What we are seeking to know is a portion of human history. It is not a history of the past, however, but a history of future times, i.e. a predictive history. But if it is not discoverable from known laws of nature (as with eclipses of the sun and moon, which can be foretold by natural means) and can only be learnt through additional insight into the future supplied by supernatural revelation, it must be termed prognosticative or prophetic.1 Besides, we are here concerned not with the natural history of mankind (as we should be if we asked, for example, whether new races of man might emerge in future times), but with the history of civilisation. And we are not dealing with any specific conception of mankind (singulorum), but with the whole of humanity (universorum), united in earthly society and distributed in national groups. All this is implied if we ask whether the human race (as a whole) is continually improving.
We can obtain a prophetic historical narrative of things to come by depicting those events whose a priori possibility suggests that they will in fact happen. But how is it possible to have history a priori? The answer is that it is possible if the prophet himself occasions and produces the events he predicts.
It was all very well for the Jewish prophets to foretell that the state to which they belonged would sooner or later suffer not only decline, but also complete dissolution; for they were themselves the architects of their fate. As leaders of the people, they had loaded their constitution with so many ecclesiastical (and thence also civil) burdens that their state became completely unfit to exist in its own right, particularly in its relations with neighbouring nations. Thus the jeremiads of the priests naturally went unheeded, because these same priests stubbornly stuck to their belief in the untenable constitution they had themselves created, so that they were themselves able to foresee the consequences with infallible certainty.
Our politicians, so far as their influence extends, behave in exactly the same way, and they are just as successful in their prophecies. One must take men as they are, they tell us, and not as the world’s uninformed pedants or good-natured dreamers fancy that they ought to be. But ‘as they are’ ought to read ‘as we have made them by unjust coercion, by treacherous designs which the government is in a good position to carry out.’ For that is why they are intransigent and inclined to rebellion, and why regrettable consequences ensue if discipline is relaxed in the slightest. In this way, the prophecy of the supposedly clever statesmen is fulfilled.
Various divines also at times prophesy the complete decline of religion and the imminent appearance of the Antichrist, all the while doing the very things that are best calculated to create the state of affairs they describe. For they are not taking care to impress on the hearts of their congregation moral principles which would directly lead to an improvement. Instead, they see observances and historical beliefs as the essential duties, supposing that these will indirectly produce the same results; but although they may lead to mechanical conformity (as within a civil constitution), they cannot produce conformity in moral attitudes. Nevertheless, these divines complain at the irreligion which they have themselves created, and which they could accordingly have foretold without any special gift of prophecy.
There are three possible forms which our prophecy might take. The human race is either continually regressing and deteriorating, continually progressing and improving, or at a permanent standstill, in relation to other created beings, at its present level of moral attainment (which is the same as continually revolving in a circle around a fixed point).
The first statement might be designated moral terrorism, the second eudaemonism2 (which, if the goal of human progress were already visible from afar, might also be termed chiliasm,3 while the third could be called abderitism.4 For in the latter case, since a genuine standstill is impossible in moral affairs, rises and falls of equal magnitude constantly alternate, in endless fluctuation, and produce no more effect than if the subject of them had remained stationary in one place.
A process of deterioration in the human race cannot go on indefinitely, for mankind would wear itself out after a certain point had been reached. Consequently, when enormities go on piling up and up and the evils they produce continue to increase, we say: ‘It can’t get much worse now.’ It seems that the day of judgement is at hand, and the pious zealot already dreams of the rebirth of everything and of a world created anew after the present world has been destroyed by fire.
We may readily agree that the sum total of good and evil of which our nature is capable always remains unchanged, and can neither be augmented nor reduced within any one individual. And how could the quantity of good of which a person is capable possibly be increased? For it would have to be done by his own free agency as a subject, and before he could do it, he would in turn require a greater store of goodness than he already possessed in the first place. After all, no effects can exceed the capacity of their effective cause; and the quantity of goodness in man must therefore remain below a certain level in proportion to the amount of evil with which it is intermixed, so that man cannot work his way beyond a given limit and go on improving further. Thus eudaemonism, with its sanguine hopes, appears to be untenable. Its ideas of constant human progress and improvement would seem of little use to a prophetic history of mankind.
