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

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KANT’S IDEA FOR A UNIVERSAL HISTORYWITH A COSMOPOLITAN AIM

Lively current debates about narratives of historical progress, theconditions for international justice, and the implications ofglobalization have prompted a renewed interest in Kant’s Ideafor a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. The essays inthis volume, written by distinguished contributors, discuss thequestions that are at the core of Kant’s investigations. Does thestudy of history convey any philosophical insight? Can itprovide political guidance? How are we to understand thedestructive and bloody upheavals that constitute so much ofhuman experience? What connections, if any, can be tracedbetween politics, economics, and morality? What is the relationbetween the rule of law in the nation state and the advancementof a cosmopolitan political order? These questions and othersare examined and discussed in a book that will be of interest tophilosophers, social and political theorists, and intellectual andcultural historians.

amelie oksenberg rorty is Lecturer in Social Medicine,Harvard University and Visiting Professor in Philosophy,Boston University.

james schmidt is Professor of History and Political Scienceat Boston University.

cambridge critical guides

Volumes published in the series thus far:

Hegel’s Phenomenology of Spiritedited by dean moyar and michael quante

Mill’s On Liberty: A Critical Guideedited by c. l . ten

Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aimedited by amelie oksenberg rorty and james schmidt

KANT’S

Idea for a Universal Historywith a Cosmopolitan Aim

A Critical Guide

edited by

AMÉLIE OKSENBERG RORTYAND

JAMES SCHMIDT

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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Contents

List of contributors page viiList of abbreviations x

Introduction: history as philosophyAMÉLIE OKSENBERG RORTY AND JAMES SCHMIDT 1

Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan AimIMMANUEL KANT (TRANSLATED BY ALLEN WOOD) 9

1 Teleology and history in Kant: the critical foundationsof Kant’s philosophy of historyHENRY E. ALLISON 24

2 The purposive development of human capacitiesKARL AMERIKS 46

3 Reason as a species characteristicMANFRED KUEHN 68

4 Good out of evil: Kant and the idea of unsocial sociabilityJ . B . SCHNEEWIND 94

5 Kant’s Fourth Proposition: the unsociable sociabilityof human natureALLEN WOOD 112

6 The crooked timber of mankindPAUL GUYER 129

7 A habitat for humanityBARBARA HERMAN 150

8 Kant’s changing cosmopolitanismPAULINE KLEINGELD 171

v

9 The hidden plan of natureECKART FÖRSTER 187

10 Providence as progress: Kant’s variations on a tale of originsGENEVIEVE LLOYD 200

11 Norms, facts, and the philosophy of historyTERRY PINKARD 216

12 Philosophy helps historyRÜDIGER BITTNER 231

Bibliography 250Index of names and works 256

vi Contents

Contributors

henry allison is Professor of Philosophy at the University ofCalifornia, Davis. His books include Kant’s Transcendental Idealism: AnInterpretation and Defense (1983), Kant’s Theory of Freedom (1990), Idealismand Freedom: Essays in Kant’s Theoretical and Practical Philosophy(1996), and Kant’s Theory of Taste: A Reading of the Critique of AestheticJudgment (2001).

karl ameriks is the McMahon-Hank Professor of Philosophy at theUniversity of Notre Dame. His publications include Kant’s Theory of Mind(1982; 2nd edn., 2000), Kant and the Fate of Autonomy (2000), InterpretingKant’s Critiques (2003) and Kant and the Historical Turn (2006). He isco-editor of The Modern Subject (1995) and editor of The CambridgeCompanion to German Idealism (2000).

rudiger bittner is Professor of Philosophy at the University ofBielefeld. He is the author of What Reason Demands (1989) and DoingThings for Reasons (2001). He is the editor of Nietzsche’s Writings from theLate Notebooks (2003).

eckart forster is Professor of Philosophy at Johns HopkinsUniversity and Honorary Professor of Philosophy at the HumboldtUniversity in Berlin. He is the author of Kant’s TranscendentalDeductions: The Three ‘Critiques’ and the ‘Opus Postumum’ (1989) andFinal Synthesis (2000).

paul guyer is Murray Professor in the Humanities at the University ofPennsylvania. He is the author of Kant and the Claims of Taste (1979), Kantand the Claims of Knowledge (1987), Kant and the Experience of Freedom(1993), Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness (2000), Kant’s System ofNature and Freedom (2005), and Values of Beauty: Historical Essays inAesthetics (2005). Along with Allen Wood, he serves as General Editor ofthe Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant.

vii

barbara herman is Professor of Philosophy at the University ofCalifornia, Los Angeles. She is the author of The Practice of MoralJudgment (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 Universityof Leiden. She is the author of Fortschritt und Vernunft: ZurGeschichtsphilosophie Kants (1995) and the editor of Immanuel Kant,‘Toward Perpetual Peace’ and Other Writings on Politics, Peace, andHistory (2006).

manfred kuehn is Professor of Philosophy at Boston University and isthe author of Scottish Common Sense in Germany (1988) and Immanuel Kant:A Biography (2001).

genevieve lloyd is Professor Emerita of Philosophy at the Universityof New SouthWales and is the author of The Man of Reason (1984), Being inTime: Selves and Narrators (1993), Part of Nature: Self-Knowledge in Spinoza’sEthics (1994), and Spinoza and The Ethics (1996), and the editor of Feminismand 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 ofIdealism (2002).

amelie oksenberg rorty is the author of Mind in Action (1991) andnumerous essays on Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume. She has alsoedited 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 TheMany Faces of Philosophy (2003).

j . b. schneewind is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at Johns HopkinsUniversity. He is the author of Sidgwick’s Ethics and Victorian MoralPhilosophy (1977), Moral Philosophy from Montaigne to Kant (1990), andThe Invention of Autonomy (1998).

james schmidt is Professor of History and Political Science at BostonUniversity. He is the author of Maurice Merleau-Ponty: BetweenPhenomenology and Structuralism (1985), and the editor of What isEnlightenment? Eighteenth-Century Answers and Twentieth-CenturyQuestions (1996) and Theodor Adorno (2007).

viii List of contributors

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

List of contributors ix

Abbreviations

Kant’s works will be cited in the body of the text according to the volumeand page number in Immanuel Kants Schriften, Ausgabe der königlichpreussischen 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 byKant.

EF Zum ewigen Frieden: Ein philosophischer Entwurf (1795), Ak 8Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Project

G Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (1785), Ak 4Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals

Idea Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht(1784), Ak 8Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim

KpV Kritik der praktischen Vernunft (1788), Ak 5Critique of Practical Reason

KrV Kritik der reinen Vernunft (1781, 1787).Critique of Pure ReasonReferences to this work follow the convention of citing thepages of the first (“A”) and second (“B”) editions.

KU Kritik der Urteilskraft (1790), Ak 5Critique of the Power of Judgment

Lec Eth Lectures on EthicsMA Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (1786), Ak 8

Conjectural Beginning of Human HistoryMS Metaphysik der Sitten (1797–8), Ak 6

Metaphysics of MoralsR Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft

(1793–4), Ak 6Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

x

Ref Reflexionen, Ak 14–23. References here are to the number ofthe Reflection and then to the volume and page in theAkademie edition.

RH Recensionen von J. G. Herders Ideen zur Philosophie derGeschichte der Menschheit, Teil 1–2, Ak 8Reviews of J. G. Herder’s Ideas for the Philosophy of theHistory of Humanity, Parts 1–2

T&P Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig seintaught aber nicht für die Praxis, Ak 8On the Common Saying: ThatMay be True in Theory, But it is ofNo Use in Practice

VA Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht (1798), Ak 7Anthropology from a Pragmatic Standpoint

List of abbreviations xi

Introduction: history as philosophyAmélie Oksenberg Rorty and James Schmidt

Lively current debates about narratives of historical progress, the conditionsfor international justice, and the implications of globalization have promp-ted a renewed interest in Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with aCosmopolitan Aim. The nine Propositions that make up this brief essayraise a set of questions that continue to preoccupy philosophers, historians,and social theorists. Does history, whether construed as a chronicle or as aset of explanatory narratives, indicate anything that can be characterized asmeaningful? If so, what is its structure, its rationale and direction? How arewe to understand the destructive and bloody upheavals that constitute somuch of human experience? What connections, if any, can be tracedbetween politics, economics, and morality? What is the relation betweenthe rule of law in the nation state and the advancement of a cosmopolitanpolitical order? Can the development of individual rationality be compatiblewith the need for the constraints of political order? Does the study of historyconvey 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 andAugustine are heard clearly; and although Kant had reservations aboutGrotius, Hobbes, Leibniz, and Rousseau, their contributions, along withthose of Mandeville and Adam Smith, are manifest in the Idea for aUniversal History. It is as if this essay were a crucible in which Kant soughtto synthesize the purified and transformed views of his predecessors, con-densing them into a comprehensive political and cultural history with aphilosophical moral. It is itself an instance of the integration of history andphilosophical 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 inwhich each part plays a necessary role, and that the exercise of rationalityconstitutes human freedom and finds its highest achievement in politicalcosmopolitanism.Kant followedAugustine in seeing a providential significance

1

in history; but Augustine distinguished the divine ordinance of the City of Godfrom the temporal human city, while Kant focused on the way that humanstrivings – often antagonistically and inadvertently – bring about a realization ofchiliastic hopes within human history. Like Grotius, he held that there areuniversal natural laws that, in conformity with human rationality, governpolitical and moral right among nations. While he agreed with Grotius thatthese laws are discovered rationally rather than empirically, Kant did not followGrotius in resting the necessity and legitimacy of rational laws on divineauthority. Nor did he share Grotius’ assumption that human beings werenaturally sociable; indeed, the species’ fundamental unsociability looms large inhis argument. LikeHobbes, Kant thought that peace and political organizationarise from the rational recognition that competition and conflicts endanger thenatural human inclination to self-protection. But Hobbes posited rationality asa precondition for the possibility of political organization, while Kant thoughtthat rational civic organization emerged gradually from the recognition thatantagonism threatens the natural instinct of self-preservation.

Along with Mandeville, Leibniz and Adam Smith, Kant maintained thatthere is a hidden pattern, a law that underlies – and harmonizes – theapparently destructive narrowly self-interested activities of mankind; thehidden hand of nature is manifest to those who know how to read historyand economics aright. Yet in contrast to Mandeville, he did not believe thatpublic virtue emerges from private vices: it is the product of rationallyconstructed political institutions. Like Smith, Kant thought that moralityrequires self-legislating reflective activity; but where Smith saw the originsof such activity in the development of moral sentiments, Kant located it inthe activity of the rational will.

Kant shared Rousseau’s distrust in the ability of social affections to providea reliable source of rational morality. And, like Rousseau, he followed theStoics in constructing amythical story – a kind of natural history – of stages inthe emergence of rational self-legislation. He shared Rousseau’s convictionthat the achievement of constitutional political organization is key to a justcivil society and that genuine individual and political freedom consists inautonomy rather than in unrestricted inclination. But while Rousseauassumed that such harmony is possible only in small, isolated polities, Kantargued that only a cosmopolitan political organization can ensure the peacerequired to achieve such autonomy. Although he agreed with Leibniz that aprovidential order underlies the apparent random chaos of nature, he dis-sented from Leibniz’s view that cosmic harmony expresses divine will.Moreover, while Leibniz’s divinely ordained harmony is atemporal, Kantthought that cosmopolitan harmony could be attained by free human activity

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

through a long and antagonistic struggle: what Leibniz argued was animplication 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 – theirsignificance was radically modified. Hegel also saw history as a narrative ofthe antagonistic but providentially progressive emergence of a rational andself-legislative world order, but he had reservations about what he saw asKant’s utopian hopes for a cosmopolitan world order. Marx shared Kant’sconviction that history is driven forward by paradoxes and contradictions,but the concern with rights that lay at the heart of Kant’s account of civilsociety played no role in his theory of society. Darwin and his followerswould, like Kant, insist that the evolution of species is not the work ofindividuals (and, indeed, does not necessarily redound to their benefit), butthey rejected his attempt to find signs of providence in the workings ofnature. In the end, the precipitate from Kant’s synthesized compoundwould 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 theGothaische Gehlehrte Zeitung had reported that Kant’s “favorite idea” wasthe notion that “the final end of humankind is the attainment of the mostperfect political constitution” and that Kant hoped a “philosophical histori-ographer” might undertake a history that would show “how far humanityhas approached this final end in different ages, or how far removed it hasbeen from it, and what is still to be done for its attainment.” As Kantexplained in the prefatory footnote, he wrote the article out of a concernthat, 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 anthol-

ogies of Kant’s writings on history or political thought. However, when itdebuted in the Berlinische Monatsschrift of November 1784 it appeared inmarkedly different company. Edited by Johann Erich Biester (librarian ofthe Royal Library in Berlin and secretary to Baron Karl Abraham vonZedlitz, a champion of Kant’s work who served as Frederick II’s ministerfor ecclesiastical and educational affairs) and Friedrich Gedike (a prominanteducational reformer and Gymnasium director), the journal had beenlaunched the previous December with the hope that it might attract writerswho shared a “zeal for truth, love for the dissemination of useful enlight-enment and for the banishment of pernicious error.”1 Idea for a Universal

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

Introduction: history as philosophy 3

History was the lead article – a testimony, perhaps, both to Kant’s growingreputation and to Biester and Gedike’s sense of the importance of hiscontribution for the broader aim of their fledgling journal – in an issuethat included a series of reports (assembled by Biester) documenting thereligious fanaticism, medical quackery, and popular prejudices that still heldsway over the citizenry of Berlin, and the latest installment of an account ofthe social and cultural life of Berlin and its environs, allegedly written by ananonymous foreigner (who was not shy in pointing out the ways in whichBerliners remained less than enlightened) but, in fact, the work of Biester’sco-editor Gedike.2 While the contributions from Gedike and Biesterreflected the journal’s interest in exposing – and, through this exposure,attempting to overcome – impediments to the enlightenment of the cit-izenry, a third item in the issue demonstrated how much had already beenaccomplished. The article in question was a reprint of a sermon from theprevious century in which an earnest, but obviously unenlightened, clergy-man sought to find theological significance in the recent birth of a pair ofmonstrously deformed piglets. As J. G. Selden observed in his prefatorynote, however much the population of Berlin was still at the mercy ofquacks and religious enthusiasts, one could take some consolation that itsclergy had become somewhat more enlightened.3

Idea for a Universal Historywas the first of sixteen articles – addressing topicswhich ranged across the fields of ethics, history, anthropology, natural philos-ophy, and politics – that Kant contributed to the Berlinische Monatsschrift overthe next decade and a half.4 It was here that he published such well-knownworks as his answer to the question “What is Enlightenment?” (December1784), “What is Orientation in Thinking?” (October 1786) – his interventionin the so-called “Pantheism Controversy,” the first chapter of Religion Withinthe Boundaries of Mere Reason (1792), and his extended account of the relation-ship between theory and practice (September 1793), along with less familiarcontributions to the fields of natural history (essays on lunar volcanoes and thealleged influence of the moon on the weather), theology (among them, hiscritique 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 [Biester], “Anekdoten,” Berlinische Monatsschrift II (1784), pp. 428–46, and [Gedike], “Ueber Berlin.Von einem Fremden,” Berlinische Monatsschrift II (1784), pp. 447–70.

3 J. G. Selden, “Auszug aus einer märkischen Bußpredigt wegen zwei monströser Ferkel,” BerlinischeMonatsschrift II (1784), pp. 471–9.

4 For Kant’s relationship with the journal, see Peter Weber, “Kant und die Berlinische Monatsschrift,” inDina Edmundts, ed., Immanuel Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig RiechertVerlag, 2000), pp. 60–79.


Monatsschrift, Kant cut a rather different figure from that of the author of thethree critiques: his general stance is more casual, the positions he takes upmorefrankly experimental, and his style considerably more accessible. He appears ina role that today would be described as that of “public intellectual”; in theterminology of his own day, it was here that he played his part as a member ofthe 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, inpassing, requested that those who had argued for the “enlightenment” of thecitizenry first answer the question “What is enlightenment?,” Kant pon-dered the question of whether his was an “enlightened age.”He offered thecautious, but hopeful, response, “No, but it is an age of enlightenment”(8:40). Idea for a Universal History shared the same hope that the barriersthat prevented the spread of enlightenment were in the process of beingdismantled. Its eighth proposition held out the prospect that the removal ofrestrictions on the freedom of citizens, when coupled with a “general free-dom of religion,” would result in an “enlightenment” that would “raisehumankind even out of the selfish aims of aggrandizement on the part of itsrulers …” and “ascend bit by bit up to the thrones and have its influenceeven 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 tothe 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 theirfight” (11:417). He did, however, return to the concerns of the essay fourmonths later in his contribution to the Berlinische Monatsschrift “On theCommon Saying: That May be True in Theory, But it is of No Use inPractice,” an article whose final section considered the relationship of theoryand practice “from a universally philanthropic, that is, cosmopolitan pointof view” (8:307–9). The arguments first broached in Idea for a UniversalHistory were given a more thorough reconsideration in Toward PerpetualPeace (1795) and in the sections of theMetaphysics of Morals (1797) devotedto “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 amore extensive reading of Kant’s work. In its pages Ernst Cassirer foundthe foundation for “the new conception of the essence of the state and ofhistory that Kant had developed” and Jürgen Habermas was struck by the


“system-exploding” implications of an intertwining of philosophy and historyin which “the philosophy of history itself was to become a part of theenlightenment diagnosed as history’s course.”5 But Idea for a UniversalHistory has tended to be overshadowed by Towards Perpetual Peace, a workthat was both more circumscribed in its theoretical apparatus and morefocused in its political proposals. Friedrich Meinecke, for instance, paid littleattention to the Idea for a Universal History in his classic studyCosmopolitanismand the National State and discussions of Kant’s work by international relationstheorists have tended to focus chiefly on Towards Perpetual Peace.6

The Idea has also long been available to English readers. It was among thefirst of Kant’s works to be translated, appearing alongside Kant’s response tothe question “What is enlightenment?,” his discussion of the relationbetween theory and practice, Towards Perpetual Peace, the Groundwork ofthe Metaphysics of Morals, and a number of his other contributions to theBerlinische Monatsschrift in John Richardson’s two-volume collection ofKant’s Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various PhilosophicalSubjects (1798–9).7 A second translation, by Thomas De Quincy, appearedin the London Magazine of October 1824 and, five years later, the Lake PoetRobert Southey interpolated De Quincy’s translation of the propositions(but not Kant’s comments on them) into Thomas More, or Colloquies on theProgress and Prospects of Society.8 It was rendered into English once again atthe close of the nineteenth century in William Hastie’s collection Kant’sPrinciples of Politics (1891).9 The emigré political scientist Carl Friedrichprovided a partial translation of the essay in his 1949 compendium of Kant’sphilosophical and political writings.10 But Friedrich was chiefly interested in

5 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.

6 Friedrich Meinecke, Cosmopolitanism and the National State (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UniversityPress, 1970). The focus ofTowards Perpetual Peace among theorists of international relations stems, inlarge part, from its framing of what has come to be known as the law of the “liberal peace” – the thesisthat republics will be less inclined to make war on one another. For a recent discussion of theliterature, see Huntley, “Kant’s Third Image: Systematic Sources of the Liberal Peace,” InternationalStudies Quarterly 40, 1 (1996).

7 Emanuel Kant, Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various Philosophical Subjects (London:William Richardson, 1798).

8 Kant, “Ideal for a Universal History on a Cosmo-Political Plan,” LondonMagazine 10 (October 1824),pp. 385–93 (reprinted inTheWorks of Thomas De Quincey, ed. Frederick Burwick [London: Pickeringand Chatto, 2000], 4:204–16); Robert Southey, Sir Thomas More, Or, Colloquies on the Progress andProspects 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 typicallyappears in literary magazines.

9 William Hastie, ed., Kant’s Principles of Politics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1891), pp. 1–29.10 Carl Joachim Friedrich, The Philosophy of Kant (New York: Random House, 1949), pp. 116–31.


Towards Perpetual Peace, in part because of the chronological accident of thesesquicentennial of its publication’s falling in the same year as the foundingof the United Nations.11 A more serious engagement with Idea for aUniversal History had to await Emil Fackenheim’s discussion of Kant’swritings on history in Kant-Studien and Lewis White Beck’s influentialcollection of Kant’s writings on history.12

The motifs of Kant’s “Idea” continue to echo in the problems and issuescentral to contemporary philosophy and the philosophy of history.Historians and philosophers alike remain concerned about whether it isappropriate to speak of grand narratives of historical ‘progress’ or ‘develop-ment.’ Political and economic theorists argue about the relation betweennationalism, global economics and cosmopolitanism. Social psychologistsattempt to understand the sources of – and the constraints on – humanaggression, the “unsocial sociability” of mankind. Public intellectuals won-der whether philosophical history – as it goes beyond local or nationalnarratives – can play a role in ensuring civil justice.Our authors have contributed to the further interpretation and under-

standing of the complexity and the audacity of Kant’s synthesis. Allisonexplores the role that assumptions about teleology play in the essay, whileAmeriks examines the way in which Kant applied the concept of purposive-ness to his discussion of the development of human capacities. Kuehnfocuses on the differing assumptions about human progress that distinguishKant’s arguments from those of his contemporaries. Schneewind andWoodshed new light on what was perhaps the most novel concept in Kant’sarsenal: the notion that the progress of the human species is the product ofits “unsociable sociability.” Taking his point of departure from Kant’sfamous image of the human race as a “crooked timber” that could neverbe made “entirely straight,”Guyer traces the evolution of Kant’s reflectionson justice. Herman analyzes the emergence and aims of civil society whileKleingeld explores the transformation of Kant’s conception of cosmopoli-tanism. Förster analyzes the way in which Idea for a Universal History boundtogether the concepts of history, nature, and the development of the species,while Lloyd explores his debts to – and departures from – earlier accounts of

11 This coincidence was the point of departure for Carl J. Friedrich, “The Ideology of the UnitedNations Charter and the Philosophy of Peace of Immanuel Kant 1795–1945,” Journal of Politics 9, 1(1947).

12 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 followedby Hans Reiss, ed., Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), andImmanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace and Other Essays, translated by Ted Humphrey (Indianapolis:Hackett Publishing, 1983).


the role of providence in history. Pinkard reflects on Kant’s treatment(crucial for later German idealists) of the relationship between philosophicalnorms and historical facts and Bittner offers some reservations about therole that Kant assigned to philosophy in the history that he constructed.These essays, we hope, will serve to remind readers of the richness andsubtlety of Kant’s essay and to serve as a provocation for further engagementwith its far-reaching implications.

The editors want to thank Allen Wood for permission to reprint histranslation of Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, from theCambridge Edition of Kant’s Writings on Anthropology, History andEducation, ed. Guenther Zoeller and Robert B. Louden (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2007), and Karen Carroll for her generous editorial help.Amélie Rorty is also grateful to the gemütlich hospitality of the NationalHumanities Center and its grant of the William C. and Ida FridayFellowship. James Schmidt thanks the Boston University HumanitiesFoundation for its support.


Idea for a Universal History witha Cosmopolitan Aim

t r an s l a tor ’ s i n t roduct i on

This essay appears to have been occasioned by a passing remark made byKant’s colleague and follower Johann Schultz in a 1784 article in the GothaLearned Papers.1 In order to make good on Schultz’s remark, Kant wrote thisarticle, 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 titleis a theoretical idea, that is, an a priori conception of a theoretical program tomaximize the comprehensibility of human history. It anticipates much ofthe theory of the use of natural teleology in the theoretical understanding ofnature that Kant was to develop over five years later in the Critique of thePower of Judgment. But this theoretical idea also stands in a close andcomplex relationship to Kant’s moral and political philosophy, and to hisconception of practical faith in divine providence. Especially prominent init is the first statement of Kant’s famous conception of a federation of statesunited 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 theHistory 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). Thetranslation is based on the presentation of the work in AA 2:15–31 and wasundertaken by Allen W. Wood.

1 The passage referred to is the following: “A favorite idea of Professor Kant is that the final end ofhumankind is the attainment of the most perfect political constitution, and he wishes that aphilosophical 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 ithas been from it, and what is still to be done for its attainment” (AA 8:468).

9

i d e a for a un i v e r s a l h i s tor y w i tha co smopo l i t an a im *

[8:17] Whatever concept one may form of the freedom of the will with ametaphysical aim, its appearances, the human actions, are determined just asmuch as every other natural occurrence in accordance with universal laws ofnature. History, which concerns itself with the narration of these appearances,however deeply concealed their causes may be, nevertheless allows us to hopefrom it that if it considers the play of the freedom of the human will in thelarge, it can discover within it a regular course; and that in this way whatmeetsthe eye in individual subjects as confused and irregular yet in the wholespecies can be recognized as a steadily progressing though slow developmentof its original predispositions. Thus marriages, the births that come fromthem and deaths, since the free will of human beings has so great an influenceon them, seem to be subject to no rule in accordance with which theirnumber could be determined in advance through calculation; and yet theannual tables of them in large countries prove that they happen just as muchin accordance with constant laws of nature, as weather conditions which areso inconstant, whose individual occurrence one cannot previously determine,but which on the whole do not fail to sustain the growth of plants, the courseof streams, and other natural arrangements in a uniform uninterruptedcourse. Individual human beings and even whole nations2 think little aboutthe fact, since while each pursues its own aim in its own way3 and one oftencontrary 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 atits promotion, although even if it were to become known to them it wouldmatter little to them.

Since human beings in their endeavors do not behave merely instinc-tively, like animals, and yet also not on the whole like rational citizens of theworld in accordance with an agreed upon plan, no history of them inconformity 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 doingsand refrainings on the great stage of the world and finds that [8:18] despitethe wisdom appearing now and then in individual cases, everything in thelarge 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 doubttaken from my conversation with a passing scholar, elicits from me this elucidation, without whichthat passage would have no comprehensible meaning.

2 Völker 3 nach seinem Sinne


malice and the rage to destruction; so that in the end one does not knowwhat concept to make of our species, with its smug imaginings about itsexcellences. Here there is no other way out for the philosopher – who,regarding human beings and their play in the large, cannot at all presupposeany rational aim of theirs – than to try whether he can discover an aim ofnature in this nonsensical course of things human; from which aim a historyin accordance with a determinate plan of nature might nevertheless bepossible even of creatures who do not behave in accordance with theirown plan. –Wewant to see if we will succeed in finding a guideline for sucha history, and want then to leave it to nature to produce the man who is in aposition to compose that history accordingly. Thus it did produce a Kepler,who subjected the eccentric paths of the planets in an unexpected way todeterminate laws, and a Newton, who explained these laws from a universalnatural cause.

f i r s t p ro po s i t i on

All natural predispositions of a creature are determined sometime to developthemselves completely and purposively.4 With all animals, external as well asinternal or analytical observation confirms this. An organ that is not to beused, an arrangement that does not attain to its end, is a contradiction in theteleological doctrine of nature. For if we depart from that principle, then weno longer have a lawful nature but a purposelessly playing nature; anddesolate chance5 takes the place of the guideline of reason.

s e cond propo s i t i on

In the human being (as the only rational creature on earth), those predis-positions whose goal is the use of his reason were to develop completely only in thespecies, but not in the individual. Reason in a creature is a faculty of extendingthe rules and aims of the use of all its powers far beyond natural instinct, andit knows [8:19] no boundaries to its projects. But reason itself does notoperate instinctively, but rather needs attempts, practice and instruction inorder gradually to progress from one stage of insight to another. Henceevery human being would have to live exceedingly long in order to learnhow he is to make a complete use of all his natural predispositions; or ifnature 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

Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim 11

transmits its enlightenment to the next, in order finally to propel its germsin our species to that stage of development which is completely suited to itsaim. 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 predispositionswould 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 other-wise serve as a principle, under the suspicion that in the case of the humanbeing alone it is a childish play.

th i rd p ropo s i t i on

Nature has willed that the human being should produce everything that goesbeyond the mechanical arrangement of his animal existence entirely out ofhimself, and participate in no other happiness or perfection than that whichhe has procured for himself free from instinct through his own reason. For naturedoes 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 groundedon it, that was already a clear indication of its aim in regard to that endow-ment. For he should now not be guided by instinct or cared for andinstructed by innate knowledge; rather he should produce everything outof himself. The invention of his means of nourishment, his clothing, hisexternal safety and defense (for which nature gave him neither the horns ofthe steer, nor the claws of the lion, nor the teeth of the dog, but merely hishands), all gratification that can make life agreeable, all his insight andprudence and even the generosity of his will, should be entirely his ownwork. 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, soprecisely to the highest need of an initial existence, as though it willedthat the human being, if he were someday to have labored himself from thegreatest crudity to the height of the greatest skillfulness, the inner perfectionof his mode of thought, and (as far as is possible on earth) thereby tohappiness, may have only his ownmerit alone to thank for it; just as if it hadbeen more concerned about his rational self-esteem than about his well-being. For in this course of human affairs there is a whole host of hardshipsthat await the human being. But it appears to have been no aim at all ofnature that he should live well; but only that he should labor and workhimself up so far that he might make himself worthy of well-being throughhis conduct of life. Yet here it remains strange that the older generationsappear to carry on their toilsome concerns only for the sake of the later ones,


namely so as to prepare the steps on which the latter may bring up higherthe edifice which was nature’s aim, and that only the latest should have thegood fortune to dwell in the building on which a long series of theirancestors (to be sure, without this being their aim) had labored, withoutbeing able to partake of the good fortune which they prepared. But aspuzzling as this may be, it is yet necessary once one assumes that a species ofanimals should have reason, and, as a class of rational beings who all die,while the species is immortal, should nevertheless attain to completeness inthe development of their predispositions.

fourth propo s i t i on

The means nature employs in order to bring about the development of all theirpredispositions is their antagonism in society, insofar as the latter is in the endthe cause of their lawful order. Here I understand by ‘antagonism’ theunsociable sociability of human beings,a i.e. their propensity to enter intosociety, which, however, is combined with a thoroughgoing resistance thatconstantly threatens to break up this society. The predisposition for thisobviously lies in human nature. The human being has an inclination tobecome socialized, since in such a condition he feels himself as more ahuman being, i.e. [8:21] feels the development of his natural predispositions.But he also has a great propensity to individualize (isolate) himself, becausehe simultaneously encounters in himself the unsociable property of willingto direct everything so as to get his own way,6 and hence expects resistanceeverywhere because he knows of himself that he is inclined on his sidetoward resistance against others. Now it is this resistance that awakens allthe powers of the human being, brings him to overcome his propensity toindolence, and, driven by ambition, tyranny and greed, to obtain forhimself a rank among his fellows, whom he cannot stand, but also cannotleave alone. Thus happen the first true steps from crudity toward culture,which really consists in the social worth of the human being; thus all talentscome bit by bit to be developed, taste is formed,7 and even, throughprogress in enlightenment, a beginning is made toward the foundationof a mode of thought which can with time transform the rude natural

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

6 nach seinem Sinne 7 gebildet


predisposition to make moral distinctions into determinate practical princi-ples and hence transform a pathologically compelled agreement to form asociety finally into a moral whole. Without these qualities of unsociabilityfrom 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, contentmentand mutual love, remain eternally hidden in their germs; human beings, asgood-natured as the sheep they tended, would give their existence hardly anygreater worth than that of their domesticated beasts; they would not fill thevoid in creation in regard to their end as rational nature. Thanks be to nature,therefore, for the incompatibility, for the spiteful competitive vanity, for theinsatiable desire to possess or even to dominate! For without them all theexcellent natural predispositions in humanity would eternally slumber unde-veloped. The human being wills concord; but nature knows better what isgood for his species: it wills discord. He wills to live comfortably andcontentedly; but nature wills that out of sloth and inactive contentment heshould throw himself into labor and toils, so as, on the contrary, prudently tofind out the means to pull himself again out of the latter. The naturalincentives to this, the sources of unsociability and thoroughgoing resistance,from which so many ills arise, which, however, impel human beings to newexertion of their powers and hence to further [8:22] development of theirnatural predispositions, thus betray the ordering of a wise creator; and not thehand of an evil spirit who might have bungled his splendid undertaking orruined it in an envious manner.

f i f th p ropo s i t i on

The greatest problem for the human species, to which nature compels him, is theachievement of a civil society universally administering right. Since only insociety, and indeed in that society which has the greatest freedom, hence onein which there is a thoroughgoing antagonism of its members and yet themost precise determination and security of the boundaries of this freedom sothat the latter can coexist with the freedom of others – since only in it can thehighest aim of nature be attained, namely, the development of all thepredispositions in humanity, and since nature also wills that humanity byitself should procure this along with all the ends of its vocation: therefore asociety in which freedom under external laws can be encountered combined inthe greatest possible degree, with irresistible power,8 i.e. a perfectly just civil

8 Gewalt


constitution, must be the supreme problem of nature for the human species,because only by means of its solution and execution can nature achieve itsremaining aims for our species. Human beings, who are otherwise so takenwith unconstrained freedom, are compelled by need to enter into thiscondition of coercion; and indeed by the greatest necessity of all, namelythat which human beings who inflict on one another, given that their owninclinations make it so that they can not long subsist next to one another inwild freedom. Yet in such a precinct as civil union is, these same inclinationshave afterward their best effect; just as trees in a forest, precisely because eachof them seeks to take air and sun from the other, are constrained to look forthem above themselves, and thereby achieve a beautiful straight growth;whereas those in freedom and separated from one another, that put forththeir branches as they like, grow stunted, crooked and awry. All culture andart that adorn humanity, and the most beautiful social order, are the fruitsof unsociability, through which it is necessitated by itself to disciplineitself, and so by an art extorted from it, to develop completely the germs ofnature. [8:23]

s i x th pro po s i t i on

This problem is at the same time the most difficult and the latest to be solved bythe human species. The difficulty which the mere idea of this problem laysbefore our eyes is this: the human being is an animal which, when it livesamong others of its species, has need of a master. For he certainly misuses hisfreedom in regard to others of his kind; and although as a rational creaturehe wishes a law that sets limits to the freedom of all, his selfish animalinclination still misleads him into excepting himself from it where he may.Thus he needs a master, who breaks his stubborn will9 and necessitates himto obey a universally valid will with which everyone can be free. But wherewill he get this master? Nowhere else but from the human species. But thenthis master is exactly as much an animal who has need of a master. Try as hemay, therefore, there is no seeing how he can procure a supreme power10 forpublic right that is itself just, whether he seeks it in a single person or in asociety of many who are selected for it. For every one of them will alwaysmisuse his freedom when he has no one over him to exercise authority overhim 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 10 Gewalt 11 für sich selbst


the most difficult of all; indeed, its perfect solution is even impossible; out ofsuch crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing entirely straightcan be fabricated. Only the approximation to this idea is laid upon us bynature.* 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 agood will that is prepared to accept it; three such items are very difficult everto find all together, and if it happens, it will be only very late, after manyfruitless attempts. [8:24]

s e v enth propo s i t i on

The problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution is dependent on the problemof a lawful external relation between states and cannot be solved without thelatter. What use is it to labor at a lawful civil constitution among individualhuman beings, i.e. at the ordering of a commonwealth? The same unsoci-ability that necessitated human beings to this is once again the cause of everycommonwealth, in its external relation, i.e. as a state in reference to otherstates, standing in unbound freedom, and consequently of each having toexpect from the other precisely the ills that pressured individual humanbeings and compelled them to enter into a lawful civil condition. Naturehas therefore once again used the incompatibility of human beings, even ofgreat societies and state bodies of this kind of creature as a means to seek outin their unavoidable antagonism a condition of tranquility and safety; i.e.through wars, through the overstrained and never ceasing process of arma-ment for them, through the condition of need that due to this finally everystate even in the midst of peace must feel internally, toward at first imperfectattempts, but finally after many devastations, reversals and even thorough-going exhaustion of their powers, nature drives them to what reason couldhave told them even without much sad experience: namely, to go beyond alawless condition of savages and enter into a federation of nations,12 whereevery state, even the smallest, could expect its security and rights not from itsown 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 andtheir nature, we do not know; if, however, we discharge well this commission of nature, then we canwell 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 isotherwise; only the species can hope for this.

12 Völkerbund


of nations (Foedus Amphictyonum),b from a united might and from thedecision in accordance with laws of its united will. As enthusiastic as thisidea appears to be, and it has been ridiculed as such in Abbé de St. Pierre orRousseau (perhaps only because they believed its execution was too near), it isnevertheless the unavoidable outcome of the condition of need into whichhuman 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 asreluctantly compelled, namely, of giving up his brute freedom and seekingtranquility and security in a lawful constitution. – All wars are therefore onlyso 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, andthrough destruction or at least dismemberment of all of them to form newbodies, which, however, once again cannot preserve themselves either inthemselves or next to one another and hence must suffer new, similarrevolutions until finally, partly through the best possible arrangement oftheir civil constitution internally, partly through a common agreement andlegislation externally, a condition is set up, which, resembling a civil com-monwealth 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 sortsof formations through their chance collisions, which again are destroyedthrough new impacts, until finally by chance there succeeds a formation thatcan preserve itself in its form (a fortunate coincidence that could hardly evertake place!); or whether one should rather assume that nature here follows aregular course, leading our species from the lowest step of animality grad-ually up to the highest step of humanity, and indeed through the humanbeing’s own art, albeit one extorted from him; or whether one would preferthat from all these effects and counter-effects of human beings nothing at allwill result in the large, or at least nothing prudent, that it will remain as italways has been, and that therefore one cannot say ahead of time whetherthe discord that is so natural to our species will in the end prepare a hell ofills for us in however civilized13 a condition, in that nature will perhaps

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

13 gesitteten


annihilate again, through barbaric devastations, this condition and all theprevious steps of culture (which cannot be excluded under the governmentof blind chance, which is in fact the same as lawless freedom, if one does notascribe secretly to a guiding thread of nature attached to wisdom!): all thisleads roughly to the question whether it is indeed rational to assumepurposiveness in the arrangement of nature in the parts and yet purposelessnessin the whole. Therefore what the purposeless condition of savages did,namely hold back all natural predispositions in our species, but finallythrough ills into which this condition transported the species, necessitatedthem to go beyond this condition and enter into a civil constitution, in whichall those germs could be developed; [8:26] this the barbaric freedom of alreadyestablished states also does, namely, that through the application of all powersof the commonwealth to armaments against one another, through thedevastations perpetrated by war, even more, however, through the necessityof preserving themselves constantly in readiness for it, the full development ofthe natural predispositions are restrained in their progress; yet on the con-trary, the ills that arise out of this necessitate our species to devise to the initself salutary resistance of many states to one another arising from theirfreedom a law of equilibrium and to introduce a united power14 givingemphasis to that law, hence to introduce a cosmopolitan condition of publicstate security, which is not wholly without danger so that the powers ofhumanity may not fall asleep, but it is at least not without a principle ofequality between its reciprocal effect and counter-effect, so that they may notdestroy each other. Before this last step (namely, to the combination of states)is done, thus almost halfway through its formation15, human nature enduresthe hardest ills under the deceptive appearance of external welfare; andRousseau 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 toascend.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 andpropriety. But very much is still lacking before we can be held to be alreadymoralized. For the idea of morality still belongs to culture; but the use of thisidea, which comes down only to a resemblance of morals in love of honor andin external propriety, constitutes only being civilized. As long, however, asstates apply all their powers to their vain and violent aims of expansion andthus ceaselessly constrain the slow endeavor of the inner formation16 of theircitizens’mode of thought, also withdrawing with this aim all support from it,

14 Gewalt 15 Ausbildung 16 Bildung


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

e i ghth pro po s i t i on

One can regard the history of the human species in the large as the completion ofa hidden plan of nature to bring about an inwardly and, to this end, also anexternally perfect state constitution, as the only condition in which it can fullydevelop all its predispositions in humanity. This proposition is a consequenceof 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 dependson 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 becompleted that the little part of it which humanity has traversed withrespect to this aim allows one to determine the shape of its path and therelation of the parts to the whole only as uncertainly as the course taken byour sun together with the entire host of its satellites in the great system offixed stars can be determined from all the observations of the heavens madehitherto; yet from the general ground of the systematic constitution of thecosmic order and from the little one has observed, one is reliably able todetermine enough to infer the actuality of such a cycle. Nevertheless, inregard to the most distant epochs that our species is to encounter, it belongsto human nature not to be indifferent about them, if only they can beexpected with certainty. This can happen all the less especially in our case,where it seems that we could, through our own rational contrivance, bringabout faster such a joyful point in time for our posterity. For the sake ofthat, even the faint traces of its approach will be very important for us. Nowstates are already in such an artificial relation to one another that none ofthem can retard its internal culture without losing out in might andinfluence in relation to the others; thus the preservation of this end ofnature itself, if not progress in it, is fairly well secured through their aims ofambition. Further, civil freedom cannot very well be infringed without

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


feeling the disadvantage of it in all trades, especially in commerce, andthereby also the diminution of the powers of the state in its external [8: 28]relationships. But this freedom is gradually advancing. If one hinders thecitizen who is seeking his welfare in any way he pleases, as long as it cansubsist along with the freedom of others, then one restrains the vitality of allenterprise18 and with it, in turn, the powers of the whole. Hence thepersonal restrictions on the citizen’s doing and refraining19 are removedmore and more, and the general freedom of religion is ceded; and thusgradually arises, accompanied by delusions and whims, enlightenment, as agreat good that must raise humankind even out of the selfish aims ofaggrandizement on the part of its rulers, if only the latter understand theirown advantage. This enlightenment, however, and with it also a certainparticipation in the good by the heart of the enlightened human being whounderstands the good perfectly, must ascend bit by bit up to the thrones andhave its influence even on their principles of government. Although, forexample, the governors of our world now have no money left over for publiceducational institutions or in general for anything that has to do with whatis best for the world, because everything is always miscalculated20 ahead oftime toward the next future war, they would actually find their ownadvantage at least in not hindering their own nation’s own21 weak andslow endeavors in this regard. Finally war itself will gradually become notonly an enterprise so artificial, and its outcome on both sides so uncertain,but also the aftereffects which the state suffers through an ever-increasingburden of debt (a new invention), whose repayment becomes unending,will become so dubious an undertaking, and the influence of every shake-up in a state in our part of the world on all other states, all of whose tradesare so very much chained together, will be so noticeable, that these stateswill be urged merely through danger to themselves to offer themselves, evenwithout legal standing, as arbiters, and thus remotely prepare the way for afuture 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 veryrough 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 giveshope that after many transforming revolutions, in the end that which naturehas as its aim will finally come about – a universal cosmopolitan condition, as

18 die Lebhaftigkeit des durchgängigen Betriebes 19 Tun und Lassen20 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 twomeanings here.

21 ihres Volks


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

n inth propo s i t i on

A philosophical attempt to work out universal world history according to a planof nature that aims at the perfect civil union of the human species, must beregarded as possible and even as furthering this aim of nature. It is, to be sure, astrange and apparently an absurd stroke, to want to write a history inaccordance with an idea of how the course of the world would have to goif it were to conform to certain rational ends; it appears that with such anaim only a novel could be brought about. If, nevertheless, one may assumethat nature does not proceed without a plan or final aim even in the play ofhuman freedom, then this idea could become useful; and although we aretoo shortsighted to see through to the secret mechanism of its arrangement,this idea should still serve us as a guiding thread for exhibiting an otherwiseplanless aggregate of human actions, at least in the large, as a system. For ifone starts from Greek history – as that through which every other older orcontemporaneous history has been kept or at least accredited*’c – if onefollows their influence on the formation or malformation22 down to thepresent time its influence on the education or miseducation of the statebody of the Roman nation23 which swallowed up the Greek state, and thelatter’s influence on the barbarians who in turn destroyed the former, downto the present time, and also adds to this episodically the political history ofother nations,24 or the knowledge about them that has gradually reached usthrough these same enlightened nations25 – then one will discover a regularcourse of improvement of state constitutions in our part of the world (whichwill probably someday give laws to all the others). When one [8:30] attendsfurther 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 accreditancient history. Back beyond it everything is terra incognita; and the history of nations (Völker) thatlived outside it can be begun only from the time when they entered into it. This happened with theJewish nation (Volk) at the time of the Ptolemies through the Greek translation of the Bible, withoutwhich one would ascribe little credibility to their isolated records. From that point forward (if thisbeginning 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 solebeginning of all true history.

c See Hume, “Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations,” Essays Moral, Political and Literary, edited byGreen and Grose. London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1875, 1:414.

22 Bildung oder Mißbildung 23 des römischen Volks 24 anderer Völker 25 Nationen


relations of states, insofar as, through the good they contained, they servedfor a while to elevate and exalt nations26 (and with them also arts andsciences), but through that again which was faulty attaching to them theybrought them down, yet in such a way that there was always left over a germof enlightenment that developed further through each revolution and thisprepared for a following stage of improvement – then a guiding thread, as Ibelieve, is revealed that can serve not merely for the explanation of such aconfused play of things human, or for an art of political soothsaying aboutfuture changes in states (a utility which has already been drawn from thehistory of human beings, even if one regarded the latter as the disconnectedeffect of a freedom without rules!), but rather there will be opened aconsoling prospect into the future (which without a plan of nature onecannot hope for with any ground), in which the human species is repre-sented in the remote distance as finally working itself upward toward thecondition in which all germs nature has placed in it can be fully developedand its vocation here on earth can be fulfilled. Such a justification of nature –or better, of providence – is no unimportant motive for choosing a particularviewpoint for considering the world. For what does it help to praise thesplendor and wisdom of creation in the nonrational realm of nature, andto recommend it to our consideration, if that part of the great showplaceof the highest wisdom that contains the end of all this – the history ofhumankind – is to remain a ceaseless objection against it, the prospect ofwhich necessitates our turning our eyes away from it in disgust and, indespair of ever encountering a completed rational aim in it, to hope for thelatter only in another world?

That with this idea of a world history, which in a certain way has aguiding thread a priori, I would want to displace the treatment of history27

proper, that is written merely empirically – this would be a misinterpretationof my aim; it is only a thought of that which a philosophical mind (whichbesides this would have to be very well versed in history) could attempt fromanother standpoint. Moreover, the laudable circumspectness with whichone now writes the history of one’s time, naturally brings everyone to thescruple as to how our later posterity will begin to grasp the burden of historythat we might leave [8:31] behind for them after a few centuries. Withoutdoubt they will prize the history of the oldest age, the documents of whichmight long since have been extinguished, only from the viewpoint of whatinterests them, namely, what nations28 and governments have accomplished

26 Völker 27 Historie 28 Völker


or harmed regarding a cosmopolitan aim. But to pay regard to this, andlikewise 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 gloriousremembrance down to the latest age – that can still be additionally a smallmotive for the attempt to furnish such a philosophical history.


chapter 1

Teleology and history in Kant: the criticalfoundations of Kant’s philosophy of history

Henry E. Allison

Although the title of Kant’s essay Idea for Universal History with aCosmopolitan Aim indicates its central theme, it reveals little or nothingabout its underlying methodology and its connection with the emergingcritical philosophy. Indeed, as far as the title is concerned, the only hint ofa 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, asdistinct from concepts of the understanding, whose legitimate use is restrictedto possible experience, involve the thought of an absolute totality or com-pleteness 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 appealedto the Platonic republic and a constitution that provides for “the greatesthuman freedom according to laws that permit the freedom of each to existtogether with that of others” as examples of such ideas (A 316/B 372–3); buthis 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 systematicunity. While illusory, in the sense that no real object corresponds to them,these Ideas nonetheless play an essential regulative role in guiding the under-standing in its endemic search for unity in experience.

“Idea” as it appears in the title of our essay, is clearly not to be understoodaccording to the model of the transcendental Ideas, since it refers to humanhistory rather than to any illusory transcendent entity. It is closer to the twopolitical Ideas noted above; but it differs from them in that they are practicalIdeas, which function as norms or ideal types, whereas the Idea of auniversal history is theoretical, characterizing a way in which a philosophermight conceive this history in the endeavor to attain a synoptic compre-hension of it. What elevates this conception to the status of an Idea is that itinvolves the thought of completeness or absolute totality in two senses:first, it is concerned with humankind as a whole rather than a particularsegment thereof (this is what makes it a “universal history”); second, and

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most important, it conceives this history as a totality, encompassing allgenerations 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, acosmopolitan state of affairs, by which Kant understands not a world state,which would be the culmination of tyranny and the end of all freedom, buta confederation of free states or league of nations, which would provide thecondition under which humankind’s greatest scourge, war and the constantthreat thereof, could be permanently abated. As such, this essay contains thefirst statement of a view that Kant was to work out more fully in subsequentyears, 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 historyrather than on the particular view of history that it contains. Inasmuch asKant’s approach to history is explicitly teleological, this requires a consider-ation of the central themes of theCritique of the Teleological Power of Judgment,which is the second part of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, commonlyreferred to as the thirdCritique. Even though the latter work was published sixyears after Idea for a Universal History, it provides the lens through which theearlier work must be examined. But before turning to this, it is necessary toconsider briefly the prefatory portion of the essay, where Kant defines theproblem 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 twocentral conceptions of the third Critique as a whole: the purposiveness ofnature and the reflective power of judgment. The third deals with Kant’sphilosophy of biology. Although not directly germane to his account ofhistory, Kant’s controversial thesis that the conception of an intrinsicpurposiveness is an ineliminable condition of our understanding of organ-isms provides the framework in which Kant’s whole approach to teleologymust be viewed. The fourth examines Kant’s attempt to extend purposive-ness from particular organisms to the relation between organic beings(including human beings) and the order of nature as a whole. The fifthconsiders Kant’s claim that the conception of nature as a teleological systemrequires the assumption that something serves as the ultimate end of thissystem 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 (“dieMenschen”) rather than the literal translation “the human being” or “human beings,” since in both thisessay 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 ofnature and Kant’s teleological account of history. Finally, by appealing tothe distinction between an ultimate end of nature (letzter Zweck) and a finalend of creation (Endzweck) and the account of an “ethical commonwealth”that Kant introduces in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, theseventh part explores the complex but related question of the connectionsbetween Kant’s politically oriented historical teleology, his moral theory,and his trans-political yet social view of the ultimate goal of history.

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Kant begins the prefatory portion of Idea for a Universal History by posingthe freedom-nature problem with respect to human history. In the reso-lution of the Third Antinomy in the first Critique, Kant had argued merelythat if one adopts the standpoint of transcendental idealism, natural cau-sality and freedom (in the transcendental sense) need not contradict eachother. Now, abstracting from the transcendental question of freedom, Kantnotes that as appearances, that is, as empirically accessible events, humanactions are as law-governed as any other natural occurrences. And, asillustration of this thesis, Kant points to statistical tables, which reveal apredictable rate of marriages, births, and deaths, given a sufficiently largesampling. The significance of this for Kant consists in the fact that, in spiteof the assumption of human freedom, it opens up the possibility of depict-ing a pattern, indeed a progress, in human affairs through the developmentof humankind’s “original predispositions” (8:17).2

Nevertheless, though necessary, such statistical regularity is hardly suf-ficient to indicate a pattern, much less a progressive development inhuman affairs writ large. There remain two obstacles to the project offinding such a pattern: first, human beings, unlike animals, do notbehave instinctively, which introduces a certain unpredictability that isnot found in the animal kingdom; second, in spite of their presumablyrational nature, human beings, considered as a whole, do not act upon anyagreed plan. On the contrary, Kant laments that a survey of human affairsindicates that, while wisdom may occasionally manifest itself in particularcases, “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 incertain determinate ways. For a useful discussion of this conception and its relevance to both Kant’sphilosophy of history and his moral theory, see Allen Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. pp. 118–22, 210–12.


vanity, often also out of childish malice… ; so that in the end one does notknow what to make of our species, with its smug imaginings about itsexcellences” (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, toinvestigate whether one may discover an aim of nature (rather than aconsciously adopted aim of human beings ) “in this nonsensical course ofthings human” (8:18). In other words, at issue is whether it is possible toattribute a purpose to nature with respect to humankind, which the latterhas not consciously chosen for itself. And since, as we have already seen, thepurpose that Kant has in mind is a political one, namely, the greatestpossible freedom of each under law that is compatible with the freedomof all, this comes down to the question of whether it is possible to considernature as forcing us to be free. Although the precise expression is not usedby 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 introducesin the first proposition of the essay. It states simply that, “All naturalpredispositions of a creature are determined sometime to develop them-selves completely and purposively” (8:18). And in justification of this thesisKant 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 acontradiction in the teleological doctrine of nature. For if we depart from thatprinciple, then we no longer have a lawful nature, but a purposelessly playingnature; and desolate chance takes the place of the guideline of reason. (8:18)

The inclusion of the qualifier ‘sometime’ (einmal) in the statement of theproposition foreshadows Kant’s subsequent claim that, in the case ofhumankind, the complete development of the predispositions that involvethe 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 themain 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 expressionwas also used by EricWeil in Problèmes kantiens (Paris, 1963). It should also be noted that Kant himselfuses virtually the same expression, referring to the Kunstanstalten der Natur (artifices of nature) (EF8:362; 332).


For present purposes, however, the main point is that the teleologicalpicture of nature that Kant sketches here is far removed from the conceptionof 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, wherethe laws are of the mechanistic variety, ultimately grounded in thePrinciples of the Pure Understanding. In short, the nature of the firstCritique is essentially a Newtonian nature that appears to have no roomfor anything like a “teleological doctrine of nature.” Accordingly, if anappeal to teleology is to be legitimated and made the basis for an accountof 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 simplyoffers a teleological account in a seemingly dogmatic matter has led some tobelieve that this essay, and some of Kant’s other seemingly whimsical foraysinto the philosophy of history, are either regressions to a pre-critical stand-point or purely occasional pieces that need not be taken seriously.4 Asalready noted, however, it is not that Kant failed to provide a criticalfoundation for his speculations about the purposiveness of nature and itshidden purposes regarding humankind; it is rather that he only did soretrospectively 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.

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As a first step, however, it is necessary to say a word about the two funda-mental and closely related conceptions that underlie the Critique of the Powerof Judgment as a whole: the reflective power of judgment and the purposive-ness (Zweckmässigkeit) of nature. In the two versions of his Introduction tothis work,5 Kant points out that judgment, together with the understandingand reason, is one of the three “higher” cognitive faculties (the “lower”

4 For a discussion of this issue and defense of the philosophical significance and systematic place ofKant’s writings on history see Fackenheim, “Kant’s Concept of History”; Lewis White Beck, Editor’sIntroduction to Kant On History, pp. vi–xxiii; Klaus Weyand, “Kants Geschichtsphilosophie, IhreEntwicklung 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’sUniversity Press, 1973), pp. 1–14.

5 Kant wrote two versions of the Introduction to the third Critique. The initial version (which is usuallyreferred to as the “First Introduction”) is far lengthier than the published version and Kant himselfclaimed that he substituted the latter merely in the interests of brevity. In reality, however, there arealso some important philosophical and systematic differences between them, which I discuss in Kant’sTheory of Taste, Chapters One and Two.


faculty being sensibility), but up to this point it is the only one that had notreceived a Critique.6 The reason for this is that, unlike the other two highercognitive faculties, judgment does not appear to have an a priori principle ofits own, which would either require or warrant a separate Critique. On thecontrary, judgment, as characterized in the first Critique, is a faculty ofsubsumption, whose function is to determine whether given particulars fallunder a rule. And since these rules are all provided by the understanding andsince (on pain of an infinite regress) there can be no rules for subsumingunder rules, there can be no distinct principle for judgment, which pre-cludes providing it with a Critique.7

Although Kant retains the conception of judgment as a faculty of sub-sumption in the third Critique, he creates the conceptual space for assigningit an a priori principle, by distinguishing between two roles that it mightplay with respect to subsumption: determination and reflection. The differ-ence turns on the question of whether the rule, which includes concepts,laws, and principles, is given or whether what is given is merely someparticular content that is to be subsumed under a sought-for rule. In theformer case, the function of judgment is determinative; in the latter it isreflective. Inasmuch as the task of the latter power is to seek the rule underwhich given particulars may be subsumed, it, unlike the former, doesrequire an a priori principle of its own, which Kant identifies with thepurposiveness 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 some-thing has of appearing purposive. There are, however, two quite distinct waysin which this may be understood. It canmean either as if designed for the sakeof our cognitive capacities, or as if designed with respect to something’s owninner possibility. This underlies the division of the third Critique into acritique 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 appreciatewhy Kant’s definitive account of teleology ended up in a Critique of thePower of Judgment. Even the most cursory discussion of the former, how-ever, is immediately confronted with the problem that it itself comes in two

6 Contrary to what the title suggests, Kant states that in the first Critique it was the a priori status ofprinciples of the understanding that was established and in the second Critique that of reason(understood as practical reason).

