Longer Review of Manfred Kuehn’s “Kant: A Biography”(To be included in Volume 4 of “A Philosophical History of Psychology, Cognition, Emotion, Consciousness, and Action.”

Visits: 2426

The legacy of Kant is manifold because both dogmatism and skepticism have been, and are, present as general attitudes in many areas of philosophical discourse. Aristotle in his attempt to synthesise the dogmatic and skeptical influences of his time proposed a contemplative attitude of mind which experienced change, attempted to understand it, and then reasoned about it with a view to knowing oneself and the world that surrounds one. Kant’s Critical Philosophy is designed to embrace and elaborate upon hylomorphism in ways that would partly aim at the restoration of an Aristotelian spirit in the arena of Philosophical debate. This Aristotelian renaissance was also intended to capture the spirit of intellectual and moral “progress” in accordance with a “hidden plan”, that Kant claimed was present in thousands of years of development leading up to the Enlightenment. The Modern Age is traditionally defined by the demarcations of Hobbes and Descartes: demarcations that involved both a general sceptical attitude toward Aristotelian Philosophy and a dogmatic belief in the substance-oriented science of the day. Kant would attempt to synthesise the ideas of substance and form into a principle-based Critical Philosophy that contained a virtue based moral Philosophy resembling Aristotelian virtue ethics. The Greek terms areté, arché, diké, phronesis were embodied in the Kantian approach which also incorporated Newtonian Physics and Christian Ethics (all men are brothers and thereby equal). The Enlightenment approach to Freedom, paradoxically surpassed the negative view of man being “evil” (in comparison with the goodness of God), with a positive view that we can view the species through its potential to be rational and thereby call man (as a species) “good”. This was also a positive enhancement of the ancient Greek prophecy that “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”. If, in accordance with Enlightenment attitudes man “Dare to be Wise!”/”Sapere Aude!”, the eventual outcome (weighed in terms of one hundred thousand years) could be expected to be Good (resulting in a Kingdom upon earth, a perfectly just cosmopolitan society). Even the eagle eyes of Freud may have missed this aspect of Kant’s Critical Philosophy if we judge him on the basis of his work “Civilisation and its Discontents”. Perhaps it is just too much to ask of man to fix his eyes/mind upon a point one hundred thousand years in the future. At issue in the difference between the Freudian and the Kantian views may be the difference Kant drew between a Civilisation and a Culture. Activities guided by the instrumental goods of instrumental imperatives where the concentration of the mind is upon the means to an end rather than the inherent value of the end, constitute the realm of civilising activities. In this instrumental realm the bringing about of an end is viewed as a consequence for which one is responsible, and the ruling category is the causality between events which in turn can be analytically separated. Activities that are categorically constituted, on the other hand, are unconditionally done in the spirit of being “good-in-themselves”, and are responsible for the cultural advancement of man. Civilising activities are examples of rule-following behaviour that is important for the maintenance of order in society, and the provision of everything that meets what Maslow calls the Maintenance needs that are necessary for survival and safety of human forms of life. Maslow’s growth needs are obviously also connected to higher values that no longer are merely instrumental for the physical activity of the building of cities, but rather are connected to the ideas and rational methodologies constituting the ideals of “Culture”. For Kant these two types of activity, the instrumental and the categorical, can dwell together in harmony side by side, as long as there is no “colonisation” of the one domain by the other: no dogmatic idealism denying the role of experience or sceptical realism denying the role of rationality. For Aristotle all activity is guided by the idea of its good, and this, can either be the instrumental activity of building a house serving the goods of the body and its relation to the external world, or the activity that is done unconditionally because of its intrinsic value in the spirit of areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time)–in service of the goods for the soul. It is of course also an ultimate good for the soul that both civilisation building/maintaining activities, and cultural constitutional unconditional activities, are in harmony with one another and the citizens living in the community. One of the differences between the Platonic and Aristotelian Political positions is that the latter believed in the rule of the Golden mean in the realm of all activity in the polis. Political activity came into existence for the preservation of life but its continued existence was tied to the provision of the conditions necessary for leading the good life, and ultimately the good spirited flourishing life (eudaimonia). The mechanisms for the actualisation of the complex ideal of the city-state that Aristotle presents is connected to the developmental phases of social activity from firstly, the family unit to, secondly, the unit of the village, and finally, to the terminus of the city-state (callipolis). The growth through these different phases of social activity is “organic”. The process, that is, resembles the phases of the growth and development of living organisms, but also perhaps resembles the evolution of one animal form of life into another. Teleological forms of explanation, therefore, are important in such contexts of explanation/justification. Aristotle believes that the 4 “causes” or “kinds of explanation”(together with the principles of change, the 4 kinds of change, and the three media of change) build some kind of unified totality of conditions that alone can satisfy the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The materialistic concentration upon explanations that seek conceptually independent causes which are the “movers” of change, transform necessity into random contingency. In such a context, attempts at unification into a totality of conditions consequently appear arbitrary and contingent. The so called “formal cause” when combined solely with the material and efficient causes takes the form of a mechanical deterministic principle that forces life forms into confining strait jackets and limits both description and explanation of the telos of organs and organisms. (Telos ought rather to focus upon what the organs and organisms are good-for).

