Kant on collectivism and war

Of all the leading figures of German philosophy in the modern era, Kant is perhaps the most influential had on the social thought of the Enlightenment.

There is a clear intellectual relationship between Rousseau and Kant. Biographers often repeat Heinrich Heine “s anecdote about how Kant always walked his afternoon walk at a fixed time, with such regular punctuality that neighbors could have adjusted his watches for his appearance — except on one occasion when he was delayed in his walk because he had been so caught by the reading of”Emile "by Rousseau who lost track of time . Kant had been raised as a pietist, a version of Lutheranism that highlighted simplicity and avoided external ornamentation. Kant consequently had no portraits or paintings on any of the walls of his house — with one exception: on his desk in his studio hung a portrait of Rousseau ¹; and Kant wrote: “I have learned to honor humanity by reading Rousseau.” ²

Neo-Enlightenment thinkers attack Kant for two things: his skeptical and subjective epistemology and his selfless duty ethics. The stance on Kant's reason, the divorce of cognitive contact with reality, thus destroying knowledge, and his stance on ethics divorces the morality of happiness, thereby destroying the purpose of life. As discussed in Chapter Two, Kant's arguments were a powerful blow against the Enlightenment.

In political terms, however, Kant is sometimes considered a liberal, and in the context of 18th century Prussia, there is some truth to that. In the context of liberalism of the Enlightenment, however, Kant deviated from liberalism in two major aspects: his collectivism and his defence of war as a means to collectivist ends.

In a 1784 essay, “Ideas for a Universal History in Cosmopolitan Key,”Kant asserted that there is a necessary destiny for the human species. Nature has a plan. It is, however, “a hidden plan of nature” ³, and as such it requires to be especially discerned by philosophers. That destiny is the total development of man's natural capabilities, especially reason. ⁴

Here, by “man”, Kant does not mean the individual. Nature's goal is collectivist: the development of the species. The capabilities of Man, Kant explained, are “to be fully developed only in the species, not in the individual” ⁵. The individual is merely fodder for the goal of nature, as Kant put it in his “Herder review”: “Nature does not allow us to see anything other than that it abandons individuals to complete destruction and only keeps the species” ⁶. And again, in his “Likely Beginning of Human History” of 1786, Kant argued that:

“The path that for the species leads to progress from the worst to the best does not do the same for the individual” ⁷.

The development of the individual is in conflict with the development of the species, and only the development of the species counts.

But it is also not the case that the development of the species is about happiness or realization. “Nature is completely indifferent to man living well” ⁸. The individual and even all existing individuals living together today are nothing more than a stage in a process, and their suffering does not count in the light of nature's ultimate end. In fact, Kant argued, man should suffer, and deservedly. Man is a sinful creature, a creature who is inclined to follow his own desires and not the demands of duty. Echoing Rousseau, Kant blamed humanity for choosing to use reason when our instincts could have served us perfectly well. ⁹ And now that reason has awakened, it has combined with self-interest to pursue all kinds of unnecessary and depraved desires. Thus the source of our boasted freedom, Kant wrote, is also our original sin: “the history of freedom begins with evil, for it is the work of man ” ¹⁰.

Therefore Kant admonished us:

“We are far from being able to value ourselves as moral” ¹¹. Man is a creature made of “reverted wood” ¹².

Therefore, to try to straighten our reverted natures, what is needed are powerful forces.

One such force is morality, a strict and intransigent morality of duty that opposes man's animal inclinations. A moral life is a life that no rational person “would wish to be longer than what it is in fact” ¹³, but one has the duty to live and develop oneself ¹⁴ and therefore to the species. Instilling this morality in man is one of the forces of nature.

Another force to straighten back wood is politics. Man is “an animal that, if he lives among other members of his species,needs a master.” And this is because “his selfish animal propensities induce him to be exempt [from moral rules] whenever he can.” Kant then introduced his version of Rousseau's general will. Politically, man “then requires a master who will break his own will and force him to obey a universally valid will” ¹⁵.

However, strict duty and political masters would not be enough. Nature would have devised an additional strategy to bring the human species closer to higher development. That strategy is war. As Kant wrote in his “Ideas for a Universal History”:

“The means used by nature to achieve the development of all the capabilities of man is the antagonism between them in society” ¹⁶.

So, conflict, antagonism, and war are good. They destroy many lives, but they are the natural path of the higher development of man's abilities. “At the stage of culture in which the human race is still standing,” Kant says bluntly in “The Probable Start..”, “war is an indispensable means of bringing it to an even higher stage.” ¹⁷ Peace would be a moral disaster, so we are obliged not to avoid war.” ¹⁸

As a product of this self-sacrifice of individuals and of war among nations, Kant hoped, the species would develop fully, and an international and cosmopolitan federation of states would live in peace and harmony, making possible within them the complete moral development of its members; ¹⁹ therefore, as Kant concluded in a 1794 essay entitled “The End of All Things”, men would finally be in a position to prepare for the day of “judgment of forgiveness or condemnation by the judge of the world” ²⁰. This is the hidden plan of nature; it is destined to happen; so we know what we have to anticipate.

Stephen R. C. Hicks, Explaining Post-Modernism , Chapter 4, “The Climate of Collectivism”, translation Walter Jerusaleminsky