Kate Peacock
GBT5 paper #2
August 2, 2000
Lightning flashed through the
heavy curtains in the dimly lit room, briefly dispelling the eerie shadows
lurking about the cobwebby corners. A
muscular, black man wearing a long, leather overcoat and small sunglasses reclined
in an armchair across from Neo. The man
was speaking in dark, cool tones while he absent-mindedly turned a small black
box over and over in his massive hands.
Suddenly his movement stopped and the black man was abruptly still as he
looked Neo in the eye and seriously asked him, “Do you know what I’m talking
about?”
In a husky voice, Neo
replied, “The matrix.” It was hard to
tell whether he was answering the first question, or merely asking another
question himself.
The black man looked
pleased. Again remaining deadly
serious, he probed, “Do you want to know what it is?”
Neo hung on his every
word. He looked like a starving man,
desperate to hear the truth. Faced with
the prospect of the answer to his most furtive question, he could only nod in
the affirmative slightly.
Thunder colored the air as
the black man explained, “The matrix is everywhere. It is all around us, even in this very room. You see it when you look out your window or
when you turn on your television. You
can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your
taxes. It is the world that has been
pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”
Later, Neo learned that the
matrix was an artificial world all human beings had been mentally connected to
which tricked them into thinking it was actually the real world. It was controlled by a race of hostile
machines that harvested energy from the humans enslaved in the matrix. The “matrix” was a 3-D, fully interactive
deception; a series of electronic signals tricking one’s senses, a virtual
reality – not the real world.
Although the fast-paced,
eye-catching thriller, The Matrix, was made primarily to entertain its
audience with a clever plot and special effects, the idea of a “virtual
reality” has been around for over a hundred years and has provided serious
philosophical issues for philosophers in the 19th and 20th
centuries. The matrix, the deceptive
virtual reality, provides a good example of a critical concept Immanuel Kant
presented in his book, Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. Kant also believed in a “matrix.” He was convinced that he could not be sure
of what was actually real, but only of reality as he perceived it, much like
the humans in the matrix, who didn’t know the “real world” but only what their
senses told them. Unlike Neo in the
movie, Kant was not kept in the “matrix” by a race of hostile computers, but by
his own mind. To use his own words from
the Prolegomena, “I…say that things as objects of our senses existing
outside us are given, but we know nothing of what they may be in themselves,
knowing only their appearances, that is, the representations which they cause
in us by our senses.” (Remark II
section 11) Or, in other words, there
is reality outside of us somewhere, but we cannot grasp the knowledge of it
because all of our knowledge is based in the interpretation of what our senses
tell us, which may not be reliable.
The “matrix” is also similar
to the “dark cave” analogy in Plato’s Republic. The people chained in the “dark cave,” like
the people trapped in the “matrix,” could only see the perverted shadows cast
on the back wall of the cave and only hear distorted echoes ringing around
them. They interpreted these things as the
real world because they had never known anything else. They too were living in a deception, an
artificial world, a dark place of oppression.
Kant’s “matrix” and basic
epistemological underpinnings are described in The Prolegomena along
with several fascinating conclusions stemming from Kant’s unique
worldview. The most important and
far-reaching of these conclusions was the intellectual exclusion of the
metaphysical or the supernatural realm which Kant labeled the noumena. This division of knowledge was Kant’s most
profound legacy to modern philosophy as it opened the door for completely
relativistic thinking. Later, Hegel’s
work Phenomenology of the Spirit provided an excellent example of
relativism arising from Kant’s exclusion of the noumena.
However, despite his
prominent influence on philosophy, Kant’s rational ideas were far from
flawless. In fact, Fredrich Nietzsche
challenged and refuted several of Kant’s most important ideas in his book Beyond
Good and Evil. Nietzsche found
Kant’s inquiries to be rationally inadequate and in some places,
ridiculous. For Nietzsche, Kant’s ideas
were merely a stepping stone to a darker philosophy.
The Foundations for Kant’s
Philosophy – Epistemology and Methodology
The philosophies of the
thinkers in any age will always be greatly influenced by their method of
epistemology, or the way in which they think knowledge is attained. It might be difficult to imagine how a
rational person could concoct such an incredible theory as Kant’s “matrix”, yet
it was Kant’s search for completely accurate and secure knowledge, especially
with regard to metaphysics, that led him to adopt his bizarre philosophy. Kant was infatuated with the idea of
establishing absolute certainty in philosophy exclusively from reason. His approach to philosophy consisted in perpetually
demanding completely certain or a priori knowledge from reason
alone. He displays this meticulous
rational thoroughness in a comment in the Introduction to his Prolegomena. “But pure reason is a sphere so separate
and self-contained that we cannot touch a part of it without affecting all the
rest…It may then, be said of such a critique that it is never trustworthy
except it be perfectly complete, down to the most minute elements of pure
reason. In the sphere of this faculty
you can determine and define either everything or nothing.” The only things of importance in Kant’s
epistemology were a priori judgments derived exclusively from his own
reason. For Kant, something had to be
completely certain, or not certain at all.