The structures of civilisations and cultures require the totality of conditions referred to in a 4-fold schema of explanation, building as they do primarily upon action and production. This implies that it is primarily the practical and productive sciences that provide us with the knowledge we require to build civilisations and actualise Cultures.

The successful interaction and integration of hypothetical and categorical imperatives is, of course, essential for the organic development of society toward the Kantian end of a Kingdom of Ends built upon morality and human rights. The “replacement” of categorical cultural attitudes by the more technical (techné) hypothetical civilisation building attitudes is problematic, and raises once again the spectre of the Ancient Greek Prophecy claiming “Everything created by man is destined for ruin and destruction”. The condition for the actualisation of such a prophecy is, however, that the social activity of man is “colonised” by instrumental forms of activity which focus continually upon means without seriously evaluating ends.

Kant is very clear over the importance of categorical attitudes in the “Progress” of society towards its telos. He is also very clear over the importance of the categorical structure of theoretical science for civilisation building. What he would have thought about the technological “achievements” of putting a man on the moon and the invention of atomic bombs is, however, unclear, but the suspicion is he would have reasoned in a similar manner about these events as Arendt did–seeing in them something ultimately regressive given the importance attributed to them.

Kuehn’s biography underscores the importance of Kantian teleological explanation in his search for the totality of conditions for phenomena. The Cartesian “revolution” aimed at regarding animal life-forms, for example, as subject to mechanical description and explanation, and also viewed the human psuche dualistically, ( as a kind of substance that could interact with material substance via mechanical processes in the brain). On this view matter was “inert” and Kant characterised this Cartesian “picture” in terms of a “dead force”. Kant in his early work entitled “True Estimation of Living forces”, sides with Leibniz who, Kuehn argues, appeals to Aristotelian concepts of “form” or “entelechy”. There is, on this view, a force locked up in a body that constitutes its inertia to change : a force that is expressed in the impenetrability of the object, a phenomenon related to the force of attraction. Kant’s argumentation for this characterisation centred around the mathematical calculations relating to experiments doubling the speed but having to more than double the force to achieve this result. This asymmetry pointed to a limitation of mechanical calculation of momentum (speed times weight of the the object). Kant concludes that the force of attraction belongs essentially to all matter. This force , Kant argues also has to be complemented by a counter-force of repulsion of external matter/objects (the possible original form of an energy regulation principle). It is this latter that explains why matter does not contract into one point of unfathomable density. What is important to note in Kant’s early account is the fact that these forces are not “dead” or inert, but rather are “active”, and the original creators of free motion. This, argues Kant, is a rejection of the Cartesian idea of dead matter being tossed about by mechanical forces. There is, an established harmony regulating these two forces (ERP). This regulation principle probably sufficed for Kant to “locate” the soul in the body and to conceive of the combination of soul and body to move other things. The “soul” for Kant is clearly a hylomorphic unity and “mechanical” explanation emanating from a Cartesian matrix of space-time brain causation which connects disparate contingent “events” will, on Kant’s view, fail to pass the tests of the principle of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. The ontological assumption is that in the realm of action–a realm in which movement is freely self initiated–the categories of agency and the “forces” of “Powers” are more relevant than the categories of substance and causation. Kant’s early work suggested that matter or substance has power which he described as “living force” but later work throws these remarks into a different context which is closer to Aristotle than it is to Leibniz and Newton . The title of the early work referred to above , “True Estimation….” indicates the hypothetical nature of his reflections upon the events of the physical external world. The same uncertainty that plagued the reflections of the early Socrates hovered over the mind of the youthful Kant and this lack of certainty may have been the cause of his so-called “Copernican Revolution”, in which he sought for categorical certainty no longer in the arena of ever changing experience, but rather in a categorical form of reflection involving structures and powers of the mind. The choice of Kant to write his first major work in German rather than the traditional Latin of the Academics testifies to his independence as a thinker. The fact that he wrote in German might also be due to the fact, as M Kuehn points out (Kant: A Biography(Cambridge, CUP, 2001), that Kant’s genius, at this point in time was not appreciated in the academic world of Königsberg.

