Kant and the Architectonics of Reason (original) (raw)
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Kant and the Critique of the Ethics-First Approach to Politics
Contemporary "realists" attack the Kantian influence on political philosophy. A main charge is that Kantians fail to understand the specificity of politics and neglect to develop a "distinctively political thought" that differs from moral philosophy. Instead, the critics say, Kantians are guilty of what they call an "ethics-first approach to politics," in which political theory is a mere application of moral principles. But what does this ethics-first approach have to do with Kant himself? This article argues that Kant's Philosophy of Right cannot be characterized as an ethics-first approach to politics. I demonstrate how Kant's approach to political theory, even if it is an ideal theory, can explain the importance of and need for political institutions, power, and coercion to deal with disagreement, security, and coordination problems among interconnected and social beings. In contrast to realists, Kant has a fundamental principle, which can explain why and guide how we ought to approach the political question, namely the norm of equal freedom. Moreover, Kant's theory does not take the form of a moralistic ought addressed to the isolated individual, but concerns a problem that we share as interdependent beings and that requires common institutions. The fruitfulness of the Kantian approach, then, is that it can take the political question seriously without being uncritical of actual politics and power, and that it can be normative without being moralistic.
2012
Past interpreters of Kant’s thought seldom viewed his writings on politics as having much importance, especially in comparison with his writings on ethics, which (along with his major works, such as the Critique of Pure Reason) received the lion’s share of attention. But in recent years a new generation of scholars has revived interest in what Kant had to say about politics. From a position of engagement with today’s most pressing questions, this volume of essays offers a comprehensive introduction to Kant’s often misunderstood political thought. Covering the full range of sources of Kant’s political theory—including not only the Doctrine of Right, the Critiques, and the political essays but also Kant’s lectures and minor writings—the volume’s dis- tinguished contributors demonstrate that Kant’s philosophy offers compelling positions that continue to inspire the best thinking on politics today.
Kant and the Problem of Politics
2022
This book examines the significance of Kant’s political philosophy in the context of contemporary philosophical and political debates. In the last few decades, Kantian specialists have increasingly manifested a purely exegetic and philological interest in Kant’s oeuvre, while contemporary philosophers and scientists tend to use Kant with scant hermeneutical care, thus misrepresenting or misunderstanding his positions. This volume countervails these tendencies by focusing more on specific themes of contemporary relevance in Kant’s writings. It looks to Kant’s political thought for insight on tackling issues such as freedom of speech, democracy and populism, intergenerational justice, economic inequality, money, poverty, international justice and gender/feminism. Featuring readings by well-known Kant specialists and emerging scholars with unorthodox approaches to Kant’s philosophy, the volume fills a significant gap in the existing scholarship on the philosopher and his works. It will be of great interest to scholars and researchers of philosophy, politics and ethics.
Kant and the Critique of the Ethics-First Approach to Politics.pdf
Critical Review of International Social and Political Philosophy , 2019
Contemporary "realists" attack the Kantian influence on political philosophy. A main charge is that Kantians fail to understand the specificity of politics and neglect to develop a "distinctively political thought" that differs from moral philosophy. Instead, the critics say, Kantians are guilty of an "ethics-first approach to politics," in which political theory is a mere application of moral principles. But what does this ethics-first approach have to do with Kant himself? Very little. This article shows how Kant's approach to political theory at a fundamental level includes political institutions, power, and coercion as well as disagreement, security, and coordination problems. In contrast to realists, Kant has a fundamental principle, which can explain why and guide how we ought to approach the political question, namely the norm of equal freedom. Yet, Kant's theory does not take the form of a moralistic ought addressed to the isolated individual, but concerns a problem that we share as interdependent beings and that requires common institutions. The fruitfulness of the Kantian approach, then, is that it can take the political question seriously without being uncritical of actual politics and power, and that it can be normative without being moralistic.
