For many years, early philosophers were regarded as extraordinarily intellectual individuals, and their ideas were held in great regard. However, new philosophers, particularly those from the 1970s, such as Marx and Nietzsche, have challenged the notion over time. Among those who have declined is Kant, whose philosophy introduced a new manner of justifying intellectuals. In reality, he was known as maître penseur, which translates as the magician of a false paradigm. Kantian philosophy is regarded transcendental, that is, an investigation of the conditions that allow experience to occur. Also, these conditions seem to be identical or almost identical to the conditions that make an object a subject of experience. He felt that every philosopher should respond within their knowledge about the physics in their time. For instance, the Newtonian physics in which the philosopher had to prove that empirical knowledge could stand for itself and explain itself without being transcendental.
Nevertheless, he was unable to justify his reasoning concerning Newton’s physics without using the no empirical rebuilding based on previous achievements and experience. As a result, there was no alternative for Newton’s achievement except by intuition based on previous experiences. This led to him being disregarded as he compromised the task of philosophers in a demanding way by introducing the discipline of epistemology, which was bent to clarify the basis of science and spell out what we can achieve due to prior experience and what we cannot. In doing so, he created a rift between his philosophy and science. Besides, we see that Kant’s philosophy refuses to be contained within epistemology which allows one to criticize the exploitations inflicted into the cognitive faculty even after analyzing the pillars of cognition. He however not only set these pillars differently from each other, which is quite impossible as they must coexist, but also gives each authority within its limit. Therefore, he creates a war between himself and the sciences and culture as explained by Weber in “Science and technology, law and morality, art and art criticism.”
Moreover, Kant’s philosophy establishes some link between it as the usher and the historical concept of judge philosophy plays to science, morality, and art. This, as the writer says, is like implying that the philosopher has some dominant entitlement to every persons’ thoughts and ideas and also some power of analyzing certain laws, resolutions of moral dilemmas and the soundness of history and literature. The writer also cites Richard Rorty’s method of criticizing philosophy as impressive. Rorty says the roles of usher and judge are too big for the philosopher, and if they should accept these roles they must give up being the “guardians of rationality”. Nonetheless, the writer disagrees with this conclusion as it would not only mean that the philosophical profession dies, but also that truth is not a necessary condition for humans.
In addition to these, the author says that Kant’s foundation of formal and differentiated reasoning implies the theory of modernity, which has traits of self-criticism. He defends this by listing the three different and critical positions in which Kant’s philosophy lies namely; analytic philosophy of Strawson, constructivist position of Lorenzen, and the critical –rationalist position of Popper. In Strawson's philosophy, Kant separated pure concepts of understanding from self-consciousness thereby forcing him to understand these concepts that make experience possible. Since he was unable to validate these concepts his analysis was considered universal and redeeming it would mean changing Kant’s strategy into a testing procedure using hypotheses formed to be proved. This, in turn, makes Kant seem like a hypothesis-testing scientist instead of a philosopher.
Although Lorenzen in his constructivist position agrees to the fact that basic concepts of experience are predictable, he, however, states that these predictions must be valid and generated transparently. This, however, disagrees with the foundations of cognition as it lays rather than display its foundations. On the other hand, Popper completely defers with Kant and approves of Munchhausen trilemma- logical circularity, recourse to absolute certitude and infinite regress, which he states that cannot be avoided unless one has lost hope in justification.
Similarly, the writer points out traits of self-criticism in Hegel’s philosophy based on three distinct positions and as a result, conform to Kant’s self-criticism though in a parallel way. However, both philosophers refute that the human spirit can be proved to be necessary. Also, both of them move from reconstructing in a rational way to creating a restatement of the praxis. Likewise, both of them reject the means of transcendent cognition and dialect cognition but still use them inconsistently. Therefore, these two views cannot be done away with except when one contradicts with themselves.
The author further questions these two philosophers’ stand in the justification of their self- limiting ideologies. He argues that both philosophers encourage or rather supplement each other in their thinking as explained by Jean Piaget. Jean explains these two ideologies as “reflective abstraction” which is a tool that explains the changes in cognitive stages in ontogenetic development. The outcome of such a development is a decentered concept of the world. Despite the criticisms, the two philosophers, Kant and Hegel, still claim to reason and disputing them and their ideas would be like doing away with philosophy for good. The writer, however, justifies this change in attitude by using a different method of critiquing the Kantian and Hegelian philosophies. He talks about pragmatism and hermeneutic philosophy which were both used against Kant and Hegel. The philosophies wok outside the limitations set by philosophers on consciousness and cognitive reason. Also, the two do away with the belief of subject and object and instead put the idea of language and action, hence giving more importance to acting and speaking than knowing.
Furthermore, the author says that although he agrees with Rorty that philosophers have no right being the highest arbiter in matters concerning science and culture, he says that even philosophers in their work cannot rest without justifying their thought through argumentation. He further insists that division of labor between philosophy and science is unavoidable. The two must coexist, and every belief that has to be declared valid must be agreed upon by argumentation. The writer goes ahead to cite philosophers who tried to blend the two antagonizing professions like Marxism philosophy which turned out to be considered atypical. The blend has become a base of attack by the empiricists. He says that instead of philosophers playing the role of the “guide” should give up the role and instead be the stand-in, though he is not certain whom they will be standing in for. He even suggests that philosophy should reorganize and take up the role of interpreter since understanding life requires not only science and technology but also a variety of cultural traditions and truth. As a result, philosophy can stop being the inspector of culture but instead be the mediating interpreter between science, morals, and art. The author concludes by saying that every agreement is formed on grounds or reason and in so saying we are forced into a yes or no position. This position creates an element of conditionality that makes the so-called validity of reason different from day to day practices. He adds that philosophy is inclined to making sure social practices are justified to be so, thus it is the guardian of rationality.
