harvey young
The New Culture Forum
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Comments by "harvey young" (@harveyyoung3423) on "Genius of Western Civilisation - Ep. 3: The Rule of Law (4K) [6-part Celebration of The West]" video.
In Montesquieu there is indeed, an emphasis on the three part separation of powers into an executive an legislator and judiciary. But in this we have to ask with Kant how these three parts relate to each other or are in "harmony of the these faculties". Faculties can also mean here "Powers" and so there is an apparent dual use here of the term, they appear both as human nature as made up of separable but related powers, and similarly then to the idea of governance as a three part instituional separation and also a mutual harmony between them. Powers or Faculties then are Janus faced as a picture of mans nature here, has a certain isomorphism with a picture of political reason.
This then makes explicit, that Montesquieu also had, as internal to his understanding of the State laws and the people, what is described as a psychology and anthropology. So the faculty here is action, and this is understood as both measured against the standard of laws of nature, and as difference from it. Human nature due to finitude, freedom, and error, is complex variety of laws. Why then as in a difference from the laws of nature standard, are these variety also different from each other. Montesquieu looks at differences of psychology and physiology and finally ground these in differences of temperament due to differences of climate. This difference of climates then he claims requires different form of governance.
Kant writes with this when he discusses Practical Reason, the beginning is the will, but the key to the will for Kant is on the one hand the aim or motive, but on the other acting in accord with a maxim. This maxim means an internal reason as to why we act. It is considered now as an inner mental state, disposition, for Kant its acting in accord with a rule, the determination of the will. It the realm now of the private, or what could be seen as the realm of the private and inner subjectivity the first person as reasons, and can be regarded as inaccessible to the public objective law. Kant's approach to the old ancient problem of the relation between the soul and the State (eg Plato and microcosm macrocosm), I think is to view these faculties as each as a part of the three part division of reason as syllogism. What seems impossible to think in terms of three objects in a kind of Trinity, might becomes accessible if we leave behind the image of these as objects and instead think of them as the three functions in a syllogism. this is then at once a Critique of a metaphysics that takes objects as ontological to a new metaphysics around reason logos and the syllogism.
What happens to all this in Hegel is first the recognition of these differences between psychologies and as different from laws of nature, by being laws but complex, but this for Hegel is a mere task of reason and science to transform these differences between, and difference from laws of nature. thus with Hegel reason and science can bring different people together and bring them all in accord with laws of reason as a system of nature. Thus since the problem is mans finitude and them containing various fragments of laws of action ie disorder, the scientific rationalism is to make man infinite or unlimited and ordered and in harmony with each other.
In this Hegelian reworking of Montesquieu via Kant we have teleological reason as the aim of remaking people of difference to be in accord with the model of laws of nature, though law. Law then does more than mealy regulate also involves a great deal of educational programs social programs and so on. The bringing of people together out of difference at once requires massive social engineering, and, as with Hegel and German Romanticism, a source of middleclass to do this. The greater the difference, the greater the social psychological engineering, and the more middle class to do it. With Hegel this is continuous with progress and sublating people under universal unlimited ordered reason. Freedom now is not mere whim or inclination (will and wilkur in Kant) but acting to increase this "real" freedom by the observation of laws of the human psyche and laws of social life, and their scientific conversion towards unity and universality. It thus paradoxically claims that freedom requires deep inner penetrations of our souls and private life and the practical transformation of our souls and private realms. Thus the modern world agrees that people act out of all sorts of complex reasons but the aim is to discover these inner states and change them. Thus today, where as Montesquieu talked of a chaotic soul not brought to an order all of its manifold willing's as a multiplicity of laws, freedom under law requires to be brought to the law and this requires science to have the right to penetrate all our privacy. thus the realm of freedom as being reason under law here becomes the scientific denial of privacy the old realm of freedom from. Science now is the absolute with no limitation. indeed Kant seems to go along with this for phenomenal science in general in that his Regulative Ideas are at once the regulative task to unify laws we discover and the nominal realm of morality and ethics etc.
Laws require differences of human nature in action as different form the law and from each other. Without this law is redundant. But with this picture it means that science and technology will have to work on us until we are in accord with the law in which case in a kind of Marxism it might be that laws are then redundant but psychotherapy social engineering and education for reason will be unlimited and ubiquitous and totalitarian.
In this I have drawn on W.T. Jones "Kant and the Nineteenth Century" (second edition 1975) pg 6-7) Jones also claims there that Montesquieu was influenced by Gibbon in this. I have left the usual religion verses secularism debate on this and tried to show there is a similar problem in enlightenment that has conflict between science and freedom or law. The enlightenment thought science was only the method of escape from superstition and the un-freedom of nature and so compatible even constitutive for the law, but I show they are in tension and conflict especial over realms of private freedom. Science it seems can go where the state cannot and on its behalf bring it to the rule of law which also seem to necessitate it. my view is that Kant unlike the Romantics realised this dual aspect of the sciences and their relation to freedom.
