Kant and the Promise of Rhetoric 9780271061115

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kant and the promise of rhetoric

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Scott R. Stroud

Kant ant and the Promise of Rhetoric The Pennsylvania State University Press University Park, Pennsylvania

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Stroud, Scott R., author. Kant and the promise of rhetoric / Scott R. Stroud. p. cm Summary: “Examines Immanuel Kant’s understanding of rhetoric. Argues that the general thesis that Kant disparaged rhetoric is untenable, and that communicative practices play an important role in his account of how we become better humans and create morally cultivating communities”—Provided by publisher. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-271-06419-2 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Kant, Immanuel, 1724–1804—Knowledge—Rhetoric. 2. Rhetoric—Philosophy. I. Title. p301.s824 2014 808.001—dc23 2014013091 Copyright © 2014 The Pennsylvania State University All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Published by The Pennsylvania State University Press, University Park, PA 16802-1003 The Pennsylvania State University Press is a member of the Association of American University Presses. It is the policy of The Pennsylvania State University Press to use acid-free paper. Publications on uncoated stock satisfy the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Material, ansi z39.48–1992. This book is printed on paper that contains 30 post-consumer waste.

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For Sandra and Herman Stroud Exemplars of Love and Respect

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Contents Acknowledgments

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list of Abbreviations

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Introduction: Kant and Rhetoric?

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Chapter 1 Tracing the Sources of Kant’s Apparent

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Animosity to Rhetoric

Chapter 2 Kant on Beauty, Art, and Rhetoric

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Chapter 3 Freedom, Coercion, and the Search for the

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Ideal Community

Chapter 4 Pedagogical Educative Rhetoric: Education, 103 Rhetoric, and the Use of Example

Chapter 5 Religious Educative Rhetoric: Religion and 138 Ritual as Rhetorical Means of Moral Cultivation

Chapter 6 Critical Educative Rhetoric: Kant and the 184 Demands of Critical Communication Conclusion: Rhetorical Experience and the 233 Promise of Rhetorical Practice

Notes

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Bibliography 263 Index 271

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Acknowledgments Writing on a thinker as notoriously complex as Kant requires an extensive network of support for an author. Whether or not the current work is worthy of Kant’s grand intellectual legacy, it is clear to me that I have been the recipient of much support and companionship throughout its creation. I must thank those who first formed—or perhaps put up with—my vague interests in Kant’s philosophy. These include Eleanor Wittrup, Jim Heffernan, Tom Leddy, Peter Hadreas, Richard Tieszen, and Rita Manning. I also must thank my Kant guru, Paul Guyer, for all the classes and discussions on Kant, as well as for his comments on the slew of papers that I wrote insisting on a connection between Kant and rhetoric. My reading of Kant is different from, but clearly indebted to, his influential reading. I also wish to thank those who helped me refine my thoughts on Kant and rhetoric in the pages of journals and on conference panels. I would like to thank Gina Ercolini, Samuel McCormick, Pat Gehrke, Nathan Crick, Paul Stob, Christopher Swift, Gerard Hauser, and Carolyn Miller for their comments, suggestions, and criticisms. Even though we each have different takes on the complex thinker that is Kant, my own reading certainly has been helped by hearing what these individuals found right and wrong about it. The first-rate staff at the Pennsylvania University Press also must be thanked. Kendra Boileau and my anonymous reviewers have been very helpful to me as this book came into its final form. I also must thank my supportive colleagues in communication studies at the University of Texas at Austin. I particularly wish to thank Barry Brummett and Rod Hart for moral and financial support during the semesters devoted to finalizing this book. This work has also benefited from the time and comments of my graduate students at Texas, including Danee Pye, Kristyn Goldberg, Jaishikha Nautiyal, Sakina Jangbar, Benjamin Gaddis, William Thomas, and Joseph Brentlinger. My ideas on Kant, rhetoric, and ethics have been germinating for a while, and I have been fortunate to air some of these ideas in print in earlier forms. Some of the ideas in chapter 3 appeared in a preliminary form in the following article: “Connecting Right and Virtue in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals,” Studies in Social and Political Thought 13 (2007): 2–28. Taylor and Francis is to be

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thanked for permission to include a revised and extended version of the following article in chapter 4: “Kant on Education and the Rhetorical Force of the Example,” Rhetoric Society Quarterly 41 (2011): 416–38. Pennsylvania State University Press is to be thanked for permission to include a revised and extended version of the following article as a portion of chapter 5: “Rhetoric and Moral Progress in Kant’s Ethical Community,” Philosophy and Rhetoric 38 (2005): 328–54. This project has benefited from the comments and criticisms that these earlier expositions have provoked. I thank the known editors and the unknown reviewers for their help in refining my reading of Kant. As Kant describes, the autonomy of any agent (or author) is conditioned by and connected to a network of other individuals. Not all of these individuals are academics, but each has helped me in an important way. I must thank my family, in a range of states, for their constant support and encouragement. This book is dedicated to my wonderful parents, Sandra and Herman Stroud. They are not experts in Kant, so I’m sure they will wonder at much of this project. When that happens, I would simply remind them that this book is basically about what they already know: that the demand to treat others with respect and charity, while still trying to help them in the way we think best, is one of the most challenging tasks we face in our lives. They have done an excellent job at striking this balance, and I must thank them for allowing and helping me to become the sort of human who could explore the challenges of respect and love in the fashion represented by this book. Finally, I must thank my wife and fellow thinker, Natalie “Talia” Stroud. Talia has been my constant supporter when others have wondered why I would ever want to write on Kant, let alone connect him to a rhetorical tradition that seems so remote from his concerns. My work on Kant has been enhanced by the challenging questions posed by Talia, as well as by the inspirations of her parallel work on partisan forms of thought. Any errors in my reading of Kant are certainly my own, but much of what is valuable in this work is surely indebted to Talia’s ever-present support and encouragement.

