The Meaning of Kant’s Attitude Towards the Technical Instruments of Science in the Atmosphere of Enlightenment

“The Meaning of Kant’s Attitude Towards the Technical Instruments of Science in the Atmosphere of Enlightenment”, Studia UBB. Philosophia, Vol. 69 (2024), 3, pp. 7-24.

Sursa: https://studia.reviste.ubbcluj.ro/index.php/subbphilosophia/article/download/8518/8269/16250

ABSTRACT. I men�on the main, technophile and technophobe, posi�ons towards technology in the Western 18th century, as the criterion of this paper. Then I show that, however unexpected would this be, the concept of technics – opening the problem of technics – was explicitly present within the transcendental philosophy. From its mul�ple meanings outlined in the logic of this philosophy, I focus on the technical instruments of science. Kant considered them op�mis�cally, but insisted that they are only means subordinated to the capability of reason that alone is able to give knowledge. And the vault key of knowledge is the moral law (the moral telos) given by the human reason. Thus, answering to Rousseau, Kant indicates that the progress of knowledge is ul�mately determined by this moral, and not by the enrichment of cognisance as a result of technical instruments. If we consider them as a model for the treatment of the technical objects in the broad sense of this term, Kant introduced the cri�cism of the technophile reduc�onism, while crea�ng the frame of the posi�vist science and the humanis�c philosophy of the 19th century.

Keywords. Kant, technical instruments of science, technic/technology, technophilia and technophobia, moral law

* Professor, Division of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Romanian Academy, Romania, ana_bazac@hotmail.com

©2024 Studia UBB Philosophia. Published by Babeș-Bolyai University.

This work is licensed under a Crea�ve Commons Atribu�on- NonCommercial-NoDeriva�ves 4.0 Interna�onal License

Prologue: the Kan�an meaning of technological op�mism

The historical context (de Tocqueville, 1866, 22-26; also, de Vries, 1976¹) within which Kant worked has deeply influenced his worldview. The reforms-lover Frederick the Great was for him a proof that these reforms are possible, not only logically and through a posteriori thinking necessary: and the power of reason gradually defeats irra�onality, inhuman behaviours. Kant was a philosopher, always seeking the accurate and consistent reasoning: that was not utopia, of course, but the way toward the solving of cogni�ve and social problems; nevertheless, the distance between the rigorous demonstra�ons of theories and the real life was huge and assumed by Kant: the intellectual and the physical work were structurally different and opposed, and thus, even some structural aspects of agency were avoided. However, just in the Kan�an understanding, this sidestepping leads to the exclusion of those aspects from the kingdom of the human universalizable. Kant was indeed the emblem of Enlightenment by promo�ng the idea of the human being understood through its universalizable: the human reason and the human capacity to behave according to the moral law.

¹ The relative social backwardness – “Friedrich Wilhelm I had destroyed serfdom in his domains in

1717. The particular code of the great Frederick, as we have seen, purported to abolish it throughout the kingdom; but, in reality, it only made its harshest form, Leibeigenschaft, disappear; he preserved it in its softened form, Erbunterthænigkeit. It was not until 1809 that it ceased entirely” (de Tocqueville, 1866, p. 355, Note 5, Date of abolition of serfdom in Germany) – of the German states, and here of Prussia, in the 18th century, was accompanied by a quite vivid coagulation of the “public sphere” in the form of learned societies of high-ranking officials, officers, clergymen, university professors of different specialties, physicians and pharmacists, merchants (As Johann Conrad Jacobi (1717–1774) and Robert Motherby (1736–1801), in Horst, 2020) who shared the same commitment to develop not only knowledge but also the ability of citizens to actively promote the modernisation reforms in the administration of the state. In principle, thus theoretically because this was its modern Western constitution, the bourgeois private sphere is opposed to the public sphere. However, in Prussia the members of the learned society saw rather the consensus, the unity of the public sphere of the state – that imposes its own order – with the private one, motivated by and wanting freedom.

And this consensus was not seen by the German intellectuals without problems: but they could and should be solved with the freedom of critique, of the deployment of a state programme of knowledge sharing and education.

The Berlin Wednesday Society in 1783-1798 (Berliner Mittwochsgesellschaft (or Gesellschaft der Freunde der Aufklärung)) was an example of these socie�es. Johann Karl Wilhelm Möhsen delivered “What Is to Be Done Towards the Enlightenment of Ci�zens?” in this society in 1783. This and other papers promoted the cri�cal spirit – result of educa�on and ability of “bien raisonner” as Frederick the Great insisted – therefore the forma�on of modern members of society, of ci�zens. Hence, the en�re Enlightenment age was “a pedagogical age” (Munzel, 2012). Science² and technology³ (and “even the empirical knowledge of humankind” (Kant, 1998 (AA3. KrV. A850/B878), p. 701) were the direct manifestation of the human knowledge. Their advancement proved the power of the human reason to construct “means” for the “essential ends of the human reason” (Ibidem (KrV. A839/B867), p. 695), with the sine qua non help of metaphysics. This posi�on was not technophile in the present meaning of this word, that is, it does not deduce the solving of social problems only from the scien�fic-technological progress. But it was op�mis�c, emphasising that the scientific discoveries and technological innovations would bring a higher capacity of humans to develop the rationality of their behaviours. Science and arts are main parts and drivers of culture that “ennobles humanity”: but their results concern the human species, not a certain time interval when the progress is only fragmentary and “offers no guarantee against regression” (Kant, 2006b (Anth. AA 07: 325 and 326), p. 240).

