The Philosopher as a “Secret
Agent” for Peace:
Taking Seriously Kant’s Revival
of the “Old Question”
1. Law vs. Philosophy at the Core of
Kant’s Conflict
The
last book Kant completed without assistance, The Conflict of the Faculties (1798), is typically regarded as a mere
composite of three essays on separate themes that are held together with nothing
but an artificial appeal to the four-fold structure of the Prussian university.
Philosophy was regarded as the “lower” faculty because it made no
attempt to relate directly to the professional training of public servants, but
instead served as a critical tool to help keep the three “higher”
faculties in line. The higher faculties of theology, law, and medicine were
each charged with the duty of training a specific type of public servant:
priests, lawyers, and doctors, respectively. The three parts of Kant’s Conflict examine the relationship between
philosophy and each of these three disciplines in turn. Or so, at least, he
claims in his Introduction.
In
fact, only Part I of Conflict,
on the relation between the faculties of philosophy and theology, really lives
up to this stated purpose. Instead of writing new and original works for the
other two parts, Kant adapted essays he had written previously, probably with
other uses originally in mind. Especially the essay appearing as the Second
Part, entitled “An old question raised again: Is the human race
constantly progressing?”, seems at first to have little or no serious
relevance to the issue of a philosopher’s duty with regard to both the
faculty of law in general and the challenge to build a more peaceful world in
particular. While both the form and the content of that essay undoubtedly leave
something to be desired, I believe it offers more insight into the
“official” topic (i.e., the relation between the philosophy faculty
and the faculty of law) than meets the eye.
In
order to appreciate the full significance of this Second Part of Conflict, we must first look at its immediate
context in Kant’s philosophical corpus. Kant originally drafted that
essay roughly three years before it was published, so it should not be
surprising that the most relevant context is its relationship to a work Kant
published at around the same time: Perpetual Peace (1795). In many ways, the latter book
applies the same reasoning to the topic of international relations that Conflict applies to the structure of a
university’s faculties.[1]
I shall therefore begin the present essay by exploring certain elements in Perpetual
Peace that clarify the
relevance of what Kant goes on to write about lawyers and philosophers in the
Second Part of Conflict.
2. The “Secret Article” in
Perpetual Peace:
Irony or Transcendental Condition?
The arguments and main principles of Perpetual Peace are well known, for this is probably the greatest (and certainly the most widely read) of the various works Kant wrote to supplement his primary systematic writings. After a brief and rather ironic introduction asking the reader to take him seriously despite the apparently impracticable nature of his claims, Section I identifies six “preliminary” requirements any states must follow in order to set in motion a lasting peace in their relations with other states.[2] These are meant to be principles of self-regulation that states can begin to implement on their own, even before there is an international “federation of states”, whose task would be to make perpetual peace a reality. Section II then explains the three “definitive articles” that would need to be adopted by every member state. Each would need: (1) to establish a “Republican” Constitution (i.e., a system of government that requires the mode of administration to be based on a “separation of the executive power (the administration) from the legislative,” so that the people who make the laws are not the same as the people who enforce the laws[3]); (2) to uphold a body of international law enacted by the Federation, so that states no longer relate to each other in the uncivilized manner of lawless savages, but rather according to self-determined principles of “rational freedom;”[4] and (3) to foster a condition of “Universal Hospitality”, whereby all human beings are regarded as “world citizens” with the same basic rights, including “a right of temporary sojourn” in other countries, without being treated as enemies.[5]
Although Kant’s basic argument appears to be complete at this point, some of his most interesting ideas appear in the two Supplements and two Appendices that follow. These sections are also where we find the most interesting common ground between Perpetual Peace and the Second Part of Kant’s Conflict. The First Supplement, for example, is a lengthy analysis of the progress of the human race toward the goal of obtaining the kind of lasting peace between nations that is envisioned in the main part of the book. Here Kant argues that nature implements a four-stage “mechanism” that guarantees the goal of peace will eventually be reached. In the earliest stage of human history, hostility between different groups of people serves the necessary purpose of encouraging them to spread throughout the whole earth. As the earth begins to fill up with people, those living in the same area must establish laws and create civilizations for their own self-protection; but as a result, conflicts inevitably arise with neighboring civilizations, and war is the inevitable result. The third stage begins when someone (like Kant) realizes that, in order for peace to exist in spite of the differences that have arisen during this process (especially differences in language and religion), a federation of separate nations must be established. (We are currently living in this third stage, Kant would say, though perhaps not much further along than we were 200 years ago.) Finally, as the idea of “world citizenship” becomes more and more prominent, so that different civilizations come to recognize that peace despite our conflicting ideals really is in everyone’s best interests, the goal of perpetual peace will be realized.
