Getting Outside the World

Once I came to understand Heidegger's account of "world" and "the world-ing of the world" in Sein und Zeit, I have thought it fundamentally correct.  If one begins with Descartes' cogito, there simply is not a way to "build a bridge" to the world.  (Descartes famously tried to justify the existence of, and the determinate shape of, the external world on the fact that God is not a deceiver, and we are justified in asserting God because we have an idea of perfection.)  Far better to begin with Heidegger with the fact that our be-ing is always already be-ing-in-the-world, that consciousness is always consciousness of a world. 

Husserl famously developed the method of phenomenological inquiry that putatively bracketed the metaphysical questions of materialism and naturalism and advocated an ad fontes return to the things themselves in introspection, grasping, as it were, through the eidetic reduction things in their essential thingness.   The method was to choose an object, vary imaginatively the features of it, and ultimately grasp what it is that cannot be eliminated if the object is to be the object it is. 

While Husserl's phenomenological reduction of bracketing judgments about the ultimate nature of the world in favor of describing carefully one's experience of the world was supposed to leave in abeyance the metaphysical question of materialism and idealism, it is pretty clear that an argument can be built plausibly claiming that Husserl is committed to a type of idealism.  (The transcendental reduction abandons our natural attitude on the world in favor of a description of the intersubjective space of the transcendental ego.) 

The question that concerns me is whether Husserl's student, Martin Heidegger is also finally committed to a type of idealism.  After all, is not his world the sum of significances in which one pre-reflectively finds oneself, a world in which one finds one's way?  Is not this world and its complex relationships of meaning present only for Da-sein (Being-there), a world which is itself a pole of Da-sein and thus forever within its arena of consciousness.  (My apologies to Heidegger for using "consciousness," but I think that an argument can be made that being-in-the-world just is to be conscious.)  We are pre-reflectively always coping with the world, a world that tends to disclose itself when our regular coping breaks down.  (Heidegger famously points out that we don't really know what a hammer is -- what it means -- until we are without it in a relevant context.) 

Heidegger's distinction between Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit is meant to get at the distinction between our everyday dwelling in the world of the "ready to hand" and our occasional examination of objects in this world with a critical distantiation, a distance that allows us to investigate the object as it is in itself.  (We might translate the latter as "present at hand.")  When our hammering no longer happens pre-reflectively, we might instead attend to the properties of the hammer and thus attempt to consider the hammer as it is in itself, as disconnected from the web of significances within our being-in-the-world.  In so doing, we might try to correct the hammer so that it can again recede into the ready-to-hand significances of our primordial dwelling in the world.

But this distinction between Zuhandenheit and Vorhandenheit seems to be a distinction in and for Dasein in its own consciousness as it attempts to grasp objects in its world in different ways.  The reading off of the objective properties of the hammer is a function of the attitude in which Dasein engages the world, and it is difficult to locate the grounds to claim that the adoption of this attitude of reading off succeeds in getting us to the thing as it might be out beyond the world of Dasein.  If ready-to-hand is a dwelling of Dasein in its being-in-the-world, then is not present-at-hand also a type of comporting, a comporting that is ultimately found in a web of meaning in and for Dasein, and thus not a deworld-ing of the world in favor of the objectivity of the thing? 

Hubert Dreyfus has famously claimed that Heidegger escapes idealism through the de-worlding move of "formal indication" (formale Anzeige).  He points out that Heidegger was really quite interested in questions of what the world is in itself, and that Heidegger thus thought it possible to refer to objects as the objects they are without the nature of the objects being determined within the holism of the context of meaning in which they are ingredient.  Comparing this move to Kripke's notion of rigid designation, Dreyfus argues that Heidegger too could have understood reference to objects apart from their descriptions and contexts.

Kripke talked about an "initial baptism" that connected name to thing, and allowed for increasing understanding of the thing and finally a grasp of the essence of that thing apart from the ways we might describe or pick out the thing.  (The atomic number of gold is essential to gold, its necessity is, however, a posteriori.  That which first allowed examination of gold, those properties by which we might unreflectively pick it out, turn out not to be essential to the thing.  Analogously, water is identified by being H2O, not by the properties of colorless, odorless, and tasteless.)   Dreyfus suggests that Heidegger's formal indication functions like Kripke's rigid designation, and that this move allows Heidegger, like Kripke, to escape the idealist net.  If this is so, then Heidegger like Kripke is committed to the ontology of natural kinds, the notion that there are, as Putnam says, self-identifying objects that exist apart from human perception and conception. 

There is quite a literature on the formale Anzeige in Heidegger, and clearly there is no consensus that such a move takes one to realism.  However, I do like the attempt to connect Heidegger's excellent analysis of what it is to be-in-the-world with resources that would allow the world to be in some sense without our being in it.  But the problem here does seem Kantian.  If the formale Anzeige takes us beyond the fuer sich of the world to the an sich of things, then how exactly does the an sich connect to the fuer sich?  In other words, how exactly is deworlding of the world possible? How are natural kinds possible beyond descriptions when they themselves are articulated in terms of descriptions?  What could a natural kind be apart from the language that articulates the kind as the kind it is, a language that operates both at the deworlding and worlding levels? What kind of faith is necessary to assert theoretical entities as having self-identifying being apart from their ingrediency in theories?  Can we find this primal place before language when, as Heidegger later says, language itself is the house of being?  Ultimately, can we locate essences out and beyond the results of an eidetic reduction?  If so, what would be the grounds of this conceivability?

Recovering Play in Theology

I was a kid once and I enjoyed playing.  Early on I played with most anything, I suppose, though I can't remember much of it. Such playing is what kids do, after all.  After playing with the everyday objects of the house or barn, I remember playing with tinker toys, electrical wires and plugs, mechanical objects, train and erector sets, radios and other electronic items, and stereo equipment and speakers.  I also remember playing with numbers, working out batting, slugging and earned run averages, and speculating about big league home runs per time at bat as a function of parks parks and average yearly ERA.  (It was hard to get baseball information in those days.  There has only been a functional internet for less than half my life, and I lived over 100 miles away from a real library.)

I don't suppose my play was too much different than that of others who lived on Midwest farms in the fifties and sixties.  When not playing with toys or numbers, I played outside.  Like many of my classmates, I thought about such things as the differences between the drawbar and PTO horsepower of various tractors, horsepower as a function of RPMs, and fuel consumption as a function of power.  Anything useful on the farm could be thought about as having a set of measurable properties, and one could, in principle, do quantitative comparisons with machines that other kids' dads had.   (In those days there were no farms operated by women alone, though many women farmed with husbands and spent their days in toil both inside and outside the house.)  All of this thinking was just plainly fun. 

Some who reflect now on the nature of play like to point out that one of its essential qualities of is purposelessness.  By this they mean that a defining feature of play is that one does not play for some other end.  The play is not an instrument one employs to accomplish something else. Play has no extrinsic value to achieve another thing.  If by this they mean that 'purpose' cannot be predicated of something constituted as an end-in-itself -- play thus having intrinsic value -- I would concur, although I am chary flatly to say that on all occasions a thing must lack purpose if it fails to be a means to an end.

Indeed, what can have more purpose than a game?  Of course, it does not matter ultimately if the team wins or loses.  Whether the Vikings ever win the Super Bowl -- or even play in it again -- really does not effect anything in the grown-up world except possibly the micro economy around the park.  But, of course, Vikings fans of all ages find all kinds of meaning in Vikings wins and loses, and even at times seemingly derive some purpose for their own lives in the winning or losing of the team.  (One might reflect here more deeply about the nature of play in religion and sports, but this would take this post too far afield.)  

In the late spring, summer and autumn in the upper Midwest, people head out to pasture-like places on hot days to hit a little white ball around, hoping ultimately to get it in a small hole 300 yards away from where they first hit it.  The game has no extrinsic purpose for most, because very few ever can derive income and ultimately a living from it.  Yet people play golf, in fact they spend money to do so.  The game seems completely full of meaning and purpose, although the world is not changed in its playing.

Different people like different kind of games; they simply play differently.  Moreover, people play differently at different times in their lives. Looking back on my life, I now understand that what I always simply wanted to do as my playing changed is somehow to keep playing.  Erector sets were displaced by electronics, and then by something that still remains a passion for me: music.  While I liked sports, I must admit that I was not athletically gifted.  This was not true of music.  With music I could actually play, and even play better as the years went by.  Moreover, as the Pythagoreans knew, music is comprised of numbers! 

