Kant, Sensus Communis, and Tradition

Common sense, or sensus communis, may refer to (1) a human individual’s “sixth sense” that organizes and unifies inputs from the five physical senses.  Common sense may also refer to (2) a widely distributed basic human awareness and ability to judge.  Descartes started his Discourse on Method with the observation that “Good sense is of all things the most equally distributed … The power of forming a good judgment and of distinguishing the true from the false, which is properly speaking what is called Good Sense or Reason, is by nature equal in all men.”  Finally, the sensus communis may refer to (3) the results of human judgments that exist in the form of viewpoints and values that are widespread within a particular linguistic or historical community.  For example, Herodotus spoke the common sense of his culture by memorializing the Greco-Persian Wars and ensuring that certain human achievements might neither be forgotten nor lose their glory.  Since viewpoints and values persist over a period of time and are inculcated into new generations while a community lasts, this third type of sensus communis may be said to form a tradition.  All three types of sensus communis play a role in creating the linguistic and intellectual environment required for philosophical analysis and synthesis.

      Did Kant think that humans possess any variety of sensus communis among their higher faculties?  If so, then is the Kantian sensus communis concerned with coordinating sensory input, as in (1); competence in judging, as in (2); or creation and evaluation of historical traditions, as in (3)?

      Regarding judgment: For Kant, sensible intuition serves as the basis for human thought about nature.  Objects given within consciousness (mental representations) arise from sensible matter (states of sense organs) and a priori sensible forms (space and time).  Only on a higher level of cognition does natural knowledge arise from the understanding (correct judgment) applied to sensible intuitions, mental representations, or given objects.  Regarding evaluation: Kant distinguishes between fulfilling hypothetical imperatives based on desire and obeying a Categorical Imperative based on a reverence for the moral law.  Thus, Kant believes that there are higher cognitive faculties related to understanding and moral evaluation that we could view as varieties of sensus communis.

      There is another Kantian higher faculty in which sensus communis plays a role: There exists an aesthetic faculty in which the imagination is applied to aesthetic intuitions (mental representations of a certain kind, i.e., aesthetic objects) in order to evaluate the subject’s feelings of pleasure or displeasure toward the aesthetic object.  The very first footnote in Kant’s Critique of Aesthetic Judgment (the first half of his Critique of Judgment) defines taste as the faculty of judging the beautiful.  Subsequently, in ¶ 1 of § 40 of that work, Kant says that although we may speak of senses of truth, beauty, or justice, etc. when referring to one’s dexterity in rendering judgments; we know full well that these concepts have no empirical basis but rather spring from (what we read as) “higher faculties.”  [Kant seems in this paragraph carelessly to have lumped together all higher faculties into a single Erkentnisvermögen (faculty of cognition), which would contradict his overall thesis, stated in § 1, that the judgment of taste is not a judgment of cognition.  (Das Geschmacksurteil ist also kein Erkenntnisurteil.)] 

      Continuing in ¶ 1 of § 40, Kant holds that common sense, interpreted as common human understanding (gemeiner Menschenverstand), may refer to “mere healthy understanding” (bloβ gesunder Menschenverstand); which is the least we can expect from a creature purporting to be human and which - - so far from being a positive distinction - - is actually a vulgar quality.  Kant disdains Reid’s approach to common sense.

      In ¶ 2 of § 40, however, Kant finds that gemeiner Verstand also bears the meaning gemeinschaftlicher Verstand, i.e., that common sense may refer to “public sense.”  Common sense as public sense refers a perfectly disinterested subject’s (i.e., “one’s”) act of reflective judgment (Reflexion): One takes into account the a priori form of representation of all others in order to conform one’s judgment to that of the totality of human reason, thereby avoiding the illusion that private considerations might prejudice the judgment.  This is accomplished by comparing one’s judgment not only to others’ actual judgments but also to others’ merely possible judgments, abstracting away from one’s own limitations.  Kant admits that the operation of reflection appears rather too artificial to be common, but insists that abstracting away from mere charm and emotion is necessary when rendering a universal judgment.  Nevertheless, it strikes the present writer that common sense as public sense involves more than just (2), the ability to judge aesthetic objects; and includes (3), the traditional results of judgments in particular communities in particular epochs.