The Second Supplement, unlike the First, is brief and appears to be of
questionable practical value. However, it will turn out to be of crucial
importance when we assess the relation between Perpetual Peace and the essay that constitutes the Second Part of Conflict. Here in the Second Supplement to Perpetual
Peace, Kant introduces a so-called “Secret Article”
that he claims must be present “subjectively” in any legislation
that is to succeed in leading the nations of the world along the road to
perpetual peace. By this he means that the lawyers who draft the legislation
must have this article in mind, and employ it in practice, even though it is
not “objectively” part of any state Constitution or body of
international law.[6] The secret
article states: “The opinions of philosophers on the conditions of the
possibility of public peace shall be consulted by those states armed for war.”[7]
Although few take Kant very seriously at this point, I believe this is an absolutely
crucial part of his plan
for enduring world peace. It is essential because if those who draft
legislation depend solely on the objective articles, the path to peace will be devoid of what we might
call the transcendental conflict
that Kant views as a necessary condition for real peace. That is, legislators
must be open to having their professional opinions challenged, analyzed, and
subjected to the judgment of dispassionate reason by those with expertise in
the latter, otherwise their legislation, drafted in a context devoid of
creative conflict, will fail to establish the desired goal of peace.[8] Unlike Plato, Kant does not expect
“[t]hat kings should philosophize or philosophers become kings;”
rather, he only asks that those who belong to the faculty of law be willing to
give those in the faculty of philosophy a fair hearing. Here Kant is clearly
hinting at what will also turn out to be his central point in The Conflict
of the Faculties: that
the ideal of peaceful conflict within the university is the most effective
model we can employ to make real progress on the path toward perpetual peace
between nations.
Appendix
I expounds further on the necessary opposition, or conflict, that exists between
“politics” and “morality,” at least as regards their
different functions on the path to peace. Politicians, Kant argues, are
typically immoral because of the inevitable relationship they have to those
holding power: “they flatter the power which is then ruling so as not to
be remiss in their private advantage, and they sacrifice the nation and,
possibly, the whole world.”[9]
In direct contrast to philosophers, politicians “make a great show of
understanding men
… without understanding man
and what can be made of him, for they lack the higher point of view of
anthropological observation which is needed for this.”[10]
Kant concludes that, although “objectively … there is no conflict
between morals and politics,” the reality of selfishness and evil in
human nature necessitates that “[s]ubjectively … this conflict will
always remain.”[11]
Perpetual
Peace concludes in
Appendix II with an explanation of how “the transcendental concept of
public right” can be used to establish harmony “between morality and
politics”—the necessary condition for lasting peace. Here Kant
proposes a “transcendental condition of public law: ‘All actions
relating to the right of other men are unjust if their maxim is not consistent
with publicity.’”[12]
After discussing several examples of this merely “negative”
principle, Kant warns that “we cannot infer conversely that the maxims
which bear publicity are therefore just,” because those who wield
sufficient levels of power have little need to conceal their plans, whether
they are good or not.[13]
The affirmative version of this basic transcendental principle is:
“‘All maxims which stand in need of publicity in order not to fail their
end, agree with politics and right [i.e., morality] combined.”[14]
Careful attention to Kant’s arguments in the apparently incidental
Supplements and Appendices reveals that, if Kant’s plan for perpetual
peace between nations is ever
to become a reality on earth, then a context must exist wherein philosophers are not only
“allowed” but encouraged to engage in open conflict with legal professionals, through
peaceful public discussion of universal principles relevant to actual
legislation. In the remainder of this paper I shall argue that Kant’s
task in the Second Part of Conflict
was to show that such a context already exists, in the form of the university.