This was a general viewpoint in Enlightenment. However, there was also a pessimis�c stance, for instance that of J.-J. Rousseau (MDCCCLVI⁴) – we have doubts

² Kant distinguished between science as concrete cognitive endeavour arising from a scheme

(internal organisation of research and concepts and ideas) that follows empirically accidental intentions whose objects are not known before, and philosophy whose scheme is given by an idea in which reason gives a priori the ends and does not expect them from the empirical research. The internal organisation of science gives it a “technical unity”, while that of philosophy gives to this unique, special knowledge an “architectonic unity” because it is based on the “essential ends of reason “(the moral ones) (Kant, 1998 (KrV. A 833/B 861), p. 692 sqq, esp. A839/B867, p. 695).

(See also Gabriele Gava, “Kant’s Definition of Science in the Architectonic of Pure Reason and the Essential Ends of Reason,” Kant Studien, 2014; 105(3): 372–393).

³ Here, technology in its contemporary meaning, as applica�on of scien�fic knowledge. But Kant used the term technology – shortened as die Technik – as methodology of theore�cal and prac�cal problems, inserted either within the sciences or in the prac�cal process of fabrica�on (Kant, 1987 (KU. AA 05:198), p. 388: “prac�cal proposi�ons that in their content deal merely with the possibility of a presented object (through voluntary action) are only applications of a complete theoretical cogni�on and cannot form a special part of a science. A prac�cal geometry as a separate science [of geometry] is an absurdity”. And indeed, in its instrumental meaning of applica�on of science, technology is the applica�on of many types of methodology: of the process of knowing, of the prac�cal applica�ons, of the technical objects. (See also Aigner, 2020, p. 16).

Regarding science and technology, Leibniz (2012, 485, 491; 487, 489) considered them independently one to the other, 1) highlighting the separate development of mechanical arts/inventions and “rather by chance” or having a “superficial considerations than to the depth of mathematics” and 2) emphasising the real origin of the technological inven�ons: science, i.e., in the form of “geometrical” as deep understanding correla�ons and the “combinatorial” as transposi�on in symbolic calculus.

⁴ And more related to the material side, Leibniz, op. cit., p. 616, put the question and answered: “after so many inventions of our century do we die less often, or are we more secure from diseases?”… “we would o�en be happy, long-lived, and disease-free, if it some�mes occurred to men to be wise; if they reasoned seriously, if they used divine favours”. to call it veritable technophobia because the author himself considered it, when the Discourse was re-edited, as “poor” (Rousseau, ibidem, 465) –: the progress of sciences and arts did never (as in examples of Egypt, ancient Greece and Rome) lead to the raise of manners and morals, and in modern �mes their applica�on – as the prin�ng press (Ibidem, 475) – generates troubles and did nothing add to the human genuine happiness, but corrupts it.

Kant considered this ques�on theore�cally: firstly, the concrete morals and the level of science and technology are different problems and have no a direct mutual influence; secondly, the beterment of morals is directly depending on the degree the humans internalise the moral principles which are categorical imperatives, transcendental and arising from the power of the human reason; thirdly, this also means that the technical objects themselves reflect this degree and thus correspond to the human ends. In this way, the human and social problems globally, depending on many hypothe�cal causes, are ul�mately solved not by the material marvels made by humans⁵ but by their conscious self-control according to the criteria of moral categorical – since transcendentally created by reason – impera�ves.

Kant showed that Rousseau’s pessimistic position was related to his paradigmatic theory of the good state of nature versus the evil state of civilisation marked by the transmission, by the multitude of individuals, of their freedom to choose to leaders: thus, by the presumption that man is good by nature and perverted by the society based on the social contract of transfer of power. Kant mentioned the real experience of ancient and modern times which would “disconcert every thinking person and make him doubt whether our species will ever fare better”, and that nevertheless, Rousseau – and thus any logical thinking – would not profess the “return to the woods” but rather to use the model of state of nature in order to correct the present state of things (Kant, 2006b (Anth. AA 07: 325, 326, 326), pp. 239-240).

Le�ng aside his deep apprecia�on of Rousseau, Kant cri�cised his theory about the rela�onship between the progress of science and art and that of morals. Concretely, Kant explicitly considered Rousseau’s paper in Anthropology, from the standpoint of the predominance of culture over “the crudity of mere personal force” of man, (Kant, 2006b (Anth. AA 07: 323, and 324), p. 237). As a result, “the human being is des�ned by his reason to live in a society with human beings in it and to cul�vate himself, to civilise himself, and to moralize himself by means of the arts and sciences”, ibidem, AA 07: 324 and 325, p. 238.

