Foundations and Tribunals

The architectural model of building a structure of thought on "foundations" is among the metaphors employed by modern thinkers, and in this as in other areas there was a close alliance of philosophy and political action. Bauman notes that this was particularly evident in various utopian writers of the modern period, who "chose architecture and urban planning as both the vehicle adn the master-metaphor of the perfect world that would know of no misfits and hence of no disorder." Utopian writers differed in many ways, but "they all lovingly detailed the carefully segregated and strictly functional urban quarters, the straight, unpolluted geometry of streets and public squares, the hierarchy of spaces and buildings which, in their presecribed volumes and austerity of adornment, mirrored the stately sovereignty of the social order. In the city of reason, there were to be no winding roads, no cul-de-sacs and no unattended sites left to chance - and thus no vagabonds, vagrants or nomads" - and, one might add, no admixture or impurity of passion or prejudice in philosophy.

Kant, however, employed the legal image of a courtroom, presided over by Judge Reason, whose advocate and spokesman was the philosopher. The philosopher, Kant said, "is not merely an artist - who occupies himself with conceptions, but a law-giver - legislating for human reason." Reason's purpose "is to establish a tribunal, which may secure it in its well-grounded claims, while it pronounces against all baseless assumptions and pretensions, not in an arbitrary manner, but according to its own eternal and unchangeable laws." Metaphysics in particular occupies the "supreme office of censor . . . for the purpose of securing order, harmony, and well-being to science, and of directing its noble and fruitful labors to the highest possible aim - the happiness of all mankind." Metaphysics is the queen of the realm of thought, and has the task of carrying out rational criticism iun order to maintain harmony among the sciences: "to deny the positive advantage of the service which this criticism renders us, would be as absurd as to maintain that the system of police is productive of no positive benefit, since its main business is to prevent the violence which citizen has to apprehend from citizen, that so each may pursue his vocation in peace and security."

This legal/judicial metaphor was not purely metaphorical; reason, as mediated through philosophers, should guide governments: "If governments think proper to interfere with the affairs of the learned, it would be more consistent with a wise regard for the interests of science, as well as for those of society, to favour a criticism of this kind, by which alone the labours of reason can be established on a firm basis, than to support the ridiculous despotism of the schools, which raise a loud cry of danger to the public over the destruction of cobwebs, of which the public has never taken any notice, and the loss of which, therefore, it can never feel."

posted by Peter J. Leithart on Wednesday, January 04, 2006 at 05:14 PM

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