by Will Durant
IV. CRITIQUE OF JUDGMENT, 1790
Kant himself must have been dissatisfied with his arguments, for in a Kritik der Urteilskraft he returned to the problem of mechanism versus free will, and advanced to the conflict between mechanism and design; to which he added complex dissertations on beauty, sublimity, genius, and art. It is not an appetizing brew.
Urteilskraft— the power of judgment—“is in general the faculty of thinking the particular as contained in the universal”; it is the act of bringing an object, idea, or event under a class, or principle, or law. The first Critique had tried to bring all ideas under the a priori universal categories; the second had sought to bring all ethical concepts under a universal a priori moral sense; the third undertook to find a priori principles for our aesthetic judgments—of order, beauty, or sublimity in nature or art.53 “I venture to hope that the difficulty of unraveling a problem so involved in its nature may serve as an excuse for a certain amount of hardly avoidable obscurity in its solution.”54
“Dogmatic” philosophy had attempted to find an objective element in beauty; Kant feels that here, especially, the subjective element is pre-eminent. Nothing is beautiful or sublime but feeling makes it so. We ascribe beauty to any object the contemplation of which gives us disinterested pleasure—i.e., a pleasure free from all personal desire; so we derive aesthetic, but no other, satisfaction from a sunset, a Raphael, a cathedral, a flower, a concerto, or a song. But why do certain objects or experiences give us this disinterested pleasure? Probably because we see in them a union of parts functioning successfully in a harmonious whole. In the case of the sublime we are pleased by grandeur or power that does not threaten us; so we feel sublimity in the sky or the sea, but not if their turbulence endangers us.
Our appreciation of beauty or sublimity is increased by accepting teleology—i.e., by recognizing in organisms an inherent adaptation of parts to the needs of the whole, and by feeling in nature a divine wisdom behind the coordination and harmony, the grandeur and power. And yet science aims at just the opposite—to show that all objective nature operates through mechanical laws, without submission to any external design. How can we reconcile these two approaches to nature? By accepting both mechanism and teleology insofar as they help us as “heuristic” principles—as assumptions that facilitate understanding or research. The mechanical principle helps us most in investigating inorganic substances; the teleological principle serves best in studying organisms. In these there are powers of growth and reproduction that baffle mechanical explanation; there is a visible adaptation of parts to the purposes of the organ or the organism, as of the claws for grasping and of the eyes for sight. It would be wise to recognize that neither mechanism nor design can be shown to be universally true. In a sense science itself is teleological, since it assumes an intelligible order, regularity, and unity in nature, as if a divine mind had organized it and sustains it.55
Kant acknowledged many difficulties in viewing man and the world as products of divine design.
The first thing that would have to be expressly arranged in a system ordered with a view to a final whole of natural beings on the earth would be their habitat—the soil or element on or in which they are intended to thrive. But a more intimate knowledge of the nature of this basic condition of all organic production shows no trace of any causes but those acting altogether without design, and in fact tending toward destruction rather than calculated to promote genesis of forms, order, and ends. Land and sea not only contain memorials of mighty primeval disasters that have overtaken them and all their brood of living forms, but their entire structure—the strata of the land and the coast lines of the sea—has all the appearances of being the outcome of the wild and all-subduing forces of a nature working in a state of chaos.56
And yet again, if we abandon all notion of design in nature we take all moral meaning out of life; life becomes a silly succession of painful births and agonizing deaths, in which, for the individual, the nation, and the race, nothing is certain except defeat. We must believe in some divine design if only to maintain our sanity. And since teleology proves merely a struggling artificer instead of a divine and omnipotent benevolence, we must rest our faith in life upon a moral sense that has no warrant except through belief in a just God. With that creed we may believe—though we cannot prove—that the just man is the final end of creation, the noblest product of the grand and mysterious design.57
V. RELIGION AND REASON, 1793
Kant was never content with his hesitant as if theology. In 1791, in a little book On the Failure of All Philosophical Attempts at Theodicy, he repeated that “our reason is altogether incapable of giving insight into the relation between the world … and the highest Wisdom.” He added a caution, perhaps to himself: “The philosopher should not play the part of a special pleader in this matter; he should not defend any cause whose justice he is unable to grasp, and which he cannot prove by means of the modes of thought peculiar to philosophy.”58
He returned to the problem again in a series of essays which brought him into open defiance of the Prussian government. The first of them, “On Radical Evil,” was printed in the Berliner Monatsschrift for April, 1792. The censor allowed its publication on the ground that “only deep-thinking scholars read the writings of Kant,”59 but he refused to allow the second essay, “On the Contest between the Good and Evil Principles for the Control of Man.” Kant resorted to a stratagem. German universities had the privilege of sanctioning books and articles for publication; Kant submitted the second, third, and fourth essays to the philosophical faculty at the University of Jena (then controlled by Goethe and Duke Karl August of Saxe-Weimar, and having Schiller on its staff); the faculty gave its imprimatur; and with this all four essays were printed at Königsberg in 1793 under the title Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der blossen Vernunft (Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone).