⁵ Humans have, of course, a “technical predisposi�on” to manipulate things, but at the same �me they have, besides a pragmatic one (“to use other human beings skillfully, for our own purposes”), a strange predisposi�on related to sociability that “presupposes freedom” (but at the same �me that could manipulate other human beings, so that is a technical skill): a moral one to treat others and ourselves “according to the principle of freedom under laws”, Kant, 2006b (Anth. AA 07: 241), p. 143, and AA 07: 322, p. 235. Also, Kant, 1987 (KU. AA 22: 120), p. 203. And, according to the naïve approach of the objec�ve world in Aristotle and pre-industrial τέχνη, but also in the industrial age, technics are instruments, and the human reason seems to being subjugated to the instrumental need, the need to consider everything as a means. In order to doing what? Again, as if warning the following centuries, Kant explained in the most consistent manner to which ends are the technological means jus�fied.

Introduc�on

Already in the 17th century an en�re field of European researchers in various branches of science flourished⁶. But the ar�sans’ technical skills and results surpassed the scien�fic knowledge based on the decomposi�on of movement and its mechanical laws. While the concept of machine became common in philosophy (Bazac, 2010) and science, the construc�on of machines or mechanical structures remained the privilege of ar�sans. The philosophers cherished the concept of machine as the model of gearing the various forms and parts of a system within a single coherent and func�oning unit.

But in order to conceive of and prac�cally make machines, they had to learn from ar�sans⁷.

Kant was not a “philosopher-inventor-engineer, capable of uniting theoretical knowledge to prac�cal knowledge of the material world and those who could work it— a new sort of persona” (Jones, 2016, 30), because his goal was to understand and reveal the forma�on of knowledge and not the prac�cal applica�on of technical knowledge. He was consonant with most of philosophers and, more, with the

⁶ Through the net and means of knowledge communication in his epoch, the so-called knowledge in transit, the dynamic system of recipients and means of communication of the texts, symbols, meanings. See Secord, 2004.

⁷ Leibniz thought to a calcula�ng machine, thus not physical but of symbolic calculus to perform arithmetical “certainty” “prepared by observation rather than by meditation” and easing/simplifying the “geometrical” understanding of things that itself is the key of material objects by its selec�on of forms allowing profound medita�on (Leibniz, 2012, 488; and 495: “This is indeed the reason, if I am not mistaken, why the ancients thought so much to contemplate forms separated from mater, and why they did…divine things”) and to even build it. In order to do this, he had to follow the ar�sanal secret in the Paris manufactures, (Jones, 2018).

The artisanal knowledge, related not only to calculating machines, included: propositional knowledge as resulting from a long experience with materials, “discernment, or the acuity of senses in making judgments about perceptions” of different properties of materials, “dexterity in doing work with hands”, “knowledge of the social world where other artisanal knowledge and skills can be found”, Jones, 2016, pp. 35-36. learned society that benefited from the separa�on of physical and intellectual labour. He contemplated the signs of ardent physical labour and its results, including the technical discoveries, from the distance given by his total urban-centred and intellectual life-centred outlook.⁸ And he could not remove too much from his

⁸ However – and this is cardinal as an example of changes within the worldview of the intellectuals who were fully framed by the very old exclusivist tradition of rationalism, of reason as the human being’s main feature covering all the others, and thus, of the qualitative superiority of contemplative activities towards the practical ones – Kant looked critically at his own imprisonment in his condition: not only in his personal Remarks related to his 1764 popular philosophy book Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime, and where he many times expressly repeated that his awakening from the mechanically assumed disdain towards common people in the name of the privilege of knowledge was due to Rousseau, but also in the works of the critical period.

The main paradigms of these works were just:

1) “dualism”, i.e. theory of the sine qua non intertwining of the contents of appearances given by experience to our outer percep�ons with the principles as “transcendental objects” conceived from concepts and which lack concrete determina�on but which substan�ate our cogni�on, as “an unknown ground of those appearances that supply us with our empirical concepts” (Kant 1998 (AA 3, KrV, A379, A 380), p. 431); 2) transcendental idealism, that is to say media�on of ideas between we, the knowing subjects, and the external things; thus, we know: a) not directly the external world and b) we know what and how this external world appears empirically, so c) we know ideas formed through the above dualism; and the topic of transcendental dualism is just the forma�on of knowledge from an epistemological, and not a psychological standpoint; 3) the grounding and forma�on of ideas are natural, ontological, but the responsibility of ideas depends on the moral assump�ons of humans; 4) the moral ideas are based on transcendental moral principles, grounding the moral assump�ons, so these moral assump�ons – obviously generated by empirical condi�ons which are the basis of hypothe�cal maxims – are evaluated by humans according to the moral transcendental principles embedded within the human consciousness as its formal condi�ons of knowing the difference between the good and the evil, according to the moral end of the human person that is his reasonto-be (“voca�on”); 5) but concretely, this evalua�on is the result of the empirical condi�ons of people, of their social place and their level of educa�on; which are low for the majority of the popula�on; 6) therefore, if the solu�on for ataining a general tendency toward morals according to the moral principles is the enlightening reforms and the contribu�on of the learned strata tot them, these strata should take over the philosophical understanding of social equality within a successful civil union of all both in a Staatsrecht and a cosmopoli�c Völkerbund; 7) the interdependence between the empirical data and the knowledge from concepts is the epistemological grounding of priority of moral thinking over the theoretical, epistemological, because the ultimate reason-to-be of theory is the practical, the human life according to the moral ends of the human being; therefore, the moral philosophy, grounding with its a priori principles the practical moral science, is preeminent over the theoretical philosophy (Kant 1998 (A 840/ B 868), p. 695).

