Immanuel Kant: Moral Duty and Political Philosophy
While Adam Smith began by searching for the natural-social origin of good intentions, he ended by justifying capitalism in terms of its objective consequences. Immanuel Kant took exactly the opposite approach, believing that there is no connection whatever between economic consequences and moral judgements.
Smith thought moral rules result from everyday experience, which logically implied that they are dependent upon time and place. Kant, to the contrary, held that the moral law is universal and accessible only to a priori reason. Despite the differences in their final conclusions, however, Kant's view of history was in many respects suggestive of the type of reasoning found in Smith's Wealth of Nations.Adam Smith was aware of historical stages, moving from the Age of Hunters to that of Shepherds, then to Agriculture and eventually to Commerce,[132] which he regarded as most appropriate for the flourishing of human nature. Kant also believed that history suggested direction and purpose. Whereas Smith referred to the ‘invisible hand', Kant spoke of a ‘hidden plan of nature', involving progress through moral individuation to purely rational self-discipline. In his Ideafor a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose (1784), he wrote that men are ‘unwittingly guided in their advance along a course intended by nature. They are unconsciously promoting an end which, even if they knew what it was, would scarcely arouse their interest'[133] In a subsequent passage, he sounded even more like Smith:
The means which nature employs to bring about the development of innate capacities is that of antagonism within society, in so far as this antagonism [Smith would say competition] becomes in the long run the cause of a law- governed social order. By antagonism, I mean... the unsocial sociability of man that is. obviously rooted in human nature.
Man has an inclination to live in society... But he also has a great tendency to live as an individual... [T]he desire for honour, power or property. drives him to seek status among his fellows. Nature should thus be thanked for fostering social incompatibility, enviously competing vanity, and insatiable desires for possession or even power. Without these desires, all man's excellent natural capacities would never be roused to develop. They would thus seem to indicate the design of a wise creator...[134]Kant thought the ‘hidden plan of nature' is to produce law-governed social order. Competition for power and property results in external laws to prevent mutual destruction. The laws of the state enable each to pursue his or her own ends while assuring the same freedom to all others. When self-seeking energies are lawfully opposed to one another, the destructive effects are neutralised, and ‘the result is the same as if man's selfish tendencies were non-existent'.[135] [136] Freedom under external laws is the highest task that nature and historical experience set for humankind:
The mechanical [i.e. unconscious] process of nature visibly exhibits the purposive plan of producing concord among men, even against their will and indeed by means of their very discord. This design, if we regard it as a compelling cause whose laws of operation are unknown to us, is called fate. But if we consider its purposive function... we call it providence?1
Empirical history culminates in a civil culture of legal discipline, which is the external condition in which we acquire the habits of mind that allow us to lay down the moral law to ourselves. The end or purpose of humankind - the ‘idea' of history - is the universal rule of reason. This distinction between empirical history and its ideal significance is the beginning of a dualism in Kant's thinking that clearly distinguishes him from Smith. Kant replaced Smith's unifying concept of human nature with a distinction between the ‘noumenal' and the ‘phenomenal'.