Kant’s politics and its contemporary meaning: Recent approaches
Contemporary Political Theory
At no time in the past seventy years has the liberal democratic order found itself under such serious political and intellectual challenge. The two volumes under review thus appear at a particularly opportune moment. For if there is one thinker who has defined the 'new world order' that emerged after the fall of the Berlin Wall, including both trends toward 'globalization' and the integration of Europe under the banner of the European Union, it is Immanuel Kant. Both as a theorist of a global, increasingly democratic world order, and as the explicit source of actual constitutions from the UNCharter to that of the postwar Federal Republic of Germany, Kant might well be called the beacon of our age. It is thus especially welcome to have two books that devote themselves not only to close textual exegesis of Kant's political works but also to the application of his thought to a wide range of contemporary political issues. Luigi Caranti's Kant's Political Legacy: Human Rights, Peace, Progress is a lucid and ambitious contribution to the growing critical discussion of Kant's political thought. Wide-ranging in its scope, it aims to combine hermeneutic fidelity (and accompanying attention to the recent scholarly literature) with practical applications likely to be of interest to a wider audience. In the author's words: Hermeneutical work has thus been carried out without much attention to the thorniest issues of our world at least those that could be treated through Kantian lenses with reasonable hope of intellectual and practical progress. Conversely, those who have focused on these concrete issues using Kant as a guide, have done so with very scant hermeneutical care. Rarely is it ever highlighted how Kant, properly understood, can do more than propose
Contemporary Political Theory, 2017
Although Kant's importance in various fields of modern philosophy has been well-appreciated, this had not been the case with regard to his political philosophy until very recent times, as a glance at the prevalent texts for introduction to political theory/philosophy would suggest. Political theorists seem to have thought that although Kant's dispersed political writings might be found to provide occasional insights to the way the Enlightenment ethical outlook might be applied to politics, he turns out to be a cursory, confusing and even inconsistent writer when he intends to provide a systematic theory of politics in his Doctrine of Right. In line with this, even when John Rawls claimed to creatively appropriate Kantian insights in modern political philosophy, he felt obliged to ignore Kant's political and legal writings and drew upon the ideas borrowed from Kant's ethical philosophy. However, things have started to change gradually, since Rawls aroused a strong interest in Kantian philosophy on the part of further generation of political-legal theorists. As contemporary scholars have increasingly engaged with Kant's political-legal works, the argument that the difficulty in digesting them is because of the distinctive nature of his political-legal vision, rather than the allegedly cursory, confusing or inconsistent nature of Kant's contentions comes to the fore in a stronger fashion. Reidar Maliks's work, Kant's Political Context, contributes to the foregoing literature from an unusual as well as very interesting standpoint. It attempts to 'shed light on how Kant's philosophy developed in the context of the debates the [French] Revolution provoked in the German public sphere, and to contribute to excavating the neglected German republican tradition' (p. 168). Maliks' argument is not simply that the founder of transcendental philosophy was a political animal as well. Beyond this, he suggests that taking into account the historical context of political debates that Kant engaged with is important to understand his political-legal philosophy in a better way. On the one hand, considered from a methodological standpoint, the argument Maliks develops might seem to be suspect. It is difficult to decide whether he is really providing a better understanding of Kant's legal-political philosophy in light of the context of political-public debates Kant had historically engaged with or whether he is reading the foregoing context in light of his prior
KANT: THE ETHICS OF RATIONAL NATURE
This book divides into four sections. Section one examines Kant's Copernican revolution in philosophy, showing how Kant altered the basis of cognition. Kant is shown to affirm creative human agency in the shaping and understanding of the world. The implications of this emphasis on human agency for ethics and politics are examined in the second and third parts. The fourth part examines how successful Kant was in realising rational nature as an end in itself in the empirical world. The principal argument of this book is that whilst Kant failed to realise his ideal noumenological society, avoiding an active politics to rely on evolution, history and a general process of public education, Kant's ethics can be developed as a transformatory politics.
Kant's Politics in Context, Introduction
Kant's Politics in Context shows how Kant developed his legal and political philosophy in an environment of controversy between conservative and radical observers of the French Revolution. Reidar Maliks argues that Kant recognized in the Revolution of 1789 his own concept of equal freedom, which he in the following decade developed into a theory of law and the state. This concept of freedom was at the root of his condemnation of paternalistic government, which makes persons dependent on the good will of a ruler, and his denunciation of direct democracy, which subjects persons to the arbitrary decisions of a majority. It led Kant to develop a republican constitutionalism, where persons are free and independent because they are subject only to law. That Kant idealized the public sphere is well known, but that he intentionally developed his own philosophy in polemical articles and pamphlets aimed for a wide audience has not been fully appreciated. Paying attention to the debates he sparked during the 1790s- where radical followers like Fichte, Erhard, and Bergk clashed with conservative critics like Rehberg, Möser, and Gentz-can help us understand Kant's political philosophy. The first comprehensive account of Kant's politics in context, this book provides a fresh perspective both on a foundational moment for modern political philosophy and on Kant's central political concepts, including freedom, rights, citizenship, revolution, and war.
Kant's Politics? An analysis of two modern interpretations of Kant's political philosophy
uq.edu.au
This paper critically examines two interpretations of Kant’s political philosophy. The first presented by Ellis (2005) argues that Kant’s politics is a theory for political change held together by a ‘provisional right’ through the notion of publicity and the judging public. In contrast, Arendt (1992) presents an interpretation of Kant’s political philosophy in which the notion of publicity places the emphasis on the disinterested judging spectator, removed from politics. Arendt claims that Kant’s politics are removed from the true realm of political action, and argues that Kant’s notion of freedom relies upon freedom from coercion, rather than freedom in a particular political sense. This paper will show the manner in which Arendt’s political theory exposes the limitations Kant’s philosophy imposes upon the concept of political freedom, and hence more adequately assesses the application of Kant’s philosophy to politics.