In his earlier work Kant also investigated the relationship between matter and space. The first basic term of this early system was that of Prime Matter which was regarded as the consequence of the Being of God. This Prime Matter extended throughout the universe possessing the potentiality of both attraction and repulsion, causing the actuality of moving matter and the consequences of collision and rotation. These were the elements of the planetary systems. God stands to some extent outside this chain of events given the fact that Kant did not believe that God gave Prime Matter a shove–the potentiality for movement was in the system from the beginning. Kant also shared the Aristotelian assumption that the universe was an infinite complex of material, space, and time which could be the source of awe and wonder but whose origins were not as easily investigated as were the origins(the natural history) of life-forms. Kant clearly did not share the Socratic concern that physical investigations into origins might blind the soul, but he did share the Socratic conviction that such investigations into origins were more speculative than, for example, investigations into the origins of the Idea of the Good. Whilst conducting both types of investigation did not lead Kant to turn his back upon speculative metaphysics, they did contribute to the important phenomenal-noumenal distinction that permeates Kantian Critical Philosophy.

In his Metaphysics lectures of 1765 we encounter the following remarks about Space which :

“must be the first actus of the divine all-presence of God, through which the things come into connection(nexus).The status post mortem is very probable, the entire world would equal nothing without rational beings.”(P.132 in Kuehn)

We see here an early Aristotelian move, but this kind of metaphysical thinking, according to Kuehn, drove Kant’s friend Herder toward reading poetry or Rousseau. Kant himself in his later work also followed Rousseau at least insofar as Education of the Young were concerned (Emile). In his early work, Kant distinguished between rational logic and the real reasons we look to in the course of causal investigations. In these latter reasons we find even the early Kant locating these reasons in the activity of our minds. The issue of God’s existence was also an early concern, but theological investigations gave way to ethical investigations into “The Good” and its rational conditions. Agency became the central focus, and character was conceptualised as a good form of agency to be tested by the Greek idea of areté (doing the right thing in the right way at the right time). Character was principally concerned with what was good in itself and what was good for the soul. The dignity of man and his freedom to choose his destiny was placed at the centre of Kant’s reflections, but not in abstraction from the polis and the Ancient Greek prophecy relating to the potentiality for life in society to descend into war, chaos, ruin and destruction. Kant, like Aristotle, was pessimistic about the young under 40 understanding the responsibility that accompanies freedom and the potentiality for rationality. He embedded the Christian concept of rebirth or conversion in his account of an actualisation process that is moving toward the telos of rationality. The lynchpin in this process of man becoming, amongst other things the “political animal” is the duty to tell the truth expressed in Kant’s later work: “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”:

“That someone has a character can only be proved by his having adopted as his highest maxim the principle to be truthful in his inner confession to himself as well as in his dealings with anyone else”( Anthropology 7, 294f)

Kant believed the age of 40 to be the beginning of this process of the dawning of a new form of consciousness which may also be connected to the psychological fact that, according to him, this is the point at which our memory, the building block of cognitive processes, begins to wane, allowing us to expand our knowledge but not, allowing us to learn anything new.

