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Natura Daedala Rerum? On the Justification of Historical Progress in Kant's Guarantee of Perpetual Peace

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Lea Ypi
Lea Ypi
Affiliation:
Nuffield College, University of Oxford
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Extract

This article analyses the teleological argument justifying historical progress in Kant's Guarantee of Perpetual Peace. It starts by examining the controversies produced by Kant's claim that the teleology of nature supports the idea of a providential development of humanity towards moral progress and the possibility of achieving a cosmopolitan political constitution. It further illustrates how Kant's teleological argument in Perpetual Peace needs to be assessed with reference to two systematically relevant issues: first, the problem of coordination linked to the necessity of realizing the ‘highest good’ as a historical end of practical reason, and secondly the problem of continuity posed by the temporal limitation of all individual efforts to cultivate moral dispositions. To illustrate the implications of both issues for the teleological argument in Perpetual Peace, the article draws attention to some important developments in Kant's analysis of teleology following the Critique of Judgment.

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Kantian Review , Volume 14 , Issue 2 , July 2010 , pp. 118 - 148
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Copyright © Kantian Review 2010

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References

1 Earlier versions of this article were presented at the UK Kant Society Graduate Conference at Wolfson College, Oxford and at the Research Seminar in Political Theory at the Free University of Berlin. I am grateful to participants at these events, as well as to Silvia De Bianchi, Renato Caputo, Gerhard Goehler, Filippo Gonnelli, Mario Reale, Paola Rodano, Cinzia Sciuto and Jonathan White for several helpful suggestions. I am particularly indebted to Filippo Gonnelli for many inspiring conversations on teleology in Kant, as well as to Katrin Flikschuh, Howard Williams and four anonymous reviewers of this journal for their invaluable written comments on earlier drafts. Finally, I would like to thank the Irmgard Coninx Stiftung for a six months fellowship at the Wissenschaftzentrum in Berlin, which enabled me to write the article.

2 ‘Nature, the contriver of things’. See Kant, Immanuel, ‘Perpetual peace: a philosophical sketch’, in Reiss, Hans (ed.), Kant's Political Writings (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 108; VIII: 360.Google Scholar

3 Ibid. For a more detailed discussion of the different uses of the terms ‘Nature’ and ‘Providence’ in Kant's philosophy of history, see Kleingeld, Pauline, ‘Nature or providence? On the theoretical and moral importance of Kant's philosophy of history’, American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly, 75 (2001), 201–19.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Kant, Perpetual Peace, p. 110; VIII: 363.

5 Pauline Kleingeld, who is ultimately sympathetic to Kant's philosophy of history, argues that ‘Kant's pre-Darwinistic teleological model is outdated’ and that ‘the assumption that human behavior is gradually becoming more moral has lost the empirical plausibility Kant still thought it had’: see her ‘Kant, history, and the ideas of moral development’, History of Philosophy Quarterly, 16 (1999), 59–80Google Scholar, esp. p. 60 and 75–6, and also Fortschritt Und Vernunft: Zur Geschichtsphilosophie Kants (Wuerzburg: Koenigshausen, 1995), pp. 110–34.Google Scholar

6 See for example, Nussbaum, Martha, ‘Kant and stoic cosmopolitanism’, The Journal of Political Philosophy, 5 (1997), esp. pp. 15–17.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 See, for example, Williams, Howard, Essays on Kant's Political Philosophy (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), pp. 2–3.Google Scholar

8 Commentators on this paragraph often rely on Kant's 1784 essay ‘Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose’ and fail to see the difference between its perspective and that of the third Critique as well as of the political writings after the French revolution. See, for example, Karl Otto Apel, ‘Kant's “Toward Perpetual Peace” as historical prognosis from the point of view of moral duty’, in Bohmann, James and Lutz-Bachmann, Matthias (eds), Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1997), pp. 86–102; Kleingeld, ‘Nature or providence?’, esp. pp. 201–11.Google Scholar

9 Kant, Immanuel, Critique of the Power of Judgment, ed. Guyer, Paul, tr. Guyer, Paul and Matthews, Eric (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), p. 241; V: 369.Google Scholar

10 Ibid.

11 On the analogy of examples in the Critique of Judgment and in Perpetual Peace see Philonenko, Alexis, ‘Histoire et guerre chez Kant’, in Kant's Practical Philosophy Reconsidered, ed. Yovel, Yirminiahu (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1989), pp. 168–82CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Mertens, Thomas, ‘Zweckmäβigkeit Der Natur Und Politische Philosophie Bei Kant’, Zeitschrift für Philosophische Forschung, 49 (1995), pp. 220–40.Google Scholar Both authors however use the analogy to argue Kant's ultimate adherence to theism from a practical perspective, an outcome that even if textually grounded is, as I will try to show, unnecessary to his justification of progress.

