Kant : Reason as the Realisation of Nature

KANT: REASON AS THE REALISATION OF NATURE 2001 Dr Peter Critchley Critchley, P., 2001. Kant: Reason as the Realisation of Nature. [e-book] Available through: Academia website <http://mmu.academia.edu/PeterCritchley/Papers ABOUT THE AUTHOR Dr Peter Critchley is a philosopher, writer and tutor with a first degree in the field of the Social Sciences (History, Economics, Politics and Sociology) and a PhD in the field of Philosophy, Ethics and Politics. Kant: Reason as the Realisation of Nature develops the chapter on Kant contained in Peter’s PhD thesis on Rational Freedom. Peter works in this tradition of Rational Freedom, a tradition which sees freedom as a common endeavour in which the freedom of each individual is conceived to be co-existent with the freedom of all. In elaborating this concept, Peter has written extensively on a number of the key thinkers in this ‘rational’ tradition (Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Dante, Spinoza, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, Marx, Habermas). Peter is currently engaged in an ambitious interdisciplinary research project entitled Being and Place. The central theme of this research concerns the connection of place and identity through the creation of forms of life which enable human and planetary flourishing in unison. Peter tutors across the humanities and social sciences, from A level to postgraduate research. Peter particularly welcomes interest from those not engaged in formal education, but who wish to pursue a course of studies out of intellectual curiosity. Peter is committed to bringing philosophy back to its Socratic roots in ethos, in the way of life of people. In this conception, philosophy as self-knowledge is something that human beings do as a condition of living the examined life. As we think, so shall we live. Living up to this philosophical commitment, Peter offers tutoring services both to those in and out of formal education. The subject range that Peter offers in his tutoring activities, as well as contact details, can be seen at http://petercritchley-e-akademeia.yolasite.com The range of Peter’s research activity can be seen at http://mmu.academia.edu/PeterCritchley Peter sees his e-akademeia project as part of a global grassroots learning experience and encourages students and learners to get in touch, whatever their learning need and level. KANT: REASON AS THE REALISATION OF NATURE In The Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that ‘It is precisely in knowing its limits that philosophy exists. This notion of limits is important. ‘I had to deny knowledge in order to make way for faith’. For Kant, human beings do not see the world as it is, but as it appears to be. This is a critical point. Certain aspects of reality are internal rather than external, that is, they are present in the conceptual apparatus of the human mind rather than in the world outside. A table appears to be a particular colour on account of the particular constitution of human being’s visual apparatus. A species with a different visual apparatus, that could, for instance, process a wider range of light waves (infrared, ultraviolet) would the colour of that particular table differently. And what applies to colour applies also to other aspects of reality which Kant called ‘categories’ of experience, such as space, time, cause and effect. These categories are innate, part of the conceptual apparatus of human beings, and determine how human beings experience the world. Without these innate categories, human experience would be an inchoate jumble. The world human beings experience is a human world constituted by innate categories. But whilst this philosophy emphasises the creative constitutive human power full of reality making possibilities, Kant is careful to emphasise limits. The innate categories impose order on chaos but also impose limits on experience, determining what human beings can know. Human beings can seek causal explanations regarding everyday experience - Who put that table there? What made that noise? But there are questions to which causal explanations cannot be applied, human free will, the origin of the universe, and so on. The answers to such questions can often result in antinomy, possibilities which, though equally rational and plausible are nevertheless mutually exclusive. For instance, it seems equally plausible that human beings possess free choice and that every human act has a determined cause. Similarly, the views that the universe at one time didn't exist or that it has always existed and always will exist (Aristotle’s eternalism) seem equally implausible. For Kant, such antinomies suggest there are limits to reason which prevent us from ever fully understanding certain things. This is the basis of Kant's transcendental idealism. Whilst human beings can only ever experience their own innate perceptions through categories of experience (idealism), there is a reality that exists beyond (transcends) these categories. Although his philosophy is difficult, Kant repays serious study. Kant shows how human beings are creators of their own reality, and therefore possess a creative, constitutive power, a demiurge, that is independent of some external source. At the same time, Kant firmly establishes the power and possibilities of reason upon the limits of reason. Kant is clear that it is only in knowing the limits of reason that one can appreciate its possibilities. Those intoxicated with power are prone to ignore those limits, realising not the freedom pursued but its opposite. The philosophy of Immanuel Kant negotiates a path beyond the conflict of knowledge and belief, reason and empiricism and achieves an intellectually sublime synthesis of ethical and cognitive perspectives. For Kant, the knowledge of the external world of 'phenomena' comes from the experience of the senses as made intelligible and organised by the categories of human reason. The world of ‘things-in-themselves’ is beyond human experience and is inaccessible to human reason. There can therefore be no transcendence here. The world of 'practical reason' or morality, however, is radically different. Human beings are co-creators and co-legislators of this moral world, the world of ‘noumena’, and partake of a real world as distinct from a merely 'phenomenal' world. Whereas once either revelation (religion) and nature (science) had been the fountain-head of morality, Kant makes human reason the source of being able to understand good and evil, to prescribe right conduct through the ‘categorical imperative’ and to author the universal. The moral law of reason enjoins human beings to live in accordance with the ‘categorical imperative’. The categorical imperative affirms the fundamental equality of rational moral agents, arguing that human beings be treated as 'ends in themselves'. True freedom is achieved if, in moral conduct, human beings follow the law of reason only, in contradistinction to natural inclinations and without regard to practical consequences. This is the moral and rational foundation which enables culture and civilization to flourish and enables human beings to forward to a future of 'perpetual peace'. Kant’s philosophy transfigures the ideals of transcendence into the ethico-rational freedom of citizens who live as co-legislators in a moral world of their own making. Without any recourse to supernaturalism, Kant’s ethico-rational freedom transcends the world of empirical reality through the power of human reason, rising above the limitations of a world beset by antagonism, desire and natural inclinations. Kant’s ethico-rational freedom encompasses Plato’s sublime morality, the righteous, the poor in spirit, the Gospel love thy neighbour as thyself, the Protestant emphasis on good works, and it does so without any need to have recourse to such elitist or selective notions as Platonic guardians, the ‘chosen people’, the elect, or, reaching into the century after Kant, ‘the party’. Kant achieves this by emphasising the creative power of human reason within each and all, conceiving human beings as co-authors of their moral existence and co-legislators in a universal kingdom of ends. In impressing its sign upon empirical reality, reason expands the sphere of human freedom. In establishing the limits of reality within the confines of reason and nature, Kant actually opened up the possibility of the most expansive moral and rational freedom, a 'kingdom of ends' which is realised in the three dimensions of nature, society and the mind. Kant’s normative philosophy presents an ideal of human association as a realm of ends composed of autonomous individuals who are co-legislators of their freedom as rational natural beings. At the heart of Kant’s normative philosophy is the moral requirement to transform society in order to realise the summum bonum, the highest good: 'The moral law .. determines for us ..a final purpose toward which it obliges us to strive, and this purpose is the highest good in the world possible through freedom' (CJ 1951:30). Human beings, therefore, have a duty to promote the highest good: 'We are a priori determined by reason to promote with all our powers the summum bonum, which consists in the combination of the greatest welfare of rational beings with the highest condition of the good itself, i.e., in universal happiness conjoined with morality most accordant to law' (CJ 1951:304). The way that the end of the highest good as a moral society enjoins individuals to promote the happiness of each other implies a social ethics. Rather than confine moral efforts to the private realm, Kant's view expresses a social demand oriented towards realising an ideal, the ideal of the perfect state and of international peace (Van Der Linden 1985:4 5). This social ethics concerned with promoting the highest good is also expressed in the way that the categorical imperative entails ideal co-legislative institutions in which human beings treat each other as ends. The end of the categorical imperative is the harmony of free and rational wills. Moral goodness consists . . in the submission of our will to rules whereby all our voluntary actions are brought into a harmony which is universally valid. Such a rule, which forms the first principle of the possibility of the harmony of all free wills, is the moral rule.. Our actions must be regulated if they are to harmonize, and their regulation is effected by the moral law. LE 1980:17 This idea establishes Kant's ethics as concerned with the public life of human beings who, as social and rational beings, realise their nature in association with each other. The moral law, as defined in the categorical imperative, grounds the pursuit of the perfect civil constitution and perpetual peace, leading to the highest good of the moral community, as a social duty. For Kant, the central aspect of the human predicament concerns how human beings are able to transcend their natural inclinations that keep them chained to natural necessity by ascending to their higher rational nature. Resolving this question entails humanity moving beyond the limitations of egoism and individual self-interest to realise the greater good that is attained from acting in common. Kant’s philosophy therefore involves a distinction between culture, as constituted in the sphere of reason, and nature. Reason is transcendentally constituted and legislates to the empirical world from which it is separated (Rumdell 1989:14). Morality remains outside the empirical limitations of the temporal sphere as a point towards which human beings aspire. Kant's morality is formal or transcendental in the sense that it seeks a ground for right not by means of an extrapolation from the empirical properties of human beings but in the critique of the rational mind (1965 B.473-480). Universality requires that freedom be grounded in something that transcends empirically limited inclinations, the will. Moral values cannot be drawn from nature and must inhabit some supersensible, 'ideal', realm. Only in relation to