The key element of character are our maxims or the general policies that we have learned from significant others or influential books. A maxim is a principle of practical reason that guides both civilisation-building and culture-constituting activities, but it can also, for Kant, be related to happiness which is the principle of self-love in disguise. Such a principle is reflective and examines ones desires in a reflective spirit. The will is involved in such reflective processes which principally are directed toward civilisation-building and culture- constituting activities. Such activities require a strong will and character, that, in their turn, require self-knowledge–the most difficult of all knowledge to acquire, but nevertheless something demanded by the oracles in the name of eudaimonia. For Kant it is the intention and the maxim that are critical for determining whether the will is worthy of praise, for it is these elements that constitute the essence of ethical activity. Kantian reflection in this area, as in all other areas, was partially formed by English empiricism and its criticised limitations in the field of ethics. Hutcheson, for example, spoke of the moral sentiment and Kuehn quotes Mendelssohn in this context–moral sentiments are

“phenomena which are related to rational principles in the same way in which colours are related to the angles and refraction of light. Apparently they are of completely different nature, yet they are basically one and the same.”( Kuehn, P. 184)

We should recall the great respect that Kant had for Mendelssohn and the fact that both thinkers entered an essay competition announced by the Berlin Academy of Science:

“Whether metaphysical truths in general and in particular the first principles of Theologiae naturalis are capable of the same clear proof as geometrical truths, and if they are not capable of same said proof, then what is the real nature of their certainty, to what sort of degree can one bring their certainty and whether this degree is sufficient for complete conviction.”

Mendelssohn’s essay won the competition narrowly, probably because the judges were predisposed toward the metaphysical approach taken which was also presumably more mathematically inclined than Kant’s contribution. Mendelssohn’s work might also have been less inclined toward the hylomorphic view of human nature Kant favoured. One of the philosophical issues of the time was that which involved a search for a unified theory of sensation and reason. For Kant the starting point of any answer to this question was Hutcheson’s theory of moral sense, and initially Kant placed both elements on a continuum, but even in 1763 Kant did not believe that moral judgements were based on feelings, even if these may have been some kind of material base for the more formal judgements. Kuehn reports that Kant’s thinking underwent a change insofar as the continuity thesis was concerned in 1770, when he claimed that the faculties concerned with reason and sensation (sensibility) were separate entities.

In an essay entitled “Concerning the Ultimate Foundation of the Differentiation of Directions in Space”, it is clear that for Kant, Space is a fundamental concept which is not a consequence of external sensation but rather a concept which makes the experience of space possible. It is not an idea of reason or even what he would later refer to as a category of the understanding. The bipolar account of this time did not include the faculty of the understanding and its categories but referred instead to sensibility and intelligence. The former was defined accurately in the above essay as :

“The receptivity of the subject through which it is possible that its representative state be affected in a certain manner by the presence of an object”

Intelligence was more controversially defined as:

“The faculty of the subject through which it is able to represent things which cannot by their own nature come before the senses of the subject.”

The account appears somewhat dualistic, presupposing a mundus sensibilis and a mundus intelligibilis, both of whom exhibit forms of object peculiar to themselves. Kant points here, in defence of the above separation, to the ancients, who apparently distinguished between phenomena and noumena in relation to these two different kinds of object. Space and time begin to be identified with subject-centred yet a priori conditions of experience.