3. Conflict between the
Philosophy and Law Faculties as the Model for Perpetual Peace
This brief overview of
Kant’s masterpiece on peace provides us with a helpful contextualization
for understanding the significance of the essay he was also writing around the
same time, which eventually became the Second Part of The Conflict of the
Faculties. For what Kant
only hints at in the Second Supplement to Perpetual Peace, that progress toward peace may depend
on philosophers (especially academic philosophers) acting almost as spies (or “secret agents”) in the
political realm, comes to look more like a serious contender for a
transcendental condition for the empirical realization of international peace.[15]
In the 1798 publication Kant offers a philosophical interpretation of the
actual structure of the Prussian university system, portraying it as a vehicle
for promoting just the sort of open public conflict between philosophers and
various types of professionals that his previous work had treated as a
“subjectively necessary” (i.e., transcendental?) condition for
peace.
The universities of
Kant’s day had a far simpler structure than our contemporary universities
typically do. Instead of a seemingly endless array of departments grouped into
a smaller but still indeterminate number of faculties, the whole system
consisted of four faculties divided into two types. The three higher
faculties—theology, law, and medicine— were charged with the task
of training the professionals (i.e., priests, lawyers, and doctors) whose task
was to assist the public in solving problems relating to their moral/spiritual
well-being, their property, and their health, respectively. Philosophy was
called the lower faculty because its job was not to train professionals but to
educate, examine, and if necessary, chasten all the other faculties in matters
pertaining to reason. Kant’s book is divided into three parts, devoted
(at least in theory)[16]
to an explanation of how the philosophy faculty engages in creative conflict
with each of the three higher faculties.
Kant’s assumption was
that this ideal of peaceful yet creative conflict in an academic setting can make
a difference to the
general public, while causing them no harm, because the arguments of the
philosophers can and should change the way priests, lawyers, and doctors deal
with the public. An important difference between the lower and higher
faculties, however, concerns the role of government regulation—an issue
Kant deals with only incidentally throughout Conflict. (The book, of course, was published
soon after the edict preventing Kant from publishing anything on religion had
been lifted, so the issue was clearly at the forefront of Kant’s mind.)
Because the content taught and published by members of the higher faculties has
a direct influence on those professionals who deal immediately with the public,
the government has a responsibility to regulate what is taught by these
faculties; the philosophy faculty, by contrast, does not train professionals
and therefore should not have to answer to any authority other than reason. In
this way, it fulfills a crucial role in any republican state, by providing a
“checks and balances” system from within the state-sponsored
educational system itself. When the potential of this system is fully realized,
academic debate can not only exemplify the kind of healthy conflict that has
the potential to make society a wiser and safer place to live; it can also
actually bring about
the goal of peace through its indirect effect on the general public.
Unfortunately, Kant’s
stated plan for this book was more of an idealized hope than an accurate
account of what is actually written therein. For as mentioned previously, the
only part that is treated in full accordance with his stated goal (i.e., to
show how the philosophy faculty, through its emphasis on rational
self-criticism, can deepen and further the insights of the other faculties,
while chastening their improprieties) is Part I, on the theology faculty. The other
two parts only tangentially touch on the specific issue of conflict between philosophers and the relevant
professionals (i.e., lawyers or doctors). As a result of this defect in the
composition of Kant’s book, perhaps excusable due to his old age at the
time of publication, the only detailed explanation of how empirical conflict in
an academic setting can pave the way for peace is to be found in his account of
the relationship between philosophers and theologians.
The
theology faculty, according to Kant, adopts a wholly different standpoint from
the philosophy faculty. Members of the two faculties are, in many respects,
enemies—or perhaps “warring neighbors” would be an
appropriate metaphor.[17]
This is because the fundamental basis of the theology faculty’s authority
is its appeal to divine revelation. The Word of God (i.e., the Holy Scripture
of whatever religious tradition is being taught), and the Spirit of God (i.e.,
the presence of God’s voice in the interpreter’s heart, leading him
or her to formulate the right interpretation) are the fundamental basis for all
consideration, both theoretical and practical. By contrast, the philosophy
faculty’s authority is grounded in reason alone. Because theologians must
inevitably make use
of reason whenever they interpret or apply the statements they find in
Scripture, they are necessarily subject to the philosopher’s critical
analysis. Conversely, philosophers may offer interpretations and applications
of Scriptural statements without
subjecting themselves to the doctrinal restrictions of orthodoxy, because they
(the philosophers) never step outside of their role as messengers of reason. If
this paper were about religion and the conflicts between different religions,
we would need to examine this part of Kant’s book in great detail. But it
is not; our concern is rather with politics and how philosophers can help
perpetuate peace amidst the conflicts between different states. I shall
therefore resist the temptation to make further observations about Kant’s
views on the philosopher’s conflict with the theologian.[18]
In
applying the same principle of free and open (i.e., unregulated, yet peaceful)
conflict in a university-based setting to the faculty of law, Kant’s
intention would obviously be to suggest that the philosopher’s role is to
provide a universal, rational standpoint for assessing and improving our actual
empirical legislation. The essay that actually appears as the Second Part of Conflict deals only with the far more limited
issue of whether “the human race [is] constantly progressing”.[19]
Our overview of Perpetual Peace showed
that this same issue was also the focus of the First Supplement in that work.
