There is a source on to which we depend. Apart from having duties to other people, you have a duty to the Universal, whether you realise it or not is irrelevant. We have a moral sense. We can recognise its necessity or pretend it is not there.
Universality is not a mere mental construction, but is inherent in the symbolic itself, because …
There is a source on to which we depend. Apart from having duties to other people, you have a duty to the Universal, whether you realise it or not is irrelevant. We have a moral sense. We can recognise its necessity or pretend it is not there.
Universality is not a mere mental construction, but is inherent in the symbolic itself, because we are speaking beings and creatures of relationships. There is something that transcends both you and me.
Systems, relationships, etc. fall apart without law, that is what we are living today. Today we live in a world where the law has failed, instead there are rules everywhere, prohibitions etc. But it is not an external law, it is a law that we follow with our hearts. When the law is not written in the heart, as Jesus said, then it becomes a dead letter on paper, corrupted, read in a distorted way. Ethics will therefore always be important, not just for a certain period :D!
The point of the law is precisely that it gives you the freedom to
So I don't think it's just about warnings and consequences. There are simply limits...and beyond them there is evil. It doesn't just seem that way to me, but it's universally right in the sense that anyone thinking would come to the same conclusions.
"Kant showed that people who are not responsible, autonomous, and do not fulfill their duties are not free. Individual autonomy is only possible if it depends on the otherness of the ethical law itself. The otherness of the ethical law means that it cannot be written down in any form that tells us what to do to obey it: it is therefore not advice, not a formula, not an equation, not a statement, not a sentence. It has a universal form and no content.
What makes the individual autonomous and free, then, is the subjection to the otherness of an ethical law which cannot be written down in the form of a code, a rule, a formula or advice on how to behave. Man can be a subject, a subject of freedom. Kant puts it this way: freedom as a force animates man through the ethical law. It animates him by directing him towards the highest good.
Freedom is not conditioned by anything. It is something unconditional and unconditioned. It is the cause of something else, and has no cause of its own. It is an empty space, a pure differentiation in the mind. That is why we can speak of openness, of opening. Without it there would be no opening and the world would be closed. With freedom, a new series of events, a new chain, a new sequence, as Badiou would say, begins again and again.
Freedom has precisely the status of the other, which thought cannot encapsulate and describe directly, because it cannot become the object of description. Man as subject is constituted as free precisely in relation to this other, to freedom itself, that is to say. The free man acts as something unconditioned, as something that is not caught up in any known chain of events, causes and effects. It is the very beginning of something completely new. We say that his action in the social field is contingent.
Man freely chooses to be free, even though he should necessarily choose only freedom. He can only choose causality. In retrospect, he understands the emergence of his own independent subjectivity. Kant speaks of the power of choice. Man chooses himself as the addressee of the ethical law. He imposes the law on himself and becomes the author of a new causal chain. He does this out of respect for the law, not out of respect for his neighbours or any authority.
For the world is indeterminate and does not exist as a coherent whole. It operates according to necessary laws, but to all the necessities we must add freedom, which Kant calls the uncaused cause. It can manifest itself in the world, but only under a certain condition.
It manifests itself or is realised through an ethical law, a universal principle or maxim. Freedom thus motivates the individual to submit to the law and to act ethically. Man therefore submits to freedom and wishes to submit to the ethical law, even though he does not necessarily know what he is doing in doing so. It is not knowledge that leads him to act, but an unconscious desire to which he is loyal, as Freud, Lacan and Deleuze would say. Then he says: I don't know why I am doing it, but I will continue to do it because I want to do it.
Man can therefore submit to an imperative that he merely suspects - deep down, as Kant would say. Autonomy means that the human being freely submits to the law and obeys it. There is therefore a force in man which makes ethical action possible. Knowing oneself therefore means that, in the very end, in the deepest depths, one discovers - not oneself, but the ethical law. This deepest depth is called the other. In man, therefore, there is an other than himself.
Free will is thus determined by duty, not by this or that object of desire, lust, need or interest. When we speak of freedom, therefore, we mean simultaneously three things: will, desire and duty.
