Transcript Oct 24 - Acsu Buffalo

4 Blinding the Eyes of Justice
1
Injustice in this life
• The bad people are rewarded
– Misdemeanors of Lester, who wins the beautiful
Halley
– Crimes of Judah, who escapes without
punishment, with the love of his wife, and the
undeserved respect of the community
• The good are punished
– Cliff with failure, Ben with blindness (and Louis
Levi, with despair)
2
Job’s complaint: God is unjust
• “Why does he look on and laugh, when the
unoffending, too, must suffer? So the whole
world is given up into the power of wrongdoers; he blinds the eyes of justice. He is
answerable for it; who else?”
3
Does this contradict Kant?
• Highest Good as “keystone” of morality
– Moral duty > Highest Good
• But “ought implies can”: if a moral world is
impossible, then the moral vision “must be
fantastic, directed to empty ends, and
consequently inherently false.”
• =“Antinomy of Practical Reason”
4
Arguments for the impossibility of
morality: 1) Louis Levy
• “But the universe is a pretty cold place. It’s we
who invest it with our feelings.”
• “Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly.
Human happiness does not seem to have
been included in the design of creation.”
5
Levy’s (implicit) argument
• =Science explains events by external causes
governing the natural and social world.
• These movements of matter are indifferent to
individual human beings.
• = Apparent implication of “Copernican
revolution” in science, versus geocentric view.
6
Arguments for the impossibility of
morality: 2) Kant (a)
• Laws of science imply determinism, and the
rule of “heteronomous laws”
• Morality implies that we are free, and can live
according to laws we make ourselves
(autonomous laws)
• If science is true, morality is impossible.
7
Arguments for the impossibility of
morality: 2) Kant (b)
• Social science (Adam Smith): self-interest governs
economic life.
• Impersonal laws of market (supply and demand)
govern distribution of wealth
• Happiness depends (in part) on this distribution of
wealth.
• Cliff: “It’s worse than dog-eat-dog. It’s dog doesn’t
answer other dog’s phone calls.”
8
Contradiction in Levy’s
existentialism?
• A) The universe is “cold,” loveless, and meaningless
because it is governed by laws of external causality.
• B) And yet “We are all faced throughout our lives with
agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a
grand scale. Most of these choices are on a lesser
scale. But we define ourselves by the choices we have
made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices.”
9
Science and human freedom
• If A is true, and the universe is governed by
external causes
• Then how is B even possible?
• B implies that people are responsible for their
own actions:
• i.e., that the universe is not governed by
outside causes (alone)
10
How is human freedom possible in
a materialist world?
• Natural world is governed by outside, material
causes (Newton’s first law)
• How can beings who govern themselves
evolve or “emerge” in such a world?
• Social science (Adam Smith) confirms this
determinism: people acting for their own
interests are governed by outside causes (laws
of the market)
11
Louis Levi on the God of the
tradition
• “The unique thing that happened to the early
Israelites was that they conceived a God that
cares. He cares but he also demands at the
same time that you behave morally. But here
comes the paradox. What’s one of the first
things that that God asks?
12
• “That God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only
son, his beloved son to Him. In other words, in
spite of millennia of efforts we have not
succeeded to create a really and entirely
loving image of a God. This was beyond our
capacity to imagine.”
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14
Levy’s solution
• 1) Does not explain how there can be genuine
freedom in a “cold” (i.e., deterministic) world.
• 2) But supposing this is possible (though
absurd), we should try to project love and
search for love
15
• 3) Religion attempts to imagine a God of love,
and a moral or just universe.
• 4) But we see the failure of such an attempt in
the Hebrew Testament (Abraham and Isaac)
• 5) =Contradiction of projecting love in a world
we know (believe?) to be inherently loveless?
16
Kant’s Solution
• The laws of science are a priori synthetic rules
for constituting experience.
• They apply to appearances, not to things in
themselves.
• They apply to cognitive experience, not to
moral practice.
• “It is necessary to deny knowledge, in order to
make room for faith.”
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Science or morality: what is real?
18
World of appearance
• 1) Natural world with its deterministic laws.
• 2) Social world in which the market
determines the distribution of material
rewards and punishments
19
3rd Formulation of CI
• “In the kingdom of ends everything has either
a price or a dignity. If it has a price, something
else can be put in its place as an equivalent; if
it is exalted above all price and so admits of no
equivalent, then it has a dignity.