Wolff embraced the continuity thesis which in Kant’s view prevented him from producing an intellectually based moral Philosophy based on Pure practical reason. Kant thus situated himself in the camp of the “ancients” and Wolff in the camp of the “moderns”. Kant’s Project was clearly to establish ethics in an intelligible world in which actions have a rational form and essence. Principles ruled in this world (the forerunners of the categories of judgement/understanding?) e.g. possibility, necessity, actuality, agency community, causality. Moral perfection was constructed from these a priori elements and the concept of a good will moved to the centre of a metaphysical system aiming at explanation and justification of noumena. This account is a clear rejection of Hutcheson, and all empirical accounts relying on the theoretical notion of abstraction from experience. Practical reasoning takes precedence, and will in fact move to becoming the central pivot of Critical Philosophy. This coincides with the move toward acknowledging synthetic a priori judgments as the founding elements of the sciences. Wolffian Metaphysics is replaced with transcendental forms of inquiry that resemble the investigations of the ancients and those modern concerns that lean more towards mathematical reasoning and the methodology of science, are dismissed. Kantian investigations are explorations of the powers of the rational animal capable of discourse–powers of sensibility, understanding and rationality.

Kant drew the boundaries of the limits of the understanding and reason with the help of the Categories which were a priori notions that organise our experience. Kant argued for instance, that viewing God in terms of the category of causality became problematic, given the necessary relation of these categories to space and time. Principles such as the axioms of intuition, the anticipations of perception, the analogies of experience and the Postulates of Empirical Thought have no room for the rational/theoretical idea of a God. We know something holds the world together as a systematic whole, but our powers are limited to knowing just that: they can reach no further into the realm of things in themselves at least insofar as theoretical reflection is concerned. We can have a negative conception of this realm and know that it cannot have spatial/temporal characteristics or perceptual/experiential characteristics, but it is at this point that our theoretical understanding of the matter ends. Theoretically, according to Kant, we cannot know ourselves as we are in ourselves because we are an animal form of life confined to the power of discourse in our philosophical investigations into the nature of space, time, causation, and reality. When we discourse about ourselves, the subject of our discourse is the self as it appears phenomenally and conditionally in the matrix of sensibility and in accordance with the categories of the understanding. The self that is doing the discoursing or the thinking, the “I think”, appears to be a second self that is independent of experience and this is the self the Oracles and Philosophers of Ancient Greece were urging us to explore. Theoretical investigations, however, are problematic, because thought does not appear to have the power to think about itself and this non-empirical self therefore cannot “find” itself. This , however, is not a recital that is doomed to end in negation. Another form of causality, that of freedom, allows us access to both God and our noumenal selves.

Kant lined up the theoretical arguments claiming to prove the existence of God and demolished them all, but then in his discussion of the human journey to moral perfection allowed space for faith and hope in relation to both God and our moral futures.

Kuehn points out that the first reviews of the “Critique of Pure Reason” viewed it as belonging to the British tradition of idealism and scepticism: a product of the Philosophy of Berkeley and Hume. Hamann’s criticism was particularly interesting, because it was to foreshadow the work of the later Wittgenstein, which was also attempting to respond to the threat of continental idealism and scepticism. Hamann claimed that we are misled by the language we use and that we should inquire more systematically into the functions of language rather than inquire into the use of pure reason. Kant, in a later work entitled “Prolegomena”, protested at the false characterisations of his work and criticised both Berkeley and Hume, but his phenomena/noumena distinction was still regarded with suspicion. This distinction in its turn required the use of transcendental logic applying a priori principles and laws to nature, and this too was sceptically received. This illustrated not just the limitations of pure theoretical reason, but also the scope and depth of pure practical reason where communities of rational animals capable of discourse were free to form and combine concepts in ways that would serve a diverse set of purposes. Moreover it was in the practical sphere that the strategy of stepping outside these categorical and conceptual systems would be subject to philosophical criticism via the Socratic methodology of elenchus, or the Aristotelian methodology of logic determined by the principles of noncontradiction and sufficient reason. This form of criticism would not, however, destroy the object of faith, namely God, and would reject all attempts at anthropomorphising the idea. Hume’s scepticism, in Kant’s view, risked rejecting too much and thereby failing to realise the fundamental limitations of experience. Philosophical aporetic questions often transcended the boundary of experience and revealed an ideal realm of thought constituted by principles of reason. Morality and Religion occupied a realm that the events, substances, and causality of science did not regulate or constitute. The function of transcendental logic in this realm was not just the negative function of transcending experience, but also the positive function of providing us with the conditions necessary to both conceptualise experience and organise it into bodies of knowledge. Science was for Kant hylomorphic: every science had both a material aspect and a formal aspect in which principles organise the subject-matter. The forms of Synthetic a priori judgements constitute the foundations of the different sciences.