Kant is therefore telling us: a man can adhere to written laws and behave lawfully, but he has another option: to behave freely and adhere to ethical duty for the sake of duty itself, not for the sake of written laws.
Freedom is the subject. The subject may not have access to freedom, so we say that he is not free, but he can also submit and do a free act, which has very empirical consequences.
Freedom cannot be realised in the world unless man, as its subject, does something. So when he does something and the ethical law does not tell him what to do, freedom operates in this world. Freedom works in such a way that a man who is not free, but has freedom in him, as Kant says, tells himself what he is going to do.
The point is this: Kant is not talking about a law that tells man what to do, he is talking about the imperative that man only makes the law by his action.
The pure mind addresses itself to the freedom that is in man, not to man. When we speak of an ethical law, we are not speaking of a law which imposes something on man, who is free to respond or not. We are talking about an imperative which only makes the law exist if man chooses to act in order to exercise freedom itself, which is utterly powerless without his decision."
"Or as Kant would say: reason itself already has ends; men have before them the task of realising them. "
The conditions are what it says at the end of the quotations - that is, that man becomes the subject of freedom. So one has to do something in order for this possibility to be actualized.
"That's not a valid argument. Prove it. This kind of enunciation, I can also do it, especially since I have extraordinary experiences, even if I don't know the origin, I could affirm this or that, and say the same thing. This would be irrelevant and cannot be proven at all."
It has nothing to do with special experiences or your consciousness. It can be pointed to using reason, as Kant did. The critique of the Enlightenment is important, and that makes it all the more important that you also read authors like Alain Badiou. For example, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism or Alain Badiou - Eight Theses on the Universal.
What I wrote about this was the Universal, your God, not universality.
My God? We are talking about the universal, which transcends particularities, so it cannot be mine. If he is a god, then he is of all.
"Yes, but I don't need to find a name, an explanation, which I'm not sure is accurate. The living, our cognitive abilities etc. kind of testify to it, it's extraordinary, that's all I can say."
Now you say you don't want an explanation? There is also the utility of "misguided intereprtations", not only Lacan would agree with that, but also hermeneuticians like Gadamer.
"Indeed, it passes first through the laws, obedience, submission, this is part of our personal evolution, leading us "green the greater good"."
It is also about evolution, but it is also about logic. There is a universal law which we access by using the reason.
"The way to Rome is not Rome. That's where we have a misunderstanding, I think. Rome being the absence of laws and submissions of any kind."
Even the absence, is a presence. As I said, universal law is inherently empty.
"Indeed, no need for laws, and if some think it is still necessary, this would show that this statement is purely intellectual, not lived."
Because of the law, which is the law of the symbolic itself, whenever you say something, there will be an unconscious. Not that laws are not necessary, but that law is structural, it is inscribed in the reality of the speaking being. Speak and you will see that the words oblige you.
"We say that his action in the social field is contingent."
When man acts as Subject of the new, he acts as a contingent, indeterminate element in the social field. Every social field is inwardly split, open... man can become a subject of it.
"I would say the opposite, once stripped of all conditioning, mental constructions etc. reveals in us what we are in reality."
There is no such thing as a " true self ", although there is a truth about the ego and there is a core which is the " other ". Man is not the master of his own house, as Freud said. But for the sake of the "other" there is becoming.
A bit of Kant summarising, again quoting other people's summaries and turning into eng.
Immanuel Kant starts from the premise that we are free and autonomous only when we set the rules of our own action. We are free and capable of making ethical choices when we take full responsibility for our actions and when we do so without reference to anyone other than ourselves and our reason. Even if we follow our own feelings and needs, we are subject to an external cause and are not really free by this strict definition. We are autonomous only when we use our reason to determine the rules by which we live.
It is this capacity for autonomous free action that makes us human beings special, since we are not mere instruments of external causes, but have the possibility of becoming the cause of our own choices. For Kant, ethics is acting according to a law that we have set for ourselves, or accept with full responsibility as our own, and then follow out of duty.
