"The Kingdom of God Is at
Hand!"
(Did Kant really say
that?)
Prof. Stephen Palmquist, D.Phil. (Oxon)
Department of
Religion and Philosophy
Hong Kong Baptist
University
I. Glimpses of the Kingdom?
It
was 11:55pm on the 28th of October 1992. Hope and expectation were in the air
at Seoul's Dami
Missionary Church, as Rev. Lee Jang-lim and thousands
of other faithful members of doomsday churches all over South Korea patiently
prepared themselves for the long-awaited rapture. This moment was to mark the
arrival of the kingdom of God in all its glory, as signified by the second
coming of Jesus Christ. They would be taken up to heaven at just the moment
when seven years of war, flood, and famine were to begin annihilating the earth,
paving the way for a millennium of peace.[1]
Imagine the intensity in that place as the clock ticked past midnight and these
devout believers gradually came to the painful realization that the moment they
were waiting for had not arrived.
This,
of course, was hardly the first time such dramas had been played out on the
stage of world history—nor was it the last, as the subsequent tragedy in
Waco, Texas demonstrated. Memories of Jim Jones were, no doubt, echoing in the
minds of the Korean police as they stood watch, lest the passion of expectation
spill over once again into the illusion of mass suicide. Indeed, the hope that
a heavenly kingdom will come to create a new and better world is probably as
old as religion itself: Jews await their Messiah; Christians await the second
coming; Muslims await the day when all nations will bow before Allah; even
followers of Eastern religions await the end of this world's cycle of
suffering through the experience of peaceful "release" (i.e., Nirvana
or moksha). And non-religious people are not
exempt: they too often find themselves thinking in eschatological terms:
Nietzsche encourages us to look forward to the "Superman", who will
give meaning to a meaningless earth; not too many years ago the Cold War
encouraged many to await in dread the nuclear "war to end all wars";
and politicians repeatedly encourage us to await the next election, in the hope
that a change of government will do away with the evils of the old world and
usher in "a new world order".
Are
such hopes in any way reasonable? It is easy enough to criticize the Korean
believers for their foolish hopes: they were obviously wrong,
otherwise they would not be here to tell the story! Nevertheless, the very
ubiquity of the human hope that the world will eventually experience a radical
change (whether for better or for worse) suggests that there may be at least a
grain of truth in their all-too-common outcry. Is there anything in
those people's actions that is a meaningful reflection of a real human hope?
Or were they simply crazy?
In
this essay I intend to use Immanuel Kant's Critical philosophy to explore how
we might answer such questions. Kant's political philosophy is traditionally
interpreted as a dry, ultra-rational defense of our most cherished assumptions
concerning liberal politics. We are all familiar with the Kant who seems to
defend (especially in his Metaphysics of Morals) our modern conceptions
of freedom, democracy, and human rights by developing a metaphysical science of
the "right" actions a state can properly enforce through external
means of coercion. What is often ignored is the fact that his political philosophy
is significantly qualified by his previously-elaborated theories of the
religious nature and political history of mankind. And without
seeing it in its proper context, we are bound to misunderstand the true
intentions of Kant's political thought. In the following pages I want to
provide a glimpse of those intentions, and in so doing, demonstrate that Kant
himself was not immune to the kind of thinking employed by his own favorite
religious teacher, when he proclaimed: "The kingdom of God is at hand!"[2]
II. Religion and the Coming of the Kingdom of God
Kant's political philosophy cannot be fully understood unless we approach it
through the spectacles of his philosophy of religion. There are at least three
good reasons for this. The first is simply that Kant did not write a book on
politics until after he had written one on religion, namely, Religion
within the Bounds of Bare Reason (hereafter referred to as Religion).
This may seem like an irrelevant point, until we recall that Kant was careful
to write his books in a specific, previously determined order, as guided by his
"architectonic" plan for a complete philosophical System.[3] Briefly, this architectonic plan can be
interpreted most clearly in terms of a hierarchy of systems and subsystems,
comprising four "levels of perspectives". For our purposes, we need
only consider the second highest level, on which Kant distinguishes between
(what I call) the three basic "standpoints" reason can adopt in
applying itself to the world:
1. The theoretical
standpoint is the subject-matter of the great Critique of Pure Reason
(1781; second edition 1787), and its two supporting works are Prolegomena to
Any Future Metaphysics (1783) and Metaphysical Foundations of Natural
Science (1786).
2. The practical
standpoint is the subject-matter of the Critique of Practical Reason
(1788), and its two supporting works are Foundation of the Metaphysics of
Morals (1785) and Metaphysics of Morals (1797). The latter contains
two parts: "The Science of Right" deals with politics (i.e., outer
morality) and "The Science of Virtue" deals with ethics (i.e., inner
morality).
3. The judicial
standpoint is the subject-matter of the Critique of Judgment (1790), and
its two supporting works are Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason
(1793) and the unfinished Opus Postumum (notes
written between 1796 and Kant's death in 1804).
As the above dates make clear, simply attending to the chronological
development of Kant's thought would require us to consider Kant's
systematic work on religion (1793) before considering his systematic work on
politics (1797).