this 'noumenal' realm could individuals become moral beings (1965 B.334/6 498ff 1956 50ff). Freedom is the capacity to act independently of natural causality and against natural 'inclinations', the desires and impulses elicited in the human psyche through objects (1965 B.561f; cf. 1956:72 118f 161). Kant’s rational will is thus free from any ground of determination in nature (Taylor 1975:368/9). A free act is morally significant in being exempt from 'blind causality' in both physical and psychological senses (1965 B.826f; 1956:95). Moral principles which are logically independent of experience can be justified only if human beings are understood to be not merely phenomenal beings, subject to causal necessity, but also noumenal beings who are free. Morality is possible only if the will is free to act. The concept of freedom is wholly a priori and forms part of a coherent system of 'ideas of reason' (1965 B.390-396), a rationally constructed standard not found in experience but according to which empirical actions can be judged (1965 B.370ff). This system of ideas is constructed by the systematic application of reason through a faculty shared 'by all human beings itself and is 'objective’ in that human beings can agree about its nature and resolve disputes by reference to it. Freedom is the capacity of reason to initiate action, lawfully, apart from inclination and hence independently of ‘blind’ natural causality (1965 B.46 50 B.566ff). With the moral law as a 'fact of reason' (e.g. FMM), Kantian autonomy is thus defined as the idea of freedom as the causality of reason in accordance with the moral law, a 'necessary' concept which human beings must construct on account of knowledge of the moral law (1965 B.476 585f; 1956:21-29 32). The general moral law is the 'categorical imperative', the objective principle of morality, categorically enjoining individuals to act in accordance with morality. As distinct from an hypothetical imperative, which indicates the means which must be willed or employed relative to the realisation of some further end (GMM 1991:79), an imperative is categorical when expressed as an unconditional demand that possesses its own validity. This yields a universal principle for all rational beings, and valid and necessary principles for every volition. Hence the categorical imperative in The Formula of Universal Law: 'Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law' (GMM 1991:84). This formulation applies to all so that everyone acts only on maxims that can be willed to become universal laws (Van Der Linden 1985:20). Once maxims are submitted to the test of universality, the pursuit of private ends no longer issues in conflict but in harmony, the individual agent respecting the categorical imperative through respect for the moral law in abstraction from objects. Kant's harmony of free and rational wills is, therefore, more than a framework for the individual pursuit of private ends, in which any claim to achieving universal happiness can only be realised indirectly. The end of the moral community affirms that individual members directly contribute to the happiness of each other, so long as this meets the test of universality (DV). Not the individual alone but all individuals together make the ends of others their own end so that universal happiness is directly promoted. In submitting their maxims to the test of universality, individual agents create a moral community. It follows that in the moral world each person is reciprocally end and means (CJ 1951:222). The ethic of ends puts 'flesh on the bones’ of the first formulation by indicating what kind of maxims could be willed as universal laws; human beings not using themselves or others as means to subjective ends implies a view of what right actions are. The view that the individual ought not be subject to another will implies that the individual should be considered as his/her own law-giver. Thus, whilst the: realm of means is equated with the world of natural things, the realm of ends is equated with that of pure, self-determined intelligences. The rational being legislates universally by all maxims of its will so as to judge itself and its actions from this perspective. This concept leads directly to the Formula of the End in Itself: 'Act in such a way that you always treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never simply as a means, but always at the same time as an end' (GMM 1991:91). It is significant that Kant refers not to 'persons' in particular but to 'humanity’ as a whole. In addressing the universal humanity in each individual, how humanity can and ought to be, Kant's ethics are social. This ‘humanity’ is the final end of the individual, the highest good as the conception of the moral community applied in order to transform the human condition. The duties to oneself are at the same time duties to all: 'To destroy the subject of morality in one’s person is to root out the existence of morality itself from the world, so far as this is in one's power; and yet morality is an end in itself. Consequently, to dispose of oneself as a mere means to an arbitrary end is to abase humanity in one's own person (homo noumenon), which was yet entrusted to man (homo phaenomenon) for its preservation (DV 1964:85). Treating humanity in oneself and in others as an end in itself is to act according to only those maxims which can become universal laws or laws of nature. The Formula of Autonomy establishes that 'the will is .. not merely subject to the law but is so subject that it must be considered as also making the law for itself and precisely on this account as first of all subject to the law (of which it can regard itself as the author)’ (GMM 1991:93). In acting out of respect for the moral law, the moral agent wills himself/herself and others as legislative selves (noumenal selves) and as co-legislators in a moral order of universal cooperation. (GMM 1991:98/9; Van Der Linden 1985:30). To treat people as ends in themselves respects the demand that individual agents should create a society of legislators concerned to promote each other's ends. Thus the formulation demands that the moral agent act always so that each will through its maxims could regard itself at the same time as 'making universal law' (GMM 1991:94). This is a conception of a community of rational beings under law, constituting their selfhood in relation with the moral individuality of all others. The fundamental worth individuals seek for themselves from other subjects they also acknowledge in other subjects (Cassirer 1981:248/9). This concept of every rational being 'as one who must regard himself as making universal law by all the maxims of his will' leads to the 'closely connected' concept of the realm of ends (GMM 1991:95): 'every rational being must so act as if he were through his maxims always a lawmaking member in the universal kingdom of ends' (GMM 1991:100). This realm is defined as 'a systematic union of rational beings under common objective laws .... Since these laws are directed precisely to the relation of such beings to one another as ends and means, this kingdom can be called a kingdom of ends (which is admittedly only an Ideal)' (GMM 1991:95). This establishes an ideal of humanity as it ought to be, a realm in which moral agents respect each other as legislators and as ends in themselves: 'A rational being belongs to the kingdom of ends as a member, when, although he makes its universal laws, he is also himself subject to these laws. He belongs to it as its head [sovereign], when as the maker of laws he is himself subject to the will of no other' (GMM 1991:95). In the realm of ends each individual upholds and promotes the conditions of autonomy. By making the moral law their own and, individual agents also make their end the moral community in which each furthers the ends of the other, thus realising the highest good (Van Der Linden 1985:32/3 38). This community, then, is composed not of monadic legislators lacking relation and interaction, but of colegislators. Kant's ethics are democratic in affirming every person as competent to make universally legislative decisions. Each member treating all others as moral beings requires liberty (every individual is able to decide for themselves); equality (every individual equally has the power to make choices and decisions); and fraternity (every individual is a member of a moral community) (Raphael 1981:57; Norman 1983:102/3). Kant's main concern is to argue that only actions which are done 'from duty' possess moral worth and exhibit a good will (GMM 1991:62/5 1956:84 87/8 DV 1964:50 52/3 R 1960:25). To act 'from duty' is to act out of respect for the moral law, rather than from inclination or from expectation of desirable consequences (GMM 1991:66). The view that the moral worth of an action resides in its consequences reduces the good will to being an efficient cause of good action rather than as an end in itself. It is morally significant whether an act is done from duty or from inclination since for Kant it is only in actions done from duty that individuals exercise their freedom, their capacity to act as autonomous beings independent of and superior to the natural or sensible world (1956:89/90). It is not enough that action should accord with duty, it must be done for 'the sake of duty'. Otherwise the accordance is merely contingent and spurious because, though the unmoral ground may indeed now and then produce lawful actions, more often it brings forth unlawful ones (GMM 1991:63ff). For Hegel, Kant’s pure motive of duty can never produce the good since it is abstracted from everything that comprises a real life, from desires, interests, and needs. The good needs to be made an integral part of everyday life in connection with the empirical desires and self-satisfaction of individuals. Hegel's conception follows Aristotle's conception of a virtue as an intelligent disposition to behave in certain ways and act for certain reasons, to feel pleasure or pain at certain things (PR parao150R Aristotle NE 1065al2 1106bl5-30). Hegel considers Aristotelian virtue to transcend Kant's dualism of duty and inclination. ‘Aristotle determines the concept of virtue more precisely by distinguishing a rational aspect of the soul from an irrational one; in the latter nous [reason] is only dynamei [potentially] - sensations, inclinations, passions, emotions apply to it. In the rational side, understanding, wisdom, reflectiveness, cognizance all have their place. But they do not constitute virtue, which consists only in the unity of the rational with the irrational side. We call it virtue when the passions (inclinations) are so related to reason that they do what reason commands' (HP 2 1968:204). Whereas for Aristotle reason had to persuade desire as to what it should want, for Kant, a truly moral act is performed out of respect for the moral law, without regard to inclinations. For Kant, reason is immanent in the mind of the autonomous moral agent and is unrelated to external objects. The problem is that if reason is noumenally structured, the empirical realm is left free from moral significance. Whereas Aristotle could make the polis crucial to individual self-realisation as the essential field of human interaction, Kant's approach assumes a set of rational ideas inherent in the human mind from which the state as the prime political object derives. Hegel thus charges Kantian ethics with being an 'empty formalism' which is incapable of generating an 'immanent doctrine of duties' (PR para 135R). Kant's pure motive of duty becomes a 'preaching' of 'duty for duty's sake' providing no content or direction of action (PR para 135R). Hegel's criticism is valid only if attention remains fixed upon the Formula of Universal Law, focusing upon the categorical imperative's universality in terms of its form. Kant's morality is indeed formal, but it is not empty in the sense of sheer consistency and noncontradiction. Kant is not indifferent to ends. Kant's standard of universalisation is tied to the ethic of ends which imposes