Reply
to Stephen Palmquist's
Book Review
By Alexander Kaufman
Stephen
Palmquist's review of my book, Welfare in the Kantian State, raises a number of apparently independent
concerns which turn out to be closely related. Why, Palmquist asks, is the book's basic claim stated
differently in different chapters?
Why is the explicit discussion of welfare policy delayed until the final
chapter? Do the policy
recommendations in this final chapter really derive from Kantian theory? And why do the two penultimate chapters
focus on the topic of reflective judgment in the Critique of Judgment?
In fact, as I
will argue below, the book advances only one basic claim: Kantian justice
requires a well-developed theory of social welfare. The discussion of reflective judgment in chapters four and
five develops arguments which are essential for the justification of this
claim. And the arguments in
chapter six ground the policy recommendations of that chapter directly in
essential elements of Kantian political judgment.
To justify these
claims, however, I will need to review substantial strands of the argument
developed in the book. Before
addressing these fundamental issues, I will address several less global
concerns raised in Palmquist's review.
Does the book, as Palmquist claims: (i) fail to recognize the systematic
consistency of Kant's main philosophical writings; (ii) illegitimately argue
that a Kantian state should legislate internal ends; (iii) illegitimately
extend Kant's argument that the state must not prevent any citizens from having
equal access to rights protected by law; and (iv) misunderstand or overlook the
role of religion in Kant's rational faith argument? After addressing these issues, I will address Palmquist's
more fundamental concerns.
1. Systematic
Consistency. The book fails to recognize, Palmquist
argues, that Kant's main philosophical writings constitute a system of
interlocking perspectives. Thus, I
fail to recognize that the Critique of Judgment's treatment of teleological judgment is not a
"revision" of Kant's earlier stance, but a perspectival shift.
I should note
first that, in general, I agree with Palmquist's claims regarding the
systematic consistency of Kant's work.
Reflective judgment, however, seems to constitute a striking
exception. Kant himself saw the
account of judgment in the Critique of Judgment as constituting a revision of his earlier
thought. In a letter to Karl
Reinhold, Kant wrote that, in his work on reflective judgment in the Critique
of Judgment, "I have
discovered a new sort of a priori principles, different from those heretofore observed....although I
[had] thought it impossible to find such principles."[1] Similarly, leading Third Critique scholars such as Guyer[2],
Makkreel[3]
and Pippin[4]
describe Kant's account of reflective judgment in that critique as involving a
serious revision of his earlier views.
Perhaps the most
important point, however, is that it makes no difference to my argument whether
Kant's account of reflective judgment and teleology is viewed as a
"revision" or merely an enrichment of Kant's earlier thought based
upon a perspectival shift. In
either case, the account of teleological judgment provides a resource to
address the "immense gulf" that, as Kant recognized, existed between
the domains of theoretical and practical legislation, as described in his
earlier work.
2. Legislation
of Internal Ends. Legislation directed towards improving
the material welfare of the disadvantaged, Palmquist argues, would appear to
require the legislation of ethical ends, in violation of Kant's proscription of
such legislation. Chapter one of
my book responds to this objection, Palmquist claims, by suggesting that Kant
allows exceptions to the rule regarding the legislation of ends, as exemplified
in Kant's appeal to the moral obligation to work towards "perpetual
peace."
This is indeed an
unpersuasive argument, but it is not an argument that I make. My response to the concern Palmquist
raises, rather, emphasizes that "there is a meaningful distinction between
legislation designed to realize ends and legislation requiring the adoption of
ends" (19-20). Legislation
designed to realize the ends of social welfare (e.g. improvements in health
care or education), in practical terms, merely regulates external acts. It is for this reason that Kant
argues that the sovereign may, consistently with the requirements of right,
implement policies designed to assure: (i) adequate health care; (ii) a system
of public education; and (iii) income assistance for the poor. It is also for this reason that Kant
argues that a material principle "can indeed remain" as a factor
affecting the content of legitimate legislation (CPr 34).
Palmquist rejects
this view, claiming that the "Perpetual Peace" essay argues that the
realization of material ends in politics "can only be morally legislated
if they are to succeed." But Kant
clearly intends that such moral legislation should have political consequences: in order to realize a just state,
citizens must, through moral motivation, realize both legislation and a
constitution founded on
right. It is the effect of moral
motivation on the content of
both the legislation[5]
and the constitution[6]
of such a state that distinguishes them from the law of a nation of intelligent
devils.
3. Equal
Access to Rights. In a "key" argument in
chapter one (29-33), Palmquist argues, I illegitimately transform Kant's
negative argument that the state must not prevent citizens from having equal
access to rights into a positive requirement that the sovereign enact laws that
actively assist the disadvantaged.
There are a
number of problems with Palmquist's description of my argument. First, the material on pp. 29-33 does not
constitute a key argument in the book.
