Recognized as a collection of his last lectures from 1772 to 1796, Immanuel Kant’s two part book, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, gives readers the opportunity to interpret philosophy as an anthropology (vii-viii). Rather than place emphasis on physiological knowledge, a narrow account of what makes us human through viewing nature, Kant directs attention to pragmatic knowledge, where readers learn what the conscious human being can achieve and how he interacts with his world (3). Kant holds the view that his conception of a cosmopolitan world would be ideal. He relates his cosmopolitan world to the three faculties—the cognitive, feeling and desire faculties—in the first part of his book titled the “Anthropological Didactic,” which asks the question of what a human being is. Kant explains how the human must overcome his egoistic tendencies to adopt a pluralistic viewpoint. Ultimately, this transcendence enables the human to become a cosmopolitan or world citizen, promoting further human culture and progress. Kant’s pragmatic anthropology relates to his notion that human beings are their own final ends, where they define who they want to be through their action and interaction with the world, entailing individual development through education and investment, where one “has…goal[s] of applying…acquired knowledge and skill[s] for the world’s use” (3). Thus, these concerns are located at the core of Kant’s work. I will proceed to discuss the distinction between egoism and pluralism and how Kant urges people to transition away from egoism to pluralism for the purpose of a cosmopolitan world. Then, I will discuss how Foucault sees Kant’s conception of the dinner party as a small microcosm of Kant’s cosmopolitan world, and using the dinner party as an illustration, show how the mental faculties relate to egoism and pluralism and why it’s important to overcome egoism.
Egoism involves only seeing one’s thoughts and preferences as right and the inability to relate yourself to others. The beginning of egoism began at the start of development through the awareness of oneself as a human being through “I” (§1). The development of “I” allowed humans to differentiate between ourselves and other living beings, namely animals, due to how we present ourselves to the rest of the world. By seeing ourselves as an “I”, one distinguishes themselves from the world and others, and so is able to relatively see how they stand out and exist in the world. A person, as relating to themselves as an “I”, recognizes their experiences as their own and from there is able to consciously shape their lives and interact with the world around them (§1, 15)..
Kant identifies three presumptions found in egoism: understanding, taste, and practical interest (§2, 17-18). Kant summarizes that logical egoism occurs when humans fail to share their views with others, practical egoism when humans selfishly care about their goals and desires as satisfying purely themselves with no regards to others, and aesthetic egoism when humans believe that their own judgment in art, style, or taste are indisputable– using themselves as a gauge of what is considered trendy (§2, 17-18).
Kant contrasts egoism to its stark antithesis—pluralism. Pluralism occurs when the human relates with others and sees beyond him/herself, recognizing that there is a greater world where s/he is able to achieve alone. Kant encourages humans to interact with one another and recognize that their combined contributions lead to a better community, thanks to the exchange of information and knowledge. Kant believes the ability to share our ideas to others is important in order to exchange critical evaluation from others, and by doing this, we are able to relate ourselves better to others and the world, as well as understand our relative stance as an individual to the wider world. Ideally, pluralism allows the human to become a “citizen of the world,” and this concept is essential to Kant’s definition of humanity (§2, 18).
Kant holds the strong stance that we should strive to transition away from egoism and into pluralism as an ideal. By sharing our ideas and allowing our inner thoughts to be openly present to the public, it will allow for critical evaluation to build towards collective principles, in this way, everyone will be able to contribute to a unified, collaborative cosmopolitan world.
Foucault views Kant’s notion of a dinner party as a small microcosm representing Kant’s cosmopolitan world where people relate and interact with each other by sharing ideas through conversation (Foucault, Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology, pp. 101). The dinner party is capable of representing both a pluralistic setting as well as an egoistic setting, where a pluralistic setting would be the ideal. In a dinner party, people can interact, share and consult their ideas with each other in order to place their ideas out in the open to be criticized by others and to be evaluated. If there are people at the dinner party who are egoist, they would hide their ideas from others and judge in silence, believing that their own ideas are superior to others before laying it out to be criticized. There may be other egoists who boastfully argue and insist that they are right, deaf to any persuasion from others. This egoistic microcosmic world would become chaotic, quietly antagonistic and brew negative conflict. Because of this, it’s evident of why Kant urges to transition from egoism to pluralism.