the duty upon each to treat all others with the respect they expect to receive in return. This ethic has practical implications, ruling out institutions and practices which treat human beings as means to external ends and leading to the 'realm of ends' composed of free and equal members, a moral community of autonomous, self-legislating agents. The imperative to treat humanity as an end and never as a means therefore puts some 'nonheteronomous teleological flesh' upon 'the bare bones of universality' (Riley 1982:49). Set alongside Aristotelian notions of the richly endowed happy individual, the Kantian self may appear to be socially, culturally and historically deracinated, 'thin as a needle' (Murdoch 1985:53). But it is simply not true to argue that the Kantian self lacks moral and affective ties to others and is subjected to the empty ethic of duty for duty's sake. Kant was as interested as Aristotle was in developing the right kind of moral personality. The difference is that Kant's good character possesses a democratic character in being open to anyone, regardless of gifts of intelligence, beauty, wealth or good luck. Kant realises that universal principle alone, at a formal level, cannot ensure morality and therefore ties it to an ethic of ends which treats all individuals as beings endowed with dignity by virtue of their humanity, their capacity for moral action. Kant's ethic taught respect for the rational moral element in each individual and is 'built to preserve its own self-respect and that of others, neither demanding nor enduring servility' (Shklar 1984:233). Kant does possess an intersubjective dimension. For Kant, the capacity to universalise the principles of actions is a necessary but not sufficient condition of the morality of these actions. Principles are only moral when tied to objective ends, specifically the injunction to treat human beings as ends rather than means. The conception of rational agency in the universal Formula is thin when considered in itself, which is why Kant connected it to an ethic of objective ends and a moral community. Without this teleology, Kant states, morality would be 'destroyed'. Kant departs from the classical conception of happiness as an intrinsic component of the highest good. Kant recognises the extent to which the modern principle of subjectivity has subverted the overarching ethical framework of the good, severing the necessary connection between individual happiness and the universal good in the classical conception. As a result, the notion of the good is subjectivised, becoming the product of individual desire and preference, in opposition to the individual good of others and the common good of all. To deal with this situation, Kant's ethics demote happiness from being the first principle of practical philosophy: 'it is the moral disposition which conditions and makes possible the participation in happiness, and not conversely the prospect of happiness that makes possible the moral disposition' (1965 B.841). Happiness and the good are no longer directly connected but require the mediation of moral virtue. The rational value of happiness - the 'complete good' - now depends upon the possession of moral virtue and is made the condition of the worthiness to be happy through moral conduct or goodwill (GMM 1991:59 1965 3.G37-S38 B.341). In the first instance, Kant identifies happiness with the well being of a finite rational being (GMM 1959:61), its total and lasting advantage through the satisfaction of natural desires or inclinations. Kant goes further in arguing that happiness is an 'idea' in which 'all inclinations are combined into a sum total’ (GMM 1991:64), an 'absolute whole or maximum of well-being' (FMM 1959:35). 'Happiness is the satisfaction of all our desires' (1965: B.834). Kant subordinates the hedonistic view that objects of desire are willed for the pleasure they may bring (Prac 1956:20) to 'contentment in fulfilling a purpose .. determined by reason alone, acknowledging the 'highest practical function' of reason to be the establishment of a good will (GMM 1991:62). 'Happiness, therefore, in exact proportion with the morality of the rational beings who are thereby rendered worthy of it, alone constitutes the supreme good of that world wherein, in accordance with the command of a pure but practical reason, we are under obligation to place ourselves' (1965 B.342). The reality of this systematic unity of ends occurs in the intelligible - hence moral - world rather than in the sensible world (1965 B.842). This 'leads inevitably also to the purposive unity of all things, which constitute this great whole, in accordance with universal laws of nature (just as the former unity is in accordance with universal and necessary laws of morality), and thus unites the practical with the speculative reason' (1965 B.843). The world must be in harmony with that moral employment of reason founded on the idea of the supreme good (1955 B.844). Kant thus develops a concept of happiness as the harmony of ends. Happiness, as free and rational activity, is more than self-preservation, instinctual gratification, and pleasure, but consists of knowledge, insight and creativity (Van Der Linden 1985:70/1). The actions of a being having will must be determined by reason rather than instinct (GMM 1991:60/111). To this end, natural inclinations are to be 'tamed': 'instead of clashing with one another they can be brought into a harmony in a wholeness which is called happiness' (R 1960:51). Happiness is the unification of 'all the ends which are prescribed by our desires' (1965:632). The basis of the conflict between Kant and Hegel lies in their different conceptions of objective ends. Hegel's more Aristotelian teleology makes the ends of moral action a condition in the world, making actions instrumental to some good yet to be achieved. For Kant, this denies the moral status of action since the end is not extrinsic to action but is part of the 'rational nature’ of human beings, as ends capable of shaping and pursuing ends (Kant DV 1971:45/6 51). Whereas Kant considered the moral will to be part of the 'rational nature' of human beings, hence prior to actions, Hegel made it part of historical development, attached to commitments in the objective world of political and legal institutions (PR para 75A). Which isn’t to argue that Kant lacks an ideal that is yet to be achieved, far from it. The realm of ends is a vision of a possible world in which all individuals really are the pure moral agents following the moral law which reason asserts they ought to be (GMM 1991:95/6). The question is how the ideal can be realised through human action. The problem is that if freedom remains the unsituated concept it is in Kant's conception, it cannot be pursued let alone realised in the empirical or sensible realm. Freedom is confined in an impotent noumenal sphere. Kant's moral law, as self-legislated, asserts the rationality, freedom and equality of all and is applicable to each and all as noumenal persons. Kant offers an ideal aiming to emancipate individuals from the phenomenal world of causal laws. In contradistinction to legislation in the actual world, members always heed moral legislation in the realm of ends. Since each member is both legislator and the subject of the laws, giving the moral law and obeying it, all are equal. The realm of ends is thus an ideal human community composed of free and equal members (Kant 1965: B.372), a goal of future society, a concept of future life (1965: B.836f). Kant offers the realm of ends as an idea of reason which is practically necessary if there is to be moral action (1965o8.372). In the sensible realm, its counterpart is progress towards communal autonomy, the 'real object of our willing' (Kant 1956:121f). As an ideal, the realm of ends exists as a criterion by which to critically evaluate the existing political order. This has radical, future oriented possibilities as an ideal civil constitution in which coercion has been replaced by moral reason. Discussing Plato's idea of the perfect city, Kant envisages: A constitution allowing the greatest possible human freedom in accordance with laws which ensure that the freedom of each can co-exist with the freedom of all others. 1965 B.373-374 Kant affirms a conception of human flourishing and potentiality in repudiating the thesis that makes corrupt human nature responsible for imperfect political institutions. Identifying the cause of imperfection with 'the neglect of the pure ideas in the making of the laws' (Pure 1965:312), Kant explains corrupt human nature by imperfect institutions which ought, therefore, to be transformed and placed on a moral basis. This means realising the perfect constitution as part of the duty to realise the highest good. Kant describes this ideal constitution as 'a necessary idea which must be taken as fundamental not only in first projecting a constitution but in all its laws'. The 'the rightfulness of the Idea’ brings ‘the legal organisation of mankind ever nearer to its greatest possible perfection, advances this maximum as an archetype' (1965 B.373-374). Happiness deriving from the moral perfection of humanity does not imply an unmediated existence proceeding through 'inner' conviction but is set within the collective framework of a perfect civil constitution and its laws. Kant's 'concept of freedom' is the essential core of Kant's ethics concerning the possibility of the categorical imperative, the 'keystone of the whole edifice of pure reason' (1965 B.7 394n; 1956:3). The implications are radical. Political and social institutions which deny the lawmaking autonomy of individuals may be criticised and transformed from the perspective of the ideal. Since heteronomy, determination by external laws, whether one’s natural inclinations or the arbitrary will of others, is the norm in existing society, autonomy, being governed rationally by self-legislated laws, is a goal still to be achieved (Van Der Linden 1985:32). Marx's critique exposes the heteronomous character of capitalist society in order to realise the autonomous moral community. Within capitalism, the ends of some are preferred or downgraded to those of others. Marx's conception of communism as 'an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all' (CM 1973:87) is in a direct line of descent from the ideal constitution as promising a self-regulating society. However, whilst the concept of the republic of ends can critically expose the failings of actual society, there is a need to show how this society can be brought into accordance with the ideal. Blocking Kant's ideal is the gap between the realm of ends and the empirical world. Kant states that the ideal constitution has been formulated in abstraction from certain 'hindrances' (1965 B.374). What Kant is referring to here becomes clear in the second Critique. Firstly, sensory nature is external to the individual so that even the legislation of reason, the determination of human will by the moral law, may not alter its course (Kant 1956:15 21). Knowledge of the course of nature is crucial in overcoming this hindrance. Secondly, there is internal nature, the inclinations individuals possess through natural causality (1956:20ff). The problem lies in the way that Kant sets reason over nature. A more material account of the ideal is available. The fact that the actual purposiveness and inclinations of individuals within the empirical world are present within any meaningful interaction makes it possible to conceive reason as truly interactive, situated and social. Marx saw Kant's highest good as the province of religious hope rather than practical politics: 'Kant was satisfied with "good will" alone, even if it remained entirely without result, and he transferred the realisation of this good will, the harmony between it and the needs and impulses of individuals, to the world beyond' (GI 1999:97). This implies that Kant's highest good exists only in abstraction, like Plato’s World of Being. But Kant's moral law projects an abstract and 'empty' ideal only by