Kant's 'Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim': A Critical Guide

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KANT’S IDEA FOR A UNIVERSAL HISTORY WITH A COSMOPOLITAN AIM

Lively current debates about narratives of historical progress, the conditions for international justice, and the implications of globalization have prompted a renewed interest in Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. The essays in this volume, written by distinguished contributors, discuss the questions that are at the core of Kant’s investigations. Does the study of history convey any philosophical insight? Can it provide political guidance? How are we to understand the destructive and bloody upheavals that constitute so much of human experience? What connections, if any, can be traced between politics, economics, and morality? What is the relation between the rule of law in the nation state and the advancement of a cosmopolitan political order? These questions and others are examined and discussed in a book that will be of interest to philosophers, social and political theorists, and intellectual and cultural historians. ame´ lie oksenberg rorty is Lecturer in Social Medicine, Harvard University and Visiting Professor in Philosophy, Boston University. james schmidt is Professor of History and Political Science at Boston University.

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Volumes published in the series thus far: Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spirit e di t e d b y d ea n m oy ar and mi c h ae l q u ant e

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Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim e d i t e d b y a m e´ lie ok se nbe rg r o rt y an d jam es sc h mid t

KANT’S

Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim A Critical Guide edited by

AMÉLIE OKSENBERG RORTY AND

JAMES SCHMIDT

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521874632 © Cambridge University Press 2009 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published in print format 2009

ISBN-13

978-0-511-53990-9

eBook (EBL)

ISBN-13

978-0-521-87463-2

hardback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of contributors List of abbreviations

page vii x

Introduction: history as philosophy AMÉLIE OKSENBERG RORTY AND JAMES SCHMIDT

1

Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim IMMANUEL KANT (TRANSLATED BY ALLEN WOOD)

9

1 Teleology and history in Kant: the critical foundations of Kant’s philosophy of history HENRY E. ALLISON 2 The purposive development of human capacities KARL AMERIKS

3 Reason as a species characteristic

46 68

MANFRED KUEHN

4 Good out of evil: Kant and the idea of unsocial sociability J. B. SCHNEEWIND 5 Kant’s Fourth Proposition: the unsociable sociability of human nature ALLEN WOOD

6

24

The crooked timber of mankind

94

112 129

PAUL GUYER

7 A habitat for humanity

150

BARBARA HERMAN

8 Kant’s changing cosmopolitanism PAULINE KLEINGELD

v

171

Contents

vi 9 The hidden plan of nature ECKART FÖRSTER

10 Providence as progress: Kant’s variations on a tale of origins GENEVIEVE LLOYD

11

Norms, facts, and the philosophy of history TERRY PINKARD

12

Philosophy helps history

187 200 216

RÜDIGER BITTNER

231

Bibliography Index of names and works

250 256

Contributors

henry allison is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Davis. His books include Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (1983), Kant’s Theory of Freedom (1990), Idealism and Freedom: Essays in Kant’s Theoretical and Practical Philosophy (1996), and Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (2001). karl ameriks is the McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. His publications include Kant’s Theory of Mind (1982; 2nd edn., 2000), Kant and the Fate of Autonomy (2000), Interpreting Kant’s Critiques (2003) and Kant and the Historical Turn (2006). He is co-editor of The Modern Subject (1995) and editor of The Cambridge Companion to German Idealism (2000). ru¨ diger bittner is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bielefeld. He is the author of What Reason Demands (1989) and Doing Things for Reasons (2001). He is the editor of Nietzsche’s Writings from the Late Notebooks (2003). eckart fo¨ rster is Professor of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the Humboldt University in Berlin. He is the author of Kant’s Transcendental Deductions: The Three ‘Critiques’ and the ‘Opus Postumum’ (1989) and Final Synthesis (2000). paul guyer is Murray Professor in the Humanities at the University of Pennsylvania. He is the author of Kant and the Claims of Taste (1979), Kant and the Claims of Knowledge (1987), Kant and the Experience of Freedom (1993), Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness (2000), Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom (2005), and Values of Beauty: Historical Essays in Aesthetics (2005). Along with Allen Wood, he serves as General Editor of the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant. vii

viii

List of contributors

barbara herman is Professor of Philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Practice of Moral Judgment (1993) and Moral Literacy (2007), and the editor of John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy (2000). pauline kleingeld is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Leiden. She is the author of Fortschritt und Vernunft: Zur Geschichtsphilosophie Kants (1995) and the editor of Immanuel Kant, ‘Toward Perpetual Peace’ and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, and History (2006). manfred kuehn is Professor of Philosophy at Boston University and is the author of Scottish Common Sense in Germany (1988) and Immanuel Kant: A Biography (2001). genevieve lloyd is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the University of New South Wales and is the author of The Man of Reason (1984), Being in Time: Selves and Narrators (1993), Part of Nature: Self-Knowledge in Spinoza’s Ethics (1994), and Spinoza and The Ethics (1996), and the editor of Feminism and the History of Philosophy (2002). terry pinkard is Professor of Philosophy at Georgetown University. He is the author of Hegel’s Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (1994), Hegel: A Biography (2000), and German Philosophy 1760–1860: The Legacy of Idealism (2002). ame´ lie oksenberg rorty is the author of Mind in Action (1991) and numerous essays on Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume. She has also edited Essays on Aristotle’s Ethics (1980), Essays on Descartes’ Meditations (1986), Essays on Aristotle’s Poetics (1992), Essays on Aristotle’s Rhetoric (1966), Philosophers on Education: Historical Perspectives (2000), and The Many Faces of Philosophy (2003). j. b. schneewind is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Johns Hopkins University. He is the author of Sidgwick’s Ethics and Victorian Moral Philosophy (1977), Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant (1990), and The Invention of Autonomy (1998). james schmidt is Professor of History and Political Science at Boston University. He is the author of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: Between Phenomenology and Structuralism (1985), and the editor of What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-Century Questions (1996) and Theodor Adorno (2007).

List of contributors

ix

allen wood is Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. He is the author of Hegel’s Ethical Thought (1990), Kant’s Ethical Thought (1999), Kant (2004), and Unsettling Obligations: Essays on Reason, Reality and the Ethics of Belief (2002). Along with Paul Guyer, he serves as General Editor of the Cambridge University Press edition of the works of Immanuel Kant.

Abbreviations

Kant’s works will be cited in the body of the text according to the volume and page number in Immanuel Kants Schriften, Ausgabe der königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: W. de Gruyter, 1902– ), abbreviated in the list below as “Ak”. The following abbreviations are used to refer to specific works by Kant. EF G Idea KpV KrV

KU Lec Eth MA MS R

Zum ewigen Frieden: Ein philosophischer Entwurf (1795), Ak 8 Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Project Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), Ak 4 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht (1784), Ak 8 Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), Ak 5 Critique of Practical Reason Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781, 1787). Critique of Pure Reason References to this work follow the convention of citing the pages of the first (“A”) and second (“B”) editions. Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), Ak 5 Critique of the Power of Judgment Lectures on Ethics Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (1786), Ak 8 Conjectural Beginning of Human History Metaphysik der Sitten (1797–8), Ak 6 Metaphysics of Morals Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft (1793–4), Ak 6 Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason x

List of abbreviations Ref RH

T&P

VA

xi

Reflexionen, Ak 14–23. References here are to the number of the Reflection and then to the volume and page in the Akademie edition. Recensionen von J. G. Herders Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit, Teil 1–2, Ak 8 Reviews of J. G. Herder’s Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity, Parts 1–2 Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein taught aber nicht für die Praxis, Ak 8 On the Common Saying: That May be True in Theory, But it is of No Use in Practice Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798), Ak 7 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint

Introduction: history as philosophy Amélie Oksenberg Rorty and James Schmidt

Lively current debates about narratives of historical progress, the conditions for international justice, and the implications of globalization have prompted a renewed interest in Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. The nine Propositions that make up this brief essay raise a set of questions that continue to preoccupy philosophers, historians, and social theorists. Does history, whether construed as a chronicle or as a set of explanatory narratives, indicate anything that can be characterized as meaningful? If so, what is its structure, its rationale and direction? How are we to understand the destructive and bloody upheavals that constitute so much of human experience? What connections, if any, can be traced between politics, economics, and morality? What is the relation between the rule of law in the nation state and the advancement of a cosmopolitan political order? Can the development of individual rationality be compatible with the need for the constraints of political order? Does the study of history convey any philosophical insight? Can it provide political guidance? Kant’s nine propositions subtly and implicitly express – and recast – some of the philosophical sources of his views: the voices of the Stoics and Augustine are heard clearly; and although Kant had reservations about Grotius, Hobbes, Leibniz, and Rousseau, their contributions, along with those of Mandeville and Adam Smith, are manifest in the Idea for a Universal History. It is as if this essay were a crucible in which Kant sought to synthesize the purified and transformed views of his predecessors, condensing them into a comprehensive political and cultural history with a philosophical moral. It is itself an instance of the integration of history and philosophical reflection that it heralds. From the Stoics, Kant took the view that nature does nothing in vain, that its regularities are not accidental, but rather reveal a functional organization in which each part plays a necessary role, and that the exercise of rationality constitutes human freedom and finds its highest achievement in political cosmopolitanism. Kant followed Augustine in seeing a providential significance 1

2

Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim

in history; but Augustine distinguished the divine ordinance of the City of God from the temporal human city, while Kant focused on the way that human strivings – often antagonistically and inadvertently – bring about a realization of chiliastic hopes within human history. Like Grotius, he held that there are universal natural laws that, in conformity with human rationality, govern political and moral right among nations. While he agreed with Grotius that these laws are discovered rationally rather than empirically, Kant did not follow Grotius in resting the necessity and legitimacy of rational laws on divine authority. Nor did he share Grotius’ assumption that human beings were naturally sociable; indeed, the species’ fundamental unsociability looms large in his argument. Like Hobbes, Kant thought that peace and political organization arise from the rational recognition that competition and conflicts endanger the natural human inclination to self-protection. But Hobbes posited rationality as a precondition for the possibility of political organization, while Kant thought that rational civic organization emerged gradually from the recognition that antagonism threatens the natural instinct of self-preservation. Along with Mandeville, Leibniz and Adam Smith, Kant maintained that there is a hidden pattern, a law that underlies – and harmonizes – the apparently destructive narrowly self-interested activities of mankind; the hidden hand of nature is manifest to those who know how to read history and economics aright. Yet in contrast to Mandeville, he did not believe that public virtue emerges from private vices: it is the product of rationally constructed political institutions. Like Smith, Kant thought that morality requires self-legislating reflective activity; but where Smith saw the origins of such activity in the development of moral sentiments, Kant located it in the activity of the rational will. Kant shared Rousseau’s distrust in the ability of social affections to provide a reliable source of rational morality. And, like Rousseau, he followed the Stoics in constructing a mythical story – a kind of natural history – of stages in the emergence of rational self-legislation. He shared Rousseau’s conviction that the achievement of constitutional political organization is key to a just civil society and that genuine individual and political freedom consists in autonomy rather than in unrestricted inclination. But while Rousseau assumed that such harmony is possible only in small, isolated polities, Kant argued that only a cosmopolitan political organization can ensure the peace required to achieve such autonomy. Although he agreed with Leibniz that a providential order underlies the apparent random chaos of nature, he dissented from Leibniz’s view that cosmic harmony expresses divine will. Moreover, while Leibniz’s divinely ordained harmony is atemporal, Kant thought that cosmopolitan harmony could be attained by free human activity

Introduction: history as philosophy

3

through a long and antagonistic struggle: what Leibniz argued was an implication of metaphysics becomes, for Kant, the product of history. Kant’s successors echoed many of his essay’s central insights, but – once detached from broader argument in which he had situated them – their significance was radically modified. Hegel also saw history as a narrative of the antagonistic but providentially progressive emergence of a rational and self-legislative world order, but he had reservations about what he saw as Kant’s utopian hopes for a cosmopolitan world order. Marx shared Kant’s conviction that history is driven forward by paradoxes and contradictions, but the concern with rights that lay at the heart of Kant’s account of civil society played no role in his theory of society. Darwin and his followers would, like Kant, insist that the evolution of species is not the work of individuals (and, indeed, does not necessarily redound to their benefit), but they rejected his attempt to find signs of providence in the workings of nature. In the end, the precipitate from Kant’s synthesized compound would prove as diverse as the elements that composed it. If we take Kant at his word, the immediate impetus for his audacious synthesis was modest enough. A note by his colleague Johann Schultz in the Gothaische Gehlehrte Zeitung had reported that Kant’s “favorite idea” was the notion that “the final end of humankind is the attainment of the most perfect political constitution” and that Kant hoped a “philosophical historiographer” might undertake a history that would show “how far humanity has approached this final end in different ages, or how far removed it has been from it, and what is still to be done for its attainment.” As Kant explained in the prefatory footnote, he wrote the article out of a concern that, in the absence of the “elucidation” that he now sought to provide, Schultz’s summary “would have no meaning” (8:15). Readers today typically encounter Idea for a Universal History in anthologies of Kant’s writings on history or political thought. However, when it debuted in the Berlinische Monatsschrift of November 1784 it appeared in markedly different company. Edited by Johann Erich Biester (librarian of the Royal Library in Berlin and secretary to Baron Karl Abraham von Zedlitz, a champion of Kant’s work who served as Frederick II’s minister for ecclesiastical and educational affairs) and Friedrich Gedike (a prominant educational reformer and Gymnasium director), the journal had been launched the previous December with the hope that it might attract writers who shared a “zeal for truth, love for the dissemination of useful enlightenment and for the banishment of pernicious error.”1 Idea for a Universal 1

Editors’ foreword to Berlinische Monatsschrift I (1783), pp. vii–viii.

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History was the lead article – a testimony, perhaps, both to Kant’s growing reputation and to Biester and Gedike’s sense of the importance of his contribution for the broader aim of their fledgling journal – in an issue that included a series of reports (assembled by Biester) documenting the religious fanaticism, medical quackery, and popular prejudices that still held sway over the citizenry of Berlin, and the latest installment of an account of the social and cultural life of Berlin and its environs, allegedly written by an anonymous foreigner (who was not shy in pointing out the ways in which Berliners remained less than enlightened) but, in fact, the work of Biester’s co-editor Gedike.2 While the contributions from Gedike and Biester reflected the journal’s interest in exposing – and, through this exposure, attempting to overcome – impediments to the enlightenment of the citizenry, a third item in the issue demonstrated how much had already been accomplished. The article in question was a reprint of a sermon from the previous century in which an earnest, but obviously unenlightened, clergyman sought to find theological significance in the recent birth of a pair of monstrously deformed piglets. As J. G. Selden observed in his prefatory note, however much the population of Berlin was still at the mercy of quacks and religious enthusiasts, one could take some consolation that its clergy had become somewhat more enlightened.3 Idea for a Universal History was the first of sixteen articles – addressing topics which ranged across the fields of ethics, history, anthropology, natural philosophy, and politics – that Kant contributed to the Berlinische Monatsschrift over the next decade and a half.4 It was here that he published such well-known works as his answer to the question “What is Enlightenment?” (December 1784), “What is Orientation in Thinking?” (October 1786) – his intervention in the so-called “Pantheism Controversy,” the first chapter of Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1792), and his extended account of the relationship between theory and practice (September 1793), along with less familiar contributions to the fields of natural history (essays on lunar volcanoes and the alleged influence of the moon on the weather), theology (among them, his critique of Leibniz’s Theodicy), anthropology (an essay on the concept of race), and law (a discussion of book piracy). In the pages of the Berlinische 2 3 4

[Biester], “Anekdoten,” Berlinische Monatsschrift II (1784), pp. 428–46, and [Gedike], “Ueber Berlin. Von einem Fremden,” Berlinische Monatsschrift II (1784), pp. 447–70. J. G. Selden, “Auszug aus einer märkischen Bußpredigt wegen zwei monströser Ferkel,” Berlinische Monatsschrift II (1784), pp. 471–9. For Kant’s relationship with the journal, see Peter Weber, “Kant und die Berlinische Monatsschrift,” in Dina Edmundts, ed., Immanuel Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig Riechert Verlag, 2000), pp. 60–79.


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Monatsschrift, Kant cut a rather different figure from that of the author of the three critiques: his general stance is more casual, the positions he takes up more frankly experimental, and his style considerably more accessible. He appears in a role that today would be described as that of “public intellectual”; in the terminology of his own day, it was here that he played his part as a member of the cosmopolitan community of readers and writers who made up the “Republic of Letters.” In these essays, Kant made the cause of the Berlinische Monatsschrift his own. Toward the close of his response to an article in the journal that, in passing, requested that those who had argued for the “enlightenment” of the citizenry first answer the question “What is enlightenment?,” Kant pondered the question of whether his was an “enlightened age.” He offered the cautious, but hopeful, response, “No, but it is an age of enlightenment” (8:40). Idea for a Universal History shared the same hope that the barriers that prevented the spread of enlightenment were in the process of being dismantled. Its eighth proposition held out the prospect that the removal of restrictions on the freedom of citizens, when coupled with a “general freedom of religion,” would result in an “enlightenment” that would “raise humankind even out of the selfish aims of aggrandizement on the part of its rulers …” and “ascend bit by bit up to the thrones and have its influence even on their principles of government” (8:27). In May 1793, the Berlin book merchant Carl Spener suggested to Kant that he produce an expanded version of the essay, applying its principles to the tumultous events that had taken place in France. Kant declined, commenting that when “the powerful of this world are in a drunken fit” it would be advisable for “a pygmy who values his skin to stay out of their fight” (11:417). He did, however, return to the concerns of the essay four months later in his contribution to the Berlinische Monatsschrift “On the Common Saying: That May be True in Theory, But it is of No Use in Practice,” an article whose final section considered the relationship of theory and practice “from a universally philanthropic, that is, cosmopolitan point of view” (8:307–9). The arguments first broached in Idea for a Universal History were given a more thorough reconsideration in Toward Perpetual Peace (1795) and in the sections of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797) devoted to “the right of nations” and to “cosmopolitan right” (6:343–55). Kant’s essay has never lacked admirers. A chance encounter with it was enough to convince the poet Friedrich Schiller that he needed to engage in a more extensive reading of Kant’s work. In its pages Ernst Cassirer found the foundation for “the new conception of the essence of the state and of history that Kant had developed” and Jürgen Habermas was struck by the

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“system-exploding” implications of an intertwining of philosophy and history in which “the philosophy of history itself was to become a part of the enlightenment diagnosed as history’s course.”5 But Idea for a Universal History has tended to be overshadowed by Towards Perpetual Peace, a work that was both more circumscribed in its theoretical apparatus and more focused in its political proposals. Friedrich Meinecke, for instance, paid little attention to the Idea for a Universal History in his classic study Cosmopolitanism and the National State and discussions of Kant’s work by international relations theorists have tended to focus chiefly on Towards Perpetual Peace.6 The Idea has also long been available to English readers. It was among the first of Kant’s works to be translated, appearing alongside Kant’s response to the question “What is enlightenment?,” his discussion of the relation between theory and practice, Towards Perpetual Peace, the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and a number of his other contributions to the Berlinische Monatsschrift in John Richardson’s two-volume collection of Kant’s Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various Philosophical Subjects (1798–9).7 A second translation, by Thomas De Quincy, appeared in the London Magazine of October 1824 and, five years later, the Lake Poet Robert Southey interpolated De Quincy’s translation of the propositions (but not Kant’s comments on them) into Thomas More, or Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society.8 It was rendered into English once again at the close of the nineteenth century in William Hastie’s collection Kant’s Principles of Politics (1891).9 The emigré political scientist Carl Friedrich provided a partial translation of the essay in his 1949 compendium of Kant’s philosophical and political writings.10 But Friedrich was chiefly interested in 5

6

7 8

9 10

Ernst Cassirer, Kant’s Life and Thought (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1981), p. 223. Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), p. 116. Friedrich Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and the National State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970). The focus of Towards Perpetual Peace among theorists of international relations stems, in large part, from its framing of what has come to be known as the law of the “liberal peace” – the thesis that republics will be less inclined to make war on one another. For a recent discussion of the literature, see Huntley, “Kant’s Third Image: Systematic Sources of the Liberal Peace,” International Studies Quarterly 40, 1 (1996). Emanuel Kant, Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various Philosophical Subjects (London: William Richardson, 1798). Kant, “Ideal for a Universal History on a Cosmo-Political Plan,” London Magazine 10 (October 1824), pp. 385–93 (reprinted in The Works of Thomas De Quincey, ed. Frederick Burwick [London: Pickering and Chatto, 2000], 4:204–16); Robert Southey, Sir Thomas More, Or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society (London: John Murray, 1829), p. 408. Montesinos, More’s partner in dialogue, praises Kant’s work as an exception to “the trash and tinsel and insolent flippancy” that typically appears in literary magazines. William Hastie, ed., Kant’s Principles of Politics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1891), pp. 1–29. Carl Joachim Friedrich, The Philosophy of Kant (New York: Random House, 1949), pp. 116–31.


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Towards Perpetual Peace, in part because of the chronological accident of the sesquicentennial of its publication’s falling in the same year as the founding of the United Nations.11 A more serious engagement with Idea for a Universal History had to await Emil Fackenheim’s discussion of Kant’s writings on history in Kant-Studien and Lewis White Beck’s influential collection of Kant’s writings on history.12 The motifs of Kant’s “Idea” continue to echo in the problems and issues central to contemporary philosophy and the philosophy of history. Historians and philosophers alike remain concerned about whether it is appropriate to speak of grand narratives of historical ‘progress’ or ‘development.’ Political and economic theorists argue about the relation between nationalism, global economics and cosmopolitanism. Social psychologists attempt to understand the sources of – and the constraints on – human aggression, the “unsocial sociability” of mankind. Public intellectuals wonder whether philosophical history – as it goes beyond local or national narratives – can play a role in ensuring civil justice. Our authors have contributed to the further interpretation and understanding of the complexity and the audacity of Kant’s synthesis. Allison explores the role that assumptions about teleology play in the essay, while Ameriks examines the way in which Kant applied the concept of purposiveness to his discussion of the development of human capacities. Kuehn focuses on the differing assumptions about human progress that distinguish Kant’s arguments from those of his contemporaries. Schneewind and Wood shed new light on what was perhaps the most novel concept in Kant’s arsenal: the notion that the progress of the human species is the product of its “unsociable sociability.” Taking his point of departure from Kant’s famous image of the human race as a “crooked timber” that could never be made “entirely straight,” Guyer traces the evolution of Kant’s reflections on justice. Herman analyzes the emergence and aims of civil society while Kleingeld explores the transformation of Kant’s conception of cosmopolitanism. Förster analyzes the way in which Idea for a Universal History bound together the concepts of history, nature, and the development of the species, while Lloyd explores his debts to – and departures from – earlier accounts of 11

12

This coincidence was the point of departure for Carl J. Friedrich, “The Ideology of the United Nations Charter and the Philosophy of Peace of Immanuel Kant 1795–1945,” Journal of Politics 9, 1 (1947). Emil Fackenheim, “Kant’s Concept of History,” Kant-Studien 48 (1956–7). Lewis White Beck, ed., Kant on History (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), pp. 11–26. Beck’s collection was quickly followed by Hans Reiss, ed., Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), and Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, translated by Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1983).

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the role of providence in history. Pinkard reflects on Kant’s treatment (crucial for later German idealists) of the relationship between philosophical norms and historical facts and Bittner offers some reservations about the role that Kant assigned to philosophy in the history that he constructed. These essays, we hope, will serve to remind readers of the richness and subtlety of Kant’s essay and to serve as a provocation for further engagement with its far-reaching implications. The editors want to thank Allen Wood for permission to reprint his translation of Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, from the Cambridge Edition of Kant’s Writings on Anthropology, History and Education, ed. Guenther Zoeller and Robert B. Louden (Cambridge University Press, 2007), and Karen Carroll for her generous editorial help. Amélie Rorty is also grateful to the gemütlich hospitality of the National Humanities Center and its grant of the William C. and Ida Friday Fellowship. James Schmidt thanks the Boston University Humanities Foundation for its support.

Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim

translator’s introduction This essay appears to have been occasioned by a passing remark made by Kant’s colleague and follower Johann Schultz in a 1784 article in the Gotha Learned Papers.1 In order to make good on Schultz’s remark, Kant wrote this article, which appeared in the Berlinische Monatsschrift late in the same year. This is the first, and despite its brevity the most fully worked out, statement of his philosophy of history. The “idea” referred to in the title is a theoretical idea, that is, an a priori conception of a theoretical program to maximize the comprehensibility of human history. It anticipates much of the theory of the use of natural teleology in the theoretical understanding of nature that Kant was to develop over five years later in the Critique of the Power of Judgment. But this theoretical idea also stands in a close and complex relationship to Kant’s moral and political philosophy, and to his conception of practical faith in divine providence. Especially prominent in it is the first statement of Kant’s famous conception of a federation of states united to secure perpetual peace between nations. The Idea for a Universal History also contained several propositions that were soon to be disputed by J. G. Herder in his Ideas for the Philosophy of the History of Humanity, leading to Kant’s reply in his reviews of that work (1785) and in the Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786). Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht was first published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift IV (November 11, 1784). The translation is based on the presentation of the work in AA 2:15–31 and was undertaken by Allen W. Wood. 1

The passage referred to is the following: “A favorite idea of Professor Kant is that the final end of humankind is the attainment of the most perfect political constitution, and he wishes that a philosophical historiographer would undertake to provide us in this respect with a history of humanity, and to show how far humanity has approached this final end in different ages, or how far removed it has been from it, and what is still to be done for its attainment” (AA 8:468).

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Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim*

[8:17] Whatever concept one may form of the freedom of the will with a metaphysical aim, its appearances, the human actions, are determined just as much as every other natural occurrence in accordance with universal laws of nature. History, which concerns itself with the narration of these appearances, however deeply concealed their causes may be, nevertheless allows us to hope from it that if it considers the play of the freedom of the human will in the large, it can discover within it a regular course; and that in this way what meets the eye in individual subjects as confused and irregular yet in the whole species can be recognized as a steadily progressing though slow development of its original predispositions. Thus marriages, the births that come from them and deaths, since the free will of human beings has so great an influence on them, seem to be subject to no rule in accordance with which their number could be determined in advance through calculation; and yet the annual tables of them in large countries prove that they happen just as much in accordance with constant laws of nature, as weather conditions which are so inconstant, whose individual occurrence one cannot previously determine, but which on the whole do not fail to sustain the growth of plants, the course of streams, and other natural arrangements in a uniform uninterrupted course. Individual human beings and even whole nations2 think little about the fact, since while each pursues its own aim in its own way3 and one often contrary to another, they are proceeding unnoticed, as by a guiding thread, according to an aim of nature, which is unknown to them, and are laboring at its promotion, although even if it were to become known to them it would matter little to them. Since human beings in their endeavors do not behave merely instinctively, like animals, and yet also not on the whole like rational citizens of the world in accordance with an agreed upon plan, no history of them in conformity to a plan (as e.g. of bees or of beavers) appears to be possible. One cannot resist feeling a certain indignation when one sees their doings and refrainings on the great stage of the world and finds that [8:18] despite the wisdom appearing now and then in individual cases, everything in the large is woven together out of folly, childish vanity, often also out of childish * A passage among the short notices in the twelfth issue of the Gotha Learned Papers this year, no doubt taken from my conversation with a passing scholar, elicits from me this elucidation, without which that passage would have no comprehensible meaning. 2 Völker 3 nach seinem Sinne


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malice and the rage to destruction; so that in the end one does not know what concept to make of our species, with its smug imaginings about its excellences. Here there is no other way out for the philosopher – who, regarding human beings and their play in the large, cannot at all presuppose any rational aim of theirs – than to try whether he can discover an aim of nature in this nonsensical course of things human; from which aim a history in accordance with a determinate plan of nature might nevertheless be possible even of creatures who do not behave in accordance with their own plan. – We want to see if we will succeed in finding a guideline for such a history, and want then to leave it to nature to produce the man who is in a position to compose that history accordingly. Thus it did produce a Kepler, who subjected the eccentric paths of the planets in an unexpected way to determinate laws, and a Newton, who explained these laws from a universal natural cause. first proposition All natural predispositions of a creature are determined sometime to develop themselves completely and purposively.4 With all animals, external as well as internal or analytical observation confirms this. An organ that is not to be used, an arrangement that does not attain to its end, is a contradiction in the teleological doctrine of nature. For if we depart from that principle, then we no longer have a lawful nature but a purposelessly playing nature; and desolate chance5 takes the place of the guideline of reason. second proposition In the human being (as the only rational creature on earth), those predispositions whose goal is the use of his reason were to develop completely only in the species, but not in the individual. Reason in a creature is a faculty of extending the rules and aims of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct, and it knows [8:19] no boundaries to its projects. But reason itself does not operate instinctively, but rather needs attempts, practice and instruction in order gradually to progress from one stage of insight to another. Hence every human being would have to live exceedingly long in order to learn how he is to make a complete use of all his natural predispositions; or if nature has only set the term of his life as short (as has actually happened), then nature perhaps needs an immense series of generations, each of which 4

zweckmäßig, which could also be translated ‘suitably’

5

das trostlose Ungefähr

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transmits its enlightenment to the next, in order finally to propel its germs in our species to that stage of development which is completely suited to its aim. And this point in time must be, at least in the idea of the human being, the goal of his endeavors, because otherwise the natural predispositions would have to be regarded for the most part as in vain and purposeless; which would remove all practical principles and thereby bring nature, whose wisdom in the judgment of all remaining arrangements must otherwise serve as a principle, under the suspicion that in the case of the human being alone it is a childish play. third proposition Nature has willed that the human being should produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical arrangement of his animal existence entirely out of himself, and participate in no other happiness or perfection than that which he has procured for himself free from instinct through his own reason. For nature does nothing superfluous and is not wasteful in the use of means to its ends. Since it gave the human being reason, and the freedom of the will grounded on it, that was already a clear indication of its aim in regard to that endowment. For he should now not be guided by instinct or cared for and instructed by innate knowledge; rather he should produce everything out of himself. The invention of his means of nourishment, his clothing, his external safety and defense (for which nature gave him neither the horns of the steer, nor the claws of the lion, nor the teeth of the dog, but merely his hands), all gratification that can make life agreeable, all his insight and prudence and even the generosity of his will, should be entirely his own work. In this it seems to have pleased nature to exercise its greatest frugality, and to have measured out its animal [8:20] endowment so tightly, so precisely to the highest need of an initial existence, as though it willed that the human being, if he were someday to have labored himself from the greatest crudity to the height of the greatest skillfulness, the inner perfection of his mode of thought, and (as far as is possible on earth) thereby to happiness, may have only his own merit alone to thank for it; just as if it had been more concerned about his rational self-esteem than about his wellbeing. For in this course of human affairs there is a whole host of hardships that await the human being. But it appears to have been no aim at all of nature that he should live well; but only that he should labor and work himself up so far that he might make himself worthy of well-being through his conduct of life. Yet here it remains strange that the older generations appear to carry on their toilsome concerns only for the sake of the later ones,


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namely so as to prepare the steps on which the latter may bring up higher the edifice which was nature’s aim, and that only the latest should have the good fortune to dwell in the building on which a long series of their ancestors (to be sure, without this being their aim) had labored, without being able to partake of the good fortune which they prepared. But as puzzling as this may be, it is yet necessary once one assumes that a species of animals should have reason, and, as a class of rational beings who all die, while the species is immortal, should nevertheless attain to completeness in the development of their predispositions. fourth proposition The means nature employs in order to bring about the development of all their predispositions is their antagonism in society, insofar as the latter is in the end the cause of their lawful order. Here I understand by ‘antagonism’ the unsociable sociability of human beings,a i.e. their propensity to enter into society, which, however, is combined with a thoroughgoing resistance that constantly threatens to break up this society. The predisposition for this obviously lies in human nature. The human being has an inclination to become socialized, since in such a condition he feels himself as more a human being, i.e. [8:21] feels the development of his natural predispositions. But he also has a great propensity to individualize (isolate) himself, because he simultaneously encounters in himself the unsociable property of willing to direct everything so as to get his own way,6 and hence expects resistance everywhere because he knows of himself that he is inclined on his side toward resistance against others. Now it is this resistance that awakens all the powers of the human being, brings him to overcome his propensity to indolence, and, driven by ambition, tyranny and greed, to obtain for himself a rank among his fellows, whom he cannot stand, but also cannot leave alone. Thus happen the first true steps from crudity toward culture, which really consists in the social worth of the human being; thus all talents come bit by bit to be developed, taste is formed,7 and even, through progress in enlightenment, a beginning is made toward the foundation of a mode of thought which can with time transform the rude natural a

6

“Il n’est rien si dissociable et sociable que l’homme: l’un par son vice, l’autre par sa nature.” Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, “De la solitude,” Essais, edited by André Tournon. Paris: Imprimerie nationale Éditions, 1998, 1:388. “There is nothing more unsociable than Man, and nothing more sociable: unsociable by his vice, sociable by his nature,” “Of Solitude,” The Complete Essays, translated by M. A. Screech. London: Penguin Books, 1991, p. 267. nach seinem Sinne 7 gebildet

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predisposition to make moral distinctions into determinate practical principles and hence transform a pathologically compelled agreement to form a society finally into a moral whole. Without these qualities of unsociability from which the resistance arises, which are not at all amiable in themselves, qualities that each of us must necessarily encounter in his selfish pretensions, all talents would, in an arcadian pastoral life of perfect concord, contentment and mutual love, remain eternally hidden in their germs; human beings, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would give their existence hardly any greater worth than that of their domesticated beasts; they would not fill the void in creation in regard to their end as rational nature. Thanks be to nature, therefore, for the incompatibility, for the spiteful competitive vanity, for the insatiable desire to possess or even to dominate! For without them all the excellent natural predispositions in humanity would eternally slumber undeveloped. The human being wills concord; but nature knows better what is good for his species: it wills discord. He wills to live comfortably and contentedly; but nature wills that out of sloth and inactive contentment he should throw himself into labor and toils, so as, on the contrary, prudently to find out the means to pull himself again out of the latter. The natural incentives to this, the sources of unsociability and thoroughgoing resistance, from which so many ills arise, which, however, impel human beings to new exertion of their powers and hence to further [8:22] development of their natural predispositions, thus betray the ordering of a wise creator; and not the hand of an evil spirit who might have bungled his splendid undertaking or ruined it in an envious manner. fifth proposition The greatest problem for the human species, to which nature compels him, is the achievement of a civil society universally administering right. Since only in society, and indeed in that society which has the greatest freedom, hence one in which there is a thoroughgoing antagonism of its members and yet the most precise determination and security of the boundaries of this freedom so that the latter can coexist with the freedom of others – since only in it can the highest aim of nature be attained, namely, the development of all the predispositions in humanity, and since nature also wills that humanity by itself should procure this along with all the ends of its vocation: therefore a society in which freedom under external laws can be encountered combined in the greatest possible degree, with irresistible power,8 i.e. a perfectly just civil 8

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constitution, must be the supreme problem of nature for the human species, because only by means of its solution and execution can nature achieve its remaining aims for our species. Human beings, who are otherwise so taken with unconstrained freedom, are compelled by need to enter into this condition of coercion; and indeed by the greatest necessity of all, namely that which human beings who inflict on one another, given that their own inclinations make it so that they can not long subsist next to one another in wild freedom. Yet in such a precinct as civil union is, these same inclinations have afterward their best effect; just as trees in a forest, precisely because each of them seeks to take air and sun from the other, are constrained to look for them above themselves, and thereby achieve a beautiful straight growth; whereas those in freedom and separated from one another, that put forth their branches as they like, grow stunted, crooked and awry. All culture and art that adorn humanity, and the most beautiful social order, are the fruits of unsociability, through which it is necessitated by itself to discipline itself, and so by an art extorted from it, to develop completely the germs of nature. [8:23] sixth proposition This problem is at the same time the most difficult and the latest to be solved by the human species. The difficulty which the mere idea of this problem lays before our eyes is this: the human being is an animal which, when it lives among others of its species, has need of a master. For he certainly misuses his freedom in regard to others of his kind; and although as a rational creature he wishes a law that sets limits to the freedom of all, his selfish animal inclination still misleads him into excepting himself from it where he may. Thus he needs a master, who breaks his stubborn will9 and necessitates him to obey a universally valid will with which everyone can be free. But where will he get this master? Nowhere else but from the human species. But then this master is exactly as much an animal who has need of a master. Try as he may, therefore, there is no seeing how he can procure a supreme power10 for public right that is itself just, whether he seeks it in a single person or in a society of many who are selected for it. For every one of them will always misuse his freedom when he has no one over him to exercise authority over him in accordance with the laws. The highest supreme authority, however, ought to be just in itself 11 and yet a human being. This problem is therefore 9

eigenen Willen

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the most difficult of all; indeed, its perfect solution is even impossible; out of such crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing entirely straight can be fabricated. Only the approximation to this idea is laid upon us by nature.* That it is also the latest to be worked out, follows besides from this: that it requires correct concepts of the nature of a possible constitution, great experience practiced through many courses of life and beyond this a good will that is prepared to accept it; three such items are very difficult ever to find all together, and if it happens, it will be only very late, after many fruitless attempts. [8:24] seventh proposition The problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution is dependent on the problem of a lawful external relation between states and cannot be solved without the latter. What use is it to labor at a lawful civil constitution among individual human beings, i.e. at the ordering of a commonwealth? The same unsociability that necessitated human beings to this is once again the cause of every commonwealth, in its external relation, i.e. as a state in reference to other states, standing in unbound freedom, and consequently of each having to expect from the other precisely the ills that pressured individual human beings and compelled them to enter into a lawful civil condition. Nature has therefore once again used the incompatibility of human beings, even of great societies and state bodies of this kind of creature as a means to seek out in their unavoidable antagonism a condition of tranquility and safety; i.e. through wars, through the overstrained and never ceasing process of armament for them, through the condition of need that due to this finally every state even in the midst of peace must feel internally, toward at first imperfect attempts, but finally after many devastations, reversals and even thoroughgoing exhaustion of their powers, nature drives them to what reason could have told them even without much sad experience: namely, to go beyond a lawless condition of savages and enter into a federation of nations,12 where every state, even the smallest, could expect its security and rights not from its own might, or its own juridical judgment, but only from this great federation

* The role of the human being is thus very artificial. How it is with the inhabitants of other planets and their nature, we do not know; if, however, we discharge well this commission of nature, then we can well flatter ourselves that among our neighbors in the cosmic edifice we may assert no mean rank. Perhaps among them every individual might fully attain his vocation in his lifetime. With us it is otherwise; only the species can hope for this. 12 Völkerbund


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of nations (Foedus Amphictyonum),b from a united might and from the decision in accordance with laws of its united will. As enthusiastic as this idea appears to be, and it has been ridiculed as such in Abbé de St. Pierre or Rousseau (perhaps only because they believed its execution was too near), it is nevertheless the unavoidable outcome of the condition of need into which human beings put one another that states must be compelled to the decision (as difficult as it is for them) to which the savage human being was just as reluctantly compelled, namely, of giving up his brute freedom and seeking tranquility and security in a lawful constitution. – All wars are therefore only so many attempts (not, to be sure, in the aims of human beings, but yet in the [8:25] aim of nature) to bring about new relationships between states, and through destruction or at least dismemberment of all of them to form new bodies, which, however, once again cannot preserve themselves either in themselves or next to one another and hence must suffer new, similar revolutions until finally, partly through the best possible arrangement of their civil constitution internally, partly through a common agreement and legislation externally, a condition is set up, which, resembling a civil commonwealth that can preserve itself like an automaton. Now whether one should expect it from an Epicurean concurrence of efficient causes that states, like little particles of matter, should seek all sorts of formations through their chance collisions, which again are destroyed through new impacts, until finally by chance there succeeds a formation that can preserve itself in its form (a fortunate coincidence that could hardly ever take place!); or whether one should rather assume that nature here follows a regular course, leading our species from the lowest step of animality gradually up to the highest step of humanity, and indeed through the human being’s own art, albeit one extorted from him; or whether one would prefer that from all these effects and counter-effects of human beings nothing at all will result in the large, or at least nothing prudent, that it will remain as it always has been, and that therefore one cannot say ahead of time whether the discord that is so natural to our species will in the end prepare a hell of ills for us in however civilized13 a condition, in that nature will perhaps b

13

The ‘Amphictyony’ (from ‘amphictionies’ = dwellers around) was an ancient Greek association, active between the sixth and fourth centuries bc and formed originally for the protection of certain religious shrines (most prominently, the oracle of Apollo at Delphi). The league met twice annually at Delphi and Thermopylae, and carried on three successful wars in the name of religion between 600 and 346. It did also aim at establishing peace among Greek states, but the last of its so-called ‘sacred wars’, in 339–338, was merely a pretext for Philip to establish Macedonian hegemony over the other Greek states. gesitteten

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annihilate again, through barbaric devastations, this condition and all the previous steps of culture (which cannot be excluded under the government of blind chance, which is in fact the same as lawless freedom, if one does not ascribe secretly to a guiding thread of nature attached to wisdom!): all this leads roughly to the question whether it is indeed rational to assume purposiveness in the arrangement of nature in the parts and yet purposelessness in the whole. Therefore what the purposeless condition of savages did, namely hold back all natural predispositions in our species, but finally through ills into which this condition transported the species, necessitated them to go beyond this condition and enter into a civil constitution, in which all those germs could be developed; [8:26] this the barbaric freedom of already established states also does, namely, that through the application of all powers of the commonwealth to armaments against one another, through the devastations perpetrated by war, even more, however, through the necessity of preserving themselves constantly in readiness for it, the full development of the natural predispositions are restrained in their progress; yet on the contrary, the ills that arise out of this necessitate our species to devise to the in itself salutary resistance of many states to one another arising from their freedom a law of equilibrium and to introduce a united power14 giving emphasis to that law, hence to introduce a cosmopolitan condition of public state security, which is not wholly without danger so that the powers of humanity may not fall asleep, but it is at least not without a principle of equality between its reciprocal effect and counter-effect, so that they may not destroy each other. Before this last step (namely, to the combination of states) is done, thus almost halfway through its formation15, human nature endures the hardest ills under the deceptive appearance of external welfare; and Rousseau was not so wrong when he preferred to it the condition of savages, as long, namely, as one leaves out this last stage to which our species has yet to ascend. We are cultivated in a high degree by art and science. We are civilized, perhaps to the point of being overburdened, by all sorts of social decorum and propriety. But very much is still lacking before we can be held to be already moralized. For the idea of morality still belongs to culture; but the use of this idea, which comes down only to a resemblance of morals in love of honor and in external propriety, constitutes only being civilized. As long, however, as states apply all their powers to their vain and violent aims of expansion and thus ceaselessly constrain the slow endeavor of the inner formation16 of their citizens’ mode of thought, also withdrawing with this aim all support from it, 14

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nothing of this kind is to be expected, because it would require a long inner labor of every commonwealth for the education of its citizens. But everything good that is not grafted onto a morally good disposition, is nothing but mere semblance and glittering misery. In this condition humankind will remain until, in the way I have said, it will labor its way out of the chaotic condition of the present relations between states. [8:27]

eighth proposition One can regard the history of the human species in the large as the completion of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an inwardly and, to this end, also an externally perfect state constitution, as the only condition in which it can fully develop all its predispositions in humanity. This proposition is a consequence of the previous one. One sees that philosophy can also have its chiliasm;17 but one the bringing about of which is promoted by the very idea of it, though only from afar, so that it is anything but enthusiastic. It all depends on whether experience reveals something of such a course as nature’s aim. I say: it reveals a little; for this cycle appears to require so long a time to be completed that the little part of it which humanity has traversed with respect to this aim allows one to determine the shape of its path and the relation of the parts to the whole only as uncertainly as the course taken by our sun together with the entire host of its satellites in the great system of fixed stars can be determined from all the observations of the heavens made hitherto; yet from the general ground of the systematic constitution of the cosmic order and from the little one has observed, one is reliably able to determine enough to infer the actuality of such a cycle. Nevertheless, in regard to the most distant epochs that our species is to encounter, it belongs to human nature not to be indifferent about them, if only they can be expected with certainty. This can happen all the less especially in our case, where it seems that we could, through our own rational contrivance, bring about faster such a joyful point in time for our posterity. For the sake of that, even the faint traces of its approach will be very important for us. Now states are already in such an artificial relation to one another that none of them can retard its internal culture without losing out in might and influence in relation to the others; thus the preservation of this end of nature itself, if not progress in it, is fairly well secured through their aims of ambition. Further, civil freedom cannot very well be infringed without 17

that is, its belief in the millennium (or apocalypse), from the Greek chilios = thousand

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feeling the disadvantage of it in all trades, especially in commerce, and thereby also the diminution of the powers of the state in its external [8: 28] relationships. But this freedom is gradually advancing. If one hinders the citizen who is seeking his welfare in any way he pleases, as long as it can subsist along with the freedom of others, then one restrains the vitality of all enterprise18 and with it, in turn, the powers of the whole. Hence the personal restrictions on the citizen’s doing and refraining19 are removed more and more, and the general freedom of religion is ceded; and thus gradually arises, accompanied by delusions and whims, enlightenment, as a great good that must raise humankind even out of the selfish aims of aggrandizement on the part of its rulers, if only the latter understand their own advantage. This enlightenment, however, and with it also a certain participation in the good by the heart of the enlightened human being who understands the good perfectly, must ascend bit by bit up to the thrones and have its influence even on their principles of government. Although, for example, the governors of our world now have no money left over for public educational institutions or in general for anything that has to do with what is best for the world, because everything is always miscalculated20 ahead of time toward the next future war, they would actually find their own advantage at least in not hindering their own nation’s own21 weak and slow endeavors in this regard. Finally war itself will gradually become not only an enterprise so artificial, and its outcome on both sides so uncertain, but also the aftereffects which the state suffers through an ever-increasing burden of debt (a new invention), whose repayment becomes unending, will become so dubious an undertaking, and the influence of every shakeup in a state in our part of the world on all other states, all of whose trades are so very much chained together, will be so noticeable, that these states will be urged merely through danger to themselves to offer themselves, even without legal standing, as arbiters, and thus remotely prepare the way for a future large state body, of which the past world has no example to show. Although this state body for now stands before us only in the form of a very rough project, nevertheless already a feeling begins to stir in all members, each of which has an interest in the preservation of the whole; and this gives hope that after many transforming revolutions, in the end that which nature has as its aim will finally come about – a universal cosmopolitan condition, as 18 20

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die Lebhaftigkeit des durchgängigen Betriebes 19 Tun und Lassen verrechnet; verrechnen can mean ‘to reckon or charge (to an account)’, but it can also mean to ‘miscalculate’ or make a mistake in one’s reckonings; Kant appears to be punning on these two meanings here. ihres Volks


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the womb in which all original predispositions of the human species will be developed – . [8: 29]

ninth proposition A philosophical attempt to work out universal world history according to a plan of nature that aims at the perfect civil union of the human species, must be regarded as possible and even as furthering this aim of nature. It is, to be sure, a strange and apparently an absurd stroke, to want to write a history in accordance with an idea of how the course of the world would have to go if it were to conform to certain rational ends; it appears that with such an aim only a novel could be brought about. If, nevertheless, one may assume that nature does not proceed without a plan or final aim even in the play of human freedom, then this idea could become useful; and although we are too shortsighted to see through to the secret mechanism of its arrangement, this idea should still serve us as a guiding thread for exhibiting an otherwise planless aggregate of human actions, at least in the large, as a system. For if one starts from Greek history – as that through which every other older or contemporaneous history has been kept or at least accredited*’c – if one follows their influence on the formation or malformation22 down to the present time its influence on the education or miseducation of the state body of the Roman nation23 which swallowed up the Greek state, and the latter’s influence on the barbarians who in turn destroyed the former, down to the present time, and also adds to this episodically the political history of other nations,24 or the knowledge about them that has gradually reached us through these same enlightened nations25 – then one will discover a regular course of improvement of state constitutions in our part of the world (which will probably someday give laws to all the others). When one [8:30] attends further everywhere only to the civil constitution and its laws and to the

* Only a learned public that has endured uninterruptedly from its beginning up to our time can accredit ancient history. Back beyond it everything is terra incognita; and the history of nations (Völker) that lived outside it can be begun only from the time when they entered into it. This happened with the Jewish nation (Volk) at the time of the Ptolemies through the Greek translation of the Bible, without which one would ascribe little credibility to their isolated records. From that point forward (if this beginning has first been properly ascertained) one can pursue its narratives from that point onward. And thus with all the other nations (Völkern). The first page in Thucydides (says Hume) is the sole beginning of all true history. c See Hume, “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” Essays Moral, Political and Literary, edited by Green and Grose. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1875, 1:414. 22 Bildung oder Mißbildung 23 des römischen Volks 24 anderer Völker 25 Nationen

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relations of states, insofar as, through the good they contained, they served for a while to elevate and exalt nations26 (and with them also arts and sciences), but through that again which was faulty attaching to them they brought them down, yet in such a way that there was always left over a germ of enlightenment that developed further through each revolution and this prepared for a following stage of improvement – then a guiding thread, as I believe, is revealed that can serve not merely for the explanation of such a confused play of things human, or for an art of political soothsaying about future changes in states (a utility which has already been drawn from the history of human beings, even if one regarded the latter as the disconnected effect of a freedom without rules!), but rather there will be opened a consoling prospect into the future (which without a plan of nature one cannot hope for with any ground), in which the human species is represented in the remote distance as finally working itself upward toward the condition in which all germs nature has placed in it can be fully developed and its vocation here on earth can be fulfilled. Such a justification of nature – or better, of providence – is no unimportant motive for choosing a particular viewpoint for considering the world. For what does it help to praise the splendor and wisdom of creation in the nonrational realm of nature, and to recommend it to our consideration, if that part of the great showplace of the highest wisdom that contains the end of all this – the history of humankind – is to remain a ceaseless objection against it, the prospect of which necessitates our turning our eyes away from it in disgust and, in despair of ever encountering a completed rational aim in it, to hope for the latter only in another world? That with this idea of a world history, which in a certain way has a guiding thread a priori, I would want to displace the treatment of history27 proper, that is written merely empirically – this would be a misinterpretation of my aim; it is only a thought of that which a philosophical mind (which besides this would have to be very well versed in history) could attempt from another standpoint. Moreover, the laudable circumspectness with which one now writes the history of one’s time, naturally brings everyone to the scruple as to how our later posterity will begin to grasp the burden of history that we might leave [8:31] behind for them after a few centuries. Without doubt they will prize the history of the oldest age, the documents of which might long since have been extinguished, only from the viewpoint of what interests them, namely, what nations28 and governments have accomplished 26

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or harmed regarding a cosmopolitan aim. But to pay regard to this, and likewise to the desire for honor of the heads of state as well as their servants, in order to direct it at the sole means by which they can bring their glorious remembrance down to the latest age – that can still be additionally a small motive for the attempt to furnish such a philosophical history.

chapter 1

Teleology and history in Kant: the critical foundations of Kant’s philosophy of history Henry E. Allison

Although the title of Kant’s essay Idea for Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim indicates its central theme, it reveals little or nothing about its underlying methodology and its connection with the emerging critical philosophy. Indeed, as far as the title is concerned, the only hint of a connection with the latter is provided by the inclusion of the term “Idea.” This is a technical term for Kant referring to concepts of reason, which, as distinct from concepts of the understanding, whose legitimate use is restricted to possible experience, involve the thought of an absolute totality or completeness that can never be met with in a possible experience and is, therefore, “transcendent” with respect to the latter. In the first Critique, Kant’s appealed to the Platonic republic and a constitution that provides for “the greatest human freedom according to laws that permit the freedom of each to exist together with that of others” as examples of such ideas (A 316/B 372–3); but his focus was on the “transcendental Ideas” (the soul, the world, and God), which arise from extending certain concepts of the understanding to the “unconditioned,” thereby producing the thought of a complete systematic unity. While illusory, in the sense that no real object corresponds to them, these Ideas nonetheless play an essential regulative role in guiding the understanding in its endemic search for unity in experience. “Idea” as it appears in the title of our essay, is clearly not to be understood according to the model of the transcendental Ideas, since it refers to human history rather than to any illusory transcendent entity. It is closer to the two political Ideas noted above; but it differs from them in that they are practical Ideas, which function as norms or ideal types, whereas the Idea of a universal history is theoretical, characterizing a way in which a philosopher might conceive this history in the endeavor to attain a synoptic comprehension of it. What elevates this conception to the status of an Idea is that it involves the thought of completeness or absolute totality in two senses: first, it is concerned with humankind as a whole rather than a particular segment thereof (this is what makes it a “universal history”); second, and 24

Teleology and history in Kant

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most important, it conceives this history as a totality, encompassing all generations and embodying an underlying telos. The title further indicates that the pattern or purpose that underlies and regulates philosophical reflection on history is a political one, namely, a cosmopolitan state of affairs, by which Kant understands not a world state, which would be the culmination of tyranny and the end of all freedom, but a confederation of free states or league of nations, which would provide the condition under which humankind’s greatest scourge, war and the constant threat thereof, could be permanently abated. As such, this essay contains the first statement of a view that Kant was to work out more fully in subsequent years, culminating in Towards Perpetual Peace (1795). The main focus of this paper, however, is on the underlying methodology and connection with the critical philosophy of Kant’s philosophy of history rather than on the particular view of history that it contains. Inasmuch as Kant’s approach to history is explicitly teleological, this requires a consideration of the central themes of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, which is the second part of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, commonly referred to as the third Critique. Even though the latter work was published six years after Idea for a Universal History, it provides the lens through which the earlier work must be examined. But before turning to this, it is necessary to consider briefly the prefatory portion of the essay, where Kant defines the problem for which teleological reflection provides the solution. The above is the subject matter of the first part of this paper, which is divided into seven parts. The second provides an introduction to the two central conceptions of the third Critique as a whole: the purposiveness of nature and the reflective power of judgment. The third deals with Kant’s philosophy of biology. Although not directly germane to his account of history, Kant’s controversial thesis that the conception of an intrinsic purposiveness is an ineliminable condition of our understanding of organisms provides the framework in which Kant’s whole approach to teleology must be viewed. The fourth examines Kant’s attempt to extend purposiveness from particular organisms to the relation between organic beings (including human beings) and the order of nature as a whole. The fifth considers Kant’s claim that the conception of nature as a teleological system requires the assumption that something serves as the ultimate end of this system and that this can only be humankind.1 The sixth analyzes the 1

In this paper I generally use the term “humankind” to render “der Mensch” and its plural form (“die Menschen”) rather than the literal translation “the human being” or “human beings,” since in both this essay and the third Critique Kant is usually referring to the species as a whole.

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connection between the conception of humankind as the ultimate end of nature and Kant’s teleological account of history. Finally, by appealing to the distinction between an ultimate end of nature (letzter Zweck) and a final end of creation (Endzweck) and the account of an “ethical commonwealth” that Kant introduces in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, the seventh part explores the complex but related question of the connections between Kant’s politically oriented historical teleology, his moral theory, and his trans-political yet social view of the ultimate goal of history. i Kant begins the prefatory portion of Idea for a Universal History by posing the freedom-nature problem with respect to human history. In the resolution of the Third Antinomy in the first Critique, Kant had argued merely that if one adopts the standpoint of transcendental idealism, natural causality and freedom (in the transcendental sense) need not contradict each other. Now, abstracting from the transcendental question of freedom, Kant notes that as appearances, that is, as empirically accessible events, human actions are as law-governed as any other natural occurrences. And, as illustration of this thesis, Kant points to statistical tables, which reveal a predictable rate of marriages, births, and deaths, given a sufficiently large sampling. The significance of this for Kant consists in the fact that, in spite of the assumption of human freedom, it opens up the possibility of depicting a pattern, indeed a progress, in human affairs through the development of humankind’s “original predispositions” (8:17).2 Nevertheless, though necessary, such statistical regularity is hardly sufficient to indicate a pattern, much less a progressive development in human affairs writ large. There remain two obstacles to the project of finding such a pattern: first, human beings, unlike animals, do not behave instinctively, which introduces a certain unpredictability that is not found in the animal kingdom; second, in spite of their presumably rational nature, human beings, considered as a whole, do not act upon any agreed plan. On the contrary, Kant laments that a survey of human affairs indicates that, while wisdom may occasionally manifest itself in particular cases, “everything in the large is woven together out of folly, childish 2

A predisposition (Anlage) is a feature of the nature of an organism that accounts for its developing in certain determinate ways. For a useful discussion of this conception and its relevance to both Kant’s philosophy of history and his moral theory, see Allen Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. pp. 118–22, 210–12.


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vanity, often also out of childish malice … ; so that in the end one does not know what to make of our species, with its smug imaginings about its excellences” (8:18). At this point, Kant reflects that there remains only one possible way for the philosopher to uncover a rational plan in human history, namely, to investigate whether one may discover an aim of nature (rather than a consciously adopted aim of human beings ) “in this nonsensical course of things human” (8:18). In other words, at issue is whether it is possible to attribute a purpose to nature with respect to humankind, which the latter has not consciously chosen for itself. And since, as we have already seen, the purpose that Kant has in mind is a political one, namely, the greatest possible freedom of each under law that is compatible with the freedom of all, this comes down to the question of whether it is possible to consider nature as forcing us to be free. Although the precise expression is not used by Kant, this procedure has been aptly termed the “cunning of nature,” which alludes to Hegel’s famous “cunning of reason” (List der Vernunft), which plays a similar role in the latter’s philosophy of history.3 This brings to the fore the problem of teleology, which Kant introduces in the first proposition of the essay. It states simply that, “All natural predispositions of a creature are determined sometime to develop themselves completely and purposively” (8:18). And in justification of this thesis Kant further remarks: With all animals, external as well as internal or analytical observation confirms this. An organ that is not to be used, an arrangement that does not attain its end, is a contradiction in the teleological doctrine of nature. For if we depart from that principle, then we no longer have a lawful nature, but a purposelessly playing nature; and desolate chance takes the place of the guideline of reason. (8:18)

The inclusion of the qualifier ‘sometime’ (einmal) in the statement of the proposition foreshadows Kant’s subsequent claim that, in the case of humankind, the complete development of the predispositions that involve the use of reason will require an indeterminately lengthy historical process, because reason cannot develop fully within the lifetime of any individual, but only gradually in the species as a whole. Indeed, this appears to be the main reason why humankind for Kant has a history. 3

Extensive use of this expression has been made by Yirmiahu Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), esp. pp. 125–7. Yovel notes (140n) that the expression was also used by Eric Weil in Problèmes kantiens (Paris, 1963). It should also be noted that Kant himself uses virtually the same expression, referring to the Kunstanstalten der Natur (artifices of nature) (EF 8:362; 332).

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For present purposes, however, the main point is that the teleological picture of nature that Kant sketches here is far removed from the conception of nature provided in the first Critique. From the point of view of that work, nature is conceived as the totality of appearances standing under laws, where the laws are of the mechanistic variety, ultimately grounded in the Principles of the Pure Understanding. In short, the nature of the first Critique is essentially a Newtonian nature that appears to have no room for anything like a “teleological doctrine of nature.” Accordingly, if an appeal to teleology is to be legitimated and made the basis for an account of human history, Kant must go beyond what he said in the first Critique. Moreover, the fact that he fails to do so in this essay and instead simply offers a teleological account in a seemingly dogmatic matter has led some to believe that this essay, and some of Kant’s other seemingly whimsical forays into the philosophy of history, are either regressions to a pre-critical standpoint or purely occasional pieces that need not be taken seriously.4 As already noted, however, it is not that Kant failed to provide a critical foundation for his speculations about the purposiveness of nature and its hidden purposes regarding humankind; it is rather that he only did so retrospectively in the third Critique. Thus, I shall turn to this work, especially its second part, the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, in an endeavor to analyze this grounding. ii As a first step, however, it is necessary to say a word about the two fundamental and closely related conceptions that underlie the Critique of the Power of Judgment as a whole: the reflective power of judgment and the purposiveness (Zweckmässigkeit) of nature. In the two versions of his Introduction to this work,5 Kant points out that judgment, together with the understanding and reason, is one of the three “higher” cognitive faculties (the “lower” 4

5

For a discussion of this issue and defense of the philosophical significance and systematic place of Kant’s writings on history see Fackenheim, “Kant’s Concept of History”; Lewis White Beck, Editor’s Introduction to Kant On History, pp. vi–xxiii; Klaus Weyand, “Kants Geschichtsphilosophie, Ihre Entwicklung und ihr Verhältnis zur Aufklärung,” Kant-Studien Ergänzungshefte 85 (1964), pp. 7–21; and Michael Despland, Kant on History and Religion (Montreal and London: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1973), pp. 1–14. Kant wrote two versions of the Introduction to the third Critique. The initial version (which is usually referred to as the “First Introduction”) is far lengthier than the published version and Kant himself claimed that he substituted the latter merely in the interests of brevity. In reality, however, there are also some important philosophical and systematic differences between them, which I discuss in Kant’s Theory of Taste, Chapters One and Two.


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faculty being sensibility), but up to this point it is the only one that had not received a Critique.6 The reason for this is that, unlike the other two higher cognitive faculties, judgment does not appear to have an a priori principle of its own, which would either require or warrant a separate Critique. On the contrary, judgment, as characterized in the first Critique, is a faculty of subsumption, whose function is to determine whether given particulars fall under a rule. And since these rules are all provided by the understanding and since (on pain of an infinite regress) there can be no rules for subsuming under rules, there can be no distinct principle for judgment, which precludes providing it with a Critique.7 Although Kant retains the conception of judgment as a faculty of subsumption in the third Critique, he creates the conceptual space for assigning it an a priori principle, by distinguishing between two roles that it might play with respect to subsumption: determination and reflection. The difference turns on the question of whether the rule, which includes concepts, laws, and principles, is given or whether what is given is merely some particular content that is to be subsumed under a sought-for rule. In the former case, the function of judgment is determinative; in the latter it is reflective. Inasmuch as the task of the latter power is to seek the rule under which given particulars may be subsumed, it, unlike the former, does require an a priori principle of its own, which Kant identifies with the purposiveness of nature. For Kant, to term something purposive (zweckmässig) is to say that it appears as if designed or produced according to the idea of some plan or end (Zweck). Correlatively, purposiveness (Zweckmässigkeit) is the quality something has of appearing purposive. There are, however, two quite distinct ways in which this may be understood. It can mean either as if designed for the sake of our cognitive capacities, or as if designed with respect to something’s own inner possibility. This underlies the division of the third Critique into a critique of the aesthetic and of the teleological powers of judgment. Although our concern here is almost entirely with the latter, it may be useful to say a word about the former, since it will enable us to appreciate why Kant’s definitive account of teleology ended up in a Critique of the Power of Judgment. Even the most cursory discussion of the former, however, is immediately confronted with the problem that it itself comes in two 6

7

Contrary to what the title suggests, Kant states that in the first Critique it was the a priori status of principles of the understanding that was established and in the second Critique that of reason (understood as practical reason). See A 132–4/B 171–4.

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radically distinct forms, which Kant suggests belong together without ever really explaining how they do. The first, which is treated only in the two versions of the Introduction, is called “logical” or “formal purposiveness” and refers to nature’s conformity at the empirical level to the requirements of the understanding for an orderly experience that goes beyond the orderliness supposedly guaranteed by the Transcendental Analytic in the first Critique.8 Simply put, nature is regarded as doing us an epistemological favor by making possible both its taxonomical ordering in terms of a coherent set of concepts and its nomological ordering in terms of a set of empirical laws that allow for the construction of overarching theories. Kant does not claim that nature actually does us such a favor, or even that we must believe that it does. The point is rather that we must proceed in our investigation of nature on the assumption that it does because this is the only way in which the reflective power of judgment can coherently proceed. Accordingly, the prescriptive force of this principle is directed back at the reflective power of judgment itself, dictating how one ought to judge, as opposed to specifying the nature of what is judged about. By contrast, inasmuch as they are non-cognitive, aesthetic judgments (or more precisely judgments of taste, which Kant also assigns to the reflective power of judgment), rely on nature “favoring” us in a quite different way. He explicates this by introducing the conception of a “subjective purposiveness,” which refers to the “form” of an object as it is given in sensory intuition, and which manifests itself by occasioning a harmony of the faculties of the understanding and imagination in “mere reflection,” that is, in a reflection directed toward enjoyment in the contemplation of an object rather than cognition. From a systematic standpoint, this seems to have been the most important function of the reflective power of judgment for Kant, since he acknowledges that it was his belated recognition that judgments of taste rest upon an a priori principle that led him to write the third Critique, which was initially conceived as a critique of taste.9 As already indicated, in the case of teleological judgments, purposiveness does not involve the idea of nature being designed for us, but serves instead as a condition of our understanding the possibility of a natural object. The inclusion of this in a Critique of the Power of Judgment stems from the fact that this understanding, which consists in finding a unifying principle, is 8 9

Kant uses the term “logical purposiveness” in the First Introduction (20:217; 20) and “formal purposiveness” in the published version (5:181–6; 68–73). See Kant’s letter to Reinhold of December 28–31, 1787, where he first announces his plan to publish a “Critique of Taste” (10:513–15). For my discussion of this, see Kant’s Theory of Taste, pp. 3–6.