Friedrich Nietzsche described
modern philosophy as “an epistemological skepticism.” (Beyond Good and Evil, section 43) This simply means that modern philosophy
essentially doubts the extent, content and certainty of knowledge. Throughout the ancient world and during the
Middle Ages, this skepticism was not considered necessary because of the
universally accepted “first principles” which formed the foundations for
philosophy. These foundations included
a confidence in man’s ability to reason logically, a belief that the senses
conveyed reality to the mind as it truly was and the validity of faith as
“proof for things unseen.” Similar to
Euclid’s use of “common notions” for constructing geometrical propositions, the
ancients and medievals used elementary assumptions such as these for objective
philosophic study.
The modern era of skepticism
that Nietzsche described arose around the time of the Renaissance in
Europe. Rationalists, like Rene
Descartes, were only one of the many philosophic groups that started to
question traditional beliefs about truth.
Descartes was a prominent Rationalist who invented analytic geometry and
loved the precision of mathematics. He
wished to apply complete rational accuracy as contained in mathematics to
speculative philosophy. Doubt played a
large role in the establishment of this certainty as seen in part four of
Descartes’ treatise On Method.
He explains, “because…I wanted to give myself entirely to the search
after truth, I thought it was necessary for me to…reject as absolutely false
everything as to which I could imagine the least ground of doubt in order to
see if afterwards there remained anything in my belief that was entirely
certain.” Descartes desperately
wanted to be absolutely sure of what he knew; therefore, anything that could
not be proved exclusively from pure reason was “rejected as absolutely false.”
However, Descartes did retain
certain first principles as shown in his Principles of Philosophy (I, para 28
and 76). He states, “but we must
keep in mind what has been said, that we must trust to this natural light [reason]
only so long as nothing contrary to it is revealed by God Himself…Above all
we should impress on our memory as an infallible rule that what God has
revealed to us is incomparably more certain than anything else; and that we
ought to submit to the Divine authority rather than to our own judgement even
though the light of reason may seem to us to suggest with the utmost clearness
and evidence, something opposite.”
In other words, although Descartes doubted many traditional beliefs that
he had borrowed from other men, he could not doubt the knowledge that he had
acquired from God through revelation.
As modern philosophy has
progressed however, it has shown disdain for revelation and all traditional
beliefs in general over and over again.
It supposedly insults the intellectual pride to borrow any truths from
previous thinkers. Kant and Nietzsche
provide two clear examples of the modernistic demand for intellectual
independence. In Beyond Good and
Evil, Nietzsche explains the mindset of the “new philosophers” with regard
to “common ideas.”
“…[the new philosophers] will certainly not be dogmatists. It must offend their pride, also their taste, if their truth is
supposed to be a truth for everyman – which has so far been the secret wish and
hidden meaning of all dogmatic aspirations…how should there be a “common
good”! The term contradicts itself;
whatever can be common always has little value…”My judgment is my judgment”: no
one else is easily entitled to it –that is what such a philosopher of the
future may perhaps say of himself.”
(From Beyond Good and Evil, section 43)
Nietzsche’s “new philosopher”
has an extremely individualistic view of truth. The philosophers of the future will pull themselves up “by their
own bootstraps” and viciously guard their own truth. They are independent and solitary thinkers.
Kant also expresses great
pride in the Introduction to the Prolegomena while claiming to have
produced an entirely original system of metaphysics. He says,
“the Prolegomena is a perfectly new science, of
which no one
has ever even
thought, the very idea of which was unknown, and for
which nothing hitherto accomplished can be of the
smallest use.”
To paraphrase, “This study in metaphysics is entirely new and
exclusively of my own invention. Forged
independently through reason alone, it will replace all of the previous studies
of metaphysics.” Again, Kant asserts
the importance and significance of an entirely new science.
The method of modern
“epistemological skepticism” progressed to a deeper level in Kant’s philosophy
of metaphysics. Regardless of all
previous studies of the subject, he decided to delve into the foundations of
metaphysical philosophy himself and evaluate whether or not it could even have
a reliable basis as scientific philosophy.
Kant’s classification of the different types of judgments, his
consideration of how the mind forms its ideas as well as the aforementioned
“matrix” theory collaborate in the Prolegomena to form Kant’s
conclusions on the rational validity of a formal science of metaphysics.
The Critique of Pure
Reason, Kant’s literary masterpiece, contains the most exhaustive and
elaborate explanation of Kantian philosophy.