Kant calls this use of reason the categorical imperative, which is just a scholarly name for the fact that a proposition assumes the status of a general ethical law for us. The categorical imperative is about universal laws that reason as such, and not the individual user of reason, arrives at, and are therefore universal and not conditioned by particular situations, cultures and similar contingent circumstances. According to Kant, man can escape from the entrapment in determinism that characterises all creatures in the natural world. According to Kant, man can emerge from natural causality by forming his own moral laws. He can do this precisely because he is a rational being.
Mia: I do not think that the human being can, by reason, have access to this universal law in its totality, it is not an affirmation. In this case, why always need to refer to different authors, we should be able to do it alone.
Point: who is talking about totality? Did you heard about non-all?There is no need to point to different authors, but I mentioned them so you can read more on that.
Mia: "as if you have omnipotent knowledge"
Point: that's your projection of my replies.
Mia: without any evidence, but you play with words, which I don't appreciate. You make it seem like you're always trying to be right.
Point: Again. What kind of evidence? Are you positivistic empiricits? Me always right? Why would then I reference other authors? "Me" is not importat here. And no. I'm not playing with words. This stuff is logical and I'm saying it from the begging.
Mia: It seems that you can only express yourself through others, the multiple authors read or otherwise, almost like copied-pasted.
Point: I don't even try to express "myself", we are not in art class. And even here I'm sure I could teach you draw, not only "expressing one inner true self". I'm replying to you. You cannot think without concepts. Botanical nomenclature has nothing to do with thinking. That is why I kindly recommend philosophy to you instead. Not to repeat after them, but to establish a diaologue and to increase the granularity of your thought.
Mia: I think we have reached the end of our exchanges, for me at this point they are no longer constructive. Thank you for the many exchanges, each one his way.
Of course, there is a spectrum of certainties. I hope you are not absolutely sure that you are not "vibrating" with me ;)
Yes, we don't live through others, but we can learn from others. And what is essential learning? Listening to others can open up one's ego; that's called love ;)
There is a source on to which we depend. Apart from having duties to other people, you have a duty to the Universal, whether you realise it or not is irrelevant. We have a moral sense. We can recognise its necessity or pretend it is not there.
Universality is not a mere mental construction, but is inherent in the symbolic itself, because we are speaking beings and creatures of relationships. There is something that transcends both you and me.
Systems, relationships, etc. fall apart without law, that is what we are living today. Today we live in a world where the law has failed, instead there are rules everywhere, prohibitions etc. But it is not an external law, it is a law that we follow with our hearts. When the law is not written in the heart, as Jesus said, then it becomes a dead letter on paper, corrupted, read in a distorted way. Ethics will therefore always be important, not just for a certain period :D!
The point of the law is precisely that it gives you the freedom to
https://www.quodlibet.it/giorgio-agamben-il-lecito-l-u2019obbligatorio-e-il-proibito
https://lenabloch.medium.com/giorgio-agamben-on-the-disappearance-of-law-916aa4027de5
So I don't think it's just about warnings and consequences. There are simply limits...and beyond them there is evil. It doesn't just seem that way to me, but it's universally right in the sense that anyone thinking would come to the same conclusions.
A few more quotes, translated into Eng:
https://mail.za-misli.si/kolumne/dusan-rutar/3077-kar-nas-dela-bolj-cloveske-1
"Kant showed that people who are not responsible, autonomous, and do not fulfill their duties are not free. Individual autonomy is only possible if it depends on the otherness of the ethical law itself. The otherness of the ethical law means that it cannot be written down in any form that tells us what to do to obey it: it is therefore not advice, not a formula, not an equation, not a statement, not a sentence. It has a universal form and no content.
What makes the individual autonomous and free, then, is the subjection to the otherness of an ethical law which cannot be written down in the form of a code, a rule, a formula or advice on how to behave. Man can be a subject, a subject of freedom. Kant puts it this way: freedom as a force animates man through the ethical law. It animates him by directing him towards the highest good.
Freedom is not conditioned by anything. It is something unconditional and unconditioned. It is the cause of something else, and has no cause of its own. It is an empty space, a pure differentiation in the mind. That is why we can speak of openness, of opening. Without it there would be no opening and the world would be closed. With freedom, a new series of events, a new chain, a new sequence, as Badiou would say, begins again and again.