We must therefore keep in mind that such progress was crucial to determining
the potential success of his overall political vision. If the human race is not
progressing, then the
philosopher has no reason even to try to be a secret agent for peace.
A few of Kant’s
arguments in the Second Part of Conflict can be applied fairly easily to the university setting. For
example, when he explains how the future of human history can be known a priori
by noting such knowledge is possible “if the diviner himself makes and contrives the events which he
announces in advance,”[20]
we can surmise that this would be one of the key differences between the way
the faculty of law and the faculty of philosophy deal with legal issues.
Members of the faculty of law, strictly speaking, would have the sole task of
teaching and interpreting the given body of law, as handed down by whatever authority
holds sovereign power in the state (i.e., the monarch, the aristocracy, or the
people as a whole). Members of the faculty of philosophy, by contrast, would
have the task of determining in advance what law reason determines as best, and then comparing the
existing body of law with this ideal in order to assess its validity.[21]
Beyond this, we can infer that Kant’s underlying intention was to suggest
that perpetual peace between nations will become a reality only when
philosophers are given the right (at least
“subjectively”—i.e., unofficially, or “in
secret”) to participate fully in the dialogue over matters of policy as
well as in the character development of politicians—e.g., through moral
and philosophical education.
Although
the Second Part of Conflict
does not deal directly with the conflict between philosophers and lawyers in
the university, we may glean some important insights by looking further into
what Kant does say there about the issue of world peace and its relation to
different approaches to conflict. After making the above point about
foreknowledge being a form of self-fulfilling prophecy, Kant goes on to compare
politicians who institute laws aimed at preventing revolt (but who thereby create the very conditions for revolt) with
preachers who “prophesy the complete destruction of religion and the
imminent appearance of the Antichrist; and in doing so they are performing
precisely what is requisite to call him up.”[22]
Next, Kant proposes three possible scenarios that would make prediction possible:
the human race must either be “in continual retrogression toward wickedness, or in perpetual progression toward improvement …, or in
eternal stagnation in
its present stage of moral worth …”.[23]
He refers to the first option as “moral terrorism,” but points out problems with all
three options that make them equally untenable. Experience can never be a
sufficient basis for solving “the problem of progress” because
human beings are free
and can at any point in time act in accordance with either a good or an evil
disposition: what people “ought to do may be dictated in advance, but … it may not be predicted what they will do …”.[24]
To assume otherwise would be to adopt “the standpoint of Providence which
is situated beyond all human wisdom;” for only God can experience the
future before it happens.[25]
Nevertheless, Kant suggests
that, if a “prophetic history” is to be advanced in a philosophical
manner, “some experience” must be cited as an empirical grounding
for one’s reasoning.[26]
A good example of such an experience, he claims, is the reaction of the general
public in France to the revolution that had begun in 1789; he interprets this
reaction as a clear sign of two moral causes operating in the society:
first, that of the right, that a nation must not be hindered in
providing itself with a civil constitution, which appears good to the people
themselves; and second, that of the end …, that that same national constitution alone be just and morally good in itself, created in
such a way as to avoid, by its very nature, principles permitting offensive
war.[27]
What reason can discern as the
“pure” (a priori) lesson to be drawn from this experience is that
people are inclined, as a matter of their inner moral nature, “to
striv[e] after … a republican constitution.”[28]
This memorable experience “has revealed a faculty in human nature for improvement such
that no politician … might have conjured out of the course of things
hitherto existing …”.[29]
On this basis, Kant advances a “philosophical prophecy”: “the
human race has always been in progress toward the better and will continue to
be so henceforth.”[30]
Although
the bulk of this part of Kant’s book does not deal very explicitly with
the actual conflict between the university faculties of philosophy and law, he
does emphasize at one point (in §8) that “public instruction of the
people in its duties and rights vis-à-vis the state to which they
belong” constitutes nothing less than “Enlightenment” itself.[31]
He then argues that the “free professors of law” who are “the
natural heralds and expositors of these” duties and rights must not be
the ones “officially appointed by the state” (i.e., members of the
higher faculty of law, and all the professionals—lawyers and
judges—who are taught by them); rather, they are “philosophers who,
precisely because this freedom is allowed to them, are objectionable to the
state, which always desires to rule alone …”.[32]
Only philosophers are fully equipped to teach “the eternal norm”
(or “Platonic ideal”)
of “a constitution in harmony with the natural right of human
beings,” a norm “for all civil organization in general” that
“averts all war.”[33]
For “the duty of the monarchs”—and in a democratic system,
the people themselves
are the monarch—is “to treat people according to principles which
are commensurate with the spirit of laws of freedom (as a nation with mature
understanding would prescribe them for itself);” and philosophers, unlike
the members of the faculty of law, are able to convey this insight to the
public, for they appeal to reason as their sole authority.