This point of view probably has the majority of subscribers on its side. To start off swiftly along the way of goodness without persevering on it, and instead, to reverse the plan of progress in order at all costs to avoid being tied to a single aim (even if only from a desire for variety); to construct in order to demolish; to take upon ourselves the hopeless task of rolling the stone of Sisyphus uphill, only to let it roll back down again: such is the industrious folly which characterises our race. In view of all this, it does not so much seem that the principle of evil within the natural character of mankind is amalgamated or fused with that of goodness, but rather that the one is neutralised by the other, with inactivity as the result (or a standstill, as in the case under discussion). This empty activity of backward and forward motion, with good and evil continually alternating, would mean that all the interplay of members of our species on earth ought merely to be regarded as a farce. And in the eyes of reason, this cannot give any higher a value to mankind than to the other animal species, whose interaction takes place at less cost and without any conscious understanding.
Even if it were found that the human race as a whole had been moving forward and progressing for an indefinitely long time, no one could guarantee that its era of decline was not beginning at that very moment, by virtue of the physical character of our race. And conversely, if it is regressing and deteriorating at an accelerating pace, there are no grounds for giving up hope that we are just about to reach the turning point (punctum flexus contrarii) at which our affairs will take a turn for the better, by virtue of the moral character of our race. For we are dealing with freely acting beings to whom one can dictate in advance what they ought to do, but of whom one cannot predict what they actually will do, and who are capable, if things go really badly and they experience evils incurred through their own actions, of regarding these evils as a greater incentive to do better than they did in the past. But as the Abbé Coyer5 says: ‘Poor mortals! Nothing is constant among you but inconstancy.’
Perhaps it is because we have chosen the wrong point of view from which to contemplate the course of human affairs that the latter seems so absurd to us. The planets, as seen from the earth, sometimes move backward, sometimes forward, and at other times remain motionless. But seen from the sun—the point of view of reason—they continually follow their regular paths as in the Copernican hypothesis. Yet some thinkers, otherwise not deficient in wisdom, prefer to stick firmly to their own interpretation of phenomena and to the point of view they originally adopted, even at the price of involving themselves to an absurd degree in Tychonic6 cycles and epicycles. It is our misfortune, however, that we are unable to adopt an absolute point of view when trying to predict free actions. For this, exalted above all human wisdom, would be the point of view of providence, which extends even to free human actions. And although man may see the latter, he cannot foresee them with certainty (a distinction which does not exist in the eyes of the divinity); for while he needs to perceive a connection governed by natural laws before he can foresee anything, he must do without such hints or guidance when dealing with free actions in the future.
If it were possible to credit human beings with even a limited will of innate and unvarying goodness, we could certainly predict a general improvement of mankind, for this would involve events which man could himself control. But if man’s natural endowments consist of a mixture of evil and goodness in unknown proportions, no one can tell what effects he should expect from his own actions.
In human affairs, there must be some experience or other which, as an event which has actually occurred, might suggest that man has the quality or power of being the cause and (since his actions are supposed to be those of a being endowed with freedom) the author of his own improvement. But an event can be predicted as the effect of a given cause only when the circumstances which help to shape it actually arise. And while it can well be predicted in general that these circumstances must arise at some time or another (as in calculating probabilities in games of chance), it is impossible to determine whether this will happen during my lifetime, and whether I shall myself experience it and thus be able to confirm the original prediction.
We must therefore search for an event which would indicate that such a cause exists and that it is causally active within the human race, irrespective of the time at which it might actually operate; and it would have to be a cause which allowed us to conclude, as an inevitable consequence of its operation, that mankind is improving. This inference could then be extended to cover the history of former times so as to show that mankind has always been progressing, yet in such a way that the event originally chosen as an example would not in itself be regarded as the cause of progress in the past, but only as a rough indication or historical sign (signum Irememorativum, demonstrativum, prognostikon). It might then serve to prove the existence of a tendency within the human race as a whole, considered not as a series of individuals (for this would result in interminable enumerations and calculations) but as a body distributed over the earth in states and national groups.