Freedom has precisely the status of the other, which thought cannot encapsulate and describe directly, because it cannot become the object of description. Man as subject is constituted as free precisely in relation to this other, to freedom itself, that is to say. The free man acts as something unconditioned, as something that is not caught up in any known chain of events, causes and effects. It is the very beginning of something completely new. We say that his action in the social field is contingent.
Man freely chooses to be free, even though he should necessarily choose only freedom. He can only choose causality. In retrospect, he understands the emergence of his own independent subjectivity. Kant speaks of the power of choice. Man chooses himself as the addressee of the ethical law. He imposes the law on himself and becomes the author of a new causal chain. He does this out of respect for the law, not out of respect for his neighbours or any authority.
For the world is indeterminate and does not exist as a coherent whole. It operates according to necessary laws, but to all the necessities we must add freedom, which Kant calls the uncaused cause. It can manifest itself in the world, but only under a certain condition.
It manifests itself or is realised through an ethical law, a universal principle or maxim. Freedom thus motivates the individual to submit to the law and to act ethically. Man therefore submits to freedom and wishes to submit to the ethical law, even though he does not necessarily know what he is doing in doing so. It is not knowledge that leads him to act, but an unconscious desire to which he is loyal, as Freud, Lacan and Deleuze would say. Then he says: I don't know why I am doing it, but I will continue to do it because I want to do it.
Man can therefore submit to an imperative that he merely suspects - deep down, as Kant would say. Autonomy means that the human being freely submits to the law and obeys it. There is therefore a force in man which makes ethical action possible. Knowing oneself therefore means that, in the very end, in the deepest depths, one discovers - not oneself, but the ethical law. This deepest depth is called the other. In man, therefore, there is an other than himself.
Free will is thus determined by duty, not by this or that object of desire, lust, need or interest. When we speak of freedom, therefore, we mean simultaneously three things: will, desire and duty.
Kant is therefore telling us: a man can adhere to written laws and behave lawfully, but he has another option: to behave freely and adhere to ethical duty for the sake of duty itself, not for the sake of written laws.
Freedom is the subject. The subject may not have access to freedom, so we say that he is not free, but he can also submit and do a free act, which has very empirical consequences.
Freedom cannot be realised in the world unless man, as its subject, does something. So when he does something and the ethical law does not tell him what to do, freedom operates in this world. Freedom works in such a way that a man who is not free, but has freedom in him, as Kant says, tells himself what he is going to do.
The point is this: Kant is not talking about a law that tells man what to do, he is talking about the imperative that man only makes the law by his action.
The pure mind addresses itself to the freedom that is in man, not to man. When we speak of an ethical law, we are not speaking of a law which imposes something on man, who is free to respond or not. We are talking about an imperative which only makes the law exist if man chooses to act in order to exercise freedom itself, which is utterly powerless without his decision."
"Or as Kant would say: reason itself already has ends; men have before them the task of realising them. "
The conditions are what it says at the end of the quotations - that is, that man becomes the subject of freedom. So one has to do something in order for this possibility to be actualized.
"That's not a valid argument. Prove it. This kind of enunciation, I can also do it, especially since I have extraordinary experiences, even if I don't know the origin, I could affirm this or that, and say the same thing. This would be irrelevant and cannot be proven at all."
It has nothing to do with special experiences or your consciousness. It can be pointed to using reason, as Kant did. The critique of the Enlightenment is important, and that makes it all the more important that you also read authors like Alain Badiou. For example, Saint Paul: The Foundation of Universalism or Alain Badiou - Eight Theses on the Universal.
What I wrote about this was the Universal, your God, not universality.
My God? We are talking about the universal, which transcends particularities, so it cannot be mine. If he is a god, then he is of all.
"Yes, but I don't need to find a name, an explanation, which I'm not sure is accurate. The living, our cognitive abilities etc. kind of testify to it, it's extraordinary, that's all I can say."