7 See A 132–4/B 171–4.


radically distinct forms, which Kant suggests belong together without everreally explaining how they do. The first, which is treated only in the twoversions of the Introduction, is called “logical” or “formal purposiveness”and refers to nature’s conformity at the empirical level to the requirementsof the understanding for an orderly experience that goes beyond the order-liness supposedly guaranteed by the Transcendental Analytic in the firstCritique.8 Simply put, nature is regarded as doing us an epistemologicalfavor by making possible both its taxonomical ordering in terms of acoherent set of concepts and its nomological ordering in terms of a set ofempirical laws that allow for the construction of overarching theories. Kantdoes not claim that nature actually does us such a favor, or even that wemust believe that it does. The point is rather that we must proceed in ourinvestigation of nature on the assumption that it does because this is theonly way in which the reflective power of judgment can coherently proceed.Accordingly, the prescriptive force of this principle is directed back at thereflective power of judgment itself, dictating how one ought to judge, asopposed to specifying the nature of what is judged about.

By contrast, inasmuch as they are non-cognitive, aesthetic judgments (ormore precisely judgments of taste, which Kant also assigns to the reflectivepower of judgment), rely on nature “favoring” us in a quite different way.He explicates this by introducing the conception of a “subjective purposive-ness,” which refers to the “form” of an object as it is given in sensoryintuition, and which manifests itself by occasioning a harmony of thefaculties of the understanding and imagination in “mere reflection,” thatis, in a reflection directed toward enjoyment in the contemplation of anobject rather than cognition. From a systematic standpoint, this seems tohave been the most important function of the reflective power of judgmentfor Kant, since he acknowledges that it was his belated recognition thatjudgments of taste rest upon an a priori principle that led him to write thethird Critique, which was initially conceived as a critique of taste.9

As already indicated, in the case of teleological judgments, purposivenessdoes not involve the idea of nature being designed for us, but serves insteadas a condition of our understanding the possibility of a natural object. Theinclusion of this in a Critique of the Power of Judgment stems from the factthat this understanding, which consists in finding a unifying principle, is

8 Kant uses the term “logical purposiveness” in the First Introduction (20:217; 20) and “formalpurposiveness” in the published version (5:181–6; 68–73).

9 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.


likewise the work of the reflective power of judgment and, as such, a matterof judgment legislating to itself rather than to nature. Once again, however,the situation is further complicated by the fact that Kant distinguishesbetween two forms of such purposiveness: intrinsic and relative or extrin-sic.10 The first of these concerns reflection upon particular organic beingsand constitutes the essence of Kant’s philosophy of biology; the secondconcerns the relations between these beings and nature as a whole viewed asa teleological system. Since the latter leads to the application of teleology tohistory it is our main concern. But since that rests upon Kant’s account oforganisms, I shall attempt to provide a brief discussion of that topic.

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The fundamental concept in Kant’s philosophy of biology is that of an end orpurpose of nature (Naturzweck). He tells us by way of a provisional character-ization rather than a strict definition, that “a thing exists as a natural end if it iscause and effect of itself (although in a twofold sense)” (KU 5:370; 243). Kantassigns a central role to this seemingly paradoxical concept because the subjectmatter of biology is the living organism and he thought that the latter could beunderstood only in light of it. It is not that Kant viewed this either as anempirical concept derived from the experience of organisms or as equivalent tothe concept of the latter, which would make the claim that an organism is anend or purpose of nature analytic. It is, rather, a construct on Kant’s part, whichhe claimed to be required for the experience and comprehension of an organismas such.11 In fact, it was the perceived need to introduce this concept intobiology that made a critique of the teleological power of judgment necessary inthe first place for Kant. This critique has two major tasks: (1) to expound thisconcept and demonstrate its indispensability for biology (the main task of theAnalytic); and (2) to establish its coherence and its reconcilability with themechanism of nature (the function of the Dialectic). Due to constraints ofspace, I shall here concern myself almost entirely with the former.12

10 Kant appears to treat “relative” and “external” purposiveness as synonyms, using them interchange-ably 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 shallhenceforth refer to such purposiveness as extrinsic.

11 See Peter McLaughlin, Kant’s Critique of Teleology in Biological Explanation Antinomy and Teleology(Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 1990), esp. p. 46.

12 I analyze this antinomy in “Kant’s Antinomy of Teleological Judgment,” Southern Journal ofPhilosophy 30, Supplement, The Spindel Conference (1991), pp. 25–42. Reprinted in: Kant’sCritique of the Power of Judgment. Critical Essays, ed. by Paul Guyer (New York and Oxford:Rowman & Littlefield, 2003), pp. 219–36.


The basic problem is that the two conditions that must be met byanything that is to count as an end of nature appear incompatible; forinsofar as we regard something as an end, we assign it to an intelligent causerather than to the mechanism of nature, while insofar as we regard it as aproduct 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 seemsmerely to restate the problem in other terms. Accordingly, my goals in thissection are to try to understand why Kant thought that the introduction ofthis concept was required; illustrate the role that it supposedly plays inbiological explanation; and examine the status that Kant assigns to it.

To begin with, Kant is insistent that all genuine explanation in naturalscience is mechanistic. Although there is some controversy about what thismeans, I take the basic idea to be that the explanation of all physical wholesmust be in terms of the causal and reciprocal interaction of their parts.13But,according to Kant, living organisms cannot be understood in this way, sincethe function and interaction of their parts can be understood only inrelation 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 thatthere could ever be a Newton of a blade of grass.14

Kant also thought that the only way in which we can provide a causalexplanation of something wherein the whole may be regarded as the causalground 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 regularhexagon) that is found sketched in the sand in a presumably uninhabitedland. The point is that anyone happening upon such a figure would not beable to conceive it as the product of purely natural forces, say the interactionof sand, sea and wind, or perhaps as the footprint of some animal. It not thatsuch a mode of production would be physically impossible in the sense thatit would violate known laws of nature; it is rather that the chance of it beingbrought 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 ofa regular hexagon], which is possible only in reason, would seem to him [theobserver of the figure] so infinitely great that it would be just as good as ifthere were no natural law of nature, consequently no cause in nature actingmerely mechanically” (KU 5:370; 242).15 Accordingly, such a figure can be

13 SeeMcLaughlin, “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 TeleologicalJudgment.”

14 See KU 5:400; 271.15 At one point Kant defines purposiveness as “the lawfulness of the contingent as such” (FI 20:217; 20).


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 inthis sense. Moreover, this led to the widespread metaphor of nature as amachine, typically a clock. And since organic beings appear to exhibit asystematic structure in which the various parts cooperate to form andpreserve a living organism, it was likewise natural to consider organisms asmachines 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 organicbeings in purely mechanistic terms, he also repudiated the alternative accountof such beings as machines and, therefore, as products of (divine) art or, as heput it, as “an analogue of art” (KU 5:374; 246). This is because he thought thatorganisms have certain epigenetic properties that cannot be attributed tomachines such as clocks. As he notes, one part of a clock produces the motionof another and was placed there for the sake of the other; but it is not theefficient cause of the production of the other. This does not apply to organ-isms, however, since in their case the parts have not simplymotive power, but aself-propagating formative power (KU 5:374; 246). The basic idea is thatorganisms are notmerely systems but self-regulating ones, in which the variousparts have a capacity to replace and repair one another, which is somethingthat Kant believed could never be said of a machine, or any product of art.As such, an organismmay 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 fromthe existence of organisms would be problematic. Kant illustrates this bymeans of the example of a tree, which, in contrast to a machine, has a threefoldepigenetic capacity. First, a tree generates another tree and, therefore, is causeof itself qua species. Second, it generates itself qua individual through growthby means of the assimilation of nutrients. And, finally, it has a capacity toreplace 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 anend of nature and, therefore, assigned an intrinsic purposiveness, quite apartfrom any further ends it might serve. Indeed, he goes further and suggeststhat this principle applies not only to every organic being considered as awhole, 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 conceivedas consequences of purely mechanistic laws, for example, hair, skin, and bones; but he insists that “the


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 andreciprocally a means as well. Nothing in it is in vain, purposeless, or to beascribed to a blind mechanism of nature” (KU 5:376; 247–8). The previouslynoted first proposition of the Idea for aUniversalHistory, namely that “All naturalpredispositions of a creature are determined sometime to develop themselvescompletely and purposively,” may be seen as a corollary of this principle, sinceany predisposition that did not develop in this way would not serve the end ofthe 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 thethird Critique Kant is careful to insist that the teleological principle pertainsmerely to the reflective rather than to the determinative power of judgmentand, as such, does not bring with it any ontological commitment. Again, itis a matter of judgment legislating to itself in its endeavor to comprehend acertain type of natural object rather than to nature. Moreover, it is not thatteleological replaces mechanistic explanation in biology, since the latterremains for Kant the only legitimate form of scientific explanation; it israther that, for reasons already given, in the reflection on organic beings itmust always be subordinated to the teleological principle.17

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As already noted, in the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment Kantdistinguishes between intrinsic and extrinsic purposiveness. And while hismain focus is on the former in virtue of its centrality to biology, Kant doesnot entirely neglect the latter. Nevertheless, at least within the Analytic of theTeleological Power of Judgment, his treatment of extrinsic purposiveness isboth perfunctory and problematic.18 The situation reflects a tension inKant’s account: on the one hand, he calls attention to the sharp differencebetween the two conceptions of purposiveness; while, on the other hand, hesuggests, without much in the way of argument, that the necessity ofassuming the former provides a warrant for introducing the latter.

With respect to these two forms of purposiveness, the crucial distinctionis between judging something to be purposive in virtue of its internal form

cause that provides the appropriate material, modifies it, forms it, and deposits it in its appropriateplace 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).

17 On this point see §80 “On the necessary subordination of the principle of mechanism to theteleological principle in the explanation of a thing as a natural end” (KU 5:417–21; 286–90).

18 It is contained in §63 and §67.


and judging the existence of something to be purposive in virtue of subserv-ing some end. And, with regard to the latter, if one is to avoid an indefiniteregress of means and ends (a is a means for b, b for c, etc.), it is necessary toassume something that is itself an end of nature, a status which, Kant pointsout, 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 orflourishing, either in general or in particular locations, such as the seeminglyinhospitable frigid zones, does not of itself suffice to establish such purpo-siveness, 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 theNew Hollanders or the Fuegians)20 or in the frigid regions.21

The issue is further complicated by the fact that assigning something (orsome species) the privileged status of an end of nature presupposes thatnature as a whole has an end in the sense of a goal (“scopus”), which leads, inturn, to the supersensible.22 In other words, inasmuch as nature for Kant isnot regarded as a self-conscious agent (in the manner of Hegel’s Geist), toconceive of a purpose of nature (the sensible) is, at the same time, toconceive of a purpose assigned to nature by something outside nature (thesupersensible). 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” canbring about.In spite of these complications, after emphasizing the radical difference

between the two species of purposiveness and the special difficulties asso-ciated with the latter, Kant insists that the concept of a natural end, whosehome base is the conception of organic beings, “necessarily leads to the ideaof the whole of nature as a system in accordance with the rule of ends (Regeldes Zwecke), to which idea all of the mechanism of nature in accordancewith principles of reason must now be subordinated (at least in order to testnatural appearances by this idea)” (KU 5:379; 250). Moreover, in thiscontext, Kant further suggests that this leads to the maxims that “everythingin 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 See KU 5:368–9; 241. 20 KU 5:378; 250.21 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 thatpart of nature’s “plan” is to use war to drive human beings into even the most inhospitable regions ofthe earth and to this end may be thought to have provided certain purposive arrangements, such asArctic moss, which supplies food for the reindeer, which, in turn, afford sustenance and conveyancefor the inhabitants of this region (8:363; 333).

22 KU 5:378; 250.


justified, indeed called upon to expect nothing in nature and its laws butwhat is purposive in the whole” (ibid.). In short, it leads to an expansion ofthe domain of the teleological principle from everything within an organismto nature as a whole.

Even though Kant issues the appropriate caveats regarding the status ofthis new principle and the maxims it enjoins, insisting that it is a matter ofthe reflective rather than the determinative power of judgment and that theprinciple is merely regulative rather than constitutive, Kant’s interjection ofnecessity into his claim seems less than compelling. Clearly, the necessity towhich Kant refers cannot be either logical or causal; but neither can it be ofthe same kind as the (subjective) necessity of using the concept of an end inconsidering organisms, since that does not require one to think of nature asa whole in these terms; and if it is not any of these forms of necessity, it isdifficult to see what other kind it could be.

Accordingly, I think that the best way to make sense out of the passage isto ignore the reference to necessity altogether and to attribute to Kant theweaker (though still substantive) thesis that, once the unavoidability ofregarding organisms as natural ends is recognized, it becomes reasonable toapply the teleological maxims to nature as a whole. At the very least it is notunreasonable to do so, as it presumably would be if it could be shown thatorganisms can be understood totally in mechanistic terms, since that wouldinvolve applying to the whole what has been shown to be not applicable tothe parts.

This reading also reflects the non-dogmatic spirit of both Kant’s remarkand his amplification of it. As noted, he suggests parenthetically that thefunction 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 oftentatively testing the teleological waters to see what emerges from theassumption that nature embodies a teleological system.23 Presumably, thepossibility (though not the fruitfulness) of this extension is justified onthe grounds that a universal reductive mechanism has already been ruledout by the analysis of organisms.

In his amplification, Kant further suggests that when applied to thingsthat appear unpleasant and even counterpurposive to us, such as vermin,mosquitoes and other stinging insects, it can lead to the recognition ofpositive purposes that they serve. In general, he remarks that such teleo-logical consideration is at least “entertaining and sometimes also instruc-tive” (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.


teleological approach to nature as a whole, it was evidently as far as Kant waswilling to go within the confines of the Analytic of the Teleological Power ofJudgment, reserving his fuller treatment of the topic, including the applica-tion of teleology to history, for the Appendix.

v

Kant begins the pivotal §83 in the Appendix to Critique of the TeleologicalPower of Judgment, which deals with the implications of the thesis thathumankind is the ultimate end of nature, by referring back to §82, where itwas initially affirmed. He writes:

In the preceding we have shown that we have sufficient cause to judge humankind notmerely, like any organized being, as a natural end, but also as the ultimate end of naturehere on earth, in relation to which all other natural beings constitute a system of ends inaccordance with fundamental principles of reason, not, to be sure, for the determiningpower 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 hisapplication of teleology to human history, I shall endeavor in this section to givea brief account of it, before turning to its application in the next. The argumentpresupposes two propositions that were supposedly established in the Analytic:(1) that we are permitted (at least for heuristic purposes) to consider nature as awhole as a teleological system; and (2) that this requires regarding something (orsome species) as the ultimate end of nature. Given this, the central claim of §82is 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 ofinorganic nature, since it can be understood mechanistically without anyneed to pose this question, Kant considers the vegetable kingdom, herbivores,and carnivores, which apparently constitute the three domains in which hedivides (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 ofthe 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 thesake 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 forhimself and who by means of his reason can make a system of ends out of anaggregate of purposively formed things” (KU 5:427; 295).24

24 See also KU 5:431; 298–9.


Inasmuch as it attributes a special status to humankind in virtue of itscapacity to set ends, the argument is reminiscent of the well-known argu-ment for the so-called “Formula of Humanity” in the Groundwork, whereKant appeals to the same capacity to support the thesis that humanity (orrational agency) must be regarded as an end in itself and, therefore, nevertreated merely as a means.25 In reality, however, though sharing a commonpremise regarding end-setting, these arguments operate at completely dif-ferent levels and lead to quite distinct conclusions. The force of theGroundwork argument is entirely practical, issuing in a conclusion regardinghow humanity (in both oneself and others) ought to be treated. By contrast,the argument from the thirdCritique is theoretical (albeit directed merely tothe reflective power of judgment) and it affirms the place of humankind in ateleological system of nature. As we shall see, the assignment of a specialmoral status to humankind only enters the picture with the introduction ofthe quite distinct conception of a final end (Endzweck) of creation; andwhile Kant will argue that humankind can be regarded as the ultimate endof nature only if it is also the final end of creation, this connection is notoperative at this juncture in the argument.

Nevertheless, Kant’s position here is radically anthropocentric and he wasaware of the objections that could be raised against such a position andattempted to deal with two of them. The first, which he associates withLinnaeus, affirms a more balanced view, according to which all members ofthe kingdom of nature, including human beings, may be regarded as ends incertain relations and as mere means in others. For example, while manyaspects of nature are obviously beneficial to humankind and, therefore, maybe regarded as means, in virtue of activities such as hunting and the removalof some of the destructive powers of nature, humankind can also be viewedas a means for maintaining a certain ecological balance.26 Although Kantdoes 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 wouldviolate the condition under which it is possible to apply teleology to naturein the first place; and (2) in denying a privileged status to humankind itignores the significance of the fact that it is the only species of rationalbeings on earth and, therefore the only species capable of conceiving asystem of ends.

The second objection reflects the standpoint of a hard-headedmechanist.Basically, it argues that it is unwarranted to assign a privileged status amongnatural 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.


forces as everything else in nature; while even those features of the humanhabitat that seem to be arranged purposively for the benefit of the species areproducts of the mechanism of nature. Speaking as the devil’s advocate, Kantremarks that it is of no avail to attempt to avoid this conclusion by limitingthe scope of the mechanism of nature to the other species, since humankindis 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 notthe ultimate end of nature and, therefore, that the aggregate of organizedbeings cannot be regarded as a system of ends, but also that “even theproducts of nature that we previously held to be natural ends can have noother origin than that in the mechanism of nature” (KU 5:428; 296). Kant’spoint here seems to be that by reducing everything to the mechanism ofnature, the argument under consideration contradicts the analysis of organ-isms, 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 endmakes it reasonable to regard nature as a whole as a teleological system, Kantapparently thought that this sufficed to dismiss the mechanistic critique.Although the argument seems somewhat dubious, we should keep in mindthe relative modesty of its claim. As we have already seen, rather than takinghimself as having provided a proof that humankind has the status of anultimate end, he claims only to have shown that “we have sufficient cause”(my emphasis) to attribute such a status to humankind, at least with respectto the reflective power of judgment. Thus the question comes down to amatter of determining what counts as “sufficient.”

v i

Setting that aside, to claim that humankind is to be regarded as the ultimateend 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 issomething that is to be found within human beings themselves, and herecognizes two generic candidates: it can either be one that is satisfied by thebeneficence of nature itself, or some special aptitude that nature gives usthat is conducive to the pursuits of all sorts of ends. The first of these ishappiness and the second culture.28 After ruling out happiness on several

27 KU 5:427–8; 295–6. 28 KU 5:429–30; 297.


grounds, the most compelling of which is that if this were nature’s aim withrespect to humankind it did not do a very good job of it, Kant arrives byelimination at culture as the sought-for end.

Before discussing culture and its teleological function, however, it isnecessary to say a word about the connection between two key teleologicalconcepts to which I have already alluded and which are both applied tohumankind by Kant: an ultimate end (letzter Zweck) of nature and a finalend (Endzweck) of creation. Although a final end (in the sense of the highestgoal 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 itselfthe 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 forhumankind is moral and since morality is a product of freedom rather thannature, 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 playwith regard to morality, merely that it cannot be a direct one. Kant’s point isperhaps best expressed by characterizing nature (in its teleological functionwith respect to humankind) as a “moral facilitator.” In other words, it helpsus to help ourselves, often against our will. And to consider nature asfunctioning in this way is just what it means to consider it as a teleologicalsystem with humankind as its ultimate end.

As already noted, the vehicle through which nature promotes its end isculture; though the situation is complicated by the fact that Kant distin-guishes between two forms of culture: the culture of skill (Geschicklichkeit)and the culture of discipline (Zucht). The former may be defined as thecapacity to attain the ends that humankind sets for itself, whatever they maybe. Kant characterizes the latter in negative terms as the “liberation of thewill from the despotism of desires” (KU 5:431–2; 299).

Although for the reasons given above, the culture of discipline is notdirectly related to morality in the sense of making us morally better,inasmuch as it helps to wean us from desires stemming from our animalnature, Kant assigns it a significant propaedeutic function. Specifically, heclaims that it makes us receptive to higher ends than nature can afford; andsince 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 benoted that this form of culture is intimately related to what Kant describes asthe 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.


transition (Übergang) from nature to freedom, in which the appreciation ofbeauty (both natural and artistic) plays a pivotal role.30 The general idea isthat this liberation from sensuous desires creates a capacity for a disinter-ested delight in beauty, while the latter, in turn, helps to make us morereceptive 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 relevantto Kant’s teleological account of history. This is largely because it is thedevelopment of certain skills that provides, quite apart from the intent ofthe possessors and users of these skills, the spur to the material progress thatleads eventually to the formation of civil societies with republican institu-tions 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 toinequality, oppression, an attachment to luxury, and all of the social andpolitical evils that these bring with them, including war, the greatest ofall such evils. At the same time, however, Kant also argues that all this“splendid misery” (KU 5:432; 299) will eventually force humankind to dowhat it would not of itself do willingly, namely, to work toward thedevelopment 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 asomewhat 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 anythingfurther about it here. For present purposes the major point is that §83 is theplace in which Kant integrated his account of history into the Critique of theTeleological Power of Judgment and, therefore, into the critical philosophy,which, as already noted, was very much a work in progress in 1784, when hedid not envision a third Critique, much less one dealing with teleology aspart of its eventual content. At the same time, however, it must also benoted that Kant relegated his discussion to the Appendix rather than, asoriginally planned, to the body of the work.31 Although this suggests a

30 For my account of the complex issue of the Übergang, see Kant’s Theory of Taste, Chapter Nine.31 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 analyticand a dialectic (see 20:251; 50–1).


certain ambivalence on Kant’s part, it is not, I think, directed at the intrinsicimportance of the material, since some of Kant’s most important thoughtsabout moral theology are likewise contained in this Appendix and aredirectly related to his account of humankind as the ultimate purpose ofnature. Rather, Kant’s ambivalence concerns the place of this discussionwithin the systematic structure of the third Critique, particularly his recog-nition of its parergal status vis-à-vis the central argument of the Critique ofthe Teleological Power of Judgment.32

v i i

The preceding account of Kant’s application of teleology to humankind andits history has featured the following four theses. (1) If nature is to beregarded as a teleological system, it must be thought of as having an ultimateend, which can only be humankind. (2) Humankind may be considered assuch an end only if it is also related to a final, unconditioned end, whichmust be moral. (3) Nature, by itself, cannot produce such an end, since thatcan only result from freedom; but it nevertheless can be thought of aspreparing the way for or facilitating the development of morality. (4) It doesthis through culture, mainly the culture of skill, which, since it requiresthe development of humankind’s rational capacities, is a lengthy historicalprocess, culminating in republican institutions, which maximize freedomunder 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 theultimate end of nature to the final end of creation involve a historicaldimension or, as a work of freedom rather than nature, is it to be consideredan atemporal “noumenal” process taking place in individuals, which, assuch, stands totally outside history as well as nature?

A glance at what Kant says about the final end of creation in the latersections of the Appendix of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, as well asthe overall account of the second Critique, strongly suggests the latter view.Confining ourselves to the former text, Kant there introduces two distinctconceptions of the final end, which are eventually brought together. Thefirst is humankind considered as noumenon. This is justified on the

32 Although Kant did not relegate his treatment of it to an appendix, there is a parallel story regardingthe sublime, which Kant characterized as a “mere appendix to our aesthetic judging of the purposive-ness of nature (KU 5:246; 130). See Kant’s Theory of Taste, p. 306.

33 The long period of time required to attain this result is merely implicit in the third Critique accountbut made fully explicit in Idea for a Universal History. See particularly the second proposition.


grounds that humankind, so considered, serves as a subject of morality (KU5:435; 302). Somewhat later Kant characterizes the final end, understood inthe same sense, as “humankind (each rational being in the world) undermoral 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, tomorality). Strictly speaking, this is the highest good for us (human beingsunder moral laws) rather than of creation itself; indeed, for Kant it is one thatwe have a duty to promote. Kant brings them together in §88 by arguing thatonly insofar as we recognize a final end for creation can there be one for usand, therefore, a duty to strive for its realization. In effect, this is the essence ofKant’s moral proof for the existence of God in the third Critique. Startingwith the ubiquitous Kantian premise that ought implies can, it claims that wecan only conceive of this end that we have a duty to fulfill as achievable on theassumption of the existence of a moral author of the world, for whom ourattainment of the highest good constitutes the purpose of creation.34

Nevertheless, from a Kantian point of view it also seems reasonable toexpect that history will play a role in the full development of the predis-position to morality in humankind. Otherwise, the ultimate end of naturewould stand in no essential connection with the final end of creation, whichseems to contradict Kant’s account in the third Critique. To be sure, Kant isquite clear that the political and cosmopolitan goals at which the cunning ofnature supposedly aims do not of themselves suffice to produce genuinemorality. For example, Kant claims famously that he considered the crea-tion of republican institutions possible even for a race of devils, as long asthey are intelligent (EF 8:366; 335). In the same work, however, Kant alsoremarks that “a morally good condition of a people is to be expected onlyunder a good constitution” (8:366; 335–6). Accordingly, Kant’s positionseems to be that such institutions are necessary, though not sufficient,conditions of the full development of morality in a people, which givesthem 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 theconfederation of states, itself an unrealized ideal, would not mark theculmination 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 See KU 5:447–53; 313–18.35 The significance of this passage is underscored by Allen Wood, “Unsociable Sociability: The

Anthropological Basis of Kantian Ethics,” Philosophical Topics 19 (1991), p. 341.


for this far distant second half of history, it seems reasonable to surmisethat 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) ofthe highest good. The puzzle is how this could be regarded as a historicalprocess. Kant does not address this question in either the essay or the thirdCritique; but he does offer a possible solution to it in Religion within theBoundaries of Mere Reason, with the introduction of his conception of anethical commonwealth (eines ethischen gemeinen Wesens), which incorpo-rates both a social and a historical dimension into his doctrine of thehighest good.

Since this is a complex topic, I can here do no more than baldly state thegist of Kant’s position as I see it. The underlying premise is that thedevelopment of a virtuous disposition, which is the portion of the highestgood that is up to us, is not something that can be attained by individuals ontheir own, any more than it can be brought about by nature. This, Kantsuggests in a manner reminiscent of his earlier account of unsociablesociability, is because we become subject to malignant inclinationsand 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 possibleonly as a member of an association of human beings “merely under the lawsof virtue” (R 6:95; 130). Such an association is an ethical commonwealth, asdistinguished from a political commonwealth, which would be a societyunder principles of right or justice.37 The idea seems to be modeled on thatof 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 fullyattained by imperfect beings such as ourselves (R 6:100; 135), he also insiststhat working toward it is a unique duty, “not of human beings towardhuman beings but of the human race toward itself” (R 6:97; 102).

Finally, Kant maintains that even approximating such a condition (whichis the best we can hope for) requires a lengthy process, wherein the focus isno longer on the state but on the church, the goal being the gradualtransformation of the latter from an ecclesiastical to an ethical organizationadvocating a purely rational and moral religion. Since this is a historicalprocess, presumably involving (at least ideally) humankind as a whole, itseems a likely candidate for the task that Kant assigns to the distant second

36 This aspect of Kant’s thought has been most fully discussed by Allen Wood; see Kant’s EthicalThought, pp. 309–20.

37 Kant also suggests that without the foundation of a political community, an ethical one could neverbe brought into existence by human beings (R 6:94; 130), thus making the latter a necessary (thoughnot a sufficient) condition of the former.


half of history in his self-proclaimed philosophical “chiliasm” (Idea, 8:26).Admittedly, it cannot be claimed conclusively that this expresses Kant’sintent in the 1784 essay, since his philosophy, particularly his moral philos-ophy, underwent a significant number of twists and turns between then and1793. Nevertheless, to adopt Kant’s expression, it provides a guiding threadfor the entertaining and perhaps useful project of interpreting Kant’sphilosophy of history as constituting a systematic whole.


chapter 2

The purposive development of human capacitiesKarl Ameriks

Kant’s pivotal essay of November 1784 is the key text that links his Criticalphilosophy directly to the issue of history, and it does so in a way that, fromthe 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 doesnot 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 isno non-controversial way to establish whether it shows that Kant’s philos-ophy is fundamentally historical, or whether this would be a good thing.

1 . a n i n i t i a l g l anc e : th e s i s , cont e x t , t i t l e

Many of the main difficulties that arise here can be gathered from simply aninitial glance at the essay’s carefully worded title, its complex historicalcontext, and its bold first thesis, that “All natural predispositions of acreature are determined sometime to develop themselves completely andpurposively” (8:18).

1.1. The genetic problem

It is only natural to object that the formulation of the thesis goes much toofar in many ways by speaking of what is “determined,” “complete,” “pur-posive,” and about “all” natural dispositions of “all” creatures.2 But even if it

1 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.

2 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 Peaceand Other Writings on Politics, Peace and History (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2006), p. 259.

46

is allowed, for the time being, that some of the claims involving these fiveambitious notions might be passed over or toned down radically while stillleaving Kant with a very significant claim, the term “develop” seemsirreplaceable, and yet its presence is already enough to arouse serioussuspicion. The explicit stress of Kant’s transcendental philosophy is clearlyon the issues of the pure source, validity, and extent of a priori judgments,and hence of propositions that have a universal and necessary form. Inthe Critique of Pure Reason as well as in his main writings in moralphilosophy, Kant repeatedly attacks “genetic” accounts (“empirical deduc-tions”) of basic principles that depend on temporal details. For an ortho-dox Kantian, any focus on “development” can thus appear to be either amere secondary issue concerning contingent “subjective,” “psychological,”or pedagogical considerations, or, even worse, a subversion of the very ideaof 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” infavor of principles that “we” in some sense “make” and “give” to ourselves.Because such “making” is inevitably imagined as a kind of process, thenotion of development may appear to be central to the Critical philosophyafter all. It is therefore not surprising that a focal point for many recentdiscussions of this problem has been Kant’s striking use of the term“epigenesis,” in particular in his 1787 characterization of his own philoso-phy as a “system, as it were, of the epigenesis of pure reason” (B 167). It isindisputable that this passage explicitly places some kind of a “genetic”notion right at the core of the Critique’s ultimate self-characterization. Yetthis hardly settles the matter, for Kant’s qualification, “as it were,” shouldnot be passed over, and John Zammito’s important recent discussion ofthis topic is quite correct, I believe, in stressing what he calls “Kant’spersistent ambivalence toward epigenesis.”3 Any interpretation of the gen-eral significance of Kant’s essay on history must confront this “ambiva-lence” (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 inPhilosophy, vol. 8 (Rochester: University of Rochester Press, 2007), pp. 51–74. See also GuentherZoeller, “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 “FromInnate to A Priori: Kant’s Radical Transformation of a Cartesian-Leibnizian Legacy,” Monist, 72(1989), pp. 222–35.

The purposive development of human capacities 47

1.2. The turn after Herder

Other important ambivalences also appear in an initial glance at the generalcontext of Kant’s essay. On the one hand, its topic is explicitly historical, andit is but one of a series of very influential essays in which Kant addressestopics such as enlightenment, society, and morality in a way in which theidentification 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 attackon the excessive importance given to history as such by writers like Herder,who proposed a broadly naturalist and thoroughly plastic conception ofhuman capacities in general. It was precisely during this period that Kantwas most intensively involved with Herder’s work, and there is evidencethat even before this essay he wanted to counteract Herder’s influence.4 Atthe beginning of 1785 he published a very critical review of Herder’s Ideas fora Philosophy of the History of Humanity (1784), and when Reinhold imme-diately wrote an anonymous response in Herder’s defense, Kant quicklyreplied (March 1785) and then also wrote a critical review of the secondinstallment of Herder’s work (November 1785).

In addition to its contrast with the earlier works of Herder, Kant’sphilosophical procedure in general, even at its most historical, needs to bedistinguished from the work of leaders of the generation that followed himin Germany. While Reinhold, Schelling, and Hegel were unlike Herderinsofar as their work was highly systematic in a basically rationalist way, theywere, nevertheless, influenced by him and differed fromKant insofar as theybrought detailed attention to the whole history of philosophy, and thereconstruction of the sequence of recent philosophical debates, right intothe center of their philosophical methodology. It is because of this develop-ment that I have argued elsewhere that a fundamental “historical turn” inphilosophy (just as in many other disciplines at that time) began at the endof the eighteenth century.5 This turn took on a philosophical style that wasexemplified not by Kant’s work but rather by that of his immediatesuccessors, who were preoccupied with the problem of what to make ofthe enormous wave of conflicting reactions to the Critical philosophy,and of how to work an extensive narrative of comparative historical

4 SeeManfred Kuehn, Kant: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 293. Herder’sinfluence should also be contrasted with Lessing’s approach, which allowed for a “history of reason” andstages of a moral “education” of humanity that was somewhat closer to Kant’s own position. SeeHenry E.Allison, Lessing and the Enlightenment (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1966).

5 See K. Ameriks, Kant and the Historical Turn: Philosophy as Critical Interpretation (Oxford: ClarendonPress, 2006); cf. Theodore Ziolkowski,Clio, The RomanticMuse:Historicizing the Faculties in Germany(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004).


considerations directly into their systematic philosophical approach.Although the proximity to Kant of the origin of this kind of systematicphilosophy in a “historical key” certainly deserves special emphasis, this isnot to say that Kant himself can be likened to Hegel (let alone Nietzsche orHeidegger), or that his method resembles that of the even more explicitlyhistorical philosophers in our own time such as Taylor, MacIntyre, Henrich,Frank, Brandom, Pippin, Geuss, or Larmore. And yet, even if one distin-guishes Kant from both the historicist tendencies of Herder and his mostradical followers as well as the more moderate and basically proceduralhistorical 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 somekind of special stress on development and history – and the philosophicalcharacter 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 anindication 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’sterm 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 butsimply of a single privileged Idea. This Idea obviously has a kind of Platonicstatus, even if it is treated as merely “regulative” rather than as rooted in anyalleged intuition of a constitutive principle. Kant’s Idea of history isintended to govern a unique, overridingly important, complete, and ulti-mately rational process, one with a necessary basic structure that in principlecan be fully anticipated. In announcing that the Idea concerns a “universal”and “cosmopolitan” “purpose” or “aim” (Absicht), Kant is going evenfurther by highlighting the absolutely all-encompassing and heavily teleo-logical character that the thesis ascribes to history. The Idea implies an idealend that is pre-given for all of us, one that, in several senses, we “must” allwork to bring about – and that we should believe that “we” already have beenbringing about in part. Although this final end will be accomplished only inand through our doing, the structure, validity, and scope of the end is inimportant 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).


requires the participation of our constructive activity), for we can describe itscore content without speaking directly of any of the contingencies or limi-tations that characterize particular individuals or societies, or even what otherphilosophers 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 theKantian galaxy of our eternal internal and external compasses.7 No wonderthat, right before presenting the first thesis, Kant compares his work onhistory to Kepler’s orderly tracing of “eccentric” orbits in astronomy (8:18).

2 . comp l i c a t i on s

2.1. Freedom, nature, history

The ambitious terminology of Kant’s first thesis, the disputatious context ofthe publications at the time of this essay, and the provocative nature of itstitle are all a reminder that Kant’s discussions of history are essays in theliteral sense of being “attempts” at something new, and they are anythingbut a trivial, uncomplicated extension of his system. The most importantcomplication arises with the essay’s very first sentence. Here Kant raises theissue of human freedom, and so a very hasty reader might imagine that alibertarian, individualist, contingent, or relativist perspective is about to beemphasized. But Kant immediately makes clear that the whole point of hisintroductory discussion is to propose a way of studying history where wesupposedly can bracket the issue of the metaphysics of human absolutefreedom and the apparent arbitrariness of individual choice. Kant goes outof his way to stress that there are fundamental historical patterns, concern-ing marriage and birth for instance (8:17), that, like the rest of nature, have alawfulness which can be assumed to remain no matter how much theindividuals involved might have, or think they have, absolute freedom.

The first thesis expands on this non-individualist perspective by speakingnot directly of human actions but instead proposing a basic pattern thatgoverns “all animals.” Readers are left on their own here to draw theinference that this general pattern of nature should from the start beassumed to govern human social history in particular. To be sure, Kant’snext theses go on to concentrate on the specific capacities of human beingsas a group, and ultimately their special capacity for eventually relating toone 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 1786essay, “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” (8:134–6).


activity in a way quite unlike anything in the “mere” animal world. This“cosmopolitan aim,” however, defines an order of external right that, giventhe rest of Kant’s philosophy, turns out to have a genuinely purposefulmeaning only insofar as it is thought of as a component of the realm ofcreation in the broadest sense, and as ultimately governed by the moralnotion of the highest good.8 For Kant, this is the only state of affairs thatwe have fully adequate rational grounds to regard as in principle irreduciblyteleological, and we can properly regard it this way only insofar as webelieve that this state involves two essential factors in addition to theappropriate phenomenal aspects of justice. These factors are related to,but in a sense outside of, nature (defined here as the full complex of itemsexhaustively covered by natural laws): the uncaused causality of the moralintentions of finite rational beings and the even more independent cau-sality of an assisting supreme cause. Although Kant holds that (with respectto “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 alsoinsists that our theoretical standpoint must still allow that (with respect towhat is “constitutive”) any process of nature by itself might in fact be dueto 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 deeplyambivalent.9 The whole concrete course of human social history, even whenit moves ideally and in full accord with the laws of nature toward thecosmopolitan end of a world structured by universal relations of right (fulljustice at an international level), is obviously a realm that takes place withintime 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 whatis in time and nature is in fact without meaning or even reality. Readers whoare familiar with Kant’s idealism, and who are reluctant to deny Kant’smetaphysical claims altogether, sometimes speak as if, in accepting thethought of powers that go beyond nature, Kant must be denying the realityor value of nature altogether. They thereby overlook the possibility that all

8 See e.g., A 804/B 832, KpV 5:43, and KU 5:569.9 See especially KU, §91, and K. Ameriks, “Der Status des Glaubens: §§90–91 und AllgemeineAnmerkung,” in Otfried Höffe, ed., I. Kant, Kritik der Urteilskraft (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 2008).

10 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 humannature, must always fall short of the final end which alone gives the whole process meaning, therealization of the summum bonum.” Cf. Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy of History.


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 toKant’s essays on history, even Lewis White Beck misses this point in sayingthat “the final purpose of the world … Kant finds in … legislating andobeying moral law in an otherwise meaningless world,” and “the world ofnature [the domain of sensible appearances] … is not reality, which we donot and cannot know. Hence what is not possible in the world understoodas nature may be possible in the world as it really is, and we must eitherdeclare the moral command [and its freedom] nugatory or postulate the finalattainability of the goals which the moral command places before us.”11 Themistake here is to imply that Kant’s contrast between the realm of freedomand the realm of nature must be a simple contrast between reality and non-reality. This is surely a mistake because Kant’s whole Critical notion of moralaction and a highest good makes sense only to the extent that one can believethat there are, in nature, real public structures and sensory effects of theuncaused12 and coordinated willings of human beings and a supreme being.The crucial point about these effects is that, unlike their ultimate causes, theyare in no way unconditioned. Similarly, when speaking about the contrast ofthe realms of the laws of nature and of freedom, Kant’s transcendentalidealist solution is not to say that there simply is no nature, no realm ofspatio-temporal laws at all, and there is (or may be) only non-natural anduncaused causing; what he holds is that, in addition to the empirically realcaused causings within nature, there can be – and moral agents must believethat there are – uncaused causings, which are due to causes that “inthemselves” 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 muchan atemporal ideal, it should not be assumed that Kant’s own way ofexpressing its preconditions did not undergo significant shifts. The fact

11 LewisWhite Beck, “Editor’s Introduction,” in Kant on History, p. xvii, emphasis mine. I have omittedBeck’s speaking of “rational man” doing the “legislating” of the moral law. This is an unfortunateexpression because the law as such is not relative simply to “man,” and the very postulate that Beckmentions makes sense, in Kant’s published arguments, only to the extent that the law is under-standable as something that can be legislated by a non-sensory and non-human rational being. See theend of Kant’s “Raising the Tone of Philosophy” (8:397n4), and cf. Rae Langton, “Objective andUnconditioned Value,” Philosophical Review 116 (2007), pp. 157–85.

12 I am using the term “uncaused” to reflect Kant’s terminology at A 538/B 566ff. What is meant is notsomething that is entirely uncaused, for the agents themselves are causes, but a free “causality” that isnot an effect of a chain of causes outside the agent.


that Idea for a Universal History appeared in 1784 is quite significant becausethis is precisely the time when Kant had just begun to move from the firstedition of his first Critique (1781), with its very sketchy account of ourfreedom and its final end, to his hitherto unexpected publication of aGroundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (April 1785). The Groundworkwas then followed by the very differently structured Critique of PracticalReason (1788) and a previously unanticipated third Critique (1790), whichmade the assessment of claims of aesthetic, natural, and moral-religiousteleology suddenly central to transcendental philosophy.13 Prior to the mid-1780s, and after his “Inaugural Dissertation” of 1770, Kant had publishedremarkably little aside from the Critique of Pure Reason and its defensive“synopsis” in the Prolegomena (1783). But even though the few brief essaysthat he did compose in this period are not very well known, they are in facthighly relevant to his Idea of history and dispute with Herder.14 In both his1771 review of Moscati’s Of the Essential Difference in the Structure of theBodies of Humans and Animals and his own 1775 essay Of the DifferentHuman Races, Kant emphasizes such themes as the relation of the develop-ment of rationality to the achievement of erect posture,15 the unique naturalcapacities of the human species, and the necessary underlying unity of allhuman 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 componentwithin this set – is a striking feature of Kant’s brief but very significantreview of Pastor J.H. Schulz (1783), which sharply criticizes the ethics andmetaphysics of Schulz’s compatibilist proposals on punishment. Under theguise of an enlightened liberalism, Schulz’s all-encompassing dynamicWolffian version of a philosophy of law and history would make humanaction merely a matter of automatically responding ever more efficiently tosurrounding “forces,” which become more and more “clear” in the inevi-table process of human education.17 Against this “turnspit” perspective,

13 See also Kant’s “On the Use of Teleological Principles in Philosophy” (1788), which also discusses theissue of race in detail, and Eze, ed., Race and the Enlightenment: A Reader (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997).

14 See John H. Zammito, Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology (Chicago: University of ChicagoPress, 2002).

15 Modern science still holds that this is an epochal development; quite recently the development ofbipedalism has been dated back from 5 to 20 million years ago. See www.news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070715/sc_nm/humans_walking_dc.

16 For extensive references to literature concerning the use of these terms in this period, see Zammito,“Kant’s Persistent Ambivalence.”

17 Johann Heinrich Schulz, “Attempt at an Introduction to a Doctrine of Morals for All Human BeingsRegardless of Different Religions, Part I” (1783).


Kant claims that human beings must both think and act under the Idea ofabsolute freedom, a theme that is taken up in Groundwork, Section III, aswell as his essay on Enlightenment (December 1784), which speaks vividlyof 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 withintheir natural setting, the common thread of Kant’s attack on all theoristslike Schulz and Herder is a deep opposition to any suggestion that thedifferences between human faculties (e.g., sensations and concepts, unfreeand free behavior), or between human beings and other species, can besimply a matter of degree.18

2.3. An ambivalence complex

Without going so far as to divide the Critical period itself into sharplydistinct 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 strikingand troublesome – although, for the most part, temporary – ambivalenceabout how to approach the basic question of the justification for belief inhuman freedom and the related issue of exactly how to express the relationbetween theoretical and practical philosophy. When Kant approacheshuman history by speaking, from the start, of “natural predispositions,”one cannot help but wonder how he is going to make room for the mostdistinctive and crucial capacity that his philosophy attributes to humanbeings: namely, the capacity to be uncaused causes in a way that, given thetranscendental idealism of the Critique, must place them in part outsidenature altogether. One response to this worry would be to say that Idea for aUniversal History is written already from the standpoint of the doctrine ofthe primacy of practical reason in precisely the sense developed in thesecond Critique, according to which the moral law, and it alone, as aFaktum der Vernunft, explicitly provides the unique, rational, and sufficientaccess (given the preliminary metaphysical road-clearing accomplished bythe thesis of the transcendental ideality of time and space), the ratiocognoscendi, for the strong claim of our absolute freedom (5:4n). An obvioushermeneutical 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 meredifference in terms of degree)” (8:11). Translation from Mary Gregor, ed., Practical Philosophy/Immanuel Kant (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996 ), p. 11 .


doctrine of the second Critique was not formulated until a few years afterthe essay and seems to contrast sharply with the strategy of Kant’s earlierargument for freedom in Groundwork III (to which it makes no reference).Moreover, at first sight Idea for a Universal History appears to be composedfrom the perspective of theoretical rather than practical philosophy, andinitially seems aimed basically at explaining how we are best to understandthe distinctive pattern of human history.19

Fortunately, there is an alternative interpretive approach here, one that Itake to be better grounded historically even if it involves a position that isless satisfactory from a systematic perspective. On this approach, whichtakes its cue from the final page of Kant’s response to Schulz (8:13–14), thedistinction between theoretical and practical considerations is not yetsharply drawn. The main idea here is that as long as one is trying to exercisethe human capacity to think at all, whether theoretically or practically, andto offer judgments or construct intentions, that is, to engage in events thatneed 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 wellas in self-determined individual agency must be present. This approachcorresponds not only to the language of the Schulz review but also to theessay on Enlightenment and the Groundwork, which are the other discus-sions of freedom that immediately surround Idea for a Universal History.The approach goes along especially smoothly with the relatively popularstandpoint of the essays, which casually mix theoretical and practical topics(e.g., the “calling to think freely”) and avoid focusing on metaphysicalcomplications.The argument of Groundwork III overlaps in its key terms (“a rational

being that must regard himself as intelligent,” 4:452) with the discussions inthe essays, but it has a different appearance because it is developed withinthe context of a longer and more systematic work that is explicitly respond-ing to the skeptical worry, raised at the end of Groundwork II, that our talkabout freedom may be a mere “figment of the brain” (4:445). Relating thistext to Kant’s other works is an especially difficult problem for all inter-preters. In several respects it resembles Kant’s more casual essays, but inother respects its ambitions seem as fundamental as that of any of theCritiques. My own hypothesis is that Groundwork III represents a briefand somewhat untypical and overconfident period in Kant’s approach toour freedom, one in which, unlike the second Critique, he at times seems torely 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.


to reach quite substantive conclusions about one’s self.20 This is an unstableposition that appears in obvious tension with Kant’s most insightful restric-tions on metaphysical self-knowledge and pure psychological claims ingeneral. Hence it is only appropriate that, in order to present a more clearlycoherent and Critical position, Kant’s major moves in 1786 through 1788 (intheMetaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 1786, as well as the revisionsin the 1787 edition of the first Critique and the introduction of the Faktumdoctrine in the second Critique) were precisely to make explicit strongrestrictions on what the self can know or assert about itself “all alone,”and especially to turn away from even any suggestion that a mere theoreticalact of judgment by itself reveals our absolute spontaneity.21

These late 1780s improvements retrospectively shed light on what can becalled Kant’s mid-1780s temporary pattern of nonchalant ambivalence incountenancing an implicit strong positive presumption about our absolutefreedom without going so far yet as clearly to insist that it is only from a puremoral perspective that there is an adequate ground for holding on to thispresumption, or even to the thought that there is any genuine purpose toexistence at all. This temporary pattern is historically understandable butsystematically precarious: to the extent that moral considerations are notdirectly addressed or defended as essential, the works of this period take onthe appearance of “dancing over an abyss.” They casually propose that wethink about natural history as in effect the whole “stage” for the advance-ment of freedom, while bracketing libertarian metaphysics and foreclosingthe standard alternative ways of making freedom comprehensible – namely,by treating it as a matter of degree, as in the earlier Leibnizian or Wolffiantradition, or the broadly naturalistic manner that was central not only toHerder but also most of the later secular determinist and Hegelianapproaches that became popular in Germany even within Kant’s lifetime.

3 . p rob l em s i n the the s i s

The troublesome nature of Kant’s nonchalance becomes apparent as soon asone tries to think through the details of his first historical thesis. The thesisdoes not present a detailed argument but simply a contention that without

20 See K. Ameriks, Preface to Kant’s Theory of Mind (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000, 2nd edn.), andInterpreting Kant’s Critiques (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006), chs. 6, 9, 10.

21 See not only Kant’s second Critique but also above, note 9, and KU §91, on “matters of fact,” whereour freedom is reaffirmed and even described as a certain “experience” but only on the practical basis ofan appreciation of the moral law. Cf. also Kant’s reference to the law as the “Archimedean point” in“Tone” (8:403).


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 verysubstantive existential claim. One could imagine an alternative approachthat would simply define an animal’s “natural” predispositions as those that,in fact, always do manifest themselves in its life cycle. This would leave openthe possibility that there may be many animals that do not have any suchpredispositions except for those that are necessary for their bare survival, andhence are present in a trivial manner.

3.1. The purpose problem

Kant’s first thesis, however, concerns not mere survival but what is involvedwhen animals develop “completely,” and it is presented as a non-trivialclaim that is “confirmed” by “external” as well as “internal observation.”This implies that here the term “purpose” must concern some kind ofevident “surplus value,” that is, the manifestation of an endowment thatallows animals to do something more than they “absolutely” have to do inorder to exist at all. Kant himself indicates that we can see that such anendowment 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 indescribing it here by means of the termUngefähr he does not meanwhateverwe might ordinarily call mere “chance.” Such a world could, after all, stillmanifest a tight network of universal and lawful mechanical relations, eventhough it would not thereby satisfy what Kant refers to here as the “guide-line of reason.”This “guideline” presumably comes from what the thesis calls the “teleo-

logical doctrine of nature,” but nothing is said here about why, in the era ofCritical philosophy, such a doctrine must be presumed. To be sure, theCritique of Pure Reason invokes a “transcendental principle” (A 651/B 680)of “systematic unity in nature,”which is supposedly necessary in a regulativeepistemological way, simply as underlying our constant need to try to orderappearances in terms of hierarchies of genus and species, and to explain theirproperties exhaustively in terms of layers of underlying powers. Whateverthe merits of this kind of broadly logical principle, however, it is hard to seehow it entails any strong universal claim about specifically teleologicalpredispositions in animals themselves. What the principle does suggest,though, is a key fact that might have been skipped over only because Kanttook it to be so extremely obvious: that we presume that animals always exist


not as mere individuals22 but only as members of a living species, a speciesdetermined in terms of distinctive inheritable characteristics. Rather thanpausing to make this point in the first thesis in a general way, Kant passesover it altogether until, in the second thesis, he draws attention to itindirectly by saying that “reason,” the allegedly distinctive predispositionof 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” isthe fact that here he calls “reason” the crucial human predisposition withoutimmediately specifying its components and explaining whether it is theoret-ical or practical. This corresponds to his pattern at the time of suggesting,somewhat like Rousseau, that one can go easily back and forth between whatis implied by our “freedom to act” and our “freedom to think” (judge). Suchnonchalance covers over a crucial issue, because even if it is allowed thatanimals have numerous characteristics not clearly essential for their baresurvival, it is hard to see how to determine which of these should be said tobe crucial for an animal’s distinctive “development.”Onemight well imagine,for example, that human animals could be quite distinctive and still prosperwithout getting near to “completely” developing practical reason, as long asthey still had some other special powers, say in the broad realm of theoreticalreason. Conversely, one might imagine that human beings could “complete”themselves in some distinctive and adequate degree simply through specialachievements of practical reason (e.g., customs of sympathetic respect), evenwhile their theoretical reason remained at a crude pre-scientific level.

Part – but only part – of what Kant may mean here concerns a strongprinciple that the first thesis introduces about “successful” activity: “Anorgan that is not to be used, or an arrangement that does not attain to itsend, is a contradiction” (8:18). Apparently, we must think that every kindof animal should be able to succeed at something specific, somethingpresumably beyond the mere general capacity to survive, which all speciesexhibit. But even if this is granted, it remains very difficult, without somefurther substantive clue, to see the specific implications of Kant’s principlefor human history. For all that we know so far, this principle could besatisfied in the human case by either a theoretical or practical life of playinggames 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,” NewYork Review of Books 54 (2007), pp. 4–8.


to succeed in having achieved its end. Hence, even if we accept that there aresome distinctive predispositions that have to be “completely developed” byhuman beings, on the bare supposition that all species as such have somesignificant properties that go beyond mere survival, it is at first not at allclear 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 humanbeings – especially because they are the only kind of animal that, on Kant’sview, seems to have reason at all – is to deny them the expectation ofsucceeding in “developing” reason. Nonetheless, it remains unclear whyeven this development need be anything more than success in a fairlymodest accomplishment or anything corresponding to commonsensenotions of purposiveness. One could still suppose, for example, that thegeneral demand that human beings “develop,” simply as a type of animalthat has distinctive rational endowments, could be met by their exhibitingsomething 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 problemby 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 simplyreturns 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 beingcomplex, rational, and reflexive, is adequately distinctive, or whether, untilmore 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 reasonit is still unclear, especially in the human case, exactly what falls under theheading of what the first thesis would call “purposeless play,” and why sucha 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 “surplusvalue” of silliness that it is capable of – and yet this success presumablywould not satisfy what Kant has in mind by his demand of somethingbeyond “purposeless playing.” And self-made “silly success” is not the onlyproblem. Kant recognizes that human beings are unique in being ablerationally and reflectively to set themselves certain kinds of tasks that arenotmanifestly silly and in which they regularly do not succeed, for example,a life without episodes of serious unhappiness. Kant appreciates that human


beings, and human beings alone, can plan a life of prudence – and yet healways avoids allowing that aim to define humanity’s goal. Although thethird thesis essay highlights the fact that human beings do not seem tosucceed at being happy (“it appears to have been no aim at all to nature thathe should live well,” 8:20), Kant’s ultimate point here, as throughout hisCritical period, is clearly that “success”with happiness is not the main issue.He stresses that a life of mere satisfaction could in principle be achievedwithout the complexities of human reason altogether (G 4:395), and so,insofar as we use our reason consciously to aimmerely at something like thisend, we still might as well be turnspits.

Looking back at the first thesis alone, it might seem that if Kant is notfundamentally concerned with prudence, and its goal of happiness, which isa goal common to any animal, he must be concerned with some morespecific but merely natural peculiarity of human beings, something thatwould allow them to have their own “field” of organic activity – just as cowsare especially good at making use of the grass in front of them, and someparasites, which indirectly make use of the grass too, are especially good atmaking use of cows as well.23 But by the time of the third Critique at thelatest,24 Kant is willing to argue that, at one level, all such apparent natural“purposiveness” can be regarded, at another level, as simply a pointlesscycle, with no final end, which is to say it would be a kind of instrumentallyself-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 thatthere could be highly rational beings caught up in a purposeless play of thistype – for example, Hobbesian beings that could even be legislating rules forthemselves 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 theysurely would not satisfy what Kant ultimately means by the “guideline ofreason.” All this goes to show that Kant has a fairly ambitious, even if at firstsight quite ambivalent, notion of reason. It was noted earlier that a series ofevents 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 bytrue “purpose” here. In addition, given the Kantian considerations that were

23 For stirring reflections on the omnipresence of parasites, see Annie Dillard’s classic, The Pilgrim atTinker Creek (New York: Harper’s Magazine Press, 1974).

24 See KU 5:427, and Guyer, Kant’s System of Nature and Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 2005), chs. 12 and 13.


just invoked above, and backed by other Critical texts, it can also be said thata series of events that appears to follow specifically organic principles (butcan, after all, still be due to what are mere mechanical causes), or even onethat follows specifically prudential-practical laws (but can also be generatedby ultimately mechanical causes), still need not satisfy what Kant has inmind 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 introducingthe notion of serious purpose, it is not really necessary to go beyond thisessay altogether; its first three theses are clearly meant as part of a singleargument that culminates in the conclusion that a full observation ofhumanity reveals that it is “as if” nature has made us to be most concernedwith our “rational self-esteem” (8:20). Kant surely does not mean this to betaken in some kind of ordinary psychological and nonmoral way, for such amere psychological state would be no more above mere “play” than thecomplex animal relations described earlier (e.g., the ultimately pointlesspreening of a peacock). Hence, despite his passing remarks about the self-forming technical ingenuity of human reason (8:19) – a quality that nodoubt could be found in properly tuned turnspits as well – it must be thatwhat Kant is ultimately concerned with here is not the mere innovativecapacity of theoretical reason, nor the mere psychological complexity of ourself-directed and self-molding states, but rather the crucial normative atti-tude that he describes in much more detail elsewhere as self-esteem basedentirely in respect for the moral law, which is the only substantive principleof pure reason in an absolute sense.25

This kind of respect is appropriately related to the theme of satisfyingreason because what Kant must ultimately have in mind here must not be“reason” in just any commonsense meaning but reason as the special highercapacity to be concerned with absolutely necessary concepts and laws. Incomparison with reason in this sense, Kant need not regard even theregularities of mechanics, let alone psychology, as by themselves laws inthe strictest sense. They are all mere sensible patterns, or “counsels,” whichby themselves do not absolutely have to be the way they are and do not havethe unconditional quality that is found in what is worthy of esteem. Themoral 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 ofChicago Press, 1989), and Kant’s lectures on metaphysics, 28:301; 29:916, 948.


only practical principle that for Kant has lawfulness in an absolutelycategorical sense, holding for all rational agents as such.26 In the realm oftheory, the only parallel to this law – and an entirely appropriate one givenKant’s language here about the “guideline [Leitfaden] of reason” – is the setof pure categories that we are led to by what he calls the Leitfaden of thelogical forms of judgment (A 66/B 91). These must also be thought of asholding 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 ina determinative way, and even if we need not think that an infinite mindwould have to employ them in a discursive rather than intuitive way. Thistight connection between reason and law will also turn out to be the clue toresolving the problem, noted at the outset, of how to make the best sense ofKant’s talk about his own philosophy as “epigenetic.”