12 Paul Guyer for example has considered ‘a fundamental revolution in Kant's conception of the tasks of philosophy’ the reasons underlying the publication of the Critique of Judgment, see Guyer, Paul, ‘Bridging the gulf: Kant's project in the third Critique’, in Bird, Graham (ed.), A Companion to Kant (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006), p. 423.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a more detailed comparison of the systematic relationship of the third Critique with Kant's previous works see also his Kant's System of Nature and Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 275–372.Google Scholar

13 Perpetual Peace, p. 109; VIII: 361.

14 The point is well taken in Guyer, Paul, ‘Nature, morality and the possibility of peace’, in Robinson, Hoke (ed.), Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995), pp. 51–68Google Scholar and in Gonnelli, Filippo, ha filosofia politica di Kant (Rome: Laterza, 1991), pp. 65–109.Google Scholar

15 Kant, Immanuel, ‘The only possible argument in support of a demonstration of the existence of God’, in Theoretical Philosophy 1755–1770, trans, and ed. Walford, David, in collaboration with Meerbote, Ralf (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), p. 172; II: 131.Google Scholar

16 On the links between natural teleology and the argument for the existence of God before Kant, with particular reference to Leibniz, and Wolff, , see Cassirer, Ernst, The Philosophy of the Enlightenment (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1951), pp. 37–92 and 134–59Google Scholar, and Kant's Life and Thought (Yale: Yale University Press, 1981).Google Scholar See also Duflo, Colas, La Finalité Dans La Nature. De Descartes À Kant (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

17 See Kant, Immanuel, Critique of Pure Reason, tr. Guyer, Paul and Wood, Allen (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1988), p. 614; III: 504.Google Scholar

18 Kant, Perpetual Peace, p. 109; VIII: 361. On the difference between ‘external’ and ‘internal’ teleology, see Kant, Critique of judgment, sections 63–8; V: 366–85.

19 Hegel, Georg W. F., Logic. Part One of the Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences, tr. Wallace, William (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1975), section 60, p. 94.Google Scholar

20 See for example the discussion in Katrin Flikschuh, ‘Reason and nature: Kant's teleological argument in Perpetual Peace’, in A Companion to Kant, pp. 383–96. Flikschuh however does not focus in any detail on the developments of Kant's analysis of teleology in the third Critique.

21 Kant, Perpetual Peace, p. 109; VIII: 361.

22 See Henry Allison, ‘The gulf between nature and freedom and nature's guarantee of Perpetual Peace’, in Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, vol. 1, 1, pp. 37–49, at p. 46. See also Ludwig, Bernd, ‘Will Die Natur Unwidersprechlich Die Republik? Einige Reflexionen Anläßlich Einer Ratselhaften Textpassage in Kants Friedensschrift’, Kant Studien, 88 (1997), pp. 218–28.Google Scholar

23 Kant, Perpetual Peace, p. 109; VIII: 366.

24 As Kant clarifies elsewhere: ‘I base my argument upon my inborn duty of influencing posterity in such a way that it will make constant progress (and I must thus assume that progress is possible) and that this duty may be rightfully handed down from one member of the series to the next.’ Kant, ‘On the common saying: this may be true in theory, but it does not apply in practice’, in Political Writings, p. 89; VIII: 309.

