4 Blinding the Eyes of Justice

1. 4 Blinding the Eyes of Justice

2. Title of film: meaning? • Woody Allen: “Crimes and Misdemeanors” refers to … • Dostoevsky’s novel: Crime and Punishment • US Constitution: "The President, Vice President and all civil Officers of the United States, shall be removed from Office on Impeachment for, and Conviction of, Treason, Bribery, or other high Crimes and Misdemeanors."

3. Injustice in this life • The bad people are rewarded • Misdemeanors of Lester, who wins the beautiful Halley • Crimes of Judah, who escapes without punishment, with the love of his wife, and the undeserved respect of the community • The good are punished • Cliff with failure, Ben with blindness (and Louis Levi, with despair)

4. Job’s complaint: God is unjust • “Why does he look on and laugh, when the unoffending, too, must suffer? So the whole world is given up into the power of wrong-doers; he blinds the eyes of justice. He is answerable for it; who else?”

5. Does this contradict Kant? • Highest Good as “keystone” of morality • Moral duty > Highest Good • Kant: But “ought implies can”: if a moral world is impossible, then the moral vision “must be fantastic, directed to empty ends, and consequently inherently false.” • “Antinomy of Practical Reason”

6. Arguments for the impossibility of morality: 1) Louis Levy • “But the universe is a pretty cold place. It’s we who invest it with our feelings.” • “Events unfold so unpredictably, so unfairly. Human happiness does not seem to have been included in the design of creation.”

7. Levy’s (implicit) argument • =Science explains events by external causes governing the natural and social world. • These movements of matter are indifferent to individual human beings. • = Apparent implication of “Copernican revolution” in science, • versus geocentric view, where human beings are in the center of reality

8. Arguments for the impossibility of morality: 2) Kant (a) • Laws of science imply determinism, and the rule of “heteronomous laws” • Morality implies that we are free, • and can live according to laws we make ourselves (autonomous laws) • If science is true, morality is impossible.

9. Arguments for the impossibility of morality: 2) Kant (b) • Social science (Adam Smith): self-interest governs economic life. • Impersonal laws of market (supply and demand) govern distribution of wealth • Happiness depends (in part) on this distribution of wealth. • Cliff: “It’s worse than dog-eat-dog. It’s dog doesn’t answer other dog’s phone calls.”

10. Contradiction in Levy’s existentialism? • A) The universe is “cold,” loveless, and meaningless • because it is governed by laws of external causality. • B) And yet, Levy argues: “We are all faced throughout our lives with agonizing decisions, moral choices. Some are on a grand scale. Most of these choices are on a lesser scale. But we define ourselves by the choices we have made. We are in fact the sum total of our choices.”

11. Science and human freedom • If A is true, and the universe is governed by external causes • Then how is B even possible? • B implies that people are responsible for their own actions: • i.e., that the universe is not governed by outside causes (alone)

12. How is human freedom possible in a materialist world? • Natural world is governed by outside, material causes • Newton’s first law: the law of inertia • How can beings who govern themselves evolve or “emerge” in such a world? • Social science (Adam Smith) confirms this determinism: • people acting for their own interests • are governed by outside causes (laws of the market)

13. Louis Levi on the God of the tradition • “The unique thing that happened to the early Israelites was that they conceived a God that cares. He cares but he also demands at the same time that you behave morally. But here comes the paradox. What’s one of the first things that that God asks?

14. “That God asks Abraham to sacrifice his only son, his beloved son to Him. In other words, in spite of millennia of efforts we have not succeeded to create a really and entirely loving image of a God. This was beyond our capacity to imagine.”

16. Levy’s solution • 1) Does not explain how there can be genuine freedom in a “cold” (i.e., deterministic) world. • 2) But supposing this is possible, though absurd, • i.e., incomprehensible scientifically, • we should try to project love and search for love

17. 3) Religion attempts to imagine a God of love, and a moral or just universe. • 4) But we see the failure of such an attempt in the Hebrew Testament (Abraham and Isaac) • 5) Contradiction of projecting love in a world we know (believe?) to be inherently loveless?

18. Kant’s Solution • The laws of science are a priori synthetic rules for constituting experience. • Our ways of organizing the data from reality • And so they apply to appearances, not to things in themselves. • They apply to cognitive experience, not to moral experience and practice. • Hence the goal of his Critique of Pure Reason: “It is necessary to deny knowledge, in order to make room for faith.”

