In the eighteenth century and since, diverse projects have been announced under the banner of “enlightenment.” One of the philosophically most influential was espoused by Kant in “What is Enlightenment?” with the injunction: “Have the courage to use your own understanding!” This has often been connected with his strong notion of rational autonomy and interpreted in individualist terms. But that essay immediately goes on to declare that thinking for oneself is best done not alone but in concert with others, and thence to define enlightenment in terms of the “freedom to make public use of one’s reason,”2 which is the topic of the remainder of the essay. The same interdependence between using one’s own reason and reasoning in concert with others is stressed in Kant’s account of the maxims of common human understanding in the Critique of Judgment:
the first maxim, “to think for oneself,” is balanced by the second, “to think from the standpoint of everyone else.” And it is also central to his account of justice in “Perpetual Peace” and other political writings, where publicity is said to be no less a condition of right than is individual consent.
Elsewhere Kant characterizes the public use of reason ideally as open, critical, free of coercion, and subject to the requirements of consistency and coherence. On this reading, Kant’s enlightenment project envisioned the gradual extension of the public use of reason, so understood, to all domains of cultural and political life. Is this today a viable project?
After indicating what Kant understood by reason and its public use, I outline some of the problems that have arisen for his conception from the waves of naturalism, historicism, pragmatism, and pluralism in the two centuries since he propounded it. The problems have been accompanied, to be sure, by ongoing revisions of his project and of the idea of reason on which it rests. The most fully developed contemporary reformulation is that of Jürgen Habermas. Analyzing rationality in terms of communication and centering it in the appeal to reasons to gain intersubjective recognition for contestable claims, he ties public reason to the procedures, forums,
practices, and institutions in which validity claims are critically tested in various forms of public discourse. Accordingly, his “discourse” approach to questions of truth and justice may be construed as a communications-theoretic reworking of Kant’s idea of the public use of reason. With that as my point of departure, and with attention primarily to the claims of
“practical reason”—that is, to ethics and politics—I sketch a version of the project of enlightenment which, I hope, is still viable today. This will require a somewhat more pragmatic account of communicative reason than Habermas’s own, in order to meet the powerful objections to Kantian idealization, universality, and unity that spring from our growing awareness of practice, context, and diversity.
I
The central idea in Kant’s conception of enlightenment is that of submitting all claims to authority to the free examination of reason:
Reason depends on this freedom for its very existence. For reason has no dictatorial authority; its verdict is always simply the agreement of free citizens, of whom each one must be permitted to express, without let or hindrance, his objections or even his veto.3 By this means, authority deriving from reasoned agreement among individuals, each relying on his or her own independent judgment, is gradually to displace authority deriving from tradition, status, office, or might, in both theoretical and practical matters. The form of this public encounter is critique:
Our age, is in especial degree, the age of criticism [Kritik], and to criticism everything must submit. Religion through its sanctity, and law-giving through its majesty, may seek to exempt themselves from it. But they then awaken just suspicion and cannot claim the same respect which reason accords only to that which has been able to sustain the test of free and open examination.
(Kant 1961: Axi)
“Nothing,” insists Kant, “is so important through its usefulness, nothing so sacred, that it may be exempted from this searching examination, which knows no respect for persons.”4 This holds for reason itself: only through a sustained critique of reason can we ascertain its “lawful claims” and reject all “groundless pretensions” (Axi).
It is fashionable today to dismiss Kant as a thoroughgoing rationalist, thereby ignoring his own trenchant criticisms of rationalist metaphysics and his renunciation of any claim to determinate knowledge of realms
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beyond experience. In relation to theoretical inquiry, he explained, “ideas of reason” can function only heuristically, as regulative ideas that spur us on to ever-deeper explanations and ever-broader systematizations. The fundamental error of metaphysics is to understand this drive beyond the conditioned, the partial, the imperfect, as if the unconditioned, the totality, the perfect, have been or could be achieved; that is, to mistake what is merely regulative for constitutive.
This deep-rooted tendency of the human mind repeatedly gives rise to speculative illusions that have to be dialectically dispelled by critical inquiry.
This is not to say that ideas of reason are meaningless, but only that we cannot grasp them theoretically, or even have determinate knowledge of them. Rather, we have to think them in relation to practice—here the practice of empirical-theoretical inquiry. In this sphere they serve to organize, guide, and constrain our thinking by projecting a consistent, coherent, systematic unity of knowledge. However, the synthesis of such unity from the multiplicity and diversity of experience and judgment is never simply given (gegeben); it is always and forever a task (aufgegeben). I will argue below that a variation on this approach to ideas of reason in terms of their practical significance for the conduct of inquiry is still a useful way to understand our ideas of an independent reality and the truth about it.
Here I want only to note that, notwithstanding his restricting of ideas of reason to a regulative employment, Kant regards them as “indispensably necessary”5 to the proper use of our understanding and any attempt to deny them as condemned to incoherence.