      In an aside in ¶ 3 of § 40 Kant states three “maxims of common sense”: First, think for yourself.  Second, think from the standpoint of everyone else.  Third, think consistently at all times.  This is Kant’s formula for implementing the Enlightenment, blasting superstition and tradition, and restricting common sense to option (2) of our analysis.

      Kant says in ¶ 4 of § 40 that taste is more justifiably designated as sensus communis or public sense than is “healthy understanding.”  Aesthetic, rather than intellectual, judgment is the effect that mere reflection (bloβe Reflexion) has upon the mind; and this effect is a feeling of pleasure or displeasure.  Taste might even be defined as the faculty of judging what makes our feeling regarding a given representation universally communicable without the use of concepts.  In a footnote, Kant identifies taste with a sensus communis aestheticus, whereas gemeiner Verstand corresponds to a sensus communis logicus.

      In ¶ 5 of § 40 Kant reformulated the idea of mere reflection as the interaction between free imagination and understanding apart from concepts, resulting in the communication of an aesthetic representation (i.e., in an aesthetic representation communicating itself) as an internal feeling of a purposive state of mind, not as a thought.

      Regarding the perfectly disinterested subject (the “one”) who is tasked with assessing common sense as public sense in the foregoing discussion: Are Kant and his readers trying to achieve a “view from nowhere,” consistent with the work of Thomas Nagel?  His view is that achieving objective reality is a great good, but that objective reality is incomplete.  Alternately, do we seek to approximate a “view from everywhere,” an estimated totality of human reason that may likewise be incomplete?  Or are we looking for a “view from somewhere,” a land of particular traditions?

      Kant embodied the Enlightenment tradition of thinking for oneself, which in turn derived from the Cartesian paradigm of retiring to a mountaintop with one’s reason and good sense (sensus communis) in order to establish all knowledge for oneself based on the cogito ergo sum.  Modernity, including Kant’s philosophy, sees thinking for oneself as a rejection of all tradition, even though systematic thinking seems itself to be a tradition.  In some of his lectures, Professor Phillip Cary has pointed out that post-modernity sees modernity as a tradition that is unaware of its own status as a tradition.  On this view, modernity is either a dead end, because it and all other traditions have been discredited; or else one tenable tradition, among others, that has something to contribute to analysis and narration.  Modernity seems to be a sensus communis of type (3) as defined in the first paragraph of this post.

      Adopting one possible post-modern perspective, religions could be seen as interacting historical traditions in the quest for meaning.  As an exponent of modernity, however, Kant saw traditional, revealed religions as potential sources of superstition.  In terms of Venn diagrams, one imagines Kant depicting revealed religions as overlapping circles on a plane representing the “religious universe of discourse.”  Kant seems to have implied that all “revealed-religion circles” overlap a common, smaller region representing a unique, natural religion of reason.  For Kant, this Vernunftreligion exists as an aid in motivating moral choices, fulfilling the Categorical Imperative, and forming part of the philosopher’s proper domain of pure reason. (This view is adapted from the Preface to the second edition of Kant’s Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone.)  Nevertheless, the possibility that modernity and its Vernunftreligion may themselves be Western traditions seems to loom over the Kantian project.

Plato (2): Crito and Phaedo

The full title of this post is “Platonic Reflections (2): Socrates’ Final Investigations as Reported in the Dialogs Crito and Phaedo.”  In Crito the argument regards the advisability of Socrates’ fleeing prison.  In Phaedo there are four arguments regarding the immortality of the human soul.