Consequently, his example could nevertheless be thought by Kant as a necessary and possible path of intellectuals. Anyway, he knew very well the state of things in Prussia and not only there. Just from this knowledge arrived he to the understanding of the necessity and possibility of convergence between personal Remarks milieu of des�na�on and recep�on of his works. Instead, he provided theore�cal messages concerning the criteria of freedom of cri�cal thinking and of moral rigour, based on the principle of man-technology asymmetry and every man’s capacity to behave according to the moral categorical impera�ve.

Kant wrote in a clear natural language, with direct explana�ons and not subs�tu�ng the philosophical analysis/explana�on with metaphors. He did not focus on methodology in order to get away from the traditional sensible instrumental meaning of τέχνη, but because (the cogni�ve) methodology was the way to arrive to objects: which, as technical objects as such, were not in the task of philosophy to being understood, he believed. The technical objects were not undetermined “things”, but concrete, determined things: created by the human focus and by the human knowledge to transpose ideas, design into reality. The two versants of crea�on – the founda�onal/ the knowing, and its manifesta�on as making – were treated by Kant as methodology. This treatment was epistemological: methodology was the scaffold /skeleton of the deployment of epistemology. The (technical) objects belong to the ontological treatment, although the objects as such are cons�tu�ve elements of the epistemological rela�ons.

The interest for the technical object, thus not for the process, methodology, organisation leading to it – keys of technics, but outside the technical object as such – involves a holis�c approach of its integral reality (not of its decomposi�on and recomposi�on of its “mater” and form) in rela�on with the maker, the subject. The reason-to-be of the technical object is just its instrumentality for the subject, its beneficial rela�on with the subject. If this feature of the subject-object rela�on is dislocated, both the object and the subject change.

A metaphorical use of “technics”

We start from Kant’s use of the word “technics” (Technik) in a metaphorical sense – actually borrowing the ancient meaning as art, ability to pu�ng into effect the crea�ve ideas of making –. In the ancient meaning there are two aspects: one is the crea�ve ideas and the other is the ability to transpose them into prac�ce. The the modern “civil sense” and the “natural sense” of human rela�ons. For this understanding, as well as the knowledge of real state of things and the self-reflec�on on the evolu�on of his intellectual a�tude towards the common people, see Bemerkungen zu den Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen / Remarks on the observations on the feeling of the beautiful and the sublime (1764-1765), in AA 20: (Handschri�licher Nachlaß) 24, 39, 40, 41, 44, 48, 102, 151, 153, 176.

Also, Michael Kryluk, “Reflec�on 6593: Kant’s Rousseau and the Voca�on of the Human Being”, Kant Studien, 2023; 114(4): 728–758. philosophical task Kant gave to himself was to understand the way through which the object is known by the subject, thus knowledge as such. But what does knowledge entail in order to arriving at crea�ve ideas? Well, to know an object means to understand the internal deployment of its constitutive causality. Only by knowing the deployment of the internal causality of things can the humans imagine objects and materially transpose them into reality, thus having the capacity of genera�ng/ making new objects as nature has⁹.

The approach of the internal causality of objects is called methodology, namely, manner to know or survey the elements, steps, and links in the knowledge of the cons�tu�on of cause-effect structure of the objects. The humans approach methodologically every object. Just this approach guarantees the knowledge of things and is its sign.

Kant considered that the ability to focus on methodology, on the methodical deciphering of the internal causality of objects is a “technical” ability, that conducts to a direct descrip�on of the structure and func�oning of an object, and only by having this ability can the humans make inten�onal objects. The deciphering as such was a technical theore�cal perspicacity, while the transposi�on of such a theore�cal ability into prac�ce was a prac�cal ap�tude¹⁰. This model of the human beings as: 1. “technical” beings¹¹ and 2. creative beings¹², was transposed on nature. But this transposition was made with the term exclusively related to humans, “technic”.

⁹ Kant, 2006b (Anth. AA 07: 198), p. 167, the body is a “machine” that generates and processes

“mechanically” movements and affects.

¹⁰ The (1) “technical-practical reason” or instrumental reason based on a hypothetical imperative and thus, a given empirical goal that imposes a certain action / “(which prescribes means: for the purposes of sense-objects)” (thus it is determination of the will) with (2) the “theoretical-speculative reason” that concerns the determination of objects, and here the eternal and necessary objects, and (3) the “moral-practical reason” emphasizing the principles of a good human life based on the categorical imperative form the world of ideas subjacent to our knowledge of reality/the world (Kant, 1993 (OP. AA 22: 52), p. 212).

