Kant's Philosophy of Communication

Abstract

The Enlightenment can be described as an attempt to make reason more worldly in order to make the world more reasonable, and the Enlightenment project is characterized by an unflagging confidence in reason's ability to ensure humanity's progress toward a more peaceful, civilized, and moral social and political order. However, the luminaries of the Enlightenment did not succumb to the naive belief that disembodied reason was capable of exercising an immediate influence on human history. To the contrary, these thinkers recognized that humanity always already mediates between reason and history and that reason only ever becomes efficacious in the world by being at work in and on human beings. Accordingly, they recognized that their attempt to promote human progress could succeed only in and through a program of universal education. The great thinkers of the Enlightenment not only thought deeply about the nature and purpose of education; they also saw their own intellectual efforts as contributions to the education of the human race. Indeed, the great Enlightenment thinkers were driven to serious reflection on their own practice of writing as the vehicle for their overarching attempt to engage, teach, and shape their readers. Though it is now common to describe the Enlightenment as a transition away from humanism's concern with speech, rhetoric, and community toward a one-sided emphasis on mathematics, method, and subjectivity, this characterization is a drastic oversimplification that fails to attend to the necessary and abiding connection between Enlightenment, education, and communication.Immanuel Kant is exemplary, in this context. For though he did not write an independent treatise on rhetoric, he emphasizes the vital role that rational discourse and effective communication play in promoting freedom and morality. Thus, Kant characterizes the Enlightenment itself as an attempt to educate the human race by cultivating in each individual the capacity and courage to employ their own understanding to make rational judgments without relying on the guidance of authoritative opinion or received custom, and he argues that this pedagogical project requires, as its necessary condition, the public use of reason, in which individuals communicate their own considered views to their community. Kant thereby indicates that the Enlightenment is inseparable from the modes of communication that make Enlightenment possible and a fortiori from an account of what modes of communication are conducive to the Enlightenment project.G. L. Ercolini's Kant's Philosophy of Communication takes Kant's account of the connection between Enlightenment and the public use of reason as its starting point. Noting that the public use of reason is nothing if not a way of speaking to and with others, Ercolini's principal thesis is that Kant not only offers “a complex philosophy of communication, but, as it turns out, rhetoric, debate, and exchange emerge as central to his enlightenment philosophy” (2). Ercolini begins by noting that historians of rhetoric have tended to overlook Kant completely or to emphasize his noteworthy criticisms of rhetoric (9). However, Ercolini avers that “a little digging” allows us “to get past Kant's curt dismissals” of rhetoric and reveals that there is, in fact, “much in his work that relies on an important role for speech, rhetoric, communication, and public discourse” (6). Accordingly, Ercolini undertakes the daunting but important task of drawing out the theory of communication underlying Kant's various “discussions of rhetoric, ethics, aesthetics, and style” (2).Ercolini begins her analysis of Kant's philosophy of communication by reviewing Kant's several explicit discussions of rhetoric (chapter 1). She rightly observes that Kant is often quite critical of the art of rhetoric, and she notes that “Kant's objection to rhetoric … is twofold: first, to its deceptive purpose and, second, to its violation of the audience's goodwill and autonomy” (33). That said, Ercolini emphasizes that Kant's criticisms of rhetoric do not prevent him from acknowledging the need to speak well, with practiced eloquence and measured style (40). Indeed, Kant appends an important footnote to his most famous and trenchant critique of rhetoric in which he praises the figure of the Ciceronian orator, who speaks “without art and full of vigor” (40). In the final analysis, then, Kant's explicit discussions of rhetoric are ambivalent. Kant is critical of rhetoric, to be sure, but he also points beyond rhetoric to a mode of speaking that is both praiseworthy and salutary. Thus, Ercolini concludes, “Kant's treatment of rhetoric, albeit confounding and requiring much patience, ends up opening possibilities for distinguishing good from bad rhetoric” (41). The remainder of Ercolini's book is devoted to exploring these possibilities in an attempt to develop “a Kantian account of what could be considered as a positive role for rhetoric” (34).Schematically, Ercolini's