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Abbreviations Anthropology/APV CF CJ CPR CPrR DR DV Groundwork/GMM JL LEC LEV MM Pedagogy Religion/RBR

Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View Conflict of the Faculties Critique of the Power of Judgment Critique of Pure Reason Critique of Practical Reason “Doctrine of Right,” Metaphysics of Morals “Doctrine of Virtue,” Metaphysics of Morals Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals Jäsche Logic Lectures on Ethics, Collins lecture notes Lectures on Ethics, Vigilantius lecture notes Metaphysics of Morals Lectures on Pedagogy Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason

References to Kant’s work use the volume and page numbers of Kants gesammelte Schriften (1902, 29 vols.). For the Critique of Pure Reason, references are to the A/B edition pagination scheme.

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introduction: kant and rhetoric?

Death often brings on its wings chances to reflect on the meaning of life. Indeed, the death of a close friend or relative not only spurs private reflection but also demands rhetorical activity—speech to comfort the living, to praise the dead, and to send the departed away from this life in the right ritual circumstances. Like any rhetorical situation calling for artful speech, the actions employed and effects created depend on the situation and the characteristics of the specific rhetor. It is such a combination that we see when the philosopher Immanuel Kant felt called on to act as more than a thinker when his friend and student, Johann Friedrich von Funk, died on May 4, 1760. Funk had studied with Kant for only a year in Königsberg, but he had impressed the developing philosopher. His death so enlivened Kant that on June 6, 1760— just more than a month after Funk’s passing—Kant penned a letter of condolence to the deceased’s mother. In this document Kant meets the demands of the situation and praises Funk’s character: he extols the “life and character of the blessedly deceased” (2:43) and uses this opportunity to rhetorically “express the respect that I have entertained for my former pupil” (2:41). Funk is said to have “shown much diligence in study,” to have “lived withdrawn and quietly,” and to have prepared for “an uplifting end with the fortitude and ardent devotion of a Christian” (2:43). Kant also assuaged the grieving mother with the thought that her son was buried at the Königsberg cathedral. So far, Kant had met the demands of a rhetor eulogizing the deceased—he comforted the survivors and honored the dead. These moves are very much in

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line with what authorities on epideictic, or ceremonial, speaking, such as Aristotle or Cicero would advise in such situations. Yet Kant was a philosopher, and he was fixating on ends beyond the situation at hand. In addressing the immediate needs of the grieving mother, Kant also wanted to make a deeply philosophical point—one that concerned how we value life and the myriad activities and pursuits it entails. Life was not about mere worldly success or happiness. This was a message that Kant conveyed in many other texts in many other ways. Here, Kant adapted to the situation in making this point, since simply lecturing on the meaning of life and human virtue would not only fail to satisfy the saddened mother; it might anger her. Kant’s message demanded adaptation, so he ensconces his reflections on life and its values in the context created by Funk’s untimely demise. Indeed, Kant begins his letter to Funk’s mother by appealing to the opportunity opened up to him (and perhaps to her) by Funk’s death: If people living amidst the turmoil of their practical affairs and diversions were occasionally to mix in serious moments of instructive contemplation, to which they are called by the daily display of the vanity of our intentions regarding the fate of their fellow citizens: thereby their pleasures would perhaps be less intoxicating, but their position would take up a calm serenity of the soul, by which accidents are no longer unexpected, and even the gentle melancholy, this tender feeling with which a noble heart swells up if it considers in solitary stillness the contemptibleness of that which, with us, commonly ranks as great and important, would contain more true happiness than the violent merriment of the flippant and the loud laughing of fools. (2:39) Kant is eloquently claiming that we ought to wish for those moments that compel us to consider who we are, what we value, and how we ought to orient ourselves to the changing winds of fate and fortune. Funk’s death, Kant submits, is just that sort of occasion. The deaths brought on by wars often fail to touch those living in “the quiet stillness of civic life” (2:40), but the deaths of those close to us in this life can rattle our everyday slumbers. As Kant puts it to Funk’s mother, seeing the death of one shows us the potential end of our own life—we think, “I am a human being, and what befalls human beings can also happen to me. . . . I find myself in the turmoil of business and in the throng of life’s duties, and my friend just recently also found himself in the same, I enjoy my life quietly and without worry, but who knows for how

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long?” (2:40). Funk’s death should remind all those close to him—including Kant and Funk’s mother—that the values and ease of everyday life are not as concrete as they may seem. Kant wants to use the occasion of Funk’s death not only to speak about the deceased but also to say something of educative value for those listening. As of June 6, 1760, this audience was Kant and the mother receiving the letter. Later that year, however, Kant had his letter published by J. F. Driest to distribute it among his friends. In one sense, Kant was using this death for a purposeful end. Yet by linking his thoughts on the meaning of life and the wise disposition one ought to take in response to this specific event, Kant opened up rhetorical room for such a merger; in a real sense, Kant’s ruminations were a response to this unfortunate situation and provide the context in which Funk’s way of living can be honored. Beyond this, his rhetorical maneuvering in the face of this tragedy illustrated the value Kant always placed on what can be called “educative” endeavors—activities meant to make the most out of human capacities. When we choose to focus on the wrong things, we suffer and corrupt ourselves. When we attend to the right things and act in the right ways, we become what we should be. Thus, it is not a stretch to claim that Kant is educating the mother—or all who read this letter in its later public iteration—as to the worth of reflecting on what life’s value is. Such a reading, informed by Kant’s activity here as a rhetorical response to this death, is buttressed by Kant’s own thoughts. While consoling Funk’s mother, he also makes a point to all that have been in similar situations: “The man of skill, of merit, of wealth is not always the one to whom providence has set the farthest end to his life in order to fully enjoy the fruits of all of these” (2:41). Our lives are too often cut short for reasons we cannot seem to fathom. Kant’s activity in this letter, contrary to the dry and metaphysically focused caricatures we typically receive of his demeanor, is eloquent, rhetorically sensitive, and focused on persuading his readers toward a specific end. Yet the end to which he directs his friends, Funk’s mother, and anyone else listening to these words is uniquely Kantian in that it forcefully advocates the centerpiece to his later ethics—that human life ought to be guided and measured by virtue and not by external concerns such as happiness, wealth, worldly prestige, and so on. In this letter from 1760, Kant gives Funk’s mother (and us) a clear reading of what kind of disposition or orientation toward life we ought to don: The wise (although how seldom one such is found!) directs attention primarily to his great destiny beyond the grave. He does not lose sight of