More
important than the chronological order of these works, however, is the
different weight Kant put on each of his three standpoints. A common
tendency among casual readers, promoted especially by some superficial
introductions to Kant's philosophy, is to assume the theoretical standpoint is the
main focus of Kant's System. The reason for this is quite simple: the first Critique
is by far the longest, the most radical, and the most influential of all Kant's
writings. More informed readers, of course, are not misled by matters of length
and influence. For Kant himself makes it very clear
that, when it comes to a comparison between the claims of theoretical and
practical reason, the practical standpoint always takes precedence over
the theoretical.[4]
What is often neglected, even by the most informed scholars, is that, over and
above both the theoretical and the practical, Kant places the judicial
standpoint, as the final arbiter of all conflicts between the theoretical and
the practical. Indeed, the "judicial" standpoint, the standpoint of judgment,
is, for Kant, the proper home of reason herself. Since Religion belongs
to this standpoint, whereas the "Science of Right" belongs to
the practical standpoint, we should beware of interpreting his politics
without recognizing the qualifications placed on both ethics and politics by
religion.
The
third reason for examining Kant's view of religion before trying to understand
his view of politics is perhaps the most significant of all. The practical
standpoint as a whole is devoted to the task of understanding the ideal
moral character of human nature. Thus, the Foundation of the
Metaphysics of Morals prepares the way by arguing that the philosophical account
of what is and is not morally right cannot take into consideration
"impure" motives based on happiness; the Critique of Practical
Reason then establishes the proper basis for the "pure" motivation
provided by freedom and the moral law; and the Metaphysics of Morals
outlines the particular examples of inner and outer duties that would be
necessary, were human beings ever to follow the moral law as they should. What
all-too-few critics recognize is that Kant's theory of religion throws into
relief this entire picture of the supposed possibility of "human
moral perfection". Religion does this by adopting not the practical
standpoint, but the judicial standpoint,[5] on the basis of which Kant argues at the
very outset that our capacity to obey the moral law is inevitably corrupted
by the presence in human nature of a foreign power he calls "radical
evil". Because of the reality of evil, the entire Enlightenment project of
constructing a better world by applying reason to the task of building
scientific, ethical, and political structures is called into question. In
other words, it is a grave error to interpret the ideas Kant develops from the
practical standpoint as if they represent his last word on mankind's ethical
and political nature.
What
then do we learn about the real human condition when we take Kant's
judicial standpoint as the focal point around which his entire System revolves?
We learn, first of all, that we are hopelessly incapable of accomplishing in
our own strength the requirements placed on us by the moral law. Although our
essential, original nature (or "predisposition", as Kant calls it in Religion)
is good, and so points us toward the possibility of realizing the ideals
we glimpse in the moral law, our existential, historically-determined nature
(or "heart") is naturally evil, and forces us to acknowledge
our failure to realize our potential. Religion arises in human culture, Kant
argues, directly out of this tension between potential goodness and real
badness. Human beings see the good they ought to do, and yet find
themselves unable to put it into practise. The only
possible solution is to place our hope in a higher Being, who alone can
effect a fundamental change in our disposition, so that our evil hearts can be
changed into good hearts. Although this begins as an individual experience of
God's grace, it must be followed by a commitment to join together with others
who have experienced such a change, in order to form a "church".
Because the corruption of our hearts comes through the influence of other human
beings more than any other single factor, we can truly begin to realize our
potential to obey the moral law only when we agree to cooperate with each other
in the context of such a religious organization. But in order to prevent the
church from becoming just as corrupt as its individual members were before
their change of heart, we must always insure that our service of God is focussed on our desire to obey the moral law he has put in
our hearts, not on the various nonmoral
beliefs and actions set up by any particular ecclesiastical organization.[6] Those who wrongly interpret Kant's Religion
as promoting merely a religion of "works" are fooled by his
insistence that morality be at the core of any religion into thinking
(quite wrongly) that he believes human beings are capable in their own power of
achieving the moral goodness necessary to please God. Kant never disallows
nonmoral elements in religion; he rather insists that
these always be viewed as only the means to the true end of all religion:
pleasing God through obedience to the voice of the moral law which he has
placed in our hearts.
With
this "bird's eye view" of Kant's system of religion in our mind, we
can now look at the specific aspects of that system which make it particularly
relevant to any discussion of Kant's politics, especially one concerned
primarily with his views on political history. Kant's writings on
morality (i.e., those adopting the practical standpoint) argue that the
true purpose, the true end of human life on earth, is to work toward the
realization of "the highest good". Yet even in these works, Kant
insists that the highest good, as the perfect correlation between human virtue
and human happiness, cannot be achieved by human beings on their own, but requires
us to "postulate" the existence of God and the possibility of life
after death.[7]
This dry and on its own rather unconvincing attempt to provide a practical
reason (though not a proof) for believing in God is given life and
breath in Religion, when Kant shows how it applies to our real,
historical situation. At one point he proposes what I call his (much-neglected)
"religious argument" for the existence of God. By recalling a few
of Kant's basic assumptions, his briefargument[in Religion,pp.97-99(88-91)]can be supplemented and
summarized as follows:
1. The highest
good: The true end of human life on earth is to realize the highest
good, by seeking to be worthy of happiness through obedience to the moral law.