At one time in my life, in fact, I thought it might be possible to derive income from such music playing.  But it became apparent to me that the economics of this was not likely sustainable.  I did not want to teach high school music, and it was clear that playing music professionally was a very serious matter indeed.  In fact, while there does remain some play in musical endeavors when one does it seriously, much of the play simply has to be given up in perfecting one's craft.  It seemed clear to me then that as the gravity of one's playing increases. one gradually ceases playing.  This suggests that part of our the criterion for the application of the word 'play' is that one does not have to do the activity in question. I don't have to play Bud Powell jazz on the piano, and this not-having-to-play is an essential feature of that play.  

Play thus has no external compulsion.  When we begin to experience the pull of duty to the craft, our play soon becomes work.  After all, training for boxing matches and practicing to play a recital are very serious matters.  One has to work most of the time every day, if one is going to box professionally or play Bach's Goldberg Variations in concert.

I never really knew what I wanted to do when I grew up, but I knew somehow that I had to keep playing.  In college, I didn't play in my math or science courses -- there were many reasons for that including the Viet Nam War -- but I did play some music, and towards the end of my undergraduate days played by both reading, and reflecting upon, books.  Unfortunately, I did not seriously read until I was almost done with college. Following college there was, of course, serious work to do on the farm.  However, I found that I was able to continue to play by learning Latin, studying mathematics and physics, reading Schopenhauer, and, more frequently, reading theology.

I must admit to coming to theology somewhat late.  The German Lutheran pastor of my childhood church taught us in confirmation class how very serious this all was.  Maybe it is because I had thought that theology was work that I did not read it seriously until I was 24 years old.  My first two books were Elert's Structure of Lutheranism and Tillich's Systematic Theology.  Both captivated me, and the latter seemed to me to be true play.

Tillich had put everything together brilliantly.  It was like he had a giant erector set and he had fabricated an enormous building with pulleys, shafts and worm gears turning in beautiful ways.  Moreover, the subject matter seemed quite disconnected from making a living.  How better could one happily spend one's spare time?  Why not read theology?  How much fun could a human have?  Clearly, reading Tillich was more fun and more engaging than watching the Vikings.  And the subject matter was important because the building Tillich was constructing included the fabric of life itself.  What better way to spend one's time than to do read and write theology?  Here is something one could do that was important in itself without thereby having to scheme as to how to make a living through the doing of it.

But a funny thing happened to me on the way to finding meaning and purpose in the play of theology.  I wanted more time to read theology, but in order to put oneself in a position to be able to spend one's time in such theological activity, I found that I had to study theology seriously, and hence move into an occupation more closely aligned to theology than was farming.  And now came the fateful decision.  Why not do a Ph.D. and thereby get to read, write and teach theology the rest of one's life?

This seemed to make sense.  One could be a pretty good thinker, thought I, without becoming merely a professional thinker, without having to read and write 12 hours a day like the poor pianist memorizing the Goldberg Variations for recital.  (Of course, Glen Gould seemingly simply played them.)  One could, I thought, somehow still do theology playfully, one could do it in the cracks and fissures of the other professional activities of life, i.e., the teaching and research of the college or university campus.  Moreover, being on faculty to think the big questions of man and women might just help a few students think those questions as well.  (I was familiar with Wittgenstein's insight that good philosophical thinking allows us to get over the disease of philosophy, but I did not think it applied to theology.)  And so was hatched the idea to get an income that is connected to the play of theology. 

But life always interrupts play.  Life is serious, after all.  My life had veered into the play of business and capital formation, but the latter activities did not remain ultimately playful.  And there was very serious work to do with respect to Lutheran church bodies, particularly the then nascent Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA).  It was my experience in the latter that ultimately propelled me to give up play almost entirely, and to work to establish The Institute of Lutheran Theology (www.ilt.edu).

While there has been some play in the last years in envisioning and implementing structures, there has been mostly work.  One needed to be vigilant in budgeting, in developing constituencies, in marketing, in production, and in the building of a functional management structure.  We have worked hard, and we hope we have successfully founded an institution that can serve future generations of those wanting seriously to study the great texts of the western tradition from a Lutheran perspective.  We take the Bible and Lutheran Confessions extremely seriously, but we do not forget the contemporary cultural and intellectual horizon, and we realize that meaning and truth in our time must be ultimately located in the playful fusion of horizons between our time and the time of these classic texts.   

Now that the Institute has been formed, and my businesses have been built, I find that I am at a new time in my life, a time that might be a time to play again, a time for bringing together the bits and pieces of a lifetime of thinkings and doings.  When I was young, all of the pieces of the erector set could conceivably be used to build most anything I wanted to construct.  It strikes me that there is much to be playful about now as I try to put what I have learned into some kind of coherent order. 

But there is great risk in being playful in theology. After all, theology is a profession and it has its guild that adjudicates the sense from the non-sense, the spurious from the relevant, the significant from the trivial.  One gets a good reputation in theology, a non-playful reputation, for doing work that is important, for doing that which has a significant end in something other than in itself.  Good theology, after all, is supposed to keep the Church moving rightly forward.  So perhaps being playful in theology is something one should keep to oneself.  

All this makes me think about the things that I have written.  Have they been expressions of something important in themselves?  I recall that the jazz pianist Cecil Taylor once said that art is a cry trying to get out.  Has anything that I have written ever been the result of such a playful dynamic?  Luther was passionate about what he wrote because salvation itself was at stake.  Has anything been at stake for me?

Here one must be brutally honest.  Perhaps over the years I might have said a couple of things in print that may have helped move an esoteric conversation in a particular way. Clearly, my academic work has been directed to a rather narrow audience, and my more popular writing has happened less frequently in recent years. What is the cause of this?  Have I nothing any longer to say, or have I simply not prioritized writing to general audiences in the way I should have?  Is it that I have worked so much, that I have no time for play? 

When one reaches a certain stage in one's career, there are no more mountains that need to be climbed, no more work that has to be done.  I finished out an academic career, founded a school, and built a number of businesses.  I am happily married with wonderful children.  So what is left?  Does one simply wander off the stage and prepare for the Night? 

I don't think so.  If one thinks about things clearly, one will fathom that the same thing is left at the end of life as was present in life's childhood: There are again days to spend that one no longer has to organize in ways to make a living.  One has time again, and time is the most precious of all things.  After all, with time comes the possibility of play. The older time of one's life is properly the time to play again, but no longer with the limited toys of youth, but with all the experiences of an entire lifetime!    

This blog is designed to be pure play.  I don't write anything here for any greater grave purpose whatsoever.  I write not to get a better position, to build fame, to reform the Church, or to establish another institution of higher learning.  I write not to accomplish anything at all.  I write now to play.  And what is the contour of this play?   

It is time to connect things together and try to build something new.  While my fundamental passion has always been theology, I have always thought that the more preparation in philosophy one has, the better one will be able to do theology.  Over the years, it has become obvious to me as well, that the best preparation for philosophy is likely not history, literature, or the study of a foreign language -- though all of these are helpful.  The best preparation for the doing of philosophy, I believe, is sustained study and reflection upon the tools of thinking in general, and there is no better way to do this than in the study of modern logic, the logic now assumed by many to constitute the foundations of mathematics.

While many will no doubt disagree, this inference is unmistakable:  To do theology well, one should know some logic, that is, one should know one's way around some of the basics in the foundations of mathematics.  As it turns out, the study of logic helps us get clear on the nature of semantic modeling, something which happens all the time in theology, but upon which there is seldom any explicit recognition or reflection.

Getting clear on the nature of theological models should allow us to remain humble when we advance viewpoints about the nature of the design and the relationship of the divine to the created order.  This involves us in mathematics as well, for when we deal with the divine, we must think the concept of infinity.  But as everybody since Plato and Aristotle have known, the concept of infinite is deeply related to mathematics.  It makes sense still, I think, to play by trying to relate the eternal realm of mathematics to the region of the divine. Playful theology should be more self-conscious, or maybe self-assured, about its mathematics.

But the relationship of theology to philosophy has another ramification as well.  Philosophy was the discipline from which the special sciences were derived.  This means that philosophy and the sciences are always related.  Since theology has a relationship to philosophy, it must as well have a relationship to the special sciences.  I have for a very long time believed that drawing the boundaries of theology in ways that they cannot in principle play on the same stage of truth is a really bad idea.  If theology is to retrieve any of its old vigor, it must again know something deeply about the world.  While theologians should understand some history, politics, literature, and critical theory, they should also know something about quantum theory, neuroscience, cosmology, and information theory.

