After reading Diana Hsiehs's analysis, one is likely to ask whether David Kelley's view of the mind-body dichotomy was always inconsistent with the Objectivist view, or developed after his break with the Ayn Rand Institute.

I recently found an old tape of Kelley's talk on "The Nature of Free Will" from 1986, probably one of his last talks before the break. At the beginning of the talk, Kelley announces that his talk will focus on free will from the perspective of the mind-body issue, and indicates that over the last few years he had been interested in that question. Then he makes a distinction between Objectivism and "philosohpy." In Objectivism, Rand used the mind-body dichotomoy in her analysis of Platonic Idealism, with the example of Platonic love vs. sex, art vs. entertainment, theory vs. practice. In "philosophy", however, the mind-body problem means the relationship between the mind and the brain, and the place of the mind in the physical world. Kelley announces that in his discussion he will use the mind-body issue in the latter sense.

It is indicative that already then Kelley did not regard Objectivism as a part of "philosophy" and preferred to study and teach the latter. It is also important that during the talk, he emphasizes that these are his views and as such, are not part of Objectivism.

Michelle F. Cohen

Clever argument.

Whoops--I was condescending again

That's not true, Shayne. You've got it completely backwards. You are also extremely condescending.

--Brant

No Diana, the questions are not the same, but if you can't answer the simpler question of the role of philosophy in a man's life you certainly aren't going to be able to answer the more complex question of the role of philosophy in history--the answer to the second depends on the answer to the first.

I've never said nor implied that "the logical structure [of philosophy] drives every man's thinking." Nor do I think that a man's thinking is necessarily in conformity with his claimed (i.e. explicit) epistemology. Moreover, questions about the role of ideas in history are not the same as questions about role of philosophy in any given man's life and thought, although the topics are related.

-- Diana Hsieh
diana@dianahsieh.com
NoodleFood

Neil: In spite of Diana's dismissive comments I think you're making valid points.

It's one thing to recognize the logical structure of philosophy. It's quite another to claim that the logical structure drives every man's thinking. On the contrary, I find it to be a lot of explicit hard work to make sure my thinking in various areas conforms to my conclusions in epistemology.

A related question here is: to what extent did Kant cause people like the Nazis to exist, and to what extent does he merely explain them? That is, to what extent is Kantianism merely an explicit description of how some human beings implicitly tend to use their minds vs. Kant being the cause of people who think like him? While it's true that explicit philosophy can reinforce implicit philosophy making it more consistent, it's not true that explicit philosophy always causes it. Otherwise, where did good (or bad) explicit philosophy come from in the first place?

For the record, John Rawls' bullshit methodology of "reflective equilibrium" has been far more influential than his egalitarianism -- and to far worse effect.

-- Diana Hsieh
diana@dianahsieh.com
NoodleFood

Jon,

I agree that a thinker's metaphysics and epistemology (generally speaking) has more influence than his ethics or politics.

On the other hand, it isn't always the case. John Rawls is most influential because of his ethics and politics (I don't know what his metaphyscis or epistemology was). Bertrand Russell, on the other hand, was more influential because of his epistemology.

In other words, you can't assume that a philosopher's epistemology was more important in terms of its influence on the course of events.

AR said that a philosopher should be judged primarily on his metaphysics and epistemology. For example, although she acknowledged that John Locke said good things about individual rights and limited government, she thought his basic philosophy was poor and thus he shouldn't be included in the same category as her and Aristotle. Meanwhile, Aristotle's political view isn't similar to Rand's, but she said his basic philsophy was so great that his other errors (including endorsing slavery) paled in comparison. Thus, I think AR would argue that no matter how anti-totalitarian Kant's politics is, the pure irrationality of his metaphysics and espistemology is what counts, and that's what laid the foundation for the politics of the Nazis.

Diana,

My concern was to understand Kant's influence on history. My contention is that can't be done without an understanding of the details of his philosophy and the context of his thought (his attempt to refute Humean skepticism and provide a foundation for Newtonian physics, for example).

Neil, from my perspective, our disagreements do not concern the particular case of Kant as much as your fuzzy and erroneous view of the nature and role of fundamental principles in philosophy. The latter prevents you from properly understanding not just my basic claims but also the Objectivist view of history. So your "understanding of the term [fundamental]" is exactly the sticking point between us. Unfortunately, you remain focused on the particular details of Kant's philosophy, so we're just spinning our wheels here.

So I think I'm going to bow out of this debate. I do thank you for the polite exchange, as it was both illuminating and interesting.

-- Diana Hsieh
diana@dianahsieh.com
NoodleFood

Diana,

A person's metaphysics and epistemology generally gives rise his ethics and politics, so in that sense I think it is fair to say that they are fundamental and politics/ethics are not. Certain "sub ideas" may be fundamental as well.

Kant's view that the categories are universal is fundamental to his philosophy by my understanding of the term. Without it, Kant's epistemology wouldn't be what it is. It would turn into a kind of sociology of knowledge or some other version of relativism. Likewise, Kant's republicanism (or constitutional monarchy) is fundamental to his politics. A Kantian dictatorship is a contradiction.

To engage in a discussion of Kant and not mention his liberal views, his advocacy of peace and the like is not, in my opinion, an exercise in getting to the "fundamentals" of his thought but, to use Objectivist phraseology, "rationalism" and "context dropping."

Neil,

As far as I can tell, you are using the term "fundamental" to mean something like "important or relevant to human life." That's not a standard use of the term, not even in ordinary language. Its certainly not the technical Objectivist usage. Given that, I think you must not understand the Objectivist theory of how philosophy moves history, since that requires understanding the differences between fundamental and derivative ideas in philosophy.