It is a human duty to work toward this goal.
2. Radical evil:
Human beings on their own are wholly incapable of achieving the highest good,
because of the radical corruption of the heart of each individual.
3. Politics
fails: No organization based on externally legislated rules (i.e.,
no "political commonwealth") can achieve this goal, because
the moral law can be legislated only internally (i.e., through an "ethical
commonwealth").
4. "Ought"
implies "can": Anything reason calls us to do (i.e., any human
duty) must be possible; if it seems impossible, we are justified in making
assumptions that will enable us to conceive of its possibility.
5. People of God:
The only way a human organization can ever hope to become such an ethical
commonwealth is through the assistance of a higher Being, who legislates internally
the moral law to each individual, thus insuring the unity of their actions.
6. God exists.
In order to work toward the fulfillment of the highest good, we must therefore
presuppose that God exists as a gracious moral lawgiver, and that to obey the
moral law is to please God.
This argument, as such, occupies Kant's attention for little more than a
few sentences. Nevertheless, it marks an important turning-point in his
discussion. For without this argument, Kant's view of religion would be
thoroughly anthropocentric (as, indeed, it is typically assumed to be);
but with this argument, the equally theocentric
emphasis of Kant's view of religion becomes apparent. {MOST
OF THIS PARAG. USED IN KSP2:VII.3.A}
Once
Kant has demonstrated that an ethical commonwealth cannot succeed without
viewing itself as—indeed, without being—a People of God, he
goes on to relate this notion of the "true church" to the religious
idea of the "kingdom of God". This is where the relation between
Kant's philosophy of religion and his philosophy of political history comes
into full view. For he concludes the first Division of Book Three of Religion
with a section entitled "The Gradual Transition of Ecclesiastical Faith to
the Exclusive Sovereignty of Pure Religious Faith is the Coming of the
Kingdom of God" [p.115(105), emphasis added]. In this section Kant argues
that real historical expressions of religion (i.e., "ecclesiastical
faiths") naturally tend to begin by emphasizing the nonmoral
aspects of religion, such as historical traditions concerning rituals and
statutes, and by regarding the task of obedience to the moral law (i.e.,
"pure religious faith") as only secondary. As history progresses, our
awareness of the true "universal religion" increases, and people
begin to recognize the priority of the rational (i.e., the moral) over the
historical (i.e., the nonmoral). What critics of
Kant's approach often neglect is that he never claims the historical elements
are irrelevant, nor does he claim we can eventually dispense with
them completely. Although historical faiths can never be more than a
"vehicle" for "pure religion" [Religion 115(106)],
they are nevertheless necessary for the proper development of the pure
moral core of religion: "some historical ecclesiastical faith...must
be utilized" [109(100), emphasis added], even though no single
empirical model can be taken as absolute. On this basis, he argues, people will
gradually come to recognize more and more that history serves a rational end,
and not vice versa: reason is not the handmaiden of history! Since true
religion can be defined as "the recognition of all duties as divine
commands",[8]
this gradual dawning of the rational end of all religion can be accurately
described as "the coming of the kingdom of God". In other
words, God's gracious gift of his kingdom on earth is manifested in us as the
recognition of the centrality of our moral nature in our religious life.
What Kant refers to as the kingdom of God in Religion is closely related
(if not identical) to what he normally refers to elsewhere as a "realm of
ends". He explains that the term "realm" refers to "the
systematic union of different rational beings [i.e., souls] through common
laws."[9] A realm of ends,
therefore, is a picture of all human souls working together for the common
good, through their mutual obedience to the moral law. Although it is
"only an ideal", it is "a very fruitful concept", for it
can drive us toward a more complete realization of the highest good, just as
the analogous ideal of a "realm of nature" can drive us toward a more
complete scientific understanding of the world.[10] The guiding principle
informing this moral ideal is the necessity of viewing humanity as an
end in itself, which first surfaces in Kant's System as the second
formulation of the categorical imperative.[11] From this principle Kant
derives not only his doctrine of humanity as the final end of creation,[12] but also his elaborate
system (in the Metaphysics of Morals) of what is right for us as
real human beings.[13] The realm of ends is
simply the term appropriate to the practical standpoint for the ideal which,
viewed from the judicial (religious) standpoint, is properly called the kingdom
of God.
Kant
regards Jesus Christ as the first person ever to perceive clearly the vision of
the coming kingdom of God as a radically moral kingdom, rather than one
based on religious observances and/or political structures. Moreover, I
believe one of Kant's two central purposes in Religion is to demonstrate
that Christianity itself, properly interpreted, is the universal
religion of mankind. But this essay is not the proper place to elaborate on
these views [cf. note 6], since this would require us to stray too far from our
central concern. What is important is to recognize that Kant's theory of
religion points us directly to a vision of the true goal of human history: the
establishment of a world-community (a "realm" or "kingdom")
in which all people, humbly acknowledging their inability to live a morally
good life, receive from God the power needed to obey the moral law, whatever
their historical situation and whatever particular statutes and rituals they
use to express this fundamental, rational faith. That the coming of the kingdom
of God is possible is the unique message of Jesus' radical life and
teaching; to make it a reality is the responsibility of each human
person, aided by the grace of God. This is the heart of Kant's interpretation
of the Gospel.