The categorical imperative, for example, constituted the fundamental form of justification of both the maxims of actions and those actions themselves.: making the actions both good in themselves and good in their consequences, because they were deeds flowing from a good will. Such Synthetic a priori judgements reach into the realm of noumena and all that can be claimed insofar as our understanding of such judgements are concerned, is that they are used as justifications but cannot themselves be fully comprehended in their intention. This means that the ultimate conditions of the possibility of morality cannot be fully understood. What we do understand is the brute fact of our freedom where it is clear to us that we are free to give ourselves laws because we are a law unto ourselves so long as these laws are valid for every rational being in an ideal intellectual realm constituted of noumena.

Kuehn, in discussing Kant’s first moral work “Groundwork for a Metaphysics of Morals” claims that this work and the following works on Practical Reason are “one of the greatest achievements of the history of Philosophy”(P. 287). We can concur with this judgement with a clear conscience because it respects the intellectual integrity of the other sciences of mundus intelligibilis. History too is respected as a universal discipline with Cosmopolitan intentions, and its use of teleological explanation is praised as a necessary justification for the Progress of humanity through historical ages. Transcendental logic is the tool Kant uses to situate freedom and the categorical imperative at the centre of these processes of the actualisation of the telos of the “kingdom of ends”. Historiography merely charts the sequence of events throughout the ages, but Transcendental History transforms this mechanical recording process into a narrative of significance that confirms Aristotle’s hylomorphic claim that all activities aim at the good. Kant claims:

“If it examines the free exercise of the human will on a large scale it will be able to discover the regular progression among freely willed actions”(Kant’s Political Writings, Ideas for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan point of view”, Reiss, P.41)

Kant is clearly in search for a principle that guides us toward the cosmopolitan kingdom of ends. The account we are given obviously assumes that it is nature itself which ensures that all that is good ends well for humanity–even if the journey is a long and tortuous one. The journey, requires good and just government–an Aristotelian requirement. Such a journey obviously requires the courage to think freely for oneself–to dare to be wise!(“Sapere Aude!”)

Kant also theorises about Conjectural History and the beginning of the human race. A state of nature in which human nature was guided by instinct and could be described as “happy”. In such a state the imagination begins to construct a myriad of objects of luxury and the famous “fevered city ” from Plato’s Republic becomes a reality. In Christian History this stage of transformation of our life was identified with “a fall” from from the Grace of God. From a moral point of view, however, the “choice” to feed ones appetites in accordance with the demands of the imagination is the beginning of the good works of man which will require the acquisition of large bodies of knowledge if his journey, as a species, to a good end, is to be not just a possibility but a real actuality. Freud promoted an oracular vision of the discontents of Civilisation and pointed to the state of affairs in which man must of necessity be discontent with the active and free powers that are governing the course of the world as a whole. Kant thinks that this form of discontentment is absolutely necessary for man if, as a species, he wishes to transcend this state of discontentment. He believes that such a problematic state of affairs has been brought about by a misuse of mans rational powers which must be corrected. One of the sources of discontent may well have been an irrational belief in the existence of an anthropomorphised God, the craftsman. Situating Freedom at the centre of his theory and deriving a faith in a Good being from such a source is, for Kant, the kind of correction needed in our use of reason. God is undoubtedly a supersensible Being, and therefore lies beyond the reach of human knowledge, but not beyond the reach of human faith and hope. If this thesis can be maintained, virtually all of religion remains justified on the condition that God is not anthropomorphised. The nature of the presence of evil in the world is still an issue which needs accounting for. Kant’s solution is to postulate that man is conscious of the moral law but chooses to make himself an exception to it. The evil man thus freely chooses a deviation from the Good. Kant clearly does not view the universe as the battleground for two dualistic Manichean powers. Evil is a subordinate principle in Kant’s system. Man is by nature Good and his activities aim at the good, unless….something causes man to deviate and then man subsequently chooses to follow this deviant path.The decision to follow the correct path for Kant, was a duty, and such a duty was far easier to understand than any obscure principle of happiness. Kant and Kantians throughout history have argued for the simplicity of doing something to increase ones worth rather than to make one happy because it is in fact very difficult to decide what will make one happy. We all know that what makes one man happy will not necessarily make another man happy unless it is because these two men know that they are worthy of being happy. In the context of this discussion the Greek principle of areté (doing the right thing at the right time in the right way) is the principle one ought to follow in doing ones duty.