Also, you very much missed my point in saying that: "You argued that Kant had no good reason to believe that his categories are universal. But to claim that there is a weakness in Kant’s system that other philosophers exploited for nefarious ends is one thing; to prove that this weaknesses did or must have resulted in totalitarianism is quite another."

My point was merely that Kant's claim that the categories are universal is not fundamental to his philosophy, as you claimed. I didn't say anything about the relationship of that point to totalitarianism.

-- Diana Hsieh
diana@dianahsieh.com
NoodleFood

Diana,

I would agree with you that certain aspects of a thinker’s philosophy are more fundamental than others, and that these are metaphysics and epistemology (which is why, I imagine, we call von Mises a Kantian even though he explicitly rejected Kant’s ethics).

However a philosopher’s ethics and politics are fundamental and important. This is particularly true when looking at a person’s influence on history. Kant’s epistemology may have grabbed one person’s attention, his ethics another’s. I suspect that for the average person it is ethics and politics that are fundamental when they consider philosophical ideas. (Most Objectivists I know first became interested in Rand because of her ethics and politics and only later became believers in her epistemology.)

You argued that Kant had no good reason to believe that his categories are universal. But to claim that there is a weakness in Kant’s system that other philosophers exploited for nefarious ends is one thing; to prove that this weaknesses did or must have resulted in totalitarianism is quite another. (As I pointed out, it didn’t with von Mises among many others.) I haven’t looked into this in detail, but I would guess that certain trends in anthropology and sociology had a much greater influence on Nazi racism and Communist polylogism than any interpretation of Kant. Sure, the Objectivist response is: “but they wouldn’t have come up with these ideas unless they have been prepared to accept them philosophically.” I seriously doubt that “but for” Kant sociologists would not have embraced cultural relativism, John Dewey wouldn’t have become a pragmatist, Himmler wouldn’t have tried to create a religion out of Teutonic mythology, or whatever.

Lastly, based on what I know about German philosophy, I suspect that there were many other thinkers such as Nietzsche that the Nazis could have interpreted (or misinterpreted) to justify their ideas and win support of intellectuals.

Neil, I'll agree that there are differences between Kant's philosophy and that of 20th century totalitarianism, even seemingly significant ones. However, I cannot agree that they are fundamental.

You claim that questions about dictatorship are fundamental -- but in what sense? A fundamental principle is central to the philosophic system, in the sense that it generates and conditions a wide range of hierarchically-later philosophic conclusions. No principles of politics deserve that honor, although some principles of politics are more or less fundamental than others. All political principles are are derivaties of far more basic, wide-reaching basic principles of metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics. A position on dictatorship is not a fundamental, not even in the context of politics.

The same goes for the question of whether the categories imposed by the mind to create experience are universal or vary by person or by race. The fundamental is the fact of the categories required for experience, not their universality. (That's particularly true given that Kant arbitrarily claimed the categories to be universal. Given his views about the limits of human knowledge, he could not possibly know the workings of the minds of others. And frankly, I'm not even sure that he could claim to know the workings of his own mind.)

Since we seem to primarily disagree about what makes a principle fundamental or not, I'd be interested to hear your view on that.

For the record, here's what Ayn Rand says about fundamentality in the context of defining concepts in IOE:

Now observe, on the above example, the process of determining an essential characteristic: the rule of fundamentality. When a given group of existents has more than one characteristic distinguishing it from other existents, man must observe the relationships among these various characteristics and discover the one on which all the others (or the greatest number of others) depend, i.e., the fundamental characteristic without which the others would not be possible. This fundamental characteristic is the essential distinguishing characteristic of the existents involved, and the proper defining characteristic of the concept.

Metaphysically, a fundamental characteristic is that distinctive characteristic which makes the greatest number of others possible; epistemologically, it is the one that explains the greatest number of others.

For instance, one could observe that man is the only animal who speaks English, wears wristwatches, flies airplanes, manufactures lipstick, studies geometry, reads newspapers, writes poems, darns socks, etc. None of these is an essential characteristic: none of them explains the others; none of them applies to all men; omit any or all of them, assume a man who has never done any of these things, and he will still be a man. But observe that all these activities (and innumerable others) require a conceptual grasp of reality, that an animal would not be able to understand them, that they are the expressions and consequences of man's rational faculty, that an organism without that faculty would not be a man—and you will know why man's rational faculty is his essential distinguishing and defining characteristic.

-- Diana Hsieh
diana@dianahsieh.com
NoodleFood

Diana,

I should have been clearer. My contention is that given the fundamental differences between Kant's philosophy and the philosophy of 20th century totalitarianism, there is a prima facie case that Kant did not cause (or set in motion the process leading to) Nazism or Communism.

That Kant did not advocate dictatatorship, did not advocate an ethics of blind obedience (as Seddon showed), did not believe that truth was determined by race or class are fundamental philosophical differences. (If Kant said "we Germans have better categories of thought than non-Germans" I don't think Objectivists would be saying that this is a superficial connection with totalitarian polylogists.)

Neil, the burden is not on those who argue for the connection between Kant and 20th century totalitarianism because you can cite some laundry list of superficial differences. Those kinds of incidental differences prove absolutely nothing, precisely because what matters is the fundamentals.

However, I do think that the burden of proof is on those who assert the connection between Kant and 20th century totalitarianism -- but that's because, as a general principle, the burden of proof is on those who assert a positive claim.

Unfortunately, I don't have time to dissect Steele's argument, although I will say that it's far better than those I've seen elsewhere. Nonetheless, he's far too narrowly focused upon the particular doctrines advocated by Kant, as opposed to the fundamental principles and methodology. It was the latter, not the former, that killed the Enlightenment dead.

