Kant’s noir period

Michael A.:

“While I would probably want to read [the noir period of] someone like Deleuze (imagine a
break in his affirmative attitude!) I think we might have something
close to a noir period in Kant. As is well known, Kant began as a
Wolffian and an optimist before the birth of critical philosophy. But
it seems like there might be something approaching a noir period in
between his Wolffianism and Critique. I’ve been reading the early Kant
lately, and his comogony is pretty dark stuff, even if the ultimate
conclusion is “God does what’s best.” In his General History of Nature
and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des
Himmels) (1755), he’ll say that the human beings relationship to the
cosmos is like that of a bug to us, and that there is no remorse when
a bug is squashed. The universe is just this drive for order from
chaos and if God decides to wipe us out in this infinite ordering then
so be it, etc. It’s almost Lovecraftian in the anti-humanist tone,
that ultimately, reason doesn’t prevail, that really the human being
is small and weak and our survival is entirely out of our hands. God
doesn’t appear in this book as a personal being, but a force for
perfection, and perhaps we are (too) imperfect. It’s very odd to read,
and being someone who has never really liked Kant (the Kant of the
three Critiques that everyone reads), it’s also strangely refreshing.”