The
true end of religion, therefore, is to bring into being something which might
best be called a "theocracy", provided we take this term literally
rather than in its common meaning.[14]
Kant states this rather explicitly (though without using the term) in
passages such as Religion, p.121(112), where he
quotes from 1 Cor. 15:28:
...in the end religion will
gradually be freed from all empirical determining grounds and from all statutes
which rest on history and which through the agency of ecclesiastical faith
provisionally unite men for the requirements of the good; and thus at last the
pure religion of reason will rule over all, "so that God may be all in
all."
In the Preface to Religion Kant compares the
relationship between pure religion and the present manifestations of historical
religion to a pair of concentric circles [12(11)]. Any historical faith which
is truly religious (i.e., moral) will have elements of the rational
religion at its "core", though the latter might be relatively small
in comparison to the outer circle of extra (i.e., nonmoral)
ecclesiastical elements. But as human history progresses, the rational core
increases in size relative to the outer historical "shell". In the
"end", to which Kant refers in the passage quoted above, these two
circles will be not only concentric, but coextensive: historical religion will
manifest in its entirety the pure religion of reason. Being the most rational
picture of human destiny, this is the end toward which all rational beings
should hope the world is moving.
III. Politics and the Ultimate Goal of Human History
Religion is not the only area of human life which Kant believes will play a
significant role in bringing about this world's true end: science and politics
are equally relevant. Indeed, these three areas correspond directly to the
three basic "ideas" of reason—God, freedom, and
immortality—which Kant discusses at length in each of his three Critiques.
Kant's Critical examination of the idea of God (especially in its
tension with the evil nature of mankind) led him, as we have seen,
directly to an examination of the metaphysical basis of that idea in religion.
His Critical examination of the idea of freedom (especially in its
tension with the determined nature of the world) likewise led him
directly to an examination of the metaphysical basis for that idea in science.And his Critical examination of the idea of immortality
(especially in its tension with the mortal nature of the human soul) led
him directly to an examination of the metaphysical basis for that idea in politics.
In examining the implications of each of these three ideas, the main focus of
Kant's System is on determining what we can rationallyhope
to be true. The first Critique demonstrates that we are incapable of
gaining speculative knowledge of the reality of these three
ideas; the second Critique demonstrates that each idea is nevertheless
necessary in one way or another if our moral action is to be
justifiable; and the System reaches its pinnacle when we determine, from the
judicial standpoint of the third Critique and its supporting works, just
how our hope in such ideas can be most rational.[15]
Such
an overview of Kant's System, like that of his explicitly systematic works
given at the beginning of the previous section, unfortunately fails to call
attention to one of the most important areas of application Kant saw for his
three Critiques: namely, that his interest is not just in politics, but
in political history. He emphasizes the importance of understanding and
believing in an ideal politics of freedom as early as the first Critique
[see pp.373-374]. So it is no accident that a large proportion of the minor
essays he wrote after 1781 were devoted to topics relating to the political
history of the human race. This reflects his recognition that, in spite of his
lack of emphasis on it in his main Critical writings, this issue actually plays
a constitutive role in his System. These essays, therefore, form (along with
his view of religion) the indispensable background for any proper
understanding of Kant's political philosophy.[16] For all but one of them were also
written before the Metaphysics of Morals, and together they place
important qualifications on the rational foundation for liberal politics
provided in Part I of the latter. Let us therefore look briefly at the contents
of some of these works.
A cursory reading of these essays is sufficient to reveal that Kant's interest
in political history was an intentional application of his overall
Transcendental Perspective[17] to the final (i.e., ultimate)
problem of the end or destiny of the human race. The essays rarely give
an account or interpretation of any specific historical events. Instead, as
their very titles suggest, they pose questions about the necessary form
of human history, such as: What was the "Conjectural Beginning of
Human History"? (1786), "What is Enlightenment?" (1784),
"...Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?" (1798), and What is "The End of All Things"? (1794).
Kant's goal, in other words, was to discover an "Idea for a Universal
History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective" (1784) which could bring
"Perpetual Peace" (1795) to humanity through a full realization of
the highest good.