      One month after Socrates’ conviction, discussed in the Apology, Socrates is still alive in prison, because no executions may occur in Athens during an annual ritual voyage to and from the sacred island of Delos, celebrating Theseus’ ancient mission to kill the Minotaur on Crete.  Socrates’ old friend, Crito, stops by the prison with the news that the celebratory ship will soon be in port.  Of Socrates’ previous refusal to escape prison, Crito complains that he, Crito, stands to lose not only an irreplaceable friend but also his reputation as a “fixer,” whose money and connections can reliably circumvent official decrees.  Crito again entreats Socrates to escape.

      Upon reflection, Socrates finds that his actions should not be governed by the opinions of the many, who praise Crito for his connections; but of the few, who are expert in right and wrong (48a).  Socrates establishes that to do wrong, including injury in retaliation, is bad and dishonorable (49b-c).  The laws of the state are personified as complaining to Socrates and Crito that complicity in escape would tend “to destroy us, the laws, and the whole state as well” (50a-b). 

      The benefits of civilization, education, and tradition create obligations to obey the law.  Few Athenians have benefitted from this social contract as much as Socrates, who never left the city except on military expedition (52a-b).  The personified laws ask Socrates what good escaping will do.  If Socrates were to flee to a well-governed state like Megara or Thebes, then the indigenous patriots would view him with suspicion.  If Socrates were to flee to an ill-governed state with obtuse citizens, like Thessaly, then he would find no suitable philosophical interlocutors (53e).  Leaving Athens in a dishonorable way would incur the wrath of the personified laws of the poleis in his lifetime, and of the “other world” after his death.  All laws say in effect, “Do not take Crito’s advice, but follow ours” (54c-d).  Having no rational response to Socrates’ argument, Crito reluctantly acquiesces in Socrates’ decision not to escape.

      Turning now to Phaedo’s recapitulation, in the eponymous dialog, of the events and arguments of Socrates’ final day before execution, the interlocutors Cebes and Simmias object (62c-63a) to Socrates’ easy acceptance of his death penalty: If the philosopher’s service in life is directed by the gods, who are the best masters, why should a really wise man wish readily to accept death and to desert masters who are better than himself?  Socrates undertakes (63b) to provide a better defense of his philosophizing than he did at his trial.  He defines death as the release of the soul from the body (64c).  He argues (65b-69e) that the soul attains a true view of reality by reflection; that the presence of the body only blurs this view; that the “other world” will be adequately populated by good rulers and good friends (potential interlocutors); and, hence, that the true philosopher looks forward to death.  Cebes objects (69e-70b) that Socrates has only presupposed that the soul will survive death and arrive in the “other world” while retaining its “active force and intelligence.”  Cebes demands an argument for the immortality of the soul to support the thesis that the true philosopher looks forward to death.  Socrates then presents four such arguments, as follows.

      The Dynamic-Equilibrium Argument (70c-72e): It is proposed that for all things in some class of continuously varying things, each thing comes into being from a differing, “opposite” state.  Consider the case of exactly two differing size states, “large” and “small.”  Today, one might say: There are dynamic processes (with transition rates) connecting these two states in both directions, i.e., from small to large and from large to small.  In dynamic equilibrium, there are equilibrium populations (call them P1 and P2) of “smalls” and “larges” related to the transition rates (call them R12 and R21) by the equation P1*R12 = P2*R21.  If both transition rates are positive and one population is a positive integer, then we may infer that the other population, even if not observed, is a positive integer. 

      If life and death were “opposites” in the same sense as the two states “large” and “small”, then since both birth rate and death rate are positive, and since there is a positive number of souls in the present world, then there must be a positive number of souls in “the other world.”  The sum over worlds of all souls is constant; the soul is immortal.  Comment: Life and death do not seem to belong to a class of things that are continuously varying.  (Being “half alive” under some duress is a metaphor.)  If life and death and are not “opposites” in the same sense as “large” and “small”, then this argument seems to rely on an equivocation on the term “opposite.” 

