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Franziska AIGNER Kant and technics: From the Critique of Pure Reason to the Opus Postumum Franziska AIGNER June 2020 Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy (CRMEP), Kingston University, for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy. Abstract This dissertation aims to critically intervene in twentieth century European philosophical thought on technics, the discourse concerning skills, tools, instruments, and machines, as well as technology, the scientific meta-discourse on technics, by way of a critical reading and conceptualization of the role and meaning of technics for Immanuel Kant’s transcendental philosophy. Starting from a critical analysis of Martin Heidegger, Gilbert Simondon, and Bernard Stiegler’s thought on technics, I will show how Kant came to stand for a philosophy that could not, and, further did not think technics. Against Heidegger, Simondon and Stiegler, according to whom Kant was incapable of recognizing the technical problematic at the center of his philosophy, I argue that we should read Kant’s philosophy as being constitutively shaped by an ongoing, developing concern for technics. Following a close reading of Kant’s texts from the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) until his very last unfinished manuscript, the Opus Postumum (1796-1803), my project works chronologically through Kant’s explicit references to technics (die Technik), as I aim to synthesize a concept of technics out of the Kantian text and lay out the role and meaning of technics through the various stages of Kant’s thought. I will show that Kant did not only ‘know’ something about technics, but that his transcendental philosophy is essentially of technics, at once explicitly constituted against, while at the same time relying on, being built upon, and proceeding from technics. While the Critique of Pure Reason will be shown to be at heart a critique of instrumental reason, which is to be remedied by a two-fold critical program, both sides of which already harbor a positive concept of technics, it is in the final Opus Postumum that Kant will be seen to articulate the systematic place and vital role of technical-practical reason for the system of transcendental philosophy. The Opus Postumum charges technical-practical reason with the technical- practical task of world-building, and thus the cosmo-technical context for both the universal laws of science and any particular technical-practical action. Consequently, then, while for Heidegger, Simondon, and Stiegler, Kant came to stand for a philosophy that could not think technics, I aim to re-open the larger question concerning the relation between philosophy and technics through the restricted discussion of the relation between Kant and technics, and the concept of technics that I discover in the Kantian text. 2 Acknowledgements I am fortunate to have written this dissertation in the company of many friends and colleagues. Most of all, I would like to thank my first supervisor, Howard J. Caygill, for having first sparked my interest in Kant, for having taught me how to read Kant and Simondon long before becoming my supervisor, and for having become my friend in the process. In our first PhD supervision meeting, Howard put me on the trail of an old, blue and long out-of-print book that one might be able to find in the British Library. Written by the little known Gerhard Lehmann, this book would soon become the key to my project. Little did I know, back then, of Howard’s gift to detect long before myself where it was that I was going, and to provide, so generously, the horizon upon which my philosophical intuitions could develop. I would like to thank Peter Hallward, my second supervisor, for being the critical, perceptive, and sharp reader that he is, and for his continued insistence on rigorous argumentation and clarity. I am greatly indebted to the incisive and critical questions posed to me by Peter Osborne, some of which have forced me into crisis, resulting in necessary decisions long overdue. It has been an intense honor to discuss my project with Étienne Balibar, whose brilliant insights have helped me navigate through difficult passages more than once, and whose teachings will stay with me through all that lies ahead. I would also like to thank Stephen Howard for having read my work on the famously difficult Opus Postumum at various stages throughout the process, and for his generous comments, which have both improved my argument and my confidence. I could not have written this dissertation without all the professors and students at the Center for Research in Modern European Philosophy, which has become my home throughout the last six years of my life. I would like to thank in particular Matt Hare, Isabell Dahms, Marie Louise Krogh, Austin Gross, Francis Cooper, Kylie Gilchrist, and