Michalson accurately explains that "the aim of
all [Kant's] speculations on history...is to give an account of the course and
destiny of the life of rational beings who can genuinely ‘know' only
about the world of appearances."[18] These speculations (or hypotheses,
as I believe Kant would want us to call them) "are not so much
predictions as they are ‘rational hopes'"
about the ultimate purpose of history itself; as such, they are regulative,
rather than constitutive.[19] In other words, they are
intended to be taken as hypothetical explanations of a plan (a
"politic", we might call it) for human history as a whole—a
plan that develops as a direct result of the tension between the soul's life in
this world and the metaphysical idea of immortality. As Kant explains:
"Even if we are too blind to see the secret mechanism of its workings,
this Idea [of Nature's "plan or purpose" in human history] may still
serve as a guiding thread for presenting as a system...what would otherwise be
a planless conglomeration of human actions."[20] Although Kant himself
never presents us with a fully elaborated system of human history, his various
essays on political history do provide enough clues to allow for a fairly
accurate reconstruction—a task I intend to carry out elsewhere.[21]
At this point it will suffice merely to point out that Kant explains his
conception of this rational plan in sufficient detail to offer some concrete
suggestions as to how a proper recognition of "the unsocial sociability
of men" can provide a solution to "the greatest problem for the human
race"—viz., "the achievement of a universal civic society which
administers law among men."[22] One of the most important
requirements is that a body of international law must be set up with "the
ultimate end" of establishing "perpetual peace".[23] This will require, among
other things, that "standing armies...shall in time be totally
abolished",[24] since "war
itself...will be regarded as a most dubious undertaking."[25] When adopting the
perspective of real politicians, who "must proceed on empirical
principles",[26] Kant admits that such
hopes must be regarded as "impossible", or at least
"impracticable";[27] nevertheless, he
acknowledges that from another standpoint, there are indeed grounds for hope
that such a universal community "will come into being as the womb wherein
all the original capacities of the human race can develop."[28] Given the theocentric character of all three metaphysical ideas,[29] it should therefore come
as no surprise to find, alongside these specific, concrete guidelines, that Kant's plan includes at the same
time "a philosophical eschatology" which "carries a strong
endorsement of the Christian world view".[30]
This outline reveals a striking parallel between Kant's view of how the
visible manifestations of religion relate to the truly rational (i.e., moral)
religion and his view of how the visible manifestations of politics
relate to the truly rational (i.e., just) political system. However,
there is no need for our present purposes to enter into a more detailed interpretation
of Kant's essays on political history, nor of his
other works on political themes (most notably the "Science of Right"
part of his Metaphysics of Morals). Instead, we can conclude our
examination of Kant's view of the ultimate goal of human life on earth by
summarizing what we can call his "vision"[31] of human destiny—i.e.,
his explanation of how we are to respond in the here and now to our
awareness of the present reality of God's kingdom.
IV. Kant's Vision of the Historical Transition to God's Kingdom
When
we see Kant's political philosophy in its proper context, what are we to make
of the traditional picture of Kant, as one of the Enlightened
"fathers" of modern liberal democracy? Is this Kant a mere fabrication
of the commentators? Is Kant really the champion of democratic freedom, legally
enforced justice, and universal human rights, as we have all grown accustomed
to viewing him? None of these play any constitutive role in his vision of the
ultimate goal of human history; so why does he devote so much attention to them
in his "Science of Right"?
The
answers to these questions are too intricate to be dealt with in full here; but
we can begin answering them by pointing out that Kant's "Science of
Right" should be read as primarily a description of what is, in
light of what ought to be. Metaphysics for Kant is a descriptive
science: it is analytic in contrast to the synthetic method
utilized by the discipline of Critique. The bulk of Kant's political theory
(which appears in his System as part of the metaphysical structure built on the
foundation of Critique) is therefore not to be regarded as a prescription for
the absolutely perfect political system, but as his best effort at explaining how
the moral law could best be applied externally in the historical climate of his
day. And, although he certainly did regard freedom as the core value of his
entire moral system, this did not lead Kant into the naive faith in the
absolute value of democracy that we find among so many political philosophers
today. On the contrary, in following Aristotle's distinction between autocracy
(i.e. monarchy), aristocracy, and democracy, Kant claims that "democracy
is, properly speaking, necessarily a despotism, because it establishes an
executive power in which ‘all' decide for or even against one who does
not agree; that is, ‘all,' who are not quite all, decide, and this is a
contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom."[32]
As long as the highest good has not yet been manifested on earth, some externally
legislated political system will be necessary. This political system will be
"right", Kant argues, only if it maximizes the freedom of individuals,
thus allowing them to follow the internally legislated moral law as
much as possible. Accordingly, just as the categorical imperative defines what
is morally good, the following principle, Kant claims, defines what is
politically right: "Every Action is right which in itself,
or in the maxim on which it proceeds, is such that it can co-exist along with
the Freedom of the Will of each and all in action, according to a universal
Law."[33] All Kant's (sometimes
outmoded) suggestions as to how this principle gives rise to a system of
political rights should be taken not as eternally binding legal truths, but as
imperfect measures whose purpose is to bring humanity at a particular point in
time closer to a realization of its final goal.
Kant's metaphysical description of modern politics may be in many ways a
confirmation of the suitability of democracy for the modern political
situation; but as we have seen, Kant was not a democrat in his deepest
convictions. For politics, according to Kant, can never be anything more than a
means to a higher or deeper end. The moral law only needs to be applied externally
to human societies as long as the individuals in a given society are not
themselves applying it internally as they should. The greatest danger of
all political systems is that they may actually hinder people from
seeing the moral law as an internal reality rooted in God himself, and cause
them to see it instead as an external code on the basis of which they will
incur punishment if they get "caught" disobeying it. Hence, the true
goal toward which the highest forms of politics work is the dissolution
of all politics. Even Kant's insistence on the need for a "federation of
states" is based not on his conviction that the "rule of law" is
the final answer to all political problems, but rather on the recognition that
the best way to break a nation's unhealthy power over its citizens is to
subordinate its laws to a higher authority.
