(cambridge critical guides) amélie oksenberg rorty, james schmidt-kant_s _idea for a universal...

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KANTS 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 Kants Ideafor a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. The essays inthis volume, written by distinguished contributors, discuss thequestions that are at the core of Kants 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:

Hegels Phenomenology of Spiritedited by dean moyar and michael quante

Mills On Liberty: A Critical Guideedited by c. l . ten

Kants Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aimedited by amelie oksenberg rorty and james schmidt

KANTS

Idea for a Universal Historywith a Cosmopolitan Aim

A Critical Guide

edited by

AMLIE OKSENBERG RORTYAND

JAMES SCHMIDT

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

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2009

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Contents

List of contributors page viiList of abbreviations x

Introduction: history as philosophyAMLIE 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 Kants 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 Kants 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 Kants changing cosmopolitanismPAULINE KLEINGELD 171

v

9 The hidden plan of natureECKART FRSTER 187

10 Providence as progress: Kants variations on a tale of originsGENEVIEVE LLOYD 200

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

12 Philosophy helps historyRDIGER 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 Kants Transcendental Idealism: AnInterpretation and Defense (1983), Kants Theory of Freedom (1990), Idealismand Freedom: Essays in Kants Theoretical and Practical Philosophy(1996), and Kants 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 Kants Theory of Mind(1982; 2nd edn., 2000), Kant and the Fate of Autonomy (2000), InterpretingKants 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 Nietzsches 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 Kants 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), Kants 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 SpinozasEthics (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 Hegels Phenomenology: The Sociality of Reason (1994),Hegel: A Biography (2000), and German Philosophy 17601860: 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 Aristotles Ethics (1980), Essays on Descartes Meditations(1986), Essays on Aristotles Poetics (1992), Essays on Aristotles 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 Sidgwicks 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 Hegels Ethical Thought (1990), Kants 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

Kants works will be cited in the body of the text according to the volumeand page number in Immanuel Kants Schriften, Ausgabe der kniglichpreussischen 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 by

Kant.

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 weltbrgerlicher 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 Mutmalicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte (1786), Ak 8

Conjectural Beginning of Human HistoryMS Metaphysik der Sitten (17978), Ak 6

Metaphysics of MoralsR Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloen Vernunft

(17934), Ak 6Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

x

Ref Reflexionen, Ak 1423. 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 12, Ak 8Reviews of J. G. Herders Ideas for the Philosophy of theHistory of Humanity, Parts 12

T&P ber den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig seintaught aber nicht fr 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 philosophyAmlie 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 Kants 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?

Kants 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 itsregularities 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 Rousseaus 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 Rousseaus 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 Leibnizs view that cosmic harmony expresses divine will.Moreover, while Leibnizs divinely ordained harmony is atemporal, Kantthought that cosmopolitan harmony could be attained by free human activity

2 Kants 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.

Kants successors echoed many of his essays central insights, but oncedetached 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 asKants utopian hopes for a cosmopolitan world order. Marx shared Kantsconviction that history is driven forward by paradoxes and contradictions,but the concern with rights that lay at the heart of Kants 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 Kants synthesized compoundwould prove as diverse as the elements that composed it.

If we take Kant at his word, the immediate impetus for his audacioussynthesis was modest enough. A note by his colleague Johann Schultz in theGothaische Gehlehrte Zeitung had reported that Kants 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,Schultzs summary would have no meaning (8:15).

Readers today typically encounter Idea for a Universal History in anthol-ogies of Kants 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 Kants work who served as Frederick IIs 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. viiviii.

Introduction: history as philosophy 3

History was the lead article a testimony, perhaps, both to Kants growingreputation and to Biester and Gedikes 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 Biestersco-editor Gedike.2 While the contributions from Gedike and Biesterreflected the journals 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 Leibnizs 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. 42846, and [Gedike], Ueber Berlin.Von einem Fremden, Berlinische Monatsschrift II (1784), pp. 44770.

3 J. G. Selden, Auszug aus einer mrkischen Bupredigt wegen zwei monstrser Ferkel, BerlinischeMonatsschrift II (1784), pp. 4719.

4 For Kants relationship with the journal, see Peter Weber, Kant und die Berlinische Monatsschrift, inDina Edmundts, ed., Immanuel Kant und die Berliner Aufklrung (Wiesbaden: Dr. Ludwig RiechertVerlag, 2000), pp. 6079.


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 theRepublic of Letters.

In these essays, Kant made the cause of the Berlinische Monatsschrift hisown. 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 Kantthat 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 fitit 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 (8:3079). 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 (6:34355).

Kants essay has never lacked admirers. A chance encounter with it wasenough to convince the poet Friedrich Schiller that he needed to engage in amore extensive reading of Kants 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 Jrgen 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 historys 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 Kants 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 Kants works to be translated, appearing alongside Kants 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 Richardsons two-volume collection ofKants Essays and Treatises on Moral, Political, and Various PhilosophicalSubjects (17989).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 Quincys translation of the propositions(but not Kants 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 Hasties collection KantsPrinciples of Politics (1891).9 The emigr political scientist Carl Friedrichprovided a partial translation of the essay in his 1949 compendium of Kantsphilosophical and political writings.10 But Friedrich was chiefly interested in

5 Ernst Cassirer, Kants 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, Kants 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. 38593 (reprinted inTheWorks of Thomas De Quincey, ed. Frederick Burwick [London: Pickeringand Chatto, 2000], 4:20416); Robert Southey, Sir Thomas More, Or, Colloquies on the Progress andProspects of Society (London: John Murray, 1829), p. 408. Montesinos, Mores partner in dialogue,praises Kants work as an exception to the trash and tinsel and insolent flippancy that typicallyappears in literary magazines.