detaching this desirable end from the moral community of co-legislators who seek to enhance one another's ends. Kant's highest good rests upon 'a moral kingdom of purposes., viz., the existence of rational beings under moral laws' (CJ 1951:295). Kant's highest good is an empty ideal or religious only to the extent that it is not grounded in the categorical imperative as a social ethics and moral praxis (Van Der Linden 1985:78/9). The categorical imperative demands that individuals seek the moral kingdom in which each enhances the ends of all. All obey the moral law and cooperate in the promotion of universal happiness. Marx himself is vulnerable to the criticism that he has not only underestimated the power of morality and culture in realising the highest good, with the participation of all as rational beings, not just those with material futurity and structural power, he has also denigrated the transcendental perspective which has inspired human beings to constantly raise their sights above the temporal or empirical realm for a world better than that immediately given. The creative power that is assigned to ideals, morality and culture is a strength that Kantian transcendental idealism has over perspectives which narrow praxis down to things, tools, instruments, interests. Marx has identified the crucial question as being how to relate the ‘good will’ in the ideal noumenal realm to the needs and impulses of individuals in the empirical world. The task that the ideal of the realm of ends sets for each individual, as a member of a group of rational beings, is to establish society according to the moral law. This is the idea of the 'moral world', the world as it 'ought to be', as revealed by the 'necessary laws of morality' (B.836). This is 'so .. far thought .. as a mere idea' since an account of its conditions in the sensible world of experience is lacking. Nevertheless, it is at the same time 'a practical idea, which really can have, as it also ought to have, an influence upon the sensible world, to bring that world, so far as may be possible, into conformity with the idea' (1965 B.836). The idea of a moral world, therefore, has 'objective reality', not as referring to an object of an intelligible intuition 'but as referring to the sensible world, viewed, however, as being an object of pure reason in its practical employment' (B.836). This achieves the idea of a 'corpus mysticum of rational beings' 'so far as the free will of each being is, under moral laws, in complete systematic unity with itself and with the freedom of every other' (B.836). The ethical state is thus based on the moral law and the moral purpose that that law engenders. This association uniting rational individuals would be possible if pure morality was expanded so that it were freely accepted by all. PEACE AND FREEDOM UNDER LAW Kant is not silent on the institutional, political and practical requirements of realising the good in the real world. Kant identifies the perfect constitution as the republican state, realising the social as against unsocial character of human beings through the rule of law, and guaranteeing the greatest possible freedom for each consistent with all. Government facilitates the development of the moral disposition to a direct respect for the law by placing a barrier against the outbreak of unlawful inclinations (PP Reiss 1991:121n). In assuring each individual that all individuals will follow the concept of law, government represents a 'great step' 'towards morality ..towards a state where the concept of duty is recognised for its own sake, irrespective of any possible gain in return’ (PP Reiss 1991:121n). Here, Kant emphasises again that true morality is built on a duty that is emphatically distinguished from interest, gain, from class or sectional implication. By guaranteeing equal external freedom for each individual, the rule of law fosters a climate favourable to moral autonomy and is preparatory for the final end of creation, the moral community in which the command of law is internalised as the product of moral motives rather than of self-interest and coercion, gain and power. Internal discipline replaces external discipline. At this stage, political peace is freely and spontaneously affirmed by human agents as morally autonomous beings. In this community, agents do not merely leave each other free to pursue private ends but come actively to promote each other's ends (Van Der Linden 1985:188). The principal aim of Kant's political philosophy is to establish 'the way to peace', converting class, difference and diversity into order, identity and unity (Saner 1973:3 4). With the realisation of the republican constitution within each nation, the dream of 'perpetual peace' becomes a realistic possibility (PP 1991:99/100 114). Kant argues that 'the sovereignty of the good principle is attainable, as far as men can work toward it, only through the establishment and spread of a society in accordance with and for the sake of the laws of virtue, a society whose task and duty it is rationally to impress these laws in all their scope upon the entire human race' (R 1949:404). It follows from this that 'the species of rational beings is objectively, through the idea of reason, destined for a social goal, namely, the promotion of the highest good as a social good' (1949:407). The central problem in Kant's politics is to discover the principles upon which unity is founded to ensure the greatest possible freedom of each and all (Saner 1973:215). The law transforms the license in which the freedom of all individuals cancels itself out in mutual conflict into a freedom of each coexisting with the freedom of all. This image of freedom achieved through legal process pervades the Critique of Pure Reason and is central to Kant's 'architectonic' (1965 B.860). This collectively universal will is a collective force for the regulation of supra-individual forces, public law under a sovereign authority (Reiss 1991:26). This is an expansion rather than an infringement of individual liberty since individuals obey only that law to which they have agreed (Reiss 1991:11). Kant's conception of the moral life is based upon the capacity of individuals to universalise and hence give their moral principles the force of law. Freedom and lawfulness, far from being antithetical as in an individualist liberal conception of liberty, are integral to each other. Freedom is not the absence of necessity but the moral recognition of necessity in the shape of relationships of obligation with others. Since human beings do not just obey law but make it, necessity is put on a moral basis. In the absence of this legal process, reason is in the state of nature and asserts its claims only through war, disputes ending only in a temporary armistice. In contrast, a legal order ensures an eternal peace through the recognised methods of legal action. This limits individual freedom so that it may be consistent with the freedom of all and hence with the common good of all (1965 B.779/80). Kant unites the freedom of each individual and all individuals through the reciprocity of legal obligations. All individuals are equal before and subject to the one universal law. The rules of the lawful state are reciprocal in being equally and mutually obligatory for all individuals (Saner 1973:30/1). In the Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784), Kant seeks to ground hope for moral progress in the historical process, seeking to inspire moral action to bring about the realisation of progressive political ends, the perfect state and peace. In the Idea, human culture evolves out of the chaotic state of nature. From within the chaotic appearance of the human world, Kant discerns a slow but steady evolution of culture (KGS 8:17). It is the purpose of Nature that human natural capacities be fully developed, not in any individual alone but in the human race as a whole. It is Nature’s intention that human beings use their natural capacities to work out their independent way of securing human well-being. The cunning of nature suffices for this task, operating through mechanisms of self-interest to compel human beings to institute 'a law-governed social order' (UH 1991:44). Kant endows the individual with an 'unsocial sociability' in which drives towards associationalism - the inclination to 'live in society' - and individualisation - the tendency to 'live as an individual' - conflict (UH 1991:44). The political problem is to recognise and reconcile the legitimate claims of both facts. 'Unsocial sociability’ compels human beings to prepare for the replacement of a natural order of conflicting particular wills by the universal will of a legal order: 'a beginning is made towards establishing a way of thinking which can with time transform the primitive natural capacity for moral discrimination into definite practical principles' (UH 1991:44/5). Identifying the 'highest purpose of nature’ as 'the development of all natural capacities', Kant predicates human growth and development upon the interplay of the natural inclinations of asociability and the moral inclinations of sociability (UH 1991:45). Out of this clash of antagonistic forces, the individual seeks a form of association which has 'the greatest freedom' which has specific limits so that 'it can coexist with the freedom of others' (UH 1991:45). The development of human capacities to the full requires the creation of a social order with the greatest possible freedom. The social order which enables the greatest possible freedom is a perfectly just constitution in which mutual opposition between its members is made consistent with freedom and justice. The highest problem that nature assigns to the human race is to design a just civic constitution. This civic constitution establishes a commonwealth in which the destructive passions of natural freedom are tamed for the good by civic union. However, this commonwealth of individuals can only be achieved by securing peace and harmony among all the nations. For the same antagonism that sets individuals against each other in society also establishes hostile relations between the nations. The ultimate purpose of Nature is to lead humankind from the state of individual rivalry to the state of social harmony, and from the state of national rivalry to the state of international harmony. Peace and harmony reigns between individuals in society and between sovereign states in the international domain. The development of the pragmatic capacity for social control involves a high human cost but nevertheless makes it possible to replace discord with concord, leading to a 'civil society which can administer justice universally' (UH 1991:45). To guarantee 'freedom under external laws' requires an 'irresistible force' since members of this 'perfectly just civil constitution' are related to each other in antagonistic fashion (UH 1991:46). Kant expands on this theme in Perpetual Peace (1795). Here he argues Nature has used the device of war for the evolution of humankind. The state of nature is a state of war. Humankind begins in this condition and scatters itself to the ends of the Earth by ceaseless war. In turn, this war produces the legal order on three levels: civil law, the law of nations, and the law of world citizenship (KGS 8:365). Kant claims that these legal orders are the work of Nature. By placing different groups of people close to each other in antagonistic relations, Nature compels them to form states for their defence, to submit to public laws, to create political order. The political order which is most fitting for the rights of individuals is the republican constitution. The creation of this republican constitution as a universal power overcoming selfish inclinations 'is both the most difficult and the last to be solved by the human race' (UH 1991:46). Whilst many claim that a republic would have to be a race of angels, Kant comments, Nature makes it possible for humankind to organize the state in such a way that the selfish inclinations of a ‘race of devils’ is contained by their