      The Recollection Argument (72e-77a): Measured things may appear equal at one resolution and unequal at a higher resolution.  Nevertheless, we have a notion of absolute equality.  Seeing deficient examples of “equality” merely helps us to recollect the notion of equality itself.  Such recollection presupposes, in turn, prior knowledge of the equal itself.  Since this knowledge does not come from sense perception, we (i.e., our souls) must have acquired this knowledge before we started processing sense perception.  Hence, our souls must have existed before we were born.  Comment: This argument, by itself, does not completely address the immortality of the soul; because each person could have a “one-use soul” that pre-dates and animates his or her specific body and that then perishes.

      The Metaphysical Classification Argument (78b-84b): If there is a metaphysical classification of existent things into two groups (worlds) based on certain clearly recognizable features, then perhaps we can infer which of the two groups “would naturally suffer the fate of being dispersed” (78b), i.e. the fate of being mortal. The two groups in question are the composite and the incomposite (simple).  The composite refers to the perceptible things (in the “visible world”) that are ever changing; and that are natural, unintelligible, and mortal.  The simple refers to the invisible world (of the Forms) that allows only mental access; that is always the same; and that is divine, intelligible, and immortal (78c-79a, summarized in 80b).

      The soul is more like the things in the simple world, whereas the body is more like the things in the composite world  (79b-e).  Therefore, supposing a soul has been freed of bodily influence (“purified”) through abstemious philosophical training; that soul is most likely to wend its way, post death, to the simple, invisible “other world” (80d-82c) without fear of “scattering” into oblivion (84b).  Comment: One might say that the soul, being simple, has no decay by-products and is hence incapable of decay.

      The fourth argument in 105c-e does not mention the Forms explicitly, so we will refer to it as The Linguistic Argument (based on analysis of concepts): Soul must be present in a body to make it alive, i.e. whenever soul takes possession of a body, the soul always brings life with it.  Death, the soul leaving the body, is the opposite of life.  But while so leaving, the soul itself does not change and “will never admit the opposite of that which accompanies it.”  Hence, soul is immortal.  Comment: The idea seems to be that a soul may be dislodged from a body, and if so, the body dies; but the soul itself carries on its own existence. 

      After Socrates finishes his final argument for the immortality of the soul, Simmias claims to have no doubts about Socrates’ bravura performance.  Nevertheless, Simmias wisely hedges his bets by saying “all the same, the subject is so vast, and I have such a poor opinion of our weak human nature, that I can’t help still feeling some misgivings” (107a-b).  Comment: In the Christian tradition such misgivings are allayed by the resources of revelation in addition to those of rational inquiry.

Plato (1): The Apology, Compared

The full title of this post is “Platonic Reflections (1): Comparison of Some Behavior in the Apology and at Disney World.”

      Late last year there were media reports of some individuals surreptitiously scattering human cremation ashes on the grounds of Disney World.  This scattering might be interpreted as nominally spiritual: Look at how the bereaved honor their dear departed!  On the other hand, one possible post-modern interpretation of this scattering is ironic and materialistic: Look at how those insulted by death escape a day’s worth of ennui by mocking traditions of burial or cremation!  In contrast, we may turn to the Platonic dialogs Apology, Crito, and Phaedo for a philosophical examination of death that is anything but ironic and materialistic.  These dialogs, occurring just before and after Socrates’ execution, include a passionate investigation of the possibility and implications of a separate existence for disembodied rational souls after death.  The idea of a separation of body and soul at death would later become common in Christian thought.  This blog post will review the Apology; a future post will summarize Crito and Phaedo.       

      Before an Athenian court in 399 B.C. Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon (representing poets, politicians, and orators, respectively) accused the 70 year-old Socrates of corrupting the youth of Athens and believing in self-invented gods rather than state-approved gods.  Socrates responded that their well-honed arguments sounded convincing; on the other hand, scarcely a word of what they said was true.   