4 . a s s e s s i ng kant ’ s h i s tor i c a l e s s a y

Tomake relevant sense of Kant’s first thesis about the purpose of animal lifein general, I have been arguing that we are forced to peek ahead – in part tothe next two theses about human beings in particular, in part to thecosmopolitan end of the essay as a whole, which defines the goal of arealm 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 notremain confused by the nonchalant ambivalence of the surface structure ofmany of Kant’s expressions in the mid-1780s. Although for a while Kanthimself might have spoken as if practically any judgmental or practicalactivity 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 whatultimately may be mere mechanical complexity – Kant did not in fact leavematters in such a careless state. By the time that he was confident enough torevise his first Critique and to publish his second, he filled out the notion of“self-esteem” and finally made the crucial condition (absolute freedom) ofthe true purposiveness of human life, and thus of the aim of human historyas well, explictly dependent on reason’s special relation to the moral law.

Even if this interpretation is accepted, there remain the sticky questionsposed at the outset about how to relate Kant’s general transcendental viewsto 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 thisimperative is relevant only to the restricted domain of sensible beings.


so crucial, why does Kant even use terms such as “epigenesis”? And if puremoral reason is overridingly important, why is history so crucial, if, preciselyon Kant’s own theory, our fundamental capacity to be free and to accept themoral law is something that in principle can be realized at any time, byanyone, in history? There are two different questions here that need to beaddressed at different levels; the first (4.1) has to do with fundamental anda priori considerations and the second (4.2) with derivative but still verysignificant 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 involvesgenesis or development only in a very restricted sense. As interpreters suchas Zammito and Zoeller have argued in different ways, Kant’s denial ofspecific versions of a preformation account of our ideas is still compatiblewith an emphasis on the strict a priori nature of some of them, and evenwith 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 doesinsist that our a priori ideas are very unlike empirical ones because theyare “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 avoidthe odd notion of a kind of actual mental picture slumbering within themind without any epistemological activity. There are two important andrelated but distinct points here: an emphasis on epistemology in contrast tothe mere facts of psychology or metaphysics, and an emphasis on activity incontrast to mere presence, passivity, or change in scale. For Kant, to call arepresentation “pure” or “a priori” is precisely to characterize a way that itfunctions within the process of knowledge, and so the phrase “originalacquisition” is meant to indicate not a particular empirical event separatefrom and before others but rather the use of a representation that mustnecessarily, in a normative sense, structure all representation from the veryoutset 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 tospeak explicitly of his system as “as it were” epigenetic. An advantage here ofthe “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 NewCritique of Reason Has Been Made Superfluous by an Earlier One (8:222).


is that the latter language by itself does not indicate the specific necessarycharacter of these basic representations as a matter of their general epistemicstructuring function. This is the crucial point of his argument at B 167: thateven if an idea of a certain type were implanted in our mind by a specialtranscendent power so that the idea would always in fact have to correspondin a perfectly pre-established way to an object of that type, this still wouldnot give a proper account of how humans have what counts as substantivenecessary knowledge. The main problem here is not simply that our invo-cation of such a transcendent power is “arbitrary” in the sense that our graspof that power and its capacities is not independently warranted or subject toany clear procedure. The key point is that the imposition of a pre-established harmony that simply puts us in a state of having, or being ableto have, particular ideas that “correspond” to particular objects (“Fido”-Fido style) still does not even begin to explain that (and how) there arenecessary, rather than arbitrary, universal judgmental structures that areneeded in order to achieve the normative state of knowing sensible objects atall. In other words, the “necessary agreement” of a sort that could bearranged by an external causal control of inner ideas and outer objects thatpassively “picture” one another is not the kind of internal or transcendentalstructuring of categorial ideas that “constitutes” objects through judgmentsso as to make them “grammatically” comprehensible, such that withoutthem there is nothing understandable that we ever could know.

All this implies that, although the “epigenetic” “process” that Kant isspeaking about concerns structures that for us are always exhibited in time,they are in no way dependent on the contingencies of time, let alone socialhistory. This point is still compatible with Kant’s making use of a term thathas its roots in the new “dynamic” biology of his era, for this termconveniently signifies that, like anti-preformationist views of biologicaldevelopment, the development of the pure core of human knowledge cannotbe understood in terms of miniature objects that need only to be unfoldedand could already be identified in terms that have nothing to do with theactivity of our experience. By the time of the first Critique, there was alreadya wide variety of biological epigenetic views, and Kant could share withthem not only some negative attitudes about naive versions of preforma-tionism, but also the general positive notion that human beings becomethemselves only by actively generating, by means of their power of reasonrather than mere pregiven nature, principles that are actual and cognitiveonly 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


introduced what they called a version of “preformationism” that alsoincludes some kind of active, “self-determining power.”28 Kant’s appreci-ation of this point may explain why he did not use the term epigenesisitself in a favorable way prior to 1787 (or ever in a wholly unqualifiedsense), and why it is not part of his 1781 account of how his metaphysicaldeduction will “follow the pure concepts up to their first Keime undAnlagen, in the human understanding, in which they lie predisposed,until they finally, on the occasion of experience, develop and throughexactly the same understanding are displayed in their purity, freed fromempirical conditions” (A 66). This passage allows that there is a sense inwhich the categories are preformed or “lie predisposed” within us, asconditions of knowledge, and yet this is not preformationism in an uncrit-ical sense, for it is still compatible with the key Critical point (notexplained right here) that these Keime as such still do not amount to actualknowledge and they need to “develop.” What Kant began, in the later1780s, to get much clearer about expressing is the idea that our transitionto the acquisition of knowledge should not be described simply in therelatively passive and negative terms of Keime being “occasioned” andthen “freed from the empirical.” Instead, the self-activated and cognition-constituting role of pure concepts needs to be more clearly stressed – thefact that, without actively deploying categories judgmentally, by bringingthem into sensible principles that order experience in general, we could notbe said to be understandably concerning ourselves with knowable empi-rical objects at all.29

It should be clear enough, then, that although there is crucial dynamiclanguage in this theoretical area of Kant’s work, it has nothing originally todo with historical development in particular. His discussions here do,however, reinforce his view that the human species as such (as opposed tomere individuals) has a special significance, and in particular a special set oftheoretical capacities. This is an important point, but its historical implica-tions are limited. One might, all too hastily, suppose that if there is anyspecial historical aim for human beings as such, it may concern completing,scientifically and philosophically, the account of how these dispositionsstructure the entirety of our theoretical knowledge. Kant is very clear,however, that this theoretical task, however valuable it may be, is not a

28 Zammito, “Kant’s Persistent Ambivalence,” p. 58, quotes from Kant’s review of Herder (8:62–3).29 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.


fundamental “need of reason.”30 Life would not be purposeless if thisproject, or any comparable theoretical task, were not accomplished by anyindividual or any foreseeable social endeavor. And even if such a task couldbe finished soon, at least in its core, as Kant sometimes suggests is possiblethanks to his own system, Kant does not regard such an accomplishment assomething that would bestow meaning on human existence, and creationitself, 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 isunconditional rather than conditional, and ultimately is even said to pro-vide a purpose for creation in general. Only the satisfaction of this need cangive a purpose definitely elevating us above “purposeless play” and definitelysatisfying the “guideline of reason.” The main problem with relating thisneed to history is that Kant’s own theory of absolute freedom rules outallowing the satisfaction of the basic need to respect the moral law to bedependent on any empirical contingencies. This is precisely what makesKant so radical, egalitarian, and universal in his orientation: every person,irrespective even of variations in intellect, or social and physical gifts, iscommanded to obey the law, and presumably has at all times and places anequal original capacity to do so.

The solution to this problem lies in the fact that Kant holds that moralitycalls us not merely to respect the moral law but also to be active rationalagents who aim to bring about objects in accord with it, and thus eventuallya world with just structures everywhere. But any success, or even merethought of success, with independent objects is subject to all sorts of socialand historical contingencies. For this reason, and even without at firstlooking in detail at the phenomenon of history, Kant introduces hispostulates of pure practical reason in the first Critique as Ideas thathuman beings need to be committed to taking to be possible becauseotherwise, given the manifest general lack of a just correlation in humanexperience between happiness and desert, the pursuit of the supreme objectof morality can seem altogether pointless. It takes only a small extra step tosee that, even given the acceptance of the postulates’ general argument that amorally committed person needs to think there is some kind of transcen-dent power organizing the effects that result, one can also imagine a rational,

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


morally concerned person who might still go on to wonder whether, giventhe details of human history that we do know, it makes sense to believe anylonger that even such a power can truly be effective. It may seem that even ajust and powerful God could not make a just world, if the history of freepersons is just a total mess. Our Mitbestimmung is crucial, and it canmanifestly 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 ofhistory. At first sight, it may seem that there is no way even to imaginethat the history of human beings could actually be going in a directioncompatible with the highest good: “no history of them in conformity toa plan appears to be possible” (8:17). And yet, given that the rest ofKant’s essay provides the sketch of a plan for history that would at leastdispel this appearance of impossibility, and provide an understandablepathway to meeting some of the most worrisome necessary conditions ofthe highest good that is supposed be the ultimate aim of our intentionalefforts, then Kant’s concern with history appear justified and consistentafter all. To achieve this worthy apologetic goal, however, it does notseem necessary that he insist on the more ambitious and controversialclaims of the first thesis, namely that “all” species have, and thus thatall 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 isclaimed that the distinctive history of human animals at first appearsnecessarily to take a path that absolutely excludes some of the conditionsneeded 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 toconceive this history so that this fulfillment does not appear impossible afterall. The rest of Kant’s essay does appear to exhibit one internally consistentand externally plausible way of accomplishing this considerably moremodest project, and thus of doing justice to the essential “spirit” behindthe first thesis. In this case, then, it may turn out that not much is lost forthe core of the Critical philosophy if one remains unpersuaded by most ofthe actual body of the “letter” of the first thesis, however intriguing it maybe. Its body may itself be simply an understandable but unfortunate relic, amatter of trying to keep too much in step with the fashions and science ofone’s youth – and thus it can be a good historical lesson in another sense,especially for philosophers.


chapter 3

Reason as a species characteristicManfred Kuehn

Some philosophical scholars understand the Idea for a Universal Historywith a Cosmopolitan Aim of 1784 as Kant’s most explicit formulation ofhis “philosophy of history.” Put differently, they understand this essay ashis attempt to uncover the fundamental laws of the historical developmentof humanity, similar in intent to the efforts of Georg Wilhelm FriedrichHegel, Karl Marx, and others, who offered compelling accounts of whatthey took to be the meaning and direction of history. But there are manyreasons why such an interpretation should be rejected.1 The English word“history” is just as ambiguous as the German word “Geschichte.” It can refereither to the totality of events that we call “history” or to the way in whichhistory is conceived or written. In the latter sense, we also speak of “histori-ography” (“Geschichtsschreibung”), and use the terms “history” (Geschichte) asa mere shorthand for the former. The Universal History presents anddefends an “idea” and a “point of view” for the writing of such a universalor world history.2 In other words, Kant was addressing in this essayGeschichtsschreibung or historiography, advocating and giving reasons for acertain way of writing history from a philosophical point of view thatintroduces a “plan” or a “purpose of nature” into the historical accountwe give of human events. He claimed that such a plan must concern theprogress of human abilities toward their full development or perfection.And he further claimed that this idea is “to some extent based on an a prioriprinciple” (8:30).3His proposal was thus in his own mind deeply connectedwith some of the central concerns of his critical philosophy.

1 Not everyone makes this mistake, but it cannot be emphasized enough that Kant was in this essayreally only talking about Geschichtsschreibung or historiography. See Yovel, Kant and the Philosophy ofHistory, for instance.

2 In fact, for Kant, it presents the (only possible) idea and point of view for such a history.3 References to Kant’s works will be given in brackets in the main text, with the volume number of theAcademy edition followed by a colon and the page number. The full reference is: Immanuel Kants gesammelteSchriften, ed. Königlich Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1902– ). I usethe translations ofTheCambridge Edition of Kant’sWorks edited by Paul Guyer andAllenW.Wood inmost

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Kant was well aware of how “strange and apparently silly” his proposalmight appear to his contemporaries (8:29f.). Indeed, the essay is first andforemost his attempt to show to his contemporaries that his ideas are farfrom being strange or silly. He was not, he argued, offering a mere piece offiction or “a novel (Roman)” (8:29). Rather, he argued Universal History isnot just a logical, but a real possibility.4 In the last section of the essay, heoffered 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 itsworking, this Idea may still serve as a guiding thread for presenting asa system … what would otherwise be a planless conglomeration ofhuman actions” (8:29). In other words, whether or not there is (orwhether or not we can discern) a plan, the assumption that there is (ormight be) a plan is useful in representing the events of human history ina systematic fashion.

(2) If there is a plan, there is also hope. The view afforded by a universalhistory from a cosmopolitan point of view also gives “a consoling viewof the future” (8:30). It is a “justification of nature – or, better, ofProvidence,” or (perhaps even better?) of God (8:30). Viewed in thisway, the Universal History is a successor of the various attempts at atheodicy. For Kant, this was “no unimportant reason” for choosing thestandpoint he argued for in the essay.

(3) Universal history is not meant to displace the work of “practicingempirical historians.” Kant proposed the new way of writing historynot as an alternative to their work, but as a supplement “from anotherpoint of view” (8:31).

(4) Finally, Kant’s argument for the adoption of universal history is alsobased on political considerations, since he hoped that this way ofwriting history would “direct the ambitions of sovereigns and theiragents” to work toward “the goal of world citizenship,” a cosmopolitanstate (8:31). In his own words, this is another “minor motive” for thiskind of historiography.

Not surprisingly, perhaps, many of Kant’s contemporaries were notconvinced by these arguments. Kant found himself forced to revisit theissue several more times. The most important of these are perhaps Section IIIof his essay “On the Common Saying: That May be True in Theory

cases. Since the Universal History has not yet appeared in this edition, I use Lewis White Beck’stranslation, as found in Immanuel Kant,OnHistory, edited by Lewis White Beck (Indianapolis: TheBobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1963).

4 It “must be regarded as possible” (29).

Reason as a species characteristic 69

But it is no use in Practice” of 1793, which is directed against MosesMendelssohn’s critique of his position, Part II of The Strife of the Facultiesof 1798, entitled “An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human RaceConstantly Progressing?” which is also an attempt to defend the Frenchrevolution as a “historical sign” of the progress of humanity, and §83 of theCritique of the Power of Judgment, entitled “On the Ultimate End of Natureas a Teleological System” that presents an argument that we cannot makessense of nature without the existence of human beings.5

While the Universal History was written before Kant had published anysignificant work in practical philosophy or ethics – the Groundwork of theMetaphysics of Morals appeared in 1785 and theCritique of Practical Reason in1788 – the three texts just mentioned appeared after his sustained reflectionon moral issues. For this reason, we should perhaps not find it surprisingthat 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 thisconception of philosophy provides us with hope (point 2) and contributesto the attainment of desirable political circumstances (point 4), it is ratherthat I, or we,

have an innate duty … so to effect through each member in the sequence ofgenerations in which I live, simply as a human being, that future generations willbecome better (which must also must be assumed as possible), and that this dutymay thus rightfully be passed on from one generation to the next … I may alwaysbe and remain unsure whether an improvement in the human race may be hopedfor; but this can invalidate neither the maxim nor its necessary presupposition thatin a practical respect it be feasible. (8:309)6

One might well ask whether this moral justification of his universal historyfundamentally changes Kant’s conception or whether it should be under-stood as its clarification or emendation. I shall suggest that in some sense it isboth. On the one hand, the moral justification is best understood as afurther development of his earlier view and is by no means incompatiblewith the Universal History. On the other hand, it introduces a new

5 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.

6 This is followed up in the next paragraph containing another argument to the effect that hope for abetter future is not unimportant either, as in point (2). In the Strife of the Faculty, there is an argumentthat reminds us of (1): “if the course us of human affairs seems senseless to us, perhaps it lies in a poorchoice of position from which you regard it.” Appealing to the Copernican hypothesis, he claims thatif we had a fixed point, like the sun, we could predict with certainty human progress. Alas, we don’thave and cannot have such a fixed point (7:83f.).


dimension into his account that relates his idea of history even more closelyto his fundamental moral concerns. In order to get somewhat clearer on therelation between history (historiography) and morality, I shall analyze insome detail a notion that has not made an appearance yet, namely that of“reason” or “Vernunft.” It plays a fundamental role in the Universal Historyas the essential characteristic of the human species. Kant’s conceptions ofnature and perfection cannot be properly understood without it, and itis the central notion of his moral philosophy. I will argue that “reason as aspecies characteristic” is for Kant fundamentally dependent on “pure prac-tical reason,” and that this way of viewing the relation is the expression of hisidealist (or less precisely: metaphysical) commitments, which goes to showhis 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, arepersuasive or not, or whether they are essentially “dated.” I will not even tryto answer this question. Let me just say that I find the claim that we have aduty to future generations and that we must therefore believe that ouractions will make a difference to future generations most persuasive. Wemay never know whether our actions improve the life of those who followus – in fact, I am sure that we will never know – but this does not mean thatwe shouldn’t try. Just like Plato’s Socrates in theMeno, “I shouldn’t like totake an oath on the whole story, but one thing I am ready to fight for as longas I can, in word and act – that is that we shall be better, braver, and moreactive men if we believe it right to look for what we don’t know than if webelieve that there is no point of looking.”7

What I intend to accomplish is more historical: I would like to investigatethe philosophical context of Kant’s view(s) concerning reason in the worksof his contemporaries, explain how they throw light on his claims, and showthat Kant’s arguments, whether “dated” or not, make perfect sense, giventhe presuppositions of those contemporaries he was responding to. After all,Kant primarily addressed views of those he knew and only secondarily somefaceless “posterity.” To the objection that this reduces Kant’s view to adhominem argument, at least two rejoinders may be given. First Kant, forone, 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.


worth reading ad hominem in this sense? To be sure, some of our contem-poraries like to think that their arguments rise above this, but they do so attheir own peril.

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While being optimistic about the efficacy of reason in the human species,Kant was very pessimistic about the rationality of human individuals. Infact, he considered their actions, apart from the occasional “wisdom thatappears here and there among individuals,” as expressions of “folly, childishvanity, childish malice and destructiveness” (8:18). Things human follow“an idiotic course” (8:18). And it was his attempt to explain what seems tobe “a planless conglomeration of human actions” (8:29) that led him topostulate 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 thisgoal in nine theses. The first three of them deal with the general back-ground of this plan. The other six get into the specifics of how nature maypossibly accomplish this.8 We will have to deal only with the first threetheses:(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 befully developed in the race, not in the individual” (8:18).

(3) “Nature has willed that the human being should, by himself, produceeverything that goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animalexistence, and that he should partake of no other happiness or perfec-tion than that which he himself, independently of instinct, has createdby 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, ofcourse, they die an early death). It can be taken as a rather uncontroversialclaim about how “nature” works or what “law” natural kinds follow. Therewould 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 aremeant to show that a universal human society is the material goal made possible by the socialunsociability of human beings, while 7 and 8 show how the external relations of states are necessaryand sufficient for reaching the final goal, and 9 attempts to justify the assumption of progress aspossible and necessary for us to make.


with Kant on this.9 The second and third theses, which seem to expressKant’s view of reason as a species characteristic or as a “gift of nature,” aremuch more interesting, controversial, and central for understanding Kant’sown 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 inhappiness and perfection.” Kant’s conception of human rationality in theUniversal History is characterized by these two principles. They imply thathuman reason is not meant to be a “tool” that would allow any individual toreach perfection during his own lifetime, but that it is a mere means that willallow the entire species, at the very expense of the individual, to reachperfection in some very distant, perhaps infinitely far removed, future.Whatever perfection and whatever happiness humanity may eventuallyreach, it will have been the result of human reason. Furthermore, everyindividual is “worthy of life and well-being” only insofar as he or she haslived a life of reason or a life of seeking perfection of him- or herself as amember 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 ultimategoal or the destiny of the human species, and can be called “anthropolog-ical,” the second principle is about what human individuals should or mustdo 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 moralprinciple respectively, and be concerned in the remainder of the paper toinvestigate further Kant’s defense of these two principles, show it grew outof the discussion of his contemporaries, and argue that Kant ultimatelyreduced the anthropological principle to the moral principle.

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Both principles centrally involve “perfection,” or, more precisely, the notionof a (possibly) infinite progress toward perfection. This is, historically speak-ing, no accident. By the time Kant published his Universal History, theconcept of perfection was long accepted as one of the key philosophicalideas in German thought. Leibniz had made “perfection” the centerpiece ofhis ontology, and argued that we live in the best of all possible worlds. Hehad also claimed that the highest goal for human beings should be their owndevelopment 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 manywould be bothered to contest it even today.


we ought to follow God’s commands, “we must work out our own perfec-tion and do wrong to no man.”10 But it was Christian Wolff, who elevatedthe striving for perfection to the highest principle of moral philosophy. Theimperative: “Do what makes you and your state or that of others moreperfect, and don’t do what makes this state less perfect!” was for him thebasic principle of all morality, and he argued that all other moral imperativesfollow from it.11His followers agreed for the most part, and the idea becamethe common good of the eighteenth century. It should therefore come as nosurprise when we find Moses Mendelssohn argue in his Phaedon (firstpublished in 1767) that the vocation (Bestimmung) of all rational beingsconsists in the continual striving for perfection and that the growth in innerperfection of the human soul is “the ultimate goal of creation.”12 There is inindividuals a progressive rise to greater perfection. Their very “nature iscapable of unceasing growth; their inclination (Trieb) has the most obviouscapacity for infinity.”13 We are meant to grow infinitely wiser, better, andmore beautiful. While not every individual can reach the same state ofperfection, it is enough, Mendelssohn claimed, “if a few noble” creaturesreach it. It is sufficient that “they all belong to the same species” and thattheir differences consist only “of more or less.”14 The goal of every individ-ual should be to pursue continual perfection, and every individual shouldrest assured that this striving for perfection can continue ad infinitum.

This belief in the possibility of infinite progress seems to have beenpossible for Mendelssohn only on the basis of a “true concepts of Godand 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 arestriving for our true happiness.”15 On the other hand, Mendelssohn clearlyalso believed that the belief in infinite progress must lead to the belief in theimmortality of the soul of rational individuals:

10 G.W. Leibniz, Theodicy, translated by Huggard (La Salle: Open Court, 1985), p. 52.11 Christian Wolff, Vernuenftige Gedanken von den Menschen Thun und Lassen (1720), §14. He alsodescribed this basic principle as a “law of nature” §17), and he claimed that “all the particular lawsmust 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 freeactions” (§41).

12 Moses Mendelssohn, Phädon oder über die Unsterblichkeit der Seele in drei Gesprächen. I quote inaccordance with Moses Mendelssohn, Schriften über Religion und Aufklärung, edited by MartinaThom (Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1989), p. 285. All the passages I quote arefrom the third dialogue of the Phaedon and can be found between pp. 108 and 124 of MosesMendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften (Jubiläumsausgabe), vol. 3.1, edited by F. Bamberger et al.(Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1932).

13 Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 285. 14 Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 273.15 Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 274.


By imitating God, we can gradually come closer to his perfections, and in thiscloseness to God consists the happiness of spirits; but the road to it is infinite, andcannot be entirely completed in eternity. For this reason, the striving knows nobounds in human life. Every human desire aims in and for itself at infinity. Ourdesire for knowledge is insatiable … the feeling of beauty seeks the infinite … thesublime stimulates us only because of its incomprehensibility,” etc.16

The notion of continual progress toward perfection thus presupposes theimmortality of the soul. If death were the end of this progress, there wouldbe “wisdom” in the world. “Providence has not given us the desire foreternal happiness for nothing: it can and must be satisfied.”17

Mendelssohn went further, however, and claimed that without the beliefin immortality, morality itself would be impossible. If someone were not tobelieve in immortality, this life would be “the highest good.” The slightestfear of death would keep him or her from doing what morality requires.18

Indeed, if we could not presuppose immortality, we would have the rightto “cause the destruction of the entire world,” whenever our own life is atstake.19 In other words, the belief in the immortality of the soul is anecessary condition for the possibility of morality as striving for perfection.Therefore it is rational for us to accept the doctrine of the immortality of thesoul as true. The notion of infinite perfectibility implies the notion of ourimmortality.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 ofthe immortality of the soul in the second edition of the Critique of PureReason (B 413–26). Furthermore, there is every indication that Kant readeverything that Mendelssohn wrote. For this reasons, it is more than justlikely that the first three theses of Kant’s Universal History constitute insome sense an answer to Mendelssohn’s view of perfectibility. However, itwould be a serious mistake to view it just as an answer to Mendelssohn. Theissue of whether human beings can make infinite progress in the perfectionof their faculties and what theological or metaphysical implications this viewmay have is central for the period often referred to as the Spätaufklärungor the “late enlightenment.” But the origins of this view go back muchfurther. Kant, though answering Mendelssohn, is not just concerned withMendelssohn’s view. It will therefore behoove us to take a closer look at

16 Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 275. 17 Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 279.18 Mendelssohn, Phädon, pp. 278–85. 19 Mendelssohn, Phädon, p. 279.


the way in which the ideas of infinite perfectibility and immortality of thesoul were viewed by others during Kant’s lifetime.20

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In 1748 – when Kant was just twenty-four years old, taking a break fromacademic life, and working as the private tutor of a reformed preacher in theenvirons of Königsberg – Johann Joachim Spalding published anonymouslya short treatise with the title Betrachtungen über die Bestimmung desMenschen (Meditations on the Vocation of Man) By all accounts, the bookwas most successful. It appeared in many editions and translations. Itbelongs to the genre of Erbauungschriften or religious tracts written for thefortification of believers, intended not for professional philosophers ortheologians, but for the educated laity. And this is how his contemporariesviewed it. What makes it interesting is that it is written, not from afundamentalist, pietist, or orthodox perspective, but from one that isphilosophically informed by Shaftesbury and Wolff. Johann GottfriedHerder gave it as a present to his fiancée. Johann Gottlieb Fichte claimedthat it had planted in his youth the first seeds of “higher speculation” inhis mind and that it “characterized best” the “striving after the super-sensible and incorruptible.”21 While Kant must have taken note of italmost 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 ofthe Spätaufklärung.23 This is in my view an exaggeration. The book isneither original nor profound, nor even well written. While I wouldagree that it was not unimportant, if only because it was influential,

20 It should go without saying that I will not offer an exhaustive survey of all the views on this, but onlyconcentrate on some of the most important stages of the discussion.

21 Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Sämtliche Werke (Berlin, 1845–6), vol. 5, p. 231.22 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 tounite the concepts “intelligent human being” and “good human being” in my feeling. For some timethe belief in Shaftesbury’s and Hutcheson’s glimmering system of the moral sense seemed to satisfyme, but it was only a slumbering” (10:330).

23 See especially Günter Zöller, “Die Bestimmung der Bestimmung des Menschen bei Mendelssohnund Kant,” in Volker Gerhardt, Kant und die Berliner Aufklärung. Akten des 9. Internationalen Kant-Kongresses (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2001), vol. 4, pp. 477–89, and Norbert Hinske, “Das stillschweigendeGespräch. Prinzipien der Anthropologie und Geschichtsphilosophie bei Mendelssohn und Kant,” inMichael 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 desMenschen (Hamburg: Meiner, 1999).


I would argue that it was rather the discussion it provoked in the 1760s (ofwhich 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 introspectiveman,” Spalding argued that we, as human beings, should follow our natureto wherever it leads us, claiming that our worth ultimately depends “on[our] ability to feel (empfinden) the order [of the universe] and the ability toascend to the beginning of all order.” We are “called (bestimmt) to such ahigh honor.” Mere hedonism is unsatisfactory; knowledge and the perfec-tion of our mental faculties are far superior. Furthermore, if we cultivate ourfaculties properly, we discover that even the most superior mind will notmake us happy, if we do not also seek the happiness of others. Altruism isnatural to our soul. We find in ourselves a “lawgiver” that demands virtuousconduct. And this notion of a lawgiver within ourselves leads Spalding’ssolitary 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 worldseem to be perfect, I know that the “unchangeable rules of fairness” of thesource of all beings will lead to a perfectly harmonious state. “I am aware ofabilities in me, which are capable of growth ad infinitum. Should my abilityto 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 appearsto me, too much of a futility in the efforts of an infinite wisdom.”This hopeof an infinite progress to perfection also infinitely increases my value andmyvocation. “I recognize (erkenne) now that I belong to an entirely differentclass of things than those are that originate, change, and decay before myeyes, 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 ofmy span; it is my childhood, in which I am educated toward eternity.”24

Our vocation is to develop toward perfection. This development is possibleonly if we think of it as an eternal development. The entire value of ourbeing consists in this. As Spalding puts it:

My worth and my happiness should consist only in this, namely, that the supremedemands of truth, shall alone guide my actions, unanaesthesized by the tumult ofthe passions and the selfish desires, that the pure feeling (Empfindung) of proprietyshould 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.


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

My life on this earth is a preparation for another life, in which all will makesense.

Spalding’s ideas represent an “enlightened” version of the Christian ideathat we are created in the image of God, that we are God’s children, and thatwe should live a life that is pleasing to God.We should try to come closer toGod. But the word “God” does not appear in any of the key passages of histext. Nor do we hear anything about the role of Christ as the mediator thatmakes it possible for us to live such a life. Rather, in language close to Platoand Shaftesbury, Spalding enjoins us to live amoral life, by which he meansthat we should try to perfect ourselves by living rationally and resisting ourpassions and selfish desires, just as Wolff and Leibniz had also argued.

In The Vocation of Man, religion is essentially a rational and moralenterprise. As Wolff had pointed out: a “rational human being needs noother law, but is in virtue of his reason his own law.”26 And though this lawis valid, even if there were no ruler and no God, it does attest to the existenceof God.27 For Wolff, just as for Spalding, “the perfection of our nature andour state [is] the ultimate and main goal of all our free actions.”28 Whileeven the notion of progress toward perfection can already be found inWolff, the idea that this perfection can and should increase ad infinitumand in another life seems rather foreign to him. Wolff discussed this mattermost thoroughly in the third chapter of his German Ethics, which dealsprecisely with “the Nature and the Way, in which the Human Being CanObtain the Highest Good or his Happiness on Earth.”29

25 I quote again in accordance with Hinske, p. 138. In fact, most of the passages I translate are taken fromthose which Hinske identifies as the “five key quotations” from the seventh edition. Hinske followsup these quotations from the 1763 editon with the corresponding versions of 1794, which remainessentially the same, but show, according to Hinske, a definite Kantian influence. He claims that theearlier versions are essentially indebted to Wolff. This is not wrong, of course, but I would emphasizethe definite Shaftesburyan and Hutchesonian tone as well. See also Clemens Schwaiger, “Zur Fragenach den Quellen von Spaldings Bestimmung des Menschen. Ein ungelöstes Rätsel derAufklärungsforschung,” 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 JamesFoster, Francis Gastrell and Joseph Butler, for instance. He shares this interest in Shaftesbury withMendelssohn, who also translated parts of Shaftesbury’s work.

26 Christian Wolff, Vernuenftige Gedanken von den Menschen Thun und Lassen (1720), §24.27 Wolff, Vernuenftige Gedanken von den Menschen Thun und Lassen, §§20, 30.28 Wolff, Vernuenftige Gedanken von den Menschen Thun und Lassen, §41.29 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 thatsermons should leave out completely any theoretical or dogmatic elements, such as the doctrine of the


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 viewcarried weight. It is no exaggeration to say that Spalding’s view represented apowerful faction of the Prussian State and Church. He taught what cameclose to being the official theological position of the Prussia of Frederick theGreat. But his book on The Vocation of Man was influential quite inde-pendent of Spalding’s high office. As has been pointed out recently, therewere between 1740 and 1850 seventy-one books that had “Bestimmung desMenschen” in their title.30 The most famous of those was, of course, Fichte’sversion of 1800 whose first beginnings can, in fact, be traced back to hisfirst reading of Spalding’s work. Fichte was far from the only one of whomthis was true. Another important thinker was Kant’s student, Herder, forinstance.But not all books that contained “vocation of man” in their title

endorsed Spalding’s views. The most important dissenter was ThomasAbbt, who published a book review of the seventh edition of the Vocationof Man in the March 1764 volume of the Briefe die Neueste Litteraturbetreffend (Letters Concerning the Most Recent Literature). In it, he did notsummarize the book because knowledge of its contents could be presup-posed, and only offered some critical remarks. One of these concernedSpalding’s dependence on Hutcheson’s “insecure system.” Moral distinc-tions just do not depend on an innate moral sense. Indeed, Spalding’s viewis not a true account of human nature, but a pleasant novel about what itmight be. Abbt finds Tom Jones to be “truer,” and argues that moral feelingsare always the results of judgments of reason. Spalding’s views on religion hefinds, by contrast, rather commendable.31

Trinity, the doctrines of salvation and God’s grace and our justification in Christ. The preachershould instead emphasize the “supreme authority of conscience and the moral force of virtue andpublic morality.” Opting for “disinterested Christian benevolence” and against pietism and itsemphasis 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 ourdiscussion is that Spalding believes he can use the analysis of human nature in an attempt to establishwhat is the goal and task of human beings as a species, and that he believes he has shown that this taskconsists in the cultivation ad infinitum of the higher faculties of human beings. And this is whatmakes his view Christian in his own eyes as well as in those of many contemporaries. In the end, it is atheological enterprise, not a philosophical one. It is also what makes it a part of “higher speculation.”

30 Fotis Jannidis, “Die ‘Bestimmung des Menschen’ – Kultursemiotische Beschreibung einer sprachli-chen Formel,” Aufklärung 14 (2002), pp. 75–95, p. 75.

31 He also discussed some of the Appendices, which have no immediate relevance for our concerns. Thereview appeared in vol. 18 (1764). This issue contained also the reviews of Kant’sOnly Possible Proof ofthe 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.


Abbt had already written to Mendelssohn on January 11, 1764, that, ratherthan always review “bad authors,” he wanted a philosophical exchange withhim about the “vocation of man,” His “starting point” would be a twofoldconcern, namely, (i) “the vocation of man, which I find shrouded in mys-tery,” and (ii) “the claim that seems so true to me,” namely, that “even if oursouls are immortal, neither virtue nor vice can demand a reward after thepresent life, because both are their own reward on earth, and there is nocertain measure of pleasure and displeasure, happiness and unhappiness.”32

Mendelssohn agrees to the proposal and suggests that they use the names ofGreek philosophers in discussing these matters so that they “will be ableto advance their boldest doubts, which we often do not like to reveal evento ourselves … without any hesitation.”33 The result of these efforts wereentitled Zweifel über die Bestimmung des Menschen (Doubts about theVocation of Man), which appeared in June and August of 1764 (vol. 19).

Appealing to the spirit of Bayle, Abbt starts out by asking how theexpression “Bestimmung des Menschen” should actually be taken. Does itmean (i) how a human being should act, decide, or determine himself.Which “vocation” should we choose in order to become happy? Or does itmean (ii) what is the place of human beings in the universe?Where do we fitin?What is the final goal that is assigned to us?34 Abbt wants it to be taken inthe second sense, which makes the enterprise more interesting, but alsomore difficult. In fact, it makes it so difficult that it cannot be answered bySpalding’s introspective means at all.

Abbt clearly thinks that Spalding’s approach is exceedingly naïve anddogmatic. Introspection of the kind invoked by Spalding is not up to thetask of answering the kinds of questions Spalding wants to answer. Anycursory acquaintance with the history of human beings, their wars andbrutal crimes, shows that Spalding is selling a story (or a novel) that has verylittle to do with reality.35 On the other hand, it has much to do with the

32 Thomas Abbt, Vermischte Werke (Stettin: 1780 and 1782), vol. II, p. 163.33 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 tohave said: “Whoever speaks of science with me, is my enemy.”Mendelssohn condemns this attitudeas misology. Baumgarten should have divested himself of philosophy long before his death. See AbbtII, p. 168. This forms clearly also the background of their exchange.

34 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 10.35 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 toreceive ultimate orders. Some disappear without a trace. Some claim to have letters. But there is noway for any member of this expedition to know what is their final goal and what their duties are, justas human beings cannot know what their final goal and their duties ultimately are.


views of certain philosophers such as Locke and Plato.36 But who can provethat there is no solution to the moral problem on this earth?37 Who canreally 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. Andthe claim that all problems vanish as soon as I see that this life is only apreparation for the next life is clearly false.40 It does not explain the earlydeath and suffering of young children, for it is not clear how their life is apreparation in any sense, and it can thus not explain anything.41 We don’tknow anything about our vocation: “we must all sail off ignorant in thismatter.”42 None of this means that that human beings as a species are notessentially rational. They are. It’s just that their reason is limited in what itcan achieve.Abbt is not just attacking Spalding, he is trying to undermine all

philosophical speculation concerning the ultimate purpose of human beingsand attempts to provide a foundation to morality by transcendental ortheological means. It amounts to a critique of the kind of “higher speculation”and “striving after the supersensible and incorruptible.” In this sense, it is arudimentary “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 ofhistorical reason. It should remind us more of Hamann’sMetacritique than ofKant’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 thatit neither needs nor can rely on the promise of an eternal life and its rewardsand punishments, and that happiness or unhappiness cannot be meas-ured.43 Furthermore, “Lebensregeln” or maxims that lead to happiness canbe formulated by paying attention to the way the world is constituted.While Abbt’s critique remains short and sketchy, it is powerful and

36 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 25.37 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 29.38 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 31.39 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 34.40 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), pp. 34f.41 This shows that the problem is for Abbt closely connected with the problem of a theodicy.42 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 39.43 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 distortinghis project. Nor is Abbt’s critique really aimed at Wolff himself, as is sometimes claimed. He objectsto some of Leibniz’s speculative positions, not to Wolffian ethics.


convincing. Any hard or honest look at the historical situation, in which wefind ourselves, shows how fantastic Spalding’s speculations really are.

Mendelssohn’s answer comes in the form of an “Oracle Concerning theVocation of Man” that attempts to defend some aspects of Spalding’s viewwhile denying his fundamentally Christian claim that this life is just apreparation for a future life. “Both are means, both are final goals.”44 Ingood (or not so good) Leibnizian fashion, he finds: “Do not think that thislife is only preparation for the next and the other only final end. Both aremeans and end at the same time. The purposes of God and the changes ofany substance progress by identical steps.”45 In other words, one might saythat while our lives in space and time concern the phenomena, they arephenomena bene fundata in being the expression of substantial reality. Theyare only different aspects of the same world. Unsurprisingly, Mendelssohnappeals to “the spirit of the great Leibniz” to answer the skeptic.46 And inthe end he simply formulates or repeats Leibnizian propositions or princi-ples against Abbt’s doubts in a most dogmatic and unsatisfactory fashion,appealing to the doctrines of universal harmony and the best of all possibleworlds.47 Mendelssohn is not at his best here, but just demonstrates howlittle traditional appeals to pure reason can do when faced with the kind ofexistential doubts formulated by Abbt.

As we have seen, this was not the end of Mendelssohn’s discussion ofAbbt and Spalding. His Phaedon is in some sense an answer to both, if onlybecause he wants to show in it that the “separation of the soul from thebody” must be understood quite differently from the way Abbt andSpalding understood it, namely not as pointing to radically discontinuousstates of “earthly” and “heavenly” life, but as a continuous progressionof “before” and “after.” While the “human soul” will be eventually trans-formed into something that cannot be called “human” any longer, thissomething can still be characterized in terms that are also most characteristicof the human soul, namely “wisdom, love of virtue, and knowledge of thetruth.”48 Furthermore, the consciousness that characterizes this other stateis identical with that of the human soul.49 Mendelssohn accepts Spalding’s

44 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 48.45 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 48.46 On July 12, 1764. Kant’s Dreams of a Ghost-Seer almost certainly alludes to this article. Hence also his

apology to Mendelssohn.47 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, tobecome more perfect, and to be happy in this perfection.” Basta!

48 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), pp. 69, 75.49 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), p. 105.


view that the abilities of human beings are capable of infinite improvementor progress. In fact, the “striving for perfection” is for Mendelssohn “thehighest and ultimate goal” of all of creation, but characterizes especiallyspirits, 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 tobelieve.Kant was responding in theUniversal History to all the participants in this

discussion, that is, mainly to Spalding, Abbt, and Mendelssohn, and he wasarguing that human perfection should be understood as an end of nature,not as a supernatural end. He is also arguing that infinite perfectibility is nota characteristic of the human individual, but applies only to the humanspecies. In some ways, this is odd, for the notion of infinite perfectibility wasgoing to play a large role in Kant’s second Critique, and particularly in hisdiscussion of the so-called “postulates of pure practical reason.” In a waythat reminds very much of Mendelssohn’s justification of the belief inimmortality, Kant argued there that we need to assume the immortalityof the soul for moral reasons (and also the existence of God) for morality tobe possible at all.51 As he put it, the categorical imperative demands that wefurther the “highest good.” Therefore, “if… the highest good is impossiblein accordance with practical rules, then the moral law, which commands usto promote it, must be fantastic and directed to empty imaginary ends andmust therefore in itself be false” (5:11). But the highest good is possible onlyif we assume what we are required to assume, namely that there is “endlessprogress” toward moral perfection, which, according to Kant is “completeconformity of [our] dispositions with the moral law” (5:122).

v

There can be little doubt that Kant’s discussion of the postulates in theCritique of Practical Reason is essentially an attempt to solve from his own“critical” perspective the same problem that Abbt and Mendelssohn wereconfronting in 1764.52 It is my contention that it is also relevant to a further

50 Briefe die Neueste Litteratur betreffend 19 (1764), pp. 113f.51 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.52 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’sdiscussion 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


explication and a defense of the third thesis of the Universal History, inwhich there is a moral principle, which we called the “principle of humanself-sufficiency in happiness and perfection.”

Just like Wolff, Kant closely connected the problem of our vocation asmoral agents with the problem of the highest good. However, unlike Wolffand very much like Spalding and Abbt, he thought that the problem of thehighest good has to do with the compatibility of justice and happiness. Onthe other hand, unlike Mendelssohn, and just like Wolff and Abbt, hewas convinced that the moral law or our obligation to be moral is entirelyindependent of the problem of the existence of God. Indeed, the moral lawholds, even if there is no God. Morality is not dependent on the belief inGod, but the belief in God is just as dependent on morality as the belief inthe immortality of the soul. Nor does morality need the promise of rewardsand punishments. Indeed, rewards and punishments would make thedecision to follow the moral law questionable. Kant also agrees with Abbtthat we cannot measure happiness nor even really aim at happiness. Hisargument at the beginning of the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Moralsagainst the view that reason can guide us to happiness is ultimately anargument against Wolff, Spalding, Mendelssohn, and many others whohold the view that happiness can be achieved by following reason. AgainstAbbt he invokes, just like Spalding and Mendelssohn, the notion of an“infinite progress” and argues that this infinite progress is intimately con-nected with the belief in the immortality of the soul. In this regard, he seemsto take the side of Mendelssohn and Spalding against the skeptical objec-tions of Abbt, who thought that revelation was the only possible warrant forthese beliefs.

Yet, there are also important differences between Mendelssohn andSpalding on the one hand and Kant on the other. First of all, whereasthey 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 arguesthat “in crucial respects, the precedent for Kant’s argument is Augustine,” and “alien to… the entireEnlightenment tradition” (p. 594). Without going into great detail, I would have to say that the wisereader should treat these claims with caution. Happiness and the connection between happiness andmoral law do play a large role in Spalding’s and Mendelssohn’s views, as does the notion of infiniteperfectibility, which plays no role in Augustine. Furthermore, the notion that the highest goodconsists in the enjoyment or contemplation of God, which is central to Augustine’s view, is absent inKant’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 bypietists as false pride. Perfection is possible only through the infusion of God’s grace; and this isdirectly contradicted by thesis 3 (or the moral principle) of the “Universal History.” For a closerdiscussion of some of these issues see John Passmore, The Perfectibility of Man (New York: CharlesScribner’s Sons, 1970), especially pp. 68–93, 134–48.


law,” that is, with moral perfection (5:122). Secondly, where Mendelssohnand Spalding claim to know the immortality of the soul and the existence ofGod, Kant only claims that we are justified in believing in these “two articlesof faith.”53His point is that it is not irrational to believe these matters (evenin the face of so much empirical evidence that seems to speak against it). Infact, his argument is intended to establish that it is very rational to believe inthese 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 clearlytrying to negotiate a “middle way” between Mendelssohn and Abbt, accep-ting the latter’s “realism” about history, while trying to modify and defendthe former’s rationalist conclusions in a different way, namely as justifiedrational belief that we should accept as true.54

Another interesting question about the discussion of the postulates thatarises against the background of the dispute between Abbt and Mendelssohnis whether Kant is closer to Spalding, the Christian, and his belief in a separateeternal life in which this life is ultimately nothing but a preparation for afuture life, or to Mendelssohn, the Jew and Leibnizian, who denied that thislife is a just preparation for another future life and claimed that this lifeand the “next” are different aspects of one and the same world. The answeris not obvious. Thus, when he finds that the “endless progress [toward moralperfection] … is possible only on the presupposition of the existence andpersonality of the same rational being continuing endlessly” (5:122), he alsoseems to say that there is no significant break between this life and a futurestate. The idea of one and the same rational being continuing endlessly is atthe very least not suggestive of the notion of a radical caesura constituted bydeath. Kant does not speak, like Spalding and other Christians, of “this earthlylife” and another life “in which I have to expect nothing but good things inaccordance with the nature of things and the beneficent government of thehighest wisdom.” In fact, there is nothing to expect by way of goods. The onlything promised by Kant’s kind of immortality is the possibility of furtherprogress towards moral perfection. So, one might be tempted to say that Kant

53 This is related to his critique of metaphysics in the first Critique. Hamann wrote to Johann FriedrichReichardt not long after the publication of the firstCritique: “What are the metaphysical gentlemen atthe river Spree saying about Kant’s Prussian Critique of Pure Reason, which because of its ideal mightjust 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: InselVerlag, 1959), vol. 4, p. 430.

54 I have dealt with this issue in previous articles. See Manfred Kuehn, “Kant’s TranscendentalDeduction 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 byJ. Wright and M.A. Stewart (Edinburgh: University of Edinburgh Press, 1994), pp. 239–55.


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 manthat he is “passing from time into eternity” can only be understood asmeaning 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 anoumenon in a world of the understanding” (5:114) point in the samedirection. Moral perfection or “happiness in precise proportion to virtue”is not possible in this world, but only in the “intelligible world” (5:115). Butthe intelligible world is in no sense a future world. Kant does not speculate,as Mendelssohn does, about the precise correspondence of our actions inthis world with the world of substances, but he does argue that we shouldbelieve that what we see is not all there is. We may look at ourselves asimmortal just because we must believe that progress toward moral perfec-tion is possible.

On the other hand, there are suggestions that the doctrine of the highestgood deals primarily with this world. Kant’s argument concerns the “pro-duction of the highest good in the world” (5:122), and one might argue that“the rational being or personality” that must be presupposed as continuingendlessly and self-identical may not be the individual but the species. Kantmay have re-interpreted the notion of the immortality of the soul so that itis the soul or the intelligible character of humanity that is understood asimmortal, not the individual soul. Perhaps one may interpret Kant this way,but I would consider such an interpretation to be much too fanciful anddismissive of Kant’s metaphysical intentions. I would rather say that nothingKant says about the historical development of human beings contradicts whathe 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 claimis that what we may hope for is just what the “principle of human self-sufficiency in happiness and perfection” in the Universal History says humanbeings may expect, that is, “no other happiness or perfection than that whichhe himself, independently of instinct, has created by his own reason.” In theterminology of the Groundwork, the second principle implies that we shouldlook at ourselves and others as ends, not as mere means. “So act that you usehumanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, alwaysat the same time as an end, never merely as a mean” (4:429). The test Kantproposes for our actions is whether they “can be consistent worth the idea ofhumanity as an end in itself ” (4:429). He also calls this the “principle ofhumanity … as an end in itself ” (4:430).

In the chapter “On the Wise Adaptation of the Human Being’s CognitiveFaculties to His Practical Vocation” that concludes the discussion of the


postulates, Kant seems to address Abbt’s objections and Mendelssohn’sanswer directly, saying that if Abbt’s demand for certainty in mattersconcerning our vocation were fulfilled, human beings would become“mere mechanisms” (5:147). Moral worth and striving for perfection orthe worthiness to be happy presupposes that reason is limited and grantsus little insight into the true order of things. “The inscrutable wisdom bywhich we exist is not less worthy of veneration in what it has denied usthan in what it has granted us” (5:148).55 It is good and not to be lamentedthat “with all the effort of our reason we have only a very obscure andambiguous view into our future” (5:147). So I would agree with FredBeiser, who claims that Kant’s doctrine of the highest good is “irreduciblymetaphysical,” or perhaps better that it contains elements that “address abasic metaphysical problem: the connection between the noumenal realmof morality and the phenomenal realm of history.”56 Indeed, this is whyI think it is necessary that the highest good make an appearance in a paperon universal history. But it is at the same time also a reason for thinkingthat the highest good must also be understood as having a secular orimmanent 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.

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What is our future? Or perhaps better, what is the referent of “our” – is it thehuman individual or the human race? Mendelssohn thought the former,Kant opted for the latter. Hinske and Zoeller have argued that the contextfor this question is also to be found in the dispute between Abbt andMendelssohn about Spalding.57 While this view is not entirely wrong, itneglects another very important issue that was publicly discussed in Germanyduring the relevant time. Adam Ferguson had argued in his An Essay on theHistory of Civil Society of 1767 that “in the human kind, the species has aprogress as well as the individual; they build in every subsequent ageon foundations formerly laid, and, in the succession of years, tend to aperfection in the application of their faculties,” and he had asked for a truehistory of this progress, arguing against the kind of conjectural history so

55 Mendelssohn would have agreed to this, by the way. In fact, he explicitly declines to describe thewhere and how of the human soul after its separation from the body, as not being part of his“business” (286).

56 Beiser, “Moral Faith and the Highest Good,” p. 390.57 “Das stillschweigende Gespräch,” pp. 145f.; Zoeller, “Die Bestimmung der Bestimmung,” pp. 487f.


prevalent among his Scottish contemporaries.58 So the question of whetherone may speak of progress of the human race as opposed to progress of theindividual was obviously in the air. Kant endorsed Ferguson’s sentiment that“whatever may have been the original state of our species, it is of moreimportance to know the condition to which we ourselves should aspire,than that which our ancestors may be supposed to have left.”59 His essayon Universal History clearly responds to the demand implied by Ferguson’ssentiment.

One of the most decisive contributions to this discussion, at least for ourpurposes, was Gotthold Ephraim Lessing’s essay “On the Education of theHuman Race” of 1780, whose first fifty-three paragraphs had alreadyappeared anonymously in his commentary on the Fragments of HermannSamuel Reimarus in 1777.60 In it, Mendelssohn’s good friend argued, muchto Mendelssohn’s chagrin, that revelation is for the human race whateducation 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 racenothing that it could not have known by the force of reason alone. It justmakes things easier (§4). The Jewish Bible is nothing but a primer forchildren and childish people. Every primer or textbook aims at students of acertain age (§51). At a certain point, a new book is needed (§53).61 Accordingto Lessing, this new book is the New Testament, and the teacher is JesusChrist, 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 doctrineof reward and punishment in a future life are completely foreign” to the OldTestament (§22), this is a significant new revelation.62 While people con-sidered 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 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 theperfection of the human race in connection with different constitutions was Isaak Iselin’sPhilosophische Muthmaßungen über die Geschichte der Menschheit of 1764, which Mendelssohnreviewed in 1767.

59 Ferguson, Essay, p. 16. This is clearly an argument against Rousseau and those who followed him.60 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 thisedition, using references in parentheses to the paragraphs of the text.

61 This is where the first publication of the “Education of the Human Race” broke off.62 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 rationalinstruction.


need the Old Testament, the New Testament may no longer be neededeither (§§67, 74). Speculations about these matters have never done damageto civil society and they are the “most fitting” exercises for the humanunderstanding (§§78, 79). Given the selfishness of the human heart, the“understanding…must at all cost be exercised on spiritual objects if it is toattain complete enlightenment (Aufklärung) and generate that purity ofheart which enables it to love virtue for its own sake” (§80). There isprogress in the human race. Nature cannot “fail to achieve with the wholewhat art achieves with the individual.”To deny this would be blasphemy, orso Lessing suggests.63

Mendelssohn disagreed. Thus he wrote to August von Henning in June1782: “The goal of nature is not the perfection of the human race. No! It isthe perfection of the human being, the individual. Every single person is todevelop his talents and abilities … and just because of this nature mustalways repeat this circle.”64 In his Jerusalem of 1783 (published one yearbefore theUniversal History), he wrote that he could “not form any conceptof the education of the human race which my late friend Lessing tookover from I do not know which historian.”65 It is wrong to conceive ofthe “collective thing” called “human race” as if it were an individual. Thehuman 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 ofhis eternity here on earth,” in which we are meant to perfect ourselvesand obtain the degree of happiness meant for us.66 But with regard to thehuman race we can find “no continual progress, in which it would approachperfection.” This is a mere hypothesis, and Mendelssohn’s Newtonianadvice is “do not forge hypotheses; look only at what has happened in alltimes.”67 “The human being progresses, but the human race wavers con-stantly between firmly established boundaries up and down, but on the

63 §84. In the final fifteen paragraphs Lessing speculates whether the doctrine of re-incarnation iscompatible with the view he has just presented. Neither Mendelssohn nor Kant were inclined to sospeculate. 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 truefor the same reason that they are in a certain respect false.”

64 Mendelssohn, Gesammelte Schriften (Jubiläumsausgabe), vol. 13, p. 66.65 Mendelssohn, Jerusalem, in Mendelssohn, Schriften über Religion und Aufklärung, ed. Thom, p. 413.

I would say that this historian was most likely Ferguson.66 Mendelssohn, Schriften über Religion und Aufklärung, ed. Thom, p. 414.67 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.


whole constantly holds the same level of morality, the same measure ofreligion 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 ofMankind, 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 whetherthe human race qua human race can advance, Herder takes the side ofMendelssohn, finding in the second part of 1785 that “if someone said thatnot 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 speakingunintelligibly for me since race and species are only universal concepts.”70

“Humanity” as a universal is just a concept and has no real predicates. Tothe extent that we may say it exists, it exists only in the individual. Kanteffectively dismisses this charge as a non-starter in his review of this partof the Ideas by pointing out that “humanity” does not just mean “humannature” in the sense of “characteristics common to all members of thespecies,” but can also be taken as having the extension “the totality of theseries of generations of human beings.”71

In any case, Kant clearly took the side of Lessing in the dispute aboutthe education and progress of the human race, and his Universal Historycan (and must) also be viewed as his answer to Mendelssohn’s critique ofLessing. That Kant knewMendelssohn’s view is clear from the third part of“The Common Saying” to which we already called attention. After summa-rizing the very passage that I outlined in the previous section, Kant baldlystates: “I take a different view,” affirms his view that we have an “innateduty” to work toward the progress of the human race, and then essentiallyrepeats some of the arguments of the Universal History.72 Accordingly, heclaimed (again) in language similar to both the Universal History and thediscussion of the postulates that we “may consider it a not inadequateexpression of the moral hopes and wishes of men (conscious of their

68 Mendelssohn, Schriften über Religion und Aufklärung, ed. Thom, p. 415.69 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.

70 I quote in accordance with Kant’s review 8:65.71 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, butit appears that he is closer to Spalding than to Mendelssohn on this matter.