The Kantian system is almost unique (among modern works) in that its teleological justification of action is both a religious and a political state rolled into one: the kingdom of ends is both a just and a holy state of affairs. The civil law and the holy law meet under the umbrella of the categorical imperative and in the arena of practical reason in which major premises of practical arguments are in the mode of “ought-statements”, e.g. “Promises ought to be kept”, “One ought to tell the truth”. Governments are bound by teleological justifications and they ought to keep promises and tell the truth to the people they govern. Failing to do so however does not, according to Kant ever justify revolution. Kuehn points out that Kant only approved of the French “Revolution” because it was not technically a revolution:

“Legally Louis 16th had in effect abdicated when he called the Estates-General. So, legally, the French Revolution was not a Revolution”(P.375)

Otherwise governmental activity is to be regarded in the light of the perspective of the good. The breaking of key promises and lying might well compromise this fundamental attitude of the governed toward their governors but otherwise in most circumstances, we assume a good will and good intentions. Kant was in favour of anyone freely criticising their government but on general grounds he felt that violence was an irrational form of response in human affairs, and becomes even more irrational and irresponsible when turned upon those who are trying to serve the people. Kant himself wished that those that governed were better educated, but he was probably more Aristotelian in his politics than Plato and would not have recommended that Philosophers rule the Republic. Government is only ultimately justified by the consent of the ruled and the idea of an inalienable human right is systematically addressed in terms of the idea of freedom:

“For right consists merely in limiting everybody else’s freedom to the point where it can coexist with my freedom according to universal law, and the public law in a community is no more than a state of actual legislation in accordance with this principle and combined with power.”(Kant, Practical Reason, On the Old Saw, P.60)

Human Rights would be fundamental in the Kingdom of Ends which would regulate interaction between states by a League of Nations or United Nations. It is important to note however, how the statement of rights above is an elaboration (in the form of an essence- specifying definition of a political concept of duty) upon the categorical imperative, an elaboration that uses the foundational idea of freedom in a way that explains or justifies the categorical imperative, thus taking us to the very outer boundary of what can be thought. The reference to power is an interesting one and raises the question as to whether such an exercise of coercion would be necessary in a kingdom of ends which, to avoid the tyranny of the instrumental imperative, ought to rest upon the categorical unconditioned duties connected to virtue. Obeying the law just because it is the law and not knowing why, i.e. not knowing why the state needs regulative laws which ought to be constitutive of ethical action in the minds of citizens, is heterogeneous, and compromises the autonomy of the free choice to do what is right and good. The definition does, however, articulate the close relationship between the duties of virtue and the political duties connected to rights. The Kingdom of Ends for Kant is more like a moral entity in which virtue reigns and one cannot help but wonder whether the State will wither away when the potential rationality of the human species becomes an actuality.