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obligation, which is imposed by his position which Providence has designed for him. Rational in his plans, but without obstinacy; confident of the fulfillment of his hope, but without impatience; modest in wishes, without dictating; trusting, without insisting; he is eager in the performance of his duties but ready in the midst of all these endeavors to follow the order of the Most High with a Christian resignation if it is pleasing to Him to call him away from the stage where he has been placed, in the middle of all these endeavors. (2:42) Kant does not explicitly claim that Funk was such a wise person. But by weaving in this philosophical reflection on the meaning of life as brought on by Funk’s passing, Kant is rhetorically connecting this educative counsel with the task of honoring Funk in speech. These themes of a rationally guided life, the correct valuation of our projects in comparison to moral duty, and the connection between religion and life are themes that continued to affect Kant’s philosophical work. As is evidenced by his letter to Funk’s mother, Kant clearly had some sort of rhetorical sensibility. One could see his letter as an attempt to reorient those saddened by Funk’s passage (and prescient enough to attend to Kant’s message). Thus, it is not unreasonable to expect some connection between moral cultivation— optimizing how we value ourselves, others, and our various ends—and rhetoric in Kant’s thought. Judging from the received accounts of Kant, however, rhetoric, or the art of persuasion through communicative means, was connected to his system only in a negative capacity. Kant turned down the post of professor of poetry at the University of Königsberg in 1764, even though he was eager for academic advancement and funds. Bravely enough, he even wrote back to the university that he would decline this post in the hopes that a professorship in logic and metaphysics would be open soon. It seems Kant would rather not be fully employed in university life if his only choice was that of teaching anything to do with the artful use of language. This reading of Kant’s general attitude toward rhetoric, poetry, and the other arts of communication has never left him. Scholars have, by and large, not taken up the challenge of examining and reassessing Kant’s apparent antipathy to rhetoric. Most fail to see any sympathetic connection between the study of communication and persuasion (“rhetoric,” in short) and Immanuel Kant. Perhaps this is because Kant seemed notoriously hostile to rhetoric—in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790), he refers to “rhetoric” as the art of “deceiving by means of beautiful illusion (as an ars oratoria).” He also criticizes rhetoric as

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moving “people, like machines, to a judgment in important matters” (5:327– 28). This perceived antipathy toward rhetoric has not encouraged much sympathetic reflection on Kant’s relation to the rhetorical tradition. Only a handful of articles deal with Kant and rhetoric, and there are no book-length treatments of this subject. Philosophers writing on Kant’s aesthetics follow this lead and do not include any extended, nonpejorative notion of rhetoric in their explanations of Kant. Rhetorical scholars tend to dismiss Kant as not relevant to contemporary rhetoric or to read him as an oppositional figure. Clifford Vaida captures the reaction of rhetoricians who do briefly look for Kant’s treatment of rhetoric: “Kant’s explicit comments on rhetoric are few, casual, and derisive. Consequently, he has not been studied closely by rhetoricians.” The ones who have attended to Kant’s thoughts on rhetoric—explicit or implicit—have typically followed one of two strategies. The first strategy is to acknowledge that he disliked rhetoric as a whole and then to find a Kantian rhetoric elsewhere. For example, Don Paul Abbott’s study asserts that “Kant’s disdain for rhetoric is extraordinary” and claims that historians of rhetoric too hastily “hurry on to Enlightenment figures more sympathetic to the art of persuasion.” Abbott acknowledges that “Kant’s characterization of rhetoric as unethical, illusive, and inferior to poetics” did evoke a response from contemporaries such as the Protestant theologian Franz Theremin, and Abbott focuses his recovery of a Kantian rhetoric on Theremin’s work on eloquence. This is an interesting project, as it involves a figure (Theremin) who has unfortunately been left out of rhetorical history. For this reason alone, Abbott’s approach has much value. Yet as a recovery of Kantian rhetoric this is less than ideal, since it seems odd for a figure such as Theremin to “present a vigorous and comprehensive response to Kant’s critique” and still represent a true vision of a Kantian approach to rhetoric. It also would seem as if Kant disagrees with the exemplar of “Kantian rhetoric.” Perhaps a Kantian rhetoric had to wait for another defender after Kant’s own missteps. One can still wonder, is there really no approach to rhetoric in Kant’s thought? Is it the case that he simply rejected a unified whole denoted by the term “rhetoric”? A second strategy taken by those in rhetoric responding to Kant is to pay attention to him as a modern defender of Plato’s attack on rhetoric. This is largely the strategy of Brian Vickers’s admirable study on rhetoric and its detractors, mostly hailing from philosophy. There he documents “Plato’s hostility toward rhetoric, expressed over a thirty-year period,” an animus described as “idiosyncratic and extreme” and as starting a “rivalry between

