Immanuel Kant

1724-1804
Outline
• Main messages
• His life
• ethics and politics
• His method
• Theory of Social Contract
• Perpetual Peace
Main messages
• Strong connection between Kant’s theory of knowledge and his
political philosophy
• Accepted social contract theory but also transformed it
• Freedom of persons is inalienable
• He thought a state of nations was ideal but a league of nations was
more practical
His life
• Born in Köningsberg in 1724
• Poor parents
• Talents recognized in school
• Entered local university at 16
• Worked as a privatdozent
• Frederick the Great’s policy of
toleration
• Popular lecturer
• Private life “like a clock”
• First major book Critique of Pure Reason 1781 (Kant is 57)
• “product of 20 years but written hastily”
• Dealt with theory of knowledge
• Critique of Practical Reason (ethics)
• Critique of Judgment (aesthetics)
• Religion within the limits of Reason Alone (1793)
• Critical of organized religion
• Frederick William II ended policy of toleration
• Book escaped censorship due to university press
• Never married
• Women had «charm, beauty and
capacity to melt the heart»
• Men more interested in sublime and
practical things
• Died in 1804, Königsberg
• “Two things fill the mind with ever
new and increasing admiration and
awe, the more often and steadily we
reflect upon them: the starry heavens
above me and the moral law within
me.”
ethics and politics
• Ethics: about personal virtues
• Politics: about principles of justice
• Two distinct domains
• Ethical duties and juridical/political duties are different
• A distinction between observing and respecting laws
• Minister of King asks Kant not to publish on religion again
• Kant promises not to write on religion as a subject of Frederick
William II
• “repudiation and denial of one’s inner conviction are evil,
but silence in a case like the present is the duty of the subject;
and while all one says must be true, this does not mean that it
is one’s duty to speak out the whole truth in public”
• Indicates his distinction between public and private
• After the death of King resumed writing on religion
• Distinction has strong impact on liberal political theory
• Externally: we need to show unquestioned obedience and comply
with laws
• Internally: we have freedom of thought and expression
• Can criticize authority in rational argument and exchange
• No problem as rational argument does not turn into action
• E.g. “incitement to violence”
• Relevant to authoritarianism vs fascism
His method
• Context: Enlightenment and great advances in science
• Natural sciences showing the laws of nature and “necessity”
• Philosophy: deals with reliability of knowledge
• “Theory of knowledge”: epistemology: objective knowledge?
• Two main schools of thought
• Rationalism
• Ratio: reason
• Objective knowledge possible, gained thru reason
• Descartes: a rationalist
• Cogito ergo sum: “I think therefore I exist”
• Method of skepticism
• To arrive at proper knowledge, doubt everything you know
• How do we know we are not living in a dream?
• If doubt exists then mind exists
• Empiricists
• The only source of knowledge is experience
• Observation
• But causality cannot be observed
• Cannot know if sun will rise again
• Kant’s solution: synthesis
• Neither experience nor reason can be sources of knowledge in
themselves
• The world as it is vs world as it appears to us
• We cannot know the world as it is
• We understand experience on the basis of categories in our minds
• These exist in all persons
Connection between theory of knowledge and
political theory
• Critique of Pure Reason: Human capabilities are finite
• Against rationalists: There are limits to human reason
• Critique: finding out the limits
• Know only the phenomena, not things in themselves
• Against empiricists: our mind is not passive
• Mind is not a “tabula rasa” that merely records
• Mind actively contributes to the formation of knowledge
• Kant is making two points
• Our mind is limited and should be used carefully
• Should not engage in speculation
• Our mind is active and creative
• Able to form concepts which do not have corresponding object in sensible
world
• E.g. the concept of duty
• E.gf. Concept of justice
• By using our mind we can create universal principle of justice
• Compare with Thomas Aquinas (Natural Law)
Social Contract
• The main problems of political philosophy
• For Ancient and Medieval Political Theory
• What is the best regime?
• For Modern Political Theory
• How to overcome social conflict? How to justify political authority?
• Primary solution in Hobbes and Rousseau
• Law and obligation (contract)
• The source of contract
• Self-interest (Nature); Self-interest + Compassion (Nature)
• Kant provides a new source of obligation: Duty
• Accepts SoN
• SoN is a hypothetical situation
• SoN: multitude of human beings, proximity, mutual effect
• Unsocial tendencies
• Strives for honor, power or property
• In SoN no authority to enforce laws and keep peace
• No pre-existing order to rely upon
• May lead to conflict even if men were moral
Compared with Hobbes
• Context: enlightenment conception of mechanic society
• In the natural world, relations of causality between material objects
• Man is also material and natural being
• If natural then subject to causality
• Hobbes: motions
• Self-interest moves people
• Kant disagrees: free will and morality
• Human beings are free, human action is unpredictable
• In SoN men cannot be criticized
for acting “badly” (Hobbes)
• Men are natural entities
• They create moral rules with a
contract
• The motivation for the contract
is necessity
• Heteronomy or hypothetical
imperative
• But if there is no choice, then
there cannot be morality
• Morality presupposes free will
• Morality needs to be based on
reason
• We have a duty to overcome
SoN
• Problem: social strife and bad inclinations of men
• Solution: available within the faculty of reason
• Condition of justice known “a priori”
• A priori: knowledge based on reason
• knowledge of justice does not come from experience but reason
• Deontological vs Consequentialist ethics
• Everyone has reason, idea of justice conceivable by all
Kant’s Moral Maxims
• Categorical Imperative
• Formula of the End in Itself
• Formula of Autonomy
• Kingdom of Ends
• Categorical Imperative
• “Act only on that maxim thru which you can at the same time will that
it should become a universal law”
• A procedural formula
• No substantial content
• Formula of the End in Itself
• Every person is an end in itself
• Actions should not turn people into means only
• Formula of Autonomy
• Every person gives the moral law for herself
• Self-legislation
• If I avoid lying to protect my reputation this is not a moral action
• Kingdom of Ends
• When each person wills in ways that are capable of being universal law
followed by all, then a kingdom of ends comes about
• Rational beings achieve a social union
• Provides a transition from ethics and politics
• Implications of moral maxims for politics:
• A framework for regulating freedoms for compatibility
Kant’s Republicanism
• Republic as separation of powers
• Classical political theory: Who possesses power?
• Kant: how is power exercised?
• Legislative and executive should be separate
• People cannot coerce themselves
Cosmopolitanism
• Ordinary meaning
• Smn who is well travelled, knows multiple languages, appreciates different
cultures
• Kantian meaning
• Feeling at home anywhere in the world
• World would become more homogenous in time
• Gov and economy would be more similar
• Laws and practices of people would be similar
Cosmopolitanism
• Politics should tend towards world government (ideally)
• Universal cosmopolitan existence: direct rule of citizens by a world
republic
• But a world government could turn into tyranny
• “what government gains in extent, law loses in vigor”
• A league of nations governed by int’l law
• Republican regimes
• No surrendering of sovereignty
• Duty not sufficient, commerce will help
Perpetual peace
• Main elements required for a perpetual peace
• Republican states
• a federalism of free states
• Peace is an Idea
• Cosmopolitan right limited to conditions of universal hospitality
• Right not to be treated with hostility
• Does not include right to steal (colonialism)
• Theory of democratic peace