mutual opposition (KGS 8:366). An unconscious natural teleology is at work in this. Human beings, as children of Nature, are born with the natural instinct for selfishness, and this leads them into the state of war. However, this war drives human beings to develop the intelligence that Nature has also endowed them with. Eventually, human beings become sufficiently intelligent to leave the state of war by building a civil society to enable the orderly exercise of their freedom, thus creating the foundation for the flowering of culture. However, a civil peace and freedom that is established within the confines of a single state is vulnerable to the predation of competing states in a condition of international war. Therefore, according to Kant’s natural teleology, humankind will extend the peaceful union of warring individuals in the social sphere to a peaceful union of warring states in the international sphere. This development is initiated by Nature and Nature’s endowment. Human history is therefore the work of Nature. Humankind is a product of nature, and is endowed with the power to realize the highest good. This republican or civil constitution acknowledges freedom as a collective project which connects the individual with essential universal powers and potentialities beyond an immediate, individual, direct response to circumstances. Kant proceeds from Rousseau’s distinction between liberty and license. For Kant, although the individual, as a rational being, 'desires a law to impose limits on the freedom of all', 'he is still misled by his self-seeking animal inclinations into exempting himself from the law where he can' and 'abuses his freedom in relation to others' and therefore 'requires a master to break his self will and force him to obey a universally valid will under which everyone can be free'. But since this 'master' can be found only the human species, and hence 'will also be an animal who needs a master' (JH 1991:46), the realisation of the perfect constitution will be the last problem to be solved. Its solution requires 'a correct conception of the nature of a possible constitution, great experience tested in many affairs of the world, and above all else a good will prepared to accept the findings of this experience’ (UH Reiss 1991:47). This makes it clear that Kant's 'master' is not an external agency but the rational nature within human beings themselves. Mastery is a self-mastery achieved through the moral law, through the autonomous citizen living under the perfect constitution obeying a law that is self-made and self-imposed. The greater liberty of 'rational freedom' achieved through an inner mastery and not just an institutional constraint is suggested by Kant's reference to the realisation in the historical process of a 'hidden plan of nature to bring about an internally - and for this purpose also externally - perfect political constitution as the only possible state within which all natural capacities of mankind can be developed completely' (UH 1991:50). To this end, nature guides human inclinations over time to the rational end of a 'just civil constitution' as the final condition for the self-development of the natural faculties of human beings (UH 1991:45). Kant, having separated the individual and the species, with reason capable of being fully realised only in the latter (Kant UH 1991:42), comes to recognise that nature is moral after all. Kant’s target is not nature as such but natural inclinations and impulses which chain rational human beings to the empirical world of necessity and immediacy. But reason too is a natural endowment which human beings can use to realise moral freedom as a rational natural end. In achieving this end, the 'pathologically enforced social union is transformed into a moral whole' (UH 1991:44/5). The pathologically enforced coordination of society is superseded by an internal moral coordination through the process of culture. In bringing the hidden plan of nature to light, the philosopher grounds the hope of progress in the perfect state and peace, thus stimulating the moral action concerned to realise these ends. The role of the philosopher is to 'formulate in terms of a definite plan of nature a history of creatures who act without a plan of their own' (UH 1991:42). In other words, reason inspires the moral impulse and informs practice leading to the perfect constitution and perpetual peace. This hope is not Utopian since nature pushes humanity towards the good; through the plan of nature, philosophy can have its belief in a millennium (UH 1991:50). The intelligent action of human beings thus hastens the fulfilment of human destiny on earth (UH 1991:52/3). Thus a philosophical attempt to work out a universal history of the world in accordance with a plan of nature aimed at a perfect civic union of mankind, must be regarded as possible and even as capable of furthering the purpose of nature itself (UH 1991:51). Though Kant argues that the union of states is the 'halfway mark’ in human development (UH 1991:49), it is only in the Critique of Judgment that he argues that culture, comprising the legal order and peace between states (highest political good), is the ultimate end of nature and prepares the ground for the moral community of co-legislators (highest moral good) as the final and of creation. Whilst the mechanisms of self-interest are sufficient to achieve the highest political good as a preparatory step toward the highest moral good, the latter can only be achieved by moral praxis under the good will (Van Der Linden 1985:134). NATURALTELEOLOGY AND HUMAN PRAXIS In the Appendix to the Critique of Teleological Judgement, Kant seeks to identify the ultimate purpose of nature as a whole. He finds this ultimate purpose in the realization of the highest good as presented in his moral theory. Human beings have a special role in realising this highest good by virtue of their rationality and morality. The highest good can only be realized by human beings as rational and moral beings, which means that humankind is the ultimate purpose of nature as a whole (C3 427). In the second Critique, Kant argued that the highest good could be fully realized only in the eternal world of noumena. In the Appendix, he is now arguing that the realisation of the highest good is the ultimate purpose of nature. Kant thus conceives humankind as Nature’s children developing under the guidance and protection of nature’s providence. Kant's view that the moral society is something that humanity ought to realise makes his philosophy both praxis- and future-oriented. Kant's primacy of pure practical reason affirms the view that the world is created by human praxis (Goldmann 1971:57). Van Der Linden thus states that Kant's social ethics affirms that '(empirical) humanity, in order to express its humanity (rational/moral nature), must produce humanity (the moral order)' (Van Der Linden 1985:13). Of particular importance is Kant's appraisal of moral enthusiasm and the capacity for social learning and control within humanity. The end of the perfect state and the union of all such states in perpetual peace is rooted in the full development of the rational predispositions of the human species. The 'technological predisposition' for manipulating things entails the increasing mastery of nature to satisfy human needs. The 'pragmatic predisposition' involves the increasing social, political and cultural power to organize and employ human beings to realize specific purposes and accustom human beings to rule-governed behaviour. The 'moral predisposition' to treat oneself and others according to 'the principle of freedom under laws' affirms that human beings come to obey juridical laws on account of autonomous motives and a concern to promote the ends of others, so long as these ends are consistent with the universal law. Progress is the moral disposition implies that human agents fulfil the duty to promote the highest good, earning to pursue just institutions in greater numbers (A 1974:183). According to Kant, humanity is a link like other animals in the chain of natural desires for happiness. What makes human beings unique is the ability and will to set their own goals. By virtue of this ability and will, human beings hold the title of lord of nature. As such, human beings must transcend subjection to nature's purposes, and pursue their own independent purpose. This purpose enjoins humanity to create and sustain culture above and beyond nature (C3 431). Culture has two elements, through which the capacity to determine ends evolves in history. The ‘culture of discipline’ increases the tendency for human beings to submit to the demands of the moral law, coming to consult the voice of duty more and more. In the first Critique, Kant defined practical freedom as 'the will's independence of coercion through sensuous impulses' (A534/B562). The culture of discipline realises this practical freedom. Kant is developing Rousseau's argument that only by subjugating natural instincts and appetites, thus transcending the domain of nature, do human beings become truly human. This process implies the 'ethicisation of human nature' in which duty comes to lose its compulsory character arid instead be guided by moral feelings like indignation, enthusiasm, solidarity, dignity (Van Der Linden 1985:173). Kant’s 'culture of discipline' is akin to Plato’s ‘culture of virtue’ as laid out in the Republic. For Plato, human beings become divine by transforming their beastly passions into virtues. The idea of establishing the domain of culture over the domain of nature therefore takes up Plato’s concern with the means of establishing the ideal city or state. The culture of discipline concerns the liberation of the will from the tyranny of desires and other natural chains, which shackle human beings to natural inclinations and prevent them from pursuing independent goals. For Kant, the ‘culture of discipline’ will enable humanity to establish their sovereignty over natural impulses and appetites and create a culture which makes it possible to institute a civil society for the liberty and equality of all citizens. This civil society takes human beings out of the state of nature, transcending the despotism of natural inclinations in which the unconstrained freedom of each individual to pursue natural appetites and impulses serves to destroy the freedom of all individuals. For Kant, the final purpose of creation is civil society, established by the force of reason, coming to extend throughout and rule the whole world (C3 435). It follows that the ultimate purpose of nature for humanity is to develop the culture of discipline. However, this is not a case of asserting culture against nature, since the culture of discipline is the development of natural endowment enabling humanity to transcend Nature in the same manner as children reach maturity in becoming independent of their mothers. This is Kant’s natural teleology, humanity as the grown up children of Mother Nature. The ‘culture of skill’ refers to the increasing capacity to manipulate the natural and social environment and involves conflict associated with material factors such as class, exploitation and division of labour (Van Der Linden 1985:137/138). The majority of human beings have had to submit to 'hard work' in order to produce 'the necessities of life .. for the convenience and leisure of others who work at the less necessary elements of culture, science and art' (CJ 1951:282). For Kant, the progress of culture overcomes class conflict through a 'civil community' guaranteeing freedom and equality for all as citizens. Only in this, the perfect state, 'can the greatest development of natural capacities take place' (CJ 1951:282). Kant’s conception of praxis highlights the potential of the increasing rational capacity to control the natural and social environment in order to overcome conflict rooted in material scarcity and the autonomy of social mechanisms and institutions from human control. For Kant, the purpose of the mastery of nature is culture, and the purpose