Critical Research

The Human Subject as Object

As the 18th century drew to a close, empiricism was well on the way toward becoming the dominant epistemological framework for science. This framework became hegemonic for concepts of knowledge-in-general during the 19th century and remains so to this day. Empiricist reason, related to instrumental action, also became embedded within industrial and postindustrial social practices to produce what critical theorists have called “the dialectic of reason.” Instrumental reason resulted in technologies on which to base factory modes of production and, treating people like other objects of nature, organized work into fragmented menial activities. Greater poverty and less meaning and freedom were the result, as revealed in critiques by Karl Marx and Max Weber. Hence, Enlightenment reason appeared to lead to a society that was in contradiction with Enlightenment ideals. With human phenomena objectified and studied within a framework that makes predictions of measurable outcomes from measurable manipulable initial conditions, there is little room for concepts of freedom, choice, morality, and other notions dear to the Enlightenment.

The Human Subject as a Condition for Knowledge

On the other hand, Immanuel Kant developed what he called “critical philosophy” during the final decades of the 18th century to reveal limits to empirical knowledge. The human subject cannot fully be an object of study, according to Kant, because aspects of [Page 171]it are a precondition for all other kinds of knowledge. To understand these preconditions, we cannot use empirical methods because these already presuppose the conditions. Instead, we must use reflection—transcendental argumentation. In particular, according to Kant, the “I” part of the human subject is presupposed by the unity of experience, by the fact that all experience internally contains the sense of being “my” experience, and by the fact that experience is always an experience of something, meaning that it involves something other than its objects. The “I” is not an entity, not an object, yet it is presupposed in all forms of experience. Thus, Kant showed limits to empirical knowledge and was able to defend morality as a rational activity by distinguishing between subject–object and subject–subject relations. Knowledge in general is then divisible into types, including empirical, reflective, and moral.

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