Contrastingly, Foucault lays out how the dinner party can represent the pluralistic cosmopolitan world in Kant’s pragmatic point of view when people at the dinner party are considered equals, where there is no room for discrimination or hierarchy while practicing a “shared sovereignty of speech” (Foucault, Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology, p. 101). This idea of a shared sovereignty of speech promotes Kant’s idea of pluralism as it pulls away from an egoistic practice; an egoistic version entailing discrimination and social hierarchy. Stemming from Kant’s conception, Foucault shows that from a pluralistic practice, people at the dinner party can see how they themselves as individuals relate to others, and see themselves as a singular element among an entire larger system, or merely being a part of the aggregate whole. In this way, as shown by Foucault, a dinner party creates a cosmopolitan and pluralistic setting where people are able to come together as a collective without losing their individuality, but instead come together and participate in the larger universal system. To be in a pluralistic setting which is ideal for Kant, Foucault reasons that conversation must flow in a way that allows for “each person’s freedom to formulate his or her opinion, to insist upon it, or to take the discussion in another direction” which should not be “felt by others to be an abuse or constraint.” (Foucault, Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology, pp. 101-2). This idea of conversation flowing in order to allow for people to speak freely relates to a broader ideal pluralistic world where people can converse in a political or social discussion by listening and respecting each other’s viewpoint as well as feeling free to present their ideas to be respectfully criticized and evaluated by others in society, without fear of social ostracization or oppression.
Now that I have discussed how Foucault can regard the dinner party as a model of Kant’s conception of a cosmopolitan world, I will show how Foucault sees how the dinner party can act as a model for understanding the significance of mental faculties in Kant’s Anthropology. In addition to what was briefly discussed about how egoism could take form in the dinner party, a more related way of looking at egoism can take form through the cognitive, feeling and desire mental faculties.
As related to the dinner party, a person who is an egoist will only see their understanding of the world and their taste in fashion and art as optimal and better than anyone else, and they would also see their vision of the future as only relating to themselves, and not with others. However, an ideal version of people at the dinner table exercising pluralism represents, in Kant’s sense, “citizens of the world”, who see that they live amongst many others who hold different viewpoints, but respect each other and go on living together nonetheless (Foucualt and Kant’s Dinner Table, slide 45). When one becomes a “citizen of the world” by exercising pluralism they can correctly relate and translate their cognitive, feeling and desire faculties to the world around them and to each other (Foucualt and Kant’s Dinner Table, slide 46). The three faculties can be represented by the dinner party: the cognitive faculty through the usage of the five senses; the feelings faculty through people’s taste in fashion, music and art; and finally the desire faculty where in the discussion of politics, people can express their visions and hopes for the future through conversation. While representing what a human being is, it’s good to note that the three faculties are related to each other and not isolated concepts.
Beginning with the cognitive faculty, it is involved with how humans perceive the world through thoughts and senses, and it is concerned with the temporal structure of the present, tying itself to the past and future (Lecture: “Time and Taste”, slide 45-46). In Kant’s idea of a dinner party, the five senses are used through sight, hearing, touch, smell, and taste. The five senses allow people to relate and share their experiences in a cosmopolitan way. This can be in the shared enjoyment of the taste in food, the shared enjoyment of listening to music and the enjoyment of viewing art. At the dinner party, Kant considers hearing the most important sense so that people can converse with each other (§22, 52). Language and the ability to converse is important in Kant’s account since people can relate to each other in a universal way through speech (Foucault Introduction to Kant’s Anthropology, p. 102), and this aids in the sharing of knowledge. Without the ability to hear, they are unable to converse and engage in conversation and so Kant believes one becomes isolated, which would inevitably lead to egoism (§22, 52).
Logical egoism can occur in the cognitive faculty when the human “considers it unnecessary to test his judgment also by the understanding of others” (§2, 17). By being unable to hear, Kant believes the person is incapable of even having the opportunity to test his judgments because at the dinner party he is unable to keep up with the conversation. Although not being able to hear is an example of how egoism can occur, it is not the only way for egoism to happen. Another form of egoism is when one believes their knowledge is unrivaled and absolute. This represents logical egoism, where they consider their knowledge to be unrivaled and absolute, and are unwilling to share their thoughts with others, dismissing and ignoring any attempts to correct their thoughts from the evaluation of others (§2, 17). Kant discourages this behavior, because the purposeful act of gatekeeping infringes on the freedom of press, which hurts both the egoist and others around him (§2). As can be represented by the dinner party as Foucult describes, the egoist lives under the illusion of correctness and continues unknowingly to make errors, while the rest of society or the people present at the dinner party are unable to gain new information or critique the egoist (Lecture: “Time and Taste”, slide 44).