9 William Hastie, ed., Kants Principles of Politics (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1891), pp. 129.10 Carl Joachim Friedrich, The Philosophy of Kant (New York: Random House, 1949), pp. 11631.


Towards Perpetual Peace, in part because of the chronological accident of thesesquicentennial of its publications 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 Fackenheims discussion of Kantswritings on history in Kant-Studien and Lewis White Becks influentialcollection of Kants writings on history.12

The motifs of Kants 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 Kants 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 distinguishKants arguments from those of his contemporaries. Schneewind andWoodshed new light on what was perhaps the most novel concept in Kantsarsenal: the notion that the progress of the human species is the product ofits unsociable sociability. Taking his point of departure from Kantsfamous image of the human race as a crooked timber that could neverbe made entirely straight,Guyer traces the evolution of Kants reflectionson justice. Herman analyzes the emergence and aims of civil society whileKleingeld explores the transformation of Kants conception of cosmopoli-tanism. Frster 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 17951945, Journal of Politics 9, 1(1947).

12 Emil Fackenheim, Kants Concept of History, Kant-Studien 48 (19567). Lewis White Beck, ed.,Kant on History (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), pp. 1126. Becks 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 Kants 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 Kants 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 Kants Writings on Anthropology, History andEducation, ed. Guenther Zoeller and Robert B. Louden (CambridgeUniversity Press, 2007), and Karen Carroll for her generous editorial help.Amlie Rorty is also grateful to the gemtlich 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 byKants colleague and follower Johann Schultz in a 1784 article in the GothaLearned Papers.1 In order to make good on Schultzs 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 Kants moral and political philosophy, and to hisconception of practical faith in divine providence. Especially prominent init is the first statement of Kants famous conception of a federation of statesunited to secure perpetual peace between nations.

The Idea for a Universal History also contained several propositions thatwere soon to be disputed by J. G. Herder in his Ideas for the Philosophy of theHistory of Humanity, leading to Kants reply in his reviews of that work(1785) and in the Conjectural Beginning of Human History (1786).

Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbrgerlicher Absicht was firstpublished in the Berlinische Monatsschrift IV (November 11, 1784). Thetranslation is based on the presentation of the work in AA 2:1531 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 Vlker 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 zweckmig, which could also be translated suitably 5 das trostlose Ungefhr

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 natures 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 nest rien si dissociable et sociable que lhomme: lun par son vice, lautre par sa nature. MichelEyquem de Montaigne, De la solitude, Essais, edited by Andr Tournon. Paris: Imprimerienationale ditions, 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 fr 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 Vlkerbund


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 Abb 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 ofefficient 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 humanbeings 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 339338, 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 theircitizensmode 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 natures 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 citizens 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 nations 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 durchgngigen 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 ones 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 thelatters 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 (Vlker) 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 (Vlkern). 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 Mibildung 23 des rmischen Volks 24 anderer Vlker 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 ones 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 Vlker 27 Historie 28 Vlker


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 Kants philosophy of history

Henry E. Allison

Although the title of Kants 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,transcendentwith respect to the latter. In the first Critique, Kants 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 3723); buthis focus was on the transcendental Ideas (the soul, the world, and God),which arise from extending certain concepts of the understanding to theunconditioned, 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 andregulates 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 humankinds 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 methodologyand connection with the critical philosophy of Kants philosophy of historyrather than on the particular view of history that it contains. Inasmuch asKants 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 isdivided 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 Kantsphilosophy of biology. Although not directly germane to his account ofhistory, Kants controversial thesis that the conception of an intrinsicpurposiveness is an ineliminable condition of our understanding of organ-isms provides the framework in which Kants whole approach to teleologymust be viewed. The fourth examines Kants 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 Kants 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.

Teleology and history in Kant 25

connection between the conception of humankind as the ultimate end ofnature and Kants 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 commonwealththat Kant introduces in Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, theseventh part explores the complex but related question of the connectionsbetween Kants 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 humankinds 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 Kantsphilosophy of history and his moral theory, see Allen Wood, Kants Ethical Thought (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1999), esp. pp. 11822, 21012.


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 forthe 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 Hegels famous cunning of reason (List der Vernunft),which plays a similar role in the latters 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 Kants 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. 1257. Yovel notes (140n) that the expressionwas also used by EricWeil in Problmes 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 Kants 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 (Zweckmssigkeit) 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 ofKants writings on history see Fackenheim, Kants Concept of History; Lewis White Beck, EditorsIntroduction to Kant On History, pp. vixxiii; Klaus Weyand, Kants Geschichtsphilosophie, IhreEntwicklung und ihr Verhltnis zur Aufklrung, Kant-Studien Ergnzungshefte 85 (1964), pp. 721;and Michael Despland, Kant on History and Religion (Montreal and London: McGill-QueensUniversity Press, 1973), pp. 114.

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 KantsTheory 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 (zweckmssig) is to say that itappears as if designed or produced according to the idea of some plan or end(Zweck). Correlatively, purposiveness (Zweckmssigkeit) 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 somethings 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 beuseful to say a word about the former, since it will enable us to appreciatewhy Kants 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 1324/B 1714.


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 purposivenessand refers to natures 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.

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