Kant and the Disease of Reason
Have you been following the science? I mean science as collective knowledge, not sanctified opinion. Expert knowledge based on the judgement of those who know subject to the public use of reason. What is known established as facts, tested and verified, from which conclusions are drawn and actions recommended. Scientia: distinguish and isolate; discriminate, decide—to cut, divide, cleave—or scythe (fauci). Not a blind hacking or dismemberment, but rather the result of methodical observations that reveal connections and patterns. These in turn are articulated as causes and effects. Observation and imagination are reflective activities bound up with perception and cause and effect. Truth is a narrative of cause and effect. And reason judges the coherence of the narrative.[1]
According to Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason, ‘the concept of the relation of cause and effect, the former of which determines the latter in time, as its consequence—not something that may occur solely in the imagination’ (B234, p.219). Observation and perception determine which representations correspond to objects and which are imaginary. Yet science is not exhausted by empiricism, which often proceeds haphazardly. The working out of a science is based on an idea and ‘this idea lies hidden in reason, like a germ in which parts are still underdeveloped and barely recognisable even under microscopic observation’ (A834, B862, p.654). Moving between speculation and observation is a messy business. Reason decides what experience counts as evidence and in what way it figures in the justificatory story.[2]
Just because something appears reasonable, or even likely, does not entail that the data is objectively true. For example, identifying the intentionality of an agent who sets something as a purpose may accord with the temporal sequence of cause and effect. But the apparently reasonable concord between observation and narrative can conceal the work of imagination that fits appearances into a predetermined frame. That everything fits and has its place in a totalising explanation—all the parts fit—is a sign of explanatory weakness. It may even fall into what Kant, in “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view”, calls dementia:
Dementia [Wahnsinn] is that disturbance of the mind in which everything that the insane person relates is to be sure in conformity with the formal laws of thought that make an experience possible; but, owing to the falsely inventive power of imagination, self-made representations are regarded as perceptions. Those who believe they are surrounded by enemies everywhere, who consider all glances, words, and otherwise indifferent actions of others as aimed against them personally and as traps set for them, belong in this category.—In their unhappy delusion they are often so astute in interpreting that which others do naturally as aimed against them that, if only the data were true, we would have to pay due honor to their understanding.—I have never seen anyone who has been cured of this disease (for to rave with reason is a special predisposition). However, they are not to be reckoned among the hospital buffoons; for, being concerned only with themselves, they direct their supposed craftiness only to their own preservation, without putting others in danger, and therefore do not need to be locked up for reasons of safety. This second type of derangement is methodical. (Kant 1798, p.320)
Verrückung, derangement, can also mean ‘displacement’. Bringing this mental illness up to date, we can say that their paranoia serves a purpose: ‘being concerned only with themselves, they direct their supposed craftiness only to their own preservation’. Self-preservation is uppermost.
What might such derangement displace, in a methodological, deliberate fashion? Perhaps engagement with others is thereby displaced; the good will necessary for moral action, as Kant would put it. Raving with reason can be a cover for selfishness. And if such selfishness were to put others in danger, we might have to rethink the classification of this disease and revisit the need not to lock them up for reasons of safety (theirs and ours). They might even invoke Kant to muddy the waters.[3]
From the standpoint of social control, the fact ‘that the powers of the unhinged mind still arrange themselves in a system’ (1798, p.321) can prove useful. For example, take a rational mind and unhinge it by subjecting it to incoherence and fear. In this reactive state, the form into which objects will be fitted can be predicted and will have been prepared by stimulating the imagination. Various scenarios and visual and verbal repetitions take the form of predictive programming. But only, of course, from the stand-point of those interpreting reasonable preventative measures and unmotivated patterns as evidence of malicious intention. Positing an intentional agent is itself evidence of derangement. Owing to the falsely inventive power of imagination, self-made representations are regarded as perceptions. Human imagination is a powerful bioweapon.