-- Diana Hsieh
diana@dianahsieh.com
NoodleFood

Howdy,

I just wanted to throw in that, in my experience, Kant is by *far* the most influential philosopher at my university (U of SC). Reverence for Kant's ethics and especially his epistemology is almost completely universal. When he is not mentioned by name in various essays and lectures, the truth of his philosophy is assumed. Professors stress the fact that even minor disagreements with Kant deserve special attention and focus in essays or lectures. The onus of proof lies with he who disagrees.

Kant has been mentioned and given a prominent place in nearly every single philosophy class I've ever taken, be it in Asheville, Greenville, or Columbia (at different universities). Even in my 3 ancient philosophy classes, three different professors each noted how Kant dealt with various philosophical issues raised. Several of my friends who majored in philosophy at universities all around the country have noted the exact same thing.

--Dan Edge

Diana,

I'm certainly not saying that a laundry list of differences between Kant and the Nazis refutes the Rand/Peikoff claim. However, I do think it shows that the burden is on those who argue for a connection.

Yes, we have to deal with basic principles. But as David Ramsay Steele points out, with Kant thinkers tended either to disagree with him or react to him:

http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2002_08/steele-kant.html

I think this makes Kant's influence particularly hard to evaluate. (Steele even argues that German philosophers rejected Hegel to return to Kant, thus complicating the issue.) And as Steele notes, when it comes to Marx, neither Marx's ethics or metaphysics owes much to Kant (and fact they owe more to Fuerebach's materialism). Even if the path from Kant might lead to Heidegger, my reading indicates it is more likely to lead to von Mises and Cassirer.

Finally, if the question is why the common man voted for Hitler (although I gather that the Nazis didn't get the majority vote) then all these other factors (treaty of Versailles, etc.) are highly relevant and far from derivative.

Neil,

I apologize for misrepresenting your position in the course of my remarks. I didn't remember what you'd written earlier; I was just responding to the point about testimony. I'm glad we agree that extensive study of Kant is necessary. And I agree that the proper approach does not consist of "Just saying that 'they read Kant in Berlin' or 'Kant influenced Heidegger'", as you point out. (I haven't read Leonard Peikoff's _Ominous Parallels_ in some time -- and my knowledge of the relevant subjects has grown tremendously since then. So I don't wish to comment on the persuasiveness of his case.)

However, I do think that this kind of analysis you suggest is extremely superficial -- and misleading:

"Kant: classical liberal, anti-war, anti-dictatorship, not a believer in Tueutonic mythology, against blind obedience to the state, people ends in themselves"
...versus...
"Nazis: anti-liberal,pro-war, pro-dictatorship, believers in Tuetonic mythology, blind obedience to the state, people not ends in themselves"

In analysing the role of ideas in history, a person must examine the fundamental driving principles, particularly in metaphysics and epistemology. He needs to know the meaning and implications of the fundamental principles. He needs to examine the ways in which the principles of one system give rise to later systems, e.g. Kant to Hegel to Marx. Mere laundry lists of aparently conflicting principles, particularly very derivative principles like those you list, don't prove anything.

To take an easy example, Kant does not mean anything like Ayn Rand in speaking of people as "ends in themselves." (That's darn clear from his views on sex and masturbation, both of which he regards as violating the "ends in themselves" principle.) Instead of grounding a classical liberal view of rights, Kant's "ends in themselves" grounds rights in vague idea of protecting human dignity. As a result, Kant undermined genuine rights, since the ideal of human dignity mandates government paternalism in the form of limiting hours of work, minimum wage, welfare programs, and the like. (The appeal to dignity was used in just that fashion during the New Deal, particularly by Justice Brandeis.) Even today, the Muslims are effectively exploiting the Kant's false foundation for rights by claiming that free speech shouldn't include the right to offend the faithful.

-- Diana Hsieh
diana@dianahsieh.com
NoodleFood

Diana,

If you are going to criticize my argument, then you should at least try to summarize accurately what I said.

I'm sure you saw the two posts where I pointed out the need to do extensive study (which would probably take years) of primary source materials in order to come to a definitive conclusion on Kant's influence on later philosophy and politics. I pointed out that in light of the obvious differences between Kant and the Nazis, I doubted that there was such a link. I could be wrong, as I also pointed out. I certainly can't claim to have read all the material needed. If you have then I congratulate you and look forward to reading anything you have written on the subject.

My reference to von Mises was meant to illustrate only on aspect of the issue. If the Nazis believed themselves to be putting into place any aspect of Kant's thought, then I think von Mises would have been aware of it.

I'll copy what I wrote below in case you missed it:
___________________________________________________

Kant: classical liberal, anti-war, anti-dictatorship, not a believer in Tueutonic mythology, against blind obedience to the state, people ends in themselves

Nazis: anti-liberal,pro-war, pro-dictatorship, believers in Tuetonic mythology, blind obedience to the state, people not ends in themselves

In addition, the concerns of the Nazis (and the people who voted for them) were the depression, the injustice of the Versailles treaty, the growth of nationalism, and (according to some writers) eugenics and Darwinism. Now, none of this has much to do with Kant or his ethics.

Nonetheless, in spite of this, it's possible that a certain intepretation of Kant's ideas penetrated German culture such that it resulted in the public believing the Nazis. But to prove that theses would probably require the analysis of hundreds of people (the Nazis, the people who taught them in school, ditto with German voters who supported the Nazis). This would take years of scholarship. Just saying that "they read Kant in Berlin" or "Kant influenced Heidegger" isn't sufficient. I hasten to add that I don't think Peikoff did this kind of in depth study in OParallels.

in Rand's St. Petersberg college was probably a post-graduate degree in any American university. Much higher standards and reading requirements. I think Sciabarra documents this in the Russian Radical, no?

Diana,

The argument from authority comes from the very high standard you set for discusing Kant's influence, which is appropriate for a graduate student in the history of philosophy with many years of additional, outside reading and study. In this category I would put you and George H. Smith, but not Rand. I didn't say she didn't study Kant.