19. Science or morality: what is real?

20. World of appearance • 1) Natural world with its deterministic laws. • 2) Social world in which the market determines the distribution of material rewards and punishments

21. 3rd Formulation of CI • “In the kingdom of ends everything has either a price or a dignity. If it has a price, something else can be put in its place as an equivalent; if it is exalted above all price and so admits of no equivalent, then it has a dignity.

22. (Market) value as relative price • “What is relative to universal human inclinations and needs has a market price; what, even without presupposing a need, accords with a certain taste—that is, with satisfaction in the mere purposeless play of our mental powers—has a fancy price;

23. Moral value as intrinsic Dignity • “but that which constitutes the sole condition under which anything can be an end in itself has not merely a relative value—that is, a price—but has an intrinsic value—that is, dignity.”

24. Heteronomy of the social world is made by us • Heteronomy: living according to externally-determined laws • This is a consequence of our own law of action: putting the ego first. • This creates division: ego v. ego • We create a world that deprives us of our freedom: Me v. everyone else • We humans do this: not nature, not God • We could create a different world.

25. Kant on moral despair • The morally committed person needs to support this commitment with “postulates” about the nature of reality. • Postulates: rationally coherent beliefs • Otherwise he/she will give up, despair, re moral goals. • And egotistical goals will be the only valid ones. • This is the conclusion of Lester and Judah regarding the “real world”

26. First postulate (belief): freedom • Moral practice postulates • free will (not being determined) • and positive freedom (living according to laws we make ourselves) • Faith or belief is necessary for authentic freedom • Levy therefore believes – he doesn’t know: • 1) that he is free to choose; • 2) that the universe is a meaningless, loveless place.

27. Other postulates • But then why not believe in a truly loving God and/or benevolent universe? • It’s our human way of thinking that imagines an unjust universe • Why not believe in the possibility of creating a fundamentally just and loving world? • And that the universe is in favor of this • Basic question: • Q: what are the postulates or beliefs necessary to support the moral perspective at which Levy aims? • A: Kant: freedom, God, immortality

28. Kant’s Critique of external religion • But this does not mean support of the traditional religion that Judah’s father teaches. • A God of rewards and punishment: • Such beliefs undermine the motive of duty. • People obey the moral rules in order to get to heaven and avoid hell: selfish motive • Morality requires a different God and immortality from that of traditional religion.

29. Belief and Imagination What the Bible, Shakespeare, and Hollywood Movies have in Common

30. Main ideas • 1) What is the experience of duty? • 2) How do we know what our duty is? • 3) Highest good: keystone of duty • 4) Is it possible, realizable? • The problem of science: natural and social • Kant’s solution • 5) Postulates • 6) Importance of imagination

32. Topics • 1) Sensible world of 1999 and intelligible world of Highest Good (Zion, Shakespeare, Hollywood endings, etc.) • What is the basic law of our social world? • Is an alternative law possible? • The Postulate of God = power of realization • Nemo: “Swim down!” • 2) Beyond the postulates: The power of imagination

33. Logic and belief • “Does everything have to be logical?” • Judah’s father asks rhetorically • Kant’s reply: the “transcendental logic” of the sciences applies to appearances, not to reality in itself. • =The “real world” of Jack and Judah is an illusion, a construction. • Compare with The Matrix: Our world of 1999. • Kant: we create our own “matrix”

34. The maxim of our economic world • “It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.” • Cliff: “It’s worse than dog-eat-dog. It’s dog doesn’t answer other dog’s phone calls.”

35. Indifferent universe or indifferent social world? • Levi: “But the universe is a pretty cold place. It’s we who invest it with our feelings. And under certain conditions, we feel that the thing isn’t worth it any more.” • What feelings do we project from our loveless, ego-based, social world?