The mob of sophists raise against reason the usual cry of absurdities and contradictions…. Yet it is to the beneficent influences exercised by reason that they owe the possibility of their own self-assertiveness, and indeed that very culture which enables them to blame and condemn what reason requires of them.6
Let us turn now from the role of reason in the conduct of inquiry to its role in the conduct of life, that is, to Kant’s treatment of ideas of practical reason. The main difference here is that these ideas are not merely indirectly but directly practical, that is, they are directly related to action, determining what we ought to do or aim at. In this sense practical reason is said by Kant to function directly as a source of objective, universally valid laws, without the intermediation of experience and understanding that is indispensable to reason’s theoretical employment. However, the laws it generates are purely formal in nature, as, paradigmatically, with the categorical imperative. They receive their content only through being situationally applied by moral agents. In this sense, they too are inherently indeterminate and require filling-in with concrete moral experience, deliberation, and judgment in particular moral situations (and, I might
add, not necessarily in the ways indicated by Kant’s own examples). Thus the idea of duty as action dictated solely by the force of universalizing reason, or the idea of persons as ends in themselves who may not be acted against, the ideal (i.e. idea in individuo) of a kingdom of ends as an association of free and equal rational beings under universal laws they give themselves, the idea of right as the maximum freedom of each so far as this is compatible with a like freedom for all under general laws, the idea of an original (social) contract as based in the united (general) will of a people, or the idea of a cosmopolitan society in which rights, justice, and the rule of law are secured internationally—all function only as general constraints upon, and orientations for, action in particular circumstances. In practice they have to be continually contextualized as changing circumstances demand. And like their theoretical counterparts, these practical ideas function as principles of coherent, systematic unity, only now we have to do with the unity of rational beings under common laws which they give to themselves. Thus the “supreme condition of harmony with universal practical reason”7 combines the first version of the categorical imperative—the idea of acting on reasons or grounds (“maxims”) that are “objective,” i.e. valid for all rational beings—with the second version—the idea that persons are “objective” ends, i.e. ends for rational agents as such, inasmuch as each rational agent regards herself in this way and thus, by virtue of the first version, must so regard all others—to yield the ideal of a kingdom of ends, “the systematic union of different rational beings through common laws.”8
Correspondingly, the moral point of view, as an idea of reason combining respect for each’s ends with principles valid for all, considers actions and norms in relation “to that legislation through which alone a kingdom of ends is possible.”9 Thus, in both theoretical and practical matters, reason for Kant functions as a capacity for finding or creating unity in diversity, and of doing so non-coercively, with appeal only to the free agreement of individuals thinking for themselves.
If we turn now to Kant’s more explicitly political writings, we find the same dual emphasis on individuality and commonality, autonomy and universality, voluntary acknowledgment and intersubjective agreement. Thus, as noted above, in “What is Enlightenment?” the courage to use one’s own reason and the freedom to make public use of one’s reason are said to be interdependent moments of the enlightenment project. The specific form of public reason Kant has in mind is that of addressing “the entire reading public,” be it of a commonwealth or of cosmopolitan society as a whole. But this is only a particular schema, more appropriate perhaps to an age of the incipient print mediation of public affairs, for the general idea of a public discourse addressed to what Chaim Perelman has called the “universal audience.” For whether in theoretical or practical matters, the mark of objectivity for Kant is agreement resulting from “universal
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human reason in which each has his own say.”10 In practice, it is ascertained precisely in and through public debate and criticism: only what stands up to critical-rational scrutiny merits the voluntary acknowledgment of each member of the universal audience.
The social embodiment of this enlightenment ideal is a “moral whole”
having the legal-political shape of a “civil society which can administer justice universally.”11 And it is precisely this idea of “a perfectly just civil constitution”12 that is the most reliable measure of progress in enlightenment. In considering the latter, we should “concentrate our attention on civic constitutions, their laws, and the mutual relations among states,”13 for it is only in such legal-political frames that “the germs implanted [in us] by nature can be developed fully.”14 As indicated, this holds not only for relationships within particular commonwealths, but for relationships among them. “The problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution is dependent upon the problem of a law-governed external relationship with other states and cannot be solved unless the latter is solved.”15 Thus the overarching goal of Kant’s enlightenment project in the legal-political sphere is “a federation of peoples, in which every state, even the smallest, could expect to derive its security and rights.”16 Only the “universal cosmopolitan existence” afforded by such a “civil union of mankind” could serve as a “matrix in which all the original capacities of the human race may develop.”17
Is something like this Kantian project of enlightenment viable today?