72 See the quote given in Part I of this essay.


weakness) to look to Providence for the circumstances required. They mayhope that since it is the purpose of mankind, of the entire species, to achieveits final destiny … Providence will bring about an outcome to which thepurposes 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 humanspecies, but in the nature of the moral disposition or, as he also puts it, in thenature 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 simplyborn with, something factual; it has always an ideal dimension. Indeed,nature, that is, the human individual as well as the human species, is tobe 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 thespecies. This is especially clear in the first principle, which amounts to theclaim that earlier generations labor only for the well-being of later gene-rations. We, as individuals, who die after a relatively short life, cannotaspire to become fully perfect; true perfection is an attribute that can applyonly to the human species, even though it is still very far removed fromperfection and it is difficult to perceive any progress towards the goal.There is, of course, for Kant, nothing wrong with nature treating indi-viduals as mere means, if only because nature, whatever it may be, is not amoral 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 §83of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, where after arguing that a life ofenjoyment has a value that amounts to less than zero, he claims that naturehas designed us “merely as a means to an undetermined final end.” In otherwords, nature itself is not moral. It cannot impart value to our lives. “Thusnothing is left but the value we give to our lives through that which we donot merely do but also do so purposively and independently of nature thateven 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 areason for its existence) only insofar as it contains us. We, that is, the onlyrational and moral beings in the world, give meaning to the world. It doesnot make any sense to ask “why… [we, as moral beings] exist. Therefore, italso does not make sense either to derive the meaning of our own life fromreason as a species characteristic. For reason as a species characteristic makes


sense only insofar as we autonomously make accept our “innate duty” tofurther the well-being of future generations.

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This justification of nature is for this very reason also a piece of metaphysicalreasoning. One might ask whether it is part of what P. F. Strawson calls“descriptive metaphysics,” or the analysis of “the massive core of humanthinking which has no history – or none recorded in histories of thought” orwhether it is some kind of revisionary metaphysics.73 The answer is notobvious. One might argue that universal history has some connections withwhat might be called the “indispensable core of the conceptual equipment”of sophisticated human beings throughout history. Kant clearly took him-self to spell this out, i.e., bring out what we “must” believe – even if he alsothought that he was the first one to get this actually right. And he claimed thatthe belief in immortality is “interwoven” with the arguments of reasoningpeople at all times (8:327). The same might be said for the idea of a moralhistory insofar as our life’s stories usually contain elements of such a historyor story.

While Kant’s arguments may look too metaphysical from our perspec-tive, they certainly would not have looked so to his contemporaries, andparticularly to Spalding and Mendelssohn. Assuming that they found hisarguments for the postulates of pure practical reason reasonable, they wouldalso have found his arguments for a “universal” or “moral history” reason-able or to the point. And there is every reason to suspect that they did, evenif they did not necessarily agree to Kant’s ultimate conclusions. Spalding, forone, not only recognized that the chapter on the postulates was a way todefend the views he expressed, for he wrote to Kant in 1788 that it did hissoul good that Kant had “illuminated in such a bright and honorable light…the ground of morality” (10:528). Since Abbt had died long before Kantaddressed 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 thelater writings, we do not know what he would have said to Kant’s moraldefense of the “universal history.” But given his own argument in thePhaedon that we should accept the doctrine of the immortality of the soulas 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.


condition of the possibility of a conception of infinite perfectibility. Perhapswe can go so far as to say that he should have accepted it because the notion ofinfinite perfectibility on this earth complements the notion of infinite perfect-ibility 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 whatAbbt some twenty years earlier had called a “pleasant novel” about humannature. Abbt might also be right that Tom Jones is ultimately “truer” tohuman nature. Kant himself might in the end be less bothered by this thanwe might think, since he has no problems with the “as if.”We should thinkand act “as if” something like a “universal history” is true, although wecannot 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 alreadybeen written during the 1770s, such as Ludwig Schlözer’s Vorstellung einerUniversal-Historie (1772). Kant may be said to have tried to elevate this typeof historical account from a “merely” empirical pre-occupation to a trans-cendental concern, but the details of the historical work would not havebeen helpful to him. The two enterprises share only the name.


chapter 4

Good out of evil: Kant and the ideaof unsocial sociability

J. B. Schneewind

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

In the first three Propositions of his Idea for a Universal History with aCosmopolitan Aim (Idea), Kant tells us that nature intends all natural humancapacities to be developed to their fullest in the species, though not in theindividual. Moreover humans are meant to provide, by their own efforts,whatever they enjoy of happiness and perfection (8:18–20).2 In the FourthProposition Kant lays out the means nature employs to bring about thisresult. It is what he calls the “unsocial sociability” (ungesellige Geselligkeit) ofmen.3 We have, he says, a “propensity to enter into society.” But we alsohave a “thoroughgoing resistance” to this tendency so that we are alwaysliable to isolate ourselves and tear society apart (8:20).

This seems an unfortunate combination of basic character traits, butKant does not find it so. On the contrary, he sees in it the goad needed tomake 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 itto. We know we would resist this desire coming from others, so we expectthe others with whomwe want to live to resist our desire. The resistance stirsus to try to overcome it. To get our way, we strive for superiority inpossessions or honor over those others who are our antagonists but whomwe cannot do without. The energies we devote to showing others howmuchstronger and smarter we are lead us to create ingenious inventions andbrilliant new ideas that gradually enrich and enlighten our strife-riddencommon lives.

1 Michel deMontaigne,Complete Essays, translated by DonaldM. Frame (Stanford: Stanford UniversityPress, 1965), I.39.

2 All references to Kant are identified by giving the volume and page number of the Academy Edition ofKant. For Idea for a Universal History, I use the translation by Allen W. Wood.

3 We may suppose that by “men” Kant intended to refer to all human beings, but he rarely takes noticeof women, and then not very favorably.

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Without this competition wewould enjoy an idyllic pastoral existence of easeand idleness. But envy and our insatiable desires for property, honor, and powerforce us to develop our natural abilities, which would otherwise remain hiddenanduseless.Nor is that the endof it. If at first only threats of punishment preventus from destroying one another, we eventually develop our inherent ability tothink in moral terms. And then we replace a social union kept in order by fearwith a unionwhich is freelywilled and thusmoral. All this, Kant says, points to adivine purpose in our being so unsociably sociable (8:21–2).

i

Sociability was a recurrent topic in early modern moral philosophy, and Kantjoined the discussion after much had been said about it. We need to knowsomething of how the conversation went before he entered it. Theories ofsociability and our unsociable resistance to it arose out of an attempt toaccount for the historical development of society.While ancient philosophershad some views on the growth of society, they did not explain it in terms oftension between sociable and unsociable character traits. The Epicureans heldthat the primary humanmotivation is the desire for our own pleasure. Interestin procuring it drives us to cooperate with others. In De Rerum NaturaLucretius presents a full and vivid picture of human development from ananimal level of existence to our present sophisticated societies. We started, hesays, with the simplest needs, for food, sex, shelter. We learned slowly how tomake tools, use animal skins, cultivate vegetables, build shelters, and makeboats. At first we did not “look to the common good… did not know how togovern … intercourse by custom and law” (5:958ff.). Eventually we learnedthese 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 andhonor, we engaged in political struggles, and at some point law and punish-ment were invented and a more orderly and peaceful society established(5:1105–60). In this story we learn to cooperate with one another for thesatisfaction of our personal desires. Lucretius allows that we come to love ourspouses 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 younganimals do so as well. Pleasure is just a by-product of success in thisendeavor. 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: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1987), vol. I, 63E, p. 396.

Good out of evil 95

for man to begin and end where the non-rational animals do.” As wemature, reason and the ability to use language lead us to concerns for othersand not just for ourselves. We come to understand ourselves as part of thedivinely ordered cosmos and this alters our initial motivations. Whenmature, 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 toform unions with other people who are at ever-increasing distance fromourselves. As we come to have more insight into our own nature, weunderstand that living in accordance with our nature requires living aspart of a society which includes all other humans as fellow members.6 Wewill marry and take part in civic affairs of our own society because it is rightand proper, and not, as the Epicureans think, for our own pleasure.7

Epicureanism and Stoicism were important influences on early modernmoral philosophy. What gave the contrast between the sociable and theunsociable aspects of our nature its modern importance was not, however,the thought of the ancients. It was the work of Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), aDutch lawyer who developed a new kind of theory of natural law and who isregarded as the founder of current understandings of international law.8

The “Preliminary Discourse” to his The Rights of War and Peace (1625, 2ndedn. 1631) contains his central assertions on the topic.

Grotius says he must begin a treatise on the law of nature by refutingthose 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 ofSociety, that is, a certain Inclination to live with those of his own kind …peaceably, and in a Community regulated according to the best of hisUnderstanding” (Prelim. §VI, pp. 79–81). In the first edition Grotius saysthat nature leads each animal “to seek its own interests” and that this is trueof 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 alwaysessentially self-interested. He is rather reworking the Stoic view, that asanimals we begin with a drive to sustain our own existence and then ashuman 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 thehuman intellect.”This care, he stresses, is not due only to the needs we have

5 Stobaeus, Long and Sedley, 67W, p. 433. 6 Cicero, Long and Sedley, 57F, p. 348.7 For useful surveys of Epicurean and Stoic ethics and social thought, see Keimpe Algra, JonathanBarnes, Jaap Mansfield, and Malcolm Schofield, eds., The Cambridge History of Hellenistic Philosophy(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), Chs. 20–22.

8 In what follows in this section I draw on my The Invention of Autonomy, chs. 4–7, 14–6.


for help from one another. It expresses the special nature of man. And it isthe source of law or right, properly so called.9 Sociability, he says in thesecond edition, is “this care of maintaining Society in a Manner conform-able 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 themajor sources of these differences during Grotius’ lifetime was religion.Europe in 1625 was in the midst of widespread, vicious, decades-long warover sectarian disagreements. Politics was inextricably combined with con-fessional disputes.10 If there was to be agreement on international law, therehad to be an understanding of it that did not rely on contested religiousclaims. Scriptural interpretations would not do, nor would argumentsending with claims about God’s will in particular matters. Grotius simpli-fied the issues with a brilliant stroke. We are sociable creatures and want tolive together, he said, but we have endless differences over property andpower, both personal and national. Let us take natural law to be a set ofempirically discoverable ways in which sociable but quarrelsome beingssuch 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 otherarea of life in which strife threatens the peace of society, either internationalor 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 asmoral. A few decades later Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) used a similarapproach to warrant a rather different set of rights, but made no appeal toany natural sociability. Indeed in a famous comment he rejects the long-held Aristotelian view that we are by nature “born fit for society.”11 Ourmost basic drive, he held, is our fear of death. Anybody, however weak, cankill anybody else, however strong (since everyone has to sleep at somepoint). Thus we all have reason to fear one another. So we seek power tosecure our own safety; and no amount of power is enough. Hence without astrong ruler we would have to be forever prepared to fight one another – a

9 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 thisedition). The term jus can be translated as “law” or as “right” and so poses difficulties for all Englishversions of Latin texts on the subject.

10 For an illuminating history of Reformation thought and politics, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, TheReformation (London: Penguin Books, 2003).

11 Thomas Hobbes, De Cive, edited by Bernard Gert (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1991), I.2.

Good out of evil 97

condition of war. A life of permanent war would be a life without cooper-ation. It would be completely horrid. But fear would make cooperationimpossible. We would never trust anyone to stick to a bargain after we hadkept our part of it first. We have enough wit, however, to see that a strongruler can make people carry out their side of a bargain. That would alleviateour fears enough to make social life and collaboration possible. We have nodesire of society for its own sake. We are simply driven into it by ourdesperate need for peace. The first law of nature, Hobbes says, is simple: toseek peace. The other laws of nature – there are many – are all derivable asmeans to obtaining and preserving peace.12

For Hobbes, then, sociability is an imperative, not a basic desire. It iseven more explicitly an imperative in the theory propounded by SamuelPufendorf (1632–94). HisDe Jure Naturae et Gentium (Of the Law of Natureand of Nations) (1672)13 was one of the most widely read of the works ofmodern natural law theorists. In it Pufendorf presents a whole system of lawfor both domestic and international affairs; and like Grotius andHobbes, hebases it on facts about human nature. For him the first central fact aboutman is that “he is an Animal extremely desirous of his own Preservation…unable to secure his own Safety and Maintenance without the Assistance ofhis Fellows, and capable of returning the Kindness by the furtherance ofmutual Good.” The second fact is that man is “often malicious, insolent,and easily provoked, and as powerful in effecting Mischief, as he is ready indelighting in it.” Because we are weak we need the help of others; becauseman is “an animal seething with evil desires … unruly and deviant pas-sions,”14 we put difficulties in the way of obtaining it. Pufendorf takes theseempirically discovered facts to be the rationale for the first law of nature:“Every man ought… to promote and preserve a peaceful Sociableness withothers.” By “sociableness,” Pufendorf explains, he does not mean a merewillingness to join with others. He means a more active disposition thatsupposes each united to others “by Benevolence, by Peace, by Charity, andso, as it were, by a silent and a secret Obligation” (LNN II.III. xv, 136–7).15

12 ThomasHobbes, Leviathan, edited by Richard Tuck (Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991),I.13–14.

13 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.

14 Samuel Pufendorf, The Whole Duty of Man, According to the Law of Nature, edited by Ian Hunter andDavid Saunders (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2003), Preface, p. 10.

15 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 ofthe ‘Four-Stages Theory,’ ” in Anthony Pagden, ed.,The Languages of Political Theory in Early-ModernEurope (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), pp. 253–76.


Why does the combination of our weakness and our unsociable charactertraits warrant us in affirming the requirement of sociability as the first law ofnature? Like Grotius and Hobbes, Pufendorf believes that religious dis-agreement 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 haslaid down laws for us. God has also enabled us to come to know them. Welearn them by treating the salient facts about ourselves as pointers to God’swill. And it is from ordinary experience, available to everyone, that we learnwhat these salient features are. We need neither theology nor biblicalexegesis to see that man is quarrelsome and self-interested but weak andin desperate need of help from others. If these – in addition to our ability tothink and use language – are our distinctive features, then an inference tothe 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 byless original thinkers whomade briefer and simpler versions of them available.In Scotland an influential professor, Gershom Carmichael, taught his workand published annotations on it. He urges that there is not just one funda-mental law of nature; there are three. One requires worship of God. Anotherrequires that each “should pursue his own interest without harming others.”And the third prescribes that “sociability should be cultivated.” The law isneeded first because men need one another’s help and are more able thanother animals to give it. But, second, “men can abuse the prerogatives of theirnature to hurt each other in a very effective manner, and are liable to attacks ofprovocationwhich incite them to do so.”The third law therefore requires that“social inclination and social life are to be encouraged and promoted by everyman … both in himself toward others, and in others toward himself.” Thesecond and third of these laws are based on the requirement that we mustshow love and veneration toward God. Obeying them is doing God’s will.16

A more widely read disseminator of Pufendorfian thought was the Swissprofessor of natural law, Jean-Jacques Burlamaqui (1694–1748). His Frenchtreatise on droit naturel (1747) was combined after his death with his workon droit politique (1752). Translated as Principles of Natural and Politic Lawthe two-volume work was popular in the British North American colonies.Burlamaqui added elements from many other views17 but his basic idea

16 Gershom Carmichael, Natural Rights on the Threshold of the Scottish Enlightenment, edited by JamesMoore and Michael Silverthorne (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 2002), pp. 49–51.

17 See Patrick Riley’s brief sketch of Burlamaqui as offering a “kind of compendium of Enlightenmentthought,” in Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler, eds., The Cambridge History of Eighteenth-CenturyPolitical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), pp. 60–1.

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about the foundation of natural law was Pufendorfian, though given aheavier dose of sentimentality than its source.

He notes the weakness of man as infant, his “rudeness, ignorance andconfused ideas” when grown up, his liability to “spleen and melancholy”when without company. Following Pufendorf he suggests a somewhatHobbesian condition of pre-civil society. But he notes ignorance and lackof education as the sources of its misery, mentioning “savagery” but withoutelaborating on it (I.4.4, 59). Thus we need society; and God has given usmany talents that make us all useful to others. Moreover “our hearts arenaturally bent to wish for the company of our equals.” And it is only insociety 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 thatwe should have these feelings. They are what is commonly referred to as oursociability. Because God wills that we should have them, sociability is “thetrue principle of the duties which the law of nature prescribes to us inrespect to other men” (II.4.XII–XV, 152–5). All our other duties to othersflow from the principle of sociability (II.4.XVI). So too do the principles ofinternational law (II.6.VII, 175).

Theorists of natural law were not the only writers to use the concept ofsociability. Their critics rejected the calculating rationality that was centralto natural law views. In its place some of them put appeal to sentiments ofattachment to others. The third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671–1713) wasperhaps the most widely read of those who made sentiment the key tomorality. He thinks sentiment important in our moral responses to oneanother and rejects the Hobbesian vision of the state of nature. Isolation isnot possible for humans, he holds, since we are born weak and dependentand remain so for years. More significantly we are born with naturalaffections drawing us to others, and parents are naturally kind and lovingto their children.18 We can find our own good only in virtue, in forwardingthe good of others. Man, indeed, is “not only by nature sociable within thelimits of his own species or kind.” He extends his love to the universe,which he perceives as divinely ordered, and he accepts whatever it maybring him.19

18 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.

19 Shaftesbury, p. 433.


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 theBees, “is not his desire of Company, Good Nature… and other Graces of afair Outside.” It is rather his “vilest and most hateful Qualities” that areneeded to fit him for society (I.4). Sociability is just a taste for humancompany, found most often in people with weak and uninventive minds, orbad consciences, who cannot stand to be alone. Sensible people wouldrather be solitary than put up with the noise and rudeness of gatheringsand crowds. And even if everyone had a taste for company, it would notprove “some Intrinsic Worth in Man not to be found in other animals”(I. 340–41). Elsewhere Mandeville says that such sociability as we havesimply springs from “self-liking,” a passion which may seem utterly“destructive to Sociableness and Society” (II. 175) but is not so. Our concernfor our own “Ease and Security” and our desire to improve our owncondition are enough to explain our fondness for society. Mandeville grantsthat man naturally has a “desire… after Company.” But he has this desire,Mandeville adds, “for his own sake,” and hopes to improve his condition byit (II. 180, 183). Such a desire, moreover, explains nothing important aboutour 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 bepliable by being taught that it is to their own advantage to obey. Of coursewe may say that God made us for society. We may also say he made grapesfor wine, but that does not prove that there is wine in each grape. It takeshuman invention to make wine out of grapes and society out of individuals.The fermentation that makes wine has its social counterpart in our com-merce with one another. “Men become sociable,” Mandeville says, “byliving together” (II. 185–9). There is no need to suppose that naturalsociability 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 forthe existence of disinterested and other-regarding desires. But in his widelyread 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 showthat society is natural to us because its suits our nature as individuals. Henotes that many writers have seen that we are naturally sociable and havetaken 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: LibertyClassics, 1988).

Good out of evil 101

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 contributeto sociable living. He rejects what he calls Pufendorf’s epicurean view, thatsocial life is natural because it is advantageous to each of us. This ignores thefact that men have many desires which directly “depend on the company ofothers” (203). And our sociability is not exhausted by these. What showsmost strongly that we were meant for society is that our nature is “in itselfimmediately and primarily kind, unselfish, and sociable without regard toits advantage or pleasure.”We have many passions that “look directly to thefelicity of others” (205). And, not least, what is honest and decent is naturalto 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 ofsociability – and a subtler and more destructive one at that.21 Rousseau isdeeply opposed to the natural law theories of Grotius and Hobbes, andattacks Pufendorf as well. They are wrong about the state of nature. If thereever were such a condition, Rousseau says, humans living in it would just beanimals. They would try to keep themselves alive, they would show somerudimentary pity or concern for other animals, especially humans, who weresick or wounded, and they would mate and help with newborns. Aside fromthat they would ignore one another. But it is from the combination of thesetwo principles – self-preservation and pity “without it being necessary tointroduce 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 thecompany of others, beyond the most minimal, is non-existent in the state ofnature. It develops only slowly, and then for the most part unfortunately.Arising from sexual desire, it turns into striving to show oneself superior torivals for love, by being a better dancer or singer or hunter. When societygets more complex, humans invent the idea of private property. Then thestriving for superiority turns into the kind of obsessive greed for power andpossessions that Hobbes mistakenly thought existed in the state of nature.Sociability develops with a vengeance: the struggle for social distinctionmakes us slaves to our need to impress others in whatever ways we can.

The only way out, Rousseau, holds, is by a total transformation ofsociety. 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-JacquesRousseau, The Discourses and Other Political Writings, edited and translated by Victor Gourevitch(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).


will for one’s own good in each of us. We can then come to live as equalsunder law, secure in our possessions and free because we are obeying onlylaws that we ourselves enact. Only then can we come to be sociable withoutendless competition and an oppressive class system.

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Plainly, then, there were many conceptions of sociability and of unsoci-ability circulating in early modern Europe. For Grotius sociability is a desireor inclination to live in a reasonable way with other reasonable people. It isopposed by our self-interest and our tendency toward controversy with oneanother. Hobbes sees no sociable inclination in our make-up. Our desperateneed to keep alive fosters our distrust of one another and hence leads ustoward a condition of unrelenting hostility. Only fear of death drives usinto society. Like Hobbes, Pufendorf finds no original sociability in us. Hefinds us, in fact, inclined to be overly concerned with our own good andquarrelsome toward others. Hence the natural law requirement that weincrease sociability prescribes that we correct our first impulses and cultivatea disposition we do not naturally have, a disposition to “accept social lifewith ease” and to develop our sense of duty to others.22Carmichael seems tothink, with Grotius, that we have a “social inclination,” which must bestrengthened to enable us to overcome our tendency to provoke oneanother. Burlamaqui speaks of our many social affections, particularlybenevolence; somehow these are also the principle from which naturallaws are derived. Shaftesbury also stresses our social sentiments, as doesHutcheson, who focuses on benevolence. Mandeville denies that any suchfeelings are part of our original nature. Some people take pleasure in crudeor boisterous crowds as an escape from their own emptiness; otherwise, heseems to think we may be brought up to pay at least lip service to generousaffections, if not really to feel them. For Rousseau the closest feature of ourconstitution to sociability is the notion of our uncultivated tendency to pityunfortunate living beings if we come across them. But it is not involved ingenerating 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 wereform ourselves under the general will, what holds us together is not asentiment of any sort, nor a principle of sociability urging us to cultivatebenevolence. It is a rational principle requiring us to treat ourselves andothers as all free and equal citizens capable of governing ourselves.

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


Where, if anywhere, amidst these differing views of sociability, can welocate Kant? Here there are three main questions. First, what is the role ofunsocial sociability in Kant’s thinking, and how does it compare with its rolein the views of those of his predecessors who used it? Second, what more canbe said about the psychology of unsocial sociability? And third, what place, ifany, 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 solutionto it. We want or need to live together but we are all hard to get alongwith. Natural laws show us how to cope with this problem so thatdespite the unsociable aspects of our make-up we can nonetheless besociable. The framework they provide is based in human nature. It istherefore the same for everyone. Its most basic directives are what wewould think of now as constituting morality. The laws of morality allowroom for differences among societies in the positive laws they enact. Butbecause the laws of nature are the same for all humans, they are thegrounding for universal laws governing all countries – the law of nationsor, 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 beused to solve. But he does not try to derive moral laws or laws of nationsfrom sociability, as Pufendorf and Burlamaqui do. On their view, Kantwould think, morality would involve merely hypothetical imperatives,since they take it to be warranted by the end or ends it serves. The mainrole of unsocial sociability, for Kant, is as a permanent spur to personal andsocial improvement. This claim about unsocial sociability recurs fre-quently. “The purpose of nature,” Kant tells his students, “would appearto be promoted by this, that providence has implanted in mankind animpulse to mutual emulation among themselves in order to compel themto be active in enlarging and cultivating their powers.” And emulation hasboth pro-social and anti-social aspects. It brings out “a side of humannature that has become malignant, notwithstanding that the purpose ofemulation really lay in inciting men to constant cultivation of greaterperfection 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 neverdisappear, 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 WalesPress, 2003), p. 121.


history is just a to-and-fro of progress and regress. But it is a moral dutyto 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 thesource of all evil,” in this light (T&P, 8.312).

(2) Kant thinks that our desires and motivations are largely opaque, toourselves as well as to others.24 Moreover he sees no possibility ofapplying mathematics to the inner appearances in the soul. And sincehe holds that scientific knowledge can be obtained only of phenomenasusceptible of mathematical treatment, he concludes that there can beno science of the soul – no scientific psychology.25 Perhaps because ofthis, his accounts of the psychological states that display our unsociableand our sociable impulses are scattered. Unlike Hume, he provides nothorough and complex theory of the passions.26

We can put flesh on the bones of unsocial sociability by looking atKant’s views of some of the virtues and vices.What in ourmake-up favorssociability?We have, for one thing, a tendency to seek friends. “It alreadylies in human nature,” Kant says in a lecture, “to love something outsideoneself, and especially another human being” (Lec Eth 27.682). Thus weare psychologically disposed to carry out some semblance of the duty tolove other humans. That duty does not require feeling, however. Itrequires a firm will to act for the good of others, or beneficence. Weare also required to show gratitude toward those who help us – but weseem to have less of an emotional tendency to be grateful than we have tobe benevolent. He also finds in us a disposition to sympathize withothers, to have “sensible feelings of pleasure or displeasure” due to thejoys or sufferings of others. He does not wish to rest much on thesefeelings alone, however. As with love of others, he moves promptly toconsider what the moral law can require of us in these matters. Actionfrom duty to help those in need is the chief thing. If someone actsbeneficently often enough, Kant thinks, “he eventually comes actuallyto love the person he has helped.” Love follows from acting sociably (MS6:402). But we are also to take steps to cultivate our compassionatefeelings, 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 See, e.g., MS 6:441, 447; Anthropology VII.121, 143. 25 G IV.471.26 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.


another – virtues in which we show our respect for one another. Mutuallove urges us to “come closer to one another,” while respect leads us tokeep ourselves “at a distance from one another.” In this way we canconstruct a moral world, just as physical principles of attraction andrepulsion make the natural world (MS 6:449). Respect requires thatwe not make excessive demands on others – that we show modestytoward them.Wemust not injure the just self-esteem of others. And wemust 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 ofothers. We are prone to envy – “a propensity to view the well-being ofothers 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 towardingratitude. Worse is to come. Malice, “the direct opposite of sympa-thy,” lurks in the soul. It is brought out by haughtiness and self-conceitin others but it can also take the form of desire for revenge (MS6:458–61). Another group of unsociable vices are those coming fromrefusal of the duty to respect others. The main ones that Kant considersare arrogance and its associate, contempt; the tendency to defameothers, which is an effort to lower the respect they deserve; and therelated urge to ridicule others (MS 6:465–68).27

In Idea for a Universal History Kant does not elaborate on how weknow about unsocial sociability. He says simply that we learn about itfrom experience. The facts we learn from even the small portion ofendless history with which we are acquainted point toward a pattern,which emerges in classical Greece and appears in later eras as well. Itshows how our unsociability drives us into what we can now see isprogress (8:27, 50; 8:29, 52). The other works in which Kant discussesunsocial sociability also treat our knowledge of it as empirical. There ishowever one passage in which Kant offers what sounds like a differentaccount 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 humanbeings and of their malevolent tendency to attack one another before externallegislation endowed with power appears, thus it is not some deed that makescoercion through public law necessary. On the contrary, however well dis-posed and law-abiding human beings might be, it still lies apriori in therational 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.


lawful condition is established individual human beings, peoples and states cannever be secure against violence from one another, since each has its own rightto what seems right and good to it and not to be dependent upon another’sopinion about this. (MS 6:312)

Prior to establishment of a public lawful condition humans are in a stateof nature (MS 6:312–13). In it there might be familial societies but thereis no public authority to safeguard possession (MS 6:242). Hence thereis mutual fear and suspicion, and there cannot be true property. At thispoint the postulate of public right holds for everyone: “when youcannot avoid living side by with all the others, you ought to leave thestate 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 sufficientmotive to do what is required: in this case, to begin to live sociably.Taken together, then, the two passages I have just quoted suggest thathowever it may be with the sorts of unsocial sociability that arise fromour 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 ownjudgment of what is “right and good.” In a state of nature we cannotexpect convergence in different agents’ judgments. But we can eachunderstand that we are morally required to enter into a condition thatwill remove the potential for conflict due to our conflicting judgmentsof what is right and good. Kant does not explicitly mention unsocialsociability in either of the discussions from which I have given the keypassages. But I think we may take them to imply that one of its forms isa priori necessary.

(3) The fullest account Kant gives of unsocial sociability in its relation tothe rest of his views occurs In Religion within the Boundaries of MereReason. There are, Kant says, three original predispositions toward thegood in our nature: toward animality, humanity, and personality. Ourpredisposition to animality explains “merely mechanical self-love,” ourautomatic tendencies toward self-preservation, sex and procreation, andsociability. Reason is not required for any of these drives. (Thus this islike the Stoic view of our initial tendency toward self-preservation.) Bycontrast, our predisposition to humanity depends on our possession ofreason. It expresses itself in a self-love in which we compare our condi-tion with that of others. This first gives rise to our inclination to “gainworth in the opinion of others.” We begin by thinking of all peopleas equal, but our anxiety about others lording it over us leads us to seek


superiority over them. And then jealousy and rivalry arise. Nature intendedthese to generate a competitiveness that would have the effect of increasingour degree of culture. But because we are always spurred on by our fear thatothers will gain ascendancy over us, we move toward vices like envy andingratitude. We have no original inclination to these. It is our fears for ourown 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 secondpredisposition uses reason to serve our non-moral desires, the thirdexpresses the sufficiency of practical reason to move us regardless of thesedesires (R 6:27–8). This leads to another point about the way Kant must seeour unsocial sociability. When fully developed it is a result of what Kantcalls our inborn “radical evil.”

Kant explains his view of evil in Part One of Religion. We are not evil justbecause we sometimes need non-moral motives to cooperate with the moralmotive 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 adoptmaxims that “subordinate the incentives of the moral law to others (notmoral ones).” In doing this we show a propensity to act as morality requiresonly if it suits our non-moral desires. The tendency to this improperordering of motives must be considered, Kant says, to be a result of a freechoice made by each and every person. In this sense it is “radical,” “woveninto human nature” and inseparable from us (6:30). Because it is due to afree choice, moreover, the propensity cannot be explained.

By the time the desires and passions that make us unsociable are fullydeveloped, we have also experienced the awakening of our moral sensibil-ities.28 Mature humans, Kant holds, cannot avoid being aware of the morallaw. At some level we are always aware of its bearing on our maxims.Consequently we cannot help noticing that the moral law prohibits actingfrom our harmful, unsociable desires. Throughout Idea for a UniversalHistory Kant makes it clear that he considers the acts that display ourunsocial sociability to be free. In such behavior we are freely choosing toact on a maxim or plan that we know is prohibited by the moral law. This isprecisely what constitutes being morally evil.

28 For the awakening of sophisticated desires and sensibilities, see Kant’s “Conjectures on the Beginningof 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).


What makes us unsocial in our sociability is thus not mere animalinstincts for which we are not responsible. It is rational choices, for whichwe are. Our difficult personality is therefore not only a natural ill of thehuman 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 societyand ultimately for a politically well-ordered world.29 At the end of the essayKant suggests that his essay enables us to see the wisdom of God in thehuman world as well as in the natural world. Idea for a Universal History isthus intended as a theodicy, an account of how God has arranged things sothat what strikes us as only an evil is nonetheless a major source of good.Kant is unique in seeing unsocial sociability in this light.

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Schopenhauer tells us of a group of porcupines who huddled together forwarmth 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 onrepeatedly, huddling and withdrawing. “Thus,” he comments in aMandevillian vein, “the need for society which springs from the emptinessand monotony of men’s lives drives them together; but their many unpleas-ant and repulsive qualities … once more drive them apart.” Politeness iswhat enables us to put up with one another. Those who have sufficientinternal warmth will “prefer to keep away from society.”30

Wemight treat this parable as a joke intended to lighten the mood at theburial of unsocial sociability. The problems left behind by the concept ofunsocial sociability continued to be discussed after Kant. But the termschanged. A history of the descendants of unsocial sociability would occupy alarge volume. I point to only three of the topics that would need to beconsidered.(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 wickedactions contribute to bringing it about. He is thus working with aconception that later came to be called “the unintended consequencesof intentional action.” It would take a history of the social sciences andof the philosophy of history to follow the uses of this fruitful notion.

29 Kant says that the history of nature begins with good, as the work of God, but “the history of freedombegins with evil, for it is the work of man.” “Conjectures,” in Reiss, p. 227, MA 8:115.

30 Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena, translated by E. F. J. Payne (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 1974), vol. II, pp. 651–2.


Adam Smith sees improvement in society’s material well-being aseventuating from private and purely personal endeavors to make aliving. In Hegel’s philosophy of history, progress toward freedom forall is the unintended outcome of innumerable struggles, most of themwith far more limited goals. For Smith a “hidden hand” brings about thefortunate result; for Hegel it is the self-development of Geist. Marxthinks that the dialectic of history does the job. Darwin eventually ledmost thinkers to try to do without such ambitious theoretical con-structs. Later sociologists have tried to explain the social mechanismsbringing about results they think cannot be explained solely in terms ofindividual psychology.

(2) For Kant, unsocial sociability serves first and foremost to explainhuman inventiveness and industry. By doing so it gives him groundsfor celebration of divine providence. Neither Nietzsche nor Freudfollow him into the realms of theodicy. But both see inner turmoiland the repressions imposed by society on individuals as sources ofcreativity as well as of suffering.

(3) Many of the users of conceptions of unsocial sociability portray theunsociable side of our nature in terms of vices. Thus for Pufendorf,Mandeville, and Kant (as for Montaigne) our unsociability is essentiallywicked. These thinkers are carrying forward the Christian view of ourfallen and sinful nature, and showing how, despite it, we could come tolive peaceably together. Other theorists of unsocial sociability do not seethe matter in this way. Hobbes, for example, explicitly refuses tocondemn the fears and desires that pose difficulties for social union.31

He sees the problem as one of channeling individual self-interest so thatit 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 practicalrationality. It is wholly rational, on this kind of view, to try to increase one’sown good as much as possible. It is also rational to hold that other agentshave 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 thatthese two rationalities can and do yield conflicting answers to questionsabout what one ought to do. And this seems to show that practical reason isdeeply at odds with itself.32

31 Hobbes, Leviathan, I.13, p. 89.32 For the classic statement of this view, see Henry Sidgwick, The Methods of Ethics (London, 1874), 7th

edn, 1907, Book IV, concluding chapter.


Kant avoids this incoherence because he holds that moral imperativesrationally override self-interested imperatives, but he fails to convinceeveryone. Egoists equally fail to convince everyone that self-interest isalways rationally entitled to defeat moral requirements. Other philosophersthink that while morality may rightly override personal projects in somecases, there are also cases where it does not. None of these thinkers considerthat 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 bea presence in recent moral philosophy because of the lively discussion of therelations between these two aspects or kinds of rationality. But in readingpast authors who discuss unsocial sociability we should not impute to all ofthem the specific form of the problem occupying attention now.We shouldnot ignore the strand of past thought in which the conflict was not justbetween two forms of rationality, but between good and evil.


chapter 5

Kant’s Fourth Proposition: the unsociablesociability 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 ofreason (KrV A 312–38/B 368–96). The proper function of such concepts, intheoretical matters, is to regulate our rational inquiry with the aim ofachieving 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 reasonsketches, in accordance with an idea, what it would be for our cognitions toattain to the greatest conceivable unity, systematicity and intelligibility, andthen makes empirical inquiries, ordering the results in such a way as to fill inthe sketch as far as the facts of nature and the limits of our cognitivecapacities make this possible. In this essay, the topic is human history,and the idea in question is therefore an idea of a maximal theoreticalintelligibility 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 inIdea for a Universal History as motivated by morality is totally to misunder-stand the essay from the ground up.

p r e l im in ar y : k ant ’ s f i r s t thr e e p ro po s i t i on s

Human history is the collective result of people’s free actions. For thepurpose of making history intelligible, Kant appeals to his solution to thetranscendental 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 naturalworld are free (Idea 8:17).1 He seeks to make these actions systematicallyintelligible 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 theproposition 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 imposedon them by human beings but by nature (Idea 8:18). He proceeds to do thisby considering the human species as a natural biological species. Thepurposiveness of a biological species is conceptualized by Kant as a set of“predispositions” (Anlagen), that is, a set of capacities that are global for theorganism (as distinct from the capacities residing in particular bodilyorgans). Kant assumes as a priori principles of the teleology of organizedbeings that such capacities normally develop themselves fully in the life ofthe 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, neverbrings about the direct opposite of their natural purpose (G 4:422). The firstof these three principles is applied to the human species in the FirstProposition 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 such-and-such means” – are beyond the scope of this essay. But this talk invitessuch serious misunderstandings that a few words of clarification are never-theless 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 beexplained by the causal mechanism of nature. He does not invoke it in orderto explain these facts by reference to the efficient causality of the intentionsof any superhuman agent (“God” or “nature”). Later in the Critique of thePower of Judgment, Kant specifically distinguishes natural purposivenessfrom intentional purposiveness, and says that he uses the expression “endof nature” precisely because “no one would attribute an intention to lifelessmatter” (KU 5:383). On this point Kant agrees with Aristotle, who distin-guishes final from efficient causality and regards it as absurd to think thatends are not present just because we observe no agent deliberating(Aristotle, Physics, 2.8 199a26–9). Although in the Fourth Propositionand elsewhere in the Idea for a Universal History Kant attempts to harmo-nize 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 boththat our actions are naturally determined and that they are free. It would be inconsistent for Kant tohold 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 consistentposition (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 fallingunder the mechanism of nature, even though we cannot in the least comprehend how this freedom ispossible or give any positive account whatever of how our freedom is compatible with naturaldeterminism.

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argument for the existence of God, and explicitly denies that this can bedone (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 thisprinciple to the human species in light of the assumption that it is a rationalspecies, that is, a species with a faculty of setting ends beyond those of naturalinstinct (Idea 8:18–19). It is the peculiarity of such a species, Kant argues, thatits predispositions are not limited to those that can be fully developed withinthe life of a single specimen, or a single generation. A rational species, on thecontrary, has the capacity to acquire, or even invent, new predispositions, andpasses them on from each generation to the next. Kant concludes from thisthat the predispositions of humanity “develop completely only in the species, butnot 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 theconcept of a rational species of organisms, that the end of nature in regard tothe history of the human species is the full, hence open-ended (and thusessentially endless) development of its predispositions in the succession ofgenerations constituting the life of the human species. The Third Propositiondraws the further conclusion that it is the purpose of nature in history thathuman beings should achieve no happiness or perfection merely frominstinct, 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).

f ourth propo s i t i on : s oc i a l ant agon i sm

Thus far Kant’s argument has proceeded entirely a priori, grounded on therational 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 FourthProposition, he begins to admit, at least tacitly, that the construction of his“idea” of the rational intelligibility of human history must depend also onempirical considerations, namely, on a very general observation about thefundamental natural mechanism through which the development of humanpredispositions takes place.

This observation is that nature’s means for the development of humanpredispositions is the social antagonism of human beings, or what Kant callstheir “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 toimply something much closer to a contradiction than a mere oxymoron – a form of sociability (socialconnectedness to others or dependence on them) that is unsocial – not connected or seeking


Kant is expressing here is by no means original with him, and plays a crucialrole in much of Enlightenment social theory, including that of Mandeville,Adam Smith and, above all, Rousseau. But Kant’s development of thisthought is fundamental not only to his theory of history, but also to hisanthropology and even to his entire moral philosophy. Its importance forthe entirety of Kant’s thinking about human nature would be virtuallyimpossible to overestimate. No interpretation of Kant’s views on any aspectof human psychology, sociology or history will get matters right as long as itignores the theme of unsociable sociability.Kant derives the oxymoronic term “unsociable sociability” from

Montaigne (one of his favorite authors): “There is nothing so unsociableand sociable as man: the one by his vice, the other by his nature.”3

Unsociable sociability is, to begin with, a modification of human sociabilitythat belongs, along with our instincts for survival and reproduction, to ouroriginal natural predisposition to animality. Our natural sociability is atendency to associate with others of our kind, and to be mutually dependenton them (R 6:26–7).4The unsociable form taken by the sociability of humanbeings is not a consequence of our animality, but rather of our predisposi-tion to humanity – that is, our rational predisposition, as free beings, to setends, devise means to them, and combine our ends into a whole under thename of happiness (R 6:27–8, VA 7:321–3). Unsociable sociability is nature’sway of developing our rational predispositions to both humanity andpersonality, which, Kant says, would have remained dormant without it(Idea 8:21–2). Our unsociability, in other words, is part of the naturaldiscontentedness that nature employs toward the end of overcoming thenatural contentment and indolence that without it would have kept us

independence. This is not altogether excluded from what Kant means, because he thinks oneabnormal 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 traumatizationthe timid misanthrope has experienced in dealing with others in some positive way. The principalmeaning of ungesellige in this expression is really “unsociable” – that is, it is a form of positiveengagement with others involving mutual antagonism or hostility.

3 “Il n’est rien si dissociable et sociable que l’homme: l’un par son vice, l’autre par sa nature.” MichelEyquem de Montaigne, “De la solitude,” Essais, edited by André Tournon (Paris: Imprimerienationale Éditions, 1998), vol. 1, p. 388. “There is nothing more unsociable than Man, and nothingmore 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.

4 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 naturallycontented 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, Kantshows some sympathy for the Rousseauian view on this (VA 7:322), though his considered view isalways that human beings are destined by their nature to be social beings (VA 7:330).


forever under the benevolent tutelage of our animal instincts, the dignity ofour rational nature forever unrealized:

Without these qualities of unsociability from which the resistance arises, which arenot at all amiable in themselves, qualities that each of us must necessarily encounterin his selfish pretensions, all talents would, in an arcadian pastoral life of perfectconcord, contentment and mutual love, remain eternally hidden in their germs;human beings, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would give their existencehardly any greater worth than that of their domesticated beasts; they would not fillthe void in creation in regard to their end as rational nature. (Idea 8:21; cf. MA8:120–1, RH 8:65, KU 5:429–31, VA 7:324, 328)

Nature’s means for the development of human predispositions is there-fore an unsociable (that is, antagonistic, competitive or conflict-ridden) formof sociability (that is, mutual dependency). More specifically: unsociablesociability develops along with our rational faculties, which carry with thema sense of selfhood, and an awareness of our self-worth (MA 8:112–13, VA7:127–31). Hence it is a tendency to seek a self-worth superior to that ofothers. Since the desire for superiority requires others (over whom to feelsuperior) and yet is present in them as much as in ourselves, human societyis a paradoxical condition in which people require one another and at thesame time find one another intolerable: “Now it is this resistance thatawakens all the powers of the human being, brings him to overcome hispropensity to indolence, and, driven by ambition, tyranny and greed, toobtain for himself a rank among his fellows, whom he cannot stand, but alsocannot leave alone” (Idea 8:21).

In the Fourth Proposition, Kant emphasizes the natural teleologyinvolved in our unsociable sociability – partly, no doubt, to forestallcomplaints against nature (or perhaps Providence) for inflicting compet-itiveness on us, and partly so that we will not hold nature to blame for faultsthat are our own. But this should not distract us from the fact that thehuman conduct displaying social antagonism is morally blameworthy, andsomething we have every reason to combat in ourselves. Indeed, it turnsout, according to the Idea for a Universal History, that even nature’s end ofdeveloping human faculties requires human beings to curb the effects ofunsociable sociability, by devising a law-governed civil society protectingproperty and other requisites for the use of our rightful freedom. Withoutthis, human competitiveness itself, by leaving people no hope of enjoyingthe fruits of their efforts, would undermine the very incentives to thedevelopment of our predispositions that unsociable sociability is supposedto promote. As we will see presently, unsociable sociability is not only adevice for developing our species capacities, but it is also the sole source of


moral evil in human life. It is crucial to Kant’s understanding of humannature 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 facultyfor comparing oneself with others with the aim of wanting to come off betterthan they do. This is also the original ground of our natural desire forhappiness – which for human beings is never merely the innocent desirefor natural satisfaction (to which Rousseau gave the name amour de soi, andKant Selbstliebe or Eigenliebe), but always also a desire involving whatRousseau called amour propre, and Kant “self-conceit” (Eigendünkel )(KpV 5:73).5 That is, the natural human desire for happiness, which arisesin us only as rational and at the same time social beings, is always originally adesire to compare our state with that of others with the aim that it should bebetter than theirs: “The predisposition to humanity can be brought underthe general title of self-love which is physical and yet involves comparison(for which reason is required); that is, only in comparison with others doesone judge oneself to be happy or unhappy” (R 6:27).

the p a s s i on s

Unsociable sociability is decisive for Kant’s understanding of every aspect ofour nature as rational beings. When Kant speaks of the way our empiricalinclinations pose a “counterweight” to the moral law of reason (G 4:405), itis not the natural (animal, sensuous) side of ourselves, as such, that puts upthis resistance. Our sensuous or animal nature is innocent, and in itself evensomething good; Kant chides the Stoics for mistaking their enemy whenthey located it merely in our natural desires (R 6:26–8, 57–9). (Despite theseemphatic assertions, the Stoic view he strongly rejects is very commonlyascribed to Kant himself, resulting in basic misunderstandings of his moralpsychology.) It is only with the development of reason in the socialcondition that there arises a systematic conflict between inclination (empir-ical desire) and the rational desires arising from moral reason. Unsociablesociability is fundamental, for example, to his understanding of our sus-ceptibility to passions – that is, natural inclinations that resist the control ofreason (VA 7:252, 265–75). Passions are inclinations presupposing a maxim,hence an exercise of freedom, and therefore we are responsible for them andfor their evil influence on our conduct; they are functions of our humanity,

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


not our animality, and we can ascribe them only to human beings, not tononhuman animals (VA 7:266). This is because, more generally, the resist-ance of our inclinations to reason is not, in Kant’s view, a resistance ofnature to freedom or of animality to rationality. Instead, it is a resistanceposed by our socially conditioned empirical desires to rational principles –of which, however, we have also become aware only through the devel-opmental influence of the social condition. Unsociable sociability thus liesat the ground of moral good as well as moral evil.

Kant distinguishes innate or natural passions – which include the passionfor freedom and sexual passion (VA 7:268–9, 136, 304, 309) – from social orcultural passions for honor, power and wealth, the three principal goods forwhich human beings in society compete. These constitute the three char-acteristic social vices Kant already mentioned as instances of our unsociablesociability: ambition, tyranny and greed (Idea 8:21, VA 7:270–4, cf. G4:393). (Sometimes he also includes the desire for vengeance among theprincipal 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 byhuman beings” (VA 7:270). Our innate passion for freedom, which Kantcalls “the most vehement of all inclinations,” consists in an insatiable desireto be rid of every limitation imposed on us by the existence of other humanbeings (which includes not only their power over us but also the obligationswe owe them). Thus “a human being whose happiness depends on anotherhuman being’s choice (no matter how benevolent the other may be) rightlyconsiders himself unhappy” (VA 7:268). Human sexual passion is a sociallyconditioned variation on the natural (and innocent) desire to reproduce. Itconsists in a desire to use the body of another for the gratification of one’simpulses (VA 7:136), which involves the desire to use the other as a meremeans 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 viewsabout sex as undeserved accusations aimed at our innocent animal nature;they are nothing of the kind, since their target is not our animality but theessentially unsociable form it assumes in our social condition.)

All passions, but especially the social or cultural passions, are inclinationsreason has a hard time controlling, and this difficulty is due to the fact thatthey subject us to delusion (Wahn) (VA 7:274–6). Specifically, socialpassions represent to us the acquisition of honor, power, and wealth asmeans of gaining superiority over others, through (respectively) their opin-ion, their fear, or their interest (VA 7:271). But our inordinate hope for thissuperiority drives us to excessive desire for the means to it, and others who


are more prudent than we are may therefore make use of these passions togain superiority over us (VA 7:274–5).

lov e and s ymp a thy

Of course not all desires for Kant are empirical (as for Aristotle, there are alsorational desires), and it is from these that we act when we constrain ourselvesthrough moral reason, prudential reason or even instrumental reason. Onlyempirical desires are “inclinations.” To equate “inclination” with “desire” isthe far from innocent error committed by all those who attack Kant formaintaining a dangerous “dualism” between reason (or morality) and“desire,” or who describe Kant as holding that we should act from reasonand without desire (a state of affairs Kant would regard as nonsensical andimpossible, since all volition and action necessarily involves desire). Further,not all inclinations for Kant are passions. Some of our inclinations, and thefeelings associated with them, such as love and sympathy, are often helpfulto morality, and this is why Kant thinks we have a duty to cultivate thesefeelings and inclinations (MS 6:456–8). But for Kant the unsociable soci-ability of our nature influences when, and toward whom, we have suchfeelings, and this is the reason he cannot treat these feelings as trustworthymotives for morality, or regard actions motivated by them as properly moralin 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 simple-minded psychological egoist who thinks all desires really aim at our owngood rather than at the good of anyone else. It is rather because of the waythat, under the influence of our unsociable sociability, these feelings,though genuinely other-oriented in their aims, nevertheless tend to selecttheir objects in ways that ultimately serve our jealous self-esteem. We tendto feel love for those whose qualities or actions benefit us or make us thinkbetter of ourselves (VE 27:407). Still more, we tend not to feel love orsympathy for anyone who threatens our self-esteem, as by making a claimon 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 ofanother, while it is humiliating to our competitive self-esteem to be obli-gated to anyone. Consequently, we tend to love anything to which we canfeel superior:

We need more to be honored than to be loved, but we also need something to lovewith which we don’t stand in rivalry. So we love birds, dogs, or a young, fickle andcheerful person. (Ref 1471, Ak 15:649)


We love everything over which we have a decisive superiority, so that we can toywith it, while it has a pleasant cheerfulness about it: little dogs, birds, grand-children. Men and women have reciprocal superiority over one another. (Ref1100, 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 hasamong our empirical feelings – as we have seen, we even have a moral dutyto cultivate them. The point is rather that in a being whose inclinations arefundamentally expressions of unsociable sociability, no natural or empiricalfeeling or inclination is to be trusted absolutely. Moral theories, like those ofHutcheson, that pick out sympathy as the distinctively moral motive, are inerror because they labor under an illusion about the role of sympathy in oursocial-psychological economy.

the mora l l aw

For Kant the moral law is given unconditionally by human reason, and it isthe fact that it is legislated solely by our own faculties, not imposed on usfrom outside, as from sense experiences or by some innate dispositionimplanted 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 theinfluence of unsociable sociability. The unsociable sociability of humannature is an empirical condition of the exercise of reason, however, andtherefore 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 afundamental condition for that emergence, and also because the content ofthe law turns out to be directly opposed to all the natural-social tendenciespresent in our unsociable sociability, it follows that the way the law isformulated can, and indeed must, take account of the fact that, as humanbeings, the rational beings who give themselves the law necessarily relate toit as unsociably sociable beings. And all of Kant’s own formulations of themoral law, as well as the content of the empirically conditioned duties thathuman 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 maynot adopt a maxim that we cannot will to be a universal law (morally validfor all rational beings) or (in the variant) to be a universal law of nature (thatwould be actually followed, with the regularity of natural law, by all rationalbeings) (G 4:421). The point of this injunction, Kant tells us immediately


after citing four examples of its application, is to counteract our propensityto will that the opposite of our maxim “should remain a law generally; yetwe 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 torational beings who had no propensity to seek superiority over others bymaking exceptions to them in their own interest; but Kant’s formulations ofFUL and FLN are clearly directed to the kind of rational beings we findourselves 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 rationalnature), 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 ana priori law that the absolute worth of rational nature would be somethingany rational being must respect. But it is only unsociably sociable rationalbeings who need to be commanded not to treat this absolute value as a meremeans, as by wanting to gain superiority over other rational beings (who aretheir 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 theFormula of Autonomy (FA) and its variant, the Formula of the Realm ofEnds (FRE), which tell us to obey the laws we give ourselves through reason,and characterizes those laws as the principles whose universal observancewould result in a “realm of ends” – that is, a systematic combination of theends of all rational beings (G 4:431–3). The idea of a realm of ends isessentially that of a system of collective human action that precludes anyultimate competition between ends, but involves the adoption by rationalbeings only of those ends that can be combined with those of all others in amutually reinforcing system of purposive activity. As before, the a priori lawsreferred to under FA would be the same for all rational beings, regardless oftheir empirical propensities. But enjoining us to seek a realm of ends has aspecial point in the case of beings whose unsociable sociability makes themnatural competitors and determines the content of their natural inclinationsas 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 generatingour moral duties to ourselves). This hasty and erroneous conclusion resultsfrom ignoring the way in which unsociable sociability conditions merely theway we (under)value others (in comparison with ourselves), but also the waywe wrongly value ourselves. We seek, namely, to ground our self-worth onfactors regarding which we may be compared to others and regarded as their


superior – fundamentally, factors involving the worth of our “state” or“condition” (Zustand) rather than that of our person. Just as we, as unsoci-ably sociable beings, value our happiness in part because it enables us tocompare ourselves favorably to those we regard as less happy, so we alsovalue the satisfaction of our inclinations over our obedience to the morallaw, because the former sort of valuation is often flattering to us, while thelatter seldom is so. Also, it is failed ambition (the frustrated desire to achievesuperiority over others even in our own opinion) that accounts for manyviolations of duty to oneself – such as the servile subjection to others, or thecowardly lack of self-respect Kant thinks is displayed in lying, or the miserlydisposition to value wealth apart from its usefulness to other ends, byirrationally identifying ourselves with the power we think it gives us overthem (MS 6:429–37, VA 7:272).

Kant also thinks that the wrong way of valuing oneself accounts forvarious self-deceptive tendencies to value ourselves wrongly even in ourmoral personality. These include the tendency to “ratiocinate against thestrict laws of duty,” interpreting them as demanding less of us than theyreally do, and resisting their commands as “snubbing and disrespecting, as itwere, the impetuous claims” of our inclinations (G 4:405, MS 6:440). Theyalso include the tendency to present ourselves to others, and even toourselves, 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 werealize how absolutely egalitarian Kantian ethics is. For when FH declaresthat every rational being has absolute worth as an end in itself, this meansthat all rational beings, whatever their perfections or advantages, moral ornon-moral, are absolutely equal in worth. This means that the stupidesthuman being, or even the most evil, is equal in worth to the wisest, or eventhe morally best. Kant denies that it is ever legitimate to compare yourselfmorally to anyone else – moral comparisons must rather have exclusiveconcern with “inner” worth – the moral worth of one’s person and one’sactions as compared with the moral law (VE 27:349). He countenancesmoral comparisons between people only when they are really understood asinner comparisons in this sense (KpV 5:88). To look down on others as yourmoral inferiors is contrary to your duty of humility, just as regardingyourself as their moral inferior is contrary to your duty of self-respect (MS6:435–6). The deep-seated human tendency to use even morality itself as abattleground or playing field on which to achieve superiority over others isone of the most deeply corrupt forms taken by our unsociable sociability: itperverts the very idea of morality itself into its very opposite.


In effect, then, the moral law of reason of which we become awarethrough the development of our faculties, has a content directly opposedto the natural purposiveness of the process through which we become awareof it. For it is only through our unsociable competitiveness that our facultiesare developed, but of these faculties, the chief one – our moral reason –makes us aware of an unconditional law commanding us to renounce allcompetitive relations with others of our kind and to pursue only those endsthat can be shared by all in common as part of an ideal universal communityof all rational beings. This gives an ironical poignancy to Kant’s ThirdProposition: that the human being can “participate in no other happiness orperfection than that which he has procured for himself free from instinct throughhis own reason” (Idea 8:19). For this means that we must strive for theproperly human good not merely independently of, but even in directconflict against, the very conditions in our own nature that made therational awareness of this good possible for us.

r ad i c a l e v i l

We have already seen that “unsociable sociability” reappears later in theCritique of Practical Reason as the “self-conceit,” a human tendency thatmust 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 ofMere Reason, as the radical propensity to evil in human nature, whichprovides the fundamental premise for Kant’s entire discussion of the religiouslife. The propensity to radical evil is there described as a fundamental maximof the will, to give the incentives of inclination priority over the incentive ofduty (R 6:36). But we have seen above that this policy amounts to regardingoneself as having a greater worth than others, which is equivalent to giving itpreference over the moral law that commands us to treat others as havingequal worth as ends in themselves and to adopt only those ends that can becombined with the ends of others into a realm of ends. This amounts at thesame time to giving one’s state or condition preference over one’s moralpersonality considered as the foundation of one’s self-worth. This is preciselythe 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 isbound up with our “humanity” (our predisposition to use reason to set endsand pursue happiness). It is that “comparative self-love” from which, Kantsays, “originates the inclination to gain worth in the opinion of others” thatis the foundation of


jealousy and rivalry, and with it all the vices of secret or open hostility to all whomwe consider alien to us… These vices, however, do not really issue from nature astheir root but are rather inclinations, in the face of the anxious endeavor of others toattain a hateful superiority over us, to procure it for ourselves over them … ; fornature itself wanted to use the idea of such a competitiveness … as an incentive toculture. (R 6:27)

Here we see the vices of comparative self-love depicted in the same terms asunsociable sociability, both as regards the reciprocal desire of human beingsto gain superiority over one another and as regards the natural end of thishuman competitiveness, which is to promote the “culture” (Kultur) ofhuman beings, that is, the open-ended development of all their speciespredispositions.