4. Can Philosophers Be Secret (i.e.,
Transcendental) Agents for Peace?
Had
Kant paid more attention to the stated theme of his Conflict book in its Second Part, he surely would
have said more about the disputes that will inevitably arise between
philosophers who attempt to take up this duty (i.e., to educate the public in
the true nature of law) and the legal professionals and teachers who teach
merely the status quo.
Instead, the remainder of his essay merely clarifies two concluding points.
These points also raise for us the concluding question of this paper: does
Kant’s vision of the philosopher as a secret agent for peace have any
meaningful application in today’s academic and political context?
First, the successful
implementation of Kant’s plan—starting, we may presume, with an
openness in university law faculties to input from philosophers—will give
rise only to a legally
better society, where people’s external actions conform to principles of
civility, without necessarily requiring any change in the moral corruption of
human nature; as such, his plan must be distinguished from all utopian visions, whereby a religious revolution based on “a kind of new
creation (supernatural influence) would be necessary.” [34]
This point coincides nicely with the distinction Kant makes in the first
Appendix to Perpetual Peace,
between the moral and political realms. Once again, we can see how these two
essays feed into each other. The philosopher as secret agent is not concerned
so much with the moral
improvement of the human race (this would be an issue of concern only for the
philosopher who is dialoguing with the theologian), as with how we can improve
the quality of civil society,
the external relations between persons and between states.
Second, the plan can be
expected to succeed only if it is implemented “from top to bottom”—i.e., according to “a
well-weighed plan of the sovereign power”—for the simple reason
that if the state is not supporting the plan, then it will have “no money
left … for the salaries of its teachers who are capable and zealously
devoted to their spheres of duty, since it uses all the money for war.”[35]
Thus, even with all its imperfections and awkwardness, the existing Second Part
of The Conflict of the Faculties
does provide ample evidence to enable us to conclude that for Kant the
university was to be the primary context wherein, through the education of the public in an approach
to law that is grounded in reason, the drama of the evolution of the human race
from a random collection of warring nations to a single, peacefully coexisting
partnership of nations with radically conflicting ideas, would evolve.
The
fact that Kant closes his essay with these two points, and that the same two
points are also made with even greater force in Perpetual Peace, indicates how serious Kant meant us to
take his mandate. The other
aspects of Kant’s plan in Perpetual Peace have already had a major influence on
the thinking of politicians and political philosophers in the shaping of public
policy during the intervening two centuries. Yet such attempts have still been
far from eliminating war: the century that saw the creation of the United
Nations and the institution of a whole body of international law aimed at
protecting universal human rights also witnessed the most horrifying atrocities ever committed by
human beings against other human beings throughout the whole history of
humanity’s time on earth. As technology advances, governments have become
more adept at killing
off their perceived enemies and less willing to sit down with them and dialogue until they reach
the point where they can find a way to live in peace in spite of their
conflicting perspectives.