Therefore (ibidem (AA 21: 12), p. 220), “Technical-practical reason contains skill and arts. Moralpractical, duties”.

And (ibidem, AA 21: 23, and AA 21: 24, p. 227) the “difference between the principles and laws of technical-practical or moral-practical reason”: the first concerns the freedom of a man in the world, the second, God as a rational concept of freedom, connecting the manifold with the categorical imperative of a person. (But, (AA 21: 17), p. 223: “There is an object of moral-practical reason which contains the principle of all human duties “as if divine commands,” without it being the case that one may assume, for the sake of this principle, a particular substance existing outside man”).

But these two kinds of reason intertwin.

¹¹ Because they are rational in a theoretical and practical sense, thus in virtue of their reason to search for and know the causality of things in a methodical manner.

¹² Expanding the reality by generating new objects, just because they transpose into practice their methodological (technical) knowledge. Kant spoke about the technic of nature (Kant, 1987 (KU. AA05: 390-391), p. 271), nature having both technica naturalis and technica intentionalis) as:

(a) its internal ar�cula�on of its elements – thus as an internal “mechanism” with uninten�onal purpose – and

(b) as a system aiming to purposes, as if nature would have been a conscious rational being that knows itself, specifically that it understands its internal causality and deploys this in order to generate and regenerate, to create as an ar�st does.

Therefore, the metaphor¹³of technic of nature was based on two comparisons: a) (having technical skills) the humans are like nature, they produce; b) nature is like humans, it appears as to having knowledge of its own internal deployment of causality.

The precise use of “technic”

Everything is – and must be – treated “technically”, namely, scien�fically, decomposed and analysed so that to emphasise the cons�tu�ve laws of the func�oning of every system. Thus, every system has its own technicity, its internal ar�cula�on for its dura�on, and, on the ground of the interest of humans to grasp it, the researchers in different domains developed the instrumental reason that is subordinated to the content of knowledge and to the pursuit of the practical purpose of knowing this content, being therefore “artists of reason” (Kant, 1998 (A839/B867), p. 695). Consequently, the sciences in different domains, and even philosophy in its “scholas�c meaning” (as sure cogni�on from things/from ideas¹⁴) un�l Kant, aimed only a coherence of their cogni�on, their “logical perfec�on of cogni�on” (Kant, 1998 (A838/B866,) p. 694), thus their technique of “skills for certain arbitrary ends” (Kant, 1998 (A839/B867), p. 695¹⁵).

¹³ The metaphorical use of technics / technology is based on its literal meaning: as both a way of doing (or as rules of procedures) and as a means of doing (tools, devices, apparatuses); these aspects are intertwined, but the Greek etymology suggests that technology would be the discourse about technical means, thus including procedures, i.e., a set of precepts about the technical objects and procedures to implement them. This understanding is common in many countries, though the difference is not so harsh nowadays.

¹⁴ This understanding means a twofold amphiboly: that the proof of things is what we do know about them, and that things are the proof of cognition.

¹⁵ Again: Kant was interested to substantiate the sciences and their instrumental reason, and developed the metaphysics as “science” (Kant, 1998 (A841/B 869), p. 695) that mediates every science and every empirical knowledge with its own scientific (thus, technical) approach of “rational cognition”: “from mere concepts” (ibidem), that is to say in a meta epistemological – transcendental – consideration of the “system of all concepts and principles that are related to objects in general, without assuming objects that would be given” (ibidem, A845/B873 p. 698), and relating all cognition “to the essential ends of human reason (teleologia rationis humanae)” (ibidem, A839/B867, p. 695), skills for these essential ends. In contemporary terms, Kant’s technics means both:

1) technique as ability of reason a) to disclose the causality and internal ar�cula�on of things / to put order, namely to ordering concepts according to the infinite series of sense and experience data and ordering these series under concepts, and also b) to make objects on the basis of scien�fic ability/technique;

2) “technical” as internal articulation of things; 3) technical as methodology of scien�fic/technical knowledge, thus as a meta mental level of structuring the cogni�ve process from the standpoint of its efficiency, thus as an instrument for giving the frame necessary to know something;

4) technical as feature of objects; 5) while in a narrow sense, actually literally – technical objects as man-made or artificial technical objects¹⁶.

Concerning technology, it reclaims all of these meanings, as an automa�c synonym, being nowadays more than its etymological meaning in Beckmann¹⁷ as discourse about technical objects and procedures.

Obviously, my paper cannot consider all these meanings, but only one, chosen here in the frame of the man-made technical objects, thus a kind of 5': the technical instruments of science¹⁸.

The transcendental level of our understanding and even of the constitution of the consciousness is a level of formal structure: components (concepts, ideas, judgements) and procedures of the formation of knowledge, level whose logical layer is rather an internal one in it.

¹⁶ There is a significant difference between the artificial objects as purpose/goal of making, and as means of making: both in productive activities and research. Obviously, every artificial object is both purpose and means, but the purpose implies that it is the end of conception and realization, while the means is only an intermediary end.

