Imagination in Kant's Critique of Practical Reason

Seven: Methodology of Pure Practical Reason: Images and Ecstasy

s e v e n Methodology of Pure Practical Reason Images and Ecstasy The Methodology (Methodenlehre) of pure theoretical reason concerned itself with “the determinations of the formal conditions of a complete system of pure reason” (A707–708, B735–36). This determination concerned itself primarily with reason’s general task of holding itself within the limits prescribed by the nature of the elements disclosed in the Elementarlehre or, to employ Kant’s architectural metaphor of building, instead of “a tower which should reach to the heavens,” “a dwelling-house just suf¤cient for our business on the level of experience and just suf¤ciently high to allow of our overlooking it” (A707, B735). Building and attending to such a dwellinghouse required a great deal of care bestowed upon many different matters, both concerning the building of the house and the way of dwelling within it.1 The Methodology of Pure Practical Reason, by contrast, is terse. It has only one matter before it, namely “the way in which we can secure to the laws of pure practical reason access to the human mind and an in®uence on its maxims” (V, 151). This section appears to bear at least some external, analogous resemblance to the education of the guardians in Plato’s Republic. As in the latter, the image-making machinery is directed toward the human soul in order to shape its responses in a certain way. The differences , of course, are clear. The image-education of the guardians is designed to produce warriors who will identify their own good with what is good for their city. Further, the guardians are lied to at every turn.2 But the similarity rests upon their common goal of directing desire away from natural “sensuous attachments” (in Kant’s language ) to a moral steadfastness analogous to the steadfastness of the Platonic guardian in the face of danger. Despite this analogical similarity, a similarity that would reinforce the traditional view of Kant’s moral philosophy as austere and ascetic , I suggest that the practical Methodenlehre makes the case clearly and positively for the view that has been suggested throughout this interpretation but could only come forth properly now. Not only is it mistaken to characterize Kant’s moral philosophy in such gray terms, but it misses its fundamental truth: this is an ecstatic view of human beings, presenting a possibility of life heretofore unsuspected (although , in my view, present also in the playfulness of the Platonic dialogues, which the Kantian critiques resemble both so little and so much). The selection of images, as will soon be shown, is designed to provide access to that ecstasy. By “ecstasy,” I intend all of the following meanings simultaneously : (1) in its literal Greek sense of ek-stasis, standing outside, here outside the pathological, time-determined order of sensation, but also (2) for Kant, given our ¤nitude, ecstasy means standing at once outside/inside this order, i.e., capable of an originary self-insertion into the order of sensation, from a heterogeneous, intelligible source, and ¤nally (3) in its more common English meaning as rapture, thrill, elation. The general task is “to bring either an as yet uneducated or a depraved (verwildestes) mind onto the track of the morally good” (V, 152). This requires an initial address to the causally determined side of our nature through external appeals to advantage or harm, followed by appeals to “the pure moral motive.” By this means, “in teaching a man to feel his own worth, it gives his mind a power, unexpected even by himself, to pull himself loose from all sensuous attachments (so far as they would govern him) and, in the independence of his intelligible nature and in the greatness of soul to which he sees himself called (bestimmt sieht), to ¤nd himself richly com119 Methodology of Pure Practical Reason pensated for the sacri¤ce he makes” (V, 152). Kant notes that this method has never been widely used, so its results in experience cannot be assessed. However, the receptivity of human beings to such a method can be adduced. This ¤rst exposition gives a glimpse of the ecstatic nature of morality for Kant. In the very act of conceiving the pure moral motive as a living possibility, the measure of life is transformed for the human being in such a way that the manifest pleasures of sensuous existence are experienced as small by comparison. Such a...