The first lines announce the pervading theme: “So far as morality is based upon the conception of man as a free agent, who, just because he is free, blinds himself through his reason to unconditioned laws, it stands in need neither of the idea of another Being over him for him to apprehend his duty, nor of an incentive, other than the law itself, for him to do it. … Hence for its own sake morality does not need religion at all.”60 Kant promises obedience to the authorities, and admits the need of censorship, but he urges that censorship “shall create no disturbance in the field of the sciences.”61 The invasion of science by theology, as in the case of Galileo, “might arrest all the endeavors of human reason. … Philosophical theology … must have complete freedom so far as its science reaches.”62
Kant derives the problems of morality from man’s twofold inheritance of good and evil tendencies. “That a corrupt propensity must indeed be rooted in man need not be formally proved in view of the multitude of crying examples which experience … puts before our eyes.”63 He does not agree with Rousseau that man is born good or was good in a “state of nature,” but he concurs with him in condemning the “vices of culture and civilization” as “the most offensive of all.”64 “Indeed, it is still a question whether we should not be happier in an uncivilized condition … than we are in the present state of society”65 with all its exploitation, hypocrisy, moral disorder, and wholesale homicide in war. If we wish to know the real nature of man we need only observe the behavior of states.
How did the “radical evil in human nature” begin? Not through “original sin”; “surely of all the explanations of the spread and propagation of this evil through all members and generations of our race, the most inept is that which describes it as descending to us as an inheritance from our first parents.”66 Probably the “evil” propensities were strongly rooted in man by their necessity to his survival in primitive conditions; only in civilization—in organized society—do they become vices; and there they require not suppression but control.67 “Natural inclinations, considered in themselves, are good, that is, not a matter for reproach; and not only is it futile
to want to exterminate them, but to do so would be harmful and blameworthy. Rather let them be tamed, and instead of clashing with one another they can be brought into that harmony in a wholeness which is called happiness.”68
Moral good is also innate, as evidenced by the universal moral sense; but it is at first only a need, which must be developed by moral instruction and arduous discipline. The best religion is not one that excels in the careful observance of ritual worship but rather one that most influences men toward a moral life.69 A religion of reason bases itself not upon a divine revelation, but upon a sense of duty interpreted as the divinest element in man.70 Religion may legitimately organize itself into a church,71 it may seek to define its creed through sacred scriptures, it may rightly worship Christ as the most Godlike of men, it may promise heaven and threaten hell,72 and “no religion can be conceived which involves no belief in a future life.”73 But it should not be necessary for a Christian to affirm faith in miracles, or the divinity of Christ, or the atonement, by Christ’s crucifixion, for the sins of mankind, or the predestination of souls to heaven or hell by divine grace given with no regard to good or evil works.74 It is “necessary carefully to inculcate some forms of prayer in children (who still stand in need of the letter)”;75 but petitional “prayer … as a means of [winning divine] grace is a superstitious illusion.”76
When a church becomes an institution for compelling belief or worship; when it assumes to itself the sole right to interpret Scripture and define morality; when it forms a priesthood claiming exclusive approaches to God and divine grace; when it makes its worship a magic ritual possessing miraculous powers; when it becomes an arm of the government and an agent of intellectual tyranny; when it seeks to dominate the state and to use secular rulers as tools of ecclesiastical ambition—then the free mind will rise against such a church, and will seek outside of it that “pure religion of reason” which is the pursuit of the moral life.77
This last major work of Kant was marked with the vacillation and obfuscation natural to a man who had no passion for imprisonment. There is much scholastic verbiage in it, some wondrous logic-chopping and fantastic theology. The wonder remains that a man of sixty-nine should still display such vigor of thought and speech, and such courage in combat with the united powers of church and state. The conflict between the philosopher and the King came to a head when (October 1, 1794) Frederick William II sent him the following “order in council.”
Our Most High Person has for a long time observed with great displeasure how you misuse your philosophy to undermine and debase many of the most important and fundamental doctrines of the Holy Scriptures and Christianity; how, namely, you have done this in your book, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone. … We demand of you immediately a most conscientious answer, and expect that in the future, toward the avoidance of our highest disfavor, you will give no such cause for offense, but rather, in accord with your duty, employ your talents and authority so that our paternal purpose may be more and more attained. If you continue to resist you may certainly expect unpleasant consequences to yourself.78
Kant gave a propitiatory reply. He pointed out that his writings were addressed only to scholars and theologians, whose freedom of thought should be preserved in the interest of the government itself. His book had admitted the inadequacy of reason to judge the final mysteries of religious faith. He concluded with a pledge of obedience: “I hereby, as your Majesty’s most faithful servant, solemnly declare that henceforth I will entirely refrain from all public statements on religion, both natural and revealed, either in lectures or in writings.” When the King died (1797) Kant felt released from his promise; moreover, Frederick William III dismissed Wöllner (1797), abolished the censorship, and repealed the Religionsedikt of 1788. After the battle Kant summed up its issues in a booklet, Der Streit der Fakultäten (The Conflict of the Faculties, 1798), in which he repeated his claim that academic freedom was indispensable to the intellectual growth of a society. Essentially the little professor in a far-off corner of the world had won his battle against a state having the strongest army in Europe. That state was soon to collapse, but by 1800 Kant’s books were the most influential in the intellectual life of Germany.