As has sometimes been noted, Kant never directly presents an argumentfor the thesis that human nature has a radical propensity to evil, but merelygestures at one by citing the “multitude of woeful examples that theexperience of human deeds parades before us” (R 6:32–3). He spares himselfthe argument, I think, partly because he thinks that a proper defense of thethesis would be a rather complicated empirical enterprise, which wouldbelong to anthropology rather than to religion, which is his topic here. Buthe thinks he can dispense with a rigorous argument here mainly because hisintended audience is the orthodox Christian believer. This is someone whoalready agrees with him about the universality of human sinfulness, andneeds only to be persuaded of Kant’s account of what radical evil consistsin – so this is the task to which Kant devotes most of his attention in theFirst Part of the Religion.6 That the human species as a whole is evil bynature, Kant says, can be demonstrated only later on, “if it transpires fromanthropological research that the grounds that justify us in attributing [thepropensity 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 prioriwhen he assertsthat “in order to call a human being evil, it must be possible to infer a priori from a number ofconsciously evil actions, or even from a single one, an underlying evil maxim, and from this, thepresence 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 insupport of it. But Kant quite clearly distinguishes the task of explaining how we may judge anindividual human being to be evil, of which this passage is a part, and which serves to support hisrigoristic conclusion that we should, if possible, seek to avoid an intermediate state between good andevil in judging human characters, from the task of ascribing a propensity to evil to human nature or theentire human species, which is discussed only later in section III of the First Part (R 6:32–5), and towhich such a priori arguments make no contribution. At the end of that discussion, Kant distinguishesthe task of showing that the human species is evil by nature, which is “to be established throughexperiential demonstration” from the task of determining “the real nature of that propensity as theground of resistance [to the moral law],” which is a matter of a priori cognition (R 6:35).


exempting anyone from it, and that the character therefore applies to thespecies” (R 6:25–6). I submit that the future “anthropological research” towhich Kant refers is best understood precisely as the empirical filling out ofthe “idea” undertaken in Idea for a Universal History, and in particular theaspect of the idea involving unsociable sociability.7

Finally, in Part Three of the Religion, it is even clearer that radical evilderives not from our nature as animal beings but instead from the develop-ment of reason occasioned by our association with others:

It is not the instigation of nature that arouses what should properly be called thepassions, 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 moderateand tranquil. He is poor (or considers himself so) only to the extent that he isanxious that other human beings will consider him poor and despise him for it.Envy, tyranny, avarice, and the malignant inclinations associated with these, assailhis nature, which on its own is undemanding, as soon as he is among humanbeings. Nor is it necessary to assume that these are sunk into evil, and are examplesto lead him astray: it suffices that they are there, that they surround him, and thatthey are human beings, and they will reciprocally corrupt one another’s moraldisposition and make one another evil. (R 6:93–4)

This social origin of radical evil then provides Kant with the basis for hisargument that the struggle against radical evil can never be successful ifundertaken only by each individual on his own, but requires membership ina voluntary “moral commonwealth” in which human beings may regardthemselves as members of a single family and unite their hearts in pursuit ofa consciously shared system of moral ends (R 6:94–100). In this way, theidentification of radical evil with our unsociable sociability plays a directrole 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 humanhistorical and social condition. But there sometimes arises a resistance toaccepting 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 theauthor of Kant’s Moral Religion (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970), pp. 225–6, whose youthfulnaïveté at the time the book was written provides an excuse to which Allison cannot appeal – thatestablishing the thesis empirically must consist in establishing merely an empirical generalizationbased 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 makeobservations, and draw conclusions from them, according to principles given by reason itself (KrVB xii–xiv). In this case, the inquiry into human nature follows a rational idea grounded on a naturalteleology that is laid out beforehand, and empirical observations play the role not of supportinginductive generalizations but rather of seeing how far the idea can be completed or realized in humancognition.


misunderstanding of Kantian ethics or Kantian moral psychology. It isthought, 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 todo (R 6:21–2, 35, 37, 39–41).8 But to say that the social condition corrupts theindividual human being (as Kant does, R 6:94) is not inconsistent withsaying 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 norsociety is ever represented by Kant as the efficient cause of our evil choices,removing them from our control and destroying our freedom. Kant issimply misunderstood if he is read as saying that society forces evil uponus – 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 One recent and thoughtful articulation of this objection is found in Jeanine Grenberg, Kant and theEthics of Humility (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 31–42. At times, Grenbergseems to be saying that it is an objection to my interpretation that if it were right, Kant would have noway of answering the objection that the social origin of radical evil “undermines individual respon-sibility” for radical evil (p. 35). But first, if Kant indeed had no good answer to this objection thatwould be nothing against my interpretation, which is based firmly on what Kant says explicitly in theReligion. 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.

9 Grenberg quotes the same passage that I do from R 6:93–4 and then comments: “The picture herealmost seems to be one in which we corrupt each other, such that I am responsible for your evil andvice versa.” The word “almost” seems an admission that this is not the picture – which, I submit, it isdefinitely 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 hasjust quoted) with the responsibility for “giving an account which showed our competitive-comparativetendencies to be more a result of individual choice than coercion through social pressures”; lackingsuch an account, she says, “We are left … with the worry that the social condition of evil couldundermine individual responsibility for it.” But again, it is no objection to what I say about Kant’sview if his view leaves us with this worry. And I also think the worry persists only in the minds of thosewho are confused about what Kant is saying, perhaps confusing a teleological account with a causalone, garbling what he says about the way in which the social condition provides the necessaryempirical context for human evil, or attributing to him the need to explain things that he deniescan be explained. Besides, it is an inveterate human defect to want to shift the responsibility for yourown misdeeds to someone or something else, so that any attempt to provide any context for evil or tomake it intelligible in any way will naturally serve as an invitation for people to blame their wrong-doing on something besides themselves. The cook, interrupted by a spouse’s casual remark, spills thecasserole all over the kitchen floor, and then exclaims: “Now look what you made me do!” As long ashuman nature disposes people to such attitudes of excuse, we should expect any discussion of thenature or context of evil to generate what Grenberg so delicately refers to as this “worry.” Butthe philosopher who illuminates the nature and context of evil should no more be expected to removethe worry than the spouse should be expected to mop up the mess.


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, andthat they are human.” They provide the necessary context for our evilchoices, 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 rationalaccount or any causal explanation for a fundamentally evil choice. It wouldmake no sense, on the one hand, to seek a good reason for a fundamentallyevil choice, since the existence of such a reason would do away with its evilcharacter. Nor, on the other, could there be any external, non-rationalcause, since that would contradict its being a free choice, and again precludeits being genuinely evil. The only sort of intelligibility Kant thinks we cangive to evil is one derived from the use of natural teleology as a regulativeprinciple used for the maximal systematic comprehension of our freeactions. Our radical propensity to evil, namely, under the description“unsociable sociability,” serves a natural end, that of developing our speciespredispositions in history. This involves neither an explanation nor anexcuse, and subtracts nothing from our total responsibility for our evilchoices.Another mistake would be to think that radical evil cannot be social or

historical in origin because the free will is an intelligible cause, beyondnature 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 ofintelligible causality as if it were meant as a dogmatic metaphysical theoryabout the nature of human freedom. But it is nothing of the kind; its onlyaim is to show that freedom does not contradict the causality of nature (KrVA 557–8/B 585–6). Kant’s resolution of the transcendental problem of free-dom involves no denial that human beings are historical beings, or that theirfree will belongs to the history which it is the aim of Idea for a UniversalHistory to render maximally comprehensible.

rou s s e au , k ant , and goe the

Kant’s thesis that human beings are by nature radically evil would seem tobe the direct opposite of Rousseau’s famous thesis that humanity is bynature good. But once we appreciate the fact that this Kantian doctrine isthe same as the Kantian doctrine of unsociable sociability, we can see thatRousseau’s thesis is not only compatible with Kant’s but that the two thesesare one and the same. For both maintain that the origin of evil lies in oursocial condition, which is also the sole condition in which our rational


faculties are capable of development. The only difference between the twodoctrines is that Rousseau has us entertain the notion of an original, pre-social, pre-rational condition (an ideal construction, which if it was everreal, is now forever lost to us) in which human beings lived in isolation fromone another and their faculties were totally undeveloped. Kant denies anyreality to this fantasy, except as a device for enabling us to look at ourselvesfrom a new and provocative angle (MA 8:116–17, VA 17:326–7).

Goethe was scandalized by Kant’s doctrine of radical evil, accusing Kantof polluting his rational philosophy, betraying the cause of critical reasonand reverting to Christian superstition.10 It is correct that in the thesis ofradical evil Kant was attempting to provide a defensible doctrine that wouldalso appeal to orthodox Christians. But by failing to appreciate the relationof this doctrine to Kant’s philosophy of history, Goethe fundamentallymissed the point of the doctrine. This is that human nature has the ironicalfate 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, sincethey have been necessary to its having the capacity both to know and to dowhat is good. In other words, in Kant’s Religion Goethe came upon thecentral idea that he himself was to place at the heart of his own greatestwork, the dramatic poem Faust. But when presented in philosophical form,he apparently found that idea utterly unrecognizable, and remained blind towhat was there right before his eyes. We should think twice before grantinggreater 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 Christianitytoo 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 mankindPaul Guyer

i . “ f rom such crooked t imb e r a s humank indi s made o f noth ing ent i r e l y s t r a i ght

can b e made ”

In the Sixth Proposition of the essay Idea for a Universal History with aCosmopolitan Aim (1784) Kant famously states that “From such crookedtimber as humankind is made of nothing entirely straight can be made.”That humankind is made from crooked timber is why the Sixth Propositionsays that the problem described in the Fifth Proposition “is both the hardestand the last that will be solved by the human species,” and one to thesolution of which we can never expect more than an “approximation” or“gradual approach” (Annäherung) (Idea 8:23). But it is not clear whyhumankind’s being made of crooked timber should cause the problemdescribed in the Fifth Proposition to be so difficult to solve and indeedimpossible to solve entirely. For what the Fifth Proposition says is that “Thegreatest problem for the human species, to the solution of which it iscompelled by nature, is the attainment of a civil society administeringjustice universally” (8:23). Yet the administration of justice in civil societyseems to be designed precisely to deal with the fact that humankind is madeof crooked timber, for such administration is designed to enforce theuniversal principle of right (to “so act externally that the free use of yourchoice can coexist with the freedom of everyone in accordance with auniversal law” [MS, Doctrine of Right, Introduction, section C, 6:231]) byexternal and coercive or aversive incentives (MS, Introduction, section IV,6:219) precisely because people cannot be counted on to comply with thisprinciple merely from respect for the moral law (although the universalprinciple 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, MarcusWillaschek, and myself in Mark Timmons, ed., Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays

129

designed to make the motivation for the preservation of equal spheres offreedom of action a matter of prudence, the desire to avoid coercion andpunishment, rather than sheer respect for the moral law, because even ifcrooked timber cannot always be counted on to be moved by morality, itcan 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 includingappropriate sanctions, are needed in order to realize justice in our externalconduct: that problem, he famously says, is so easy that even a “people ofdevils” can solve it, “if only they have understanding,” that is, as long as theyare capable of merely prudential practical reasoning. Here Kant says first, inapparent agreement with the Sixth Proposition of the history essay, that“the republican constitution is the only one that is completely compatiblewith the right of human beings, but it is also the most difficult one toestablish and even more to maintain, so much so that many assert it wouldhave to be a state of angels because human beings, with their self-seekinginclinations, 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 butimpotent 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 withinthe capacity of human beings), of arranging those forces of nature in opposition toone another in such a way that one checks the destructive effect of the other orcancels it, so that the result for reason turns out as if neither of them existed at alland the human being is constrained to become a good citizen even if not a morallygood human being. The problem of establishing a state, no matter how hard it maysound, is solvable even for a people of devils (if only they have understanding) andgoes like this: “Given a multitude of rational beings all of whom need universal lawsfor their preservation but each of whom is inclined covertly to exempt himself fromthem, so to order this multitude and establish their constitution that, although intheir private dispositions they strive against one another, these yet so check oneanother that in their public conduct the result is the same as if they had no such evildispositions.” Such a problem must be soluble. For the problem is not the moralimprovement 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 externalcompliance 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 andThine? The Kantian State,” in Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy,pp. 416–46.


of establishing a just state by instituting threats of sanctions that will make itin their self-interest to keep their self-interest in check. Angels are notneeded. Yet if devils can solve this problem, shouldn’t human beings,even though they are made out of crooked timber and are therefore notangels, 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 heonce thought could never be completely solved by human beings turns outto be solvable even by devils, or at least one of these passages cannot meanexactly what it first seems to mean. I will argue for the latter. In fact, I willargue that neither work means exactly what our quotations thus far seem tosuggest. The essay on history hints at a reason why establishing a just statemay be very hard, but it does not give any explicit reason why this problemcan never be more than approximately solved, while Perpetual Peace doesnot hold, contrary to initial appearance, that even a people of devils can infact establish and maintain a just state, even if they can determine what itslaws ought to be. For even though a just state does not require those who areruled by its laws to be motivated by respect for morality alone, and thus doesnot depend upon the moral improvement of its subjects, it does require thatthose who institute and maintain the administration of the laws (or moreprecisely, in the historical evolution of states, their reform) be moved bymorality rather than mere prudence. A just state can come into being onlythrough what Kant calls later in Perpetual Peace “moral politicians” (EF8:372). Thus, as Kant actually says in the Sixth Proposition of Idea for aUniversal History, for the solution of the problem of a just state “what isrequired is correct concepts of a possible constitution, great experiencepracticed through many affairs of the world, and above all a good willprepared for accepting” the results of this experience (Idea 8:23). In an essaypublished just months before Kant’s Groundwork for the Metaphysics ofMorals (1785), the use of the term “good will” can only signal that thesolution of the problem of establishing a just state does require purely moralmotivation, not just prudence, at some point. And the context of thisremark further makes it clear that such moral motivation is not requiredin 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 thesubjects of the state are made out of crooked timber, but it is if its rulers areincurably 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 thepurely natural mechanism of self-interest without anymoral motivation and

The crooked timber of mankind 131

resolve on the part of anyone. In the Fifth Proposition, he states that “thehuman being, who is otherwise so taken with unconstrained freedom, isforced to enter into the condition of coercion by need, and indeed by thegreatest of all, namely that which humans whose inclinations make itimpossible for them to live very long with one another in wild freedomimpose upon themselves.” He then makes a first use of the metaphor oftimber that makes it sound as if this transition from lawless to lawfulfreedom comes about entirely naturally and mechanically:

Only in such an enclosure as that of civil union, the same inclinations subsequentlyhave the best effect: just as trees in a forest, by seeking to deprive each other of airand sun, necessitate each other to reach beyond themselves and thereby growbeautifully straight, while those that in freedom and apart from one another sendtheir branches where they will grow stunted, bent, and crooked. All of the cultureand art that decorates mankind, the most beautiful social order, are fruits of theunsociability through which they are necessitated to discipline themselves and soby 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 beforced 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 moralmotivation, force timber that would become crooked in isolation to growstraight.

But Kant’s further use of the metaphor of crooked timber in the SixthProposition makes it clear that this is not actually his conclusion. For thereis a crucial difference between trees growing in a dense forest and humanbeings who must live with one another: the trees respond to their environ-ment entirely mechanically, each seeking the sun and thereby growingstraight and tall by completely unintentional and involuntary processes,while even in a densely packed society human beings must intentionally andvoluntarily regulate their conduct in accordance with laws that have beenpromulgated and will be enforced by some subset of them, indeed in anysociety but a very small one a small subset of the population. That is, humanbeings need law-givers and law-enforcers in order to live together even inmerely prudential conformity with law. This is what leads to the specificproblem that Kant then raises in the Sixth Proposition:

The human being is an animal who, if it lives among others of its species, needs amaster. For he certainly misuses his freedom with regard to others of his kind; andalthough as a rational creature he wishes for a law that sets limits to the freedom ofall, yet his self-seeking animal inclinations mislead him to make an exception ofhimself where he can. He thus needs a master, who can break his own will and


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

Without a power to enforce them, prudence alone would not compelindividual human beings living in society always to conform even to justlaws, for prudence could tempt them to violate those laws whenever theyreasonably thought they might get away with it. Unlike trees in a forest,therefore, human beings could grow crooked even when living in society ifthat society has no effective law-enforcement. But if those who are toenforce the law have no one to enforce them to be just, then they may belike the trees that grow crooked when freed from the constraint of neigh-boring trees. And unjust rulers will not enforce just laws justly. That is thereal 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 ownfear of a superior power, are possible, and in the Sixth Proposition of thehistory essay, as we have previously seen, he also seems to say that a properconcept of a just constitution and much experience on the part of the rulerscan solve the problem of a just society if accompanied with a good will, thatis, respect for the moral law. So why should a just society never be more thanan idea to which we can approximate but which we can never fully attain?The problem of crooked timber remains because although there is nothingthat can prevent the existence of a good will in any human being, includingeven those who possess political power, neither is there anything that canguarantee it. This is the message of Kant’s concept of radical evil, intro-duced in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), between thehistory essay and Perpetual Peace. To understand the problem of crookedtimber fully, then, we need to understand two aspects of Kant’s political andmoral philosophy: first, his view that even if within a functioning state thesubjects can reliably be motivated by their self-interested disinclination tocoercion, their rulers cannot be motivated solely by self-interest and coer-cion, but must be motivated by respect for morality; and second, hisdoctrine of radical evil, which claims that the possibility of freely choosingevil is always inseparable from the possibility of freely choosing morality forits own sake, thus that choosing good for its own sake is always possible forhuman beings but never guaranteed. Radical evil may not be an insuperable


problem for subjects, who can generally be motivated to obey the laws of thestate by mere prudence; but it may be a grave problem for rulers, for non-moral motivation may not suffice for their task of making just laws andenforcing them justly.2

i i . mor a l po l i t i c i an s

Unlike the trees in a forest, then, which automatically grow straight, thehuman subjects of a government will grow straight only if governed by justlaws, but those laws will not be just or justly enforced if their rulers growcrooked, and only respect for morality can prevent rulers from growingcrooked. This is what Kant is actually saying in the Sixth Proposition. Tounderstand why he says this, we must now turn to his mature politicalphilosophy as developed in three seminal works of the 1790s, namely, theessay “On the Common Saying: That may be Correct in Theory, but it is ofno Use in Practice” (1793), Toward Perpetual Peace (1795), and the “Doctrineof Right” of the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Three claims developed inthese works underlie the Sixth Proposition’s worry that even rulers may bemade of crooked timber.

First, Kant argues that the only just form of government is republicangovernment, in which sovereignty rests in a legislature representing theunited will of the people, but the laws enacted by the legislature, andinterpreted by a separate judiciary, must be executed by an executiveauthority that has sole control over the use of coercion. Thus, althoughthe sovereign legislature may attempt to withdraw its commission of powerto an executive whom it does not believe to be doing its bidding, it has norightful way to coerce the executive who controls all use of coercion; thus hecan ultimately be moved to reform or relinquish his use of power only by theinternal sanction of morality rather than the external sanction of coercion.Moreover, since the executive ought not to use his power of coercion againstthe legislature, and will not so use it if he is himself just, there is nothingexcept 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 aboutrulers, so for the purposes of of interpreting this text I am allowing what may be an exaggeratedcontrast 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 “CivicResponsibility 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.


legislature to make just laws. Thus moral motivation is ultimately necessaryfor 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 theirenactment and enforcement of particular laws, Kant does not believe thatgovernments historically arise from any actual agreement among subjects orbetween subjects and rulers to be governed justly; governments historicallyarise from the use of force by the strong rather than the just, and thereforemust generally improve their current constitution in order to become just.Kant may not believe that human beings generally are always conceived insin (more on this in section 3), but he does believe that governments arealways conceived in sin and that they must undergo a moral conversion tobecome 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 ofrepublican government, justice itself requires that there be a distinctionbetween legislative and executive power, it is not only difficult but inKant’s view unjust for the subjects of a government or even for its sovereignlegislature to remove power from an unjust executive or to remove such anexecutive from power altogether by force, that is, by rebellion; subjects andeven their legislators have only the right to petition their executive for reform.The executive, in response, has the moral and political obligation to listen topetitions for reform and initiate reform; but since he holds all the force in thegovernment, there is nothing that can compel him to fulfill that obligationbut his own respect for justice as a moral duty. Rulers, that is, the executivebranch, thus have a moral burden for the reform of governments toward theideal of justice unlike that of anyone else even in a government, because theyhave a unique combination of moral obligation and coercive power. That iswhy 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 theDoctrine of Right does he clearly describe the division of power within arepublican government. Even there he hardly gives us as much argument aswe might expect for the necessity of this division, instead relying uponlogical 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 mostextended treatment is in Wolfgang Kersting, Wohlgeordnete Freiheit: Immanuel Kants Rechts- undStaatsphilosophie, second edition (Frankfurt amMain: Suhrkamp, 1993), Teil C, III, “Souveränität undGewaltenteilung,” pp. 393–412. There is a briefer discussion in Leslie A. Mulholland, Kant’s System ofRights (New York: Columbia University Press, 1990), pp. 331–7.


Every state contains three authorities within it, that is, the general united willconsists of three persons … : the sovereign authority … in the person of thelegislator; 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 likethe three propositions in a practical syllogism: the major premise, which containsthe law of that will; the minor premise, which contains the command to behave inaccordance 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 asright 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 theminor premise of the syllogism and the executive to the conclusion, forwhile the judiciary determines that a general law applies to a specific case, itis the executive that has the sole right to enforce the verdict of a court, or toturn its verdict into a command. As Kant subsequently remarks, each of thepowers 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 thecontent of the laws it is to enforce and to the judiciary for the applicationof the laws to specific cases; but the other branches are both subordinate tothe executive insofar as they must depend upon it for the coercive enforce-ment of their laws and rulings. In any case, what Kant stresses and what iscrucial for our interpretation of the Sixth Proposition of Idea for a UniversalHistory is that while it is the legislature that represents the sovereignty of theunited will of the subjects of a government and expresses that sovereign willin its laws, it is the executive power that has the sole use of coercive force in arepublican government, and therefore it cannot itself rightfully be coerced.

Kant states quite briefly that “The legislative authority can belong only tothe united will of the people” (MS, Doctrine of Right, §46, 6:313). Hesubsequently mentions that the people are “represented by its deputies (inparliament)” (MS, Doctrine of Right, General Remark A, 6:319), so he isassuming that in a typical state the sovereignty of the populace is exer-cised through a legislature of representatives. Kant’s discussion of theexecutive authority is more extensive than his discussion of the legislativeauthority, and it is here that he makes his claim that the executive musthave 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 ofterms for the different divisions of government, some of which I have omitted frommy quotation. Butthe key point is that, whatever names he uses for these two branches of government, he will base hisensuing argument that governments must move toward greater justice only by reform and never byrebellion on the assumption that the legislature has the right to make laws but only the executive hasthe authority to enforce them by coercion.


princeps) of a state is that (moral or natural) person to whom the executiveauthority (potestas executoria) belongs.” He explicitly states that the execu-tive “is the agent of the state” who is to execute the laws made by thesovereign legislature, and that “a people’s sovereign (Beherrscher) (legislator)cannot also be its ruler” precisely because “the ruler is subject to the law andso 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) “poweraway from him, depose him, or reform his administration.” But he alsoasserts that the legislature cannot punish the executive, “for punishment isan act of the executive authority, which has supremely the capacity to coercein accordance with the law, and it would be self-contradictory for him to besubject to coercion” (MS, Doctrine of Right, §49, 6:316–17). Kant’s assump-tion is that there must ultimately be a sole agent for the exercise of coercivepower in a state, and that this agency is delegated to the executive, fromwhom it can peaceably be withdrawn by the sovereign, that is, the legis-lature, 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 parliamentor the people acting directly, would mean that there was not a uniqueagency 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 itpossible 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 soto limit him. For, someone who is to limit the authority in a state must have evenmore power than he whom he limits, or at least as much power as he has… In thatcase, 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 theDoctrine of Right, Kant embellishes this argument by adding that eventhe 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 under-mining 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 govern-ment without a unique agency for the exercise of force against its subjects isnot a functioning government at all, but anarchy (see T&P 8:302n); so even


though the executive in a government is not the source of its sovereigntyand is himself in principle subject to its laws, coercive force cannot beexercised against him without undermining the government altogether.And since Kant believes we have a moral duty to be under government inany situation in which we cannot avoid contact with other people altogether(MS, Doctrine of Right, §42, 6:307), this means that there is a moralobligation 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, cantherefore be carried out only through reform by the sovereign itself, but notby the people, and therefore not by revolution; and when such a changetakes place this reform can affect only the executive authority, not thelegislative” (6:321). But before we consider this claim and its implicationsfurther, let us consider the basis for the assumption that governments willfrequently need reform, namely Kant’s assumption that as a matter of factgovernments typically arise not by equally powerful parties voluntarilymaking a contract, but by the force of some party over others, and thereforethat governments can approach the ideal of a social contract only through aprocess of reform from a less than ideally just condition.

That governments historically arise through the unjust use of force, notthrough a social contract, and must therefore always be reformed towardgreater justice is emphasized in each of Kant’s works on political philoso-phy. The essay on theory and practice emphasizes that the social contract isnot an historical event, and indeed that as an historical event it would noteven be binding on subjects subsequent to the original contractors,6 but can

5 The literature on Kant’s denial of a right to rebellion is extensive. For my views on it, see “CivicResponsibility 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 theLaw 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 (Cambridgeand New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), pp. 297–328; and Williams, Kant’s Critique ofHobbes, chapter 7, pp. 160–90.

6 This was a point emphasized by Hume in his essay “Of the Original Contract,” which was certainlyknown to Kant. See Hume, Essays Moral, Political, and Literary, edited by Eugene F. Miller, secondedition (Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1987), pp. 465–87, at pp. 470–1. Adam Ferguson emphasized themore general point that “Mankind have always wandered or settled, agreed or quarrelled, in troops andcompanies,” and thus that governments can typically improve only in progressu rather than beingcreated 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, wastranslated into German the next year.


only be considered as an ideal to which governments ought to aspire (T&P8:297). Then in Perpetual Peace and theMetaphysics of Morals Kant adds thepoint that historical governments actually arise from the unjust exercise offorce, not from a social contract, and that they must therefore always bereformed 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 therightful condition to be counted upon is that by power, on the coercion ofwhich public right is afterward based; and … it can be anticipated that inactual 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 statesthe whole argument:

It is futile to inquire into the historical documentation of the mechanism ofgovernment, that is, one cannot reach back to the time at which civil societybegan (for savages draw up no record of their submission to law); besides, we canalready gather from the nature of uncivilized human beings that they were originallysubjected to it by force [emphasis added]) … But it must still be possible, if theexisting constitution cannot well be reconciled with the idea of the originalcontract, for the sovereign to change it, so as to allow to continue in existencethat form which is essentially required for a people to constitute a state… the spiritof the original contract (anima pacti originarii) involves an obligation on the part ofthe constituting authority to make the kind of government suited to the idea of theoriginal contract. Accordingly, even if this cannot be done all at once, it is under anobligation to change the kind of government gradually and continually so that itharmonizes in its effect with the only constitution that accords with right, that of apure republic, in such a way that the old (empirical) statutory forms, which servedmerely 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 thecondition for any exercise of coercion, as is required by a rightful constitution of astate 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 savagesto law by force, that is, presumably, through the subjection of some savagesby force to the still savage law of stronger savages; this historically “old”condition must be replaced by the ideal “original” condition of conformityto the idea of a social contract in which freedom is the “principle” orgoverning value; but this change can itself rightfully occur only throughthe government’s own reform from within. Because of their historicalorigins on the one hand and their ideal in pure reason on the other, statesinevitably need to change in order to become just, but because of thenecessity of reserving the use of force to a single branch of government inorder to have a coherent government at all, change cannot be compelledeither by another branch of government or by the people acting directly; it


can come about only through a process of reform that cannot be motivatedby external coercion, and therefore, unless it could be motivated by mereself-interest, which will never suffice as long as the executive has enoughpower to hold on to office by sheer force, it can be motivated only by respectfor morality itself.

Kant nowhere describes the process of reform he has in mind in greatdetail, but he does make a few important comments about it. In the essay ontheory and practice, he claims that “A nonrecalcitrant subject must be ableto 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 aduty to comply with the laws, and is prepared to do so even when they areless than perfectly just; and he must mean that such a subject assumes thathis ruler does not want to do him any wrong because he believes that theruler is himself motivated to do what is just; since it seems implausible tosuppose that anyone would think that rulers could always be motivated todo what is just out of their own self-interest, that is, that they always regardit as necessary to be just (in order to retain their grip on power), thenonrecalcitrant subject must be assuming that his ruler is fundamentallymotivated by a moral regard for justice. The nonrecalcitrant subject thenassumes that “the wrong done to him,” and presumably to other subjects aswell as or instead of himself, “occurs only from the supreme power’s error orignorance of certain consequences of his laws” or his execution of them.Such a citizen then “must have, with the approval of the ruler himself, theauthorization to make known publicly his opinions about what it is in theruler’s arrangements that seems to him to be a wrong against the common-wealth. For, to assume that the head of state could never err or be ignorantof something would be to represent him as favored with divine inspirationand raised above humanity” (T&P 8:304). It is noteworthy that Kant saysthat the citizen must have the authorization to make known his complaintsabout his government “with the approval of the ruler himself”: Kant’s use of“must” suggests that while the subject might be motivated either by self-interest or pure respect for justice in making his criticisms known, the ruleris under a moral obligation to allow such criticism, for mere self-interestwould not give him a duty to authorize the publication of complaints abouthis administration. And since the only source of this obligation on the partof the ruler could be his obligation to bring about a condition of greaterjustice than currently obtains – that is, to bring the actual state into closerapproximation of the ideal of the social contract – surely the ruler’sobligation does not end with allowing the citizen to make his criticisms,but must also include the obligation to respond to those criticisms by


reforming his regime – assuming of course, that the citizen’s criticisms werecorrect, for after all the citizen is no more “favored with divine inspirationand raised above humanity” than is the ruler.In theMetaphysics of Morals, Kant further elaborates that reform must be

carried out through parliament’s reform of its executive agent, but that evenparliament does not have the right to coerce the executive, although it doeshave 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 theexecutive authority and its representatives (the minister) by means of its represen-tatives (in parliament). Nevertheless, no active resistance (by the people combiningat will, to coerce the government to take a certain course of action, and so itselfperforming 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 thegovernment puts forth as necessary for administering the state. (MS, Doctrine ofRight, General Remark A, 6:322)

This passage makes two key points. First, whatever its authority as theultimate source of sovereignty, the people as a whole can rightfully exerciseit only in parliament, that is, through its legislature; otherwise it is just alawless rabble (see also T&P 8:302n). But second, since the power to enforcethe legislature’s laws coercively has to be delegated to a separate executiveauthority, and any attempt by the people even in parliament to coerce theexecutive would undermine the uniqueness of power in the executive,therefore even when it is the executive enforcement of the laws ratherthan the laws themselves that need to be reformed, parliament cannot useforce against the executive. It can resist the executive by refusing to providehim with what he deems necessary to administer the government, as theEnglish parliament did when it refused to vote Charles I ship-money. Thelegislature can even seek to remove the executive through non-coercivemeans, that is, to persuade him to give up his office, as was at least thefiction about the deposition of James II. But the legislature cannot rightfullycoerce the executive or punish him for what it deems to be his maladminis-tration of its laws, as the English parliament did when it executed CharlesI (see MS, Doctrine of Right, General Remark A, 6:321n). Thus, the legis-lature in essence has only the same right as the individual citizen, namely toexpress its criticism of the executive in the hope that the executive willrespond out of his moral obligation to do so.Because the state generally needs reform but those who actually admin-

ister its laws cannot themselves rightfully be coerced, and the mere self-interest of rulers can hardly be counted on to motivate them to reform ifthey are powerful enough to hold on to office in the face of public and even


parliamentary disapproval, the state can only be reformed by rulers who arethemselves motivated by morality, or what Kant calls “moral politicians.”This consequence of his political philosophy is made explicit in TowardPerpetual Peace. Here Kant writes that

A moral politician will make it his principle that, once defects that could not havebeen 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 beimproved as soon as possible and brought into conformity with natural right… Sincethe severing of a bond of civil or cosmopolitan union even before a better constitu-tion is ready to take its place is contrary to all political prudence, which in this agreeswithmorals, it would indeed be absurd to require that those defects be altered at onceand violently; but it can be required of the one in power that he at least take to heartthe maxim that such an alteration is necessary, in order to keep constantly approach-ing 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 asufficient reason for a ruler to reform his administration of a state, so the rulercannot be merely a “political moralist,” that is, someone whose politicsoutwardly comply with the demands of morality only when that is in hisself-interest, but must be a “moral politician,” someone whose politics aremotivated by the demands of morality even when those conflict with his self-interest. And while prudence might typically require the preservation of thestate, even at the cost of some reform, morality always requires the preserva-tion but also the reform of the state in the direction of greater “conformitywith natural right.” This is the duty of the ruler, but one that will be fulfilledonly by the moral politician, that is, the politician motivated by morality.

Kant did not mention the distinction between the legislative and exec-utive authorities within the state in his initial discussion of the problemwithrulers in the Sixth Proposition of the history essay, nor did he alwaysemphasize it in the essay on theory and practice or in Perpetual Peace. Butwith that distinction clearly made in the Doctrine of Right, we can refineKant’s conception of the obligations of the moral politician by consideringthe obligations of legislators and executives separately. In the real world, thelegislators will not be all of the citizens meeting in some gigantic townmeeting, but deputies or elected representatives. As mere mortals, they willof course have their own selfish interests, which they could allow to bereflected in their legislation. To the extent that their interest in holding onto their seats in the legislature or other self-interest cannot motivate them todo so, only their respect for justice can motivate them to legislate in theinterest of all their constituents rather than just in their own interest. So tothat extent legislators must be moral politicians. But since the executive


authority has a monopoly on coercive force, even when the legislature doesreform its laws it will not be able to coerce the executive into accepting andadministering those laws justly. Given its monopoly on force, only respectfor the sovereignty of the legislature and for the morality of justice in generalcan motivate the executive to accept the reforms of the legislature and toenforce them. So the executive must be comprised of moral politicians asmuch 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 toa just state. But those who legislate and administer those lawsmust themselvesbe moral politicians, moved not just by experience and prudence but by goodwill. Is there an insuperable obstacle to justice in the fact that they too arehuman beings and thus apparently also made of crooked timber? Kant’sdoctrine of radical evil, developed in Religion within the Limits of MereReason at the same time as he was laying down the foundations of his politicalphilosophy, might suggest that there is, and thus that the problem ofestablishing justice described in the Fifth Proposition of the history essayreally is a difficult problem that can only be solved in approximation, asclaimed in the Sixth Proposition. So we must now ask whether radical evilpresents an insuperable obstacle to reform by moral politicians.

i i i . r ad i c a l e v i l

It might seem strange to bring Kant’s concept of radical evil into a dis-cussion of his political philosophy. But the only place other than the SixthProposition of the history essay where Kant uses the metaphor of crookedtimber again is in Part Three of the Religion within the Boundaries of MereReason, where Kant asks how an “ethical community” can ever be estab-lished in the face of the radical evil that he has attributed to human beings inPart One of the work:

The sublime, never fully attainable idea of an ethical community is greatly scaleddown under human hands, namely to an institution which, at best capable ofrepresenting with purity only the form of such a community, with respect to themeans for establishing a whole of this kind is greatly restricted under the conditionsof sensuous human nature. But how could one expect to construct somethingcompletely straight from such crooked timber? (R 6:100)

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


that the Sixth Proposition has argued is necessary for the establishment of ajust state – the necessity of which has been explained by our excursus intoKant’s political philosophy – irremediably threatened by the fact of radicalevil? In particular, are moral politicians inevitably compromised by radicalevil, thus is radical evil the reason why nothing more than an approximationto 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 contrastbetween the concept of an “ethical community” and that of a “juridico-civilstate”: the latter is “the relation of human beings to each other inasmuch asthey stand jointly under public juridical laws (which are all coercive laws),”while an ethical community or “ethico-civil state” would be “one in whichthey are united under laws without being coerced, i.e., under laws of virtuealone” (R 6:95). This contrast might make it seem as if radical evil as thecrooked timber of humanity cannot threaten the juridico-civil state at all,since that state operates solely by coercive laws that do not need moralmotivation to be effective. However, as we have seen, the legislators in anyreal state cannot be coerced intomaking their positive legislation comply withthe ideal of justice represented by the idea of the social contract, and the rulerswhomust enforce its laws cannot themselves be coerced into compliance withthe laws they are to enforce. However their subjects might be motivated, therulers of a state can be moved to comply both with their own actual laws andwith the ideal of justice only by respect formorality. So if radical evil is a threatto the possibility of effective motivation by respect for morality alone, it is athreat 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 awork of Christian apologetics, that is, a reconstruction of the centraldoctrines of Christianity in Kantian terms, or as a work of the radicalEnlightenment, a deconstruction of Christianity.7 Like Friedrich WilhelmII and his minister Wöllner, I take the book to be an aggressive decon-struction of Christianity, particularly of its doctrine that we are all subject toan original sin fromwhich we can be redeemed only by the sacrifice of a Saviorand the grace of God.8 In particular, I do not see Kant’s concept of radical evilas an adoption of the idea of original sin, but rather as an alternative to it,

7 For a more apologetic interpretation of Kant’s philosophy of religion than will be presupposed here, aswell as an orientation to much of the literature on this field, see Frederick C. Beiser, “Moral Faith andthe 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.

8 For details on the political conditions and consequences of Kant’s publication of the Religion, see theGeneral Introduction to Kant, Religion and Rational Theology, pp. xv–xxii, and Kuehn, Kant: ABiography, pp. 361–82.


which holds that our responsibility for evil means that it is a product of ourfree choice, but that this very fact means that we are also always free to choosegood rather than evil, and need external assistance to choose good no morethan we do – or did – to choose evil. This basic fact, that even if we havechosen evil we are still always free to choose good, applies to politicians asmuch 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 hassucceeded in confusing many subsequent commentators. But I think thebasic point of the work is clear enough. Kant’s argument in Part One is builtupon two main premises. First, he holds that a person’s particular maximsor principles of action are always a reflection of his choice of one of twofundamental maxims, ormore precisely his choice to subordinate one of thesemaxims to the other: either a person chooses always to subordinate thedemands of self-love to the imperative of the moral law, or he chooses toplace self-love above the moral law, and to comply with the latter only whenso doing is compatible with the former (R 6:36). Kant characterizes the choicebetween good and evil in this way because he believes that no one is simplydeaf 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 fundamentalmaxim, or the evil decision to subordinate morality to self-love, is not theinevitable result of any natural, sensuous inclinations, because our sensuousinclinations are not a matter of choice at all, and are in that respect morallyindifferent (R 6:35), and because, given Kant’s generally teleological view ofnature, they are predispositions toward the good rather than toward evilunless we ourselves pervert them (R 6:28, 58). Rather, Kant holds, if eitherevil or good are to be “imputable,” that is, something for which we can beheld blameworthy or praiseworthy, our choice of fundamental maxim must,

itself always be a deed [Actus] of freedom (for otherwise the use or abuse of thehuman being’s power of choice with respect to the moral law could not be imputedto him, nor could the good or evil in him be called “moral”). Hence the ground ofevil 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 itselfproduces for the exercise of its freedom, i.e., in a maxim. One cannot, however, goon asking what, in a human being, might be the subjective ground of the adoptionof this maxim rather than its opposite. For if this ground were ultimately no longeritself a maxim, but merely a natural impulse, the entire exercise of freedom could betraced back to a determination through natural causes – and this would contradictfreedom. When we therefore say, “The human being is by nature good” or “He isby nature evil,” this only means that he holds within himself a first ground (to usinscrutable) for the adoption of good or evil (unlawful) maxims. (R 6:21)


Because we are responsible for our good or evil, Kant believes, our choice ofa good or evil maxim must always be a free choice, although since, as Kantalso believes, such free choice is possible only at the noumenal level of ourreal self rather than the phenomenal level of our empirical self wherenatural, causal laws appear to determine our actions fully from temporallyprior conditions, there can never be any explanation of why a personchooses one way or the other.

Evil is thus radical for Kant in the twofold sense that it is global, that is, itlies in the choice of a fundamental maxim governing all of one’s particularmaxims, and that it is original, that is, it lies in an exercise of free choice thatis not determined by nor can be explained by any empirical factors. But justbecause the choice of a fundamental maxim is an act of free choice, one isalways free to reverse one’s choice:

Now if a propensity to this [inversion] does lie in human nature, then there is in thehuman 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 equallybe 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 ofthis passage. Just because our choice of even a fundamental maxim of evil isfree, we are also always free to reject that fundamental maxim in favor of themaxim of morality; but likewise just because we are free to choose eithermaxim, the possibility of choosing the opposite of whatever we have chosencan also never be extirpated. That is, if we have chosen to make self-love ourfundamental maxim, we are still always free to make morality our funda-mental maxim, but even once we have chosen to make morality ourfundamental maxim, we are also still free to revert to evil once again.

Some of Kant’s original readers thought that he had reinstated thedoctrine of original sin, and several recent commentators have in essenceargued for this too, by arguing that Kant holds that we necessarily begin bychoosing evil rather than good, and thus always have to undergo a con-version from evil to good, which however it is not in our own power tocomplete, for we can never entirely reverse our original choice.9 There arecertainly passages in Kant’s text that can suggest such an interpretation, butI think a careful reading shows that this is not what Kant meant. Let usbegin 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, “Perversityof the Heart,” Philosophical Review 114 (2005), pp. 153–78.


evil. To be sure, several passages point in this direction. Kant, as we havealready seen, calls radical evil a “propensity” (Hang, or “tendency”). Heinitially characterizes a propensity in turn as “the subjective ground of thepossibility of an inclination” (R 6:29). By this account, the propensity to evilshould be no more than the possibility of choosing evil, which, however,insofar as it is grounded in genuine freedom, also implies the possibility ofchoosing good. But Kant then goes on to describe a propensity as “thepredisposition to desire an enjoyment which, when the subject has expe-rienced it, arouses inclination to it,” and gives as an example of what hemeans the supposed propensity of “savages” for intoxication, that is, thealleged fact that savages who have never been exposed to intoxicants develop“an almost inextinguishable desire for them” as soon as they are exposed tothem (R 6:29n). This makes it sound as if the propensity to evil is not afterall merely the mere possibility of choosing evil that is inseparable from thepossibility of choosing good, but rather a very high probability or indeed avirtual certainty of choosing evil on the first opportunity to do so. Thiscertainly 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 corruptpropensity rooted in the human being” (6:32), because of the self-evidenceof “unprovoked cruelty” among both the least and the most civilized humanbeings (6:33). Following this well-known passage, he continues:

But even though the existence of this propensity to evil in human nature can beestablished through experiential demonstrations of the actual resistance in time ofthe human power of choice against the [moral] law, these demonstrations still donot teach us the real character of that propensity … that character, rather, since ithas to do with a relation of the free power of choice (the concept of which is notempirical) 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 possibleaccording to the laws of freedom (of obligation and imputability). (6:35)

In a recent article, Seriol Morgan has taken this passage to mean thatKant believes that he must and can give a “formal” or a priori proof of theuniversality of an initial choice of evil, and then finds the basis for that proofin the premise that we all begin our practical reasoning by valuing freedom,which is indeed the basis of genuine morality, but with a misrepresentationof freedom as merely “negative freedom,” that is, freedom from all con-straint, rather than “positive” freedom, that is, freedom governed by a lawthat 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,” PhilosophicalReview 114 (2005), pp. 63–114, at 64–5 and 79–85.


First, I take it that the last quotation does not say that the universality ofevil needs a formal or a priori proof, but rather says that although theubiquitous existence of evil can be established empirically, the nature of evilcannot be understood empirically, as the inevitable product of naturalinclinations, but can only be understood a priori, as the free choice tosubordinate the maxim of morality to the maxim of self-love. Kant is nottrying to prove the ubiquity of evil, but rather to prove that the evil that isubiquitous is radical, that is, that the evil that we undeniably observe allaround us has to be understood in the terms of his own analysis, whichimputes it to genuinely free choice and therefore always leaves open thepossibility 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 apriori proof of why we should all make the essentially cognitive mistake ofinitially misunderstanding the real nature of freedom, any attempt toexplain 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’sinsistence that the free choice of either evil or good is inscrutable. We maybe allowed an a priori analysis of the nature of free choice, but that thischoice takes place beyond the level of phenomena means that there can beno a priori proof of any synthetic proposition that it must be made one wayor the other. In my view, then, Kant does not reinstate the doctrine oforiginal sin, but rather calls our doubtlessly common choice of evil radicalprecisely in order to imply that we have the equally radical freedom tochoose good.

i v . conc lu s i on

With this interpretation of Kant’s analysis of radical evil in hand, we canfinally return to the question of whether the crooked timber of humankindis an insuperable obstacle to the establishment of a just civil society, orjuridico-civil state. As we have seen, Kant’s position is that the laws of a stateare coercive laws with which the subjects of the state can be motivated tocomply out of self-interest rather than out of pure respect for morality, andthat 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 main-tenance of just laws for the subjects to obey out of mere self-interest requiresmoral politicians, because there is no one who can exercise coercion overthem, and thus self-love is not a sufficient motive for them to be just. So, asKant says in the Sixth Proposition of Idea for a Universal History, there canbe a just state only if the knowledge and experience of rulers is accompanied


with good will, or as he says in Perpetual Peace, there can be national andinternational justice only if there are moral politicians. Does the existence ofradical evil then mean that there can be no genuinely good will or moralpoliticians? We can now see that it clearly does not mean that: human evil isradical because it is a product of freedom, not mere nature, but if evil can befreely chosen, then good can also be freely chosen; thus there is noinsuperable obstacle to rulers acting with genuinely good will, or to politicalmoralists becoming moral politicians. However, that we always have thefreedom to convert from evil to good also means that we always have thefreedom to relapse from good to evil, and there is nothing but our ownvigilance and efforts to prevent that. And since rulers enjoy a guarantee oftheir conversion no more than the rest of us do, but have an even greaterburden 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 therest of us do. It is rulers above all else who must not confuse justice withself-interest, and who must constantly be vigilant that even if they haveseparated these two different motivations on one occasion they do notrelapse 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 soundas if the problem of establishing a just state is so difficult that a solution cannever be more than approximated: if we think of the Idea for a UniversalHistory as more of a mirror for princes and politicians than a treatise onhistoriographical methodology, that is, as Kant’s anti-Machiavelli,11 we canread it as meant to tell princes and politicians that they should nevercomplacently regard their efforts at establishing justice as complete andirreversible. Just as we all do better not to think that God guarantees thecompleteness and irreversibility of our moral conversion, princes and pol-iticians will do better if they always think of their efforts at justice as in needof improvement and maintenance by their own efforts – and were they tosee 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 hisemployee also have done so?


chapter 7

A habitat for humanityBarbara 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 insome ways most provocative, is its effacement of the individual moralagent. Persons are around in the story, most often as the vehicles for envyand greed, or the other aspects of human unsocial sociability. But thesincerely good person, careful and thoughtful in ends and deeds, might aswell not bother, at least not from the point of view of the questions that theIdea is about (and then also, perhaps, from the point of view of humanhistory). In the post-Hegelian world-view, that may seem right. But inKant’s philosophical voice, it is jarring.

A related source of puzzlement concerns the intended audience for theIdea. There is some reason to think it is Frederick the Great (the tone of theremarks in the Ninth Proposition suggests a worldly advisor whispering inthe 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 forthe liberation of human rational powers; in the Idea there is something like aplea for the end of war-making in order to liberate resources for theeducation and culture of citizens. But the Idea doesn’t read like an argumentfor princes, and it is not entirely clear that Kant regards peace, as he doesfreedom of thought and expression, as a possible aim of public policy (asopposed to something one hopes for and should not impede). Peace is onlypartly in the hands of any one ruler: it is likely to arise, if it does, as a sideeffect of other trans-national processes (e.g., the pursuit of ever largermarkets).

One audience of the Idea is future historians (especially social historians,a relatively new breed), who are urged to adopt a normative-politicalprogressive framework for historical interpretation. But that directive rathercontinues the puzzle than resolves it. For if it would be better to constructhistory around one theme rather than another, it must be better in somerespect and for some persons (it cannot be better in the sense of closer to the

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truth since the proposal assumes the underdetermination of interpretationby 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 theemployment of reason, in human affairs, and so in nature. The engine ofsuch progress does not depend on any rational or grand purposes of anyindividuals. Rather, over time, the natural mechanisms of passion and desirethat shape the relations of persons drive the realization (or partial realiza-tion) of a global rational end (regarded as an end of nature). The Idea is inthis 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 begood to produce good (and for the good in question, it is not even clear thatour goodness is of value). The Idea does not argue that unless written historyexhibits this pattern that morality or the full development of reason in thehuman species is impossible. So where is its contribution? Thinking back-ward 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 Someanxieties might be assuaged by actuarial-style arguments (seeing how accu-mulated effects of non-coordinated human actions amount to something).But if what one is worried about is whether what we do as moral agents canmake the world a better place, this is cold comfort.2 The discovery that theactions of rascals might serve the ends of reason better than virtue would notexactly 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 theGroundwork. The dissonance between Kant’s views about history in theIdea and what I understood to be his core moral views was at oncedisorienting and exhilarating. The Idea does not dispute the view thatmorality is the highest state and required end for human beings, yet inbypassing moral action as a necessary element in rational progress, at least inthe large, it raises a host of questions about the relation between moralityand its material causes. The actions of the good will have their determiningground entirely in rational principle, yet the actions of agents that contrib-ute to human (rational) progress do not. If human progress includes moralprogress, as surely it must, then the conditions for the moral law becoming

1 The arbitrariness or chance nature of events can seem as threatening as the problem of evil.2 While the justification of moral action is not in terms of its effects, the moral agent is hardly indifferentto her actions’ ends being realized in the world – the harm averted; the promise kept; the helpprovided – and in a way that is overall beneficial.

A habitat for humanity 151

the effective or determining ground of the will look to be empirical. But isthis really so strange? Without developed empirical abilities the actualrational determination of any willing would not be possible. So perhapsKant, in the Idea, is speculating about how causality of one kind (empirical)can give rise to causality of quite another kind (rational). The Critique ofJudgment argues for emergent purposiveness frommechanism in biology, sosuch an idea is not entirely alien to Kant. But, unlike Hegel, who regardsnature as a kind of rational organism, Kant does not pursue the biologicalanalogy for agency; instead, he embraces an “as if” historiography – apragmatism for the human sciences that fits neither his general idea ofwhat a science is nor his account of how we think about the rationalexplanation of individual human action.

The surprise in the Idea was not just the fact that Kant oriented historicalthought around a global moral purpose that challenged the austere versionsof the moral philosophy. Kant also appeared to be embracing a divisionbetween the philosophical task of justification (showing that the notions ofobligation, imputation, and moral judgment were well-founded) and whatone might call the ethical task of understanding “lived morality” – how wecome to the mix of ideals and ambitions, standards and institutions that atany time reflect solutions to the problems of living well and living together.Among the things that the Idea implies is that moral justificatory principlescannot stand alone – they do not describe and cannot generate an ethicallife. While the ground of the principles is a priori, the sources of ethicallife are not. In addition to reminding us of the fact that individual moral lifecould only be a blend of the empirically given and rational standards, theIdea points to the further fact of social and historical conditions necessaryfor ethical life. Although the unit of morality is the individual agent acting,the conditions of moral action are not exhausted by the character of thesingle 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 butalso a specific narrative form as essential to the human sciences. Any accountof how things happen employs an idea of connection. In the small, weconnect events in terms of efficient causality: when we want to know whatcaused the fire we seek the spark. In the realm of voluntary actions, we alsoseek out agents’ reasons (what drew the agent to embrace the connectionbetween action and effect). In the large, however, appeals to efficientcausality and individuals’ reasons may not be sufficient to make sense ofwhat happens as a result of what we do. The hypothesis of the Idea is thatthe human sciences should make use of another level of causal explanation


that treats a conjunction of atomic elements as together giving rise to awholly different kind of phenomenon as an effect than each elementproduces separately. This is what we see when continuous application ofsub-zero cold on water produces ice, or pressure on coal, a diamond. Theemergent global effect has a different significance in the causal chain thanthe effect of each atomic element of the causal sequence that produced it.Although the laws stay the same from beginning to end, the late emergenteffect can make it that, along this chain, the future does not resemble thepast. The Idea applies this pattern of reasoning to the sphere of humancausality and then adds a significant piece. There is a story to be told aboutwhat 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 causalevents that have effects independent of our purposes. I walk to work andmy shoes wear out a bit. Kant’s interest is in a second aspect of the indirectcausality 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 onemight call emergent effects (the consequences of increased carbon use).Knowledge of the way such effects come about gives us some predictivepower (I don’t know when I will need new shoes, only that if I keepwalking, I will; we don’t know exactly what will happen as global warmingproceeds, but we have reason to believe that if we each stay on our currentcourse, the global effect will be dire). The focus of the Idea is on a kindof collective emergent effect, one that has an “as if” design relation toexpanding the role of reason in human action. The historical emergence ofcivil society is an unintended effect of the self-interested actions of manypersons pursuing private ends.3 While self-interest may be served by life incivil society (it will in any case shape the interests profitably pursued), thesignificance of civil society in the historical scheme lies in a different spherethan 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 theemergence of civil society, and so justice, as an artificial virtue, by way of the self-seeking actions ofpersons of limited powers in conditions of moderate scarcity. Other accounts of the history are lessbenign: war and other predatory behaviors can provoke the same condition. For Kant’s purposes, thehow of it doesn’t really matter.


practical.4 The interest the narrative directive of the Idea points to is that ofreason in nature which “seeks” the condition in which its potential can bemost 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 evenparts of the body (it’s not good for your back, your eyes, to work at acomputer all day). In that mode we can talk about the interests of reason: noHegelian metaphysics, just a part or aspect of persons that can be well- or ill-served by different conditions. Reason need not be seeking an environmentfriendly to its interests for it to be a beneficiary of second causality. It neednot 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 orientus in the space of efficient second causes.

The Idea’s narrative directive goes beyond imposing intelligibility on asecond cause effect (i.e., treating it as if it were the result of a purpose, or as afirst cause effect). The narrative form introduces a controlling final end thatmakes one second cause effect (civil society) a sine qua non cause ofsubsequent events (those that contribute to the progress of reason inhuman history). It is a second cause effect that transforms the nature ofthe human subject, and therefore also the kind of effects human action canbring about. Until that watershed moment of civil society, the engine ofhuman progress works through second cause effects; reason (in persons) isnot 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 herunderstanding of the watershed moment plays a causal role in reachingthe next steps. With this, second cause effects give way to intentional actionaimed at fulfilling nature’s final end.

If this is the right general picture, it raises a variety of intriguing anddifficult questions, some of which I’ll begin to address in what follows. I amespecially 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). Inthe Idea, the final end of nature engages a proleptic effect, and a special formof self-referential rational action. For unlike other ends and emergentsecond cause effects which tell us about patterns and tendencies in thelight of which we make plans and form intentions, this end and this effect inhistory 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.


idea, for the tendency to be fully realized through our action. In this way wemove 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 naturecannot be expressed by some pattern achieved by blind forces or fromwithout (that would be “according to reason”), but only by way of bringingincreasing amounts of untamed nature (including human nature) under thecontrol and authority of actual agents’ rational purposes. Domesticatednature 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 expandour rational powers). Might we at some point have to act directly for thesake of a more rational or a more human condition? And if so, how? Woulda 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 thetable for rational ones?

2. Might we have moral reason to worry about being the beneficiaries ofpast amoral acts (and worse) – the deeds of unsocial sociability – thatbring about the civil condition?

3. How is the proleptic effect possible? That is, what is it about the Idea’sposited final end that calls for proleptic teleology: an account of eventstending toward an end the understanding of which contributes essen-tially to bringing it about?

1 . the wat e r sh ed

In approaching the first question, I propose to go back to the beginning ofthe 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 hemakes can be rendered clear enough, and we avoid the worry that prematuretranslation into a more modern idiom loses key elements of the originalideas.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


human life can’t contain all human possibilities; the very capacity thatmakes us possible subjects of history – our capacity to bring rational orderto our lives – whatever its metaphysical status, is not fully realized in us atany time in our (past) history.5The point is not that we are not fully rationalin our ends and choices – that’s an ordinary fact – but that the rationalcapacity itself undergoes growth in the species, increasing the range ofhuman powers. The second element is that many of the sources of reason’sdevelopment are themselves nonrational. The very idea of the Idea is a callfor an historical account of the dark and chaotic-seeming nature of humanaffairs that will give evidence of a “guiding thread” that reveals the develop-ment of reason. So although we rightly bemoan envy, greed, arrogance, andwar, there is a point of view from which they are welcome (like grit for apearl); the conflicts they inevitably cause provoke the development ofhuman rational powers (and in easy times, keep humans from falling asleepor from becoming domesticated beasts (8:21, 26)).