RECONSTRUCTION AND INTERPRETATION IN SOCIAL SCIENCES
The writer starts by reminiscing a point he made concerning social sciences following the path of research of hermeneutic dimension. He cites Hans-Georg Gadamer as having contributed by pointing out that interpretational problems arise mostly from non-scientific factors of life and therefore philosophers should cast light on common processes of understanding instead of analyzing methods of collecting and analyzing a particular information. Secondly, the writer states that the problem of interpretation lies in mystifying interpretation. However, he says that when the terms are operated carefully and tested wisely, we can avoid uncontrolled factors that may arise from unanalyzed complexities of language.
Furthermore, the writer goes ahead to say that hermeneutics has shifted from being a philosophical doctrine to being a research parameter. He mentions a few philosophers who used the doctrine for research such as Popper-Kuhn, Wittgenstein, and many others. The shift gave rise to a change in the philosophical climate into neo-conservatism. The circumstantial norms of social scientists changed as the shift gave rise to sociobiology, genetic research on intelligence, relativism, historicism, existentialism among others. He describes hermeneutics as a way of deciphering meaning to an expression which can be viewed from a double perspective. Although epistemology deals with the relationship between language and reality, hermeneutics considers language and orders a speaker to not only consider the objective world while speaking, but also the social world and the speaker’s own experience.
The author concludes by saying that sciences that accept objectivations of meaning should consider the role of the interpreter. However, this, on the other hand, creates conflict as some social scientists employ the empathy theory of understanding which he says Gadamer’s critique has blocked, while others have employed radical principles of hermeneutics which has resulted in interpretations being viewed as the difference in giving value to communication.
MORAL CONSCIOUSNESS AND COMMUNICATIVE ACTION
The writer talks about discourse ethics and concludes that every Universalists’ morality has to compensate for the efficient actions lost when they retain rational insights within their morals. Their morals are dependent on the forms of life that make it possible to apply universal moral insights and also encourage translation of these insights to action. In so saying, some conditions must be fulfilled by these forms of life to make it possible for Universalist moralities to revert accomplishments of demotivation. For discourse ethics, he proposes philosophical justification and adds that it depends on hypothetical reconstruction whose confirmation is plausible.
Hereafter, the writer says that validation of this theory led to the formation of the theory of moral consciousness by Lawrence Kohlberg. Kohlberg says that a person’s moral judgment transcends through an invariant pattern whose main path is a principled morality; main characteristics of discourse ethics. The supporters of discourse ethics, for instance, Kant, are bent on an argument whose general assumptions underlie the communication process and has no alternative from which one can pick from. The argument is made from a reflective form of view and not from an empirical view of the observer. The observers’ viewpoint is incorporated with the points of the world and therefore, structures of interaction must be formed to act as an usher in reconstructing the process.
Nevertheless, the author argues that bringing up an observers’ perspective necessitates the formation of a social world and the need to validate whether these perspectives agree to the socially recognized beliefs. He, therefore, suggests a hypothetical research to act as a guide in determining the ontogenesis of a speaker’s perspective and the world’s perspective. Selman and Damon’s explanation agree with this suggestion and explain the acquisition of certain behaviors in humans in the middle of their life. Even though Freud inquires the psychodynamics of this process, Mead explained it concerning the sociocognitive conditions of internalization.
Hereafter, the author goes ahead to classify the stages of interaction concerning the reciprocation of actions by observers using Selman’s theory. He argues that this classification represents the speaker’s ideas acquired previously by the hearer during middle childhood. He says that moral action is a result of constant regulation of action and is developed at the post-conventional stage of interaction where the adult is beyond the naivety of day to day life practices. He concludes by saying that it is of more advantage to put moral development in the skeleton of communicative action as it would be easier to interpret it not only regarding moral judgment and social cognition but also regarding development of moral stages in a logic manner.
Nonetheless, the author notes that classifying moral development into stages especially using Kohlberg’s scheme brings about a range of discussion by other learners such as Norma Haan and Carol Gilligan. These two are of the opinion that Kohlberg deviates too far into understanding morally sensitive scores and as a result, almost more than fifty per centum of US’ population would fall under the post-conventional stage of moral consciousness. The author adds by saying that cultural values and ones’ life history shape who they are, and it is impossible to separate one from his life practice as it forms his personality and therefore his morals hard to question.
Finally, the author concludes by saying that identity and how one is projected or projects himself from the basics of defense against conflict. These two, he says, are acquired during early childhood but develop later at the conventional stage into the mechanisms of defense. He notes, however, that the mechanism differs concerning actions geared towards success and actions geared towards reaching an agreement. Consequently, defense creates a barrier between the main aspect of activity which is one’s desired action and the intended action conveyed in the bid to reach an agreement. The desired action is unconscious and is explained as the reversal of strategic movement and communication action, a factor that is hidden from the speaker and the participants. This effect is a result of the interpretation of the distortion of communication in an orderly manner and can be manifested either in an interpersonal level or intra-psych level.
Bibliography
J. Habermas. 1990. Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action, Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Pedersen, Jørgen. 2009. "Habermas and the Political Sciences". Philosophy of the Social Sciences. 39 (3): 381-407.
