Politics and Kant

As political module started as well as the discussion of the role of government in our societies, I have reflected on the main idea of “Critique of Pure Reason” from Immanuel Kant.

The Prussian philosopher from the 18th century for long pondered on the relation between knowledge and experience.

Rationalists believe that knowledge is acquired by pure reason whereas empiricists state that knowledge relies on experience.

Kant builds a bridge between this endless debate.

Pure reason indeed expands understandings and experience plays an important role when it comes to interpreting reality.

In this context, our mind organizes information and constructs thoughts based on temporal progression, time and space perceptions, and causation.

These human skills, however, only allow us to interpret phenomena. We cannot grasp noumena, things-in-themselves.

Being aware of our cognitive limitations, what is the role of governments and public administrators?

According to Kantian theses, we should utilize our mental faculties for coming up with solutions for social problems that require a balance between pure reason and experience.

For instance, a task force addressing housing issues cannot rely solely on experiences from other localities but should also encourage inputs originating from rational insights.

The latter is what I recognize as “da Vinci’s spark”.

I have seen many cities around the world unsuccessfully trying to address urban problems based exclusively on best practices and lessons learned from other places.

I have also witnessed the failure of projects of million dollars due to lack of creativity and innovation.

It seems to me that one of the great challenges of public administrators is drawing a line between knowledge and experience and be able to walk over it without losing balance and falling off.

As Kant said “reason without applying it to experience will only lead to illusions while experience will be purely subjective without first being subsumed under pure reason”.

PS. A summary of Kant’s “pure reason” ideas can be found at:

http://www.sparknotes.com/philosophy/kant/section1.html