When theological discourse is no longer available in the sciences, then the possibility of theological coordination and explanation is wholly occluded.  Theories of the multiverse become plausible because there no longer is a bound to the questions science asks and speculatively tries to answer.  What is, after all, more likely:  A creating God at the center of the universe, or the bald existence of a multiverse, an existence without explanation, an existence which itself is only hypothesized because one thinks one can now ask and answer questions beyond the bounds of possible experience in the spirit of the regnant naturalism of our day. 

It is time to play, and I intend to so.  This means I will speculate and make connections that perhaps ultimately cannot be sustained.  Theological play is like brainstorming.  We throw ideas against the wall, many of which we shall probably ultimately have to reject.  However, we shall try to ask some interesting questions.

Notice that the professionalism of the guild counts against such play.  One ought, after all, put into print only what one knows.  In the discipline of many hours of work devoted to one thing, one can learn a great deal about that thing and one might thereby become the expert voice when it comes to that thing.  The world deeply needs experts in many areas, but being an expert is no longer playing, and I intend to play. 

Anybody reading this is invited to join the conversation,  My experience has been that the number of readers of my blog posts diminishes proportionally to that which I regard as theologically important. So let me be clear: I am no longer interested in what the guild might regard as important.  Instead I want to play, and I would be deeply honored if some would want to read along and comment.  Theological conversation helps a theologian stay humble and informed.

But if there are not many readers for some of these blogs, I do understand.  Connecting theologically Bohmian mechanics to the Kantian supersensible substrate is perhaps too speculative for most.  (I do realize that when one looks to be too speculative, one can easily come across as simply being childish.)  Yet, I shall try to remain playful.  After all, I believe that our entire lives can be understood from the inside as being a type of game.  It is precisely in the intrinsicality of our existence, in its playful "purposiveness without a purpose" (Kant), that we find the leisure to ask what it has been about and what it means. Theology poses the most significant questions of human existence, and when these questions are no longer asked, then the game ends and we become other than homo ludens, we become other than who we are. 

So I likely won't run after little white balls this summer.  I will, however, try to think theologically and playfully about all manner of things.  Perhaps this theological thinking is at its deepest meditative.  Perhaps it thus can be linked to the "thinking which is a thanking" to which Heidegger alludes.  I am thankful to have this opportunity to do some playful theology.  Now its time to roll up the sleeves and have some fun!

Where can Teleology find a Home?

Section 79 of Kant's Kritik der Urtheislkraft (Critique of Judgment) poses the following question: What discipline ought to treat teleology? Should it be part of natural science or theology? After pointing out that it can't belong to both and still be a science (Wissenbchaft), Kant offers the following: 

It can't belong to theology. Why? Kant declares:

Denn sie hat Naturerzeugungen und die Ursache derselben zu ihrem Gegenstande, und ob sie gleich auf die letztere, als einen ausser und über die Natur gelegenen Grund (göttlichen Urheber) hinausweiset, so that die dieses doch nicht für die bestimmende, sonder nur (um die Beurteilung der Dinge in der Welt durch eine solche Idee dem menschlichen Verstande angemessen als regulatives Prinzip zu leiten) bloss für die reflectirenede Urteilskraft in der Naturbetrachtung.

What is Kant saying? Since teleological considerations here deal with natural objects and their cause (perhaps a divine cause), no determinative judgment of this divine author is possible. We learned in the First Critique that determinative judgments rightly operate through a "synthesis of the manifold of sensation" in Newtonian ways, that is, in the ways of classical mechanics. 

Determinative judgments will take us to mechanism, but a "goettlichen Urheber" can never be the product of the application of the empirical and pure concepts of the understanding to intuitions (perceptions), and cannot thus appear in the mechanistic web. Thus, while one is free to think there is such a Urheber, this is the result of a reflective judgment which operates by allowing a universal to be freely thought, a universal under which the particular can then fall. [Kant explains in Section IV of the Introduction that when the particular is given and judgment must locate the universal under which it falls, then the power of judgment is reflective ("soll ist die Urtheilskraft bloss reflectierend").] Clearly, teleology does not belong to theology. 

Lamentably, teleology does not belong to natural science either. (I don't think Dembski ever takes on Kant head on, but I have only read some of what he has written.) Kant explains: 

Eben so wenig schient sie aber auch in der Naturwisschenchaft zu gehören, welcher bestimmender und nicht bloss reflektierender Prinzipien bedarf, und von der Naturwirkungen objective Gründe anzugeben. In der That is auch für die Theorie der Natur, oder die mechanische Erklärung der Phänomenon derselben durch ihre wirkende Ursachen dadurch nichts gewonnen, das man sie nach dem Verhältnisse zu Zwecke zu einander betrachtet.

Kant points to the reason why explanations in terms of purpose are dubious in natural science: They disclose nothing about the origination and the inner possibility of the natural forms -- "ueber dass Entstehen und innere Moeglichkeit dieser Formen gar keinen Aufschluss giebt" -- about which theoretical science is concerned. So teleology can not belong to natural science either. Has teleology thus no home? 

As it turns out, teleology does not concern doctrine but Kritik. It concerns "zwar eines besonderen Erkenntnissvermoegens, namlich die Urteilskraft." Teleology concerns the a priori, and thus, can accordingly be regulative of our thinking in the sciences, a regulative thinking that is largely negative. After all, we cannot specify final causes as theoretical objects in our mature scientific theory. However, purposefulness must, in a sense, form the context within which the text of mature naturalistic mechanistic scientific theorizing operates. 

We must remember for the mature Kant, teleological and mechanistic reasoning is grounded in the same thing: the Supersensible. This quote from Section 78 makes all of this quite clear: 

Nun ist aber das gemeinschaftliche Prinzip der mechanischen einerseits und der teleologischen Ableiten andrerseits das Übersinnliche, welches wir der Natur als Phänomen unterlegen müssen.

The Supersensible mediately accessible through the pure and empirical concepts of the understanding in the First Critique, and immediately encountered in the determinations of freedom in the Second Critique, is both "an und fuer sich" through the reflective judgments of the Third Critique. (Or one might so interpret it.) 

But were there a principle that dealt not with the simple material denizens of the res extensa nor the simple mental reality of the res cogitans, but with that neutral monistic reality from which both emerge, would it not after all demand a new "Erkenntnisvermoegens," one which drives toward that way that Heidegger would later evoke as a "thinking which is a thanking?" 

At the Institute of Lutheran Theology, we try to think about things, and we try to think about our thinking of things. Without reverence in the face of the Supersensible, gods become ultimately engineered by, and thus, possessed by the thinker. But Kant, who loved autonomy, nevertheless understood that thinking responds to what is deeper. It can never possess that Abgrund over which it has been fashioned to think. To think that it does is, of course, the ground of idolatry, superstition and ultimately blasphemy. Kant was, of course, a staunch enemy of all of these.

Indeterminate Realism versus Phenomenological Ontology

We received word late yesterday (November 15, 2018) from our accrediting agency that we could begin offering our Ph.D. at the Institute of Lutheran theology in the fall of 2019.  As the founding President of the Institute of Lutheran Theology (ILT), and having taken it from its early very tenuous years through accreditation, and now to this milestone, I wish to express my sincere thanks to all who have worked so diligently on this project.  We have always done what we do to the glory of God, because the search for truth is its own reward.

I wrote this reflection earlier this week, and offer it up now in the spirit of truth.  Clearly, blog writing is not meant to be scholarly writing with citations like one would find in a academic journal.  That being said, I do think all I say below can be supported by the appropriate texts.  As always, I am interested in any responses you might want to share on the blog.
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I remember once having a rather protracted discussion with Langdon Gilkey (1919-2004) in a Des Moines church basement sometime around 1994.  At that time, he would have been 75 years old.  Like many, I had read Naming the Whirlwind in the early1970s, and had been impressed with the issues Langdon had raised on the future possibility of God-talk.  Gilkey had given a talk reflecting on his teacher Paul Tillich that night in the church basement, and I wanted to talk to him about how I was understanding Tillich in those days.

Paul Tillich (1885-1965) wrote a number of widely-read books in the 1950s, including two that I regularly taught undergraduates, The Dynamics of Faith (1956) and The Courage to Be (1952).  (I never had undergraduates read his Systematic Theology.)  In both of those texts, Tillich had employed the notion of the "Ground of Being" in tandem with the "Power of Being," and the "depth of Being," distinguishing them all in The Dynamics of Faith from the "Structure of Being."