In this passage, I am merely speculating regarding Kant's possible
justification for arguing that the general will of society "has submitted
itself to the internal authority of the state in order to support those members
of society who are unable to maintain themselves" (R 326).[7] While these speculations are intended
to suggest the shape of a possible Kantian theory of social welfare, the
conclusions of the chapter are deliberately and self-consciously
tentative. I argue only that
Kantian right "appears" to require a theory of social welfare, and
that the arguments presented "seem" to ground a principle governing
the state's obligations to its members (34). I explicitly reserve final judgment regarding possible
requirements of Kantian right until "the nature of the constraint which
natural law exercises over positive law has been specified" (35).
Second, while the
passage is not crucial to my overall argument, it has more textual support than
Palmquist allows. The passage from
the Rechtslehre relating to
rights presents not a negative claim, but the positive assertion that a
rightful civil condition constitutes "that relation of men among one
another that contains the conditions under which everyone is able to enjoy his rights" (R 305-6, Kant's emphasis).
More
significantly, my argument does not simply leap from this passage to the claim
that the state must provide material assistance to secure the enjoyment of
rights. The argument is quite
carefully textual. First,
according to Kant, the necessary formal condition of a rightful civil condition
is a constitution (R 306-7).
Second, Kant argues that "conditions of freedom and equality"
are the necessary substantive conditions for the establishment of a
constitution (R 315). Third, Kant
defines equality as "independence from being bound by others to more than
one can in turn bind them" (R 237).
The combined weight of these passages at least suggests that the
necessary conditions of a rightful civil condition include the absence of
exploitative or oppressive civil conditions. Finally, Kant argues that the existing civil order "is
so arranged that we participate in public and general oppressions" (LE 27:
432).[8] If existing civil conditions are
inconsistent with the necessary conditions of public right, then the sovereign,
whose purpose is to realize public right, would appear to have a duty to
intervene to repair those conditions.
The passage Palmquist criticizes is, therefore, based upon a carefully
constructed textual argument, not the inflation of a single and inappropriate
piece of Kantian text.
4. The Rational
Faith Argument. The discussion of rational faith in
chapter three, Palmquist claims, neglects the close connection in Kant between
rational faith and religion.
In fact, I devote
a substantial portion of chapter three to arguing that Kant's rational faith
argument contains two strands, one religious and one moral/political. The former strand, developed in the Critique
of Practical Reason, argues from
the assumption that furthering the highest good (defined to require that
happiness in proportion to virtue is realized) is a practical necessity for the
moral will. Since: (i) the perfect
good requires the postulate of a supreme reason to secure its realization; and
(ii) the real possibility of realizing the perfect good is necessary for moral
motivation; (iii) the postulate of a supreme reason is necessary for a moral
will.
In the Groundwork, however, Kant argues that the kingdom of ends
(in which happiness in proportion to virtue is not guaranteed), and not the
highest good (as defined in the second Critique), is the necessary object of the moral will. Since faith in the realization of the
kingdom of ends does not require the postulate of a supreme intelligence, I
suggest, the rational faith argument of the Groundwork and later political essays (which also argue from
the claim that the kingdom of ends is the necessary object of the moral will)
only requires faith in moral progress and the perfectibility of man's nature
and social relations. The
political teleology of the late essays, I argue, fits much more naturally with
such a "secular counterpart"[9]
of the rational faith argument.
While this
argument certainly presents a controversial reading of the rational faith
argument, it is a reading endorsed by Christine Korsgaard, Robert Pippin, John
Rawls, Andrew Reath, Patrick Riley, and other leading Kantian scholars. Palmquist may reasonably disagree with
this reading, then, but he cannot plausibly suggest that chapter three neglects
the topic or presents an outlandish interpretation.
5. Fundamental
Questions. Palmquist raises a number of
fundamental questions relating to the conception, execution and conclusions of the
analysis. Does the book have a
clearly defined thesis; do the chapters taken together form a unified whole;
and do the substantive conclusions generated truly derive from a Kantian
analysis? The Thesis.
The book advances and defends a single thesis: Kantian justice requires
a well-developed theory of social welfare. This thesis is announced as the central proposition to be
defended in chapter one (8); while chapter six, employing the account of
Kantian political judgment developed in chapters 3-5, concludes that the
proposition is justified since a theory of social welfare is among the
substantive implications of the principles of natural law.
