understanding of the conditions- the condition of experience, and the hope that arises from this condition. Reason becomes dominant, and it is not. Reason is power, and it is not. Reason is wondrous, and it is not. Reason justifies action, and it does not. Reason triumphs, and it does not. Always. Thus the symbols of the Christian Triune crystallize the dynamics of separation and power in struggling relationship with others, in a mutual exaltation that occurs through the inflammation of the inner dynamics of need and belonging, expanding and multiplying the hyperbolic arena of a common thinking, and therefore of a common firmament of thought. Every part of this thinking and firmament immersed in feeling, every part concrete, every part ever so real. So we find ourselves, together, in a common sense, we.
Reason is shelter, for Kant, as a layer of distance between the self of the ‘me’, of mine, and the violent storm of a nature that wants to devour me, and the storm of humanity that wants to conquer me, to make me subordinate. The Architectonic of Reason is a house we build of absolute necessity that stores the fragile ‘me’, that cages the horrible ‘me’, that keeps anxious sentry through its window, that gives me a place to work, that silences the terrible, that keeps safe the love that is ‘me’, and in its absolute need cannot rest. Through the necessity of the contest of judgment and its absolute need to see the other first as a threat, the possibility of agreement arises as a choice. Through fighting each other we are able to hear the brilliance and color in the silent choice of peace. Through the agony of our wars we see the absolute glory in the choice of the common life lived, and in relationship to fear and hate we are able to find the absolute salvation chosen in a common love- larger in our thinking, ever so real. Thus the symbols of the Triune God crystallize the ineluctable paradox and mystery of this shared life- what can be called the struggle for Unity and in doing so the Unity in struggle.
Above all the dialectic of thesis- antithesis: synthesis, is a dialectic of opposition and contest, so the opposition and contest in antinomy finds a resolution in the higher voices of Reason, and so the mystery of the Triune describes in symbols the dynamics of human authority and separation within and beyond a higher togetherness, a higher common choice, a clearer common voice, divine, singing the spirit of our life.

What if all the more you wish is before your eyes, is under your nose, is within your house, everyday? Why would it be so hard to believe? Why is it so hard to believe? Perhaps all the more you wish is before you, present to you- how then would you know? Why must it look different and feel different? What if chains were casted off? And What if it were you that had to cast off these chains?
What if all the more you wish were present to you, and to others every moment, at all times? What if all the more you wish is not yours to have solely, and never was solely yours- why would it diminish you any less, all the more? What if all the more you wish- what if this Kingdom of God, were at hand, and was always at hand? Would the world end should you take this real opportunity?- Yes! But would a different life, a new life begin again? Certainly! What if this were always, has always been, part of this life- the world ending and new life beginning- in the structure of opportunity, in the choice, of participating in the real salvation of a common love?
What if the end of the world and the beginning of life happened all around you at all times in a glorious light and what if you were just afraid to look, and just afraid to believe? What if all the more you wish is already given to you, and has always been given? Perhaps all the more you wish does look different than you have ever imagined, and is yours to be given, but is also yours to make for others. Perhaps the opportunity in the need present throughout life is the key to this Kingdom of God, this Time of God, this clarity of God. Why would it be so hard to believe? Why is it so hard to believe?

Notes
1. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, (St. Martin’s Press, New York, 1929).
2. The First Epistle of St. John the Apostle, Chapter 3 Vs. 2.
3. St. Augustine, Confessions, (Doubleday, New York, 1960), Book 11 Chapter 20, pgs. 292- 293.
4. Emmanuel Levinas, Totality and Infinity, (Duquesne University Press, 1969), pg. 39.
5. Kant, pg. 69.
6. Kant, pg. 87.
7. Kant, pg. 22.
8. The Book of Psalms, Chapter 22 Vs. 4.
9. Kant, pg. 23.