The occurrence in question does not involve any of those momentous deeds or misdeeds of men which make small in their eyes what was formerly great or make great what was formerly small, and which cause ancient and illustrious states to vanish as if by magic, and others to arise in their place as if from the bowels of the earth. No, it has nothing to do with all this. We are here concerned only with the attitude of the onlookers as it reveals itself in public while the drama of great political changes is taking place: for they openly express universal yet disinterested sympathy for one set of protagonists against their adversaries, even at the risk that their partiality could be of great disadvantage to themselves. Their reaction (because of its universality) proves that mankind as a whole shares a certain character in common, and it also proves (because of its disinterestedness) that man has a moral character, or at least the makings of one. And this does not merely allow us to hope for human improvement; it is already a form of improvement in itself, in so far as its influence is strong enough for the present.
The revolution which we have seen taking place in our own times in a nation of gifted people7 may succeed, or it may fail. It may be so filled with misery and atrocities that no right-thinking man would ever decide to make the same experiment again at such a price, even if he could hope to carry it out successfully at the second attempt. But I maintain that this revolution has aroused in the hearts and desires of all spectators who are not themselves caught up in it a sympathy which borders almost on enthusiasm, although the very utterance of this sympathy was fraught with danger. It cannot therefore have been caused by anything other than a moral disposition within the human race.
The moral cause which is at work here is composed of two elements. Firstly, there is the right of every people to give itself a civil constitution of the kind that it sees fit, without interference from other powers. And secondly, once it is accepted that the only intrinsically rightful and morally good constitution which a people can have is by its very nature disposed to avoid wars of aggression (i.e. that the only possible constitution is a republican one, at least in its conception),8 there is the aim, which is also a duty, of submitting to those conditions by which war, the source of all evils and moral corruption, can be prevented. If this aim is recognised, the human race, for all its frailty, has a negative guarantee that it will progressively improve or at least that it will not be disturbed in its progress.
All this, along with the passion or enthusiasm with which men embrace the cause of goodness (although the former cannot be entirely applauded, since all passion as such is blameworthy), gives historical support for the following assertion, which is of considerable anthropological significance: 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. No pecuniary rewards could inspire the opponents of the revolutionaries with that zeal and greatness of soul which the concept of right could alone produce in them, and even the old military aristocracy’s concept of honour (which is analogous to enthusiasm) vanished before the arms9 of those who had fixed their gaze on the rights of the people to which they belonged,10 and who regarded themselves as its protectors. And then the external public of onlookers sympathised with their exaltation, without the slightest intention of actively participating in their affairs.
In these principles, there must be something moral which reason recognises not only as pure, but also (because of its great and epoch-making influence) as something to which the human soul manifestly acknowledges a duty. Moreover, it concerns the human race as a complete association of men (non singulorum, sed universorum)11 for they rejoice with universal and disinterested sympathy at its anticipated success and at all attempts to make it succeed.
The occurrence in question is not, however, a phenomenon of revolution, but (as Erhard12 puts it) of the evolution of a constitution governed by natural right. Such a constitution cannot itself be achieved by furious struggles—for civil and foreign wars will destroy whatever statutory order has hitherto prevailed—but it does lead us to strive for a constitution which would be incapable of bellicosity, i.e. a republican one. The actual form of the desired state might be republican, or alternatively, it might only be republican in its mode of government, in that the state would be administered by a single ruler (the monarch) acting by analogy with the laws which a people would give itself in conformity with universal principles of right.
Even without the mind of a seer, I now maintain that I can predict from the aspects and signs of our times that the human race will achieve this end, and that it will henceforth progressively improve without any more total reversals. For a phenomenon of this kind which has taken place in human history can never be forgotten, since it has revealed in human nature an aptitude and power for improvement of a kind which no politician could have thought up by examining the course of events in the past. Only nature and freedom, combined within mankind in accordance with principles of right, have enabled us to forecast it; but the precise time at which it will occur must remain indefinite and dependent upon chance.