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the two disciplines [that] persisted just as long as rhetoric was a living force.” Vickers does expend significant interpretive effort detailing a sense of rhetoric in Kant, but it seems like a hollow echo of the Platonic disdain that he finds animating the continuing relationship between these two disciplines. Kant is placed squarely on the philosophy side of this dispute: “like Plato, he made much use of binary categories to privilege one discipline and dismiss another.” Kant’s response to rhetoric is said to be bad argument—it is described as a “demolition without examining rhetorical theory, and without analyzing a single text.” Rhetoric, and the orators who practiced it, was a magical force that overtook the free choice of rational beings and led them to evil actions. Ironically, Kant’s own attempt to side with Plato and philosophy in the battle against rhetoric is judged to be manipulative: “Kant’s desire to destroy rhetoric is notably short on argument, or logic. Like Plato, he uses binary categories to place rhetoric in the inferior position, before dismissing it altogether. He is more original in the strategies he invents to confuse and alarm the reader, who is to be stampeded into a judgment against rhetoric by being told that otherwise rhetoric will stampede him to judgment. Thus he will be manipulated like a machine over which some other person has total control.” Kant, unlike the philosophical approach he is supposedly championing, is as manipulative as the rhetoric he seemingly criticizes. Instead, Kant ought to simply see that “rhetoric [does] not attempt to deprive its listeners of free will, reason, and judgment, but to mobilize them on behalf of a specific issue.” This is the same sort of reading of Kant on rhetoric in Bryan Garsten’s project, which examines Kant’s Platonic disdain for rhetoric and finds in it a “fundamental mistrust of ordinary opinion and judgment.” Kant’s “quick dismissal of persuasion and rhetoric” is based on seeing it as a “threat to enlightenment and free thought” or as a practice that “dispersed judgment and so posed a threat to that authority [of a sovereign power to settle disputes].” If Kant would only recognize the necessity of individual judgment and oratorical adaptation to specific audiences, he would see the value in rhetoric and its art of utilizing messages for persuasive purposes in political communities. These dismissals of any form of Kantian rhetoric are important because they try to take Kant’s comments on rhetoric seriously, but they seem to fall short of the sympathy and sensitivity needed to mine the thought of a thinker as complex as Kant. Simply equating rhetoric to adapted and mobilizing discourse leaves out the worry that Kant continues to bring up—are there not bad or harmful ways to adapt appeals to audiences and to mobilize them to an

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orator’s purposes? The simplistic Platonic move of taking rhetoric to denote only bad ways of moving people to belief is just as simplistic and nonuseful as taking rhetoric to denote only good or beneficial activities of orators concerning the judgment of audiences. More analytical touch is required to truly get beyond seeing Kant as a mere partisan in the debate between rhetoric and philosophy. In addition, it is not clear that Kant thought all human communication oriented toward belief formation in an addressed audience was manipulative and bad. Part of the task of this book is to problematize such simple, universal pronouncements about rhetoric in Kant’s thought. If it can be shown that he has a complex take on the value and use of communicative action, then we must not lump all such action into a term we know as “rhetoric” and judge that Kant hated what it denotes. We must resist the urges to fit Kant’s thought—known only as we synthetically translate, interpret, or read it—into narratives with which we may be familiar, as such a move risks closing off the option of finding a sense of Kantian rhetoric that we may otherwise find. This is unfortunately what occurs when Kant is placed (occasionally due to his own sloppy utterances) on the side of Plato in the battle of rhetoric versus philosophy. This is also what happens when we envision Kant’s operative binary as being one of reason versus rhetoric. This book instead takes the notion of rhetoric to imply human communicative practices orientated toward persuasion, belief formation, and actional change and asks the more complex questions: What senses of such rhetorical action are enjoined by Kant’s complex thought on morality, religion, politics, aesthetics, and education? Taking “rhetoric” not as a simple term but as a complex concept, what uses or forms of rhetorical activity fit into Kant’s mature thought, especially the important topic of morality and the formation of the ideal sort of human community? Asking questions such as these get us beyond simply determining on which side Kant was in the debate between reason and rhetoric or between rhetoric and philosophy. It allows this project to extend the small body of literature on Kant in communication studies and rhetoric that has seen rhetorical promise in his way of thinking about aesthetics and morality. Here I engage a wide range of his systematic philosophical thought, including his later works in the 1790s—his Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, his Metaphysics of Morals, and his lectures on anthropology and education. This endeavor demonstrates that a more productive course exists than addressing Kant and rhetoric by simply moving past him or by fixating on him as an enemy of rhetoric. This new path considers the ends and ideals resident in his moral and aesthetic projects not as exclusive of communicative activities but as integrally

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involving the communicative means and goals we can associate with some rhetorical activity. This more nuanced reading of the value and uses of human communication in his moral project constitutes the rhetorical side that many have overlooked in Kant. There is a clear need to bring Kant into conversation with communication and rhetoric. His thought has had an undoubted influence on theorizing in many disciplines. His account of aesthetic judgment as detached and disinterested has influenced vital strands of twentieth-century aesthetics. It also serves as a foil for the rhetorical theories that have resisted such disinterestedness. Yet Kant sees the experience of art and the aesthetic as intimately connected to moral matters. This book answers the question: can we reclaim rhetoric as part of Kant’s project of moral improvement, of molding an individual into a caring and consistent community member? Part of the answer lies in understanding Kant and his contemporaries better. Another part of the answer resides in employing a more sympathetic, pragmatic methodology to actively reconstruct and build a role for rhetoric in Kant’s system of moral cultivation. Considering the possibility that not all communicative activity oriented toward specific audiences is forbidden by Kant, we can reconsider ways of reading Kant, interpreting conflicting utterances, and envisioning his moral program in ways that foreground a sense of rhetoric we have overlooked or ignored. In pursuing such a project, we can see a way that rhetoric and human communication can help move us to the sort of ideal community that Kant postulates as the goal of moral improvement. A central concept in reading rhetoric back into Kant’s philosophy is the notion of rhetorical experience, or the use of the experience of a message receiver in the persuasion of that receiver. When we communicate with others, we use various utterances and appeals that are experienced by us and our audience over time. This experience might be one that actively requires the use of certain capacities (such as attentive reasoning), or it might be one that thwarts such processes. This book serves as a thorough exposition of rhetorical experience and its connection to morality in Kant’s system. This account is grounded in the Kantian project of moral cultivation—how we make ourselves and our communities more virtuous and capable of instantiating autonomy. In Kant’s terminology, the question of moral improvement is how we move to more cultivated, sustainable, and systematic states in terms of how we act as rational agents. My project illustrates the barriers to such moral cultivation noted in Kant’s moral philosophy from the 1790s (namely, the gulf between the orderly use of external freedom and the consistent and respectful