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(Market) value as relative price
• “What is relative to universal human
inclinations and needs has a market price;
what, even without presupposing a need,
accords with a certain taste—that is, with
satisfaction in the mere purposeless play of
our mental powers—has a fancy price;
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Moral value as intrinsic Dignity
• “but that which constitutes the sole condition
under which anything can be an end in itself
has not merely a relative value—that is, a
price—but has an intrinsic value—that is,
dignity.”
22
Heteronomy of the social world is
made by us
• Heteronomy: living according to externallydetermined laws
• This is a consequence of our own law of
action: putting the ego first.
• This creates division: ego v. ego
• We create a world that deprives us of our
freedom: I v. everyone else
• >We could create a different world.
23
Kant on moral despair
• The morally committed person needs to
support this commitment with “postulates”
about the nature of reality.
• Otherwise he/she will give up, despair, re
moral goals.
• And egotistical goals will be the only valid
ones. (Conclusions of Lester and Judah re the
“real world”)
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First postulate (belief): freedom
• Moral practice postulates
– free will (not being determined)
– and positive freedom (living according to laws we make
ourselves)
• Faith or belief is necessary for authentic freedom
• Levy therefore believes – he doesn’t know: 1) that he is
free to choose; 2) that the universe is a meaningless,
loveless place.
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Other postulates
• But then why not believe in a truly loving God
and/or benevolent universe?
• Why not believe in the possibility of creating a
fundamentally just and loving world?
• Basic question: what are the postulates or
beliefs necessary to support the moral
perspective at which Levy aims?
26
Kant’s Critique of external religion
• But this does not mean support of the
traditional religion that Judah’s father teaches.
• A God of rewards and punishment: Such
beliefs undermine the motive of duty.
• Morality requires a different God and
immortality from that of traditional religion.
27
Belief and Imagination
What the Bible, Shakespeare, and
Hollywood Movies have in Common
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Main ideas
•
•
•
•
1) What is the experience of duty
2) How do we know what our duty is?
3) Highest good: keystone of duty
4) Is it possible, realizable?
– The problem of science: natural and social
– Kant’s solution
• 5) Postulates
• 6) Importance of imagination
29
Topics
• 1) Sensible world of 1999 and intelligible
world of Highest Good (Zion, Shakespeare,
Hollywood endings, etc.)
– What is the basic law of our social world?
– Is an alternative law possible?
– The Postulate of God = power of realization
• 2) Beyond the postulates: The power of
imagination
30
Logic and belief
• “Does everything have to be logical?”
• Kant’s reply: the “transcendental logic” of the sciences
applies to appearances, not to reality in itself.
• =The “real world” of Jack and Judah is an illusion, a
construction.
• Compare with The Matrix: Our world of 1999.
– (Fantasy and Woody Allen’s “Realism”)
31
The maxim of our economic world
• “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher,
the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our
dinner, but from their regard to their own
interest.”
• Cliff: “It’s worse than dog-eat-dog. It’s dog
doesn’t answer other dog’s phone calls.”
32
Indifferent universe or indifferent
social world?
• Levi: “But the universe is a pretty cold place.
It’s we who invest it with our feelings. And
under certain conditions, we feel that the
thing isn’t worth it any more.”
• What feelings do we project from our loveless,
ego-based, social world?
33
Three kinds of freedom
• Freedom as doing what I want to do.
– But desires are caused by circumstances,
education and nature. (science)
– So “free” people have no free will.
• Freedom as not being bound by external laws
(free will—negative freedom)
• Freedom as realizing a law I give to myself.
(positive freedom)
34
Heteronomy
• Law of separate ego (self-interest)
• When I act for ego-based desires, aroused in me by
outside forces, I alienate my freedom.
• = “heteronomy” (heteros: other; nomos: law)
• We determine ourselves to be governed by outside
forces. We allow ourselves to be enslaved.
– The Matrix depends on the people themselves (recall 1st Matrix
of Paradise)
– We create the dog-eat-dog world.
35
Ego-based desires
• When I act as an ego, I see myself as separate
from others (other egos)
• My egotism therefore implicitly creates a
world of others who act against me.
• There is a law implicit in ego-based action:
“Each man for himself, and the devil take the
hindmost.”
• =We create a world based on this “law.”
36
Autonomy
• Freedom is acting on the basis of laws we give
ourselves.
• The law of egotism is also a law we give ourselves,
but not one that we can consciously will. (How know
what is duty?)
• Autonomy is acting according to a law we can
consciously will.
• = A law in which ego is subordinate to our shared
humanity.
37
The “real world” that we “know”
• Adam Smith: social world is the outcome of the selfinterested actions of individuals
• The power of the Market is the expression of the
individuals who produce it
• It then rules over them as an apparently separate
force, an “Invisible Hand”
• =The God that rules the world is US!
