The Practical Dialectic in Kant and Plato

   This will be a simple attempt to expand my understanding of thinkers by thinking them through each other, and also an illustration of such thinking through.  This procedure runs along these lines: structures in philosophical thought are actually few in number, despite the rich variety in language, and so when two philosophers have thought about the same subject, it can be helpful to compare the structures they employ to see if they are actually indicate results that are only implied in the other, or which can be seen by structuring elements in one system by those in another.  The comparison here is between Kant and Plato, and concerns the highest Good in Kant and Beauty itself (which is also the True, Good, &c) in Plato, and how both thinkers see these highest ideas as providing for the highest objectives of human life.

   Kant sees man's practical life divided between two universal ends that are in conflict: virtue and happiness.  To be virtuous means to obey the autonomous moral law (duty), while happiness is the fulfillment of our heteronomous desires.  These universal aims are in conflict since our desires may always lead us astray from our duty.  These conflicts in human nature have been recognized through the history of philosophy, and attempts have been made to resolve the conflict intellectually.  Kant contrasts the attempt of Stoics in supposing that virtue is happiness with that of Epicureans in supposing that happiness is virtue and finds that both the popular Stoic and Epicurean positions ignore one side of the conflict, rather than actually resolve the struggle between autonomy and heteronomy.

   Kant names the fulfillment of perfect virtue and happiness the "highest Good", and notes that striving for its attainment is in our nature.  However, this goal cannot be accomplished by us, and so requires supernatural assistance for its possibility.

   For Plato, there are primarily two ways of thinking 'love': as philos and eros.  Philos is associated by us with friendship, and for Plato I will emphasize the motto (maybe maxim), "friends share all things in common" (Phaedrus, Lysis).  Eros is thought by us in connection with erotic love, and Plato considers it more broadly as the result of our feeling the lack (Symposium, Phaedrus).  I will associate philos with the demands of autonomy (virtue), and eros with heteronomy (happiness), and thereby use Kant's practical dialectic as a foil to predict some thing we can expect in these terms.

   Plato understands love (eros) of Beauty itself to be obtainable, and so it is not an ideal that guides us onward indefinitely.  Perfect fulfillment of heteronomous desire is an unobtainable ideal in Kant, and so not to be made equivalent with loving Beauty itself.  We should understand education in eros as the unveiling of new kinds of eros, and so new things that we lack and pursue.

   Beauty is manifest in all objects of desire, however, but there is an exclusivity involved in the love of finite things which does not exist for Beauty itself.  Still, even when we attain a love Beauty itself, we are still susceptible to finite objects of desire, and so are tempted to exclude others from them.  For Kant, a limit on our ability to attain to perfect virtue is exactly this constant possibility of desire for things, and so the struggle to attain a love of Beauty itself parallels the development of virtue somehow.  Now, erotic love is still heteronomous, and so the cultivation of it at any level will never suffice for autonomy, and so we should see if the cultivation of eros provides a foundation for virtue rather than its attainment.

   It is, at first, hard to see how philos has a relationship to the cultivation of virtue.  But, supposing that the cultivation of eros develops the ground for virtuous practice, we may find how this cultivation concerns philos.  Considering the motto, "friends share all things in common", we can project the development of relationships between people where conflict arises due to limited resources.  The perfect management of these resources, so far as we must have them, will be a progress towards universal freedom sustained mutually between agents, as well as an economy of objects desired.  If we were to only love things that were limited, then it would require a great deal of laws to keep us in a relation as friends (but this would itself not work without love of law - even begrudgingly).  However, so far as we can attain to a love (eros) of things which are not subject to limited resources, then sharing becomes much easier.  Here we can clearly see how the cultivation of eros lays the ground for the pursuit of philos as a maximum in sharing, freedom under laws, and how a perfect development of eros (so that we only love Beauty itself) would produce no need for laws.  However, so long as we are finite beings, we have finite needs which prevent us from a perfect love of Beauty itself.

   To review: if friends are to share all things in common, we will have great difficulty so far as we find ourselves needful of things that are limited and of which we have a limited amount.  The cultivation of loving (eros) Beauty itself (Good, Truth, &c) orients us towards a domain of things that are not subject to limitations.  This means that the cultivation of eros is at the same time the development of philos, but this development will still be on the side of a single individual, and so only makes an individual suitable to be a part of a community of friends without creating that community.  This can indicate the importance of education in Plato, and that education should not be seen in terms of passing on knowledge of finite things or even particular cultural mores, but rather is for cultivating eros to allow for better friends, and citizens (this also should be understood relative to letting things stand in their own light, as in the allegory of the cave`).