25 The thesis of Kant's formalism and solipsism is precisely what has inspired the communitarian critique of Kant's ethics. For one influential account see Maclntyre, Alasdair, After Virtue (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1981), p. 233.Google Scholar For one critical exploration of Kant's ethics of the community, covering also Religion within the Boundaries of Reason Alone, see Moore, Jennifer, ‘Kant's ethical community’, The Journal of Value Inquiry, 26 (1992), 51–71.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

26 Kant, Groundwork, p. 80; IV: 430.

27 Ibid.

28 This move from promoting humanity as an end, to the collective duty of promoting the capacity to have ends (what I have here called moral perfection) is admittedly very quick. I have only introduced it as a step towards understanding the subsequent concept of a kingdom of ends upon which the teleological assumption of an order of nature relies. For a more detailed account of this passage see Guyer, Paul, ‘Ends of reason and ends of nature: the place of teleology in Kant's ethics’, The Journal of Value Inquiry, 36 (2002), pp. 161–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

29 Happiness is a complex issue in Kant and has given rise to several interpretations. It is often discussed how its constituting a part of the highest good, understood as the supreme end of practical reason, may affect the autonomy of the moral law. See the classic interpretation of Beck, Lewis White in A Commentary on Kant's Critique of Practical Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 242 ff.Google Scholar However I focus here on the promotion of the happiness of other people as a duty towards their humanity, thus leaving aside the question of the personal satisfaction in virtuous action. On this interpretation, happiness (provided that it is that of others and not identified with egoistic satisfaction) is relevant for the motivation of moral action but does not affect the status of autonomy. This approach, as I try to show below, allows us to resolve the question of the ‘guarantee’ without necessarily endorsing the ethico-theological postulates of Kant's later philosophy. On the different interpretations of Kant's concept of the highest good – individual and collective - see Reath, Andrews, ‘Two conceptions of the highest good in Kant’, Journal of the History of Philosophy, 26 (1988), 593–619CrossRefGoogle Scholar and Yovel, Yirminiahu, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), pp. 49–80.Google Scholar

30 Kant, Groundwork, p. 81; IV: 430.

31 Ibid., p. 83; IV: 433.

32 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, pp. 681–82; III: 527–28.

33 Kant, Groundwork, p. 86; IV: 437.

34 See on this issue Brandt, Reinhardt, ‘The vocation of the human being’, in Jacobs, Brian and Cain, Patrick (eds), Essays on Kant's Anthropology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 85–104.Google Scholar

35 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 678; III: 524.

36 Ibid. My italics.

37 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, in Practical Philosophy, p. 231; V: 113.

38 Ibid., p. 238; V: 122.

39 Ibid.

40 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 682; III: 529–30.

41 Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, p. 238; V: 122. Many interpreters consider the question of the immortality of the soul to arise from an internal necessity of the individual and his hope to be rewarded for virtuous actions. Under this interpretation there would be a shift in the analysis of the summum bonum between the first and the second Critique, the first framing the question in terms of a collective historical obligation, the second in terms of individual expectation. See for example Pauline Kleingeld, ‘What do the virtuous hope for? Re-reading Kant's doctrine of the highest good’, in Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, pp. 91–112. If the interpretation of the problem of the highest good that I offer above is correct there is however no inconsistency between the two Critiques. Kant is always interested in the realization of the highest good as a collective historical problem but simply adds to the ‘coordination’ concern of the first Critique the ‘continuity’ concern of the second.

42 Immanuel Kant, ‘Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose’, in H. Reiss (ed.), Political Writings, pp. 47–50; VIII: 27–8. I have discussed these aspects in greater detail in Ypi, L., ‘Sovereignty, cosmopolitanism and the ethics of European foreign policy’, European Journal of Political Theory, 7 (2008), 349–64, esp. pp. 355–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

41 Kant, ‘Idea for a universal history’, p. 47; VIII: 22.

44 Ibid, p. 42; VIII: 19–20.

45 Ibid.

46 Ibid. For a further discussion of how Kant's analysis of these issues is linked to the postulates of practical reason see Lindstedt, David, ‘Kant: progress in universal history as a postulate of practical reason’, Kant Studien, 90 (1999), 129–7, who nevertheless fails to consider how the Critique of judgment poses the question of natural teleology in terms that are slightly different from those of the essay on universal history.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

47 For the idea that Kant's third Critique constitutes a turning point in Kant's justification of teleology see also Guyer, Paul, Kant's System of Nature and Freedom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), esp. pp. 314–42.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

48 Kant, Critique of judgment, p. 303; V: 437,

49 Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, p. 6 8 2 - 3; A 816; B 844.

