Is Philosophical Research Even Relevant?

Jesus LaPaz

“Is philosophical research even relevant?” Any student who has experience conducting research within the field of philosophy has heard those words. When people think of research, they commonly think of labs, experiments, interviews, and other complex research methods that can deliver concrete data or results. This summer, I was awarded a Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) to conduct philosophical research, and my topic is relevant now more than ever. My project aimed to determine whether Enlightenment ideals of reason, freedom, and morality create a direct path toward authoritarianism, and if so, how these concepts can be adapted to prevent such a descent.

Freedom is one of the most essential metaphysical assumptions that we implicitly accept within the structures of our society. This is evident from the ways we choose to treat persons depending on their behavior. Whenever we punish someone for a crime, hold someone accountable for their actions toward others, or even give a bad grade to a student on a test, we operate with the assumption that all those individuals made the free choices that led them to this point; it would be bizarre to hold someone accountable or punish them for an action we do not believe they actually chose. Moreover, freedom grants us one of the most essential concepts that stands at the heart of our society, namely morality. We could never have morality and moral laws if human beings were not free and able to make their own decisions that are either right or wrong.

All these concepts are Enlightenment ideals, propounded by figures like Immanuel Kant. To understand these ideals, the first part of my research consisted of a close reading of two of Kant’s works on morality: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason (sometimes called the Second Critique, as it is the second in a series of three Critiques Kant published).

What I learned from these readings made me realize more about how we commonly think of morality. In both works, Kant is trying to answer the question: Why do we think of morality the way we commonly do? In other words, he is trying to establish a metaphysical foundation for morality. For Kant, morality is based on a principle he calls the Categorical Imperative, a supreme moral law for which we, as rational beings, are both lawgivers and subjects—the moral law binds us. Still, we also give it to ourselves through our own reason. I realized that this is somewhat implicit in our standard way of thinking. Whenever we think of “ought” claims, we assume both that we are free and that there is some universal law that gives that claim validity. If there were no universal moral laws, then any ought claim would be empty. For example, when we say, “you ought not to kill innocent people,” we want that claim to have moral weight behind it and not just be a mere opinion.

I was all on board with these Enlightenment ideals guaranteeing autonomy, freedom, and morality for all—until the next part of my research began. Theodor Adorno’s critique of the Enlightenment, especially in works such as Dialectic of Enlightenment, warns us how Kant’s formalist moral principle (or any moral principle based on a law) can, under modern conditions, slide into obedience to any “law,” thereby becoming complicit with domination when reason is turned into instrumentality. Reason, for Kant, promises emancipation by replacing superstition with rules; the problem is that these rules can harden into a system that treats people like data points. Unconstrained universality risks forgetting about the concrete conditions of human suffering and focusing on a means-to-end rational calculation. This transformation of reason into instrumentality and calculability is what Adorno argues leads these beautiful Enlightenment ideals to descend into totalitarianism. 

However, this does not mean we should abandon the project of the Enlightenment. Adorno’s critique of Enlightenment ideals in works such as Problems of Moral Philosophy and Dialectic of Enlightenment made me realize how important it is to rethink Enlightenment ideals with the material conditions of modernity in mind; not to abandon those ideals, but to make sure they are fully realized as they were intended. Adorno characterizes modernity as a late-capitalist, bureaucratically administered society, in which instrumental reason, mass media, and concentrated technical, and economic power shape desire, thinking, and action. This is where research in the field of philosophy can play a significant role. 

“Medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for.”[1] Philosophy must play a critical role in modernity, rethinking morality in light of the atrocities of the 20^th Century and the modern conditions of today, to revive the “beauty, romance, [and] love” that sustain us. Adorno defines philosophy as that thing which lives on “because the moment to realize it was missed.”[2] The Enlightenment promised a just society, autonomy, freedom… and failed to deliver on its promise. Precisely due to this unfulfilled promise, philosophical research must live on rethinking and trying to concretize these ideals.