I was at the Bronx Community College in November 1970 when an audience member asked Rand whether she ever had read a single book by Kant. Instead of simply saying yes or no she beat around the bush without doing much more than attacking the guy who asked the question. Now I understand Kant's books are compilations of his lectures and you can probably be an authority on him without reading any one from beginning to end, but Rand did not take advantage of the opportunity to explain why she was any kind of authority on Kant. I challenge you to give me any reference to her ability and competence in this regard in the Objectivist literature.

--Brant

Brant,

What is your evidence for your claim that Ayn Rand did not study those subjects? (The oft-repeated claim that she never read Kant is false.)

And how exactly am I "awfully close" to argument from authority by suggesting that people should learn the facts for themselves, rather than just accepting the conclusions of others?

-- Diana Hsieh
diana@dianahsieh.com
NoodleFood

Diana,

I mostly agree with you, however, Ayn Rand herself did little of what you claim is needed in regard to evaluating Kant. You, like Rand, are awfully close to an argument from authority here.

--Brant

I totally agree with your evaluation of Kant, with one exception: If you were to take out Rousseau, Kant might have not been able to develop his own philosophy within his lifetime. Rousseau's ideas gave Kant a headstart.

Thanks for a great post.

Michelle

Neil,

Questions of intellectual influence cannot be decided by "testimony" of Ayn Rand, Von Mises, or anyone else. Testimony is appropriate for concrete facts, but not for philosophic analyses of history.

If you wish to know the truth, then you need to study it for yourself. You need some substantial familiarity with the Enlightenment philosophers, as they're the foil for Kant. You need a detailed knowledge of Kant's philosophy, as gleaned from Kant himself. And you need to know the subsequent intellectual and political history in detail.

In the case of Kant's influence on 20th century totalitarianism, you need to study Hegel, since he was the major link between Kant and the communists and the fascists. Unless you've done that, you're speaking in ignorance. And if the issue isn't important enough to you to warrant that kind of study, then you shouldn't be so concerned about it in these arguments either.

-- Diana Hsieh
diana@dianahsieh.com
NoodleFood

Adam,

Von Mises was also a history major and a philosopher. He was also living during the time and place when the Nazis were supposedly putting the implications of Kant into effect. He had a greater familiarity with Germanic philosophy than Rand. So I would say that his testimony carries at least as much weight as Rand's. (Incidentally, he was not a support of Kantian ethics and thought it did encourage socialism, yet he did not see the dire consequences that Rand saw in Kant.)

This whipping-boy philosophy is utterly naive. Linz is correct, and Jason damned hit the ball out of the park. And we can certainly look earlier than Kant even. When's the last time you saw a bracelet on someones arm that said "WWKD". For those of you not entirely familiar with Americanism, you can find "WWJD(what would Jesus do?) bracelets in any convenience store here. Last time I checked, he predated Kant, and even earlier were other gods and irrational doctrines.

Neil, Linz,

One of the keys to Kant's influence was that he wore the mask of a liberal and an individualist, even while doing more than anyone in history to destroy the foundations of liberty and individualism. One's own liberty is objectively valuable to oneself, because it is a pre-condition of one's own life qua man. Similarly, one's enjoyment of the fruits of cooperation and trade with other men, and therefore one's respect for their individual rights, is of value to the rational man because it is a necessary condition for the enjoyment of one's own (optimal, happy) human life. Kant's masks made it possible for Fichte, Hegel, Marx and so on to pose as promoters of "true freedom" even while "maintaining deniability," and using Kant's ethic of dutiful obedience for the only purpose it was suited to: the promotion of dictatorship. Casirer and similar "Kantian Liberals" had disarmed themselves, or rather had permitted Kant to disarm them, by accepting Kant's dismemberment of the Enlightenment grounding of liberty and individualism in human self-interest.

By my calculation, one could take away Rousseau, or Fichte, or Hegel or Marx, or any three of them, and Kant's influence still would have been enough to lead Europe to the same "Age of Dictators" that it actually led to. Rand the philosopher, and also Rand the history major, deserves better than to have her well-grounded judgement of the consequences of Kant dismissed as "hyperbole."

Casey,

Sorry, I didn't see that you were referring to Linz's quote.

I don't claim to be an expert on Kant, but people who are knowledgeable about him such as Rod Long and Fred Seddon dissent from Rand's interpretation of his ethics. I don't see Kant being opposed to "personal reward." In any event, since Kant is hard to interpret, any claim that his ideas inevitably lead this or that is quite tentative.

Neil, how could one conduct a life of abject duty with no personal reward if he committed suicide? Now do you see why Rand considered Kant more immmoral than those who called for dictatorship or actual suicide?

The death of the individual had to require the individual's own choice, according to Kant, and required the individual to stay technically alive to live out the suicide over a life-time of duty.
(I was referring to suicide of the soul, not the body.)

And I was referring to the quote in Linz's post.

Casey,

What is the source for your quote? It is my understanding that Kant considered suicide immoral, so I don't see the connection between this and dictatorship. In fact, I believe that Kant supported the American revolution (would Aristotle have?).

Adam,

But how do you deal with people such as Cassirer who were Kantians and saw in Kantianism reason to reject dictatorship and the Nazis? How do explain von Mises who was "on the scene" and believed the Nazis were anti-Kant?

I'm working on an article on this topic, but suffice it to say:

Kant: classical liberal, anti-war, anti-dictatorship, not a believer in Tueutonic mythology, against blind obedience to the state, people ends in themselves

Nazis: anti-liberal,pro-war, pro-dictatorship, believers in Tuetonic mythology, blind obedience to the state, people not ends in themselves

In addition, the concerns of the Nazis (and the people who voted for them) were the depression, the injustice of the Versailles treaty, the growth of nationalism, and (according to some writers) eugenics and Darwinism. Now, none of this has much to do with Kant or his ethics.