50 Ibid.

51 Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 304; V: 437.

52 Kant, Idea for a Universal History, p. 42, VIII: 18.

53 Kant, Critique of judgment, p. 253; V: 381.

54 For a more specific analysis of Kant's conception of the organic life, with reference to pre- and post-Darwinian biology see Kolb, Daniel, ‘Kant, teleology, and evolution’, Synthese, 91 (1992), 9–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

55 See, for example, Kant, Immanuel, ‘On the use of teleological principles in philosophy, (1788) in Zoeller, Guenter and Louden, Robert B. (eds), Anthropology, History, and Education (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 216Google Scholar; VIII: 181.

56 Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 68, V: 181.

57 Ibid, p. 234; V: 360.

58 Ibid, p. 301–2; V; 434–5.

59 Ibid, p. 298; V: 430.

60 Ibid, p. 294–5; V: 426.

61 The section of the Critique of judgment in which we find this analysis makes precisely the same examples of the Guarantee but in a much clearer systematic perspective.

62 Kant, Critique of judgment, p. 240; V: 369.

63 Immanuel Kant, ‘Conjectures on the beginning of h u m a n history’, in Political Writings, p. 225; VIII: 114, second emphasis added.

64 Kant, Critique of judgment, p. 298; V: 431.

65 Kant, Critique of Judgment, p. 297; V; 430. Another alternative is to consider ‘the beneficence of nature itself (i.e. the promotion of happiness) as guaranteeing the possibility of promoting a system of ends. Yet Kant discards this argument by saying not only that ‘it is far from being the case that nature has made the human being its special favourite and favoured him with beneficence above other animals’ but also that even if this were the case ‘conflicts in the natural predisposition of the human being would still prevent him from realizing that end’ (ibid).

66 Ibid., pp. 299–300; V: 431–2. There are striking similarities between this passage and the one in Perpetual peace in which Kant discusses the question of the guarantee, not least the overlapping discussions on the effects of war for the development of politics. This seems to confirm the interpretation that Kant increasingly perceived the solution to the systematic problem of the harmony between nature and freedom to be found in political and cultural emancipation.

67 Ibid.

68 Ibid, p. 300; V: 433.

69 Kant, ‘Conjectures on the beginning of human history’, cit. p. 228.

70 Wood, Allen, ‘Kant's historical materialism’, in Kneller, Jane and Axinn, Sidney (eds), Autonomy and Community. Readings in Contemporary Kantian Social Philosophy (Albany: SUNY Press, 1998), pp. 15–38. Curiously though, Wood's observations, although fundamentally correct, are mostly focused on Kant's earlier writings on universal history rather than on the third Critique, where the evidence for the ‘materialistic’ interpretation of Kant's philosophy of history is much stronger.Google Scholar

71 Kant, The Contest of Faculties, in Political Writings, cit. p. 181; VII: 84.

72 Ibid, p. 180; VII: 85.

73 Kant, The Contest of Faculties, p. 183; VII: 85. One of the few articles in English that rightly analyses the question of the guarantee of historical progress in terms of a ‘fact of politics’ seems to miss the importance of the French Revolution as internal political transformation and focuses only on the second element, that of the aesthetic participation of the external public. See Krassnof, Larry, ‘The fact of politics: history and teleology in Kant’, European Journal of Philosophy, 2 (1994), 22–40.CrossRefGoogle Scholar There are however several good non-English studies of the issue, see Gonnelli, , La filosofia politica di Kant, Pasquale Salvucci, L'uomo di Kant (Urbino: Argalia, 1963)Google Scholar, and Weil, EricProblemes Kantiens (Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1970).Google Scholar

74 ‘If, of course there is neither freedom nor any moral law based on freedom, but only a state in which everything that happens or can happen simply obeys the mechanical workings of nature … the concept of right would then be only an empty idea.’ See Kant, Perpetual Peace, p. 117; VIII: 372.

75 Ibid.

76 Kant, The Contest of Faculties, p. 183; VII: 85. For a more elaborate account on the influence of the French Revolution on Kant's political philosophy, see Williams, Kant's Political Philosophy and Gonnelli, La filosofia politica di Kant.

77 Ibid.

78 Ibid.

79 Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, pp. 173–4; VI: 354.

80 Ibid.