Presented evidence is rendered less than conclusive precisely because of its extensiveness; variety, quantity, and obviousness indicate interpretive mania and obsession rather than economy of truth. A meticulously constructed form into which objects can be fitted pre-empts the credibility of those trying to expose it. Their reason appears as imaginative unreason regardless of how much conclusive evidence they present. It all fits too neatly into their narrative. And the scale and interconnectedness is so improbable, so many coordinating nodes, etc. A series of coincidences and tendencies with no directive planning or implementation; at most ad hoc opportunism, despite programmatic predictions from interested parties, etc. Merely the result of systemic tendencies beyond the control of any agent. It looks spontaneous.
Such an integrated narrative web lacks credibility as a human creation and must be a subjective projection; a reductive and motivated distorted simplification. The falsely inventive power of imagination, rather than objective cause and effect, is at work. The totalising interpretation of a unified and coordinated action is turned around onto the accuser. Chasing your own shadow by gaslight.
Could such a neutralising effect have been foreseen, even planned?[4] The aesthetic ideological project being to represent the functionalist game in which any attribution of intention certifies paranoia. And simultaneously present the offer of intentionalist intervention to halt the juggernaut. They will beg for the very cure that they now decry as poison
The very question of planning falls into the snare of the reductive totalisation it would incriminate. Alternatively, if it was not calculated to deflect and disarm criticism then such a result is either remarkable (providential) or disastrous (devilishly ingenious), depending on one’s standpoint. Faced with these alternatives is it not reasonable, psychologically speaking (i.e., for reasons of safety), to stay with the option of the nonexistence of any intentional agency? Which is where we began: stasis, compliance, yes, even paralysis—but at least not dementia. For that is a cover story, mere theatre, on the part of those concerned only with themselves, directing their supposed craftiness only to their own preservation and not to the common good.[5]
In Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) Kant analyses the good will necessary for moral action. The capacity of the will is intertwined with capacity for self-destruction. For example, consider the person for whom things are going well contemplating those who have to contend with great hardships. He could help them, but he thinks: ‘what is it to me? let each be as happy as heaven wills or as he can make himself; I shall take nothing from him nor even envy him; only I do not care to contribute anything to his welfare or to his assistance in need!’ (1785, p. 75).
Kant comments that while such a viewpoint does not threaten the survival of the human race, and is ‘no doubt even better than when everyone prates about sympathy and benevolence and even exerts himself to practice them occasionally, but on the other hand also cheats where he can, sells the right of human beings or otherwise infringes upon it’ (1785, p.75). This image of self and world self-destructs because indifferentism, however understandable as a conclusion drawn from contemplating the hypocrisy abroad in the world, does not transcend the situation from which it recoils. It is not simply that one might at some point need the sympathy and help one denies to others, for self-interest is not moral. Rather such scepticism rests on a naïve accommodation with things as they are, a kind of opportunistic, wilful lack of will. Cynicism is forgetfulness of the fact that just as the will to preserve is tied to the will to destroy, so too is the preservation of integrity dependent on chaos and night. Would-be resistance and ‘certain indignation’ (1784, p.109), certain distaste, is not immune to dependency.
Put another way—and to sidestep for a moment the whiff of sanctimony that invariably hangs about lectures on morality—scepticism is not simply opposed to naïve dogmatism. From a perspective that is not above either scepticism or dogmatism, but rather knowingly immersed in their mutually reinforcing co-implication, there is a passage through the conclusion that all has been tried and found wanting. In this understandable recoil, according to Critique of Pure Reason, ‘the prevailing mood is that of weariness and complete indifferentism’ (p.8 Aix). Beyond disgust, this tedium is the mother of ‘chaos and night’, the spiral into despair and nihilism. However, this intellectual (and moral) pit is the ‘source, or at least the prelude’ of ‘approaching reform and restoration’.[6] The image carefully built up in people’s minds will destroy the image, and this fragmentation is necessary for transformation and enlightenment.