Nonetheless, in light of this, it's possible that a certain intepretation of Kant's ideas penetrated German culture such that it resulted in the public believing the Nazis. But to prove that theses would probably require the analysis of hundreds of people (the Nazis, the people who taught them in school, ditto with German voters who supported the Nazis). This would take years of scholarship. Just saying that "they read Kant in Berlin" or "Kant influenced Heidegger" isn't sufficient. I hasten to add that I don't think Peikoff did this kind of in depth study in OParallels.

I think it is this quote: "There can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another" that was probably the very reason Rand regarded Kant as so monumentally and even uniquely evil. What he is saying in toto is that a man must willingly commit suicide or it's no good. Dictatorship is only possible after the individual has AGREED to commit suicide.

Adam:

Kant was the necessary spiritual father of the whole "Age of Dictators," Stalin and Hitler included.

The problem with that is that Kant is the one person among the various villains we've been discussing who didn't believe in dictatorship. Try this for size: "There can be nothing more dreadful than that the actions of a man should be subject to the will of another." Now you can argue that his duty ethic would necessarily require dictatorship, but that's not what he had in mind, & he wasn't advocating it in the context of politics anyway. His pin-up boy, Rousseau, of course did advocate dictatorship, as did his successors, Fichte & Hegel, as Jason pointed out (though no doubt Fred Seddon will jump on & say they were libertarians). For reasons I've stated in my Rousseau/Kant essay, which I've just reprised here, the whole exercise of nailing "the most evil man in history" is fraught, to put it mildly.

Linz,

You are right about Rousseau - although even Rousseau would have been much less influential without Kant. Meister Eckhart and Luther were pretty much undone by the Enlightenment; had their ideas not been assimilated by the Kantians, they would have been mainly of historical interest. Kant was not big in Tiflis, but the priests' seminary where Stalin studied did cover Kant (and Hegel and even Nietzsche) in relation to Christian polemics and apologetics.

Obedience to authority was in decline in the West from the Renaissance onward, and that decline was greatly accelerated by the Enlightenment. I just don't see this trend getting reversed without Kant. In the real history of Europe, Kant was very much the chief resuscitator of the cult of obedience after that cult had been nearly buried by the Enlightenment and by the rise of the scientific method. Kant was the necessary spiritual father of the whole "Age of Dictators," Stalin and Hitler included. I see Rand's evaluation of him as "the most evil man in history" as neither excessive nor hyperbolic: Kant was very much the man who, for a time, "gave mankind one neck, ready for one leash."

Jim,

I certainly agree that von Mises is a hero and that his ideas should be judged "in context," but I don't see how that makes a difference from the Objectivist perspective.

Assume you have:

Prof. A, a Kantian classical liberal who specializes in philosophy and only secondarily writes on conomics; and

Prof B, a Kantian classical liberal who specializes in economics and only secondarily writes on philosophy.

Yes, there is a different context, but how does that change the moral evaluation? If Prof. B had decided to write primarily in philosophy he would be evil because the effects of his writing would have been bad? Doesn't this bring us back to Kelley's alleged mind-body dichotomy?

Linz,

Luther's "anti-reason" statements aren't nearly as bad when looked at in context. He was reacting against what he saw were excesses of the "rationalism" of Scholastic thought. Hans Schwarz's book Creation has a good discussion of this.

When I see people on Objectivist message forums sitting around beating up on Kant I always think that his immediate successors like Fichte and Hegel get off the hook far too easily. Their diabolical methodologies are certainly rooted in Kant, but it is their sets of ideas that can be much more clearly linked to the birth of commmunism and NAZIism. I'm always happy to beat up on Kant, but we should never let his immediate successors off the hook.

- Jason

An impressive list of names, Linz. But we could go further and say that humanity has never needed philosophers to tell them to be obedient. After all, even baboons obey the dominant members of their troops. Obedience is quite a natural part of human society - philosophers can rationalize it, and maybe increase or decrease its power in a certain culture, if they're lucky, but they clearly didn't create it. Hence there's no need to say that Hitler or Stalin must have learned their authoritarianism anywhere...on the contrary, people need to learn independence and liberty. But perhaps even that is putting too much faith in the power of the idea...

Adam - you can't think of anyone apart from Kant who could have spawned the "pandemic of obedience"? Hell, just to scratch the surface here, the ethic of obedience had been around in the west since Plato, who, as I'm sure you know, advocated the taking of children by the state from their parents at birth. The Dark Age could be called the Obedience Age. Meister Eckhart preached obedience as the virtue of all virtues. Rousseau preached obedience to the general will. Martin Luther advocated unconditional obedience to the state. To the extent that it wasn't all his own work, Hitler probably got that, & his anti-Jewish, anti-reason tirades from Luther & the Lutheran Church rather than from Kant.

As for Stalin, he's far more likely to have got it from his priestly tutors when he was in the Russian Orthodox seminary. I don't think Kant was that big in Tiflis.

The point is not to let Kant off the hook, but to keep a sense of proportion & avoid a hysterical excess such as "the most evil man in history."

Later today I'll reprise my article Kant & Rousseau - Partners in Crime.

Linz,

You write, "I suspect that Hitler, and especially Stalin, would have managed perfectly well without Kant's help. There were plenty of duty ethicists around who owed nothing to Kant, even if his version of it was the most refined."