Yet because the Critique was enormous and extremely difficult to
decipher, Kant also wrote Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, as a
“Cliff Notes” version of his metaphysical philosophy. Although complicated and obscure in some places as well, the Prolegomena
lays out Kant’s metaphysical observations more lucidly than the Critique.
The Prolegomena begins
with a classification of the different types of judgements which are possible
for the mind to formulate as well as a clarification of the kind of statements
that compose metaphysics. The
clarification helps to explain Kant’s purpose in writing the Prolegomena. The classification provides the vocabulary
for the rest of the book, as well as the foundation for the “matrix” idea and
subsequent theories. Most importantly,
Kant distinguishes the difference between analytic a priori judgments
and synthetic judgments.
Analytic judgments are explicative, derived by the law of non-contradiction, and a priori by nature. Kant explains that they are derived by the law of non-contradiction; “for the predicate of an affirmative analytical judgment is already contained in the concept of the subject, of which it cannot be denied without contradiction.” (Prolegomena Preamble section 2) This means that the predicate, which describes the subject in an analytic judgment, can be deduced directly from knowledge of the subject itself. Take for example the analytic statement, “A horse is a mammal.” This proposition can be immediately stated from the understanding of what a horse is. Therefore it is derived by the law of non-contradiction: for what would the horse be if not a mammal? A bird? No, for then it would not be a horse. As this reasoning from the law of non-contradiction needs no further experience than the immediate knowledge of the subject; analytic judgments are empirical and a priori, that is coming from pure reason and understanding, by nature.
Synthetic
statements on the other hand are expansive, derived by intuition and can either
be a priori or a posteriori.
Synthetic judgments seek to expand the horizons of knowledge by
exploring and “synthesizing” new ideas.
They take two unrelated concepts and logically join them together. Although they must never violate the law of
non-contradiction, their predicate cannot be found exclusively in their
subject, thus they cannot be effectively derived by the law of
non-contradiction alone. As Kant states,
“a synthetic proposition can indeed be established by the law of
non-contradiction, but only by presupposing another synthetical proposition
from which it follows, but never by that law alone.” (Prolegomena,
Preamble section 2, part 2)
Synthetical judgments cannot be founded in the law of non-contradiction
alone; therefore they require intuition for their construction. Intuition is instantaneous apprehension, or
the immediate knowing or learning of something without the aid of conscious
reason. To quote from the Preamble, “intuition
must come to aid us. It alone makes the
synthesis possible.” Intuition
builds mental “bridges” in the mind that connect and synthesize independent
ideas.
The examples Kant provides of
synthetic statements are judgments of experience, mathematical judgments and
metaphysical judgments. Consider the
following example of a mathematical synthetic statement: “five plus seven equals twelve.” This perhaps
appears to be an analytic judgment, but do not be fooled. The concepts “five” and “seven” are
unrelated and distinct ideas. Further,
you cannot find the quality of “twelve”
in either concept. Intuition in the
mind takes these two distinct ideas and “builds” the mental “bridge” to the
number twelve. Without the aid of intuition,
the synthesis will never occur. An example of a judgment of experience might be, “pizza is
delicious.” Judgments of experience, like “pizza is delicious,” take individual
observances and extend them to universal principles. Because they construct propositions apart
from simple analysis and also reflect one’s personal perspective of a certain
situation, they may or may not be true.
Accurate mathematical judgments on the other hand, do reflect objective
universal truths and generate their conclusions from universally accepted
rational methods. They construct their
statements through simple analysis of those universal principles. Although both are synthetic statements because
they require an intuition for their establishment, these two examples differ
from one another because one is a posteriori, or reasoned from
particulars to general principals, and the other a priori. An a posteriori inquiry involves inductive reasoning, or
reasoning from detailed facts to general principles and may or may not be true. Judgements of experience are synthetic a
posteriori statements. An a
priori inquiry involves deductive
reasoning, or reasoning from the general to the particular, and
is always accurate. Mathematical
statements are synthetic a priori judgments.
Metaphysical knowledge, by
definition, implies the study of that which is beyond the physical world and
beyond experience. Thus, it cannot be
analytic knowledge, because all analytic knowledge requires an object from
experience to analyze. Therefore, metaphysical
judgments are purely synthetic.
However, the study of metaphysics in order to be useful also demands
objective certainty or a priori certainty. This leads to Kant’s clarification at the end of section 2, “the
generation of a priori knowledge by intuition as well as by concepts, in fine,
of synthetical propositions a priori, especially in philosophical knowledge,
constitutes the essential subject of metaphysics.” Or more simply, metaphysics must be entirely
composed of synthetic propositions a priori.