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likewise the work of the reflective power of judgment and, as such, a matter of judgment legislating to itself rather than to nature. Once again, however, the situation is further complicated by the fact that Kant distinguishes between two forms of such purposiveness: intrinsic and relative or extrinsic.10 The first of these concerns reflection upon particular organic beings and constitutes the essence of Kant’s philosophy of biology; the second concerns the relations between these beings and nature as a whole viewed as a teleological system. Since the latter leads to the application of teleology to history it is our main concern. But since that rests upon Kant’s account of organisms, I shall attempt to provide a brief discussion of that topic. iii The fundamental concept in Kant’s philosophy of biology is that of an end or purpose of nature (Naturzweck). He tells us by way of a provisional characterization rather than a strict definition, that “a thing exists as a natural end if it is cause and effect of itself (although in a twofold sense)” (KU 5:370; 243). Kant assigns a central role to this seemingly paradoxical concept because the subject matter of biology is the living organism and he thought that the latter could be understood only in light of it. It is not that Kant viewed this either as an empirical concept derived from the experience of organisms or as equivalent to the concept of the latter, which would make the claim that an organism is an end or purpose of nature analytic. It is, rather, a construct on Kant’s part, which he claimed to be required for the experience and comprehension of an organism as such.11 In fact, it was the perceived need to introduce this concept into biology that made a critique of the teleological power of judgment necessary in the first place for Kant. This critique has two major tasks: (1) to expound this concept and demonstrate its indispensability for biology (the main task of the Analytic); and (2) to establish its coherence and its reconcilability with the mechanism of nature (the function of the Dialectic). Due to constraints of space, I shall here concern myself almost entirely with the former.12 10

11 12

Kant appears to treat “relative” and “external” purposiveness as synonyms, using them interchangeably in contrast to inner purposiveness. For texts bearing on this distinction, see FI 20:249–50; KDU:226–7, 111–12, 366–9, 239–41, 377–81, 249–52, 425–9, 293–7. To avoid redundancy, I shall henceforth refer to such purposiveness as extrinsic. See Peter McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation Antinomy and Teleology (Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), esp. p. 46. I analyze this antinomy in “Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” Southern Journal of Philosophy 30, Supplement, The Spindel Conference (1991), pp. 25–42. Reprinted in: Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment. Critical Essays, ed. by Paul Guyer (New York and Oxford: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 219–36.

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The basic problem is that the two conditions that must be met by anything that is to count as an end of nature appear incompatible; for insofar as we regard something as an end, we assign it to an intelligent cause rather than to the mechanism of nature, while insofar as we regard it as a product of nature, we seemingly rule out any appeal to such a cause. Moreover, to refer to such a thing as both cause and effect of itself seems merely to restate the problem in other terms. Accordingly, my goals in this section are to try to understand why Kant thought that the introduction of this concept was required; illustrate the role that it supposedly plays in biological explanation; and examine the status that Kant assigns to it. To begin with, Kant is insistent that all genuine explanation in natural science is mechanistic. Although there is some controversy about what this means, I take the basic idea to be that the explanation of all physical wholes must be in terms of the causal and reciprocal interaction of their parts.13 But, according to Kant, living organisms cannot be understood in this way, since the function and interaction of their parts can be understood only in relation to the whole. In short, in the case of organic beings, the whole is (conceptually) prior to the parts. That is why Kant notoriously denied that there could ever be a Newton of a blade of grass.14 Kant also thought that the only way in which we can provide a causal explanation of something wherein the whole may be regarded as the causal ground of its parts is if we attribute causality to the conception of the whole. As an example of this, Kant appeals to a geometrical figure (a regular hexagon) that is found sketched in the sand in a presumably uninhabited land. The point is that anyone happening upon such a figure would not be able to conceive it as the product of purely natural forces, say the interaction of sand, sea and wind, or perhaps as the footprint of some animal. It not that such a mode of production would be physically impossible in the sense that it would violate known laws of nature; it is rather that the chance of it being brought about in such manner would be so remote as to defy explanation. As Kant puts it, “the contingency of coinciding with such a concept [that of a regular hexagon], which is possible only in reason, would seem to him [the observer of the figure] so infinitely great that it would be just as good as if there were no natural law of nature, consequently no cause in nature acting merely mechanically” (KU 5:370; 242).15 Accordingly, such a figure can be 13

14 15

See McLaughlin, “Newtonian Biology and Kant’s Mechanistic Concept of Causality,” in Paul Guyer, ed., Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, and Allison, “Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment.” See KU 5:400; 271. At one point Kant defines purposiveness as “the lawfulness of the contingent as such” (FI 20:217; 20).


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comprehended only by regarding it as the product of an intelligent cause, that is, as an end. Now it was fairly common in the eighteenth century, especially among theologically inclined Newtonians, to regard nature as a work of art in this sense. Moreover, this led to the widespread metaphor of nature as a machine, typically a clock. And since organic beings appear to exhibit a systematic structure in which the various parts cooperate to form and preserve a living organism, it was likewise natural to consider organisms as machines designed by a supernatural intelligence. Nevertheless, the distinctive feature of Kant’s position is that he not only rejected the reductive attempt to explain the nature and behavior of organic beings in purely mechanistic terms, he also repudiated the alternative account of such beings as machines and, therefore, as products of (divine) art or, as he put it, as “an analogue of art” (KU 5:374; 246). This is because he thought that organisms have certain epigenetic properties that cannot be attributed to machines such as clocks. As he notes, one part of a clock produces the motion of another and was placed there for the sake of the other; but it is not the efficient cause of the production of the other. This does not apply to organisms, however, since in their case the parts have not simply motive power, but a self-propagating formative power (KU 5:374; 246). The basic idea is that organisms are not merely systems but self-regulating ones, in which the various parts have a capacity to replace and repair one another, which is something that Kant believed could never be said of a machine, or any product of art. As such, an organism may be viewed as cause and effect of itself, in a twofold sense; and this gives content to the concept of a natural end, which apart from the existence of organisms would be problematic. Kant illustrates this by means of the example of a tree, which, in contrast to a machine, has a threefold epigenetic capacity. First, a tree generates another tree and, therefore, is cause of itself qua species. Second, it generates itself qua individual through growth by means of the assimilation of nutrients. And, finally, it has a capacity to replace certain parts, if they are damaged or destroyed (KU 5:371–2; 243–4). Kant claims that this applies to every organic being, which in virtue of these capacities and, more generally, its organization, must be regarded as an end of nature and, therefore, assigned an intrinsic purposiveness, quite apart from any further ends it might serve. Indeed, he goes further and suggests that this principle applies not only to every organic being considered as a whole, but to every part of such a being.16 And this leads Kant to the 16

In the same context, Kant grants the possibility that many parts of an animal body could be conceived as consequences of purely mechanistic laws, for example, hair, skin, and bones; but he insists that “the

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formulation of a principle, which also serves as the definition of an organism: “An organized product of nature is that in which everything is an end and reciprocally a means as well. Nothing in it is in vain, purposeless, or to be ascribed to a blind mechanism of nature” (KU 5:376; 247–8). The previously noted first proposition of the Idea for a Universal History, namely that “All natural predispositions of a creature are determined sometime to develop themselves completely and purposively,” may be seen as a corollary of this principle, since any predisposition that did not develop in this way would not serve the end of the organism and, therefore, as Kant says in his exposition of this proposition, would constitute “a contradiction in the teleological doctrine of nature.” In contrast to his seemingly dogmatic stance in the earlier essay, in the third Critique Kant is careful to insist that the teleological principle pertains merely to the reflective rather than to the determinative power of judgment and, as such, does not bring with it any ontological commitment. Again, it is a matter of judgment legislating to itself in its endeavor to comprehend a certain type of natural object rather than to nature. Moreover, it is not that teleological replaces mechanistic explanation in biology, since the latter remains for Kant the only legitimate form of scientific explanation; it is rather that, for reasons already given, in the reflection on organic beings it must always be subordinated to the teleological principle.17 iv As already noted, in the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment Kant distinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic purposiveness. And while his main focus is on the former in virtue of its centrality to biology, Kant does not entirely neglect the latter. Nevertheless, at least within the Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment, his treatment of extrinsic purposiveness is both perfunctory and problematic.18 The situation reflects a tension in Kant’s account: on the one hand, he calls attention to the sharp difference between the two conceptions of purposiveness; while, on the other hand, he suggests, without much in the way of argument, that the necessity of assuming the former provides a warrant for introducing the latter. With respect to these two forms of purposiveness, the crucial distinction is between judging something to be purposive in virtue of its internal form

17 18

cause that provides the appropriate material, modifies it, forms it, and deposits it in its appropriate place must always be judged teleologically, so that everything in it must be considered as organized, and everything is also, in a certain relation to the thing itself, an organ in turn” (KU 5:377; 249). On this point see §80 “On the necessary subordination of the principle of mechanism to the teleological principle in the explanation of a thing as a natural end” (KU 5:417–21; 286–90). It is contained in §63 and §67.


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and judging the existence of something to be purposive in virtue of subserving some end. And, with regard to the latter, if one is to avoid an indefinite regress of means and ends (a is a means for b, b for c, etc.), it is necessary to assume something that is itself an end of nature, a status which, Kant points out, can never be determined merely by the observation of nature.19 Indeed, even the fact that something turns out to be necessary for human survival or flourishing, either in general or in particular locations, such as the seemingly inhospitable frigid zones, does not of itself suffice to establish such purposiveness, as long as it remains unclear why human beings had to exist at all (something which Kant ironically suggests is not so clear in the case of the New Hollanders or the Fuegians)20 or in the frigid regions.21 The issue is further complicated by the fact that assigning something (or some species) the privileged status of an end of nature presupposes that nature as a whole has an end in the sense of a goal (“scopus”), which leads, in turn, to the supersensible.22 In other words, inasmuch as nature for Kant is not regarded as a self-conscious agent (in the manner of Hegel’s Geist), to conceive of a purpose of nature (the sensible) is, at the same time, to conceive of a purpose assigned to nature by something outside nature (the supersensible). In fact, we shall see that for Kant ascribing an ultimate end (letzter Zweck) to nature presupposes a final end (Endzweck) of creation, which takes us beyond anything that nature itself for all its “cunning” can bring about. In spite of these complications, after emphasizing the radical difference between the two species of purposiveness and the special difficulties associated with the latter, Kant insists that the concept of a natural end, whose home base is the conception of organic beings, “necessarily leads to the idea of the whole of nature as a system in accordance with the rule of ends (Regel des Zwecke), to which idea all of the mechanism of nature in accordance with principles of reason must now be subordinated (at least in order to test natural appearances by this idea)” (KU 5:379; 250). Moreover, in this context, Kant further suggests that this leads to the maxims that “everything in the world is good for something, that nothing is in vain,” and even that “by means of the example that nature gives in its organic products, one is 19 21

22

See KU 5:368–9; 241. 20 KU 5:378; 250. Kant here surmises that only the greatest incompatibility among human beings could have forced them into such inhospitable regions (KU 5:369; 241). In Perpetual Peace, however, he suggests that part of nature’s “plan” is to use war to drive human beings into even the most inhospitable regions of the earth and to this end may be thought to have provided certain purposive arrangements, such as Arctic moss, which supplies food for the reindeer, which, in turn, afford sustenance and conveyance for the inhabitants of this region (8:363; 333). KU 5:378; 250.

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justified, indeed called upon to expect nothing in nature and its laws but what is purposive in the whole” (ibid.). In short, it leads to an expansion of the domain of the teleological principle from everything within an organism to nature as a whole. Even though Kant issues the appropriate caveats regarding the status of this new principle and the maxims it enjoins, insisting that it is a matter of the reflective rather than the determinative power of judgment and that the principle is merely regulative rather than constitutive, Kant’s interjection of necessity into his claim seems less than compelling. Clearly, the necessity to which Kant refers cannot be either logical or causal; but neither can it be of the same kind as the (subjective) necessity of using the concept of an end in considering organisms, since that does not require one to think of nature as a whole in these terms; and if it is not any of these forms of necessity, it is difficult to see what other kind it could be. Accordingly, I think that the best way to make sense out of the passage is to ignore the reference to necessity altogether and to attribute to Kant the weaker (though still substantive) thesis that, once the unavoidability of regarding organisms as natural ends is recognized, it becomes reasonable to apply the teleological maxims to nature as a whole. At the very least it is not unreasonable to do so, as it presumably would be if it could be shown that organisms can be understood totally in mechanistic terms, since that would involve applying to the whole what has been shown to be not applicable to the parts. This reading also reflects the non-dogmatic spirit of both Kant’s remark and his amplification of it. As noted, he suggests parenthetically that the function of this extension of the concept of an end to nature as a whole is to “test natural appearances by this idea,” which can be seen as a matter of tentatively testing the teleological waters to see what emerges from the assumption that nature embodies a teleological system.23 Presumably, the possibility (though not the fruitfulness) of this extension is justified on the grounds that a universal reductive mechanism has already been ruled out by the analysis of organisms. In his amplification, Kant further suggests that when applied to things that appear unpleasant and even counterpurposive to us, such as vermin, mosquitoes and other stinging insects, it can lead to the recognition of positive purposes that they serve. In general, he remarks that such teleological consideration is at least “entertaining and sometimes also instructive” (KU 5:379; 251). Although this is far from establishing the necessity of a 23

For a similar approach in the first Critique see A 691/B 719.


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teleological approach to nature as a whole, it was evidently as far as Kant was willing to go within the confines of the Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment, reserving his fuller treatment of the topic, including the application of teleology to history, for the Appendix. v Kant begins the pivotal §83 in the Appendix to Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, which deals with the implications of the thesis that humankind is the ultimate end of nature, by referring back to §82, where it was initially affirmed. He writes: In the preceding we have shown that we have sufficient cause to judge humankind not merely, like any organized being, as a natural end, but also as the ultimate end of nature here on earth, in relation to which all other natural beings constitute a system of ends in accordance with fundamental principles of reason, not, to be sure, for the determining power of judgment, yet for the reflecting power of judgment. (KU 5:429; 297)

Since the argument to which Kant here alludes provides the basis for his application of teleology to human history, I shall endeavor in this section to give a brief account of it, before turning to its application in the next. The argument presupposes two propositions that were supposedly established in the Analytic: (1) that we are permitted (at least for heuristic purposes) to consider nature as a whole as a teleological system; and (2) that this requires regarding something (or some species) as the ultimate end of nature. Given this, the central claim of §82 is that only humankind is a suitable candidate for this role. The argument takes the form of a progressive iteration of the question: why (in the sense of for what purpose) does something exist? Setting aside all of inorganic nature, since it can be understood mechanistically without any need to pose this question, Kant considers the vegetable kingdom, herbivores, and carnivores, which apparently constitute the three domains in which he divides (at least for the sake of this argument) non-human organic nature. Predictably, Kant suggests that the first may be thought to exist for the sake of the second, the second for the third, and all three for the sake of humankind, which is therefore the ultimate end of nature in the sense of being that for the sake of which the others exist. And in support of this claim Kant notes that “he [humankind] is the only being on earth who forms a concept of ends for himself and who by means of his reason can make a system of ends out of an aggregate of purposively formed things” (KU 5:427; 295).24 24

See also KU 5:431; 298–9.

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Inasmuch as it attributes a special status to humankind in virtue of its capacity to set ends, the argument is reminiscent of the well-known argument for the so-called “Formula of Humanity” in the Groundwork, where Kant appeals to the same capacity to support the thesis that humanity (or rational agency) must be regarded as an end in itself and, therefore, never treated merely as a means.25 In reality, however, though sharing a common premise regarding end-setting, these arguments operate at completely different levels and lead to quite distinct conclusions. The force of the Groundwork argument is entirely practical, issuing in a conclusion regarding how humanity (in both oneself and others) ought to be treated. By contrast, the argument from the third Critique is theoretical (albeit directed merely to the reflective power of judgment) and it affirms the place of humankind in a teleological system of nature. As we shall see, the assignment of a special moral status to humankind only enters the picture with the introduction of the quite distinct conception of a final end (Endzweck) of creation; and while Kant will argue that humankind can be regarded as the ultimate end of nature only if it is also the final end of creation, this connection is not operative at this juncture in the argument. Nevertheless, Kant’s position here is radically anthropocentric and he was aware of the objections that could be raised against such a position and attempted to deal with two of them. The first, which he associates with Linnaeus, affirms a more balanced view, according to which all members of the kingdom of nature, including human beings, may be regarded as ends in certain relations and as mere means in others. For example, while many aspects of nature are obviously beneficial to humankind and, therefore, may be regarded as means, in virtue of activities such as hunting and the removal of some of the destructive powers of nature, humankind can also be viewed as a means for maintaining a certain ecological balance.26 Although Kant does not say what he finds wrong with this conception, it seems clear that (1) by effectively denying that there is any ultimate end of nature, it would violate the condition under which it is possible to apply teleology to nature in the first place; and (2) in denying a privileged status to humankind it ignores the significance of the fact that it is the only species of rational beings on earth and, therefore the only species capable of conceiving a system of ends. The second objection reflects the standpoint of a hard-headed mechanist. Basically, it argues that it is unwarranted to assign a privileged status among natural beings to humankind, since it is subject to the same destructive 25

See G 4:428–9; 79–80.

26

See KU 5:427; 295.


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forces as everything else in nature; while even those features of the human habitat that seem to be arranged purposively for the benefit of the species are products of the mechanism of nature. Speaking as the devil’s advocate, Kant remarks that it is of no avail to attempt to avoid this conclusion by limiting the scope of the mechanism of nature to the other species, since humankind is so dependent on these that if they are under the sway of this mechanism, it must be as well.27 In response, Kant counters that if this line of argument proves anything, it proves too much. This is because it not only shows that humankind is not the ultimate end of nature and, therefore, that the aggregate of organized beings cannot be regarded as a system of ends, but also that “even the products of nature that we previously held to be natural ends can have no other origin than that in the mechanism of nature” (KU 5:428; 296). Kant’s point here seems to be that by reducing everything to the mechanism of nature, the argument under consideration contradicts the analysis of organisms, which is the foundation on which his account of natural ends is built. And inasmuch as he had already argued that the concept of a natural end makes it reasonable to regard nature as a whole as a teleological system, Kant apparently thought that this sufficed to dismiss the mechanistic critique. Although the argument seems somewhat dubious, we should keep in mind the relative modesty of its claim. As we have already seen, rather than taking himself as having provided a proof that humankind has the status of an ultimate end, he claims only to have shown that “we have sufficient cause” (my emphasis) to attribute such a status to humankind, at least with respect to the reflective power of judgment. Thus the question comes down to a matter of determining what counts as “sufficient.” vi Setting that aside, to claim that humankind is to be regarded as the ultimate end of nature viewed as a teleological system invites the further question: what end is nature supposed to effect with respect to humankind? Addressing this question is the task of §83. Kant assumes that this end is something that is to be found within human beings themselves, and he recognizes two generic candidates: it can either be one that is satisfied by the beneficence of nature itself, or some special aptitude that nature gives us that is conducive to the pursuits of all sorts of ends. The first of these is happiness and the second culture.28 After ruling out happiness on several 27

KU 5:427–8; 295–6.

28

KU 5:429–30; 297.

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grounds, the most compelling of which is that if this were nature’s aim with respect to humankind it did not do a very good job of it, Kant arrives by elimination at culture as the sought-for end. Before discussing culture and its teleological function, however, it is necessary to say a word about the connection between two key teleological concepts to which I have already alluded and which are both applied to humankind by Kant: an ultimate end (letzter Zweck) of nature and a final end (Endzweck) of creation. Although a final end (in the sense of the highest goal or purpose) is also an ultimate end, the converse need not hold. Indeed, it does not hold when the highest goal attainable by some means is not itself the highest goal conceivable for whatever it serves as means. Moreover, according to Kant, this is precisely the case with nature and humankind. Since, as we shall see in more detail in the next section, the final end for humankind is moral and since morality is a product of freedom rather than nature, it follows that nature’s ultimate end cannot be to make us moral. Nevertheless, this does not mean that nature has no teleological role to play with regard to morality, merely that it cannot be a direct one. Kant’s point is perhaps best expressed by characterizing nature (in its teleological function with respect to humankind) as a “moral facilitator.” In other words, it helps us to help ourselves, often against our will. And to consider nature as functioning in this way is just what it means to consider it as a teleological system with humankind as its ultimate end. As already noted, the vehicle through which nature promotes its end is culture; though the situation is complicated by the fact that Kant distinguishes between two forms of culture: the culture of skill (Geschicklichkeit) and the culture of discipline (Zucht). The former may be defined as the capacity to attain the ends that humankind sets for itself, whatever they may be. Kant characterizes the latter in negative terms as the “liberation of the will from the despotism of desires” (KU 5:431–2; 299). Although for the reasons given above, the culture of discipline is not directly related to morality in the sense of making us morally better, inasmuch as it helps to wean us from desires stemming from our animal nature, Kant assigns it a significant propaedeutic function. Specifically, he claims that it makes us receptive to higher ends than nature can afford; and since these are moral ends this makes it a moral facilitator par excellence.29 Moreover, while it is impossible to pursue this topic here, it must at least be noted that this form of culture is intimately related to what Kant describes as the central problem of the third Critique as a whole, namely, providing a 29

I discuss the role of beauty as a moral facilitator in Kant’s Theory of Taste, pp. 229–35.


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transition (Übergang) from nature to freedom, in which the appreciation of beauty (both natural and artistic) plays a pivotal role.30 The general idea is that this liberation from sensuous desires creates a capacity for a disinterested delight in beauty, while the latter, in turn, helps to make us more receptive to moral ideas. While the culture of discipline is of great significance for the third Critique as a whole, it is the culture of skill that is most directly relevant to Kant’s teleological account of history. This is largely because it is the development of certain skills that provides, quite apart from the intent of the possessors and users of these skills, the spur to the material progress that leads eventually to the formation of civil societies with republican institutions and a confederation of states designed to preserve the peace. In short, this form of culture is the prime means by which the “cunning of nature” operates in history. It is in this spirit that Kant suggests that, combined with humankind’s natural predispositions, cultural progress in this sense leads unavoidably to inequality, oppression, an attachment to luxury, and all of the social and political evils that these bring with them, including war, the greatest of all such evils. At the same time, however, Kant also argues that all this “splendid misery” (KU 5:432; 299) will eventually force humankind to do what it would not of itself do willingly, namely, to work toward the development of those republican institutions and a confederation of states, which would eventually usher in a permanent state of peace. In this way, then, the culture of skill likewise functions as a moral facilitator, albeit in a somewhat more roundabout way then the culture of discipline. Since this is essentially the same view of history that Kant articulated in Idea for a Universal History some six years earlier, I shall not say anything further about it here. For present purposes the major point is that §83 is the place in which Kant integrated his account of history into the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment and, therefore, into the critical philosophy, which, as already noted, was very much a work in progress in 1784, when he did not envision a third Critique, much less one dealing with teleology as part of its eventual content. At the same time, however, it must also be noted that Kant relegated his discussion to the Appendix rather than, as originally planned, to the body of the work.31 Although this suggests a 30 31

For my account of the complex issue of the Übergang, see Kant’s Theory of Taste, Chapter Nine. In the first introduction, Kant indicates that he planned to give equal weight to the discussions of inner and relative purposiveness, devoting a separate book to each, which will contain both an analytic and a dialectic (see 20:251; 50–1).

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certain ambivalence on Kant’s part, it is not, I think, directed at the intrinsic importance of the material, since some of Kant’s most important thoughts about moral theology are likewise contained in this Appendix and are directly related to his account of humankind as the ultimate purpose of nature. Rather, Kant’s ambivalence concerns the place of this discussion within the systematic structure of the third Critique, particularly his recognition of its parergal status vis-à-vis the central argument of the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment.32 vii The preceding account of Kant’s application of teleology to humankind and its history has featured the following four theses. (1) If nature is to be regarded as a teleological system, it must be thought of as having an ultimate end, which can only be humankind. (2) Humankind may be considered as such an end only if it is also related to a final, unconditioned end, which must be moral. (3) Nature, by itself, cannot produce such an end, since that can only result from freedom; but it nevertheless can be thought of as preparing the way for or facilitating the development of morality. (4) It does this through culture, mainly the culture of skill, which, since it requires the development of humankind’s rational capacities, is a lengthy historical process, culminating in republican institutions, which maximize freedom under law, and a confederation of states guaranteeing perpetual peace.33 Considered from the point of view of the Kantian philosophy of history, however, this invites the further question: does the progress from the ultimate end of nature to the final end of creation involve a historical dimension or, as a work of freedom rather than nature, is it to be considered an atemporal “noumenal” process taking place in individuals, which, as such, stands totally outside history as well as nature? A glance at what Kant says about the final end of creation in the later sections of the Appendix of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, as well as the overall account of the second Critique, strongly suggests the latter view. Confining ourselves to the former text, Kant there introduces two distinct conceptions of the final end, which are eventually brought together. The first is humankind considered as noumenon. This is justified on the 32

33

Although Kant did not relegate his treatment of it to an appendix, there is a parallel story regarding the sublime, which Kant characterized as a “mere appendix to our aesthetic judging of the purposiveness of nature (KU 5:246; 130). See Kant’s Theory of Taste, p. 306. The long period of time required to attain this result is merely implicit in the third Critique account but made fully explicit in Idea for a Universal History. See particularly the second proposition.


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grounds that humankind, so considered, serves as a subject of morality (KU 5:435; 302). Somewhat later Kant characterizes the final end, understood in the same sense, as “humankind (each rational being in the world) under moral laws” (5:448; 314). The other conception of a final end with which Kant operates is that of the highest good (happiness in proportion to worthiness to be happy, that is, to morality). Strictly speaking, this is the highest good for us (human beings under moral laws) rather than of creation itself; indeed, for Kant it is one that we have a duty to promote. Kant brings them together in §88 by arguing that only insofar as we recognize a final end for creation can there be one for us and, therefore, a duty to strive for its realization. In effect, this is the essence of Kant’s moral proof for the existence of God in the third Critique. Starting with the ubiquitous Kantian premise that ought implies can, it claims that we can only conceive of this end that we have a duty to fulfill as achievable on the assumption of the existence of a moral author of the world, for whom our attainment of the highest good constitutes the purpose of creation.34 Nevertheless, from a Kantian point of view it also seems reasonable to expect that history will play a role in the full development of the predisposition to morality in humankind. Otherwise, the ultimate end of nature would stand in no essential connection with the final end of creation, which seems to contradict Kant’s account in the third Critique. To be sure, Kant is quite clear that the political and cosmopolitan goals at which the cunning of nature supposedly aims do not of themselves suffice to produce genuine morality. For example, Kant claims famously that he considered the creation of republican institutions possible even for a race of devils, as long as they are intelligent (EF 8:366; 335). In the same work, however, Kant also remarks that “a morally good condition of a people is to be expected only under a good constitution” (8:366; 335–6). Accordingly, Kant’s position seems to be that such institutions are necessary, though not sufficient, conditions of the full development of morality in a people, which gives them an essential propaedeutic function. Moreover, Kant appears to hint at the idea of a further, trans-political aim of history already in Idea for a Universal History, when he suggests that the confederation of states, itself an unrealized ideal, would not mark the culmination of the historical process, but roughly its halfway point (8:26).35 Although Kant does not tell us in this essay what he had in mind 34 35

See KU 5:447–53; 313–18. The significance of this passage is underscored by Allen Wood, “Unsociable Sociability: The Anthropological Basis of Kantian Ethics,” Philosophical Topics 19 (1991), p. 341.

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for this far distant second half of history, it seems reasonable to surmise that the task that he assigns to it involves the attainment of the final end, which, as we have seen, consists in the realization (or least promotion) of the highest good. The puzzle is how this could be regarded as a historical process. Kant does not address this question in either the essay or the third Critique; but he does offer a possible solution to it in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, with the introduction of his conception of an ethical commonwealth (eines ethischen gemeinen Wesens), which incorporates both a social and a historical dimension into his doctrine of the highest good. Since this is a complex topic, I can here do no more than baldly state the gist of Kant’s position as I see it. The underlying premise is that the development of a virtuous disposition, which is the portion of the highest good that is up to us, is not something that can be attained by individuals on their own, any more than it can be brought about by nature. This, Kant suggests in a manner reminiscent of his earlier account of unsociable sociability, is because we become subject to malignant inclinations and the vices associated with them as soon as we are among human beings (R 6:94; 129).36 Accordingly, an individual’s attainment of virtue is possible only as a member of an association of human beings “merely under the laws of virtue” (R 6:95; 130). Such an association is an ethical commonwealth, as distinguished from a political commonwealth, which would be a society under principles of right or justice.37 The idea seems to be modeled on that of the “kingdom of ends” of the Groundwork; but while Kant claims that, like the latter, this commonwealth is a mere ideal that can never be fully attained by imperfect beings such as ourselves (R 6:100; 135), he also insists that working toward it is a unique duty, “not of human beings toward human beings but of the human race toward itself” (R 6:97; 102). Finally, Kant maintains that even approximating such a condition (which is the best we can hope for) requires a lengthy process, wherein the focus is no longer on the state but on the church, the goal being the gradual transformation of the latter from an ecclesiastical to an ethical organization advocating a purely rational and moral religion. Since this is a historical process, presumably involving (at least ideally) humankind as a whole, it seems a likely candidate for the task that Kant assigns to the distant second 36 37

This aspect of Kant’s thought has been most fully discussed by Allen Wood; see Kant’s Ethical Thought, pp. 309–20. Kant also suggests that without the foundation of a political community, an ethical one could never be brought into existence by human beings (R 6:94; 130), thus making the latter a necessary (though not a sufficient) condition of the former.


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half of history in his self-proclaimed philosophical “chiliasm” (Idea, 8:26). Admittedly, it cannot be claimed conclusively that this expresses Kant’s intent in the 1784 essay, since his philosophy, particularly his moral philosophy, underwent a significant number of twists and turns between then and 1793. Nevertheless, to adopt Kant’s expression, it provides a guiding thread for the entertaining and perhaps useful project of interpreting Kant’s philosophy of history as constituting a systematic whole.

chapter 2

The purposive development of human capacities Karl Ameriks

Kant’s pivotal essay of November 1784 is the key text that links his Critical philosophy directly to the issue of history, and it does so in a way that, from the very beginning, also clearly transcends a focus on the mere individual.1 Nonetheless, the fact that this essay, like many of Kant’s other writings, devotes considerable attention to history and human society as a topic does not by itself show that Kant’s own philosophy is historical in a “fundamental” way, even if it is admittedly not “ahistorical” in a typical “pejorative” sense. For this reason alone the essay deserves further examination, even if there is no non-controversial way to establish whether it shows that Kant’s philosophy is fundamentally historical, or whether this would be a good thing. 1. an initial glance: thesis, context, title Many of the main difficulties that arise here can be gathered from simply an initial glance at the essay’s carefully worded title, its complex historical context, and its bold first thesis, that “All natural predispositions of a creature are determined sometime to develop themselves completely and purposively” (8:18). 1.1. The genetic problem It is only natural to object that the formulation of the thesis goes much too far in many ways by speaking of what is “determined,” “complete,” “purposive,” and about “all” natural dispositions of “all” creatures.2 But even if it 1 2

See Allen Wood, “Kant and the Problem of Human Nature,” in Brian Jacobs and Patrick Kain, eds., Essays on Kant’s Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 56. Wood is right to note “a measure of theoretical adventurousness in Kant’s historical teleology,” in “Kant’s Philosophy of History,” in Pauline Kleingeld, ed., Immanuel Kant, Toward Perpetual Peace and Other Writings on Politics, Peace and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 259.

46

The purposive development of human capacities

47

is allowed, for the time being, that some of the claims involving these five ambitious notions might be passed over or toned down radically while still leaving Kant with a very significant claim, the term “develop” seems irreplaceable, and yet its presence is already enough to arouse serious suspicion. The explicit stress of Kant’s transcendental philosophy is clearly on the issues of the pure source, validity, and extent of a priori judgments, and hence of propositions that have a universal and necessary form. In the Critique of Pure Reason as well as in his main writings in moral philosophy, Kant repeatedly attacks “genetic” accounts (“empirical deductions”) of basic principles that depend on temporal details. For an orthodox Kantian, any focus on “development” can thus appear to be either a mere secondary issue concerning contingent “subjective,” “psychological,” or pedagogical considerations, or, even worse, a subversion of the very idea of pure philosophy. At the same time, it cannot be denied that a large part of the fascination with Kant’s philosophy has been motivated by its “Copernican” character, its apparent rejection of all dogmatic and static “school philosophy” in favor of principles that “we” in some sense “make” and “give” to ourselves. Because such “making” is inevitably imagined as a kind of process, the notion of development may appear to be central to the Critical philosophy after all. It is therefore not surprising that a focal point for many recent discussions of this problem has been Kant’s striking use of the term “epigenesis,” in particular in his 1787 characterization of his own philosophy as a “system, as it were, of the epigenesis of pure reason” (B 167). It is indisputable that this passage explicitly places some kind of a “genetic” notion right at the core of the Critique’s ultimate self-characterization. Yet this hardly settles the matter, for Kant’s qualification, “as it were,” should not be passed over, and John Zammito’s important recent discussion of this topic is quite correct, I believe, in stressing what he calls “Kant’s persistent ambivalence toward epigenesis.”3 Any interpretation of the general significance of Kant’s essay on history must confront this “ambivalence” (see below, 4.1).

3

Zammito, “Kant’s Persistent Ambivalence toward Epigenesis, 1764–1790,” in Philippe Huneman, ed., Understanding Purpose: Kant and the Philosophy of Biology, North American Kant Society Studies in Philosophy, vol. 8 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007), pp. 51–74. See also Guenther Zoeller, “Kant on the Generation of Metaphysical Knowledge,” in H. Oberer and G. Seel, eds., Kant: Analysen-Probleme-Kritik (Würzburg: Königshausen and Neumann, 1988), pp. 71–90; and “From Innate to A Priori: Kant’s Radical Transformation of a Cartesian-Leibnizian Legacy,” Monist, 72 (1989), pp. 222–35.

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Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim 1.2. The turn after Herder

Other important ambivalences also appear in an initial glance at the general context of Kant’s essay. On the one hand, its topic is explicitly historical, and it is but one of a series of very influential essays in which Kant addresses topics such as enlightenment, society, and morality in a way in which the identification of crucial stages in human history is placed front and center. On the other hand, Kant’s overall strategy in these essays is largely an attack on the excessive importance given to history as such by writers like Herder, who proposed a broadly naturalist and thoroughly plastic conception of human capacities in general. It was precisely during this period that Kant was most intensively involved with Herder’s work, and there is evidence that even before this essay he wanted to counteract Herder’s influence.4 At the beginning of 1785 he published a very critical review of Herder’s Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity (1784), and when Reinhold immediately wrote an anonymous response in Herder’s defense, Kant quickly replied (March 1785) and then also wrote a critical review of the second installment of Herder’s work (November 1785). In addition to its contrast with the earlier works of Herder, Kant’s philosophical procedure in general, even at its most historical, needs to be distinguished from the work of leaders of the generation that followed him in Germany. While Reinhold, Schelling, and Hegel were unlike Herder insofar as their work was highly systematic in a basically rationalist way, they were, nevertheless, influenced by him and differed from Kant insofar as they brought detailed attention to the whole history of philosophy, and the reconstruction of the sequence of recent philosophical debates, right into the center of their philosophical methodology. It is because of this development that I have argued elsewhere that a fundamental “historical turn” in philosophy (just as in many other disciplines at that time) began at the end of the eighteenth century.5 This turn took on a philosophical style that was exemplified not by Kant’s work but rather by that of his immediate successors, who were preoccupied with the problem of what to make of the enormous wave of conflicting reactions to the Critical philosophy, and of how to work an extensive narrative of comparative historical 4

5

See Manfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 293. Herder’s influence should also be contrasted with Lessing’s approach, which allowed for a “history of reason” and stages of a moral “education” of humanity that was somewhat closer to Kant’s own position. See Henry E. Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966). See K. Ameriks, Kant and the Historical Turn: Philosophy as Critical Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006); cf. Theodore Ziolkowski, Clio, The Romantic Muse: Historicizing the Faculties in Germany (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).


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considerations directly into their systematic philosophical approach. Although the proximity to Kant of the origin of this kind of systematic philosophy in a “historical key” certainly deserves special emphasis, this is not to say that Kant himself can be likened to Hegel (let alone Nietzsche or Heidegger), or that his method resembles that of the even more explicitly historical philosophers in our own time such as Taylor, MacIntyre, Henrich, Frank, Brandom, Pippin, Geuss, or Larmore. And yet, even if one distinguishes Kant from both the historicist tendencies of Herder and his most radical followers as well as the more moderate and basically procedural historical tendencies of the advocates of what I call the “historical turn,” there remains the fact that Kant’s essays, especially in the 1780s, do put some kind of special stress on development and history – and the philosophical character of that stress still needs to be captured in its uniqueness. 1.3. The big Idea The title of Kant’s essay, like the terminology of its first thesis, is also an indication of Kant’s “ambivalent” attitude. The title’s first term is “Idea,” and although it is an Idea that immediately is said to concern history, Kant’s term implies several clearly ahistorical points and deserves being capitalized, just like the eternal Ideas that define his postulates of pure practical reason. In contrast to Herder, Kant chooses to speak not of a plurality of “ideas” that arise within history, or of “yet one more” perspective on history,6 but simply of a single privileged Idea. This Idea obviously has a kind of Platonic status, even if it is treated as merely “regulative” rather than as rooted in any alleged intuition of a constitutive principle. Kant’s Idea of history is intended to govern a unique, overridingly important, complete, and ultimately rational process, one with a necessary basic structure that in principle can be fully anticipated. In announcing that the Idea concerns a “universal” and “cosmopolitan” “purpose” or “aim” (Absicht), Kant is going even further by highlighting the absolutely all-encompassing and heavily teleological character that the thesis ascribes to history. The Idea implies an ideal end that is pre-given for all of us, one that, in several senses, we “must” all work to bring about – and that we should believe that “we” already have been bringing about in part. Although this final end will be accomplished only in and through our doing, the structure, validity, and scope of the end is in important ways as pure and necessary as mathematical knowledge (which also 6

Typical titles of Herder’s works were Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Humanity (1784) and “This, Too, a Philosophy of History” (1774).

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requires the participation of our constructive activity), for we can describe its core content without speaking directly of any of the contingencies or limitations that characterize particular individuals or societies, or even what other philosophers call the “spirit of an age.” It is an ideal for all human beings (and, in principle, all “human-like” beings) as such, the loftiest fixed star in the Kantian galaxy of our eternal internal and external compasses.7 No wonder that, right before presenting the first thesis, Kant compares his work on history to Kepler’s orderly tracing of “eccentric” orbits in astronomy (8:18). 2. complications 2.1. Freedom, nature, history The ambitious terminology of Kant’s first thesis, the disputatious context of the publications at the time of this essay, and the provocative nature of its title are all a reminder that Kant’s discussions of history are essays in the literal sense of being “attempts” at something new, and they are anything but a trivial, uncomplicated extension of his system. The most important complication arises with the essay’s very first sentence. Here Kant raises the issue of human freedom, and so a very hasty reader might imagine that a libertarian, individualist, contingent, or relativist perspective is about to be emphasized. But Kant immediately makes clear that the whole point of his introductory discussion is to propose a way of studying history where we supposedly can bracket the issue of the metaphysics of human absolute freedom and the apparent arbitrariness of individual choice. Kant goes out of his way to stress that there are fundamental historical patterns, concerning marriage and birth for instance (8:17), that, like the rest of nature, have a lawfulness which can be assumed to remain no matter how much the individuals involved might have, or think they have, absolute freedom. The first thesis expands on this non-individualist perspective by speaking not directly of human actions but instead proposing a basic pattern that governs “all animals.” Readers are left on their own here to draw the inference that this general pattern of nature should from the start be assumed to govern human social history in particular. To be sure, Kant’s next theses go on to concentrate on the specific capacities of human beings as a group, and ultimately their special capacity for eventually relating to one another by setting up a realm of global rules that would regulate 7

Kant frequently plays on the parallels of natural and normative orientations. See especially his 1786 essay, “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” (8:134–6).


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activity in a way quite unlike anything in the “mere” animal world. This “cosmopolitan aim,” however, defines an order of external right that, given the rest of Kant’s philosophy, turns out to have a genuinely purposeful meaning only insofar as it is thought of as a component of the realm of creation in the broadest sense, and as ultimately governed by the moral notion of the highest good.8 For Kant, this is the only state of affairs that we have fully adequate rational grounds to regard as in principle irreducibly teleological, and we can properly regard it this way only insofar as we believe that this state involves two essential factors in addition to the appropriate phenomenal aspects of justice. These factors are related to, but in a sense outside of, nature (defined here as the full complex of items exhaustively covered by natural laws): the uncaused causality of the moral intentions of finite rational beings and the even more independent causality of an assisting supreme cause. Although Kant holds that (with respect to “reflective judgment”) we cannot expect ever to be able to “explain” even a lump of grass in terms that are not organic and teleological, he also insists that our theoretical standpoint must still allow that (with respect to what is “constitutive”) any process of nature by itself might in fact be due to some kind of universal mechanism “all the way down” (KU 5:428). Kant’s ultimate vindication of nature thus must also turn out to be deeply ambivalent.9 The whole concrete course of human social history, even when it moves ideally and in full accord with the laws of nature toward the cosmopolitan end of a world structured by universal relations of right (full justice at an international level), is obviously a realm that takes place within time and nature, and yet for him its value (and origin) must be rooted, literally preformed, in an Idea and powers that go beyond the sensible, temporary, and conditioned character of natural individuals as such.10 This is not at all to say that, given his idealism, Kant must hold that what is in time and nature is in fact without meaning or even reality. Readers who are familiar with Kant’s idealism, and who are reluctant to deny Kant’s metaphysical claims altogether, sometimes speak as if, in accepting the thought of powers that go beyond nature, Kant must be denying the reality or value of nature altogether. They thereby overlook the possibility that all 8 9 10

See e.g., A 804/B 832, KpV 5:43, and KU 5:569. See especially KU, §91, and K. Ameriks, “Der Status des Glaubens: §§90–91 und Allgemeine Anmerkung,” in Otfried Höffe, ed., I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008). See Keith Ward, The Development of Kant’s View of Ethics (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1972), p. 139, “The purpose of nature alone, in developing a world-federation and a civilized, cultured human nature, must always fall short of the final end which alone gives the whole process meaning, the realization of the summum bonum.” Cf. Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History.

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Kant may mean is that nature by itself may lack a certain fundamental, unconditioned kind of reality or value. At one point in his introduction to Kant’s essays on history, even Lewis White Beck misses this point in saying that “the final purpose of the world … Kant finds in … legislating and obeying moral law in an otherwise meaningless world,” and “the world of nature [the domain of sensible appearances] … is not reality, which we do not and cannot know. Hence what is not possible in the world understood as nature may be possible in the world as it really is, and we must either declare the moral command [and its freedom] nugatory or postulate the final attainability of the goals which the moral command places before us.”11 The mistake here is to imply that Kant’s contrast between the realm of freedom and the realm of nature must be a simple contrast between reality and nonreality. This is surely a mistake because Kant’s whole Critical notion of moral action and a highest good makes sense only to the extent that one can believe that there are, in nature, real public structures and sensory effects of the uncaused12 and coordinated willings of human beings and a supreme being. The crucial point about these effects is that, unlike their ultimate causes, they are in no way unconditioned. Similarly, when speaking about the contrast of the realms of the laws of nature and of freedom, Kant’s transcendental idealist solution is not to say that there simply is no nature, no realm of spatio-temporal laws at all, and there is (or may be) only non-natural and uncaused causing; what he holds is that, in addition to the empirically real caused causings within nature, there can be – and moral agents must believe that there are – uncaused causings, which are due to causes that “in themselves” are outside of nature and yet have effects in nature. 2.2. Complications in context Even though Kant’s conception here of our “natural purpose” is very much an atemporal ideal, it should not be assumed that Kant’s own way of expressing its preconditions did not undergo significant shifts. The fact 11

12

Lewis White Beck, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Kant on History, p. xvii, emphasis mine. I have omitted Beck’s speaking of “rational man” doing the “legislating” of the moral law. This is an unfortunate expression because the law as such is not relative simply to “man,” and the very postulate that Beck mentions makes sense, in Kant’s published arguments, only to the extent that the law is understandable as something that can be legislated by a non-sensory and non-human rational being. See the end of Kant’s “Raising the Tone of Philosophy” (8:397n4), and cf. Rae Langton, “Objective and Unconditioned Value,” Philosophical Review 116 (2007), pp. 157–85. I am using the term “uncaused” to reflect Kant’s terminology at A 538/B 566ff. What is meant is not something that is entirely uncaused, for the agents themselves are causes, but a free “causality” that is not an effect of a chain of causes outside the agent.


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that Idea for a Universal History appeared in 1784 is quite significant because this is precisely the time when Kant had just begun to move from the first edition of his first Critique (1781), with its very sketchy account of our freedom and its final end, to his hitherto unexpected publication of a Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (April 1785). The Groundwork was then followed by the very differently structured Critique of Practical Reason (1788) and a previously unanticipated third Critique (1790), which made the assessment of claims of aesthetic, natural, and moral-religious teleology suddenly central to transcendental philosophy.13 Prior to the mid1780s, and after his “Inaugural Dissertation” of 1770, Kant had published remarkably little aside from the Critique of Pure Reason and its defensive “synopsis” in the Prolegomena (1783). But even though the few brief essays that he did compose in this period are not very well known, they are in fact highly relevant to his Idea of history and dispute with Herder.14 In both his 1771 review of Moscati’s Of the Essential Difference in the Structure of the Bodies of Humans and Animals and his own 1775 essay Of the Different Human Races, Kant emphasizes such themes as the relation of the development of rationality to the achievement of erect posture,15 the unique natural capacities of the human species, and the necessary underlying unity of all human beings over time and around the globe because of a distinctive set of “seeds” (Keime) and “predispositions” (Anlagen).16 A focus on absolute human freedom – the most crucial component within this set – is a striking feature of Kant’s brief but very significant review of Pastor J. H. Schulz (1783), which sharply criticizes the ethics and metaphysics of Schulz’s compatibilist proposals on punishment. Under the guise of an enlightened liberalism, Schulz’s all-encompassing dynamic Wolffian version of a philosophy of law and history would make human action merely a matter of automatically responding ever more efficiently to surrounding “forces,” which become more and more “clear” in the inevitable process of human education.17 Against this “turnspit” perspective, 13 14 15

16 17

See also Kant’s “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy” (1788), which also discusses the issue of race in detail, and Eze, ed., Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997). See John H. Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002). Modern science still holds that this is an epochal development; quite recently the development of bipedalism has been dated back from 5 to 20 million years ago. See www.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/ 20070715/sc_nm/humans_walking_dc. For extensive references to literature concerning the use of these terms in this period, see Zammito, “Kant’s Persistent Ambivalence.” Johann Heinrich Schulz, “Attempt at an Introduction to a Doctrine of Morals for All Human Beings Regardless of Different Religions, Part I” (1783).

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Kant claims that human beings must both think and act under the Idea of absolute freedom, a theme that is taken up in Groundwork, Section III, as well as his essay on Enlightenment (December 1784), which speaks vividly of nature’s unwrapping “the seed [Keim] for which she cares most tenderly, namely the propensity and calling [Hang und Beruf] to think freely” (8:41). However much he agrees that it is important to study human beings within their natural setting, the common thread of Kant’s attack on all theorists like Schulz and Herder is a deep opposition to any suggestion that the differences between human faculties (e.g., sensations and concepts, unfree and free behavior), or between human beings and other species, can be simply a matter of degree.18 2.3. An ambivalence complex Without going so far as to divide the Critical period itself into sharply distinct subperiods, I believe it can be shown that Kant’s mid-1780s work, and especially the first pages of the Idea of history essay, manifests a striking and troublesome – although, for the most part, temporary – ambivalence about how to approach the basic question of the justification for belief in human freedom and the related issue of exactly how to express the relation between theoretical and practical philosophy. When Kant approaches human history by speaking, from the start, of “natural predispositions,” one cannot help but wonder how he is going to make room for the most distinctive and crucial capacity that his philosophy attributes to human beings: namely, the capacity to be uncaused causes in a way that, given the transcendental idealism of the Critique, must place them in part outside nature altogether. One response to this worry would be to say that Idea for a Universal History is written already from the standpoint of the doctrine of the primacy of practical reason in precisely the sense developed in the second Critique, according to which the moral law, and it alone, as a Faktum der Vernunft, explicitly provides the unique, rational, and sufficient access (given the preliminary metaphysical road-clearing accomplished by the thesis of the transcendental ideality of time and space), the ratio cognoscendi, for the strong claim of our absolute freedom (5:4n). An obvious hermeneutical problem with this approach, however, is that the Faktum 18

See this passage, italicized by Kant himself, in his review: “Virtue and vices are [according to Schulz] not essentially different (so here again what is otherwise taken as a specific difference is changed into a mere difference in terms of degree)” (8:11). Translation from Mary Gregor, ed., Practical Philosophy/ Immanuel Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 11.


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doctrine of the second Critique was not formulated until a few years after the essay and seems to contrast sharply with the strategy of Kant’s earlier argument for freedom in Groundwork III (to which it makes no reference). Moreover, at first sight Idea for a Universal History appears to be composed from the perspective of theoretical rather than practical philosophy, and initially seems aimed basically at explaining how we are best to understand the distinctive pattern of human history.19 Fortunately, there is an alternative interpretive approach here, one that I take to be better grounded historically even if it involves a position that is less satisfactory from a systematic perspective. On this approach, which takes its cue from the final page of Kant’s response to Schulz (8:13–14), the distinction between theoretical and practical considerations is not yet sharply drawn. The main idea here is that as long as one is trying to exercise the human capacity to think at all, whether theoretically or practically, and to offer judgments or construct intentions, that is, to engage in events that need to be assessed in terms of reasons and are not to be regarded as “simply” a response to forces, then a belief in freedom in thought as well as in self-determined individual agency must be present. This approach corresponds not only to the language of the Schulz review but also to the essay on Enlightenment and the Groundwork, which are the other discussions of freedom that immediately surround Idea for a Universal History. The approach goes along especially smoothly with the relatively popular standpoint of the essays, which casually mix theoretical and practical topics (e.g., the “calling to think freely”) and avoid focusing on metaphysical complications. The argument of Groundwork III overlaps in its key terms (“a rational being that must regard himself as intelligent,” 4:452) with the discussions in the essays, but it has a different appearance because it is developed within the context of a longer and more systematic work that is explicitly responding to the skeptical worry, raised at the end of Groundwork II, that our talk about freedom may be a mere “figment of the brain” (4:445). Relating this text to Kant’s other works is an especially difficult problem for all interpreters. In several respects it resembles Kant’s more casual essays, but in other respects its ambitions seem as fundamental as that of any of the Critiques. My own hypothesis is that Groundwork III represents a brief and somewhat untypical and overconfident period in Kant’s approach to our freedom, one in which, unlike the second Critique, he at times seems to rely on considerations that are not clearly practical (in a pure sense) in order 19

L. W. Beck and Allen Wood, for example, stress this theoretical intention of the essay.

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to reach quite substantive conclusions about one’s self.20 This is an unstable position that appears in obvious tension with Kant’s most insightful restrictions on metaphysical self-knowledge and pure psychological claims in general. Hence it is only appropriate that, in order to present a more clearly coherent and Critical position, Kant’s major moves in 1786 through 1788 (in the Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 1786, as well as the revisions in the 1787 edition of the first Critique and the introduction of the Faktum doctrine in the second Critique) were precisely to make explicit strong restrictions on what the self can know or assert about itself “all alone,” and especially to turn away from even any suggestion that a mere theoretical act of judgment by itself reveals our absolute spontaneity.21 These late 1780s improvements retrospectively shed light on what can be called Kant’s mid-1780s temporary pattern of nonchalant ambivalence in countenancing an implicit strong positive presumption about our absolute freedom without going so far yet as clearly to insist that it is only from a pure moral perspective that there is an adequate ground for holding on to this presumption, or even to the thought that there is any genuine purpose to existence at all. This temporary pattern is historically understandable but systematically precarious: to the extent that moral considerations are not directly addressed or defended as essential, the works of this period take on the appearance of “dancing over an abyss.” They casually propose that we think about natural history as in effect the whole “stage” for the advancement of freedom, while bracketing libertarian metaphysics and foreclosing the standard alternative ways of making freedom comprehensible – namely, by treating it as a matter of degree, as in the earlier Leibnizian or Wolffian tradition, or the broadly naturalistic manner that was central not only to Herder but also most of the later secular determinist and Hegelian approaches that became popular in Germany even within Kant’s lifetime. 3. problems in the thesis The troublesome nature of Kant’s nonchalance becomes apparent as soon as one tries to think through the details of his first historical thesis. The thesis does not present a detailed argument but simply a contention that without 20 21

See K. Ameriks, Preface to Kant’s Theory of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000, 2nd edn.), and Interpreting Kant’s Critiques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), chs. 6, 9, 10. See not only Kant’s second Critique but also above, note 9, and KU §91, on “matters of fact,” where our freedom is reaffirmed and even described as a certain “experience” but only on the practical basis of an appreciation of the moral law. Cf. also Kant’s reference to the law as the “Archimedean point” in “Tone” (8:403).


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assuming the universal necessary development of “natural predispositions,” animals would have to be regarded as “purposelessly playing” in a realm of “desolate chance” (8:18). The thesis thus appears committed to a very substantive existential claim. One could imagine an alternative approach that would simply define an animal’s “natural” predispositions as those that, in fact, always do manifest themselves in its life cycle. This would leave open the possibility that there may be many animals that do not have any such predispositions except for those that are necessary for their bare survival, and hence are present in a trivial manner. 3.1. The purpose problem Kant’s first thesis, however, concerns not mere survival but what is involved when animals develop “completely,” and it is presented as a non-trivial claim that is “confirmed” by “external” as well as “internal observation.” This implies that here the term “purpose” must concern some kind of evident “surplus value,” that is, the manifestation of an endowment that allows animals to do something more than they “absolutely” have to do in order to exist at all. Kant himself indicates that we can see that such an endowment is in a strict sense superfluous because his thesis concedes that, even without it, animals could be around, still “playing,” as part of a merely “purposelessly playing” nature. He calls such a situation “desolate,” but in describing it here by means of the term Ungefähr he does not mean whatever we might ordinarily call mere “chance.” Such a world could, after all, still manifest a tight network of universal and lawful mechanical relations, even though it would not thereby satisfy what Kant refers to here as the “guideline of reason.” This “guideline” presumably comes from what the thesis calls the “teleological doctrine of nature,” but nothing is said here about why, in the era of Critical philosophy, such a doctrine must be presumed. To be sure, the Critique of Pure Reason invokes a “transcendental principle” (A 651/B 680) of “systematic unity in nature,” which is supposedly necessary in a regulative epistemological way, simply as underlying our constant need to try to order appearances in terms of hierarchies of genus and species, and to explain their properties exhaustively in terms of layers of underlying powers. Whatever the merits of this kind of broadly logical principle, however, it is hard to see how it entails any strong universal claim about specifically teleological predispositions in animals themselves. What the principle does suggest, though, is a key fact that might have been skipped over only because Kant took it to be so extremely obvious: that we presume that animals always exist

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not as mere individuals22 but only as members of a living species, a species determined in terms of distinctive inheritable characteristics. Rather than pausing to make this point in the first thesis in a general way, Kant passes over it altogether until, in the second thesis, he draws attention to it indirectly by saying that “reason,” the allegedly distinctive predisposition of human beings, develops “completely only in the species” (8:18). 3.2. The reason problem Another indication of what I have called Kant’s “nonchalant ambivalence” is the fact that here he calls “reason” the crucial human predisposition without immediately specifying its components and explaining whether it is theoretical or practical. This corresponds to his pattern at the time of suggesting, somewhat like Rousseau, that one can go easily back and forth between what is implied by our “freedom to act” and our “freedom to think” (judge). Such nonchalance covers over a crucial issue, because even if it is allowed that animals have numerous characteristics not clearly essential for their bare survival, it is hard to see how to determine which of these should be said to be crucial for an animal’s distinctive “development.” One might well imagine, for example, that human animals could be quite distinctive and still prosper without getting near to “completely” developing practical reason, as long as they still had some other special powers, say in the broad realm of theoretical reason. Conversely, one might imagine that human beings could “complete” themselves in some distinctive and adequate degree simply through special achievements of practical reason (e.g., customs of sympathetic respect), even while their theoretical reason remained at a crude pre-scientific level. Part – but only part – of what Kant may mean here concerns a strong principle that the first thesis introduces about “successful” activity: “An organ that is not to be used, or an arrangement that does not attain to its end, is a contradiction” (8:18). Apparently, we must think that every kind of animal should be able to succeed at something specific, something presumably beyond the mere general capacity to survive, which all species exhibit. But even if this is granted, it remains very difficult, without some further substantive clue, to see the specific implications of Kant’s principle for human history. For all that we know so far, this principle could be satisfied in the human case by either a theoretical or practical life of playing games that are in an ordinary sense just silly, for such a life could still be said 22

On the possible limitations of the “era of species,” see Freeman Dyson, “Our Biotech Future,” New York Review of Books 54 (2007), pp. 4–8.


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to succeed in having achieved its end. Hence, even if we accept that there are some distinctive predispositions that have to be “completely developed” by human beings, on the bare supposition that all species as such have some significant properties that go beyond mere survival, it is at first not at all clear what kind of properties these are. To begin to address this difficulty, a Kantian can understandably argue that what is specifically contrary to the “guideline of reason” for human beings – especially because they are the only kind of animal that, on Kant’s view, seems to have reason at all – is to deny them the expectation of succeeding in “developing” reason. Nonetheless, it remains unclear why even this development need be anything more than success in a fairly modest accomplishment or anything corresponding to commonsense notions of purposiveness. One could still suppose, for example, that the general demand that human beings “develop,” simply as a type of animal that has distinctive rational endowments, could be met by their exhibiting something like the mere ability to “play” ruthless strategic games, or to do “desolate” things like cultivating (beyond survival needs) only tobacco. 3.3. The self-made problem The essay’s third thesis can be read as an attempt to resolve this problem by proposing that it is precisely the “self-making” (“entirely out of himself,” 8:19) quality of human beings that is crucial here. But this point simply returns us to the issue that Kant seems to be trying to keep under the table, namely, the question of whether human action, simply in virtue of its being complex, rational, and reflexive, is adequately distinctive, or whether, until more is said, it still might be, as Kant thought that Schulz’s view implied, merely like the movement of a very complicated “turnspit.” For this reason it is still unclear, especially in the human case, exactly what falls under the heading of what the first thesis would call “purposeless play,” and why such a situation would be unacceptable. One can imagine a community of self-making human beings that, in a life of mere silly games, has self-consciously formed itself with the “surplus value” of silliness that it is capable of – and yet this success presumably would not satisfy what Kant has in mind by his demand of something beyond “purposeless playing.” And self-made “silly success” is not the only problem. Kant recognizes that human beings are unique in being able rationally and reflectively to set themselves certain kinds of tasks that are not manifestly silly and in which they regularly do not succeed, for example, a life without episodes of serious unhappiness. Kant appreciates that human

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beings, and human beings alone, can plan a life of prudence – and yet he always avoids allowing that aim to define humanity’s goal. Although the third thesis essay highlights the fact that human beings do not seem to succeed at being happy (“it appears to have been no aim at all to nature that he should live well,” 8:20), Kant’s ultimate point here, as throughout his Critical period, is clearly that “success” with happiness is not the main issue. He stresses that a life of mere satisfaction could in principle be achieved without the complexities of human reason altogether (G 4:395), and so, insofar as we use our reason consciously to aim merely at something like this end, we still might as well be turnspits. Looking back at the first thesis alone, it might seem that if Kant is not fundamentally concerned with prudence, and its goal of happiness, which is a goal common to any animal, he must be concerned with some more specific but merely natural peculiarity of human beings, something that would allow them to have their own “field” of organic activity – just as cows are especially good at making use of the grass in front of them, and some parasites, which indirectly make use of the grass too, are especially good at making use of cows as well.23 But by the time of the third Critique at the latest,24 Kant is willing to argue that, at one level, all such apparent natural “purposiveness” can be regarded, at another level, as simply a pointless cycle, with no final end, which is to say it would be a kind of instrumentally self-adjusting organic system that is still “purposeless play” on the whole. This is a point not only about cows and parasites, for Kant also sees that there could be highly rational beings caught up in a purposeless play of this type – for example, Hobbesian beings that could even be legislating rules for themselves and gaining, through all sorts of clear perception and reflection, ever higher conditions of power and happiness in a Schulzian ideal state. Such beings might in a sense be “rational” and “self-making,” but they surely would not satisfy what Kant ultimately means by the “guideline of reason.” All this goes to show that Kant has a fairly ambitious, even if at first sight quite ambivalent, notion of reason. It was noted earlier that a series of events that follows the laws of mere mechanical nature is still following laws, and to that extent reflects something that might be called reason – and yet, given the first thesis alone, it clearly would not satisfy what Kant means by true “purpose” here. In addition, given the Kantian considerations that were 23 24

For stirring reflections on the omnipresence of parasites, see Annie Dillard’s classic, The Pilgrim at Tinker Creek (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974). See KU 5:427, and Guyer, Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), chs. 12 and 13.


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just invoked above, and backed by other Critical texts, it can also be said that a series of events that appears to follow specifically organic principles (but can, after all, still be due to what are mere mechanical causes), or even one that follows specifically prudential-practical laws (but can also be generated by ultimately mechanical causes), still need not satisfy what Kant has in mind by genuine, that is, serious and not merely “playful,” purpose. 3.4. The moral problem To find out in a more positive way what Kant is after here by introducing the notion of serious purpose, it is not really necessary to go beyond this essay altogether; its first three theses are clearly meant as part of a single argument that culminates in the conclusion that a full observation of humanity reveals that it is “as if” nature has made us to be most concerned with our “rational self-esteem” (8:20). Kant surely does not mean this to be taken in some kind of ordinary psychological and nonmoral way, for such a mere psychological state would be no more above mere “play” than the complex animal relations described earlier (e.g., the ultimately pointless preening of a peacock). Hence, despite his passing remarks about the selfforming technical ingenuity of human reason (8:19) – a quality that no doubt could be found in properly tuned turnspits as well – it must be that what Kant is ultimately concerned with here is not the mere innovative capacity of theoretical reason, nor the mere psychological complexity of our self-directed and self-molding states, but rather the crucial normative attitude that he describes in much more detail elsewhere as self-esteem based entirely in respect for the moral law, which is the only substantive principle of pure reason in an absolute sense.25 This kind of respect is appropriately related to the theme of satisfying reason because what Kant must ultimately have in mind here must not be “reason” in just any commonsense meaning but reason as the special higher capacity to be concerned with absolutely necessary concepts and laws. In comparison with reason in this sense, Kant need not regard even the regularities of mechanics, let alone psychology, as by themselves laws in the strictest sense. They are all mere sensible patterns, or “counsels,” which by themselves do not absolutely have to be the way they are and do not have the unconditional quality that is found in what is worthy of esteem. The moral law, in contrast, which is the prime object of our self-esteem, is the 25

KpV 5:161, and MS 6:402. Cf. Velkley, Freedom and the End of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), and Kant’s lectures on metaphysics, 28:301; 29:916, 948.

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only practical principle that for Kant has lawfulness in an absolutely categorical sense, holding for all rational agents as such.26 In the realm of theory, the only parallel to this law – and an entirely appropriate one given Kant’s language here about the “guideline [Leitfaden] of reason” – is the set of pure categories that we are led to by what he calls the Leitfaden of the logical forms of judgment (A 66/B 91). These must also be thought of as holding for all rational beings and thus having an unconditional validity – even if by themselves they are too formal for sensible minds like ours to use in a determinative way, and even if we need not think that an infinite mind would have to employ them in a discursive rather than intuitive way. This tight connection between reason and law will also turn out to be the clue to resolving the problem, noted at the outset, of how to make the best sense of Kant’s talk about his own philosophy as “epigenetic.” 4. assessing kant’s historical essay To make relevant sense of Kant’s first thesis about the purpose of animal life in general, I have been arguing that we are forced to peek ahead – in part to the next two theses about human beings in particular, in part to the cosmopolitan end of the essay as a whole, which defines the goal of a realm of universal right, and in part to other works in Kant’s Critical period, which reveal his fundamental views about the highest good and freedom. These additional materials can be used to show that a Kantian need not remain confused by the nonchalant ambivalence of the surface structure of many of Kant’s expressions in the mid-1780s. Although for a while Kant himself might have spoken as if practically any judgmental or practical activity of human beings is enough to reveal the true purpose of the species – which must involve absolute freedom and not only a high degree of what ultimately may be mere mechanical complexity – Kant did not in fact leave matters in such a careless state. By the time that he was confident enough to revise his first Critique and to publish his second, he filled out the notion of “self-esteem” and finally made the crucial condition (absolute freedom) of the true purposiveness of human life, and thus of the aim of human history as well, explictly dependent on reason’s special relation to the moral law. Even if this interpretation is accepted, there remain the sticky questions posed at the outset about how to relate Kant’s general transcendental views to his special interest in notions of development and history. If pure reason is 26

The moral law is thus stricter than the categorical imperative, because, as an imperative, even this imperative is relevant only to the restricted domain of sensible beings.