Critique of Pure Reason describes ‘a new phenomenon of human reason’ (p.385 B434). This novel illusion of reason is a mark above ‘the slumber of fictitious conviction’ not least because of its obviousness: ‘there is no need of making subtle enquiries or laying snares for the unwary’. The phenomenon is out in the open, and a moment’s reflection reveals its operation. But, nevertheless, it exists and exerts a mystifying influence on the use of reason, or more precisely, it results in deadlocked debate. It subjects reason ‘to the temptation of either abandoning itself to sceptical despair, or of assuming an obstinate attitude, dogmatically committing itself to dogmatic assertions, and refusing to grant a fair hearing to arguments for the counter-position’. On the one side toxic scepticism, suspicious of all authority and claims to truth—always demanding incontrovertible proof before credibility is granted— and on the other, the repetitive assertion of authority and the silencing of debate. Yet this opposition is itself illusory since dogmatism and scepticism not only reinforce each other, they produce each other.
In Kant’s territorial imagery, dogmatism is despotic and eventually gives way to the complete anarchy of scepticism (see p.8, Aix): ‘Either attitude [slumber of imaginary conviction or scepticism] is the death of sound philosophy, although the former might perhaps be entitled the euthanasia (Euthanasie) of pure reason’ (p.385, B434). Euthanasia: peaceful sleep; death.
The spectacle of the assisted suicide of reason is difficult to prevent since every intervention is met with corrosive scepticism; with suspicion and the demand that you prove you are not lying or delusional. The new phenomenon produces a vicious, self-confirming circle, a stasis that too often degenerates into bitter recrimination and intolerance. Accusations of being hoodwinked or complicit abound, personal invective flourishes, reason dies in the swamp of mendacious self-interest. Dementia is seen on all sides (except one’s own). As Kant puts it in “Essay on the maladies of the head”: ‘A deranged person is thus a dreamer in waking’ (1764, p.71). Look around you, they are everywhere.
No one is above suspicion. Not least Kant. Despite offering ‘a few remarks in explanation and justification of the method which we propose to employ in the treatment of this subject’ (p.385, B434), the very definition of this subject already evinces an interpretation that delimits the area of enquiry, framing the issue in a way that is always open to question.
To put it in other terms, we might say that Kant’s diagnosis presumes, and endorses, a specific etiology regarding more than the causes and results of the novel disease of reason he identifies. What of the his own reasoning—the origins of his own account of origination—that Kant tries to make explicit without falling into abyssal recursivity (which typically invites either scepticism or dogmatism, or both). I must make a judgement: a decision about decision, and in the process align myself. The challenge is to avoid scepticism and dogmatism but we know that any decision is open to being characterised as one or the other, for there is always ‘a certain degree of misology, that is hatred of reason’ (1785, p.51), in the air. It is up to each individual to reanimate the spirit of reason at the expense of entrenched bigotry and corrosive despair—on behalf of reason always dead, always coming back to life, always haunted by nightmares.[7]
Can you imagine what Kant would have made of our recent history? But then you will be comparing his appeal for free public debate in an era of dogmatic authoritarianism with our modern scientific era.[8] Even pointing to similarities between late eighteenth century struggles against despotism and our enlightened age is to invite suspicion. Be aware, in the wake of science, those who are one step ahead are waiting to examine your sanity:
Insania [Wahnwitz] is a deranged power of judgment in which the mind is held in suspense by means of analogies that are confused with concepts of similar things, and thus the power of imagination, in a play resembling understanding, conjures up the connection of disparate things as universal, under which the representations of the universal are contained. Mental patients of this kind are for the most part very cheerful; they write insipid poetry and take pleasure in the richness of what, in their opinion, is such an extensive alliance of concepts all agreeing with each other.—The lunatic of this sort is not curable because, like poetry in general, he is creative and entertaining by means of diversity.—This third kind of derangement is indeed methodical, but only fragmentary. (1798, pp.320-321)
And yet the poet keeps company with the scientist who spends ‘much time in the collection of materials in a somewhat random [rhapsodistisch: rhapsodic] fashion at the suggestion of an idea hidden in our minds’ (A835, B 863, p.655).