   Reflecting off of this insight into Plato's thought we can find insight into Kant.  We can see that Kant's description of virtue in the Metaphysics of Morals as the cultivation of our inclination for duty is exactly this cultivation of eros in Plato.  The universality of the Categorical Imperative illustrates how Kant considers duty to involve such a possibility of a community of friends in relation to individual developments of virtue.  Situating the universality of the moral law in these terms of the conditions of maximum sharing in common (philos) represent Kant's understanding of morals more accurately, and avoids the harmful reception of Kant himself pronouncing what one ought to do.

   Happiness (in Kant) is only attainable so far as we can bring about conditions of universal philos in ourselves and others, and for this we will always be striving in this life in our cultivation of eros or virtue.  Perhaps this life long striving revealed in Plato can provide us a good basis to move on to understanding the afterlife myths that involve the familial relationship he draws between the laws of a state and those of the afterlife (Crito), or the striving after the forms (Phaedrus), or the expression of power to free us from long standing tyranny (Republic), or Socrates easygoing relation to death (Phaedo).

Understanding 'Worthiness to be Happy' in Kant

   When reading Kant's practical philosophy I have struggled how best to understand how 'self-worth', and 'virtue', are understood also as 'worthiness to be happy'. Kant seems to think that it is clear, but I do not think I am alone in my difficulties. I hope that sharing my own reflections on the topic can help continued progress in understanding Kant's practical philosophy.
   My overarching concern with 'worthiness' relates to what Kant calls the Highest Good, which is the the idea of possessing happiness in proportion to virtue (this is basically theodicy). Kant understands virtue as worthiness to be happy, and so the Highest Good could also be formulated as happiness in accordance with worthiness to be happy. If we do not correctly understand what worthiness to be happy means, or fail to understand how merely being good renders us worthy of happiness in our own eyes, then we are not completely clear on what Kant means by virtue, and therefore, we also do not understand the Highest Good, either.
   This problem may also be valuable opportunity for examining a style of reading, since I will need to employ some kind of technique to understand worthiness to be happy. Therefore, to begin I am going to discuss my approach to this hermeneutical problem.

Interpretive Method
   Because Kant does not provide a lot of detailed interpretation of worthiness, or a derivation of it, it is probably safe to assume (ex hypothesis) that its meaning should be fairly straight forward. I generally think we all have a sense of justice in punishment and reward. However, giving metaphysical accounts gets more and more difficult as the object being accounted for becomes more 'straight forward'. Personally, I think that Kant may not have recognized the limits of his discussion of worthiness to be happy (or I have not found the passage he makes its necessity precise enough); I also think that Kant did not have a method for working out this question until the third critique, and in light of that I plan to approach this question in light of the third critique. I will explain this briefly.
   The third critique examines principles which concern reflective judgments. In short, reflective judgments tell us about the subject, as opposed to objects. The third critique does not examine all cases of determination of the subject, but only the necessary connection between our faculties as revealed in certain experiences (beauty, usefulness). The procedure is generally as follows: if there is an experience which constrains us to think the subject to be some way, then we have found a necessary determination of the subject. Any necessary judgment requires a transcendental principle. We will examine 'worthiness to be happy' as a type of determination of the subject that is unavoidable in the experience of self-worth.
   Such an analysis could be done, with much benefit, on other topics in Kant. One of these that may stand in most need would be the unity of apperception.

