Kant’s Philosophy: Perpetual Peace, Politics, and Morality
Kant’s Philosophy on Perpetual Peace
Kant asks if the republican constitution is the government most appropriate to achieve peace. The answer is yes. In the republican constitution, the consent of the citizens is necessary to decide whether to go to war or not. Since the citizens are the ones who are going to suffer the worst calamities of war, they would normally choose not to provoke it. However, when a state is the property of a monarch, it does not cost him anything to send his subjects to war. With this argument, Kant generates hope to prevent such dynastic wars, frequent in 18th-century Europe, but he is not aware that in the 19th and 20th centuries, it will be the people themselves who, obfuscated by nationalist fanaticism, will provoke war.
Republican Constitution vs. Democratic Constitution
The republican constitution could be confused with the democratic one, so Kant believes it is convenient to draw attention to both. He explains the differences that exist between these classifications based on two different forms of the state:
- A state can be divided according to the number of people who hold the supreme power (autocracy: only one sovereign; aristocracy: a few sovereigns; and democracy: all are sovereigns).
- Not according to the number, but according to how many govern: republican constitution (representation and division of powers) and despotic constitution (no representation, power is not divided).
Kant wrote this on December 2nd.
Republicanism vs. Despotism
In republicanism, there is representation and division of powers. In despotism, there is no separation of powers, and the will of the people is not represented. In democracy, the government is despotism, which is the worst for Kant because it crushes the minority and violates the rights of equality and liberty of citizenship. He is concerned that democracy executed Socrates in Athens and led to the French Revolution.
Representative Government
A representative form of government is not a form of government. The same person cannot make and execute the laws. Kant believes that the people are sovereign, but their powers must be represented, not accumulated. Functioning: the representatives of the people have to legislate, the governors put them into practice, and the judges administer justice; the separation of powers is the only way for the people to be represented. He believes that it is easier to convert a monarchy into republicanism and that in a democracy, there is only one sovereign, while everyone wants to be sovereign.
Republic vs. Monarchy
Kant opposes the republic to the monarchy: fewer people in power means more representation and easier constitution of the republic, then aristocracy, and finally democracy. Sovereignty is not mentioned because democracy presents censorship. Those who do not divide power fall into despotism and injustice.
Social Contract
The social contract allows individuals to leave the state of nature to enter the civil state. It is not a historical event but a scenario that must be assumed as the absolute submission of individuals to an authority. At the same time, it supposes that the individual is a co-legislator (no law can be adopted without his consent, so the government has to make laws as if they were the general will).
Rationalism vs. Empiricism
Empiricism is a theory that states that the origin of knowledge is limited to sensitive experience (Hobbes, Locke, Hume, and Berkeley). Rationalism states that the source of knowledge is reason, rejecting faith, revelation, and the senses (Descartes). Rationalism advances from innate ideas as necessary and a priori. Empiricism is systematic, criticizing everything. Metaphysics is limited by experience, which is sensitive. Rationalism has absolute confidence in the powers of reason to know everything. It unifies knowledge based on modern science (only mathematics), empiricism, and phenomenology. Both defend that ideas and the mind are reduced to relationships between them.
Juridical Liberty
Natural right defines the individual. Politics corresponds to the positive right, so each individual is converted into a co-legislator (the laws of the state derive from him). The government can only legislate if the people give their consent (general will). Kant does not express civil disobedience, and submission to the state is a necessary condition for social order.
Copernican Turn
Sciences increase our knowledge of the world and provide us with necessary, independent, and universal knowledge. Kant reaches the conclusion that we possess necessary knowledge about the world that predates experience. This is a necessary philosophical revolution that gave origin to the scientific revolution. There is no remedy other than a Copernican turn to reach knowledge. Empiricism disables knowledge because of its origin in experience. Rationalism overestimates the scope of knowledge because it believes it can advance from innate ideas. Kant takes an intermediate position, a synthesis between experience and the subject who knows. Kant’s discovery: the world is a product of our mind, and we can make judgments a priori. The Copernican turn consists of putting the subject and not the object at the center of knowledge.
- Sensitivity:
- Matter
- Form
The result of unification is the phenomenon (the object of our experience).
- Understanding:
The option to judge, to include a perception. Knowledge only exists when a general concept accompanies intuition. There are two types of empirical concepts: a priori, understood. Kant calls them rubrics (fundamentals: substance and causality) and two types of physics: experimental and pure.
Illusion
This is the third and last option of knowledge, where reason only knows what it thinks. Kant preferentially knows particular phenomena to apply to two necessary elements: concept and experience. Thinking only consists of organizing concepts according to logical relations. The result of the activity of reason is called universalisms, which Kant calls the comings of reason (soul: knowledge of internal experience; world: external; God: synthesis of both). Although we can think of all phenomena through ideas, they do not give us any knowledge because to do so, we would need some intuition. Illusion is the deceitfulness of man after not obtaining an answer to existential questions. Ideas can be attributed a regulative use in two senses (negative and positive). The postulates of practical reason are the necessary conditions for morality: liberty, the immortal soul, and the existence of God. They are indemonstrable, so we need faith: to remove knowledge and put faith.
Imperative
Material morals are imposed to found universal duties. Moral laws do not contain maxims that can be universal, but not all are obliged to follow them. Formal morality does not say what material imperatives say or what to do. It contains a single imperative that only expresses the form of the imperative. The Kantian imperative is formal, categorical, and unique. It is not empirical but pure, as reason establishes it, marginal to experience. It is rational and a priori. Currently, Kantian morality is considered a procedural morality, but not in December, as it gives its procedure, which is universality.
Context
Immanuel Kant lived from 1724 (Königsberg, Prussia) to 1804. His father was engaged in the manufacture of belts and harnesses for cavalry swords. He was the fourth child of the marriage. He entered university at 16 and became rector. He was trained in German rationalism and read Hume, questioning the value of reason and establishing its limits. He made a synthesis. His work “Critique of Pure Reason” came out in 1781, laying the foundations of human knowledge and establishing modern epistemology. He was affected by the consolidation of European nations governed by powerful monarchs. His political ideas are reflected in “Perpetual Peace”.