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exercise of inner freedom) and then discusses how Kant sees religious, aesthetic, and educative means of communication (such as religious narrative and disinterested debate) as ways of noncoercively moving agents toward a more perfect moral state. Thus, my project connects Kantian views of morality, aesthetics, religion, and education through the attention to communicative means en-shrined in the concept of the rhetorical. Such a way of analyzing rhetoric in Kant moves us beyond the simple opposition of the rhetorical versus the rational and into a more nuanced conception of rhetoric as manipulative or nonmanipulative. This is equivalent to what I identify as Kant’s educative rhetoric, since both draw on the powers of reason to imaginatively shape the experience of an audience in such a way as to preserve and promote their autonomy. This project is a detailed pursuit that requires a sensitivity to a variety of domains of Kant’s architectonic thought. Chapter 1 sets the stage for my constructive engagement with Kantian rhetoric by considering the hostile reaction of many in rhetorical studies to Kant on rhetoric. Twentieth-century work has not fabricated the Kantian distrust of the many communicative practices denoted by the term “rhetoric.” It is real. This chapter explores the historical reasons why Kant may have overstated his case in some of his more exaggerated utterances concerning rhetoric. An important cause of Kant’s distaste for rhetoric evident in some of his negative pronouncements was his relationship with Christian Garve (1742–98), an important German translator of Cicero, friendly antagonist to Kant, and “popular philosopher.” Kant saw such a popular philosophy movement and the rhetorical-artistic means it often employed as exemplifying the manipulation inherent in a rhetorically influenced philosophy. Chapter 2 engages Kant’s specific criticisms of rhetoric. It explores the reasons that Kant has for his opposition to one conception of rhetoric. Also, I problematize the ways we translate and conceptually simplify the notion of rhetoric in Kant’s corpus. From examining the multitude of rhetorical terms in Kant’s writings and the various valences of their use, it is far from clear that Kant hated any simple, unified thing known as rhetoric. Following an opening in his Critique of the Power of Judgment, I submit both rhetoric and poetry to another experiment in definition and argue that Kant objected to both rhetoric and poetry when they were motivated by certain end-driven orientations or dispositions. He also allowed room for various objects to be experienced as beautiful or sublime depending on the orientation of the observer. Thus, I argue that orientation is a vital part to rendering rhetoric and poetry as types of practices that create vivid presentations of morally edifying ideas

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and concepts. This account of orientation, creative genius, and aesthetic ideas presages a way to include a reconstructed notion of rhetoric into Kant’s philosophical system, largely through notions of disinterest and the orientation of the ones communicating. To understand Kant on rhetoric, one must understand Kant on autonomy and freedom. Chapter 3 engages in the necessary step of determining the ends or goals to Kant’s normative scheme. This is absolutely essential to reclaiming a Kantian sense of rhetoric, since some of his utterances and virtually all the readings of his detractors fixate on rhetoric in its immoral or manipulative employments. This book, on the other hand, wants to delineate a nonmanipulative or educative sense of rhetorical activity that fits into Kant’s moral scheme of individual and communal improvement, so attention must be paid to what he thinks human activity ought to accomplish. This chapter explores the ideal of freedom and autonomy in his important moral work the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). This is vital, since nonmanipulative uses of rhetorical means are the uses that preserve and promote individuals’ capability to rationally and freely direct their own projects. Kant’s notion of systemic harmony of individual agents acting and respecting one another equally also is revealed. This importantly leads to the developments in his political and moral philosophy in the 1790s, especially in his Metaphysics of Morals (1797). There freedom is divided into a sense of external freedom of action and internal freedom of end setting. In Kant’s early conception of moral behavior, virtue consists of harmony among agents in their external action and in how their guiding maxims valued self and others. In that ideal, fully autonomous state, one does the right action out of the right motives— respect for the moral law and the equal value of others. This chapter argues that Kant’s scheme of moral cultivation envisions a system of moral agents that progress from externally free and consistent uses of action (the realm of right) to a group of agents that act in such a way because of their free internal choice (the realm of virtue). Yet how such a transition effectively occurs is far from clear. How do we get from people being nonharmful to others out of concern for selfish interests to a situation of helping others based on truly respecting them as equal? Force (viz., coercive laws) can only make an agent act (externally) in a free and consistent sense; it can never compel an agent to freely choose to create such harmony because of a respect of the other’s equal value. This is what can be called the “problem of force” in Kant’s scheme. Societies can enforce duties of right (e.g., those commanding one to not externally harm another’s life or property), but an individual or society cannot do any-