But on this view of human history, what has happened to our moralpowers? Why have they no role in the narrative? Surely each person isautonomous, self-legislating, an end-in-herself; each ultimately responsiblefor the correctness of her ends and actions. Although we are subject tovarious temptations and urges, insofar as we are rational, we have the powerto act well. Is this version of the sovereign individual under pressure nowthat we attend to history?

When I compare myself to my parents or grandparents or more distantancestors, I recognize that I live in different (and let’s assume better)conditions, that I have skills that they lacked (though there were thingsthey could do that I cannot). But I don’t imagine them not caring abouttheir children, or gratuitously malevolent to their neighbors, or that theywere somehow systematically lower down the ladder of rational abilities.True, they might have been a nasty bunch, but that wouldn’t distinguishthem from some who live among us now.

Could Kant want us to imagine further back to some fictional firstmoment when human beings lacked any language or culture, where thevery idea of moral action seems out of reach? That hardly seems a task forthe historians Kant addresses. We get a different idea when we look at theputative 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 aspecies whose species-nature undergoes deep change across generations. Perhaps a species whoseeffect on its environment allows it or even forces it to manifest different aspects of its species-natureover time?


needy individual – a being we know very well. It is our unsocial sociabilitywe are reminded of, our tendency to want close social relations and fences,to care about fairness and yet need to dominate. This is the sovereignindividual with a sense of morality, but one easily overwhelmed by needand envy and fear. It is likely not in the distant past but in the social andpolitical strife of pre-modern Europe that the Kantian historian is to find hissubject 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 specialinterest is the subject of the Fifth Proposition: the problem posed by “wildfreedom” (wilde or ungebundene Freiheit, 8:22). For human beings in some-thing like a state of nature, wild freedom impedes the development of thehuman predispositions with respect to the use of reason (8:18). But thebattlefield of wild freedom is not the war of all against all, it is the warwithin: the human being is a creature desirous of rest and peace andcomfort, yet driven by passions for possession and domination that forcehim to “throw himself into labor and toils” (8:21), with no finer or final aimfor his actions. The inevitable outcome is human unsocial sociability, thecondition in which persons cannot stand to be with one another (the othermakes us anxious and uncertain), and cannot live without each other(if only to have someone to dominate). The solution to this unhealthysituation is “civil society universally administering right” (8:22), the con-dition in which constrained freedom replaces wild freedom, but withouthuman 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 theIdea that leads human beings to civil society seems to be the problem ofdistance. There are no natural limits to our affecting one another; and nomoral limits either, at least not until conditions of right (Recht) obtain. Inwild 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 stronglyconstrained in our exercise of power over others. The sense in which civilsociety increases freedom is not quantitative (as in lots of unfettered con-sumer 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 actionmore deeply rational so long as obedienceto 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.


between the system of enforced order and the development of our rationalcapacity, we need to look more closely at the problem of distance.

In a condition of Unrecht, the boundary conditions on our activitieswould be our physical (and perhaps passionate) powers. Desiring yourpossessions or your labor, I exercise my natural powers and obtain them.My desire might arise from my amour propre, or from a defensive fear thatunless I increase my sphere of control I will come under the power ofanother, or even from my need to provide for the well-being of some groupfor whom I take responsibility. This could be a bad arrangement for all sortsof reasons, but why think the arrangement must impede the development ofreason (or its scope)? Suppose that as a result of my industry some whowould have no or poor access to the necessities of life now get them, thoughat the cost of being in my service. How is this bad for reason? It is not acondition of equality, but we have yet to see the connection betweenequality and the rational powers. For a beneficent exercise of power to bebad for reason, it must stand in the way of reason-directed, or autonomous,action. Perhaps in the condition of Unrecht autonomous action is notpossible; that would indeed impede the development of the human capacityto use reason.

Being subject to the power of another is not in itself a barrier to thedevelopment of all sorts of skills, mechanical as well as theoretical; in somecases it could be the condition of their development. It is more credibly abarrier to the development of the moral powers (in children it is not a barrierif we adjust the balance of authority and freedom to their growth). Insofar asthe moral powers are identified with the freedom of the will tout court, theexercise of power over persons canmake no difference. But the metaphysicalfact of the freedom of the will is not sufficient for our being or becomingfully moral persons, for our being moralized (moralisirt 8:27). That is, for ahuman being to be a moral person requires her having some specific non-metaphysical abilities, and, Kant’s argument might be, these abilities requirethe setting of civil society for their development.

There must therefore be something quite deep that we can’t be in naturethat Rechtmakes possible (some potential of reason in and for us that Rechtallows 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 thatwhat we cannot get in nature is a self. For Hegel and for Kant, Recht is thenecessary condition for the existence of public or bounded selves, thus forthe person as such, the potential moral subject. Recht makes personssubstantially real in the sense that they can make intelligible claims (ofright) against one another – they can see and resist one another as persons,


not merely as physical and manipulable things. (In the material realm,substantial reality is a function of relative impenetrability: bodies resisteach 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 toincursions by others.) Public standing in civil society thus creates a sphereof mutual recognition; regardless of the condition of individuals’ privatebeliefs and attitudes, their coerced lawful behavior recognizes and respectsthe standing of each and so of all as persons.7

The creation of standing is only part of the answer. Recognition must inturn be a necessary condition of the development of human predispositionsfor the use of reason. How would rightful control of the use of oneself andsome sphere of rightful possession promote that? Stable possession mightenhance opportunities for the development and acquisition of all sorts oftechnical skills (farming, building …), but skills can also flourish in theabsence of status (think of highly skilled Roman slaves), and skills are in anycase hard to see as developments of the predispositions for the use of reason,as opposed to tools to be employed, given such development. A moresuitable if more exotic idea is that when we build and trade and promise,we increase the extent to which nature becomes a human habitat – anenvironment suited to a human form of life.8 It is not just an increase indominion over things, which we do gain, but the increase in genuinelyhuman dominion over human interactions: less is left to mechanism orforce, more comes under civil law and lawful behavior. The creation of civilsociety would serve reason’s end of adding to the mechanical laws of naturean order of its own if civil society is a condition for the emergence of moralpersonality (moving from conditions of force to a “moral whole” [8:21]).The key is to show that something that happens to us collectively allows acapacity that is present in us only separately as individuals to develop into areal ability. Or that, in the reason-friendly conditions of civil society, thecapacity 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 anautarky: 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 arereasons to have coordination rules – but there is nothing fundamental thatthe individual needs from them as supplement to her agency in order to

7 Kant does not invent this argument; in a slightly different form he would have found it in Rousseau.8 There are environments in which human beings can survive – a slum, a favela – that we should not sayprovide a human habitat.


act well.9 The Idea, prefiguring the Rechstlehre argument, asserts that this isnot so.

According to the Idea, at least as I read it, moral autarky is not possible forhuman beings. The condition of their empirical presentation as personsamong persons is civil society. This is not to say that the authority of themoral law is social, that its status as a rational norm depends on positive lawto frame it. It is to say something about the conditions in which persons cancome to recognize themselves and others as subject to moral authority (theauthority of their own legislative reason). If civil society is a necessarycondition for our being persons in this sense, then it is not at all surprisingthat 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 ofpersons. 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 andsensibility of each (and so the best) person is partly constituted by back-ground social institutions, we are not just adding something to the tradi-tional Groundwork picture of the moral agent, we are changing it. Thisis both welcome in itself, and welcome because it encourages us to placethe Groundwork within Kant’s larger scheme of moral argument. TheGroundwork addresses philosophical questions that require it not to attendto the social and empirical conditions of human moral agency. It does notfollow that there are none.10 The task of the Groundwork is to explicate thepossibility conditions of moral action: what has to be true of us, and ofmorality, if an authoritative norm of volition is to be possible. What we getis an account of morality in terms of a principle that imposes a standard ofuniversal form on volitions, and an account of agency centered on the will aspractical reason, a capacity to be moved by (such a) self-legislated non-material principle.11 What we do not get is an account of the content-

9 In this picture, even the dependency of moral education is just a phase one passes through.10 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 noricher than they require. For example, the account of nonmoral action in the secondCritique is not anembrace of hedonism but an argument that, absent objective value, hedonism is what you’re left withas an account of volition and choice.

11 We also get demonstrations that this idea of moral requirement fits our ordinary notions of duty (Kantshows that actions we can be sure are contrary to duty are ones whose maxims or principles of volitioncannot be willed a universal law), and that under interpretation, the same idea is explanatory of theerrors of reasoning in wrongful action (free-riding, failure to acknowledge the inescapable conditionsof human agency, unwarranted judgments of exceptionalness and violation of the public or sharedreasoning conditions of justification, etc.).


sources of morality,12 or an account of the empirical conditions of moralagency.13 Nor should we expect to.Actual individual moral agency develops subject to all sorts of contin-

gency. Rational capacities are realized through response to developmentallysalient experiences that neither arrive by plan nor have uniform effectsacross individuals (they are not accidental either: think of the vagaries andthe givenness of parenting). The Idea adds to this the development of reasonin the species over extended (historical) time. Some of this is accumulatedskill and knowledge. We (collectively) learn how to build bridges, farmefficiently, engage in large-scale manufacture, cure diseases and remediateailments. (We also cause new problems – urban crowding, resource deple-tion, environmental disorder – that call for further invention.) Regarded inthe large, technological innovation is about manipulating the materialworld for the sake of satisfying human needs and desires. These develop-ments do not take us beyond desire, and do not use reason to extend ourpowers 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, notin 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 nonmoraland even morally deficient, though natural, behaviors. Elements (b) and(c) echo the developmental pattern of the individual. Absent a social contextand nonmoral desires that engage the child in demanding relations withadults, moral character does not form. Unlike physical growth, which moreor less happens, morality is a creature of culture. So too for the species: outof the social forms that arise for natural and nonmoral reasons (think here ofthe natural convention phase of Humean justice), a condition obtains thatprovokes the formation and use of normative rational concepts (of Recht) aswell as the supporting abilities to deliberate and act in accordance withthem. Two important things follow. First, that the concepts and abilitiesemerge socially makes them transmissible and intelligible, suitable for termsof public assessment and justification. Second, though the emergence of

12 We know that content will be related to form: that is, our duties will pick out action-kinds whosepresence in a maxim (especially, in a maxim of self-interest) defeats valid reasoning to action, but wedo not know either ex ante or from elsewhere in the Groundwork what those action-kinds are.

13 Knowing that a being under the moral law is a free being (has freedom of the will), and that the onlypossible moral law is a law of the free rational will, we cannot say what the conditions for us must be ifwe 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 arenormative issues of development and correction.


concepts and abilities must occur at a culturally specific place and time,because what emerges is a communicable rational norm of social order (thisis assumed14), it applies universally, that is, to the species. It is in this waylike any piece of genuine knowledge: its validity transcends its conditions ofdiscovery.

Rather than being a surprise, this is just the kind of view we should expectKant to have, given the conjunction of his rationalist and empirical scien-tific commitments. The task is to show that or how a sequence of naturalcauses can bring about something purposive or rational.15 In the actualworld, there are no other causes than natural ones; but in social life, as inbiology, the result of some natural processes is the creation of somethingwhose 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 necessaryfor the expression of human rational agency (and so is possible). It is the taskof 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 anddevelop it (otherwise it is just a chance happening). It is therefore not merelya curious anomaly that civil society arises from unsocial sociability; theefficient cause of civil society has to lie in some mechanism of natural action.

Kant argues against the contract tradition that no regime of right couldarise from any agreement. None of us can be in a relation of right unless allare, non-conditionally; but all voluntary agreement is essentially conditional(MS 6:252–7). By contrast, the mechanism of unsocial sociability reliablybrings people together seeking the relief of ordered relations, which rela-tions are then made stable by coercive policing and the institutions of law.Since the condition that arises through this mechanism is a priori rationaland 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, causalexplanation yields to post-facto rational justification.

2 . i nher i t i ng b ene f i t s

Might there be a problem – a moral problem – about inheriting theunintended benefits of unsocial sociability? It’s an open question whetherone should eschew a benefit when its cause or source is not a good one.

14 Showing that it is a rational norm is the task of the Rechtslehre.15 This is part of the reason why Kant cannot appeal to anything like a moral sense or moral intuition.


Sometimes one need not. One person’s exploitative money-making inven-tion is used by others to save lives; a robbery uncovers lost documents thatallow a claim in justice to be pursued; a flood alters property boundaries in away that forces the aggressing party to end a violent dispute. Sometimes thesource taints the benefit. We may not benefit from stolen goods or free-rideon another’s criminal activity. If the benefit-source involves an ongoingwrong – e.g., inheriting land initially acquired by forceful dispossession –the benefit may be innocently received, but it is not innocent.16 Unlike thelost documents, where the relation of the wrong to the benefit is indirectand accidental, here the benefit descends from the wrong. Even if the goodcannot reasonably be forgone, the descent may encumber it, and reparationbe owed. There are yet more extreme cases – using the research findings ofNazi medical experiments, for example – where some would say that takingthe 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 com-parative status. Such persons pursue ends that seem to them appropriate towhat they want; they revise them in the face of danger, other ends, anduncertainties. We may assume that much of the motivation is, and some ofthe actions are, disreputable. Civil society, the effect of this collection ofbehaviors, 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 inthe Rechstlehre. Might civil society nonetheless be a tainted good, a benefitwe should refuse (if we could)? Should we condemn the actions that made itpossible? Acts of dispossession or criminal experimenting are wrong; they donot have to be done; benefits that flow from them are tainted. But thesource acts of unsocial sociability are, in their context, inevitable, naturalexpressions of morally immaturity, more like the actions of children com-peting for sandbox toys than wrongful exercises of power. They are crit-icizable for what they are, but not to be condemned as expressive of amorally bad will. Prior to civil society, the actions cannot involve violationsof right; and we are imagining greed and status anxiety, not moral perversityor ruthlessness, as their motivation. The outcome – the creation of civilsociety – is thus an indirect effect, a response to a coordination problemcaused by natural actions, not a descendant of wrongdoing. Like storms andtantrums that we would rather not have to weather, their occurrencegenerates 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 morallyunencumbered.


regard the civil condition as a kind of manna, a habitat for humanity, leftbehind 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 imma-turity as a natural stage-characteristic in the development of somethingbetter. This development does not – because it could not – occur as a resultof individual virtue; it is an ability human beings in general gain access towhen they inhabit the social world of civil society. There is no position fromwhich we can regard the process except as history: civil society was not anend human beings with wild freedom were in a position to promote, or onewhose production could have been made easier by making people nicer, orless vulnerable.17 Although after the fact we can see how human deficienciescombined for human (moral) benefit, the progressive story does not changethe negative valence of envy or greed; it does tell us something about theconditions in which they are rightly judged to be full-blown vices.

3 . th e p ro l e p t i c e f f e c t

A progressive history implies a final end. Since history per se need not have afinal end, there remains the question why Kant thinks we should adopt theattitude that it has one. It’s in some sense a natural attitude for a beingwhose practical nature aims to make the world fit its will. But it is theproleptic possibility that makes the attitude rational: that, at least at sometimes or in some circumstances, seeing the social world as tending toward afinal end is essential to making it true that it reaches it. If nature had a finalend, it would not follow that the end will come about; a final end is not itsown efficient cause (it does not come about automatically; it can beimpeded). What does follow is that the end is possible: given the materialsand forces present in nature, the final end stands toward what there is as itscompletion. If we add to this the supposition that the final end of nature liesin the extension of the rational powers of human beings, then the only waythat nature could realize its final aim is through the actions of human agentsdirected 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 forrational 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 thatit cannot be imposed from without (MS 6:266), but that does not imply that others cannot benefitfrom those who came first (more reason for history). Perhaps it is like arithmetic: once any humanslearned to add and subtract, there was a sense in which all could.


Recht with equal liberty of action). So, we should ask, what are the relevantimpediments that civil society might remedy?18 Any ordered social worlddisciplines instinctual life, but civil society introduces the intermediary ofpublic law. While law too involves discipline, through coercive enforce-ment, its rationale is not in discipline per se (or in the service of somepower), 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 reasonsfor each citizen, and each citizen has the same reason to regard the law as anend – 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’sbeing held accountable to its terms. Where authority is merely force, if onecan elude its reach, the authority is frustrated. By contrast, where authorityis rightful law, eluding enforcement is not an escape from the law’s norma-tive reach any more than it would be were one’s motivation respect for lawas a rational end. In civil society we may therefore regard violations as a kindof weakness of will – a deviation from an attributed commitment – ratherthan, say, a consequence of indifference or insubordination. (This, in turn,affects our vision of correction and punishment: whether, for example, weregard the lawbreaker as one of us who has failed to appreciate the forceof his own valid reasons, or we treat the lawbreaker as an outlier, a threat, tobe controlled and rendered harmless. When we ask why “one of us” wouldact against law-based reasons, the identification can also make us moresensitive to (and open to being responsible for) some of the social sources ofdeviance – poverty, de facto exclusion – that we had or have the power tocorrect.)We should not be surprised that the condition for agents adopting

rational ends and the condition of recognition of self and other as a personare one and the same. The ability to move beyond natural motivation isnecessary to recognize another (or oneself) as a limiting condition on endsand actions; that same ability is required to see value in an end that connectsnot to one’s interests (however broadly understood) but to considerations ofrational requirement.19

18 In this light, one need not think that civil society or the nation state in which it is first found is apermanent necessity. It might be something that once its work is done can wither away.

19 There is a stronger claim possible here – that the possible recognition of self and other as persons onlycomes through the adoption of rational ends – and although I believe Kant makes such an argument inthe Groundwork’s formula of humanity, I don’t see it in the Idea.


The work of civil society takes place on two fronts. The first, as we havejust seen, is in the introduction of lawful relations between persons (withregard 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 curiouslytoo much civilization, a weakness of self in the exaggerations of “socialdecorum and propriety” (8:26). Inside civil society, morality can be acreature of culture; it is then a surrogate morality, where correctness inaction is motivated by honor and anxiety about social form. The final task isto liberate morality by educating citizens to autonomy.

We might summarize the progression this way. The first appearance ofthe person is formal, in the idea of a citizen with rights, each a limit to allothers’ actions and aims because they all act in the public space of coercivelyenforced law. Although the generating cause of the regime of law is the needto 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 ajustification for the coercive state in terms of the possibility conditions forequal liberty of action and rightful possession). Lawfulness can then be asource of morally motivated action, though, as a matter of fact, withoutfurther human development, coercion and custom remain the sources ofconformity.20 But note that the justification of law as an end of reasonrequires the extension of the public status of person to those whose naturewould have been insufficiently forceful to provoke the formation of civilsociety in the first place (women, children, and others deemed no danger,either physically or comparatively).21 This is one of the ways the idea ofuniversal 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 reasonremains external to the nature of the beings it regulates. Neither theconstraint of force nor that of taming custom renders what is forced ortrained fully rational. Further progress in nature, if the aim is rational order,can only be achieved through free human activity and choice, the worldlyexpression of reason. At some point, then, history has to produce the freehuman action needed to complete or take over nature’s work, work that up

20 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) incivil society. That is, if the final end of nature involved the elimination of the hindrance to freedom,then coercion would fall away.

21 Thus partially solving the problemHume saw with justice concerning those whose resentment we donot feel. Cf. Hume, An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, Section III, Part I.


until then is done on and through human nature. This is also the pointwhere 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, wethink of moral goodness as the personal business of getting one’s heart andhead straight about what we are to do and why. The passivity of makingseems in tension with an idea of moral action that is all the way throughactive. The problem disappears if we hold to the distinction between a finalend and the conditions necessary to realize it (8:19). Wise parenting is a kindofmaking directed at a child, not for the sake of protecting her innocence, orfor extending the parent’s dominion, but for the sake of the eventual adult’sautonomy. Concerning the final end of “our” moral maturity, we are ourown parents. At a certain point, the task of creating an environment inwhich persons are trained to autonomy becomes ours, collectively: one weare obligated to take on for the sake of subsequent generations. It offers adeeper 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 develop-ment of the moral personality. Kant draws on now familiar arguments.Although arising from the sphere of purposeful mechanism,22 art andculture civilize the passions, widen persons’ experience of what it is to behuman, and give them access to pleasures that are universally communi-cable (KU 5:216–19), thereby strengthening the sense of unity and equalitybetween persons. Alongside this, political conditions of justice, formal andmaterial, support an environment in which the moral personality canemerge and find social support. Self-esteem detaches from comparativeand envy-driven pursuits and connects to the idea of participating in ashared civil life.23

What I want to emphasize instead is a more speculative claim. Among thethings that come from our active engagement with the direction of history isthe supplanting of nature’s cold indifference to our welfare by a concern forhuman happiness and well-being.24 Aside from our natural interest inhappiness, 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 Perhaps this is the reason Kant does not sort religion with art and culture.23 The echoes here of Part III of John Rawls’ Theory of Justice are intended.24 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 rationalform of nature, it cannot be turned into a wasteland or a pale of destruction and suffering for otherliving things.


attend to its interests” (KpV 5:61). One might object that reason’s chiefconcern is that we be worthy of happiness and that our desire for happinessbe satisfied only in ways that enhance the powers of our autonomousagency. The speculative claim, however, is that in the setting of civil societywe can take steps to satisfy both of these requirements in the course ofpromoting human well-being.

The idea of worthiness to be happy can be a source of moral andphilosophical discomfort, especially when taken as a moral claim aboutultimate benefit and punishment – that a happy life is an appropriate rewardfor virtue, sorrow and suffering a due response to its lack.25 We don’t rejectall thoughts of this form. We think that criminals should not benefit fromtheir criminal activity; it is painful when the innocent and virtuous suffer,worse if they suffer because of their innocence or virtue. But for the mostpart we find the idea of regulating happiness by desert unsavory; it doesn’tseem to be proper human work to insure that there is no cosmic moraldisorder. Such an idea goes too far. There is another and related idea thatdoes not.

Although civil society does not arise because it is anyone’s goal, the end ofcivil society, once it exists, is an end for all citizens, and becomes a vehiclethrough which they can together act morally. In the spirit of the Idea weshould say that nature puts members of civil society in a position toaccomplish together things that nature aims at, but cannot itself makehappen. By sustaining and respecting the rule of law, the status of personsis secured. But that’s not just having a pro-attitude towards law. We are toseek a fair regime of law-making, enforcement and punishment togetherthat create a public space in which, for the sake of civil society, certainkinds of actions are off limits, and efforts are made through both enforce-ment and punishment to guide action and repair breaches. Given therole of civil society as a vehicle through which persons can activelyfurther the rational ordering of the human part of nature, they neednot (and should not) see punishment as about exacting deserved suffer-ing for wrongdoing; it is better understood as a piece of a continuum thatstarts in a system of enforcement that aims to interrupt the trajectoryof unlawful activity and ends, if necessary, in forms of hard treat-ment that aim to get the lawbreaker to (re)connect with shared publicends (ends that are in a sense already his own). It is not clear that civilsociety 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 nottake our happiness to be a sign of our worth.


not punishment); and the same considerations show that it also cannotdo 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 pursuitof happiness from the moral arbitrariness of a state of nature in which thestrong 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 reason-able part of the progressive human project. The system of property, itselfdependent on civil society, makes it possible for social justice to become amoral aim. It’s not just that because there is property, distributional aimscan be pursued through regulation and taxation; the concept of social justicedepends on notions of rightful possession, of being able to say of some stockof material goods that this or that group ought to possess some share.Happiness remains in the hands of the individual – each has her ownconception of a good life for herself – but the prospects for the pursuit ofhappiness can be social. In civil society we canmake “the attainment by eachof a natural end” an end we together support. We do not thereby peghappiness to moral desert, but we can correct those “natural” tendencies thatmake 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 theextension of the imagination necessary to escape the system of desires. Theyare equally a condition for social self-criticism, keeping alive awareness thatthe given does not exhaust social and moral possibilities. The practicalurgency of these social goals is emphasized at the end of the Idea (8:28) aspart of an argument for an end to war-making. Kant seems less concernedwith the mayhem and destruction of war than with the financial burdens ofwar-making that leave states unable to support the moral project of citizen-ship. My conjecture is that this is because, in its best form, civil society(perhaps in its universal cosmopolitan condition) is where we can realize theworldly form of the Highest Good. If we are obligated to make the HighestGood our end, we have the strongest moral reasons to support the con-stitution 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 inthe Rechstlehre (6:331–7).


The progressive arc of history that Kant urges on us thus makes room forjustice – a condition that can only arise through human choice andorganization – within a strongly teleological scheme. The teleology ofnature gets us to the possibility of justice without our cooperation; nothingbut human agency can get us the rest of the way. So this is one answer to thequestion of how one can embrace both a strong teleology of nature and animportant role for human agency. The teleology of nature is a developmen-tal account that puts persons in a position to make the (human) world anorder of reason. The need for history is to provide us with a proleptic reasonfor thinking we might now be living at a time when the responsibility formaking the (human) world a more rational place is ours. Before the adventof civil society, we cannot act together – really, cannot demand of each otherthat we act together – for collective ends. We can and should tend our ownmoral gardens, and support, in ways that are consistent with morality, theadvent of civil order. As individuals with moral obligations, there may notbe muchmore we can do, or much that we can do that does not risk the livesand 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 inmaking demands on one another they are not exceeding moral bounds(bounds of sacrifice, for example), and keeps them attuned to the fact thatalthough the sphere of human control has been expanded, human causalityis not the only force at work in shaping events.

A final cautionary word from the Idea. It might seem that with theintroduction of a final end of nature and an argument that we should takeprogressive history to provide a guiding thread for action, that we areencouraged to imitate nature and see in instrumental success justificationfor action that would in other circumstances be morally prohibited. Thatwould get it wrong about the moral function of the teleology. While it istrue that nature, or natural causes, can induce rational progress by worsen-ing human conditions,wemay not do that. Nature’s acts are not justified bythe 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 bythemselves justify their being brought about. The moral injunctions remainintact. Teleology has a different practical role. In coming to see, throughinterpreted history, that the development of reason in our species is a finalend of nature, we gain an idea of an end “the bringing about of which ispromoted by the very idea of it.” This tells us something about what mightbe possible through justified action we take together.


8

Kant’s changing cosmopolitanismPauline Kleingeld

In the Seventh Proposition of the Idea for a Universal History with aCosmopolitan Aim, Kant advocates the establishment of a federation ofstates with coercive powers to enforce its laws. He states that a “cosmopol-itan condition,” which such a worldwide federative body would create, isrequired for the security and stability of its member states. Their securityand stability, in turn, are required in order to facilitate the completedevelopment of the human predispositions for the use of reason, whichKant 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), “Onthe Common Saying: That May Be True in Theory, But it is of No Use inPractice” (1793), The Contest of the Faculties (1798), and most notably inToward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (1795) and theMetaphysics ofMorals (1797). Compared to its formulation in the Idea, however, Kant’slater texts introduce fundamental changes on a number of important points,although this usually goes unnoticed in the literature. In other words, theview formulated in the 1784 essay is Kant’s early view, which he latermodifies 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 atKant’s modifications of his view in later works, so as to highlight what isspecific to this essay. In order to put the cosmopolitan view of the Idea in itsphilosophical context, however, it is also necessary to address, briefly, Kant’sgeneral aim in this text.

1 . the f i n a l end o f human h i s tor y

Idea for a Universal History appeared three years after the publication of theCritique of Pure Reason, in 1784. In a note at the beginning, Kant explainsthat a remark in theGothaische gelehrte Zeitung had compelled him to clarify

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his views. The remark stated that it was a “favorite idea” of Kant’s “that thefinal end of humankind is the attainment of the most perfect constitution ofthe state.” Furthermore, Kant was said to wish “that a philosophicalhistoriographer would undertake to provide us in this respect with a historyof humanity” and show to what extent this end had already beenapproximated.1

Kant writes at the beginning of the essay that this remark “would have nocomprehensible meaning” without the clarification that he undertakes toprovide in the essay (8:15n). And indeed, if we look more closely, we see thatthe remark is both incomplete and incorrect as a summary of the viewsexpressed here.2 Kant does conceive of history as a teleological process, andhe does attribute a crucial role to the establishment of a perfectly justconstitution. But he also attributes an important role to the establishmentof a worldwide, cosmopolitan legal order, as indicated in the full title of theessay. Moreover, he regards neither the perfect state nor the world feder-ation as the final end of history. Although there are still commentators whoclaim that Kant conceives of the final end of history in terms merely of alegal order, Kant in fact clearly regards the establishment of a legal order asitself the means toward a yet further goal (8:22). As he makes clearest in thecomments to the Fourth and Seventh Propositions, he sees the genuine finalend of history as the complete development of the human predispositionsfor the use of reason. This development involves cultivation, civilization,and, eventually, moralization: the final end is the transformation of thelegal-political order into a “moral whole” (“ein moralisches Ganze”) (8:21).

Kant explains why the full development of the human predispositions forthe use of reason requires a legal order at both the state and the internationallevel. A fully just state is important for the development of human rationalfaculties because a legal order forces individuals to be disciplined. Humanshave both social and unsocial tendencies, wanting both to gain recognitionfrom others and to do things their own way. In a good state, i.e., in a statethat grants its subjects freedom while determining and constraining thisfreedom 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 tooutdo each other (8:22). Yet they cannot follow their inclinations withimpunity, because if they violate the law they are subject to sanctions. In

1 Quoted in the editor’s introduction, AA 8:468.2 I do not pursue the question whether the discrepancy between the remark and Kant’s views in the Ideais due to a misrepresentation on the part of the author of the remark, or to modifications Kant made ashe was developing his views in more detail.


this context, then, they are forced to develop self-discipline, which is acrucial 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 ingeneral. Living in a society with other humans already has a good effect onpeople, for in a social setting

happen the first true steps from crudity toward culture, which really consists in thesocial 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 madetoward the foundation of a mode of thought which can with time transform therude natural predisposition to make moral distinctions into determinate practicalprinciples and hence transform a pathologically compelled agreement to form asociety finally into a moral whole. (8:21)

A just state (as distinct from just any type of civil society) facilitates thisprocess. Because a good state allows its citizens the freedom of the press, itprovides a space for the development of the arts and sciences and enablesincreasing enlightenment. Already in the Idea it is clear that Kant associatesenlightenment with an increase in independent thinking (which is not thesame as solitary thinking) and moral agency. It is enlightenment, he says,which contributes to the development of a manner of thinking that willproduce the transformation of society into a moral whole.Kant specifies the way this is supposed to workmore fully in the essay “What

Is Enlightenment?”which was published only one month after the Idea, and inthe same magazine, the Berlinische Monatsschrift. Here Kant explains the valueof a free public sphere. A free public sphere enables the collective expansion ofknowledge and increases the chances of eliminating errors (8:39). Because thisincludes the public’s ridding itself of prejudices and superstition, enlightenedthought will lead to better insight into how one ought to act. That is, freedomin thinking will enable genuine “freedom to act” on the part of individualsubjects (8:41). On the part of the government, enlightenment will increaserespect 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 thestate of nature and that leads them to establish a state will subsequently re-emerge at the level of the relations among states. Warfare between states,however, tends to stifle the developmental processes within states. Moneythat is necessary for education is used for weaponry; civil liberties that arenecessary for enlightenment are curtailed in the name of the safety andsecurity of the state. Therefore, in the Seventh Proposition of the Idea Kant

Kant’s changing cosmopolitanism 173

introduces a second requirement for the development of the human rationalfaculties, in addition to that of a perfect civil constitution, namely, therequirement of a “cosmopolitan condition” (weltbürgerlicher Zustand).

Kant uses this term to refer to a situation in which the external relationsamong states are governed by enforced laws. This of course requires a higher-level 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, execu-tive, and juridical powers at the federal level, including a “united power givingemphasis to that law” (8:26). Because the cosmopolitan condition secures thegood state, and the good state enables enlightenment, which enables thefurther development of the human capacity to use reason, Kant also calls thiscosmopolitan condition the “womb in which all the original predispositionsof the human species will be developed” (8:28).

This shows that the remark in the Gothaische gelehrte Zeitung is indeednot a correct representation of Kant’s view in the “Idea.” He does notconsider the achievement of the most perfect state constitution to be thefinal end of history. Kant regards the perfectly just state constitution,together with the federation of states, as absolutely crucial goals, but theyare themselves instrumental toward a further goal, namely, the completedevelopment of the human predispositions for the use of reason, which is toculminate in moral agency.

2 . k ant ’ s p ro j e c t i n the i d e a fora un i v e r s a l h i s tor y

In order to understand the status of Kant’s claims concerning the cosmo-politan condition, it is necessary to have a clear sense of his overarchingproject in this essay. Kant introduces the cosmopolitan ideal in the contextof a discussion of the conditions for the possibility of the full developmentof the human predispositions for the use of reason. Thus, it is necessary tosay a few words about the notion of the development of human predis-positions as the final end of history. It is important to establish exactly whatKant 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 unitedunder common laws, hence who form a state (cf. MS 6:344). Accordingly, Kant indicates at thebeginning 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 “ofstates” and a league “of peoples” interchangeably. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant notes that theterm “right of peoples” (Völkerrecht, international law) is strictly speaking a misnomer and that theappropriate term would be “right of states” (Staatenrecht, MS 6:343). Therefore, “Völkerbund” can betranslated both as “federation of peoples” and as “federation of states.”


history is progressing towards this development and that the world will turninto a cosmopolitan whole? Or is his view that history should progress in thisdirection and that states should bond together? Or, rather, that one shouldregard history as if it is progressive and hence as if a cosmopolitan condition isin 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, hislist of nine Propositions is easily mistaken for a series of wildly dogmaticclaims 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 systematicunity of knowledge and that it is justified in using regulative ideas for thispurpose. In the Idea, he starts out by noting that the empirical historicalfacts, however, seem to challenge the possibility of ever reaching reason’sgoal (8:17–8). Empirical history seems to offer a rather chaotic picture to theobserver, raising the spectre of an empirical “aggregate” that resists organ-ization into a “system.”4

Kant had claimed in the Critique of Pure Reason, in general and withoutspecific regard to history, that in order to establish a systematic unity ofempirical 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 wholeof cognition, which precedes the determinate cognition of the parts and containsthe conditions for determining a priori the place of each part and its relation to theothers. Accordingly, this idea postulates complete unity of the understanding’scognition, through which this cognition comes to be not merely a contingentaggregate but a system interconnected in accordance with necessary laws. (KrV A645/B 673, emphasis mine)

In the first Critique Kant did not reflect on the difficulties that one faceswhen one attempts to apply this principle to human history. This is what hedoes in the Idea. In order to facilitate the organization of knowledge of thisarea of the phenomenal world systematically, Kant sets out to formulate aregulative idea. He expresses the hope that a historian will indeed attempt touse it. The term “idea” in the title of the essay is, then, best read in thetechnical sense of “regulative idea” in the first Critique, which is a “guidingprinciple” 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 asystem out of a mere aggregate of it” (KrV A 832/B 860).


“idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim” might serve goodheuristic and organizational purposes by enabling a historian to organize theempirical historical materials into a systematic whole.

At first sight, however, human history seems to show no order ordirection at all. There does not seem to be anything that can serve as aunifying principle for a systematic description of history, leaving the histor-iographer no other option than a long enumeration of events, or at best anenumeration of developments under the rubric “rise and fall.” This, how-ever, causes “a certain indignation” in the observer. The irregularity of thecourse of human events seems “nonsensical,” frustrating reason’s quest fororder (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 topropose a solution. He combines the general teleological principle, the useof which he had already clarified and justified in the Critique of Pure Reason,with a proposed telos, thus designing a unifying principle. The first elementof this “idea,” then, and the first “proposition” of the essay, is the generalteleological principle that “all natural predispositions of a creature aredestined sometime to develop themselves completely and purposively”(8:18). Kant designates the final end of history as the development of thehuman predispositions for the use of reason (Second Proposition). To thishe further adds a specific developmental logic, suggesting that the develop-ment of these predispositions is not a matter of a constant linear and gradualimprovement, but, rather, a matter of a development that takes placethrough social struggles and tensions. Kant highlights the combination ofsociability and unsociability that is innate in human beings: humans can’tlive without others, but they also keep trying to “obtain for [themselves] arank among [their] fellows” (8:21). The resulting social antagonism forcesthem to use their reason (Third and Fourth Propositions).

Kant attributes crucial importance to the development of legal systems atboth the state and the international levels (Fifth, Sixth, and SeventhPropositions). These are themselves the result of such social antagonism,as its negative consequences prompt humans to subject themselves tocommon laws and a collective system of law enforcement. Thus, the stateis not only the product of historical development but also, importantly, afactor that gives a new impetus to this development. The international legalorder, too, is both the result of historical progress and a necessary precon-dition for further progress, because it allows the state to fulfill its role in thedevelopmental process (Seventh Proposition).

By the end of the Seventh Proposition, then, Kant has offered his readersan “idea” that has two large advantages for the project of turning the


aggregate of history into a system. It offers a single overarching principle ofhistory, and it offers a way to integrate those aspects of history that initiallyseemed to defy integration into a progressive account of history – thewarfare, 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 bemade of it. In the commentsto these propositions, Kant performs a preliminary check against historicaldata to show how that history can indeed be regarded in this way (EighthProposition) and that historiography can indeed use this principle fruitfully(Ninth Proposition). He concludes in the final comments that “this ideacould become useful” and that “this idea… should still serve us as a guidingthread for exhibiting an otherwise planless aggregate of human actions, atleast 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 aregulative idea for use in historiography, it is clear that the first sevenPropositions are not meant as dogmatic empirical assertions. Kant is clearabout the weak epistemic status of his model, calling it “only a thought ofthat which a philosophical mind … could attempt from another stand-point” (8:30), and something that still needs to be tried in actual historio-graphical practice.5

3 . the na tur e o f the f ed e r a t i on o f s t a t e s

As mentioned above, the cosmopolitan condition Kant envisages in the Ideais that of a strong, state-like federation of states (not that of a voluntaryassociation without coercive powers). This is required to guarantee thesecurity of just states, which in turn are required for the full developmentof 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 leavethe state of nature to join into a state. In both cases, the hardship resultingfrom their rivalry and fights eventually forces them, in their own interest, togive up their “wild freedom.” Individuals unite into a state “in whichfreedom under external laws can be encountered combined in the greatestpossible degree, with irresistible power” (8:22). Similarly, Kant claims, stateswill 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: ZurGeschichtsphilosophie Kants (Würzburg: Königshausen und Neumann, 1995).


them, to exit the state of nature and enter a juridical condition. Statesexhibit “the same unsociability,” they experience “precisely the ills thatpressured individual human beings and compelled them to enter into alawful civil condition,” and thus states too will come to see the advantages ofjoining a federation with common laws and law enforcement (8:24). Thisfederation 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 ownpower, or its own juridical judgment, but only from this great federation of peoples(Foedus Amphictyonum), from a united power [vereinigte Gewalt] and from thedecision in accordance with laws of the united will. (8:24)

It is clear from the way Kant explicates the function of this federation that itis not the voluntary league that he discusses in Toward Perpetual Peace. Thefederation meant in the Idea is to guarantee the states’ security and rights,which are grounded in the “laws of the united will” and enforced andguaranteed through a “united power” (8:24, 26). Kant describes this cos-mopolitan condition, which will come about once states form a federation,as “resembling a civil commonwealth” (8:25). He refers to the work of Abbéde St. Pierre, who had proposed a permanent senate and an internationalcourt of arbitration backed up by international law enforcement, as defen-ding a similar view. Similarly, already in the Lectures on Anthropology from1775–6, Kant had advocated an international federation with a “generalsenate of peoples” that would adjudicate all international conflicts, andwhose verdict should be executed by a “power of the peoples,” which wouldmean that peoples should be subject to “civil coercive powers” (bürgerlicheGewalt, 25:676). Just as in the Idea, Kant here expects internal improvementof the government from the establishment of such an international feder-ation (ibid.).

Kant’s use of the term “federation” (Bund) can easily mislead. The termitself is neutral as to whether or not the institution has the power to enforceits laws. Federative unions can have a strong centralized federal governmentwith binding public laws and coercive powers to enforce them; or they canlack coercive powers and take the form of a voluntary association of statesthat share certain goals; or they can fall somewhere in between. Thatdepends on the nature of the agreement between the states. In the IdeaKant envisions a strong federal authority; in later texts, however, he also usesthe term for a much weaker kind of entity (see below).

Kant does not provide details as to the different institutions such aninternational political body should include. Thus, it remains unclearwhether all states should have voting rights in a federal legislative body,


whether the federation would have a standing army to enforce its rules, andso on. Perhaps his reference to the Abbé de St. Pierre means that he agreedwith his proposals. Perhaps, also, Kant simply left these matters undecidedbecause his interest in the Idea is in finding a unifying principle fororganizing 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. Withregard to the state, Kant famously discusses the problem that human natureprevents states from ever being fully perfect. The “crooked wood” of whichhumanity is made does not allow the creation of something perfectly straight(8:23). Moreover, Kant claims that a perfect state constitution is dependentnot just on individuals being motivated by self-interest but also on a “goodwill that is prepared to accept it” (ibid.), but a good will is actually more likelyto develop within the good state. Hence, Kant argues in the Idea, the problemof 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 animperfect federation, and that an imperfect federation with coercive powersmay do great injustice. Later, in Toward Perpetual Peace, Kant seems toacknowledge this problemwhen he introduces a looser kind of internationalfederation, in which states retain their full sovereignty and do not subjectthemselves to coercive powers at the federal level. In those later texts thestrong federation remains Kant’s ultimate goal, but he makes importantchanges to his account of how it is to be reached.

4 . mod i f i c a t i on s to the s e v enth propo s i t i on

Building straight with crooked wood: the new importanceof the republic in Kant’s philosophy of right

Kant’s views on the “cosmopolitan condition” undergo important modifi-cations over time. In the Idea he advocates the establishment of a strongfederation of states with coercive authority at the federal level, and like theAbbé de Saint-Pierre, he appeals to the enlightened self-interest of rulers andstates to defend the feasibility of this ideal. Later, most clearly in TowardPerpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals, however, Kant defends amore 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


federation as the ideal dictated by reason. To make the feasibility of hisproposal plausible, Kant still relied on the self-interest of individuals and ofstates. But he drops the claim that the development of a “good will” isnecessary for achieving a perfectly just state constitution, and he adds theclaim that republics tend toward peace inherently, thus linking the achieve-ment of peace between states to the internal constitution of states.

By a “republic” Kant means a state that is characterized by a separation ofpowers and by the fact that the subjects are also citizens, i.e., a state in whichthe legislative power is in the hands of the people through their representa-tives. The republic is the only kind of state that is fully in accordance withthe normative requirements that follow from the principle of right (EF8:349–53, 366; MS 6:341), which itself is grounded in individual freedom.

Kant regards the republican state as fully feasible. First, he explicitlyaddresses the objection that only a people of angels could produce andmaintain a perfect state. Kant now replies that the self-interested inclina-tions of humans are sufficient to account for the possibility of the justrepublic. Even a “people of devils” would form a republic, at least if they areintelligent (EF 8:366). This is because the republic is the form of govern-ment 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 simplylet his subjects bear the costs. An overspending despot is therefore morelikely to cause the collapse of the state or be forced to make concessions tohis subjects – creating opportunities to reform the state in the direction of arepublic.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 “crookedwood” 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 thecapacity of humans,”Kant adds) the selfish inclinations of people can in factcancel each other out, so that “the result turns out as if [these selfishinclinations] did not exist” (EF 8:366).

This is quite a departure from the Idea. Not only does it imply a rejectionof the earlier claim that a good will is necessary for the establishment of agood state, but it also implies that Kant now distances himself from theearlier and famous “crooked wood” passage. His picture of human naturehas not changed. “Crooked wood” it certainly is. But Kant no longerbelieves 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.


a just state. To extend Kant’s metaphor from the Idea and use Kant’s“organization” terminology from Toward Perpetual Peace: if only thecrooked pieces are organized in the right way, the resulting structure canbe straight. Kant explicitly rejects his earlier statement that a good will isnecessary for accepting a perfect state constitution, now claiming that “itshould not be expected that a good state constitution would arise from innermorality, but rather conversely that the good moral education of a peoplewould follow from the former” (EF 8:366).With regard to the role of the republic for the establishment of an interna-

tional federation, Kant again highlights the advantages of the republicanconstitution. A republic tends toward peace, in his view, because it is in theinterest of its citizens to be peaceful toward other states. When the citizens ofa republic deliberate about whether to go to war, they will realize that theythemselves shoulder all the costs, financial and otherwise, and this willnaturally 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 towardpeace, Kant anchors the feasibility of international peace in the interests ofboth 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 stateand that of the international federation. In the Idea, he still regards thesolution of the first as dependent upon the second, claiming that theachievement of a perfect state constitution is not possible until rightfulexternal relations among states (in an international federation) have beenachieved (8:24). In later essays he turns the order around and claims thatinternational peace will not be achieved until after states have becomerepublics (e.g., T&P 8:311). In Toward Perpetual Peace, he revises his viewagain, arguing that the two requirements stand in a reciprocal relationship(along with a third requirement, that of cosmopolitan right) and that theone cannot be fully achieved without the other (8:349n).

A second type of federation

Kant’s elaboration of his republican political theory has significant effectson his conception of the normative ideal of the international federation. Ifindividual freedom is taken seriously as the ultimate justification of coercivepolitical institutions, and if, therefore, the republican state in which citizens


co-legislate through their representatives is the only just state, then Kant hasto argue that republican states should not be forced into an imperfectinternational federation against their will. Given the possible and likelyimperfections of a federation, Kant cannot consistently argue that it wouldbe normatively right for a mighty despotically ruled federation to incorpo-rate an unwilling republic with military means. Yet according to TowardPerpetual Peace, individuals do have this right to force each other into a stateagainst their will (or leave them alone) (8:349n).

This is likely to be part of the explanation for why Kant introduces theideal of a voluntary association of states, also called a “federation” but nowone without coercive powers. In Toward Perpetual Peace, Kant argues thatthis “federation of free states” aims at

securing and maintaining the freedom of a state for itself and also the freedom ofother confederated states without these states thereby being required, as are humanbeings in the state of nature, to subject themselves to public laws and coercionunder such laws. (8:356)

This means that Kant here inserts a new type of institution between thestate of nature and the cosmopolitan condition, namely a voluntary leagueof states without coercive power. This league, while certainly not able toguarantee the security of states, will still have significant positive effects. Byoffering a forum for international arbitration and negotiation, it helps toreduce global conflict and increase the security of states (cf. MS 6:350–1).This in turn allows for the increasing development of human predisposi-tions, which will lead to a “gradual approximation of humans to a greateragreement on principles” (EF 8:367). This, then, paves the way for astronger union in a stronger type of federation, which Kant still claims isthe ultimate ideal.

Kant does not give up the ideal of the strong, state-like federation that hedefended in the Idea, but he now places it at the end of a more protractedprocess that involves the establishment of a voluntary non-coercive leaguefirst. That Kant still defends the strong federation can be seen in a numberof passages in Toward Perpetual Peace and the Metaphysics of Morals. Heexpresses the hope that “distant parts of the world can peaceably enter intorelations with each other, relations which can ultimately become publiclylawful and so bring humanity finally ever closer to a cosmopolitan con-stitution” (EF 8:358). He writes that justice requires “an internal constitu-tion of the state in accordance with pure principles of right, and thenfurther, however, the union of this state with other neighboring or alsodistant states for the purpose of a lawful settlement of their conflicts”


(EF 8:379). And he writes in theMetaphysics of Morals that before states leavethe state of nature all international right is merely “provisional,” and thatinternational right can come to hold definitively and establish a trueperpetual peace only “in a universal union of states [Staatenverein] (analo-gous to that by which a people becomes a state),” a union which Kant on thesame page also refers to as a “state of peoples” (Völkerstaat) (6:350).7

From a worldwide European legislation to a moregenuine ‘cosmopolitan constitution’

Until the 1790s, Kant talked about the “cosmopolitan condition”merely interms 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 statewith common laws and law enforcement, and states establish a civil con-dition by joining an international federation – but what about, for example,the lawful regulation of the relations between states and stateless individualsor shipwrecked sailors? Or between individuals from one state and peoplesthat have not yet formed a state? What about colonialism, for example?In the IdeaKant does not yet raise these questions, limiting his discussion

to the juridical regulation of relations among individuals (in the state) andamong states (in the international federation). Kant says very little, forexample, about the conduct of European states elsewhere in the world. Infact, the only comment he makes on that subject should probably be read ina disturbing way. Kant suggests, towards the end of the essay and betweenparentheses, that “our part of the world” (Europe) “will probably somedaygive laws to all the others [viz., the other parts of the world]” (8:29).Without further explanation, this comment is ambiguous. It could intheory be interpreted as an empirical prediction on Kant’s part about the(unfortunate) direction in which international relations are likely todevelop. On the other hand, given that the entire essay outlines a teleo-logical view of history as moving toward an ideal end-state, this readingdoes not seem plausible. If the situation in which non-Europeans do notgive laws to themselves but receive laws from Europe is not part of the finalend of history, why would Kant mention it here? If he does not believe thatEurope’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’sDefence of a League of States and his Ideal of a World Federation,” European Journal of Philosophy12 (2004), pp. 304–25.


mentioning it as the result of history would undercut the entire teleologicalperspective he lays out in this essay.

If Kant does regard European legislation for the rest of the world as partof the final end of history, on the other hand, this fits with other commentshe made elsewhere, to the effect that most non-white “races” are not capableof self-legislation.8 Then the proper way to read Kant’s brief parentheticalcomment is to read it against the background of the racial hierarchy thatKant still defended during the 1780s. Against the background of a viewaccording to which whites are superior to non-whites and according towhich many non-whites are not capable of governing themselves, it isunderstandable how worldwide European legislation could be part of thefinal end of history.

Kant defended exactly this kind of racial hierarchy until well after theIdea. 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 toeclearly proved that what he said was stupid (2:255). Furthermore, Kant citedHume’s comment that no Negro has ever shown any talent and concludesthat 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 (TPP8:174n) and refers to the “levels which we have mentioned as racial differ-ences” (TPP 8:176). In anthropology lectures from (probably) 1781–2, Kantasserts 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 incapableof any other form of education); the “Hindus” have yet more potential, butwhites form the only non-deficient race (25.2:1187).

In Toward Perpetual Peace and theMetaphysics of Morals, however, Kanthas clearly given up these views. He explicitly strengthens the juridical statusof individuals regardless of race. Understandably, this also leads to a verycritical stance on European practices on other continents, such as the slavetrade and colonialism.

That Kant strengthens the status of non-whites is clear from his discussionof cosmopolitan right. In Kant’s political theory, cosmopolitan right(Weltbürgerrecht) is the third category of public right, in addition to

8 “[Native] Americans andNegroes cannot govern themselves. Thus, [they] serve only as slaves” Sketchesfor the Lectures on Anthropology, from the 1780s, 15:878.


constitutional right and international right. He argues that states and indi-viduals have the right to attempt to establish relations with other states andtheir citizens, but not a right to enter foreign territory. States have the right torefuse visitors, but not violently, and not if it leads to their destruction (EF8:357–60; MS 6:352–3). This implies an obligation to refrain from imperialistintrusions and to provide safe haven for refugees. Cosmopolitan right, asintroduced in Toward Perpetual Peace, explicitly prohibits the colonial con-quest, 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). Inhis notes forToward Perpetual Peace (1794–95), Kant repeatedly and explicitlycriticizes the enslavement of non-Europeans in the strongest terms, as a graveviolation of cosmopolitan right (23:173–4). Kant concludes his exposition ofcosmopolitan 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 finallybring the human species ever closer to a cosmopolitan constitution. (EF 8:358)

Dropping his earlier claim that blacks and Native Americans cannot governthemselves and that Europe will probably eventually legislate for all othercontinents, Kant here envisions a world in which people of different colors andon different continents together make public laws to regulate their interactionpeacefully and in accordance with the normative principles of right.9

5 . c ont inu i t y : th e f i n a l end o f human h i s tor ya s a mora l wor ld

Although Kant rethought a number of problems that were connected with hisearly views, some significant elements remain the same. Throughout the 1780sand 1790s, Kant remains committed to the view, found in the Idea, that thefinal end of history is the complete development of the predispositions for theuse of reason, and that this complete development consists in humans usingtheir reason to determine their will, i.e., in moral agency.10 Although this endcannot 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 thehighest good. In the first Critique, this is the ideal of “the world as it would be

9 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.

10 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).


if it were in conformity with all moral laws” (KrV A 808/B 836). This is theworld in which all agents act morally, and in which, as a consequence of theirvirtuous action, all are happy (A 809/B 837). The virtuous agents in the moralworld are “themselves, under the guidance of [moral] principles, the authorsboth 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 intoconformity with such a moral world (A 808/B 836). Kant’s theory in the Ideaclearly seems to be an elaboration of the way in which this moral world is to beapproximated in the sensible world. After all, according to the SecondProposition the goal of history is the full development of the human predis-positions for the use of reason which is to culminate in moral agency, andaccording to the Third Proposition humans should be the source of their ownperfection and of the general happiness (8:18–20).

In the Critique of Judgment, Kant again discusses the highest good interms of a moral world composed of general virtue and general happiness(5:445, 448, 453); and here he explicitly connects it up with historicalprogress. He discusses the way nature is teleologically oriented towardsthe development of the predispositions for the use of reason (“culture”);and culture is itself subservient to the final end of creation, viz., to humansas moral beings (5:434–6).

Another element that remains the same throughout Kant’s writings ofthe 1780s and 1790s is his view that the development of legal institutions(especially the state and the international federation) plays an important rolein this process. Legal institutions are both products of and catalysts for thedevelopment of the predispositions for the use of reason. This view re-emerges 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 finalend of history, but the details of his cosmopolitan theory change over time,as he elaborates the principles of republicanism, changes his view of therelation between the development of the just state and that of the interna-tional federation, drops his earlier racial hierarchalism, adds the category ofcosmopolitan right, and starts to criticize the exploitative practices ofEuropeans on other continents.

11 A particularly salient passage is found in the Vorarbeiten to the Metaphysics of Morals, where Kantthematizes the relationship between legal and moral progress: “[W]hen the laws secure freedomexternally, the maxims to also govern oneself internally in accordance with laws can liven up; andconversely, the latter in turn make it easier through their dispositions for lawful coercion to have aninfluence, 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., legalityand morality find in the concept of peace the point of support for the transition from the Doctrine ofRight to the Doctrine of Virtue” (23:354–5).


chapter 9

The hidden plan of natureEckart Förster

Kant’s discussion of the Eighth Proposition of the Idea for a UniversalHistory with a Cosmopolitan Aim marks an all-important turning point ofhis 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 asthe completion of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an inwardly and, to thisend, also an externally perfect state constitution, as the only condition in which itcan 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 themunnecessary are a prerequisite for a stable civil society in which reason canflourish. For reason, Kant had stated in the Second Proposition, can developfully only in the species, but not in the individual. Its development requiresfavorable conditions in society, which can only be fulfilled if a certainamount 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 areendowed by nature with species-specific instincts (or organs) that guidetheir struggle for survival. Humans, by contrast, were initially endowed bynature only with those instincts that belong to animals in general – sexualinstincts, instinct for food, etc. – but with none that were specific to theirspecies. In order to survive, therefore, they had to learn to compensate forthe absence of such instincts. They had to acquire and develop an ability toanticipate danger, predict future events, contemplate alternative courses ofaction, etc. – in short, man was forced by nature to develop reason. Reason,then, is the product of mankind’s emergence from the discomfort of itsinitial situation in nature, while the natural development of the humanspecies can be seen as the progressive development of reason, the gradualtransformation of a mere potentiality into successful actuality. To this end,however, since reason cannot develop in isolation, men had to join efforts

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and enter into society, where their mutual antagonism and “unsociablesociability” forces them to overcome propensities to indolence and to makethe necessary steps from crudity to culture by developingmanifold skills andsocial prudence (Fourth Proposition).

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The Eighth Proposition, it could be said, sums up these thoughts. The nextsentence, however, breaks new ground. It speaks no longer of nature and itshidden plan, but of philosophy and its role vis-à-vis this plan: “One sees thatphilosophy can also have its chiliasm;1 but one the bringing about of whichis promoted by the very idea of it, though only from afar, so that it isanything but enthusiastic” (8:27).

This sudden shift from nature to philosophy must not escape ourattention. What is at issue here is the suggestion that philosophy can as itwere take over from nature in the promotion of her plan, or at leastcontribute actively to its realization. What this means is not immediatelyobvious. To be sure, if philosophy discerns a plan underlying humanhistory, it must not only discern its beginning,2 but also the telos of itsmovement, its goal. This, we might say, has taken place in the first sevenchapters of Kant’s essay. But how can bringing nature’s plan to conscious-ness contribute to the realization of this goal, “though only from afar”? Howis this to be understood?