There are strong arguments on both sides. The public use of “theoretical”
reason has, however imperfectly, been culturally developed and institutionally embodied in the arts and sciences, universities and research institutes, publishing houses and professional journals, and so forth, of the scientific, scholarly, and artistic worlds. And the public use of “practical” reason has, with more mixed results, been developed and embodied in the legal and political practices and institutions of modern democratic societies. The historical failures, especially in the areas of practical reason, are as familiar as the successes. Here, however, I want to focus on philosophical problems with the very conception of reason at the heart of Kant’s enlightenment project. To be brief, the naturalism, historicism, pragmatism, and pluralism of the last century-and-a-half has made the detranscendentalization and decentering of Kantian reason unavoidable. The residue of metaphysics in the noumenal-phenomenal split that under-girds it, the dominance of mentalism in the design and execution of its critique, and the subordination of diversity built into its aspiration to unity are no longer tenable. “Pure”
reason has had to make fundamental and lasting concessions to the impurities of language and culture, temporality and history, practice and interest, body and desire. More specifically, Kant’s notion of using one’s own reason, thinking for oneself, has to be tempered with the ineliminable background of what is always already taken for granted in doing so—the
preconceptions, prejudgments, and preunderstandings that inform any rational undertaking. His stress on agreement and consensus, especially on the “united will” of a people as the source of the legitimacy of its laws, has to be tempered with acknowledgment of persistent reasonable disagreements in theory and in practice. And his idealized conception of the public use of reason has to be tempered with a heightened awareness of the significance of context and audience in assessing the strength of reasons and the cogency of arguments.
A revealing case in point is Kant’s classically rationalist, hierarchical, distinction between conviction and persuasion.18 Holding something to be true is said to be conviction if it rests on “objective grounds” and is therefore “valid for everyone” possessed of reason. It is said to be persuasion if it has its grounds “only in the special character of the subject,” be it an individual or a group. Persuasion is “illusion” if its grounds are taken to be objective, for it has only “private validity.” The “touchstone” whereby we determine whether holding something as true is one or the other is
“the possibility of communicating it and finding it to be valid for all human reason.” Thus, it is only in and through the effort to secure universal agreement that we can “test upon the understanding of others whether those grounds of the judgment which are valid for us have the same effect on the reason of others as on our own.” However, in practice we can do this only by attempting to convince particular audiences and holding the discussion open to others. And that means that “subjective” factors—
for instance, who is being addressed, where and when, in what connection and for what purpose, against which taken-for-granted background, and so on—will inevitably figure in the processes and outcomes of such communication. What we need here is an account of the interplay between the universal and particular. But that would point toward a conception of reason that escapes Kant’s strict dichotomies. And it would require balancing his stress on “systematic unity” with a correlative recognition of irreducible diversity. The question is, whether all this can be done without giving up on Kant’s enlightenment project. Can we desublimate and decenter his transcendental-philosophical conception of reason and still make sense of the ideas and ideals at the heart of his project?
A number of thinkers since Kant have essayed affirmative responses to this question. By and large, they have come to agree that examining the nature, scope, and limits of reason calls for modes of inquiry that go beyond the bounds of traditional philosophical analysis. Once we turn our attention from consciousness to culture and society it becomes clear that rational practices, including epistemic practices like researching and theorizing, have to be viewed in their sociocultural contexts if they are to be understood and appraised. From this perspective, the critique of
“impure” reason belongs to the study of culture and society, and aspires to practical import. It aims to reform and enhance our self-understanding
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as rational beings in ways that affect how we live. This sort of practically significant sociohistorical critique of impure reason has been a live option since the time of the Left-Hegelians. Variants of it dominated the philosophical scene in the United States during the heyday of American Pragma-tism. I now consider briefly some ideas of its most important contemporary representative, Jürgen Habermas.
II
Habermas shifts the focus of the critique of reason from forms of transcendental consciousness to forms of interpersonal communication.
Accordingly, he understands objective validity, both theoretical and practical, in relation to reasoned agreement concerning defeasible claims. The key to communicative rationality is the use of reasons or grounds—the
“unforced force” of the better argument—to gain intersubjective recognition for such claims. This leads, on the one side, to a discourse theory of truth and, on the other, to a discourse theory of justice. The enlightenment project then becomes a matter of cultivating suitable forms of theoretical and practical discourse, and of establishing the institutions and practices required to give them social effect. In regard to theoretical discourse, this requires improving the cultural and institutional conditions for empirical research, theoretical inquiry, scholarly activity, and the like. In regard to practical discourse, it requires reforming the cultural and institutional conditions for moral, legal, and political deliberation and strengthening its role in our lives.
Like Kant’s transcendental approach, Habermas’s communicative approach assigns an indispensable function to ideas of reason, only now they are understood as pragmatic presuppositions of communication which are constitutive of basic forms of social practice, and in this sense unavoidable, but which at the same time project a completeness and final-ity unattainable in practice. They are, as it were, “constitutive idealizations”
of rational practices. We shall take a closer look at some of them below.
But here it is important to see that this approach is meant to undercut the immanent-transcendent, real-ideal, and fact-norm dichotomies that have plagued Kantianism. Ideas of reason are now firmly located within social reality. As ideal presuppositions of rational practices, they are actually effective in defining social situations and at the same time contrary to fact in ways that transcend the limits of those situations. This tension at
But here it is important to see that this approach is meant to undercut the immanent-transcendent, real-ideal, and fact-norm dichotomies that have plagued Kantianism. Ideas of reason are now firmly located within social reality. As ideal presuppositions of rational practices, they are actually effective in defining social situations and at the same time contrary to fact in ways that transcend the limits of those situations. This tension at