36. Three kinds of freedom • Freedom as doing what I want to do. • But desires are caused by circumstances, education and nature. (science) • So “free” people have no free will (and so are not morally responsible) • Freedom as not being bound by external laws (free will—negative freedom) • This is possible because science rests on a priori concepts • Freedom as realizing a law I give to myself (positive freedom)

37. Heteronomy • Law of separate ego (self-interest) • When I act for ego-based desires, aroused in me by outside forces, I alienate my freedom. • = “heteronomy” (heteros: other; nomos: law) • We determine ourselves to be governed by outside forces. • We allowourselves to be enslaved. • The Matrix depends on the people themselves (recall 1st Matrix of Paradise) • We create the dog-eat-dog world.

38. Ego-based desires • When I act as an ego, I see myself as separate from others (other egos) • My egotism therefore implicitly creates a world of others • who use me in the same way I use them • There is a law implicit in ego-based action: • “Each man for himself, and the devil take the hindmost.” • =We create a world based on this “law.”

39. Autonomy • Real freedom is acting on the basis of laws we give ourselves. • The law of egotism is also a law we give ourselves, • but not one that we can consciously will. • Recall: How can we know what is duty? • Autonomy is acting according to a law we can consciously will. • = A law in which ego is subordinate to our shared humanity.

40. Adam Smith’s “invisible hand” • Adam Smith: “By preferring the support of domestic to that of foreign industry, he intends only his own security; and by directing that industry in such a manner as its produce may be of the greatest value, he intends only his own gain, and he is in this, as in many other cases, led by an invisible hand to promote an end which was no part of his intention.

41. The “real world” that we “know” • Adam Smith: social world is the outcome of the self-interested actions of individuals • = The power of the Market is the expression of the individuals who produce it • It then rules over them as an apparently separate force, an “Invisible Hand”

42. Trading for the common good? • “Nor is it always the worse for the society that it was not part of it. By pursuing his own interest he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good. It is an affectation, indeed, not very common among merchants, and very few words need be employed in dissuading them from it.”

43. Postulate of freedom • Kant: we choose to define ourselves as separate egos • but we can also choose a different identity: as sharing humans. • People must believe they are capable of morality. • = the Postulates of morality • Postulate of freedom: • ability to choose duty against the forces of one’s own, and others’, desires and fears.

44. B Postulate of God (1) • Postulate of freedom: ability to freely choose • But we must also believe that we have the power and intelligence to realize the highest good. • Q: But how can we counteract the power of the Market? • A: This is our own power, alienated (heteronomy)

45. Postulate of God (2) • Invisible Hand of Adam Smith: • =outside power, intelligence, • Kant: “Intelligible world” • regulating the market • Kant: “sensible world” • = A system of power ruling over individuals • who feed into this system their life energies and intelligence. • The Matrix: the machines run by human energy •  God of External Religion: demands that Abraham sacrifice Isaac (Louis Levy)

46. Postulate of God (3) • Recall Kant on relation between intelligible and sensible worlds: • “the person as belonging to the sensible world is subject to his own personality as belonging to the intelligible [supersensible] world.” • Recall Buffy’s heaven • = the person is the cause of The Matrix.

47. Postulate of God (4) • New Matrix of shared humanity. • “third formulation” of CI: Kingdom of Ends •  realization of the Highest Good • Humanity is the “invisible hand” that creates The Matrix of The Market • – by its law of egotism • And so humanity has the power to recreate the world by the law of shared humanity. • Hence the humanity in us is holy (God)

48. Choice between two laws • Choose between ego-based desires and duty: • Morpheus: “You can feel it when you go to work, when you go to church, when you pay your taxes.” • law of ego: world of separate egos produces alien power of • the market, “when you go to work” • external religion, “when you go to church” • the state, “when you pay your taxes” • Law of personality, humanity: our own power restored to us from its self-alienation: • Jesus, Internal religion: “The Kingdom of God is within you.”

49. Two directions of human bio-energy • 7 Billion people put energy into an external system that rules over them. • In economic life, we are governed by the laws of the market operating as an Invisible Hand to produce growing wealth • In religion: an all powerful God rules us, and we must do whatever He demands (Abraham/Isaac) • Suppose each person reflects energy back to the other, sharing energy • Energy of 7 Billion flows into each person. • United, we experience “divinity” within us • The power of our shared humanity

50. Three approaches to the possibility of morality • 1) Negative: Critique of the objectivity of scientific laws. • --So morality is logically possible. • 2) Positive: Moral experience of duty— • shows that we are in contact with a power that transcends the sensible world: our personality • 3) Aesthetic experience