Ethics, Aesthetics and Religion: Kant at the Limits of Language

This paper will examine particular notions and expressions from Kant’s writings on ethics, aesthetics and religion from the perspective of early Wittgenstein’s philosophy (as exemplified in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus and his Lecture on Ethics). Even from a charitable point of view, many of Kant’s propositions regarding ethical and religious notions seem, at least prima facie, like language that verges on paradox: 1) The way Kant conceives of moral (free) action: Every free action (as an effect) is a phenomenon, i.e., part of the world of phenomena, whose cause is nevertheless not another phenomenon, but a noumenal free choice. In other words, every free action takes place at a given place and time but presupposes a timeless, i.e., outside the time series, free choice of a maxim as its cause. 2) Kant’s famous “fact of reason”, that signifies our unmediated consciousness of the moral law. It is conceived as a non-empirical fact that is not supported by any sensible intuition. In a sense, it is a fact that is also not a fact – in the proper sense of the term. 3) Kant’s notion of the “moral feeling”, the feeling of respect for the moral law. On the one hand the moral feeling is a feeling, i.e., something felt and for that reason part of the world of phenomena, and on the other it is not induced by the world of phenomena, but by pure reason working on our sensible nature. In short, it is a feeling that is also not a feeling, at least in the proper sense of the term. 4) The postulates of practical reason are conceived as theoretical propositions that are nevertheless not theoretically established. 5) In the field of aesthetics Kant famously describes the experience of the beautiful in terms of the apparently paradoxical idea of "purposiveness without a purpose". I propose to view all the above as examples of language that runs against its limits, in the manner that Wittgenstein articulated such a notion in his Lecture on Ethics: “My whole tendency and I believe the tendency of all men who ever tried to write or talk Ethics or Religion was to run against the boundaries of language.” In other words, I propose to examine Kant’s pronouncements as examples of language that tries to go beyond the world and express (treat in a scientific manner, in the broad sense of the term) absolute and unconditional value. My aim in this paper is not to argue for or against Kant’s views but only to point out the fact that their expression in language feels like we are at, what Wittgenstein calls, the limits of language. I make this comparison in good spirit since I take it for granted that the early Wittgenstein and Kant understand the ethical in the same pre-philosophical way (in an absolute and unconditional way) even if they differ enormously in the way they treat it philosophically (Kant holds that the ethical is essentially rational in character while nothing analogous holds for the early Wittgenstein).