Kant’s entire purpose in
writing the Prolegomena revolves around metaphysics and their rational,
scientific validity. The key characteristic of Kantian philosophy is the demand
for completely rational or a priori knowledge. For Kant, something must be completely certain, or not certain at
all. Though many people had erected
systems of metaphysics before him, Kant was not sure that metaphysics was even
capable of being a priori philosophy.
Therefore, as his primary purpose in the Prolegomena, he doubts
even the possibility of metaphysics as a valid subject for a priori
philosophy. To use his own words from
the Prolegomena’s Introduction; ‘My purpose is to persuade all those
who think metaphysics worth studying that it is absolutely necessary to pause a
moment and, regarding all that has been done as though undone, to propose first
the preliminary question, “Whether such a thing as metaphysics be even
possible?” ’ In short, he
challenges those who pursue metaphysics to disregard all the previous studies
of the subject, and ask themselves if the science is rationally possible.
To accomplish this purpose,
Kant presses the critical question: “How are synthetic propositions a priori
possible?” Or, more clearly, how
is the mind able to synthesize abstract metaphysical material with a priori
certainty? This question was immensely
important to Kant. In fact, he goes
even so far as to say, “Metaphysics stands or falls with the solution of
this problem; its very existence depends upon it. Let anyone make metaphysical assertions with ever so much
plausibility, let him overwhelm us with conclusions; but if he has not
previously proved able to answer this question satisfactorily, I have a right
to say: This is all vain, baseless philosophy and false wisdom.” (Prolegomena, Preamble section 5) In other words, the explanation of how
“synthetic propositions a priori” are possible is the key to
establishing the science of metaphysics.
If a philosopher cannot answer this vital question, he does not have the
credentials to speculate on the supernatural.
When asking how
statements can be established by intuition a priori, (as in mathematics
or metaphysics, for example) Kant comes to the conclusion that they must first
be established as forms (or ideas) in the mind. Kant includes the argument for this position in the Critique,
but it goes beyond the scope of this paper.
Yet because all judgments must first be established in the mind, Kant
makes the statement that we cannot know things as they are in themselves, but
only as they appear to us. “I…say
that things as objects of our senses existing outside us are given, but we know
nothing of what they may be in themselves, knowing only their appearances, that
is the representations which they cause in us by our senses.” (Remark II, section 11) Kant pointed out that any perceived object
is projected into the mind by the mind.
We do not observe the world rather we create it. Thus, we can only know a thing as we
perceive it, not the thing itself.
Again, the “matrix” provides a good illustration of this concept. Kant does not deny that there are things “in
themselves” or things as they are in reality; however, he states that it is
impossible for people to know them. “The
existence of the thing that appears is thereby not destroyed, but it is only
shown that we cannot possibly know it by the senses as it is in itself.” (Remark II, section 11)
Because all analytic
knowledge depends on sense perception for its derivation, through his “matrix”
idea, Kant severely restricted the area of cosmology (or philosophy of the
world) as men could no longer rely on their senses for truth. A person’s experiences were not composed of
the real world, but only of how the brain interpreted what one’s senses told
him. Yet, however limited Kant’s
experiences of reality were because of his “matrix” mindset, he realized that
experience was his only way of gathering information. Kant explains in section 34 of the Prolegomena, “Experience
must therefore contain all the objects for our concepts.” In this quote, Kant asserts that
experience has a monopoly on “all the objects of our concepts” or the material
from which we form ideas. Without
experience, we do not have any concrete particular examples on which to base
our abstract, universal ideas. Kant
continues in section 34 to say, “ but beyond [experience] no concepts have
any significance, as there is no intuition that might offer them a
foundation.” In other words, without experience, all that
remains is pure abstract ideas “which have no significance” as there is “no
intuition” to “offer them a foundation.”
Based on this principle of
gaining information through experience alone, Kant divides knowledge into two
categories, one realm of knowledge derived from experience and containing valid
a priori knowledge and the other containing uncertain theories
formulated merely by assumption and imagination. The valid objects of experience or possible experience were
collected into one category named the “phenomenon.” Kant first referred to this group in section 11: “The form of
the phenomenon, that is, pure intuition, can by all means be represented as
preceding from ourselves, that is, a priori.”
The phenomenon is the realm of knowledge based on experience that we
immediately comprehend through the interpretation of our senses. In other words, the phenomenon is the
“matrix,” the world that we comprehend through our perceptions by pure
intuition.
Metaphysics, by its very
nature, transcends our experience and belongs to the second category called the
“noumena.” Kant also referred to
this group as “things in themselves,” “pure beings of understanding,” “beings
of thought” and “the void.” (Section 45)
The “noumena” contains material beyond possible experience like
metaphysical theories that transcend empirical intuition. Included in this field is the belief of God,
of angels, of eternal souls, of Platonic forms, of moral absolute standards, of
miracles and any other supernatural concepts that cannot be an element of the
usual phenomenon. Of these Kant says, “But
as there is no intuition at all beyond the field of sensibility, these pure
concepts as they cannot possibly be exhibited in concreto, are void of all
meaning; consequently all these noumena…are from the nature of our
understanding, totally impossible.”