Stalin and Hitler were riders on a pandemic of obedience that had grown for more than a century from Kant's duty ethics. Had there been no Stalin and no Hitler, any number of other Communists and other Nazis could have ridden that pandemic to similar effect or worse. On the other hand, I can't think of anyone besides Kant who could have spawned that pandemic of obedience, if Kant hadn't. Please correct my ignorance if I am wrong, but (to my knowledge) the only duty ethicist of similar stature who owed nothing to Kant was Confucius - without whom Mao would have been as impossible, as Stalin and Hitler would have been without Kant. Whom are you thinking of?

Utility Belt Wrote:

And you blame this on Kant? Kant, whose whole morality was based upon the principle that we should always treat other people as rational, valued ends-in-themselves and never as instruments or ways-to-an-end?

Kant did write these things, but I would not say that his "whole morality was based on the principle." Kant was primarily an apologist for Christian ethics. The more I read of Kant, the more I am convinced that he did this on purpose. In epistemology, his goal was to "deny knowledge, to make room for faith." In ethics, his goal was to "logically" justify altruism via the categorical imperitive.

Kant even twists the idea that men are "value ends-in-themselves." He writes that we can't "value" other human beings beyond the fact that we can sacrifice to them. If you do anything for another person because you value him, then your action has "no moral import." Mutually productive traders or really any kind of mutually beneficial relationships he considers outside the realm of ethics.

Kant was really really *severely* fucked up, it's just not obvious at first glance (at least, it wasn't for me). I didn't consider him the worst philosopher in history before I actually read what he had to say. At this point I think it is likely that he was a purposefuly dishonest, malevolent psycho-christian. The guy was a genius, and he thought that his little categorical imperitive game could take the place of the entire field of ethics, even though his conclusion completely contradicted everything he saw in the world?!? I mean, c'mon! He was either crazy, or as evil as they come.

--Dan Edge

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How much does one have to break with the spirit of times to be regarded a hero? Mises did plenty... that's the point. In any event, such judgements are a contextual matter, as are all moral judgemnts, according to Objectivism.

Mr. Anderson,

Kelley does admit that ideas can be used to judge people, as I said. And, certainly, there are good people who aren't Objectivists. Why do you assume the level of my own willingness to condemn another based on his not being a "good Objectivist," and assume I wouldn't agree with what you just said?

Jim,

I agree with you, but what you say doesn't seem consistent with the Objectivist approach. If Marxist professors are evil (perhaps as evil as Communist henchmen), then isn't a Kantian economist evil? (Personally, I don't think Kant was evil.)

In any event, with von Mises it isn't a case of him simply following the zeitgeist. Von Mises broke with the spirit of the times by rejecting socialism. And von Mises did break with the philosophical zeitgeist, which for much of the time he wrote was not Kantian but positivistic. Von Mises was probably better read in philosophy than Rand. If you add the philosophical parts of Human Action and his three philosophical books (Theory and History, Ultimate Foundation of Economics & Epistemological Problems of Economics) he almost certainly wrote more pure philosophy than Rand. So his acceptance of Kantianism should be "culpable" from the Objectivist perspective.

Adam,

I don't think it's the case that Kant taught a "selfless morality" in the sense you understand it. And I don't see how it paved the way for Hitler and Stalin.

Let me give you an example. The leading neo-Kantian in the 20th century was Ernst Cassirer. In 1933, after the Nazis took over and he heard them say "justice is what the Fuhrer says it is," he said "If that's true, there is no hope for Germany." He left Germany for the US and wrote a book called "The Myth of the State" which, I gather, is pro-freedom. (Peikoff sneers at Cassirer in Ominous Parallels but doesn't mention these inconvenient facts.)

Here is a critique of Kelley which I think shows that any link between Kant and the Nazis/commies is unlikely --

http://libertyunbound.com/archive/2002_08/steele-kant.html

Stalin and Hitler could not have led the murder of tens of millions without the obedience of hundreds of millions. That insane mass obedience, that whole culture of selfless obedience to duty, was what made the crimes of Stalin and Hitler possible in reality.

And you blame this on Kant? Kant, whose whole morality was based upon the principle that we should always treat other people as rational, valued ends-in-themselves and never as instruments or ways-to-an-end? Why not blame it on Machiavelli, who directly denied that and put "reasons of state" foremost? If I were a Kantian I could just as well claim that it was, in fact, the lack of Kant in the popular mind which lead to the Nazis, and I'd be just as justified. Which is to say, not justified at all, because it's rather silly to look at a philosopher's arguments, look at some fact of history, say "This justifys that" and then jump to the conclusion "This caused that". People do what they want and justify it later, mostly. History is a fantastically complex process, the history of ideas even more so, and it's meaningless to say that any one man, especially an academic philosopher, made anything possible, especially a whole half-century of strife.

... but I didn't miss it. First, I suspect that Hitler, and especially Stalin, would have managed perfectly well without Kant's help. There were plenty of duty ethicists around who owed nothing to Kant, even if his version of it was the most refined. Second, Kant had no power of coercion at his disposal, nor did he seek it. No one *had* to obey his duty ethic. ARIans speak deterministically of Kant's ideas being unleashed into the culture as though some *inexorable* process was thereby set off whereby everyone else then had no choice but to accept and practice his ideas. That's not the case.

This is not to defend Kant against the charge of being "evil," though I doubt he was conscious of, or intended or desired the actual consequences of his kind of morality—he wanted peace & harmony to break out all over the world. I wrote very critically of him in Kant Can't and I meant that. But I *do* suggest that "the most evil man in history" is a bizarre hyperbole.

And this was a side-bar to the issue of whether David Kelley buys into the mind-body dichotomy. As you know, Adam, I've had my issues with Kelley (and with TOC generally—never more than now, rather like you). But MBD is not one of them, for reasons I've stated.