of culture, in turn, is to realise the highest political good as a preparatory stage leading to the moral community. (Van Der Linden 1985:141). The external freedom guaranteed by political peace in and between perfect states creates conditions for autonomous action and diminishes the forces which encourage immoral acts. Kant's moral praxis rests not on a religious hope but on the rational hope for progress, affirming that the future is something open, to be created by rational human agents. Nature has willed that man should produce entirely by his own initiative everything which goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his animal existence, and that he should not partake of any other happiness or perfection than that which he has procured for himself without instinct and by his own reason. UH 1991:43 The very things which define human beings as rational beings - knowledge, insight, happiness, virtue - are given by nature as endowments and potentialities for human beings to live up to (Van Der Linden 1985:102/3). Kant, therefore, conceives history as a process of human self-creation. Culture, as 'what nature can supply to prepare [the human agent] for what he must do himself in order to be a final purpose' (CJ 1951:281), prepares the way for the moral society. Kant's highest good as projecting an ideal community of colegislators shows the extent to which Kant's philosophy is future oriented and affirms a moral praxis. Human beings have a duty to change the world to realise a moral ideal. Kant advocated caution in politics, believing it 'foolhardy' and even 'punishable' to oppose an existing constitution with 'political constitutions which meet the requirements of reason’ (CF Reiss ed. 1991:188). The perfect constitution and perpetual peace will be attained and maintained by rational moral action, not physical and material force. Kant nevertheless praised the French Revolution for arousing moral enthusiasm within 'all spectators' deriving from 'a moral disposition within the human race' (CF Reiss ed 1991:182). Humanity has the 'disposition and capacity' to effect social change autonomously, 'to be' the cause of its own advance toward the better' (1963:142). The prospect of the evolution of a condition of natural right in the relation of the individual to the state and of individual states to each other is founded upon this moral disposition, 'the right of every people to give itself a civil constitution of the kind that it sees fit', the 'enthusiasm with which men embrace the cause of goodness'. The enthusiasm of the spectators shows that 'true enthusiasm is always directed exclusively towards the ideal, particularly towards that which is purely moral (such as the concept of right), and it cannot be coupled with selfish interests' (CF Reiss ad 1991:183). As the enthusiasm of the spectators rather than of the Revolutionaries, it was an objective rather than a subjective concern with advancing humanity toward the highest good embodied in political institutions (Van Der Linden 1985:60). The moral enthusiasm of spectators show that voluntary cooperation and reciprocity is more than a philosophical dream (Van Der Linden 1985:61 64). Kant affirms here the power of example and association in motivating and sustaining moral action. The 'moral disposition’ within the people possesses a tendency towards the moral society and for humanity as it ought to be, stimulating action toward the realisation of this ideal. Indicating that a moral cause is operative in humanity, events like the French Revolution reveal a capacity far the better in human nature and society which no philosopher or politician could discern from the course of things and which alone unites nature and freedom in accordance with the inner principles of right in humankind (Cassirer 1981:407). In the same manner, political events, campaigns, grassroots movements and organisations reveal the contours of a possible ideal future, give hope and inspire efforts leading to its attainment. Prefiguration in this sense is a Kantian view of the innate moral disposition of human beings. REPUBLICAN CONSTITUTION For Kant, the philosophical problem of politics is how to convert lawless conflict into a moral ideal of peace (Saner 1973:310 313). The struggle for the rule of law persists until the realisation of the ideal of the republican state ensuring the greatest possible freedom for all. The chaos that conflict between the freedom of the individual and all others produces can be avoided only with the imposition of a lawful framework regulating individuals in a universally binding manner. This ensures that the free actions of one individual 'can be reconciled with the freedom of the other in accordance with a universal law', individuals remaining free to pursue private ends within the constraint of external freedom as defined by the 'Universal Principle of Right': 'Every action which by itself or by its maxim enables the freedom of each individual's will to coexist with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a universal law is right' (MM 1991:133). This is an application of Kant's universal principle of morality to politics. In Perpetual Peace, Kant argues that political philosophy must begin from the a priori awareness of the moral law as opposed to principles of (empirical) advantage, which would issue in the rationalisation of unjust acts (PP 1991:93ff). The 'First Definitive Article' restates two formulations of the Categorical Imperative to produce an a priori starting point. The 'objective' formulation, that human beings act in accordance with practical laws valid for all, is given political form in the principle that all members of society are equally subject to a 'common legislation' (PP 1991:99). The 'subjective' formulation, that human beings treat each other as ends and never as means, respecting everyone's capacity to legislate for themselves, takes political form in the principle of the 'freedom of all members of a society' (PP Reiss 1991:99). These principles lead to the idea of the moral agent as 'citizen of a transcendental world' (PP 1991:99), employing the moral law to establish a possible 'republican' constitution in the empirical world, structuring a 'civil society'. In this context, the realm of ends is a 'respublica noumenon' (CF 1991:187), appropriate to a 'race of angels' (PP 1991:112); civil society 'is a 'respublica phenomenon' which applies not to a moral idea of human beings but to a world of experience, to, in the worst possible case, a 'nation of devils' (PP 1991:112). In so far as individuals live in two spheres (the intelligible and the natural), they are torn between freedom under the moral law and the ethical arbitrariness of natural inclinations. The problem with this is that the principle of society and its laws cannot be freedom, which can never be empirically realised, but coercion, its legality forcing individuals prudentially what they ought to do morally (PP 1991:112/3 117). Coercion is inherent in the constitutional framework of civil society, nature compelling individuals to enter into a social contract to satisfy their inclination and protect their persons (PP 1991:97n 98n 99n). This coercive legality is necessary since individuals are inclined to pursue individual advantage at the expense of the moral law. However, this necessity of coercion to subordinate natural inclinations to legally instituted motives, voiding them (PP 1991:108/114 120/ln), diverges markedly from the ideal community promised by the realm of ends and the civil constitution. Freedom as the capacity to legislate for oneself remains a predicate of the individual as noumenon. There is a strain in Kant's political thought which is sceptical of democracy, restricting the right to vote to individuals who qualify as active citizens, self-employed males i.e. the individual who is 'his own master' through owning 'same sort of property .. that supports him' (Saw 1974:63/4; CJ 1951:79). The argument has radical implications which Kant did not pursue. In being dependent on another's will through not owning the instruments and products of labour, the labourer cannot have the right to participate (CJ 1951:79). If the labourer is to acquire the attribute of citizenship fitting to a rational being, it follows that the economic structure of society must be transformed so as to abolish social dependence. Kant, however, himself limits his comments to the possibility that the passive citizen may rise to become an active citizen through 'talent, industry and luck’ (Saw 1974:60). Further, Kant repudiates the directly democratic implications of the social contract in favour of a republican state in which popular sovereignty is exercised through representatives chosen in free elections (Saw 1974:64). Yet, as Marx's critique of abstract political representation shows, representatives of the people are not independent of particular interests and do not necessarily legislate in the universal interest, even though legislative activity proceeds within a constitutional framework that embodies the universal principle. Kant's republican ideal could not serve the universal interest without an actively democratic input, an active as well as a passive suffrage, a commission or a recall system uniting electors and deputies. What Marx's critique would show most of all is the impossibility of a public realm under capitalism. Capitalism privatises and depoliticises the public realm by making common affairs the province of the private realm (Levine 1984:133/4). The realisation of the political ideal of Kant's republican state and Hegel's ethical state requires the abolition of the state-civil society dualism so that the public sphere is invested with democratic and material content, ensuring that the universal interest legislated through the public sphere reflects the will of all. The most that Kant will concede to this radical project is a formal or legal equality which 'is quite consistent with the greatest inequality' in social life. Kant accepts the corollary that whilst persons are 'equal subjects before the law', if 'the welfare of one person is greatly dependent on the will of another (the poor depending on the rich), one must obey .. when the other commands' (Saw 1974:59/60). Such dependence contradicts the principle of active citizenship and, hence, blocks the full realisation of the republican ideal. Marx was to demand the transformation of the mechanisms generating the socio-economic inequality which prevented civic independence, thus making political participation available to all as active citizens. Kant's claims that the republican state guarantees the most extensive liberty for each and all, establishes the conditions of autonomy, and prepares the grounds for the moral community can only be made good with the abolition of capitalism (Van Der Linden 1985:201 202). Kant's 'rational freedom' is a lawful freedom that restrains individual appetite and inclination in order to reach the higher good for all. In this conception, 'right is the restriction of each individual's freedom so that it harmonizes with the freedom of everyone else' and law is the general coercive rule which achieves this general union (TP 1991:73). Kant's thought compares and contrasts with Rousseau, particularly the principle of self-assumed obligation and the idea of law as an educative process that forces people to be free. Though what Kant calls 'lawful freedom' is based on the right of the individual 'to obey no law other than that to which he has given his consent' (MM 1991:139), this 'state of lawful dependence' created by the legislative will of its members does not imply democracy. Individuals must demonstrate a 'fitness to vote’ by being an independent and active member of the commonwealth (MM 1991:139). Since all 'are not equally qualified within this constitution to possess the right to vote', not all 'have a right to influence or organise the state itself as active members, or to co-operate in introducing particular laws' (MM 1991:140). In insisting that positive laws not be