As we cannot perceive the objects of the noumena in any way, they
have no basis in intuition a priori, (i.e. experience), thus are
impossible to establish with any certainty.
In section 30 Kant again states the impossibility and meaninglessness of
the noumena: “Hence if even the pure concepts of the understanding
are thought to go beyond objects of experience to things in themselves
(noumena), they have no meaning whatsoever.”
The exclusion of the noumena
has several depressing consequences in Kant, especially regarding the
eternality of the soul, the idea of a Supreme Being and the limits of
knowledge. Because we cannot know the noumena,
(that is, things beyond experience), Kant states in section 48, “The
permanence of the soul can therefore only be proved during the life of a man,
but not, as we desire to do, after death.”
In section 42, Kant reaches a decision about the rational validity of
God. “We must, according to a right
maxim of the philosophy of nature, refrain from explaining the design of nature
as drawn from the will of a Supreme Being, because this would not be natural
philosophy but a confession that we have come to the end of it.” God in his infiniteness transcends our
finite capacity for experience and intuition.
Thus according to Kant, God cannot be known for certain.
John Calvin, a Christian
theologian of the 1500’s wrote in his book, The Institutes of the Christian
Religion, “Our wisdom, if it is to be thought genuine, consists almost
entirely of two parts: the knowledge of God and of ourselves.” According to Kant, God goes beyond
experience, thus belonging to the mysterious noumena that cannot be
known for certain. Kant also
states that it cannot be known whether or not men possess an eternal soul. Also including this as a part of the
elimination of the noumena, Kant “de-souls” men, drastically changing
their perspective of themselves and other men.
According to Kant, men cannot even begin to know whether or not a part
of themselves survives physical death.
By imposing a division between the phenomenon and the noumena,
Kant has banished even the possibility of knowing God or the spiritual
component in men, thus knocking down the foundations of genuine wisdom
according to orthodox Christianity.
After Kant imposed the
division excluding the metaphysical noumena, the only thing left for
“real” philosophers to pursue was the empirical phenomenon. There was no completely rational way to
securely establish a system of metaphysical philosophy. Therefore, metaphysics was abandoned. This shift in the concept of truth was
essential in the development of modern philosophy. The ancients and medievals looked outside of themselves into the noumena
for objective truth; the moderns starting with Kant and other like him began to
look for truth exclusively in the phenomenon. Yet, even in the phenomenon “truth” is merely one’s own
particular perspective. Remember that
the phenomenon is the “matrix” where reality is “created” by one’s own
sense-intuition and brain-interpretation.
Thus, in a Kantian frame of mind, even an attempted study of the outside
world (cosmology) basically boils down to a study in psychology (a study of
one’s self.)
Following Kant’s
division of the phenomenon and the noumena, Hegel opened the door
for completely relativistic thinking.
This should not be a surprising consequence of Kantian philosophy. After all, when the noumena was
estranged, all of the absolute standards that belong to the noumena were
rejected as well. To have some kind of
ethical guidelines, men started looking to the phenomenon and inside
themselves for moral truth.
In the Phenomenology,
Hegel creates a timeline of philosophic reason depicting the different stages
of thought that show how philosophy progressed through the ages. Hegel examines each of the stages of thought
and formulates a sterotype representing each basic philosophy. He compares his sterotypes to a “gallery of
images” and “a slow moving succession of Spirits.” (section 808) The Phenomenology, similar to an art
gallery displaying great paintings, exhibits “snap-shots” of the different
stages of philosophic development laid out in an organized chronological
history.
Throughout the
different stages of thought, Hegel includes a fascinating conflict between “the
universal” and “the particular.” The
universal can be thought of as an absolute (and previously metaphysical)
standard that encompasses the whole of life in a very general sense. The particular reaches into the details of
life and addresses specific individuals and cases. Throughout the Phenomenology, Hegel draws out the
difficulty that almost every philosophy in the history of the mind has had in
reconciling these naturally contradictory concepts.
Interestingly,
God, as revealed in the Bible, perfectly reconciles the universal and the
particular. Job 28:24 says, “For he
[God] looks to the ends of the earth, and sees everything under the
heavens.” Yet, in Matthew 6, Jesus
states that God feeds the birds of the air and clothes the grass of the field,
taking interest in the tiny particulars of the universe. God exercises infinite authority, wisdom and
power over the vast universe in general, but also attends to the smallest
details of life.