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so crucial, why does Kant even use terms such as “epigenesis”? And if pure moral reason is overridingly important, why is history so crucial, if, precisely on Kant’s own theory, our fundamental capacity to be free and to accept the moral law is something that in principle can be realized at any time, by anyone, in history? There are two different questions here that need to be addressed at different levels; the first (4.1) has to do with fundamental and a priori considerations and the second (4.2) with derivative but still very significant a posteriori complications. 4.1. A genetic account of Kantian epigenesis as not very genetic It turns out that Kant’s conception of his own view as epigenetic involves genesis or development only in a very restricted sense. As interpreters such as Zammito and Zoeller have argued in different ways, Kant’s denial of specific versions of a preformation account of our ideas is still compatible with an emphasis on the strict a priori nature of some of them, and even with an allowance that we are dependent on something that is preformed.27 Even though Kant does not want to call any of our ideas innate, he does insist that our a priori ideas are very unlike empirical ones because they are “originally” rather than derivatively “acquired.” Kant still takes the “ground” of the possibility of pure representations to be innate in us, although not the representations themselves, because he wants to avoid the odd notion of a kind of actual mental picture slumbering within the mind without any epistemological activity. There are two important and related but distinct points here: an emphasis on epistemology in contrast to the mere facts of psychology or metaphysics, and an emphasis on activity in contrast to mere presence, passivity, or change in scale. For Kant, to call a representation “pure” or “a priori” is precisely to characterize a way that it functions within the process of knowledge, and so the phrase “original acquisition” is meant to indicate not a particular empirical event separate from and before others but rather the use of a representation that must necessarily, in a normative sense, structure all representation from the very outset in any act of knowing. It is significant that it is only in the Critique’s second edition account of the objectivity of the categories of “pure reason” that Kant goes so far as to speak explicitly of his system as “as it were” epigenetic. An advantage here of the “constructive” language of “original acquisition” rather than innateness 27

See Zoeller, “From Innate to A Priori,” and Kant, On a New Discovery According to which Any New Critique of Reason Has Been Made Superfluous by an Earlier One (8:222).

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is that the latter language by itself does not indicate the specific necessary character of these basic representations as a matter of their general epistemic structuring function. This is the crucial point of his argument at B 167: that even if an idea of a certain type were implanted in our mind by a special transcendent power so that the idea would always in fact have to correspond in a perfectly pre-established way to an object of that type, this still would not give a proper account of how humans have what counts as substantive necessary knowledge. The main problem here is not simply that our invocation of such a transcendent power is “arbitrary” in the sense that our grasp of that power and its capacities is not independently warranted or subject to any clear procedure. The key point is that the imposition of a preestablished harmony that simply puts us in a state of having, or being able to have, particular ideas that “correspond” to particular objects (“Fido”Fido style) still does not even begin to explain that (and how) there are necessary, rather than arbitrary, universal judgmental structures that are needed in order to achieve the normative state of knowing sensible objects at all. In other words, the “necessary agreement” of a sort that could be arranged by an external causal control of inner ideas and outer objects that passively “picture” one another is not the kind of internal or transcendental structuring of categorial ideas that “constitutes” objects through judgments so as to make them “grammatically” comprehensible, such that without them there is nothing understandable that we ever could know. All this implies that, although the “epigenetic” “process” that Kant is speaking about concerns structures that for us are always exhibited in time, they are in no way dependent on the contingencies of time, let alone social history. This point is still compatible with Kant’s making use of a term that has its roots in the new “dynamic” biology of his era, for this term conveniently signifies that, like anti-preformationist views of biological development, the development of the pure core of human knowledge cannot be understood in terms of miniature objects that need only to be unfolded and could already be identified in terms that have nothing to do with the activity of our experience. By the time of the first Critique, there was already a wide variety of biological epigenetic views, and Kant could share with them not only some negative attitudes about naive versions of preformationism, but also the general positive notion that human beings become themselves only by actively generating, by means of their power of reason rather than mere pregiven nature, principles that are actual and cognitive only when realized in a specific form in experience. What complicates matters here is the fact that, as Zammito has stressed, Kant was also aware that important biologists such as von Haller had


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introduced what they called a version of “preformationism” that also includes some kind of active, “self-determining power.”28 Kant’s appreciation of this point may explain why he did not use the term epigenesis itself in a favorable way prior to 1787 (or ever in a wholly unqualified sense), and why it is not part of his 1781 account of how his metaphysical deduction will “follow the pure concepts up to their first Keime und Anlagen, in the human understanding, in which they lie predisposed, until they finally, on the occasion of experience, develop and through exactly the same understanding are displayed in their purity, freed from empirical conditions” (A 66). This passage allows that there is a sense in which the categories are preformed or “lie predisposed” within us, as conditions of knowledge, and yet this is not preformationism in an uncritical sense, for it is still compatible with the key Critical point (not explained right here) that these Keime as such still do not amount to actual knowledge and they need to “develop.” What Kant began, in the later 1780s, to get much clearer about expressing is the idea that our transition to the acquisition of knowledge should not be described simply in the relatively passive and negative terms of Keime being “occasioned” and then “freed from the empirical.” Instead, the self-activated and cognitionconstituting role of pure concepts needs to be more clearly stressed – the fact that, without actively deploying categories judgmentally, by bringing them into sensible principles that order experience in general, we could not be said to be understandably concerning ourselves with knowable empirical objects at all.29 It should be clear enough, then, that although there is crucial dynamic language in this theoretical area of Kant’s work, it has nothing originally to do with historical development in particular. His discussions here do, however, reinforce his view that the human species as such (as opposed to mere individuals) has a special significance, and in particular a special set of theoretical capacities. This is an important point, but its historical implications are limited. One might, all too hastily, suppose that if there is any special historical aim for human beings as such, it may concern completing, scientifically and philosophically, the account of how these dispositions structure the entirety of our theoretical knowledge. Kant is very clear, however, that this theoretical task, however valuable it may be, is not a

28 29

Zammito, “Kant’s Persistent Ambivalence,” p. 58, quotes from Kant’s review of Herder (8:62–3). Zammito, “Kant’s Persistent Ambivalence,” p. 60, documents how the crucial Kantian features of reason’s “spontaneity” and “systematicity” had analogs in the biological theories of the day.

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fundamental “need of reason.”30 Life would not be purposeless if this project, or any comparable theoretical task, were not accomplished by any individual or any foreseeable social endeavor. And even if such a task could be finished soon, at least in its core, as Kant sometimes suggests is possible thanks to his own system, Kant does not regard such an accomplishment as something that would bestow meaning on human existence, and creation itself, as such. 4.2. The primacy of the practical, as non-historical and historical The need of practical reason is a very a different matter for Kant, for it is unconditional rather than conditional, and ultimately is even said to provide a purpose for creation in general. Only the satisfaction of this need can give a purpose definitely elevating us above “purposeless play” and definitely satisfying the “guideline of reason.” The main problem with relating this need to history is that Kant’s own theory of absolute freedom rules out allowing the satisfaction of the basic need to respect the moral law to be dependent on any empirical contingencies. This is precisely what makes Kant so radical, egalitarian, and universal in his orientation: every person, irrespective even of variations in intellect, or social and physical gifts, is commanded to obey the law, and presumably has at all times and places an equal original capacity to do so. The solution to this problem lies in the fact that Kant holds that morality calls us not merely to respect the moral law but also to be active rational agents who aim to bring about objects in accord with it, and thus eventually a world with just structures everywhere. But any success, or even mere thought of success, with independent objects is subject to all sorts of social and historical contingencies. For this reason, and even without at first looking in detail at the phenomenon of history, Kant introduces his postulates of pure practical reason in the first Critique as Ideas that human beings need to be committed to taking to be possible because otherwise, given the manifest general lack of a just correlation in human experience between happiness and desert, the pursuit of the supreme object of morality can seem altogether pointless. It takes only a small extra step to see that, even given the acceptance of the postulates’ general argument that a morally committed person needs to think there is some kind of transcendent power organizing the effects that result, one can also imagine a rational, 30

Kant stresses this phrase in his “Orientation” essay (8:139).


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morally concerned person who might still go on to wonder whether, given the details of human history that we do know, it makes sense to believe any longer that even such a power can truly be effective. It may seem that even a just and powerful God could not make a just world, if the history of free persons is just a total mess. Our Mitbestimmung is crucial, and it can manifestly appear to be sorely deficient. It is primarily to meet this problem that I believe Kant introduces his complex hypothesis of the hidden purposive mechanism of the Idea of history. At first sight, it may seem that there is no way even to imagine that the history of human beings could actually be going in a direction compatible with the highest good: “no history of them in conformity to a plan appears to be possible” (8:17). And yet, given that the rest of Kant’s essay provides the sketch of a plan for history that would at least dispel this appearance of impossibility, and provide an understandable pathway to meeting some of the most worrisome necessary conditions of the highest good that is supposed be the ultimate aim of our intentional efforts, then Kant’s concern with history appear justified and consistent after all. To achieve this worthy apologetic goal, however, it does not seem necessary that he insist on the more ambitious and controversial claims of the first thesis, namely that “all” species have, and thus that all human history has, a “determined” pathway, a supersized “purpose” that involves “all” natural predispositions, and requires a “complete” development. Kant might have proposed a much more modest first thesis that simply states that animals do seem to develop in distinctive ways, and so if it is claimed that the distinctive history of human animals at first appears necessarily to take a path that absolutely excludes some of the conditions needed for the fulfillment of a genuinely purposeful (i.e., at least just) existence, then there is a need to see if there may be some rational way to conceive this history so that this fulfillment does not appear impossible after all. The rest of Kant’s essay does appear to exhibit one internally consistent and externally plausible way of accomplishing this considerably more modest project, and thus of doing justice to the essential “spirit” behind the first thesis. In this case, then, it may turn out that not much is lost for the core of the Critical philosophy if one remains unpersuaded by most of the actual body of the “letter” of the first thesis, however intriguing it may be. Its body may itself be simply an understandable but unfortunate relic, a matter of trying to keep too much in step with the fashions and science of one’s youth – and thus it can be a good historical lesson in another sense, especially for philosophers.

chapter 3

Reason as a species characteristic Manfred Kuehn

Some philosophical scholars understand the Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim of 1784 as Kant’s most explicit formulation of his “philosophy of history.” Put differently, they understand this essay as his attempt to uncover the fundamental laws of the historical development of humanity, similar in intent to the efforts of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Karl Marx, and others, who offered compelling accounts of what they took to be the meaning and direction of history. But there are many reasons why such an interpretation should be rejected.1 The English word “history” is just as ambiguous as the German word “Geschichte.” It can refer either to the totality of events that we call “history” or to the way in which history is conceived or written. In the latter sense, we also speak of “historiography” (“Geschichtsschreibung”), and use the terms “history” (Geschichte) as a mere shorthand for the former. The Universal History presents and defends an “idea” and a “point of view” for the writing of such a universal or world history.2 In other words, Kant was addressing in this essay Geschichtsschreibung or historiography, advocating and giving reasons for a certain way of writing history from a philosophical point of view that introduces a “plan” or a “purpose of nature” into the historical account we give of human events. He claimed that such a plan must concern the progress of human abilities toward their full development or perfection. And he further claimed that this idea is “to some extent based on an a priori principle” (8:30).3 His proposal was thus in his own mind deeply connected with some of the central concerns of his critical philosophy. 1

2 3

Not everyone makes this mistake, but it cannot be emphasized enough that Kant was in this essay really only talking about Geschichtsschreibung or historiography. See Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History, for instance. In fact, for Kant, it presents the (only possible) idea and point of view for such a history. References to Kant’s works will be given in brackets in the main text, with the volume number of the Academy edition followed by a colon and the page number. The full reference is: Immanuel Kants gesammelte Schriften, ed. Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1902– ). I use the translations of The Cambridge Edition of Kant’s Works edited by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood in most

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Reason as a species characteristic

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Kant was well aware of how “strange and apparently silly” his proposal might appear to his contemporaries (8:29f.). Indeed, the essay is first and foremost his attempt to show to his contemporaries that his ideas are far from being strange or silly. He was not, he argued, offering a mere piece of fiction or “a novel (Roman)” (8:29). Rather, he argued Universal History is not just a logical, but a real possibility.4 In the last section of the essay, he offered four reasons: (1) The idea of a plan or purpose is heuristically useful in presenting the material. “Even if we are too blind to see the secret mechanism of its working, this Idea may still serve as a guiding thread for presenting as a system … what would otherwise be a planless conglomeration of human actions” (8:29). In other words, whether or not there is (or whether or not we can discern) a plan, the assumption that there is (or might be) a plan is useful in representing the events of human history in a systematic fashion. (2) If there is a plan, there is also hope. The view afforded by a universal history from a cosmopolitan point of view also gives “a consoling view of the future” (8:30). It is a “justification of nature – or, better, of Providence,” or (perhaps even better?) of God (8:30). Viewed in this way, the Universal History is a successor of the various attempts at a theodicy. For Kant, this was “no unimportant reason” for choosing the standpoint he argued for in the essay. (3) Universal history is not meant to displace the work of “practicing empirical historians.” Kant proposed the new way of writing history not as an alternative to their work, but as a supplement “from another point of view” (8:31). (4) Finally, Kant’s argument for the adoption of universal history is also based on political considerations, since he hoped that this way of writing history would “direct the ambitions of sovereigns and their agents” to work toward “the goal of world citizenship,” a cosmopolitan state (8:31). In his own words, this is another “minor motive” for this kind of historiography. Not surprisingly, perhaps, many of Kant’s contemporaries were not convinced by these arguments. Kant found himself forced to revisit the issue several more times. The most important of these are perhaps Section III of his essay “On the Common Saying: That May be True in Theory

4

cases. Since the Universal History has not yet appeared in this edition, I use Lewis White Beck’s translation, as found in Immanuel Kant, On History, edited by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1963). It “must be regarded as possible” (29).

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But it is no use in Practice” of 1793, which is directed against Moses Mendelssohn’s critique of his position, Part II of The Strife of the Faculties of 1798, entitled “An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?” which is also an attempt to defend the French revolution as a “historical sign” of the progress of humanity, and §83 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, entitled “On the Ultimate End of Nature as a Teleological System” that presents an argument that we cannot makes sense of nature without the existence of human beings.5 While the Universal History was written before Kant had published any significant work in practical philosophy or ethics – the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals appeared in 1785 and the Critique of Practical Reason in 1788 – the three texts just mentioned appeared after his sustained reflection on moral issues. For this reason, we should perhaps not find it surprising that in them the moral impetus for a “universal history,” now also called “moral” or “prophetic” (vorhersagend, wahrsagend, and weissagend) history, is even more prominent than in the earlier essay. It is not just that this conception of philosophy provides us with hope (point 2) and contributes to the attainment of desirable political circumstances (point 4), it is rather that I, or we, have an innate duty … so to effect through each member in the sequence of generations in which I live, simply as a human being, that future generations will become better (which must also must be assumed as possible), and that this duty may thus rightfully be passed on from one generation to the next … I may always be and remain unsure whether an improvement in the human race may be hoped for; but this can invalidate neither the maxim nor its necessary presupposition that in a practical respect it be feasible. (8:309)6

One might well ask whether this moral justification of his universal history fundamentally changes Kant’s conception or whether it should be understood as its clarification or emendation. I shall suggest that in some sense it is both. On the one hand, the moral justification is best understood as a further development of his earlier view and is by no means incompatible with the Universal History. On the other hand, it introduces a new 5 6

In this section the discussion is embedded in the context of a discussion of the ultimate end of nature, which, unsurprisingly, is the human being. This is followed up in the next paragraph containing another argument to the effect that hope for a better future is not unimportant either, as in point (2). In the Strife of the Faculty, there is an argument that reminds us of (1): “if the course us of human affairs seems senseless to us, perhaps it lies in a poor choice of position from which you regard it.” Appealing to the Copernican hypothesis, he claims that if we had a fixed point, like the sun, we could predict with certainty human progress. Alas, we don’t have and cannot have such a fixed point (7:83f.).


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dimension into his account that relates his idea of history even more closely to his fundamental moral concerns. In order to get somewhat clearer on the relation between history (historiography) and morality, I shall analyze in some detail a notion that has not made an appearance yet, namely that of “reason” or “Vernunft.” It plays a fundamental role in the Universal History as the essential characteristic of the human species. Kant’s conceptions of nature and perfection cannot be properly understood without it, and it is the central notion of his moral philosophy. I will argue that “reason as a species characteristic” is for Kant fundamentally dependent on “pure practical reason,” and that this way of viewing the relation is the expression of his idealist (or less precisely: metaphysical) commitments, which goes to show his opposition to any sort of “naturalism.” One might also ask whether Kant’s arguments for a universal or moral history, whether taken in isolation from one another or taken together, are persuasive or not, or whether they are essentially “dated.” I will not even try to answer this question. Let me just say that I find the claim that we have a duty to future generations and that we must therefore believe that our actions will make a difference to future generations most persuasive. We may never know whether our actions improve the life of those who follow us – in fact, I am sure that we will never know – but this does not mean that we shouldn’t try. Just like Plato’s Socrates in the Meno, “I shouldn’t like to take an oath on the whole story, but one thing I am ready to fight for as long as I can, in word and act – that is that we shall be better, braver, and more active men if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know than if we believe that there is no point of looking.”7 What I intend to accomplish is more historical: I would like to investigate the philosophical context of Kant’s view(s) concerning reason in the works of his contemporaries, explain how they throw light on his claims, and show that Kant’s arguments, whether “dated” or not, make perfect sense, given the presuppositions of those contemporaries he was responding to. After all, Kant primarily addressed views of those he knew and only secondarily some faceless “posterity.” To the objection that this reduces Kant’s view to ad hominem argument, at least two rejoinders may be given. First Kant, for one, did not think that ad hominem arguments are necessarily bad. Second, is not any interesting philosophical argument offered by any philosopher

7

Plato, Meno, 86b. I use the translation of W. K. C. Guthrie as found in The Collected Work of Plato, edited by Edith Hamilton and Huntington Cairns (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1963), p. 371.

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worth reading ad hominem in this sense? To be sure, some of our contemporaries like to think that their arguments rise above this, but they do so at their own peril. ii While being optimistic about the efficacy of reason in the human species, Kant was very pessimistic about the rationality of human individuals. In fact, he considered their actions, apart from the occasional “wisdom that appears here and there among individuals,” as expressions of “folly, childish vanity, childish malice and destructiveness” (8:18). Things human follow “an idiotic course” (8:18). And it was his attempt to explain what seems to be “a planless conglomeration of human actions” (8:29) that led him to postulate as possible a hidden plan in nature that gives to every individual “a natural but to each of them unknown goal” (8:17). He explicated this goal in nine theses. The first three of them deal with the general background of this plan. The other six get into the specifics of how nature may possibly accomplish this.8 We will have to deal only with the first three theses: (1) “All natural capacities of a creature are determined to evolve at one point completely to their natural end” (8:18). (2) “In the human being (as the only rational creature on earth) those natural capacities which are directed to the use of his reason are to be fully developed in the race, not in the individual” (8:18). (3) “Nature has willed that the human being should, by himself, produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason” (8:19). The first thesis concerns all creatures and simply maintains that they are “meant to” or are “wired up to” develop all their natural faculties (unless, of course, they die an early death). It can be taken as a rather uncontroversial claim about how “nature” works or what “law” natural kinds follow. There would have been few in the eighteenth century who would have disagreed

8

Thesis 4 introduces the central notion of “social unsociability,” as driving human progress, 5 and 6 are meant to show that a universal human society is the material goal made possible by the social unsociability of human beings, while 7 and 8 show how the external relations of states are necessary and sufficient for reaching the final goal, and 9 attempts to justify the assumption of progress as possible and necessary for us to make.


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with Kant on this.9 The second and third theses, which seem to express Kant’s view of reason as a species characteristic or as a “gift of nature,” are much more interesting, controversial, and central for understanding Kant’s own philosophical view. Accordingly, they deserve closer attention. One might call the second thesis the “principle of human perfection as a species characteristic” and the third the “principle of human self-reliance in happiness and perfection.” Kant’s conception of human rationality in the Universal History is characterized by these two principles. They imply that human reason is not meant to be a “tool” that would allow any individual to reach perfection during his own lifetime, but that it is a mere means that will allow the entire species, at the very expense of the individual, to reach perfection in some very distant, perhaps infinitely far removed, future. Whatever perfection and whatever happiness humanity may eventually reach, it will have been the result of human reason. Furthermore, every individual is “worthy of life and well-being” only insofar as he or she has lived a life of reason or a life of seeking perfection of him- or herself as a member of the human species, and not as an isolated individual (8:20). Thus, while the first principle amounts to a claim about what is the ultimate goal or the destiny of the human species, and can be called “anthropological,” the second principle is about what human individuals should or must do in order to be worthy of happiness. It is normative or, as Kant would say, moral. I shall, therefore refer to them as the anthropological and moral principle respectively, and be concerned in the remainder of the paper to investigate further Kant’s defense of these two principles, show it grew out of the discussion of his contemporaries, and argue that Kant ultimately reduced the anthropological principle to the moral principle. iii Both principles centrally involve “perfection,” or, more precisely, the notion of a (possibly) infinite progress toward perfection. This is, historically speaking, no accident. By the time Kant published his Universal History, the concept of perfection was long accepted as one of the key philosophical ideas in German thought. Leibniz had made “perfection” the centerpiece of his ontology, and argued that we live in the best of all possible worlds. He had also claimed that the highest goal for human beings should be their own development and perfection. Since God is the most perfect being, and since 9

While from a more recent perspective it may be considered unduly “teleological,” I don’t think many would be bothered to contest it even today.

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we ought to follow God’s commands, “we must work out our own perfection and do wrong to no man.”10 But it was Christian Wolff, who elevated the striving for perfection to the highest principle of moral philosophy. The imperative: “Do what makes you and your state or that of others more perfect, and don’t do what makes this state less perfect!” was for him the basic principle of all morality, and he argued that all other moral imperatives follow from it.11 His followers agreed for the most part, and the idea became the common good of the eighteenth century. It should therefore come as no surprise when we find Moses Mendelssohn argue in his Phaedon (first published in 1767) that the vocation (Bestimmung) of all rational beings consists in the continual striving for perfection and that the growth in inner perfection of the human soul is “the ultimate goal of creation.”12 There is in individuals a progressive rise to greater perfection. Their very “nature is capable of unceasing growth; their inclination (Trieb) has the most obvious capacity for infinity.”13 We are meant to grow infinitely wiser, better, and more beautiful. While not every individual can reach the same state of perfection, it is enough, Mendelssohn claimed, “if a few noble” creatures reach it. It is sufficient that “they all belong to the same species” and that their differences consist only “of more or less.”14 The goal of every individual should be to pursue continual perfection, and every individual should rest assured that this striving for perfection can continue ad infinitum. This belief in the possibility of infinite progress seems to have been possible for Mendelssohn only on the basis of a “true concepts of God and his qualities,” which also reveal that “virtue alone leads to happiness.” Indeed, he claimed that “we can be pleasing to God only insofar as we are striving for our true happiness.”15 On the other hand, Mendelssohn clearly also believed that the belief in infinite progress must lead to the belief in the immortality of the soul of rational individuals: 10 11

12

13 15

G. W. Leibniz, Theodicy, translated by Huggard (La Salle: Open Court, 1985), p. 52. Christian Wolff, Vernuenftige Gedanken von den Menschen Thun und Lassen (1720), §14. He also described this basic principle as a “law of nature” §17), and he claimed that “all the particular laws must be derived from it,” and that it is “the complete basis of all natural laws” (§19). Therefore “the perfection of nature and our own state remains the ultimate and chief purpose of all free actions” (§41). Moses Mendelssohn, Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele in drei Gesprächen. I quote in accordance with Moses Mendelssohn, Schriften über Religion und Aufklärung, edited by Martina Thom (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989), p. 285. All the passages I quote are from the third dialogue of the Phaedon and can be found between pp. 108 and 124 of Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften (Jubiläumsausgabe), vol. 3.1, edited by F. Bamberger et al. (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1932). Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 285. 14 Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 273. Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 274.


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By imitating God, we can gradually come closer to his perfections, and in this closeness to God consists the happiness of spirits; but the road to it is infinite, and cannot be entirely completed in eternity. For this reason, the striving knows no bounds in human life. Every human desire aims in and for itself at infinity. Our desire for knowledge is insatiable … the feeling of beauty seeks the infinite … the sublime stimulates us only because of its incomprehensibility,” etc.16

The notion of continual progress toward perfection thus presupposes the immortality of the soul. If death were the end of this progress, there would be “wisdom” in the world. “Providence has not given us the desire for eternal happiness for nothing: it can and must be satisfied.”17 Mendelssohn went further, however, and claimed that without the belief in immortality, morality itself would be impossible. If someone were not to believe in immortality, this life would be “the highest good.” The slightest fear of death would keep him or her from doing what morality requires.18 Indeed, if we could not presuppose immortality, we would have the right to “cause the destruction of the entire world,” whenever our own life is at stake.19 In other words, the belief in the immortality of the soul is a necessary condition for the possibility of morality as striving for perfection. Therefore it is rational for us to accept the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as true. The notion of infinite perfectibility implies the notion of our immortality. There can be no doubt that Kant knew Mendelssohn’s Phaedon well. Mendelssohn had sent him a copy, and he responded to one of the proofs of the immortality of the soul in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason (B 413–26). Furthermore, there is every indication that Kant read everything that Mendelssohn wrote. For this reasons, it is more than just likely that the first three theses of Kant’s Universal History constitute in some sense an answer to Mendelssohn’s view of perfectibility. However, it would be a serious mistake to view it just as an answer to Mendelssohn. The issue of whether human beings can make infinite progress in the perfection of their faculties and what theological or metaphysical implications this view may have is central for the period often referred to as the Spätaufklärung or the “late enlightenment.” But the origins of this view go back much further. Kant, though answering Mendelssohn, is not just concerned with Mendelssohn’s view. It will therefore behoove us to take a closer look at

16 18

Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 275. 17 Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 279. Mendelssohn, Phädon, pp. 278–85. 19 Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 279.

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the way in which the ideas of infinite perfectibility and immortality of the soul were viewed by others during Kant’s lifetime.20 iv In 1748 – when Kant was just twenty-four years old, taking a break from academic life, and working as the private tutor of a reformed preacher in the environs of Königsberg – Johann Joachim Spalding published anonymously a short treatise with the title Betrachtungen über die Bestimmung des Menschen (Meditations on the Vocation of Man) By all accounts, the book was most successful. It appeared in many editions and translations. It belongs to the genre of Erbauungschriften or religious tracts written for the fortification of believers, intended not for professional philosophers or theologians, but for the educated laity. And this is how his contemporaries viewed it. What makes it interesting is that it is written, not from a fundamentalist, pietist, or orthodox perspective, but from one that is philosophically informed by Shaftesbury and Wolff. Johann Gottfried Herder gave it as a present to his fiancée. Johann Gottlieb Fichte claimed that it had planted in his youth the first seeds of “higher speculation” in his mind and that it “characterized best” the “striving after the supersensible and incorruptible.”21 While Kant must have taken note of it almost immediately, I doubt he would have found anything new in it.22 Recently, it has been argued that this book is the central first text of the Spätaufklärung.23 This is in my view an exaggeration. The book is neither original nor profound, nor even well written. While I would agree that it was not unimportant, if only because it was influential,

20 21 22

23

It should go without saying that I will not offer an exhaustive survey of all the views on this, but only concentrate on some of the most important stages of the discussion. Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Sämtliche Werke (Berlin, 1845–6), vol. 5, p. 231. Spalding himself thought so. In a letter to Kant, written in February of 1988, he praises Kant for having elucidated the grounds of morality so clearly, and says: “Even during the years of my youth, I could not agree to the principle of happiness in moral doctrine. It was quite impossible for me to unite the concepts “intelligent human being” and “good human being” in my feeling. For some time the belief in Shaftesbury’s and Hutcheson’s glimmering system of the moral sense seemed to satisfy me, but it was only a slumbering” (10:330). See especially Günter Zöller, “Die Bestimmung der Bestimmung des Menschen bei Mendelssohn und Kant,” in Volker Gerhardt, Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung. Akten des 9. Internationalen KantKongresses (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), vol. 4, pp. 477–89, and Norbert Hinske, “Das stillschweigende Gespräch. Prinzipien der Anthropologie und Geschichtsphilosophie bei Mendelssohn und Kant,” in Michael Albrecht, Eva Engel, et al. (eds.), Moses Mendelssohn und die Kreise seiner Wirksamkeit (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1994), pp. 135–56, as well as Norbert Hinske (ed.) Die Bestimmung des Menschen (Hamburg: Meiner, 1999).


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I would argue that it was rather the discussion it provoked in the 1760s (of which Mendelssohn’s Phaedon was an echo) that makes it important. Choosing the form of a fictional monologue, purporting to be the introspective meditation of “an honest,” or “a learned and introspective man,” Spalding argued that we, as human beings, should follow our nature to wherever it leads us, claiming that our worth ultimately depends “on [our] ability to feel (empfinden) the order [of the universe] and the ability to ascend to the beginning of all order.” We are “called (bestimmt) to such a high honor.” Mere hedonism is unsatisfactory; knowledge and the perfection of our mental faculties are far superior. Furthermore, if we cultivate our faculties properly, we discover that even the most superior mind will not make us happy, if we do not also seek the happiness of others. Altruism is natural to our soul. We find in ourselves a “lawgiver” that demands virtuous conduct. And this notion of a lawgiver within ourselves leads Spalding’s solitary meditator to attain the knowledge of a most perfect being or a God, who is the source of all being. Accordingly, Spalding formulated a resolution: “I will try to come ever closer to it. I will not rest until I have followed beauty up to its first source (Quelle). There my soul shall finally rest.” While neither I nor the world seem to be perfect, I know that the “unchangeable rules of fairness” of the source of all beings will lead to a perfectly harmonious state. “I am aware of abilities in me, which are capable of growth ad infinitum. Should my ability to know and love the good end at the very point where, enabled by exercise, it can only begin to ascend to a higher perfection? That would be, it appears to me, too much of a futility in the efforts of an infinite wisdom.” This hope of an infinite progress to perfection also infinitely increases my value and my vocation. “I recognize (erkenne) now that I belong to an entirely different class of things than those are that originate, change, and decay before my eyes, and that this visible life is by far not the entire purpose of my being … I am thus made for another life. The present time is only the beginning of my span; it is my childhood, in which I am educated toward eternity.”24 Our vocation is to develop toward perfection. This development is possible only if we think of it as an eternal development. The entire value of our being consists in this. As Spalding puts it: My worth and my happiness should consist only in this, namely, that the supreme demands of truth, shall alone guide my actions, unanaesthesized by the tumult of the passions and the selfish desires, that the pure feeling (Empfindung) of propriety should be my real and authentic obligation, and that I may thus be in general and in 24

I quote the 1763 edition of Die Bestimmung des Menschen, according to Hinske, p. 138f.

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every moment of my life what my nature and the universal nature of things has determined me to be.25

My life on this earth is a preparation for another life, in which all will make sense. Spalding’s ideas represent an “enlightened” version of the Christian idea that we are created in the image of God, that we are God’s children, and that we should live a life that is pleasing to God. We should try to come closer to God. But the word “God” does not appear in any of the key passages of his text. Nor do we hear anything about the role of Christ as the mediator that makes it possible for us to live such a life. Rather, in language close to Plato and Shaftesbury, Spalding enjoins us to live a moral life, by which he means that we should try to perfect ourselves by living rationally and resisting our passions and selfish desires, just as Wolff and Leibniz had also argued. In The Vocation of Man, religion is essentially a rational and moral enterprise. As Wolff had pointed out: a “rational human being needs no other law, but is in virtue of his reason his own law.”26 And though this law is valid, even if there were no ruler and no God, it does attest to the existence of God.27 For Wolff, just as for Spalding, “the perfection of our nature and our state [is] the ultimate and main goal of all our free actions.”28 While even the notion of progress toward perfection can already be found in Wolff, the idea that this perfection can and should increase ad infinitum and in another life seems rather foreign to him. Wolff discussed this matter most thoroughly in the third chapter of his German Ethics, which deals precisely with “the Nature and the Way, in which the Human Being Can Obtain the Highest Good or his Happiness on Earth.”29

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26 27 28 29

I quote again in accordance with Hinske, p. 138. In fact, most of the passages I translate are taken from those which Hinske identifies as the “five key quotations” from the seventh edition. Hinske follows up these quotations from the 1763 editon with the corresponding versions of 1794, which remain essentially the same, but show, according to Hinske, a definite Kantian influence. He claims that the earlier versions are essentially indebted to Wolff. This is not wrong, of course, but I would emphasize the definite Shaftesburyan and Hutchesonian tone as well. See also Clemens Schwaiger, “Zur Frage nach den Quellen von Spaldings Bestimmung des Menschen. Ein ungelöstes Rätsel der Aufklärungsforschung,” in Norbert Hinske (Hg.), Die Bestimmung des Menschen, Aufklärung 11,1 (1999), pp. 7–20. It should also be said that Spalding translated not just Shaftesbury, but also James Foster, Francis Gastrell and Joseph Butler, for instance. He shares this interest in Shaftesbury with Mendelssohn, who also translated parts of Shaftesbury’s work. Christian Wolff, Vernuenftige Gedanken von den Menschen Thun und Lassen (1720), §24. Wolff, Vernuenftige Gedanken von den Menschen Thun und Lassen, §§20, 30. Wolff, Vernuenftige Gedanken von den Menschen Thun und Lassen, §41. Spalding takes this view a step farther in his Über die Nutzbarkeit des Predigtamts und deren Beförderung (On the Usefulness of the Office of the Preacher) of 1773, expanded 1791, arguing that sermons should leave out completely any theoretical or dogmatic elements, such as the doctrine of the


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Since Spalding became the provost of St Nicholas and St Mary in Berlin (1764–88) and a member of the Upper Consistory (until 1791), his view carried weight. It is no exaggeration to say that Spalding’s view represented a powerful faction of the Prussian State and Church. He taught what came close to being the official theological position of the Prussia of Frederick the Great. But his book on The Vocation of Man was influential quite independent of Spalding’s high office. As has been pointed out recently, there were between 1740 and 1850 seventy-one books that had “Bestimmung des Menschen” in their title.30 The most famous of those was, of course, Fichte’s version of 1800 whose first beginnings can, in fact, be traced back to his first reading of Spalding’s work. Fichte was far from the only one of whom this was true. Another important thinker was Kant’s student, Herder, for instance. But not all books that contained “vocation of man” in their title endorsed Spalding’s views. The most important dissenter was Thomas Abbt, who published a book review of the seventh edition of the Vocation of Man in the March 1764 volume of the Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend (Letters Concerning the Most Recent Literature). In it, he did not summarize the book because knowledge of its contents could be presupposed, and only offered some critical remarks. One of these concerned Spalding’s dependence on Hutcheson’s “insecure system.” Moral distinctions just do not depend on an innate moral sense. Indeed, Spalding’s view is not a true account of human nature, but a pleasant novel about what it might be. Abbt finds Tom Jones to be “truer,” and argues that moral feelings are always the results of judgments of reason. Spalding’s views on religion he finds, by contrast, rather commendable.31

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Trinity, the doctrines of salvation and God’s grace and our justification in Christ. The preacher should instead emphasize the “supreme authority of conscience and the moral force of virtue and public morality.” Opting for “disinterested Christian benevolence” and against pietism and its emphasis on a personal experience of conversion, he argues that the preacher’s task is to teach virtue, and the task of the church is primarily one that concerns the world we inhabit, not eternal life. In fact, it is only this function that saves the office of the preacher from redundancy. Interesting for our discussion is that Spalding believes he can use the analysis of human nature in an attempt to establish what is the goal and task of human beings as a species, and that he believes he has shown that this task consists in the cultivation ad infinitum of the higher faculties of human beings. And this is what makes his view Christian in his own eyes as well as in those of many contemporaries. In the end, it is a theological enterprise, not a philosophical one. It is also what makes it a part of “higher speculation.” Fotis Jannidis, “Die ‘Bestimmung des Menschen’ – Kultursemiotische Beschreibung einer sprachlichen Formel,” Aufklärung 14 (2002), pp. 75–95, p. 75. He also discussed some of the Appendices, which have no immediate relevance for our concerns. The review appeared in vol. 18 (1764). This issue contained also the reviews of Kant’s Only Possible Proof of the Existence of God. Kant would therefore almost certainly have seen the review of Spalding’s book. His later comparison of historical accounts and novels may well be indebted to this review.

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Abbt had already written to Mendelssohn on January 11, 1764, that, rather than always review “bad authors,” he wanted a philosophical exchange with him about the “vocation of man,” His “starting point” would be a twofold concern, namely, (i) “the vocation of man, which I find shrouded in mystery,” and (ii) “the claim that seems so true to me,” namely, that “even if our souls are immortal, neither virtue nor vice can demand a reward after the present life, because both are their own reward on earth, and there is no certain measure of pleasure and displeasure, happiness and unhappiness.”32 Mendelssohn agrees to the proposal and suggests that they use the names of Greek philosophers in discussing these matters so that they “will be able to advance their boldest doubts, which we often do not like to reveal even to ourselves … without any hesitation.”33 The result of these efforts were entitled Zweifel über die Bestimmung des Menschen (Doubts about the Vocation of Man), which appeared in June and August of 1764 (vol. 19). Appealing to the spirit of Bayle, Abbt starts out by asking how the expression “Bestimmung des Menschen” should actually be taken. Does it mean (i) how a human being should act, decide, or determine himself. Which “vocation” should we choose in order to become happy? Or does it mean (ii) what is the place of human beings in the universe? Where do we fit in? What is the final goal that is assigned to us?34 Abbt wants it to be taken in the second sense, which makes the enterprise more interesting, but also more difficult. In fact, it makes it so difficult that it cannot be answered by Spalding’s introspective means at all. Abbt clearly thinks that Spalding’s approach is exceedingly naïve and dogmatic. Introspection of the kind invoked by Spalding is not up to the task of answering the kinds of questions Spalding wants to answer. Any cursory acquaintance with the history of human beings, their wars and brutal crimes, shows that Spalding is selling a story (or a novel) that has very little to do with reality.35 On the other hand, it has much to do with the 32 33

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Thomas Abbt, Vermischte Werke (Stettin: 1780 and 1782), vol. II, p. 163. Abbt, Vermischte Werke, vol. II, p. 169. It is highly interesting that Mendelssohn talks in the same letter about Abbt’s life of Baumgarten and especially his hour of death, in which he is supposed to have said: “Whoever speaks of science with me, is my enemy.” Mendelssohn condemns this attitude as misology. Baumgarten should have divested himself of philosophy long before his death. See Abbt II, p. 168. This forms clearly also the background of their exchange. Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 10. It’s interesting that Abbt (or Bayle’s ghost) tells or pretends to retell a story of an army that has been sent to a foreign land without knowing what its task is. Even the commanding general does not know. Some live without aim and without attention to duty. Others are constantly ready and prepared to receive ultimate orders. Some disappear without a trace. Some claim to have letters. But there is no way for any member of this expedition to know what is their final goal and what their duties are, just as human beings cannot know what their final goal and their duties ultimately are.


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views of certain philosophers such as Locke and Plato.36 But who can prove that there is no solution to the moral problem on this earth?37 Who can really determine that happiness and unhappiness are distributed unfairly?38 How does an eternal life solve the problems of this life?39 Furthermore, the notion of an “infinite perfectibility” of human abilities is incoherent. Human memory, for instance, cannot grow so as to become infinite. And the claim that all problems vanish as soon as I see that this life is only a preparation for the next life is clearly false.40 It does not explain the early death and suffering of young children, for it is not clear how their life is a preparation in any sense, and it can thus not explain anything.41 We don’t know anything about our vocation: “we must all sail off ignorant in this matter.”42 None of this means that that human beings as a species are not essentially rational. They are. It’s just that their reason is limited in what it can achieve. Abbt is not just attacking Spalding, he is trying to undermine all philosophical speculation concerning the ultimate purpose of human beings and attempts to provide a foundation to morality by transcendental or theological means. It amounts to a critique of the kind of “higher speculation” and “striving after the supersensible and incorruptible.” In this sense, it is a rudimentary “critique of pure reason.” Yet, it does not point towards a “critique by pure reason,” but rather to a critique from the point of view of historical reason. It should remind us more of Hamann’s Metacritique than of Kant’s Critique. On the other hand, it would be a serious mistake to read Abbt’s “Doubts” as an attack on morality itself. Morality is not in doubt. His point is just that it neither needs nor can rely on the promise of an eternal life and its rewards and punishments, and that happiness or unhappiness cannot be measured.43 Furthermore, “Lebensregeln” or maxims that lead to happiness can be formulated by paying attention to the way the world is constituted. While Abbt’s critique remains short and sketchy, it is powerful and 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43

Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 25. Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 29. Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 31. Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 34. Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), pp. 34f. This shows that the problem is for Abbt closely connected with the problem of a theodicy. Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 39. To say that “Abbt’s essay was a frontal attack upon the whole philosophy of the Enlightenment, especially in its Leibniz/Wolffian form,” as Alexander Altmann does in his Moses Mendelssohn. A Biographical Study (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973), p. 134, is overstating and distorting his project. Nor is Abbt’s critique really aimed at Wolff himself, as is sometimes claimed. He objects to some of Leibniz’s speculative positions, not to Wolffian ethics.

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convincing. Any hard or honest look at the historical situation, in which we find ourselves, shows how fantastic Spalding’s speculations really are. Mendelssohn’s answer comes in the form of an “Oracle Concerning the Vocation of Man” that attempts to defend some aspects of Spalding’s view while denying his fundamentally Christian claim that this life is just a preparation for a future life. “Both are means, both are final goals.”44 In good (or not so good) Leibnizian fashion, he finds: “Do not think that this life is only preparation for the next and the other only final end. Both are means and end at the same time. The purposes of God and the changes of any substance progress by identical steps.”45 In other words, one might say that while our lives in space and time concern the phenomena, they are phenomena bene fundata in being the expression of substantial reality. They are only different aspects of the same world. Unsurprisingly, Mendelssohn appeals to “the spirit of the great Leibniz” to answer the skeptic.46 And in the end he simply formulates or repeats Leibnizian propositions or principles against Abbt’s doubts in a most dogmatic and unsatisfactory fashion, appealing to the doctrines of universal harmony and the best of all possible worlds.47 Mendelssohn is not at his best here, but just demonstrates how little traditional appeals to pure reason can do when faced with the kind of existential doubts formulated by Abbt. As we have seen, this was not the end of Mendelssohn’s discussion of Abbt and Spalding. His Phaedon is in some sense an answer to both, if only because he wants to show in it that the “separation of the soul from the body” must be understood quite differently from the way Abbt and Spalding understood it, namely not as pointing to radically discontinuous states of “earthly” and “heavenly” life, but as a continuous progression of “before” and “after.” While the “human soul” will be eventually transformed into something that cannot be called “human” any longer, this something can still be characterized in terms that are also most characteristic of the human soul, namely “wisdom, love of virtue, and knowledge of the truth.”48 Furthermore, the consciousness that characterizes this other state is identical with that of the human soul.49 Mendelssohn accepts Spalding’s 44 45 46 47

48 49

Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 48. Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 48. On July 12, 1764. Kant’s Dreams of a Ghost-Seer almost certainly alludes to this article. Hence also his apology to Mendelssohn. There are six such “answers.” To give a flavor of them, I shall cite the first: “1. What is the Vocation of Man? Answer: To fulfill God’s purposes in the state of rational cognition (Erkenntniß), to persist, to become more perfect, and to be happy in this perfection.” Basta! Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), pp. 69, 75. Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 105.


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view that the abilities of human beings are capable of infinite improvement or progress. In fact, the “striving for perfection” is for Mendelssohn “the highest and ultimate goal” of all of creation, but characterizes especially spirits, which are to come ever closer to God as the ens perfectissimum.50 While not every soul can arrive at the same degree of perfection, some will; and this is sufficient to answer Abbt’s doubts, or so Mendelssohn seems to believe. Kant was responding in the Universal History to all the participants in this discussion, that is, mainly to Spalding, Abbt, and Mendelssohn, and he was arguing that human perfection should be understood as an end of nature, not as a supernatural end. He is also arguing that infinite perfectibility is not a characteristic of the human individual, but applies only to the human species. In some ways, this is odd, for the notion of infinite perfectibility was going to play a large role in Kant’s second Critique, and particularly in his discussion of the so-called “postulates of pure practical reason.” In a way that reminds very much of Mendelssohn’s justification of the belief in immortality, Kant argued there that we need to assume the immortality of the soul for moral reasons (and also the existence of God) for morality to be possible at all.51 As he put it, the categorical imperative demands that we further the “highest good.” Therefore, “if … the highest good is impossible in accordance with practical rules, then the moral law, which commands us to promote it, must be fantastic and directed to empty imaginary ends and must therefore in itself be false” (5:11). But the highest good is possible only if we assume what we are required to assume, namely that there is “endless progress” toward moral perfection, which, according to Kant is “complete conformity of [our] dispositions with the moral law” (5:122). v There can be little doubt that Kant’s discussion of the postulates in the Critique of Practical Reason is essentially an attempt to solve from his own “critical” perspective the same problem that Abbt and Mendelssohn were confronting in 1764.52 It is my contention that it is also relevant to a further 50 51 52

Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), pp. 113f. I will concentrate on the postulate of the immortality of the soul, but the postulate of the existence of God has very similar relations to the contemporary discussion. This alone is a significant result, for the provenance of the problem that Kant is trying to solve has exercised philosophical scholars for some time. Frederick C. Beiser has recently argued that Kant’s discussion shows his “self-conscious allegiance to the Christian, indeed, Protestant tradition.” In “Moral Faith and the Highest Good,” in Paul Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant and

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explication and a defense of the third thesis of the Universal History, in which there is a moral principle, which we called the “principle of human self-sufficiency in happiness and perfection.” Just like Wolff, Kant closely connected the problem of our vocation as moral agents with the problem of the highest good. However, unlike Wolff and very much like Spalding and Abbt, he thought that the problem of the highest good has to do with the compatibility of justice and happiness. On the other hand, unlike Mendelssohn, and just like Wolff and Abbt, he was convinced that the moral law or our obligation to be moral is entirely independent of the problem of the existence of God. Indeed, the moral law holds, even if there is no God. Morality is not dependent on the belief in God, but the belief in God is just as dependent on morality as the belief in the immortality of the soul. Nor does morality need the promise of rewards and punishments. Indeed, rewards and punishments would make the decision to follow the moral law questionable. Kant also agrees with Abbt that we cannot measure happiness nor even really aim at happiness. His argument at the beginning of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals against the view that reason can guide us to happiness is ultimately an argument against Wolff, Spalding, Mendelssohn, and many others who hold the view that happiness can be achieved by following reason. Against Abbt he invokes, just like Spalding and Mendelssohn, the notion of an “infinite progress” and argues that this infinite progress is intimately connected with the belief in the immortality of the soul. In this regard, he seems to take the side of Mendelssohn and Spalding against the skeptical objections of Abbt, who thought that revelation was the only possible warrant for these beliefs. Yet, there are also important differences between Mendelssohn and Spalding on the one hand and Kant on the other. First of all, whereas they speak about the perfection of all kinds of human faculties or abilities, Kant is only interested in “complete conformity of the will with the moral Modern Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 588–629, p. 593 Beiser argues that “in crucial respects, the precedent for Kant’s argument is Augustine,” and “alien to … the entire Enlightenment tradition” (p. 594). Without going into great detail, I would have to say that the wise reader should treat these claims with caution. Happiness and the connection between happiness and moral law do play a large role in Spalding’s and Mendelssohn’s views, as does the notion of infinite perfectibility, which plays no role in Augustine. Furthermore, the notion that the highest good consists in the enjoyment or contemplation of God, which is central to Augustine’s view, is absent in Kant’s view (even if in a certain sense present in Spalding and Mendelssohn). It is true that “perfectibility” plays a role in some Protestant denominations, but it would have been rejected by pietists as false pride. Perfection is possible only through the infusion of God’s grace; and this is directly contradicted by thesis 3 (or the moral principle) of the “Universal History.” For a closer discussion of some of these issues see John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1970), especially pp. 68–93, 134–48.


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law,” that is, with moral perfection (5:122). Secondly, where Mendelssohn and Spalding claim to know the immortality of the soul and the existence of God, Kant only claims that we are justified in believing in these “two articles of faith.”53 His point is that it is not irrational to believe these matters (even in the face of so much empirical evidence that seems to speak against it). In fact, his argument is intended to establish that it is very rational to believe in these things. Thus we cannot be as certain as they were about these beliefs, yet we can be more certain than Abbt thought he could be. Kant is clearly trying to negotiate a “middle way” between Mendelssohn and Abbt, accepting the latter’s “realism” about history, while trying to modify and defend the former’s rationalist conclusions in a different way, namely as justified rational belief that we should accept as true.54 Another interesting question about the discussion of the postulates that arises against the background of the dispute between Abbt and Mendelssohn is whether Kant is closer to Spalding, the Christian, and his belief in a separate eternal life in which this life is ultimately nothing but a preparation for a future life, or to Mendelssohn, the Jew and Leibnizian, who denied that this life is a just preparation for another future life and claimed that this life and the “next” are different aspects of one and the same world. The answer is not obvious. Thus, when he finds that the “endless progress [toward moral perfection] … is possible only on the presupposition of the existence and personality of the same rational being continuing endlessly” (5:122), he also seems to say that there is no significant break between this life and a future state. The idea of one and the same rational being continuing endlessly is at the very least not suggestive of the notion of a radical caesura constituted by death. Kant does not speak, like Spalding and other Christians, of “this earthly life” and another life “in which I have to expect nothing but good things in accordance with the nature of things and the beneficent government of the highest wisdom.” In fact, there is nothing to expect by way of goods. The only thing promised by Kant’s kind of immortality is the possibility of further progress towards moral perfection. So, one might be tempted to say that Kant 53

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This is related to his critique of metaphysics in the first Critique. Hamann wrote to Johann Friedrich Reichardt not long after the publication of the first Critique: “What are the metaphysical gentlemen at the river Spree saying about Kant’s Prussian Critique of Pure Reason, which because of its ideal might just as well have been called “Mysticism,” and which shuts up all speculative theology of the Spaldings, Steinbarts, etc.” Johann Georg Hamann, Briefwechsel, edited by Arthur Henkel (Wiesbaden: Insel Verlag, 1959), vol. 4, p. 430. I have dealt with this issue in previous articles. See Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s Transcendental Deduction of God’s Existence as a Postulate of Pure Practical Reason,” Kant-Studien 76 (1985), pp. 152–69; “Kant’s Response to Hume’s Theory of Faith,” in Hume and His Connections, edited by J. Wright and M. A. Stewart (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1994), pp. 239–55.

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is closer to Mendelssohn in this regard. This is also suggested by the essay on “The End of All Things,” where he claims that the expression of a dying man that he is “passing from time into eternity” can only be understood as meaning that this is the “end of all time” for him (8:327). Kant’s claims about our warrant for thinking “of my existence also as a noumenon in a world of the understanding” (5:114) point in the same direction. Moral perfection or “happiness in precise proportion to virtue” is not possible in this world, but only in the “intelligible world” (5:115). But the intelligible world is in no sense a future world. Kant does not speculate, as Mendelssohn does, about the precise correspondence of our actions in this world with the world of substances, but he does argue that we should believe that what we see is not all there is. We may look at ourselves as immortal just because we must believe that progress toward moral perfection is possible. On the other hand, there are suggestions that the doctrine of the highest good deals primarily with this world. Kant’s argument concerns the “production of the highest good in the world” (5:122), and one might argue that “the rational being or personality” that must be presupposed as continuing endlessly and self-identical may not be the individual but the species. Kant may have re-interpreted the notion of the immortality of the soul so that it is the soul or the intelligible character of humanity that is understood as immortal, not the individual soul. Perhaps one may interpret Kant this way, but I would consider such an interpretation to be much too fanciful and dismissive of Kant’s metaphysical intentions. I would rather say that nothing Kant says about the historical development of human beings contradicts what he says about the hope an individual may have for her or his own existence, “however long” it “may last, even beyond this life” (5:123). And the claim is that what we may hope for is just what the “principle of human selfsufficiency in happiness and perfection” in the Universal History says human beings may expect, that is, “no other happiness or perfection than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.” In the terminology of the Groundwork, the second principle implies that we should look at ourselves and others as ends, not as mere means. “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a mean” (4:429). The test Kant proposes for our actions is whether they “can be consistent worth the idea of humanity as an end in itself ” (4:429). He also calls this the “principle of humanity … as an end in itself ” (4:430). In the chapter “On the Wise Adaptation of the Human Being’s Cognitive Faculties to His Practical Vocation” that concludes the discussion of the


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postulates, Kant seems to address Abbt’s objections and Mendelssohn’s answer directly, saying that if Abbt’s demand for certainty in matters concerning our vocation were fulfilled, human beings would become “mere mechanisms” (5:147). Moral worth and striving for perfection or the worthiness to be happy presupposes that reason is limited and grants us little insight into the true order of things. “The inscrutable wisdom by which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in what it has denied us than in what it has granted us” (5:148).55 It is good and not to be lamented that “with all the effort of our reason we have only a very obscure and ambiguous view into our future” (5:147). So I would agree with Fred Beiser, who claims that Kant’s doctrine of the highest good is “irreducibly metaphysical,” or perhaps better that it contains elements that “address a basic metaphysical problem: the connection between the noumenal realm of morality and the phenomenal realm of history.”56 Indeed, this is why I think it is necessary that the highest good make an appearance in a paper on universal history. But it is at the same time also a reason for thinking that the highest good must also be understood as having a secular or immanent import and can be understood as the goal of all human striving, as our future. Having dealt with the moral principle of universal progress, we must now turn to the anthropological principle. vi What is our future? Or perhaps better, what is the referent of “our” – is it the human individual or the human race? Mendelssohn thought the former, Kant opted for the latter. Hinske and Zoeller have argued that the context for this question is also to be found in the dispute between Abbt and Mendelssohn about Spalding.57 While this view is not entirely wrong, it neglects another very important issue that was publicly discussed in Germany during the relevant time. Adam Ferguson had argued in his An Essay on the History of Civil Society of 1767 that “in the human kind, the species has a progress as well as the individual; they build in every subsequent age on foundations formerly laid, and, in the succession of years, tend to a perfection in the application of their faculties,” and he had asked for a true history of this progress, arguing against the kind of conjectural history so 55

56 57

Mendelssohn would have agreed to this, by the way. In fact, he explicitly declines to describe the where and how of the human soul after its separation from the body, as not being part of his “business” (286). Beiser, “Moral Faith and the Highest Good,” p. 390. “Das stillschweigende Gespräch,” pp. 145f.; Zoeller, “Die Bestimmung der Bestimmung,” pp. 487f.

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prevalent among his Scottish contemporaries.58 So the question of whether one may speak of progress of the human race as opposed to progress of the individual was obviously in the air. Kant endorsed Ferguson’s sentiment that “whatever may have been the original state of our species, it is of more importance to know the condition to which we ourselves should aspire, than that which our ancestors may be supposed to have left.”59 His essay on Universal History clearly responds to the demand implied by Ferguson’s sentiment. One of the most decisive contributions to this discussion, at least for our purposes, was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s essay “On the Education of the Human Race” of 1780, whose first fifty-three paragraphs had already appeared anonymously in his commentary on the Fragments of Hermann Samuel Reimarus in 1777.60 In it, Mendelssohn’s good friend argued, much to Mendelssohn’s chagrin, that revelation is for the human race what education is to the human individual (§§1–2), and that, just as education, it unfolds only what is already in human beings. It teaches the human race nothing that it could not have known by the force of reason alone. It just makes things easier (§4). The Jewish Bible is nothing but a primer for children and childish people. Every primer or textbook aims at students of a certain age (§51). At a certain point, a new book is needed (§53).61 According to Lessing, this new book is the New Testament, and the teacher is Jesus Christ, the “first reliable” and the “first practical teacher” (§58). In particular, Christ was the teacher of “another true life after this life,” whose expectation would have an influence on the actions of human beings (§57). Since the “doctrine of the soul’s immortality and the related doctrine of reward and punishment in a future life are completely foreign” to the Old Testament (§22), this is a significant new revelation.62 While people considered this new revelation as the non plus ultra of education for a long time, there are at this time people, who can go beyond it. Just as people no longer 58

59 60

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Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), p. 10; see also 11f. It appeared in German translation in 1768. Another book that spoke of the perfection of the human race in connection with different constitutions was Isaak Iselin’s Philosophische Muthmaßungen über die Geschichte der Menschheit of 1764, which Mendelssohn reviewed in 1767. Ferguson, Essay, p. 16. This is clearly an argument against Rousseau and those who followed him. See Gotthold Ephraim Lessing, Philosophical and Theological Writings, translated and edited by H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 79 and 217–40. I refer to this edition, using references in parentheses to the paragraphs of the text. This is where the first publication of the “Education of the Human Race” broke off. But Lessing pointed out that the Jewish nation learned about the immortality of the soul from the Chaldeans and Persians, and claimed that this constituted a form of enlightenment and rational instruction.


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need the Old Testament, the New Testament may no longer be needed either (§§67, 74). Speculations about these matters have never done damage to civil society and they are the “most fitting” exercises for the human understanding (§§78, 79). Given the selfishness of the human heart, the “understanding … must at all cost be exercised on spiritual objects if it is to attain complete enlightenment (Aufklärung) and generate that purity of heart which enables it to love virtue for its own sake” (§80). There is progress in the human race. Nature cannot “fail to achieve with the whole what art achieves with the individual.” To deny this would be blasphemy, or so Lessing suggests.63 Mendelssohn disagreed. Thus he wrote to August von Henning in June 1782: “The goal of nature is not the perfection of the human race. No! It is the perfection of the human being, the individual. Every single person is to develop his talents and abilities … and just because of this nature must always repeat this circle.”64 In his Jerusalem of 1783 (published one year before the Universal History), he wrote that he could “not form any concept of the education of the human race which my late friend Lessing took over from I do not know which historian.”65 It is wrong to conceive of the “collective thing” called “human race” as if it were an individual. The human race does not “grow up.” It is at each time in history “child, man, and aged,” because there are always individuals at each of these stages. Providence has determined that every individual should “live a part of his eternity here on earth,” in which we are meant to perfect ourselves and obtain the degree of happiness meant for us.66 But with regard to the human race we can find “no continual progress, in which it would approach perfection.” This is a mere hypothesis, and Mendelssohn’s Newtonian advice is “do not forge hypotheses; look only at what has happened in all times.”67 “The human being progresses, but the human race wavers constantly between firmly established boundaries up and down, but on the

63

64 65 66 67

§84. In the final fifteen paragraphs Lessing speculates whether the doctrine of re-incarnation is compatible with the view he has just presented. Neither Mendelssohn nor Kant were inclined to so speculate. It is perhaps worth pointing out that the title page of the “Education of the Human Race” contains as a motto a quote by Augustine to the effect that “all these things are in certain respects true for the same reason that they are in a certain respect false.” Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften (Jubiläumsausgabe), vol. 13, p. 66. Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, in Mendelssohn, Schriften über Religion und Aufklärung, ed. Thom, p. 413. I would say that this historian was most likely Ferguson. Mendelssohn, Schriften über Religion und Aufklärung, ed. Thom, p. 414. Mendelssohn, Schriften über Religion und Aufklärung, ed. Thom, p. 414. Kant’s assurance that he does not mean to displace empirical historians addresses this point.

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whole constantly holds the same level of morality, the same measure of religion and irreligion, of virtue and vice, happiness and suffering.”68 There is, of course, still another player in this discussion, namely Herder, who published, beginning in 1784, Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind, which Kant was commissioned to review. Herder also spoke of “eternal progress,” and he was clearly influenced by people like Spalding, Abbt, Ferguson, Lessing, and Mendelssohn.69 On the question of whether the human race qua human race can advance, Herder takes the side of Mendelssohn, finding in the second part of 1785 that “if someone said that not the individual man but the species could be educated,” as if someone (i.e., Lessing and Kant) had not said this already, “he would be speaking unintelligibly for me since race and species are only universal concepts.”70 “Humanity” as a universal is just a concept and has no real predicates. To the extent that we may say it exists, it exists only in the individual. Kant effectively dismisses this charge as a non-starter in his review of this part of the Ideas by pointing out that “humanity” does not just mean “human nature” in the sense of “characteristics common to all members of the species,” but can also be taken as having the extension “the totality of the series of generations of human beings.”71 In any case, Kant clearly took the side of Lessing in the dispute about the education and progress of the human race, and his Universal History can (and must) also be viewed as his answer to Mendelssohn’s critique of Lessing. That Kant knew Mendelssohn’s view is clear from the third part of “The Common Saying” to which we already called attention. After summarizing the very passage that I outlined in the previous section, Kant baldly states: “I take a different view,” affirms his view that we have an “innate duty” to work toward the progress of the human race, and then essentially repeats some of the arguments of the Universal History.72 Accordingly, he claimed (again) in language similar to both the Universal History and the discussion of the postulates that we “may consider it a not inadequate expression of the moral hopes and wishes of men (conscious of their 68 69

70 71

72

Mendelssohn, Schriften über Religion und Aufklärung, ed. Thom, p. 415. See also Marion Heinz, “Die Bestimmung des Menschen. Herder contra Mendelssohn,” in Beitrag zur Festschrift für E. Chr. Schröder: Philosophie der Endlichkeit, edited by B. Niemeyer and D. Schötze (Würzburg, 1992), pp. 263–85. I quote in accordance with Kant’s review 8:65. Concerning the question of the immortality of the soul, Herder takes a more or less (albeit unorthodox) Christian line, speaking of a “future state” and characterizing the position of the human being is that of “a middle state” between “two worlds.” It is not entirely clear to me what precisely he has in mind, but it appears that he is closer to Spalding than to Mendelssohn on this matter. See the quote given in Part I of this essay.


