What would an Immanuel Kant for the 21st century look like? Immanuel Kant, through his numerous writings, sought to unite the two camps of reason versus experience, or empiricists versus rationalists. He felt strongly that there could be reconciliation between the two, that in fact you could not have one without the other. Experience is worthless without reason to process it, and reason is meaningless without experience to back it. This could easily be said to be representative of the schism between the natural sciences and the humanities, with social sciences in some ways attempting to bridge this gap by having one foot in each school of thought. With that in mind, the new Kant would have to emerge from or at least be minimally affiliated with the social sciences, with a great level of familiarity with the other two disciplines.
Jerome Kagan is correct when he calls us a “passive population.” A great majority of us no longer have a defining moral or ethical compass that guides and motivates our deeds and actions. As a collective culture we no longer have a unifying principal other than our collective belief in the right to pursue happiness, which has been perverted in our capitalist society to mean the right to consume as much as possible until it makes us happy. As so many have discovered, this endless accumulation brings very little real satisfaction or joy, and as such we have a very unhappy population at large. Whether it is the natural sciences, the social sciences, or the humanities, the single most relevant priority in determining what is invented, created, researched or introduced is the marketability of said item or topic. The monetary value has eclipsed the intrinsic or moral value. This colors the behavior of researchers at Institutions of higher learning, practicing artists, and in fact all who participate in our growth driven economy. Secularism hasn’t replaced God, greed has.
This greed has fostered the discord between the disciplines, as each seeks grants and funding to further their causes. Jealousy ferments, and each discipline seeks to discredit or minimize the relevance of the other in order to procure a larger slice of the money pie for themselves. Knowledge or beauty for the simple sake of knowledge or beauty is a phenomenon of days long past, and we now find it replaced by a base desire to cushion the bottom line.
So what does this mean for a new Kant, and the actions that would be required of them to have a meaningful impact? We must first specifically innumerate the most grave obstacles currently facing our society. The first is the aforementioned culture of greed and “me”-ness that has permeated everything we do as a society. The second is the ongoing battle between the religious extreme and secularists which has rendered our government impotent. Lastly, as technology has rapidly progressed, we find that old community ties are eroded even as new one’s form, but these new ties do not run as deep or provide nearly the same emotional support system that live, in the moment interaction does. Globalism has lead to extended families living oceans apart, and the wealthier and more educated you are the less children you are likely to have, thus reducing the size of families, and extended family, and increasing the burden of eldercare for society at large. We are in the midst of an epic paradigm shift as it related to community and family structures, as well the overall composition of society at large. Population pyramids will grow increasingly unstable as the elderly population swells with far fewer younger workers being born to support them. To some extent, this speaks to the failure of natural scientists, in their zeal to prologue life at any cost, and how they failed to consult social scientists about the long term possible social and economic ramifications of creating such a large elderly population. In many respects, the natural sciences have pressed forward with their discoveries with little regard for what the long-term ramifications of such actions might be, whether we are referring to the invention of weapons of mass destruction, or life support machines that artificially extend life.
So, where does our new Kant start? First, in our celebrity saturated and obsessed culture, just to at least capture the public’s initial attention, he or she must be visually interesting. Not necessarily good looking or attractive in the conventional sense, but they must have visual impact and appeal that will draw people in enough to be willing to hear what they have to say. Second, they must be charismatic and engaging-part of the consequence of our modern toys and technologies is a reduced attention span that now requires engaging stimuli. Third, they must be well educated and intelligent, but able to “bring it down” in a non-patronizing manner. There is a segment of the populace that has grown leery of the so-called intelligentsia. Fourth, he must earn credibility with the public by maintaining a clearly non-partisan, non-religious persona that can speak to everyone while alienating none.
This can only be done by appealing to everyone from a nationalist perspective. The one common ground we all have in our country is being American. We need to reclaim this identity in a much more positive way, and redefine what it means to be an American and a good citizen. If this means allowing certain hot button issues to be left to be decided by states, so be it. We cannot have a genuine national dialogue and move forward until everyone feels less emotional and threatened. Once we have accepted this is a non-negotiable essential, we can start focusing on those goals and ideals which we hold in common, which are greater than we realize. Our new Kant will remind us of these common goals, our common humanity, and remind us that our obligations to our neighbors aren’t based in religion or a certain background or worldview; they are based on a common humanity. Working to benefit this common humanity should be the single goal of all three disciplines, which would in turn force them to work to together to achieve this end. Federal finding and grants should be allocated in such a way that they are only provided to teams from each discipline working together holistically to address an issue from all angles, thus greatly reducing the competitiveness and lack of cooperation. Additionally, education and medicine need to cease to be for profit industries, As long as they are for profit businesses, what is best for humanity will never be the end game focus, it will always be profit margins and appeasing shareholders. When scientists and artists can feel confident they will remain employed and relevant while still putting humanity first, they will be far more likely to consider the implications and ramifications of their actions prior to actually taking action.
The Kant for the new generation will have to wear many hats-philosopher, leader, politician, negotiator. Perhaps it is far too great a burden to place on the shoulders of any one individual. Rather, real hope most likely rests on the actions of an ever growing and organized collective working to promote these common goals and ideals. But until we find a way to bridge the gap on the divisive right/left rhetoric, there can be no forward momentum at all.
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