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thing positive to move that group of agents toward the inner perfection demanded by the endpoint of virtuous agents in a “kingdom of ends.” If right lies as a necessary, but incomplete, first step toward the system of virtuous agents Kant imagines in his Groundwork, how might we morally and politically encourage movement beyond external consistency of action to the sort of internal respect that characterizes the state of virtue? If rhetoric represents some sort of noncoercive force or persuasion, how can it reliably and ethically move individuals to choose their own paths of moral cultivation? Chapter 4 begins the recovery of rhetoric in Kant that sees communicative means as a way to noncoercively move others toward more cultivated states. This chapter explores Kant’s thoughts on education, a domain that also was subject to the same constraints as politics due to Kant’s extreme valuation of individual autonomy. As was the case in politics, manipulation was not encouraged in the education or moralization of rational agents. Here, I begin my elucidation of Kant’s nonmanipulative educative rhetoric. Its specifications in pedagogical domains are the focus in this chapter, especially the use of examples by a rhetor or teacher to stimulate the educative experience of critical thinking and moral judgment in an auditor. Previous research on Kant has tended to minimize the rhetorical import of example in his thought. He often maligned examples as encouraging jealousy of the exemplar, as creating mere copying in terms of behavior, and as necessitating moral theory to adjudicate good examples from bad examples. I argue that Kant’s writings on education and example can elucidate one communicative means of noncoercively creating the sort of morally virtuous agent he postulates in his moral theory. Hypothetical examples, as experienced means of moral judgment, instantiate the sort of moral disposition that external coercion (e.g., laws aimed at creating a state of right) cannot create. This allows one to begin to extract an educative rhetoric from Kant’s moral project, one that preserves and enhances human powers conducive to autonomy through human communicative activity. This chapter is largely focused on what can be labeled as his pedagogical educative rhetoric. Chapter 5 extends the experiential, rhetorical means of moral cultivation resident in Kant’s educative rhetoric from example and pedagogy to his later thought on religious community. Drawing heavily on his Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793), I argue that Kant advocates the moralizing use of rhetorical force in the forms of lively verbal discussions and ritual communication. He envisions religious community as a “social solution” to a “social problem” (the existence of selfishness in our will, “evil” in Kant’s philosophy). Yet scholars have consistently missed the rhetorical implications of

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this move. I argue that Kant’s religious employment of rhetoric utilizes (1) communication and discussion focused on religious narratives and symbols to present the ideal moral disposition in one’s experience, and (2) rituals as formulaic prayer to perform the moral disposition in a communal setting. The former use of religious imagery and narrative is a Kantian endorsement of the classical rhetorical concept of enargeia, or vivid presentation through rhetorical means. The latter use of performed, embodied methods of ritual communication serves as a valuable and disinterested technique to actualize the sort of ideal community in an individual’s experience. Both means comprise what this chapter identifies as Kant’s religious educative rhetoric. Chapter 6 explores Kant’s advocated form of nonmanipulative rhetoric in its more secular, argumentative forms. A vital part to an enlightened citizenry for Kant was the practice of disinterestedly advocating and criticizing various claims to belief. This chapter examines the argument that Kant abolished critical judgment and speech from the polis, and rejected it. More positively, it extracts from Kant’s various writings on critical thinking, aesthetics, and belief an account of critical rhetorical activity. As this entails the detached advancing and consideration of argumentative claims, it is analyzed in two parts. First, I examine how a critical rhetor would communicate according to this account. The traditional rhetorical topics of how one speaks and how one constructs one’s arguments in regard to others in this Kantian account is explicated. Second, one’s activity as a listener to the arguments of others—or as a rhetorical critic—is examined. We can extract Kantian guidance for how we ought to think about and analyze the utterances of other arguers while donning the right orientation toward them as autonomous agents. Both of these domains together will be said to comprise Kant’s critical educative rhetoric. The conclusion to this work explores the sort of rhetorical advice that stems from this trifold division of educative rhetoric in Kant. This chapter is the most speculative of those contained in this inquiry, but it is undertaken to show that the practice of rhetoric is not inimical to Kant’s themes of moral cultivation of self and others. How one constructs arguments, uses appeals to passion, and portrays one’s own character are all interesting parts of the human actions denoted by rhetoric. A fully sympathetic Kantian account cannot leave them out simply because Kant chose not to write on them. In this way, the final section to this book places Kant in conversation with rhetorical sources and topics that he did not know of or overtly engage but that nonetheless have something to say about the ideal that he did approvingly cite—Quintilian’s invocation of Cato’s “vir bonus dicendi peritus,” or the good person speaking well.

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There will be some still unconvinced by this account, as there are still those unpersuaded by a range of other unique rereadings of Kant’s well-trodden philosophy. These will be those readers who fixate on Kant’s utterances that malign and simplify rhetoric and that seem to cohere with the standard Platonic reading of rhetoric as the absolute and manipulative opposite to philosophical activity. Some philosophers will never get beyond thinking that rhetoric denotes only manipulative, nonrational uses of utterance, and some rhetorical scholars will never get beyond fixating only on Kant’s remarks concerning language use that fit with the standard Platonic antipathy to rhetoric. Yet my account aims to show that with some sympathy and sensitivity to Kant’s moral system, one can see a use for communicative means to move people toward the virtuous. This is Kant’s educative rhetoric in its three senses. It is dreadfully true that Kant did not write or lecture on the art of speaking or the art of rhetoric, but this should not prevent us from seeing communicative means of moral improvement in his work. And because he sometimes (but not always) simplified rhetoric and maligned it does not entail that we should also follow this tactic in providing a monolithic reading of this complex thinker. This book represents one of the most extensive looks into Kant’s thought and its use of rhetorical means, but it by no means represents the end to that endeavor. In a real sense, it merely opens the door for a richer account of the Kant that we have overlooked, the Kant that combines moral progress with certain ways of communicating with others.