Although the world-wide federation of states is ultimately only a temporary
measure in Kant's idea of the rational plan of human history, it is
nevertheless one of two key signs that human history is approaching its
ultimate destiny. The first sign is the advent of a religion that teaches
people how to deny the validity of all external forms of religion in order to
focus on its inner meaning. This, Kant says, has already come in the form of
Christianity. The second sign, the federation of states, was not yet on the horizon
in Kant's day. The establishment of the United Nations in our century might be
regarded as the beginnings of the fulfillment of this second sign. In any case,
we must be careful to keep in mind Kant's insistence that in both religion and
politics, the external sign is only a "vehicle" for the true
goal: when individuals and nations all learn to submit themselves willingly
(i.e., without any external coercion) to the demands of the moral law, then no
outward form of religion or politics (not even Christianity or a world-wide
federation of states) will be viewed as necessary in itself.
Whentheidealgoalofrealizingthe"universalreligionofreason"[Religion,p.122(113)]is finally fulfilled, religion and politics will
actually merge, though both will at that point be thoroughly
transformed: they will both be legislated entirely from within, through
the agency of the moral law (regarded as the voice of God) speaking to each
individual, and uniting all human beings in a whole which no human political system
could ever sustain. That Kant had such a merger in mind can be seen at various
points in Religion, not the least of which is in his use of the
paradoxical term "ethical commonwealth" as a description of the true
church. Thus it should come as no surprise when he ends the first Division of
Book Three with a clear allusion to the political implications of what
he earlier called "the Coming of the Kingdom of God":
Such, therefore, is the activity
of the good principle, unnoted by human eyes but ever continuing—erecting
for itself in the human race, regarded as a commonwealth under laws of
virtue, a power and a kingdom which sustains the victory over
evil and, under its own dominion, assures the world of eternal peace. [Religion,
p.124(114), emphasis added]
Of course, Kant is often quite reluctant to discuss his vision of the ultimate
destiny of the human race, not only because of its thoroughly hypothetical
nature (as befits all good metaphysics), but also because of the great danger
of mistaking such a vision for a real set of policies intended
for immediate historical implementation. Kant is well aware of the tension between
the ideals of reason and the realities of history. This is why he devotes most
of his attention in Part I of Metaphysics of Morals to the construction
of a political philosophy which is capable of being applied in the here and
now. In order to use such principles in the most appropriate way, however, we
must view them as interim measures, valid only during the long
transitional period which we call human history. Hence, his is a qualified
theocracy: the common maxim "All Authority is from God" should not
be interpreted to "express the historical foundation of the Civil
Constitution, but an ideal Principle of the Practical Reason."[34] Critical politics
does not deny the validity of such theocratic ways of viewing the world,
but rather insists that we view them from their proper perspective, as
ideals toward the realization of which our imperfect political systems ought to
work.
With this in mind, we can now adapt Kant's own model of concentric circles to
summarize his vision of the rational plan of human history. The human race,
like all human individuals, began in a state of innocence, but was
corrupted by the radical evil which infected the first moral act. When such
individuals joined in groups, conflicts of various sorts inevitably arose.
Their attempt to make agreements which could resolve such conflicts was at
first legislated only externally, through both political and (nonmoral) religious forms of coercion. As a result, the internal"seed"ofmoralreligionremaineddormantwithin
humanity [see Figure 1(a)].[35] External legislation is
the proper domain of politics; internal legislation is the proper domainoftrue(moral)religion.Butatthisearlystageinhuman history, neither
religious nor political agreements bore much resemblance to the idea of freedom
that lies at their base. "Progress" in human history happens whenever
individuals learn to utilize more of the internal power of freedom, so that
both the religious and political "vehicles" of goodness can conform
more closely to their pure rational core.
Figure 1: The Four Stages of Human History
In Religion Kant portrays the rise of Christianity as the first
historical faith to reflect accurately the pure rational core of all true
religion. As such, the authentic forms of Christianity (i.e., the ones that
encourage individuals to make use of their freedom to be self-legislating) have
marked, during the past two millennia, the first major step toward the
realization of pure moral religion in human history [see Figure 1(b)]. But nonmoral political systems (like the false attempts of
many "ecclesiastical faiths" to legislate externally) have continued
to dominate human societies during this period, so that the core of moral
religion has been unable to progress much further.In
his minor essays Kant therefore predicts that we can enter the next stage in human
history only through the formation of a world-wide federation of states,
an historical political structure which would accurately reflect the pure rational
core of all right politics [see Figure 1(c)], just as Christianity providesan historical representation of universal
religion. Some would say that in the twentieth century we have seen a partial
fulfillment of this prediction, in the form of the United Nations, though this
federation is still far from realizing the ultimate goal of establishing a
universal political system, promoting internal self-legislation.
