Political Categories by Michael Marder;

Author:Michael Marder;
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Perseus Books, LLC

“AFTER” THE CATEGORIES: SCHEMATISM

Judgments are the austere logical and subjective instantiations of the categories; schemata insert the categories into the order of time, putting some flesh on the bare bones of pure understanding. For Kant, the mediations of schematism are unsurpassable, in that the categories and the transcendental aesthetics of experience (space and time) are two forms of the a priori that are not to be conflated. Heidegger’s thesis The meaning of being is time is incomprehensible from a Kantian perspective, where it would mean that the category of existence is a pure form of sensible intuition. At best, Heidegger’s predecessor will concede that “reality,” Realität, is “a concept, which in itself indicates a being (in time) [Begriff an sich selbst ein Sein (in der Zeit) anzeigt]” (CPR A143). As logical functions, then, judgments are categories stabilized in atemporal molds; as temporalized categories, schemata come adrift and are prepared to receive any object in light of “the general conditions under which alone the category can be applied” (CPR A140). What are the general political conditions for applying the categories? How might schemata work in politics?

Taking up quantity, Kant notes that the “pure schema of magnitude” is “number, which is a representation that summarizes the successive addition of one (homogeneous) unit to another” (CPR B182). In its unity, number is a plurality of homogenized units added to one another in a succession, that is to say, in a temporal pattern. We could transpose this definition onto a numeric succession of political regimes, classically ranging from one ruler through a few to many. We could also predictably claim that the scientific and philosophical invention of homogeneity and its implementation within a quantitative outlook are the forerunners of modern democratic constructions. The disadvantage of such claims is that they do not give enough credit to the political constitution of the categories. So, what if things were the other way around? What if the schema of magnitude (as Kant sees it, his monarchic leanings notwithstanding) were not just political but a priori democratic, because it counted and counted upon homogenous units in a uniform succession, out of which time itself is woven?

On the one hand, 1 + 1 + 1 … = (a) a dynamic representation of number, (b) a chain of instants that make up time, and (c) electoral multiplicities in representative democracies. On the other hand, isolated from “before” and “after,” extracted from a succession, sequestered from the order of time, one—let alone the One—is not a number: absolute monarchic rule does not sit comfortably with the “pure,” but essentially democratic, schema of magnitude. Democracy judges all kinds of politics starting from and coming back to itself: hence, the predominance of quantitative categories in the age of democratic hegemony and the surreptitiously democratic take on democracy’s own nuts and bolts, the numbers. None of this is strange, given that in the same paragraph Kant reopens the door to the empirical constitution of transcendentals, as well as to a cross-contamination of transcendental aesthetics

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