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weakness) to look to Providence for the circumstances required. They may hope that since it is the purpose of mankind, of the entire species, to achieve its final destiny … Providence will bring about an outcome to which the purposes of men, considered separately, run directly counter” (7:80). In other words, universal or moral history can only be considered as an expression of rational hope. Kant argues that this hope is deeply founded, not in the nature of human beings nor even in the nature of the human species, but in the nature of the moral disposition or, as he also puts it, in the nature of practical reason. Reason, even when it is understood as a species characteristic, is not to be understood simply as a part of human, or perhaps better, animal nature. For Kant, reason is not something given, or something we are simply born with, something factual; it has always an ideal dimension. Indeed, nature, that is, the human individual as well as the human species, is to be remade and changed by ideal reason. Put in terms of Kantian morality, the claim is that human individuals are mere means toward the end of the species. This is especially clear in the first principle, which amounts to the claim that earlier generations labor only for the well-being of later generations. We, as individuals, who die after a relatively short life, cannot aspire to become fully perfect; true perfection is an attribute that can apply only to the human species, even though it is still very far removed from perfection and it is difficult to perceive any progress towards the goal. There is, of course, for Kant, nothing wrong with nature treating individuals as mere means, if only because nature, whatever it may be, is not a moral being. It is in the end all up to the human individual, not to reason as a species characteristic. Kant puts this perhaps most clearly and most radically in §83 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, where after arguing that a life of enjoyment has a value that amounts to less than zero, he claims that nature has designed us “merely as a means to an undetermined final end.” In other words, nature itself is not moral. It cannot impart value to our lives. “Thus nothing is left but the value we give to our lives through that which we do not merely do but also do so purposively and independently of nature that even the existence of nature can be an end only under this condition” (5:434). In other words, nature can be regarded as meaningful (or as having a reason for its existence) only insofar as it contains us. We, that is, the only rational and moral beings in the world, give meaning to the world. It does not make any sense to ask “why … [we, as moral beings] exist. Therefore, it also does not make sense either to derive the meaning of our own life from reason as a species characteristic. For reason as a species characteristic makes

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sense only insofar as we autonomously make accept our “innate duty” to further the well-being of future generations. vii This justification of nature is for this very reason also a piece of metaphysical reasoning. One might ask whether it is part of what P. F. Strawson calls “descriptive metaphysics,” or the analysis of “the massive core of human thinking which has no history – or none recorded in histories of thought” or whether it is some kind of revisionary metaphysics.73 The answer is not obvious. One might argue that universal history has some connections with what might be called the “indispensable core of the conceptual equipment” of sophisticated human beings throughout history. Kant clearly took himself to spell this out, i.e., bring out what we “must” believe – even if he also thought that he was the first one to get this actually right. And he claimed that the belief in immortality is “interwoven” with the arguments of reasoning people at all times (8:327). The same might be said for the idea of a moral history insofar as our life’s stories usually contain elements of such a history or story. While Kant’s arguments may look too metaphysical from our perspective, they certainly would not have looked so to his contemporaries, and particularly to Spalding and Mendelssohn. Assuming that they found his arguments for the postulates of pure practical reason reasonable, they would also have found his arguments for a “universal” or “moral history” reasonable or to the point. And there is every reason to suspect that they did, even if they did not necessarily agree to Kant’s ultimate conclusions. Spalding, for one, not only recognized that the chapter on the postulates was a way to defend the views he expressed, for he wrote to Kant in 1788 that it did his soul good that Kant had “illuminated in such a bright and honorable light … the ground of morality” (10:528). Since Abbt had died long before Kant addressed any of these issues, and Mendelssohn was dead since April 1, 1786, and had no chance to comment on the Critique of Practical Reason and the later writings, we do not know what he would have said to Kant’s moral defense of the “universal history.” But given his own argument in the Phaedon that we should accept the doctrine of the immortality of the soul as true just because it is a necessary condition of the possibility of morality, he might also have accepted the conception of a moral history as the 73

P. F. Strawson, Individuals. An Essay in Descriptive Metaphysics (London: Methuen & Co., 1959), p. 39.


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condition of the possibility of a conception of infinite perfectibility. Perhaps we can go so far as to say that he should have accepted it because the notion of infinite perfectibility on this earth complements the notion of infinite perfectibility in the sense of uninterrupted survival. At the same time, Mendelssohn’s objections are both obvious and very powerful. What Kant is offering us here may be nothing more than what Abbt some twenty years earlier had called a “pleasant novel” about human nature. Abbt might also be right that Tom Jones is ultimately “truer” to human nature. Kant himself might in the end be less bothered by this than we might think, since he has no problems with the “as if.” We should think and act “as if” something like a “universal history” is true, although we cannot know whether it will actually come to pass. It should perhaps also be pointed out that Kant’s universal history has little to do with the kind of empirical universal histories that had already been written during the 1770s, such as Ludwig Schlözer’s Vorstellung einer Universal-Historie (1772). Kant may be said to have tried to elevate this type of historical account from a “merely” empirical pre-occupation to a transcendental concern, but the details of the historical work would not have been helpful to him. The two enterprises share only the name.

chapter 4

Good out of evil: Kant and the idea of unsocial sociability J. B. Schneewind

There is nothing so unsociable and so sociable as man: the one by his vice, the other by his nature. – Montaigne1

In the first three Propositions of his Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (Idea), Kant tells us that nature intends all natural human capacities to be developed to their fullest in the species, though not in the individual. Moreover humans are meant to provide, by their own efforts, whatever they enjoy of happiness and perfection (8:18–20).2 In the Fourth Proposition Kant lays out the means nature employs to bring about this result. It is what he calls the “unsocial sociability” (ungesellige Geselligkeit) of men.3 We have, he says, a “propensity to enter into society.” But we also have a “thoroughgoing resistance” to this tendency so that we are always liable to isolate ourselves and tear society apart (8:20). This seems an unfortunate combination of basic character traits, but Kant does not find it so. On the contrary, he sees in it the goad needed to make us overcome our natural laziness. We do not want to live solitary lives. But we find in ourselves a strong desire to have everything go as we want it to. We know we would resist this desire coming from others, so we expect the others with whom we want to live to resist our desire. The resistance stirs us to try to overcome it. To get our way, we strive for superiority in possessions or honor over those others who are our antagonists but whom we cannot do without. The energies we devote to showing others how much stronger and smarter we are lead us to create ingenious inventions and brilliant new ideas that gradually enrich and enlighten our strife-ridden common lives. 1 2 3

Michel de Montaigne, Complete Essays, translated by Donald M. Frame (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1965), I.39. All references to Kant are identified by giving the volume and page number of the Academy Edition of Kant. For Idea for a Universal History, I use the translation by Allen W. Wood. We may suppose that by “men” Kant intended to refer to all human beings, but he rarely takes notice of women, and then not very favorably.

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Without this competition we would enjoy an idyllic pastoral existence of ease and idleness. But envy and our insatiable desires for property, honor, and power force us to develop our natural abilities, which would otherwise remain hidden and useless. Nor is that the end of it. If at first only threats of punishment prevent us from destroying one another, we eventually develop our inherent ability to think in moral terms. And then we replace a social union kept in order by fear with a union which is freely willed and thus moral. All this, Kant says, points to a divine purpose in our being so unsociably sociable (8:21–2). i Sociability was a recurrent topic in early modern moral philosophy, and Kant joined the discussion after much had been said about it. We need to know something of how the conversation went before he entered it. Theories of sociability and our unsociable resistance to it arose out of an attempt to account for the historical development of society. While ancient philosophers had some views on the growth of society, they did not explain it in terms of tension between sociable and unsociable character traits. The Epicureans held that the primary human motivation is the desire for our own pleasure. Interest in procuring it drives us to cooperate with others. In De Rerum Natura Lucretius presents a full and vivid picture of human development from an animal level of existence to our present sophisticated societies. We started, he says, with the simplest needs, for food, sex, shelter. We learned slowly how to make tools, use animal skins, cultivate vegetables, build shelters, and make boats. At first we did not “look to the common good … did not know how to govern … intercourse by custom and law” (5:958ff.). Eventually we learned these things too, each being driven always by desire for a more enjoyable life. As we formed larger groups, we began to seek the pleasures of eminence and honor, we engaged in political struggles, and at some point law and punishment were invented and a more orderly and peaceful society established (5:1105–60). In this story we learn to cooperate with one another for the satisfaction of our personal desires. Lucretius allows that we come to love our spouses and children, but he does not speak of a wider sociability. The Stoics tell a different story. They deny that we always seek our own pleasure. All living beings strive to preserve themselves, and we as young animals do so as well. Pleasure is just a by-product of success in this endeavor. It is proper to begin with simple self-concern.4 But “it is wrong 4

Epictetus, in A. A. Long, and D. N. Sedley, The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), vol. I, 63E, p. 396.

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for man to begin and end where the non-rational animals do.” As we mature, reason and the ability to use language lead us to concerns for others and not just for ourselves. We come to understand ourselves as part of the divinely ordered cosmos and this alters our initial motivations. When mature, we desire to live in accordance with nature, and by nature we are “an animal which is rational, sociable and gregarious.”5 We are suited to form unions with other people who are at ever-increasing distance from ourselves. As we come to have more insight into our own nature, we understand that living in accordance with our nature requires living as part of a society which includes all other humans as fellow members.6 We will marry and take part in civic affairs of our own society because it is right and proper, and not, as the Epicureans think, for our own pleasure.7 Epicureanism and Stoicism were important influences on early modern moral philosophy. What gave the contrast between the sociable and the unsociable aspects of our nature its modern importance was not, however, the thought of the ancients. It was the work of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), a Dutch lawyer who developed a new kind of theory of natural law and who is regarded as the founder of current understandings of international law.8 The “Preliminary Discourse” to his The Rights of War and Peace (1625, 2nd edn. 1631) contains his central assertions on the topic. Grotius says he must begin a treatise on the law of nature by refuting those who deny that there is any such thing. Allowing that man is an animal, and so a part of nature, he adds that man is an animal of a higher order. “Now amongst the Things peculiar to Man,” he continues, “is his Desire of Society, that is, a certain Inclination to live with those of his own kind … peaceably, and in a Community regulated according to the best of his Understanding” (Prelim. §VI, pp. 79–81). In the first edition Grotius says that nature leads each animal “to seek its own interests” and that this is true of man also “before he came to the use of that which is special to man.” Grotius is not making the Epicurean claim that each of us is always essentially self-interested. He is rather reworking the Stoic view, that as animals we begin with a drive to sustain our own existence and then as human beings we naturally develop a broader concern, which shows what is “special to man.” We come to have a “care for society in accordance with the human intellect.” This care, he stresses, is not due only to the needs we have 5 7

8

Stobaeus, Long and Sedley, 67W, p. 433. 6 Cicero, Long and Sedley, 57F, p. 348. For useful surveys of Epicurean and Stoic ethics and social thought, see Keimpe Algra, Jonathan Barnes, Jaap Mansfield, and Malcolm Schofield, eds., The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Chs. 20–22. In what follows in this section I draw on my The Invention of Autonomy, chs. 4–7, 14–6.

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for help from one another. It expresses the special nature of man. And it is the source of law or right, properly so called.9 Sociability, he says in the second edition, is “this care of maintaining Society in a Manner conformable to the Light of human Understanding” (Prelim. §VIII, pp. 85–6). Grotius never loses sight of our concern for our own interests, however. It is not surprising that in a treatise focused on rights of war and peace our “differences” (controversiae) are a principal topic (I.I.1, 133). One of the major sources of these differences during Grotius’ lifetime was religion. Europe in 1625 was in the midst of widespread, vicious, decades-long war over sectarian disagreements. Politics was inextricably combined with confessional disputes.10 If there was to be agreement on international law, there had to be an understanding of it that did not rely on contested religious claims. Scriptural interpretations would not do, nor would arguments ending with claims about God’s will in particular matters. Grotius simplified the issues with a brilliant stroke. We are sociable creatures and want to live together, he said, but we have endless differences over property and power, both personal and national. Let us take natural law to be a set of empirically discoverable ways in which sociable but quarrelsome beings such as we are can get along together. These laws will not rule out warfare – far from it. But they will regulate its conduct and the conduct of every other area of life in which strife threatens the peace of society, either international or at home. From this understanding of natural right Grotius worked out an entire system of rights – not just political rights but also those we would think of as moral. A few decades later Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) used a similar approach to warrant a rather different set of rights, but made no appeal to any natural sociability. Indeed in a famous comment he rejects the longheld Aristotelian view that we are by nature “born fit for society.”11 Our most basic drive, he held, is our fear of death. Anybody, however weak, can kill anybody else, however strong (since everyone has to sleep at some point). Thus we all have reason to fear one another. So we seek power to secure our own safety; and no amount of power is enough. Hence without a strong ruler we would have to be forever prepared to fight one another – a 9

10 11

Hugo Grotius, The Rights of War and Peace, edited by Richard Tuck (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005), Prolegomena to First Edition, vol. III, p. 1747 (there were no paragraph numbers in this edition). The term jus can be translated as “law” or as “right” and so poses difficulties for all English versions of Latin texts on the subject. For an illuminating history of Reformation thought and politics, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, The Reformation (London: Penguin Books, 2003). Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, edited by Bernard Gert (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1991), I.2.

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condition of war. A life of permanent war would be a life without cooperation. It would be completely horrid. But fear would make cooperation impossible. We would never trust anyone to stick to a bargain after we had kept our part of it first. We have enough wit, however, to see that a strong ruler can make people carry out their side of a bargain. That would alleviate our fears enough to make social life and collaboration possible. We have no desire of society for its own sake. We are simply driven into it by our desperate need for peace. The first law of nature, Hobbes says, is simple: to seek peace. The other laws of nature – there are many – are all derivable as means to obtaining and preserving peace.12 For Hobbes, then, sociability is an imperative, not a basic desire. It is even more explicitly an imperative in the theory propounded by Samuel Pufendorf (1632–94). His De Jure Naturae et Gentium (Of the Law of Nature and of Nations) (1672)13 was one of the most widely read of the works of modern natural law theorists. In it Pufendorf presents a whole system of law for both domestic and international affairs; and like Grotius and Hobbes, he bases it on facts about human nature. For him the first central fact about man is that “he is an Animal extremely desirous of his own Preservation … unable to secure his own Safety and Maintenance without the Assistance of his Fellows, and capable of returning the Kindness by the furtherance of mutual Good.” The second fact is that man is “often malicious, insolent, and easily provoked, and as powerful in effecting Mischief, as he is ready in delighting in it.” Because we are weak we need the help of others; because man is “an animal seething with evil desires … unruly and deviant passions,”14 we put difficulties in the way of obtaining it. Pufendorf takes these empirically discovered facts to be the rationale for the first law of nature: “Every man ought … to promote and preserve a peaceful Sociableness with others.” By “sociableness,” Pufendorf explains, he does not mean a mere willingness to join with others. He means a more active disposition that supposes each united to others “by Benevolence, by Peace, by Charity, and so, as it were, by a silent and a secret Obligation” (LNN II.III. xv, 136–7).15 12 13 14 15

Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, edited by Richard Tuck (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), I.13–14. Samuel Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and of Nations, translated by Basil Kennett (London, 1729). Hereafter LNN; I will cite this work by book, chapter and section number as well as by page. Samuel Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature, edited by Ian Hunter and David Saunders (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), Preface, p. 10. For a useful discussion of Pufendorf on sociability and the development of society, see Istvan Hont, “The Language of Sociability and Commerce: Samuel Pufendorf and the Theoretical Foundations of the ‘Four-Stages Theory,’ ” in Anthony Pagden, ed., The Languages of Political Theory in Early-Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 253–76.

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Why does the combination of our weakness and our unsociable character traits warrant us in affirming the requirement of sociability as the first law of nature? Like Grotius and Hobbes, Pufendorf believes that religious disagreement must not be allowed to hamper our agreement on laws of nature. Still, he takes it for granted that everyone will agree that God exists and has laid down laws for us. God has also enabled us to come to know them. We learn them by treating the salient facts about ourselves as pointers to God’s will. And it is from ordinary experience, available to everyone, that we learn what these salient features are. We need neither theology nor biblical exegesis to see that man is quarrelsome and self-interested but weak and in desperate need of help from others. If these – in addition to our ability to think and use language – are our distinctive features, then an inference to the first law of nature, Pufendorf thinks, is quite obvious. Pufendorf’s ideas were spread by translations into all the modern European languages and by innumerable editions of his works. They were also spread by less original thinkers who made briefer and simpler versions of them available. In Scotland an influential professor, Gershom Carmichael, taught his work and published annotations on it. He urges that there is not just one fundamental law of nature; there are three. One requires worship of God. Another requires that each “should pursue his own interest without harming others.” And the third prescribes that “sociability should be cultivated.” The law is needed first because men need one another’s help and are more able than other animals to give it. But, second, “men can abuse the prerogatives of their nature to hurt each other in a very effective manner, and are liable to attacks of provocation which incite them to do so.” The third law therefore requires that “social inclination and social life are to be encouraged and promoted by every man … both in himself toward others, and in others toward himself.” The second and third of these laws are based on the requirement that we must show love and veneration toward God. Obeying them is doing God’s will.16 A more widely read disseminator of Pufendorfian thought was the Swiss professor of natural law, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (1694–1748). His French treatise on droit naturel (1747) was combined after his death with his work on droit politique (1752). Translated as Principles of Natural and Politic Law the two-volume work was popular in the British North American colonies. Burlamaqui added elements from many other views17 but his basic idea 16 17

Gershom Carmichael, Natural Rights on the Threshold of the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by James Moore and Michael Silverthorne (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 2002), pp. 49–51. See Patrick Riley’s brief sketch of Burlamaqui as offering a “kind of compendium of Enlightenment thought,” in Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler, eds., The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-Century Political Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 60–1.

100 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim about the foundation of natural law was Pufendorfian, though given a heavier dose of sentimentality than its source. He notes the weakness of man as infant, his “rudeness, ignorance and confused ideas” when grown up, his liability to “spleen and melancholy” when without company. Following Pufendorf he suggests a somewhat Hobbesian condition of pre-civil society. But he notes ignorance and lack of education as the sources of its misery, mentioning “savagery” but without elaborating on it (I.4.4, 59). Thus we need society; and God has given us many talents that make us all useful to others. Moreover “our hearts are naturally bent to wish for the company of our equals.” And it is only in society that man can feel the social affections – “benevolence, friendship, compassion, and generosity” – from which “our purest enjoyments arise.” Society would not exist or be happy unless we had the sentiments of “affection and benevolence for one another.” Plainly it is God’s will that we should have these feelings. They are what is commonly referred to as our sociability. Because God wills that we should have them, sociability is “the true principle of the duties which the law of nature prescribes to us in respect to other men” (II.4.XII–XV, 152–5). All our other duties to others flow from the principle of sociability (II.4.XVI). So too do the principles of international law (II.6.VII, 175). Theorists of natural law were not the only writers to use the concept of sociability. Their critics rejected the calculating rationality that was central to natural law views. In its place some of them put appeal to sentiments of attachment to others. The third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) was perhaps the most widely read of those who made sentiment the key to morality. He thinks sentiment important in our moral responses to one another and rejects the Hobbesian vision of the state of nature. Isolation is not possible for humans, he holds, since we are born weak and dependent and remain so for years. More significantly we are born with natural affections drawing us to others, and parents are naturally kind and loving to their children.18 We can find our own good only in virtue, in forwarding the good of others. Man, indeed, is “not only by nature sociable within the limits of his own species or kind.” He extends his love to the universe, which he perceives as divinely ordered, and he accepts whatever it may bring him.19

18 19

Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, edited by Lawrence E. Klein (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 285–8. Shaftesbury, p. 433.

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Sociability had, of course, its critics. Bernard de Mandeville (1670–1733) scorns it.20 What makes man a sociable animal, he says, in his Fable of the Bees, “is not his desire of Company, Good Nature … and other Graces of a fair Outside.” It is rather his “vilest and most hateful Qualities” that are needed to fit him for society (I.4). Sociability is just a taste for human company, found most often in people with weak and uninventive minds, or bad consciences, who cannot stand to be alone. Sensible people would rather be solitary than put up with the noise and rudeness of gatherings and crowds. And even if everyone had a taste for company, it would not prove “some Intrinsic Worth in Man not to be found in other animals” (I. 340–41). Elsewhere Mandeville says that such sociability as we have simply springs from “self-liking,” a passion which may seem utterly “destructive to Sociableness and Society” (II. 175) but is not so. Our concern for our own “Ease and Security” and our desire to improve our own condition are enough to explain our fondness for society. Mandeville grants that man naturally has a “desire … after Company.” But he has this desire, Mandeville adds, “for his own sake,” and hopes to improve his condition by it (II. 180, 183). Such a desire, moreover, explains nothing important about our lives together. Only governance – the use of power to keep us in order – explains social life. Once that comes into being, children are raised to be pliable by being taught that it is to their own advantage to obey. Of course we may say that God made us for society. We may also say he made grapes for wine, but that does not prove that there is wine in each grape. It takes human invention to make wine out of grapes and society out of individuals. The fermentation that makes wine has its social counterpart in our commerce with one another. “Men become sociable,” Mandeville says, “by living together” (II. 185–9). There is no need to suppose that natural sociability plays an important role in our lives together. Replying to Mandeville and to Hobbes is a major enterprise for Francis Hutcheson (1694–1746). He criticizes psychological egoism and argues for the existence of disinterested and other-regarding desires. But in his widely read works on morality and on the passions, he uses the term “sociability” little if at all. His inaugural address at the University of Glasgow, however, was entitled “On the Natural Sociability of Mankind.” His aim is to show that society is natural to us because its suits our nature as individuals. He notes that many writers have seen that we are naturally sociable and have taken sociability to be the source of natural law. But they have not given an 20

Bernard Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, edited by F. B. Kaye, 2 vols. (1924) (Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1988).

102 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim adequate account of what is meant by sociability. It does not mean, he says, with a slap at Mandeville, simply that men like to pass their time in crowds (201). Nor does it mean simply that we have many abilities that contribute to sociable living. He rejects what he calls Pufendorf’s epicurean view, that social life is natural because it is advantageous to each of us. This ignores the fact that men have many desires which directly “depend on the company of others” (203). And our sociability is not exhausted by these. What shows most strongly that we were meant for society is that our nature is “in itself immediately and primarily kind, unselfish, and sociable without regard to its advantage or pleasure.” We have many passions that “look directly to the felicity of others” (205). And, not least, what is honest and decent is natural to us: the virtues that help others are gratifying to us just as such (205–7). Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), like Mandeville, gives a genealogy of sociability – and a subtler and more destructive one at that.21 Rousseau is deeply opposed to the natural law theories of Grotius and Hobbes, and attacks Pufendorf as well. They are wrong about the state of nature. If there ever were such a condition, Rousseau says, humans living in it would just be animals. They would try to keep themselves alive, they would show some rudimentary pity or concern for other animals, especially humans, who were sick or wounded, and they would mate and help with newborns. Aside from that they would ignore one another. But it is from the combination of these two principles – self-preservation and pity “without it being necessary to introduce into it that of sociability” – that the rules of natural right arise (Second Discourse, Pref., 127). There is society before there are laws, on Rousseau’s view. Desire for the company of others, beyond the most minimal, is non-existent in the state of nature. It develops only slowly, and then for the most part unfortunately. Arising from sexual desire, it turns into striving to show oneself superior to rivals for love, by being a better dancer or singer or hunter. When society gets more complex, humans invent the idea of private property. Then the striving for superiority turns into the kind of obsessive greed for power and possessions that Hobbes mistakenly thought existed in the state of nature. Sociability develops with a vengeance: the struggle for social distinction makes us slaves to our need to impress others in whatever ways we can. The only way out, Rousseau, holds, is by a total transformation of society. Politics must enter. A will for the general good must supplant the 21

The chief source here is the Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Discourses and Other Political Writings, edited and translated by Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

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will for one’s own good in each of us. We can then come to live as equals under law, secure in our possessions and free because we are obeying only laws that we ourselves enact. Only then can we come to be sociable without endless competition and an oppressive class system. ii Plainly, then, there were many conceptions of sociability and of unsociability circulating in early modern Europe. For Grotius sociability is a desire or inclination to live in a reasonable way with other reasonable people. It is opposed by our self-interest and our tendency toward controversy with one another. Hobbes sees no sociable inclination in our make-up. Our desperate need to keep alive fosters our distrust of one another and hence leads us toward a condition of unrelenting hostility. Only fear of death drives us into society. Like Hobbes, Pufendorf finds no original sociability in us. He finds us, in fact, inclined to be overly concerned with our own good and quarrelsome toward others. Hence the natural law requirement that we increase sociability prescribes that we correct our first impulses and cultivate a disposition we do not naturally have, a disposition to “accept social life with ease” and to develop our sense of duty to others.22 Carmichael seems to think, with Grotius, that we have a “social inclination,” which must be strengthened to enable us to overcome our tendency to provoke one another. Burlamaqui speaks of our many social affections, particularly benevolence; somehow these are also the principle from which natural laws are derived. Shaftesbury also stresses our social sentiments, as does Hutcheson, who focuses on benevolence. Mandeville denies that any such feelings are part of our original nature. Some people take pleasure in crude or boisterous crowds as an escape from their own emptiness; otherwise, he seems to think we may be brought up to pay at least lip service to generous affections, if not really to feel them. For Rousseau the closest feature of our constitution to sociability is the notion of our uncultivated tendency to pity unfortunate living beings if we come across them. But it is not involved in generating sociality. In the corrupt society in which we now find ourselves, it is hard to find any genuine feelings for the good of others. And when we reform ourselves under the general will, what holds us together is not a sentiment of any sort, nor a principle of sociability urging us to cultivate benevolence. It is a rational principle requiring us to treat ourselves and others as all free and equal citizens capable of governing ourselves. 22

Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man, 1.5.1–2.

104 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim Where, if anywhere, amidst these differing views of sociability, can we locate Kant? Here there are three main questions. First, what is the role of unsocial sociability in Kant’s thinking, and how does it compare with its role in the views of those of his predecessors who used it? Second, what more can be said about the psychology of unsocial sociability? And third, what place, if any, does unsocial sociability have in the Kantian philosophical system? (1) Kant’s predecessors use conceptions of unsocial sociability to pose what they see as the central problem of social cohesion and to give a solution to it. We want or need to live together but we are all hard to get along with. Natural laws show us how to cope with this problem so that despite the unsociable aspects of our make-up we can nonetheless be sociable. The framework they provide is based in human nature. It is therefore the same for everyone. Its most basic directives are what we would think of now as constituting morality. The laws of morality allow room for differences among societies in the positive laws they enact. But because the laws of nature are the same for all humans, they are the grounding for universal laws governing all countries – the law of nations or, as we would now call it, international law. Kant sees the central function of unsocial sociability quite differently. He allows that it points toward a problem that morality and law must be used to solve. But he does not try to derive moral laws or laws of nations from sociability, as Pufendorf and Burlamaqui do. On their view, Kant would think, morality would involve merely hypothetical imperatives, since they take it to be warranted by the end or ends it serves. The main role of unsocial sociability, for Kant, is as a permanent spur to personal and social improvement. This claim about unsocial sociability recurs frequently. “The purpose of nature,” Kant tells his students, “would appear to be promoted by this, that providence has implanted in mankind an impulse to mutual emulation among themselves in order to compel them to be active in enlarging and cultivating their powers.” And emulation has both pro-social and anti-social aspects. It brings out “a side of human nature that has become malignant, notwithstanding that the purpose of emulation really lay in inciting men to constant cultivation of greater perfection in themselves, by comparison with others” (Lec Eth 27.678–9). Kant allows – indeed, he insists – that progress toward the perfection of the species is nowhere near an end. Our unsocial drives never disappear, even when society improves.23 It may be easy to think that 23

This point is also made by Howard Williams, Kant’s Critique of Hobbes (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2003), p. 121.

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history is just a to-and-fro of progress and regress. But it is a moral duty to hold on to the belief in progress and to do what we can to forward it. We must look at the “conflict of individual inclinations, which is the source of all evil,” in this light (T&P, 8.312). (2) Kant thinks that our desires and motivations are largely opaque, to ourselves as well as to others.24 Moreover he sees no possibility of applying mathematics to the inner appearances in the soul. And since he holds that scientific knowledge can be obtained only of phenomena susceptible of mathematical treatment, he concludes that there can be no science of the soul – no scientific psychology.25 Perhaps because of this, his accounts of the psychological states that display our unsociable and our sociable impulses are scattered. Unlike Hume, he provides no thorough and complex theory of the passions.26 We can put flesh on the bones of unsocial sociability by looking at Kant’s views of some of the virtues and vices. What in our make-up favors sociability? We have, for one thing, a tendency to seek friends. “It already lies in human nature,” Kant says in a lecture, “to love something outside oneself, and especially another human being” (Lec Eth 27.682). Thus we are psychologically disposed to carry out some semblance of the duty to love other humans. That duty does not require feeling, however. It requires a firm will to act for the good of others, or beneficence. We are also required to show gratitude toward those who help us – but we seem to have less of an emotional tendency to be grateful than we have to be benevolent. He also finds in us a disposition to sympathize with others, to have “sensible feelings of pleasure or displeasure” due to the joys or sufferings of others. He does not wish to rest much on these feelings alone, however. As with love of others, he moves promptly to consider what the moral law can require of us in these matters. Action from duty to help those in need is the chief thing. If someone acts beneficently often enough, Kant thinks, “he eventually comes actually to love the person he has helped.” Love follows from acting sociably (MS 6:402). But we are also to take steps to cultivate our compassionate feelings, fostering them as means to active helpfulness (MS 6:456–7). These virtues attract us to one another, Kant holds, and they require to be balanced by virtues that keep us at a proper distance from one 24 26

See, e.g., MS 6:441, 447; Anthropology VII.121, 143. 25 G IV.471. For an excellent account of Hume’s psychology bearing on unsocial sociability see Gerald J. Postema, “ ‘Cemented with Disease Qualities’: Sympathy and Comparison in Hume’s Moral Psychology,” Hume Studies 31.2 (November 2005), 249–98.

106 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim another – virtues in which we show our respect for one another. Mutual love urges us to “come closer to one another,” while respect leads us to keep ourselves “at a distance from one another.” In this way we can construct a moral world, just as physical principles of attraction and repulsion make the natural world (MS 6:449). Respect requires that we not make excessive demands on others – that we show modesty toward them. We must not injure the just self-esteem of others. And we must maintain our honor as law-abiding citizens (MS 6:462–5). All these virtues plainly belong among our tendencies to sociability. Our unsociable vices also fall into groups. One arises from hatred of others. We are prone to envy – “a propensity to view the well-being of others with distress, even though it does not detract from one’s own.” We fall into jealousy, and as I have just noted we tend also toward ingratitude. Worse is to come. Malice, “the direct opposite of sympathy,” lurks in the soul. It is brought out by haughtiness and self-conceit in others but it can also take the form of desire for revenge (MS 6:458–61). Another group of unsociable vices are those coming from refusal of the duty to respect others. The main ones that Kant considers are arrogance and its associate, contempt; the tendency to defame others, which is an effort to lower the respect they deserve; and the related urge to ridicule others (MS 6:465–68).27 In Idea for a Universal History Kant does not elaborate on how we know about unsocial sociability. He says simply that we learn about it from experience. The facts we learn from even the small portion of endless history with which we are acquainted point toward a pattern, which emerges in classical Greece and appears in later eras as well. It shows how our unsociability drives us into what we can now see is progress (8:27, 50; 8:29, 52). The other works in which Kant discusses unsocial sociability also treat our knowledge of it as empirical. There is however one passage in which Kant offers what sounds like a different account of our knowledge of at least one aspect of unsocial sociability. In the Doctrine of Right, Kant says: It is not from experience that we learn of the maxim of violence in human beings and of their malevolent tendency to attack one another before external legislation endowed with power appears, thus it is not some deed that makes coercion through public law necessary. On the contrary, however well disposed and law-abiding human beings might be, it still lies apriori in the rational idea of such a condition (one that is not rightful) that before a public 27

See also the quite full discussion of vices in Lec Eth 27.686–98.

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lawful condition is established individual human beings, peoples and states can never be secure against violence from one another, since each has its own right to what seems right and good to it and not to be dependent upon another’s opinion about this. (MS 6:312)

Prior to establishment of a public lawful condition humans are in a state of nature (MS 6:312–13). In it there might be familial societies but there is no public authority to safeguard possession (MS 6:242). Hence there is mutual fear and suspicion, and there cannot be true property. At this point the postulate of public right holds for everyone: “when you cannot avoid living side by with all the others, you ought to leave the state of nature and proceed with them into a rightful condition, that is, a condition of distributive justice” (MS 6:307; cf. 6:237). In general Kant holds that awareness of the moral law and of specific instances of the categorical imperative provides agents with a sufficient motive to do what is required: in this case, to begin to live sociably. Taken together, then, the two passages I have just quoted suggest that however it may be with the sorts of unsocial sociability that arise from our passions and desires and about which we learn from experience, there is another kind. This kind arises from the right to act on one’s own judgment of what is “right and good.” In a state of nature we cannot expect convergence in different agents’ judgments. But we can each understand that we are morally required to enter into a condition that will remove the potential for conflict due to our conflicting judgments of what is right and good. Kant does not explicitly mention unsocial sociability in either of the discussions from which I have given the key passages. But I think we may take them to imply that one of its forms is a priori necessary. (3) The fullest account Kant gives of unsocial sociability in its relation to the rest of his views occurs In Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. There are, Kant says, three original predispositions toward the good in our nature: toward animality, humanity, and personality. Our predisposition to animality explains “merely mechanical self-love,” our automatic tendencies toward self-preservation, sex and procreation, and sociability. Reason is not required for any of these drives. (Thus this is like the Stoic view of our initial tendency toward self-preservation.) By contrast, our predisposition to humanity depends on our possession of reason. It expresses itself in a self-love in which we compare our condition with that of others. This first gives rise to our inclination to “gain worth in the opinion of others.” We begin by thinking of all people as equal, but our anxiety about others lording it over us leads us to seek

108 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim superiority over them. And then jealousy and rivalry arise. Nature intended these to generate a competitiveness that would have the effect of increasing our degree of culture. But because we are always spurred on by our fear that others will gain ascendancy over us, we move toward vices like envy and ingratitude. We have no original inclination to these. It is our fears for our own security that give rise to them (R 6:27). Reason is also central to the third predisposition, that to personality. It is shown in our openness to being moved by awareness of the moral law, which, of course, for Kant is the core of practical reason. While the second predisposition uses reason to serve our non-moral desires, the third expresses the sufficiency of practical reason to move us regardless of these desires (R 6:27–8). This leads to another point about the way Kant must see our unsocial sociability. When fully developed it is a result of what Kant calls our inborn “radical evil.” Kant explains his view of evil in Part One of Religion. We are not evil just because we sometimes need non-moral motives to cooperate with the moral motive if we are to act morally. In cases like this we show what Kant calls the “impurity” of our hearts. We are fully evil, however, only when we adopt maxims that “subordinate the incentives of the moral law to others (not moral ones).” In doing this we show a propensity to act as morality requires only if it suits our non-moral desires. The tendency to this improper ordering of motives must be considered, Kant says, to be a result of a free choice made by each and every person. In this sense it is “radical,” “woven into human nature” and inseparable from us (6:30). Because it is due to a free choice, moreover, the propensity cannot be explained. By the time the desires and passions that make us unsociable are fully developed, we have also experienced the awakening of our moral sensibilities.28 Mature humans, Kant holds, cannot avoid being aware of the moral law. At some level we are always aware of its bearing on our maxims. Consequently we cannot help noticing that the moral law prohibits acting from our harmful, unsociable desires. Throughout Idea for a Universal History Kant makes it clear that he considers the acts that display our unsocial sociability to be free. In such behavior we are freely choosing to act on a maxim or plan that we know is prohibited by the moral law. This is precisely what constitutes being morally evil.

28

For the awakening of sophisticated desires and sensibilities, see Kant’s “Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History” (MA 8:109–23), translation in Hans Reiss, Kant: Political Writings, trans. H. B. Nisbet, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, [1970] 1991).

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What makes us unsocial in our sociability is thus not mere animal instincts for which we are not responsible. It is rational choices, for which we are. Our difficult personality is therefore not only a natural ill of the human condition; it is a moral evil as well. Yet this very evil, Kant thinks, gives us reason to hope for the moral good of a morally well-ordered society and ultimately for a politically well-ordered world.29 At the end of the essay Kant suggests that his essay enables us to see the wisdom of God in the human world as well as in the natural world. Idea for a Universal History is thus intended as a theodicy, an account of how God has arranged things so that what strikes us as only an evil is nonetheless a major source of good. Kant is unique in seeing unsocial sociability in this light. iii Schopenhauer tells us of a group of porcupines who huddled together for warmth on a cold winter day, only to be driven apart by each other’s quills. Separated, the need for warmth forced them together again – and so on repeatedly, huddling and withdrawing. “Thus,” he comments in a Mandevillian vein, “the need for society which springs from the emptiness and monotony of men’s lives drives them together; but their many unpleasant and repulsive qualities … once more drive them apart.” Politeness is what enables us to put up with one another. Those who have sufficient internal warmth will “prefer to keep away from society.”30 We might treat this parable as a joke intended to lighten the mood at the burial of unsocial sociability. The problems left behind by the concept of unsocial sociability continued to be discussed after Kant. But the terms changed. A history of the descendants of unsocial sociability would occupy a large volume. I point to only three of the topics that would need to be considered. (1) In Kant’s Idea, the progress which he sees as resulting from unsocial sociability is not the intention of any of the agents whose often wicked actions contribute to bringing it about. He is thus working with a conception that later came to be called “the unintended consequences of intentional action.” It would take a history of the social sciences and of the philosophy of history to follow the uses of this fruitful notion. 29 30

Kant says that the history of nature begins with good, as the work of God, but “the history of freedom begins with evil, for it is the work of man.” “Conjectures,” in Reiss, p. 227, MA 8:115. Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, translated by E. F. J. Payne (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1974), vol. II, pp. 651–2.

110 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim Adam Smith sees improvement in society’s material well-being as eventuating from private and purely personal endeavors to make a living. In Hegel’s philosophy of history, progress toward freedom for all is the unintended outcome of innumerable struggles, most of them with far more limited goals. For Smith a “hidden hand” brings about the fortunate result; for Hegel it is the self-development of Geist. Marx thinks that the dialectic of history does the job. Darwin eventually led most thinkers to try to do without such ambitious theoretical constructs. Later sociologists have tried to explain the social mechanisms bringing about results they think cannot be explained solely in terms of individual psychology. (2) For Kant, unsocial sociability serves first and foremost to explain human inventiveness and industry. By doing so it gives him grounds for celebration of divine providence. Neither Nietzsche nor Freud follow him into the realms of theodicy. But both see inner turmoil and the repressions imposed by society on individuals as sources of creativity as well as of suffering. (3) Many of the users of conceptions of unsocial sociability portray the unsociable side of our nature in terms of vices. Thus for Pufendorf, Mandeville, and Kant (as for Montaigne) our unsociability is essentially wicked. These thinkers are carrying forward the Christian view of our fallen and sinful nature, and showing how, despite it, we could come to live peaceably together. Other theorists of unsocial sociability do not see the matter in this way. Hobbes, for example, explicitly refuses to condemn the fears and desires that pose difficulties for social union.31 He sees the problem as one of channeling individual self-interest so that it will carry everyone into society. Recent theorists have put the Hobbesian problem in a more complex way. The question as they see it is that there are two aspects of practical rationality. It is wholly rational, on this kind of view, to try to increase one’s own good as much as possible. It is also rational to hold that other agents have as much right to consideration as one has oneself. Or, put another way, it is rational to be equally concerned for the good of all. The problem is that these two rationalities can and do yield conflicting answers to questions about what one ought to do. And this seems to show that practical reason is deeply at odds with itself.32 31 32

Hobbes, Leviathan, I.13, p. 89. For the classic statement of this view, see Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London, 1874), 7th edn, 1907, Book IV, concluding chapter.

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Kant avoids this incoherence because he holds that moral imperatives rationally override self-interested imperatives, but he fails to convince everyone. Egoists equally fail to convince everyone that self-interest is always rationally entitled to defeat moral requirements. Other philosophers think that while morality may rightly override personal projects in some cases, there are also cases where it does not. None of these thinkers consider that concern for one’s own good or one’s own projects is vicious or wicked. It is tempting to say that the problem of unsocial sociability continues to be a presence in recent moral philosophy because of the lively discussion of the relations between these two aspects or kinds of rationality. But in reading past authors who discuss unsocial sociability we should not impute to all of them the specific form of the problem occupying attention now. We should not ignore the strand of past thought in which the conflict was not just between two forms of rationality, but between good and evil.

chapter 5

Kant’s Fourth Proposition: the unsociable sociability of human nature Allen Wood

Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim presents an “idea” in Kant’s technical sense of the term, namely, an a priori concept of reason (KrV A 312–38/B 368–96). The proper function of such concepts, in theoretical matters, is to regulate our rational inquiry with the aim of achieving maximal completeness and systematicity among our cognitions (KrV A 515–67/B 543–95, A 643–704/B 670–704732, A 832–51/B 860–79). Kant conceives of a rational system of cognitions as one in which reason sketches, in accordance with an idea, what it would be for our cognitions to attain to the greatest conceivable unity, systematicity and intelligibility, and then makes empirical inquiries, ordering the results in such a way as to fill in the sketch as far as the facts of nature and the limits of our cognitive capacities make this possible. In this essay, the topic is human history, and the idea in question is therefore an idea of a maximal theoretical intelligibility to human history. The results of this project may converge (as they finally do in the Ninth Proposition) with our practical strivings, motivated by moral considerations. But to regard Kant’s main project in Idea for a Universal History as motivated by morality is totally to misunderstand the essay from the ground up. preliminary: kant’s first three propositions Human history is the collective result of people’s free actions. For the purpose of making history intelligible, Kant appeals to his solution to the transcendental problem of freedom of the will (KrV A 532–58/B 560–87), which he regards as licensing the assumption that our actions in the natural world are free (Idea 8:17).1 He seeks to make these actions systematically intelligible by finding in them an unconscious, collective purposiveness, 1

It is significant that the assumption takes this form. Kant is often read as being committed to the proposition that we are free only in the noumenal world, but in fact the theory of noumenal freedom is

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which (as both collective and unconscious) is not a purposiveness imposed on them by human beings but by nature (Idea 8:18). He proceeds to do this by considering the human species as a natural biological species. The purposiveness of a biological species is conceptualized by Kant as a set of “predispositions” (Anlagen), that is, a set of capacities that are global for the organism (as distinct from the capacities residing in particular bodily organs). Kant assumes as a priori principles of the teleology of organized beings that such capacities normally develop themselves fully in the life of the species (Idea 8:18), that they are optimally suited to their natural ends (G 4:395), and that their operation, in accordance with natural laws, never brings about the direct opposite of their natural purpose (G 4:422). The first of these three principles is applied to the human species in the First Proposition of Idea for a Universal History. The meaning of Kant’s talk about “ends of nature” – and related expressions such as that “nature wills so-and-so” or “nature uses suchand-such means” – are beyond the scope of this essay. But this talk invites such serious misunderstandings that a few words of clarification are nevertheless in order. Kant employs the concept of a natural end (Naturzweck) only to organize the facts of inquiry in ways that go beyond what can be explained by the causal mechanism of nature. He does not invoke it in order to explain these facts by reference to the efficient causality of the intentions of any superhuman agent (“God” or “nature”). Later in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant specifically distinguishes natural purposiveness from intentional purposiveness, and says that he uses the expression “end of nature” precisely because “no one would attribute an intention to lifeless matter” (KU 5:383). On this point Kant agrees with Aristotle, who distinguishes final from efficient causality and regards it as absurd to think that ends are not present just because we observe no agent deliberating (Aristotle, Physics, 2.8 199a26–9). Although in the Fourth Proposition and elsewhere in the Idea for a Universal History Kant attempts to harmonize the natural teleology he is discussing with a kind of theodicy (Idea 8:21–2, 30), he never attempts to use natural teleology as any sort of theoretical introduced by him in the Critique of Pure Reason only to show that we may consistently suppose both that our actions are naturally determined and that they are free. It would be inconsistent for Kant to hold that he knows we are free, and in particular that he knows we are free only as noumenal beings, since both propositions would count as pieces of transcendent metaphysics. Kant’s only consistent position (which he does hold in the Idea for a Universal History, but perhaps violates elsewhere at times) is that we are justified in taking our actions in the sensible world to be free actions, despite their falling under the mechanism of nature, even though we cannot in the least comprehend how this freedom is possible or give any positive account whatever of how our freedom is compatible with natural determinism.

114 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim argument for the existence of God, and explicitly denies that this can be done (see KrV A 620–42/B 648–70, A 675–702/B 703–30, KU 5:436–42). Kant’s Second Proposition in the Idea for a Universal History applies this principle to the human species in light of the assumption that it is a rational species, that is, a species with a faculty of setting ends beyond those of natural instinct (Idea 8:18–19). It is the peculiarity of such a species, Kant argues, that its predispositions are not limited to those that can be fully developed within the life of a single specimen, or a single generation. A rational species, on the contrary, has the capacity to acquire, or even invent, new predispositions, and passes them on from each generation to the next. Kant concludes from this that the predispositions of humanity “develop completely only in the species, but not in the individual ” (Idea 8:18). Kant thus concludes, by a priori reasoning, based solely on the rational structure of natural teleology in organisms and the concept of a rational species of organisms, that the end of nature in regard to the history of the human species is the full, hence open-ended (and thus essentially endless) development of its predispositions in the succession of generations constituting the life of the human species. The Third Proposition draws the further conclusion that it is the purpose of nature in history that human beings should achieve no happiness or perfection merely from instinct, but only that which is a product of their own free use of reason, under the conditions in which nature has placed them (Idea 8:19). fourth proposition: social antagonism Thus far Kant’s argument has proceeded entirely a priori, grounded on the rational idea of natural teleology, the regulative principles that belong to it, and the conception of the human species as essentially a rational species, rather than one whose predispositions are fixed by instinct. With the Fourth Proposition, he begins to admit, at least tacitly, that the construction of his “idea” of the rational intelligibility of human history must depend also on empirical considerations, namely, on a very general observation about the fundamental natural mechanism through which the development of human predispositions takes place. This observation is that nature’s means for the development of human predispositions is the social antagonism of human beings, or what Kant calls their “unsociable sociability” (Idea 8:20).2 The view about human social life 2

Sometimes people slip into translating ungesellige Geselligkeit as “unsocial sociability.” This seems to imply something much closer to a contradiction than a mere oxymoron – a form of sociability (social connectedness to others or dependence on them) that is unsocial – not connected or seeking


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Kant is expressing here is by no means original with him, and plays a crucial role in much of Enlightenment social theory, including that of Mandeville, Adam Smith and, above all, Rousseau. But Kant’s development of this thought is fundamental not only to his theory of history, but also to his anthropology and even to his entire moral philosophy. Its importance for the entirety of Kant’s thinking about human nature would be virtually impossible to overestimate. No interpretation of Kant’s views on any aspect of human psychology, sociology or history will get matters right as long as it ignores the theme of unsociable sociability. Kant derives the oxymoronic term “unsociable sociability” from Montaigne (one of his favorite authors): “There is nothing so unsociable and sociable as man: the one by his vice, the other by his nature.”3 Unsociable sociability is, to begin with, a modification of human sociability that belongs, along with our instincts for survival and reproduction, to our original natural predisposition to animality. Our natural sociability is a tendency to associate with others of our kind, and to be mutually dependent on them (R 6:26–7).4 The unsociable form taken by the sociability of human beings is not a consequence of our animality, but rather of our predisposition to humanity – that is, our rational predisposition, as free beings, to set ends, devise means to them, and combine our ends into a whole under the name of happiness (R 6:27–8, VA 7:321–3). Unsociable sociability is nature’s way of developing our rational predispositions to both humanity and personality, which, Kant says, would have remained dormant without it (Idea 8:21–2). Our unsociability, in other words, is part of the natural discontentedness that nature employs toward the end of overcoming the natural contentment and indolence that without it would have kept us

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independence. This is not altogether excluded from what Kant means, because he thinks one abnormal form that unsociable sociability can take is timidity in relation to other people – Leutescheuen (anthropophobia), a misanthropic withdrawal from all relations with others (MS 6:450, VE 27:672). But Kant sees this as a contingent result of unpleasantness, humiliation, or traumatization the timid misanthrope has experienced in dealing with others in some positive way. The principal meaning of ungesellige in this expression is really “unsociable” – that is, it is a form of positive engagement with others involving mutual antagonism or hostility. “Il n’est rien si dissociable et sociable que l’homme: l’un par son vice, l’autre par sa nature.” Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, “De la solitude,” Essais, edited by André Tournon (Paris: Imprimerie nationale Éditions, 1998), vol. 1, p. 388. “There is nothing more unsociable than Man, and nothing more sociable: unsociable by his vice, sociable by his nature,” “Of Solitude,” in The Complete Essays, translated by M. A. Screech (London: Penguin Books, 1991), p. 267. If this is Kant’s view, then it contrasts with Rousseau’s thesis that human beings are solitary by nature, and become sociable only when their developing reason wrenches them out of their naturally contented isolation from other human beings (Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, translated by Donald Cress [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1992], pp. 18–26). At times, however, Kant shows some sympathy for the Rousseauian view on this (VA 7:322), though his considered view is always that human beings are destined by their nature to be social beings (VA 7:330).

116 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim forever under the benevolent tutelage of our animal instincts, the dignity of our rational nature forever unrealized: Without these qualities of unsociability from which the resistance arises, which are not at all amiable in themselves, qualities that each of us must necessarily encounter in his selfish pretensions, all talents would, in an arcadian pastoral life of perfect concord, contentment and mutual love, remain eternally hidden in their germs; human beings, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would give their existence hardly any greater worth than that of their domesticated beasts; they would not fill the void in creation in regard to their end as rational nature. (Idea 8:21; cf. MA 8:120–1, RH 8:65, KU 5:429–31, VA 7:324, 328)

Nature’s means for the development of human predispositions is therefore an unsociable (that is, antagonistic, competitive or conflict-ridden) form of sociability (that is, mutual dependency). More specifically: unsociable sociability develops along with our rational faculties, which carry with them a sense of selfhood, and an awareness of our self-worth (MA 8:112–13, VA 7:127–31). Hence it is a tendency to seek a self-worth superior to that of others. Since the desire for superiority requires others (over whom to feel superior) and yet is present in them as much as in ourselves, human society is a paradoxical condition in which people require one another and at the same time find one another intolerable: “Now it is this resistance that awakens all the powers of the human being, brings him to overcome his propensity to indolence, and, driven by ambition, tyranny and greed, to obtain for himself a rank among his fellows, whom he cannot stand, but also cannot leave alone” (Idea 8:21). In the Fourth Proposition, Kant emphasizes the natural teleology involved in our unsociable sociability – partly, no doubt, to forestall complaints against nature (or perhaps Providence) for inflicting competitiveness on us, and partly so that we will not hold nature to blame for faults that are our own. But this should not distract us from the fact that the human conduct displaying social antagonism is morally blameworthy, and something we have every reason to combat in ourselves. Indeed, it turns out, according to the Idea for a Universal History, that even nature’s end of developing human faculties requires human beings to curb the effects of unsociable sociability, by devising a law-governed civil society protecting property and other requisites for the use of our rightful freedom. Without this, human competitiveness itself, by leaving people no hope of enjoying the fruits of their efforts, would undermine the very incentives to the development of our predispositions that unsociable sociability is supposed to promote. As we will see presently, unsociable sociability is not only a device for developing our species capacities, but it is also the sole source of


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moral evil in human life. It is crucial to Kant’s understanding of human nature that the natural process through which nature develops our faculties, including our rational capacity for morality, is also the ground of moral evil. It is originally in this competitive sense, for example, that reason counts for human beings as a faculty of comparison – that is, it is originally a faculty for comparing oneself with others with the aim of wanting to come off better than they do. This is also the original ground of our natural desire for happiness – which for human beings is never merely the innocent desire for natural satisfaction (to which Rousseau gave the name amour de soi, and Kant Selbstliebe or Eigenliebe), but always also a desire involving what Rousseau called amour propre, and Kant “self-conceit” (Eigendünkel ) (KpV 5:73).5 That is, the natural human desire for happiness, which arises in us only as rational and at the same time social beings, is always originally a desire to compare our state with that of others with the aim that it should be better than theirs: “The predisposition to humanity can be brought under the general title of self-love which is physical and yet involves comparison (for which reason is required); that is, only in comparison with others does one judge oneself to be happy or unhappy” (R 6:27). the passions Unsociable sociability is decisive for Kant’s understanding of every aspect of our nature as rational beings. When Kant speaks of the way our empirical inclinations pose a “counterweight” to the moral law of reason (G 4:405), it is not the natural (animal, sensuous) side of ourselves, as such, that puts up this resistance. Our sensuous or animal nature is innocent, and in itself even something good; Kant chides the Stoics for mistaking their enemy when they located it merely in our natural desires (R 6:26–8, 57–9). (Despite these emphatic assertions, the Stoic view he strongly rejects is very commonly ascribed to Kant himself, resulting in basic misunderstandings of his moral psychology.) It is only with the development of reason in the social condition that there arises a systematic conflict between inclination (empirical desire) and the rational desires arising from moral reason. Unsociable sociability is fundamental, for example, to his understanding of our susceptibility to passions – that is, natural inclinations that resist the control of reason (VA 7:252, 265–75). Passions are inclinations presupposing a maxim, hence an exercise of freedom, and therefore we are responsible for them and for their evil influence on our conduct; they are functions of our humanity, 5

Rousseau, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, pp. 53, 90–1.

118 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim not our animality, and we can ascribe them only to human beings, not to nonhuman animals (VA 7:266). This is because, more generally, the resistance of our inclinations to reason is not, in Kant’s view, a resistance of nature to freedom or of animality to rationality. Instead, it is a resistance posed by our socially conditioned empirical desires to rational principles – of which, however, we have also become aware only through the developmental influence of the social condition. Unsociable sociability thus lies at the ground of moral good as well as moral evil. Kant distinguishes innate or natural passions – which include the passion for freedom and sexual passion (VA 7:268–9, 136, 304, 309) – from social or cultural passions for honor, power and wealth, the three principal goods for which human beings in society compete. These constitute the three characteristic social vices Kant already mentioned as instances of our unsociable sociability: ambition, tyranny and greed (Idea 8:21, VA 7:270–4, cf. G 4:393). (Sometimes he also includes the desire for vengeance among the principal human passions, VA 7:270–1). All passions, however, natural as well as social, are social in the sense that “they are directed only at human beings and can also be satisfied only by human beings” (VA 7:270). Our innate passion for freedom, which Kant calls “the most vehement of all inclinations,” consists in an insatiable desire to be rid of every limitation imposed on us by the existence of other human beings (which includes not only their power over us but also the obligations we owe them). Thus “a human being whose happiness depends on another human being’s choice (no matter how benevolent the other may be) rightly considers himself unhappy” (VA 7:268). Human sexual passion is a socially conditioned variation on the natural (and innocent) desire to reproduce. It consists in a desire to use the body of another for the gratification of one’s impulses (VA 7:136), which involves the desire to use the other as a mere means and is therefore essentially a desire to degrade the other (MS 6:278, VE 27:384–5). (We therefore deceive ourselves if we view Kant’s nasty views about sex as undeserved accusations aimed at our innocent animal nature; they are nothing of the kind, since their target is not our animality but the essentially unsociable form it assumes in our social condition.) All passions, but especially the social or cultural passions, are inclinations reason has a hard time controlling, and this difficulty is due to the fact that they subject us to delusion (Wahn) (VA 7:274–6). Specifically, social passions represent to us the acquisition of honor, power, and wealth as means of gaining superiority over others, through (respectively) their opinion, their fear, or their interest (VA 7:271). But our inordinate hope for this superiority drives us to excessive desire for the means to it, and others who


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are more prudent than we are may therefore make use of these passions to gain superiority over us (VA 7:274–5). love and sympathy Of course not all desires for Kant are empirical (as for Aristotle, there are also rational desires), and it is from these that we act when we constrain ourselves through moral reason, prudential reason or even instrumental reason. Only empirical desires are “inclinations.” To equate “inclination” with “desire” is the far from innocent error committed by all those who attack Kant for maintaining a dangerous “dualism” between reason (or morality) and “desire,” or who describe Kant as holding that we should act from reason and without desire (a state of affairs Kant would regard as nonsensical and impossible, since all volition and action necessarily involves desire). Further, not all inclinations for Kant are passions. Some of our inclinations, and the feelings associated with them, such as love and sympathy, are often helpful to morality, and this is why Kant thinks we have a duty to cultivate these feelings and inclinations (MS 6:456–8). But for Kant the unsociable sociability of our nature influences when, and toward whom, we have such feelings, and this is the reason he cannot treat these feelings as trustworthy motives for morality, or regard actions motivated by them as properly moral in content. Kant regards love and sympathy as falling under the principle of self-love or one’s own happiness (KpV 5:22). This is not because Kant is a simpleminded psychological egoist who thinks all desires really aim at our own good rather than at the good of anyone else. It is rather because of the way that, under the influence of our unsociable sociability, these feelings, though genuinely other-oriented in their aims, nevertheless tend to select their objects in ways that ultimately serve our jealous self-esteem. We tend to feel love for those whose qualities or actions benefit us or make us think better of ourselves (VE 27:407). Still more, we tend not to feel love or sympathy for anyone who threatens our self-esteem, as by making a claim on us based on duty rather than our freely given affection. For it flatters us, and puts us in a position of superiority, to be able to relieve the suffering of another, while it is humiliating to our competitive self-esteem to be obligated to anyone. Consequently, we tend to love anything to which we can feel superior: We need more to be honored than to be loved, but we also need something to love with which we don’t stand in rivalry. So we love birds, dogs, or a young, fickle and cheerful person. (Ref 1471, Ak 15:649)

120 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim We love everything over which we have a decisive superiority, so that we can toy with it, while it has a pleasant cheerfulness about it: little dogs, birds, grandchildren. Men and women have reciprocal superiority over one another. (Ref 1100, Ak 15:490) Love, like water, always flows downward more easily than upward. (VE 27:670)

This is not to deny that love and sympathy are the best friends morality has among our empirical feelings – as we have seen, we even have a moral duty to cultivate them. The point is rather that in a being whose inclinations are fundamentally expressions of unsociable sociability, no natural or empirical feeling or inclination is to be trusted absolutely. Moral theories, like those of Hutcheson, that pick out sympathy as the distinctively moral motive, are in error because they labor under an illusion about the role of sympathy in our social-psychological economy.

the moral law For Kant the moral law is given unconditionally by human reason, and it is the fact that it is legislated solely by our own faculties, not imposed on us from outside, as from sense experiences or by some innate disposition implanted in us by God or nature, that makes it an a priori law. Our reason, however, develops in history only through our social condition, under the influence of unsociable sociability. The unsociable sociability of human nature is an empirical condition of the exercise of reason, however, and therefore has no share in determining the a priori content of the moral law. Yet because it accompanies the emergence of that law in human nature, as a fundamental condition for that emergence, and also because the content of the law turns out to be directly opposed to all the natural-social tendencies present in our unsociable sociability, it follows that the way the law is formulated can, and indeed must, take account of the fact that, as human beings, the rational beings who give themselves the law necessarily relate to it as unsociably sociable beings. And all of Kant’s own formulations of the moral law, as well as the content of the empirically conditioned duties that human beings have under the law, give clear evidence of this fact. The first formulation of the law, the Formula of Universal Law (FUL), and its variant, the Formula of the Law of Nature (FLN), tell us that we may not adopt a maxim that we cannot will to be a universal law (morally valid for all rational beings) or (in the variant) to be a universal law of nature (that would be actually followed, with the regularity of natural law, by all rational beings) (G 4:421). The point of this injunction, Kant tells us immediately


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after citing four examples of its application, is to counteract our propensity to will that the opposite of our maxim “should remain a law generally; yet we take the liberty of making an exception for ourselves,” for our inclination (G 4:424). The very same universal laws would, of course, apply a priori to rational beings who had no propensity to seek superiority over others by making exceptions to them in their own interest; but Kant’s formulations of FUL and FLN are clearly directed to the kind of rational beings we find ourselves to be. Likewise, the second principal formulation of the law, the Formula of Humanity as End in Itself (FH), tells us to treat humanity (or rational nature), in our own person as well as in the person of other rational beings, as always an end in itself, never merely as a means (G 4:429). Again, it is an a priori law that the absolute worth of rational nature would be something any rational being must respect. But it is only unsociably sociable rational beings who need to be commanded not to treat this absolute value as a mere means, as by wanting to gain superiority over other rational beings (who are their equals in moral value) and treating them as mere means. Finally, there is the most definitive form of the moral law, the one that is the outcome of Kant’s developmental argument at G 4:412–36. This is the Formula of Autonomy (FA) and its variant, the Formula of the Realm of Ends (FRE), which tell us to obey the laws we give ourselves through reason, and characterizes those laws as the principles whose universal observance would result in a “realm of ends” – that is, a systematic combination of the ends of all rational beings (G 4:431–3). The idea of a realm of ends is essentially that of a system of collective human action that precludes any ultimate competition between ends, but involves the adoption by rational beings only of those ends that can be combined with those of all others in a mutually reinforcing system of purposive activity. As before, the a priori laws referred to under FA would be the same for all rational beings, regardless of their empirical propensities. But enjoining us to seek a realm of ends has a special point in the case of beings whose unsociable sociability makes them natural competitors and determines the content of their natural inclinations as tending toward ends that are hostile to those of other rational beings. It might be thought that unsociable sociability could have no role to play in the moral command to treat ourselves as ends (and hence in generating our moral duties to ourselves). This hasty and erroneous conclusion results from ignoring the way in which unsociable sociability conditions merely the way we (under)value others (in comparison with ourselves), but also the way we wrongly value ourselves. We seek, namely, to ground our self-worth on factors regarding which we may be compared to others and regarded as their

122 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim superior – fundamentally, factors involving the worth of our “state” or “condition” (Zustand) rather than that of our person. Just as we, as unsociably sociable beings, value our happiness in part because it enables us to compare ourselves favorably to those we regard as less happy, so we also value the satisfaction of our inclinations over our obedience to the moral law, because the former sort of valuation is often flattering to us, while the latter seldom is so. Also, it is failed ambition (the frustrated desire to achieve superiority over others even in our own opinion) that accounts for many violations of duty to oneself – such as the servile subjection to others, or the cowardly lack of self-respect Kant thinks is displayed in lying, or the miserly disposition to value wealth apart from its usefulness to other ends, by irrationally identifying ourselves with the power we think it gives us over them (MS 6:429–37, VA 7:272). Kant also thinks that the wrong way of valuing oneself accounts for various self-deceptive tendencies to value ourselves wrongly even in our moral personality. These include the tendency to “ratiocinate against the strict laws of duty,” interpreting them as demanding less of us than they really do, and resisting their commands as “snubbing and disrespecting, as it were, the impetuous claims” of our inclinations (G 4:405, MS 6:440). They also include the tendency to present ourselves to others, and even to ourselves, as morally better than we really are (MS 6:441, VA 7:121, 151, 332, VE 27:444). We can appreciate fully the delusion that is involved here only if we realize how absolutely egalitarian Kantian ethics is. For when FH declares that every rational being has absolute worth as an end in itself, this means that all rational beings, whatever their perfections or advantages, moral or non-moral, are absolutely equal in worth. This means that the stupidest human being, or even the most evil, is equal in worth to the wisest, or even the morally best. Kant denies that it is ever legitimate to compare yourself morally to anyone else – moral comparisons must rather have exclusive concern with “inner” worth – the moral worth of one’s person and one’s actions as compared with the moral law (VE 27:349). He countenances moral comparisons between people only when they are really understood as inner comparisons in this sense (KpV 5:88). To look down on others as your moral inferiors is contrary to your duty of humility, just as regarding yourself as their moral inferior is contrary to your duty of self-respect (MS 6:435–6). The deep-seated human tendency to use even morality itself as a battleground or playing field on which to achieve superiority over others is one of the most deeply corrupt forms taken by our unsociable sociability: it perverts the very idea of morality itself into its very opposite.


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In effect, then, the moral law of reason of which we become aware through the development of our faculties, has a content directly opposed to the natural purposiveness of the process through which we become aware of it. For it is only through our unsociable competitiveness that our faculties are developed, but of these faculties, the chief one – our moral reason – makes us aware of an unconditional law commanding us to renounce all competitive relations with others of our kind and to pursue only those ends that can be shared by all in common as part of an ideal universal community of all rational beings. This gives an ironical poignancy to Kant’s Third Proposition: that the human being can “participate in no other happiness or perfection than that which he has procured for himself free from instinct through his own reason” (Idea 8:19). For this means that we must strive for the properly human good not merely independently of, but even in direct conflict against, the very conditions in our own nature that made the rational awareness of this good possible for us. radical evil We have already seen that “unsociable sociability” reappears later in the Critique of Practical Reason as the “self-conceit,” a human tendency that must be struck down by respect for the moral law if we are to do our duty (KpV 5:73). It reappears again even later, in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, as the radical propensity to evil in human nature, which provides the fundamental premise for Kant’s entire discussion of the religious life. The propensity to radical evil is there described as a fundamental maxim of the will, to give the incentives of inclination priority over the incentive of duty (R 6:36). But we have seen above that this policy amounts to regarding oneself as having a greater worth than others, which is equivalent to giving it preference over the moral law that commands us to treat others as having equal worth as ends in themselves and to adopt only those ends that can be combined with the ends of others into a realm of ends. This amounts at the same time to giving one’s state or condition preference over one’s moral personality considered as the foundation of one’s self-worth. This is precisely the propensity Kant describes as unsociable sociability. The social origin of radical evil is not a major theme in the Religion, but it is nonetheless quite explicit. We have seen that unsociable sociability is bound up with our “humanity” (our predisposition to use reason to set ends and pursue happiness). It is that “comparative self-love” from which, Kant says, “originates the inclination to gain worth in the opinion of others” that is the foundation of

124 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim jealousy and rivalry, and with it all the vices of secret or open hostility to all whom we consider alien to us … These vices, however, do not really issue from nature as their root but are rather inclinations, in the face of the anxious endeavor of others to attain a hateful superiority over us, to procure it for ourselves over them … ; for nature itself wanted to use the idea of such a competitiveness … as an incentive to culture. (R 6:27)

Here we see the vices of comparative self-love depicted in the same terms as unsociable sociability, both as regards the reciprocal desire of human beings to gain superiority over one another and as regards the natural end of this human competitiveness, which is to promote the “culture” (Kultur) of human beings, that is, the open-ended development of all their species predispositions. As has sometimes been noted, Kant never directly presents an argument for the thesis that human nature has a radical propensity to evil, but merely gestures at one by citing the “multitude of woeful examples that the experience of human deeds parades before us” (R 6:32–3). He spares himself the argument, I think, partly because he thinks that a proper defense of the thesis would be a rather complicated empirical enterprise, which would belong to anthropology rather than to religion, which is his topic here. But he thinks he can dispense with a rigorous argument here mainly because his intended audience is the orthodox Christian believer. This is someone who already agrees with him about the universality of human sinfulness, and needs only to be persuaded of Kant’s account of what radical evil consists in – so this is the task to which Kant devotes most of his attention in the First Part of the Religion.6 That the human species as a whole is evil by nature, Kant says, can be demonstrated only later on, “if it transpires from anthropological research that the grounds that justify us in attributing [the propensity to evil] as innate are of such a nature that there is no cause for 6

Some readers think that Kant is attempting to argue for the thesis of radical evil a priori when he asserts that “in order to call a human being evil, it must be possible to infer a priori from a number of consciously evil actions, or even from a single one, an underlying evil maxim, and from this, the presence in the subject of a common ground, itself a maxim, of all particularly morally evil maxims” (R 6:20). This seems to be Henry Allison’s interpretation, in Kant’s Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), pp. 155–6, though he does not appeal specifically to this passage in support of it. But Kant quite clearly distinguishes the task of explaining how we may judge an individual human being to be evil, of which this passage is a part, and which serves to support his rigoristic conclusion that we should, if possible, seek to avoid an intermediate state between good and evil in judging human characters, from the task of ascribing a propensity to evil to human nature or the entire human species, which is discussed only later in section III of the First Part (R 6:32–5), and to which such a priori arguments make no contribution. At the end of that discussion, Kant distinguishes the task of showing that the human species is evil by nature, which is “to be established through experiential demonstration” from the task of determining “the real nature of that propensity as the ground of resistance [to the moral law],” which is a matter of a priori cognition (R 6:35).


