The New Conflict of the Faculties: Kant, Radical Enlightenment, The Hyper-State, and How to Philosophize During a Pandemic

Abstract

In this essay, I apply the Kantian (or at the very least, Kant-inspired) interpretation of enlightenment as  radical enlightenment  to the enterprise of  philosophy  within the context of our contemporary world-situation, and try to answer this very hard quest ion: “As radically enlightened  Kantian philosophers confronted by  the double-whammy  consisting of what I call  The Hyper-State , together with  the 2020-2021 COVID-19 pandemic , what should we dare to think and do?” The very  hard problem posed by this very har d question is what I’ll call  The New Conflict of the Faculties . By way of a direct answer to this very hard question and by way of an effective solution to this very hard problem, I provide seven recommendations.