Reason

Reason and the Third Thesis

By John Taylor; 2006 December 19

Immanuel Kant began the third thesis of his Cosmopolitan History with this proposition:

"Nature has willed that man should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason." (Kant, Cosmopolitan History, 251-252)

A Muslim, or a Babi or Baha'i, reading this statement would have no problem at all reconciling what Kant says about our total dependence as human beings upon reason. For us, reason is faith, and faith is reason; as Baha'u'llah said, "reason is the first gift of God to man." However the religious leaders of Europe were drunk and delirious on the brackish, contaminated water of re-used religious terminology. For them, faith and reason were different, competing quantities, and reading the above would ask, Where does faith come in? Whenever they saw pronouncements like this by leading lights of the enlightenment they would balk, and their followers along with them. As a result the 17th Century Enlightenment witnessed a monumental and split between faith and science in the West. This bitter divorce has yet to be healed.

Had Europe learned the lessons that Muhammad taught the Middle East there could have been no such dichotomy. Consider how the Qu'ran links trust and reliance on God to reason, "And what reason have we that we should not rely on Allah? (14:12, Shakir); and how it identifies theodicy and apologetics with reasoned discourse,

"And what reason have you that you should not believe in Allah? And the Apostle calls on you that you may believe in your Lord, and indeed He has made a covenant with you if you are believers." (57:8, Shakir)

Service by the more fortunate to the poor is the logical result of reasoned faith, "And what reason have you that you should not spend in Allah's way?" (57:10, Shakir), as is service to the One who created everything, through reciprocal offerings of prayer and other devotional tribute, "And what reason have I that I should not serve Him Who brought me into existence?" (36:22, Shakir) This reasoned faith agrees completely with Kant's foundational proposition that human happiness only results from the use of God-given reason to overcome the obstacles that nature presents to us, as opposed to operating out of nature, that is, mere instinct, reflex or recycling borrowed truths.

Kant then follows up on this in the body of the third thesis, where he elaborates upon the bases of above general proposition. He begins with what the nature of things seems to be saying to us about our use of the gift of reason.

"Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal. Her giving to man reason and the freedom of the will which depends upon it is clear indication of her purpose."

Let me try to paraphrase this a little clearer. Organisms tend to be economical in their use of resources. Biology now knows that this is because evolution, over long periods of struggle for survival, tends to weed out wasteful or inappropriate structures. Our legs do what is necessary to help us walk and run, and no more. They do not attempt to fly or dig as we walk. Presumably, then, our brains, with their powerful command of reason, logic and language, are not built wastefully either. We need that command of theoretical entities in order to survive, just as a frog needs its long legs to hop and swim as quickly as possible.

As always, Kant is himself a force of nature, for he is economical to the point of obscurity, for he also slips in here the idea that free will results from and is dependent upon the faculty of reason, and that the nature of things indicates that we as human beings can and must exercise our free will along with our reason. Consider how Baha'u'llah defines nature:

"Say: Nature in its essence is the embodiment of My Name, the Maker, the Creator. Its manifestations are diversified by varying causes, and in this diversity there are signs for men of discernment. Nature is God's Will and is its expression in and through the contingent world." (Baha'u'llah, Tablets, Lawh-i-Hikmat, 141)

This, if anything, is stronger than what Kant says about nature. Nature _is_ God's will, and the very fact that we can percieve God's Will in His creation is proof positive that we have wills, and that we are morally obliged to use them. Kant then proceeds to all but paraphrase the Baha'i definition of justice:

"Man accordingly was not to be guided by instinct, not nurtured and instructed with ready-made knowledge; rather, he should bring forth everything out of his own resources."

Okay, this is all a bit heavy, and I apologize for that. Let me break off for now and discuss a new addition to my library, "The Federalist Papers," by Hamilton, Madison and Jay. This was a series of anonymous letters to the editor in a New York newspaper written to persuade New York, the biggest and most reluctant state, that the passage of the yet-to-be ratified Constitution of the United States was a good idea.

Though not influential as published in themselves, these papers were used as a sort of handbook for debaters. The ideas in the Federalist Papers furnished the intellectual ammunition for the down and dirty practical task of consultation, of changing the jaundiced view of leaders of the constitution, and the opinions of the public away from rejection, towards accepting the new constitution. The Federalist Papers came out surprisingly close to the time that Kant wrote the Cosmopolitan History. Since the unification of the 13 Colonies into a single federalist union prefigured the ultimate union of all governments into one, an event soon to be effectuated if we are ever to escape the tyranny of Adolph Nobody, we could think of the Federalist Papers as the practical or applied version, part one, of the Cosmopolitan History envisaged by Kant. If you doubt, consider how Hamilton starts off the first of the Federalist Papers,

"It ... seems to have been reserved to the people of this country, by their conduct and example, to decide the important question, whether societies of men are really capable or not of establishing good government from reflection and choice, or whether they are forever destined to depend for their political constitutions on accident and force. ... a wrong election of the part we shall act may, in this view, deserve to be considered as the general misfortune of mankind." (Federalist Papers, 33)

Consider how close this is to the argument of Qu'ran, which asserts that this happens in every age. God gives us a set of reasons and arguments, and it is up to us to work it out in our artificial political forum according our original nature, not the nature of nature, which though it arised directly from the Will of God, is still an indirect reflection compared to what He created within our selves. Upon the quality of our response to our own original truth depends our survival.

"That was the reasoning about Us, which We gave to Abraham (to use) against his people: We raise whom We will, degree after degree: for thy Lord is full of wisdom and knowledge." (6:83, Yusuf Ali)