Kant’s relation to Religion is both positive and critical. Miracles and supernatural events are not to be believed or used to trick people into believing and hoping for a moral Kingdom on earth some time in the future. The Bible for Kant, as it was for Spinoza, must be interpreted in terms of practical reason. The dialectical progress of metaphysics from dogmatism to scepticism to the criticism of pure reason must be reflected in this “modern” interpretation of the Bible, which aims not just at the worthiness of ones character, but also at a cosmopolitan world in which cosmopolitan law will replace nationalistic laws: cosmopolitan law that constitutes and regulates the human rights of citizens of the world. Obviously in such a world inner moral legislation will be more important and prevalent than external juridicial legislation and the good will, moreover must have a “holy” religious dimension. For Kant, the laws we find in the Bible, are those that logically specify our duties and build character via a conception of the worthiness of being human. The “transgressions” of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden, for example, will, in the science of Anthropology, be a narrative that highlights the move away from animal instinct into the world of the human, where the search for the knowledge we need to lead our lives begins with an act of freedom. The rational animal capable of discourse that is the subject of investigation, in Kant’s Anthropological investigations, is a knowledge bearing creature for whom the Socratic ideal of wisdom (knowing what one does not know and what one could never know) is acknowledged as the model of Oracles.

There will be moments that are difficult to interpret such as God’s presence in the Garden of Eden, and those too ought eventually to be interpreted anthropologically without anthropomorphising a mode of Being that does not occupy the space-time matrix. This hermeneutical exercise will, Kant insists, need to be in accordance with a metaphysics that has engaged in a critique of pure reason and all putative so called “proofs” of the existence of God.

The details of our political development on the way to a Kingdom of ends is given in Kant’s work “Perpetual peace” from 1795. Direct democracy is regarded as a despotic system. Kant’s preference is for a Republic in which representatives (presumably with political knowledge and political skills) ensure and uphold a constitutional system in which the executive and legislative branches of government are separate from each other and possess genuine independence. Such government would protect property as part of human rights. It is rightful that one ought to be able to enjoy the fruits of ones work and that what is yours is yours and what is mine is mine. Ones possessions, rightfully and deservedly gained are protected under the infringement of freedom principle articulated above. Obviously under such a principle a person, being an end-in-themselves–cannot be owned or used without their consent. We do not “own” our children Kant argues, they are bearers of rights toward which parents have duties which are not reciprocated. Even in marriage the ideal of the person as an end in themselves means that one does not own the partner but rather consents to giving the partner rights over oneself. For Kant it is the Promise that is the central issue of this commitment. Talk of contracts both here and with respect to the relation the citizen has to the government must be placed in this ethical context: a context in which the notion of quid pro quo is a subordinate notion to that of rights and promises. Any allegiance to any government must be predicated upon the reciprocation of duties that build upon a moral foundation of treating people as ends in themselves, and a legal foundation of rights and freedom. The Enlightenment “revolution” was a repeat of the Socratic attempt to introduce a new set of values that replaced the stronger with the wiser. The Enlightenment twist that Kant added was that of the political wisdom of a phronimos who envisaged a peaceful cosmopolitan world ruled by moral values and human rights: a community of peaceful nations on earth. Forcefully occupying the lands that were being newly discovered was problematic for Kant and an enterprise filled with bad faith.

Education was of central concern to all the Enlightenment thinkers of importance. Kant believed in a method he described as catechism, by which the teacher does not dogmatically preach his subject or engage in a dialectical dialogue where the discoursing parties are contesting to win an argument. Rather the teacher engages the pupils in a form of discourse involving the kind of questioning Socrates engaged in with Meno, the boy-slave who then “recollected” a principle of geometry. This form of education is particularly important in moral education and this must precede any form of religious education. Religious education shall, when it occurs later in the educational process, not attempt to neutralise a fundamentally autonomous attitude with something more heterogeneous such as an attitude that emphasises duties to God. The question of what sort of moral relation we have to God may, Kant argues, be beyond the scope of our understanding and reason. The duties we have to man on the other hand are clear and comprehensible and easily understood by everyone.