History, Reason and Hope: A Comparative Study of Kant, Hayek and Habermas: Dialogue on Personal and Political Ethics

In Critique of Practical Reason, Immanuel Kant expressed awe and admiration for the starred heaven above me and moral law within me. With reference to heavens, Kant was struck by human insignificance in the incalculable vastness of worlds upon worlds, of within systems, over endless ages. Within this sensible of cosmic proportions, appeared to be but an animal-like being, condemned to return to dust of planet which itself is a mere speck in universe. At same time, however, Kant believed that every human consciousness contains within itself universality of moral law. As intelligible beings, we live a life independent of animality and even of entire world of sense. The moral law elevates human existence into a world ... which can be sensed only by intellect. Moral self-determination, said Kant, radiates into infinite. (1) Lucien Goldmann's interpretation of Kant emphasizes need to overcome this division between sensible and intelligible domains. Kant conceived moral autonomy as an attribute of rational individuals, but he also contemplated universal community, integrated through practical Idea of human freedom--an ethical commonwealth and kingdom of ends. Goldmann argues that absolute necessity of realizing this totality is the centre of Kant's thought. (2) For solution, he looks to Kant's philosophy of history. In The Contest of Faculties, Kant claimed that it is possible to have priori if the prophet himself occasions and produces events he predicts'. (3) In French Revolution, Kant saw evidence that man has quality or power of being cause and.., author of his own improvement'. (4) Goldmann interprets Kant's view of history as opening way to subsequent philosophies of totality in work of Hegel, Marx and Lukacs. (5) Jurgen Habermas claims, however, that dialectical concept of totality has today collapsed into its disjecta membra. (6) Instrumental and strategic reason have suppressed practical discourse, and economic and social systems objectify human subjects in accordance with systemic functional imperatives. Nevertheless, Habermas remains committed to Kant's faith in human reason. He argues that personal and social pathologies resulting from systemic integration inevitably reproduce human need for shared meaning and purpose. In imperatives of language and everyday speech, he finds implicit an speech situation which sustains hope for human behaviour guided (in part at least) by good reasons. (7) Today concept of totality has reappeared in an unexpected quarter. Friedrich Hayek, often regarded as spiritual father of modern conservatism, draws upon Kantian influences in accounting for Great Society and extended order of market economy. In liberal ideal of voluntary market exchanges, coordinated through universal laws, Hayek thinks Kant's aspirations have been fulfilled by modern capitalism. Hayek's pursuit of totality, however, takes new twist. Whereas Hegel, Marx and Lukacs saw social reason as ultimate determinant of human interaction, Hayek's evolutionary epistemology suggests opposite: social evolution, both cultural and economic, turns out to be author of human consciousness. By comparing Hayek's work with that of Kant and Habermas, I shall argue that Hayek collapses Kant's project rather than continuing it. 1. Immanuel Kant: Reason as Philosophical Explanation of History Kant considered distinction between inner compulsion of moral law and external causality of nature to be fundamental. The moral law transcends all particulars of time and space and is distinct from all principles that determine events in nature. (8) Facts, conventions and experience are absolutely inconsequential in moral judgements: anyone so misled as to make into basic moral principle something derived from this source would be in danger of grossest and most pernicious errors. …