Thank you for the documentary Marc Sidwell and all the interviewees and the New Culture Forum.
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I posted this in the main comments section and on another comment thread , but I'll post it here as a response to your comment too.
In Montesquieu there is indeed, an emphasis on the three part separation of powers into an executive an legislator and judiciary. But in this we have to ask with Kant how these three parts relate to each other or are in "harmony of the these faculties". Faculties can also mean here "Powers" and so there is an apparent dual use here of the term, they appear both as human nature as made up of separable but related powers, and similarly then to the idea of governance as a three part instituional separation and also a mutual harmony between them. Powers or Faculties then are Janus faced as a picture of mans nature here, has a certain isomorphism with a picture of political reason.
This then makes explicit, that Montesquieu also had, as internal to his understanding of the State laws and the people, what is described as a psychology and anthropology. So the faculty here is action, and this is understood as both measured against the standard of laws of nature, and as difference from it. Human nature due to finitude, freedom, and error, is complex variety of laws. Why then as in a difference from the laws of nature standard, are these variety also different from each other. Montesquieu looks at differences of psychology and physiology and finally ground these in differences of temperament due to differences of climate. This difference of climates then he claims requires different form of governance.
Kant writes with this when he discusses Practical Reason, the beginning is the will, but the key to the will for Kant is on the one hand the aim or motive, but on the other acting in accord with a maxim. This maxim means an internal reason as to why we act. It is considered now as an inner mental state, disposition, for Kant its acting in accord with a rule, the determination of the will. It the realm now of the private, or what could be seen as the realm of the private and inner subjectivity the first person as reasons, and can be regarded as inaccessible to the public objective law. Kant's approach to the old ancient problem of the relation between the soul and the State (eg Plato and microcosm macrocosm), I think is to view these faculties as each as a part of the three part division of reason as syllogism. What seems impossible to think in terms of three objects in a kind of Trinity, might becomes accessible if we leave behind the image of these as objects and instead think of them as the three functions in a syllogism. this is then at once a Critique of a metaphysics that takes objects as ontological to a new metaphysics around reason logos and the syllogism.
What happens to all this in Hegel is first the recognition of these differences between psychologies and as different from laws of nature, by being laws but complex, but this for Hegel is a mere task of reason and science to transform these differences between, and difference from laws of nature. thus with Hegel reason and science can bring different people together and bring them all in accord with laws of reason as a system of nature. Thus since the problem is mans finitude and them containing various fragments of laws of action ie disorder, the scientific rationalism is to make man infinite or unlimited and ordered and in harmony with each other.
In this Hegelian reworking of Montesquieu via Kant we have teleological reason as the aim of remaking people of difference to be in accord with the model of laws of nature, though law. Law then does more than mealy regulate also involves a great deal of educational programs social programs and so on. The bringing of people together out of difference at once requires massive social engineering, and, as with Hegel and German Romanticism, a source of middleclass to do this. The greater the difference, the greater the social psychological engineering, and the more middle class to do it. With Hegel this is continuous with progress and sublating people under universal unlimited ordered reason. Freedom now is not mere whim or inclination (will and wilkur in Kant) but acting to increase this "real" freedom by the observation of laws of the human psyche and laws of social life, and their scientific conversion towards unity and universality. It thus paradoxically claims that freedom requires deep inner penetrations of our souls and private life and the practical transformation of our souls and private realms. Thus the modern world agrees that people act out of all sorts of complex reasons but the aim is to discover these inner states and change them. Thus today, where as Montesquieu talked of a chaotic soul not brought to an order all of its manifold willing's as a multiplicity of laws, freedom under law requires to be brought to the law and this requires science to have the right to penetrate all our privacy. thus the realm of freedom as being reason under law here becomes the scientific denial of privacy the old realm of freedom from. Science now is the absolute with no limitation. indeed Kant seems to go along with this for phenomenal science in general in that his Regulative Ideas are at once the regulative task to unify laws we discover and the nominal realm of morality and ethics etc.
Laws require differences of human nature in action as different form the law and from each other. Without this law is redundant. But with this picture it means that science and technology will have to work on us until we are in accord with the law in which case in a kind of Marxism it might be that laws are then redundant but psychotherapy social engineering and education for reason will be unlimited and ubiquitous and totalitarian.
In this I have drawn on W.T. Jones "Kant and the Nineteenth Century" (second edition 1975) pg 6-7) Jones also claims there that Montesquieu was influenced by Gibbon in this. I have left the usual religion verses secularism debate on this and tried to show there is a similar problem in enlightenment that has conflict between science and freedom or law. The enlightenment thought science was only the method of escape from superstition and the un-freedom of nature and so compatible even constitutive for the law, but I show they are in tension and conflict especial over realms of private freedom. Science it seems can go where the state cannot and on its behalf bring it to the rule of law which also seem to necessitate it.