Linz - I think that you missed the crux of Kant's evil. Pre-Kantian (religious) morality was based on false assumptions about the alleged "eternal life" of the disembodied soul, but it still held the good to be the good for one's own "soul," or self. By replacing that morality with a morality of selfless obedience to duty, Kant created a culture of obedience in which men believed themselves to be moral precisely because they behaved in obedience to "duty" - as defined by their political leaders - without regard, or even any need to understand, the relationship of their obedient actions to their own selves and lives.

Stalin and Hitler could not have led the murder of tens of millions without the obedience of hundreds of millions. That insane mass obedience, that whole culture of selfless obedience to duty, was what made the crimes of Stalin and Hitler possible in reality. You will search history in vain for greater evil. The fact that Kant evaded the main consequence of his revolutionary approach to "morality" - that he "didn't mean it" - is hardly an excuse.

Linz - I agree with your last post to Mr. Valliant, except that I think Kelley cuts people too much slack by significantly less than you do! Overall, it was a very good comment.

There is a very abstract discussion going on here and where it has been tied to concretes, of a sort, we have talked about judging Kant. Now, I never knew Kant. I read some of his work, which was very difficult reading. I understood some of his mistakes. Some of what he wrote was so foreign to me that I could not understand it. Rather than just using Kant as an example, shouldn't we all be searching the file of people we know in our own lives and ask if everyone who had some very bad idea was therefore evil? Aren't our abstract ideas supposed to apply to the concretes of our lives?

When I returned to graduate school from Vietnam, Prof. Les Foldy allowed me to sit in on his Quantum Mechanics class to review it before taking the Qualifying Exam for a Ph.D. in Physics. I had already taken the course before being drafted, but I needed to refresh it badly. Les Foldy was a socialist, but he was also the best quantum mechanics teacher I ever had. He graded all of my homework assignments and tests, even though he did not have to. He never was anything but kind, while many others treated me like a baby killer. Every graduate student who knew him and even the conservative members of the faculty, such as my thesis advisor, always said he was one of the best gentlemen they ever knew. Am I to believe he was a monster? No, that flies in the face of the reality I know. He was tragically in error on an important issue, but he was no monster.

Charles Anderson

I read your reasons below and for the reasons I have given and reasons that Shayne and Linz have given, I do not agree that you have made a point.

I believe that Kelley does use a man's convictions in evaluating him morally. He is just not as ready to totally condemn a man as you are if his convictions are not all good Objectivist convictions. He pays more attention to context, to the complexity of ideas, to the complexity of the world and people's experiences, and maybe to the accidents that make a difference.

For instance, if I had not had a friend who recommended The Fountainhead to me strongly in my senior year of high school, would I be an Objectivist? Maybe not. I would have been a pretty good person, but not good enough to escape your complete and utter condemnation. You would say that I was immoral for some idea or other that I held. David, on the other hand, would probably have said that Charles is a productive man in science and engineering, he has raised 3 pretty decent daughters, he favors the capitalist system, he has no radical or impositional religious beliefs, he believes that reason is the way to knowledge, so he is a fairly decent guy.

There are a lot of decent people who are not Objectivists. They contribute many good things to our lives, even if they suspend the act of reason on the occasional issue, such as the existence of a god. They should not do this. It is an immoral act. But it does not make them moral monsters.

Charles Anderson

I was aware that David Kelley read a poem at Ayn Rand's funeral. I did not know what poem. Thanks for the name of the poem.

Of course an Objectivist should be against dictating what people think. More than that, they should be especially interested in ideas, have an especially high opinion of others who make the effort to think and develop ideas, be especially eager to use the ideas of others as an aid in checking their own premises and ideas, and generally appreciate the fact that the many benefits of modern civilization rest on the fact that many people are eager to generate ideas that have produced much that is good for mankind and for me.

The most classical Objectivism would certainly be that of Ayn Rand herself. Was Ayn Rand as willing to listen to ideas that differed from hers as she should have been? The answer to this may well be that she largely was, given the state of development of her ideas in her mind. We can find some largely minor areas where maybe she was not.

The important thing for this discussion, however, is not that she may have been impatient with others differing ideas than she should have been with respect to her mind, but that maybe she was less willing to have those around her, whose ideas had not yet been as thoroughly thought through, have as much advantage of testing ideas against other sets of ideas or simply trying to develop new ideas on their own. Too many of her followers have felt that they should also be impatient about anything she was impatient with, but perhaps without the real benefit of the degree of understanding she had for the issues.

I, myself, can be very impatient with socialism, for instance, since to me it is literally a childish idea. I thought through the issues long ago and unless someone comes up with something radically new as a justification, which I doubt is likely, I am truly bored with socialism. But, at one point in time, I had to evaluate it. Objectivists need both to allow people to evaluate other ideas and to try to develop new ideas. Some Objectivists do not welcome the objective evaluation of non-Objectivist ideas, even though they may have had to go through the process themselves at some earlier stage of their own development.

A good reality check on what level of respect one should have for the ideas of others is to examine how useful it is to listen to your colleagues at work. Now, often the workplace is more rational than say the forum of a philosophical or a political discussion, but still my colleagues often have good ideas. I have definitely experienced the situation of bemusedly listening to a colleague explain something that they want to try in the lab and thinking that I do not think that will work. Usually, I am right, but sometimes I get a pleasant surprise. Their idea, sometimes not the reason they thought it would, yielded an important result. If the thought process and the process for the exchange of ideas will not work in the lab, then it will not likely work in the world at large.

Charles Anderson

Neil,

If the originator of an idea is evil, it does not follow that one who accepts that idea in some form generations later -- after it has become part of the zeitgeist -- also has to be evil. I'd have to say that this is especially true when the person's own creative work is as overwhelmingly positive as Mises'. Don't you think?

But wouldn't you have to agree that if Kant was evil, then von Mises -- a Kantian -- was also evil?