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One tracing the sources of kant’s apparent animosity to rhetoric

Most of what people know about Kant comes from his “critical writings,” those in the 1780s and 1790s that expand on the basic project of his magisterial Critique of Pure Reason. This work was the product of an older Kant, a philosopher focused on what he thought he could contribute to the debates of his day. His writing then does have a certain flair, but one may be tempted to see a comprehensively antirhetorical figure. One might think that Kant was fixated on “pure reason” and never came close to the realm of rhetoric—the messy, but important, everyday world. If we look at Kant’s activity as a younger lecturer in the 1760s, however, we see a different communicative moxie. Kant ate every meal somewhere outside his home until well in the 1780s. He ate at friends’ houses for lunch if invited (lunch was the biggest meal of the day in Prussian culture); if not, he ate at a pub (öffentliches Speishaus). He seemed to have liked the social aspects to such meals and the chance to get to talk to everyday, “common” denizens of Königsberg. Kant is said to have left certain places when the discussions became too “affected” and nonconversational or when others expected him to lecture to them ex cathedra. Kant enjoyed talking with others as equals. Such conversational vigor transferred to his classroom, where it came out in the form of eloquent lectures. Kant’s lectures are said to have drawn many more students than his own lecture hall could hold. More than this, his style was excellent. A student of his in the 1760s, Johann Gottfried Herder, recalled Kant’s eloquence many years later, even after the

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two had suffered a drastic difference in opinion over how one should philosophically investigate the human condition. Herder remembered that Kant as lecturer “had the most cheerful sprightliness of a youth . . . his open brow, made for thinking was the seat of clarity; and the most profound and pleasant speech came from his eloquent mouth. Jest, wit, and caprice were in his command—but always at the right time so that everyone laughed. His public lecture was like an entertaining conversation. He spoke about his author, thought on his own, and often beyond the author.” Even though Herder would advocate a more popular and rhetorical form of philosophy, he remembered Kant as being a masterful and eloquent rhetor more than thirty years later. What happened to this rhetorical side to Kant? Why do we know him only as the dry, metaphysically focused philosopher who disparaged the arts of rhetoric later in his life? Part of my overall argument is that part of the blame lies with Kant for this common view that rhetoric played no role in his philosophy; another part of the blame, however, lies in how we imaginatively or unimaginatively approach his thought with rhetorical interests in mind. Why do we commonly think that Kant disparaged the art of rhetoric? If we take the term “rhetoric” to be inherently unstable and ambiguous, we might find it profitable to refine our question—what image of rhetoric did Kant hate in his time, and why did he feel this way toward it? Such a constructive, albeit historically informed, approach might yield further understanding as to why and how Kant overemphasized a certain practice in his pejorative mentions of rhetoric in his later work. It also grants us the conceptual room, fully illustrated in the next chapter, to fill out the sort of beneficial or moralized eloquence that Kant himself displayed in his lively and informative lectures from the 1760s and 1770s. This chapter aims to create an opening for the project of this book by arguing that it is not clear that Kant’s philosophical system necessarily excludes a role for rhetoric as persuasive human communication. The parts of Kant’s work that castigate any notion of rhetoric might simply be an overreaction to dominant forms of philosophizing that overtly allied themselves as “rhetoric.” Understanding the sort of practice of rhetoric that Kant disagrees with is the first step to positively enunciating a sense of Kant’s educative rhetoric. As the later chapters show, one can see Kant’s work in the 1790s as explicating rhetorical, symbolic means of communicating with others that assist in the project of moral cultivation. Here I start this process by attempting to explain the roots of Kant’s hostility to certain uses or types of skill in persuasive speaking (rhetoric, for short). I discuss the historical events that may have led to Kant’s overly negative view of rhetoric.

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That Kant hated a narrow, manipulative sense of rhetoric, or skilled speaking, seems a settled debate to many—indeed, Robert J. Dostal notes that Kant “forthrightly castigates rhetoric” in his review of the fine arts. But why did Kant tend to emphasize such a negative and limited view, as opposed to his positive mentions of eloquence or rhetoric? Pointing to the fact that Kant defined rhetoric as end-driven, nonaesthetic manipulation of free agents does not give us the full answer we desire, since many in the field of rhetoric could simply wonder, why did Kant tend to define rhetoric as only manipulation? Why didn’t he amplify the positive forms of eloquence and well-spokenness he mentioned in the Critique of the Power of Judgment and displayed in his public lectures? The answer to this question, I submit, is that Kant had strategic, agonistic reasons to tend to conceptualize rhetoric in line with the views of Christian Garve. In addition to teaching rhetoric, Garve translated Aristotle’s On Rhetoric and Cicero’s On Duties into German. His thought privileged social position, happiness as a motive, and honor. Garve clearly was influenced by rhetoric and the rhetorical tradition, including both Aristotle and Cicero. Might Kant have overemphasized a negative sense of rhetoric because of the sort of rhetorical commitments he saw evidenced in the form of the popular philosophers? This thesis is difficult to establish with certainty, since Kant surely knew of Cicero, Quintilian, and rhetoric through his Latin education. Yet this way of framing the debate over Kant’s ultimate view of rhetoric may be useful to enunciate a different way of taking rhetoric on Kantian grounds. It might give us further detail into the kind of persuasive communication that Kant did not see as playing a vital role in his system of moral cultivation. In this chapter, I detail Kant’s relationship to Garve and then argue that differences between these two thinkers in subject matter and style are what drove Kant to propose and reject rhetoric as manipulation. Kant erred on the side of his antirhetorical mentions because he hated the connotations and commitments of one of rhetoric’s most prominent defenders, Christian Garve.