Self-Worth as Un-concealing of Worthiness to be Happy
   Worthiness to be happy is identified with our moral worth, or self-worth. To put this in another way: when we do what we ought to, we feel good about ourselves, and this good feeling is also a feeling of our worthiness to be happy. This sense of self-worth is quotidian, and I assume the feeling of it is available to all readers such that we can appraise it on our own in relation to how we think of worthiness. But first, we can continue to clarify.
   Kant takes there to be two ways in which things are valued: as means and as ends. So far as something is (or I am) useful as a means to some end, the thing (or I) have instrumental value for that end, which is valued. On the other hand, so far as I do what I ought to, then I have an inner worth (moral worth, or self-worth) which is indifferent to the results of my actions; this is what it means to be worthy as an end in myself. It is only in this latter, inner worth that we will seek to understand worthiness.
   Another question we might ask is - and this will sound phenomenological - how does worthiness to be happy show itself? Worthiness to be happy is something attributed to the subject. It shows itself through my self-worth arising from an action I performed. How does this self-worth constrain us to think the subject?
   Worth is always of some value, and we might ask if worth (be it from material or formal principles) should always be thought as connected with purposiveness (thinkable in terms of what for). If so, with self-worth I think a purpose (a what for) pertaining to myself. However, it is a purpose that is ambiguous, a peculiar usefulness which I cannot use for myself. I say this because we do not know any technique of using our self-worth to attain anything.
   If something is useful for us, and pertains to our happiness in some way. This usefulness, uncovered by self-worth, then relates to happiness. To put this in another way, our self-worth gives rise to the thought of our own useful, which is always for our happiness. We can see an interpretation of worthiness to be happy emerging.
   I would like to clarify the analysis so far, doubling back to two points in particular: first, worth always brings along with it the thought of purposiveness; second, that something useful for us always pertains to our happiness.

Clarifications
   Purposiveness is the suitability of something for some end. For example, when we experience the force of the moral law, we experience the suitability of the subject to the duty commanded by the law. Above we have mentioned that when we act for the sake of duty and feel self-worth that this value of ourselves is also the thought of ourselves as useful. However, through self-worth we do not also think a maxim or technique for use of ourselves to some end. Furthermore, there is no way we can guarantee that the world, which obeys laws of nature, will have any means to make us happy from this self-worth, since it is the result of laws of freedom. This worth cannot be manipulated or made use of by us. Is it coherent to say that something can be determined as purposive, and suited to some end, without any way of knowing how to use it for that end?
   This seems coherent, since I can suppose anything to be useful to the end of happiness without yet knowing how to make use of it. In fact, this simply is a heuristic for thinking the object according to a plan to know more about its usefulness. Perhaps we can add this additional clarification to our interpretation above and see if it is clearer: worthiness to be happy is the subject being made aware of his suitability for happiness by his self-worth arising from obedience to the moral law; this is a heuristic for coming to know more about how obedience to the moral law makes us suited for happiness, that is, it sets up an interest in the subject in the happiness that it might attain through virtue.
   We may recognize an additional clarification here. Since duty makes us useful to the ends of some command, does this mean that duty itself implies that the end it supplies is useful to us? No, since the representation of the suitability does not include any ends which we might take, and so which might contribute to our happiness. We do not find worth, that is, use, in the moral law, but we respect it.
   Now I want to clarify the second point which is what I mean when I say that something useful for us always pertains to our happiness.
   By happiness I understand when something has happened in accordance with my desire. When something is useful, but not worth anything to us, then it is thought as having a purpose in some relation to an end and means, but it is not useful for us. When something is useful for us, then it also has a worth because it can contribute to our happiness. A thing can contribute to our happiness when its purpose is suited to something we desire, and, therefore, aims at our happiness.

Conclusion
   In the analysis of worthiness to be happy, moral law, self-worth, happiness and an interest in our self-worth - all important in Kant's practical thought - have been represented in their relationships, and hopefully this has provided some clarity and distinctness to many of these concepts. However, it may be helpful to illustrate once more the connection of these concepts: self-worth, which is the result of acting out of respect of the moral law, is the same thing as a consideration of our usefulness to ourselves for happiness, which is always an interest to us. We can add to these connections the Highest Good.
   The usefulness to ourselves thought in self-worth is virtue, and it contains no maxim that we can adopt which will fulfill the value of the will. Therefore, for this value to be redeemed, intervention is requires. If this intervention is within the bounds of nature, and due to respect from other finite rational beings, then we find that we can be benefited by others due to respect for us. However, the Highest Good involves perfect happiness, which means that nature is entirely bent to my desire (will and wish). For this we must think a force at least as great as nature, but also capable of respect and so capable of judgment. Therefore, it cannot simply be nature. This entity must be a will with enough power to control nature entirely. This is the postulate of God.
   I hope to further consider the postulate of God in another post, by asking what it means to be asked if you believe in God.