But even if the intended object behind the occurrence we have described were not to be achieved for the present, or if a people’s revolution or constitutional reform were ultimately to fail, or if, after the latter had lasted for a certain time, everything were to be brought back onto its original course (as politicians now claim to prophesy), our own philosophical prediction still loses none of its force. For the occurrence in question is too momentous, too intimately interwoven with the interests of humanity and too widespread in its influence upon all parts of the world for nations not to be reminded of it when favourable circumstances present themselves, and to rise up and make renewed attempts of the same kind as before. After all, since it is such an important concern of the human race, the intended constitution must at some time or another finally reach that degree of stability which the lessons of repeated experience will not fail to instil into the hearts of everyone.
Thus the proposition that the human race has always been progressively improving and will continue to develop in the same way is not just a well-meant saying to be recommended for practical purposes. Whatever unbelievers may say, it is tenable within the most strictly theoretical context. And if one considers not only the events which may happen within a particular nation, but also their repercussions upon all the nations of the earth which might gradually begin to participate in them, a view opens up into the unbounded future. This would not be true, of course, if the first epoch of natural convulsions, which (according to Camper13 and Blumenbach14) engulfed the animal and vegetable kingdoms before the era of man, were to be followed by a second in which the human race were given the same treatment so that other creatures might take the stage instead, etc. For man in turn is a mere trifle in relation to the omnipotence of nature, or rather to its inaccessible highest cause. But if the rulers of man’s own species regard him as such and treat him accordingly, either by burdening him like a beast and using him as a mere instrument of their ends, or by setting him up to fight in their disputes and slaughter his fellows, it is not just a trifle but a reversal of the ultimate purpose of creation.
Popular enlightenment is the public instruction of the people upon their duties and rights towards the state to which they belong. Since this concerns only natural rights and rights which can be derived from ordinary common sense, their obvious exponents and interpreters among the people will not be officials appointed by the state, but free teachers of right, i.e. the philosophers. The latter, on account of the very freedom which they allow themselves, are a stumbling-block to the state, whose only wish is to rule; they are accordingly given the appellation of ‘enlighteners,’ and decried as a menace to the state. And yet they do not address themselves in familiar tones to the people (who themselves take little or no notice of them and their writings), but in respectful tones to the state, which is thereby implored to take the rightful needs of the people to heart. And if a whole people wishes to present its grievance (gravamen), the only way in which this can be done is by publicity. A ban on publicity will therefore hinder a nation’s progress, even with regard to the least of its claims, the claim for natural rights.
Another thing which is concealed (transparently enough) by legal measures from a certain people is the true nature of its constitution. It would be an affront to the majesty of the people of Great Britain to say that they lived under an absolute monarchy. Instead, it is said that their constitution is one which limits the will of the monarch through the two houses of parliament, acting as representatives of the people. Yet everyone knows very well that the influence of the monarch upon these representatives is so great and so infallible that the aforesaid houses make no decisions except those which His Majesty wishes and recommends through his minister. Now and again, the latter will certainly recommend decisions wherein he15 knows and indeed ensures that he will meet with contradiction (as with the abolition of the slave trade), simply in order to furnish ostensible proof of parliamentary freedom. But this sort of approach has the insidious effect of discouraging people from looking for the true and rightfully established constitution, for they imagine they have discovered it in an instance which is already before them. Thus a mendacious form of publicity deceives the people with the illusion that the monarchy is limited16 by a law which emanates from them, while their representatives, won over by bribery, secretly subject them to an absolute monarch.
All forms of state are based on the idea of a constitution which is compatible with the natural rights of man, so that those who obey the law should also act as a unified body of legislators. And if we accordingly think of the commonwealth in terms of concepts of pure reason, it may be called organised in conformity with it and governed by laws of freedom is an example representing it in the world of experience (respublica phaenomenon), and it can only be achieved by a laborious process, after innumerable wars and conflicts. But its constitution, once it has been attained as a whole, is the best qualified of all to keep out war, the destroyer of everything good. Thus it is our duty to enter into a constitution of this kind; and in the meantime, since it will be a considerable time before this takes place, it is the duty of monarchs to govern in a republican (not a democratic) manner, even although they may rule autocratically. In other words, they should treat the people in accordance with principles akin in spirit to the laws of freedom which a people of mature rational powers would prescribe for itself, even if the people is not literally asked for its consent.