      Socrates repeatedly complained about the short time allowed for his trial, because it was necessary for him first of all to defend himself against a widespread Athenian background belief that would prejudice jury deliberations.  This belief is that Socrates is a wise man who can make the weaker argument defeat the stronger.  Socrates maintains that he is said to be wise only because of a mysterious utterance of the god (oracle) at Delphi, who had supposedly once said that there is no one wiser than Socrates.  (Some historians say that the oracle spoke gibberish that had to be interpreted by the Delphic priests; hence, Socrates’ uncertainty.)  Socrates had set about many years ago, as a sort of religious duty, to find the true meaning of the Delphic oracle on that past occasion.  It should be straightforward, Socrates thought, to find people purporting to be wise and to question them with the aim of establishing his own ignorance and inferiority.  Those examined, however, neither stood up well under Socrates’ interrogation nor took kindly to his efforts; hence, there arose a widespread campaign of slander against him.  Such calumny is irrelevant to the charges brought by Meletus, Anytus, and Lycon.  Socrates’ “interrogation of experts” had only established that real wisdom is the property of God and that the oracle had really been saying that human wisdom has little or no value.

      Socrates then returns to the specific charges of corrupting youth and believing in non-approved gods.  Socrates argues (in the text indexed by Stephanus numbers 25c-26a) that if he were corrupting youth, then he would be harmed by their future corrupt behavior.  But no one chooses to be harmed.  Hence, he is either not corrupting youth or else is doing so unintentionally, in which case the proper remedy is private reproof, not public trial.  Socrates believes that only the background hostility previously mentioned could move a jury to convict him.

      Starting at 28b, Socrates asks rhetorically if he feels no compunction in having lived a life of examining others and building up animus against himself.  Socrates’ rhetorical response is that if he never abandoned his military posts, ordained by Athenian commanders; then he would certainly never abandon the post that God ordained for him, that of leading the philosophical life.  Socrates does not believe that God permits a better man, fulfilling a religious duty, to be harmed by a worse, such as Meletus et al.  If the Athenians put Socrates to death, then they will not likely be able to find another gadfly that would arouse them to self-examination and improvement.  Being now wound up in a mode of robust oratory, Socrates says things unlikely to appeal to an Athenian jury: “No man on earth who conscientiously opposes either you or any other organized democracy, and flatly prevents a great many wrongs [during public service] … can possibly escape with his life.”

      Continuing at 36a, Socrates says that he is not surprised by the jury’s vote to convict him, but only by its closeness: A change of only thirty votes would have resulted in acquittal.  He doubts that Meletus’ argument convinced even 20% of the jury.  (Assuming equal, non-overlapping, 20% contributions from all three accusers, one might speculate that the approximate vote was 180 to convict and 120 to acquit.)  Facing the death penalty, Socrates is permitted to argue for an alternative punishment.  Socrates maintains that, since he spends his time persuading individual Athenians to focus on mental and moral wellbeing rather than practical advantages, the “sentence” should really be his full maintenance at state expense.  To accept fines and penalties that would preserve life but prevent him from pursuing philosophy would be disobedience to his divine calling.  In Socrates’ opinion, “life without this sort of examination is not worth living. 

      In his final address to the jury, beginning at 40a, Socrates says that he suspects that the death sentence just imposed is a blessing, i.e., that it would be a mistake to suppose that death is an evil.  As represented in the Apology, death is either annihilation (dreamless sleep) or “a migration of the soul from this place to another,” where one could meet the heroes of the past, beyond the travails and malfeasance of so-called human justice.  Socrates would find it especially edifying to meet others who had suffered unjust deaths, such as Palamedes (betrayed by Odysseus) and Ajax the Great (denied his just reward of Achilles’ armor).  Socrates concludes that nothing can harm a good man in life or death, and that his fortunes are not a matter of indifference to the gods.

      One notes that Plato presupposes the ancient Greek background belief that each living thing has a soul (psyche) of some appropriate grade.  In particular, humans have rational souls.  Plato also presupposes that the human soul’s “migration” (Apology, 40c) is sufficient to convey a complete person to the “other place,” where he or she can have experiences and interact with some divinities and other deceased humans (40e-41c).  Plato does not address, here, whether this interaction would be limited due to the absence of some souls from the “other world” due to “reincarnation duty.”  In other words the Apology, and all the other Platonic dialogs as well, are only analyzable within the ancient Greek intellectual tradition.

