Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl

Cora Cruz

doi:doi:10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15

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Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl

Cora Cruz

Published in International Journal of Philosophy (Volume 10, Issue 2)

Received: 14 January 2022 Accepted: 15 March 2022 Published: 20 June 2022

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Abstract

It has been a perennial puzzle that Kant’s notion of reason, or thinking, must be taken as necessarily sui generis, and that construing it otherwise - say, as socially embedded and developmentally contingent - undermines the transcendental project: if thinking is historically contingent, it cannot be free. This might seem to reduce to the problem of the third antinomy, but I argue that it does not, and is not amenable to transcendental critique alone. Its solution requires its own existential analytic, an examination of reason’s prior structures. This can be accommodated by the Kantian architecture, in which the outlines of a constitutive intersubjective orientation are already to be found. In what follows, I re-examine the Kantian paradox of autonomy and spontaneity in light of psychoanalytic traditions and current research in cognitive science, to make the case that, even for Kant, “thinking” is not only “intersubjective” from the ground up; it is also as “affective” as it is “rational”. In addition to the a priori structures contributed by the understanding, imagination, and pure forms of intuition, there is a further a priori, implicit in the Third Critique, which can be considered “relational”. This ties in well with Alfred Adler’s notion of “Gemeinschaftsgefühl”, in which both affective and cognitive capacities converge in the idea of social feeling as a marker of psychological health. In this sense, Adler inherits the Kantian legacy but corrects practical reason of what has been construed as its rationalistic and solipsistic bias.

Published in	International Journal of Philosophy (Volume 10, Issue 2)
DOI	10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15
Page(s)	82-89
Creative Commons	This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright	Copyright © The Author(s), 2024. Published by Science Publishing Group

Keywords

Consciousness, Corticocentrism, Representational Thought, Affect, Ego, Id, Autonomy, Heteronomy

References

[1]	Adler, A. (1933) On the Origin of the Striving for Superiority and of Social Interest. In: Superiority and Social Interest, Eds. H. & R. Ansbacher, New York/London: Norton & Co., Inc.
[2]	Bargh, J. A. & Chartrand, T. L. (1999). The Unbearable Automaticity of Being. American Psychologist, 54 (7), 462-479.
[3]	Ferenczi, S. (1913) Stages in the Development of the Sense of Reality. First Contributions to Psycho-Analysis. Trans. Ernest Jones, Maresfield Library Karnac Books.
[4]	Freud, S. Gesammelte Werke, chronologisch geordnet. Edited by Anna Freud, E. Bibring, V. Hoffer, E. Kris, and O. Isakowa with the collaboration of Marie Bonaparte. 18 Vols. London: Imago, 1952. Reprint, Frankfurt: S. Fischer Verlag, 1991.
[5]	Gauthier, D. (1975) Reason and Maximization. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 4 (3), 411-433.
[6]	Ginsborg, H. (1990) The Role of Taste in Kant’s Theory of Cognition. Garland Publishing, New York & London.
[7]	Kant, I. (1784) Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? Und andere kleine Schriften. Berlin: Henricus Edition Deutsche Klassik UG.
[8]	Kant, I. (1787) Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Norman Kemp Smith, St. Martin’s Press, New York.
[9]	Kant, I. (1785) Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Trans. Gregor, M. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
[10]	Kant, I. (1788) Critique of Practical Reason. Trans. Pluhar, W. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc.
[11]	Kant, I. (1790). Critique of Judgment. Tr. Pluhar, W. Cambridge: Hackett Publishing Co., Inc.
[12]	Korsgaard, C. (2008) The Constitution of Agency: Essays on Practical Reason and Moral Psychology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
[13]	Longuenesse, B. (2017) I, Me, Mine: Back to Kant, and Back Again. Oxford, Oxford University Press.
[14]	Sacks, Oliver. (1998) The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat, and Other Clinical Tales. New York: Touchstone, Simon & Schuster. First published in 1985.
[15]	Solms, M. (2013). The Conscious Id. Neuropsychoanalysis, 2013, 15 (1), 5-19.
[16]	Solms, M. (2019). The Hard Problem of Consciousness and the Free Energy Principle. Frontiers in Psychology, 9 (2714).
[17]	Wittgenstein, L. (1958). The Blue and Brown Books. Oxford: Blackwell.

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Cora Cruz. (2022). Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl. International Journal of Philosophy, 10(2), 82-89. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15

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Cora Cruz. Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl. Int. J. Philos. 2022, 10(2), 82-89. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15

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Cora Cruz. Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl. Int J Philos. 2022;10(2):82-89. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15

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@article{10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15,
  author = {Cora Cruz},
  title = {Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl},
  journal = {International Journal of Philosophy},
  volume = {10},
  number = {2},
  pages = {82-89},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijp.20221002.15},
  abstract = {It has been a perennial puzzle that Kant’s notion of reason, or thinking, must be taken as necessarily sui generis, and that construing it otherwise - say, as socially embedded and developmentally contingent - undermines the transcendental project: if thinking is historically contingent, it cannot be free. This might seem to reduce to the problem of the third antinomy, but I argue that it does not, and is not amenable to transcendental critique alone. Its solution requires its own existential analytic, an examination of reason’s prior structures. This can be accommodated by the Kantian architecture, in which the outlines of a constitutive intersubjective orientation are already to be found. In what follows, I re-examine the Kantian paradox of autonomy and spontaneity in light of psychoanalytic traditions and current research in cognitive science, to make the case that, even for Kant, “thinking” is not only “intersubjective” from the ground up; it is also as “affective” as it is “rational”. In addition to the a priori structures contributed by the understanding, imagination, and pure forms of intuition, there is a further a priori, implicit in the Third Critique, which can be considered “relational”. This ties in well with Alfred Adler’s notion of “Gemeinschaftsgefühl”, in which both affective and cognitive capacities converge in the idea of social feeling as a marker of psychological health. In this sense, Adler inherits the Kantian legacy but corrects practical reason of what has been construed as its rationalistic and solipsistic bias.},
 year = {2022}
}