Why, then, is
Palmquist able to point to weaker statements of the thesis throughout the
book? The presence of these weaker
statements of the thesis simply reflects the book's attempt to explore the case
for the basic thesis progressively. At the conclusion of
chapters 1 and 2, having addressed the classic objections to a Kantian theory
of social welfare, I conclude that "it seems plausible that Kantian right
could encompass a theory of social welfare" (25, see 61). The statement is tentative because,
although the classic objections have been met, the positive case has yet to be
made. At the conclusion of chapter
three, I conclude that political teleology "makes possible" the
specification of a theory of social welfare; I claim no more than this because
I have not yet shown how the theory may be specified. In the conclusions of chapters 4 and 5, I claim that Kant's
account of systematicity provides the basis for the account of political
judgment necessary to specify the substantive implications of the principles of
natural law (such as a theory of social welfare). Finally, in chapter six, having set in place what I view as
an adequate grounding for the proposition, I argue that Kantian justice does,
in fact, require a well-developed account of social welfare.
A Unified Whole. If
the book is about a Kantian theory of social welfare, Palmquist asks, why do chapters
4 and 5 appear to digress to the topic of systematicity? As the preceding paragraph should make
clear, the account of systematicity is an essential element of the account of
Kantian political judgment which is necessary, in my view, in order to specify
the substantive implications of the principles of natural law.
In chapter one
(17ff), I note Kant's claim that the principles of natural law are associated
with "principles of application" which govern their application to
objects of experience (R 217). In
order to specify the requirements of natural law for relations in experience,
then, we require an account of the form of reasoning structuring the relation
between the principles of natural law and public law. The account of political judgment in chapters 4 and 5
develops the sketch of political judgment that Kant provides in the late essays
and third Critique. This account follows strictly Kant's
model of the political application teleological political judgment in the third
Critique (see 97-107;
111-120). Only through the
application of this model of political judgment, I argue on pp. 116-119, is
Kant able to justify even the foundational political claim that "man under
moral law" (that is, perpetual peace) is the final purpose of creation (CJ
434). And only with this claim in
place can Kant claim that perpetual peace is "the entire final end of the
doctrine of right" (R 355).
Since Kant
illustrates the political application of teleological judgment primarily in
cases of foundational issues, the political issues discussed in chapters 4 and
5 are quite abstract.
Nevertheless, the point of the inquiry is to determine the structure of
Kantian political judgment so that it will be possible to reconstruct the
reasoning behind the Rechtslehre
argument for aid to the poor.
When Palmquist
claims that the issue of systematicity has no direct relevance to the question
of a Kantian theory of social welfare, then, he misses the entire motivation of
my project. The content
problem--the problem of the discontinuity between pure principles and practical
determinations in experience--constitutes one of the most profound issues both
in Kantian ethics and politics.
Chapters 4 and 5 constitute an attempt to address this problem so that
the political implications of the principles of natural law may be specified
with respect to the question of social welfare.
Substantive
Conclusions. It does not, Palmquist claims, take a
Kant scholar to see that my conclusions regarding social welfare depend little
on Kant.
Perhaps I may be
permitted to suggest, however, that it does take a Kant scholar to see
that my conclusions are indeed deeply rooted in Kant. My thesis, which is no longer controversial[10],
is that an adequate understanding of Kant's political thought must bring
together the analytic and teleological strands in his writing. My book simply attempts to make the
implications of this thesis determinate in the area of social welfare.
Read in light of
Kant's account of the political employment of teleological judgment, I suggest,
Kant's argument for aid to the poor takes on a coherence which it lacks when
viewed from the analytic perspective.[11] First, Kant' reflective argument, in
the Critique of Judgment, that
"the transformation of a large people into a state" may be
"elucidated" through an analogy to self-organized being (CJ
375n) suggests that socially
determinative concepts such as rights are properly defined only in the context
of consideration of the social whole.
In particular, definitive right-claims can be constituted only after
individuals have united to enter civil society. Each individual "relinquishe[s] entirely" his
provisional rights in order to take up the rights "apportioned" to
him by the sovereign (R 316).
In order to
apportion justly, however, the sovereign requires a just distributive
principle; and the proper form of this principle is suggested by Kant's idea of
a general will in which all citizens participate jointly (R 314). The status of equal participation in
the general will represents equality among citizens of civil society and
establishes the legislative faculties of each citizen as a structural feature
of that equality. A just
distributive principle must therefore respect the equality of citizens with
particular emphasis upon their legislative faculties. Moreover, since the general will constitutes the ends of
civil society, the legislative faculty in this context includes the ability to
form and pursue ends (or, as I argue in the section 2 of chapter 6, the
person's capabilities). In a just
civil society, then, the sovereign's principle of distribution will be informed
with a concern for the equal right of citizens to realize their capabilities.
In conclusion,
then Palmquist's concerns are, as I suggested, closely related. The book's basic claim is stated
differently in different chapters because the argument investigates the
resources of Kant's political thought in progressive stages. Explicit discussion of welfare policy
is delayed until the final chapter because only at that final stage of the
analysis has an account of political judgment adequate to ground policy
judgments been set out. The
discussion of reflective judgment constitutes an essential basis for this account
of political judgment. And the
policy recommendations in the final chapter are grounded directly in that
account.
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