Dirk Setton

In Kants Theorie der Freiheit tut sich eine Spannung zwischen zwei unterschiedlichen Formen des Willens auf: zwischen der Autonomie auf der einen Seite, in der der freie Wille und die vernünftige Einsicht zusammenfallen, und der „freien Willkür“ auf der anderen Seite, die eine Freiheit von normativen Bestimmungen darstellt. Dass und wie diese beiden einander entgegengesetzten Momente der Freiheit zusammengehören, wird in diesem Buch entwickelt.

Motive des Unvermögens und Figuren des Scheiterns beschäftigen die Theoriebildung in den Kultur- und Geisteswissenschaften wie nie zuvor. Doch was in den Thematisierungen des Unwissens, Vergessens und Zauderns, der Blindheit, Undarstellbarkeit und Untätigkeit auf dem Spiel steht, ist keine philosophisch irrelevante und abgeleitete Problematik. Im Gegenteil: Es geht um eine fundamentale Neudeutung des Begriffs des menschlichen Könnens im Allgemeinen. Dirk Setton nimmt jene heterogene Motivlage philosophisch ernst und bringt sie auf eine Kategorie – die des Unvermögens. In Auseinandersetzung mit der philosophisch wirkmächtigsten Vermögenstheorie – der aristotelischen – und der philosophisch prominentesten Unvermögensfigur – der Willensschwäche – zeigt er, dass die Möglichkeiten des Scheiterns und der Irrationalität für ein vernünftiges Vermögen konstitutiv sind.

Der zweite Band der Reihe „Freiheit und Gesetz“ stellt einen Begriff ins Zentrum, der dem philosophischen Blick seit jeher verdächtig erschien: den der Willkür. Er beschreibt ein unbestimmtes, grundloses Wollen, das sich einer Freiheit jenseits von Gesetzen, Normen und Vorstellungen des Guten erfreut. Klassischen Theorien gilt sie entweder als „Unding“ oder als defizitäre Form der Freiheit, die durch Autonomie zu überwinden ist. Die Beiträge des Bandes versuchen demgegenüber, in Auseinandersetzung mit Kant und Hegel die philosophische und politische Bedeutung der „Willkür“ neu zu deuten. Setzt Autonomie nicht Willkür voraus? Oder mehr noch, schließt Freiheit nicht notwendig ein Moment der Freiheit von Gesetzen wie von etablierten Verständnissen des Guten ein?

One problem that is fundamental for a theory of experiential judgment resides in the question of how to understand the unity of spontaneity and receptivity that is essential to its exercise. How is it possible for a non-normative and non-conceptual aspect (i.e. receptivity) to have normative significance with respect to experiential judgments? In contemporary debates concerning Kant’s solution to this puzzle we can discern two tendencies that seem to form equally unsatisfactory alternatives: In interpreting his idea that the conditions of spontaneity constitutively enter the manner in which things are given to us, either we arrive at an account in which the non-normative or non-conceptual element of receptivity is obliterated, or we end up with an account of sensible experience as a composite structure containing natural and normative aspects without being able to understand the very necessity that holds these heterogeneous aspects together. The starting point of this paper is the assumption that such a picture is the result of an “idealist” misunderstanding of Kant’s account of experience in the first Critique – and of the “materialist” punchline of the conception of spontaneous receptivity that the latter involves. The proposal is that we should reconstruct the unity of spontaneity and receptivity in such a way that the judging subject determines itself to be spontaneously receptive, i.e. that the subject sustains his or her own sensible affections as affections self-actively. That aspect of spontaneity that accomplishes this is the (transcendental) power of imagination. The aim of this paper is to reconstruct some basic traits of Kant’s conception of imagination in the A and B deductions of the first Critique, and to sketch out an argument for its contribution to the puzzle of receptivity.

At the climax of George Cukor’s 'Gaslight,' a film melodrama from 1944, the female protagonist utters the phrase ‘I am mad’ which Stanley Cavell takes to reveal her Cogito. As such, the formula seems to be a perfect exemplification of Derrida’s central point in ‘Cogito and the History of Madness,’ namely that there is ‘a value and a meaning of the Cogito,’ detectable in Descartes’ Mediations, which welcomes madness as its genuine and necessary possibility. But how can we conceive of the ‘I think’—the supreme principle of transcendental philosophy constituting the objectivity of cognition and experience—as embracing unreason as its own condition? This article attempts to highlight a quasi-transcendental interpretation of Derrida’s answer to this question: deconstruction reveals a certain irony at the core of the primary text of transcendental philosophy. I argue that the formula ‘I am mad’ contains the decisive key to the argument: the irony of the Cogito consists in the fact of its double transcendental functioning—a transcendental function in the ‘middle’ form and a transcendental function in the active form.

Kant’s concept of autonomy promises to solve the problem of the actuality of freedom. The latter has actuality as a practical capacity insofar as the will is objectively determined through the form of law. In later writings, however, Kant situates the actuality of freedom in the “absolute spontaneity” of choice, and connects the reality of autonomy itself to the condition of a “radical” act of free choice. The reason for this resides in the fact that his first solution is marked by a certain defect: it does not contain a sufficient concept of the actuality of a practical capacity. This essay elaborates a revised account of Kant’s concept of freedom in light of this insight. The argument is that we need to distinguish force and faculty in order to understand the actuality of a capacity. Only on this basis can we introduce the idea of imagination as a pre-reflexive force of practical reason and the idea of reflective judgment as a power of practical judgment in order to realize how free choice is capable of generating a maxim that has the form of a law spontaneously and of its own accord. In this way, we see that the actuality of freedom necessarily includes the spontaneity of choice, and that human freedom manifests a certain paradoxicality: the universality of the will is bound to a subjective ground of determination, to a pre-reflexive act of “radical” choice.

The topic of this essay is akrasia in its most paradoxical kind, as it appears to us in the emblem of Medea. The argument starts with the claim that the problem about akrasia is especially a problem of rational potentiality: to understand it philosophically, we are forced to embrace the idea that its possibility is immanent to the rational capacity of action. By discussing elements of Plato’s, Aristotle’s, and Davidson’s explanations of practical irrationality, the argument proceeds in demonstrating that the reasons a practical capacity delivers exist as “forces,” that rational forces are structurally in excess with respect to their normative statuses, and that Medea is the mythical figure par excellence of such an immanent excess of rational agency. On account of these insights, we can begin to understand that akrasia is not only a kind of failure, or incapacity, but entails the very possibility of a “metamorphosis” of the subject.

Mit dem Erstarken des Rechtspopulismus ist das „Ressentiment“ zu einer beliebten gesellschaftspolitischen Diagnose avanciert. Der Philosoph Dirk Setton geht in seinem aktuellen Forschungsprojekt der Funktionsweise des schillernden Begriffs nach. Im Gespräch beleuchtet er die Rolle, die eine „Politik des Übelnehmens“ in den politischen Krisen des frühen 21. Jahrhunderts spielt.

Interview von Elena Stingl