The profit which will accrue to the human race as it works its way forward will not be an ever increasing quantity of morality in its attitudes. Instead, the legality of its attitudes will produce an increasing number of actions governed by duty, whatever the particular motive behind these actions may be. In other words, the profit will result from man’s good deeds as they grow ever more numerous and successful, i.e. from the external phenomena of man’s moral nature. For we have only empirical data (our experiences) on which to base this prediction—that is, we base it on the physical cause of our actions in so far as they actually take place as phenomena, not on the moral cause which contains the concept of duty as applied to what ought to happen, and which can be determined by processes of pure a priori thinking.
Violence will gradually become less on the part of those in power, and obedience towards the laws will increase. There will no doubt be more charity, less quarrels in legal actions, more reliability in keeping one’s word, and so on in the commonwealth, partly from a love of honour, and partly from a lively awareness of where one’s own advantage lies; and this will ultimately extend to the external relations between the various peoples, until a cosmopolitan society is created. Such developments do not mean, however, that the basic moral capacity of mankind will increase in the slightest, for this would require a kind of new creation or supernatural influence. For we must not expect too much of human beings in their progressive improvements, or else we shall merit the scorn of those politicians who would gladly treat man’s hopes of progress as the fantasies of an overheated mind.17
The answer is: not the usual sequence from the bottom upwards, but from the top downwards.
To expect that the education of young people in intellectual and moral culture, reinforced by the doctrines of religion, firstly through domestic instruction and then through a series of schools from the lowest to the highest grade, will eventually not only make them good citizens, but will also bring them up to practise a kind of goodness which can continually progress and maintain itself, is a plan which is scarcely likely to achieve the desired success. For on the one hand, the people believe that the expense of educating their children should be met not by them but by the state; and on the other, the state itself (as Büsching18 laments) has no money left over to pay qualified teachers who will carry out their duties with enthusiasm, since it needs it all for war. But apart from this, the whole mechanism of education as described above will be completely disjointed unless it is designed on the considered plan and intention of the highest authority in the state, then set in motion and constantly maintained in uniform operation thereafter. And this will mean that the state too will reform itself from time to time, pursuing evolution instead of revolution, and will thus make continuous progress. But those responsible for the desired education are also human beings who will therefore have to have had a suitable education themselves. And in view of the frailty of human nature and the fortuitous circumstances which can intensify its effects, we can expect man’s hopes of progress to be fulfilled only under the positive condition of a higher wisdom (which, if it is invisible to us, is known as providence); and in so far as human beings can themselves accomplish anything or anything can be expected of them, it can only be through their negative wisdom in furthering their own ends. In the latter event, they will find themselves compelled to ensure that war, the greatest obstacle to morality and the invariable enemy of progress, first becomes gradually more humane, then more infrequent, and finally disappears completely as a mode of aggression. They will thereby enter into a constitution based on genuine principles of right, which is by its very nature capable of constant progress and improvement without forfeiting its strength.
A doctor who used to console his patients from day to day with hopes of imminent recovery, telling one that his pulse was better, and others that their faeces or perspiration heralded an improvement, etc., received a visit from one of his friends. ‘How are you, my friend, and how is your illness?’ was the first question. ‘How do you think,’ was the reply. ‘I am dying of sheer recovery!’
I do not blame anyone if political evils make him begin to despair of the welfare and progress of mankind. But I have confidence in the heroic medicine to which Hume refers, for it ought to produce a speedy cure. ‘When I now see the nations engaged in war,’ he says, ‘it is as if I witnessed two drunken wretches bludgeoning each other in a china-shop. For it is not just that the injuries they inflict on each other will be long in healing; they will also have to pay for all the damage they have caused.’19 Sero sapiunt Phryges.20 But the after-pains of the present war21 will force the political prophet to admit that the human race must soon take a turn for the better, and this turn is now already in sight.
1. Those, from pyrhonesses (Prophetic priestesses of the Delphic oracle) to gypsies, who dabble in prophecy with neither knowledge nor honesty, are known as false prophets.