Now you say you don't want an explanation? There is also the utility of "misguided intereprtations", not only Lacan would agree with that, but also hermeneuticians like Gadamer.
"Indeed, it passes first through the laws, obedience, submission, this is part of our personal evolution, leading us "green the greater good"."
It is also about evolution, but it is also about logic. There is a universal law which we access by using the reason.
"The way to Rome is not Rome. That's where we have a misunderstanding, I think. Rome being the absence of laws and submissions of any kind."
Even the absence, is a presence. As I said, universal law is inherently empty.
"Indeed, no need for laws, and if some think it is still necessary, this would show that this statement is purely intellectual, not lived."
Because of the law, which is the law of the symbolic itself, whenever you say something, there will be an unconscious. Not that laws are not necessary, but that law is structural, it is inscribed in the reality of the speaking being. Speak and you will see that the words oblige you.
"We say that his action in the social field is contingent."
When man acts as Subject of the new, he acts as a contingent, indeterminate element in the social field. Every social field is inwardly split, open... man can become a subject of it.
"I would say the opposite, once stripped of all conditioning, mental constructions etc. reveals in us what we are in reality."
There is no such thing as a " true self ", although there is a truth about the ego and there is a core which is the " other ". Man is not the master of his own house, as Freud said. But for the sake of the "other" there is becoming.
A bit of Kant summarising, again quoting other people's summaries and turning into eng.
Immanuel Kant starts from the premise that we are free and autonomous only when we set the rules of our own action. We are free and capable of making ethical choices when we take full responsibility for our actions and when we do so without reference to anyone other than ourselves and our reason. Even if we follow our own feelings and needs, we are subject to an external cause and are not really free by this strict definition. We are autonomous only when we use our reason to determine the rules by which we live.
It is this capacity for autonomous free action that makes us human beings special, since we are not mere instruments of external causes, but have the possibility of becoming the cause of our own choices. For Kant, ethics is acting according to a law that we have set for ourselves, or accept with full responsibility as our own, and then follow out of duty.
Kant calls this use of reason the categorical imperative, which is just a scholarly name for the fact that a proposition assumes the status of a general ethical law for us. The categorical imperative is about universal laws that reason as such, and not the individual user of reason, arrives at, and are therefore universal and not conditioned by particular situations, cultures and similar contingent circumstances. According to Kant, man can escape from the entrapment in determinism that characterises all creatures in the natural world. According to Kant, man can emerge from natural causality by forming his own moral laws. He can do this precisely because he is a rational being.
Mia: "each his own way."
Point: That's just an ignorant way to see things.
Mia: I do not think that the human being can, by reason, have access to this universal law in its totality, it is not an affirmation. In this case, why always need to refer to different authors, we should be able to do it alone.
Point: who is talking about totality? Did you heard about non-all?There is no need to point to different authors, but I mentioned them so you can read more on that.
Mia: "as if you have omnipotent knowledge"
Point: that's your projection of my replies.
Mia: without any evidence, but you play with words, which I don't appreciate. You make it seem like you're always trying to be right.
Point: Again. What kind of evidence? Are you positivistic empiricits? Me always right? Why would then I reference other authors? "Me" is not importat here. And no. I'm not playing with words. This stuff is logical and I'm saying it from the begging.
Mia: It seems that you can only express yourself through others, the multiple authors read or otherwise, almost like copied-pasted.
Point: I don't even try to express "myself", we are not in art class. And even here I'm sure I could teach you draw, not only "expressing one inner true self". I'm replying to you. You cannot think without concepts. Botanical nomenclature has nothing to do with thinking. That is why I kindly recommend philosophy to you instead. Not to repeat after them, but to establish a diaologue and to increase the granularity of your thought.
Mia: I think we have reached the end of our exchanges, for me at this point they are no longer constructive. Thank you for the many exchanges, each one his way.
Point: I don't know why you sound so cynical.
Of course, there is a spectrum of certainties. I hope you are not absolutely sure that you are not "vibrating" with me ;)
Yes, we don't live through others, but we can learn from others. And what is essential learning? Listening to others can open up one's ego; that's called love ;)