Although he acknowledges a
natural purpose for war in the early stages of human civilization, Kant argues
that this initial purpose has long since been fulfilled, rendering war
unnecessary in the modern era. Cultural differences, including differences of
language and of religion, should now be viewed in an altogether different
light, as shades and hues on the single tapestry of humanity itself. As we saw
so clearly from our review of Kant’s Conflict, these differences are not to be
abolished, but highlighted,
if the beautiful image of one world at peace with itself is to become a
reality. Here, as throughout his major critical writings, Kant sees conflict
not as an evil to be abolished but as a preliminary step on the road to
concord. Despite its idealistic overtones, Kant seemed to be quite serious in
promoting his plan as a realistic solution to the greatest human social problem, war. Why, then, do the conflicts we have
witnessed during the past centuries, and in recent years, so rarely lead to the
creative concord Kant had in mind? That is, why is war an even greater problem
today—especially given the threat from weapons of mass
destruction—than it was in Kant’s day?
Kant’s
answer, I suggest, would be that the world’s universities in general, and
their philosophy departments in particular, have largely failed to realize
their calling as the agents for peace in their respective societies. This may be due in part to a
lack of receptiveness on the part of governments and/or the law schools and
those trained by them to give ear to the rational arguments being put forward
by philosophers. But in larger part the responsibility lies with philosophers
themselves, who in a majority of cases are quite happy to live in the false
peace of their ivory towers, talking only with each other about the problems and issues they
should be promoting in the public square. Is it any wonder that few outside the
discipline of philosophy have listened seriously to what we philosophers have
been saying?
As philosophers, we must take
seriously our potential role as peacemakers by encouraging our governments to
adopt policies of engagement that promote balance and mutual respect between
different nations and people groups. Although our modern universities are
structured differently from those in Kant’s day, with the departments of
philosophy no longer enjoying a privileged position—indeed, in some
universities they no longer exist at all!—we should still aim to practice
Kant’s high ideal of peaceful, creative conflict. If Kant could send us
any message from his resting place in the grave, I believe it would be to
remind us philosophers that we really can help solve contemporary political
problems, and that once we realize this fact, we shall find we are closer than
we ever before realized to the day when all the nations on earth, despite their
radically conflicting perspectives, may live together in lasting peace.
ENDNOTES
[1] See my paper,
“Kant’s Ideal of the University as a Model for World Peace”
(presented at the conference, “Two Hundred Years After Kant”, held
in Tehran, Iran, 20-22 November, 2004), especially section 1, for details of
the role conflict played throughout Kant’s mature writings.
[2] In brief, these preliminary requirements are: (1) the only valid peace
treaties shall be those that do not provide a justification for some future
war; (2) nations must not be treated as objects that can be bought, inherited,
exchanged, or otherwise manipulated by larger nations; (3) armies must
gradually be abolished; (4) a nation must not use credit to pay for any
military conflict; (5) no nation shall use force to interfere with the internal
governance of another nation; and (6) if or when a war is unavoidable, no
nation shall engage in dishonorable strategies in carrying out their hostile
acts. See Immanuel Kant, Perpetual
Peace, tr. Lewis White Beck in On
History, ed. Lewis White Beck
(Indianapolis: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, Inc., 1963), 343-347. Page numbers
refer to the pagination of the German Akademie edition, provided in the margin of the translation.
[3] Perpetual Peace, 352. Any government that allows the ones who make the laws also to administer them is necessarily despotic, even if the despotism is hidden under the cloak of a popular, democratic vote. Democracy without separation of powers (i.e., non-republican democracy) is despotic because “ ‘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.”
[4] Perpetual Peace, 354f. Perhaps the most fundamental among the principles of international law is that the federation’s purpose cannot be that of establishing “a law of nations as a right to make war” (356). Kant goes on to say (357): “The only conceivable meaning of such a law of nations [i.e., conceived as a right to make war] might be that it serves men right who are so inclined that they should destroy each other and thus find perpetual peace in the vast grave that swallows both the atrocities and their perpetrators.”
[5] Perpetual Peace, 358.
[6] Perpetual Peace, 368.
[7] Perpetual Peace, 368.
[8] Objective legislation
made without
the controlling conflict of the philosopher’s voice echoing in the
subjective background will never lead to world peace, because on their own,
lawyers can be expected to do nothing other than look after their own self
interest. As Kant puts it (Perpetual Peace, 369): “The lawyer, who has made
not only the scales of right but also the sword of justice his symbol,
generally uses the latter not merely to keep back all foreign influences from
the former, but, if the scale does not sink the way he wishes, he also throws
the sword into it…, a practice to which he often has the greatest
temptation because he is not also a philosopher, even in morality.”
