This blog post examines how excessive submission to law undermines human freedom and autonomy, even amplifying guilt, focusing on Kant’s categorical imperative and Deleuze’s critique.
Within the Western intellectual tradition, law has long been understood as secondary to the good, or merely a means to resemble the good. Law was seen as a mere semblance of the good, revealed only in a world abandoned by the gods, a counterfeit of the supreme principle of goodness. From Plato’s perspective, the only way humans could follow the Idea of the Good in the phenomenal world was through imitation, and this imitation was concretely realized through compliance with the law.
This classical relationship between law and the Good was traditionally justified within the framework of natural law theory, which was linked to the essence of being. However, natural law theory can only be useful under conditions where a certain degree of homogeneous understanding of the essence of being is secured. When different worldviews collide, natural law theory finds it difficult to escape the fate of constantly having to abandon its own content in order to maintain its universal applicability. The modern legal theorist Kant sought to overcome these limitations of natural law theory by focusing on the moral law a priori inherent in human practical reason. He aimed to break through the crisis facing natural law theory by redefining the relationship between law and goodness.
In his Critique of Practical Reason, Kant understands human freedom as personal autonomy and the responsibility that follows from it, presenting the categorical imperative as the moral law that governs ethical action. The moral law appears in the form of a command because human natural inclinations do not always aim at the good. Therefore, the moral law is a norm that practical reason imposes on itself coercively according to the ideal of the good, an absolute command demanding unconditional obedience. However, the categorical imperative, as a representation of pure form, is independent of any object, place, or situation; it contains no content directing a specific action. The command merely unconditionally presents the formal law that action must follow. In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant declares the command “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” as the fundamental principle of practical reason.
Deleuze finds within Kant’s argument a project that overturns the traditional notion that law revolves around the good, instead making the good revolve around law. According to Kant’s project, law is no longer defined by the good; rather, law itself defines the good from its own standpoint. As the law of practical reason, law justifies itself under the pretext of being the universal form that goodness must possess to impose duty. According to Deleuze’s analysis, the core logic driving Kant’s project lies in elevating the categorical imperative as the sole, universal, and unconditional law, and defining obedience to it as goodness itself.
In other words, it is not that obedience to the law is demanded to realize the good, but rather that obedience to the law itself is regarded as the good. Kant’s project, which inverted the relationship between law and the good in the history of modern legal theory, marked a new epoch. Nevertheless, it is difficult to deny that a particular form of violence lies latent beneath it.
As mentioned earlier, the categorical imperative is purely formal and contains no concrete content within itself. Therefore, the categorical imperative can only be concretely grasped within a specific situation. It is precisely at this point that Deleuze raises the issue of the actual implementation of law, citing Kafka’s novels as an example. In Kafka’s “The Penal Colony,” a penal machine appears where the condemned person is punished without knowing their crime. Punishment is carried out by tattooing the charge onto the person’s body with needles. This implies that humans only concretely learn the law at the very moment they violate it and receive punishment.
Thus, if the execution of law is understood as a process of judgment and enforcement, Kant’s project inevitably risks producing a “depressive consciousness of law.” Since obedience to the categorical imperative is good in itself, the imperative imposes an unconditional demand on humans to possess a good will. However, the categorical imperative cannot be concretely recognized unless it is violated. For this reason, within Kant’s system, the categorical imperative functions as a coercive structure that incessantly demands humans prove the existence of a good will, causing them to suffer from guilt within this compulsion. The stricter the demand for obedience to the categorical imperative is followed, the more this guilt intensifies.
As a modern legal theorist, Kant demands that humans unconditionally obey the law commanded by practical reason within themselves. Yet, according to Deleuze, Kant’s project is a process that increases human guilt through absolute obedience to the law, while simultaneously undermining personal autonomy—the very foundation of human freedom. Unless the execution of law is understood in another way, the only way to escape this melancholic consciousness of law is ultimately to reject Kant’s project. Perhaps humanity must now dethrone law from the sovereign’s seat and return it to the periphery of the good, while placing the good on the sovereign’s throne to govern law. This transformation constitutes a readjustment of the classical relationship between law and the good, and will become a crucial task for humanity to reaffirm its own freedom and responsibility.