¹⁷ Kant knew the word technology at least from Anleitung zur Technologie, 1777, written by Johann

Beckmann (1739-1811) who coined this word as a science of crafts and craftsmanship, as they are included within economy. To have craftsmanship involves knowing the methodology used by crafts, that meaning also the technical objects: tools and the objects of work (“naturalia”).

¹⁸ The paper draws aten�on on an aspect related to the most visible aspect of technics and that may help to understand one of the greatest general concerns nowadays.

Technical objects

For Kant, every object the humans focus on is “technical” – namely, approached from the interest to be known so as to being arranged in their mental scape of cognisance in order to use this knowledge in the everyday life –; or, every object is approached through their internal methodology of the process of knowing: giving a more and more coloured and large “world”¹⁹.

The technical objects, which are the technically seen objects, are considered both empirically and ra�onally, with (and from) abstract concepts, that is, they are decomposed and their causes are known, therefore their rela�ons and laws of functioning as they appear to the humans. This way of knowing is /gives the peculiarity of technology as both man-made objects and their methodology of knowing, making, and preserving.

Methodology is also a technical object, considered scientifically in Beckmann as “technology”, and without the awareness of technical objects there is no science as a systema�c knowledge of the system of

1. upstream, 2. fulfilment of knowing and practical application, 3. downstream; neither of the principles of this knowledge and nor of its results. The methodology of cra�s integrated within the knowledge of administra�on (the so-called cameralist

¹⁹ Already in the Inaugural Disserta�on, the “world” is given by our knowledge, but only as reality meaningful for us, not as existence, and is objec�ve: (Kant, 1992, 377 sqq) “the notion of a world should not seem merely arbitrary and made up, as in mathematics, only for the sake of the deducible consequences”; (ibidem, 391). “But the world regarded as phenomenon, that is, in respect to the sensibility of the human mind, acknowledges no principle of form but a subjective one, that is, a certain mental law by which it is necessary that all things qualified for being objects of the senses would seem to pertain necessarily to the same whole”. And further: “the principle of the form of the sensible world, it will comprise only actual things in as far as thought of as possibly falling under sense-perception”. (The translation uses the word “actual” for expressing “real existence”/”existence in fact”, thus not simply existence, that is the ontic basis of the ontological meanings, but existence that is ontologically significant, namely reality) (MSI. AA 02: 389 and 398).

For Kant, reality exists as a result of our experience mentally processed with the help of a priori elements; connected to this standpoint of knowledge, the phenomenological viewpoint expresses the same ontological-gnoseological description of reality as the meanings people discover following complex judgements. Reality is according to these meanings (information and significances) existing and forming within the mind in the complex process of judging with both empirical and abstract concepts and ideas; and, once formed (transcendentally) these concepts and ideas exist, so they are objective, being criteria of knowledge, thus of reality, and following our experience positioned according to the meanings from a “worldview”/paradigm. See (Kant, 1993 (OP. AA 21: 87), p. 250) – as the last expression of this theory – an experience “presupposes a formal a priori principle and a system). Observation and experiment, as an aggregate of perceptions, are far from founding the Hippocratic proposition: There is experience”. science (Garner, 2017)) was intended for the elite who was to lead the German society in high-ranking posts (Wakefield, 2017). On the one hand, this science of “technology” seemed to have nothing to do with the principles a “true science” aims at and promotes. On the other hand, the systemic outlook was an early²⁰ no�ce of the integra�ve meanings of technology and of the dialec�c of con�nuity and discon�nuity in sciences (which could share and transfer par�cular views and principles) (Hock, 2017).

Therefore, technology had in fact all the five meanings men�oned above.

The technical instruments of science

For thinkers, the scien�fic technical instruments were one of the most astonishing and, at the same time, problematic artificial objects: because they allowed the extension of physical and “combinatorial”²¹ capability of researchers, although the power of “contemplation”, of thinking was the force of knowledge²²; they were only means, but without which the scientific knowledge could hardly be conceived.

The scien�fic instruments were compared with the produc�ve machines²³ which were anterior to them, and whose spontaneous prac�cal models²⁴ generated

²⁰ However, already in 1728 Christian Wolff (1679-1754) discussed the words technica or (aut)

technologia as a part of practical philosophy – that is, of the “effective science directing the free actions through the most general rules” – as “science of arts and works of arts, or in other words, of the organs of the body, especially of the hands, the works of men they are done” (Wolfio, MDCCXXXV, § 70 and 71, p. 22).

That “or” was the follow-up of the use of these words in Middle Ages and Renaissance focussing on instruments, including on machines, as an art or ar�fice (astutia, impostura, frauda), necessary and existent everywhere in the human affairs (see Carnino et Hilaire-Pérez, 2017, pp. 13-36; but also, Aigner, 2020, 95, quo�ng Wilfried Seibicke, 1968. Technik. Versuch einer Geschichte der Wortfamilie um τέχνη in Deutschland vom 16. Jahrhundert bis etwa 1830. Düsseldorf: VDI Verlag, especially his underline that the Stoic definition of τέχνη as a system of rules became prevalent in the 17th century). Also, Maar, 2023.