[9] Perpetual Peace, 373.
[10] Perpetual Peace, 374. Kant proceeds to
explain three rather cynical (though all too often, penetratingly accurate!)
“maxims” that guide the typical professional at law. He then
challenges his reader to stand up and be courageous in fighting against this
feature of modern culture (376): “Let us … force the false
representatives of power to confess that they do not plead in favor of the
right but in favor of might.”
[11] Perpetual Peace, 379.
[12] Perpetual Peace, 381.
[13] Perpetual Peace, 385.
[14] Perpetual Peace, 386.
[15] Since Kant wrote much
of this book earlier, he may have initially conceived of the idea of publishing
it as a book around the same time he wrote Perpetual Peace. Kant had to wait until
the Prussian king died in 1798 to publish The Conflict of the Faculties, because the First Part
dealt with his religious views, which he had been banned from publishing during
the reign of that king.
[16] See note 15, and the
further discussion of this issue in the main text, below.
[17] Kant uses a similar,
territorial metaphor in the Preface to the first edition of his 1793 book, Religion
within the Bounds of Bare Reason. This was the book whose publication was
regarded by the king’s censor as a violation of the edict against
publishing anything contrary to the church’s official position on matters
of religion. The Preface discusses the basic differences between what Kant
there calls the “philosophical theologian” and the “biblical
theologian,” concluding that the two neighbors, despite their fundamental
differences, have the potential to be “at one,” if only they will
respect each other’s fundamental perspectives and work towards mutual
self-understanding.
[18] I have, however,
discussed this issue in significant depth in two other publications: first, in
my book, Kant’s Critical Religion: Volume Two of Kant’s System
of Perspectives
(Aldershot: Ashgate, 2000), especially Chapter IX; and second, in my essay,
“Philosophers in the Public Square: A Religious Resolution of
Kant’s Conflict of the Faculties,” Chapter 12 in Kant and the
New Philosophy of Religion, ed. Chris L. Firestone and Stephen R. Palmquist
(Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005).
[19] Immanuel Kant, The
Conflict of the Faculties, tr. and ed. Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 79. Page numbers refer to the German
pagination provided in the margin. Section numbers, where cited, refer to
Kant’s numbered sections in Part 2 of the book.
[20] Conflict, 80 (§2).
[21] This is precisely what
Kant did in Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason, only as applied to the
faculty of theology. The Preface to the second edition of that work describes
these two tasks (determining in advance what rational religion should be, then
comparing one empirical religion with that ideal) as the two
“experiments” being conducted in that work. Kant’s decision
not to address directly (in the Second Part of Conflict) the need for such a
pair of experiments as applied to the faculty of law might suggest that
Kant’s own experience of a very real threat of legal prosecution, as a
result of his own violation of government censorship, was simply too fresh in
his mind for him to address the issue explicitly, even after the censorship was
lifted. Perhaps he was all too aware that his own failure to take up the role
of a true philosopher in that situation would have been all-too-apparent, had
he written the Second Part in the same direct way he wrote the First Part.
[22] Conflict, 80 (§2).
[23] Conflict, 81 (§3).
Kant’s use of the words “continual”, “perpetual”,
and “eternal” provide further evidence that Kant is here dealing
with essentially the same theme he was addressing in Perpetual Peace.
[24] Conflict, 83 (§4).
[25] Conflict, 84 (§4).
[26] Conflict, 84 (§5).
[27] Conflict, 89 (§8).
[28] Conflict, 87-88 (§7).
[29] Conflict, 88 (§7), emphasis
added. Kant’s use of the term “faculty” here refers, of
course, to a power of the mind, not to a university department. This parallel
usage of the same term does suggest, however, that a metaphorical relationship
exists (or should exist) between these two organizational structures.
[30] Conflict, 88-89 (§7). Kant
qualifies this prophetic proposition in a way that could be regarded as
foreshadowing Nietzsche’s übermensch: “provided at
least that there does not, by some chance, occur a second epoch of natural
revolution which will push aside the human race to clear the stage for other
creatures…” (89).
[31] Conflict, 89 (§8).
[32] Conflict, 89 (§8).
[33] Conflict, 90-91 (§8).
[34] Conflict, 91-92 (§9).
[35] Conflict, 92-93 (§10).
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