I hope it is of interest.
1
I posted this in the main comments section, but I'll post it here as a response to your comment too.
In Montesquieu there is indeed, an emphasis on the three part separation of powers into an executive an legislator and judiciary. But in this we have to ask with Kant how these three parts relate to each other or are in "harmony of the these faculties". Faculties can also mean here "Powers" and so there is an apparent dual use here of the term, they appear both as human nature as made up of separable but related powers, and similarly then to the idea of governance as a three part instituional separation and also a mutual harmony between them. Powers or Faculties then are Janus faced as a picture of mans nature here, has a certain isomorphism with a picture of political reason.
This then makes explicit, that Montesquieu also had, as internal to his understanding of the State laws and the people, what is described as a psychology and anthropology. So the faculty here is action, and this is understood as both measured against the standard of laws of nature, and as difference from it. Human nature due to finitude, freedom, and error, is complex variety of laws. Why then as in a difference from the laws of nature standard, are these variety also different from each other. Montesquieu looks at differences of psychology and physiology and finally ground these in differences of temperament due to differences of climate. This difference of climates then he claims requires different form of governance.
Kant writes with this when he discusses Practical Reason, the beginning is the will, but the key to the will for Kant is on the one hand the aim or motive, but on the other acting in accord with a maxim. This maxim means an internal reason as to why we act. It is considered now as an inner mental state, disposition, for Kant its acting in accord with a rule, the determination of the will. It the realm now of the private, or what could be seen as the realm of the private and inner subjectivity the first person as reasons, and can be regarded as inaccessible to the public objective law. Kant's approach to the old ancient problem of the relation between the soul and the State (eg Plato and microcosm macrocosm), I think is to view these faculties as each as a part of the three part division of reason as syllogism. What seems impossible to think in terms of three objects in a kind of Trinity, might becomes accessible if we leave behind the image of these as objects and instead think of them as the three functions in a syllogism. this is then at once a Critique of a metaphysics that takes objects as ontological to a new metaphysics around reason logos and the syllogism.
What happens to all this in Hegel is first the recognition of these differences between psychologies and as different from laws of nature, by being laws but complex, but this for Hegel is a mere task of reason and science to transform these differences between, and difference from laws of nature. thus with Hegel reason and science can bring different people together and bring them all in accord with laws of reason as a system of nature. Thus since the problem is mans finitude and them containing various fragments of laws of action ie disorder, the scientific rationalism is to make man infinite or unlimited and ordered and in harmony with each other.
In this Hegelian reworking of Montesquieu via Kant we have teleological reason as the aim of remaking people of difference to be in accord with the model of laws of nature, though law. Law then does more than mealy regulate also involves a great deal of educational programs social programs and so on. The bringing of people together out of difference at once requires massive social engineering, and, as with Hegel and German Romanticism, a source of middleclass to do this. The greater the difference, the greater the social psychological engineering, and the more middle class to do it. With Hegel this is continuous with progress and sublating people under universal unlimited ordered reason. Freedom now is not mere whim or inclination (will and wilkur in Kant) but acting to increase this "real" freedom by the observation of laws of the human psyche and laws of social life, and their scientific conversion towards unity and universality. It thus paradoxically claims that freedom requires deep inner penetrations of our souls and private life and the practical transformation of our souls and private realms. Thus the modern world agrees that people act out of all sorts of complex reasons but the aim is to discover these inner states and change them. Thus today, where as Montesquieu talked of a chaotic soul not brought to an order all of its manifold willing's as a multiplicity of laws, freedom under law requires to be brought to the law and this requires science to have the right to penetrate all our privacy. thus the realm of freedom as being reason under law here becomes the scientific denial of privacy the old realm of freedom from. Science now is the absolute with no limitation. indeed Kant seems to go along with this for phenomenal science in general in that his Regulative Ideas are at once the regulative task to unify laws we discover and the nominal realm of morality and ethics etc.
Laws require differences of human nature in action as different form the law and from each other. Without this law is redundant. But with this picture it means that science and technology will have to work on us until we are in accord with the law in which case in a kind of Marxism it might be that laws are then redundant but psychotherapy social engineering and education for reason will be unlimited and ubiquitous and totalitarian.
In this I have drawn on W.T. Jones "Kant and the Nineteenth Century" (second edition 1975) pg 6-7) Jones also claims there that Montesquieu was influenced by Gibbon in this. I have left the usual religion verses secularism debate on this and tried to show there is a similar problem in enlightenment that has conflict between science and freedom or law. The enlightenment thought science was only the method of escape from superstition and the un-freedom of nature and so compatible even constitutive for the law, but I show they are in tension and conflict especial over realms of private freedom. Science it seems can go where the state cannot and on its behalf bring it to the rule of law which also seem to necessitate it.
I hope it is of interest.
1