Nathaniel Wooding for their friendship, their philosophical insights, and for having read and discussed my writing with me at various stages. My immense gratitude also goes to Iain Campbell, who has helped me improve my work in the final stage. I completed this dissertation in my mother’s house during the lockdown declared due to the global Corona-virus pandemic. Her love and support have guided me, not only during these last stages of writing. I am also greatly indebted to my sister and brother, to Lawrence, and to my friends at 113, in London, Salzburg, and Berlin. My infinite gratitude goes to Sam, who has supported me in all imaginable ways in thought and love. 3 Last but not least, I would like to thank my grandmother, Gertrude Fischer, whose love and defiance has always been my guide. This dissertation is dedicated to her. I completed this thesis thanks to the generous support of Kingston University (2016- 2019) 4 A critique is not a matter of saying that things are not right as they are. It is a matter of pointing out on what kinds of assumptions, what kinds of familiar, unchallenged, unconsidered modes of thought, the practices that we accept rest.... Criticism is a matter of flushing out that thought and trying to change it: to show that things are not as self-evident as we believed, to see that what is accepted as self-evident will no longer be accepted as such. Practicing criticism is a matter of making facile gestures difficult. - Michel Foucault, Practicing Criticism 5 Table of Contents INTRODUCTION 7 KANT AND/WITHOUT TECHNICS 7 THE PROBLEM AND THE PROMISE 10 OUTLINE 11 CHAPTER 1. TECHNICS, PERIODIZATION, AND THE ECLIPSE OF KANT IN THE TECHNCIAL THOUGHT OF HEIDEGGER, SIMONDON, AND STIEGLER 16 CHAPTER 1.1 HEIDEGGER AND THE QUESTION OF TECHNICS 17 FROM TECHNE TO TECHNICS 18 THE SECOND TERM: THE HUMAN 21 HEIDEGGER AND THE HISTORY OF TECHNICAL THOUGHT 23 FROM METAPHYSICS TO TECHNICS 26 HEIDEGGER AND KANT 28 CHAPTER 2.2. SIMONDON AND THE PROBLEM OF TECHNICS 32 THE PROBLEM OF TECHNICS AND BECOMING IN SIMONDON’S ON THE MODE OF EXISTENCE OF TECHNICAL OBJECTS 34 SIMONDON’S HISTORY OF TECHNICAL THOUGHT 38 SIMONDON AND KANT 39 CHAPTER 1.3. STIEGLER AND THE REPRESSION OF TECHNICS 46 INTRODUCING STIEGLER’S FRAMEWORK OF EXHUMATION 47 STIEGLER’S ACCOUNT OF THE HISTORY OF TECHNICAL THOUGHT 50 PHILOSOPHICAL MODERNITY 52 THE “OLD METAPHYSICAL DOXA” 53 STIEGLER AND KANT 54 CHAPTER 1.4. A FUTURE FOR KANT DESPITE HEIDEGGER, SIMONDON, AND STIEGLER 59 CHAPTER 2. KANT’S CRITICAL PHILOSOPHY AND TECHNICS 62 CHAPTER 2.1 REASON’S DRIVE 64 THE ORGANON OF REASON 65 ELEMENTS, SOURCES, AND BOUNDARIES: THE DOCTRINE OF ELEMENTS AND THE CANON 67 THE CANON AND ITS TECHNICAL CRITIQUES 69 THE CANON, AN A PRIORI MANUFACTURE? 74 A PRIORI OPERATIONS (HANDGRIFFE) 75 CHAPTER 2.2 INSTRUMENTAL EXPANSION AND THE TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF METHOD 81 THE EMERGENCE OF THE GERMAN TERMS DIE TECHNIK AND DIE TECHNOLOGIE 82 TECHNICS IN THE TRANSCENDENTAL DOCTRINE OF METHOD 88 INSTRUMENTALITY, TECHNICS, AND THE PROBLEM OF ADDICTION 91 THE DISCIPLINING OF REASON 94 CHAPTER 2.3 THE MANY FACES OF TECHNICS IN THE CRITICAL FRAMEWORK 99 CHAPTER 3. TECHNICS BETWEEN THEORY AND PRACTICE: THE CRITIQUE OF THE POWER OF JUDGMENT 102 CHAPTER 3.1 THE SYSTEM OF PHILOSOPHY AND THE PLACE OF TECHNICS WITHIN IT 104 CHAPTER 3.2 THE CRITIQUE OF THE POWER OF JUDGMENT AND THE PROBLEM OF NATURE’S UNRULY THINGS 109 CHAPTER 3.3 A TECHNICS OF NATURE 114 NATURE 114 TECHNICS 116 A HYPOTHETICAL RESTRICTION 118 CHAPTER 3.4 THREE KINDS OF TECHNICS 121 CHAPTER 3.5 THE RETURN OF THE PROBLEM OF TECHNICS 124 CHAPTER 4. TECHNICS IN THE OPUS POSTUMUM 126 CHAPTER 4.1 KANT’S OPUS POSTUMUM AND GERHARD LEHMANN 128 CHAPTER 4.2 TECHNICAL-PRACTICAL REASON IN THE OPUS POSTUMUM 133 ON THE RELATION BETWEEN FASCICLES VII AND I 140 CHAPTER 4.3 TECHNICAL-PRACTICAL REASON AND THE DOCTRINE OF SELF-POSITING 142 SELF-POSITING IN THE OPUS POSTUMUM 144 THE FIRST ACT OF SELF-POSITING 146 THE TRANSITION BETWEEN THE FIRST AND THE SECOND ACT OF SELF-POSITING 147 IDEAS, IDEALS, ORIGINAL IMAGES 149 GOD, THE WORLD, AND THE HUMAN 153 WORLD AND KNOWLEDGE OF THE WORLD 155 PHILOSOPHY IN THE WORLD CONCEPT 158 GOD, THE WORLD, AND THE HUMAN IN THE OPUS POSTUMUM, THE SYSTEM OF TRANSCENDENTAL PHILOSOPHY 159 REASON, SELF-POSITING AND TRANSCENDENTAL REFLECTION 163 TECHNICAL-PRACTICAL AND MORAL PRACTICAL-REASON 165 CHAPTER 4.5 TECHNICAL-PRACTICAL SELF-POSITING 169 THE PROBLEM OF CONSTRUCTION 173 SELF-AFFECTION AND APPEARANCES OF APPEARANCES 176 CHAPTER 4.5 CONCLUSION 180 CONCLUSION 182 BIBLIOGRAPHY 188 6 INTRODUCTION Kant and/without technics In 1936, the German Akademie der Wissenschaften published the first part of the Opus Postumum (Nachlasswerk), containing the hitherto unpublished manuscript on which Immanuel Kant had worked over the last decade of his life.
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