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exempting anyone from it, and that the character therefore applies to the species” (R 6:25–6). I submit that the future “anthropological research” to which Kant refers is best understood precisely as the empirical filling out of the “idea” undertaken in Idea for a Universal History, and in particular the aspect of the idea involving unsociable sociability.7 Finally, in Part Three of the Religion, it is even clearer that radical evil derives not from our nature as animal beings but instead from the development of reason occasioned by our association with others: It is not the instigation of nature that arouses what should properly be called the passions, which wreak such great devastation in his originally good predisposition. His needs are but limited, and his state of mind in providing for them is moderate and tranquil. He is poor (or considers himself so) only to the extent that he is anxious that other human beings will consider him poor and despise him for it. Envy, tyranny, avarice, and the malignant inclinations associated with these, assail his nature, which on its own is undemanding, as soon as he is among human beings. Nor is it necessary to assume that these are sunk into evil, and are examples to lead him astray: it suffices that they are there, that they surround him, and that they are human beings, and they will reciprocally corrupt one another’s moral disposition and make one another evil. (R 6:93–4)

This social origin of radical evil then provides Kant with the basis for his argument that the struggle against radical evil can never be successful if undertaken only by each individual on his own, but requires membership in a voluntary “moral commonwealth” in which human beings may regard themselves as members of a single family and unite their hearts in pursuit of a consciously shared system of moral ends (R 6:94–100). In this way, the identification of radical evil with our unsociable sociability plays a direct role in one of the main arguments of the Religion. The plain meaning of these passages is that the radical evil in human nature is to be identified with the unsociable sociability of the human historical and social condition. But there sometimes arises a resistance to accepting this plain meaning – due usually to one or another common 7

Here we see also that it is an error to think – as did Allison, Kant’s Theory of Freedom, p. 154 – or the author of Kant’s Moral Religion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), pp. 225–6, whose youthful naïveté at the time the book was written provides an excuse to which Allison cannot appeal – that establishing the thesis empirically must consist in establishing merely an empirical generalization based on the observation of individual human beings. For in Kant’s view, this is not how any science, properly speaking, or any rational endeavor of human cognition, ever operates. All sciences make observations, and draw conclusions from them, according to principles given by reason itself (KrV B xii–xiv). In this case, the inquiry into human nature follows a rational idea grounded on a natural teleology that is laid out beforehand, and empirical observations play the role not of supporting inductive generalizations but rather of seeing how far the idea can be completed or realized in human cognition.

126 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim misunderstanding of Kantian ethics or Kantian moral psychology. It is thought, for instance, that if evil is social or collective in nature and origin, this would exculpate the individual from it, which Kant is careful never to do (R 6:21–2, 35, 37, 39–41).8 But to say that the social condition corrupts the individual human being (as Kant does, R 6:94) is not inconsistent with saying that it is the individual human being who is corrupted – in other words, it is the individual alone who bears the responsibility for the evil propensity. (These two claims are not the least bit in conflict or tension with each other; on the contrary, the second follows from the first.) Neither nature nor society is ever represented by Kant as the efficient cause of our evil choices, removing them from our control and destroying our freedom. Kant is simply misunderstood if he is read as saying that society forces evil upon us – as if the presence of others, and their desire for superiority over us, somehow compelled us to seek superiority over them.9 On the contrary, Kant says explicitly that the corruption of the social condition does not 8

9

One recent and thoughtful articulation of this objection is found in Jeanine Grenberg, Kant and the Ethics of Humility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 31–42. At times, Grenberg seems to be saying that it is an objection to my interpretation that if it were right, Kant would have no way of answering the objection that the social origin of radical evil “undermines individual responsibility” for radical evil (p. 35). But first, if Kant indeed had no good answer to this objection that would be nothing against my interpretation, which is based firmly on what Kant says explicitly in the Religion. For an interpretation of Kant to be correct, it is by no means required that Kant’s doctrines, so interpreted, should have a convincing answer to every objection that might be raised against them. And second, I see no reason for thinking that Kant could have no convincing answer to this objection, for reasons I am now in the course of presenting. Grenberg quotes the same passage that I do from R 6:93–4 and then comments: “The picture here almost seems to be one in which we corrupt each other, such that I am responsible for your evil and vice versa.” The word “almost” seems an admission that this is not the picture – which, I submit, it is definitely not in the quoted passage, in which Kant actually asserts exactly the opposite. However, immediately after this I am charged by Grenberg (But why me? Why not Kant? He is the one she has just quoted) with the responsibility for “giving an account which showed our competitive-comparative tendencies to be more a result of individual choice than coercion through social pressures”; lacking such an account, she says, “We are left … with the worry that the social condition of evil could undermine individual responsibility for it.” But again, it is no objection to what I say about Kant’s view if his view leaves us with this worry. And I also think the worry persists only in the minds of those who are confused about what Kant is saying, perhaps confusing a teleological account with a causal one, garbling what he says about the way in which the social condition provides the necessary empirical context for human evil, or attributing to him the need to explain things that he denies can be explained. Besides, it is an inveterate human defect to want to shift the responsibility for your own misdeeds to someone or something else, so that any attempt to provide any context for evil or to make it intelligible in any way will naturally serve as an invitation for people to blame their wrongdoing on something besides themselves. The cook, interrupted by a spouse’s casual remark, spills the casserole all over the kitchen floor, and then exclaims: “Now look what you made me do!” As long as human nature disposes people to such attitudes of excuse, we should expect any discussion of the nature or context of evil to generate what Grenberg so delicately refers to as this “worry.” But the philosopher who illuminates the nature and context of evil should no more be expected to remove the worry than the spouse should be expected to mop up the mess.


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require that they should be “sunk into evil,” acting as “examples to lead [us] astray”: it is enough, he says, “that they are there, that they surround us, and that they are human.” They provide the necessary context for our evil choices, but we make those all by ourselves. Kant calls our evil propensity “inscrutable” (R 6:21, cf. 6:39–44). He denies in principle that there could ever in principle be either any rational account or any causal explanation for a fundamentally evil choice. It would make no sense, on the one hand, to seek a good reason for a fundamentally evil choice, since the existence of such a reason would do away with its evil character. Nor, on the other, could there be any external, non-rational cause, since that would contradict its being a free choice, and again preclude its being genuinely evil. The only sort of intelligibility Kant thinks we can give to evil is one derived from the use of natural teleology as a regulative principle used for the maximal systematic comprehension of our free actions. Our radical propensity to evil, namely, under the description “unsociable sociability,” serves a natural end, that of developing our species predispositions in history. This involves neither an explanation nor an excuse, and subtracts nothing from our total responsibility for our evil choices. Another mistake would be to think that radical evil cannot be social or historical in origin because the free will is an intelligible cause, beyond nature and outside time. This adds to the error of thinking of “society” and “history” as efficient causes the further error of treating Kant’s concept of intelligible causality as if it were meant as a dogmatic metaphysical theory about the nature of human freedom. But it is nothing of the kind; its only aim is to show that freedom does not contradict the causality of nature (KrV A 557–8/B 585–6). Kant’s resolution of the transcendental problem of freedom involves no denial that human beings are historical beings, or that their free will belongs to the history which it is the aim of Idea for a Universal History to render maximally comprehensible. rousseau, kant, and goethe Kant’s thesis that human beings are by nature radically evil would seem to be the direct opposite of Rousseau’s famous thesis that humanity is by nature good. But once we appreciate the fact that this Kantian doctrine is the same as the Kantian doctrine of unsociable sociability, we can see that Rousseau’s thesis is not only compatible with Kant’s but that the two theses are one and the same. For both maintain that the origin of evil lies in our social condition, which is also the sole condition in which our rational

128 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim faculties are capable of development. The only difference between the two doctrines is that Rousseau has us entertain the notion of an original, presocial, pre-rational condition (an ideal construction, which if it was ever real, is now forever lost to us) in which human beings lived in isolation from one another and their faculties were totally undeveloped. Kant denies any reality to this fantasy, except as a device for enabling us to look at ourselves from a new and provocative angle (MA 8:116–17, VA 17:326–7). Goethe was scandalized by Kant’s doctrine of radical evil, accusing Kant of polluting his rational philosophy, betraying the cause of critical reason and reverting to Christian superstition.10 It is correct that in the thesis of radical evil Kant was attempting to provide a defensible doctrine that would also appeal to orthodox Christians. But by failing to appreciate the relation of this doctrine to Kant’s philosophy of history, Goethe fundamentally missed the point of the doctrine. This is that human nature has the ironical fate that it must endlessly, and always fallibly, strive toward what is good; and in this striving it must avail itself of the powers of evil themselves, since they have been necessary to its having the capacity both to know and to do what is good. In other words, in Kant’s Religion Goethe came upon the central idea that he himself was to place at the heart of his own greatest work, the dramatic poem Faust. But when presented in philosophical form, he apparently found that idea utterly unrecognizable, and remained blind to what was there right before his eyes. We should think twice before granting greater insight to poets than we do to philosophers. 10

“Kant required a long lifetime to purify his philosophical mantle of many impurities and prejudices. And now he has wantonly tainted it with the shameful stain of radical evil, in order that Christianity too might be attracted to kiss its hem” (quoted by Emil Fackenheim, “Kant and Radical Evil,” University of Toronto Quarterly 23 [1954], p. 340).

chapter 6

The crooked timber of mankind Paul Guyer

i. “from such crooked timber as humankind is made of nothing entirely straight can be made” In the Sixth Proposition of the essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (1784) Kant famously states that “From such crooked timber as humankind is made of nothing entirely straight can be made.” That humankind is made from crooked timber is why the Sixth Proposition says that the problem described in the Fifth Proposition “is both the hardest and the last that will be solved by the human species,” and one to the solution of which we can never expect more than an “approximation” or “gradual approach” (Annäherung) (Idea 8:23). But it is not clear why humankind’s being made of crooked timber should cause the problem described in the Fifth Proposition to be so difficult to solve and indeed impossible to solve entirely. For what the Fifth Proposition says is that “The greatest problem for the human species, to the solution of which it is compelled by nature, is the attainment of a civil society administering justice universally” (8:23). Yet the administration of justice in civil society seems to be designed precisely to deal with the fact that humankind is made of crooked timber, for such administration is designed to enforce the universal principle of right (to “so act externally that the free use of your choice can coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with a universal law” [MS, Doctrine of Right, Introduction, section C, 6:231]) by external and coercive or aversive incentives (MS, Introduction, section IV, 6:219) precisely because people cannot be counted on to comply with this principle merely from respect for the moral law (although the universal principle of right is nevertheless ultimately grounded in the moral law).1 That is to say, the administration of justice in civil society seems to be 1

That statement has been the subject of some debate; see the contributions by Allen Wood, Marcus Willaschek, and myself in Mark Timmons, ed., Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays

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130 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim designed to make the motivation for the preservation of equal spheres of freedom of action a matter of prudence, the desire to avoid coercion and punishment, rather than sheer respect for the moral law, because even if crooked timber cannot always be counted on to be moved by morality, it can apparently be counted on to be moved by prudence. Moreover, as Kant suggests a decade later in Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), it is not even difficult to see what sorts of laws, presumably including appropriate sanctions, are needed in order to realize justice in our external conduct: that problem, he famously says, is so easy that even a “people of devils” can solve it, “if only they have understanding,” that is, as long as they are capable of merely prudential practical reasoning. Here Kant says first, in apparent agreement with the Sixth Proposition of the history essay, that “the republican constitution is the only one that is completely compatible with the right of human beings, but it is also the most difficult one to establish and even more to maintain, so much so that many assert it would have to be a state of angels because human beings, with their self-seeking inclinations, would not be capable of such a sublime form of constitution.” But then he continues: But now nature comes to the aid of the general will ground in reason, revered but impotent in practice, and does so precisely through those self-seeking inclinations, so that it is a matter only of a good organization of a state (which is certainly within the capacity of human beings), of arranging those forces of nature in opposition to one another in such a way that one checks the destructive effect of the other or cancels it, so that the result for reason turns out as if neither of them existed at all and the human being is constrained to become a good citizen even if not a morally good human being. The problem of establishing a state, no matter how hard it may sound, is solvable even for a people of devils (if only they have understanding) and goes like this: “Given a multitude of rational beings all of whom need universal laws for their preservation but each of whom is inclined covertly to exempt himself from them, so to order this multitude and establish their constitution that, although in their private dispositions they strive against one another, these yet so check one another that in their public conduct the result is the same as if they had no such evil dispositions.” Such a problem must be soluble. For the problem is not the moral improvement of human beings but only the mechanism of nature. (EF 8:366)

Here Kant seems to say that precisely because justice does not concern the “moral improvement of human beings” but requires only an external compliance with laws that can be motivated by “self-seeking inclinations,” entirely self-seeking but sufficiently intelligent devils can solve the problem (Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), pp. 1–88, and Robert B. Pippin, “Mine and Thine? The Kantian State,” in Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, pp. 416–46.


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of establishing a just state by instituting threats of sanctions that will make it in their self-interest to keep their self-interest in check. Angels are not needed. Yet if devils can solve this problem, shouldn’t human beings, even though they are made out of crooked timber and are therefore not angels, also be able to do so? Either Kant radically changed his view between the Sixth Proposition of 1784 and this passage in Perpetual Peace of 1795, so that the problem that he once thought could never be completely solved by human beings turns out to be solvable even by devils, or at least one of these passages cannot mean exactly what it first seems to mean. I will argue for the latter. In fact, I will argue that neither work means exactly what our quotations thus far seem to suggest. The essay on history hints at a reason why establishing a just state may be very hard, but it does not give any explicit reason why this problem can never be more than approximately solved, while Perpetual Peace does not hold, contrary to initial appearance, that even a people of devils can in fact establish and maintain a just state, even if they can determine what its laws ought to be. For even though a just state does not require those who are ruled by its laws to be motivated by respect for morality alone, and thus does not depend upon the moral improvement of its subjects, it does require that those who institute and maintain the administration of the laws (or more precisely, in the historical evolution of states, their reform) be moved by morality rather than mere prudence. A just state can come into being only through what Kant calls later in Perpetual Peace “moral politicians” (EF 8:372). Thus, as Kant actually says in the Sixth Proposition of Idea for a Universal History, for the solution of the problem of a just state “what is required is correct concepts of a possible constitution, great experience practiced through many affairs of the world, and above all a good will prepared for accepting” the results of this experience (Idea 8:23). In an essay published just months before Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785), the use of the term “good will” can only signal that the solution of the problem of establishing a just state does require purely moral motivation, not just prudence, at some point. And the context of this remark further makes it clear that such moral motivation is not required in all the subjects of the state, thus in humankind generally, but in its rulers. Thus it is not a insoluble problem for the establishment of justice if the subjects of the state are made out of crooked timber, but it is if its rulers are incurably crooked. In the Idea for a Universal History, as in Perpetual Peace, Kant initially makes it seem as if the problem of attaining a just state can be solved by the purely natural mechanism of self-interest without any moral motivation and

132 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim resolve on the part of anyone. In the Fifth Proposition, he states that “the human being, who is otherwise so taken with unconstrained freedom, is forced to enter into the condition of coercion by need, and indeed by the greatest of all, namely that which humans whose inclinations make it impossible for them to live very long with one another in wild freedom impose upon themselves.” He then makes a first use of the metaphor of timber that makes it sound as if this transition from lawless to lawful freedom comes about entirely naturally and mechanically: Only in such an enclosure as that of civil union, the same inclinations subsequently have the best effect: just as trees in a forest, by seeking to deprive each other of air and sun, necessitate each other to reach beyond themselves and thereby grow beautifully straight, while those that in freedom and apart from one another send their branches where they will grow stunted, bent, and crooked. All of the culture and art that decorates mankind, the most beautiful social order, are fruits of the unsociability through which they are necessitated to discipline themselves and so by the art that is enforced upon them to develop completely the germs of nature. (Idea 8:22)

Human beings living in close contact with one another will apparently be forced by mere prudence to discover and adhere to just laws. Thus, it seems, the fact of having to live in society will by itself, without any moral motivation, force timber that would become crooked in isolation to grow straight. But Kant’s further use of the metaphor of crooked timber in the Sixth Proposition makes it clear that this is not actually his conclusion. For there is a crucial difference between trees growing in a dense forest and human beings who must live with one another: the trees respond to their environment entirely mechanically, each seeking the sun and thereby growing straight and tall by completely unintentional and involuntary processes, while even in a densely packed society human beings must intentionally and voluntarily regulate their conduct in accordance with laws that have been promulgated and will be enforced by some subset of them, indeed in any society but a very small one a small subset of the population. That is, human beings need law-givers and law-enforcers in order to live together even in merely prudential conformity with law. This is what leads to the specific problem that Kant then raises in the Sixth Proposition: The human being is an animal who, if it lives among others of its species, needs a master. For he certainly misuses his freedom with regard to others of his kind; and although as a rational creature he wishes for a law that sets limits to the freedom of all, yet his self-seeking animal inclinations mislead him to make an exception of himself where he can. He thus needs a master, who can break his own will and


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necessitate him to obey a universal will by which everyone can be free. But where is he to find this master? Nowhere else than in the human species. But this is likewise an animal, who needs a master. Let him begin where he will; it is not to be seen how he can create a sovereign of public justice who is himself just … For each of these will always misuse his freedom because there is no one to exercise power over him in accordance with the law. The highest sovereign is supposed to be just by himself and yet still to be a human being. (Idea 8:23)

Without a power to enforce them, prudence alone would not compel individual human beings living in society always to conform even to just laws, for prudence could tempt them to violate those laws whenever they reasonably thought they might get away with it. Unlike trees in a forest, therefore, human beings could grow crooked even when living in society if that society has no effective law-enforcement. But if those who are to enforce the law have no one to enforce them to be just, then they may be like the trees that grow crooked when freed from the constraint of neighboring trees. And unjust rulers will not enforce just laws justly. That is the real problem of crooked timber. Yet in Perpetual Peace Kant seems to say that “moral politicians,” that is, politicians motivated by respect for the moral law rather than by their own fear of a superior power, are possible, and in the Sixth Proposition of the history essay, as we have previously seen, he also seems to say that a proper concept of a just constitution and much experience on the part of the rulers can solve the problem of a just society if accompanied with a good will, that is, respect for the moral law. So why should a just society never be more than an idea to which we can approximate but which we can never fully attain? The problem of crooked timber remains because although there is nothing that can prevent the existence of a good will in any human being, including even those who possess political power, neither is there anything that can guarantee it. This is the message of Kant’s concept of radical evil, introduced in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), between the history essay and Perpetual Peace. To understand the problem of crooked timber fully, then, we need to understand two aspects of Kant’s political and moral philosophy: first, his view that even if within a functioning state the subjects can reliably be motivated by their self-interested disinclination to coercion, their rulers cannot be motivated solely by self-interest and coercion, but must be motivated by respect for morality; and second, his doctrine of radical evil, which claims that the possibility of freely choosing evil is always inseparable from the possibility of freely choosing morality for its own sake, thus that choosing good for its own sake is always possible for human beings but never guaranteed. Radical evil may not be an insuperable

134 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim problem for subjects, who can generally be motivated to obey the laws of the state by mere prudence; but it may be a grave problem for rulers, for nonmoral motivation may not suffice for their task of making just laws and enforcing them justly.2 ii. moral politicians Unlike the trees in a forest, then, which automatically grow straight, the human subjects of a government will grow straight only if governed by just laws, but those laws will not be just or justly enforced if their rulers grow crooked, and only respect for morality can prevent rulers from growing crooked. This is what Kant is actually saying in the Sixth Proposition. To understand why he says this, we must now turn to his mature political philosophy as developed in three seminal works of the 1790s, namely, the essay “On the Common Saying: That may be Correct in Theory, but it is of no Use in Practice” (1793), Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), and the “Doctrine of Right” of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Three claims developed in these works underlie the Sixth Proposition’s worry that even rulers may be made of crooked timber. First, Kant argues that the only just form of government is republican government, in which sovereignty rests in a legislature representing the united will of the people, but the laws enacted by the legislature, and interpreted by a separate judiciary, must be executed by an executive authority that has sole control over the use of coercion. Thus, although the sovereign legislature may attempt to withdraw its commission of power to an executive whom it does not believe to be doing its bidding, it has no rightful way to coerce the executive who controls all use of coercion; thus he can ultimately be moved to reform or relinquish his use of power only by the internal sanction of morality rather than the external sanction of coercion. Moreover, since the executive ought not to use his power of coercion against the legislature, and will not so use it if he is himself just, there is nothing except its moral concern for justice that can ultimately compel the

2

The problem of crooked timber as Kant puts it in the Sixth Proposition is clearly a problem about rulers, so for the purposes of of interpreting this text I am allowing what may be an exaggerated contrast between the prudential motivation of subjects and the necessarily moral motivation of rulers. For a more balanced account of the moral responsibilities of subjects, see my essay “Civic Responsibility and the Kantian Social Contract,” in Herta Nagl-Docekal and Rudolph Langthaler, eds., Recht – Geschichte – Religion: Die Bedeutung Kants für die Gegenwart (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2004), pp. 27–47.


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legislature to make just laws. Thus moral motivation is ultimately necessary for both the enactment and the administration of just laws. Second, although the idea of a united general will is an ideal to which both actual legislators and actual executives should attempt to conform their enactment and enforcement of particular laws, Kant does not believe that governments historically arise from any actual agreement among subjects or between subjects and rulers to be governed justly; governments historically arise from the use of force by the strong rather than the just, and therefore must generally improve their current constitution in order to become just. Kant may not believe that human beings generally are always conceived in sin (more on this in section 3), but he does believe that governments are always conceived in sin and that they must undergo a moral conversion to become just. But, third, because there not only is a concentration of coercive power in the rulers of an existing government but, according to Kant’s conception of republican government, justice itself requires that there be a distinction between legislative and executive power, it is not only difficult but in Kant’s view unjust for the subjects of a government or even for its sovereign legislature to remove power from an unjust executive or to remove such an executive from power altogether by force, that is, by rebellion; subjects and even their legislators have only the right to petition their executive for reform. The executive, in response, has the moral and political obligation to listen to petitions for reform and initiate reform; but since he holds all the force in the government, there is nothing that can compel him to fulfill that obligation but his own respect for justice as a moral duty. Rulers, that is, the executive branch, thus have a moral burden for the reform of governments toward the ideal of justice unlike that of anyone else even in a government, because they have a unique combination of moral obligation and coercive power. That is why it is a special problem that rulers are made of crooked timber. Kant emphasized the unique importance of republican government in each of his three main works on political philosophy, but only in the Doctrine of Right does he clearly describe the division of power within a republican government. Even there he hardly gives us as much argument as we might expect for the necessity of this division, instead relying upon logical authority of the syllogism:3 3

Kant’s version of the doctrine of the division of powers has not drawn a lot of discussion. The most extended treatment is in Wolfgang Kersting, Wohlgeordnete Freiheit: Immanuel Kants Rechts- und Staatsphilosophie, second edition (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp, 1993), Teil C, III, “Souveränität und Gewaltenteilung,” pp. 393–412. There is a briefer discussion in Leslie A. Mulholland, Kant’s System of Rights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 331–7.

136 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim Every state contains three authorities within it, that is, the general united will consists of three persons … : the sovereign authority … in the person of the legislator; the executive authority in the person of the ruler (in conformity to law); and the judicial authority (to award to each what is his in accordance with the law) in the person of the judge (potestas legislatoria, rectoria et iudiciaria). These are like the three propositions in a practical syllogism: the major premise, which contains the law of that will; the minor premise, which contains the command to behave in accordance with that law, that is, the principle of the subsumption under that law; and the conclusion, which contains the verdict (sentence), what is laid down as right in the case at hand. (MS, Doctrine of Right, §45, 6:313)4

It might have made more sense for Kant to analogize the judiciary to the minor premise of the syllogism and the executive to the conclusion, for while the judiciary determines that a general law applies to a specific case, it is the executive that has the sole right to enforce the verdict of a court, or to turn its verdict into a command. As Kant subsequently remarks, each of the powers in the state is in some respect subordinate to the others (§48, 6:316), and the executive in particular is subordinate to the legislature for the content of the laws it is to enforce and to the judiciary for the application of the laws to specific cases; but the other branches are both subordinate to the executive insofar as they must depend upon it for the coercive enforcement of their laws and rulings. In any case, what Kant stresses and what is crucial for our interpretation of the Sixth Proposition of Idea for a Universal History is that while it is the legislature that represents the sovereignty of the united will of the subjects of a government and expresses that sovereign will in its laws, it is the executive power that has the sole use of coercive force in a republican government, and therefore it cannot itself rightfully be coerced. Kant states quite briefly that “The legislative authority can belong only to the united will of the people” (MS, Doctrine of Right, §46, 6:313). He subsequently mentions that the people are “represented by its deputies (in parliament)” (MS, Doctrine of Right, General Remark A, 6:319), so he is assuming that in a typical state the sovereignty of the populace is exercised through a legislature of representatives. Kant’s discussion of the executive authority is more extensive than his discussion of the legislative authority, and it is here that he makes his claim that the executive must have sole control of coercive force. Kant says that the “ruler [Regent] (rex, 4

As Gregor points out in a footnote to her translation of this passage, Kant uses a confusing battery of terms for the different divisions of government, some of which I have omitted from my quotation. But the key point is that, whatever names he uses for these two branches of government, he will base his ensuing argument that governments must move toward greater justice only by reform and never by rebellion on the assumption that the legislature has the right to make laws but only the executive has the authority to enforce them by coercion.


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princeps) of a state is that (moral or natural) person to whom the executive authority (potestas executoria) belongs.” He explicitly states that the executive “is the agent of the state” who is to execute the laws made by the sovereign legislature, and that “a people’s sovereign (Beherrscher) (legislator) cannot also be its ruler” precisely because “the ruler is subject to the law and so is put under obligation through the law by another, namely the sovereign (Souverän).” Thus Kant denies that the executive is above the law, that is, that he himself has the right to make laws, and he asserts that the sovereign (that is, the legislature) can take the ruler’s (that is, the executive’s) “power away from him, depose him, or reform his administration.” But he also asserts that the legislature cannot punish the executive, “for punishment is an act of the executive authority, which has supremely the capacity to coerce in accordance with the law, and it would be self-contradictory for him to be subject to coercion” (MS, Doctrine of Right, §49, 6:316–17). Kant’s assumption is that there must ultimately be a sole agent for the exercise of coercive power in a state, and that this agency is delegated to the executive, from whom it can peaceably be withdrawn by the sovereign, that is, the legislature, but from whom it cannot be taken by force at pain of contradiction. Kant frequently emphasizes that to allow anyone else the power to remove the sovereign by force, whether the people through their parliament or the people acting directly, would mean that there was not a unique agency of power in a government and thus no real government after all. Thus he says that Indeed, even the constitution cannot contain any article that would make it possible for there to be some authority in a state to resist the supreme commander (obersten Befehlshaber) in case he should violate the law of the constitution, and so to limit him. For, someone who is to limit the authority in a state must have even more power than he whom he limits, or at least as much power as he has … In that case, however, the supreme commander in a state is not the supreme commander; instead, it is the one who can resist him, and this is self-contradictory. (MS, Doctrine of Right, General Remark A, 6:319; see also T&P 8:299–300)

In the Doctrine of Right, Kant embellishes this argument by adding that even the legislature cannot make a law allowing the people to resist its executive, for that would undermine its own authority as well as that of the executive, ultimately granting undivided power to the people and thereby undermining republican government altogether (General Remark A, 6:320). But whether with this added step or not, Kant’s argument is plain enough: it is not merely a matter of experience but a matter of logic that a government without a unique agency for the exercise of force against its subjects is not a functioning government at all, but anarchy (see T&P 8:302n); so even

138 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim though the executive in a government is not the source of its sovereignty and is himself in principle subject to its laws, coercive force cannot be exercised against him without undermining the government altogether. And since Kant believes we have a moral duty to be under government in any situation in which we cannot avoid contact with other people altogether (MS, Doctrine of Right, §42, 6:307), this means that there is a moral obligation to refrain from rebellion.5 This prohibition leads Kant directly to his conclusion that “A change in a (defective) constitution, which may certainly be necessary at times, can therefore be carried out only through reform by the sovereign itself, but not by the people, and therefore not by revolution; and when such a change takes place this reform can affect only the executive authority, not the legislative” (6:321). But before we consider this claim and its implications further, let us consider the basis for the assumption that governments will frequently need reform, namely Kant’s assumption that as a matter of fact governments typically arise not by equally powerful parties voluntarily making a contract, but by the force of some party over others, and therefore that governments can approach the ideal of a social contract only through a process of reform from a less than ideally just condition. That governments historically arise through the unjust use of force, not through a social contract, and must therefore always be reformed toward greater justice is emphasized in each of Kant’s works on political philosophy. The essay on theory and practice emphasizes that the social contract is not an historical event, and indeed that as an historical event it would not even be binding on subjects subsequent to the original contractors,6 but can 5

6

The literature on Kant’s denial of a right to rebellion is extensive. For my views on it, see “Civic Responsibility and the Kantian Social Contract,” pp. 38–41, and Kant (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), pp. 284–94; for some other valuable discussions, see Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought, 1790–1800 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), chapter 2, especially pp. 44–8; Kersting, Wohlgeordnete Freiheit, Teil C, VI, especially pp. 457–501; Christine M. Korsgaard, “Taking the Law into Our Own Hands: Kant on the Right to Revolution,” in Andrews Reath, Barbara Herman, and Christine M. Korsgaard, eds., Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 297–328; and Williams, Kant’s Critique of Hobbes, chapter 7, pp. 160–90. This was a point emphasized by Hume in his essay “Of the Original Contract,” which was certainly known to Kant. See Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by Eugene F. Miller, second edition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 465–87, at pp. 470–1. Adam Ferguson emphasized the more general point that “Mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed or quarrelled, in troops and companies,” and thus that governments can typically improve only in progressu rather than being created ab novo, in An Essay on the History of Civil Society, edited by Fania Oz-Salzberger (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), Part I, section III, p. 21. This work, published in 1767, was translated into German the next year.


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only be considered as an ideal to which governments ought to aspire (T&P 8:297). Then in Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals Kant adds the point that historical governments actually arise from the unjust exercise of force, not from a social contract, and that they must therefore always be reformed in the direction of conformity with the ideal of the social contract. In the former work Kant writes that “(in practice) the only beginning of the rightful condition to be counted upon is that by power, on the coercion of which public right is afterward based; and … it can be anticipated that in actual experience there will be great deviations from that idea (of theory),” that is, the idea of the social contract (EF 8:371). The later work then states the whole argument: It is futile to inquire into the historical documentation of the mechanism of government, that is, one cannot reach back to the time at which civil society began (for savages draw up no record of their submission to law); besides, we can already gather from the nature of uncivilized human beings that they were originally subjected to it by force [emphasis added]) … But it must still be possible, if the existing constitution cannot well be reconciled with the idea of the original contract, for the sovereign to change it, so as to allow to continue in existence that form which is essentially required for a people to constitute a state … the spirit of the original contract (anima pacti originarii) involves an obligation on the part of the constituting authority to make the kind of government suited to the idea of the original contract. Accordingly, even if this cannot be done all at once, it is under an obligation to change the kind of government gradually and continually so that it harmonizes in its effect with the only constitution that accords with right, that of a pure republic, in such a way that the old (empirical) statutory forms, which served merely to bring about the submission of the people, are replaced by the original (rational) form, the only form which makes freedom the principle and indeed the condition for any exercise of coercion, as is required by a rightful constitution of a state in the strict sense of the word. (MS, Doctrine of Right, §52, 6:339–40)

States can only have arisen historically through the subjection of savages to law by force, that is, presumably, through the subjection of some savages by force to the still savage law of stronger savages; this historically “old” condition must be replaced by the ideal “original” condition of conformity to the idea of a social contract in which freedom is the “principle” or governing value; but this change can itself rightfully occur only through the government’s own reform from within. Because of their historical origins on the one hand and their ideal in pure reason on the other, states inevitably need to change in order to become just, but because of the necessity of reserving the use of force to a single branch of government in order to have a coherent government at all, change cannot be compelled either by another branch of government or by the people acting directly; it

140 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim can come about only through a process of reform that cannot be motivated by external coercion, and therefore, unless it could be motivated by mere self-interest, which will never suffice as long as the executive has enough power to hold on to office by sheer force, it can be motivated only by respect for morality itself. Kant nowhere describes the process of reform he has in mind in great detail, but he does make a few important comments about it. In the essay on theory and practice, he claims that “A nonrecalcitrant subject must be able to assume that his ruler does not want to do him any wrong” (T&P 8:304). By a nonrecalcitrant subject, he must mean one who recognizes that he has a duty to comply with the laws, and is prepared to do so even when they are less than perfectly just; and he must mean that such a subject assumes that his ruler does not want to do him any wrong because he believes that the ruler is himself motivated to do what is just; since it seems implausible to suppose that anyone would think that rulers could always be motivated to do what is just out of their own self-interest, that is, that they always regard it as necessary to be just (in order to retain their grip on power), the nonrecalcitrant subject must be assuming that his ruler is fundamentally motivated by a moral regard for justice. The nonrecalcitrant subject then assumes that “the wrong done to him,” and presumably to other subjects as well as or instead of himself, “occurs only from the supreme power’s error or ignorance of certain consequences of his laws” or his execution of them. Such a citizen then “must have, with the approval of the ruler himself, the authorization to make known publicly his opinions about what it is in the ruler’s arrangements that seems to him to be a wrong against the commonwealth. For, to assume that the head of state could never err or be ignorant of something would be to represent him as favored with divine inspiration and raised above humanity” (T&P 8:304). It is noteworthy that Kant says that the citizen must have the authorization to make known his complaints about his government “with the approval of the ruler himself”: Kant’s use of “must” suggests that while the subject might be motivated either by selfinterest or pure respect for justice in making his criticisms known, the ruler is under a moral obligation to allow such criticism, for mere self-interest would not give him a duty to authorize the publication of complaints about his administration. And since the only source of this obligation on the part of the ruler could be his obligation to bring about a condition of greater justice than currently obtains – that is, to bring the actual state into closer approximation of the ideal of the social contract – surely the ruler’s obligation does not end with allowing the citizen to make his criticisms, but must also include the obligation to respond to those criticisms by


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reforming his regime – assuming of course, that the citizen’s criticisms were correct, for after all the citizen is no more “favored with divine inspiration and raised above humanity” than is the ruler. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant further elaborates that reform must be carried out through parliament’s reform of its executive agent, but that even parliament does not have the right to coerce the executive, although it does have the right to try to limit the executive’s power by parliamentary means. A limited constitution … contains a provision that the people can legally resist the executive authority and its representatives (the minister) by means of its representatives (in parliament). Nevertheless, no active resistance (by the people combining at will, to coerce the government to take a certain course of action, and so itself performing an act of executive authority) is permitted, but only negative resistance, that is, a refusal of the people (in parliament) to accede to every demand the government puts forth as necessary for administering the state. (MS, Doctrine of Right, General Remark A, 6:322)

This passage makes two key points. First, whatever its authority as the ultimate source of sovereignty, the people as a whole can rightfully exercise it only in parliament, that is, through its legislature; otherwise it is just a lawless rabble (see also T&P 8:302n). But second, since the power to enforce the legislature’s laws coercively has to be delegated to a separate executive authority, and any attempt by the people even in parliament to coerce the executive would undermine the uniqueness of power in the executive, therefore even when it is the executive enforcement of the laws rather than the laws themselves that need to be reformed, parliament cannot use force against the executive. It can resist the executive by refusing to provide him with what he deems necessary to administer the government, as the English parliament did when it refused to vote Charles I ship-money. The legislature can even seek to remove the executive through non-coercive means, that is, to persuade him to give up his office, as was at least the fiction about the deposition of James II. But the legislature cannot rightfully coerce the executive or punish him for what it deems to be his maladministration of its laws, as the English parliament did when it executed Charles I (see MS, Doctrine of Right, General Remark A, 6:321n). Thus, the legislature in essence has only the same right as the individual citizen, namely to express its criticism of the executive in the hope that the executive will respond out of his moral obligation to do so. Because the state generally needs reform but those who actually administer its laws cannot themselves rightfully be coerced, and the mere selfinterest of rulers can hardly be counted on to motivate them to reform if they are powerful enough to hold on to office in the face of public and even

142 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim parliamentary disapproval, the state can only be reformed by rulers who are themselves motivated by morality, or what Kant calls “moral politicians.” This consequence of his political philosophy is made explicit in Toward Perpetual Peace. Here Kant writes that A moral politician will make it his principle that, once defects that could not have been prevented are found within the constitution of a state or in the relation of states, it is a duty, especially for heads of state, to be concerned about how they can be improved as soon as possible and brought into conformity with natural right … Since the severing of a bond of civil or cosmopolitan union even before a better constitution is ready to take its place is contrary to all political prudence, which in this agrees with morals, it would indeed be absurd to require that those defects be altered at once and violently; but it can be required of the one in power that he at least take to heart the maxim that such an alteration is necessary, in order to keep constantly approaching the end (of the best constitution in accordance with laws of right). (EF 8:372)

Here Kant makes it clear, first, that mere selfishness will not always be a sufficient reason for a ruler to reform his administration of a state, so the ruler cannot be merely a “political moralist,” that is, someone whose politics outwardly comply with the demands of morality only when that is in his self-interest, but must be a “moral politician,” someone whose politics are motivated by the demands of morality even when those conflict with his selfinterest. And while prudence might typically require the preservation of the state, even at the cost of some reform, morality always requires the preservation but also the reform of the state in the direction of greater “conformity with natural right.” This is the duty of the ruler, but one that will be fulfilled only by the moral politician, that is, the politician motivated by morality. Kant did not mention the distinction between the legislative and executive authorities within the state in his initial discussion of the problem with rulers in the Sixth Proposition of the history essay, nor did he always emphasize it in the essay on theory and practice or in Perpetual Peace. But with that distinction clearly made in the Doctrine of Right, we can refine Kant’s conception of the obligations of the moral politician by considering the obligations of legislators and executives separately. In the real world, the legislators will not be all of the citizens meeting in some gigantic town meeting, but deputies or elected representatives. As mere mortals, they will of course have their own selfish interests, which they could allow to be reflected in their legislation. To the extent that their interest in holding on to their seats in the legislature or other self-interest cannot motivate them to do so, only their respect for justice can motivate them to legislate in the interest of all their constituents rather than just in their own interest. So to that extent legislators must be moral politicians. But since the executive


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authority has a monopoly on coercive force, even when the legislature does reform its laws it will not be able to coerce the executive into accepting and administering those laws justly. Given its monopoly on force, only respect for the sovereignty of the legislature and for the morality of justice in general can motivate the executive to accept the reforms of the legislature and to enforce them. So the executive must be comprised of moral politicians as much as or even more than the legislature. Thus, the crooked timber of subjects can be forced to grow straight with reasonable effectiveness if governed by justly designed and administered laws. So the crooked timber of mankind is not in general an insuperable obstacle to a just state. But those who legislate and administer those laws must themselves be moral politicians, moved not just by experience and prudence but by good will. Is there an insuperable obstacle to justice in the fact that they too are human beings and thus apparently also made of crooked timber? Kant’s doctrine of radical evil, developed in Religion within the Limits of Mere Reason at the same time as he was laying down the foundations of his political philosophy, might suggest that there is, and thus that the problem of establishing justice described in the Fifth Proposition of the history essay really is a difficult problem that can only be solved in approximation, as claimed in the Sixth Proposition. So we must now ask whether radical evil presents an insuperable obstacle to reform by moral politicians.

iii. radical evil It might seem strange to bring Kant’s concept of radical evil into a discussion of his political philosophy. But the only place other than the Sixth Proposition of the history essay where Kant uses the metaphor of crooked timber again is in Part Three of the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, where Kant asks how an “ethical community” can ever be established in the face of the radical evil that he has attributed to human beings in Part One of the work: The sublime, never fully attainable idea of an ethical community is greatly scaled down under human hands, namely to an institution which, at best capable of representing with purity only the form of such a community, with respect to the means for establishing a whole of this kind is greatly restricted under the conditions of sensuous human nature. But how could one expect to construct something completely straight from such crooked timber? (R 6:100)

Here the metaphor of crooked timber can only refer to the radical evil that Kant has assigned to all human beings earlier in the work. Is the good will

144 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim that the Sixth Proposition has argued is necessary for the establishment of a just state – the necessity of which has been explained by our excursus into Kant’s political philosophy – irremediably threatened by the fact of radical evil? In particular, are moral politicians inevitably compromised by radical evil, thus is radical evil the reason why nothing more than an approximation to a just state can be made out of the crooked timber of humankind? To be sure, Kant makes the remark just cited in the course of a contrast between the concept of an “ethical community” and that of a “juridico-civil state”: the latter is “the relation of human beings to each other inasmuch as they stand jointly under public juridical laws (which are all coercive laws),” while an ethical community or “ethico-civil state” would be “one in which they are united under laws without being coerced, i.e., under laws of virtue alone” (R 6:95). This contrast might make it seem as if radical evil as the crooked timber of humanity cannot threaten the juridico-civil state at all, since that state operates solely by coercive laws that do not need moral motivation to be effective. However, as we have seen, the legislators in any real state cannot be coerced into making their positive legislation comply with the ideal of justice represented by the idea of the social contract, and the rulers who must enforce its laws cannot themselves be coerced into compliance with the laws they are to enforce. However their subjects might be motivated, the rulers of a state can be moved to comply both with their own actual laws and with the ideal of justice only by respect for morality. So if radical evil is a threat to the possibility of effective motivation by respect for morality alone, it is a threat to the juridico-civil state as well as to the ethico-civil state. Approaches to Kant’s Religion can be divided into those that see it as a work of Christian apologetics, that is, a reconstruction of the central doctrines of Christianity in Kantian terms, or as a work of the radical Enlightenment, a deconstruction of Christianity.7 Like Friedrich Wilhelm II and his minister Wöllner, I take the book to be an aggressive deconstruction of Christianity, particularly of its doctrine that we are all subject to an original sin from which we can be redeemed only by the sacrifice of a Savior and the grace of God.8 In particular, I do not see Kant’s concept of radical evil as an adoption of the idea of original sin, but rather as an alternative to it, 7

8

For a more apologetic interpretation of Kant’s philosophy of religion than will be presupposed here, as well as an orientation to much of the literature on this field, see Frederick C. Beiser, “Moral Faith and the Highest Good,” in Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, pp. 588–629. Beiser refers to Kant’s use of the crooked timber metaphor in the Religion (p. 603), but does not specifically discuss radical evil. For details on the political conditions and consequences of Kant’s publication of the Religion, see the General Introduction to Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, pp. xv–xxii, and Kuehn, Kant: A Biography, pp. 361–82.


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which holds that our responsibility for evil means that it is a product of our free choice, but that this very fact means that we are also always free to choose good rather than evil, and need external assistance to choose good no more than we do – or did – to choose evil. This basic fact, that even if we have chosen evil we are still always free to choose good, applies to politicians as much as to anyone else. Kant may have written the Religion as obscurely as he could in the hope of confusing the censors; if so, he did not succeed at that, though he has succeeded in confusing many subsequent commentators. But I think the basic point of the work is clear enough. Kant’s argument in Part One is built upon two main premises. First, he holds that a person’s particular maxims or principles of action are always a reflection of his choice of one of two fundamental maxims, or more precisely his choice to subordinate one of these maxims to the other: either a person chooses always to subordinate the demands of self-love to the imperative of the moral law, or he chooses to place self-love above the moral law, and to comply with the latter only when so doing is compatible with the former (R 6:36). Kant characterizes the choice between good and evil in this way because he believes that no one is simply deaf to the voice of the moral law nor is any one simply free from self-love. Second, Kant holds that the evil adoption of self-love as one’s fundamental maxim, or the evil decision to subordinate morality to self-love, is not the inevitable result of any natural, sensuous inclinations, because our sensuous inclinations are not a matter of choice at all, and are in that respect morally indifferent (R 6:35), and because, given Kant’s generally teleological view of nature, they are predispositions toward the good rather than toward evil unless we ourselves pervert them (R 6:28, 58). Rather, Kant holds, if either evil or good are to be “imputable,” that is, something for which we can be held blameworthy or praiseworthy, our choice of fundamental maxim must, itself always be a deed [Actus] of freedom (for otherwise the use or abuse of the human being’s power of choice with respect to the moral law could not be imputed to him, nor could the good or evil in him be called “moral”). Hence the ground of evil cannot lie in any object determining the power of choice through inclination, nor in any natural impulses, but only in a rule that the power of choice itself produces for the exercise of its freedom, i.e., in a maxim. One cannot, however, go on asking what, in a human being, might be the subjective ground of the adoption of this maxim rather than its opposite. For if this ground were ultimately no longer itself a maxim, but merely a natural impulse, the entire exercise of freedom could be traced back to a determination through natural causes – and this would contradict freedom. When we therefore say, “The human being is by nature good” or “He is by nature evil,” this only means that he holds within himself a first ground (to us inscrutable) for the adoption of good or evil (unlawful) maxims. (R 6:21)

146 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim Because we are responsible for our good or evil, Kant believes, our choice of a good or evil maxim must always be a free choice, although since, as Kant also believes, such free choice is possible only at the noumenal level of our real self rather than the phenomenal level of our empirical self where natural, causal laws appear to determine our actions fully from temporally prior conditions, there can never be any explanation of why a person chooses one way or the other. Evil is thus radical for Kant in the twofold sense that it is global, that is, it lies in the choice of a fundamental maxim governing all of one’s particular maxims, and that it is original, that is, it lies in an exercise of free choice that is not determined by nor can be explained by any empirical factors. But just because the choice of a fundamental maxim is an act of free choice, one is always free to reverse one’s choice: Now if a propensity to this [inversion] does lie in human nature, then there is in the human being a natural propensity to evil; and this propensity itself is morally evil, since it must ultimately be sought in a free power of choice, and hence is imputable. This evil is radical, since it corrupts the ground of all maxims … Yet it must equally be possible to overcome this evil, for it is found in the human being as acting freely. (R 6:37)

The central point of Kant’s Religion is fully contained in the last sentence of this passage. Just because our choice of even a fundamental maxim of evil is free, we are also always free to reject that fundamental maxim in favor of the maxim of morality; but likewise just because we are free to choose either maxim, the possibility of choosing the opposite of whatever we have chosen can also never be extirpated. That is, if we have chosen to make self-love our fundamental maxim, we are still always free to make morality our fundamental maxim, but even once we have chosen to make morality our fundamental maxim, we are also still free to revert to evil once again. Some of Kant’s original readers thought that he had reinstated the doctrine of original sin, and several recent commentators have in essence argued for this too, by arguing that Kant holds that we necessarily begin by choosing evil rather than good, and thus always have to undergo a conversion from evil to good, which however it is not in our own power to complete, for we can never entirely reverse our original choice.9 There are certainly passages in Kant’s text that can suggest such an interpretation, but I think a careful reading shows that this is not what Kant meant. Let us begin with the claim that Kant holds that we necessarily begin by choosing 9

In addition to the article by Seriol Morgan I am about to discuss, see also David Sussman, “Perversity of the Heart,” Philosophical Review 114 (2005), pp. 153–78.


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evil. To be sure, several passages point in this direction. Kant, as we have already seen, calls radical evil a “propensity” (Hang, or “tendency”). He initially characterizes a propensity in turn as “the subjective ground of the possibility of an inclination” (R 6:29). By this account, the propensity to evil should be no more than the possibility of choosing evil, which, however, insofar as it is grounded in genuine freedom, also implies the possibility of choosing good. But Kant then goes on to describe a propensity as “the predisposition to desire an enjoyment which, when the subject has experienced it, arouses inclination to it,” and gives as an example of what he means the supposed propensity of “savages” for intoxication, that is, the alleged fact that savages who have never been exposed to intoxicants develop “an almost inextinguishable desire for them” as soon as they are exposed to them (R 6:29n). This makes it sound as if the propensity to evil is not after all merely the mere possibility of choosing evil that is inseparable from the possibility of choosing good, but rather a very high probability or indeed a virtual certainty of choosing evil on the first opportunity to do so. This certainly sounds like a version of original sin. Then Kant goes on to say that “we can spare ourselves the formal proof that there must be such a corrupt propensity rooted in the human being” (6:32), because of the self-evidence of “unprovoked cruelty” among both the least and the most civilized human beings (6:33). Following this well-known passage, he continues: But even though the existence of this propensity to evil in human nature can be established through experiential demonstrations of the actual resistance in time of the human power of choice against the [moral] law, these demonstrations still do not teach us the real character of that propensity … that character, rather, since it has to do with a relation of the free power of choice (the concept of which is not empirical) to the moral law (the concept of which is equally purely intellectual), must be cognized a priori from the concept of evil, so far as the latter is possible according to the laws of freedom (of obligation and imputability). (6:35)

In a recent article, Seriol Morgan has taken this passage to mean that Kant believes that he must and can give a “formal” or a priori proof of the universality of an initial choice of evil, and then finds the basis for that proof in the premise that we all begin our practical reasoning by valuing freedom, which is indeed the basis of genuine morality, but with a misrepresentation of freedom as merely “negative freedom,” that is, freedom from all constraint, rather than “positive” freedom, that is, freedom governed by a law that it gives itself.10 I think this interpretation is mistaken on both points. 10

Morgan, “The Missing Formal Proof of Humanity’s Radical Evil in Kant’s Religion,” Philosophical Review 114 (2005), pp. 63–114, at 64–5 and 79–85.

148 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim First, I take it that the last quotation does not say that the universality of evil needs a formal or a priori proof, but rather says that although the ubiquitous existence of evil can be established empirically, the nature of evil cannot be understood empirically, as the inevitable product of natural inclinations, but can only be understood a priori, as the free choice to subordinate the maxim of morality to the maxim of self-love. Kant is not trying to prove the ubiquity of evil, but rather to prove that the evil that is ubiquitous is radical, that is, that the evil that we undeniably observe all around us has to be understood in the terms of his own analysis, which imputes it to genuinely free choice and therefore always leaves open the possibility of the free choice of good. This is not a doctrine of original sin. Second, apart from the fact that Morgan gives no convincing “formal” or a priori proof of why we should all make the essentially cognitive mistake of initially misunderstanding the real nature of freedom, any attempt to explain why any or all of us should, whether initially or later, choose evil, for the reason alleged by Morgan or for any other, runs afoul of Kant’s insistence that the free choice of either evil or good is inscrutable. We may be allowed an a priori analysis of the nature of free choice, but that this choice takes place beyond the level of phenomena means that there can be no a priori proof of any synthetic proposition that it must be made one way or the other. In my view, then, Kant does not reinstate the doctrine of original sin, but rather calls our doubtlessly common choice of evil radical precisely in order to imply that we have the equally radical freedom to choose good. iv. conclusion With this interpretation of Kant’s analysis of radical evil in hand, we can finally return to the question of whether the crooked timber of humankind is an insuperable obstacle to the establishment of a just civil society, or juridico-civil state. As we have seen, Kant’s position is that the laws of a state are coercive laws with which the subjects of the state can be motivated to comply out of self-interest rather than out of pure respect for morality, and that means that the state can exist even if its subjects are at heart evil, that is, disposed to put self-love ahead of morality. But the creation and maintenance of just laws for the subjects to obey out of mere self-interest requires moral politicians, because there is no one who can exercise coercion over them, and thus self-love is not a sufficient motive for them to be just. So, as Kant says in the Sixth Proposition of Idea for a Universal History, there can be a just state only if the knowledge and experience of rulers is accompanied


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with good will, or as he says in Perpetual Peace, there can be national and international justice only if there are moral politicians. Does the existence of radical evil then mean that there can be no genuinely good will or moral politicians? We can now see that it clearly does not mean that: human evil is radical because it is a product of freedom, not mere nature, but if evil can be freely chosen, then good can also be freely chosen; thus there is no insuperable obstacle to rulers acting with genuinely good will, or to political moralists becoming moral politicians. However, that we always have the freedom to convert from evil to good also means that we always have the freedom to relapse from good to evil, and there is nothing but our own vigilance and efforts to prevent that. And since rulers enjoy a guarantee of their conversion no more than the rest of us do, but have an even greater burden to be motivated by morality rather than self-love than the rest of us, they have an even greater call to be vigilant about their motivation than the rest of us do. It is rulers above all else who must not confuse justice with self-interest, and who must constantly be vigilant that even if they have separated these two different motivations on one occasion they do not relapse into confusing them on another. Perhaps that is the ultimate lesson in Kant’s metaphor of crooked timber. And if that is his lesson, then he may have had good reason to make it sound as if the problem of establishing a just state is so difficult that a solution can never be more than approximated: if we think of the Idea for a Universal History as more of a mirror for princes and politicians than a treatise on historiographical methodology, that is, as Kant’s anti-Machiavelli,11 we can read it as meant to tell princes and politicians that they should never complacently regard their efforts at establishing justice as complete and irreversible. Just as we all do better not to think that God guarantees the completeness and irreversibility of our moral conversion, princes and politicians will do better if they always think of their efforts at justice as in need of improvement and maintenance by their own efforts – and were they to see that, we their subjects would be better off too. 11

Kant’s employer Frederick the Great famously published such a work in 1740, so why shouldn’t his employee also have done so?

chapter 7

A habitat for humanity Barbara Herman

Of the many puzzling elements in Kant’s Idea for a Universal History (hereafter the Idea), one that has seemed to me most puzzling, and in some ways most provocative, is its effacement of the individual moral agent. Persons are around in the story, most often as the vehicles for envy and greed, or the other aspects of human unsocial sociability. But the sincerely good person, careful and thoughtful in ends and deeds, might as well not bother, at least not from the point of view of the questions that the Idea is about (and then also, perhaps, from the point of view of human history). In the post-Hegelian world-view, that may seem right. But in Kant’s philosophical voice, it is jarring. A related source of puzzlement concerns the intended audience for the Idea. There is some reason to think it is Frederick the Great (the tone of the remarks in the Ninth Proposition suggests a worldly advisor whispering in the king’s ear about honor and posterity). In “What is Enlightenment?” Kant made a plea for the protection of freedom of the press as necessary for the liberation of human rational powers; in the Idea there is something like a plea for the end of war-making in order to liberate resources for the education and culture of citizens. But the Idea doesn’t read like an argument for princes, and it is not entirely clear that Kant regards peace, as he does freedom of thought and expression, as a possible aim of public policy (as opposed to something one hopes for and should not impede). Peace is only partly in the hands of any one ruler: it is likely to arise, if it does, as a side effect of other trans-national processes (e.g., the pursuit of ever larger markets). One audience of the Idea is future historians (especially social historians, a relatively new breed), who are urged to adopt a normative-political progressive framework for historical interpretation. But that directive rather continues the puzzle than resolves it. For if it would be better to construct history around one theme rather than another, it must be better in some respect and for some persons (it cannot be better in the sense of closer to the 150

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truth since the proposal assumes the underdetermination of interpretation by fact). So better for whom, and how? The Idea presents a philosophical conjecture about human history: that it can and should be represented as aiming towards the increased scope of the employment of reason, in human affairs, and so in nature. The engine of such progress does not depend on any rational or grand purposes of any individuals. Rather, over time, the natural mechanisms of passion and desire that shape the relations of persons drive the realization (or partial realization) of a global rational end (regarded as an end of nature). The Idea is in this way deflationary in its representation of what we can do for our species: for at least a very long stretch of history, human beings do not need to be good to produce good (and for the good in question, it is not even clear that our goodness is of value). The Idea does not argue that unless written history exhibits this pattern that morality or the full development of reason in the human species is impossible. So where is its contribution? Thinking backward from Hegel, the Idea might be part of a reconciliation project (cf. 8:30), a way of giving meaning to the chaos of human affairs.1 Some anxieties might be assuaged by actuarial-style arguments (seeing how accumulated effects of non-coordinated human actions amount to something). But if what one is worried about is whether what we do as moral agents can make the world a better place, this is cold comfort.2 The discovery that the actions of rascals might serve the ends of reason better than virtue would not exactly be uplifting. I first read the Idea as a graduate student, at a time when I was in the grip of an austere reading of Kant’s moral theory drawn mostly from the Groundwork. The dissonance between Kant’s views about history in the Idea and what I understood to be his core moral views was at once disorienting and exhilarating. The Idea does not dispute the view that morality is the highest state and required end for human beings, yet in bypassing moral action as a necessary element in rational progress, at least in the large, it raises a host of questions about the relation between morality and its material causes. The actions of the good will have their determining ground entirely in rational principle, yet the actions of agents that contribute to human (rational) progress do not. If human progress includes moral progress, as surely it must, then the conditions for the moral law becoming 1 2

The arbitrariness or chance nature of events can seem as threatening as the problem of evil. While the justification of moral action is not in terms of its effects, the moral agent is hardly indifferent to her actions’ ends being realized in the world – the harm averted; the promise kept; the help provided – and in a way that is overall beneficial.

152 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim the effective or determining ground of the will look to be empirical. But is this really so strange? Without developed empirical abilities the actual rational determination of any willing would not be possible. So perhaps Kant, in the Idea, is speculating about how causality of one kind (empirical) can give rise to causality of quite another kind (rational). The Critique of Judgment argues for emergent purposiveness from mechanism in biology, so such an idea is not entirely alien to Kant. But, unlike Hegel, who regards nature as a kind of rational organism, Kant does not pursue the biological analogy for agency; instead, he embraces an “as if” historiography – a pragmatism for the human sciences that fits neither his general idea of what a science is nor his account of how we think about the rational explanation of individual human action. The surprise in the Idea was not just the fact that Kant oriented historical thought around a global moral purpose that challenged the austere versions of the moral philosophy. Kant also appeared to be embracing a division between the philosophical task of justification (showing that the notions of obligation, imputation, and moral judgment were well-founded) and what one might call the ethical task of understanding “lived morality” – how we come to the mix of ideals and ambitions, standards and institutions that at any time reflect solutions to the problems of living well and living together. Among the things that the Idea implies is that moral justificatory principles cannot stand alone – they do not describe and cannot generate an ethical life. While the ground of the principles is a priori, the sources of ethical life are not. In addition to reminding us of the fact that individual moral life could only be a blend of the empirically given and rational standards, the Idea points to the further fact of social and historical conditions necessary for ethical life. Although the unit of morality is the individual agent acting, the conditions of moral action are not exhausted by the character of the single agent. Although this is a lot to add to the canonical Kant, it is not the end of it. The Idea’s historical directive intimates that Kant saw not just teleology but also a specific narrative form as essential to the human sciences. Any account of how things happen employs an idea of connection. In the small, we connect events in terms of efficient causality: when we want to know what caused the fire we seek the spark. In the realm of voluntary actions, we also seek out agents’ reasons (what drew the agent to embrace the connection between action and effect). In the large, however, appeals to efficient causality and individuals’ reasons may not be sufficient to make sense of what happens as a result of what we do. The hypothesis of the Idea is that the human sciences should make use of another level of causal explanation


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that treats a conjunction of atomic elements as together giving rise to a wholly different kind of phenomenon as an effect than each element produces separately. This is what we see when continuous application of sub-zero cold on water produces ice, or pressure on coal, a diamond. The emergent global effect has a different significance in the causal chain than the effect of each atomic element of the causal sequence that produced it. Although the laws stay the same from beginning to end, the late emergent effect can make it that, along this chain, the future does not resemble the past. The Idea applies this pattern of reasoning to the sphere of human causality and then adds a significant piece. There is a story to be told about what persons make happen that transcends their intentions, which, if true, bears on the kinds of intentions they can come to have. We readily accept that ordinary human action has a dual causal role: our actions both realize our purposes and at the same time are material causal events that have effects independent of our purposes. I walk to work and my shoes wear out a bit. Kant’s interest is in a second aspect of the indirect causality of actions: many individuals, each acting for his own purposes, can produce an effect as if they were acting in concert for a shared end. There are the actuarial effects (Kant talks of patterns of births and deaths), collective causal effects (efficiencies of the division of labor), and what one might call emergent effects (the consequences of increased carbon use). Knowledge of the way such effects come about gives us some predictive power (I don’t know when I will need new shoes, only that if I keep walking, I will; we don’t know exactly what will happen as global warming proceeds, but we have reason to believe that if we each stay on our current course, the global effect will be dire). The focus of the Idea is on a kind of collective emergent effect, one that has an “as if” design relation to expanding the role of reason in human action. The historical emergence of civil society is an unintended effect of the self-interested actions of many persons pursuing private ends.3 While self-interest may be served by life in civil society (it will in any case shape the interests profitably pursued), the significance of civil society in the historical scheme lies in a different sphere than its sources. In most cases where we pay attention to dual causality, the second cause is identified in terms of an effect connected to an interest, theoretical or 3

One prominent philosophical theorist of this “event” is Hume, with his “as if” historical account of the emergence of civil society, and so justice, as an artificial virtue, by way of the self-seeking actions of persons of limited powers in conditions of moderate scarcity. Other accounts of the history are less benign: war and other predatory behaviors can provoke the same condition. For Kant’s purposes, the how of it doesn’t really matter.

154 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim practical.4 The interest the narrative directive of the Idea points to is that of reason in nature which “seeks” the condition in which its potential can be most fully realized. This sounds odd, but it’s not necessarily mysterious. While we normally think of interests as the interests of a proper subject (human, animal, plant), we also speak of the interests of the body or even parts of the body (it’s not good for your back, your eyes, to work at a computer all day). In that mode we can talk about the interests of reason: no Hegelian metaphysics, just a part or aspect of persons that can be well- or illserved by different conditions. Reason need not be seeking an environment friendly to its interests for it to be a beneficiary of second causality. It need not be seeking anything; though having been placed in a condition of (relative) flourishing, it is natural to say that it has found what it needs. The language of final causes, and so talk of seeking, is introduced to orient us in the space of efficient second causes. The Idea’s narrative directive goes beyond imposing intelligibility on a second cause effect (i.e., treating it as if it were the result of a purpose, or as a first cause effect). The narrative form introduces a controlling final end that makes one second cause effect (civil society) a sine qua non cause of subsequent events (those that contribute to the progress of reason in human history). It is a second cause effect that transforms the nature of the human subject, and therefore also the kind of effects human action can bring about. Until that watershed moment of civil society, the engine of human progress works through second cause effects; reason (in persons) is not the subject or the agent of change. But once we arrive at civil society, there is a new engine: now the rational subject acting in light of her understanding of the watershed moment plays a causal role in reaching the next steps. With this, second cause effects give way to intentional action aimed at fulfilling nature’s final end. If this is the right general picture, it raises a variety of intriguing and difficult questions, some of which I’ll begin to address in what follows. I am especially interested in what I’ll call the proleptic effect: where there is an end “the bringing about of which is promoted by the very idea of it” (8:27). In the Idea, the final end of nature engages a proleptic effect, and a special form of self-referential rational action. For unlike other ends and emergent second cause effects which tell us about patterns and tendencies in the light of which we make plans and form intentions, this end and this effect in history must in some sense become internal to us as agents, as a rational 4

No model of inquiry attempts or could attempt to exhaust all second causes.