²¹ Leibniz, p. 488: “in the arithmetical instrument, which transfers all the labor of the soul into the wheels”. ²² Kant, 1998, Preface to the second edition (KrV. B.XXIII), p. 113: “Copernicus assumed (with certainty)

at the beginning only as a hypothesis (the central laws of the motion of the heavenly bodies)”. ²³ Leibniz, ibidem: “As nor are they easily enunciated, nor immediately understood by any hearer or spectator, whence we have an elegant example in the weaving machine, now frequented here and there…”. (I underlined, AB).

Or, it was about the stocking frame, discovered in 1589. (See Friedman, 2024).

²⁴ Leibniz, pp. 488, 489: “it is easier to condense into a body than vapor raised from things by heat;

examples of bathrooms they were before their eyes, yet no one of the Greeks and Romans came to mind the spirit to draw out of the wine, although he was a witness”… “From this it can be understood that sometimes people look far away, but do not see what is before their feet”. in researchers theoretical ideas covering a larger and larger area of things. At the same �me, if the instruments were not based on a conscious theore�cal thinking, they s�ll were primi�ve and did not lead to certainty²⁵. On the contrary, the principles – through rules – organise the investigated process and systems. Anyway, the scien�fic technical instruments were integrated in a different type of endeavour: Kant dis�nguished, though he observed their blurred boundaries, art as free arts²⁶.

Kant sketched a frame for the latter analysis of the scientific instruments. He was not original in 1755 (Kant, 2012 (NTH. AA 01: 215-369) by emphasising many times the dependence of development of astronomical knowledge on “periscopes” (Sehrohre, AA 01: 253), telescope (Fernglas, Ferngläser, AA 01: 289, 294), once more mentioning this relation in Anthropology (Kant, 2006b (AA 07: 134), § 5, p. 25, and AA 07: 178, p. 78). Telescopes were seen as sine qua non, material conditions of confirmation, in their evolution (see 294), of their ability to emphasise new information and to contribute to physic predictions, but with inherent limits in front of theory. The creative initiative (in imagination and theory) belonged to scientists, irrevocably, but nevertheless the scientific instruments started to show their power to reveal reality²⁷. And this, because: 1) the knowledge of what the things are (and letting aside that we cannot know really the things as they exist, the things in themselves) cannot anyhow be realised only by senses, and 2) the senses themselves are limited and need their artificial prolongation, the “prosthetics”²⁸ of technology; 3) however, as prosthetics not only substitutes the missing or damaged organs and senses but also enhances them, so the scientific instruments can show absolutely new unseen/unfelt and un-imagined things²⁹.

²⁵ Ibidem, p. 491: “we ourselves had above objected to the telescope of a plebeian man unlearned in mathematics being necessary, is not so certain as some think”.

²⁶ Distinction of “occupation that is agreeable on its own account”, from the crafts, “mercenary art we regard as labor, i.e., as an occupation that on its own account is disagreeable (burdensome) and that attracts us only through its effect (e.g., pay), so that people can be coerced into it” (Kant, 1987 (§ 43, 3) (KU. AA 05: 304), p. 171).

And he discerned between this (social) type of coercion and that internal to every art, including the free ones, called “mechanism” (ibidem: “In poetry, for example, it is correctness and richness of language, as well as prosody and meter”, and thinking upon it is transcendental, too.)

(Obviously, Leibniz spoke about the technical scientific instruments – as telescopes and microscopes, 492-493.) ²⁷ Kant, 1993 (OP. AA 21: 88), p. 251, the barometer as the intermediary of von Humboldt’s observation of specific movements in the atmosphere.

²⁸ Stiegler, 1998: permanently transformed and transforming the human, showing through this transformation the default, the lack of man towards the features fulfilled by technics.

²⁹ However, first, the scientific instruments are those which help the intellectual activity of mind’s memorisation: utensils for writing / drawing (The compass and ruler are not only instruments to measure – as they are described immediately – but first to draw, i.e. to exhibit in forms what our

Instead of conclusions

Obviously, Kant did not see all the meanings or consequences of technology we experience nowadays. Even manifested as procedures and methodology, and not only as tools materialising them, the instrumental reason substan�a�ng all the tools, devices, instruments and imbued within them was seen as a clear illustra�on of the power of the human intellect. And even though both the biological systems³⁰ as a machine and the instruments without which scientific observations could not be made had a novel, special and paradoxical capacity to perform as if by themselves³¹, in fact they had not the autonomous will³² that is compulsory for the ac�on to perform, to make.³³ The modelof the technical instruments of science whose advance a priori imagination conceive, for example, “the line and the right angle”. We see here a new type of mediation: that between memory and reasoning. Kant did not focus on this, but on the simpler instruments which measure (somehow engraving new signs/ideas in the mind): “compass and ruler” (Immanuel Kant, 1987 (KU. AA05: 198), p. 388).

³⁰ For instance, the body.

