CyberKant, a Timely Response to the Eclipse of Reason by Mechanical Rationality

Kant grappled with two oppressive forces that curtailed the power of judgement in his day: superstition, i.e. internalized selective filtering of information, and enforced censorship, external monitoring of permissible information. To counteract their combined, deleterious effect, he asserted the virtues of a novel social network, what Habermas has dubbed the “public sphere”. Its communicative structure served to affirm the veracity of facts by upholding the transparency of negotiated consensus. In hindsight, Kant’s late 18th century intervention in the Republic of Letters might be likened to that of a prominent blogger and his subsequent historical reception to the global sway of a viral influencer. Be that as it may, his status is increasingly contested. Critical histories question the Eurocentric humanism he espoused and the anthropocentric universalism he promoted. Given that his proposals predate the digital transformation, the corrective measures put forward are easily deemed obsolete. To complicate matters, our contemporary, socio-technological arrangements are confounded by an inverse cultural dynamic, not censorship so much as the opposite – information deluge – a kind of data-driven counter-censorship imperils the epistemic ground of deliberative processes today. All the same, Kant’s prescriptions remain singularly apt. A Gestalt switch suffices to reveal their digital relevance.