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idea, for the tendency to be fully realized through our action. In this way we move from being the subject of history to making it. As a formal matter, it’s not hard to see why Kant would have this view. If the end of the historical process is the full realization of reason in nature (reason as a faculty of the natural species that is human), reason in nature cannot be expressed by some pattern achieved by blind forces or from without (that would be “according to reason”), but only by way of bringing increasing amounts of untamed nature (including human nature) under the control and authority of actual agents’ rational purposes. Domesticated nature is (human) reason’s proper habitat. As a material matter, things are not so clear. We have no reason to think that in civil society with extensive liberty, even adding peace among nations, whatever we do (or do lawfully) will expand reason’s dominion (or expand our rational powers). Might we at some point have to act directly for the sake of a more rational or a more human condition? And if so, how? Would a progressive grasp of history help us do that? Of the many questions the Idea provokes, I think it most useful to focus on the following: 1. Exactly what makes civil society the watershed moment? And how does something that must arrive by means of natural (human) causes set the table for rational ones? 2. Might we have moral reason to worry about being the beneficiaries of past amoral acts (and worse) – the deeds of unsocial sociability – that bring about the civil condition? 3. How is the proleptic effect possible? That is, what is it about the Idea’s posited final end that calls for proleptic teleology: an account of events tending toward an end the understanding of which contributes essentially to bringing it about? 1. the watershed In approaching the first question, I propose to go back to the beginning of the Idea and collect some of the elements Kant offers to compose an answer. I mostly stay with Kant’s teleological and reason-personifying language; although it is no longer a comfortable way to talk, I think the points he makes can be rendered clear enough, and we avoid the worry that premature translation into a more modern idiom loses key elements of the original ideas. The first element is Kant’s claim that human rationality develops over time as an aspect of human species-development. It’s not just that one

156 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim human life can’t contain all human possibilities; the very capacity that makes us possible subjects of history – our capacity to bring rational order to our lives – whatever its metaphysical status, is not fully realized in us at any time in our (past) history.5 The point is not that we are not fully rational in our ends and choices – that’s an ordinary fact – but that the rational capacity itself undergoes growth in the species, increasing the range of human powers. The second element is that many of the sources of reason’s development are themselves nonrational. The very idea of the Idea is a call for an historical account of the dark and chaotic-seeming nature of human affairs that will give evidence of a “guiding thread” that reveals the development of reason. So although we rightly bemoan envy, greed, arrogance, and war, there is a point of view from which they are welcome (like grit for a pearl); the conflicts they inevitably cause provoke the development of human rational powers (and in easy times, keep humans from falling asleep or from becoming domesticated beasts (8:21, 26)). But on this view of human history, what has happened to our moral powers? Why have they no role in the narrative? Surely each person is autonomous, self-legislating, an end-in-herself; each ultimately responsible for the correctness of her ends and actions. Although we are subject to various temptations and urges, insofar as we are rational, we have the power to act well. Is this version of the sovereign individual under pressure now that we attend to history? When I compare myself to my parents or grandparents or more distant ancestors, I recognize that I live in different (and let’s assume better) conditions, that I have skills that they lacked (though there were things they could do that I cannot). But I don’t imagine them not caring about their children, or gratuitously malevolent to their neighbors, or that they were somehow systematically lower down the ladder of rational abilities. True, they might have been a nasty bunch, but that wouldn’t distinguish them from some who live among us now. Could Kant want us to imagine further back to some fictional first moment when human beings lacked any language or culture, where the very idea of moral action seems out of reach? That hardly seems a task for the historians Kant addresses. We get a different idea when we look at the putative engine of progressive historical change: the messy, greedy, and 5

It’s a curious notion of a species. Certainly there are species, like bees, whose species nature is collective – no individual manifests all of its essential elements. It’s less clear that one can properly identify a species whose species-nature undergoes deep change across generations. Perhaps a species whose effect on its environment allows it or even forces it to manifest different aspects of its species-nature over time?


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needy individual – a being we know very well. It is our unsocial sociability we are reminded of, our tendency to want close social relations and fences, to care about fairness and yet need to dominate. This is the sovereign individual with a sense of morality, but one easily overwhelmed by need and envy and fear. It is likely not in the distant past but in the social and political strife of pre-modern Europe that the Kantian historian is to find his subject and guiding thread. Pervading the nine Propositions of the Idea is a complex set of views about human nature and the social conditions of practical life. Of special interest is the subject of the Fifth Proposition: the problem posed by “wild freedom” (wilde or ungebundene Freiheit, 8:22). For human beings in something like a state of nature, wild freedom impedes the development of the human predispositions with respect to the use of reason (8:18). But the battlefield of wild freedom is not the war of all against all, it is the war within: the human being is a creature desirous of rest and peace and comfort, yet driven by passions for possession and domination that force him to “throw himself into labor and toils” (8:21), with no finer or final aim for his actions. The inevitable outcome is human unsocial sociability, the condition in which persons cannot stand to be with one another (the other makes us anxious and uncertain), and cannot live without each other (if only to have someone to dominate). The solution to this unhealthy situation is “civil society universally administering right” (8:22), the condition in which constrained freedom replaces wild freedom, but without human beings losing their edge. It is widely thought that the moral problem Kant regards civil society as solving is that of rightful possession.6 But the problem he points to in the Idea that leads human beings to civil society seems to be the problem of distance. There are no natural limits to our affecting one another; and no moral limits either, at least not until conditions of right (Recht) obtain. In wild freedom, we come too close out of a desire to dominate and control; and having no reason to trust each other, we stay too far apart to cooperate. In civil society, we may desire domination and status, but we are strongly constrained in our exercise of power over others. The sense in which civil society increases freedom is not quantitative (as in lots of unfettered consumer transactions); it rather shuts down some of the arenas of domination. A condition of Recht gives lawful and so rational form to external actions. But it doesn’t make human action more deeply rational so long as obedience to the law is motivated by the threat of coercive force. To see the connection 6

Recht does not cure free-for-all wrongful taking; absent Recht there is no wrongful taking.

158 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim between the system of enforced order and the development of our rational capacity, we need to look more closely at the problem of distance. In a condition of Unrecht, the boundary conditions on our activities would be our physical (and perhaps passionate) powers. Desiring your possessions or your labor, I exercise my natural powers and obtain them. My desire might arise from my amour propre, or from a defensive fear that unless I increase my sphere of control I will come under the power of another, or even from my need to provide for the well-being of some group for whom I take responsibility. This could be a bad arrangement for all sorts of reasons, but why think the arrangement must impede the development of reason (or its scope)? Suppose that as a result of my industry some who would have no or poor access to the necessities of life now get them, though at the cost of being in my service. How is this bad for reason? It is not a condition of equality, but we have yet to see the connection between equality and the rational powers. For a beneficent exercise of power to be bad for reason, it must stand in the way of reason-directed, or autonomous, action. Perhaps in the condition of Unrecht autonomous action is not possible; that would indeed impede the development of the human capacity to use reason. Being subject to the power of another is not in itself a barrier to the development of all sorts of skills, mechanical as well as theoretical; in some cases it could be the condition of their development. It is more credibly a barrier to the development of the moral powers (in children it is not a barrier if we adjust the balance of authority and freedom to their growth). Insofar as the moral powers are identified with the freedom of the will tout court, the exercise of power over persons can make no difference. But the metaphysical fact of the freedom of the will is not sufficient for our being or becoming fully moral persons, for our being moralized (moralisirt 8:27). That is, for a human being to be a moral person requires her having some specific nonmetaphysical abilities, and, Kant’s argument might be, these abilities require the setting of civil society for their development. There must therefore be something quite deep that we can’t be in nature that Recht makes possible (some potential of reason in and for us that Recht allows us to realize). Taking a page from Hegel here (as I think we should, since Hegel absorbs Kant on this point), the simple if extreme answer is that what we cannot get in nature is a self. For Hegel and for Kant, Recht is the necessary condition for the existence of public or bounded selves, thus for the person as such, the potential moral subject. Recht makes persons substantially real in the sense that they can make intelligible claims (of right) against one another – they can see and resist one another as persons,


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not merely as physical and manipulable things. (In the material realm, substantial reality is a function of relative impenetrability: bodies resist each other. Something similar seems to be the case in the realm of persons: to be a person is to have lawful or rational grounds of resistance to incursions by others.) Public standing in civil society thus creates a sphere of mutual recognition; regardless of the condition of individuals’ private beliefs and attitudes, their coerced lawful behavior recognizes and respects the standing of each and so of all as persons.7 The creation of standing is only part of the answer. Recognition must in turn be a necessary condition of the development of human predispositions for the use of reason. How would rightful control of the use of oneself and some sphere of rightful possession promote that? Stable possession might enhance opportunities for the development and acquisition of all sorts of technical skills (farming, building …), but skills can also flourish in the absence of status (think of highly skilled Roman slaves), and skills are in any case hard to see as developments of the predispositions for the use of reason, as opposed to tools to be employed, given such development. A more suitable if more exotic idea is that when we build and trade and promise, we increase the extent to which nature becomes a human habitat – an environment suited to a human form of life.8 It is not just an increase in dominion over things, which we do gain, but the increase in genuinely human dominion over human interactions: less is left to mechanism or force, more comes under civil law and lawful behavior. The creation of civil society would serve reason’s end of adding to the mechanical laws of nature an order of its own if civil society is a condition for the emergence of moral personality (moving from conditions of force to a “moral whole” [8:21]). The key is to show that something that happens to us collectively allows a capacity that is present in us only separately as individuals to develop into a real ability. Or that, in the reason-friendly conditions of civil society, the capacity for moral character becomes socially real (8:26). Now one might have thought, taking a point of view strongly suggested by the Groundwork, that each autonomous agent, as self-legislating, is an autarky: sufficient on her own to judge and act as the moral law dictates. Other agents’ actions and ends need to be taken into account – there are reasons to have coordination rules – but there is nothing fundamental that the individual needs from them as supplement to her agency in order to 7 8

Kant does not invent this argument; in a slightly different form he would have found it in Rousseau. There are environments in which human beings can survive – a slum, a favela – that we should not say provide a human habitat.

160 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim act well.9 The Idea, prefiguring the Rechstlehre argument, asserts that this is not so. According to the Idea, at least as I read it, moral autarky is not possible for human beings. The condition of their empirical presentation as persons among persons is civil society. This is not to say that the authority of the moral law is social, that its status as a rational norm depends on positive law to frame it. It is to say something about the conditions in which persons can come to recognize themselves and others as subject to moral authority (the authority of their own legislative reason). If civil society is a necessary condition for our being persons in this sense, then it is not at all surprising that the problem of getting us to civil society can be solved only by nature (through response to unsocial sociability) and not by the moral actions of persons. Until the problem is solved, effectively (i.e., non-metaphysically) there are none. If autarky is not a possible moral state, if the moral agency and sensibility of each (and so the best) person is partly constituted by background social institutions, we are not just adding something to the traditional Groundwork picture of the moral agent, we are changing it. This is both welcome in itself, and welcome because it encourages us to place the Groundwork within Kant’s larger scheme of moral argument. The Groundwork addresses philosophical questions that require it not to attend to the social and empirical conditions of human moral agency. It does not follow that there are none.10 The task of the Groundwork is to explicate the possibility conditions of moral action: what has to be true of us, and of morality, if an authoritative norm of volition is to be possible. What we get is an account of morality in terms of a principle that imposes a standard of universal form on volitions, and an account of agency centered on the will as practical reason, a capacity to be moved by (such a) self-legislated nonmaterial principle.11 What we do not get is an account of the content9 10

11

In this picture, even the dependency of moral education is just a phase one passes through. As Kant points out in the Preface to the Groundwork (4:389). Something similar is true of the other canonical texts as well: each has a specific set of tasks and its account of action and agency is often no richer than they require. For example, the account of nonmoral action in the second Critique is not an embrace of hedonism but an argument that, absent objective value, hedonism is what you’re left with as an account of volition and choice. We also get demonstrations that this idea of moral requirement fits our ordinary notions of duty (Kant shows that actions we can be sure are contrary to duty are ones whose maxims or principles of volition cannot be willed a universal law), and that under interpretation, the same idea is explanatory of the errors of reasoning in wrongful action (free-riding, failure to acknowledge the inescapable conditions of human agency, unwarranted judgments of exceptionalness and violation of the public or shared reasoning conditions of justification, etc.).


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sources of morality,12 or an account of the empirical conditions of moral agency.13 Nor should we expect to. Actual individual moral agency develops subject to all sorts of contingency. Rational capacities are realized through response to developmentally salient experiences that neither arrive by plan nor have uniform effects across individuals (they are not accidental either: think of the vagaries and the givenness of parenting). The Idea adds to this the development of reason in the species over extended (historical) time. Some of this is accumulated skill and knowledge. We (collectively) learn how to build bridges, farm efficiently, engage in large-scale manufacture, cure diseases and remediate ailments. (We also cause new problems – urban crowding, resource depletion, environmental disorder – that call for further invention.) Regarded in the large, technological innovation is about manipulating the material world for the sake of satisfying human needs and desires. These developments do not take us beyond desire, and do not use reason to extend our powers beyond the natural aims of (developed) instinct (8:18). We do not yet have moral agents, and won’t until we get beyond the life of desires. Moral action calls on powers that involve reason essentially, not in the service of desire, but to realize the aims and rules of reason itself. The striking thesis of the Idea is that these powers develop (a) in the species, (b) within a social order (civil society), and (c), as the product of nonmoral and even morally deficient, though natural, behaviors. Elements (b) and (c) echo the developmental pattern of the individual. Absent a social context and nonmoral desires that engage the child in demanding relations with adults, moral character does not form. Unlike physical growth, which more or less happens, morality is a creature of culture. So too for the species: out of the social forms that arise for natural and nonmoral reasons (think here of the natural convention phase of Humean justice), a condition obtains that provokes the formation and use of normative rational concepts (of Recht) as well as the supporting abilities to deliberate and act in accordance with them. Two important things follow. First, that the concepts and abilities emerge socially makes them transmissible and intelligible, suitable for terms of public assessment and justification. Second, though the emergence of 12

13

We know that content will be related to form: that is, our duties will pick out action-kinds whose presence in a maxim (especially, in a maxim of self-interest) defeats valid reasoning to action, but we do not know either ex ante or from elsewhere in the Groundwork what those action-kinds are. Knowing that a being under the moral law is a free being (has freedom of the will), and that the only possible moral law is a law of the free rational will, we cannot say what the conditions for us must be if we are to effectively exercise our rational powers. In something like the relation of medicine to health, the empirical question is set by the fact that we often exercise our rational abilities badly. So there are normative issues of development and correction.

162 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim concepts and abilities must occur at a culturally specific place and time, because what emerges is a communicable rational norm of social order (this is assumed14), it applies universally, that is, to the species. It is in this way like any piece of genuine knowledge: its validity transcends its conditions of discovery. Rather than being a surprise, this is just the kind of view we should expect Kant to have, given the conjunction of his rationalist and empirical scientific commitments. The task is to show that or how a sequence of natural causes can bring about something purposive or rational.15 In the actual world, there are no other causes than natural ones; but in social life, as in biology, the result of some natural processes is the creation of something whose nature is different in kind than its material conditions (a living thing, in the case of biology, a social order of a rational form, for human society). As a philosopher, Kant can argue that civil society is a priori necessary for the expression of human rational agency (and so is possible). It is the task of the historian to provide an empirical explanation of how the various “material” elements come together to produce a real rational social order – that is, how the elements that produce the order are sufficient to sustain and develop it (otherwise it is just a chance happening). It is therefore not merely a curious anomaly that civil society arises from unsocial sociability; the efficient cause of civil society has to lie in some mechanism of natural action. Kant argues against the contract tradition that no regime of right could arise from any agreement. None of us can be in a relation of right unless all are, non-conditionally; but all voluntary agreement is essentially conditional (MS 6:252–7). By contrast, the mechanism of unsocial sociability reliably brings people together seeking the relief of ordered relations, which relations are then made stable by coercive policing and the institutions of law. Since the condition that arises through this mechanism is a priori rational and necessary, it is rationally incumbent on all to will it, if it can be willed, which, after the fact, and for the first time, it can be. In this way, causal explanation yields to post-facto rational justification. 2. inheriting benefits Might there be a problem – a moral problem – about inheriting the unintended benefits of unsocial sociability? It’s an open question whether one should eschew a benefit when its cause or source is not a good one. 14 15

Showing that it is a rational norm is the task of the Rechtslehre. This is part of the reason why Kant cannot appeal to anything like a moral sense or moral intuition.


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Sometimes one need not. One person’s exploitative money-making invention is used by others to save lives; a robbery uncovers lost documents that allow a claim in justice to be pursued; a flood alters property boundaries in a way that forces the aggressing party to end a violent dispute. Sometimes the source taints the benefit. We may not benefit from stolen goods or free-ride on another’s criminal activity. If the benefit-source involves an ongoing wrong – e.g., inheriting land initially acquired by forceful dispossession – the benefit may be innocently received, but it is not innocent.16 Unlike the lost documents, where the relation of the wrong to the benefit is indirect and accidental, here the benefit descends from the wrong. Even if the good cannot reasonably be forgone, the descent may encumber it, and reparation be owed. There are yet more extreme cases – using the research findings of Nazi medical experiments, for example – where some would say that taking the benefit at all makes one complicitous in the wrongdoing. The benefit-source in the generation of civil society is the natural dispositions of persons: happiness-seeking, covetous, anxious about comparative status. Such persons pursue ends that seem to them appropriate to what they want; they revise them in the face of danger, other ends, and uncertainties. We may assume that much of the motivation is, and some of the actions are, disreputable. Civil society, the effect of this collection of behaviors, is not only to be regarded as beneficial; it is a condition which, once obtained, we are morally required to maintain. Or so Kant argues in the Rechstlehre. Might civil society nonetheless be a tainted good, a benefit we should refuse (if we could)? Should we condemn the actions that made it possible? Acts of dispossession or criminal experimenting are wrong; they do not have to be done; benefits that flow from them are tainted. But the source acts of unsocial sociability are, in their context, inevitable, natural expressions of morally immaturity, more like the actions of children competing for sandbox toys than wrongful exercises of power. They are criticizable for what they are, but not to be condemned as expressive of a morally bad will. Prior to civil society, the actions cannot involve violations of right; and we are imagining greed and status anxiety, not moral perversity or ruthlessness, as their motivation. The outcome – the creation of civil society – is thus an indirect effect, a response to a coordination problem caused by natural actions, not a descendant of wrongdoing. Like storms and tantrums that we would rather not have to weather, their occurrence generates effects, bad and good, without moral taint. We may therefore 16

Although questions of repair or return may remain open, one cannot regard the benefit as morally unencumbered.

164 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim regard the civil condition as a kind of manna, a habitat for humanity, left behind by people who aimed at no such thing (indeed they could not have). The Idea thus directs us to regard the greed and envy of human immaturity as a natural stage-characteristic in the development of something better. This development does not – because it could not – occur as a result of individual virtue; it is an ability human beings in general gain access to when they inhabit the social world of civil society. There is no position from which we can regard the process except as history: civil society was not an end human beings with wild freedom were in a position to promote, or one whose production could have been made easier by making people nicer, or less vulnerable.17 Although after the fact we can see how human deficiencies combined for human (moral) benefit, the progressive story does not change the negative valence of envy or greed; it does tell us something about the conditions in which they are rightly judged to be full-blown vices. 3. the proleptic effect A progressive history implies a final end. Since history per se need not have a final end, there remains the question why Kant thinks we should adopt the attitude that it has one. It’s in some sense a natural attitude for a being whose practical nature aims to make the world fit its will. But it is the proleptic possibility that makes the attitude rational: that, at least at some times or in some circumstances, seeing the social world as tending toward a final end is essential to making it true that it reaches it. If nature had a final end, it would not follow that the end will come about; a final end is not its own efficient cause (it does not come about automatically; it can be impeded). What does follow is that the end is possible: given the materials and forces present in nature, the final end stands toward what there is as its completion. If we add to this the supposition that the final end of nature lies in the extension of the rational powers of human beings, then the only way that nature could realize its final aim is through the actions of human agents directed at rational ends. The Idea argues that the work of civil society is, and is to be regarded as, establishing the conditions in which human beings can adopt and act for rational or moral ends (i.e., not just private ends under the constraint of 17

It’s an unasked question whether civil society must arise in the same way in each place, or whether, once it happens anywhere, it can be regarded everywhere as a rationally required end. Kant is clear that it cannot be imposed from without (MS 6:266), but that does not imply that others cannot benefit from those who came first (more reason for history). Perhaps it is like arithmetic: once any humans learned to add and subtract, there was a sense in which all could.


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Recht with equal liberty of action). So, we should ask, what are the relevant impediments that civil society might remedy?18 Any ordered social world disciplines instinctual life, but civil society introduces the intermediary of public law. While law too involves discipline, through coercive enforcement, its rationale is not in discipline per se (or in the service of some power), but in giving effective public form to each individual’s rational will. This creates the possibility of motivation by respect instead of fear. That is, law or Recht is itself a possible rational end and source of regulative reasons for each citizen, and each citizen has the same reason to regard the law as an end – that it can be a rational end for all. Of course, the status of citizen is not conditional on acting from rational motivation. The role makes such motivation available and legitimates one’s being held accountable to its terms. Where authority is merely force, if one can elude its reach, the authority is frustrated. By contrast, where authority is rightful law, eluding enforcement is not an escape from the law’s normative reach any more than it would be were one’s motivation respect for law as a rational end. In civil society we may therefore regard violations as a kind of weakness of will – a deviation from an attributed commitment – rather than, say, a consequence of indifference or insubordination. (This, in turn, affects our vision of correction and punishment: whether, for example, we regard the lawbreaker as one of us who has failed to appreciate the force of his own valid reasons, or we treat the lawbreaker as an outlier, a threat, to be controlled and rendered harmless. When we ask why “one of us” would act against law-based reasons, the identification can also make us more sensitive to (and open to being responsible for) some of the social sources of deviance – poverty, de facto exclusion – that we had or have the power to correct.) We should not be surprised that the condition for agents adopting rational ends and the condition of recognition of self and other as a person are one and the same. The ability to move beyond natural motivation is necessary to recognize another (or oneself) as a limiting condition on ends and actions; that same ability is required to see value in an end that connects not to one’s interests (however broadly understood) but to considerations of rational requirement.19

18 19

In this light, one need not think that civil society or the nation state in which it is first found is a permanent necessity. It might be something that once its work is done can wither away. There is a stronger claim possible here – that the possible recognition of self and other as persons only comes through the adoption of rational ends – and although I believe Kant makes such an argument in the Groundwork’s formula of humanity, I don’t see it in the Idea.

166 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim The work of civil society takes place on two fronts. The first, as we have just seen, is in the introduction of lawful relations between persons (with regard to material objects and each other’s will, in contract and promise). The second is the terrain of Kunst und Kultur. The danger here is curiously too much civilization, a weakness of self in the exaggerations of “social decorum and propriety” (8:26). Inside civil society, morality can be a creature of culture; it is then a surrogate morality, where correctness in action is motivated by honor and anxiety about social form. The final task is to liberate morality by educating citizens to autonomy. We might summarize the progression this way. The first appearance of the person is formal, in the idea of a citizen with rights, each a limit to all others’ actions and aims because they all act in the public space of coercively enforced law. Although the generating cause of the regime of law is the need to resolve the problems of living together, once the regime of law is in place, reason can recognize law’s authority as its own end (thus providing a justification for the coercive state in terms of the possibility conditions for equal liberty of action and rightful possession). Lawfulness can then be a source of morally motivated action, though, as a matter of fact, without further human development, coercion and custom remain the sources of conformity.20 But note that the justification of law as an end of reason requires the extension of the public status of person to those whose nature would have been insufficiently forceful to provoke the formation of civil society in the first place (women, children, and others deemed no danger, either physically or comparatively).21 This is one of the ways the idea of universal justice is introduced. Now unless the formal idea of the person in law is taken up in volition, unless the person as end in herself becomes our end, the order of reason remains external to the nature of the beings it regulates. Neither the constraint of force nor that of taming custom renders what is forced or trained fully rational. Further progress in nature, if the aim is rational order, can only be achieved through free human activity and choice, the worldly expression of reason. At some point, then, history has to produce the free human action needed to complete or take over nature’s work, work that up

20

21

If one sees in the moral culmination of the generative story a variation of rule by the general will, there’s a nice question about the conceptual necessity of coercion (as opposed to its justification) in civil society. That is, if the final end of nature involved the elimination of the hindrance to freedom, then coercion would fall away. Thus partially solving the problem Hume saw with justice concerning those whose resentment we do not feel. Cf. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Section III, Part I.


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until then is done on and through human nature. This is also the point where the idea of progress in history becomes a cause of its own realization. That progress in history requires the making of morally good agents (8:26) might seem strange if, following the Kant of the Groundwork, we think of moral goodness as the personal business of getting one’s heart and head straight about what we are to do and why. The passivity of making seems in tension with an idea of moral action that is all the way through active. The problem disappears if we hold to the distinction between a final end and the conditions necessary to realize it (8:19). Wise parenting is a kind of making directed at a child, not for the sake of protecting her innocence, or for extending the parent’s dominion, but for the sake of the eventual adult’s autonomy. Concerning the final end of “our” moral maturity, we are our own parents. At a certain point, the task of creating an environment in which persons are trained to autonomy becomes ours, collectively: one we are obligated to take on for the sake of subsequent generations. It offers a deeper vision of autonomy, of becoming a self-creating species. I’ve not said much (and I won’t say much) about the work of the institutions of law and the contributions of art and culture to the development of the moral personality. Kant draws on now familiar arguments. Although arising from the sphere of purposeful mechanism,22 art and culture civilize the passions, widen persons’ experience of what it is to be human, and give them access to pleasures that are universally communicable (KU 5:216–19), thereby strengthening the sense of unity and equality between persons. Alongside this, political conditions of justice, formal and material, support an environment in which the moral personality can emerge and find social support. Self-esteem detaches from comparative and envy-driven pursuits and connects to the idea of participating in a shared civil life.23 What I want to emphasize instead is a more speculative claim. Among the things that come from our active engagement with the direction of history is the supplanting of nature’s cold indifference to our welfare by a concern for human happiness and well-being.24 Aside from our natural interest in happiness, morality gives us obligations to attend to the happiness of others, and a persons’s reason “has a commission from the side his sensibility … to 22 23 24

Perhaps this is the reason Kant does not sort religion with art and culture. The echoes here of Part III of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice are intended. And not just human well-being: as persons increase their dominion over the natural world, they gain responsibility for a wider range of things. If the world that is a habitat for humanity is the rational form of nature, it cannot be turned into a wasteland or a pale of destruction and suffering for other living things.

168 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim attend to its interests” (KpV 5:61). One might object that reason’s chief concern is that we be worthy of happiness and that our desire for happiness be satisfied only in ways that enhance the powers of our autonomous agency. The speculative claim, however, is that in the setting of civil society we can take steps to satisfy both of these requirements in the course of promoting human well-being. The idea of worthiness to be happy can be a source of moral and philosophical discomfort, especially when taken as a moral claim about ultimate benefit and punishment – that a happy life is an appropriate reward for virtue, sorrow and suffering a due response to its lack.25 We don’t reject all thoughts of this form. We think that criminals should not benefit from their criminal activity; it is painful when the innocent and virtuous suffer, worse if they suffer because of their innocence or virtue. But for the most part we find the idea of regulating happiness by desert unsavory; it doesn’t seem to be proper human work to insure that there is no cosmic moral disorder. Such an idea goes too far. There is another and related idea that does not. Although civil society does not arise because it is anyone’s goal, the end of civil society, once it exists, is an end for all citizens, and becomes a vehicle through which they can together act morally. In the spirit of the Idea we should say that nature puts members of civil society in a position to accomplish together things that nature aims at, but cannot itself make happen. By sustaining and respecting the rule of law, the status of persons is secured. But that’s not just having a pro-attitude towards law. We are to seek a fair regime of law-making, enforcement and punishment together that create a public space in which, for the sake of civil society, certain kinds of actions are off limits, and efforts are made through both enforcement and punishment to guide action and repair breaches. Given the role of civil society as a vehicle through which persons can actively further the rational ordering of the human part of nature, they need not (and should not) see punishment as about exacting deserved suffering for wrongdoing; it is better understood as a piece of a continuum that starts in a system of enforcement that aims to interrupt the trajectory of unlawful activity and ends, if necessary, in forms of hard treatment that aim to get the lawbreaker to (re)connect with shared public ends (ends that are in a sense already his own). It is not clear that civil society can impose hard treatment for any other reason (self-protection is 25

Sometimes when Kant speaks of worthiness to be happy his concern is quite different: that we not take our happiness to be a sign of our worth.


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not punishment); and the same considerations show that it also cannot do without punishment (though it can allow for mercy).26 Civil society also has a positive agenda. The system of secured liberties – of movement, speech, religion, and access to property (or its equivalent) – gives the formal status of persons real expression. It also rescues the pursuit of happiness from the moral arbitrariness of a state of nature in which the strong and lucky prosper, while those who are weak (personally or socially) or whose talents don’t fit their circumstances, tend to have poor prospects. In civil society, good prospects (and to that extent, happiness) are a reasonable part of the progressive human project. The system of property, itself dependent on civil society, makes it possible for social justice to become a moral aim. It’s not just that because there is property, distributional aims can be pursued through regulation and taxation; the concept of social justice depends on notions of rightful possession, of being able to say of some stock of material goods that this or that group ought to possess some share. Happiness remains in the hands of the individual – each has her own conception of a good life for herself – but the prospects for the pursuit of happiness can be social. In civil society we can make “the attainment by each of a natural end” an end we together support. We do not thereby peg happiness to moral desert, but we can correct those “natural” tendencies that make the prospects of some come at the expense of the prospects of others. The last element is the social provision of education and the civic support of art and culture. Both are necessary for the moral development of citizens (to realize their moral powers and to make them active citizens), and for the extension of the imagination necessary to escape the system of desires. They are equally a condition for social self-criticism, keeping alive awareness that the given does not exhaust social and moral possibilities. The practical urgency of these social goals is emphasized at the end of the Idea (8:28) as part of an argument for an end to war-making. Kant seems less concerned with the mayhem and destruction of war than with the financial burdens of war-making that leave states unable to support the moral project of citizenship. My conjecture is that this is because, in its best form, civil society (perhaps in its universal cosmopolitan condition) is where we can realize the worldly form of the Highest Good. If we are obligated to make the Highest Good our end, we have the strongest moral reasons to support the constitution and institutions of a just civil society.

26

So far the view is retributive. I make no attempt to match up with Kant’s stronger retributive theses in the Rechstlehre (6:331–7).

170 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim The progressive arc of history that Kant urges on us thus makes room for justice – a condition that can only arise through human choice and organization – within a strongly teleological scheme. The teleology of nature gets us to the possibility of justice without our cooperation; nothing but human agency can get us the rest of the way. So this is one answer to the question of how one can embrace both a strong teleology of nature and an important role for human agency. The teleology of nature is a developmental account that puts persons in a position to make the (human) world an order of reason. The need for history is to provide us with a proleptic reason for thinking we might now be living at a time when the responsibility for making the (human) world a more rational place is ours. Before the advent of civil society, we cannot act together – really, cannot demand of each other that we act together – for collective ends. We can and should tend our own moral gardens, and support, in ways that are consistent with morality, the advent of civil order. As individuals with moral obligations, there may not be much more we can do, or much that we can do that does not risk the lives and well-being of those for whom we are responsible. But having arrived at (or finding ourselves in) civil society, our field of action is greatly expanded, especially action that we can take together for collective moral ends. The “guiding thread” of a progressive history gives persons confidence that in making demands on one another they are not exceeding moral bounds (bounds of sacrifice, for example), and keeps them attuned to the fact that although the sphere of human control has been expanded, human causality is not the only force at work in shaping events. A final cautionary word from the Idea. It might seem that with the introduction of a final end of nature and an argument that we should take progressive history to provide a guiding thread for action, that we are encouraged to imitate nature and see in instrumental success justification for action that would in other circumstances be morally prohibited. That would get it wrong about the moral function of the teleology. While it is true that nature, or natural causes, can induce rational progress by worsening human conditions, we may not do that. Nature’s acts are not justified by the progress they effect; it makes no sense to talk of justification there at all. But we require justification, and welcome features of outcomes don’t by themselves justify their being brought about. The moral injunctions remain intact. Teleology has a different practical role. In coming to see, through interpreted history, that the development of reason in our species is a final end of nature, we gain an idea of an end “the bringing about of which is promoted by the very idea of it.” This tells us something about what might be possible through justified action we take together.

8

Kant’s changing cosmopolitanism Pauline Kleingeld

In the Seventh Proposition of the Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, Kant advocates the establishment of a federation of states with coercive powers to enforce its laws. He states that a “cosmopolitan condition,” which such a worldwide federative body would create, is required for the security and stability of its member states. Their security and stability, in turn, are required in order to facilitate the complete development of the human predispositions for the use of reason, which Kant suggests is the final end of human history. The ideal of an international federation of states returns many times in Kant’s later writings, for instance, in the Critique of Judgment (1790), “On the Common Saying: That May Be True in Theory, But it is of No Use in Practice” (1793), The Contest of the Faculties (1798), and most notably in Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795) and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Compared to its formulation in the Idea, however, Kant’s later texts introduce fundamental changes on a number of important points, although this usually goes unnoticed in the literature. In other words, the view formulated in the 1784 essay is Kant’s early view, which he later modifies in important respects. In this essay, I aim to explicate Kant’s early cosmopolitan view as found in the Idea. I will do so by looking not only at the essay itself, but also at Kant’s modifications of his view in later works, so as to highlight what is specific to this essay. In order to put the cosmopolitan view of the Idea in its philosophical context, however, it is also necessary to address, briefly, Kant’s general aim in this text. 1. the final end of human history Idea for a Universal History appeared three years after the publication of the Critique of Pure Reason, in 1784. In a note at the beginning, Kant explains that a remark in the Gothaische gelehrte Zeitung had compelled him to clarify 171

172 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim his views. The remark stated that it was a “favorite idea” of Kant’s “that the final end of humankind is the attainment of the most perfect constitution of the state.” Furthermore, Kant was said to wish “that a philosophical historiographer would undertake to provide us in this respect with a history of humanity” and show to what extent this end had already been approximated.1 Kant writes at the beginning of the essay that this remark “would have no comprehensible meaning” without the clarification that he undertakes to provide in the essay (8:15n). And indeed, if we look more closely, we see that the remark is both incomplete and incorrect as a summary of the views expressed here.2 Kant does conceive of history as a teleological process, and he does attribute a crucial role to the establishment of a perfectly just constitution. But he also attributes an important role to the establishment of a worldwide, cosmopolitan legal order, as indicated in the full title of the essay. Moreover, he regards neither the perfect state nor the world federation as the final end of history. Although there are still commentators who claim that Kant conceives of the final end of history in terms merely of a legal order, Kant in fact clearly regards the establishment of a legal order as itself the means toward a yet further goal (8:22). As he makes clearest in the comments to the Fourth and Seventh Propositions, he sees the genuine final end of history as the complete development of the human predispositions for the use of reason. This development involves cultivation, civilization, and, eventually, moralization: the final end is the transformation of the legal-political order into a “moral whole” (“ein moralisches Ganze”) (8:21). Kant explains why the full development of the human predispositions for the use of reason requires a legal order at both the state and the international level. A fully just state is important for the development of human rational faculties because a legal order forces individuals to be disciplined. Humans have both social and unsocial tendencies, wanting both to gain recognition from others and to do things their own way. In a good state, i.e., in a state that grants its subjects freedom while determining and constraining this freedom in such a way that that it is compatible with the freedom of others, subjects have enough freedom to pursue a variety of projects and try to outdo each other (8:22). Yet they cannot follow their inclinations with impunity, because if they violate the law they are subject to sanctions. In 1 2

Quoted in the editor’s introduction, AA 8:468. I do not pursue the question whether the discrepancy between the remark and Kant’s views in the Idea is due to a misrepresentation on the part of the author of the remark, or to modifications Kant made as he was developing his views in more detail.

Kant’s changing cosmopolitanism

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this context, then, they are forced to develop self-discipline, which is a crucial precondition for moral agency (8:22). The state not only compels subjects to develop discipline, but it also enables substantive progress in the arts, sciences, and rational insight in general. Living in a society with other humans already has a good effect on people, for in a social setting happen the first true steps from crudity toward culture, which really consists in the social worth of the human being; thus all talents come bit by bit to be developed, taste is formed, and even, through progress in enlightenment, a beginning is made toward the foundation of a mode of thought which can with time transform the rude natural predisposition to make moral distinctions into determinate practical principles and hence transform a pathologically compelled agreement to form a society finally into a moral whole. (8:21)

A just state (as distinct from just any type of civil society) facilitates this process. Because a good state allows its citizens the freedom of the press, it provides a space for the development of the arts and sciences and enables increasing enlightenment. Already in the Idea it is clear that Kant associates enlightenment with an increase in independent thinking (which is not the same as solitary thinking) and moral agency. It is enlightenment, he says, which contributes to the development of a manner of thinking that will produce the transformation of society into a moral whole. Kant specifies the way this is supposed to work more fully in the essay “What Is Enlightenment?” which was published only one month after the Idea, and in the same magazine, the Berlinische Monatsschrift. Here Kant explains the value of a free public sphere. A free public sphere enables the collective expansion of knowledge and increases the chances of eliminating errors (8:39). Because this includes the public’s ridding itself of prejudices and superstition, enlightened thought will lead to better insight into how one ought to act. That is, freedom in thinking will enable genuine “freedom to act” on the part of individual subjects (8:41). On the part of the government, enlightenment will increase respect for the dignity of the subjects as essentially free beings (8:41–2). Enlightenment requires a certain degree of political calm, however, which is possible only when the state is not threatened by outside forces. The same “unsociability” that creates struggles among individuals in the state of nature and that leads them to establish a state will subsequently reemerge at the level of the relations among states. Warfare between states, however, tends to stifle the developmental processes within states. Money that is necessary for education is used for weaponry; civil liberties that are necessary for enlightenment are curtailed in the name of the safety and security of the state. Therefore, in the Seventh Proposition of the Idea Kant

174 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim introduces a second requirement for the development of the human rational faculties, in addition to that of a perfect civil constitution, namely, the requirement of a “cosmopolitan condition” (weltbürgerlicher Zustand). Kant uses this term to refer to a situation in which the external relations among states are governed by enforced laws. This of course requires a higherlevel political institution, which he refers to as a “federation of peoples” or a “federation of states” (Völkerbund)3 (8:24). This is to have legislative, executive, and juridical powers at the federal level, including a “united power giving emphasis to that law” (8:26). Because the cosmopolitan condition secures the good state, and the good state enables enlightenment, which enables the further development of the human capacity to use reason, Kant also calls this cosmopolitan condition the “womb in which all the original predispositions of the human species will be developed” (8:28). This shows that the remark in the Gothaische gelehrte Zeitung is indeed not a correct representation of Kant’s view in the “Idea.” He does not consider the achievement of the most perfect state constitution to be the final end of history. Kant regards the perfectly just state constitution, together with the federation of states, as absolutely crucial goals, but they are themselves instrumental toward a further goal, namely, the complete development of the human predispositions for the use of reason, which is to culminate in moral agency. 2. kant’s project in the idea for a universal history In order to understand the status of Kant’s claims concerning the cosmopolitan condition, it is necessary to have a clear sense of his overarching project in this essay. Kant introduces the cosmopolitan ideal in the context of a discussion of the conditions for the possibility of the full development of the human predispositions for the use of reason. Thus, it is necessary to say a few words about the notion of the development of human predispositions as the final end of history. It is important to establish exactly what Kant is claiming regarding this cosmopolitan ideal. Is he claiming that 3

Kant often uses the term “people” (Volk) in the political sense of a group of individuals who are united under common laws, hence who form a state (cf. MS 6:344). Accordingly, Kant indicates at the beginning of his discussion of international right in Toward Perpetual Peace that he is discussing “peoples as states” (Völker als Staaten) (8:354), and in the subsequent discussion he refers to a league “of states” and a league “of peoples” interchangeably. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant notes that the term “right of peoples” (Völkerrecht, international law) is strictly speaking a misnomer and that the appropriate term would be “right of states” (Staatenrecht, MS 6:343). Therefore, “Völkerbund” can be translated both as “federation of peoples” and as “federation of states.”


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history is progressing towards this development and that the world will turn into a cosmopolitan whole? Or is his view that history should progress in this direction and that states should bond together? Or, rather, that one should regard history as if it is progressive and hence as if a cosmopolitan condition is in our future? For a clear view of Kant’s project, it is important to recognize what the leading question of the essay is, and how he goes about answering it. Without further insight into his methodological approach in the essay, his list of nine Propositions is easily mistaken for a series of wildly dogmatic claims without much in the way of justification. The leading problem of the Idea is an epistemological worry that derives straight from the theory Kant had developed in the Critique of Pure Reason. In this work, Kant had argued that reason strives to establish a systematic unity of knowledge and that it is justified in using regulative ideas for this purpose. In the Idea, he starts out by noting that the empirical historical facts, however, seem to challenge the possibility of ever reaching reason’s goal (8:17–8). Empirical history seems to offer a rather chaotic picture to the observer, raising the spectre of an empirical “aggregate” that resists organization into a “system.”4 Kant had claimed in the Critique of Pure Reason, in general and without specific regard to history, that in order to establish a systematic unity of empirical knowledge one first needs an idea of such a unity: The unity of reason always presupposes an idea, namely that of the form of a whole of cognition, which precedes the determinate cognition of the parts and contains the conditions for determining a priori the place of each part and its relation to the others. Accordingly, this idea postulates complete unity of the understanding’s cognition, through which this cognition comes to be not merely a contingent aggregate but a system interconnected in accordance with necessary laws. (KrV A 645/B 673, emphasis mine)

In the first Critique Kant did not reflect on the difficulties that one faces when one attempts to apply this principle to human history. This is what he does in the Idea. In order to facilitate the organization of knowledge of this area of the phenomenal world systematically, Kant sets out to formulate a regulative idea. He expresses the hope that a historian will indeed attempt to use it. The term “idea” in the title of the essay is, then, best read in the technical sense of “regulative idea” in the first Critique, which is a “guiding principle” for the enterprise of establishing systematic unity (8:18). Kant’s 4

Cf. also: “[S]ystematic unity is that which first makes ordinary cognition into science, i.e., makes a system out of a mere aggregate of it” (KrV A 832/B 860).

176 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim “idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim” might serve good heuristic and organizational purposes by enabling a historian to organize the empirical historical materials into a systematic whole. At first sight, however, human history seems to show no order or direction at all. There does not seem to be anything that can serve as a unifying principle for a systematic description of history, leaving the historiographer no other option than a long enumeration of events, or at best an enumeration of developments under the rubric “rise and fall.” This, however, causes “a certain indignation” in the observer. The irregularity of the course of human events seems “nonsensical,” frustrating reason’s quest for order (8:17–18). This is the central problem Kant’s essay attempts to address. In the Idea Kant takes recourse to a teleological point of view in order to propose a solution. He combines the general teleological principle, the use of which he had already clarified and justified in the Critique of Pure Reason, with a proposed telos, thus designing a unifying principle. The first element of this “idea,” then, and the first “proposition” of the essay, is the general teleological principle that “all natural predispositions of a creature are destined sometime to develop themselves completely and purposively” (8:18). Kant designates the final end of history as the development of the human predispositions for the use of reason (Second Proposition). To this he further adds a specific developmental logic, suggesting that the development of these predispositions is not a matter of a constant linear and gradual improvement, but, rather, a matter of a development that takes place through social struggles and tensions. Kant highlights the combination of sociability and unsociability that is innate in human beings: humans can’t live without others, but they also keep trying to “obtain for [themselves] a rank among [their] fellows” (8:21). The resulting social antagonism forces them to use their reason (Third and Fourth Propositions). Kant attributes crucial importance to the development of legal systems at both the state and the international levels (Fifth, Sixth, and Seventh Propositions). These are themselves the result of such social antagonism, as its negative consequences prompt humans to subject themselves to common laws and a collective system of law enforcement. Thus, the state is not only the product of historical development but also, importantly, a factor that gives a new impetus to this development. The international legal order, too, is both the result of historical progress and a necessary precondition for further progress, because it allows the state to fulfill its role in the developmental process (Seventh Proposition). By the end of the Seventh Proposition, then, Kant has offered his readers an “idea” that has two large advantages for the project of turning the


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aggregate of history into a system. It offers a single overarching principle of history, and it offers a way to integrate those aspects of history that initially seemed to defy integration into a progressive account of history – the warfare, the cycles of rising and falling civilizations, and so on. The Eighth and Ninth Propositions do not add further elements to this regulative idea but deal with the use that can be made of it. In the comments to these propositions, Kant performs a preliminary check against historical data to show how that history can indeed be regarded in this way (Eighth Proposition) and that historiography can indeed use this principle fruitfully (Ninth Proposition). He concludes in the final comments that “this idea could become useful” and that “this idea … should still serve us as a guiding thread for exhibiting an otherwise planless aggregate of human actions, at least in the large, as a system” (8:29). If the main problem that Kant is trying to solve in the essay is kept in mind, and, hence, if it is kept in mind that the Propositions aim to craft a regulative idea for use in historiography, it is clear that the first seven Propositions are not meant as dogmatic empirical assertions. Kant is clear about the weak epistemic status of his model, calling it “only a thought of that which a philosophical mind … could attempt from another standpoint” (8:30), and something that still needs to be tried in actual historiographical practice.5 3. the nature of the federation of states As mentioned above, the cosmopolitan condition Kant envisages in the Idea is that of a strong, state-like federation of states (not that of a voluntary association without coercive powers). This is required to guarantee the security of just states, which in turn are required for the full development of human predispositions for the use of reason. Kant argues that the way in which states leave the state of nature to join into a state-like federation is structurally similar to the way individuals leave the state of nature to join into a state. In both cases, the hardship resulting from their rivalry and fights eventually forces them, in their own interest, to give up their “wild freedom.” Individuals unite into a state “in which freedom under external laws can be encountered combined in the greatest possible degree, with irresistible power” (8:22). Similarly, Kant claims, states will be forced, by the hardship resulting from the rivalry and wars among 5

For the full argument for the claims in this section, see my Fortschritt und Vernunft: Zur Geschichtsphilosophie Kants (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1995).

178 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim them, to exit the state of nature and enter a juridical condition. States exhibit “the same unsociability,” they experience “precisely the ills that pressured individual human beings and compelled them to enter into a lawful civil condition,” and thus states too will come to see the advantages of joining a federation with common laws and law enforcement (8:24). This federation has the same features as a state. In such a federation of states, every state, even the smallest, could expect its security and rights, not from its own power, or its own juridical judgment, but only from this great federation of peoples (Foedus Amphictyonum), from a united power [vereinigte Gewalt] and from the decision in accordance with laws of the united will. (8:24)

It is clear from the way Kant explicates the function of this federation that it is not the voluntary league that he discusses in Toward Perpetual Peace. The federation meant in the Idea is to guarantee the states’ security and rights, which are grounded in the “laws of the united will” and enforced and guaranteed through a “united power” (8:24, 26). Kant describes this cosmopolitan condition, which will come about once states form a federation, as “resembling a civil commonwealth” (8:25). He refers to the work of Abbé de St. Pierre, who had proposed a permanent senate and an international court of arbitration backed up by international law enforcement, as defending a similar view. Similarly, already in the Lectures on Anthropology from 1775–6, Kant had advocated an international federation with a “general senate of peoples” that would adjudicate all international conflicts, and whose verdict should be executed by a “power of the peoples,” which would mean that peoples should be subject to “civil coercive powers” (bürgerliche Gewalt, 25:676). Just as in the Idea, Kant here expects internal improvement of the government from the establishment of such an international federation (ibid.). Kant’s use of the term “federation” (Bund) can easily mislead. The term itself is neutral as to whether or not the institution has the power to enforce its laws. Federative unions can have a strong centralized federal government with binding public laws and coercive powers to enforce them; or they can lack coercive powers and take the form of a voluntary association of states that share certain goals; or they can fall somewhere in between. That depends on the nature of the agreement between the states. In the Idea Kant envisions a strong federal authority; in later texts, however, he also uses the term for a much weaker kind of entity (see below). Kant does not provide details as to the different institutions such an international political body should include. Thus, it remains unclear whether all states should have voting rights in a federal legislative body,


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whether the federation would have a standing army to enforce its rules, and so on. Perhaps his reference to the Abbé de St. Pierre means that he agreed with his proposals. Perhaps, also, Kant simply left these matters undecided because his interest in the Idea is in finding a unifying principle for organizing human history – it is not meant to be a political treatise. More surprising than the lack of detail, however, is the fact that Kant does not reflect on the possible injustice of a strong federation of states. With regard to the state, Kant famously discusses the problem that human nature prevents states from ever being fully perfect. The “crooked wood” of which humanity is made does not allow the creation of something perfectly straight (8:23). Moreover, Kant claims that a perfect state constitution is dependent not just on individuals being motivated by self-interest but also on a “good will that is prepared to accept it” (ibid.), but a good will is actually more likely to develop within the good state. Hence, Kant argues in the Idea, the problem of creating a perfectly just state constitution is insoluble (ibid.). One would expect Kant to bring up this same problem again in the context of his discussion of the cosmopolitan condition, but he does not. He fails to discuss the problem that imperfect states are likely to form an imperfect federation, and that an imperfect federation with coercive powers may do great injustice. Later, in Toward Perpetual Peace, Kant seems to acknowledge this problem when he introduces a looser kind of international federation, in which states retain their full sovereignty and do not subject themselves to coercive powers at the federal level. In those later texts the strong federation remains Kant’s ultimate goal, but he makes important changes to his account of how it is to be reached. 4. modifications to the seventh proposition Building straight with crooked wood: the new importance of the republic in Kant’s philosophy of right Kant’s views on the “cosmopolitan condition” undergo important modifications over time. In the Idea he advocates the establishment of a strong federation of states with coercive authority at the federal level, and like the Abbé de Saint-Pierre, he appeals to the enlightened self-interest of rulers and states to defend the feasibility of this ideal. Later, most clearly in Toward Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals, however, Kant defends a more complex view. During the 1790s, Kant began to defend the establishment of a league without coercive powers, but he continued to mention the stronger form of

180 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim federation as the ideal dictated by reason. To make the feasibility of his proposal plausible, Kant still relied on the self-interest of individuals and of states. But he drops the claim that the development of a “good will” is necessary for achieving a perfectly just state constitution, and he adds the claim that republics tend toward peace inherently, thus linking the achievement of peace between states to the internal constitution of states. By a “republic” Kant means a state that is characterized by a separation of powers and by the fact that the subjects are also citizens, i.e., a state in which the legislative power is in the hands of the people through their representatives. The republic is the only kind of state that is fully in accordance with the normative requirements that follow from the principle of right (EF 8:349–53, 366; MS 6:341), which itself is grounded in individual freedom. Kant regards the republican state as fully feasible. First, he explicitly addresses the objection that only a people of angels could produce and maintain a perfect state. Kant now replies that the self-interested inclinations of humans are sufficient to account for the possibility of the just republic. Even a “people of devils” would form a republic, at least if they are intelligent (EF 8:366). This is because the republic is the form of government that is most in accordance with the self-interest of individuals. Second, a despotic ruler can organize a war on a whim, as he will simply let his subjects bear the costs. An overspending despot is therefore more likely to cause the collapse of the state or be forced to make concessions to his subjects – creating opportunities to reform the state in the direction of a republic.6 Thus, we find that in the 1790s, Kant gives up his claims in the Idea that “good will” is necessary to establish the good state and that the “crooked wood” quality of human nature implies that states will always be imperfect. Kant now claims that the just republic can be fully realized, and that if the “organization” of the state is republican (“which is certainly within the capacity of humans,” Kant adds) the selfish inclinations of people can in fact cancel each other out, so that “the result turns out as if [these selfish inclinations] did not exist” (EF 8:366). This is quite a departure from the Idea. Not only does it imply a rejection of the earlier claim that a good will is necessary for the establishment of a good state, but it also implies that Kant now distances himself from the earlier and famous “crooked wood” passage. His picture of human nature has not changed. “Crooked wood” it certainly is. But Kant no longer believes that this quality creates insoluble difficulties for the realization of 6

This idea is an obvious reference to events in France, cf. MS 6:341 and T&P 8:311.


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a just state. To extend Kant’s metaphor from the Idea and use Kant’s “organization” terminology from Toward Perpetual Peace: if only the crooked pieces are organized in the right way, the resulting structure can be straight. Kant explicitly rejects his earlier statement that a good will is necessary for accepting a perfect state constitution, now claiming that “it should not be expected that a good state constitution would arise from inner morality, but rather conversely that the good moral education of a people would follow from the former” (EF 8:366). With regard to the role of the republic for the establishment of an international federation, Kant again highlights the advantages of the republican constitution. A republic tends toward peace, in his view, because it is in the interest of its citizens to be peaceful toward other states. When the citizens of a republic deliberate about whether to go to war, they will realize that they themselves shoulder all the costs, financial and otherwise, and this will naturally make republics disinclined to go to war (EF 8:352). By introducing the notion of the peaceful nature of republics, Kant strengthens his argument for the feasibility of the cosmopolitan condition. International peace is no longer merely in the interest of states and rulers. Given the natural tendency toward republics, and their tendency toward peace, Kant anchors the feasibility of international peace in the interests of both the republic as a whole and its individual citizens. While Kant is working out his republican political theory, he continues to tinker with the relationship between the development of the just state and that of the international federation. In the Idea, he still regards the solution of the first as dependent upon the second, claiming that the achievement of a perfect state constitution is not possible until rightful external relations among states (in an international federation) have been achieved (8:24). In later essays he turns the order around and claims that international peace will not be achieved until after states have become republics (e.g., T&P 8:311). In Toward Perpetual Peace, he revises his view again, arguing that the two requirements stand in a reciprocal relationship (along with a third requirement, that of cosmopolitan right) and that the one cannot be fully achieved without the other (8:349n). A second type of federation Kant’s elaboration of his republican political theory has significant effects on his conception of the normative ideal of the international federation. If individual freedom is taken seriously as the ultimate justification of coercive political institutions, and if, therefore, the republican state in which citizens

182 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim co-legislate through their representatives is the only just state, then Kant has to argue that republican states should not be forced into an imperfect international federation against their will. Given the possible and likely imperfections of a federation, Kant cannot consistently argue that it would be normatively right for a mighty despotically ruled federation to incorporate an unwilling republic with military means. Yet according to Toward Perpetual Peace, individuals do have this right to force each other into a state against their will (or leave them alone) (8:349n). This is likely to be part of the explanation for why Kant introduces the ideal of a voluntary association of states, also called a “federation” but now one without coercive powers. In Toward Perpetual Peace, Kant argues that this “federation of free states” aims at securing and maintaining the freedom of a state for itself and also the freedom of other confederated states without these states thereby being required, as are human beings in the state of nature, to subject themselves to public laws and coercion under such laws. (8:356)

This means that Kant here inserts a new type of institution between the state of nature and the cosmopolitan condition, namely a voluntary league of states without coercive power. This league, while certainly not able to guarantee the security of states, will still have significant positive effects. By offering a forum for international arbitration and negotiation, it helps to reduce global conflict and increase the security of states (cf. MS 6:350–1). This in turn allows for the increasing development of human predispositions, which will lead to a “gradual approximation of humans to a greater agreement on principles” (EF 8:367). This, then, paves the way for a stronger union in a stronger type of federation, which Kant still claims is the ultimate ideal. Kant does not give up the ideal of the strong, state-like federation that he defended in the Idea, but he now places it at the end of a more protracted process that involves the establishment of a voluntary non-coercive league first. That Kant still defends the strong federation can be seen in a number of passages in Toward Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals. He expresses the hope that “distant parts of the world can peaceably enter into relations with each other, relations which can ultimately become publicly lawful and so bring humanity finally ever closer to a cosmopolitan constitution” (EF 8:358). He writes that justice requires “an internal constitution of the state in accordance with pure principles of right, and then further, however, the union of this state with other neighboring or also distant states for the purpose of a lawful settlement of their conflicts”


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(EF 8:379). And he writes in the Metaphysics of Morals that before states leave the state of nature all international right is merely “provisional,” and that international right can come to hold definitively and establish a true perpetual peace only “in a universal union of states [Staatenverein] (analogous to that by which a people becomes a state),” a union which Kant on the same page also refers to as a “state of peoples” (Völkerstaat) (6:350).7 From a worldwide European legislation to a more genuine ‘cosmopolitan constitution’ Until the 1790s, Kant talked about the “cosmopolitan condition” merely in terms of a federation of states. As he worked out his political theory, however, Kant realized that a genuine global legal order requires more. Individuals establish a civil condition by their joint submission to a state with common laws and law enforcement, and states establish a civil condition by joining an international federation – but what about, for example, the lawful regulation of the relations between states and stateless individuals or shipwrecked sailors? Or between individuals from one state and peoples that have not yet formed a state? What about colonialism, for example? In the Idea Kant does not yet raise these questions, limiting his discussion to the juridical regulation of relations among individuals (in the state) and among states (in the international federation). Kant says very little, for example, about the conduct of European states elsewhere in the world. In fact, the only comment he makes on that subject should probably be read in a disturbing way. Kant suggests, towards the end of the essay and between parentheses, that “our part of the world” (Europe) “will probably someday give laws to all the others [viz., the other parts of the world]” (8:29). Without further explanation, this comment is ambiguous. It could in theory be interpreted as an empirical prediction on Kant’s part about the (unfortunate) direction in which international relations are likely to develop. On the other hand, given that the entire essay outlines a teleological view of history as moving toward an ideal end-state, this reading does not seem plausible. If the situation in which non-Europeans do not give laws to themselves but receive laws from Europe is not part of the final end of history, why would Kant mention it here? If he does not believe that Europe’s legislating for the rest of the world constitutes a kind of progress, 7

For the full argument for the claims in this section, see my “Approaching Perpetual Peace: Kant’s Defence of a League of States and his Ideal of a World Federation,” European Journal of Philosophy 12 (2004), pp. 304–25.

184 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim mentioning it as the result of history would undercut the entire teleological perspective he lays out in this essay. If Kant does regard European legislation for the rest of the world as part of the final end of history, on the other hand, this fits with other comments he made elsewhere, to the effect that most non-white “races” are not capable of self-legislation.8 Then the proper way to read Kant’s brief parenthetical comment is to read it against the background of the racial hierarchy that Kant still defended during the 1780s. Against the background of a view according to which whites are superior to non-whites and according to which many non-whites are not capable of governing themselves, it is understandable how worldwide European legislation could be part of the final end of history. Kant defended exactly this kind of racial hierarchy until well after the Idea. It is well known that Kant held racist views in his pre-critical works. Notorious is his remark, in Observations on the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764), that the fact that a Negro carpenter was black from head to toe clearly proved that what he said was stupid (2:255). Furthermore, Kant cited Hume’s comment that no Negro has ever shown any talent and concludes that the differences between blacks and whites are “essential” and seem to be “as large with regard to mental powers as they are in color” (2:253). Kant’s racist remarks are not confined to the pre-critical works, however. Even in works of the 1780s, he endorses a critique of abolitionism (TPP 8:174n) and refers to the “levels which we have mentioned as racial differences” (TPP 8:176). In anthropology lectures from (probably) 1781–2, Kant asserts that Native Americans are the lowest of the races, as they are inert, impassive, and incapable of being educated at all. He places the “Negroes” above them, as they are capable of being trained to be slaves (but incapable of any other form of education); the “Hindus” have yet more potential, but whites form the only non-deficient race (25.2:1187). In Toward Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals, however, Kant has clearly given up these views. He explicitly strengthens the juridical status of individuals regardless of race. Understandably, this also leads to a very critical stance on European practices on other continents, such as the slave trade and colonialism. That Kant strengthens the status of non-whites is clear from his discussion of cosmopolitan right. In Kant’s political theory, cosmopolitan right (Weltbürgerrecht) is the third category of public right, in addition to 8

“[Native] Americans and Negroes cannot govern themselves. Thus, [they] serve only as slaves” Sketches for the Lectures on Anthropology, from the 1780s, 15:878.


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constitutional right and international right. He argues that states and individuals have the right to attempt to establish relations with other states and their citizens, but not a right to enter foreign territory. States have the right to refuse visitors, but not violently, and not if it leads to their destruction (EF 8:357–60; MS 6:352–3). This implies an obligation to refrain from imperialist intrusions and to provide safe haven for refugees. Cosmopolitan right, as introduced in Toward Perpetual Peace, explicitly prohibits the colonial conquest, by states “in our part of the world,” of lands elsewhere in the world. Kant also strongly condemns the subjugation of their inhabitants (8:358). In his notes for Toward Perpetual Peace (1794–95), Kant repeatedly and explicitly criticizes the enslavement of non-Europeans in the strongest terms, as a grave violation of cosmopolitan right (23:173–4). Kant concludes his exposition of cosmopolitan right by expressing the hope that remote parts of the world can establish relations peacefully with one another, relations which ultimately become regulated by public laws and can thus finally bring the human species ever closer to a cosmopolitan constitution. (EF 8:358)

Dropping his earlier claim that blacks and Native Americans cannot govern themselves and that Europe will probably eventually legislate for all other continents, Kant here envisions a world in which people of different colors and on different continents together make public laws to regulate their interaction peacefully and in accordance with the normative principles of right.9 5. continuity: the final end of human history as a moral world Although Kant rethought a number of problems that were connected with his early views, some significant elements remain the same. Throughout the 1780s and 1790s, Kant remains committed to the view, found in the Idea, that the final end of history is the complete development of the predispositions for the use of reason, and that this complete development consists in humans using their reason to determine their will, i.e., in moral agency.10 Although this end cannot be reached completely, it can be approximated in human history. The final end of history according to the Idea seems to be identical to the “moral world” discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason under the name of the highest good. In the first Critique, this is the ideal of “the world as it would be 9 10

For the full argument for the claims in this section, see my “Kant’s Second Thoughts on Race,” Philosophical Quarterly 57 (2007), pp. 573–92. The one possible exception here is a comment in the second part of the Contest of the Faculties (7:91), which, however, contradicts other statements in that text which do mention moral progress (7:85–9).

186 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim if it were in conformity with all moral laws” (KrV A 808/B 836). This is the world in which all agents act morally, and in which, as a consequence of their virtuous action, all are happy (A 809/B 837). The virtuous agents in the moral world are “themselves, under the guidance of [moral] principles, the authors both of their own enduring well-being and of that of others” (A 809/B 837). Kant argues that our action should aim at bringing the sensible world into conformity with such a moral world (A 808/B 836). Kant’s theory in the Idea clearly seems to be an elaboration of the way in which this moral world is to be approximated in the sensible world. After all, according to the Second Proposition the goal of history is the full development of the human predispositions for the use of reason which is to culminate in moral agency, and according to the Third Proposition humans should be the source of their own perfection and of the general happiness (8:18–20). In the Critique of Judgment, Kant again discusses the highest good in terms of a moral world composed of general virtue and general happiness (5:445, 448, 453); and here he explicitly connects it up with historical progress. He discusses the way nature is teleologically oriented towards the development of the predispositions for the use of reason (“culture”); and culture is itself subservient to the final end of creation, viz., to humans as moral beings (5:434–6). Another element that remains the same throughout Kant’s writings of the 1780s and 1790s is his view that the development of legal institutions (especially the state and the international federation) plays an important role in this process. Legal institutions are both products of and catalysts for the development of the predispositions for the use of reason. This view reemerges time and again in Kant’s later writings through the late 1790s.11 In short, Kant remains committed to the view that morality is the final end of history, but the details of his cosmopolitan theory change over time, as he elaborates the principles of republicanism, changes his view of the relation between the development of the just state and that of the international federation, drops his earlier racial hierarchalism, adds the category of cosmopolitan right, and starts to criticize the exploitative practices of Europeans on other continents. 11

A particularly salient passage is found in the Vorarbeiten to the Metaphysics of Morals, where Kant thematizes the relationship between legal and moral progress: “[W]hen the laws secure freedom externally, the maxims to also govern oneself internally in accordance with laws can liven up; and conversely, the latter in turn make it easier through their dispositions for lawful coercion to have an influence, so that peaceable behavior [friedliches Verhalten] under public laws and pacific dispositions [friedfertige Gesinnungen] (to also end the inner war between principles and inclinations), i.e., legality and morality find in the concept of peace the point of support for the transition from the Doctrine of Right to the Doctrine of Virtue” (23:354–5).

chapter 9

The hidden plan of nature Eckart Förster

Kant’s discussion of the Eighth Proposition of the Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim marks an all-important turning point of his entire argument. Let us first take note of the proposition itself. Eighth Proposition: One can regard the history of the human species in the large as the completion of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an inwardly and, to this end, also an externally perfect state constitution, as the only condition in which it can fully develop (entwickeln) all its predispositions (Anlagen) in humanity.