Here wemust recall the circumstances that led Kant to write the Idea for aUniversal History. As he reports, his text was occasioned by a note in theGothaische Gelehrte Zeitungwhich stated that it was a “favorite idea of ProfessorKant” that the final end of humankind is the attainment of the most perfectpolitical constitution, and that to this end it would be desirable “that aphilosophical historiographer would undertake to provide us in this respectwith a history of humanity, and to show how far humanity has approachedthis final end in different ages, or how far removed it has been from it, andwhat 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 andpresent events, because he must be able to discern the idea underlying all thediverse events constituting the history of humanity in order to grasp itsfuture end, and assess the various stages relative to it. The presumption is ofcourse that history is not just a largely unpredictable succession of events,

1 “The thousand years,” from Greek chilioi = thousand; cf. Revelation 20,1–6.2 On this see Kant’s essay on the “Conjectural Beginning of the Human History,” 8:107–24.


but something that is goal-directed, that has a beginning and end and withit a prescribed course from which it is possible to stray and which can beapproximated 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 thefact that in his response Kant does not simply assume that readers of theGotha Zeitung might find this assumption implausible because they viewthe course of human history in less teleological terms. He thinks, rather,that the present essay is needed as an elucidation because without it, “thatpassage 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 whyKant might have thought so. For his was a time of immense cultural andscientific changes, which in turn brought about equally revolutionaryconceptual changes, the realization of which only slowly penetrated publicopinion. Three such changes in particular, changes the readers of the GothaZeitung might not have been entirely familiar with, are relevant in thepresent context. They are changes in concepts that reflect a deep revolutionin the way reality was experienced, but which today’s readers, who grew upwith the new concepts long established, don’t realize anymore. The threeconcepts 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 usthe term signifies something that equally comprises past and future as statesof a continuous subject, so that we may speak of the history, of history assuch. Up to Kant’s time, however, the term had the meaning of the Latinhistoria, of narrative, account, tale, story. A history would be the history of abattle or a journey, as, for example, in Xenophon’s Anabasis, or the lives ofparticular subjects, as, for example, in Vasari’s The Lives of the Artists. Therewere 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 similaror even repeat themselves: histories with determinate subjects who acted or wereacted upon, or (inside the narrative) with determinate objects. Since the 18thCentury there exists a ‘history in general’ that seemed to be its own subject andobject – a system, not an aggregate, as one used to say in those days. Spatially therecorresponds to it the one world history. Temporally there corresponds to it the

The hidden plan of nature 189

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 increasein information during the age of discovery.4 Sciences had to integrate ahitherto unknown wealth of newly found specimens into their classificatorysystems. In the past, living things were classified bymeans of external marks,and in primarily spatial manners,5 but this way of organizing nature couldno longer cope with the sheer quantity of newly discovered species. Spatialmethods of organization had to be transformed into temporal ones: crea-tures belong to the same species if they are part of a chain of commonoffspring. Thus nature became historicized, and with it the human being, asa species being, became the subject of a common history.

Entwicklung

Originally the German word Entwicklung meant literally ‘to unfold’ or ‘tounwrap’ (auswickeln) something that already existed in a definite form. It is atranslation of the Latin evolutio, which means to unroll (in order to read) ascroll or volume. It was only in the second half of the eighteenth century thatthe term Entwicklung received its contemporary meaning.6 The reason forthis shift in meaning stems from an important scientific debate of the timeconcerning the generation of living things. On the one side, there was thetraditional theory of evolution or preformation, which assumed that thegerms of all living things were preformed, and indeed had been preformedsince the moment of Creation. According to this theory, in all generation thenew individual, fully formed although still minute in size, is already containedin the germ and only needs to be gradually unfolded, or entwickelt. Nothingnew emerges in nature ever, and no part of a living being is there before theother. But in 1759, this view received a rival in C. F. Wolff ’s theory ofepigenesis, according to which there is in the emergence of an organism notjust an unfolding of a preformed germ, but the generation of something newbrought forth by physical causes. Originally unorganized male and femalefluids merge and consolidate, while individual organs grow successively from

3 Otto Brunner, Werner Conze, Reinhart Koselleck, eds., Geschichtliche Grundbegriffe; historischesLexikon zur politisch-sozialen Sprache in Deutschland (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1972), vol. II, p. 594.

4 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).

5 Cf., e.g., Frances A. Yates, The Art of Memory (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966).6 Kant still uses the term in its old meaning in his early writings; cf., e.g., 1:310, 334.


them, under the influence of an essential force.7 From the point of view ofepigenesis, Entwicklung is not the development of a preformed individual butthe 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 dasZeugungsgeschäft. In this short treatise Blumenbach presented ample evidencefor the existence of a formative drive or Bildungstrieb in nature that controlsthe organization of the organism from still unformed materials. From thatmoment on, epigenesis became the prevailing theory of generation,8 and withit the concept of Entwicklung became firmly associated with the new theory.The significance of this conceptual change is considerable. To under-

stand Entwicklung, thought has not simply to add different stages to form awhole, but to follow the metamorphosis of an initial state through itstransformations. Amerely mechanical thinking used to conjoining elementsexternally cannot grasp this concept properly. However, once the concepthas been comprehended, new questions are bound to arise, like: What is itthat evolves in this succession of events? Which stage of its Entwicklung arewe presently looking at? What initial state has the present state evolvedfrom? Where is this Entwicklung going to lead? In other words, preciselythose types of questions are likely to arise that Kant wishes a “philosophicalhistoriographer” might apply to the human subject and answer in a con-vincing manner, a new “Newton” capable of discerning nature’s determi-nate 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 hadpublished in the Berlinische Monatsschrift an essay “On the Question: What

7 Cf. HelmutMüller-Sievers, Self-Generation: Biology, Philosophy, and Literature Around 1800 (Stanford:Stanford University Press, 1997), pp. 26–47.

8 Somuch so that in 1787, in the second edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant compared the resultof the transcendental deduction of the categories to a “a system, as it were, of the epigenesis of purereason” (B 167).

9 Kant was not the first to ask such questions, nor was he the first to apply the new concepts of historyand Entwicklung to the human condition. In his 1774 essay This Too a Philosophy of History for theFormation of Humanity, Herder had already raised the question: “Does fate have a guiding thread inthe Entwicklung of the human powers throughout all centuries and upheavals?” Sämtliche Werke(Berlin: Weidemannsche Buchhandlung, 1891), vol. 5, p. 588. Between 1784 and 1791, Herderdeveloped 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 turnedinto one of his fiercest opponents.


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 peoplehardly understands them … Linguistic usage, which seems to want toindicate a distinction between these synonymous words, has not yet hadthe 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 himselfin 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 Bildungstriebor nisus formativus, but in Mendelssohn’s statement, that old meaningseems no longer present. And it is not difficult to see that the now under-determined concept of Bildung was ideally suited to fill a lacuna in thepicture of a historical evolution of the human species. To put it in Kantianterms: if history has a common subject that evolves according to a hiddenplan of nature, and if the goal of that plan is the development of mankind’sabilities to the fullest, and if the supreme abilities of humanity can only bedeveloped in society through joined efforts and practices, then it must bewithin nature’s plan that humans reach a point at which they form them-selves a picture of what they want to achieve. The course of history must leadfrom external threats and danger to the antagonism within society to “theinner Bildung of their citizens’ mode of thought” (8:26). The human beingthus becomes both subject and object of Bildung.

In his lectures on pedagogy, which Kant delivered in the wintersemesters of 1783/4 and again in 1786/7, we witness the conceptual trans-formation in detail. Education consists, Kant says, in the Bildung of ahuman being to be a freely acting being. To this end he distinguishes the“scholastic-mechanical Bildung with respect to skill,” the “pragmaticBildung with respect to prudence,” and the “moral Bildung” with respectto ethics. The first, he says, gives a human being a worth as individual, thesecond as a citizen, the last a worth with respect to the entire humanspecies (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 anotherarticle in this journal in which the Berlin pastor J. F. Zöllner had expressed the complaint: “What isenlightenment? 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.


The main thesis of Kant’s essay can only be understood against thebackdrop 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; mankindis the common subject of a process in which its dispositions are entwickelt,not as something preformed andmerely to be unfolded, but as something tobe acquired through effort and struggle. In this process the human speciesdevelops reason. It lies in the very nature of reason that there must come apoint in time when it starts to reflect on its own conditions and understandshow it got to where it is. It discerns nature’s hidden plan and what the goalof this plan is. It comprehends the ultimate condition of the realization ofthis goal: an externally perfect state constitution. Understanding that it canpromote the realization of the goal, it forms an image (Bild) that can guidehumanity’s own subsequent self-formation or Bildung – a philosophicalhistoriography with a cosmopolitan aim. For “it seems that we could,through our own rational contrivance, bring about faster such a joyfulpoint in time for our posterity” (8:27). The clear philosophical articulationof the goal will at least bring to public awareness the role it has to play in therealization of this goal.

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We now understand better what Kant means when he says that philosophynot only has its chiliasm, but that its realization is promoted by the very ideaof it.With this much established, let us now turn to the next sentence: “It alldepends on whether experience reveals something of such a course asnature’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 haddemonstrated in the Critique of Pure Reason, there is an all-importantdifference between thinking something on the one hand, and knowingsomething on the other. If I am to think something, the concepts employedmust be non-contradictory; but if I know something through a concept, Imust 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 merelyplayed with representations” (A 155/B 195). If the concept in question is anempirical concept, experience shows that its object is possible because it isactual. But if the concept is a priori, its objective reality must be demon-strated by showing how its object is really possible, through presenting the


synthesis through which the object can be generated: “This is a warning notto infer immediately from the possibility of a concept (logical possibility) tothe possibility of the thing (real possibility)” (A 596/B 624).

Against this background, it is not difficult to see that the concept or ideaof an end of universal history (chiliasm) poses a genuine problem. Is it morethan a logically possible but empty concept? Or is it objectively real? On theone hand, it is not an a priori concept that could be proven independently ofexperience. On the other hand, it is not an empirical concept either. Thevery expression “hidden plan” acknowledges the fact that it is not abstractedfrom experience. Adopting a phrase from another of Kant’s texts, we mightsay that the idea of a hidden plan of nature is “empirically conditioned, i.e. aconcept 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 orobjectively real concept thus depends on whether or not experience showstraces of its reality. This is the crucial question of the present chapter: theEighth Proposition itself is still “a consequence” of the previous one; what isat issue now is its objective reality: “It all depends on whether experiencereveals something of such a course as nature’s aim”!

The philosopher thus cannot but have an interest in whether or notexperience reveals traces of such a plan. Does it? “I say: it reveals a little; forthis cycle appears to require so long a time to be completed that from thelittle part of it which humanity has traversed with respect to this aim allowsone to determine the shape of its path and the relation of the parts to thewhole only as uncertainly as the course taken by our sun together with theentire host of it satellites in the great system of fixed stars can be determinedfrom all the observations of the heavens made hitherto; yet from the generalground of the systematic constitution of the cosmic order and from the littleone has observed, one is able to determine reliably enough, in order to inferthe reality of such a revolution” (8:27).

This answer is disingenuous. For given the Kantian picture, the largestpart of our history seems to lie behind us; what is required now in order toachieve nature’s aim is to end warfare and to establish peaceful relationsamong states. It is not at all clear why getting there should take vastly longerthan getting to the present time from our humble and helpless beginnings atthe hands of nature.

Secondly, the comparison with the sun’s path through the “great systemof fixed stars” is hardly appropriate. What Kant seems to have in mind is theprecession of the vernal equinox, i.e., the point at which the sun crossesthe celestial equator from south to north on its (apparent) path around the


earth. In the third millennium bc when the vernal equinox was in the signof Aries, Mesopotamian astronomers discovered that it slowly shifts inrelation to the zodiac. Between the third and second century bc it movedinto the sign of Pisces, and in our time it is making its slow transition intoAquarius. The precession covers about 1° in 72 years, so that the sun at thevernal equinox traverses a sign of the zodiac in roughly 2,160 years. It willhave 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 returnto its beginning, but the achievement of something that did not existpreviously. More importantly, the development of a living whole embody-ing the unfolding of a “hidden plan” cannot be compared with a merelyspatial advance; the inner Entwicklung of a living species is entirely unlike amere 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 thatsuggest that the idea of nature’s development towards the goal of a universalcosmopolitan 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 retardits internal culture without risking loss in might and influence inrelation to the others. Thus, “the preservation of this end of natureitself, if not progress in it, is fairly well secured through their aims ofambition” (8:27).

(2) Now major infringements on civil liberties perforce have effects on alltrades, especially in commerce, and thus result in the diminution of thepowers of the state in its external relations. The rulers must thus grantbasic civic liberties.

(3) But this freedom is gradually advancing. The vitality of the whole ofsociety stands in direct relation to citizens’ ability to seek their welfare inany way they please as long as it does not conflict with the freedom ofothers. “Hence the personal restrictions on the citizen’s doing andrefraining are removed more and more … and thus gradually arises,debilitating [unterlaufen] delusions and whims, enlightenment, as a greatgood that must raise humankind even out of the selfish aims ofaggrandizement on the parts of its rulers, if only the latter understandtheir 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


belong to book language only. The meaning and significance of“Enlightenment” was also the topic of another essay of Kant’s of thesame year, “What is Enlightenment?” He opened it with the nowclassical definition: “Enlightenment is man’s release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man’s inability to make use of his under-standing without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelagewhen its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution andcourage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! ‘Havecourage to use your own reason!’ – that is the motto of enlightenment”(8:35).What is at issue, Kant claims, is a change in themode of thinking;and for this enlightenment “nothing is required but freedom, andindeed the most harmless among all the things to which this term canproperly be applied. It is the freedom to make public use of one’s reasonat every point” (8:36).

(4) It is clear that the age of Enlightenment is more than just another epochin Kant’s view. It marks a turning point. “This enlightenment, how-ever, and with it also a certain warmheartedness (Herzensanteil ) whichthe enlightened human being who understands the good perfectlycannot but feel toward it, must ascend bit by bit up to the thronesand 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 itmeans to understand the good perfectly. The only thing uncondition-ally good is a good will. A good will is a will determined only by themoral law. The moral law is a law that I give to myself but that is validfor all rational beings alike. Kant describes this realization that I am theauthor of the moral law that at the same time is binding for everyrational being as autonomy, and claims that it is accompanied by thefeeling of respect or Achtung for the moral law. This feeling is alluded tohere, too, when Kant claims that the person who comprehends thegood perfectly feels his heart involved as well (Herzensantheil).

(5) The “governors of our world” will find it in their own interest at leastnot to hinder their own nation’s own weak and slow endeavors in thisregard.

(6) Because the trades are so much interchained, and the weakening of onenation cannot be without effect on others, these states “will be urgedmerely through danger to themselves to offer themselves, even withoutlegal standing, as arbiters, and thus remotely prepare the way for afuture large state body, of which the past world has no example toshow” (8:28).


(7) Although this future state is now only a rough project, “neverthelessalready a feeling begins to stir in all members, each of which hasan interest in the preservation of the whole, and this gives hope …that in the end that which nature has as its aim will finally comeabout.”

What are we to make of this “empirical evidence?” Interestingly, there ishardly any reference to experience at all in this reflection. Only points (1)and (2) refer to experience: each is introduced with a “jetzt” (now) toindicate that Kant is talking about the present. Point (3) expresses aprognosis: restrictions on the citizen’s doing and refraining will be increas-ingly removed and enlightenment will take its course – if only the rulers“understand their own advantage.” Point (4) makes the philosophical pointthat a proper understanding of the good is accompanied by the feeling ofrespect and interest in the good. The remaining points are predictions againof the future course of history, applying what was observed in the firststatements to the governors of the world: it is in their self-interest to ensurethat 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 nodoubt point out, with regard to point (1), that the subsequent history ofKant’s own country has shown that a return to barbarism is always possibleand that the “preservation of this end of nature” is anything but secure. Norwill he be impressed by Kant’s claim, in point (3), that enlightenment is agood that “must [sic] raise humankind even out of the selfish aims ofaggrandizement on the parts of its rulers.” Instead, he will point to thefact that the globalization that Kant anticipated, the worldwide interde-pendence of trade and commerce, may have reduced the risk of warsbetween states, without advancing towards the goal envisioned by Kant.What makes such stability possible is less the warm-hearted interests of theheads of states than corporate greed and the laws of the market. It brings inits wake not the release from citizens’ self-imposed tutelage but their deeperentrenchment in such tutelage at the hands of mass media, entertainmentindustry and a consumer culture that seeks to keep its audience uninformedand 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 ofKant’s examples. Must we perhaps think in a much larger time frame thenthe skeptic does when considering the possibility of a hidden plan ofnature? If so, then the examples of the kind Kant advances must also beirrelevant.


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In sum: Kant presents us with an intriguing idea, but his attempt todemonstrate its objective reality by reference to experience must be consid-ered a failure. Is it an empty idea, then? Before we reach this conclusion, letus 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 thereis not just empirical, but a-priori ground for assuming that nature is not justa blind and artless mechanism but intrinsically purposive.

Investigations into the nature of beauty, more precisely, into the natureof natural beauty,11 had led Kant, in theCritique of the Power of Judgment, tothe discovery of a hitherto unknown a-priori principle, the principle of aformal purposiveness of nature. This principle reveals to us “a technique ofnature, which makes it possible to represent it as a system in accordancewith laws the principle of which we do not encounter anywhere in ourentire faculty of understanding, namely that of a purposiveness with respectto the use of the power of judgment in regard to appearances, so that thismust be judged as belonging not merely to nature in its purposelessmechanism but rather also to the analogy with art. Thus it actually expandsnot our cognition of natural objects, but our concept of nature, namely as amere mechanism, into the concept of nature as art” (5:246).

According to Kant, this principle must also guide our judgment in theestimation of all living things in nature. For these cannot be regardedmechanically as mere aggregates of their parts. They have to be viewed asinternally organized and purposive: as organisms. Yet as such they must alsostand in essential relations to the elements of their environment (water, air,light, food, mates, etc.), without which they could not exist and propagatethemselves. That is, once we admit natural purposes we cannot but extendour teleological reflections to nature as a whole: “This concept leads reasoninto an order of things entirely different from that of a mere mechanism ofnature, which will here no longer satisfy us” (5:377).

If things in nature stand in relation to other things as means to end, andthe latter in turn may be means to yet other ends, the question ariseswhether this natural chain terminates in a being that is not a means toother natural ends? If so, then this can only be the human being. Endowedwith the ability to create ends of his own choosing, man assigns and arrangesthings 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.


view, manmay be said to be the ultimate end of nature. But we only need toask why man should exist on earth in the first place, Kant points out, inorder to realize that nothing in nature has an unconditional worth or is afinal 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 itwas still ill-adapted to its environment? Nature produces a staggering multi-tude of species, some better adapted than others, some not well adapted atall. Some survive, some become extinct.What makes us different? Themorewe developed reason, it might be said, the better our chances for survivalbecame, but this does not establish why the process should have beensuccessful in the first place. Kant’s Idea for a Universal History exclusivelydescribes relations of relative or extrinsic purposiveness (one thing’s beingbeneficial to another), that are as such insufficient to establish the objectivereality of the Eighth Proposition:

We can easily see from this that the only condition on which extrinsic purposive-ness (a thing’s being beneficial to others) can be looked on as an extrinsic physicalend, is that the existence of the thing for which it is proximately or remotelybeneficial is itself, in its own right, an end of nature. This, however, we can nevertell by a mere observation of nature. Hence it follows that, although relativepurposiveness points hypothetically to natural purposes, it does not justify anyabsolute teleological judgment. (5:368–9)

Only if man is regarded not merely as a natural being but also as abeing capable of freedom and autonomy, and hence author of, andsubject to, the moral law, is he an end in itself and hence must never betreated as a mere means to other ends. In this way, our existence can beviewed, 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 moralbeing” (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 beaddressed independently of whether or not there is an end of creation. Thisquestion, however, gives rise to a whole set of new problems which pre-sumably Kant was not aware of in 1784 – problems he tried to come to termswith in the final years of his life.12 Like most good philosophy, the essay Ideafor a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim raises more questions than itanswers.

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 variationson a tale of origins

Genevieve Lloyd

Kant’s Idea For a Universal History articulates a vision of a future for thehuman race centered on the idea of a “cosmopolitan goal” – a world order inwhich institutions and practices of international justice will achieve, forthe relations between nations, something analogous to the relations andrestraints which transform a collection of individuals into an ordered state.Kant is here deeply concerned with the idea of progress – with the questionwhether human life is getting better or worse, and with how his own timesshould be judged with regard to maturity in reason andmorals. But this richand elegantly constructed essay is also centrally concerned with the idea ofProvidence, and Kant’s ingenious conceptual play with that idea marks acrucial point of transition in its history: its transformation into the secularidea of progress. In this essay I want to focus on the relations between Kant’streatment of Providence, his version of cosmopolitanism, and his ingenioususe of a narrative device – a philosophical story of human origins anddevelopment.

The conceptual connections between Providence and cosmopolitanismcan be difficult to grasp, now that cosmopolitanism has come to mean littlemore than cultural sophistication, while the idea of Providence is relegatedto religious piety. Novel though Kant’s version of Providence is, the con-nections he draws between Providence and cosmopolitanism are not new.Both ideas, and the connections between them, go back to ancient Greekthought. In the mid-fourth century bce, Diogenes the Cynic describedhimself as a “citizen of the universe,” implying that, wherever else he mightbelong, he regarded himself also as at home in the cosmos itself. The Stoicconcept of the “cosmic city” developed as an extension of that idea. It cametogether with Providence because of its connotations of the world as anorderly whole, regulated by necessary laws – a structured whole which servesas a model for human conduct.

Talk of a structured order, imbued with purpose, fed the idea of theuniverse as a cosmic polis, the common home of gods andmen. It is a way of

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thinking of human presence in the world that is difficult for us to now fullycomprehend – not least in its way of looking to the order of the naturalworld as a model for human conduct. This idea of ethically significantcosmic order is crucial to the history of the cosmopolitan ideal.1

Cosmopolitanism is explicit in Zeno’s description in his Republic of awell-regulated society: “Our household arrangements should not be basedon cities or parishes, each one marked out by its own legal system, but weshould regard all men as our fellow citizens and local residents, and thereshould be one way of life and order, like that of a herd grazing together andnurtured 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, consis-tent, everlasting.”Whoever does not obey this law, he says, “ is fleeing fromhimself and treating his human nature with contempt; by this very fact hewill pay the heaviest penalties, even if he escapes all conventional punish-ments.”3 The idea of the cosmic city is also invoked by Seneca, who talks inOn Leisure of human beings as belonging to two communities: “the onewhich is great and truly common, embracing gods and men, in which welook neither to this corner nor to that, but measure the boundaries of ourstate by the sun; the other, the one to which we have been assigned by theaccident of our birth.”4

The connections between Providence and cosmopolitanism can seemremote to us now that the idea of Providence is closely associated with theidea of divine will. But for the Stoics the connotations of Providence were ofa necessary order, a necessity which was, however, entirely consistent withthe idea of a cosmos imbued with purpose. Although Kantian ethics has hada profound influence on modern ideas of the autonomous will, Kant’sphilosophy also has strong continuities with ancient Stoic ideas that nowseem at odds with belief in free will – ideas of the coexistence of Providence

1 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 AncientPhilosophy, 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 andStoic ethics, and the history of the idea of the “cosmic city,” see Malcolm Schofield’s excellentdiscussion in The Stoic Idea of the City (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991).

2 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.

3 Cicero, Republic 3.33 (H. von Arnim, Stoicorum veterum fragmenta [Leipzig, 1903–5] 3.325), astranslated by Long and Sedley, pp. 432–3.

4 Seneca, On Leisure 4.1, as translated by Long and Sedley, p. 431.

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and necessity, grounding a very different understanding of divine andhuman freedom.

There is a historical precedent, too, for another crucial strand in Kant’streatment of Providence: its connections with time. For Kant, human pro-gress is Providence unfolding in time; and it is also human reason unfoldingin history. The idea of divine Providence as entering into human history wasarticulated by Augustine inThe City of God. To understandwhat is distinctiveabout Kant’s treatment of Providence-in-time, it is helpful to look briefly atAugustine’s very different version of that idea.

It pleases divine Providence, Augustine says in The City of God, to “disposeof the times,” so that the law which is at one time given in the “mouths ofangels,” or in a multiplicity of gods, can at another time find more adequateexpression through Christianministers.5 But for Augustine divine Providencedid not unfold in human history as such. Instead, it unfolded in the narrativeof the coming of Christ. Providence was not directly linked with humanhistory; it was connected with the idea of Christianity as the language of Godin the world.

For Augustine, like Plotinus before him, Providence belongs properly notin time but in the eternal. It belongs with the “intellectual and immutablebeauty”which forms the rich assortment of transitory things.6 In metaphorsof music drawn from Plotinus, Augustine talks in a letter of God as “order-ing all events according to his providence, until the beauty of the completedcourse of time, whose parts are the dispensations suitable to each differentperiod, shall have played itself out, like the great melody of some ineffablecomposer.”7 But for Augustine this unfolding of Providence belongs withthe narrative of sacred history, the narrative of God’s word becomingincarnate in the world. The temporalising of Providence belongs not inthe secular world but in the history of the Christian “City of God” which hecontrasts with it.

For Kant in contrast it is in human history itself that Providence unfoldsin 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 innovationin the history of ideas of Providence. To see just how innovative it is, itis helpful to understand not only what he borrowed from older ideas ofProvidence and cosmopolitanism but also his use of the narrative of human

5 Augustine, The City of God, Book X, translated by John Healey, (London: J.M. Dent & Sons, 1962),vol. I, Chapter XV, p. 288.

6 Augustine, op. cit., Book X, Chapter XIV, p. 288.7 Augustine, Epistle 138, i,5, as translated in Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography (London:Faber and Faber, 1967), p. 318.


progress that is embedded in his essay. Kant revives the ancient conceptualconnections between ideas of Providence and cosmopolitanism by articu-lating both in terms of human history. He does this, in turn, by adapting agenre that was already familiar. His remarkable story of the development ofthe human species into moral maturity through conflict did not spring fromnowhere. He was making his own variations on a philosophical fiction thathad already been offered by Rousseau, subtly retelling the tale of originsthrough which Rousseau had expressed a very different view of humanprogress.Tales once told can be retold with variations; and philosophical tales can

be adapted to express different philosophical insights. Rousseau was himselfadapting philosophical fictions that had been elaborated by other philoso-phers. In the opening sections of theDiscourse on the Origins of Inequality hecomplained that, although the philosophers who have inquired into thefoundations of society have all felt the necessity of going back to a “state ofnature,” not one of them has gotten there. Dwelling on the flaws that havecharacterized human beings in corrupt societies, he argues they have trans-ferred to the state of nature traits that were in fact acquired in society. Inspeaking of human beings in an uncivilized condition, they in fact described“the social man.” In response Rousseau developed his own imaginativestrategy – his own fiction – in the form of a tale of origins. He told a story ofthe development of the human species on the model of the developmentof an individual human being. The parallel story – the development of anindividual human being in accordance with “natural” principles – was toldin Émile.Rousseau’s tale of the development of the species was supposed to reveal

true human nature. His disaffection with the corruptions inherent incontemporary society was expressed by the positioning of his own present –and the terrible future which can be expected to follow it – in relation to thewhole story of humanity. At the end of the introductory section, he says:“Discontented with your present state, for reasons which threaten yourunfortunate descendants with still greater discontent, you will perhaps wishit were in your power to go back; and this feeling should be a panegyric onyour first ancestors, a criticism of your contemporaries, and a terror to theunfortunates who will come after you.”8 Rousseau derived some optimismfrom his belief in Providence; there are in his story glimpses of positivetransformations 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.


closeness to nature. That positive vision of the future of the species iselaborated in The Social Contract; his overall treatment of the futureprospects of the human species is not pessimistic. But his version of thetale of origins in the Second Discourse emphasizes the relative bleakness ofthe present condition of humanity.

In the Idea Kant adapts Rousseau’s story of progress to offer both a morepositive view of his own present and a celebration of the future. Withinthe shared frame of a chronological fiction, Kant tells a very different storyfrom Rousseau’s. His version of social hope looks forward to an intenselyimagined future “cosmopolitan” stage of human history. This era of cos-mopolitanism is a construct of the imagination; but it is imagined not as autopia but as an achievable, and indeed inevitable, future. Rousseau hadseen the social antagonism of his times as indicating the corruption of thespecies under conditions of supposed social progress. Kant in contrast sees itas a necessary stimulus that will elicit nascent, distinctively human capaci-ties for reason. Without these “qualities of unsociability,” which give rise toresistance between human beings, “all talents would, in an Arcadian pas-toral life of perfect concord, contentment and mutual love, remain eternallyhidden in their germs; human beings, as good-natured as the sheep theytended, would give their existence hardly any greater worth than that oftheir domesticated beasts” (8:22).

There is a gentle irony in Kant’s description of the limitations of a conflict-free mode of life. It evokes in its wistful, bucolic simplicity the idyllic periodthat Rousseau, in the second part of theDiscourse on the Origins of Inequality,evokes as the golden age of human development – the times when men andwomen frolicked around the oak trees, enjoying the pleasures of sociabilitywithout the conflict-ridden competitiveness that emerges in more fullydeveloped society. Kant makes the Rousseauian overtones even more explicitin a later passage that directly challenges Rousseau’s descriptions of socialcorruption. His crucial difference from Rousseau lies in where they positiontheir present in relation to the narrative of progress. In Kant’s version of thestory, human nature “endures the hardest ills under the deceptive appear-ance 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 “thecondition of savages” as long as one “leaves out this last stage to which ourspecies has yet to ascend.” Rousseau’s flawed human beings have not yetreached the state of full moral maturity. “Cultivated” though his contempo-raries may be by art and science, and “civilized” in “all sorts of social decorumand propriety,” they are still a long way from the fullness of development thatis nature’s purpose for them (8:27).


Like Rousseau, Kant emphasizes themes of origin and development inevaluating the future prospects of humanity. But he takes the conceptualconnections between human history and Providence further than Rousseau.Talk of the “purposes” of nature runs right through Kant’s essay. He writesin the language of Providence and the text resonates with the history of thatidea. Yet this is a Providence cleverly adapted to a new sense of humanhistory. There are echoes of Leibniz’s concern with Providence in Kant’sremarkable opening passages on the order that is hidden in the apparentchaos of the human world. However, Leibniz’s vision was in comparisonstatic, indeed atemporal. He was concerned with the beautiful mathema-tical structures that could be discerned by the informed eye in an apparentlyrandom distribution of numbers. From the start, Kant’s emphasis is onthe temporal unfolding of human lives in all their messy unpredictability.What in the actions of individuals strikes us as “confused and irregular”maybe recognized in the history of the whole species, he says, as “steadilyprogressing 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 toanother, they are proceeding unnoticed, as by a guiding thread, according to anaim 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 tothem. (8:17)

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


purpose, one which goes beyond any individual or collective decision-making. Behind the apparently “nonsensical course of things human” therelies a profound “aim of nature” (8:18).

The ancient dispute between Epicurean and Stoic cosmologies – betweenchance and all-pervasive purpose – is recast as a contrast between rivalmodern hypotheses about history and politics. On the one hand, there iswhat Kant sees as the implausible idea that cosmopolitan order couldemerge through “random collisions” between states (8:25). On the other,there is Kant’s own preferred hypothesis that Nature develops the capacitiesof the human race by a regular process within apparent disorder. Withinthat frame of purpose-in-nature, there emerges a new resolution of the oldcontroversies about how the human capacity for evil is to be reconciled withprovidential cosmic harmony. Kant offers a positive view of the evils thatarise within human societies. Yet, unlike many earlier resolutions of the“problem” of evil through appeal to the idea of Providence, his approachdoes not attempt to subsume human suffering into any re-description interms 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 inpurposes other than our own: the inscrutable purposes of divine goodnessand justice. Although Kant sees nature as purposive, the only “end” it hasfor human beings is the self-realization that is implicit in their own nature.Through crises of “unsocial sociability” the human species ascends graduallyto its own highest level. There is no room here for human suffering to beconstrued as what we might now call “collateral damage” in the achieve-ment of higher divine purposes. Leibniz sought to reconcile human freedomwith divine purpose by incorporating human inclinations and desires intothe best of all possible worlds, already understood and chosen by God. Ourcooperation in the divine plan involves trustingly accepting our place in abigger picture that we can only dimly understand. Kant’s reconciliationstrategy is different: our antagonisms and the suffering they produce are thenecessary catalyst for the emergence of the dormant rational capacities thatdistinguish us from the rest of the universe.

In Kant’s version of Providence the higher ends of nature coincide withthe realization of our own human nature. What is expected of us if we are toco-operate with “the wisdom of nature” is that we exercise our minds – thatwe use our reason. In the slogan of enlightenment that Kant made famousin his companion essay “What is Enlightenment?” we must “dare to know.”Rather than mindlessly trusting, like Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide, in theinscrutable ends of a higher being, we achieve the ends of nature by learning


to think for ourselves. This can be read as an adaptation of old Stoic ideas ofcosmic purpose to the understanding of human history, yet it rests on adistinctively modern preoccupation with what separates human nature outfrom 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 mindthat crucial shift in the understanding of Providence can help us see moreclearly the role played by his tale of origins in the overall argumentativestrategy of his essay. The retelling of a philosophical story is of course notthe only thing that is going on here. The essay involves an audacious mixingof 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-priorimode. The essay is structured as a set of foundational“propositions” and methodically arranged elaborations, which togetherdraw out different aspects of the relations between the human individualand the species. Despite the deliberate evoking of the methods of thesciences, the essay as a whole reads as a sustained imaginative fiction, testedagainst the constraints of emotional plausibility. Although Kant makes fewexplicit references to Rousseau’s tale of origins, the whole essay is suffusedwith its presence. The background philosophical story provides an imagi-native 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 oremotional. Affects and imagination are brought into interaction with theprocedures of rational argument; but the appeal to reason is by no meansabandoned. Nor does the appeal to reason replace the exercise of imagi-nation: the tale of human development is incorporated into the argumentand cannot be readily separated from it. Kant insists that in accepting thathuman beings do not act from instinct, we thereby accept that humanreason is such that it can develop its potential only in the species, not inthe individual. Having accepted that, we are supposed to see also that theafflictions that befall the human race are intelligible in relation to the storyas a whole. That human beings depend on the labors and sufferings of theirforebears can be seen as necessary “once one assumes that a species ofanimals should have reason and, as a class of rational beings who all die,while the species is immortal, should nevertheless attain to completeness inthe 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


for philosophical ends. In bringing the philosophical use of fictions togetherso explicitly with the logical structuring of his “Propositions,” he is alsodoing something that is distinctively his own. Philosophers in the pasthad used tales of origin to elicit a sense of necessity – to present not just apleasing story but a sense of fittingness, a sense of how things must be.“Something thus it must have been …” says Plotinus in presenting hisheady account in the Enneads of the unfolding of “the All” into determinatebeing. Plato, his model, had already in the Timaeus used a tale of origins as ameans of making persuasive his convictions about how human society mustbe organized – trying to show how things should now be, on the basis ofhow 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 audaciousleap into the idea of a “philosophical history” which is as much concernedwith the future as with the past and present. This is a “history” in which theissue of truth will be assessed by judging “how world events must develop ifthey are to conform to certain rational ends.”

“Dare to know,” indeed! Kant in effect calls on his readers to dare toknow how things must be in the future. He repeatedly insists that someconclusions about the future of humanity are simply unthinkable. It isunthinkable, he says in the eighth proposition, that, out of contemporarydisorder, nothing rational will emerge, unthinkable that things mightsimply remain as they have been. It is not thinkable, he insists, that allthe civilization and cultural progress so far attained might be ultimatelysucceeded by a state of lawless freedom, by the rule of blind chance. The“unthinkable” in this context goes beyond subjective dismay at a badprospect. For Kant it is a requirement of rational thought that disordermust ultimately give way to order. Current discord must be secretly guidedby 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 morethan the evaluation of steps in a logical argument. It involves a capacity toimaginatively grasp the future in present events. The “universal cosmopo-litan 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 toemerge, he says: “… already a feeling begins to stir in all members, each ofwhich has an interest in the preservation of the whole” (8:28).

The sense of fittingness evoked by the exercise of philosophical storytelling has entered new territory. The philosopher’s narrative shows howhuman history – at least in its broad parameters –must unfold. But what are


we tomake of this alleged necessity? Kant acknowledges in the defense of hisfinal Proposition that it may seem absurd to suggest that such an exerciseshould yield anything more than “a novel.” Yet he insists that the ultimateaim of the exercise which he is here initiating is truth. It is, however, a truthgrounded in a practical imperative: this is how things must be if we are notto despair of ever finding a rational aim behind the spectacle of the world. Itis 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 ourhopes are not to be confined to what dim expectations we may hold aboutwhat 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 thepositioning of his own present finds expression in a resolve to shape thefuture. That optimism is grounded in a conviction of providential purposeat work in the world. This purpose is not seen as divine intervention, butrather as operating through the efforts of human beings to achieve thefullness of their own natures. But Kant does not merely offer a descriptionof these operations in human history. His strategic use of the tale of originsdemands of his readers that they position themselves with him as partic-ipants 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 thwartedby “caprice and folly.” But in daring to take up the tasks of enlightenment,his readers are supposed to have the opportunity to cooperate with thewisdom of nature. In the final sections of the essay Kant’s appropriation ofthe tale of origins yields a rhetorical challenge for his contemporary readers:they are invited to take up the challenge of consciously positioning themselvesin their present. As enablers of the cosmopolitan future, they are asked to seizethe historical moment, rather than putting capricious obstacles in the way ofits 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 thefuture itself – to future generations, the remote descendants of his contem-poraries, who will have to take up in their turn the legacy of “the burden ofhistory” (8:31). Where Rousseau talks only in pitying terms of the “unfor-tunates” who will come later, Kant embraces future generations as fellowparticipants in the achievement of the cosmopolitan goal. Their own futureconflicts will elicit in turn an accompanying process of enlightenment, aprocess which they too will either thwart or facilitate. “Without doubt theywill 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 regar-ding a cosmopolitan aim” (8:31). His contemporaries, he insists, owe it to theirdescendants – to us – not to stand in the way of the emerging maturity ofreason; 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 theexercise of imagination in which Kant invites his readers to participate. Hisessay embraces both the ancient past and the distant future. He has offered atemporalized version of the old Stoic idea of the “cosmic city,” transformedinto the ideal of a universal cosmopolitan existence, to be realized as “thematrix within which all the original capacities of the human race maydevelop.” It is a grand vision. What became of it and is it still accessibleto us?

Something of Kant’s temporalizing of Providence resurfaces in Hegel’seven grander vision of human history as the unfolding of Nature intoSpirit. Indeed, Hegel’s “Spirit” seems to have absorbed the very idea ofProvidence so completely that there is little room in his philosophy for anexplicit role for Providence. WhenHegel talks of Providence in the ShorterLogic he identifies it with his concept of “the notion” which is for him “thetruth of necessity.”9 His exalted sense of the future as the unfolding ofnature into Spirit goes beyond the shy hope of Kant’s vision of Nature’sprovidential purpose for humanity, unfolding in history. Here Providencedisappears into “Spirit” – and with it disappears also the related Kantianvision of cosmopolitanism as the full achievement of Enlightenmentreason.

In the absence of either a philosophically viable concept of Providence ora readiness to take seriously grand narratives of progress, it is not surprisingthat Kant’s cosmopolitan vision can fail to engage modern readers. To makesense of it we have to look, not so much forward fromKant, as back throughhim to the Stoics. Providence has receded and with it the conceptualconnections that once tied cosmopolitanism to ideas of an ordered cosmos.Can we enter into the exercise of imagining ourselves as enabling theemergence of a cosmopolitan world order, grounded in enlightenmentreason? Or are we on the other side of the collapse of Kant’s ideals, livingamidst the ruins of his Enlightenment vision? Can we really enter at all intothe 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 WilliamWallace(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1904), Chapter VIII, sec. 147, pp. 266–71.


It is inherent in Kant’s version of the genre that his tale of origins canaccommodate the horrors of present conflict. In that respect, it continuesthe history of the ideas of Providence that preceded it: no evil is so great thatit cannot be encompassed by Providence. It is not our realism about thehorrors of our present that most challenges our imagination here; perhaps itis rather the limits of our capacity to embrace a Kantian optimism about thefuture. It may be difficult, for example, to share Kant’s conviction that ourindividual mortality is encompassed by an indubitable immortality of thehuman species. We may well find it all too possible to entertain thehypothesis that Kant found “unthinkable” – that the ultimate future ofour 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 ofEnlightenment reason. It can illuminate our own relations to the ideals ofthe Enlightenment. Kant’s essay shows us that those ideals, definitivethough they were for the self-understanding of modernity, were themselvesrooted in philosophical ideas that are much older. In grasping our imagi-native distance from his vision of the future we can recover lost conceptualconnections between familiar concepts. Trying to locate ourselves in Kant’sphilosophical story can help us to see, for example, the links between ideasof human rights and cosmopolitan ideals – between the “universality” of ourrights as humans and the idea of being “citizens of the world.” It comesreadily to us to associate the discourse of universal human rights with ideasof a distinctive human essence – of a timeless human nature, common to allhuman beings. Reading the Idea can make us aware of unfamiliar connec-tions between modern ideals and old ideas of human beings as part of aninterconnected cosmos.To explore these conceptual connections, which make the Idea of con-

tinuing relevance, I want now to turn briefly to Kant’s own development ofsome of its central themes in his later political essays. His suggestion that thea sense of the future is already stirring in his own present is more fullydeveloped in The Contest of the Faculties, where he relates it to the enthu-siastic response he has now witnessed among his contemporaries to theevent of the French Revolution. What matters about the revolution, he saysin 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. Therevolution may succeed or it may fail. “It may be so filled with misery andatrocities that no right-thinking man would ever decide to make the sameexperiment again at such a price, even if he could hope to carry it outsuccessfully at the second attempt.” Yet the revolution has nonetheless


aroused in “the hearts and desires” of its spectators a sympathy which couldnot have been caused by anything other than “a moral disposition withinthe 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 signifi-cance 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 thematuring and flourishing of human reason. To sense the stirring of thefuture in their own present, Kantian “spectators” need to be able to readevents as signs pointing to things yet to be realized. But in responding toevents in that way the spectators are already positioning themselves assharing in the emergence of Enlightenment reason.

Kant’s cosmopolitan ideal can here be fruitfully read in conjunction withhis talk of a “public” use of reason in the companion essay to theIdea, theessay which so impressed Michel Foucault,11 “An Answer to the Question:‘What is Enlightenment?’” By the “public use of one’s own reason,” Kantsays early in that essay, he means “that use which anyone may make of it as aman of learning addressing the entire reading public.” The private use ofreason, in contrast, is “that which a person may make of it in a particularcivil post or office, with which he is entrusted.”12This “public” use of reasonis closely associated with Kant’s slogan “Dare to Know” and the idea of it isclosely connected to the kind of reason we have seen at stake in his“cosmopolitan aim,” the reason he sees as expressed in the moral maturityof the species. For Kant, as we have seen, its full articulation necessarilyinvolves the regulation not only of individual lives but also of the relationsbetween nations. But what makes this kind of reason “cosmopolitan”?

What connects these threads in Kant’s reflections on reason in hispolitical essays, I want to suggest, is the central theme of the Idea: theidea of an emergent autonomy. His concern is with reason as an evolvingcapacity – an ongoing, open-ended process. For him, it is an unfolding“predisposition” rather than a completed product. This evolving autono-mous 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 “The Contest of the Faculties,” as translated by H. B. Nisbet in Hans Reiss, ed., Kant: PoliticalWritings, 2nd edn. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 182.

11 See Michel Foucault, “What is Enlightenment?” in Paul Rabinow, ed., The Foucault Reader (NewYork: Pantheon Books, 1984), pp. 32–50, and his “What is Critique?” in James Schmidt, ed.,What isEnlightenment? Eighteenth Century Answers and Twentieth Century Questions (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1996), pp. 382–98.

12 “An Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” as translated by H. B. Nisbet, in Reiss, ed.,Kant: Political Writings, p. 55.


to the future. Kant’s “public” use of reason evokes a public intellectualspace, as it were, the occupation of which cannot be circumscribed. Thisspace must be “cosmopolitan,” for it must be open to all human beings whoare capable of thinking for themselves. There can be no foreclosing on therequirements for inclusion in this space. It embraces all who can projectthemselves into a future that they will themselves bring about. Autonomousreasoners are the makers of the cosmopolitan order of the future, rather thanits passive subjects.13 Kant’s moving embrace, in the Idea, of us, his futurereaders, is an imaginative enactment of the future realization of this cosmo-politan 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 abasis for critique of what is happening in his own present. He talks of alimited right to hospitality: the right of a stranger not to be treated withhostility when he arrives on someone else’s territory. This is a “right ofresort” which entitles all men “to present themselves in the society of othersby virtue of their communal possession of the earth’s surface.” The humanrace 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 notof “philanthropy” but of right. Human beings have a right not to be treatedwith hostility, so long as they behave “in a peaceable manner” in the placesthey happen to find themselves.Kant’s concern was with the hospitality that facilitated voyages of explo-

ration and commerce. The expectations implicit in those activities, hethought, often went beyond the rights to limited hospitality that theycould justly claim in the territories entered. The “right of strangers,” heargued, did not extend beyond “those conditions which make it possible forthem to attempt to enter into relations with the native inhabitants.”

In this way, continents distant from each other can enter into peaceful mutualrelations which may eventually be regulated by public laws, thus bringing thehuman race nearer to a cosmopolitan constitution. If we compare with thisultimate 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 theconnections between Kant’s treatment of reason in his political essays and in his major works. See heressay, “Vindicating Reason,” in Guyer, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Kant, pp. 280–308; and herConstructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant’s Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge UniversityPress, 1989), Chapter 2, “The Public Use of Reason,” pp. 28–50.


countries and peoples (which in their case is the same as conquering them) seemsappallingly great.14

It may well seem far-fetched to us now to think of the rights of uninvitedstrangers as conceptually connected with the very nature of Enlightenmentreason. But for Kant it is all part of the unfolding narrative of reason he hadboldly sketched in the Idea. The context of his “right to hospitality” was ofcourse very different from the mass movement of peoples that frames ourcontemporary concerns with the rights of asylum seekers, refugees and“economic migrants.” His use of the cosmopolitan perspective to groundthe “rights of strangers” can nonetheless remind us that the challengingissues thrown up by the uninvited visitor go beyond considerations ofcompassion, or what Kant called “philanthropy.”15

Trying to place ourselves imaginatively in Kant’s cosmopolitan futurecan serve to remind us that the confronting idea of a “right to resort” – aright of the uninvited stranger to at least a limited hospitality – was for himgrounded in a cosmopolitanism which he saw as the core of Enlightenmentreason. Understanding the ways in which his version of cosmopolitanismreworked older connections with ideas of Providence can also allow us to seethat it is an ideal that reaches back, through his political philosophy, to thethought of the ancient Greeks.

The content of Kant’s own version of the “cosmopolitan ideal” was ofcourse very different from what the ancient Stoics had in mind when theytalked of being “citizens of the world,” and what content we might nowgive to cosmopolitanism as an ideal will be different again. Kant’s callfor us “future descendants” to insert ourselves into the onward path ofprogress by embracing the cosmopolitan ideal is unlikely to inspire anenthusiasm comparable to what he saw stirring amongst his contempo-raries in response to the spectacle of the French Revolution. Yet there arecontinuities that connect us back through Kant to those ancient ideals,and they continue to be relevant, even if we cannot share his vision ofongoing progress.

We do not have to share Kant’s optimism about the future of the humanspecies to learn from his brilliant expounding of the cosmopolitan thread in

14 “Perpetual Peace,” as translated by N. B. Nisbet, in Reiss, ed, Kant: Political Writings, p. 106.15 For a useful discussion of the relevance of Kant’s treatment of the “right to hospitality” to contem-

porary 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.


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


chapter 1 1

Norms, facts, and the philosophy of historyTerry Pinkard

So many of the themes that later surface in German idealism’s treatment ofthe 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’sown famous treatment of the subject in his lectures. This has not goneunnoticed, and there have been recent attempts to make Kant into aHegelian avant la lettre (or maybe Hegel into a Kantian propter hoc).However, as Pauline Kleingeld has convincingly shown in her work onthe topic, the idea that Kant is really offering up a version of Hegel’s ownhistoricized conception of reason, or that Kant can make the assertions hemakes only at the cost of inconsistency with the basic tenets of the criticalphilosophy, are not really tenable positions to hold, even if Kant’s own listsof the various problems to be solved by such a philosophy of history looks insome respects like the checklist that the later post-Kantians read as theyconstructed their own views on the matter.1

On the one hand, there is one strikingly obvious difference betweenKant and his idealists successors (most prominently, Hegel) which has beennoted so often that it is only worth briefly mentioning here. Whereas Kantthinks that the achievement of a free political and social life is a regulativeideal, something for which we hope and progressively approximate butnever actually fully attain, Hegel holds that it is in fact entirely possible tohave a free society in the here and now which answers to all we canreasonably hope for in a free society. This has of course led to the suspicionthat 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 thecritical philosophy in the first place and which sets the stage for Kant’sand 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 ofMoral Development,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 16, 1 (1999).

216

phrase, that of the relation between “facticity and normativity.”2The Kantiansystem famously argues for there being two exclusive ways in which we mustunderstand ourselves and understand the world: There is the world (andourselves) as it exists in itself and as it appears (and must appear) to us.Notoriously, this distinction between the “in itself” and “appearance” hasproved to be one of the most vexatious of all Kant’s claims for every Kantcommentator since Kant’s own day to comprehend, and there has thus neverbeen a full consensus on just how to characterize the distinction. Be that as itmay, it has nonetheless always been clear that whether the distinctionamounts to a “two aspect” or a “two worlds” theory, there are in any eventtwo versions of the world and ourselves. It is also clear that whatever else Kantis taken to be saying, he is claiming that there is no way in which we canmakesense of our own freedomwithout invoking that distinction so that as wemustappear to ourselves, there is no possibility for freedom, but as we mustpractically think of ourselves, we must take ourselves to be free. Thus, in therealm of facticity, as natural beings embedded in a deterministic naturalworld, we are no more free than anything else, but as beings taken to existin a noumenal world (a world grasped in thought that goes beyond possibleappearance), we are capable of exercising a distinct form of causality that isnot itself comprehensible in terms of the category of causality we must bringto bear in making sense of the natural world – of that world under the onlyconditions 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 otheror to interact with each other. This is especially important for Kant, whowas acutely aware of the role of moral training and moral instruction andwas also equally aware of the strains such an attention to ourselves, con-strued naturalistically, put on our awareness of ourselves as subject to thenormative demands of the “fact of reason.” Thus, at one point in theMetaphysics 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 thecapacity to make a choice for or against the law … even though choice as aphenomenon provides frequent examples of this in experience… We can also seethat freedom can never be located in a rational subject’s being able to make a choicein opposition to his (lawgiving) reason, even though experience proves oftenenough that this happens (though we still cannot conceive how this is possible).3

2 The allusion here is, I hope, obvious: Jürgen Habermas, Between Facts and Norms: Contributions to aDiscourse Theory of Law and Democracy, trans. William Rehg (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1996).

3 MS 6:226, emphasis mine.

Norms, facts, and the philosophy of history 217

What motivates the need for a philosophy of history is just this basic tensionbetween normativity and facticity, between, or as we might put it, aconception of norms as not bounded by natural facts and norms thatseem to be only reflections of a particular point in time, of a particularsocial set-up, or as the expression perhaps even of a particular point of view.This constitutes the set of problems which have haunted philosophy sinceKant: how do we give a unified account of ourselves as bound by norms thatmakes room both for the normativity of reason and for the fact that thesenorms must appear to us as expressions of merely natural inclinations,positive laws, social rules, or given interests of one sort or another? This isespecially worrisome if one takes the Kantian turn to be ruling out anyanswer 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 ofdifferent “stuff” into an inquiry into the kinds of activities which character-ize our agency, and from the first Critique onward, those activities werecharacterized as norm-governed (as being, for example, judgments made inaccordance with rules) rather than merely events happening in accordancewith natural laws.

This quite naturally raises some questions about whether Kant’s ownconception of our freedom as not being conditioned by anything in thenatural world – as its being the result of our exercising our “own” causality –and his own view of the categorical imperative as being timeless andunconditionally binding on us can possibly be consistent with anythingother than a rather moralistic or highly moralized conception of history.Pauline Kleingeld lumps these worries under the topics of both the “uni-versal validity problem” and the “atemporal problem.” The problem of, inher words, “universal validity” is resolved by noting that “it is not reasonthat develops, but rather the predispositions for the use of reason.”4 Likewise,she claims that the “atemporal problem” is resolved by noting that althoughthe character and binding quality of the categorical imperative does not varyover history, our “understanding” of it does.5 Finally, as she also notes, Kanthimself admits that we cannot know the noumenal dispositions of an agent,but we must nonetheless also think that they are “in accordance with theempirical character of the agent.”6

4 Kleingeld, “Kant, History, and the Idea of Moral Development,” p. 62.5 Ibid., p. 69. 6 Ibid., p. 62.


Given these commitments, it is thus not surprising that Kant’s view ofhistory sees it as marking progress in something like our understanding ofwhat the moral law requires and in the establishing and maintainingof institutions that more adequately fit the requirements of the categoricalimperative. That there has been change in history in what we take the morallaw to demand of us is clear; that there has also been progress evidenced inthose changes is, so Kant is driven to conclude, also clear when viewed fromthe practical point of view. So Kant concludes, if there has indeed been thiskind of progress in history, then there must be something about our naturaland social make-up that is pushing us in the very same direction in which wewould have been going if we had been making those decisions all along infull self-awareness of the demands of the moral law itself (even though weclearly 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 otherthings that Kant says elsewhere, such as the famous line in the Grundlegungto the effect that,

We need not now wonder, when we look back upon all the previous efforts thathave been made to discover the principle of morality, why they have one and allbeen found to fail. Their authors saw man as tied to laws by his duty, but it neveroccurred to them that he is subject only to laws which are made by himself and yetare universal, and that he is bound only to act in conformity with a will which is hisown 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 Kantso famously makes in the opening sentences of “What is Enlightenment?”where he notes that the failure to achieve the kind of freedom that comeswith thinking for oneself is not so much a cognitive failure, a failure todiscover the correct law, as it is more like an attitudinal failure; failure toachieve enlightenment, Kant says, is after all a,

self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understandingwithout the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is notlack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without theguidance of another.8

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

7 G 4:432.8 Kant, “The Answer to the Question: ‘What is Enlightenment?’” in Reiss, ed., Kant: PoliticalWritings, p. 54.


the order of simply not getting their premises into line with each other. Itis more along the lines of a practical or moral indictment of them as, inKant’s own words, their being “lazy” and “cowardly.” The predispositionswhich have developed historically, as Kleingeld puts it, seem to be devel-oping more along the lines not so much of that of blindness to the claims ofthe categorical imperative but along the lines of some kind of motivationaldisorder that makes it impossible even to see the moral law as a (self-produced) incentive to action.

We thus seem to marking moral progress in history in terms either ofgetting our predispositions in line with what rationality has in fact alwaysrequired of us (the discovery model), or in terms of finally getting thecorrect predispositions to put us in the position of finally having thecourage to think for ourselves (the indictment model). However, sincethe terms of the critical philosophy rule out our making any connectionbetween the factual development of these predispositions and the actualuse 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 whichnature (or a wise creator) has so arranged things that the two worlds or thetwo aspects will come to be in harmony with each other. That is, natureseems to operate as if it had a plan to make the empirical interests ofindividuals collide with the interests of others in such a way that certaininstitutional set-ups are made necessary to deal with those conflicts, whichin turn provokes further collisions, which in turn leads to a state of affairssuch as we find in an “enlightened age” and which begins to look structur-ally like what we would have arrived at if the institutions had in factbeen designed by perfectly rational agents with a moral end in mind. Theeffects of nature and the demands of morality can be conceived as even-tually coming to harmonize, even though there is no way to demonstratethat harmony to exist nor, in the last analysis, to make any metaphysicalsense of it.