The Ground of Being, for Tillich in the 1950s, was the source of existential empowerment in the face of the fundamental anxieties of existence, the anxiety of fate and death, the anxiety of guilt and condemnation, and the anxiety of emptiness and meaninglessness.   In those days, I admit to thinking that Tillich was committed to a phenomenological ontology, and that the Ground of Being simply could not be any "thing" at all.  It was both Ground and Abyss, the Depth of Being whose function it was to be pointed to by religious symbols, and which somehow provided the "courage to be in spite of the fact of non-being," that is, that "negation of the negation of being" that provided being (through courage) existentially in the face of the non-being of existential anxiety.  Whereas a phenomenological ontology could describe the structure of being, it could only point to that indeterminate reservoir of empowerment potential transcending that structure.

I remember talking to Langdon about this, trying to gauge what, in fact, Tillich's view on the Ground of Being was. I thought that perhaps Tillich himself knew that his phenomenological ontology pointed to a Ground of Being that could only be in and for consciousness, that as the reservoir of empowerment, it could not in any way be what it is apart from consciousness.  In other words, I thought that Tillich would have to hold that if consciousness were not present, the Ground of Being could not exist either.  I remember Gilkey listening earnestly to me and saying, "I think Tillich would never think of the Ground of Being in that way.  After all, the Ground of Being for Paul was a real thing."  He then said to me, "if you want to understand what Paul was talking about, you have to read Schelling."  Since reading Schelling seriously was not then on my immediate to-do list, I admit to continuing to think that Tillich must finally be understood in the lineage of Martin Heidegger.  Surely, his thought was not somehow indebted to one of Schelling's Five Systems.  Was he not better understood as a thinker of his own age -- at least when he was thinking clearly like he was surely doing in the last 15 years of his life?

I have been talking about realism in theology these last years because I have thought profoundly important this claim:  A thing is real if and only if that thing exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language.   Applied to God, this is the claim that God is not real unless God's existence is what it is apart from human existence, that is to say, if and only if the existence of human beings is logically independent of God's existence.  It thus seemed that one would have to adopt irrealism in theology if one were to ground one's theology in a phenomenological ontology.   Irrealism is the simple denial of realism, the assertion that "it is not the case that God exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language."

It had been clear to me for some time that that if theology was going to be about something important, i.e., about that which the tradition had assumed it was about, it would have to make causal claims about salvation, claims of the type that "X would not have been saved  -- however one construes this -- apart from the real existence and action of God."  If Bob's existential empowerment could have occurred even were it not the case that the Ground of Being existed apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language, then it could not rightly be claimed that this salvific empowerment was caused by God.  One might claim it was caused by some aspect of us, some depth of our own being with which we are not normally in contact.

It has also seemed to me for a very long time that God cannot be God if God were only a metaphysical absolute.  The God that is the God of Christianity is tied to action, I thought, to acting so as aid God's children, to, as Tillich might say, "negate the negations of being." 

This being said, ground of being theologies do have great metaphysical appeal.  Wesley Wildman rightly points to their fascination: "They deny that ultimate reality is a determinate entity, and they deny that the universe is ontologically self-explanatory" (See "Ground-of-Being Theologies," in the Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science).  My opinion is, however, that while the metaphysical absolute can be intellectually satisfying in myriad ways, if there is no salvific causal connection or metaphysical dependency relation that can be drawn from the Ground of Being to possible human transformation, then Ground of Being ontologies are not really helpful for the religious quest. 

As I was thinking about the development of post-Kantian options for theology in the nineteenth century and into the twentieth century, I became quite uneasy with many of the moves, because they seemed mostly to be consistent with theological irrealism.  What difference would it even make if there were a God that exists apart from human awareness, perception, conception and language if empowerment in the face of the fundamental existential anxieties did not even involve God?  What difference would it make were there to exist a God that was soteriologically inert?  God could, after all, have abstract existence, perhaps like the set of all ordered pairs, but if God were not related to the universe or people in it such that if God had not existed the salvific options of people would not be different, then in what sense is it even important to say that God is?
 
As an instance of possible irrealism, consider how it is possible that one can preach Law and Gospel, and deliver Christ in the sermon so that the grace of God is delivered in the forgiveness of sins without assuming the existence of God at all.  If one presupposes a phenomenological ontology, the forgiveness proclaimed and received in the Word can be understood in terms of a change in the ontological linguisticallity of existence.  If what it is to be is to be in a world in which one dwells in relationship to beings and values, then a linguistic event like preaching really can change one's world.  One perhaps is donated a being-in-the-world which would not have happened apart from the event of preaching.  The effects on the reader of Scripture, the hearer of the sermon, and the recipient of the sacrament could clearly be interpreted as not involving the action of some divine being.  If language itself is performative and the linguistic event empowers, then why assert some other being, disconnected from the event whose action would vouchsafe for the success of the event's reception?

But what if Langdon Gilkey is right about Tillich, and that I really should have studied more deeply Schelling, or perhaps the later works of Kant whom Fichte and Schelling wholly devoured?  While I have spent quite a bit of time in both The Critique of Pure Reason and The Critique of Practical Reason, I have never spent sufficient time with The Critique of Judgment, Kant's last great work of 1790.   I have lately decided to read the work closely, and I now see how and why it was that both Fichte, Schelling, as well as a whole host of other philosophers, believed that Kant's greatest work was, in fact, the Critique of Judgment.  The Critique of Pure Reason is very important, of course, but the options for philosophical and theological development from that work in an age threatened by mechanism were understandably limited.  However, the Critique of Judgment with its emphasis on aesthetics and purpose seemed extremely relevant to the challenges of the early 19th century: How can one find unity, purpose and meaning in a natural universe in which everything that happens seems to be the result of some congeries or concatenation of events antecedently occurring?

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant attempts to find a linkage between the mechanism resulting from the understanding's theoretical cognition of nature and freedom resulting from practical cognition of the power of desire.  The problem is the apparent antinomy between the assertion that all natural events are necessarily determined by other natural events and the claim that there are some events which are natural that are nonetheless not wholly determined by other natural events.  After all, when confronted by the decision to either go to the party of stay home, Molly is immediately aware of her freedom not to go as the very presupposition for her thinking that she ought not to go party.  Molly is a being in the world who is caused to behave as she does by her antecedent conditioning, but who nonetheless has the freedom to do other that what she did do.  But how can all natural events have a cause in nature, when Molly is a natural being involved in natural events and she sometimes acts in ways seemingly determined by no natural events at all?  How is the freedom of a human being, whose being is embodied in nature, possible?

Kant attempts to solve this antinomy by arguing that nature deals only with appearances, and so the appearance of determinism is not in conflict with the underlying freedom encountered in practical reason's grasp of its own duty.  The freedom encountered by the reason in its moral life is not a freedom, however, solely resting in the subject.  It is a freedom determined by reason's grasp of the supersensible substrate that exists both inside and outside the subject, a supersensible substrate that is indeterminate in itself, but is determined in moral experience.  For Kant, however, there is a power of judgment which operates to make determinable the indeterminate supersensible subtrate, a determinability that is possible on the side of the object, that is, a determinability applicable to the entire supersensible substrate, not just that encountered by the subject.

In an important section of the Critique of Judgment, Kant argues that the transcendental notion of purpose applied to nature is finally no mere thinking of purpose on the side of the subject when thinking nature, a thinking that would be the subject's imposition of purpose upon nature, but it is a thinking itself grounded in the indeterminate supersensible substrate, a real supersensible substrate which is what it is, and in the application of judgment to it, can allow the thinking of purpose in nature.

It is impossible, of course, to think what is indeterminate, however, Kant does laud Judgment's ability to think the world as if it were designed by God and as if this God had placed the human effort towards fulfillment of the moral law as the highest good of this creation.  While Kant knows that he cannot argue metaphysically for the real existence of this God without running into the antinomies, he does realize that human beings are allowed to think of the world of nature as if it is the result of objective purpose built into it by God, an objective purpose designed by God allowable on the basis or ground (Grund) of the supersensible substrate.  This substrate cannot be thought for there are no universals under which any supersensible intuitions might fall.  It is not able to be articulated by human beings, but it itself is that upon which analogies arise, analogies that allow human beings to think of nature as the field of moral activity without at the same time having to deny the results of the First Critique.

What does all of this mean?  Well maybe Ground of Being theologies yet hold some hope if we can connect them to a Kantian supersensible substrate.  If the Ground of Being underlying the Structure of Being is the supersensible substrate, an indeterminate noumenality that is the real reservoir of a power of being at the depth of being, a real reservoir of empowerment potential that can truly address the anxieties of fate and death, guilt and condemnation, and emptiness and meaninglessness, then perhaps we can read the entire tradition of theology based upon Kant a bit differently.  There would be, after all, a God, and that God would do stuff.  Its upon that God's basis that we could proclaim that God was indeed in Christ reconciling the world unto Himself.  It is upon that Ground that the grace of Jesus Christ would be proclaimed and it is upon that really existing being that we could proclaim forgiveness and witness transformed lives.  It is upon that Ground that the Spirit would blow when and where it wills, and that the play of the Trinitarian persons could be entertained.  It is upon that Ground of divine simplicity that we could think the great thoughts of the Trinitarian tradition, a Ground deeper than substance but which is the true cause (Grund) of all that is. Maybe such an indeterminate realism is what the apophantic tradition was after all along. 

