Ethics of tragic heroism: Moral autonomy as lawgiving rebellion in Kant, Hegel and Kafka.

摘要

This dissertation aims to prove that Kant's notion of autonomy and Hegel's notion of spirituality have nothing to do with common-minded pragmatism or bourgeois-consumerist reasonableness. They are both founded upon the premise that what is most uniquely, distinctly and authentically particular in each particularity, lives in deepest communion with what is most universal about human race as a whole. One acquires the meaning of this deep communion only through a pitiless, autonomous questioning of all given contents of justice inscribed in right, morals, habits, politics, religion or economics that are externally proclaimed to be valid. Upon this merciless questioning, one reaches the zero-point of absolute uncertainty regarding the very notions of good, right and justice. This depletes universality from its hefty, imperative sturdiness and lets particularity live in desperate fluctuation from one ground of incertitude to another. When particularity dares to accept that universality is irremediably empty--that no god or external authority will ever come to authoritatively fill it with content--she can become moral, lawgiving particularity. She then realizes that the determination of the content of good is the sole responsibility of her particular action, of her own deep engagement with the universal as idea and the universal as the entirety of the social, public sphere. Externalization of authentic, unique particularity through action is the only true universality that human beings are capable of. Particularity which is able to achieve this is the age-old Slave's Desire for recognition which, through the nameless throbbing of anxiety, keeps plaguing the public sphere so long as there are rights that remain unrecognized. Kafka's writing is imbued with the here described rationality of Desire. Unlike Kant and Hegel, Kafka is extremely pessimistic about the prospect of implementing Desire into the social sphere. He correctly perceives that in our time, Desire is sacrificed for the sake of extolling the irrationality of caprices and whims into the definitive yardsticks of human freedom. Desire (with capital "D"), as the ground of rational volition, loses the battle with the irrationality of desires, drives and inclinations, for the latter are inscribed in the ever-growing mass mentality.