Based on the Apology, one infers that Socrates would have viewed the post-modern irony and detachment of human ash scattering at Disney World as inconsistent with, if not wholly repugnant to, the great seriousness with which he regarded his own divine calling, the tradition of rational inquiry.

The Virtue of Independence Day

Granted that the writing of the American Declaration of Independence, the voting for colonial independence, the adopting of the Declaration, and its signing were spread out over time; nevertheless, as of the official date of July 4, 2019 it will have been twelve score and three years since the birth of the U.S.A.  According to the Declaration, whenever any form of government becomes destructive of a people’s unalienable rights, then it is the right of that people to alter or abolish that government, i.e., to practice national self-determination. 

      By August 14, 1941 the interests of the United States and the United Kingdom had converged to the point that an Atlantic Charter could be declared, in which Roosevelt and Churchill stipulated that their policies were to “respect the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live” (national self-determination).  After World War II, however, there was an increasing emphasis on international institutions such as the United Nations and the European Union.  Thus, the resurgent nationalism expressed by the British electorate in the Brexit vote of June 23, 2016, as well as by the American electorate in the Presidential vote of November 8, 2016, represented a break with post WW II internationalism and a return to the aspirations of the Atlantic Charter.

      Finding this change in the public acceptance of internationalism to be highly significant, Yoram Hazony wrote the excellent book The Virtue of Nationalism (2018) to proclaim the value of free national states.  Such independent nations stand in stark opposition to what Hazony calls the “liberal empire,” administered by the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States; and widely accepted as the best type of political state.  In contrast, however, Hazony supports free national states by distinguishing nationalism from the national socialism that led to the Holocaust; disputing the charge that nationalism creates more hate than does imperialism; focusing on liberal empire’s problematic promotion of peace and prosperity based on a sacrifice of collective self-determination; and pointing out that a national state encourages loyalties to natural or adopted family, tribe, nation, tradition, religion, and language. 

      Hazony finds that, just after the Reformation, there were two principles in European politics: First, a government had to be strong enough to defend itself from external threats, to adjudicate disputes among its citizens, to police itself, and officially to recognize one God.  Second, nations that were strong in the foregoing sense had the right of self-determination of their national and church governments.  (The reviewer notes parenthetically that these principles rendered it self-evident at that time that any newly discovered lands and peoples that did not have strong government in this sense were ipso facto ripe for colonial take-over.)  It would have been incomprehensible in that era to suggest that all nations could, would, or should become one. 

      Subsequently, John Locke offered his social contract theory of politics: There is only one underlying political principle, and it is individual freedom and consent to obligations.  Other, Burkean, loyalties to family, tribe, nation, tradition, religion, and language are extraneous and are to be jettisoned; and even the existence of national borders is said to be an unjustifiable artifact of primitive politics.  Hazony traces this stream of thought from Rousseau through Kant, Rand, and Rawls.  

      Here, the reviewer registers a minor disagreement with Hazony: It is true that Kant did sometimes write in favor of the idea of a cosmopolitan, utopian empire or, alternately, a world republic.  However, he also recognized the existence and strength of what he viewed as a “national identity politics” that would prevent the attainment of any of his ideal polities.  For that reason he insisted that a league of nations should be formed as a federation of free states.  (See the May 1, 2019 blog posting in this series.)  Thus, Kant did allow for national borders but could not foresee the future futility of such leagues.

      Hazony’s overall thesis remains unaffected: Today, the ongoing liberal reconstruction of Western politics unrealistically neglects Burkean loyalties and is a form of imperialism in the proud tradition of the Pharaohs, Babylonian kings, Roman emperors, Papal statesmen, Marxists, and any others who are “quick to express disgust, contempt, and anger when their vision of peace and prosperity meets with opposition” from the ostensible beneficiaries.  Moreover, any resistance to liberal doctrine is today “afflicted by public shaming campaigns and heresy hunts,” which are unwittingly modeled on medieval infallibility, inquisition, and index; and which are turning the Western democracies into one very large university campus.  For example, liberal imperialists view the consolidation of the European Union as the only political opinion that may be upheld by decent people in the face of opposition from Brexiteers.