Kant's Argument for Purpose and the Notion of the Highest Good as the Solution to the Problem of Freedom and Nature

In his Second Introduction to Die Kritik der Urtheilskraft (1790), Kant declares:

"The understanding (Verstand), inasmuch as it can give laws to nature a priori, proves that we cognize nature only as appearance (Erscheinung), and hence at the same time points to a supersensible substate of nature (auf ein uebersinnliches Substrat derselben); but it leaves this substate wholly undetermined.  Judgment, through its a priori principle of judging nature in terms of possible particular laws of nature, provides nature's supersensible substrate (within as well as outside us) with determinability by the intellectual power (Bestimmbarkeit durch das intellectuelle Vermoegen).  But reason, through its a priori practical law, gives this same substrate determination (Bestimmung).  Thus judgment makes possible the transition (Uebergang) from the domain of the concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom" (Kant, Pluhar translation, 37/Kritik der Urtheilskraft, S. 196-7).

Kant's claims are these:

• The understanding, by giving laws to nature a priori, points to an undetermined supersensible substrate.
• Judgment, by judging nature a priori in terms of possible particular laws of nature, provides nature a determinability through its intellectual power.  
• Reason, by its a priori use of practical law, provides the substrate determination.  
• Judgment makes possible transition from the domain of the concept of nature to that of the concept of freedom. 

The supersensible substrate, which is undetermined by the understanding, is determined by reason.  How can that which is undetermined by understanding be nonetheless determined by reason?  Kant argues that judgment links the understanding and reason by providing the undetermined supersensible substrate the very possibility of determination. The undetermined cannot be determined without it having the disposition for determination.  Judgment somehow provides the supersensible the disposition for determination without itself being the actualization of that disposition.  Kant is saying, in effect, that judgment confers potential determination on the supersensible, a potentiality actualized in the employment of reason in its practical use.  But how is this all possible?  Kant argues that the condition for this possibility is the ultimate purpose for the world.  

In Section 86 entitled "Ethicotheology," Kant discusses what ultimately makes the world valuable by considering the notion of final purpose (Endzweck).  He denies that human contemplation (Betrachtung) and cognition (Erkenntnissvermoegen) of the world is sufficient to give the world value (Pluhar, 331/Die Kritik, S. 442: 22-29).  Rather, he claims that "only if we presupposed that the world has a final purpose (einen Endzweck derselben voraussetzen), could its contemplation itself have a value by reference to that purpose (die Weltbetrachtung selbst einen Werth haben)" (331/442).  Accordingly, he staunchly rejects any view that would claim that the final purpose of creation is the feeling of pleasure (der Gefuehl der Lust) that humans might have or develop, or human well-being (Wohlsein), or physical or intellectual enjoyment (Genuss), or ultimately, happiness (Glueckseligkeit) (331/442).  Kant writes: 

"For the fact that man, once he exists, makes happiness his own final intention (Endabsicht) gives us no concept [that tells us] for what end he exists at all, and what his own value is, on account of which his existence should be made agreeable to him (angenehm zu machen).  Therefore, we must already presuppose that man is the final purpose of creation, if we are to have a rational basis (Vernunftgrund) of why nature, considered as an absolute whole in terms of principles of purposes (ein absolutes Ganze nach Principien der Zweck betrachtet wird), should have to harmonize with [the goal of achieving] his happiness (zu seiner Glueckseligkeit zusammen stimmen muesse)" (331-32/442-43).   

Kant is saying that the only way rationally to account for how nature as a whole with its biological teleologies should harmonize with the human goal of happiness is to posit that human beings themselves constitute the final purpose of creation.   He further suggests that human beings have value and the world has final purpose through the "power of desire" (Begehrungsvermoegen).  This "power of desire" does not rest on what human beings might enjoy, but rather concerns the human exercise of freedom, an exercise that is tied to the good will.  Kant declares that this "good will is that through which human existence alone can have absolute worth (absoluten Werth), and in relation to which the existence of the world can have final purpose (Endzweck)" (Die Kritik, S. 443:10-13). 

Kant believes that it is through the good will that the universe has a final purpose.  The moral life of men and women is the final purpose for which nature exists at all.  Kant, however, realizes that a chain of final purposes can be organized according to the relation of "conditions" and the final purpose of human existence is, in some sense, "conditioned" by a higher purpose.  In such a concatenation, one most isolate the unconditional final purpose on the basis of which other final purposes are conditioned.  By acknowledging human beings to be the purpose of creation, there is a rational ground to regard the world as a whole as a system of final causes (die Welt als ein nach Zwecken zusammenhaengendes Ganz und als System von Endursachen anzusehen) (Die Kritik, S. 444:3-4).  Kant writes: 

" . . . we now have . . .  a basis (Grund), or at least the primary condition (Hauptbedingung), for regarding the world as a whole that coheres in terms of purposes (nach Zwecken zusammenhaengendes Ganze), and as a system of final causes (von Endursachen anzusehen). . . in referring natural purposes to an intelligent world cause (verstaendige Weltursache), as the character of our reason forces us to do, we now have a principle that allows us to conceive of the nature and properties of the first cause, i.e., the supreme basis of the kingdom of purposes (obersten Grundes im Reich der Zwecke) and hence allows us to give determination to the concept of this cause (den Begriff derselben zu bestimmen).  Physical teleology was unable to do this; all it could do was to give rise to concepts of this supreme basis that were indeterminate (unbestimmte) and on that very account were inadequate (untaugliche) for both theoretical and practical use" (Pluhar, 333/Die Kritik S. 444:2-11).  

Kant believes we must think this being not simply as intelligence (Intelligenz) and as giving laws to nature (gesetzgebend fuer die Natur), but as a sovereign (Oberhaupt) that gives laws in a moral kingdom of purposes.  In relation to the highest possible good (Gut) -- the existence of rational beings under moral laws -- we must think this primal being (Urwesen) as omniscient (allwissend), as omnipotent (allmaechtig), and as omnibenevolent (allguetig) and just (gerecht).  Kant believes the latter two conditions are necessary if we are to think the highest cause of the world as constituting the highest good under moral laws.  The same is true of all the transcendental properties, e.g., eternity and omnipresence (Allgegenwart), etc., which are presupposed by final purpose.  Kant argues that "in such a way, moral teleology supplements (ergaenzt) what physical teleology lacks, and for the first time grounds a theology" (Die Kritik S. 444: 13-29).    

Kant then concludes that the principle that allows us to relate the world to a supreme cause (oberste Ursache), is itself sufficient, and by driving our attention to the purposes of nature and in investigating the great art (grossen Kunst) lying hidden under nature's forms, the ideas that pure practical reason supplies (herbeischafft) might find incidental (beilaeufige) confirmation (Bestaetigung) in natural purposes (Naturzwecken) (Die Kritik, S. 445:1-4).  The notion of a highest being giving laws to the moral kingdom of purposes is necessary to connect the ideas of pure practical reason --ideas that have according to Kant's First Critique no echo in the physical universe -- nonetheless to nature via the notion of natural purposes.  A universe ordered teleologically is not ultimately alien to a purposeful moral agent.  It is, in fact, the kind of place in which a purposeful moral agent might dwell.  The universe and the beings inhabiting it are teaming with purpose.  Moreover, the moral kingdom of purposes require a highest being giving laws to both it and nature, a being that can and must be thought if freedom is ever to be present in and through nature. 

For Kant, Judgment is the faculty by which the indeterminate supersensible substrate might become determinable, that is, that it might be made capable of determination by pure practical reason.  But is this supersensible substrate the noumenal?  Or is it a transcendental concept, i.e., a transcendental condition for thinking how freedom and nature might be connected, a  concept that is itself not the noumenal?  If the latter, then it is determinable on the basis of itself being a concept capable of predication.  But if this is so, then the determinability of the concept is of a different order than the indeterminateness of the noumenal.  Since the noumenal remains undetermined, there is no ultimate bridge between freedom and nature.   While they can be thought together, at the ontological level they remain wholly disparate.  An unbridgeable dualism remains.  So what is that which unifies the fissure between freedom and nature?  Is it the idea of God, or is it God Himself?  It is to the oft-neglected "moral proof of the existence of God" in Die Kritik der Urtheilkraft that we turn in the next post.  