³¹ This is the extension of Kant’s functionalism in the understanding of cognition: cognition (actually, consciousness) is a complex of structures (“nerves” and “the brain”) with specific roles which fulfill the reason-to-be of the entire system; and conversely, this entire system shapes the roles of different structures and their interdependence. (Kant called the roles as “principles” and “faculties”). The early modern functionalism was the result of both the development of scientific and philosophical research of determinism and the technological ingeniousness of playing around mechanisms. This functionalism challenged the “spontaneity” of mind, but Kant – forerunning the present science – conceived it as a “phenomenon” that is the result of the processes of cognition; but it is not neutral, because it involves reason, and reason with its moral principles have the power to conduct the “spontaneous” combination and construction of the human comprehension. Differently put, the human being has an autonomous will that can select and judge the hypothetical situations.

³² This autonomous will, sign of reason in the broad sense of both cognition “ex datis” and “ex principiis”

(Kant, 1998 (A835 / B 863), p. 1172), is thus related to the self-feeling/self-consciousness of the “I.”

The instruments of Kant’s �me did not have, obviously, the “I”. But this dis�nc�ve feature is s�ll valid today. See Dieter Schönecker, “Kant’s Argument from Moral Feelings: Why Practical Reason Cannot Be Ar�ficial”, in Kant and Artificial Intelligence, Edited by Hyeongjoo Kim and Dieter Schönecker, Berlin/Boston: Walter de Gruyter GmbH, 2022, 169-188 (p. 185: “To say that a computer feels is like saying that a planet flies just because it moves through space”).

Accordingly, as Kant showed, only the humans are responsible, thus including for the use of instruments. But if the Enlightenment spirit was (at least moderately) op�mis�c concerning the development of the human responsibility, and the technical instruments of science as beneficial means were the model for all the technical instruments of humans, can this perspec�ve s�ll be consistent, valid? This ques�on, obviously not discussed here, was felt by Kant. For example – and this example is of our highest interest – he spoke about the “diabolical arts” of producing and using “the means” of war (Kant, 2006c, p. 68; ZeF, AA 08:347).

³³ Their autonomy is related only to their functions which depended on the human subject who transformed them from potentiality to actuality. helped and will help the thinkers to deeper viewing the causality of things suggested him that other technical tools would and will lead to similar beterment of the human practice. And concerning J.-J. Rouseau’s newly put problem – that the modern improvement of cognisance and technology did not conduct to beter morals – Kant emphasised one of the methodological aspects of the human development-context dialectic: the hypothetical conjunctures – including the changes in the crea�on of the objects of civilisa�on – might well influence the humans, but there is a fundamental basis of their autonomy, just because of the autonomy (spontaneity, freedom) of the human moral-prac�cal reason capable to conceive the categorical impera�ve³⁴. And just because of the human autonomy towards contexts, their behaviour – their cognitive endeavour and practical transposition of their cognition in/through morals – is modelled by ra�onal moral impera�ves and is able to transpose them into hypothe�cal ones and maxims.

However, the instrumental reason proved to be subordinated to contradictory par�cular (hypothe�cal) goals. And this situa�on led Kant to once more: 1) insist on the subordination of the theoretical reason to the practical one, and 2) promote the autonomy of instrumental reason, and of the different realms of instrumental and moral reason, and at the same �me the precedence and main determina�ve role of the moral-prac�cal reason over the instrumental-prac�cal one³⁵.

Resul�ng from his ethical theory transcendentally inferred, Kant was an op�mist. A moderate one, of course, because, as a result of their life in unpropi�ous condi�ons – including from the standpoint of their s�ll exiguous instruments – the human rela�onships were mostly aggressive and oppressive and people were immersed in their “self-incurred immaturity” (Kant, 2006a (WA. AA 8: 35), p. 3), but nevertheless the human beings could transcend this through educa�on: essen�ally, if they impose to themselves, by the exercise of their reason, their mutual treatment as ends and not only as means; thus, if they substan�ate their hypothe�cal subjec�ve maxims with the universal requirements and features given by their ability to reason beyond the constraints of the empirical³⁶.

³⁴ “It is not the concept of freedom which founds the categorical imperative but the latter first founds the concept of freedom. Not technical-practical but moral-practical reason contains the principle of God. Likewise, nature in the world does not lead to God (e.g. through its beautiful order) but the reverse”, Kant, 1993, OP. AA 22:60, p. 217.

³⁵ The practical cognition/reason giving rules which “prescribe action as a means to an effect, which is its purpose”. And although these rules appear as subjective to the subject, as maxims, they are objective, as imperatives, when they hold “for the will of every rational being”, Kant, 2015, Book 1, Chapter 1, Definition (KpV. AA 05:20 and AA 05: 21), pp. 17 and 18.

³⁶ Kant, 1997 (GMS. AA 4: 388, 389), pp. 1-2. Consequently, the solu�on against the social evil was not the technical progress and neither the ability to think and judge from concepts as if this ability would assure the confirmation of man’s truth no matter the contents of his judgements. On the contrary, the human gi� of thinking transcendentally is proven by the moral telos of its concrete use.

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