      There never has been a Hobbesian or Lockean state of nature in which individuals were only loyal to themselves; instead, Hazony writes, there have been anarchical states of nature characterized by the lack of permanent, centralized governments.  Centralized governments come into being either as free states, in which individuals’ Burkean loyalties are transferred to the state, as when the loyalty to a father is transferred to the fatherland; or as despotic states, established by conquest.

      Hazony lists five virtues of the national state in his Chapter XIV.  First, the desire for collective freedom shifts from family units to the national state itself.  This shift strikes the reviewer as the attitude, “Why should individuals’ petty preferences interfere with the flourishing of the state?”  Comparing domestic slumber to martial vigor and national honor, Shakespeare has King Henry V say before the Battle of Agincourt that “Gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accursed they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's day.” 

      The second virtue of the national state is a disinclination of contented national states to acquire empires.  Third, the freedom of the national state allows individuals to focus on material prosperity and cultural inheritance.  Fourth, nationalism is based on an empirical standpoint, a moderate skepticism regarding human reason, and a plurality of political paths.  Fifth, the national state offers the best environment for free institutions that evolve over long periods of time by trial and error and that support individual liberties. 

      Hazony proposes that the best political order is one of independent national states.  Yet although such independence is an evident good that should be established wherever feasible, political independence is not a right, because there are too many potential independent states and too few physical resources and moral rationales.  Even if India had a right of self-determination to assert against the British Empire in 1947, it does not follow that the speakers of each of India’s 1700 distinct languages should be awarded their own national states today.  Even if the thirteen British colonies in North America had a right of self-determination to assert against the British Empire in 1776, it does not follow that the Confederate states had a moral rationale for succession in 1861.   

      Beyond the attractive virtues of independent national states and the moral rationale for independence set forth in the Declaration’s listing of the “repeated injuries and usurpations” by the British king, the reviewer notes that the decisive factor in the American Revolutionary War may well have been the “geographical virtue” of a great physical separation between North America and the British Isles.  On July 4, 2019 it is time to celebrate not only the virtue of nationalism but also the vastness of the Atlantic Ocean and the slowness of sailing ships nearly a quarter millennium ago!

Kant’s Political Theory (3): Perpetual Peace

The full subtitle for this posting is “Recapitulation, Commentary, and the Guarantee of Perpetual Peace.”  This posting is the third of three installments reviewing Kant’s Toward Perpetual Peace, A Philosophical Sketch (1795).

By way of background: Natural objects, like rocks, may serve extrinsic, utilitarian purposes, such as keeping doors open.  Other natural objects, known as natural ends, have intrinsic purposes and characteristic cause-effect relationships, in which the effect is part of the cause.  [See § 62 - 68 in Kant’s Critique of Judgment (1790), as well as Sections I.II.3 and I.II.6.3 in my book An Initial View of Final Causes (2017), described elsewhere on this website.]  Biological organisms are natural ends. For example, an acorn grows by mechanistic means (efficient causes, today known to include DNA processes) into an instance of the form of an oak.  The form is the final cause (Naturzweck) of the growth.  At a higher level of abstraction, the kingdom of nature itself might be said to have an ultimate, providential cause (Endzweck der Schöpfung).

By way of recapitulation and commentary: Kant should have recognized that peoples and nations are natural objects of a sort, produced by the efficient mechanisms of language-formation, common history, cultural achievement, religious experience, and political events.  In addition, the vision of speakers, actors, cultural innovators, and religious leaders; and the leadership of influential monarchs, aristocrats, and populists have served as final causes for peoples and nations.  However, Kant’s political contract theory downplays history and focuses entirely on the idea that the natural state of neighbors (individuals or nation-states) is either actual or threatened warfare.  Kantian neighbors either must agree upon some common constitutional system or else be forcibly ejected from each other’s neighborhood. Kantian neighbors do reciprocally renounce some natural rights for the sake of mutual peace.  This leaves open the question whether any neighbors might reciprocally renounce other natural rights for the sake of culture, language, or religion; leading to great differences among nation-states; and culminating in grave difficulties in forming the league of nations favored by Kant (see the second posting in this series).  