2. Eudaemonism usually means the teaching that all human activity is determined by a striving for happiness. . . . Kant does not use it in that sense, however.
3. Originally, the belief that the millennium will be established on earth before the Day of Judgement.
4. After a novel by Christian Martin Wieland, the eighteenth century German writer, called Geschichte der Abderiten (The Story of the Abderites) (1774–81), in which human follies are satirised. Abdera was a city in ancient Greece whose inhabitants were alleged to be particularly foolish.
5. Gabriel Francois Coyer (1707–82), French Jesuit, author of a Dissertation sur la difference des anciennes religions (Paris, 1755).
6. The reference is to Tycho Brahe (1546–1601), Danish astronomer who, in order to refute Copernicus, elaborated an astronomical system of his own, the Tychonic system. He put forward the theory that the sun and the moon rotate around the earth, but that the planets rotate around the sun. His theory was well thought of by many at the time.
7. This is, of course, a reference to the French Revolution.
8. This does not mean, however, that a people which has a monarchic Constitution can thereby claim the right to alter it, or even nurse a secret desire to do so. For a people which occupies extended territories in Europe may feel that monarchy is the only kind of constitution which can enable it to preserve its own existence between powerful neighbours. And if the subjects should complain, not because of their internal government but because of their government’s behaviour towards the Citizens of foreign States (for example, if it were to discourage republicanism abroad), this does not prove that the people are dissatisfied with their own Constitution, but rather that they are profoundly attached to it; for it becomes progressively more secure from danger as more of the other nations become republics. Nevertheless, slanderous sycophants, bent on increasing their own importance, have tried to portray this innocuous political gossip as innovationism, Jacobinism and conspiracy, constituting a menace to the state. But there was never the slightest reason for such allegations, particularly in a country more than a hundred miles removed from the scene of the revolution.
9. The reference is to the Wars of the French Revolution.
10. It may be said of such enthusiasm for asserting the rights of man: posiquam ad arma Vulcania ventum est—mortalis mucro glacies ceu futitlis ictu dissiluit (Kant misquotes the first words. It should read: Postquam arma dei ad Vulcania ventum est. . . . ‘Now that he was faced by Vulcan’s arms, his mortal blade was shattered by the blow like brittle ice.’ Virgil, Aeneid XII, 73–41). Why has no ruler ever dared to say openly that he does not recognise any rights of the people against himself? Or that the people owe their happiness only to the beneficence of a government which confers it upon them, and that any pretensions on the part of the subject that he has rights against the government are absurd or even punishable, since they imply that resistance to authority is permissible? The reason is that any such public declaration would rouse up all the subjects against the ruler, even although they had been like docile sheep, well fed, powerfully protected and led by a kind and understanding master, and had no lack of welfare to complain of. For beings endowed with freedom cannot be content merely to enjoy the comforts of existence, which may well be provided by others (in this case, by the government); it all depends on the principle which governs the provision of such comforts. But welfare does not have any ruling principle, either for the recipient or for the one who provides it, for each individual will define it differently. It depends, in fact, upon the will’s material aspect, which is empirical and thus incapable of becoming a universal rule. A being endowed with freedom, aware of the advantage he possesses over non-rational animals, can and must therefore follow the formal principle of his will and demand for the people to which he belongs nothing short of a government in which the people are co-legislators. In other words, the rights of men who are expected to obey must necessarily come before all considerations of their actual wellbeing, for they are a sacred institution, exalted above all utilitarian values; and no matter how benevolent a government is, it may not tamper with them. These rights, however, always remain an idea which can be fulfilled only on condition that the means employed to do so are compatible with morality. This limiting condition must not be overstepped by the people, who may not therefore pursue their rights by revolution, which is at all times unjust. The best way of making a nation content with its constitution is to rule autocratically and at the same time to govern in a republican manner, i.e. to govern in the spirit of republicanism and by analogy with it.
11. ‘Not of individuals, but of mankind as a whole.’
12. Johann Benjamin Erhard (1766–1827), a physician and friend of Kant’s, who esteemed Erhard highly. Erhard published several political treatises including an essay Über das Recht des Volkes zu einer Revolution (On the Right of the People to Revolution) (Jena, 1794), to which Kant alludes here.