38
Postulate of freedom
• Kant: we choose to define ourselves as separate egos
• but we can also choose a different identity: as sharing
humans.
• People must believe they are capable of morality.
Postulates.
• Postulate of freedom: ability to choose duty against the
forces of one’s own, and others’, desires and fears.
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B Postulate of God (1)
• Freedom: ability to freely choose
• But we must also believe that we have the
power and intelligence to realize the highest
good.
• Q: But how can we counteract the power of
the Market?
• A: This is our own power, alienated
(heteronomy)
40
Postulate of God (2)
• Invisible Hand of Adam Smith
• =outside power, intelligence, (Intelligible
world) regulating the market (sensible world)
• = A system of power ruling over individuals
who feed into this system their life energies
and intelligence.
• > God of External Religion: demands that
Abraham sacrifice Isaac (Levy)
41
Postulate of God (3)
• Recall Kant on relation between intelligible
and sensible worlds:
• “the person as belonging to the sensible world
is subject to his own personality as belonging
to the intelligible [supersensible] world.”
– Recall Buffy’s heaven
• =the person is the cause of The Matrix.
42
Postulate of God (4)
•
•
•
•
New Matrix of shared humanity.
“third formulation” of CI: Kingdom of Ends
> realization of the Highest Good
Humanity is the “invisible hand” that creates The
Matrix of The Market – by its law of egotism
• Humanity has the power to recreate the world by the
law of shared humanity.
• Hence the humanity in us is holy (God)
43
Choice between two laws
• Choose between ego-based desires and duty:
• law of ego: world of separate egos produces
alien power of the market, the state, and
external religion: External God
• Law of personality, humanity: our own power
restored to us from its alienation: “The
Kingdom of God is within you.”
44
Two directions of human bioenergy
• 6 Billion people put energy into an external
system that rules over them.
– In economic life, we are governed by the laws of
the market operating as an Invisible Hand to
produce growing wealth
– In religion: all powerful God rules us
• Suppose each person reflects energy back to
the other, sharing energy
• Energy of 6 Billion flows into each person.
• United, we experience “divinity” within us
45
Three approaches to the possibility
of morality
• 1) Negative: Critique of the objectivity of
scientific laws.
– --So morality is logically possible.
• 2) Positive: Moral experience of duty—
– shows that we are in contact with a power that
transcends the sensible world: our personality
• 3) Aesthetic experience
46
Willing suspension of disbelief
• Samuel Taylor Coleridge asked from his readers "that
willing suspension of disbelief for the moment that
constitutes poetic faith" (Coleridge ch. xiv).
• Bible, Shakespeare, and Hollywood movies with happy
endings for the good, dutiful people.
• =In religion and art, we imagine the Highest Good
47
What happens when we watch an
engaging movie?
•
•
•
•
1. diminished perception of our bodies;
2. diminished perception of our environment;
3. diminished perception of probability;
4. we respond emotionally to the known
fiction as though it were real.
• 5. we enter and participate in an alternate
reality
48
Kant on disinterestedness of
beauty, art
• 1) We suspend practical goals—utility.
– I.e., We are disinterested, not governed by “selfinterest” or ego: (in beauty as in morality)
• 2) We experience pleasure in the harmony of
our faculties (unity of sensible and intelligible
worlds)
– Imagination links reason (higher ideas) and
sensibility in a harmony
49
Kant on beauty
• “Beauty is a symbol of Morality”
• “The enjoyment of nature is the mark of a
good soul”
50
Role of imagination in religion
• Levy: “In other words, in spite of millennia of
efforts we have not succeeded to create a
really and entirely loving image of a God. This
was beyond our capacity to imagine.”
• But Rabbi Ben can imagine this
51
Two different visions of life
• (To Judah, his eye doctor): “It’s a fundamental
difference in the way we see the world. You
see it as harsh and empty of values and
pitiless. And I couldn’t go on living if I didn’t
feel with all my heart a moral structure, with
real meaning, and … forgiveness. And some
kind of higher power. Otherwise there’s no
basis to know how to live. And I know you well
enough to know there’s a spark of that notion
somewhere inside you too.”
52
Judah’s dream versus the “real”
• Judah to Jack: “What dream was I following
that I got in so deep?”
• Jack: “Playing hard ball was never your game.
You never like to get your hands dirty. But
apparently this woman is for real, and this
thing isn’t just going to go away.”
53
Dolores's vision
• Dolores: “You’re always so much more relaxed
away from home. You come to life. Your whole
face changes.”