However, after
Kant, the knowledge of God was rejected through the “matrix” theory and
elimination of the noumena, and a philosopher could not rationally
establish absolute standards through one “universal/particular” God. Therefore, Hegel tried to discover some
rational way in which to reconcile the universal and particular without
God. He classifies and describes his
observations of the history of philosophic reason using the method of the
dialectic, commonly known as “thesis,” “antithesis,” and “synthesis.” Hegel’s solution, the Happy Consciousness,
eliminates one all-powerful God and deifies all men.
Looking at a few
of the mental “snap-shots” immediately before the Happy Consciousness will
dramatically aid the understanding of what the Happy Consciousness
represents. The conflict between the
universal and particular is especially important to note. For example, “the Stoic” adopts a very
universal, detached approach to thought and philosophy. The Stoic strives to transcend his immediate
surrounding to enter into the vast absolutes above in order to overcome the
challenges and problems of everyday life.
Yet, in doing so, he disregards the small details and inconsistencies in
his philosophy. The Stoic remains confident
that he knows truth, but cannot defend himself against detailed, specific
criticism. The antithesis of the Stoic
is the Skeptic, who cannot accept the Stoic’s broad generalizations and view of
truth because of the little conflicting details he discovers and points out. The Skeptic, being the opposite of the
Stoic, dwells completely in the particular and resigns himself to the
impossibility of ever finding truth.
After the Stoic
and the Skeptic there comes a forlorn character whom Hegel calls the “Unhappy
Consciousness.” The Unhappy
Consciousness is miserable because like the Stoic, he longs for absolute
truth. Unlike the Stoic and like the
Skeptic, he also sees the conflicting particulars around him that he cannot
reconcile with each other. Unlike the
Skeptic though, he cannot resign himself to the impossibility of achieving
truth. He wrestles and agonizes over
the questions, but all his struggles are insufficient to bring the peace he
requires and desperately desires. The
Unhappy Consciousness joins the doubt of the Skeptic with the desire of the
Stoic. Hegel summarizes his character
stating, “The Unhappy Consciousness is the consciousness of the self as a
dual-natured, merely contradictory being.”
(Section 206)
Out of this
pitiful mess of battling universals and particulars known as the Unhappy
Consciousness, there emerges the enlightened, confident chap Hegel calls the
“Happy Consciousness.” Hegel frames the
Happy Consciousness as the ideal and height of philosophic development. The Happy Consciousness also provides a
practical application of theoretical Kantian philosophy. Instead of estranging the universal and the
particular and making himself miserable like the Unhappy Consciousness, the
Happy Consciousness unites the universal and particular in himself, producing
peace and harmony between the two elements.
Instead of setting the metaphysical and empirical in antithesis, Hegel
blends the two in a synthesis. The
Happy Consciousness becomes the universal by assuming infinite moral,
philosophic and ethical authority, while remaining a particular as he realizes
that authority applies only to himself.
He has all authority over himself and no authority over anyone else.
Hegel’s solution
eliminates one all-powerful God and deifies all men. He sets up all people as “gods” by asserting that all people have
the right to create absolute standards for themselves. Hegel expresses this idea in numerous
sections of the Phenomenology, section 655 being a prime example.
He says, “Consciousness,
then, in the majesty of its elevation above specific law and every content of
duty, puts whatever content it pleases into its knowing and willing.”
Or more simply,
consciousness in its sublime majesty transcends particular, external law and
can decide for itself what is right for itself. Hegel continues, “It is the moral genius which knows the inner
voice of what it immediately knows to be a divine voice…” Or, intelligent men know that the voice of
their inner intuition is divine. Hegel
proceeds to say, “…it is the divine creative power which in its Notion
possesses the spontaneity of life.”
Similarly, the moral genius’ creativity can make any action to be
right. Hegel finishes by saying, “Equally,
it is in its own self divine worship, for its action is the contemplation of
its own divinity.” In short, to
become a Happy Consciousness is to practice a religion of self-worship.
Besides the obvious blasphemy against God, the undesirable consequences of this mindset may outweigh the advantages. After all, when people have the equal right to decide truth for themselves, no statement can have any more weight than one’s own personal opinion. A person may not tell another person what to do, for each person has his own individuality and right to decide his own truth. Each man becomes an isolated individual. Although the Happy Consciousness may be self-sufficient and “a god”, being cut-off from the rest of mankind as he is, he cannot become anything more than a divinity with a congregation of one. He is ultimate and alone.
Hegel’s
conclusions about a “personal absolute” are a direct outgrowth of Kant’s
intellectual rejection of the metaphysical and a continuation of the
modernistic desire for intellectual independence. Hegel sought to combine the universal and the particular elements
of life by changing the concept of truth to suit himself. However, the most that can be said for
Hegel’s Happy Consciousness is that it still did cling to moral
principles. The Happy Consciousness
continued to embrace a standard of “good” and
“truth” even though that standard was a personal, self-centered perversion
of goodness and truth. Hegel’s Happy
Consciousness was egotistical, but he did admit that he could not have
authority and power over other people who had with their own standards. The Happy Consciousness was “tolerant”, and
in that respect, comparatively harmless.