This Proposition, Kant states, is a consequence of the previous one. Indeed, lawful external relations between states such as to make wars between them unnecessary are a prerequisite for a stable civil society in which reason can flourish. For reason, Kant had stated in the Second Proposition, can develop fully only in the species, but not in the individual. Its development requires favorable conditions in society, which can only be fulfilled if a certain amount of international stability prevails. As a human capacity reason is still a product of nature. It is what distinguishes us from all the other natural creatures. Most animals are endowed by nature with species-specific instincts (or organs) that guide their struggle for survival. Humans, by contrast, were initially endowed by nature only with those instincts that belong to animals in general – sexual instincts, instinct for food, etc. – but with none that were specific to their species. In order to survive, therefore, they had to learn to compensate for the absence of such instincts. They had to acquire and develop an ability to anticipate danger, predict future events, contemplate alternative courses of action, etc. – in short, man was forced by nature to develop reason. Reason, then, is the product of mankind’s emergence from the discomfort of its initial situation in nature, while the natural development of the human species can be seen as the progressive development of reason, the gradual transformation of a mere potentiality into successful actuality. To this end, however, since reason cannot develop in isolation, men had to join efforts 187

188 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim and enter into society, where their mutual antagonism and “unsociable sociability” forces them to overcome propensities to indolence and to make the necessary steps from crudity to culture by developing manifold skills and social prudence (Fourth Proposition). i The Eighth Proposition, it could be said, sums up these thoughts. The next sentence, however, breaks new ground. It speaks no longer of nature and its hidden plan, but of philosophy and its role vis-à-vis this plan: “One sees that philosophy can also have its chiliasm;1 but one the bringing about of which is promoted by the very idea of it, though only from afar, so that it is anything but enthusiastic” (8:27). This sudden shift from nature to philosophy must not escape our attention. What is at issue here is the suggestion that philosophy can as it were take over from nature in the promotion of her plan, or at least contribute actively to its realization. What this means is not immediately obvious. To be sure, if philosophy discerns a plan underlying human history, it must not only discern its beginning,2 but also the telos of its movement, its goal. This, we might say, has taken place in the first seven chapters of Kant’s essay. But how can bringing nature’s plan to consciousness contribute to the realization of this goal, “though only from afar”? How is this to be understood? Here we must recall the circumstances that led Kant to write the Idea for a Universal History. As he reports, his text was occasioned by a note in the Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitung which stated that it was a “favorite idea of Professor Kant” that the final end of humankind is the attainment of the most perfect political constitution, and that to this end it would be desirable “that a philosophical historiographer would undertake to provide us in this respect with a history of humanity, and to show how far humanity has approached this final end in different ages, or how far removed it has been from it, and what is still to be done for its attainment” (8:468). Such a task, we may add, requires a philosophical historiographer and not just a chronicler of past and present events, because he must be able to discern the idea underlying all the diverse events constituting the history of humanity in order to grasp its future end, and assess the various stages relative to it. The presumption is of course that history is not just a largely unpredictable succession of events, 1 2

“The thousand years,” from Greek chilioi = thousand; cf. Revelation 20,1–6. On this see Kant’s essay on the “Conjectural Beginning of the Human History,” 8:107–24.

The hidden plan of nature

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but something that is goal-directed, that has a beginning and end and with it a prescribed course from which it is possible to stray and which can be approximated closely. Is this an intelligible assumption? Kant presumes that a visitor with whom he conversed must have leaked his views to the newspaper. What is particularly noteworthy, however, is the fact that in his response Kant does not simply assume that readers of the Gotha Zeitung might find this assumption implausible because they view the course of human history in less teleological terms. He thinks, rather, that the present essay is needed as an elucidation because without it, “that passage would have no comprehensible meaning” (8:15). This should give us reason to pause. Why would that passage have no comprehensible meaning on its own? I think it is not difficult to see why Kant might have thought so. For his was a time of immense cultural and scientific changes, which in turn brought about equally revolutionary conceptual changes, the realization of which only slowly penetrated public opinion. Three such changes in particular, changes the readers of the Gotha Zeitung might not have been entirely familiar with, are relevant in the present context. They are changes in concepts that reflect a deep revolution in the way reality was experienced, but which today’s readers, who grew up with the new concepts long established, don’t realize anymore. The three concepts I have in mind are: (1) history; (2) Entwicklung; and (3) Bildung. History It was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that the concept ‘history’ acquired the meaning with which we are familiar nowadays. To us the term signifies something that equally comprises past and future as states of a continuous subject, so that we may speak of the history, of history as such. Up to Kant’s time, however, the term had the meaning of the Latin historia, of narrative, account, tale, story. A history would be the history of a battle or a journey, as, for example, in Xenophon’s Anabasis, or the lives of particular subjects, as, for example, in Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists. There were many histories in the plural, but not the history of a universal subject. Reinhard Koselleck has described the difference thus: Previously there had been a plurality of histories which in principle could be similar or even repeat themselves: histories with determinate subjects who acted or were acted upon, or (inside the narrative) with determinate objects. Since the 18th Century there exists a ‘history in general’ that seemed to be its own subject and object – a system, not an aggregate, as one used to say in those days. Spatially there corresponds to it the one world history. Temporally there corresponds to it the

190 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim uniqueness of progress, which in turn was first conceptualized together with “history in general.”3

This new relation to time is in large part the result of an explosive increase in information during the age of discovery.4 Sciences had to integrate a hitherto unknown wealth of newly found specimens into their classificatory systems. In the past, living things were classified by means of external marks, and in primarily spatial manners,5 but this way of organizing nature could no longer cope with the sheer quantity of newly discovered species. Spatial methods of organization had to be transformed into temporal ones: creatures belong to the same species if they are part of a chain of common offspring. Thus nature became historicized, and with it the human being, as a species being, became the subject of a common history. Entwicklung Originally the German word Entwicklung meant literally ‘to unfold’ or ‘to unwrap’ (auswickeln) something that already existed in a definite form. It is a translation of the Latin evolutio, which means to unroll (in order to read) a scroll or volume. It was only in the second half of the eighteenth century that the term Entwicklung received its contemporary meaning.6 The reason for this shift in meaning stems from an important scientific debate of the time concerning the generation of living things. On the one side, there was the traditional theory of evolution or preformation, which assumed that the germs of all living things were preformed, and indeed had been preformed since the moment of Creation. According to this theory, in all generation the new individual, fully formed although still minute in size, is already contained in the germ and only needs to be gradually unfolded, or entwickelt. Nothing new emerges in nature ever, and no part of a living being is there before the other. But in 1759, this view received a rival in C. F. Wolff ’s theory of epigenesis, according to which there is in the emergence of an organism not just an unfolding of a preformed germ, but the generation of something new brought forth by physical causes. Originally unorganized male and female fluids merge and consolidate, while individual organs grow successively from 3 4 5 6

Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe; historisches Lexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972), vol. II, p. 594. Cf., e.g., S. E. Toulmin and J. Goodfield, The Discovery of Time (New York: Harper & Row, 1965); Wolf Lepenies, Das Ende der Naturgeschichte (Munich and Vienna: Carl Hanser, 1976). Cf., e.g., Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966). Kant still uses the term in its old meaning in his early writings; cf., e.g., 1:310, 334.


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them, under the influence of an essential force.7 From the point of view of epigenesis, Entwicklung is not the development of a preformed individual but the successive self-organization of a substance into something new. Neither view could claim victory until 1781 – only three years before Kant’s essay – when J. F. Blumenbach published Über den Bildungstrieb und das Zeugungsgeschäft. In this short treatise Blumenbach presented ample evidence for the existence of a formative drive or Bildungstrieb in nature that controls the organization of the organism from still unformed materials. From that moment on, epigenesis became the prevailing theory of generation,8 and with it the concept of Entwicklung became firmly associated with the new theory. The significance of this conceptual change is considerable. To understand Entwicklung, thought has not simply to add different stages to form a whole, but to follow the metamorphosis of an initial state through its transformations. A merely mechanical thinking used to conjoining elements externally cannot grasp this concept properly. However, once the concept has been comprehended, new questions are bound to arise, like: What is it that evolves in this succession of events? Which stage of its Entwicklung are we presently looking at? What initial state has the present state evolved from? Where is this Entwicklung going to lead? In other words, precisely those types of questions are likely to arise that Kant wishes a “philosophical historiographer” might apply to the human subject and answer in a convincing manner, a new “Newton” capable of discerning nature’s determinate plan in the history of humankind (8:468; 8:18).9 There is, however, a third concept that needs to be taken into account. Bildung A few months before Kant’s Idea appeared, Moses Mendelssohn had published in the Berlinische Monatsschrift an essay “On the Question: What 7 8

9

Cf. Helmut Müller-Sievers, Self-Generation: Biology, Philosophy, and Literature Around 1800 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 26–47. So much so that in 1787, in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant compared the result of the transcendental deduction of the categories to a “a system, as it were, of the epigenesis of pure reason” (B 167). Kant was not the first to ask such questions, nor was he the first to apply the new concepts of history and Entwicklung to the human condition. In his 1774 essay This Too a Philosophy of History for the Formation of Humanity, Herder had already raised the question: “Does fate have a guiding thread in the Entwicklung of the human powers throughout all centuries and upheavals?” Sämtliche Werke (Berlin: Weidemannsche Buchhandlung, 1891), vol. 5, p. 588. Between 1784 and 1791, Herder developed the early sketch in great detail in his Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind. Kant reviewed the first volume in 1785 (cf. 8:43–66), as a result of which Kant’s former pupil turned into one of his fiercest opponents.

192 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim does it Mean to Enlighten?”10 He opened it by stating: “The words ‘Enlightenment,’ ‘culture,’ ‘Bildung’ are still new arrivals in our language. Currently they belong only to book language. The great mass of people hardly understands them … Linguistic usage, which seems to want to indicate a distinction between these synonymous words, has not yet had the time to fix their boundaries.” Originally the term Bildung, with its root-meaning Bild (image, picture), meant an external, formative influence, such as when God imprints himself in the human soul. The Enlightenment critique of religion, however, robbed this concept of its traditional significance. In a secularized form, the old meaning is still noticeable in Blumenbach’s epigenetic Bildungstrieb or nisus formativus, but in Mendelssohn’s statement, that old meaning seems no longer present. And it is not difficult to see that the now underdetermined concept of Bildung was ideally suited to fill a lacuna in the picture of a historical evolution of the human species. To put it in Kantian terms: if history has a common subject that evolves according to a hidden plan of nature, and if the goal of that plan is the development of mankind’s abilities to the fullest, and if the supreme abilities of humanity can only be developed in society through joined efforts and practices, then it must be within nature’s plan that humans reach a point at which they form themselves a picture of what they want to achieve. The course of history must lead from external threats and danger to the antagonism within society to “the inner Bildung of their citizens’ mode of thought” (8:26). The human being thus becomes both subject and object of Bildung. In his lectures on pedagogy, which Kant delivered in the winter semesters of 1783/4 and again in 1786/7, we witness the conceptual transformation in detail. Education consists, Kant says, in the Bildung of a human being to be a freely acting being. To this end he distinguishes the “scholastic-mechanical Bildung with respect to skill,” the “pragmatic Bildung with respect to prudence,” and the “moral Bildung” with respect to ethics. The first, he says, gives a human being a worth as individual, the second as a citizen, the last a worth with respect to the entire human species (9:455).

10

In Berlinische Monatsschrift 4 (1784), reprinted in Moses Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften (Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Frommann, 1981), 6/1, pp. 115–19. The essay was occasioned by another article in this journal in which the Berlin pastor J. F. Zöllner had expressed the complaint: “What is enlightenment? Shouldn’t this question, which is almost as important as the question, What is truth? be answered before one begins to enlighten? And yet I have not found it answered anywhere.” Berlinische Monatsschrift (December 1783), p. 516.


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The main thesis of Kant’s essay can only be understood against the backdrop of these conceptual changes, which jointly underlie the “idea” for a universal history of humankind but which were novel to his readers: There is a past and future history of the human species as a whole; mankind is the common subject of a process in which its dispositions are entwickelt, not as something preformed and merely to be unfolded, but as something to be acquired through effort and struggle. In this process the human species develops reason. It lies in the very nature of reason that there must come a point in time when it starts to reflect on its own conditions and understands how it got to where it is. It discerns nature’s hidden plan and what the goal of this plan is. It comprehends the ultimate condition of the realization of this goal: an externally perfect state constitution. Understanding that it can promote the realization of the goal, it forms an image (Bild) that can guide humanity’s own subsequent self-formation or Bildung – a philosophical historiography with a cosmopolitan aim. For “it seems that we could, through our own rational contrivance, bring about faster such a joyful point in time for our posterity” (8:27). The clear philosophical articulation of the goal will at least bring to public awareness the role it has to play in the realization of this goal. ii We now understand better what Kant means when he says that philosophy not only has its chiliasm, but that its realization is promoted by the very idea of it. With this much established, let us now turn to the next sentence: “It all depends on whether experience reveals something of such a course as nature’s aim” (8:27). All of a sudden, we are transposed from the visualization of nature’s hidden plan to the heart of Kant’s critical philosophy. For as he had demonstrated in the Critique of Pure Reason, there is an all-important difference between thinking something on the one hand, and knowing something on the other. If I am to think something, the concepts employed must be non-contradictory; but if I know something through a concept, I must be able to comprehend that its corresponding object is really possible, not merely logically possible. Otherwise the concept is empty, and one has “not in fact cognized anything through this thinking, but rather merely played with representations” (A 155/B 195). If the concept in question is an empirical concept, experience shows that its object is possible because it is actual. But if the concept is a priori, its objective reality must be demonstrated by showing how its object is really possible, through presenting the

194 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim synthesis through which the object can be generated: “This is a warning not to infer immediately from the possibility of a concept (logical possibility) to the possibility of the thing (real possibility)” (A 596/B 624). Against this background, it is not difficult to see that the concept or idea of an end of universal history (chiliasm) poses a genuine problem. Is it more than a logically possible but empty concept? Or is it objectively real? On the one hand, it is not an a priori concept that could be proven independently of experience. On the other hand, it is not an empirical concept either. The very expression “hidden plan” acknowledges the fact that it is not abstracted from experience. Adopting a phrase from another of Kant’s texts, we might say that the idea of a hidden plan of nature is “empirically conditioned, i.e. a concept that is possible only under certain conditions given in experience; yet it is not one to be abstracted from experience” (5:396). Whether the notion of nature’s plan underlying history is an empty or objectively real concept thus depends on whether or not experience shows traces of its reality. This is the crucial question of the present chapter: the Eighth Proposition itself is still “a consequence” of the previous one; what is at issue now is its objective reality: “It all depends on whether experience reveals something of such a course as nature’s aim”! The philosopher thus cannot but have an interest in whether or not experience reveals traces of such a plan. Does it? “I say: it reveals a little; for this cycle appears to require so long a time to be completed that from the little part of it which humanity has traversed with respect to this aim allows one to determine the shape of its path and the relation of the parts to the whole only as uncertainly as the course taken by our sun together with the entire host of it satellites in the great system of fixed stars can be determined from all the observations of the heavens made hitherto; yet from the general ground of the systematic constitution of the cosmic order and from the little one has observed, one is able to determine reliably enough, in order to infer the reality of such a revolution” (8:27). This answer is disingenuous. For given the Kantian picture, the largest part of our history seems to lie behind us; what is required now in order to achieve nature’s aim is to end warfare and to establish peaceful relations among states. It is not at all clear why getting there should take vastly longer than getting to the present time from our humble and helpless beginnings at the hands of nature. Secondly, the comparison with the sun’s path through the “great system of fixed stars” is hardly appropriate. What Kant seems to have in mind is the precession of the vernal equinox, i.e., the point at which the sun crosses the celestial equator from south to north on its (apparent) path around the


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earth. In the third millennium bc when the vernal equinox was in the sign of Aries, Mesopotamian astronomers discovered that it slowly shifts in relation to the zodiac. Between the third and second century bc it moved into the sign of Pisces, and in our time it is making its slow transition into Aquarius. The precession covers about 1° in 72 years, so that the sun at the vernal equinox traverses a sign of the zodiac in roughly 2,160 years. It will have completed its cycle through the entire zodiac in about 26,000 years, also known as a “Platonic year.” Clearly, the course of human history is not cyclical in this sense and cannot be calculated in the same way. Its completion would not be a return to its beginning, but the achievement of something that did not exist previously. More importantly, the development of a living whole embodying the unfolding of a “hidden plan” cannot be compared with a merely spatial advance; the inner Entwicklung of a living species is entirely unlike a mere alteration of external relations. So let us look at what Kant means exactly when he says that experience reveals “a little” of nature’s plan. There are, Kant thinks, several points that suggest that the idea of nature’s development towards the goal of a universal cosmopolitan condition is not an empty concept. (1) Now – that is, in Kant’s time – states are already in such complex artificial relations to one another that none of them can afford to retard its internal culture without risking loss in might and influence in relation to the others. Thus, “the preservation of this end of nature itself, if not progress in it, is fairly well secured through their aims of ambition” (8:27). (2) Now major infringements on civil liberties perforce have effects on all trades, especially in commerce, and thus result in the diminution of the powers of the state in its external relations. The rulers must thus grant basic civic liberties. (3) But this freedom is gradually advancing. The vitality of the whole of society stands in direct relation to citizens’ ability to seek their welfare in any way they please as long as it does not conflict with the freedom of others. “Hence the personal restrictions on the citizen’s doing and refraining are removed more and more … and thus gradually arises, debilitating [unterlaufen] delusions and whims, enlightenment, as a great good that must raise humankind even out of the selfish aims of aggrandizement on the parts of its rulers, if only the latter understand their own advantage” (8:28). As we saw, “Enlightenment” is another term new in Germany at the time: Mendelssohn listed it together with Bildung among those that still

196 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim belong to book language only. The meaning and significance of “Enlightenment” was also the topic of another essay of Kant’s of the same year, “What is Enlightenment?” He opened it with the now classical definition: “Enlightenment is man’s release from his selfincurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! ‘Have courage to use your own reason!’ – that is the motto of enlightenment” (8:35). What is at issue, Kant claims, is a change in the mode of thinking; and for this enlightenment “nothing is required but freedom, and indeed the most harmless among all the things to which this term can properly be applied. It is the freedom to make public use of one’s reason at every point” (8:36). (4) It is clear that the age of Enlightenment is more than just another epoch in Kant’s view. It marks a turning point. “This enlightenment, however, and with it also a certain warmheartedness (Herzensanteil ) which the enlightened human being who understands the good perfectly cannot but feel toward it, must ascend bit by bit up to the thrones and have its influence even on their principles of government” (8:28). In the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals, published the year after the Idea for a Universal History, Kant described in detail what it means to understand the good perfectly. The only thing unconditionally good is a good will. A good will is a will determined only by the moral law. The moral law is a law that I give to myself but that is valid for all rational beings alike. Kant describes this realization that I am the author of the moral law that at the same time is binding for every rational being as autonomy, and claims that it is accompanied by the feeling of respect or Achtung for the moral law. This feeling is alluded to here, too, when Kant claims that the person who comprehends the good perfectly feels his heart involved as well (Herzensantheil). (5) The “governors of our world” will find it in their own interest at least not to hinder their own nation’s own weak and slow endeavors in this regard. (6) Because the trades are so much interchained, and the weakening of one nation cannot be without effect on others, these states “will be urged merely through danger to themselves to offer themselves, even without legal standing, as arbiters, and thus remotely prepare the way for a future large state body, of which the past world has no example to show” (8:28).


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(7) Although this future state is now only a rough project, “nevertheless already a feeling begins to stir in all members, each of which has an interest in the preservation of the whole, and this gives hope … that in the end that which nature has as its aim will finally come about.” What are we to make of this “empirical evidence?” Interestingly, there is hardly any reference to experience at all in this reflection. Only points (1) and (2) refer to experience: each is introduced with a “jetzt” (now) to indicate that Kant is talking about the present. Point (3) expresses a prognosis: restrictions on the citizen’s doing and refraining will be increasingly removed and enlightenment will take its course – if only the rulers “understand their own advantage.” Point (4) makes the philosophical point that a proper understanding of the good is accompanied by the feeling of respect and interest in the good. The remaining points are predictions again of the future course of history, applying what was observed in the first statements to the governors of the world: it is in their self-interest to ensure that other states don’t engage in warfare either. It is fair to say, I think, that this line of reasoning will only convince those already converted. A skeptic with respect to nature’s “hidden plan” will no doubt point out, with regard to point (1), that the subsequent history of Kant’s own country has shown that a return to barbarism is always possible and that the “preservation of this end of nature” is anything but secure. Nor will he be impressed by Kant’s claim, in point (3), that enlightenment is a good that “must [sic] raise humankind even out of the selfish aims of aggrandizement on the parts of its rulers.” Instead, he will point to the fact that the globalization that Kant anticipated, the worldwide interdependence of trade and commerce, may have reduced the risk of wars between states, without advancing towards the goal envisioned by Kant. What makes such stability possible is less the warm-hearted interests of the heads of states than corporate greed and the laws of the market. It brings in its wake not the release from citizens’ self-imposed tutelage but their deeper entrenchment in such tutelage at the hands of mass media, entertainment industry and a consumer culture that seeks to keep its audience uninformed and manoeuvrable. Objections of this kind are too well known to be rehearsed here. One does not have to endorse them in every respect to see the weakness of Kant’s examples. Must we perhaps think in a much larger time frame then the skeptic does when considering the possibility of a hidden plan of nature? If so, then the examples of the kind Kant advances must also be irrelevant.

198 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim iii In sum: Kant presents us with an intriguing idea, but his attempt to demonstrate its objective reality by reference to experience must be considered a failure. Is it an empty idea, then? Before we reach this conclusion, let us for a moment glance ahead and look at Kant’s later treatment of this idea. In particular, the third Critique is of interest here, since it suggests that there is not just empirical, but a-priori ground for assuming that nature is not just a blind and artless mechanism but intrinsically purposive. Investigations into the nature of beauty, more precisely, into the nature of natural beauty,11 had led Kant, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, to the discovery of a hitherto unknown a-priori principle, the principle of a formal purposiveness of nature. This principle reveals to us “a technique of nature, which makes it possible to represent it as a system in accordance with laws the principle of which we do not encounter anywhere in our entire faculty of understanding, namely that of a purposiveness with respect to the use of the power of judgment in regard to appearances, so that this must be judged as belonging not merely to nature in its purposeless mechanism but rather also to the analogy with art. Thus it actually expands not our cognition of natural objects, but our concept of nature, namely as a mere mechanism, into the concept of nature as art” (5:246). According to Kant, this principle must also guide our judgment in the estimation of all living things in nature. For these cannot be regarded mechanically as mere aggregates of their parts. They have to be viewed as internally organized and purposive: as organisms. Yet as such they must also stand in essential relations to the elements of their environment (water, air, light, food, mates, etc.), without which they could not exist and propagate themselves. That is, once we admit natural purposes we cannot but extend our teleological reflections to nature as a whole: “This concept leads reason into an order of things entirely different from that of a mere mechanism of nature, which will here no longer satisfy us” (5:377). If things in nature stand in relation to other things as means to end, and the latter in turn may be means to yet other ends, the question arises whether this natural chain terminates in a being that is not a means to other natural ends? If so, then this can only be the human being. Endowed with the ability to create ends of his own choosing, man assigns and arranges things in such a way as to further his own interests, and from this point of 11

Cf. Eckart Förster, Kant’s Final Synthesis (Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2000), pp. 8–11.


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view, man may be said to be the ultimate end of nature. But we only need to ask why man should exist on earth in the first place, Kant points out, in order to realize that nothing in nature has an unconditional worth or is a final end (cf. 5:436, 425–7). Why should man exist on earth in the first place? Is it more than a lucky chance that the human species survived the early stages of its history when it was still ill-adapted to its environment? Nature produces a staggering multitude of species, some better adapted than others, some not well adapted at all. Some survive, some become extinct. What makes us different? The more we developed reason, it might be said, the better our chances for survival became, but this does not establish why the process should have been successful in the first place. Kant’s Idea for a Universal History exclusively describes relations of relative or extrinsic purposiveness (one thing’s being beneficial to another), that are as such insufficient to establish the objective reality of the Eighth Proposition: We can easily see from this that the only condition on which extrinsic purposiveness (a thing’s being beneficial to others) can be looked on as an extrinsic physical end, is that the existence of the thing for which it is proximately or remotely beneficial is itself, in its own right, an end of nature. This, however, we can never tell by a mere observation of nature. Hence it follows that, although relative purposiveness points hypothetically to natural purposes, it does not justify any absolute teleological judgment. (5:368–9)

Only if man is regarded not merely as a natural being but also as a being capable of freedom and autonomy, and hence author of, and subject to, the moral law, is he an end in itself and hence must never be treated as a mere means to other ends. In this way, our existence can be viewed, not only as an end of nature but as the final end of creation: “we recognize the human being as the end of creation only as a moral being” (5:444). From this later perspective, then, the question of whether or not there is a “hidden plan of nature” underlying human history cannot meaningfully be addressed independently of whether or not there is an end of creation. This question, however, gives rise to a whole set of new problems which presumably Kant was not aware of in 1784 – problems he tried to come to terms with in the final years of his life.12 Like most good philosophy, the essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim raises more questions than it answers. 12

I discuss some of these issues in my contribution to The History of Western Philosophy of Religion, eds. Nick Trakakis and Graham Oppy (forthcoming).

chapter 10

Providence as progress: Kant’s variations on a tale of origins Genevieve Lloyd

Kant’s Idea For a Universal History articulates a vision of a future for the human race centered on the idea of a “cosmopolitan goal” – a world order in which institutions and practices of international justice will achieve, for the relations between nations, something analogous to the relations and restraints which transform a collection of individuals into an ordered state. Kant is here deeply concerned with the idea of progress – with the question whether human life is getting better or worse, and with how his own times should be judged with regard to maturity in reason and morals. But this rich and elegantly constructed essay is also centrally concerned with the idea of Providence, and Kant’s ingenious conceptual play with that idea marks a crucial point of transition in its history: its transformation into the secular idea of progress. In this essay I want to focus on the relations between Kant’s treatment of Providence, his version of cosmopolitanism, and his ingenious use of a narrative device – a philosophical story of human origins and development. The conceptual connections between Providence and cosmopolitanism can be difficult to grasp, now that cosmopolitanism has come to mean little more than cultural sophistication, while the idea of Providence is relegated to religious piety. Novel though Kant’s version of Providence is, the connections he draws between Providence and cosmopolitanism are not new. Both ideas, and the connections between them, go back to ancient Greek thought. In the mid-fourth century bce, Diogenes the Cynic described himself as a “citizen of the universe,” implying that, wherever else he might belong, he regarded himself also as at home in the cosmos itself. The Stoic concept of the “cosmic city” developed as an extension of that idea. It came together with Providence because of its connotations of the world as an orderly whole, regulated by necessary laws – a structured whole which serves as a model for human conduct. Talk of a structured order, imbued with purpose, fed the idea of the universe as a cosmic polis, the common home of gods and men. It is a way of 200

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thinking of human presence in the world that is difficult for us to now fully comprehend – not least in its way of looking to the order of the natural world as a model for human conduct. This idea of ethically significant cosmic order is crucial to the history of the cosmopolitan ideal.1 Cosmopolitanism is explicit in Zeno’s description in his Republic of a well-regulated society: “Our household arrangements should not be based on cities or parishes, each one marked out by its own legal system, but we should regard all men as our fellow citizens and local residents, and there should be one way of life and order, like that of a herd grazing together and nurtured by a common law.”2 The theme was taken up in Roman Stoicism. Cicero, in his own Republic, attributed to the Stoics the view that “true law” is “right reason, in agreement with nature, diffused over everyone, consistent, everlasting.” Whoever does not obey this law, he says, “ is fleeing from himself and treating his human nature with contempt; by this very fact he will pay the heaviest penalties, even if he escapes all conventional punishments.”3 The idea of the cosmic city is also invoked by Seneca, who talks in On Leisure of human beings as belonging to two communities: “the one which is great and truly common, embracing gods and men, in which we look neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the boundaries of our state by the sun; the other, the one to which we have been assigned by the accident of our birth.”4 The connections between Providence and cosmopolitanism can seem remote to us now that the idea of Providence is closely associated with the idea of divine will. But for the Stoics the connotations of Providence were of a necessary order, a necessity which was, however, entirely consistent with the idea of a cosmos imbued with purpose. Although Kantian ethics has had a profound influence on modern ideas of the autonomous will, Kant’s philosophy also has strong continuities with ancient Stoic ideas that now seem at odds with belief in free will – ideas of the coexistence of Providence 1

2

3 4

For an illuminating treatment of the complexities in the Stoic ideal of living in accordance with nature, see Gisela Striker’s “Following Nature: A Study in Stoic Ethics,” in Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 9, pp. 1–73, reprinted in her Essays on Hellenistic Epistemology and Ethics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 221–80. On the connections between Stoic cosmology and Stoic ethics, and the history of the idea of the “cosmic city,” see Malcolm Schofield’s excellent discussion in The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). From Plutarch, On the fortune of Alexander 329A–B (H. von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta [Leipzig, 1903–5], 1.262), as translated by A. A. Long and D. N. Sedley, in The Hellenistic Philosophers (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), vol. I, p. 429. Cicero, Republic 3.33 (H. von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta [Leipzig, 1903–5] 3.325), as translated by Long and Sedley, pp. 432–3. Seneca, On Leisure 4.1, as translated by Long and Sedley, p. 431.

202 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim and necessity, grounding a very different understanding of divine and human freedom. There is a historical precedent, too, for another crucial strand in Kant’s treatment of Providence: its connections with time. For Kant, human progress is Providence unfolding in time; and it is also human reason unfolding in history. The idea of divine Providence as entering into human history was articulated by Augustine in The City of God. To understand what is distinctive about Kant’s treatment of Providence-in-time, it is helpful to look briefly at Augustine’s very different version of that idea. It pleases divine Providence, Augustine says in The City of God, to “dispose of the times,” so that the law which is at one time given in the “mouths of angels,” or in a multiplicity of gods, can at another time find more adequate expression through Christian ministers.5 But for Augustine divine Providence did not unfold in human history as such. Instead, it unfolded in the narrative of the coming of Christ. Providence was not directly linked with human history; it was connected with the idea of Christianity as the language of God in the world. For Augustine, like Plotinus before him, Providence belongs properly not in time but in the eternal. It belongs with the “intellectual and immutable beauty” which forms the rich assortment of transitory things.6 In metaphors of music drawn from Plotinus, Augustine talks in a letter of God as “ordering all events according to his providence, until the beauty of the completed course of time, whose parts are the dispensations suitable to each different period, shall have played itself out, like the great melody of some ineffable composer.”7 But for Augustine this unfolding of Providence belongs with the narrative of sacred history, the narrative of God’s word becoming incarnate in the world. The temporalising of Providence belongs not in the secular world but in the history of the Christian “City of God” which he contrasts with it. For Kant in contrast it is in human history itself that Providence unfolds in the world; and it is in the future achievement of the “cosmopolitan goal” that the aims of divine Providence will be realized. This is Kant’s innovation in the history of ideas of Providence. To see just how innovative it is, it is helpful to understand not only what he borrowed from older ideas of Providence and cosmopolitanism but also his use of the narrative of human 5 6 7

Augustine, The City of God, Book X, translated by John Healey, (London: J. M. Dent & Sons, 1962), vol. I, Chapter XV, p. 288. Augustine, op. cit., Book X, Chapter XIV, p. 288. Augustine, Epistle 138, i,5, as translated in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London: Faber and Faber, 1967), p. 318.


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progress that is embedded in his essay. Kant revives the ancient conceptual connections between ideas of Providence and cosmopolitanism by articulating both in terms of human history. He does this, in turn, by adapting a genre that was already familiar. His remarkable story of the development of the human species into moral maturity through conflict did not spring from nowhere. He was making his own variations on a philosophical fiction that had already been offered by Rousseau, subtly retelling the tale of origins through which Rousseau had expressed a very different view of human progress. Tales once told can be retold with variations; and philosophical tales can be adapted to express different philosophical insights. Rousseau was himself adapting philosophical fictions that had been elaborated by other philosophers. In the opening sections of the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality he complained that, although the philosophers who have inquired into the foundations of society have all felt the necessity of going back to a “state of nature,” not one of them has gotten there. Dwelling on the flaws that have characterized human beings in corrupt societies, he argues they have transferred to the state of nature traits that were in fact acquired in society. In speaking of human beings in an uncivilized condition, they in fact described “the social man.” In response Rousseau developed his own imaginative strategy – his own fiction – in the form of a tale of origins. He told a story of the development of the human species on the model of the development of an individual human being. The parallel story – the development of an individual human being in accordance with “natural” principles – was told in Émile. Rousseau’s tale of the development of the species was supposed to reveal true human nature. His disaffection with the corruptions inherent in contemporary society was expressed by the positioning of his own present – and the terrible future which can be expected to follow it – in relation to the whole story of humanity. At the end of the introductory section, he says: “Discontented with your present state, for reasons which threaten your unfortunate descendants with still greater discontent, you will perhaps wish it were in your power to go back; and this feeling should be a panegyric on your first ancestors, a criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror to the unfortunates who will come after you.”8 Rousseau derived some optimism from his belief in Providence; there are in his story glimpses of positive transformations of currently corrupted social institutions to yield a new 8

As translated by G. D. H. Cole in Jean-Jacques Rousseau, The Social Contract and Discourses (London: J. M. Dent & Sons Ltd.), p. 46.

204 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim closeness to nature. That positive vision of the future of the species is elaborated in The Social Contract; his overall treatment of the future prospects of the human species is not pessimistic. But his version of the tale of origins in the Second Discourse emphasizes the relative bleakness of the present condition of humanity. In the Idea Kant adapts Rousseau’s story of progress to offer both a more positive view of his own present and a celebration of the future. Within the shared frame of a chronological fiction, Kant tells a very different story from Rousseau’s. His version of social hope looks forward to an intensely imagined future “cosmopolitan” stage of human history. This era of cosmopolitanism is a construct of the imagination; but it is imagined not as a utopia but as an achievable, and indeed inevitable, future. Rousseau had seen the social antagonism of his times as indicating the corruption of the species under conditions of supposed social progress. Kant in contrast sees it as a necessary stimulus that will elicit nascent, distinctively human capacities for reason. Without these “qualities of unsociability,” which give rise to resistance between human beings, “all talents would, in an Arcadian pastoral life of perfect concord, contentment and mutual love, remain eternally hidden in their germs; human beings, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would give their existence hardly any greater worth than that of their domesticated beasts” (8:22). There is a gentle irony in Kant’s description of the limitations of a conflictfree mode of life. It evokes in its wistful, bucolic simplicity the idyllic period that Rousseau, in the second part of the Discourse on the Origins of Inequality, evokes as the golden age of human development – the times when men and women frolicked around the oak trees, enjoying the pleasures of sociability without the conflict-ridden competitiveness that emerges in more fully developed society. Kant makes the Rousseauian overtones even more explicit in a later passage that directly challenges Rousseau’s descriptions of social corruption. His crucial difference from Rousseau lies in where they position their present in relation to the narrative of progress. In Kant’s version of the story, human nature “endures the hardest ills under the deceptive appearance of external welfare” when it is “almost half-way through its formation.” Rousseau, he says, was “not so wrong” when he preferred to that stage “the condition of savages” as long as one “leaves out this last stage to which our species has yet to ascend.” Rousseau’s flawed human beings have not yet reached the state of full moral maturity. “Cultivated” though his contemporaries may be by art and science, and “civilized” in “all sorts of social decorum and propriety,” they are still a long way from the fullness of development that is nature’s purpose for them (8:27).


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Like Rousseau, Kant emphasizes themes of origin and development in evaluating the future prospects of humanity. But he takes the conceptual connections between human history and Providence further than Rousseau. Talk of the “purposes” of nature runs right through Kant’s essay. He writes in the language of Providence and the text resonates with the history of that idea. Yet this is a Providence cleverly adapted to a new sense of human history. There are echoes of Leibniz’s concern with Providence in Kant’s remarkable opening passages on the order that is hidden in the apparent chaos of the human world. However, Leibniz’s vision was in comparison static, indeed atemporal. He was concerned with the beautiful mathematical structures that could be discerned by the informed eye in an apparently random distribution of numbers. From the start, Kant’s emphasis is on the temporal unfolding of human lives in all their messy unpredictability. What in the actions of individuals strikes us as “confused and irregular” may be recognized in the history of the whole species, he says, as “steadily progressing though slow development of its original predispositions.” Individual human beings and even whole nations think little about this fact, since while each pursues its own aim in its own way and one often contrary to another, they are proceeding unnoticed, as by a guiding thread, according to an aim of nature, which is unknown to them, and are laboring at its promotion, although even if it were to become known to them it would matter little to them. (8:17)

These remarks not only echo Leibniz’s fascination with the hidden order of the apparently random, but also his attempts to reconcile the freedom of the individual human will with the divine choice of the best, which benignly encompasses our decisions. Leibniz, like the Stoics, saw the free acts of human beings against the background of the whole, interconnected cosmos. Kant’s way of reconciling freedom and necessity engages more deeply with the temporal aspects of human existence; each act is seen against the background of the whole of history. Kant sees his present as bearing within it the past of the entire human species and as reaching out into the entire future of that species. It is a giddying perspective from which to contemplate human action and Kant acknowledges that it is in some ways a sobering – even bleak – one. Human activities may occasionally display an apparent wisdom. Seen within the frame of the “great stage of the world” they are, however, “woven together out of folly, childish vanity, often also out of childish malice and the rage to destruction.” The good news is that, the worse things are, the better they are becoming. Human destructiveness has its part to play in the emergence of moral maturity. It achieves a higher

206 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim purpose, one which goes beyond any individual or collective decisionmaking. Behind the apparently “nonsensical course of things human” there lies a profound “aim of nature” (8:18). The ancient dispute between Epicurean and Stoic cosmologies – between chance and all-pervasive purpose – is recast as a contrast between rival modern hypotheses about history and politics. On the one hand, there is what Kant sees as the implausible idea that cosmopolitan order could emerge through “random collisions” between states (8:25). On the other, there is Kant’s own preferred hypothesis that Nature develops the capacities of the human race by a regular process within apparent disorder. Within that frame of purpose-in-nature, there emerges a new resolution of the old controversies about how the human capacity for evil is to be reconciled with providential cosmic harmony. Kant offers a positive view of the evils that arise within human societies. Yet, unlike many earlier resolutions of the “problem” of evil through appeal to the idea of Providence, his approach does not attempt to subsume human suffering into any re-description in terms of the ends of some agent other than ourselves. Despite Leibniz’s strong affirmation of the freedom of the human will, his reconciliation of human evil with cosmic harmony invokes a trust in purposes other than our own: the inscrutable purposes of divine goodness and justice. Although Kant sees nature as purposive, the only “end” it has for human beings is the self-realization that is implicit in their own nature. Through crises of “unsocial sociability” the human species ascends gradually to its own highest level. There is no room here for human suffering to be construed as what we might now call “collateral damage” in the achievement of higher divine purposes. Leibniz sought to reconcile human freedom with divine purpose by incorporating human inclinations and desires into the best of all possible worlds, already understood and chosen by God. Our cooperation in the divine plan involves trustingly accepting our place in a bigger picture that we can only dimly understand. Kant’s reconciliation strategy is different: our antagonisms and the suffering they produce are the necessary catalyst for the emergence of the dormant rational capacities that distinguish us from the rest of the universe. In Kant’s version of Providence the higher ends of nature coincide with the realization of our own human nature. What is expected of us if we are to co-operate with “the wisdom of nature” is that we exercise our minds – that we use our reason. In the slogan of enlightenment that Kant made famous in his companion essay “What is Enlightenment?” we must “dare to know.” Rather than mindlessly trusting, like Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide, in the inscrutable ends of a higher being, we achieve the ends of nature by learning


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to think for ourselves. This can be read as an adaptation of old Stoic ideas of cosmic purpose to the understanding of human history, yet it rests on a distinctively modern preoccupation with what separates human nature out from the rest of the world. Kant thus emphasizes the temporal dimensions of Providence in a way that allows it to operate in the unfolding of human history. Keeping in mind that crucial shift in the understanding of Providence can help us see more clearly the role played by his tale of origins in the overall argumentative strategy of his essay. The retelling of a philosophical story is of course not the only thing that is going on here. The essay involves an audacious mixing of genres. It brings together a literary device – the construction of a fiction – with an apparent testing of hypotheses in the manner of scientific argument, set in a highly a-priori mode. The essay is structured as a set of foundational “propositions” and methodically arranged elaborations, which together draw out different aspects of the relations between the human individual and the species. Despite the deliberate evoking of the methods of the sciences, the essay as a whole reads as a sustained imaginative fiction, tested against the constraints of emotional plausibility. Although Kant makes few explicit references to Rousseau’s tale of origins, the whole essay is suffused with its presence. The background philosophical story provides an imaginative frame against which the series of “propositions” are to be assessed. The tale of origins demands of us an evaluation in terms of fittingness – an appeal to an integrated response of reason, emotion and imagination. But this does not mean that Kant’s “arguments” are merely subjective or emotional. Affects and imagination are brought into interaction with the procedures of rational argument; but the appeal to reason is by no means abandoned. Nor does the appeal to reason replace the exercise of imagination: the tale of human development is incorporated into the argument and cannot be readily separated from it. Kant insists that in accepting that human beings do not act from instinct, we thereby accept that human reason is such that it can develop its potential only in the species, not in the individual. Having accepted that, we are supposed to see also that the afflictions that befall the human race are intelligible in relation to the story as a whole. That human beings depend on the labors and sufferings of their forebears can be seen as necessary “once one assumes that a species of animals should have reason and, as a class of rational beings who all die, while the species is immortal, should nevertheless attain to completeness in the development of their predispositions” (8:20). The force of logic and the persuasive force of the tale of origins here interact. Kant, like many philosophers before him, is using literary strategies

208 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim for philosophical ends. In bringing the philosophical use of fictions together so explicitly with the logical structuring of his “Propositions,” he is also doing something that is distinctively his own. Philosophers in the past had used tales of origin to elicit a sense of necessity – to present not just a pleasing story but a sense of fittingness, a sense of how things must be. “Something thus it must have been …” says Plotinus in presenting his heady account in the Enneads of the unfolding of “the All” into determinate being. Plato, his model, had already in the Timaeus used a tale of origins as a means of making persuasive his convictions about how human society must be organized – trying to show how things should now be, on the basis of how they must have been in their origins. Kant’s tale reaches into the future. The genre of the philosophical tale of origins has here taken an audacious leap into the idea of a “philosophical history” which is as much concerned with the future as with the past and present. This is a “history” in which the issue of truth will be assessed by judging “how world events must develop if they are to conform to certain rational ends.” “Dare to know,” indeed! Kant in effect calls on his readers to dare to know how things must be in the future. He repeatedly insists that some conclusions about the future of humanity are simply unthinkable. It is unthinkable, he says in the eighth proposition, that, out of contemporary disorder, nothing rational will emerge, unthinkable that things might simply remain as they have been. It is not thinkable, he insists, that all the civilization and cultural progress so far attained might be ultimately succeeded by a state of lawless freedom, by the rule of blind chance. The “unthinkable” in this context goes beyond subjective dismay at a bad prospect. For Kant it is a requirement of rational thought that disorder must ultimately give way to order. Current discord must be secretly guided by the wisdom of nature. Grasping Kant’s “necessities” clearly demands an intellectual response, but it is equally clear that he wants to elicit in his readers something more than the evaluation of steps in a logical argument. It involves a capacity to imaginatively grasp the future in present events. The “universal cosmopolitan condition” to be realized in a “future large state body” is a distant goal. Kant is convinced that it lies within the imaginative reach of his own times. The rough outline of the future cosmopolitan body are already beginning to emerge, he says: “… already a feeling begins to stir in all members, each of which has an interest in the preservation of the whole” (8:28). The sense of fittingness evoked by the exercise of philosophical story telling has entered new territory. The philosopher’s narrative shows how human history – at least in its broad parameters – must unfold. But what are


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we to make of this alleged necessity? Kant acknowledges in the defense of his final Proposition that it may seem absurd to suggest that such an exercise should yield anything more than “a novel.” Yet he insists that the ultimate aim of the exercise which he is here initiating is truth. It is, however, a truth grounded in a practical imperative: this is how things must be if we are not to despair of ever finding a rational aim behind the spectacle of the world. It is how things must be if the hope of enlightenment is to be achieved – that “man’s destiny can be fulfilled here on earth.” It is how things must be if our hopes are not to be confined to what dim expectations we may hold about what we might find “only in some other world.” The sense of necessity which Kant evokes in his way of telling the tale of origins involves a self-fulfilling optimism. The optimism implicit in the positioning of his own present finds expression in a resolve to shape the future. That optimism is grounded in a conviction of providential purpose at work in the world. This purpose is not seen as divine intervention, but rather as operating through the efforts of human beings to achieve the fullness of their own natures. But Kant does not merely offer a description of these operations in human history. His strategic use of the tale of origins demands of his readers that they position themselves with him as participants in the ongoing narrative of enlightenment. It is an essential part of Kant’s story, as we have seen, that in any period of history the stirrings of the cosmopolitan future can be temporarily thwarted by “caprice and folly.” But in daring to take up the tasks of enlightenment, his readers are supposed to have the opportunity to cooperate with the wisdom of nature. In the final sections of the essay Kant’s appropriation of the tale of origins yields a rhetorical challenge for his contemporary readers: they are invited to take up the challenge of consciously positioning themselves in their present. As enablers of the cosmopolitan future, they are asked to seize the historical moment, rather than putting capricious obstacles in the way of its onward flow. However Kant’s transformation of the tale of origins into a tale of the future goes even further: the call to enlightenment is addressed also to the future itself – to future generations, the remote descendants of his contemporaries, who will have to take up in their turn the legacy of “the burden of history” (8:31). Where Rousseau talks only in pitying terms of the “unfortunates” who will come later, Kant embraces future generations as fellow participants in the achievement of the cosmopolitan goal. Their own future conflicts will elicit in turn an accompanying process of enlightenment, a process which they too will either thwart or facilitate. “Without doubt they will prize the history of the oldest age, the documents of which might long

210 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim since have been extinguished, only from the viewpoint of what interests them, namely, what nations and governments have accomplished or harmed regarding a cosmopolitan aim” (8:31). His contemporaries, he insists, owe it to their descendants – to us – not to stand in the way of the emerging maturity of reason; we will in turn also owe it to our descendants to do likewise. Content and genre here interact to make the Idea an enactment of the exercise of imagination in which Kant invites his readers to participate. His essay embraces both the ancient past and the distant future. He has offered a temporalized version of the old Stoic idea of the “cosmic city,” transformed into the ideal of a universal cosmopolitan existence, to be realized as “the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop.” It is a grand vision. What became of it and is it still accessible to us? Something of Kant’s temporalizing of Providence resurfaces in Hegel’s even grander vision of human history as the unfolding of Nature into Spirit. Indeed, Hegel’s “Spirit” seems to have absorbed the very idea of Providence so completely that there is little room in his philosophy for an explicit role for Providence. When Hegel talks of Providence in the Shorter Logic he identifies it with his concept of “the notion” which is for him “the truth of necessity.”9 His exalted sense of the future as the unfolding of nature into Spirit goes beyond the shy hope of Kant’s vision of Nature’s providential purpose for humanity, unfolding in history. Here Providence disappears into “Spirit” – and with it disappears also the related Kantian vision of cosmopolitanism as the full achievement of Enlightenment reason. In the absence of either a philosophically viable concept of Providence or a readiness to take seriously grand narratives of progress, it is not surprising that Kant’s cosmopolitan vision can fail to engage modern readers. To make sense of it we have to look, not so much forward from Kant, as back through him to the Stoics. Providence has receded and with it the conceptual connections that once tied cosmopolitanism to ideas of an ordered cosmos. Can we enter into the exercise of imagining ourselves as enabling the emergence of a cosmopolitan world order, grounded in enlightenment reason? Or are we on the other side of the collapse of Kant’s ideals, living amidst the ruins of his Enlightenment vision? Can we really enter at all into the exercise of retelling for our own times Kant’s inspiring story?

9

The Logic of Hegel, translated from The Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, by William Wallace (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904), Chapter VIII, sec. 147, pp. 266–71.


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It is inherent in Kant’s version of the genre that his tale of origins can accommodate the horrors of present conflict. In that respect, it continues the history of the ideas of Providence that preceded it: no evil is so great that it cannot be encompassed by Providence. It is not our realism about the horrors of our present that most challenges our imagination here; perhaps it is rather the limits of our capacity to embrace a Kantian optimism about the future. It may be difficult, for example, to share Kant’s conviction that our individual mortality is encompassed by an indubitable immortality of the human species. We may well find it all too possible to entertain the hypothesis that Kant found “unthinkable” – that the ultimate future of our species might turn out to be “a hell of horrors.” Yet there is much that we can learn from the exercise of imagination involved in trying to place ourselves within Kant’s philosophical tale of Enlightenment reason. It can illuminate our own relations to the ideals of the Enlightenment. Kant’s essay shows us that those ideals, definitive though they were for the self-understanding of modernity, were themselves rooted in philosophical ideas that are much older. In grasping our imaginative distance from his vision of the future we can recover lost conceptual connections between familiar concepts. Trying to locate ourselves in Kant’s philosophical story can help us to see, for example, the links between ideas of human rights and cosmopolitan ideals – between the “universality” of our rights as humans and the idea of being “citizens of the world.” It comes readily to us to associate the discourse of universal human rights with ideas of a distinctive human essence – of a timeless human nature, common to all human beings. Reading the Idea can make us aware of unfamiliar connections between modern ideals and old ideas of human beings as part of an interconnected cosmos. To explore these conceptual connections, which make the Idea of continuing relevance, I want now to turn briefly to Kant’s own development of some of its central themes in his later political essays. His suggestion that the a sense of the future is already stirring in his own present is more fully developed in The Contest of the Faculties, where he relates it to the enthusiastic response he has now witnessed among his contemporaries to the event of the French Revolution. What matters about the revolution, he says in Section 6 of that work, is not its success or its failure – not its place in “empirical history” – but rather the response it elicits in its spectators. The revolution may succeed or it may fail. “It may be so filled with misery and atrocities that no right-thinking man would ever decide to make the same experiment again at such a price, even if he could hope to carry it out successfully at the second attempt.” Yet the revolution has nonetheless

212 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim aroused in “the hearts and desires” of its spectators a sympathy which could not have been caused by anything other than “a moral disposition within the human race.”10 Kant insists that it is not the event itself that matters here, but rather the “attitude of the onlookers.” Grasping this special, future-imbued significance of the event as “spectacle” demands a rather special set of observers; and it is here that we see the connections with Kant’s talk in Idea of the maturing and flourishing of human reason. To sense the stirring of the future in their own present, Kantian “spectators” need to be able to read events as signs pointing to things yet to be realized. But in responding to events in that way the spectators are already positioning themselves as sharing in the emergence of Enlightenment reason. Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal can here be fruitfully read in conjunction with his talk of a “public” use of reason in the companion essay to theIdea, the essay which so impressed Michel Foucault,11 “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” By the “public use of one’s own reason,” Kant says early in that essay, he means “that use which anyone may make of it as a man of learning addressing the entire reading public.” The private use of reason, in contrast, is “that which a person may make of it in a particular civil post or office, with which he is entrusted.”12 This “public” use of reason is closely associated with Kant’s slogan “Dare to Know” and the idea of it is closely connected to the kind of reason we have seen at stake in his “cosmopolitan aim,” the reason he sees as expressed in the moral maturity of the species. For Kant, as we have seen, its full articulation necessarily involves the regulation not only of individual lives but also of the relations between nations. But what makes this kind of reason “cosmopolitan”? What connects these threads in Kant’s reflections on reason in his political essays, I want to suggest, is the central theme of the Idea: the idea of an emergent autonomy. His concern is with reason as an evolving capacity – an ongoing, open-ended process. For him, it is an unfolding “predisposition” rather than a completed product. This evolving autonomous reason cannot be acted out in accordance with a prescribed procedure. It involves opening out to what is not yet determinate, a reaching out 10 11

12

“The Contest of the Faculties,” as translated by H. B. Nisbet in Hans Reiss, ed., Kant: Political Writings, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 182. See Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (New York: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp. 32–50, and his “What is Critique?” in James Schmidt, ed., What is Enlightenment? Eighteenth Century Answers and Twentieth Century Questions (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1996), pp. 382–98. “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” as translated by H. B. Nisbet, in Reiss, ed., Kant: Political Writings, p. 55.


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to the future. Kant’s “public” use of reason evokes a public intellectual space, as it were, the occupation of which cannot be circumscribed. This space must be “cosmopolitan,” for it must be open to all human beings who are capable of thinking for themselves. There can be no foreclosing on the requirements for inclusion in this space. It embraces all who can project themselves into a future that they will themselves bring about. Autonomous reasoners are the makers of the cosmopolitan order of the future, rather than its passive subjects.13 Kant’s moving embrace, in the Idea, of us, his future readers, is an imaginative enactment of the future realization of this cosmopolitan public intellectual space. We can get further insight into the cosmopolitan ideal enunciated in the Idea by looking at a twist Kant gives it in his best-known political essay, Perpetual Peace. Here we see Kant putting his cosmopolitanism to work as a basis for critique of what is happening in his own present. He talks of a limited right to hospitality: the right of a stranger not to be treated with hostility when he arrives on someone else’s territory. This is a “right of resort” which entitles all men “to present themselves in the society of others by virtue of their communal possession of the earth’s surface.” The human race shares in common this “right to the earth’s surface” and can utilize it as “a means of social intercourse.” This “right of resort” is for Kant an issue not of “philanthropy” but of right. Human beings have a right not to be treated with hostility, so long as they behave “in a peaceable manner” in the places they happen to find themselves. Kant’s concern was with the hospitality that facilitated voyages of exploration and commerce. The expectations implicit in those activities, he thought, often went beyond the rights to limited hospitality that they could justly claim in the territories entered. The “right of strangers,” he argued, did not extend beyond “those conditions which make it possible for them to attempt to enter into relations with the native inhabitants.” In this way, continents distant from each other can enter into peaceful mutual relations which may eventually be regulated by public laws, thus bringing the human race nearer to a cosmopolitan constitution. If we compare with this ultimate end the inhospitable conduct of the civilised states of our continent, especially the commercial states, the injustice which they display in visiting foreign

13

Onora O’Neil stresses the importance of ideas of “construction” and “building” in understanding the connections between Kant’s treatment of reason in his political essays and in his major works. See her essay, “Vindicating Reason,” in Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant, pp. 280–308; and her Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), Chapter 2, “The Public Use of Reason,” pp. 28–50.

214 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim countries and peoples (which in their case is the same as conquering them) seems appallingly great.14

It may well seem far-fetched to us now to think of the rights of uninvited strangers as conceptually connected with the very nature of Enlightenment reason. But for Kant it is all part of the unfolding narrative of reason he had boldly sketched in the Idea. The context of his “right to hospitality” was of course very different from the mass movement of peoples that frames our contemporary concerns with the rights of asylum seekers, refugees and “economic migrants.” His use of the cosmopolitan perspective to ground the “rights of strangers” can nonetheless remind us that the challenging issues thrown up by the uninvited visitor go beyond considerations of compassion, or what Kant called “philanthropy.”15 Trying to place ourselves imaginatively in Kant’s cosmopolitan future can serve to remind us that the confronting idea of a “right to resort” – a right of the uninvited stranger to at least a limited hospitality – was for him grounded in a cosmopolitanism which he saw as the core of Enlightenment reason. Understanding the ways in which his version of cosmopolitanism reworked older connections with ideas of Providence can also allow us to see that it is an ideal that reaches back, through his political philosophy, to the thought of the ancient Greeks. The content of Kant’s own version of the “cosmopolitan ideal” was of course very different from what the ancient Stoics had in mind when they talked of being “citizens of the world,” and what content we might now give to cosmopolitanism as an ideal will be different again. Kant’s call for us “future descendants” to insert ourselves into the onward path of progress by embracing the cosmopolitan ideal is unlikely to inspire an enthusiasm comparable to what he saw stirring amongst his contemporaries in response to the spectacle of the French Revolution. Yet there are continuities that connect us back through Kant to those ancient ideals, and they continue to be relevant, even if we cannot share his vision of ongoing progress. We do not have to share Kant’s optimism about the future of the human species to learn from his brilliant expounding of the cosmopolitan thread in

14 15

“Perpetual Peace,” as translated by N. B. Nisbet, in Reiss, ed, Kant: Political Writings, p. 106. For a useful discussion of the relevance of Kant’s treatment of the “right to hospitality” to contemporary issues relating to the rights of refugees, see Seyla Benhabib, The Rights of Others: Aliens, Residents and Citizens (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), Chapter I, “On Hospitality: Rereading Kant’s Cosmopolitan Right,” pp. 25–48.


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Enlightenment thought. Rereading Idea can make us aware that for him a “cosmopolitan” approach to world order was inseparable from the unfolding of Enlightenment reason. Whether we can think of contemporary setbacks to cosmopolitan ideals as transient capricious follies, which we can trust Providence to use for the ultimate well-being of our species, is of course another matter.

chapter 11

Norms, facts, and the philosophy of history Terry Pinkard

So many of the themes that later surface in German idealism’s treatment of the philosophy of history make their first appearance in Kant’s essay – indeed, so much so that it is tempting to see Kant as foreshadowing Hegel’s own famous treatment of the subject in his lectures. This has not gone unnoticed, and there have been recent attempts to make Kant into a Hegelian avant la lettre (or maybe Hegel into a Kantian propter hoc). However, as Pauline Kleingeld has convincingly shown in her work on the topic, the idea that Kant is really offering up a version of Hegel’s own historicized conception of reason, or that Kant can make the assertions he makes only at the cost of inconsistency with the basic tenets of the critical philosophy, are not really tenable positions to hold, even if Kant’s own lists of the various problems to be solved by such a philosophy of history looks in some respects like the checklist that the later post-Kantians read as they constructed their own views on the matter.1 On the one hand, there is one strikingly obvious difference between Kant and his idealists successors (most prominently, Hegel) which has been noted so often that it is only worth briefly mentioning here. Whereas Kant thinks that the achievement of a free political and social life is a regulative ideal, something for which we hope and progressively approximate but never actually fully attain, Hegel holds that it is in fact entirely possible to have a free society in the here and now which answers to all we can reasonably hope for in a free society. This has of course led to the suspicion that whatever else the differences between Kant and Hegel on this point, Hegel is surely all too triumphalist and Kant is the more sober of the two. However, the more basic problem which motivates and orients the critical philosophy in the first place and which sets the stage for Kant’s and his successor’s idea of a philosophy of history could be called, to coin a 1

The most compact statement of her views is to found in Kleingeld, “Kant, History, and the Idea of Moral Development,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 16, 1 (1999).

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Norms, facts, and the philosophy of history

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phrase, that of the relation between “facticity and normativity.”2 The Kantian system famously argues for there being two exclusive ways in which we must understand ourselves and understand the world: There is the world (and ourselves) as it exists in itself and as it appears (and must appear) to us. Notoriously, this distinction between the “in itself” and “appearance” has proved to be one of the most vexatious of all Kant’s claims for every Kant commentator since Kant’s own day to comprehend, and there has thus never been a full consensus on just how to characterize the distinction. Be that as it may, it has nonetheless always been clear that whether the distinction amounts to a “two aspect” or a “two worlds” theory, there are in any event two versions of the world and ourselves. It is also clear that whatever else Kant is taken to be saying, he is claiming that there is no way in which we can make sense of our own freedom without invoking that distinction so that as we must appear to ourselves, there is no possibility for freedom, but as we must practically think of ourselves, we must take ourselves to be free. Thus, in the realm of facticity, as natural beings embedded in a deterministic natural world, we are no more free than anything else, but as beings taken to exist in a noumenal world (a world grasped in thought that goes beyond possible appearance), we are capable of exercising a distinct form of causality that is not itself comprehensible in terms of the category of causality we must bring to bear in making sense of the natural world – of that world under the only conditions in which we could ever have experience of it. Of course the first question raised about any such twofold view has to do with the way in which the two aspects are understood to relate to each other or to interact with each other. This is especially important for Kant, who was acutely aware of the role of moral training and moral instruction and was also equally aware of the strains such an attention to ourselves, construed naturalistically, put on our awareness of ourselves as subject to the normative demands of the “fact of reason.” Thus, at one point in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant goes so far as to note, But freedom of choice can never be defined – as some have tried to define it – as the capacity to make a choice for or against the law … even though choice as a phenomenon provides frequent examples of this in experience … We can also see that freedom can never be located in a rational subject’s being able to make a choice in opposition to his (lawgiving) reason, even though experience proves often enough that this happens (though we still cannot conceive how this is possible).3 2 3

The allusion here is, I hope, obvious: Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to a Discourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996). MS 6:226, emphasis mine.

218 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim What motivates the need for a philosophy of history is just this basic tension between normativity and facticity, between, or as we might put it, a conception of norms as not bounded by natural facts and norms that seem to be only reflections of a particular point in time, of a particular social set-up, or as the expression perhaps even of a particular point of view. This constitutes the set of problems which have haunted philosophy since Kant: how do we give a unified account of ourselves as bound by norms that makes room both for the normativity of reason and for the fact that these norms must appear to us as expressions of merely natural inclinations, positive laws, social rules, or given interests of one sort or another? This is especially worrisome if one takes the Kantian turn to be ruling out any answer to that problem as resting on claims that we are made of different “stuff” than the rest of the natural world (say, “spiritual” or “mental” stuff). Kant irrevocably shifted the question away from whether we were made of different “stuff” into an inquiry into the kinds of activities which characterize our agency, and from the first Critique onward, those activities were characterized as norm-governed (as being, for example, judgments made in accordance with rules) rather than merely events happening in accordance with natural laws. This quite naturally raises some questions about whether Kant’s own conception of our freedom as not being conditioned by anything in the natural world – as its being the result of our exercising our “own” causality – and his own view of the categorical imperative as being timeless and unconditionally binding on us can possibly be consistent with anything other than a rather moralistic or highly moralized conception of history. Pauline Kleingeld lumps these worries under the topics of both the “universal validity problem” and the “atemporal problem.” The problem of, in her words, “universal validity” is resolved by noting that “it is not reason that develops, but rather the predispositions for the use of reason.”4 Likewise, she claims that the “atemporal problem” is resolved by noting that although the character and binding quality of the categorical imperative does not vary over history, our “understanding” of it does.5 Finally, as she also notes, Kant himself admits that we cannot know the noumenal dispositions of an agent, but we must nonetheless also think that they are “in accordance with the empirical character of the agent.”6

4 5

Kleingeld, “Kant, History, and the Idea of Moral Development,” p. 62. Ibid., p. 69. 6 Ibid., p. 62.


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Given these commitments, it is thus not surprising that Kant’s view of history sees it as marking progress in something like our understanding of what the moral law requires and in the establishing and maintaining of institutions that more adequately fit the requirements of the categorical imperative. That there has been change in history in what we take the moral law to demand of us is clear; that there has also been progress evidenced in those changes is, so Kant is driven to conclude, also clear when viewed from the practical point of view. So Kant concludes, if there has indeed been this kind of progress in history, then there must be something about our natural and social make-up that is pushing us in the very same direction in which we would have been going if we had been making those decisions all along in full self-awareness of the demands of the moral law itself (even though we clearly have not). Kant’s claims here, however, are not all that univocally clear. On the one hand, the language of “discovery” does indeed fit nicely with some other things that Kant says elsewhere, such as the famous line in the Grundlegung to the effect that, We need not now wonder, when we look back upon all the previous efforts that have been made to discover the principle of morality, why they have one and all been found to fail. Their authors saw man as tied to laws by his duty, but it never occurred to them that he is subject only to laws which are made by himself and yet are universal, and that he is bound only to act in conformity with a will which is his own but has as nature’s purpose for it the function of making universal law.7

On the other hand, this does fit nearly so well with the kind of claim Kant so famously makes in the opening sentences of “What is Enlightenment?” where he notes that the failure to achieve the kind of freedom that comes with thinking for oneself is not so much a cognitive failure, a failure to discover the correct law, as it is more like an attitudinal failure; failure to achieve enlightenment, Kant says, is after all a, self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another.8

The charge against the predecessors of an enlightened age is thus not that there is something they failed to discover, as if their failure was something on 7 8

G 4:432. Kant, “The Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” in Reiss, ed., Kant: Political Writings, p. 54.