• Judah rejects the dream of a different life for
his world of privilege as a winner in dog-eatdog life
54
Cliff’s happy moments
• His response to Judah’s “movie”: “I would
have him turn himself in. Because then, you
see, your story assumes tragic proportions,
because in the absence of [an external] God or
something he is forced to assume that
responsibility himself. Then you have tragedy.”
55
Judah rejects “fiction”
• Judah’s reply: “But that’s fiction. That’s
movies. You’ve seen too many movies. I’m
talking about reality. If you want a happy
ending you should see a Hollywood movie.”
56
Kant’s movie: 1) comedy
• “Suppose that someone says his lust is
irresistible when the desired object and
opportunity are present. Ask him whether he
would not control his passion if, in front of the
house where he has this opportunity, a
gallows were erected on which he would be
hanged immediately after gratifying his lust.
We do not have to guess very long what his
answer would be.”
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Freedom or determinism?
• 1) I cannot help myself before this powerful
sex drive
• 2) Oh, yes you can! [Picture a gallows outside
the house of pleasure and ill repute]
• 3) Does this example prove free will?
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Which drive is more powerful?
• 1) Sex drive
• 2) Survival
• Recall Hobbes: “Freedom” = being able to
realize your desires
• But this does not contradict determinism
because you do not control your desires
• Hume: reason is a slave to passion
– Morality is a (disinterested) passion
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Kant’s movie: 2) tragedy
• “But ask him whether he thinks it would be
possible for him to overcome his love of life,
however great it may be, if his sovereign
threatened him with the same sudden death
unless he made a false deposition against an
honorable man whom the ruler wished to
destroy under a plausible pretext.
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Imagine … What would you do?
• “Whether he would or not he perhaps will not
venture to say; but that it would be possible
for him he would certainly admit without
hesitation. He judges, therefore, that he can
do something because he knows that he
ought, and he recognizes that he is free—a
fact which, without the moral law, would have
remained unknown to him.”
61
More powerful than life
• There is a force more powerful than the drive
for survival
• It is recognized in duty
• Sidney Carton, before the guillotine: “It is a
far, far better thing that I do now than I have
ever done.” (Charles Dickens, Tale of Two
Cities)
• What is the source of the experience of moral
duty?
62
Role of Imagination
• Lifts us out of practical world
– Of dog-eat-dog
– World of egotism and injustice
• We can imagine a different world in which our
moral ideas are realized in sensible form
• Morally inspiring art is needed to sustain us as
well as “postulates”
63
Power of Imagination, Duty
• Power of self-interested desires
– suspended by consideration of duty: another
source of power
– also suspended by beautiful imaginings
64
Levy’s cold universe
• 1) Objective fact?
• 2) Projection of human coldness and
indifference of ego-based world?
65
The natural world: 3 views
• 1) As perceived around us pre-Copernican
view: benevolent world that centers on us
• 2) As depicted in science (Copernican
revolution): cold, indifferent
• 3) The sensible reality as meaningful to the
poet and artist: return to 1 through morallyinspired imagination
66
Kant’s critique of “knowledge”
• Science gives us appearance.
• Reality in itself is unknowable
• Postulate of Morality: It is a field of
potentiality on which we can project our own
goals
– Kant criticizes classical mechanics
– But here we have quantum mechanics!
• We can view nature as having purposes that
support our highest goals
67
Two perspectives on the Universe
• It’s cold and indifferent
– Perspective of cause-effect between spatially
separate entities evolving in linear time
• It’s beautiful and sustaining
– Look at the dome of the sky
– The beauty of trees, animals
• Which supports the ideals of duty?
68
Van Gogh’s Starry Night
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Woody Allen and The Matrix
• Look at “Crimes and Misdemeanors” from the
perspective of The Matrix
– Judah’s real world—based on dog-eat-dog
– Lester’s success—based on entertaining his
audience, responding to the demands of the
market.
•  This is an illusion that we have created for
ourselves
72
Is this really real?
• Or a choice?
– How hard Judah must work to “keep up
appearances”
– His other life through love, passion
73
Alternative worlds
• But some imagine other worlds
– Sol’s Bible and Shakespeare
– Cliff’s Hollywood movies
– Ben’s Kingdom of God
• “But that’s fiction.”
• And yet imagination has its own reality
– We live a vicarious life
– Our ego-drives are suspended
74
Rousseau on raptures experienced
in “fiction”
• If there is nothing moral in the heart of man,
what is the source of these transports of
admiration for heroic actions, these raptures
of love for great souls? What relation does this
enthusiasm for virtue have to our private
interest? Why would I want to be Cato, who
disembowels himself, rather than Caesar
triumphant?
– Émile, op. cit., 287.
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