Enthusiastic Cosmopolitanism

Abstract

Kant’s moral philosophy has often been condemned for being unfeeling and dominated by a cold, unyielding law of reason. By contrast, his political philosophy has often been found altogether too much swayed by feelings. Feelings of the wrong kind, mind; that is, those that spur the pursuit of rational self-interest and give rise to a related distrust of others’ actions and motives. Many are familiar with Kant’s supposedly Hobbesian devil-dictum in Towards Perpetual Peace, according to which ‘the problem of establishing a state, no matter how hard it may sound, is soluble even for a nation of devils (if only they have understanding)’ (ZEF 8:366). The intimation here is generally taken to be of prudential rationality — a rationality starkly opposed to the moral purity of the categorical imperative. Nor is the devil-dictum the only passage in Kant’s political writings seemingly to favor prudent pursuit of rational self-interest over abidance by moral principle no matter what. The Metaphysics of Morals refers to ‘aversions’ as the relevant incentives in relation to a juridical law-giving as ‘a lawgiving which constrains, not an allurement, which invites’ (MS 6:219). And the transitional passage from private to public Right in the Doctrine of Right admonishes readers that ‘no one need wait until he has learned by bitter experience of the other’s antagonistic position’. To the contrary, each can ‘quite well perceive within himself man’s general inclination to ‘lord it over others’ (MS 6:312).