As phenomenal beings we experience the self as part of nature and as governed by natural causality: we have biological needs that must be satisfied. But as noumenal beings we conceive the self as a ‘free will' that transcends biology: we find freedom in the duty to obey no master but our own moral reason. Like the Christian soul or the Calvinist conscience, Kant's nou- menal being has no empirical existence.Given this dualism, Kant's moral philosophy replays the logic of history - the emergence of law-governed order - as an internal drama within each consciousness. The result is an internal moral order that co-exists with external laws. Kant explained the requirements of moral law this way:
Everyone must admit that if a law is to have moral force, i.e. to be the basis of an obligation, it must carry with it absolute necessity [otherwise it would not be a law];... therefore, the basis of obligation must not be sought in the nature of man [for nature is a realm of particular needs and appetites rather than rational necessity], or in the circumstances of the world in which he is placed [a universal law cannot be determined by particular circumstances], but a priori simply in the conception of pure reason... moral philosophy... does not borrow the least thing from the knowledge of man himself (anthropology), but gives laws a priori to him as a rational being.[137] [138] [139] [140] [141] [142] An a priori law is logically prior to time and place; that is to say, it is universally valid - always and everywhere. Moral law is analogous to the laws of physics insofar as it is universal in scope and binds all without exception. But moral law is also radically different in that it determines wills that determine themselves. To apply always and everywhere, the moral law must be strictly formal, telling us how to judge, not what judgements to make (which will always pertain to a particular time and place). Kant gave several formulations of the categorical imperative: 1) ‘Act only on that maxim whereby thou canst at the same time will that it should become a universal law’;55 2) ‘So act as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of any other, in every case as an end withal, never as means only’;56 3) ‘So act as if thy maxim were to serve likewise as the universal law (of all rational beings)'.57 Kant’s second formulation categorically forbids use of oneself or of another human being merely as a means to one’s own end; all rational beings must be respected as ends in themselves, whose uniquely human attribute is the capacity for autonomous moral judgements. The third formulation, which ultimately reappears in Hegel’s political philosophy and is even echoed - indirectly, by way of his critique of Hegel - in Marx’s anticipation of communism, points to the logical prospect of what Kant called a universal ‘kingdom of ends’, meaning a self-governing whole, a community of autonomous individual wills cohering through universal laws that are identical for all, speak to each from within, and result purely from the requirements of reason. Kant explained: By a kingdom I understand the union of different rational beings in a system by common laws. Now since it is by laws that ends are determined as regards their universal validity, hence, if we abstract from the personal differences of rational beings and likewise from all the content of their private ends, we shall be able to conceive all ends combined in a systematic whole (including both rational beings as ends in themselves, and also the special ends which each may propose to himself), that is to say, we can conceive a kingdom of ends, which on the preceding principles is pos- sible.[143] Adam Smith said conscience speaks to us on behalf of our particular community; Kant replied that conscience speaks the universal, and the universal is in each of us. There must... be someone other than the people whom we can declare the public lawgiver of an ethical community. But this is the concept of God as a moral ruler of the world. Hence an ethical community is conceivable only as a people under divine commands, i.e. as a people of God, and indeed in accordance with the laws of virtue.[144] Only God, in His perfection, could produce perfect laws that speak to each from within, yet Kant said it is our rational duty to strive for the ideal. The question then becomes: How might we aspire, in everyday life, to produce a general Will out of a plurality of individual wills? Marx will tell us that the answer lies in communal self-determination through an agreed economic plan, which coordinates all of our ends in a common purpose. For Kant, however, the answer appeared to lie in a social contract as the concept (or principle) of any rational constitution in which only the ‘united and consenting Will of all’[145] can legislate, creating a sovereignty in which reason alone must prevail. Kant suggested that beyond empirical history lies a rational history that we might consciously make for ourselves. History might be created a priori in the same way as a priori reason specifies moral duty: ‘... At this point, however, Kant’s political philosophy ran aground on the same issue that confronted Adam Smith: the inequality of wealth and power and its effect upon the determination of public law. Each individual has the rational capacity to ‘legislate’ moral preceptsfor the self, but Kant was convinced that not all are capable of rational politicaljudgements. Formal law might ensure that all ‘are free and equal under existing public law. but not as regards the right to make these laws’.’4 Particular wills could not finally converge as a ‘general Will’ - or the ‘united Will of the people’ - because of the institution of private property. In order to exercise rational judgement in political life, and thus to have a ‘civil personality’, one first had to have ‘civil independence’, which, in turn, required economic independence. To be a citizen, one must ‘have some property (which can include any skill, trade, fine art or science) to support himself’.