Kant and The Putative Contradiction between Determinism and Freedom, and the Move towards Common Ground

As is well-known, Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) wrote two very famous works that seem to give very different results.  Like many who have studied philosophy, I have spent considerable time in the texts of both his First and Second Critiques, but never seriously in his Third.

Of course, I have known for a very long time what is in his 1790 Die Kritik der Urtheilskraft.  It is, after all,  famous for its position on the subjective universality of aesthetic judgments; its development of the concept of beauty with its "four moments" that include disinterestedness, universality, necessity, and feeling; and his development of teleology and highlighting of purpose.  One can read parts of the work and be alternately convinced and puzzled by Kant's arguments.  I have known also that Kant thought that somehow his Third Critique could address the putative fissure between the results of his first two tomes, though I have not hitherto tried to examine carefully the specific arguments by which he tries to establish this.  What I write below is my first step in trying to correct this deficiency.

The Kritik der reinen Vernunft from 1781 (first edition) and 1787 (second edition) argued persuasively that all empirical objects, properties, relations and events are constituted by the Understanding (Der Verstand), that is, that the pure and empirical concepts of the understanding ultimately work to "synthesize the manifold of sensation" such that the denizens of the empirical domain can be known in their universality and necessity.  While Kant speaks of the Ding an sich (thing-in-itself), he realizes we have no epistemic access to it.  But while the nomenal realm of the things-in-themselves cannot be known, the phenomenal realm of things-as-they-are-for-us -- things as they have been constituted by, and given to consciousness -- is epistemically accessible.  We can know the latter, but not the former.   What we know is a domain whose inhabitants are connected by strict causal laws.  There are, accordingly, no uncaused events in this domain.  All that happens is a result of other things that have happened.  Accordingly, a mechanical determinism characterizes the phenomenal order of the Ding fuer uns ("thing-for-us").

The Kritik der praktischen Vernunft from 1788 argued persuasively that human beings are immediately confronted by duty, and that in the face of this duty they are free: The fact that one ought to do X presupposes that one is free to do X.  Ought implies the freedom to do; ought implies can.  (Try to think of a situation where it can meaningfully said that something ought to be done when there is no ability for what has not been done to have been other than it is.)  Famously, Kant argues that we are confronted with a categorical imperative that while empty of content, formally gives conditions of universality, impartiality, and necessity.  His subjective maxims of the categorical imperative are these: 1) So act such that in your act, your act can become a universal law of humanity, 2) So act always to treat the other as an end-in-itself and not as a means to one's own end.  But this action requires freedom, a conclusion seemingly incompatible with the results of the First Critique.

Palpably, if there is one or more free acts in the universe, then the mechanistic determinism of the First Critique is wrong.  Conversely, if all events are determined in accordance with strict natural laws, as Kantian universality and necessity seem to imply, then the freedom of the Second Critique is incorrect.  How might this tension be mitigated?

In his Kritik der Urtheilskraft, Kant takes up this issue, particularly in Section IX of his second Introduction that deals with how judgment can connect the legislations of the understanding and reason.  There is a footnote in this section where Kant explains how it is that the results of the first two Critiques are not in opposition with each other.  Because of the difficulty of the argument, I shall often quote it in the original German, offer my own translation of relevant portions, and analyze what it is the Kant is attempting to do.  It is hard enough to understand exactly what Kant means when he is writing in his own language employing his own technical vocabulary.  I believe that the task only becomes more challenging when trying to read him in translation where the attempt to render him intelligible in English has sometimes occluded the precision of that vocabulary.  Here is the footnote:

"Einer von den verschiedenen vermeinten Widersprüchen in dieser gänzlichen Unterscheidung der Naturcausalität von der durch Freiheit ist der, da man ihr den Vorwurf macht: daß, wenn ich von Hindernissen, die die Natur der Causalität nach Freiheitsgesetzen (den moralischen) legt, oder ihre Beförderung durch dieselbe rede, ich doch der ersteren auf die letztere einen Einfluß einräume. Aber wenn man das Gesagte nur verstehen will, so ist die Mißdeutung sehr leicht zu verhüten. Der Widerstand, oder die Beförderung ist nicht zwischen der Natur und der Freiheit, sondern der ersteren als Erscheinung und den Wirkungen der letztern als Erscheinungen in der Sinnenwelt; und selbst die Causalität der Freiheit (der reinen und praktischen Vernunft) ist die Causalität einer jener untergeordneten Naturursache (des Subjekts, als Mensch, folglich als Erscheinung betrachtet), von deren Bestimmung das Intelligible, welches unter der Freiheit gedacht wird, auf eine übrigens (eben so wie eben dasselbe, was das übersinnliche Substrat der Natur ausmacht) unerklärliche Art den Grund enthält" (Kritik der Urteilskraft, S. 195, fn.)

Kant points out here one of the objections to his finding no contradiction between the causality of nature and freedom is this:  "When I speak about obstacles that nature lays in the way of the laws of freedom (moral laws), or the furthering of the same, I thus concede that the former has an influence on the latter."  Kant says, however, that this is a misinterpretation of his position, a misunderstanding that is easy to avoid it.  He continues, "The resistance (Widerstand) or furtherance (Befoerderung) is not between nature and freedom, but between the former as an appearance and the effects of the latter as an appearance in the world of sense (Sinnenwelt)."  Kant is clearly explaining that this is not a situation of nature and freedom in conflict.  Rather, the apparent conflict occurs between appearances, i.e., between the appearance that is nature and the appearance of the effects of freedom.  

Kant then declares that "the causality of freedom (of pure and practical reason) is the causality of that subsumed natural cause -- the subject, as a human being, thus considered as an appearance."  He further explains that in the determination (Bestimmung) of this natural cause, "the intelligible, which is thought under [the concept] of freedom, contains a ground (Grund) in an unexplained way -- even as the same comprises the supersensible substrate of nature."  

Kant is claiming that freedom and nature do not conflict because in some sense both are appearances of an underlying reality which, though it itself cannot be explicated, nonetheless grounds the intelligible, that is, a reflective judgment of freedom, a judgment that humans can think, and in that thinking locate the perspective by which freedom and nature do not conflict.

But can we become clearer on what Kant is saying?  How does this all cohere with Kant's examination of both aesthetic and teleological judgments that comprise most of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft?  

In light of the footnote above, I want to read closely Section IX of Kant's second Introduction to the Kritik.  While it does not provide a detailed explanation of how the intelligibility of the judgment linking the domains of nature and freedom connects to the ground of the supersensible, it does nicely lay out the direction in which an explanation might take us.  Kant begins the section by distinguishing the understanding and reason.  Because the German is straightforward, I quote Werner Pluhar's translation as follows:  

"The understanding legislates a priori for nature, as object of sense, in order to give rise to theoretical cognition of nature in a possible experience.  Reason legislates a prior for freedom and for freedom's own causality, in other words, for the supersensible in the subject, in order to give rise to unconditioned practical cognition" (Pluhar, Critique of Judgment, p. 35/Kritik, S. 195:4-8).  

This statement of the results of the First and Second Critiques is followed by what I shall call Kant's independence axiom:

"The concept of freedom determines nothing with regard to our theoretical cognition of nature, just as the concept of nature determines nothing with regard to the practical laws of freedom: and to this extent it is not possible to throw a bridge from one domain to the other (eine Bruecke von einem Gebiete zu dem anderen hinueberzuschlagen) (Critique, p. 35-6/Kritik, S. 195:13-16).  

But he then qualifies this statement of independence with this startling assertion that I must quote in the original German: 

"Allein wenn die Bestimmungsgründe der Causalitaet nach dem Freiheitbegriffe . . . gleich nicht in der Natur belegen sind, und das Sinnliche das Übersinnliche im Subjekte nicht bestimmen kann: so ist dieses doch umgekehrt . . . möglich and schon in dem Begriffe eine Causalitaet durch Freiheit enthalten, deren Wirkung diesen ihren formalen Gesetzen Gemäß in der Welt geschehen soll . . .(Kritik, S. 195:17-24)." 