In fact, based on Objectivist premises he should be more evil. Von Mises saw the rise of the Nazis and therefore the (alleged) culmination of Kant's philosophy. And in spite of this he remained a Kantian until the end of his life. In fact, he even wrote a book (Omnipotent Government) in 1944 in which he asserted that Nazism had nothing to do with Kant. Talk about evasion on a massive scale.

The fact that von Mises and other defenders of freedom considered themselves Kantians should make one question the standard Objectivist interpretation of Kant.

Yes Shayne, each man is responsible for himself and his actions - includling Immanuel Kant. Kant encouraged mankind to doubt his ability to think. Ayn Rand encouraged man to treasure his ability to think and was even so kind as to show us a great many ways to approach it.

One approach is evil and the other good.

"The point is that Kant (and his ridiculous followers) lobotomized man's mind."

No, the point is that each individual man is responsible for his own mind. Kant didn't force anyone to read his works. You can denounce Kant without treating mankind as merely a bunch of automatons following this or that philosopher mindlessly. Each man is responsible for himself.

Linz,

Any "non-consequentialist" ethics is some rationalization for mysticism. Sure, we argue against it, as philosophers, clinically and without engaging in some ad hominem against the proponent. But, quite apart from that analysis, we have to ask ourselves, "What's REALLY going on here?" I'm being asked to forget any of the "effects and performances" on my own (or anyone else's) life, and told to do my moral duty... and by reference to WHAT? Somebody's visit to Mt. Sinai, or vision on the road to Damascus, or pangs of conscience streaming in from my noumenal self, or what? Kant's was an Enlightenment mind trying to preserve a primordial and religious approach to ethics, one which kinda made a point out of not caring much about its "consequences."

And what the hell was Kant's whole system about? Showing how the realm of ethics, volition -- and what "really counts" -- is separate and distinct from the world of mere phenomena that we see, study and live in? Isn't that how you read him?

For all his liberal politics, Kant's negative impact on philosophers' respect for the efficacy and role of reason in the century to follow is unmistakable in all that ghastly German philosophy he generated and which so quickly spread its poison across the civilized world. His negative IMPACT, you will concede (and adjusting for Plato's big head start, of course) is of a kind with Plato's. At the dawn of real thought, however, I tend to be far more forgiving of him. Plato's is a "context" I am wary of judging. But Kant was a contemporary of America's Founding Fathers, for gosh sakes. When Paine and Jefferson were using reason to "question with boldness" the premises of their tradition, Kant was throwing a life-preserver to the Dark Ages.

[P.S. German historians and Austrian economists did accomplish great things despite the rising influence of post-Kantian epistemology, although it is sometimes interesting to observe Aristotle's (and other pagans') influence here, as in the case of Menger.]

I agree with you about Kant Linz. But I'd qualify that by saying that Rand, being a genius philosopher, would have probably better discerned Kant's intent from reading him than you, me, or Kelley.

Another qualification is that Kant's philosophy provided moral support and rationalizations for the evil elements in the culture while simultaneously demoralizing and confusing the good. That is a consequence. And if evil is measured only by consequence, then Kant *is* the most evil man in history. If Ayn Rand exaggerated it was only slightly.

The thing that makes it difficult is that "evil as in Kant" and "evil as in Stalin" are seemingly incommensurate units. We'd never put Kant in jail or harm him in any way for what he did, but Stalin we'd execute. We'd not be afraid of Kant if in the same room with him even if he had a gun but we wouldn't be surprised if Stalin would shoot us on sight. Kant is only indirectly responsible for deaths and it's not clear that he intended them in fact he may have intended the opposite; Stalin meant to kill.

If moral judgment requires a purpose, then it's difficult to see what purpose would require ranking these two men on the same scale. Why not just say that Kant was the most evil philosopher in history and say that his ideas caused more destruction than any dictator that ever lived? It's precise and I don't think it lets Kant off the hook.

Perhaps the evil was not the life and work of Kant, but the absence of Rand.

--Brant

Regarding Kant, the specifics of how the evil plays itself out is not what's important, Linz. Kant did his best to introduce doubt about the efficacy of the human mind. Whatever specific hell a mindless person spins into is beside the point. The point is that Kant (and his ridiculous followers) lobotomized man's mind. That was Kant's essential gift to mankind.

When someone evades, Linz, he may not realize the consequences of his move -- indeed, "evasion" generally means he will not allow himself to face those consequences -- but, still, he should "know better." The evader is refusing to see the consequences. This does NOT absolve him of moral responsibility for those consequences. For example, Kant did not have to know that 20th century totalitarianism would be boosted by his ideas (that would have made him really, really evil) for the scale of his evasions (a whole system of thought) to be regarded as dishonest or even evil. And, to the extent that Kant did "know what he was doing" and had a sense of his role in even just the history of ideas (and there's some disturbing evidence for that), it's hard to escape a pretty grim conclusion about the fellow.

I don't know why your "article" isn't appearing, but you can post using "add blog entry."

Diana's accusation against Kelley was that he embraced the mind-body dichotomy, which would make him an advocate of the view that mind and body are not only independent of each other but also at war with each other. How does assigning primary weight to actions in reaching the judgement "evil" and to ideas in reaching the judgement "false" do that? "The good is a species of the true; the evil is a species of the false." (Peikoff)

We may still judge a man "evil" for holding & advocating false ideas, knowing their consequences, even if he doesn't himself act on them. If he holds them thinking their consequences will be beneficial, then of course that judgement will have to be mitigated (this is where "motive" comes in—nothing wrong or MBD with that).

I realise this cuts across Kant as "the most evil man in history," but I never thought that judgement stacked up anyway. For Kant to be evil at all you would have to believe that his intent indeed was what Ayn Rand said it was—to destroy the mind. Is that consistent with what we know about hi