The ultimate end of this entire process will come about when there is no longer
any distinction between the empirical manifestations of religious and politicalsystemsandthepuremoralreasontowhichtheyconform[seeFigure 1(d)]. When these are
fully identified, the external forms of religion and politics as we now know
them will no longer be necessary; instead, politics will finally be seen in its
proper perspective, as the expression of God's rule guiding the actions of all
human beings, thus creating a society of lasting peace and true justice. Though
often gravely misunderstood, this hope that the world's political and religious
kingdoms will become the universal kingdom of God is the kernel of
rational truth Kant would see in the type of religious extremism mentioned at
the beginning of this essay. For when its proper end comes into full view, the
idea of immortality will no longer refer merely to a hope for everlasting life
in another world—as it properly does at our present stage of human
history, in which we can only hope to "rest in peace" after we die.
It will then refer also to the realization of another way of life in the
present world: a life in which the autonomous domains of religion,
science, and politics cooperate for a single purpose, being guided by the
rational ideas of God, freedom, and immortality, fully regulative in the heart
of every human person. Andthis way of life Kant
himself describes as one in which"the kingdom of
God is at hand."[36]
FOOTNOTES
[1]See the Reuter's articles in The South
China Morning Post, 28 October 1992, p.11, and 29 October 1992, p.1.
[2]The "he" in this sentence refers
to both Jesus and Kant. For Kant was quite fond of quoting Jesus' references to
God's kingdom to support his own view of religion. Thus, in his main book on
religion [tr. T.M. Greene and H.H. Hudson as Religion within the Limits of
Reason Alone (New York: Harper, 1960[1934]), p.151(139)] Kant quotes
approvingly Matthew 6:20 (see also Luke 11:2), from which the title of the
present essay is taken. He likewise quotes Matthew 12:28: "We have good
reason to say, however, that ‘the kingdom of God is come to us' once ...
the universal religion of reason ... has gained somewhere a public
foothold" [p.122(113)]. See also p.101(92), where Kant quotes Matthew 6:10. For more on the
relationship between the ideas of Jesus and Kant, see my "Four
Perspectives on Moral Judgement: The Rational
Principles of Jesus and Kant", The Heythrop
Journal 32.2 (April 1991), pp.216-232.
References to all Kant's works will cite the pagination of the standard German
(Berlin Academy) edition, with the exception of references to the first Critique,
which will cite the pagination of the original second ("B")
edition (1787). For references to translations which do not specify the German
pagination, the pagination of the English translation will also be given in
parentheses (as in the preceding paragraph).
[3]For a thoroughgoing description of the form
and content of this System, including an explanation of why Kant was justified
in claiming a logical "completeness" for his System, see my book, Kant's
System of Perspectives (Lanham: University Press of America, 1993). An
early version of the central argument regarding the exact form of Kant's
"architectonic plan" can also be found in "The Architectonic
Form of Kant's Copernican Logic", Metaphilosophy
17.4 (October 1986), pp.266-288.
[4]See especially Critique of Practical
Reason, pp.119-121.
[5]Kant's Religion most emphatically cannot
therefore be regarded as merely an extended "footnote" to his theory
of ethics, as is so often wrongly assumed. To adopt this traditional assumption
before reading Kant's Religion is to render all its key arguments
unintelligible; for without seeing them in terms of the judicial
standpoint, their true intention cannot be clearly perceived. I explain and
defend this point more fully in "Does Kant Reduce Religion to Morality?", Kant-Studien 83.2
(1992), pp.129-139.
[6]This brief sketch of the four stages in
Kant's system of religion is outlined in greater detail in "Does Kant
Reduce...?", pp.140-146. A full account of the
twelve steps in this system, and of their
compatibility with Christianity (which Kant uses as a test case throughout Religion)
will be given in my forthcoming book, Kant's Critical Religion (Hong
Kong: Philopsychy Press, 1994).
[7]See Critique of Practical Reason,
pp.122-132.
[8]See Religion, p.153(142);
see also Critique of Practical Reason, p.129.
[9]Foundation of the
Metaphysics of Morals, tr. L.W. Beck (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill,
1959),p.433.
[10]Ibid., pp.433,438; cf. 462-463.
[11]Ibid., p.429.
[12]See e.g., Kant's Critique of Judgment,
p.435, and my Kant's System of Perspectives, pp.301-304.
[13]Because of his emphasis on
the importance of respect for humanity, Kant is often cited as one of the
fathers of our modern concern for human rights. Although there is obviously
some justification for this view, I shall argue in Kant's Critical Politics
that Kant's conception of the "right" departs in some important
respects from today's emphasis on defending one's own "human
rights" at all costs. For Kant, it is not the individual person as such
who, as "the end of creation", has a set of inalienable rights
deserving of the highest respect, but only humanity as a whole [see
e.g., Religion, p.60(54) and "Idea for a
Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View", tr. L.W. Beck in Kant
On History (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), p.18]. Therefore, rather than presupposing a
naive "equality" upon which the rights of all individuals are
based—a view often imputed to Kant [see e.g., Louis P. Pojman, "A Critique of Contemporary Egalitarianism: A
Christian Perspective", Faith and Philosophy 8.4 (October 1991),
pp.483-486]—Kant seeks to determine what is politically "right"
in various situations by examining how and to what extent individuals participate
in the cosmos of rational beings known as "humanity".