Kant declares that "even though the grounds of the determination of causality according to the concept of freedom do not lie in nature, and the sensible cannot thus determine the supersensible
in the subject, the converse is possible, and already in this concept, a causality through freedom is contained, [a causality] whose effect must happen in the world according to its [freedom's] formal laws."  Clearly, Kant is saying that the supersensible can somehow determine the sensible in conformity with the formal laws of freedom.  This is a bold claim for the one who wrote persuasively in his Kritik der reined Vernunft  that metaphysics has been shipwrecked on the shores on reason's antinomies.  The "supersensible" clearly smacks of metaphysics, does it not?  But Kant is not done:  

" . . . obzwar das Wort Ursache, von dem Übersinnlichen gebraucht, nur dem Grund bedeutet, die Causalitaet der Naturdinge zu einer Wirkung gemäß ihren eigen Naturgesetzen, zugleich aber doch auch mit dem formalen Princip der Vernunftgesetze einhellig zu bestimmen, . . .  (Kritik, S. 195:24-27).  

Kant is pointing out that when the word 'cause' is used with respect to the supersensible, we mean only the ground (Grund) determining the causality of natural things to bring about an effect according to their own laws of nature, and at the same time to do so in conformity with the formal principle of the laws of reason.  By qualifying his assertion in this way, Kant seeks to avoid a metaphysical claim.  'Cause' used here is not a usage according to the pure concepts of the understanding or the pure ideas of reason, but instead points to a basis or ground in the noumenal by which casual connections can be drawn in the phenomenal, a basis or ground that at the same time can allow these causal connections to obtain in a way consistent with the laws of reason in the moral order.  It is a use that is possible for reflective judgment, not for the theoretical judgments of the First Critique.  It is a use that nonetheless allows for the fact that we have no insight into how this is possible (wovon die Moeglichkeit zwar night eingesehen).   

It is important to recall at this point Kant's distinction between determinative and reflective judgments.  While the theoretical exercise of pure reason and the practical use of pure practical reason employ the former, the second type of judgment is saved mostly for the kinds of concerns Kant examines in the Third Critique, e.g., aesthetics and teleology.  In a determinative judgment, the universal is that which is known and which determines the particular in accordance with it.  In a reflective judgment, however, it is the particular which is known and one is allowed thereby freely to think a universal (identifies a universal) under which the particular might fall.   

It is in such a judgment that Kant then connects this supersensible ground to the concept of purpose.  It is through a final cause that freedom and the world of nature in which it is advanced must exist. In lines that clearly suggest the development of Fichte that will soon follow, Kant writes: 

"Die Wirkung nach dem Freiheitsbegriffe ist der Endzweck, der (oder dessen Erscheinung in der Sinnenwelt) existieren soll, wozu die Bedingung der Möglichkeit desselben in der Natur (des Subjects als Sinnenwesens, nämlich als Mensch) vorausgesetzt wird" (Kritik, S. 195:30 - 196:3).   

Purpose is the effect according to the concept of freedom, which must exist in the sensible world, and which is presupposed by the condition for the possibility in nature of human beings, subjects that are denizens of the sensible.  He continues: 

" . . . die Urteilskraft giebt den vermittelnden Begriff zwischen den Naturbegriffen und dem Freiheitsbegriffe, der die Übergang von der reinen theoretischen zur der praktischen, von der Geseztsmaessigkeit nach der ersten zum Endzwecke nach dem letzten möglich macht, in dem Begriff einer Zweckmässigkeit der Natur an der Hand; Den dadurch wird die Möglichkeit des Endzwecks, der allein in der Natur und mit Einstimmung ihrer Gesetze wirklich werden kann, erkannt" (Kritik, S. 196:4-11).  

The power of judgment provides a mediating concept between the concepts of nature and freedom.  It is the concept of the purposiveness of nature that makes possible a transition from the theoretical to the practical, from the lawfulness of nature to the purpose of the practical.  We can know only through the possibility of a final purpose (Endzwecks) how freedom is actualizable in accordance with the laws of nature.  The understanding which determines the phenomenal order leaves the supersensible substrate of nature undetermined.  While reason in its practical use according to the moral laws does determine this substrate, it cannot point to how freedom might be thought actualizable in nature.  Kant declares: 

"Die Urteilskraft verschafft durch ihr Princip a priori die Beurteilung der Natur nach möglichen besonderen Gesetzen derselben ihrem übersinnlichen Substrat (in uns sowohl als ausser uns) Bestimmbarkeit durch das intellektuelle Vermögen. Die Vernunft aber giebt eben demselben durch ihr praktisches Gesetz a priori die Bestimmung; und so macht die Urteilskraft den Übergang von Gebiete des Naturbegriffs zu dem Freiheitsbegriffs möglich" (Kritik, S. 196:15-22).     

It is the power of judgment that, through its own a priori principle, judges nature according to its possible particular laws, and accordingly possesses the intellectual capability (intellektuelle Vermoegen) to give the supersensible substrate determinability (Bestimmbarkeit).  This determinability of the supersensible substrate links to the determination (Bestimmung) by practical reason of that same supersensible substate.  Judgment thus allows the transition from the domain of the concept of freedom to that of the concept of nature.   

What Kant is saying is that judgment is free to think the notion of a final purpose under which both moral freedom and the determinism of nature might fall.  One can conceive of a ground -- though not articulate its structure -- under which its determination of nature, and its determinability by practical reason is possible.  The intelligibility of this ground in uns sowohl als ausser uns is found in the final purpose for which nature and freedom exist.  Our permission contemplatively to think nature as purposeful allows us to think how it is that a purposeful moral agent might exercise freedom in the domain of nature.  Ultimately, it is only the appearance of nature that stands in opposition to the life of the moral subject.  In reality, the deepest nature of that nature is consonant with our moral strivings.  

How could it be that the fissure between freedom and nature is overcome?  It is simply that we must penetrate beyond the mere appearance of their opposition and grasp the identity of their ground in the seeming disparate difference of their domains.  With this move, Kant, and not Fichte, palpably becomes the true father of German Idealism.  

To achieve more clarity on the nature of purpose and teleology for his program of finding an underlying unity between nature and freedom, however, demands that we examine carefully relevant selections of pertinent texts in Part II of the Kritik der Urtheilskraft on teleology.  I shall return to this task in a later post. 

Reflections on Kant's Quest for the Unity of Reason

I first came to Kant as an undergraduate student, trying to read a text I found at the library with the interesting title, The Critique of Pure Reason.  I recall attempting to figure out what Kant meant by the analytic/synthetic distinction and why he thought it so important.  I liked metaphysics even then, I must admit, and was accordingly puzzled why Kant was so chary of it.

I also vividly remember taking in my last undergraduate semester a course entitled "Freedom and Determinism," in which I wrote a paper complaining that Kant could and ought not be a half-way determinist.  If the results of the First Critique are a thoroughgoing mechanistic determinism, then clearly there is no freedom, certainly not the freedom Kant extols in his Critique of Practical Reason.  I was an incompatibilist back then, I suppose, for I thought that if all acts are determined, then there can be no contra-causal freedom and philosophical libertarianism is false, and conversely, if some actions are contra-causally free -- philosophical libertarianism is true -- then not all acts are determined.

Compatibilism was, I thought, simply a lack of courage.  If I really could have done other than I did do -- and write 'really could not have done' instead of 'really could have done' in the earlier part of this sentence -- then not all acts are mechanistically determined and the results of Kant's First Critique are wrong.  How could the conclusions of both Critiques be true?   If mechanistic determinism, then no freedom; if freedom then no mechanistic determinism.  Tertium non datur!!  

I have read quite a bit of philosophy since those early days, but I must confess that I have not really gotten sufficient clarity on the freedom/determinism issue to make much progress.  Clearly, every event has a cause including each act that I do.  Yet if I am not really free to do other than what I did do, then I cannot be culpable for my actions.  With what propriety can I ascribe praise and blame to someone who cannot do other than what he does do?

Probably James' "Dilemma of Determinism" was most convincing to me.  I can believe in freedom of the will.  On questions that are momentous, unavoidable, and not ultimately empirically determinable, then I have a right to choose that belief which is most subjectively satisfying.  Either freedom of the will is true or it is not true.  If it is not true, then I am in the subjectively unsatisfying position of always regretting actions I do which, if determinism is true, I could not have not done.  My experience is one of regretting what is unchangeable, and even, if enlightened about determinism, regretting my regretting of what is unchangeable.  Why would one choose to believe that which makes a mockery out of one's very moral experience?

But my practical belief in libertarianism (the freedom to do other than what one did do) could not dispel my theoretical doubts. After all, it seemed to me then, and seems to me now, that everything in the universe is ultimately physical -- including us.  This means inter alter that explanation schemes for the realization of contra-causal action are difficult to frame. Assume that macro-event A causes macro-event B.  Given that physicalism is likely true -- that what there ultimately is in the universe are those entities over which the quantifiers of our fundamental theories of micro-physics quantify -- then each macro-event must have some realization at progressively lower levels of descriptions terminating in those most basic entities (or fields) over which micro-physics quantifies.