13. Petrus Camper (1722–89), a Dutch anatomist. The allusion is to a work published in German translation, Über den natürlichen Unterschied der Gesichtszüge im Menschen . . . (ed. A. G. Camper) (Berlin, 1792), §3.
14. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach, Professor of Medicine in the University of Göttingen from 1776. He greatly furthered the study of comparative anatomy. Cf. his Handbuch der Naturgeschichte (Göttingen, 1779), p. 44 and pp. 474 ff.
15. This is a reference to George III (1738–1820), King of Great Britain and Ireland (1760–1820).
16. A cause whose nature is not directly perceptible can be discovered through the effect which invariably accompanies it. What is an absolute monarch? He is one at whose command war at once begins when he says it shall do so. And conversely, what is a limited monarch? He is one who must first ask the people whether or not there is to be a war, and if the people say that there shall be no war, then there will be none. For war is a condition in which all the powers of the state must be at the head of state’s disposal.
Now the monarch of ‘Great Britain’ has waged numerous wars without asking the people’s consent. This king is therefore an absolute monarch, although he should not be so according to the constitution. But he can always bypass the latter, since he can always be assured, by controlling the various powers of the state, that the people’s representatives will agree with him; for he has the authority to award all offices and dignities. This corrupt system, however, must naturally be given no publicity if it is to succeed. It therefore remains under a very transparent veil of secrecy.
17. It is certainly agreeable to think up political constitutions which meet the requirements of reason (particularly in matters of right). But it is foolhardy to put them forward seriously, and punishable to incite the people to do away with the existing constitution. Plato’s Atlantis (the myth of a city engulfed by the sea, mentioned by Plato in the Timaeus), More’s Utopia (1516, the exact title of this work is De optima rei publicae statu, deque nova insula Utopia. It was written by Sir Thomas More (1478–1535), the eminent humanist who was Lord Chancellor of England in 1529–32), Harrington’s Oceana (a treatise by James Harrington [1611–77], the English political philosopher, who projected the ideal state for England) and Allais’ Severambia (refers to the Histoire des Seåvarambes [first published in English, London, 1675; Paris, 1677 and 1679], a political novel by Denis Vairasse d’Allais, a French writer of the seventeenth century [translated into German by J. G. Müller as Geschichte der Sevaramben, Itzehoe, 1783]), have successively made their appearance, but they have never (with the exception of Cromwell’s abortive attempt to establish a despotic republic) been tried out in practice. It is the same with these political creations as with the creation of the world: no-one was present at it, nor could anyone have been present, or else he would have been his own creator. It is a pleasant dream to hope that a political product of the sort we here have in mind will one day be brought to perfection, at however remote a date. But it is not merely conceivable that we can continually approach such a state; so long as it can be reconciled with the moral law, it is also the duty of the head of state (not of the citizens) to do so.
18. p. 189. Cf. p. 60, n. 8.
19. The likely source for this passage is: ‘I must confess, when I see princes and states fighting and quarrelling, amidst their debts, funds, and public mortgages, it always brings to my mind a match of cudgel-playing fought in a China shop.’ (Hume, Of Public Credit, Essays Moral, Political and Literary, ed. cit. I, 371.) I owe this reference to Professor Lewis Beck White who drew my attention to the fact that he had identified this passage in his edition Immanuel Kant: On History (Indianapolis and New York, 1963), p. 124.
20. ‘The Phrygians learn wisdom too late’ (i.e. they are wise after the event).
21. Presumably this remark refers to the war between France and Austria which was ended by the Treaty of Campo Formio (17 November 1797). It could also refer to the war between France and Prussia which was ended by the Treaty of Basle (5 April 1795). Kant probably wrote this section of the Contest of Faculties some considerable time before its publication (cf. AA VII, 338 ff. for a full discussion of the origin of the treatise by Karl Vorländer).
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From Political Writings of Kant, translated by H.B. Nisbet, pp. 177–90. Copyright © by Cambridge University Press, 1970. Text and footnotes edited.