VI. THE REFORMER
He retired from lecturing in 1797 (aged seventy-three), but till 1798 he continued to issue essays on vital themes. Despite his isolation he kept in touch with world affairs. When the Congress of Basel assembled in 1795 to arrange peace among Germany, Spain, and France, Kant took the occasion (as the Abbé de Saint-Pierre had done with the Congress of Utrecht in 1713) to publish a brochure Zum euoigen Frieden (On Perpetual Peace).
He began modestly by describing “eternal peace” as a fit motto for a cemetery, and assuring statesmen that he did not expect them to take him as anything more than a “scholastic pedant who can bring no danger to the state.”79 Then, setting aside as temporizing trivia the articles of peace signed at Basel, he drew up, as a committee of one, “six preliminary articles” outlining the conditions prerequisite to a lasting peace. Article I outlawed all secret reservations or addenda to a treaty. Article II forbade the absorption or domination of any independent state by another. Article III called for the gradual elimination of standing armies. Article IV held that no state might “interfere by force with the constitution of another.” Article VI required that no state at war with any other should “permit such acts of hostility as would make mutual trust, in case of a future peace, impossible, such as the employment of assassins or poisoners, … and the instigation of rebellion in the enemy state.”
Since no durable peace can be made between states that acknowledge no limits to their sovereignty, persistent efforts must be made to develop an international order and so provide a legal substitute for war. So Kant drew up some “definite articles” for a lasting peace. First, “the constitution of every state must be republican.” Monarchies and aristocracies tend to frequent wars, because the ruler and the nobles are usually protected from loss to their lives and property in war, and so engage in it too readily as “the sport of kings”; in a republic “it rests with the citizens to determine whether war shall be declared or not,” and they will bear the consequences; hence “it is not likely that the citizens of a state [a republic] would ever enter on so costly a game.”80 Second, “all international right must be grounded upon a federation of free states.”81 This should not be a superstate; “indeed, war is not so incurably bad as the deadness of a universal monarchy.”82 Each people should determine its own government, but the separate states (at least of Europe) should unite in a confederation empowered to govern their external relations. The ideal never to be abandoned is the practice by states of the same moral code that they require of their citizens. Could such a venture possibly produce more evil than the perpetual practice of international deceit and violence? In the end, Kant hoped, Machiavelli would be proved wrong; there need be no contradiction between morality and politics; only “morals can cut the knot which politics cannot unloose.”83
Kant obviously had delusions about republics (which have joined in the most terrible wars of all); but we should note that by “republic” he meant constitutional government rather than a complete democracy. He distrusted the wild impulses of unchained men,84 and feared universal suffrage as the empowerment of unlettered majorities over progressive minorities and nonconforming individuals.85 But he resented hereditary privilege, class arrogance, and the serfdom encompassing Königsberg. He welcomed the American Revolution, which, as he saw it, was creating a federation of independent states along the lines that he had proposed for Europe. He followed the French Revolution with almost youthful enthusiasm, even after the September Massacres and the Terror.
But, like nearly all followers of the Enlightenment, he put more faith in education than in revolution. Here, as in so many fields, he felt the influence of Rousseau and the Romantic movement. “We must allow the child from his earliest years perfect liberty in every respect, … provided that … he
does not interfere with the liberty of others.”86 Soon he hedged on this perfect liberty; some measure of discipline, he admitted, is necessary in the formation of character; “neglect of discipline is a greater evil than neglect of culture, for this last can be remedied later in life.”87 Work is the best discipline, and should be required at all stages of education. Moral education is indispensable, and should begin early. Since human nature contains the seed of both good and evil, all moral progress depends upon weeding out the evil and cultivating the good. This should be done not through rewards and punishments, but by stressing the concept of duty.
Education by the state is no better than education by the church; the state will seek to make obedient, pliable, patriotic citizens. It would be better to leave education to private schools led by enlightened scholars and public-spirited citizens;88 hence Kant applauded the principles and schools of Johann Basedow. He deplored the nationalistic bias of state schools and textbooks, and hoped for a time when all subjects would be treated impartially. In 1784 he published an essay, Ideen zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürger-licher Absicht (Ideas for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Standpoint) ; it sketched the progress of mankind from superstition to enlightenment, allowed only a minor role to religion, and called for historians who would rise above nationalism.
Like the philosophes, he warmed his heart with faith in progress, moral as well as intellectual. In 1793 he chided Moses Mendelssohn for saying that every advance is canceled by retrogression.
Many proofs may be given that the human race on the whole, and especially in our own as compared with all preceding times, has made considerable advances morally for the better. Temporary checks do not prove anything against this. The cry of the continually increasing degradation in the race arises just from this, that when one stands on a higher step of morality he sees further before him, and his judgment on what men are, as compared with what they ought to be, is more strict.89