Even though 'A causes B' can perhaps not be given a reductive analysis in terms of a congeries of micro-events and entities constituting A and a congeries of micro-events and entities constituting B, it is nonetheless true that some set of entities and events realize A and some other set realize B.  Presumably, top-down causality does not hold, i.e., that actualizations at upper levels can causally influence the distribution of their realizers at the lower levels.  Accordingly, the laws effecting the distribution of lower level events and entities must be indigenous to those lower levels.  Thus, the distribution of these lower level events and entities will metaphysically determine the causal relations at the upper levels.  Simply put, macro-causality is realized by the physical micro-causal, and there is no room for the contra-causal agency of human beings.  While there is no type/type identity between macro-events and their realizers, there is token/token identity.  That is to say, every occasion of A need not be realized in the same way at the lower levels, but there must be some realization or other of A.   One might say that A and B are multiply realizable at the lower levels.

It is precisely these considerations that have made it difficult for me to get clear on any way to solve the problem of freedom and nature.  Freedom seems not to be part of nature, but profoundly part of what it is to be me.  Nature seems not to have any freedom, and indeed to give it freedom seems to make a mockery out of our science.  How could the lower level physical realizers of uncaused actions spontaneously appear?

All of this is but an extended introduction to Immanuel Kant's Third Critique.  In his 1790 Critique of Judgment -- actually it is Der Kritik der Urtielkraft, or "Critique of the Power of Judgment"-- Kant mounts a spirited defense of a position that animated earlier readers of the Kritik, but has not been much understood since.  In this Critique, Kant argues for the possibility of a rapprochement between Nature and Freedom, between the results of the First Critique and the results of the Second.  Famously, he argues for a different type of judgment than the determinative judgments of the first two Critiques.

While it is the imagination and understanding which work to form and experience the objects of the empirical world according to the laws of nature we ourselves promulgate, and while it is reason that functions to determine our moral experience according to the moral law that we autonomously legislate, there is a judgment tied to aesthetics and teleology that does not determine the particular on the basis of the universal, but which allows a universal to be thought on the basis of the particular.  In this reflective judgment, which Kant does not explicitly connect to aesthetics in the Critique of Judgment, there is granted a license to judge universally and subjectively the purposiveness of that which has no purpose.  In this judgment, one is ultimately allowed to think that there is a supersensible substratum connecting the sensibility of nature and the supersensibility of freedom, a noumenal reality that shows itself in teleological organization in nature, and in the doing, rescues nature from a position of total otherness (alienation?) from freedom.

Imagine John acting to save Mary from her drug addiction.  Presumably, John could not have acted so to save Mary, but did so act, and thus his act is freely done and praiseworthy because of it.  But where does John realize his free decision to do other than what he might have done and take Mary to the drug treatment center?

He seemingly must do this action wholly embodied in nature  -- his body is physical and his actions are physical events -- and thus the entire realization of his free decision so to act is subject to the determinism of nature.  So how could this free act be possible in a mechanical universe?  What are the transcendental conditions allowing for the realization of Freedom in Nature?

Kant's answer is that we are allowed to think that there is in nature purposive structure.  The heart exists to pump blood.  The pumping of the blood allows the heart to be conceived as cause.  The symmetries of nature allow a designer to be thought as cause.  Nature itself organizes itself, and in this organization points to a summum bonum as the limit of such organization, as the attractor towards which all things flow.  In the organization of nature can be found the manifestation of the supersensible, a manifestation that makes possible the realization of freedom precisely in the determinism of nature.  Kant is hoping to locate a unity to reason grounding both its theoretical and practical operations, a unity that does not, however, fall prey to the antinomies of Pure Reason, a unity that escapes the charge of the bare posit of another pulling of a metaphysical rabbit out of the hat.

An evaluation of the degree to which Kant is successful must await, however, a precise statement of the argument for the unity of reason found in the Critique of Judgment.  It is to this that I hope soon to return.

An Irony at Luther Seminary

The Park Bugle of St. Anthony Park reports in its June 22, 2018 issue that Luther Seminary will sell 15 acres of its buildings and land.  The subheading declares, "Sale is Part of 'Campus of the Future' plan, which includes free tuition for incoming students and a trimmer campus."  The buildings to be sold include Northwestern Hall, Stub Hall, several houses and the LDR apartments on Fulham St., Breck Woods, and Bockman Hall.  Remaining at Luther Seminary are the Olson Campus Center and Gullixson Hall.  Looking at the map, it would appear that approximately 70% of the campus is slated for sale.  (See http://www.parkbugle.org/luther-seminary-to-sell-15-acres-of-buildings-land/.)

There are many reasons for the sale.  Years ago I wrote a brief paper justifying the establishment of a new Lutheran seminary -- a seminary that the Institute of Lutheran Theology became -- that alluded to the problems facing the present brick and mortar Lutheran seminaries.  I spoke then of the economic, sociological and theological problems facing these educational institutions (https://www.academia.edu/12456248/Proposal_of_the_Lutheran_Theological_House_of_Studies_Taskforce).  The problems the seminaries face oftentimes disallow them from operating on the models they have inherited from the past.  Within the ELCA in particular, changes are now rapid.

Luther Seminary, like many seminaries of mainline Protestant Christianity, is witnessing declining enrollment and increased use of online learning platforms.  While headcount at many seminaries is slowly declining, the number of physical students on campuses is dropping much more precipitously.  This seems to be happening at Luther. 

As I was contemplating the move by Luther to monetize their real estate assets to provide operational revenue via "free tuition" for incoming M.Div. and M.A. students, I was stuck by an irony.  While the ELCA and its predecessor bodies have not for decades been able to provide future pastors free tuition for matriculating at Luther, free tuition will now evidently be available to students because of the appreciation of the financial value of Luther Seminary's real assets.

Many of those who will train to become future "missional pastors" at Luther will no doubt have deep concerns and criticisms of capitalism.  Theological literature criticizing America's present  economic system is abundant, and most studying in mainline Protestant denominational seminaries can articulate at least some of the key points of economic injustice underlying classism, sexism, racism, etc. Clearly, a greater percentage of American wealth lands in fewer and fewer hands.  (Think of Jeff Bezos at Amazon who is now worth $142,500,000,000.)  It simply is true that many becoming pastors today understand their task primarily as speaking a prophetic voice against structures of economic injustice, oppression and marginalization.

The irony is this: Those attending Luther in its tuition-free future will likely owe their ability to learn the deep theological critiques of capitalism to . . .  capitalism.  How is this so?

Land value appreciates because developers see a market, and subsequently value an asset on the basis of how it will allow them to serve that market.  There are many reasons why developers develop.  Many developers whom I know have altruistic traits; they want to help people by providing a service that is needed.  However, no developer can develop without calculating the margins, and those margins must include profit.

It is standard in commercial and multi-family development that one must achieve a certain debt service covering ratio (DSCR) before a bank will make a loan on a project.  This ratio is the measure of net operating income (NOI) over debt service.  Most banks will not approve a project if the DSCR is below 1.2.  For instance, if debt service (principle + interest) on a building is $100,000/year, the NOI must be at least $120,000 if the DSCR is to be above 1.2.  Since NOI is the difference between revenue and all expenses, one must show a profit prior to depreciation (amortized write-off of capital expenditures) of $120,000 even to get the loan to allow the project to be built.  Simply put, one must show $20,000 in available cash flow (net operating income less debt service) in order to build the project.  The land and improvements at Luther Seminary will likely have the value they will have, a value based upon a motivated rational seller and motivated rational buyer, because someone can figure a way to cash flow the new project at 20% over debt service.

This means that the value of the asset that can be monetized for free student tuition which will allow students to study the evils of capitalism is itself dependent upon economic realities that presuppose capitalism.  Simply put, if capitalism did not work, at least in this particular case, there would be insufficient land and improvement value to monetize, no free student tuition, and possibly no educational context for the study of capitalism's shortcomings.

But there is more irony.  What the Lutheran Church was not capable of doing -- providing free tuition to those studying to become pastors -- the market is actually accomplishing.   It is precisely because entrepreneurs take risks in order to develop property that land at Luther will likely have the value it will have. Because the land and improvements have the value they have, monetization is possible which can produce free or diminished student tuition. 

It is perhaps too bald to say this, but I shall do so anyway:  The necessary condition for the possibility of a context of free and open dialogue and criticism of capitalism among students and professors at Luther Seminary is the existence itself of capitalism, an economic system apparently capable of providing the requisite funds for the discussion there to occur.