A serious problem
arises in Hegel’s system of “personal absolutes” when morality and
righteousness are completely abandoned.
Ironically, Nietzsche disposes of all ideas of moral ethics using Kant’s
own method of critical inquiry and doubt.
Although Nietzsche soundly refutes the “matrix idea,” he also extended
the spectrum of skepticism by asking why truth should even be pursued. Kant probed “if metaphysics could be even
possible” and greatly desired truth and accuracy in philosophy but Nietzsche
demanded to know why truth and accuracy were rationally important. In section one of his book Beyond Good
and Evil he says:
“The will to
truth which will still tempt us to many a venture, that famous truthfulness of
which all philosophers so far have spoken with respect – what questions has
this will to truth not laid before us!
What strange, wicked, questionable questions!…Indeed, we came to a long
halt at the question about the cause of this will – until we finally came to a
complete stop before a still more basic question. We asked about the value of this will. Suppose we want truth: why not rather
untruth? And uncertainty? Even ignorance?”
This significant
passage holds a lot of important information.
The “will to truth” which Nietzsche speaks of was the motivation that
drove Kant, Descartes and all the previous philosophers to devote their lives
looking for the real answers to their philosophic questions. However, in this quote, Nietzsche treats
this instinctive philosophic urge with disdain. After pondering the source of the “will to truth” for a long
while with no results, he suddenly realizes a more foundational question – why
should we follow this “will to truth”?
What value does it contain? Can
we rationally justify sacrificing our time making ourselves miserable by
agonizing over complex philosophical problems?
Nietzsche asked why we should not rather be content with untruth? “And uncertainty? Even ignorance?” In this
way, Nietzsche demonstrates how dark and despairing rationalism can become by
merely following a method of critical inquiry very similar to Kant’s to its
rational conclusions.
CS Lewis says in The
Abolition of Man, “the Nietzschean ethic can be accepted only if we are
ready to scrap traditional morals as a mere error and then to put ourselves in
a position where we can find no ground for any value judgements at all.”
Not only does Nietzsche generally discredit Kant by rejecting the “will to truth,” he also specifically refutes Kant’s “matrix” theory by a surprising reductio ad absurdum. Remember in the “matrix” concept, Kant believed that people “create” their world by conceptualizing the sensations received by their senses. Nietzsche responds; “What?… the external world is the work of our organs [senses]? But then our body, as a part of this external world, would be the work of our organs! But then our organs themselves would be – the work of our organs! It seems to me that this is a complete reductio ad absurdum…consequently, the external world is not the work of our organs ?”
After doubting
the “will to truth” and refuting the matrix theory, Nietzsche comes to the
conclusions that one should not pursue knowledge for truth. Rather, knowledge should be pursued
practically for a purpose – power.
Dispensing with the old philosophers who followed the will to truth,
Nietzsche proposed a new class of philosophers, “Free Spirits” to exercise the
“will to power.” The “Free Spirit” was
an original thinker, innovative, ruthless and independent. He transcended all the rules. He was “beyond good and evil.” Like Hegel’s Happy Consciousness, the Free
Spirit was his own master and chose his own rules. Unlike the Happy Consciousness, the Free Spirit had a “bad
attitude.” Being the height of
intolerance and political incorrectness, a Free Spirit did not shirk at the
idea of using his knowledge to exploit others.
Nietzsche, like
Hegel, altered the concept of truth using extreme rationalism. By means of critical analysis, he refutes
Kant’s very important “matrix” theory and bankrupts the “will to truth.” In its place, he erects the new system of
the “will to power” which rejects reason, truth and goodness if they do not
serve immediate practical purposes. His
philosophers, the Free Spirits are ruthless antagonists, willing to do whatever
it takes to satisfy their frenzied lust for power.
Socrates’ analogy
of the “dark cave”, in Book Seven of Plato’s Republic illustrates the
concept of the “matrix” and division of knowledge very well. Down below the surface of the earth, people
are chained with their backs to the faint sunlight shining dimly down, unable
to see anything but fleeting shadows in the dark, nor hear anything but ringing
echoes bouncing off the cold, hard walls.
These people always naturally assumed that what they were viewing was
substantial and actual, until one day when one man was unchained and forcibly
dragged away from the darkness and up the narrow shaft to the bright, real
world above. At first overwhelmed with
the incredible clearness and light, the man could not see anything, but
gradually his eyes grew accustomed to the brightness and he understood reality
as it really was for the first time in his life. To Socrates, this man who travels upwards becomes the true
philosopher.