By way of exposition on the guarantee of perpetual peace: According to the “Addition” section of Kant’s 1795 essay, that which guarantees perpetual peace is nothing less than the great artist, nature, from whose merely mechanical operations shines forth the purposiveness (design) required to generate political concord from discordant individual wills.  Nature’s purposiveness can be considered to be a necessitation of natural law according to an unknown cause (destiny, fate, or Schicksal); or to be a deep wisdom of a higher, predetermining cause directed to the objective final end of the human race (providence or Vorsehung).

As a technical matter, Kant believed that providence must be “thought into” nature by reflective judgment during the conceptualization of purposes immediately prescribed by reason; and not recognized, inferred, or known from experience in any strict sense.  Any claim that providence is knowable, Kant thought, would imply, presumptuously, that one could put on the wings of Icarus in order to come closer to the secret of nature’s inscrutable design.  

Now we come to the question of what nature has done, or at least of what our reflective judgment leads us to believe that nature has done, to enforce perpetual peace in case mankind does not respond to its moral duty to renounce some rights for the sake of peace.  How does nature aid the establishment of constitutions appropriate for civil, international, and cosmopolitan law? Kant offers three numbered sections paralleling his three determinative articles for perpetual peace mentioned in the second posting in this tripartite series.

1.  Even if a recognizable group of people does not choose to submit to civil law (Staatsbürgerrecht) because of discord among its individuals, nature, in the form of actual or threatened warfare from outsiders, will eventually require that people’s submission to civil law.  If that civil law establishes a republican form of government with its separation of powers, then there is the best chance for political concord to arise from the cancellation of selfish, opposing, and ruinous individual inclinations.  Individuals are forced to be good citizens even if not morally good persons. Nature inexorably wills that the right will prevail.

2.  The idea of international law (Völkerrecht) presupposes the existence of independent nation-states, because the amalgamation of nation-states under one superior power, Kant believed, leads to soulless despotism.  National “identity politics” implies the futility of attempting to fuse nation-states into a higher-order state. Even though reason may prescribe the existence of exactly one all-encompassing Weltrepublic, the reality of nation-states jealous of their identity implies that only a league of nations is achievable.  Nature enforces the separation of states by differences in language, religion, and culture. Nature, in the form of actual or threatened warfare between nation-states, will eventually force those nation-states to submit to international law.

3.  The idea of cosmopolitan law (Weltbürgerrecht) is the necessary completion, albeit in an unwritten code, of civil law and of international law.  Moreover, nature unites some peoples, for whom the concept of cosmopolitan law might not have secured peace, by offering a principle of reciprocal self-interest (wechselseitgen Eigennutz) or spirit of commerce (Handelsgeist), which will ultimately empower every people.  The power of money (Geldmacht) may be nature’s most reliable means to promote a noble peace.

In this manner, Kant concludes, nature guarantees perpetual peace by the mechanism of human inclinations, away from actual or threatened military conflict, and toward what can serve as their substitutes, economic competition and the power of money.  Military and economic conflict ensures the development of a league of nations to limit that conflict. This guarantee does not come with a security sufficient to predict the future; but it suffices for the practical purpose, which is also a duty, of working towards the end of perpetual peace, which is anything but chimerical.

Today, of course, one may note that the economic development of late 19th century Europe made the prospect of European warfare unthinkable, until World War I occurred.  Thereafter, the combined effects of the League of Nations, disarmament treaties, and general appeasement were incapable of preventing World War II.  For promoting peace, it is not clear that trans-national institutions fare better than a balance of power between nation-states.