On the surface, this looks especially troubling if one were to regard thisfinding from the practical point of view itself (where we must assumeourselves to be free). On the one hand, I might ask myself: what am I, aconcerned moral agent, supposed to do to help further this kind of moralprogress? On the other hand, from the naturalist point of view, it might seemas if it does not matter what I do, at least in the long run, since human natureitself is so constructed that it tends to put itself in situations which over thelong haul will naturally force the issue toward the right conclusion eventhough nomoral intention is at work in the process at all. Yet the very folly ofhuman aspirations also inspires the practical requirement that we act to bring


about a world in which the moral law is better supported by institutionsappropriate to developing our predispositions to rational conduct.9

Although we cannot make any pre-critical metaphysical sense of thisview of history (since the imputation of purposes to nature violates thestrictures of the critical philosophy’s destruction of the possibility ofclassical metaphysics), we can still, so Kant seems to think, make phil-osophical sense of it with the tools that the critical philosophy supplies.The philosophy of history would show us why we must think of historyas exhibiting rational progress (in terms of shaping our predispositionsto rationality), why this cannot be given a metaphysical explanation(because of the gulf between things in themselves and appearance), andwhy this gives us a reassurance for acting morally. Moreover, as Kantmakes clear, a complete philosophy of history should be able to show usthat the “natural” social forces at work in history have as their objectprimarily the civil constitutions of various peoples. Here the philosophy ofhistory has to come to terms with several different kinds of oppositionsthat animate Kant’s thought besides that of appearance and things inthemselves.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 ofwhich Kant labels the “most difficult problem” of all to solve. Both involvewhat looks like a conundrum or even a paradox (or perhaps are differentversions of the same problem).

9 In “Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History” (published in 1786), Kant says that “thinkingpeople are subject to a malaise which may even turn into moral corruption, a malaise of which theunthinking are ignorant – namely discontent with that providence by which the course of the world isgoverned. They feel this sentiment when they contemplate the evils which so greatly oppress thehuman race, with no hope (as it seems) of any improvement.” Immanuel Kant, “Conjectures onthe Beginning of Human History,” in Kant’s Political Writings, p. 231. He follows that with theadmonition, “it is of the utmost importance that we should be content with providence, even if the path ithas laid out for us on earth is an arduous one” (“Conjectures on the Beginning of HumanHistory,” inKant’s Political Writings, p. 231). In “On the Common Saying: That May Be True in Theory But it isno use in Practice” (published much later in 1793), Kant notes that “it is a sight unfit for… the mostordinary, though right-thinking man to see the human race advancing over a period of time towardsvirtue, and then quickly relapsing the whole way back into vice and misery. It may perhaps be movingand instructive to watch such a drama for a while; but the curtain must eventually descend. For in thelong run, it becomes a farce. And even if the actors do not tire of it – for they are fools – the spectatordoes, for any single act will be enough for him if he can reasonably conclude from it that the never-ending play will go on in the same way forever.” Immanuel Kant, “On the Common Saying: ‘ThisMay Be True in Theory, but It Does Not Apply in Practice,’ “ in Kant’s Political Writings, p. 88. ThusKant notes that when we contemplate human history, what we at first seem to have before us is “woventogether out of folly, childish vanity, often also out of childish malice and the rage to destruction”(Idea 8:18).


the f i r s t p rob l em

The first of these has to with Kant’s statement in theGrundlegung, where heis describing the formula of the kingdom of ends, that in such a kingdom (aReich), each agent is both sovereign and subject; each both and at the sametime legislates the law – each is thus a sovereign above which there is nogreater power – and each is subject to the law which he and others havelegislated, and each is thus subordinate to a power above himself. One wayof taking this is as Kant’s own way of showing that the formula of thekingdom of ends provides an answer to why any putative alternativeformulation in terms of a Leibnizian harmony of monads is in fact eitherreducible to or derivable from the formulation of universal law and is thusnot really an alternative at all.10 Each individual agent thus “mirrors” withinherself the systematic moral whole in which each respects the dignity of allothers and acts only on maxims which meet the test of universalizability.

In another context in the Critique of Judgment, Kant offers a model ofjudgment that seems to cash out what this might mean when he says that inseeking the required impartiality in judgments,

we compare our judgment not so much with the actual as rather with the merelypossible judgments of others, and put ourselves in the position of everyone else,merely by abstracting from the limitations that happen to attach to our ownjudging.11

To put it in Habermasian terms, in that work, Kant moves a morecommunicative sense to the kingdom of ends, which we can then imaginenot as consisting in “agents-as-monads mirroring the moral decisions madeby other such monads” but something more like a real give-and-take ofmutual perspective-taking among reasoning agents.

However, as Kant makes it clear, it would be wrong to assume thatanything like this idealized giving and asking for reasons is what actuallydrives people to establish civic unions and civil constitutions (or perhapsto put it more precisely, what in the appearing world can be determinedto drive them), since “human beings, who are otherwise so takenwith unconstrained freedom, are compelled by need to enter into this

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

11 Critique of Judgment, §40.


condition of coercion” (Idea 8:22), not by any such idealized activity ofmutual perspective-taking.Yet in his discussion of the state of nature in theMetaphysics of Morals, he

does not stress the natural social forces that impel people to form such civicunions for mutual advantage but the categorically binding obligation to do so.The issue has to do with what whether there is any unconditional obligationfor 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 anunconditional obligation, there must be some way of deriving such anobligation from the categorical imperative itself. Kant in fact proposes this,but, in what will strike many casual readers of Kant as surprising (or, for thosewho read him through the lens of contemporary Kantian liberal politicalphilosophy, even to be inconsistent), Kant concludes that this obligationnecessarily requires us to conclude that the civic union established must takethe form of what Jeremy Waldron has called (in full awareness of its initiallyproblematic-sounding character) Kant’s “normative positivism” and whichRobert Pippin has tried to show displays his proto-Fichtean commitments.12

As Kantmakes clear in a variety of different places, the obligation to move outof a state of nature to a civic union could not be accomplished by what he callsa “unilateral will.” In a state of nature, I have a right to take possession ofnatural things as my property; this is so because whereas I have a variety ofmoral rights, those natural things have none, and thus I do them no wrongwhen I seize them for my own ends. I thereby also have a right to defend myrightful possessions, and this will inevitably, as an empirical fact, bring meinto 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 thosefor 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 overwho 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 settlethat on their own (an interpretation that he admits is not quite that easy tofind in Kant but which is nonetheless, as he puts it, a “plausible” interpreta-tion of the relevant ideas at work.)13

However, that looks as if it still makes the obligation to leave the state ofnature rest on an empirical fact – even if for practical purposes also anunavoidable fact – about human beings and their propensity for disagreement,

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

13 Waldron, “Kant’s Legal Positivism,” p. 1550.


whereas Kant himself argues for a stronger point: no “univocal”will at all couldpossibly establish the duty to leave the state of nature. That is, nobody coulddecide on their own, even with the most benevolent of motives, that this wasthe way to resolve such property disputes. When I declare something to be myproperty, Kant says, “I thereby declare that everyone else is under obligation torefrain from using the object of my choice,” and “a unilateral will cannot serveas a coercive law for everyone with regard to possession that is external andtherefore contingent, since that would infringe upon freedom in accordancewith universal laws.”14 Kant even notes that this prohibition against a “unilat-eral will” is notmerely an argument to the effect that no single individual couldlegitimately perform this act but that no mere collection of individuals coulddo that, for as he puts it, “a unilateral will (and a bilateral but still particularwillis also unilateral) cannot put everyone under an obligation that is in itselfcontingent,” and he immediately adds that this requires “a will that is omni-lateral, that is united… a priori and necessarily.”15No de facto social collectionof wills can suffice; a universal will is required to establish the duty to leave thestate of nature.

This puts Kant in the position of claiming that there are indeed propertyrights in the state of nature –matters about which there are right and wronganswers – and yet it seems to suggest that the determination of what countsas a property right is itself dependent on determination by a legislature(which need not on Kant’s own account mirror the relations of propertythat would have been established in the state of nature, even if there actuallyhad been a state of nature).

That in turn seems to present a kind of interpretive dilemma. On the onehand, Kant can be read as endorsing something like Hume’s position to theeffect that the distinction between “mine” and “thine” – the institution ofproperty in general – is itself established only within the rules set out in acivil union and that there therefore could be no real property at all in thehypothetical state of nature; property would only be possible once there arerules laid down by the relevant authorities.16 However, since Kant rules outHume’s own justification of these rules in terms of their utility to society, he

14 MS 6:255–6. 15 MS 6:263.16 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 candistinguish these objects? Here we must have recourse to statutes, customs, precedents, analogies, anda hundred other circumstances; some of which are constant and inflexible, some variableand 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 couldhave no place, were not the former previously established: for otherwise the distinction of mine andthine would be unknown in society.”


must seek the justification of them in the idea of a law of freedom that iscompatible with an equal freedom for all, and since the rules governing suchproperty cannot be set unilaterally, it would seem that they must then be setsomehow socially.17 Unfortunately, Kant himself does not endorse any kindof social solution to the problem, which, since it would be in his terms,“bilateral,” would only remain therefore the same as “unilateral”; it must beinstead the universal rational will which creates the conditions of thepossibility 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 themove to a civil union under law. Such a view might seem to bring Kant muchcloser to the views of Hobbes, but this is a move which Kant quite obviouslyand vehemently rejects. Instead, Kant rightly insists that the justification of themove to a civil union – which is always to be distinguished from the factualmotives that bring about civil unions in the natural world – has to do not withcalculations about my own advantage nor even with negotiations with othersbut with the moral necessity (legislated by the universal rational will) tobecome a member, that is, a citizen, of a civil union.18 The rights to propertyin anything like a state of nature thus remain merely provisional rights untilthey are modified and made more secure in a civil union.

the s e cond prob l em

The worry about whether property rights are only provisional in the state ofnature and require their full specification in civil union under the rule oflaw, or whether, strictly speaking, there simply are no such property rights atall in a state of nature may indeed look like a worry about a distinctionwithout a difference. This is especially put into harsh light by virtue ofKant’s own “normative positivism.” Individuals have the moral authority tocompel others whomay not wish to leave the state of nature to enter into thecivil union. This follows from Kant’s own constructivist approach to the

17 In “The Kantian State,” Robert Pippin tries out this strategy of seeing in Kant’s arguments a kind ofanticipation of Fichte’s claims that property rights arise out of mutual recognition (and thus a step onthe way to Hegel’s own more robust social theory of agency). The problem with this approach is thatit goes against Kant’s own stated views about the right of such property preceding civil union.

18 Waldron puts this nicely and succinctly: “If the subject wants to think about the advantages ofmembership in civil society, then he must think relationally about what that membership secures, sofar as the reciprocity and mutual assurance between his rights and others’ rights are concerned. Inother words, he is to be aware that his presence in the civil society is as necessary for the interest andadvantage 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.


moral law; there is no obligation until the law has been constructed, but, ina manner analogous to constructivism in mathematics, once the answer tothe problem has been constructed, it is a priori necessary. The problem withthe state of nature is that it puts the subjects in such a state under a set ofcontradictory duties. Robert Pippin has argued that attention to theKantian text shows that these include the duties: (1) to appropriate andseize things for one’s own use and to defend one’s appropriations; (2) theduty not to wrong others; and (3) a correlative duty to do what is necessaryto make compliance with both (1) and (2) rationally possible.19 Since in anycase where there is a dispute about whose property something is (such as adispute over first occupancy), and (as a moral requirement) neither party tothe dispute can serve as a judge in their own case, both parties are morallycompelled to find a third party who can serve as a judge and are morallycompelled to submit their own wills to the judgments made by that thirdparty. In effect, this requires them to construct a new principle, that havingto do with a civil union under rule of law, thus establishing a sovereignpower over themselves. This much follows from the formula of universallaw: I cannot universalize a maxim that requires contradictory commit-ments in agents who hold such maxims – in this case, the complex maximof, 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 samemoral law requires agents to submit themselves to a real sovereign againstwhich 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 disobedienceto the law is in effect to put himself back in the state of nature which he hasa timeless and unconditional duty to leave in order to join a civil union ruledby law, and he has also the right to compel others to leave such a state ofnature.20 Now, the sovereign clearly has a moral duty to legislate only just

19 See Pippin, “The Kantian State.”20 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 therevolutionary overthrow of legal authority, noting that the execution of a monarch is “a crime thatremains forever and can never be expiated… the sin that cannot be forgiven either in this world or thenext… Like a chasm that irretrievably swallows everything, the execution of a monarch seems to be acrime 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 … diewelche weder in dieser noch in jener Welt vergeben werden kann … welches, wie ein alles ohneWiederkehr verschlingender Abgrund, als ein vom Staate an ihm verübter Selbstmord, ein keinerEntsündigung fähiges Verbrechen zu sein scheint.”


laws (or, negatively put, not to legislate any laws that violate any of thederivative rights of the categorical imperative), but the citizens can have nolegal or moral rights to resist even unjust laws. This is Kant’s “normativepositivism.”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 timethe most difficult and the latest to be solved by the human species” (Idea8:23). 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 themost difficult of all; indeed, its perfect solution is even impossible; out ofsuch crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing entirely straightcan be fabricated” (Idea 8:23). (Kant notes in addition that part of theproblem in solving this task is that we also need a correct conception of thebest possible constitution of such a civic order along with the good will toaccept 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 leastwithin 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 isexactly what drives Kant to postulate something like a “hidden plan ofnature” (the Eighth Proposition), in which, first, “nature” has made us tointeract with each other such that our “predispositions” to reason havebecome 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 toaccept the responsibilities that were with us all along. Indeed, there must besuch a plan, since, as Kant notes, there indeed has been progress and theprobabilities of such a reconciliation between our facticity and the norma-tive demands of reason are so low as to make it impossible for this to havehappened accidentally. Moreover, it is humanly impossible for humans towork this out on their own:

[A]lthough as a rational creature he wishes a law that sets limits to the freedom ofall, his selfish animal inclination still misleads him into excepting himself from itwhere he may. Thus he needs a master, who breaks his stubborn will and neces-sitates him to obey a universally valid will with which everyone can be free. Butwhere will he get this master? Nowhere else but from the human species. But thenthis 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 problembetween facticity and normativity thus emerges as the “most difficult” and


the “latest” of all the problems to be solved. And the reason for the difficultyis that in Kant’s own terms, which comprehend the difference betweennorms and facts as being located in the difference between noumenal andphenomenal reality, the problem is quite simply irresolvable.

But if this is the most difficult and the last problem to be solved, then thequestion is thus immediately raised: what would a philosophy of historylook like that did not make the critical assumption about the noumenalreality of freedom and the natural reality of our being determined? To theextent that the problem is one of mediating between facticity and norma-tivity, it will be an extension of the Kantian program even if carried out infairly fundamentally different terms.

Kant notes that this “last” and “most difficult” problem to be solvedinvolves the necessity of forcing people to change their predispositions so asto bring them in line with reason. To cast off the distinction betweennoumenal and phenomenal reality while holding fast to the distinctionbetween norms and facts thus requires the philosophy of history to hold fastalso to both of the Kantian ideas of marking progress in history and ofexplaining how it is that our interactions with each other would eventuallylead us to something like a more rational set-up. Now to be sure, thisremains “the most difficult problem to solve” since it requires us to showhow the establishment of intersubjective relations among natural individu-als can be so structured as to provoke a progress in rationality itself, and thisin turn would require some way of understanding the way in which therequirement of “a master to break his self-will and force him to obey auniversally valid will under which everyone can be free” can be understoodin terms not merely of masters imposing their own will on others (whichthus 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 beinginformed at a deep level by commitments to relations of mastery andservitude in the form of life that sustains that kind of civil constitution. Ifso, then the “inherent defects” in those constitutions are due in part to thefailures of non-normatively based mastery itself to be able to normativelysustain itself over time. The later forms of life that sustain those kinds ofcivil constitutions emerge out of the very determinate failures – the “inher-ent defects” – of those earlier attempts to provide a rational comprehensionof themselves, and, if there is progress to be marked, it must be that “therewas always left over a germ of enlightenment that developed further


through each revolution and this prepared for a following stage of improve-ment” (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 bekept intact. To depart from Kant would be to jettison the commitment to asharp distinction between phenomena and noumena and to construct anunderstanding of the relation between norm and fact that adheres to thespirit 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 noumenaand phenomena but by appeal only to the phenomena themselves wouldthus put the Kantian program in the position of being able to realize itself inmany of the same terms Kant laid out for it. As appealing to the distinctionbetween norm and fact as itself making its appearance in the world ofphenomena – that is, within experience itself – it would, of course, be a“phenomenology” of sorts. As such a “phenomenology,” it would have tocomprehend that the Kantian kingdom of ends as the idealized whole –within which each agent is both sovereign and subject – would have to berethought as the social order in which nobody is either “master” or “slave”but each is equally “master,” as legislator, and “slave” as subject to thelegislation of all, and it would have to show how that normative distinctionwould have to emerge within the “phenomena” themselves because of the“inherent defects” of earlier attempts to establish a livable set of relationsbetween masters and vassals. It would also have to show how the provision-ality of matters like property rights means neither that those property rightsare suspended in the civil union which comes conceptually (although nothistorically) after them, nor that they are empty or meaningless until filledout by the institutional structures of the civil union, but instead that themeanings involved in the commitments to something like the abstract rightto property can themselves only be fully realized – that is, worked out andput into practice without also thereby becoming impracticable in theprocess of doing so – by showing how they are embedded in a moredeterminate set of commitments having to do with a whole form of lifeand the political shape it gives itself. (There is a term in philosophicalGerman that brings together in one word how the meaning of somethingcan be understood in terms of how it is realized in more determinatepractices – 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 thatdoes not reduce rationality to mere “bilateral” agreement but does notleave it floating in the thin air of the noumenal order. To reject the


noumenon–phenomenon distinction would also mean that one cannotsimply presuppose there is a universal conception of reason which is alwaysthere; to show that one’s conception of reason is universal, one must be ableto redeem that claim in ways that will be acceptable in some proper sense toothers, and that requires an examination of the social and historical bases ofagency in the realm of appearance itself. To carry that out, though, theKantian would have to do the one thing that Kantians seem loath to do.They would have to becomeHegelians. And, so far, that has seemed like toobitter a pill to swallow.21

21 These last couple of sentences perhaps should be couched a bit more cautiously. There is obviouslyanother way of being Kantian that is on the table that has in fact taken the Hegelian turn and thenreturned back to Kant without returning to the noumenal/phenomenal distinction. That is of courseto be found in the works of Jürgen Habermas, at least since his book on The Theory of CommunicativeAction. To take that into account here, however, would require more than just another essay. Anotheralternative 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 justanother essay to do it justice.


chapter 1 2

Philosophy helps historyRüdiger Bittner

After a great many surprising statements Kant’s essay Idea for a UniversalHistory with a Cosmopolitan Aim offers the reader a truly amazing one in theend: namely, that the description of history that Kant envisages may itselfcontribute 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 “theperfect civil union of the human species” (8:29), and Kant claims thatphilosophers describing history as pursuing that aim thereby help historyto reach it. In what follows I shall investigate first what this help is supposedto consist in and second on what grounds Kant can claim that philosophywill be helpful in this way.

i

Here is the Ninth Proposition, the passage putting forward Kant’s claimmost explicitly:

A philosophical attempt to work out universal world history according to a plan ofnature that aims at the perfect civil union of the human species, must be regarded aspossible and even as furthering this aim of nature. (8:29)

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

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description of history as moving toward its cosmopolitan aim a philosoph-ical history, which is how Kant uses the expression “philosophical history”in the last sentence of the Idea. (Note that so understood a philosophicalhistory is not a kind of history, history being a set of events, but a kind ofdescription of history.) Kant’s second claim in the Ninth Proposition thencomes to this: a philosophical history contributes itself to the movement itascribes to history.

It may be objected that talk of history’s cosmopolitan aim, and hencetalk of a contribution to history’s moving toward it, is unwarranted as longas it has not been shown that the cosmopolitan state is indeed the aim ofhistory, and this could only be shown in the philosophical history that Kantdeclares feasible in the first of the two claims just distinguished, withoutundertaking the task himself. In fact, however, the description of history asmoving towards the cosmopolitan state is not intended to prove the aim-directedness of history, but only to render it visible in the historical material.That the cosmopolitan state is the aim of history is something that Kanttakes himself to have already shown in the Idea. The argument he offers isthis: nature wants all potentials to be fully developed (First Proposition),human potential can only be fully developed in civil society (FifthProposition), and civil society needs, in the long run presumably, a cosmo-politan state (Seventh Proposition). Having summarized this argument inthe Eighth Proposition, Kant can certainly take himself to be in a position inthe Ninth Proposition to refer to history’s cosmopolitan aim.

It is not clear, however, what this contribution consists in. Since else-where in the Idea the text following under a proposition gives an argumentfor it, as in the case of the First Proposition, or adds explanations, as inthe case of the Fourth Proposition, one would expect the text under theNinth Proposition to remove this unclarity and to specify what it is that aphilosophical account of history contributes to history’s movement. In factthe text under the Ninth Proposition only puts forward a number ofconsiderations purporting to show that a philosophical account would beuseful in some respect or other. This is less than we need. A philosophicalaccount of history could be useful in various ways without helping history tomove on toward its cosmopolitan aim. So the question is whether amongthe uses of a philosophical history which Kant mentions there are some thatsubstantiate his claim that it contributes to history’s moving toward itscosmopolitan aim.

Kant mentions four ways in which a philosophical account of historycould be useful. First, it could help to explain the “confused play of thingshuman,” and second, it could assist “an art of political soothsaying about


future changes in the state.” In short, it could be used for purposes ofexplanation and prediction. Clearly, these two services of a philosophicalaccount of history do not directly further the cosmopolitan cause. To besure, better able to understand their past and to foresee their future, peoplelead a more enlightened life, and in this way philosophy does change thecourse of history. In this sense, however, any intellectual endeavour changesthe course of history, helping people to enlightenment in other areas of theirlives, like agriculture, say, or economics. Yet there is no reason to expectenhanced capacities of historical explanation and prediction to move historyahead specifically in the direction of a cosmopolitan state. Kant suggests asmuch when he adds that this utility of a philosophical account of history isone “which has already been drawn from the history of human beings.”Historical explanation and prediction, then, is improved already by ordi-nary, i.e., non-philosophical historical research. Since a contribution tohistory’s moving forward was clearly expected from a philosophical accountof history in particular, that contribution cannot consist in enabling peoplebetter 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 consolingprospect into the future” will be opened. The view into the future openedby a philosophical account of history is consoling in a sense similar to that inwhich you console a child who has suffered some mishap. You do not denythat what happened is bad. You rather lead the child to see that it is not asbad as it seemed, or that there are other good things left which make thesituation yet look hopeful overall. Similarly, Kant’s “consoling prospect intothe future” responds to the mishap described in the introduction of theIdea, the spectacle of “folly, childish vanity, often also … childish maliceand the rage to destruction,” a spectacle that arouses our indignation. Aphilosophical account of history will not deny the unreason prevailing inhuman history. Instead, it will make us see that humankind, for all theabsurdity and wickedness of its acting, is still on its way to the state which itis meant to reach. We are not lost in the woods, the philosophical historianis telling his fellow humans, we are on track, little though it may be evidentin the events we are witnessing. That message, if believable, may certainlyraise the spirits of the travellers, the philosopher included, and this couldlead 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 isKant’s worry about how posterity will be able to cope with the “burden ofhistory” that we are going to leave them after a couple of centuries more,

Philosophy helps history 233

given the detail in which contemporary history is written nowadays. It is astrange worry, for the following reason. In the phrase “burden of history,”which translates “Last von Geschichte,” “history” must be understood as amass term, otherwise Kant would have written “Last der Geschichte.” This isto 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 doesnotmean thereby that we are leaving behind lots of historical events, but ratherlots of books. Then, however, it is not clear why the mass of history we aregoing to leave behind should be a burden. Kant wonders how posterity mightmanage to “grasp” (fassen) all that history coming down to them, but whetheryou take “grasping” literally or intellectually, it is difficult to see why they needto do so. They may just omit to grasp all those books, but leave them todissolve 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 truthonce laid down, and then of course posterity is in trouble, with the output ofhistorians doubling every five years or so. But it is not clear what should holdus to such a demanding task. In the footnote to the text under the NinthProposition, Kant maintains that only the continuity of a learned publicauthenticates historical documents from peoples outside this tradition, andso one could argue that a learned public neglecting to preserve historicalknowledge would jeopardize the continuity of history itself. This is a poorargument, though it is advanced frequently by defenders of the humanities inour days. For one thing, it is unlikely that our forgetfulness will be complete, incontrast to blotting out details here and there, and only if complete could itbreak the thread of historical continuity. For another, it is just not true thathistorical continuity requires historical knowledge. It is not true that anythinglying beyond the confines of the enlightened nations’ tradition is in Kant’swords “terra incognita.” For example, thanks to archaeological evidence alonewe know quite a bit about human life in the stone age. So historical knowledgeis not the Atlas carrying the historical world. It is just one historical itemmore.

Kant’s worry may be strange or not; as a remedy he offers a line of thoughtsimilar 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 whichmight long since have been extinguished, only from the viewpoint of what intereststhem, namely, what nations and governments have accomplished or harmedregarding a cosmopolitan aim. (8:31)

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


rest. Kant apparently thinks he knows what will be of interest to them,namely, anything that advanced or hindered the cosmopolitan cause, but itis not clear that his claim is warranted. To be sure, if the argument of theFirst to Seventh Propositions stands, the cosmopolitan state is in fact theaim of history. Posterity, though, may not know that it is, as little as presenthumankind does who work their way toward it not knowing that theydo (see the text under the Fourth and Seventh Propositions). Thus latergenerations, whether already enjoying the benefits of a cosmopolitan stateor not, might still care only about, say, genealogies of royal families andmake 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 tothe last sentence of Kant’s text, this fact gives a further reason for under-taking a philosophical history:

But to pay regard to this, and likewise to the desire for honor of the heads of state aswell as their servants, in order to direct it at the sole means by which they can bringtheir glorious remembrance down to the latest age – that can still be additionally asmall motive for the attempt to furnish such a philosophical history. (8:31)

Actually, two reasons are mentioned here, but as the first is expressedsomewhat obscurely, let us begin with the second. Here the idea seems tobe that a philosophical history, viewing our past from a cosmopolitanperspective just as posterity’s writing of history will view its past, showspoliticians how to assure an honorable mention in posterity’s history book.(“Politicians” renders Kant’s ancien régime expression “heads of state as wellas their servants,” since surely Kant means by “servants” ministers, notvalets.) Given politicians’ ambition, showing them what brought earlieragents honorable mention in the cosmopolitan history we write makesaction on their part more likely which deserves honorable mention in thecosmopolitan history that posterity is going to write. Philosophical history,that is, anticipates posterity’s history, and by showing what actions earnedpast politicians a place in the cosmopolitan hall of fame, or infamy, it canattract present and future politicians likewise to achieve fame and shuninfamy.1 Philosophical history thus functions like the lives of the saints inthe Catholic church. Showing that by their virtuous action these humanbeings already reached a secure place in God’s register encourages thoseliving now to try to do the same.

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


The first reason is construed like the second. The second says: you havean additional reason for writing a philosophical history if you take intoaccount the ambition of politicians. The first says: you have an additionalreason 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 thefact that posterity will only remember such deeds as affected significantlyhistory’s progress toward its cosmopolitan aim is to provide an additionalreason for writing a philosophical history, and the ambition of politicianswho thereby learn how to make their name immortal need not be broughtin. Now what is difficult to understand here is this: why should the fact, oralleged fact, that posterity’s memory will be biased toward the cosmopolitancause getting helped or harmed, why should this fact be a reason, if only asmall one, for writing a philosophical history?

The text does not say why, but here is a guess. The ambition of politicianswho want to see their name remembered in all posterity is only a special caseof a desire of ordinary people to be on the right side in the struggles ofhistory. Philosophical history shows us in the historical material the progressof history toward its aim. Thus it allows us to locate ourselves on a historicalmap intelligible in terms of history’s aim.We all locate ourselves historicallyin knowing, say, the current year or the year in which we were born. Yetsuch data are surd. Only a philosophical history makes them transparentwith respect to what is truly important in history. Thanks to a philosophicalhistory, 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 orresisting forces whose value with respect to history’s cosmopolitan aim wenow recognize. It is not for the sake of fame that we take special efforts, if wedo. Not being politicians we will not be remembered. We do it for the sakeof being right, right in historical, not in moral terms only. Philosophicalhistory tells us how we can manage to be right. In this way it fulfills a needwe have, it does us a service, and that is a reason for writing one. And in thisway philosophical history does help history: by locating ourselves withrespect to the aim of history we will gain courage and self-confidence insupporting history moving toward that aim.

Yes, this interpretation has little positive warrant, but it is difficult to seehow else we are to read the obscure phrase (“But to pay regard to this”) thatopens the last sentence of Kant’s text (8:31). Also, the interpretation makesthe first and second reason mentioned here come out parallel, just as“likewise” indicates. So construed, moreover, the two reasons bear outKant’s claim that a philosophical history contributes to history’s movementforward. For thanks to a philosophical history, politicians and ordinary


people alike will see better reason to engage in action that fosters history’smovement 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 acosmopolitan perspective; and once the cosmopolitan state is reached, whichit will be at some point according to the central argument of Idea, anyposterity will view history in this way. This is so because Kant assumes, asshown earlier, that with the cosmopolitan state reached people will no longerbemistaken about what is and in the past was really of interest to them. So thecosmopolitan view of history is the one to stay, it is the last verdict abouthistory. 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 thenonrational realm of nature, and to recommend it to our consideration, if thatpart 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 prospectof which necessitates our turning our eyes away from it in disgust and, in despair ofever encountering a completed rational aim in it, to hope for the latter only inanother world? (8:30)

The first part of this sentence is traditional. Like Augustine in a memorablepassage in De Civitate Dei (V:11), Kant is not prepared to accept that thesplendor and wisdom of God’s creation should be displayed only in natureand not in human history which supposedly contains the end of nature. Thelast part of the sentence turns brusquely away from traditional ways ofthought. Kant is saying here that the hope to see the aims that reason setscompleted in another world results from the despair of seeing that com-pletion in history. Conversely, then, as philosophical history shows thisworld to be already on its way toward a reasonable state, such despair isunwarranted. With a philosophical history therefore we no longer need toconsole ourselves with the hope to see our reasonable aspirations completedin another world. True, Kant does not say expressly that then the whole ideaof another world can go. Yet what other use could that idea be than to referto 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 worldto come. He dismisses it by arguing, not that such a hypothesis isunfounded, but rather in the line that Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx willbe pursuing, that the need which makes people cling to this hypothesisarises 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.


With the other world goes the Last Judgment, for that judgment wassupposed to be a tribunal with the people concerned present, not a meredeclaration of the scores over the graves, and so these people need to live onor live again after their death. In traditional doctrine the Last Judgment wassupposed to be the event that, in ending history, makes apparent what wasdone right and what was done wrong. God, looking into our hearts, knowsall along what our doings are worth, but in the Last Judgment this becomespublic knowledge. In the end, that is, we will know where anybody stoodwith respect to right and wrong. The truth about history is there and willcome out, even if for now we cannot accede to it. Yet with the LastJudgment gone we no longer have grounds to assume that this truth existsand waits to manifest itself, and so we have no grounds to judge, if inanticipation and thus fallibly, what is right and wrong in history.We are leftwith the spectacle described in the introduction of the Idea: wisdom hereand there woven together with folly and childish vanity, malice and rage todestruction. To be sure, moral agents merely as such can continue their pathundisturbed. Being rational they know what they ought to do, and beingfree they can do it, whatever resistance from their inclinations they encoun-ter and however uncertain they remain about having done it for the rightreason.2 What sense, though, their doings make in the world at large theynot only have no means of knowing, but without a Last Judgment not eventhe hope of eventually learning. However right an action may be in moralperspective, in terms of the good or ill it does in the world it is a mere stab inthe dark.

Kant was not enough of a Stoic to leave it in earnest at that and just tellpeople: “Do right and never mind the world.” True, in this sense thehistorical Stoics were not Stoics either, since their trust in the guidance ofreason grew precisely from the confidence that to follow reason is at thesame time to be in accord with the order of the world. Still, if a Stoic issomeone who stays in accord with himself and his principles, but does notcare what his actions effect in the world at large – roughly the attitude thatMax Weber called “Gesinnungsethik”3 – then Kant sometimes pretended toStoicism.4 Yet as the doctrine of the highest good shows, he did not stick to

2 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 arguedthat Kant should not and occasionally does not maintain opacity in my Doing Things for Reasons(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), §§105–6.

3 Max Weber, “Politik als Beruf,” in Gesammelte politische Schriften, ed. J. Winckelmann, 5th edn.(Tübingen: Mohr, 1988), pp. 505–60, here p. 531.

4 See for instance G (IV 403).


it. And he did not stick to it here in the Idea. Since the Last Judgment hasfallen prey to the critique of ideology sketched earlier, he calls in a philo-sophical history that allows people to determine where in history they standwith their actions. Thanks to the philosophers the truth about history doescome out after all, and indeed not “after all,” but right now. In 1786 Schillerproffered the pithy formula, soon to be picked up by other writers: “Worldhistory is the world’s tribunal” (“DieWeltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht”) –the point of the formula being that world history is the only tribunal of theworld there is. Kant here in the Ideamade precisely the same point, thoughwith 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 lightof that standard. Thus Kant’s philosophical history is a kind of running LastJudgment.So here is the fourth reason for writing a philosophical history. On the

one hand, as explained earlier, you can lead ambitious politicians intoserving the cosmopolitan cause by showing them that previous politiciansearned themselves a lasting memory by supporting it. On the other, you canlead ordinary, unambitious people into that service by showing themthrough your philosophical history the import of what they do in termsof history’s overall aim. You get the politicians by telling them how tobecome famous, you get the others by telling them how to join history on itsmarch forward. And it may well be true that, if you can come up with aphilosophical history of the envisaged kind, you will inspire and encouragepeople by showing them the historical significance of their actions and willthereby make history move on faster than it otherwise would. Thus you willhave contributed to history’s movement not as a citizen or politician, butspecifically 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 textunder the Eighth Proposition? It rather seems to be a deep reason, one thatconcerns the self-understanding of agents in the world. Indeed it does, andKant’s modest remark should be read as a comment, not on how importantthis consideration is in itself, but on how much it will impress people andchange their ways. For Kant, philosophical history tells you where you stand

5 Friedrich Schiller, “Resignation,” inWerke 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.


in world history and whether you are on the right track. Herder gave hisIdeas for a Philosophy of History of Humankind, published in 1784 like Kant’sIdea, a motto from Persius: “Quem te deus esse iussit et humana qua partelocatus es, in re disce” (“Learn from how things are what god ordered you tobe and where in the world you are located”).6 Kant could have put hissmaller piece under the same motto.7 Philosophical history is to teachpeople what they are supposed to be and how far they have got. Yet howeverimportant this must be for people to know, the effect on what they actuallydo may still be negligible, given how narrow-minded and short-sighted theyare in determining what they do. Thus with “only a small reason” thephilosopher is not deprecating the view of humankind he puts forward, heonly offers a sober estimate of how much weight that view will gain inpeople’s decisions.

This reading is supported by the fact that Kant gives the small reasonremarkable weight in his presentation, mentioning the point twice, in theNinth Proposition and in the text under the Eighth Proposition, cunninglyemphasizing the word “small” in print, and above all putting the point intothe center of attention by closing with it the entire article. I have littleinfluence, Kant can be understood to be saying in conclusion of the Idea, onwhat people generally do and thus on how the world goes; and those inparticular who govern will only be led by means of their vanity, not theirreason. Yet what I contribute is not nothing, and I am slyly proud of it. I amtelling you where we are supposed to go in this world. I am giving youa historical orientation.8 What you do with it is up to you, I am not aphilosopher-king with the power to make you move in that direction. Still,some of you will follow the line which a philosophical historian will makeevident in the historical material. So while I effect little, my knowledge isahead of whatever you do: I know what will count in the end.

Kant had a brief exchange in March 1793 with Carl Spener, the publisherof the Berlinische Monatsschrift, where the Idea had in 1784 originallyappeared, and the understanding of Kant’s article displayed in both hisreader’s and his own letter confirms the interpretation offered here. Spenerasks Kant to agree to a separate reprint of the 1784 article, preferably “giving

6 Persius, Saturae III, 70–72.7 In fact, it may have been the similarity of their projects more than the personal relation to his formerstudent that prompted Kant to write the reviews of Herder’s work (VIII 43–55). However, we do notknow what Kant’s reason was, as his acceptance letter to Schütz was not preserved.

8 As opposed to orientation in thinking, the subject of Kant’s 1786 paper “What is Orientation inThinking?” (VIII 131–47), which in turn follows Mendelssohn in the metaphorical use of the word“orientation.”


it some further extension or some soft application, with or without regard tocurrent 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 UniversalHistory] brought to certainty in me when it first appeared, and I remember theintention it confirmed in me to act in a cosmopolitan manner in my small circle ofactivity. Ah, with what regret I must see now, nine years later on the occasion of asecond edition, that this excellent article failed to reach the princes and theiradvisors, except the noble Crown Prince of Denmark!10

Kant in reply expresses his pleasure to have found in Spener a man receptiveto nobler motives thanmere advantage, but declares himself against the planto publish the Idea again, “least of all with additions directed at currentcircumstances.” He gives his reason as follows:

When the powerful in the world are intoxicated, whether by a breath divine or by avolcanic gas, a pygmy caring about saving his skin is well advised not to interfere intheir quarrel, even if he would speak to them in the softest and most reverentialmanner, 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 tolure Kant into a deal that brings him, Spener, good money. Never mindwhether Kant believes Spener or merely pretends that he does, trying to getpolitely out of an unwelcome proposal. Honest or not, the letters show whatkind of reception both Kant and one of his readers consider fitting, andconsider likely, for the Idea. For one thing, Kant and Spener agree that thetext should reach those in power, clearly in order to tell them, on the basis ofthe overall aim of history determined here, what direction they should takein their politics. Kant merely doubts that the powerful are receptive to whathe has to say; he even fears that he might come to harm through raising hisvoice. He does not doubt that matters would improve if they were to listen.For another, Spener thinks that people outside politics like himself can andshould learn in the Ideawhere history is heading and can and should changetheir ways accordingly to acting “in a cosmopolitan manner.” Kant, byacknowledging the “nobler motives” in Spener’s heart, can be understood toagree. Thus the same dual reception is envisaged in the letters and in thearticle: the powerful should – but won’t – listen to the philosopher showing

9 XI 416. 10 XI 415. 11 XI 417.


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, ordinarypeople will listen, and some will even act differently in the light of history’sagenda revealed by the philosopher. Thus Spener presents himself in hisletter as an exemplary case of the sort of reception that Kant in the Ideaanticipated for a philosophical history and that grounded his confidence inphilosophy’s helping history to reach its aim.

So this is what Kant is saying when he asserts in the Ninth Propositionthat a philosophical history can itself further history’s moving toward itsaim. Once philosophical history has shown us what it is that, historicallyspeaking, we should do, we will be more likely actually to do it. In a note forhis anthropology lectures, dated by the editor to the late or perhaps early1770 years, Kant wrote:

History must itself contain the plan for bettering the world, not from the parts tothe whole, but the other way round.What use is philosophy, if it does not direct themeans for teaching humans toward what is truly their best.12

Like Hegel and Marx, Kant is convinced that the plan for bettering theworld cannot be merely somebody or other’s good idea. It must be con-tained within history, as the course that it is in itself set to pursue.Philosophers recognizing that course in the manifold of events therebyhelp us to direct our efforts toward the aim that history is intended toreach and that is best for humans.

i i

How Kant could take himself to be in a position to say what he does in theNinth Proposition is a harder question. Just three years earlier the Critiqueof Pure Reason argued that judgments pretending to refer to objects lyingoutside the realm of possible experience are not objectively valid.13 Sincehuman history, taken in its entirety, is an object lying outside the realm ofpossible experience, judgments about the aim of history are not objectivelyvalid, and humans adjusting their actions to history’s movement towardthat aim are deluded. What led Kant to think that with regard to history hecould evade the strictures he had just erected against philosophicalextravagance?

It may be contested that the whole of human history is an object beyondthe 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.


empirical discipline, if perhaps in a sense different from that prevailing inthe sciences. Thus, any historical event is an object of possible experience,and so is therefore their totality. However, the last inference is fallaciousprecisely in the way Kant exposed in the seventh section of the antinomychapter in the Critique: “The entire antinomy of pure reason rests on thedialectical argument: If the conditioned is given, so is the whole series of allits conditions” (A 497/B 525). In fact, the whole series of its conditions is stillnot given, even if the conditioned is. Analogously, while any historical eventmay be an object of experience, the whole of history is not. Even historianson the last evening of the world may form judgments only about the wholeof history so far. They cannot judge about the whole of history. The bird’seye 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 toshow that history as a whole is directed toward the cosmopolitan state as itsaim. This claim has practical import, and so the Idea is exempted from thedemand that the objects it refers to be given in experience. In this way Kantwill also be arguing in the Critique of Practical Reason for the reality offreedom, immortality, and God. They evidently lie outside the realm ofpossible experience, but that does not hinder declaring them real, as long asthis is declared with practical, not merely theoretical intent.14 The idea ofthe totality of history may similarly escape the restriction imposed by thefirst Critique.15

In fact it may not, and Kant’s attempt to procure special passports forstatements with practical intent is misguided throughout. What you intendto do with some statement is irrelevant for the question of its truth; if it hasbeen shown, as Kant claims it has, that statements about objects beyond thelimits of possible experience are invalid, then this remains the case even ifvarious practical concerns would make the truth of some of these statementshighly welcome. So the idea of the whole of history cannot plead practicalutility 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 thecompletion of a hidden plan of nature,” and in the Ninth Proposition,similarly, he claims no more than that a philosophical history “must be

14 KpV V 134–6.15 Friedrich Kaulbach takes this line in his paper “Welchen Nutzen gibt Kant der

Geschichtsphilosophie?” Kant-Studien 66 (1975), pp. 65–84, here pp. 74f.


regarded as possible and even as furthering this aim of nature.” So it is all amatter merely of what people can, or must, think about history, not ofhistory itself. Kant, then, does not even advance a theoretical statementhere, and only that would expose him to the first Critique’s restrictions.

There is no doubt that Kant is trying to forestall such objections byretreating to claims merely about how people may or must regard history.This move, however, does not succeed. Take the phrase in the EighthProposition. If the expression “one can regard human history as the com-pletion 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 thathistory is the completion of a plan of nature. If however the expression “onecan regard human history as the completion of a plan of nature” is to be readas “someone might hit on this idea,” then Kant’s claim loses all interest: allsorts of ideas come into people’s heads, why not this one? Similarly for thephrasing in the Ninth Proposition. If a philosophical history must beregarded as possible because it simply is possible, then “regarding” no longerplays any role. If, however, a philosophical history must be regarded aspossible in the sense that we are well advised so to regard it or cannot get outof so regarding it, then this claim might have some anthropological interest,but it would not tell us anything worth knowing about philosophicalhistory. Besides, those insisting on the difference between having to regarda philosophical history as possible and its being possible themselves give anexample of not having to regard it as possible; for if they were really to regardit as possible, as allegedly they must, they would not withdraw from sayingthat 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 evasivemaneuver, then, we are back with asking why Kant accepted the wholeof history as an object of theoretical statements and, in particular, sawhimself in a position to give an account of the aim of history. The answerseems to be that consolation and orientation depend on such an account.Consolation: the history of which we have experience is the spectacledescribed in the introduction of the Idea, folly, vanity, malice and destruc-tiveness, with some occasional wisdom here and there. The only remedy forthe 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 byreason. Orientation: assuming that we are not satisfied with moral direc-tions 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 historydefinitely tells us what it is we do and what cause we really are serving.


Only from the point of view of history as a whole can we determine wherewe stand and where, historically speaking, we should go. For the sake ofsuch consolation and orientation Kant permits himself an account of theaim of history, for in his view a philosophical history is specifically usefulin just these two ways – so useful, we now only have to add, as to exemptit from the limitations to which theoretical assertions are otherwisesubject.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. Historyno doubt offers many examples of folly, vanity, malice and destructiveness,but it offers examples of wisdom, kindness and mutual support as well, andwho is going to do the counting on either side? Not Kant, but he never-theless sees the first side prevail. Wisdom appears only “now and then inindividual cases,” whereas “everything in the large is woven together” out offolly, vanity, malice, and destructiveness (8:18). We certainly need consola-tion if the world, which is to say the human world, not the cosmos, isfundamentally as bad as that, but it is hard to see what makes Kant so surethat it is. There is a famous passage in ReligionWithin the Boundaries of MereReason where Kant makes virtually the same point:

We can spare ourselves the formal proof that such a corrupt inclination must berooted in man, given the large number of glaring examples that experience shows usin the actions of humans.16

We do not get a philosophical proof, and the empirical argument is tooweak: nobody will deny the “large number” of evil things people did and doto each other, but that does not suffice to show the radically evil characterof humans. Similarly for history: the large number of glaring examples offoolish and malicious actions just does not decide about the character of thewhole. So the question returns: from where does this understanding of theworld 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 fundamen-tally evil, and Kant, for once, is disingenuous when he phrases the passagejust quoted as if he had such an argument right at hand. History does notsupport it, and neither does ordinary experience, even if people sometimesspeak as if it did. Experience only shows us the “large number” of evil thingsof which Kant speaks, not an evil character of the whole. So, other thanChristian religion, what could be the source of this notion? The corruption

16 R VI 32f.


of humanity through the Fall is after all a central tenet of Christiandoctrine.17

It is a curious situation, then: Kant calls in philosophical history to let ittake the place of a Last Judgment that has lost its credibility, so as to consoleus with the view that rationality becomes real in this world, but the need forsuch consolation arises only on religious, i.e., Christian assumptions. Kantgives philosophical history a job that is vacant because Christian interpre-tations of history have been dismissed, but the condition for there to be thatjob in the first place is a Christian, or at any rate a religious, view of theworld. To be sure, it is not incoherent for Kant to reject the Last Judgmentand 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 thepresent one, it would have been natural to wonder whether this despair inturn does not merely derive from mythical sources. Kant did not take thisstep: he accepted “indignation” or “despair” at the sight of human history atface value and so felt bound to call on philosophy for consolation.

No misunderstanding: some of us suffer, and some of us need consola-tion, if it is to be had, because we have been hit by this or that evil. Thepoint is, we do not need consolation for living in a world in which “every-thing in the large is woven together out of folly, childish vanity, often alsoout of childish malice and the rage to destruction” (Idea, Introduction).Sure enough, some things are so woven together. For saying instead thateverything is, Kant must draw on Christian doctrine.

The same holds for orientation: we need the orientation offered byphilosophical history as little as we need its consolation. We are no morefundamentally disoriented than we are fundamentally afflicted. Occasionallywe do not know where we are and where to go, literally or figuratively, butthere are various means, from maps to friendly advice, from dictionaries tocourses in economics, to find our way again. Kant, however, was not satisfiedwith such worldly means of orientation. He wanted philosophical history totell us where human affairs in their entirety are meant to go, so that we canadjust our actions to supporting that overall movement. In this way, heclaimed, philosophy itself gives history a small extra push, because it showspeople how they can join history on its march forward. In fact it is not clearwhy the aim of history should be even significant for us. If the cosmopolitanstate 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 ofHuman History” does not prevent him from accepting in general the bleak view of humanitytraditionally associated with this story.


the world reaching a cosmopolitan state, but then they probably do becausethis would be a good thing, not because it is the aim of history. True, onemight make history’s aim one’s own simply because it is history’s, but thatwould be an odd and arbitrary way of choosing an aim. Why make history’saim 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 tous. Knowing in what direction history is moving and how its movementreveals itself in various events with which we are acquainted leaves us nobetter equipped to figure out which direction we should take. Philosophicalhistory 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. Inall probability he thinks otherwise because he understands history’s beingdirected toward a certain aim in a stronger sense than allowed so far. Take arock rolling downhill: it has a certain direction and you may be able topredict, within limits, where it will come to rest. History’s directednessunderstood in these terms is indeed of no concern to us. Unlike the move-ment of some rock rolling downhill, the movement of history involves us,but we have no reason positively to further it in either case, barring specialcircumstances. If history, however, is directed toward a certain aim in thesense that in going that way it is completing a task it was given, then weprobably are concerned, for that task may well be partly ours.18 When Kantin the Eighth Proposition invites us to regard human history “as thecompletion of a hidden plan of nature” and in the Ninth Proposition callsupon philosophical history “to work out universal world history accordingto a plan of nature,” the word “plan” shows that he has the stronger sense inmind. Someone set history to run this course, not only will it do so; and it isnatural to assume that whoever in this way planned history thereby alsorequired us in particular to contribute our share. Thus philosophical historydoes provide orientation after all, for it tells us what we are asked to do. AsPersius says in Herder’s motto, quem te deus esse iussit … disce, learn whatGod ordered you to be – this is precisely what philosophical history is goingto teach us.So, for Kant, the orientation provided by philosophical history once

again depends on the assumption of a religious (and particularly aChristian) framework. A task we were given takes a giver, which in thiscase 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.


It takes God, and a traditional, Augustinian God at that, one “whose eternaland stable permanence is master over all past and future times.”19 Kantmakes evident this commitment when in the last section of the Idea hereplaces nature, which so far was considered the origin of the plan under-lying history, by providence, this being the better expression. And it is thebetter expression. It shows that a plan of history needs someone who viewshistory as a whole.

It will not do to give the religious assumption a mere “as if ” status of thesort: history may, or must, be considered as if it were directed by a Godstanding outside history.20 As long as the alleged direction of history ismerely a matter of how history may or must be considered, we actually donot have a direction of history, in the stronger sense just distinguished. Ifhistory only may or must be considered some way, this is, in Kant’s soberingphrase, merely “a peculiar quality of my faculties of cognition”21 whichallows or prevents me from forming certain kinds of judgments, and such acapacity or limitation of mine is irrelevant for the question whether historyhas an aim and human agents have a task. For that to be the case, God mustactually be directing history toward some aim.

So Kant has a reason to call for a philosophical history and to expectit to contribute to history’s movement toward its cosmopolitan aim.Philosophical history, he thinks, can cure us of a despair we may feel onlooking into the historical world, and it can show us the guiding intentionin history as a whole, thereby enabling and encouraging us to throw in ourindividual efforts in support of history’s movement. Yet the problems hecalls upon philosophical history to solve are merely a Christian heritage,which is to say that in fact they just may not arise. To consider humansfallen is what leads you to despair about the historical world, and throughregarding history as being directed by God, you come to feel disoriented aslong as you do not know where it is heading and how you can join itsmovement in your actions.

Karl Löwith suggested that modern philosophy of history is the secula-rization of the eschatological pattern of Hebrew and Christian faith.22 As faras Kant (whom Löwith does not discuss) is concerned, “secularization,” i.e.,“transfer of ownership from ecclesiastical to civil agents,” may not be theright concept. On the interpretation offered here, there is certainly a close

19 St. Augustine, Confessions XII 28, 38.20 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 §83.21 KU §75.22 Karl Löwith, Meaning in History (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1949), p. 2.


relationship between Kant’s philosophy of history and Christian doctrine.However, Kant does not take materials from Christian doctrine to incor-porate them into his philosophical view of history. Instead, this philosoph-ical view of history, and in particular the philosophical history thereinenvisaged, responds to needs that arise under the domination of Christiandoctrine. Kant does not re-sell Christian thought under a philosophicalwrapping. He erects a philosophy that is to allay worries induced byChristianity.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 ahistorical 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 Platonicsetting. The philosopher catches glimpses of what is beyond history, and bycommunicating what he has learned he consoles, orients, and encourageshis worried fellows. He guides them, claiming to show them what guidancethey are subject to as agents in history. Thus he helps history. For thanks tohis gaze beyond, he knows what history’s plan is and thus can lead hisaudience 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 stoppretending to be able to look beyond the historical world. The cosmopol-itan state may no less be worth our efforts. It is a political question whetherit 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, 93Zweifel über die Bestimmung des Menschen

(Doubts about the Vocation of Man) 80Aristotle 113, 119Augustine of Hippo, St. 1–2, 84n. 52, 89n. 63,

202, 237

Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb 80n. 33Bayle, Pierre 80Beck, Lewis White 7, 52Berlinische Monatsschrift 3–5, 9, 240Biester, Johann Erich 3, 4Blumenbach, J. F., 191Burlamaqui, Jean-Jacques, 99–100, 103, 104

Carmichael, Gershom 99, 103Cassirer, Ernst 5Charles I (king of England) 141Cicero, Marcus Tullius 201

Darwin, Charles 3, 110De Quincey, Thomas 6Diogenes the Cynic, 200

Fackenheim, Emil 7Ferguson, Adam 87–8, 89n. 65, 138n. 6Fichte, Johann Gottlieb 76, 79, 225n. 17Foster, James 78n. 25Foucault, Michel 212Frederick the Great (king of Prussia) 149n. 21, 150Freud, Sigmund 110Friedrich Wilhelm II (king of Prussia) 144Friedrich, Carl Joachim 6–7

Gedike, Friedrich 3, 4Goethe, Johann Wolfgang 128Gothaische Gelehrte Zeitung 3, 9, 10n., 171, 174, 188Grotius, Hugo 1, 2

Habermas, Jürgen 5–6, 230n. 21Hamann, Johann Georg 85n. 53

Hastie, William 6Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich 3, 27, 48–9, 68,

110, 152, 158, 210, 216–17Henning, August von 89Herder, Johann Gottfried 76Hume, David 21n., 138n. 6, 153n. 3, 166 n. 21,

184, 224Hutcheson, Francis 76n. 22, 79

Idea of a Universal History with a CosmopolitanAim (Kant) 1–3, 9–23

First Proposition 11, 34, 46, 113, 232on “natural predispositions” 56–9, 60, 67

Second Proposition 11–12, 114, 176, 187Third Proposition 12–13, 59–60, 123, 176Fourth Proposition 13–14, 172, 176, 188, 235on unsociable sociability 114–19, 123–8

Fifth Proposition 14–15, 129, 132, 143, 176, 232Sixth Proposition 15–16, 129, 131, 132, 134n. 2,

136, 143, 144, 176Seventh Proposition 16–17, 176–7, 179, 187,

232, 235on an international federation of states 171,

172, 173–4Eighth Proposition 5, 19–21, 177, 187–8, 194,

199, 208, 227, 232, 239, 240, 243, 244, 247Ninth Proposition 21–3, 177, 231–2, 240, 242,

244Iselin, Isaak 88n. 58

James II (king of England) 141Jesus of Nazareth 78, 88

Kant, ImmanuelAnalytic of the Teleological Power of Judgment,

34–42Conjectural Beginning of Human History 9Critique of the Power of Judgment 9, 25, 28,

28n. 5Critique of Practical Reason 54, 123Critique of Pure Reason 24, 27, 47, 57

256

Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment25, 28

Doctrine of Right 106–7Groundwork 55–6, 159–60Only Possible Proof of the Existence of God 28–31,

48–9, 79n. 31, 216–17Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

26, 44, 107–8, 123–6, 128, 133, 143–5Towards Perpetual Peace 6, 6n. 6, 7, 25,

130–2“What is Enlightenment?” 150see also Idea of a Universal History with

a Cosmopolitan AimKoselleck, Reinhard, 189–90

Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm 1, 2–3, 81n. 43, 73–4,78, 205–6

Lessing, Gotthold Ephraim 48n. 4, 88–9, 89n. 63Linnaeus, Carolus 38London Magazine 6Löwith, Karl 248Lucretius, 95

Mandeville, Bernard de 1, 2, 101–3, 110, 115Marx, Karl 3, 68, 110Meinecke, Friedrich 6Mendelssohn, Moses 70, 80, 82–7, 92–3, 191–2,

195–6Jerusalem 89–90Phaedon 74–5, 77, 82–3Zweifel über die Bestimmung des Menschen

(Doubts about the Vocation of Man) 80Montaigne, Michel de 13n., 110, 115Morgan, Seriol, 147–8Moscati, Pietro, Of the Essential Difference in the

Structure of the Bodies of Humans andAnimals 53

Persius 240Philip of Macedon 17n.Plato 71, 208

Plotinus 202, 208Pufendorf, SamuelDe Jure Naturae et Gentium (Of the Law of

Nature and of Nations), 98–100, 102–4, 110

Reichard, Johann Friedrich 85n. 53Reimarus, Hermann Samuel 88Reinhold, Karl Leonard 30n. 9, 48Richardson, John 6Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 1, 2, 17, 18, 88n. 59, 102–3,

115, 117, 127–8, 203–4, 209

S. Pierre, Abbé de 17, 178, 179Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm, philosophical

methodology 48Schiller, Friedrich 5, 239Schopenhauer, Arthur, on unsocial sociability 109Schultz, Johann Heinrich 3, 9, 53–4, 55Selden, J. G. 4Seneca 201Shaftesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl

76, 76n. 22, 78n. 25, 100, 103Smith, Adam 1, 2, 110, 115Southey, Robert 6Spalding, Johann JoachimBetrachtungen über die Bestimmung des

Menschen (Meditations on the Vocation ofMan) 76–82, 84, 84n., 85, 92

Spener, Carl 5, 240–1, 242Strawson, P. F. 92

Thucydides 21n.

Weber, Max 238Wolff, C. F 190–1Wolff, Christian 74, 74n. 11, 76, 78,

81n. 43, 84Wöllner, Johan Christian 144

Zedlitz, Karl Abraham von, Baron 3Zeno 201

Index of names and works 257

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

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