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Kant's Rhetoric of Enlightenment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 August 2009

Michael Clarke
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Extract

This article examines Kant's What is Enlightenment? and The Conflict of the Faculties with a view to recovering certain neglected aspects of his defense of freedom in the public use of reason. Kant's arguments in the two works are the most tangible expression of the concern with the scope and limits of reason in politics that runs throughout his political philosophy. Yet the political purpose and rhetorical strategy of that defense has received less attention than it deserves. Kant contends the possibility of establishing ends set by reason as critical standards in politics depends on rulers being persuaded that their interests are best served by cooperating with philosophers. The famous distinction in What is Enlightenment? between the public and private uses of reason proposes the terms of this cooperation. In The Conflict of The Faculties Kant makes similar arguments in defense of the university. He presents it as an institution that exists to serve governments but that can also pursue enlightening ends if government grants it the freedom to do so. The article attempts to show Kant's awareness of enduring conflicts between reason and authority in politics, and it argues that his defense of the public use of reason addresses them in a way that is still worthy of our attention.

Type
Research Article
Information
The Review of Politics , Volume 59 , Issue 1 , Winter 1997 , pp. 53 - 74
Copyright
Copyright © University of Notre Dame 1997

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References

1 See, for instance, Kersting, Wolfgang, “Politics, freedom and order: Kant's Political Philosophy,” in The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Guyer, Paul (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 1992), p. 360Google Scholar; and Williams, Howard, Kant's Political Philosophy (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1983), pp. 153,Google Scholar 275. Hassner's, Pierre article, “Immanuel Kant” in Strauss, and Cropsey's, History of Political Philosophy, 3rd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1987)Google Scholar accords the topic no special significance.

2 The most notable such interpretation is developed by O'Neill, Onora in Constructions of Reason (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989),Google Scholar Part One; and “Vindicating Reason,” in Geyer, Cambridge Companion to Kant, pp. 280–307. Comparable views are found in Arendt's, HannahLectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, ed. Beiner, Ronald (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982), pp. 39–51.Google Scholar See also Rosen, Allen, Kant's Theory of Justice (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1993), pp. 18–19, 181–86.Google Scholar

3 This theme has not been totally neglected. Kevin Davis's careful studies of the relation between publicity and justice in Kant's thought make a similar case. See his “Kantian Publicity and Political Justice,” History of Philosophy Quarterly 8 (1991): 409–421Google Scholar; and “Kant's Different Publics and the Justice of Publicity,” Kant-Studien 83:2 (1992): 170–84Google Scholar. Likewise, Jϋrgen Habermas contends that Kant advocates publicity as the bridge between politics and morality in The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere (Strukturwandel der Öffentlicheit), trans. Burger, Thomas (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1989), pp. 102–116.Google ScholarRosen, Stanley discusses the importance of publicity to Kant's overall philosophic project in Hermeneutics and Politics, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 30–32.Google Scholar

4 The rhetorical character of Kant's writing on politics has become more widely recognized in recent years. Knippenberg, Joseph provides an insightful account of the political purpose of Kant's philosophy of history in “The Politics of Kant's Philosophy,” Kant and Political Philosophy, ed. Beiner, Ronald and Booth, William (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1993), pp. 155–72Google Scholar. Cavallar, Georg shows how Kant's explicit praise of Frederick the Great disguises deeper criticisms in “Kant's Judgment on Frederick's Enlightened Absolutism,” History of Political Thought 24 (1993)Google Scholar. As Cavallar rightly points out, Kant regards enlightened absolutism as at best a transitional phase in the process towards republicanism. Laursen, John situates Kantian publicity in the context of a tradition of skeptical opposition to authority in The Politics of Skepticism in the Ancients, Montaigne, Hume, and Kant (New York: E. J. Brill, 1992)Google Scholar. Laursen shows how Kant's apparent support of enlightened absolutism and acceptance of the limits it placed upon freedom of speech conceals a more fundamental opposition. I depart from Laursen in contending that Kant's rhetorical strategy is not simply subversive. It is directed at political authorities as an appeal for their cooperation in a project of popular and political enlightenment.