at variance with the natural laws of freedom, Kant does at least allow the equality of all 'to work their way up from their passive condition to an active one' (MM 1991:140). This would equip the individual to influence and organise the state as an active member. The notion of ‘fitness to vote’ is of a piece with Kant’s attempt to transcend natural inclinations for a higher good. Those who are unfitted are in a condition of material dependence and would tend to vote according to self-interest as given within the necessity of the empirical world. The votes of individuals pursuing their own interests and desires would reflect a passive condition of material dependency, not an active consideration of moral good in the commonwealth. The translation of the popular will into public policy would therefore reflect not a rational and moral will concerned with the common good of all but a congeries of individual inclinations, interests and desires. Kant, however, argues for a superior authority 'to rule autocratically' so as to control individual passions and improve the ethical disposition of humanity (CF 1991:184 187). Kant refers to his ideal of a self-legislating sovereign people as a 'Platonic ideal', existing as an 'eternal norm but for which there is no object adequately existent in experience (CF 1991:187). He offers the 'republican constitution' as the only means by which the respublica noumenon could be applied, according to the laws of freedom through an example in experience (respublica phenomenon) (CF 1991:187). The 'republican constitution' represents Kant's attempt to combine the ideal of the self-legislating sovereign people with the existent sovereign ruler. For Kant, however, justice as universal can only be realised through a legal coercion exercised according to universal principle. Kant's political order is, therefore, a 'coercive order’ (Ladd 1965:xviii) in which legality is 'the decisive principle' (Reiss in Reiss ed 1991:21/22). Nevertheless, Kant's morality of duty, institutionalised as a 'lawful freedom', does not provide a solution to the problem of order. Rather, in conceding the phenomenal world of natural inclination to self-interest, Kant's ethics degenerate into a formalistic morality designed not to overcome self-interest but constrain it within the capitalist structures of private property and the minimal state. Of all the 'rational' thinkers, Kant expresses most clearly the dualistic character of law as rational and law as positive (Norrie ed 1991:ch3; Wood 1990:70/1), of law as embodying the rational will of individuals and of law as controlling the egoistic will of individuals. Law involves both a concept of right and a concept of regulation, split between a possible freedom and an actual necessity. Hegel would come to attempt a synthesis by the rational elucidation of the universal within the particular. Law thus emerges in Hegel as a moment in the movement of the rational within the social (Norrie 1991:ch4). As the application of principles of right to experience, Kant's principles of politics are normative. Indeed, he argues that politics should be normative. Right .. 'ought never to be adapted to politics, but politics ought always to be adapted to right' (Reiss ed 1991:21). Thus Kant affirms that there can be no conflict of politics, as a practical doctrine of right, with ethics, as a theoretical doctrine of right: 'all politics must bend the knee before right' (PP 1991:125). Morality and legality must be related in such a way that morality shapes politics (PP 1991:93/130). The Categorical Imperative, universalising only those maxims of action which respect all individuals as ends in themselves, obtains political form. Though 'man' 'is a mere trifle' in relation to the 'inaccessible highest cause' of nature, 'it is not just a trifle but a reversal of the ultimate purpose of creation' 'if the rulers of man's own species regard him as such and treat him accordingly', 'using him as a mere instrument of their ends' (CF 1991:185). Further, if legality can be interpreted as ensuring that some moral ends (prohibition of theft, murder etc) are observed, then the political-legal realm can be conceived as the partial realisation of an ideal realm in which individuals respected each other as ends. Politics is thus the legal realisation of moral ends. KANTIAN RATIONALISM The success of Kant’s project depends upon the extent to which culture and nature can be integrated through reason. Without this integration it is not possible to establish the basis of freedom in the empirical world, a world of bondage subjecting individuals to alien forms. In so far as the ideal is locked up in a normative realm abstracted from the real world, the real state will be unable to proceed beyond Kant's minimal assumption of intelligent devils, an assumption which corresponds to a market society based upon antagonism and egoism in human relations (Lukacs 1991:72 73). The empirical facts of class division and the autonomy-denying universal antagonism of the ‘war of all against all’ means that the coercion that Kant wrote of in the 'respublica phenomenon’ is necessarily the basis of legality, against which the reconciling power of reason is impotent (Marx OJQ EW 1975:221). Marx showed that Kant's vision of the harmonious community of noumenal beings - the 'respublica noumenon' - is a material and historical possibility only through the abolition of class and the alienating division of labour which generate coercion in human relationships. By placing all empirical phenomena outside the bounds of reason, Kant's framework is dualistic. As the product of pure reason, emancipating individuals from natural inclinations, Kant's freedom under law possesses an external character apart from individuals in their real lives. Kant separates moral society from the world of experience, treating individuals as rational beings as distinct from natural beings (Krieger 1972:101/2). This comes at a price. As Hegel argued, 'although practical reason postulates the identity of idea and reality, the latter remains strictly opposed and external to reason' (NL 1975:59/60 72). Since the 'true' moral nature of human beings is identified by Kant with a self distinct from the empirical self, individuals have to value the rational aspect of identity whilst denying that the natural world of needs, wants, and desires could possess any rationality. For Kant, the individual is moral only in being able to abstract from the contingent influences and determinations of the natural and social world, coming to act according to a moral law established by pure practical reason in a noumenal realm. 'Empirical principles are always unfitted to serve as a ground for moral laws. The universality with which these laws should hold for all rational beings without exception - the unconditioned practical necessity which they thus impose - falls away if their basis is taken from the special constitution of human nature or from the accidental circumstances in which it is placed (GMM 1991:103). Kant delivers an impressive list of charges to prove that personal happiness is the 'most objectionable' principle, singling out the fact that it 'bases morality on sensuous motives' as the greatest vice (GMM 1991:103). Kant praises Plato for demonstrating that ideas originate in reason rather than in the empirical world: 'nothing is more reprehensible than to derive the laws prescribing what ought to be done from what is done, or to impose upon them the limits by which the latter is circumscribed' (Pure 1965:313). The human being as a 'creature' can never attain such a level of moral disposition as holiness since 'he can never be wholly free from desires and inclinations which, because they rest on physical causes, do not of themselves agree with the moral law, which has an entirely different source' (Prac 1956:86). In the Groundwork, Kant turned morality and Nature against each other. The categorical imperative is conceived as a stern command for the triumph of morality over the forces of natural inclination. There is nothing absolutely good other than the morally good will. (GMM 394). Human beings, as moral agents, are the maltreated stepchildren of a heartless Nature. The absolute value of morality thus received protection by being enclosed in the innermost sanctuary of rational beings. In the Groundwork, the natural world is at best coldly indifferent and at worst cruelly hostile to the supersensible moral ideals. Material forces are governed by mechanical laws and are therefore blind and indifferent to moral values. In constituting human nature, they produce natural inclinations that have the perpetual propensity to flout moral laws. The natural world thus works to prevent human beings realizing their transcendent aspirations. The fact that human beings have such aspirations makes the human species a misfit pitted against nature. Kant contemplated this troubled condition of humanity in the natural world in terms of the gap between the sensible and the supersensible worlds. This was the gap that also filled Kant with awe and wonder, the starry skies above and the moral law within. Since the possibility of morality depends upon abstraction from the empirical world, the noumenal realm beyond the phenomenal world 'is certainly only an ideal'. Individuals enter this realm only to the extent to which they abstract from their social situation. The categorical imperative can enjoin that individuals act as though they are legislating members of a 'kingdom of ends' only 'if we abstract from the personal differences between rational beings, and also from all the content of their private ends' (GMM 1991:95). It is difficult to understand how the moral legislation produced in this noumenal realm could apply in the phenomenal realm. Kant himself realises that by denying the situational character of the world of experience he reduces the force of his argument. A kingdom of ends could exist if the maxims which the categorical imperative prescribes for all rational beings were universally followed. The problem is that 'if a rational being were himself to follow such a maxim strictly, he cannot count on everybody else being faithful to it on this ground' (Kant GMM 1991:100). Because a realm of ends, in which every individual acts as a rational being, cannot be guaranteed, legal force must intervene. Kant's view imposes a dualism between the independence of the individual as a rational subject and the subordination of the individual as an empirical being to an external authority (Reiss in Reiss ed 1991:20; Norman 1983:96 98). Individuals must learn to identify happiness with the subordination of their lower nature to the necessity of the moral law in order to realise their higher nature. For the workings of the Categorical Imperative enables individuals to discover 'right' and 'wrong' independently of their inclinations, impulses and desires. Kant's morality of self-denial, instituting the obedience of the 'lower', i.e. empirical, to the 'higher', i.e. rational self, is based upon the categorical distinction between reason and nature. This division of the individual between the phenomenal natural world as a determined order of natural necessity and the noumenal world of moral freedom risks fragmenting human experience and subjecting the individual to a ceaseless struggle between the command of duty and natural inclinations. The failure to bridge this gap between the noumenal and the phenomenal (Maclntyre 1967:197/8; Wolff 1973:ch2) results in the autonomy of law, morality and politics within liberal society (Murphy 1970; Arendt 1982). This has implications which turn against both reason and nature. As Weber's rationalisation thesis shows, the distinction between reason and nature fits a capitalist modernity in which individuals have been made instrumental to purposes and processes which are external to them. The 'rational' project of substituting morality for coercion in human affairs thus ends in a lawful state administering a coercive civil society which inhibits the human ontology and