analysis of Kant's philosophy of communication seems to fall into three parts: one that deals with the practical significance of Kantian rhetoric (chapters 2–3), one that deals with the aesthetic characteristics of Kantian rhetoric (chapters 4–5), and one that begins to develop an account of what Ercolini calls “rhetorical judgment” (conclusion). In the realm of the practical, Ercolini first examines Kant's interest in and analysis of popularity (chapter 2) and then turns to a more direct examination of the moral significance of rhetoric (chapter 3). Ercolini's treatment of Kant's account of popularity is one of the strongest and most important sections of the book. Noting Kant's well-known criticism of popularity in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (77–79), Ercolini illuminates this criticism's place within Kant's broader critique of Popularphilosophie, on one hand (81–87), and his own attempt to clarify, popularize, and promote the Critique of Pure Reason by publishing the Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, on the other (60–77). Ercolini's central claim is that Kant is critical of the pursuit of popularity for its own sake but that he also recognizes the need to popularize his own thought. Of course, Kant is well aware that it is difficult to navigate between the demand for rigor and well-groundedness and the demand for clarity and accessibility, but Ercolini concludes that he sees the attempt to meet both demands as one of the central tasks of philosophical communication.Chapter 3 turns from an examination of popularity to an investigation of the normative principles that ought to govern the quest for popularity. In taking up the relationship between Kant's moral philosophy and his philosophy of communication, however, Ercolini turns away from what she describes as the “strict and morally rigorous Kant,” who “is interested in determining the a priori principle of moral action divested of any particularities, experience, or other intervening factors”, to what she describes as “another ethics in Kant”—“an other-ethics,” “an ethics of the empirical,” “an improper ethics” (92, 106, 104). Ercolini's claim is that Kant's anthropological writings reveal an approach to ethics that is “anchored in the realm of the contingent, the situational, and the momentary” (93). On Ercolini's reading, this “improper ethics” corrects for “the radical interiority of the categorical imperative” by offering an account of the human as necessarily directed toward and obligated by the community in which he or she abides (110). And precisely because it orients one toward community, the “other side” of Kant's ethics both demands and describes forms of communication fitting for moral community, as Ercolini demonstrates through a fascinating analysis of Kant's concrete discussions of communal dining (115–20).After completing her examination of the “practical” side of Kant's philosophy of communication, Ercolini turns to the “aesthetic” side in order to consider the role of Kant's aesthetic theory (chapter 4) and his account of style and tone (chapter 5). Chapter 4's overarching goal is to explain why Kant ranks poetry above rhetoric in the hierarchy of the fine arts. Ercolini argues that a careful analysis of Kant's argument reveals that both poetry and rhetoric can provoke a lawless and disordered relation between the cognitive capacities but that both can also provoke a lawful and harmonious free play of the faculties (154–64). Accordingly, Ercolini once again concludes that Kant's aesthetic theory points toward a positive account of rhetoric, his explicit criticisms of rhetoric notwithstanding.Chapter 5 offers an important analysis of Kant's account of style and tone. Regarding style, Ercolini stresses Kant's recognition of the need to balance logical and aesthetic perfection in order to achieve a “perspicaciousness” that is conducive to true popularity (167–75), while avoiding a fashionable, enthusiastic, and affected style that undermines rational autonomy (175–81). Whereas style can and should engage the understanding, Ercolini argues that Kant thinks that tone necessarily engages the affects (186). Thus, Kant's account of tone is primarily negative in orientation—he emphasizes the need to avoid a “superior” tone that smacks of “elitism, where the philosopher is one of the few who uncovers the secret of philosophy and, as such, holds a superior position over the many who have no such direct access” (193). And yet this negative posture points beyond itself to Kant's commitment to a way of speaking that “facilitates understanding and encourages engagement and exchange” (197).In her conclusion, Ercolini seeks to draw the insights from the preceding chapters together in order to offer an account of Kant's Enlightenment legacy. She pays particular attention to Kant's popular essays. Drawing out their historical context, she characterizes these essays as “argumentative moments in dynamic and lively debates” that describe, theorize, and