[14]In its proper sense,
the term "theocracy" refers to a political system based on the
internally legislated "rule of God" in human hearts. In Biblical
Theocracy (Hong Kong: Philopsychy Press, 1993) I
argue in detail that theocracy is properly regarded as the most basic form of
Christian political philosophy. Unfortunately, the word "theocracy"
is nearly always misused as a reference to a political system characterized by
the "rule of the church". Yet this is the very opposite of true
theocracy, and ought rather to be called "ecclesiocracy"
[see ibid., pp.52-59], or
"clericalism", as Kant suggests in Book Four of Religion. Kant
himself often uses explicitly theocratic language, as when he describes God as
a person "possessing law-giving power over all rational
beings" [Opus Postumum 22.35, quoted in
W.H. Werkmeister, Kant: The Architectonic and
Development of His Philosophy (London: Open Court, 1980), p.193].
[15]Kant emphasized the priority of hope over
speculation throughout his entire career. For example, as early as 1766 he says
[in his Dreams of a Spirit Seer, tr. J. Manolesco
(New York: Vantage Press, 1969), pp.349-350 (68)]: "The scale of reason is
not quite as impartial as we might think: the lever carrying the inscription:
‘Future Hopes' has a mechanical advantage; it always succeeds in
outweighing, even with the smallest weights on its side, the speculations of
far greater weight placed in the opposite tray. This is a
defect which truly speaking I cannot remove, nor do I want to remove it
ever."
[16]Kant's views on science would also be
relevant here, if we had time and space to examine them. Indeed, his picture of
the ideal human situation is succinctly described in the following maxim:
"Every man his own doctor [cf. science], every man his own lawyer [cf.
politics], every man his own priest [cf. religion]" [William Wallace, Kant
(London: William Blackwood & Sons,
1901), p.47]. The professions Wallace names here are
arguably the three most oppressive in modern western culture: they claim to
provide physical, legal, and spiritual freedom; yet in ways neither Kant nor
Wallace could have foreseen, they now all too often end up taking away
freedom from those they "serve". Using this Kantian maxim to suggest
a prognosis for the ills of our contemporary situation is not as difficult as
actually putting it into practise. The functions
given over to doctors, lawyers, and priests must be reclaimed by individuals
who see these as community services rather than money-making professions. Those
who are gifted and/or specially trained in one of these areas should give their
services to others free of charge, and earn their living through a separate
means of employment, thus gradually returning a sense of responsibility for
physical, mental, and spiritual health to each individual person. Nobody who
sees Kant's vision for the human race should earn a living at the expense of
other people's freedom!
[17]This highest and most general
"level" of perspectives in Kant's System is identical to his
"Copernican" assumption: i.e., that objects conform to the subject,
rather than vice versa (as appears to be the case, according to our ordinary
Empirical Perspective on the world). See my Kant's System of Perspectives,
pp.61-62,67-68.
[18]G.E. Michalson, The
Historical Dimensions of a Rational Faith (Washington D.C.: University
Press of America, 1979), p.140.
[19]Ibid., pp.150,152.
[20]Kant, "Idea for a Universal History ...", p.29.
[21]This reconstruction will be one of the main
topics of the projected fourth volume of Kant's System of Perspectives,
entitled Kant's Critical Politics.
[22]Kant, "Idea for a Universal History ...", pp.20,22.
[23]Immanuel Kant, Metaphysics of Morals,
Part I tr. W. Hastie as "The Metaphysical
Principles of the Science of Right", in The Philosophy of Law
(Edinburgh: T.&T. Clark, 1887), p.350(224).
[24]Immanuel Kant, "Perpetual Peace",
tr. L.W. Beck in Kant On History, p.345.
[25]Kant, "Idea for a Universal History ...", p.28.
[26]Kant, "Perpetual
Peace", p.343.
[27]Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, p.350(224).
[28]Kant, "Idea for a Universal History ...", p.28.
[29]See Kant's System of Perspectives,
pp.317-323, and Chapter I of Kant's Critical Religion.
[30]Michalson, Historical Dimensions, p.139.
[31]This is the term Michalson
uses in ibid., p.157.
[32]Kant, "Perpetual
Peace", p.352. He
adds in a footnote on p.353 that the office of monarch is "an office too
great for man, an office which is the holiest God has ordained on earth ...".
[33]Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, p.230(45).
[34]Ibid., p.319(175).
[35]This figure, and several
paragraphs throughout this essay, have been adapted from Chapter XII of Kant's System of Perspectives.
[36]See above, note 2. I read an earlier draft
of this paper at the February, 1993 colloquium of the Department of Religion
and Philosophy at Hong Kong Baptist College. I am grateful for the helpful
suggestions of various students and colleagues who attended. I would also like
to thank HPQ's anonymous editorial consultant
for offering several very significant suggestions for revision, without which
this paper would have been considerably less clear.
This etext is based on a prepublication draft of the published
version of this essay.
Send comments to: StevePq@hkbu.edu.hk
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