To combat this issue, Kant emphasizes that it is crucial to cognition and enlightenment that “we also restrain our understanding by the understanding of others instead of isolating ourselves with our own understanding and judging publicly with our private representations” (§53, p. 113). Thus, the human needs to recognize that his senses and thoughts are singular, and there are an infinite amount of other possible senses and thoughts in existence (§59, 124). Such as, in the dinner party, where there are signs like art, music and speech, there is a multitude of opportunities to confide in others about their senses and experience of the world. The prevalence of art, music, and speech contributes to the outer experience that people have which is relevant to how one starts relating their inner self to the outer world through their senses (slide 14, Foucault and Kant’s Dinner table). It’s significant to relate the inner self to the outer world since if one becomes stuck within their inner self they are prone to illusions and false judgements if they do not share their thoughts and hear evaluation from others. Without the ability to test one’s inner ideas, they are unable to make tweaks and corrections and are not even able to make judgments of whether the ideas they have are false since they rid themselves of the opportunity to hear criticism and ideas from others (§24, 53). And so, an egoist who is stuck inside their inner self is “aided by the dinner party in transitioning out of being an egoist by the onset of unavoidable outer experiences of music, food, and art which is at least shared by everyone present. This transition is significant towards human development, because it reduces the possibility of delusions and false judgments, and creates tolerance for alternative views that one might initially judge as incorrect (§53, 114). By adopting a pluralistic viewpoint, the human becomes a “citizen of the world,” where he contributes positively towards humanity in order to increase shared understanding and acceptance of differences, as well as acknowledging that humans are one and the same. If the human dwells in egoism, s/he would be unable to compare her/his conception of “signs” or “language” with others’ shared public present, since the overall temporal structure needs others to form a cohesive understanding (Lecture: “Time and Taste”, slide 46). This is why Kant emphasizes the importance of the sense of hearing in order to converse through language, and is also the reason why Foucult views the dinner party as representing Kant’s cosmopolitan world, as conversation at the dinner party allows for people to relate to one another and exchange ideas and critically evaluate and compare their viewpoints.
Another mental faculty that is represented by the dinner table is the faculty of feeling. At the dinner party people can come together to compare their taste in art, music and fashion. Aesthetic egoism occurs when the human believes that his/her own taste in art, food, and style as being the best. Again, we see the recurrence of superiority due to arrogance in judgment and disconnection from others. Due to its representation of the temporal past, this faculty is involved with feelings of pleasure and displeasure towards what someone considers beautiful, artful, and more (xiv). For instance, the aesthetic egoist becomes fixated upon their favored painting and cannot comprehend criticism or ridicule from others. While this egoism’s damage does not extend as far as the logical egoist, it nonetheless hinders individual progress in the form of delusion, which in turn affects societal growth (§2, 18). In this way, aesthetic egoism undercuts the ability to get along with others through sharing and enjoying taste and art together, and it prevents a sense of community among people that is essential for a cosmopolitan world.
Instead of appreciating the supposed good tastes in isolation, the pluralistic approach suggests confiding with others to compare tastes. This method allows for peer evaluated opinions on what is good or bad, which can potentially lead individuals to modify or diversify their initial preferences. The importance behind this pluralistic exercise is to create an inclusive, comprehensive dialogue of what is right and wrong and what is beautiful and ugly. With that said, this paves the way for collective appreciation of the arts and increased awareness for others’ thoughts and opinions. Not only will people compare their taste with others, but this will be a sense of unity and camaraderie as they share and enjoy their taste together. Kant encourages humans to utilize the pluralistic approach of this faculty to escape the pain of the past and prosper in pleasure from what’s beautiful in the present, at the same time looking forward to beauty in the future (Lecture “Taste and Time, slide 50-56).
Kant concludes the first part of his book by explaining how practical egoism is aligned with the future-oriented faculty of desire, which is concerned with morals and ethics. This faculty is similar to the previously mentioned faculty of taste since it helps to determine what is considered good and bad (xiv). Kant also refers to the practical egoist as a moral egoist, because this individual accomplishes actions or goals for self-satisfaction rather than considerations of good or general welfare. Practical egoism prevents the human from seeing what would truly matter from a broader perspective, meaning how individual actions affect others (§2, 18). In order to view the faculty of desire through a pluralistic lens, the human should consider what others value and consider morally good. Overall, this process takes into account what types of social norms or rules are necessary to pave the way for a better future, allowing for harmony and coexistence (Lecture “Taste and Time”, slide 72). This doesn’t mean to change or eliminate one’s own desires for the future, but that one respects their desires for the future as being related to others and the world around them, as well as being open to being criticized and evaluating their choices based on input from others.
Now with a good understanding of how egoism and pluralism relate to the “Anthropological Didactic,” it is evident that there is common significance between shifting from egoism to pluralism within the three faculties of cognition, feeling, and desire. Ultimately, Kant emphasizes the importance of interconnectedness through communication to gain a better understanding about oneself to the world, along with living in close proximity with others.
Foucault connects Kant’s notion of a dinner party to his wider conception of a cosmopolitan world as a mini-microcosm representing the entire world, which shows the significance of transitioning from egoism to pluralism as important for an ideal world, where people live together while relating themselves to nature, history, and each other while having open discourse about ideas. Though humans exhibit egoistic behavior at some point during their lives, both unknowingly or purposefully, it is important to strive towards pluralism as it benefits individuals and communities. As cosmopolitans or world citizens, humans will be able to broaden their understanding, taste, and desire– denoted through the faculties. Overall, Kant’s pragmatic anthropology provides humans with a good methodology as to how they can live amongst each other in tolerance and understanding. If humans do not resolve their egoistic tendencies, this will create intolerance towards diverse viewpoints, potentially escalating to destructive ideologies like xenophobia. Thus, it is imperative for humans to ease away from their problematic egoism into adopting an inclusive, cosmopolitan pluralism.
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