establish “the communicative space of a vision of politics focusing on public modes of engagement” (202, 200). Ercolini concludes that Kant's popular essays reveal an implicit theory of what she calls “rhetorical judgment,” that is, the “practices of submitting one's thought to the public realm, achieving balance between rigorous examination … and aesthetic perfection” in order to attain true popularity (215).Having offered an overview of Ercolini's argument, I conclude this review by developing three critical suggestions in hopes of inspiring further reflection on the nature, meaning, and significance of Kant's philosophy of communication. The first critical suggestion concerns Ercolini's treatment of Kant's ethical theory. As noted above, Ercolini's treatment of Kant's moral philosophy turns on her distinction between Kant's account of a pure and abstract ethical theory grounded in the categorical imperative and the “impure” and therefore “improper” ethics that Kant presents in his anthropological writings. Though Ercolini is right to claim that scholars have tended to emphasize the former at the expense of the latter, she goes too far in her own attempt to correct for the scholarship's one-sidedness. For Ercolini goes so far as to claim that it is possible to read Kant as grounding morality in anthropology (106). However, the mature Kant consistently maintains that the categorical imperative is and must be the foundational principle of human morality. This observation is not intended to discredit Ercolini's claim that Kant's anthropological writings shed important light on his understanding of communication—they surely do—but it does call Ercolini's way of drawing a sharp distinction between two different “sides” of Kant's ethics into question. It would be productive to further develop Ercolini's careful examination of Kant's anthropological writings by exploring the important and vital connection between Kant's philosophy of communication and his account of the nature and significance of the fundamental principle of morality, that is, the categorical imperative.A second critical suggestion has to do with Ercolini's way of abstracting from Kant's account of reason as spontaneous, free, teleological, and moral. For Kant, the categorical imperative is grounded in reason. The moral law is always reason's moral law, and reason always already demands that morality be efficacious in the world of lived experience. This demand is root and fruit of Kant's account of the highest good, and it ultimately takes the form of an obligation to establish what Kant describes, variously, as a moral world, a kingdom of ends, and an ethical community. Attending to Kant's account of reason suggests that the categorical imperative, as reason's moral law, is always already bound up with concerns with and interests in the well-being of the community. Indeed, Kant emphasizes the importance of speech, communication, and the public use of reason at least in part because these activities are conducive to the realization of the highest good in the world. Accordingly, we do not need to turn away from Kant's “proper” ethics in order to explore the connection between morality, community, and communication. Ercolini's account of the role of communication in humanity's social and political life might benefit from further reflection on the central role that the highest good plays in Kant's moral theory.A final critical suggestion concerns Ercolini's treatment of the Critique of Judgment. For, though Ercolini offers a general summary of Kant's project in this work and a careful analysis of Kant's account of the relationship between poetry and rhetoric, she overlooks several other important and explicit discussions of communication that Kant offers in the third Critique. In particular, an account of Kant's philosophy of communication would benefit from a discussion of Kant's claim that judgments of taste are characterized by their universal communicability, of Kant's account of genius as an artist who is characterized by a special talent for a unique mode of communication, and especially of Kant's suggestion in CPJ §60 that beautiful art is capable of contributing to social and cultural progress by facilitating communication and sympathy between different social classes. Ercolini's discussion of the third Critique is helpful so far as it goes, but this work contains more resources for developing a complete account of Kant's philosophy of communication than Ercolini suggests.In the final analysis, Ercolini's treatment of Kant's philosophy of communication is clear, original, and provocative, and it pursues a number of important questions that are typically overlooked in the Kant scholarship. Kant's Philosophy of Communication makes an original and timely contribution to the scholarship. It will be of interest to scholars working on Kant's social and political theory, and it will be required reading for anyone interested in Kant's understanding of speech, rhetoric, and communication.