subjects external nature to an instrumental rationality detached from ends. The basis of Kant’s predicament is the separation of reason from nature and the ensuing primacy of reason over nature. On Kant's premises, certain aspects of the internal nature of human beings are in external relation to the moral law. It can, however, be overcome by human beings transcending their natural inclinations for their rational and moral will which is not only just as natural but, in line of descent from Plato, the better part of human nature. In the recent surge of interest in ‘the body’, Kant has been criticised for his heavy emphasis upon individuals freeing themselves from the sensuous human desires which are considered to be an integral part of human nature. (see Seidler). This misses Kant’s point that these ‘sensuous desires’ serve to shackle human beings to natural necessity within and without, chaining them to an empirical world of wants, impulses and inclinations. In Verdi’s Brindisi from La Traviata, all the guests sing of their love of ‘passionate hedonism’ with the line ‘all that is not pleasure is senseless’. The point is that the rational tradition to which Kant belongs affirms a greater freedom beyond the senses in terms of the fulfilment and flourishing of the whole nature of human being. His point is that freedom will only be achieved through the realisation of the human capacity for autonomy and independence as given by rational and moral will. The capacity of the market economy to manacle individuals to necessity in their empirical existence by manipulating their ‘sensuous desires’ is one of the most striking features of the modern world. It is this shackling of human beings by their own natural inclinations that Kant sought to overcome. But if ‘sensuous desires’ are essential aspects of human nature, then a more promising strategy may be to acknowledge this fact and see them as socially and historically mediated, thus attempting to unite inclinations and moral reason. Hegel's success in conceiving the possibility of moralising human nature becomes in Marx a project of moralising the whole socio-relational fabric of society, resolving Kant's antithesis between inclinations and the moral law. We are back here to Aristotle’s reason educating desire. Kant's Moralitat as an inner or private dimension, posed in and of itself, has to be contextualised in connection to the public world. Whereas Kant emphasised categorical duty over against human inclination, Hegel sought to bridge the gap between finite phenomenal and infinite noumenal realms so that duty was integral to the empirical lives of individuals (Dallmayr 1993:32 33). Kant's thought, nevertheless, contains radical possibilities which serve to test Hegel's claim that Sittlichkeit embodies the 'ought' within the 'is'. Kant's motto of enlightenment - 'have the courage to use your own understanding!’ (WE 1991:54) - celebrates the departure of human beings from all forms of tutelage, affirming a conception of autonomy which delegitimizes all social and political institutions that are not the product of free will. Such a notion justifies liberation from all contexts or situations which are oppressive of human freedom (Yack 1986:89/133; cf Rose 1984; Lukacs 1971:108/9). This is not a repudiation of institutional mediation as such. On the contrary, Kant sought to realise freedom within the constraint of law, not against it as in Fichte's 'self-sufficiency and independence outside of everything' (Fichte 1982:15). It simply emphasises that Kant’s morality repudiates all dehumanising, alienating and oppressive conditions and institutions as the denial of the essential humanity, and dignity of human beings. In which case, Marx himself emerges as a Kantian in affirming the 'categorical imperative to overthrow all conditions in which man is a debased, enslaved, neglected and contemptible being' (CHPR:I 1975:251). This begs the question of how reflective judgement mediates between the worlds of phenomena and noumena. The question involves the two-way transition, the upward transition from phenomena to noumena, which concerns the recognition of moral law; and the downward transition from noumena to phenomena, which concerns the realization of moral law. In answering the question of how aesthetic judgement makes these two transitions one has to recognise that Kant had two aesthetic theories, aesthetic formalism and aesthetic Platonism. In aesthetic formalism, reflective judgements are made by the subjective feeling that the free interplay of imagination and understanding provoke. Since this free interplay involves no supersensible world, there is no need for mediation. In Kant’s aesthetic Platonism, there is a need for mediation since the ultimate foundation of all aesthetic judgements is the Idea of Beauty, and this belongs to the noumenal world. The Idea of Beauty is transcendent and abstract and is not therefore readily applicable to the phenomenal world, leaving a gap between phenomena and noumena. Bridging this gap requires aesthetic Ideas constructed by imagination and understanding, thus articulating the transcendent Idea of Beauty in terms of sensible imagery. This is what artistic genius and its inspiration does. In Platonic terms, this is the descent of Ideas from Heaven to the natural world. In Kantian terms, immanent aesthetic Ideas perform the mediation between phenomena and noumena. With natural beauty as the expression of aesthetic Ideas, this mediatory transition is made by both human beings and nature. The two-way mediation in teleological judgements works thus. For Kant, natural purpose is a supersensible Idea that cannot be found in the blind mechanism of nature (C3 377). Human beings make the upward transition for recognizing the Idea and the downward transition for realizing the Idea in the natural world. But this mediation is made by both human beings and natural teleology. On the highest level, there may be only one Idea of natural purpose. For Plato, there is only one Idea of Life (Timaeus (39e). However, every species has its own Idea of natural purpose and is governed in accordance with it. On this level, the multiplicity of teleological Ideas corresponds to the multiplicity of aesthetic Ideas. The various particular Ideas of natural purpose are generated by the articulation and specification of the one transcendent Idea of Life. In naming the objects of natural beauty, Kant often refers to living beings such as flowers, birds, and crustaceans. This implies the conclusion that the power of life includes the power of beauty. Thus Nature conjoins the Ideas of Life and Beauty and brings them from the supersensible to the sensible world. This descent of Ideas is engineered by the technique of Nature. Nature working like an artist (C3 390). Nature’s two-way mediation between phenomena and noumema proceeds thus: Nature creates living beings in the phenomenal world by bringing down the supersensible Ideas, and one species amongst those living beings have the intelligence to apprehend the noumenal world. The moral and aesthetic life of human beings is a link in the creative cycle of natural teleology which Kant calls the Providence of Mother Nature in his Idea of a Universal History. For Kant, Newton was the master of natural world and Rousseau was the master of the moral world. But neither could bridge the vast chasm between phenomena and noumena. Kant locates the solution for this, the key problem in his philosophy, in Nature. Nature is the original matrix for realizing the supersensible Ideas in the sensible world, even before the birth of humanity; the moral and political development of humanity is shaped under the auspices of Nature’s eternal providence. His acceptance of the mechanistic conception of nature had prevented Kant from grasping this cosmic truth. By acknowledging Nature as the living force, resolves his ultimate philosophical problem and bridges the chasm between noumena and phenomena. Kant’s solution savours a great deal of Plato's conception of the natural world in the Timaeus, where the Demiurge, the spirit of the natural world (the World-Soul), creates all things in accordance with the eternal Ideas. Moral and political philosophy began with Socrates and the stand he took against the overweening claims to knowledge on the part of natural philosophers who studied nature with no regard to human beings. Plato continued thus spiritual quest, connecting the fight against the amoral forces of nature with the fight against the immoral forces of human beings. In the Gorgias, Callicles, the avowed champion of amoral naturalism and immoral humanism, is confronted by Socrates’ argument that that one could be virtuous even in a totally immoral world and that one's soul could never be harmed by the immoral acts of others. In the Phaedo and the Symposium Plato finds a safe haven for the virtuous soul in the intelligible world of Ideas. In this world, the soul was safe from the immorality of the phenomenal world. However, the safe haven of the intelligible world could never provide a living community for moral individuals. In the Republic, Plato set out the principles of the ideal state as a moral community which provides for the moral life of individuals. Recognising the difficulty of realising a just society in an amoral and irrational world, Plato laid out his conception of a rational and orderly universe in the Timaeus – which Plato presents as the cosmological foundation for his ideal state of the Republic and for the city of Magnesia proposed in the Laws. Kant reaffirms the Platonic conception of the rational order of Nature in his Ideological conception of natural order. Kant is continuing Plato's quest for a suitable natural order for the realization of eternal ideals. In this quest, Kant revitalises the Platonic conception of Nature as the mother of all creation. If Kant’s conception of the noumena and the categorical imperative retained the Christian legacy, then this conception of Mother Nature taps into the old nature religions and looks forward to the attempts to locate the place of human beings within Nature. Certainly, the conception was a key figure in Goethe’s Faust, where Nature manifests her inexhaustible creative power as the Earth Spirit, the Eternal Mothers, and the Eternal Feminine. The idea inspired the supernatural naturalism of Romantic philosophers and poets. Along with the conception of immanent Ideas, this natural teleology is one of Kant's most enduring achievements and is likely to become even more relevant in the coming years as human beings deal with the task of making their peace with Nature. In the middle of the third Critique. Here, Kant abandons the formalist programme and propound his revolutionary notion of immanent Ideas. The descent of transcendent Ideas from Platonic Heaven to the natural world fundamentally alters Kant's conception of Nature. In the first Critique and in the Groundwork, Kant conceived Nature as a chaotic world of subjective impressions and natural inclinations, a world so unruly that Kant claimed that it was the ultimate source of all radical evil in human nature (R 19). This chaotic natural world could assume a rational order only through the a priori natural laws that human understanding comes to impose on empirical impressions; the world of natural inclinations could only be controlled by imposing moral laws. However, the descent of transcendent Ideas from the Platonic world of Being releases Nature from the shackles of humanly imposed moral and natural laws since Nature is able to operate with the power of its own immanent Ideas. This opens up a conception of Mother Nature as the Eternal Feminine who has the inexhaustible power to procreate and sustain her countless children. Kant’s vision is larger than this in arguing that human beings, Nature’s children, are equipped with natural endowments that enable them to transcend their natural state and create their cultural world. thus realizing Nature’s immanent Ideas. This is Kant's transcendent naturalism. Dr Peter Critchley Kant 42