Abstract
In the projected five-book series on Kant’s Questions, edited by Allen Wood, Fleischacker’s sits beside Patrick Frierson’s volume on What Is the Human Being, eventually to be complemented by volumes on What Can I Know, What Should I Do, and What Can I Hope for. In contrast to the other four, “What is Enlightenment” is, of course, not one of the classic questions that Kant had posed in the Jäsche Logic to chart the “cosmopolitan meaning” of philosophy, but the title of one of his earliest political interventions. It is tempting to think that it sums up or replaces his other questions as their overall task is to outline “the science of the highest maxim of our use of reason” (AA IX, 24). In Fleischacker’s interpretation, the criterion of enlightenment thinking is indeed nothing but the free use of one’s reason, as spelled out in two principles. The first is that individuals have a duty to justify their beliefs through public reasoning, and the second is that societies are obliged to provide the conditions for its exercise. The first, the “cognitive universalization principle,” applies to all areas of knowledge, while the second is a principle of politics that is to govern the communicative infrastructure in any given country.
The book starts with two chapters on Kant’s writings, distinguishing an official “minimal” version of enlightenment, propagated in the Critique of Pure Reason and the 1783 “Enlightenment” essay, from an unofficial, intolerant, and slightly resentful “maximal” version in some later works in which Kant not only outlines the process, but prescribes the desired outcomes of enlightened thinking. The minimal version is exhaustively characterized by its commitment to public reason-giving. Yet when Kant distinguishes misguided from true religious beliefs, or false from true assumptions about the origins of morality and the world as an object of cognition, he privileges right answers over processes of discussion. Sentimentalist views in religion and morality, and determinist views in metaphysics he regards not merely as wrong but as incompatible with enlightenment, impressing the material results of his critical philosophy onto the allegedly open exchange. Under a minimal reading, then, the process of enlightenment is necessarily independent of Kant’s own pursuit of his four canonical questions and must take pains neither to prejudice the methods for answering them, nor to privilege certain results over others. Under maximal enlightenment, attacking “superstition” as well as atheism, the critical method itself becomes a dogmatic expression of humility about the limits of our knowledge. The central tenet of the book is to respect the priority of enlightenment to philosophy, and to keep its defense separate from controversial philosophical assumptions.
The distinction between minimalist enlightenment and enlightened overreach structures the argument of the book, confronting less demanding versions of the public use of reason (like those, Fleischacker suggests, of Foucault, Rawls, and Habermas) with the foundationalist versions he finds in left-Hegelianism and in Marx. Critics of the historical Enlightenment period, from Hamann to Burke and Hegel, and systematic critics like Heidegger, Horkheimer/Adorno, and again, Foucault, are shown to overshoot their targets in attacking what is maximalist in their opponents. By isolating a defensible core against its strained comprehensive environment, Fleischacker can reconstruct a number of criticisms of enlightenment as internal critique. However, from Heidegger onwards, the critique of rigorous uses of reason often spills over into a critique of reason itself, and the book, in attempting to place complicated cases like Nietzsche and Foucault judiciously into the traditions both of enlightenment thinking and of its critics, branches out to address notions of reason, critique, and cultural modernity. What keeps the argument from turning into a full-scale restaging of the Philosophical Discourse of Modernity is its replacement of a discourse theory with an ethic of public conversation, as well as the attempt, in the final chapter, to come back to the tasks of Kant’s original essay on “What is Enlightenment” and to sketch society’s obligations in providing the preconditions for free and meaningful public debate. Drawing on Kant, Mill, and contemporary hate speech legislation, Fleischacker sketches possible avenues of ethical and educational reform, pointing out the advantages of staying, philosophically speaking, on the surface.
In attempting to avoid philosophical controversy, Fleischacker’s approach may recall mid-period Rawls and his methods of evasion. Although Rawls himself makes no claim to advance enlightenment thinking, his account of public reason is treated here as a partial update of Kant’s public use of reason. For Rawls, public reason is “the” reason governing democratic citizens in their exchanges with each other, but lacking authority for their personal lives. In contrast, Fleischacker clearly states his adherence to discursive universalism. Enlightenment minimalism means that across the board, we may “never accept beliefs blindly, . . . or on a basis that we could not regard generally as a reason for believing.” This commitment is not reserved to democratic societies. Contra Rawls, again, free public discussion can be “defended as a good for all human beings in all cultures.” All public associations, not just those in liberal states, are under the obligation to “permit, and to the extent necessary foster, a public realm of debate to which people can bring their beliefs for examination” (30). It is refreshing to see Fleischacker here going beyond Rawls in supporting the universal appeal, and multi-purpose usefulness, of free public debate. But despite his unreserved allegiance to communicative freedom, his own minimalist defense appears too coarse in some areas, and too weak in others.