The phenomenon,
or the “matrix” can be compared to the “dark cave.” People are confined to knowing only to what their senses tell
them, not reality as it is. In a way,
they create their own world for they may interpret the shadows however they
please. The noumena, or the
metaphysical realm is the bright world above which gives light to the “mind’s
eye” and provides a criterion for judging the shadows below. The noumena, the bright world above,
infuses meaning and purpose into the phenomenon.
Imagine Kant
chained in the darkness of the cave.
Had Someone come to him to drag him up to the light, he probably would
have pulled himself away, muttering “How are synthetic propositions a priori
possible? How are synthetic
propositions a priori possible?”
Because of his strict rationalism, Kant closed the door on the noumena
and sentenced himself to life in the cave.
After the exclusion of the metaphysical from the realm of secure knowledge, truth was drastically changed for all subsequent philosophers. In direct contrast to Socrates who pointed up to the bright world of the metaphysical for meaning and truth, the philosophers now looked deeper into the darkness of the “matrix” to discover what was real in life. The phenomenon and the noumena, the matrix and the metaphysical were set at antithesis as mutually exclusive arenas, violently antagonistic against one another.
Hegel could have been a man chained in the cave who tried to reconcile the matrix and metaphysical without moving from his chains. He remained in Kant’s dichotomy trying to make it work. His theory was that all the men in the cave could keep to themselves and think whatever they wanted about anything. They were all “gods;” they were their own light, meaning and purpose in the oppressive darkness.
Nietzsche might have been chained next to Hegel with his relativism and Kant with his rationalism, but he was a bit more realistic and pessimistic than either of them. He disregarded Kant’s matrix idea as unrealistic and ridiculous, but instead of returning to Socrates’ position of finding truth above, Nietzsche sneered at the “will to truth” in despair. After all, why did he want to find truth so badly anyway? His idea was to become king of the cave and enjoy the power of commanding and ruling all of his cellmates.
The common thread
that unites Kant, Hegel and Nietzsche is their prevalent reliance on rationalism,
epistemological skepticism and intellectual individualism. They formed their philosophies by dissecting
and dividing knowledge, relying entirely on reason and immediate empirical data
in the “matrix”, or “in the cave.” They
followed Kant who completely changed the concept of truth with his method of
“epistemological skepticism” and in his divisions. Yet, by changing the concept of truth to include only the phenomenon
and basic sense perception these philosophers also cut out all the purpose to
their rationalism. Without the
metaphysical realm of value and objectivity the physical realm of material and
subjectivity had no structure. The new
philosophers rendered the metaphysical world unattainable and the “matrix”
meaningless.
Thomas Howard
compares the “old myth” of Socrates, Aquinas and other ancient or medieval
thinkers to the “new myth” of the modern philosophers. “The myth sovereign in the old age was
that everything means everything. The
myth sovereign in the new is that nothing means nothing.” [from The Chance or the Dance?: A
Critique of Modern Secularism] In
the “old age,” knowledge was a unified whole, interconnected and
inter-dependant so that everything rested on everything else and gave
everything meaning. In the “new age,”
knowledge is divided and egocentric: nothing has any moral or practical
meaning.
C.S. Lewis
explains this in an interesting way; “From propositions about fact alone
[i.e. the phenomenon] no practical conclusions can ever be drawn. ‘This will preserve society’ cannot lead
directly to ‘do this’ except by the mediation of ‘society ought to be
preserved’…trying to get a conclusion in the imperative mood out of premises in
the indicative mood…is impossible.” Without
the value judgments that the noumena provides, no “imperatives” can be
formed. All a person may rationally
hope to achieve are the obvious indicative statements within the phenomenon. As Nietzsche illustrates, no moral, ethical
or practical structure can be formed from these indicative statements. One is merely left with disconnected,
meaningless data.
Matthew Arnold in
God in the Bible wrote, “The
freethinking of one age is the common sense of the next.” This is exactly the reason why studying and
understanding Kant and the ensuing philosophers is so important. Their ideas have been the canvas on which
relativism, egalitarianism and humanism seen in modern culture, science, art,
philosophy and theology have been painted.
Francis Schaeffer, in the foreword to his book Escape from Reason,
sums up the importance of understanding these thought forms extremely
well.
For Christians, the study of Kant, Hegel, Nietzsche and
other philosophers travels far deeper than only a fascinating hobby. Knowing the thought-forms of these men
provides the “language” of the modern world: a necessary tool if they wish to
communicate with their fellow “cave-men.”
Then, while conveying the truth, Christians can pray for God to “unplug”
the people trapped in the darkness of the “matrix” and drag them up to the
sunlight where they may rejoice in actual reality.