220 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim the order of simply not getting their premises into line with each other. It is more along the lines of a practical or moral indictment of them as, in Kant’s own words, their being “lazy” and “cowardly.” The predispositions which have developed historically, as Kleingeld puts it, seem to be developing more along the lines not so much of that of blindness to the claims of the categorical imperative but along the lines of some kind of motivational disorder that makes it impossible even to see the moral law as a (selfproduced) incentive to action. We thus seem to marking moral progress in history in terms either of getting our predispositions in line with what rationality has in fact always required of us (the discovery model), or in terms of finally getting the correct predispositions to put us in the position of finally having the courage to think for ourselves (the indictment model). However, since the terms of the critical philosophy rule out our making any connection between the factual development of these predispositions and the actual use of the freedom that transcends all possible theoretical knowledge of it, we are thus led to think that there therefore must be some way in which nature (or a wise creator) has so arranged things that the two worlds or the two aspects will come to be in harmony with each other. That is, nature seems to operate as if it had a plan to make the empirical interests of individuals collide with the interests of others in such a way that certain institutional set-ups are made necessary to deal with those conflicts, which in turn provokes further collisions, which in turn leads to a state of affairs such as we find in an “enlightened age” and which begins to look structurally like what we would have arrived at if the institutions had in fact been designed by perfectly rational agents with a moral end in mind. The effects of nature and the demands of morality can be conceived as eventually coming to harmonize, even though there is no way to demonstrate that harmony to exist nor, in the last analysis, to make any metaphysical sense of it. On the surface, this looks especially troubling if one were to regard this finding from the practical point of view itself (where we must assume ourselves to be free). On the one hand, I might ask myself: what am I, a concerned moral agent, supposed to do to help further this kind of moral progress? On the other hand, from the naturalist point of view, it might seem as if it does not matter what I do, at least in the long run, since human nature itself is so constructed that it tends to put itself in situations which over the long haul will naturally force the issue toward the right conclusion even though no moral intention is at work in the process at all. Yet the very folly of human aspirations also inspires the practical requirement that we act to bring


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about a world in which the moral law is better supported by institutions appropriate to developing our predispositions to rational conduct.9 Although we cannot make any pre-critical metaphysical sense of this view of history (since the imputation of purposes to nature violates the strictures of the critical philosophy’s destruction of the possibility of classical metaphysics), we can still, so Kant seems to think, make philosophical sense of it with the tools that the critical philosophy supplies. The philosophy of history would show us why we must think of history as exhibiting rational progress (in terms of shaping our predispositions to rationality), why this cannot be given a metaphysical explanation (because of the gulf between things in themselves and appearance), and why this gives us a reassurance for acting morally. Moreover, as Kant makes clear, a complete philosophy of history should be able to show us that the “natural” social forces at work in history have as their object primarily the civil constitutions of various peoples. Here the philosophy of history has to come to terms with several different kinds of oppositions that animate Kant’s thought besides that of appearance and things in themselves. In particular, in Kant’s list of problems to be solved for there to be a philosophy of history, there are two different ones that stand out, one of which Kant labels the “most difficult problem” of all to solve. Both involve what looks like a conundrum or even a paradox (or perhaps are different versions of the same problem).

9

In “Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History” (published in 1786), Kant says that “thinking people are subject to a malaise which may even turn into moral corruption, a malaise of which the unthinking are ignorant – namely discontent with that providence by which the course of the world is governed. They feel this sentiment when they contemplate the evils which so greatly oppress the human race, with no hope (as it seems) of any improvement.” Immanuel Kant, “Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History,” in Kant’s Political Writings, p. 231. He follows that with the admonition, “it is of the utmost importance that we should be content with providence, even if the path it has laid out for us on earth is an arduous one” (“Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History,” in Kant’s Political Writings, p. 231). In “On the Common Saying: That May Be True in Theory But it is no use in Practice” (published much later in 1793), Kant notes that “it is a sight unfit for … the most ordinary, though right-thinking man to see the human race advancing over a period of time towards virtue, and then quickly relapsing the whole way back into vice and misery. It may perhaps be moving and instructive to watch such a drama for a while; but the curtain must eventually descend. For in the long run, it becomes a farce. And even if the actors do not tire of it – for they are fools – the spectator does, for any single act will be enough for him if he can reasonably conclude from it that the neverending play will go on in the same way forever.” Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying: ‘This May Be True in Theory, but It Does Not Apply in Practice,’ “ in Kant’s Political Writings, p. 88. Thus Kant notes that when we contemplate human history, what we at first seem to have before us is “woven together out of folly, childish vanity, often also out of childish malice and the rage to destruction” (Idea 8:18).

222 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim the first problem The first of these has to with Kant’s statement in the Grundlegung, where he is describing the formula of the kingdom of ends, that in such a kingdom (a Reich), each agent is both sovereign and subject; each both and at the same time legislates the law – each is thus a sovereign above which there is no greater power – and each is subject to the law which he and others have legislated, and each is thus subordinate to a power above himself. One way of taking this is as Kant’s own way of showing that the formula of the kingdom of ends provides an answer to why any putative alternative formulation in terms of a Leibnizian harmony of monads is in fact either reducible to or derivable from the formulation of universal law and is thus not really an alternative at all.10 Each individual agent thus “mirrors” within herself the systematic moral whole in which each respects the dignity of all others and acts only on maxims which meet the test of universalizability. In another context in the Critique of Judgment, Kant offers a model of judgment that seems to cash out what this might mean when he says that in seeking the required impartiality in judgments, we compare our judgment not so much with the actual as rather with the merely possible judgments of others, and put ourselves in the position of everyone else, merely by abstracting from the limitations that happen to attach to our own judging.11

To put it in Habermasian terms, in that work, Kant moves a more communicative sense to the kingdom of ends, which we can then imagine not as consisting in “agents-as-monads mirroring the moral decisions made by other such monads” but something more like a real give-and-take of mutual perspective-taking among reasoning agents. However, as Kant makes it clear, it would be wrong to assume that anything like this idealized giving and asking for reasons is what actually drives people to establish civic unions and civil constitutions (or perhaps to put it more precisely, what in the appearing world can be determined to drive them), since “human beings, who are otherwise so taken with unconstrained freedom, are compelled by need to enter into this 10

11

This is based on the suggestion made by Jens Timmerman, “Value without Regress: Kant’s ‘Formula of Humanity’ Revisited,” European Journal of Philosophy 14, 1 (2006), pp. 69–93. Timmerman claims that Kant’s rival formulations of the universal formulation of the moral law “re-cast the principle of Kantian ethics in the language of his philosophical rivals: Stoicism, teleology and Leibnizianism” (87n2). Critique of Judgment, §40.


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condition of coercion” (Idea 8:22), not by any such idealized activity of mutual perspective-taking. Yet in his discussion of the state of nature in the Metaphysics of Morals, he does not stress the natural social forces that impel people to form such civic unions for mutual advantage but the categorically binding obligation to do so. The issue has to do with what whether there is any unconditional obligation for people to leave the state of nature and enter into a civic union under law. Since it is clear that mutual advantage could never be the basis for such an unconditional obligation, there must be some way of deriving such an obligation from the categorical imperative itself. Kant in fact proposes this, but, in what will strike many casual readers of Kant as surprising (or, for those who read him through the lens of contemporary Kantian liberal political philosophy, even to be inconsistent), Kant concludes that this obligation necessarily requires us to conclude that the civic union established must take the form of what Jeremy Waldron has called (in full awareness of its initially problematic-sounding character) Kant’s “normative positivism” and which Robert Pippin has tried to show displays his proto-Fichtean commitments.12 As Kant makes clear in a variety of different places, the obligation to move out of a state of nature to a civic union could not be accomplished by what he calls a “unilateral will.” In a state of nature, I have a right to take possession of natural things as my property; this is so because whereas I have a variety of moral rights, those natural things have none, and thus I do them no wrong when I seize them for my own ends. I thereby also have a right to defend my rightful possessions, and this will inevitably, as an empirical fact, bring me into conflict with others. In his explanation of Kant’s reasoning about this, Waldron points out that the problems that occur in this regard are not those for which there is no right answer but which nonetheless require an answer, such as driving on the right or left side of the road. Rather, in conflicts over who was the first to occupy a piece of land, there is indeed a right answer, but, so Waldron argues, we cannot expect the feuding parties to be able to settle that on their own (an interpretation that he admits is not quite that easy to find in Kant but which is nonetheless, as he puts it, a “plausible” interpretation of the relevant ideas at work.)13 However, that looks as if it still makes the obligation to leave the state of nature rest on an empirical fact – even if for practical purposes also an unavoidable fact – about human beings and their propensity for disagreement, 12 13

Jeremy Waldron, “Kant’s Legal Positivism,” Harvard Law Review 109 (1996), and Robert Pippin, “The Kantian State,” forthcoming. Waldron, “Kant’s Legal Positivism,” p. 1550.

224 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim whereas Kant himself argues for a stronger point: no “univocal” will at all could possibly establish the duty to leave the state of nature. That is, nobody could decide on their own, even with the most benevolent of motives, that this was the way to resolve such property disputes. When I declare something to be my property, Kant says, “I thereby declare that everyone else is under obligation to refrain from using the object of my choice,” and “a unilateral will cannot serve as a coercive law for everyone with regard to possession that is external and therefore contingent, since that would infringe upon freedom in accordance with universal laws.”14 Kant even notes that this prohibition against a “unilateral will” is not merely an argument to the effect that no single individual could legitimately perform this act but that no mere collection of individuals could do that, for as he puts it, “a unilateral will (and a bilateral but still particular will is also unilateral) cannot put everyone under an obligation that is in itself contingent,” and he immediately adds that this requires “a will that is omnilateral, that is united … a priori and necessarily.”15 No de facto social collection of wills can suffice; a universal will is required to establish the duty to leave the state of nature. This puts Kant in the position of claiming that there are indeed property rights in the state of nature – matters about which there are right and wrong answers – and yet it seems to suggest that the determination of what counts as a property right is itself dependent on determination by a legislature (which need not on Kant’s own account mirror the relations of property that would have been established in the state of nature, even if there actually had been a state of nature). That in turn seems to present a kind of interpretive dilemma. On the one hand, Kant can be read as endorsing something like Hume’s position to the effect that the distinction between “mine” and “thine” – the institution of property in general – is itself established only within the rules set out in a civil union and that there therefore could be no real property at all in the hypothetical state of nature; property would only be possible once there are rules laid down by the relevant authorities.16 However, since Kant rules out Hume’s own justification of these rules in terms of their utility to society, he 14 16

MS 6:255–6. 15 MS 6:263. David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, “What is a man’s property? Anything which it is lawful for him, and for him alone, to use. But what rule have we, by which we can distinguish these objects? Here we must have recourse to statutes, customs, precedents, analogies, and a hundred other circumstances; some of which are constant and inflexible, some variable and arbitrary.” Hume adds in an Appendix, “By the laws of society, this coat, this horse is mine, and ought to remain perpetually in my possession … And though the second consideration could have no place, were not the former previously established: for otherwise the distinction of mine and thine would be unknown in society.”


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must seek the justification of them in the idea of a law of freedom that is compatible with an equal freedom for all, and since the rules governing such property cannot be set unilaterally, it would seem that they must then be set somehow socially.17 Unfortunately, Kant himself does not endorse any kind of social solution to the problem, which, since it would be in his terms, “bilateral,” would only remain therefore the same as “unilateral”; it must be instead the universal rational will which creates the conditions of the possibility of the distinction between “mine and thine.” On the other hand, Kant might claim that there is indeed a set of rights in the state of nature but that they have to be sacrificed or even overturned in the move to a civil union under law. Such a view might seem to bring Kant much closer to the views of Hobbes, but this is a move which Kant quite obviously and vehemently rejects. Instead, Kant rightly insists that the justification of the move to a civil union – which is always to be distinguished from the factual motives that bring about civil unions in the natural world – has to do not with calculations about my own advantage nor even with negotiations with others but with the moral necessity (legislated by the universal rational will) to become a member, that is, a citizen, of a civil union.18 The rights to property in anything like a state of nature thus remain merely provisional rights until they are modified and made more secure in a civil union. the second problem The worry about whether property rights are only provisional in the state of nature and require their full specification in civil union under the rule of law, or whether, strictly speaking, there simply are no such property rights at all in a state of nature may indeed look like a worry about a distinction without a difference. This is especially put into harsh light by virtue of Kant’s own “normative positivism.” Individuals have the moral authority to compel others who may not wish to leave the state of nature to enter into the civil union. This follows from Kant’s own constructivist approach to the 17

18

In “The Kantian State,” Robert Pippin tries out this strategy of seeing in Kant’s arguments a kind of anticipation of Fichte’s claims that property rights arise out of mutual recognition (and thus a step on the way to Hegel’s own more robust social theory of agency). The problem with this approach is that it goes against Kant’s own stated views about the right of such property preceding civil union. Waldron puts this nicely and succinctly: “If the subject wants to think about the advantages of membership in civil society, then he must think relationally about what that membership secures, so far as the reciprocity and mutual assurance between his rights and others’ rights are concerned. In other words, he is to be aware that his presence in the civil society is as necessary for the interest and advantage of others – others who would be entitled to compel him to enter if he did not want to enter – as for his own interest and advantage.” Waldron, “Kant’s Legal Positivism,” p. 1563.

226 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim moral law; there is no obligation until the law has been constructed, but, in a manner analogous to constructivism in mathematics, once the answer to the problem has been constructed, it is a priori necessary. The problem with the state of nature is that it puts the subjects in such a state under a set of contradictory duties. Robert Pippin has argued that attention to the Kantian text shows that these include the duties: (1) to appropriate and seize things for one’s own use and to defend one’s appropriations; (2) the duty not to wrong others; and (3) a correlative duty to do what is necessary to make compliance with both (1) and (2) rationally possible.19 Since in any case where there is a dispute about whose property something is (such as a dispute over first occupancy), and (as a moral requirement) neither party to the dispute can serve as a judge in their own case, both parties are morally compelled to find a third party who can serve as a judge and are morally compelled to submit their own wills to the judgments made by that third party. In effect, this requires them to construct a new principle, that having to do with a civil union under rule of law, thus establishing a sovereign power over themselves. This much follows from the formula of universal law: I cannot universalize a maxim that requires contradictory commitments in agents who hold such maxims – in this case, the complex maxim of, roughly, “defend my appropriation and do wrong to nobody.” In the noumenal moral realm, each, as a member of the kingdom of ends, is both sovereign and subject. However, in the political realm that same moral law requires agents to submit themselves to a real sovereign against which no right of disobedience exists. Kant is quite emphatic on this point, noting that “the presently existing legislative authority ought to be obeyed, whatever its origin,” since for an agent to engage in any act of disobedience to the law is in effect to put himself back in the state of nature which he has a timeless and unconditional duty to leave in order to join a civil union ruled by law, and he has also the right to compel others to leave such a state of nature.20 Now, the sovereign clearly has a moral duty to legislate only just 19 20

See Pippin, “The Kantian State.” MS 6:319 (“der jetzt bestehenden gesetzgebenden Gewalt gehorchen zu sollen; ihr Ursprung mag sein, welcher er wolle”). Kant quite obviously held (at least late in his life) a strong abhorrence for the revolutionary overthrow of legal authority, noting that the execution of a monarch is “a crime that remains forever and can never be expiated … the sin that cannot be forgiven either in this world or the next … Like a chasm that irretrievably swallows everything, the execution of a monarch seems to be a crime from which the people cannot be absolved, for it is as if the state commits suicide” (MS 6:321); “Es wird als Verbrechen, was ewig bleibt, und nie ausgetilgt werden … die jenige Sünde … die welche weder in dieser noch in jener Welt vergeben werden kann … welches, wie ein alles ohne Wiederkehr verschlingender Abgrund, als ein vom Staate an ihm verübter Selbstmord, ein keiner Entsündigung fähiges Verbrechen zu sein scheint.”


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laws (or, negatively put, not to legislate any laws that violate any of the derivative rights of the categorical imperative), but the citizens can have no legal or moral rights to resist even unjust laws. This is Kant’s “normative positivism.” This raises, of course, Kant’s most famous problem in his list of issues to be resolved in the philosophy of history, the one he calls “at the same time the most difficult and the latest to be solved by the human species” (Idea 8:23). Kant says of the sovereign: “The highest supreme authority, however, ought to be just in itself and yet a human being. This problem is therefore the most difficult of all; indeed, its perfect solution is even impossible; out of such crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing entirely straight can be fabricated” (Idea 8:23). (Kant notes in addition that part of the problem in solving this task is that we also need a correct conception of the best possible constitution of such a civic order along with the good will to accept such a constitution, and this will require a lot of experience.) Between the unconditional normative demands of reason and the facts about what actually moves people to act and think, there can be, at least within the limits set by the terms of the critical philosophy, no mediation. Yet for a philosophy of history, there must be such a mediation, and this is exactly what drives Kant to postulate something like a “hidden plan of nature” (the Eighth Proposition), in which, first, “nature” has made us to interact with each other such that our “predispositions” to reason have become more amenable to ascertaining what the law requires of us; second, we thereby become more amenable to being motivated by the moral law; and, third, we cease therefore to be so “lazy” and “cowardly” as to refuse to accept the responsibilities that were with us all along. Indeed, there must be such a plan, since, as Kant notes, there indeed has been progress and the probabilities of such a reconciliation between our facticity and the normative demands of reason are so low as to make it impossible for this to have happened accidentally. Moreover, it is humanly impossible for humans to work this out on their own: [A]lthough as a rational creature he wishes a law that sets limits to the freedom of all, his selfish animal inclination still misleads him into excepting himself from it where he may. Thus he needs a master, who breaks his stubborn will and necessitates him to obey a universally valid will with which everyone can be free. But where will he get this master? Nowhere else but from the human species. But then this master is exactly as much an animal who has need of a master. (Idea 8:23)

Thus, only a “hidden plan” of nature can resolve this problem. The problem between facticity and normativity thus emerges as the “most difficult” and

228 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim the “latest” of all the problems to be solved. And the reason for the difficulty is that in Kant’s own terms, which comprehend the difference between norms and facts as being located in the difference between noumenal and phenomenal reality, the problem is quite simply irresolvable. But if this is the most difficult and the last problem to be solved, then the question is thus immediately raised: what would a philosophy of history look like that did not make the critical assumption about the noumenal reality of freedom and the natural reality of our being determined? To the extent that the problem is one of mediating between facticity and normativity, it will be an extension of the Kantian program even if carried out in fairly fundamentally different terms. Kant notes that this “last” and “most difficult” problem to be solved involves the necessity of forcing people to change their predispositions so as to bring them in line with reason. To cast off the distinction between noumenal and phenomenal reality while holding fast to the distinction between norms and facts thus requires the philosophy of history to hold fast also to both of the Kantian ideas of marking progress in history and of explaining how it is that our interactions with each other would eventually lead us to something like a more rational set-up. Now to be sure, this remains “the most difficult problem to solve” since it requires us to show how the establishment of intersubjective relations among natural individuals can be so structured as to provoke a progress in rationality itself, and this in turn would require some way of understanding the way in which the requirement of “a master to break his self-will and force him to obey a universally valid will under which everyone can be free” can be understood in terms not merely of masters imposing their own will on others (which thus provokes the infinite regress of a “master … who needs a master”), but, to keep it in Kant’s own terms, in terms of an examination of the failure of “civil constitutions, [and] their laws,” failures which he says are due to the “inherent defects [which] led to their overthrow” in history. Those failures, so it would seem, had in part to do with those civil constitutions being informed at a deep level by commitments to relations of mastery and servitude in the form of life that sustains that kind of civil constitution. If so, then the “inherent defects” in those constitutions are due in part to the failures of non-normatively based mastery itself to be able to normatively sustain itself over time. The later forms of life that sustain those kinds of civil constitutions emerge out of the very determinate failures – the “inherent defects” – of those earlier attempts to provide a rational comprehension of themselves, and, if there is progress to be marked, it must be that “there was always left over a germ of enlightenment that developed further


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through each revolution and this prepared for a following stage of improvement” (Idea 8:29). This of course can only be sustained by an appeal to a “hidden plan of nature” if the basic terms of the critical philosophy are to be kept intact. To depart from Kant would be to jettison the commitment to a sharp distinction between phenomena and noumena and to construct an understanding of the relation between norm and fact that adheres to the spirit of the critical philosophy while jettisoning one of its key elements. To fulfill the project of the Kantian proposal for a philosophy of history that would be carried out not by appeal to the Kantian dualism of noumena and phenomena but by appeal only to the phenomena themselves would thus put the Kantian program in the position of being able to realize itself in many of the same terms Kant laid out for it. As appealing to the distinction between norm and fact as itself making its appearance in the world of phenomena – that is, within experience itself – it would, of course, be a “phenomenology” of sorts. As such a “phenomenology,” it would have to comprehend that the Kantian kingdom of ends as the idealized whole – within which each agent is both sovereign and subject – would have to be rethought as the social order in which nobody is either “master” or “slave” but each is equally “master,” as legislator, and “slave” as subject to the legislation of all, and it would have to show how that normative distinction would have to emerge within the “phenomena” themselves because of the “inherent defects” of earlier attempts to establish a livable set of relations between masters and vassals. It would also have to show how the provisionality of matters like property rights means neither that those property rights are suspended in the civil union which comes conceptually (although not historically) after them, nor that they are empty or meaningless until filled out by the institutional structures of the civil union, but instead that the meanings involved in the commitments to something like the abstract right to property can themselves only be fully realized – that is, worked out and put into practice without also thereby becoming impracticable in the process of doing so – by showing how they are embedded in a more determinate set of commitments having to do with a whole form of life and the political shape it gives itself. (There is a term in philosophical German that brings together in one word how the meaning of something can be understood in terms of how it is realized in more determinate practices – that is, Aufhebung.) Even more ambitiously, such a way of fulfilling the Kantian program would require a more fully historical and social account of reason that does not reduce rationality to mere “bilateral” agreement but does not leave it floating in the thin air of the noumenal order. To reject the

230 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim noumenon–phenomenon distinction would also mean that one cannot simply presuppose there is a universal conception of reason which is always there; to show that one’s conception of reason is universal, one must be able to redeem that claim in ways that will be acceptable in some proper sense to others, and that requires an examination of the social and historical bases of agency in the realm of appearance itself. To carry that out, though, the Kantian would have to do the one thing that Kantians seem loath to do. They would have to become Hegelians. And, so far, that has seemed like too bitter a pill to swallow.21 21

These last couple of sentences perhaps should be couched a bit more cautiously. There is obviously another way of being Kantian that is on the table that has in fact taken the Hegelian turn and then returned back to Kant without returning to the noumenal/phenomenal distinction. That is of course to be found in the works of Jürgen Habermas, at least since his book on The Theory of Communicative Action. To take that into account here, however, would require more than just another essay. Another alternative is to make the move to Hegelianism while carrying along many Kantian commitments. One finds that line of thought in Robert Pippin’s work, but that too would require more than just another essay to do it justice.

chapter 12

Philosophy helps history Rüdiger Bittner

After a great many surprising statements Kant’s essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim offers the reader a truly amazing one in the end: namely, that the description of history that Kant envisages may itself contribute to history’s moving towards the aim that history, in that account, is said to have. That aim, the “cosmopolitan aim” of the essay’s title, is “the perfect civil union of the human species” (8:29), and Kant claims that philosophers describing history as pursuing that aim thereby help history to reach it. In what follows I shall investigate first what this help is supposed to consist in and second on what grounds Kant can claim that philosophy will be helpful in this way. i Here is the Ninth Proposition, the passage putting forward Kant’s claim most explicitly: A philosophical attempt to work out universal world history according to a plan of nature that aims at the perfect civil union of the human species, must be regarded as possible and even as furthering this aim of nature. (8:29)

“Possible” presumably means something like “feasible” here, since merely to claim that one could make the attempt so to describe history would seem trivial – of course one can try that. In calling this enterprise possible, Kant is probably asserting that it can be completed, that this enterprise is not bound to fail. On what this confidence is based need not concern us at the moment. What is important rather is the second claim that Kant adds, i.e., that describing history as following such a plan contributes to history’s moving on in that direction. Call the state of a perfect civil union of the human species the cosmopolitan state or, if that state should be someone’s or something’s aim, the cosmopolitan aim. (For present purposes a precise account of the cosmopolitan state is dispensable.) Furthermore, call a 231

232 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim description of history as moving toward its cosmopolitan aim a philosophical history, which is how Kant uses the expression “philosophical history” in the last sentence of the Idea. (Note that so understood a philosophical history is not a kind of history, history being a set of events, but a kind of description of history.) Kant’s second claim in the Ninth Proposition then comes to this: a philosophical history contributes itself to the movement it ascribes to history. It may be objected that talk of history’s cosmopolitan aim, and hence talk of a contribution to history’s moving toward it, is unwarranted as long as it has not been shown that the cosmopolitan state is indeed the aim of history, and this could only be shown in the philosophical history that Kant declares feasible in the first of the two claims just distinguished, without undertaking the task himself. In fact, however, the description of history as moving towards the cosmopolitan state is not intended to prove the aimdirectedness of history, but only to render it visible in the historical material. That the cosmopolitan state is the aim of history is something that Kant takes himself to have already shown in the Idea. The argument he offers is this: nature wants all potentials to be fully developed (First Proposition), human potential can only be fully developed in civil society (Fifth Proposition), and civil society needs, in the long run presumably, a cosmopolitan state (Seventh Proposition). Having summarized this argument in the Eighth Proposition, Kant can certainly take himself to be in a position in the Ninth Proposition to refer to history’s cosmopolitan aim. It is not clear, however, what this contribution consists in. Since elsewhere in the Idea the text following under a proposition gives an argument for it, as in the case of the First Proposition, or adds explanations, as in the case of the Fourth Proposition, one would expect the text under the Ninth Proposition to remove this unclarity and to specify what it is that a philosophical account of history contributes to history’s movement. In fact the text under the Ninth Proposition only puts forward a number of considerations purporting to show that a philosophical account would be useful in some respect or other. This is less than we need. A philosophical account of history could be useful in various ways without helping history to move on toward its cosmopolitan aim. So the question is whether among the uses of a philosophical history which Kant mentions there are some that substantiate his claim that it contributes to history’s moving toward its cosmopolitan aim. Kant mentions four ways in which a philosophical account of history could be useful. First, it could help to explain the “confused play of things human,” and second, it could assist “an art of political soothsaying about


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future changes in the state.” In short, it could be used for purposes of explanation and prediction. Clearly, these two services of a philosophical account of history do not directly further the cosmopolitan cause. To be sure, better able to understand their past and to foresee their future, people lead a more enlightened life, and in this way philosophy does change the course of history. In this sense, however, any intellectual endeavour changes the course of history, helping people to enlightenment in other areas of their lives, like agriculture, say, or economics. Yet there is no reason to expect enhanced capacities of historical explanation and prediction to move history ahead specifically in the direction of a cosmopolitan state. Kant suggests as much when he adds that this utility of a philosophical account of history is one “which has already been drawn from the history of human beings.” Historical explanation and prediction, then, is improved already by ordinary, i.e., non-philosophical historical research. Since a contribution to history’s moving forward was clearly expected from a philosophical account of history in particular, that contribution cannot consist in enabling people better to explain and predict historical events. The most important way in which a philosophical account of history could be useful is the third. Thanks to such an account, “a consoling prospect into the future” will be opened. The view into the future opened by a philosophical account of history is consoling in a sense similar to that in which you console a child who has suffered some mishap. You do not deny that what happened is bad. You rather lead the child to see that it is not as bad as it seemed, or that there are other good things left which make the situation yet look hopeful overall. Similarly, Kant’s “consoling prospect into the future” responds to the mishap described in the introduction of the Idea, the spectacle of “folly, childish vanity, often also … childish malice and the rage to destruction,” a spectacle that arouses our indignation. A philosophical account of history will not deny the unreason prevailing in human history. Instead, it will make us see that humankind, for all the absurdity and wickedness of its acting, is still on its way to the state which it is meant to reach. We are not lost in the woods, the philosophical historian is telling his fellow humans, we are on track, little though it may be evident in the events we are witnessing. That message, if believable, may certainly raise the spirits of the travellers, the philosopher included, and this could lead them to accelerate their steps on a path they now recognize. In the last few lines of the Idea, there appears, in somewhat cryptic terms, a fourth way in which a philosophical history could be useful. The context is Kant’s worry about how posterity will be able to cope with the “burden of history” that we are going to leave them after a couple of centuries more,

234 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim given the detail in which contemporary history is written nowadays. It is a strange worry, for the following reason. In the phrase “burden of history,” which translates “Last von Geschichte,” “history” must be understood as a mass term, otherwise Kant would have written “Last der Geschichte.” This is to say, Kant is suggesting that we are leaving behind, as it were, lots of history. As the reference to the detailed contemporary writing of history shows, he does not mean thereby that we are leaving behind lots of historical events, but rather lots of books. Then, however, it is not clear why the mass of history we are going to leave behind should be a burden. Kant wonders how posterity might manage to “grasp” (fassen) all that history coming down to them, but whether you take “grasping” literally or intellectually, it is difficult to see why they need to do so. They may just omit to grasp all those books, but leave them to dissolve on the shelves. That is after all what, to a large extent, we already do, without belonging to later posterity. Worrying about the burden of history, Kant seems to suppose that people bear a responsibility not to forget any truth once laid down, and then of course posterity is in trouble, with the output of historians doubling every five years or so. But it is not clear what should hold us to such a demanding task. In the footnote to the text under the Ninth Proposition, Kant maintains that only the continuity of a learned public authenticates historical documents from peoples outside this tradition, and so one could argue that a learned public neglecting to preserve historical knowledge would jeopardize the continuity of history itself. This is a poor argument, though it is advanced frequently by defenders of the humanities in our days. For one thing, it is unlikely that our forgetfulness will be complete, in contrast to blotting out details here and there, and only if complete could it break the thread of historical continuity. For another, it is just not true that historical continuity requires historical knowledge. It is not true that anything lying beyond the confines of the enlightened nations’ tradition is in Kant’s words “terra incognita.” For example, thanks to archaeological evidence alone we know quite a bit about human life in the stone age. So historical knowledge is not the Atlas carrying the historical world. It is just one historical item more. Kant’s worry may be strange or not; as a remedy he offers a line of thought similar to the one just put forward to show that his problem does not arise: Without doubt they will prize the history of the oldest age, the documents of which might long since have been extinguished, only from the viewpoint of what interests them, namely, what nations and governments have accomplished or harmed regarding a cosmopolitan aim. (8:31)

Posterity will cut down the vast amount of historical knowledge they receive by concentrating on what is of interest to them and forgetting about the


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rest. Kant apparently thinks he knows what will be of interest to them, namely, anything that advanced or hindered the cosmopolitan cause, but it is not clear that his claim is warranted. To be sure, if the argument of the First to Seventh Propositions stands, the cosmopolitan state is in fact the aim of history. Posterity, though, may not know that it is, as little as present humankind does who work their way toward it not knowing that they do (see the text under the Fourth and Seventh Propositions). Thus later generations, whether already enjoying the benefits of a cosmopolitan state or not, might still care only about, say, genealogies of royal families and make their selection from the historical material accordingly. Waive that objection, though, and assume with Kant that posterity will write their abridged history from a cosmopolitan perspective. According to the last sentence of Kant’s text, this fact gives a further reason for undertaking a philosophical history: But to pay regard to this, and likewise to the desire for honor of the heads of state as well as their servants, in order to direct it at the sole means by which they can bring their glorious remembrance down to the latest age – that can still be additionally a small motive for the attempt to furnish such a philosophical history. (8:31)

Actually, two reasons are mentioned here, but as the first is expressed somewhat obscurely, let us begin with the second. Here the idea seems to be that a philosophical history, viewing our past from a cosmopolitan perspective just as posterity’s writing of history will view its past, shows politicians how to assure an honorable mention in posterity’s history book. (“Politicians” renders Kant’s ancien régime expression “heads of state as well as their servants,” since surely Kant means by “servants” ministers, not valets.) Given politicians’ ambition, showing them what brought earlier agents honorable mention in the cosmopolitan history we write makes action on their part more likely which deserves honorable mention in the cosmopolitan history that posterity is going to write. Philosophical history, that is, anticipates posterity’s history, and by showing what actions earned past politicians a place in the cosmopolitan hall of fame, or infamy, it can attract present and future politicians likewise to achieve fame and shun infamy.1 Philosophical history thus functions like the lives of the saints in the Catholic church. Showing that by their virtuous action these human beings already reached a secure place in God’s register encourages those living now to try to do the same. 1

A similar thought appears in Ref. 1439, from the late 1770s (XV 629): “A monarch does not leave a trace in the totality of the world, if he did not contribute something to its system.”

236 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim The first reason is construed like the second. The second says: you have an additional reason for writing a philosophical history if you take into account the ambition of politicians. The first says: you have an additional reason for writing a philosophical history if you pay regard to “this” – and “this” can only refer to what was said in the previous sentence. So just the fact that posterity will only remember such deeds as affected significantly history’s progress toward its cosmopolitan aim is to provide an additional reason for writing a philosophical history, and the ambition of politicians who thereby learn how to make their name immortal need not be brought in. Now what is difficult to understand here is this: why should the fact, or alleged fact, that posterity’s memory will be biased toward the cosmopolitan cause getting helped or harmed, why should this fact be a reason, if only a small one, for writing a philosophical history? The text does not say why, but here is a guess. The ambition of politicians who want to see their name remembered in all posterity is only a special case of a desire of ordinary people to be on the right side in the struggles of history. Philosophical history shows us in the historical material the progress of history toward its aim. Thus it allows us to locate ourselves on a historical map intelligible in terms of history’s aim. We all locate ourselves historically in knowing, say, the current year or the year in which we were born. Yet such data are surd. Only a philosophical history makes them transparent with respect to what is truly important in history. Thanks to a philosophical history, then, we know where we stand with respect to the aim of history. To know that, however, may encourage us to additional efforts in serving or resisting forces whose value with respect to history’s cosmopolitan aim we now recognize. It is not for the sake of fame that we take special efforts, if we do. Not being politicians we will not be remembered. We do it for the sake of being right, right in historical, not in moral terms only. Philosophical history tells us how we can manage to be right. In this way it fulfills a need we have, it does us a service, and that is a reason for writing one. And in this way philosophical history does help history: by locating ourselves with respect to the aim of history we will gain courage and self-confidence in supporting history moving toward that aim. Yes, this interpretation has little positive warrant, but it is difficult to see how else we are to read the obscure phrase (“But to pay regard to this”) that opens the last sentence of Kant’s text (8:31). Also, the interpretation makes the first and second reason mentioned here come out parallel, just as “likewise” indicates. So construed, moreover, the two reasons bear out Kant’s claim that a philosophical history contributes to history’s movement forward. For thanks to a philosophical history, politicians and ordinary


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people alike will see better reason to engage in action that fosters history’s movement toward its aim. Here is a further, material consideration to support this reading. Posterity, Kant tells us in the penultimate sentence of his text, will view history from a cosmopolitan perspective; and once the cosmopolitan state is reached, which it will be at some point according to the central argument of Idea, any posterity will view history in this way. This is so because Kant assumes, as shown earlier, that with the cosmopolitan state reached people will no longer be mistaken about what is and in the past was really of interest to them. So the cosmopolitan view of history is the one to stay, it is the last verdict about history. As such it compares with the Last Judgment in the Christian creed. Consider here the last sentence in Kant’s penultimate paragraph: For what does it help to praise the splendor and wisdom of creation in the nonrational realm of nature, and to recommend it to our consideration, if that part of the great showplace of the highest wisdom that contains the end of all this – the history of humankind – is to remain a ceaseless objection against it, the prospect of which necessitates our turning our eyes away from it in disgust and, in despair of ever encountering a completed rational aim in it, to hope for the latter only in another world? (8:30)

The first part of this sentence is traditional. Like Augustine in a memorable passage in De Civitate Dei (V:11), Kant is not prepared to accept that the splendor and wisdom of God’s creation should be displayed only in nature and not in human history which supposedly contains the end of nature. The last part of the sentence turns brusquely away from traditional ways of thought. Kant is saying here that the hope to see the aims that reason sets completed in another world results from the despair of seeing that completion in history. Conversely, then, as philosophical history shows this world to be already on its way toward a reasonable state, such despair is unwarranted. With a philosophical history therefore we no longer need to console ourselves with the hope to see our reasonable aspirations completed in another world. True, Kant does not say expressly that then the whole idea of another world can go. Yet what other use could that idea be than to refer to the realm where what we are reasonably aiming for comes true? In effect, then, the author of the Idea dismisses the Christian tenet of another world to come. He dismisses it by arguing, not that such a hypothesis is unfounded, but rather in the line that Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx will be pursuing, that the need which makes people cling to this hypothesis arises from their failure to appreciate what is possible in human history. Opening their eyes to this potential they will drop the idea of another world, not as something refuted, but as something uninteresting.

238 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim With the other world goes the Last Judgment, for that judgment was supposed to be a tribunal with the people concerned present, not a mere declaration of the scores over the graves, and so these people need to live on or live again after their death. In traditional doctrine the Last Judgment was supposed to be the event that, in ending history, makes apparent what was done right and what was done wrong. God, looking into our hearts, knows all along what our doings are worth, but in the Last Judgment this becomes public knowledge. In the end, that is, we will know where anybody stood with respect to right and wrong. The truth about history is there and will come out, even if for now we cannot accede to it. Yet with the Last Judgment gone we no longer have grounds to assume that this truth exists and waits to manifest itself, and so we have no grounds to judge, if in anticipation and thus fallibly, what is right and wrong in history. We are left with the spectacle described in the introduction of the Idea: wisdom here and there woven together with folly and childish vanity, malice and rage to destruction. To be sure, moral agents merely as such can continue their path undisturbed. Being rational they know what they ought to do, and being free they can do it, whatever resistance from their inclinations they encounter and however uncertain they remain about having done it for the right reason.2 What sense, though, their doings make in the world at large they not only have no means of knowing, but without a Last Judgment not even the hope of eventually learning. However right an action may be in moral perspective, in terms of the good or ill it does in the world it is a mere stab in the dark. Kant was not enough of a Stoic to leave it in earnest at that and just tell people: “Do right and never mind the world.” True, in this sense the historical Stoics were not Stoics either, since their trust in the guidance of reason grew precisely from the confidence that to follow reason is at the same time to be in accord with the order of the world. Still, if a Stoic is someone who stays in accord with himself and his principles, but does not care what his actions effect in the world at large – roughly the attitude that Max Weber called “Gesinnungsethik”3 – then Kant sometimes pretended to Stoicism.4 Yet as the doctrine of the highest good shows, he did not stick to 2

3 4

On Kant’s doctrine of the opacity of the human heart see for instance G (IV 407) and Onora O’Neill, “Kant’s Virtues,” in Roger Crisp, ed., How Should One Live? (Oxford: Clarendon, 1996). I have argued that Kant should not and occasionally does not maintain opacity in my Doing Things for Reasons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), §§105–6. Max Weber, “Politik als Beruf,” in Gesammelte politische Schriften, ed. J. Winckelmann, 5th edn. (Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), pp. 505–60, here p. 531. See for instance G (IV 403).


239

it. And he did not stick to it here in the Idea. Since the Last Judgment has fallen prey to the critique of ideology sketched earlier, he calls in a philosophical history that allows people to determine where in history they stand with their actions. Thanks to the philosophers the truth about history does come out after all, and indeed not “after all,” but right now. In 1786 Schiller proffered the pithy formula, soon to be picked up by other writers: “World history is the world’s tribunal” (“Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht”) – the point of the formula being that world history is the only tribunal of the world there is. Kant here in the Idea made precisely the same point, though with less flourish than Schiller.5 History itself, for Kant as for Schiller, contains the standard by which the value of people’s doings is measured, and philosophers are called upon to read the historical material in the light of that standard. Thus Kant’s philosophical history is a kind of running Last Judgment. So here is the fourth reason for writing a philosophical history. On the one hand, as explained earlier, you can lead ambitious politicians into serving the cosmopolitan cause by showing them that previous politicians earned themselves a lasting memory by supporting it. On the other, you can lead ordinary, unambitious people into that service by showing them through your philosophical history the import of what they do in terms of history’s overall aim. You get the politicians by telling them how to become famous, you get the others by telling them how to join history on its march forward. And it may well be true that, if you can come up with a philosophical history of the envisaged kind, you will inspire and encourage people by showing them the historical significance of their actions and will thereby make history move on faster than it otherwise would. Thus you will have contributed to history’s movement not as a citizen or politician, but specifically as a philosopher. QED: philosophy helps history. If this is the correct reading of Kant’s claim, why should this only be a small reason for undertaking a philosophical history, as Kant maintains it is, both here in the last sentence of the Idea and at the beginning of the text under the Eighth Proposition? It rather seems to be a deep reason, one that concerns the self-understanding of agents in the world. Indeed it does, and Kant’s modest remark should be read as a comment, not on how important this consideration is in itself, but on how much it will impress people and change their ways. For Kant, philosophical history tells you where you stand 5

Friedrich Schiller, “Resignation,” in Werke in drei Bänden, edited by H. G. Göpfert (Munich: Hanser, 1966), vol. 1, p. 38. For subsequent usages, see Reinhart Koselleck, “Geschichte,” in Brunner, Conze, and Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe, vol. 2, p. 667.

240 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim in world history and whether you are on the right track. Herder gave his Ideas for a Philosophy of History of Humankind, published in 1784 like Kant’s Idea, a motto from Persius: “Quem te deus esse iussit et humana qua parte locatus es, in re disce” (“Learn from how things are what god ordered you to be and where in the world you are located”).6 Kant could have put his smaller piece under the same motto.7 Philosophical history is to teach people what they are supposed to be and how far they have got. Yet however important this must be for people to know, the effect on what they actually do may still be negligible, given how narrow-minded and short-sighted they are in determining what they do. Thus with “only a small reason” the philosopher is not deprecating the view of humankind he puts forward, he only offers a sober estimate of how much weight that view will gain in people’s decisions. This reading is supported by the fact that Kant gives the small reason remarkable weight in his presentation, mentioning the point twice, in the Ninth Proposition and in the text under the Eighth Proposition, cunningly emphasizing the word “small” in print, and above all putting the point into the center of attention by closing with it the entire article. I have little influence, Kant can be understood to be saying in conclusion of the Idea, on what people generally do and thus on how the world goes; and those in particular who govern will only be led by means of their vanity, not their reason. Yet what I contribute is not nothing, and I am slyly proud of it. I am telling you where we are supposed to go in this world. I am giving you a historical orientation.8 What you do with it is up to you, I am not a philosopher-king with the power to make you move in that direction. Still, some of you will follow the line which a philosophical historian will make evident in the historical material. So while I effect little, my knowledge is ahead of whatever you do: I know what will count in the end. Kant had a brief exchange in March 1793 with Carl Spener, the publisher of the Berlinische Monatsschrift, where the Idea had in 1784 originally appeared, and the understanding of Kant’s article displayed in both his reader’s and his own letter confirms the interpretation offered here. Spener asks Kant to agree to a separate reprint of the 1784 article, preferably “giving 6 7

8

Persius, Saturae III, 70–72. In fact, it may have been the similarity of their projects more than the personal relation to his former student that prompted Kant to write the reviews of Herder’s work (VIII 43–55). However, we do not know what Kant’s reason was, as his acceptance letter to Schütz was not preserved. As opposed to orientation in thinking, the subject of Kant’s 1786 paper “What is Orientation in Thinking?” (VIII 131–47), which in turn follows Mendelssohn in the metaphorical use of the word “orientation.”


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it some further extension or some soft application, with or without regard to current circumstances.”9 This was certainly a good idea on Spener’s part: such a publication could have sold very well, especially if it had touched “current circumstances,” i.e., the revolutionary changes in France. Spener, though, claims to have a higher motive for his proposal: Grateful to its author I remember the high feelings and ideas [Idea for a Universal History] brought to certainty in me when it first appeared, and I remember the intention it confirmed in me to act in a cosmopolitan manner in my small circle of activity. Ah, with what regret I must see now, nine years later on the occasion of a second edition, that this excellent article failed to reach the princes and their advisors, except the noble Crown Prince of Denmark!10

Kant in reply expresses his pleasure to have found in Spener a man receptive to nobler motives than mere advantage, but declares himself against the plan to publish the Idea again, “least of all with additions directed at current circumstances.” He gives his reason as follows: When the powerful in the world are intoxicated, whether by a breath divine or by a volcanic gas, a pygmy caring about saving his skin is well advised not to interfere in their quarrel, even if he would speak to them in the softest and most reverential manner, above all because they would not even listen, and others, their informants, would misinterpret him.11

Never mind whether Spener feels what he claims to feel or merely tries to lure Kant into a deal that brings him, Spener, good money. Never mind whether Kant believes Spener or merely pretends that he does, trying to get politely out of an unwelcome proposal. Honest or not, the letters show what kind of reception both Kant and one of his readers consider fitting, and consider likely, for the Idea. For one thing, Kant and Spener agree that the text should reach those in power, clearly in order to tell them, on the basis of the overall aim of history determined here, what direction they should take in their politics. Kant merely doubts that the powerful are receptive to what he has to say; he even fears that he might come to harm through raising his voice. He does not doubt that matters would improve if they were to listen. For another, Spener thinks that people outside politics like himself can and should learn in the Idea where history is heading and can and should change their ways accordingly to acting “in a cosmopolitan manner.” Kant, by acknowledging the “nobler motives” in Spener’s heart, can be understood to agree. Thus the same dual reception is envisaged in the letters and in the article: the powerful should – but won’t – listen to the philosopher showing 9

XI 416.

10

XI 415.

11

XI 417.

242 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim history’s course towards its aim, and even less will they act accordingly, except when they see a chance to enhance their fame. In contrast, ordinary people will listen, and some will even act differently in the light of history’s agenda revealed by the philosopher. Thus Spener presents himself in his letter as an exemplary case of the sort of reception that Kant in the Idea anticipated for a philosophical history and that grounded his confidence in philosophy’s helping history to reach its aim. So this is what Kant is saying when he asserts in the Ninth Proposition that a philosophical history can itself further history’s moving toward its aim. Once philosophical history has shown us what it is that, historically speaking, we should do, we will be more likely actually to do it. In a note for his anthropology lectures, dated by the editor to the late or perhaps early 1770 years, Kant wrote: History must itself contain the plan for bettering the world, not from the parts to the whole, but the other way round. What use is philosophy, if it does not direct the means for teaching humans toward what is truly their best.12

Like Hegel and Marx, Kant is convinced that the plan for bettering the world cannot be merely somebody or other’s good idea. It must be contained within history, as the course that it is in itself set to pursue. Philosophers recognizing that course in the manifold of events thereby help us to direct our efforts toward the aim that history is intended to reach and that is best for humans. ii How Kant could take himself to be in a position to say what he does in the Ninth Proposition is a harder question. Just three years earlier the Critique of Pure Reason argued that judgments pretending to refer to objects lying outside the realm of possible experience are not objectively valid.13 Since human history, taken in its entirety, is an object lying outside the realm of possible experience, judgments about the aim of history are not objectively valid, and humans adjusting their actions to history’s movement toward that aim are deluded. What led Kant to think that with regard to history he could evade the strictures he had just erected against philosophical extravagance? It may be contested that the whole of human history is an object beyond the limits of possible experience. After all, the study of history is an 12

Ref 1438 (XV 628).

13

See for instance KrV A 238-40/B 297–99.


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empirical discipline, if perhaps in a sense different from that prevailing in the sciences. Thus, any historical event is an object of possible experience, and so is therefore their totality. However, the last inference is fallacious precisely in the way Kant exposed in the seventh section of the antinomy chapter in the Critique: “The entire antinomy of pure reason rests on the dialectical argument: If the conditioned is given, so is the whole series of all its conditions” (A 497/B 525). In fact, the whole series of its conditions is still not given, even if the conditioned is. Analogously, while any historical event may be an object of experience, the whole of history is not. Even historians on the last evening of the world may form judgments only about the whole of history so far. They cannot judge about the whole of history. The bird’s eye view over the whole of history remains inaccessible for us. It may also be contested that the statements in the Idea are subject to the strictures that limit the claims of theoretical reason. The Idea purports to show that history as a whole is directed toward the cosmopolitan state as its aim. This claim has practical import, and so the Idea is exempted from the demand that the objects it refers to be given in experience. In this way Kant will also be arguing in the Critique of Practical Reason for the reality of freedom, immortality, and God. They evidently lie outside the realm of possible experience, but that does not hinder declaring them real, as long as this is declared with practical, not merely theoretical intent.14 The idea of the totality of history may similarly escape the restriction imposed by the first Critique.15 In fact it may not, and Kant’s attempt to procure special passports for statements with practical intent is misguided throughout. What you intend to do with some statement is irrelevant for the question of its truth; if it has been shown, as Kant claims it has, that statements about objects beyond the limits of possible experience are invalid, then this remains the case even if various practical concerns would make the truth of some of these statements highly welcome. So the idea of the whole of history cannot plead practical utility to gain an acceptance refused on theoretical grounds. It may be contested, finally, that Kant is asserting something about history and its aim. In the Eighth Proposition, after all, he only says that “one can regard the history of the human species in the large as the completion of a hidden plan of nature,” and in the Ninth Proposition, similarly, he claims no more than that a philosophical history “must be 14 15

KpV V 134–6. Friedrich Kaulbach takes this line in his paper “Welchen Nutzen gibt Kant der Geschichtsphilosophie?” Kant-Studien 66 (1975), pp. 65–84, here pp. 74f.

244 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim regarded as possible and even as furthering this aim of nature.” So it is all a matter merely of what people can, or must, think about history, not of history itself. Kant, then, does not even advance a theoretical statement here, and only that would expose him to the first Critique’s restrictions. There is no doubt that Kant is trying to forestall such objections by retreating to claims merely about how people may or must regard history. This move, however, does not succeed. Take the phrase in the Eighth Proposition. If the expression “one can regard human history as the completion of a plan of nature” is to be read as “one may rightly so regard it,” then we may as well drop all reference to regarding and simply say that history is the completion of a plan of nature. If however the expression “one can regard human history as the completion of a plan of nature” is to be read as “someone might hit on this idea,” then Kant’s claim loses all interest: all sorts of ideas come into people’s heads, why not this one? Similarly for the phrasing in the Ninth Proposition. If a philosophical history must be regarded as possible because it simply is possible, then “regarding” no longer plays any role. If, however, a philosophical history must be regarded as possible in the sense that we are well advised so to regard it or cannot get out of so regarding it, then this claim might have some anthropological interest, but it would not tell us anything worth knowing about philosophical history. Besides, those insisting on the difference between having to regard a philosophical history as possible and its being possible themselves give an example of not having to regard it as possible; for if they were really to regard it as possible, as allegedly they must, they would not withdraw from saying that it is possible and only claim that it must be so regarded. If the retreat to merely regarding history a certain way is just an evasive maneuver, then, we are back with asking why Kant accepted the whole of history as an object of theoretical statements and, in particular, saw himself in a position to give an account of the aim of history. The answer seems to be that consolation and orientation depend on such an account. Consolation: the history of which we have experience is the spectacle described in the introduction of the Idea, folly, vanity, malice and destructiveness, with some occasional wisdom here and there. The only remedy for the depression that this view causes is the idea of history as a whole moving, appearances to the contrary, towards the realization of a state required by reason. Orientation: assuming that we are not satisfied with moral directions for acting and want to know what in the world we help to accomplish, the history of which we have experience does not give us what we need, since it yields only confusing answers. No bit of experienced history definitely tells us what it is we do and what cause we really are serving.


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Only from the point of view of history as a whole can we determine where we stand and where, historically speaking, we should go. For the sake of such consolation and orientation Kant permits himself an account of the aim of history, for in his view a philosophical history is specifically useful in just these two ways – so useful, we now only have to add, as to exempt it from the limitations to which theoretical assertions are otherwise subject. As explained earlier, this is an argument that will not stand. However, in the end one wonders why Kant even takes us to need consolation. History no doubt offers many examples of folly, vanity, malice and destructiveness, but it offers examples of wisdom, kindness and mutual support as well, and who is going to do the counting on either side? Not Kant, but he nevertheless sees the first side prevail. Wisdom appears only “now and then in individual cases,” whereas “everything in the large is woven together” out of folly, vanity, malice, and destructiveness (8:18). We certainly need consolation if the world, which is to say the human world, not the cosmos, is fundamentally as bad as that, but it is hard to see what makes Kant so sure that it is. There is a famous passage in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason where Kant makes virtually the same point: We can spare ourselves the formal proof that such a corrupt inclination must be rooted in man, given the large number of glaring examples that experience shows us in the actions of humans.16

We do not get a philosophical proof, and the empirical argument is too weak: nobody will deny the “large number” of evil things people did and do to each other, but that does not suffice to show the radically evil character of humans. Similarly for history: the large number of glaring examples of foolish and malicious actions just does not decide about the character of the whole. So the question returns: from where does this understanding of the world as fundamentally evil derive? It can only come from the pulpits. Philosophy does not support it: there is no decent philosophical argument for saying that the world is fundamentally evil, and Kant, for once, is disingenuous when he phrases the passage just quoted as if he had such an argument right at hand. History does not support it, and neither does ordinary experience, even if people sometimes speak as if it did. Experience only shows us the “large number” of evil things of which Kant speaks, not an evil character of the whole. So, other than Christian religion, what could be the source of this notion? The corruption 16

R VI 32f.

246 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim of humanity through the Fall is after all a central tenet of Christian doctrine.17 It is a curious situation, then: Kant calls in philosophical history to let it take the place of a Last Judgment that has lost its credibility, so as to console us with the view that rationality becomes real in this world, but the need for such consolation arises only on religious, i.e., Christian assumptions. Kant gives philosophical history a job that is vacant because Christian interpretations of history have been dismissed, but the condition for there to be that job in the first place is a Christian, or at any rate a religious, view of the world. To be sure, it is not incoherent for Kant to reject the Last Judgment and keep the Fall, but it is surprising. For when, in the Ninth Proposition, he suspects the hope for another world to depend on the despair over the present one, it would have been natural to wonder whether this despair in turn does not merely derive from mythical sources. Kant did not take this step: he accepted “indignation” or “despair” at the sight of human history at face value and so felt bound to call on philosophy for consolation. No misunderstanding: some of us suffer, and some of us need consolation, if it is to be had, because we have been hit by this or that evil. The point is, we do not need consolation for living in a world in which “everything in the large is woven together out of folly, childish vanity, often also out of childish malice and the rage to destruction” (Idea, Introduction). Sure enough, some things are so woven together. For saying instead that everything is, Kant must draw on Christian doctrine. The same holds for orientation: we need the orientation offered by philosophical history as little as we need its consolation. We are no more fundamentally disoriented than we are fundamentally afflicted. Occasionally we do not know where we are and where to go, literally or figuratively, but there are various means, from maps to friendly advice, from dictionaries to courses in economics, to find our way again. Kant, however, was not satisfied with such worldly means of orientation. He wanted philosophical history to tell us where human affairs in their entirety are meant to go, so that we can adjust our actions to supporting that overall movement. In this way, he claimed, philosophy itself gives history a small extra push, because it shows people how they can join history on its march forward. In fact it is not clear why the aim of history should be even significant for us. If the cosmopolitan state is where history is heading, why care? Perhaps some of us do care about 17

Kant’s surprisingly optimistic interpretation of the story of the Fall in his “Conjectural Beginning of Human History” does not prevent him from accepting in general the bleak view of humanity traditionally associated with this story.


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the world reaching a cosmopolitan state, but then they probably do because this would be a good thing, not because it is the aim of history. True, one might make history’s aim one’s own simply because it is history’s, but that would be an odd and arbitrary way of choosing an aim. Why make history’s aim one’s own, why not one’s nextdoor neighbor’s? Philosophical history, then, does not provide orientation, for what it has to say is of no concern to us. Knowing in what direction history is moving and how its movement reveals itself in various events with which we are acquainted leaves us no better equipped to figure out which direction we should take. Philosophical history speaks about a different subject. Kant thinks otherwise, or he would have to suppose massive irrationality in those whom he expects to adjust their actions to history’s movement. In all probability he thinks otherwise because he understands history’s being directed toward a certain aim in a stronger sense than allowed so far. Take a rock rolling downhill: it has a certain direction and you may be able to predict, within limits, where it will come to rest. History’s directedness understood in these terms is indeed of no concern to us. Unlike the movement of some rock rolling downhill, the movement of history involves us, but we have no reason positively to further it in either case, barring special circumstances. If history, however, is directed toward a certain aim in the sense that in going that way it is completing a task it was given, then we probably are concerned, for that task may well be partly ours.18 When Kant in the Eighth Proposition invites us to regard human history “as the completion of a hidden plan of nature” and in the Ninth Proposition calls upon philosophical history “to work out universal world history according to a plan of nature,” the word “plan” shows that he has the stronger sense in mind. Someone set history to run this course, not only will it do so; and it is natural to assume that whoever in this way planned history thereby also required us in particular to contribute our share. Thus philosophical history does provide orientation after all, for it tells us what we are asked to do. As Persius says in Herder’s motto, quem te deus esse iussit … disce, learn what God ordered you to be – this is precisely what philosophical history is going to teach us. So, for Kant, the orientation provided by philosophical history once again depends on the assumption of a religious (and particularly a Christian) framework. A task we were given takes a giver, which in this case is one who, standing outside history, directs history towards some aim. 18

Kaulbach draws a related distinction between two conceptions of nature, “Welchen Nutzen … ,” p. 67.

248 Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim It takes God, and a traditional, Augustinian God at that, one “whose eternal and stable permanence is master over all past and future times.”19 Kant makes evident this commitment when in the last section of the Idea he replaces nature, which so far was considered the origin of the plan underlying history, by providence, this being the better expression. And it is the better expression. It shows that a plan of history needs someone who views history as a whole. It will not do to give the religious assumption a mere “as if ” status of the sort: history may, or must, be considered as if it were directed by a God standing outside history.20 As long as the alleged direction of history is merely a matter of how history may or must be considered, we actually do not have a direction of history, in the stronger sense just distinguished. If history only may or must be considered some way, this is, in Kant’s sobering phrase, merely “a peculiar quality of my faculties of cognition”21 which allows or prevents me from forming certain kinds of judgments, and such a capacity or limitation of mine is irrelevant for the question whether history has an aim and human agents have a task. For that to be the case, God must actually be directing history toward some aim. So Kant has a reason to call for a philosophical history and to expect it to contribute to history’s movement toward its cosmopolitan aim. Philosophical history, he thinks, can cure us of a despair we may feel on looking into the historical world, and it can show us the guiding intention in history as a whole, thereby enabling and encouraging us to throw in our individual efforts in support of history’s movement. Yet the problems he calls upon philosophical history to solve are merely a Christian heritage, which is to say that in fact they just may not arise. To consider humans fallen is what leads you to despair about the historical world, and through regarding history as being directed by God, you come to feel disoriented as long as you do not know where it is heading and how you can join its movement in your actions. Karl Löwith suggested that modern philosophy of history is the secularization of the eschatological pattern of Hebrew and Christian faith.22 As far as Kant (whom Löwith does not discuss) is concerned, “secularization,” i.e., “transfer of ownership from ecclesiastical to civil agents,” may not be the right concept. On the interpretation offered here, there is certainly a close 19 20 21 22

St. Augustine, Confessions XII 28, 38. Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History, pp. 164–8, recommends such a reading, referring to Kant’s distinction between determinant and reflective judgment, for instance in KU §83. KU §75. Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 2.


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relationship between Kant’s philosophy of history and Christian doctrine. However, Kant does not take materials from Christian doctrine to incorporate them into his philosophical view of history. Instead, this philosophical view of history, and in particular the philosophical history therein envisaged, responds to needs that arise under the domination of Christian doctrine. Kant does not re-sell Christian thought under a philosophical wrapping. He erects a philosophy that is to allay worries induced by Christianity. And it is philosophy in a traditional sense that he builds. For he tries to allay those worries by revealing what is ahistorically true. It is, after all, not a historical matter that history as a whole is set to reach the cosmopolitan aim. With respect to the means that Kant employs we are still in a Platonic setting. The philosopher catches glimpses of what is beyond history, and by communicating what he has learned he consoles, orients, and encourages his worried fellows. He guides them, claiming to show them what guidance they are subject to as agents in history. Thus he helps history. For thanks to his gaze beyond, he knows what history’s plan is and thus can lead his audience to carry it out. With the Christian belief losing its grip, the philosopher too may cease to overreach himself. As we no longer need an aim of history, we may also stop pretending to be able to look beyond the historical world. The cosmopolitan state may no less be worth our efforts. It is a political question whether it is.23 23

I am grateful to Sam Kerstein for his valuable comments on a previous version of this text.

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Index of names and works

Abbt, Thomas 79–82, 84, 85, 87, 92, 93 Zweifel über die Bestimmung des Menschen (Doubts about the Vocation of Man) 80 Aristotle 113, 119 Augustine of Hippo, St. 1–2, 84n. 52, 89n. 63, 202, 237

Hastie, William 6 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 3, 27, 48–9, 68, 110, 152, 158, 210, 216–17 Henning, August von 89 Herder, Johann Gottfried 76 Hume, David 21n., 138n. 6, 153n. 3, 166 n. 21, 184, 224 Hutcheson, Francis 76n. 22, 79

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 80n. 33 Bayle, Pierre 80 Beck, Lewis White 7, 52 Berlinische Monatsschrift 3–5, 9, 240 Biester, Johann Erich 3, 4 Blumenbach, J. F., 191 Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques, 99–100, 103, 104 Carmichael, Gershom 99, 103 Cassirer, Ernst 5 Charles I (king of England) 141 Cicero, Marcus Tullius 201 Darwin, Charles 3, 110 De Quincey, Thomas 6 Diogenes the Cynic, 200 Fackenheim, Emil 7 Ferguson, Adam 87–8, 89n. 65, 138n. 6 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 76, 79, 225n. 17 Foster, James 78n. 25 Foucault, Michel 212 Frederick the Great (king of Prussia) 149n. 21, 150 Freud, Sigmund 110 Friedrich Wilhelm II (king of Prussia) 144 Friedrich, Carl Joachim 6–7 Gedike, Friedrich 3, 4 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 128 Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitung 3, 9, 10n., 171, 174, 188 Grotius, Hugo 1, 2 Habermas, Jürgen 5–6, 230n. 21 Hamann, Johann Georg 85n. 53

Idea of a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (Kant) 1–3, 9–23 First Proposition 11, 34, 46, 113, 232 on “natural predispositions” 56–9, 60, 67 Second Proposition 11–12, 114, 176, 187 Third Proposition 12–13, 59–60, 123, 176 Fourth Proposition 13–14, 172, 176, 188, 235 on unsociable sociability 114–19, 123–8 Fifth Proposition 14–15, 129, 132, 143, 176, 232 Sixth Proposition 15–16, 129, 131, 132, 134n. 2, 136, 143, 144, 176 Seventh Proposition 16–17, 176–7, 179, 187, 232, 235 on an international federation of states 171, 172, 173–4 Eighth Proposition 5, 19–21, 177, 187–8, 194, 199, 208, 227, 232, 239, 240, 243, 244, 247 Ninth Proposition 21–3, 177, 231–2, 240, 242, 244 Iselin, Isaak 88n. 58 James II (king of England) 141 Jesus of Nazareth 78, 88 Kant, Immanuel Analytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment, 34–42 Conjectural Beginning of Human History 9 Critique of the Power of Judgment 9, 25, 28, 28n. 5 Critique of Practical Reason 54, 123 Critique of Pure Reason 24, 27, 47, 57

256

Index of names and works Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment 25, 28 Doctrine of Right 106–7 Groundwork 55–6, 159–60 Only Possible Proof of the Existence of God 28–31, 48–9, 79n. 31, 216–17 Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason 26, 44, 107–8, 123–6, 128, 133, 143–5 Towards Perpetual Peace 6, 6n. 6, 7, 25, 130–2 “What is Enlightenment?” 150 see also Idea of a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim Koselleck, Reinhard, 189–90 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 1, 2–3, 81n. 43, 73–4, 78, 205–6 Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 48n. 4, 88–9, 89n. 63 Linnaeus, Carolus 38 London Magazine 6 Löwith, Karl 248 Lucretius, 95 Mandeville, Bernard de 1, 2, 101–3, 110, 115 Marx, Karl 3, 68, 110 Meinecke, Friedrich 6 Mendelssohn, Moses 70, 80, 82–7, 92–3, 191–2, 195–6 Jerusalem 89–90 Phaedon 74–5, 77, 82–3 Zweifel über die Bestimmung des Menschen (Doubts about the Vocation of Man) 80 Montaigne, Michel de 13n., 110, 115 Morgan, Seriol, 147–8 Moscati, Pietro, Of the Essential Difference in the Structure of the Bodies of Humans and Animals 53 Persius 240 Philip of Macedon 17n. Plato 71, 208

257

Plotinus 202, 208 Pufendorf, Samuel De Jure Naturae et Gentium (Of the Law of Nature and of Nations), 98–100, 102–4, 110 Reichard, Johann Friedrich 85n. 53 Reimarus, Hermann Samuel 88 Reinhold, Karl Leonard 30n. 9, 48 Richardson, John 6 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 1, 2, 17, 18, 88n. 59, 102–3, 115, 117, 127–8, 203–4, 209 S. Pierre, Abbé de 17, 178, 179 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm, philosophical methodology 48 Schiller, Friedrich 5, 239 Schopenhauer, Arthur, on unsocial sociability 109 Schultz, Johann Heinrich 3, 9, 53–4, 55 Selden, J. G. 4 Seneca 201 Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl 76, 76n. 22, 78n. 25, 100, 103 Smith, Adam 1, 2, 110, 115 Southey, Robert 6 Spalding, Johann Joachim Betrachtungen über die Bestimmung des Menschen (Meditations on the Vocation of Man) 76–82, 84, 84n., 85, 92 Spener, Carl 5, 240–1, 242 Strawson, P. F. 92 Thucydides 21n. Weber, Max 238 Wolff, C. F 190–1 Wolff, Christian 74, 74n. 11, 76, 78, 81n. 43, 84 Wöllner, Johan Christian 144 Zedlitz, Karl Abraham von, Baron 3 Zeno 201

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