5 James Schmidt provides an invaluable account of the political and intellectual context of What is Enlightenment? in “The Question of Enlightenment: Kant, Mendelssohn and the Mittwochsgesellschaft,” Journal of the History of Ideas 50 (1989): 269–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and “What Enlightenment Was: How Moses Mendelssohn and Immanuel Kant Answered the Berlinische Monatsschrift,” Journal of the History of Philosophy 30 (1992): 77–101CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Other useful studies of the intellectual history of the German enlightenment are Nisbet, H. B., “Was ist AufklUrung?: The Concept of Enlightenment in Eighteenth-Century Germany,” Journal of European Studies 12 (1982): 77–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Lestition, Steven, “Kant and the End of the Enlightenment in Prussia,” Journal of Modern History 65 (1993): 57–112CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Beiser's, Frederick C. twin studies The Fate of Reason: German Philosophy from Kant to Fichte (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1987)Google Scholar, and Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992)Google Scholar provide a comprehensive account of the political and intellectual issues that concerned Kant and his contemporaries.

6 Citations to Kant's works are to the volume and page number, separated by a colon, of the Prussian Academy Edition, Kants Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin: Königliche Preussische Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1902)Google Scholar (indicated by the abbreviation KGS). I provide the line number after the page number, separated by a period, in cases where the reference is to a single word or very short phrase that might otherwise be difficult to locate. The translations of Enlightenment are my own. In the case of The Conflict of the Faculties I generally rely on Gregor's, Mary well known English translation The Conflict of the Faculties (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1979).Google Scholar

7 For further discussion of this issue, see Schmidt, “What Enlightenment Was,” p. 94Google Scholar, and O'Neill, , Constructions of Reason, p. 34.Google Scholar

8 Elsewhere Kant gives different senses to the term public. Kevin Davis discusses these at length in “Kant's Different Publics.”

9 See, for instance, What is Orientation in Thinking? (KGS 8:144–47)Google Scholar, On the Common Saying: This May be True in Theory, but it Does Not Apply in Practice (KGS 8:304) and Eternal Peace: A Philosophic Sketch (KGS 8:37).

10 The last book to be published by Kant in his lifetime The Conflict of The Faculties is generally known only as the source of the essay “An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?” The tendency of scholars to overlook Kant's broader account of the university is hard to fathom, because it is really one of his most engaging works. Laursen's insightful discussion of the work in The Politics of Skepticism (1992) is a notable exception. However Kant's book in its entirety only became widely available in English after Mary Gregor's translation in 1979. Its reputation since was probably damaged by the publication of Hannah Arendt's suggestion that Kant was dotty when he wrote it. See her Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, pp. 9, 16.

11 Mary J. Gregor, “Translator's Introduction” to Conflict of the Faculties, pp. xv–xvi.

12 This not only helps to understand why Kant regards universities in such a utilitarian light, it also warns us against interpreting his argument in terms of the nineteenth century reforms of the German universities. It is tempting to interpret Kant's essay as a precursor the nineteenth century German university, especially since Fichte, Schelling and Humboldt all paid homage to Kant. The neo-humanist ideal of personal cultivation through science requires academic freedom. But this freedom is the freedom of distance and detachment from political concerns. As we shall see, the freedom for which Kant argues is a critical freedom with an enlightening political purpose. For background on the German universities in the late seventeenth century, see Turner, R. Steven, “University Reformers and Professional Scholarship in Germany, 1760–1806,” in The University in Society, vol. 2, ed. Laurence, Stone (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1974)Google Scholar; and McClelland, Charles E., State, Society and University in German, 1700–1014 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar. The most comprehensive general history of the German universities in Kant's time is still Paulsen's, FriedrichThe German Universities and University Study, trans. Thilly, F. and Elwang, W. W. (New York: Charles Scribners' Sons, 1906).Google Scholar

13 Kant acknowledges that the faculty of medicine has considerable independence from the government, since insofar as it teaches a natural science it must derive its teachings from nature alone. However the manner in which this science is to be employed is subject to government control (KGS 7:40–41.)