Only after having ‘over a long period assembled the materials in a merely technical manner, does it first become possible for us to discern the idea in a clearer light’. It takes time to see the truth as ‘[s]ystems seem to be formed in the manner of lowly organisms [wie Gewürme: like maggots] through a generatio aequivoca [spontaneous generation] from the mere confluence of assembled concepts’. It looks spontaneous—until you discern the pattern.9
The challenge is to distinguish and isolate, establish connections and patterns, causes and effects. Imagination and observation forge a narrative, and reason judges the coherence of the narrative. So the story goes. In reality each one of these activities can be targeted, diverted and pre-empted. Analogies are purposely confused with concepts of similar things and they are often astute in interpreting that which others do naturally as aimed against them. More of a danger to others than to themselves, they will not hesitate follow through on their threats.
REFERENCES:
Kant, Immanuel 1764. “Essay on the maladies of the head”. In: Anthropology, History, and Education. Edited by Günter Zöller and Robert P. Louden. Translated by Holly Wilson. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007, pp.63-77.
—-1781/7. Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Norman Kemp Smith. London: Macmillan Publishers Ltd., 1985 [1929].
—-1784. “Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim.” In: Anthropology, History, and Education. Edited by Günter Zöller and Robert P. Louden. Translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007, pp.107-120.
—-1785. “Groundwork of The Metaphysics of Morals.” In: Practical Philosophy. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp.41-108.
—-1795. “Toward perpetual peace. A philosophical project” In: Practical Philosophy. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996, pp.311-351.
—-1798. “Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view.” In: Anthropology, History, and Education. Edited by Günter Zöller and Robert P. Louden. Translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2007, pp.227-429.
NOTES:
[1] ‘In order to support a certain belief what we need is not an appropriate causal connection to the fact which the belief is about, but rather an appropriate reason that makes the belief justified.’ (Chong-Fuk Lau, “From the Kantian to the Hegelian Court of Reason.” Proceedings of the 13th International Kant Congress. Edited by Beatrix Himmelmann and Camilla Serck-Hanssen. Berlin/Boston: De Gruyter, 2021. pp.337-347, p.344)
[2] Listen to Reiner Fuellmich’s invocation of Kant, “New Statement from Prison.” Bitchute. 24 July. 2025.
https://www.bitchute.com/search?query=reiner+fuellmich+new+statement+from+prison+july+24+2025&kind=video&sensitivity_id=normal&duration=all&sort=new
[3] Mathew Barnard, “Coronavirus: what philosopher Immanuel Kant can teach us about panic buying and isolation dodging.” The Conversation. March 26. 2020.
https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-what-philosopher-immanuel-kant-can-teach-us-about-panic-buying-and-isolation-dodging-134491
[4] See The National Blueprint for Biodefense. Immediate Action Needed to Defend Against Biological Threats. A Report by the Bipartisan Commission on Biodefense. April. 2024.
https://biodefensecommission.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/National-Blueprint-for-Biodefense-2024_final_digital.pdf
[5] See Matúš Grežo and Magdalena Adamus, “Light and Dark core of personality and the adherence to COVID-19 containment measures: The roles of motivation and trust in government.” Acta Psychologica, vol.223. March. 2022. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S000169182100233X
[6] Jean-François Lyotard, Enthusiasm: The Kantian Critique of History, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele. California: Stanford University Press, 2009 [1986]. p.7.
[7] See Anna Young, “DOJ drops charges against Utah surgeon accused of injecting fake COVID-19 shots and destroying $28K of real vaccines.” New York Post. July 13. 2025.
https://nypost.com/2025/07/13/us-news/doj-drops-charges-against-utah-surgeon-accused-of-injecting-fake-covid-19-shots-and-destroying-28k-of-real-vaccines/
[8] See Judith Carballo, “Conspirationist doctor sentenced in Germany for falsifying certificates during COVID-19 pandemic.” Newsendip. June 19. 2024.
https://www.newsendip.com/conspirationist-doctor-sentenced-in-germany-for-falsifying-certificates-during-covid-19-pandemic/
9 See for example Debbie Lerman, “COVID mRNA Vaccines Are Unregulated Military Countermeasures.” Substack, August 21, 2025. https://substack.com/home/post/p-171587677
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