[150] [151] The self-employed and the independently wealthy - artisans and landowners - were qualified to be active citizens, but not women or day- labourers, whose judgement would be distorted by their condition of economic dependence. Fitness for voting is a prerequisite of being a citizen. To be fit to vote, a person must be independent. This qualification leads to the distinction between an active and a passive citizen. The following examples [of passive citizens] may serve to clear up this difficulty: an apprentice of a merchant or artisan; a servant (not in the service of the state); a minor...; all women; and generally anyone who must depend for his support (subsistence and protection). on arrangements by others. - all such people lack civic personality.66 Kant concluded that the ideal of the social contract ‘is in fact merely an idea of reason'.6[152] Its practical significance lay solely in the conviction that legislators are rationally obligated to consider whether any proposed law could be agreed to by the entire people, were they in a position to express a rational judgement. But since most of them were not, the phenomenal republic could never become the noumenal republic. ‘Any true republic’, Kant decided, ‘is and cannot be anything other than a representative system of the people whereby the people’s rights are looked after on their behalf by deputies who represent the united will of the citizens’[153] Landless peasants, day labourers and vagabonds - the victims, as Marx said, of primitive capitalist accumulation - would have to depend upon the wisdom and virtue of the great and powerful. The dualism in Kant’s political philosophy resulted from his inability to see beyond the existing economic order. The Marxist philosopher Lucien Gold- mann wrote that Kantian man is condemned to a tragic and divided existence, ‘torn between a material but atomistic and egoistic aspiration towards happiness and a purely formal morality. That is why the moral law is an imperative, an “ought”, and not an “is”...’[154] Kant would reply, of course, that what merely ‘is’, is not the point: the proper concern of philosophy is the subjective intention that precedes the action. ‘An action done from duty derives its moral worth. from the maxim by which it is determined, and therefore does not depend on the realization of the object of the action, but merely on the principle of volition by which the action has taken place...70 The highest end, the ultimate end in itself, is a ‘good will', which acts upon nothing but the good intention never to treat other people solely as means to our own end: ‘the worth of such a will is above everything'.[155] [156] [157] In The German Ideology (1845), Marx and Engels dismissed such thoughts as a reflection of the miserable circumstances of the German bourgeoisie in Kant's day: The state of Germany at the end of the last century is fully reflected in Kant's Kritik der Practischen Vernunft [ Critique of Practical Reason]. While the French bourgeoisie, by means of the most colossal revolution that history has ever known, was achieving domination and conquering the Continent of Europe, while the already politically emancipated English bourgeoisie was revolutionising industry and subjugating India politically, and all the rest of the world commercially, the impotent German burghers did not get any further than ‘good will'. Kant was satisfied with ‘good will' alone, even if it remained entirely without result, and he transferred the realisation of this good will, the harmony between it and the needs and impulses of individuals, to the world beyond [the kingdom of ends]. Kant's good will fully corresponds to the impotence, depression and wretchedness of the German burghers, whose petty interests were never capable of developing into the common, national interests of a class and who were, therefore, constantly exploited by the bourgeois of all other nations?2 The characteristic form which French liberalism, based on real class interests, assumed in Germany we find again in Kant. Neither he, nor the German middle class, whose whitewashing spokesman he was, noticed that these theoretical ideas of the bourgeoisie had as their basis material interests and a will that was conditioned and determined by the material relations of production. Kant, therefore, separated this theoretical expression from the interests which it expressed; he made the materially motivated determinations of the will of the French bourgeois into pure selfdeterminations of ‘free will’, of the will in and for itself, of the human will, and so converted it into purely ideological conceptual determinations and moral postulates. Hence the German petty bourgeois recoiled in horror from the practice of this energetic bourgeois liberalism as soon as this practice showed itself, both in the Reign of Terror and in shameless bourgeois profit-making.[158] [159] Marx despised Kant's political philosophy because he thought it represented the most insipid sort of bourgeois self-deception. For thinkers such as Adam Smith and David Ricardo, Marx had much greater respect. They at least made a contribution to economic science. There is much irony, however, in the fact that numerous subsequent Marxists, who for one reason or another despaired of the prospect for proletarian revolution, ended up reverting to some form of neo-Kantianism. Kant's name, for that reason, often recurs in this volume. To disillusioned Marxists, Kant provided a comfortable haven: he expressed confidence in the ability of human reason if not to resolve class contradictions, then perhaps to promote gradual improvement. Unlike the Calvinist disdain for the poor, Kant believed that the principle of the modern state included the responsibility to redistribute wealth, through taxation, to the benefit of those who could not secure their own subsistence?4 To later Social Democrats, such as Eduard Bernstein and several Austro-Marxists of the early twentieth century, this sort of reformism had considerable appeal.[160] [161] [162]