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AB  - It has been a perennial puzzle that Kant’s notion of reason, or thinking, must be taken as necessarily sui generis, and that construing it otherwise - say, as socially embedded and developmentally contingent - undermines the transcendental project: if thinking is historically contingent, it cannot be free. This might seem to reduce to the problem of the third antinomy, but I argue that it does not, and is not amenable to transcendental critique alone. Its solution requires its own existential analytic, an examination of reason’s prior structures. This can be accommodated by the Kantian architecture, in which the outlines of a constitutive intersubjective orientation are already to be found. In what follows, I re-examine the Kantian paradox of autonomy and spontaneity in light of psychoanalytic traditions and current research in cognitive science, to make the case that, even for Kant, “thinking” is not only “intersubjective” from the ground up; it is also as “affective” as it is “rational”. In addition to the a priori structures contributed by the understanding, imagination, and pure forms of intuition, there is a further a priori, implicit in the Third Critique, which can be considered “relational”. This ties in well with Alfred Adler’s notion of “Gemeinschaftsgefühl”, in which both affective and cognitive capacities converge in the idea of social feeling as a marker of psychological health. In this sense, Adler inherits the Kantian legacy but corrects practical reason of what has been construed as its rationalistic and solipsistic bias.
VL  - 10
IS  - 2
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Author Information

Cora Cruz

Department of Philosophy, The New School for Social Research, New York, USA

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APA Style

Cora Cruz. (2022). Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl. International Journal of Philosophy, 10(2), 82-89. https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15

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ACS Style

Cora Cruz. Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl. Int. J. Philos. 2022, 10(2), 82-89. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15

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AMA Style

Cora Cruz. Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl. Int J Philos. 2022;10(2):82-89. doi: 10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15

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@article{10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15,
  author = {Cora Cruz},
  title = {Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl},
  journal = {International Journal of Philosophy},
  volume = {10},
  number = {2},
  pages = {82-89},
  doi = {10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15},
  eprint = {https://article.sciencepublishinggroup.com/pdf/10.11648.j.ijp.20221002.15},
  abstract = {It has been a perennial puzzle that Kant’s notion of reason, or thinking, must be taken as necessarily sui generis, and that construing it otherwise - say, as socially embedded and developmentally contingent - undermines the transcendental project: if thinking is historically contingent, it cannot be free. This might seem to reduce to the problem of the third antinomy, but I argue that it does not, and is not amenable to transcendental critique alone. Its solution requires its own existential analytic, an examination of reason’s prior structures. This can be accommodated by the Kantian architecture, in which the outlines of a constitutive intersubjective orientation are already to be found. In what follows, I re-examine the Kantian paradox of autonomy and spontaneity in light of psychoanalytic traditions and current research in cognitive science, to make the case that, even for Kant, “thinking” is not only “intersubjective” from the ground up; it is also as “affective” as it is “rational”. In addition to the a priori structures contributed by the understanding, imagination, and pure forms of intuition, there is a further a priori, implicit in the Third Critique, which can be considered “relational”. This ties in well with Alfred Adler’s notion of “Gemeinschaftsgefühl”, in which both affective and cognitive capacities converge in the idea of social feeling as a marker of psychological health. In this sense, Adler inherits the Kantian legacy but corrects practical reason of what has been construed as its rationalistic and solipsistic bias.},
 year = {2022}
}

Copy | Download

TY  - JOUR
T1  - Thinking for Oneself Is Thinking with Others: Enlightenment Reason and Gemeinschaftsgefühl
AU  - Cora Cruz
Y1  - 2022/06/20
PY  - 2022
N1  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15
DO  - 10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15
T2  - International Journal of Philosophy
JF  - International Journal of Philosophy
JO  - International Journal of Philosophy
SP  - 82
EP  - 89
PB  - Science Publishing Group
SN  - 2330-7455
UR  - https://doi.org/10.11648/j.ijp.20221002.15
AB  - It has been a perennial puzzle that Kant’s notion of reason, or thinking, must be taken as necessarily sui generis, and that construing it otherwise - say, as socially embedded and developmentally contingent - undermines the transcendental project: if thinking is historically contingent, it cannot be free. This might seem to reduce to the problem of the third antinomy, but I argue that it does not, and is not amenable to transcendental critique alone. Its solution requires its own existential analytic, an examination of reason’s prior structures. This can be accommodated by the Kantian architecture, in which the outlines of a constitutive intersubjective orientation are already to be found. In what follows, I re-examine the Kantian paradox of autonomy and spontaneity in light of psychoanalytic traditions and current research in cognitive science, to make the case that, even for Kant, “thinking” is not only “intersubjective” from the ground up; it is also as “affective” as it is “rational”. In addition to the a priori structures contributed by the understanding, imagination, and pure forms of intuition, there is a further a priori, implicit in the Third Critique, which can be considered “relational”. This ties in well with Alfred Adler’s notion of “Gemeinschaftsgefühl”, in which both affective and cognitive capacities converge in the idea of social feeling as a marker of psychological health. In this sense, Adler inherits the Kantian legacy but corrects practical reason of what has been construed as its rationalistic and solipsistic bias.
VL  - 10
IS  - 2
ER  -

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