Fleischacker’s avoidance of philosophical foundations requires him to refrain from offering a unified account of the normativity of enlightenment, thus allowing different people to base their cognitive universalization duties on different grounds. Religious parents may have pragmatic reasons for seeking an open exchange about the truth of their church’s doctrines, in not wishing to alienate their children, while their offspring may seek such an exchange based on an interest in disentanglement. When challenged about the culture-transcending claims of enlightenment thinking in its minimalist sense, Fleischacker, in contrast to Kant, has no single answer. Shying away from the obvious reply that striving for enlightenment reflects an autonomous attitude toward morality and knowledge, the effusive generality of his principles is hard to redeem. Why should a multi-purpose duty “to seek reasons for what we believe that we can expect everybody else to share” be expected to apply to all areas of belief? Why should all exchanges about our beliefs have to reflect universalist cognitive commitments? As an example, consider people who treat religion much like Kant treated matters of happiness, that is, as an idiosyncratic matter not amenable to systematic theorizing and therefore exempt from attempts at general justification. Their stance would not count as committed to enlightenment thinking under Fleischacker’s conception. Yet it is difficult to see why they should feel the pull of enlightened normativity. Similarly, even in areas where non-arbitrary justification is seen as an essential feature of some beliefs, the requirement that reasons be universally shareable appears too strong. People who restrict justification of their beliefs on some matters to their peer-group or tribe may deliberately fail to give fully general reasons, and in this show their reflective understanding of what enlightenment can achieve. Matters of the collective good life may be topics for an “ethical use of reason,” in Habermas’s phrase, with universal acceptability neither required nor desired. Fleischacker must re-describe, to an extent artificially, the scope of religious and communitarian justification as strictly universal, in order to conceive of them as part of minimal enlightenment.
One area in which enlightenment minimalism seems curiously weak is in explicating its link to emancipation, autonomy, and self-government. I focus on political autonomy here, but similar arguments can be made for emancipation from familial or religious domination. In stark contrast to Jonathan Israel’s recent historical accounts of the Enlightenment, Fleischacker does not distinguish between “radical” and “moderate” thinkers along the lines of their emancipation from theism. If “radicalism” is understood as polemical maximalism with regard to religion, it can fairly be said that his favorites are all moderates. But this masks the further problem whether minimal enlightenment is politically neutral or whether, as Israel goes on to argue, maximalists are republican democrats, while moderates tend to make their peace with enlightened despotism. Characteristically, Kant’s mid-career minimalism that both Israel and Fleischacker draw on is compatible with an equivocal position on political self-government. Only in 1795, Kant comes out as a clear defender of popular self-legislation. As we saw, Fleischacker joins Rawls in avoiding to commit enlightenment to the value of autonomy in morality (which may be considered a matter for metaphysical disagreement), but also in politics (which, presumably, may not). So we may be forgiven for asking whether Israel is right that only conceptions more ambitious than minimal enlightenment entail the need and duty to struggle for political self-government. Fleischacker’s discussion of free speech in the last chapter of his book mirrors Kant’s mid-period minimalism in its independence not just from critical philosophy but also from popular self-rule, which seems taken for granted as a background condition. Late-period Kant’s work is not only marked by more “maximal” commitments to enlightenment but draws political consequences from enlightenment notions of publicity and autonomy that seem capable of transforming our understanding even of the broad claims to free public debate. In setting out his terms in the 1783 “Enlightenment” essay as not just about practices of critique and justification, but of emancipation and autonomy, Kant made it easier to see how enlightenment thinking exerts pressure to move on from liberal authoritarianism to republican self-government. A purely discursive notion of justification is no substitute for the project of empowering self-legislating agents.
In the current theoretical climate, it is to the book’s immense credit that it stages a credible defense of a version of enlightenment thinking, clearly set out, maximally erudite, progressing by means of thoughtful sketches that bring out new nuances on much-trodden ground. In giving roughly equal space to authors promoting enlightenment thinking and those usually read as its critics, the book strikes a fair balance. Students of the enlightenment, but also of Western political thought in general, will be fortunate to be exposed to its historical reach and perspective, and to the elegance of its presentation.