Amity and Animosity Between Kant and Garve The relationship between Kant and the Breslau philosopher Christian Garve was one of respect and antagonism. Garve, like Kant, was the son of an artisan. Like Kant, he also was plagued by illnesses, both real and imaginary. And most important, he shared an interest in the enlightenment of the public. As

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Manfred Kuehn recounts in detail, Garve’s relationship with Kant became prominent in the 1780s. Kant published his immense Critique of Pure Reason in July 1781. Many of the early readers of this work were relatively stunned by Kant’s rather idiosyncratic vocabulary and his treatment of the work’s central problematics. For instance, Kant’s friend Johann Georg Hamann (1730–88) would pen a metacritique of it on the grounds that it ignored the natural use of language in human societies, but he would not allow publication of this work until after his own death. One of the first prominent public reviews of the work appeared on January 19, 1782, in an anonymous piece in the Göttingische Anzeigen von gelehrten Sachen. The review had two main criticisms of Kant’s first critique. First, it situated and criticized Kant in the tradition of Berkeley’s idealism and insinuated that other arguments are indebted to Hume’s original positions. Thus, the review of Kant “calls attention to two philosophies that had at that time a rather dubious reputation in Germany. . . . The review characterizes Kant’s philosophy in such a way that it would have been viewed by many as dangerous and something that needs to be avoided.” Second, the review also criticized Kant’s style of presentation. Overall, the reviewers criticized the first critique for being incredibly hard to comprehend, even by specialists in metaphysics. While the review was anonymous, we now know that it was penned by Garve. More than this, Garve’s original version was heavily edited by the journal’s editor, Georg Friedrich Heinrich Feder. As Kuehn indicates, “Of the 312 lines of Garve’s original review, Feder took over unchanged only 76 lines; a further 69 lines were changed insignificantly, but the rest was changed significantly.” Feder was the source of the references to Berkeley and Hume. Kant, of course, knew nothing of this authorship story. Yet he continued to work on a popular exposition of the critical philosophy, a task he sensed as urgent as early as September 1781 (shortly after the publication of the first critique). This hostile review, however, catalyzed his angst and energy and spurred him to work on his Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics. This book was eventually published in April 1783. In a lengthy appendix Kant challenges the anonymous author of the Göttingische review to answer Kant’s defense of his critical philosophy. Of course, he says, such an answer must involve publicly revealing the reviewer’s identity. Garve, seeking improved relations with Kant, answered Kant’s challenge. In a July 13 letter to Kant, Garve reveals himself as the author the Göttingische review, albeit with Feder’s heavy editorial hand. Garve apologizes for his review insofar as he claims he was unaware of the scope and content of Feder’s

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changes. Kant seems to agree with Garve’s assessment, and all seems well between the two men in correspondence from early August 1783. Yet when Kant sees Garve’s original review in late August 1783, he finds that he is still being radically misunderstood. As Kuehn puts it, “Garve’s original review was really no better than the one that appeared in the Göttingische Anzeigen. It was just longer, and it did not mention Berkeley by name. Kant complained, and he felt he was being treated ‘like an imbecile.’ ” With this background of increasing animosity between Kant and Garve, we turn to Kant’s growing work on moral philosophy. Kuehn reports that Kant was working on a project he hoped would complete his Metaphysics of Morals in 1782, yet he continued to be delayed by the Garve-related publication of the Prolegomena and the tasks associated with buying and renovating a new house. His work seemed to start off as a textbook on morals and then eventually changed into his Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, which would be published in 1785. Why did his project shift in this more specific, and theoretical, direction? In 1783 Kant read the newly published translation and commentary on Cicero by Garve, Philosophische Anmerkungen und Abhandlungen zu Ciceros Büchern von den Pflichten. This was an adaptation of Cicero’s On Duties. Garve’s book “brought home to Kant not only the importance of Cicero, but also his continuing effect on Kant’s German contemporaries.” Kant already had been exposed to Cicero in his early education, but with Garve’s book the connection between a classical rhetorical scholar and a prominent opponent of Kant’s thought was made explicitly. As Kuehn argues, “Garve was important. He dared to criticize Kant’s first Critique in a review, and Kant had been moved to criticize Garve in return.” Displaying his argumentative nature, Kant set out to use his work in moral philosophy as an answer or indictment of Garve’s Cicero; Kant’s friend and correspondent Hamann “reported early in 1784 that Kant was working on a ‘counter-critique’ of Garve. . . . It was intended to be an attack not on Garve’s review but on Garve’s Cicero—and it was an attack that would constitute a kind of revenge.” Yet Hamann’s interest in academic fights was soon let down. Kuehn points out that merely “six weeks later he [Hamann] had to report that the ‘countercritique of Garve’s Cicero had changed into a preliminary treatise on morals,’ and that what he had wanted to call first ‘counter-critique’ had become a predecessor (prodrome) to morals, although it was to have (still, perhaps?) ‘a relation to Garve.’ ” The eventual product of Kant’s efforts was his Groundwork, which has no explicit references to Garve or Cicero.

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There is much debate over the question of whether the Groundwork was an explicit response to Cicero or Garve. Klaus Reich takes Cicero’s philosophy (as filtered through Garve’s translation) to be causally influential in Kant’s formulations of the moral law in the Groundwork, going so far as to point out Ciceronian equivalents of the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself and the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends. Gregory DesJardins also argues that Cicero directly influenced Hume and Kant in the content of their arguments, including the latter’s Groundwork. Yet others disagree with the strong causal hypothesis, pointing out that Kant knew of Cicero before his conflict with Garve and that Kant’s moral terminology was developed even before he wrote the first Critique. Allen Wood even refers to Reich’s “unprovable hypothesis” about the influence of Cicero on the philosophical content of the Groundwork and states that “the argument of the Groundwork, regarding what is philosophically interesting in it, proceeds very much as if Kant had not been thinking about Cicero or Garve at all.” Yet things may be different if we change the question from “Did Garve’s Cicero causally influence Kant’s moral philosophy?” to “How might Kant’s notion of rhetoric have been shaped by Garve’s Cicero?” The latter question is more speculative in nature, but such speculation may help us in our quest to resuscitate a notion of rhetoric in Kant’s philosophy. I submit that one can discern interesting answers to this question from the divergence between Garve and Kant on subject matter and style in philosophy. This will allow us a way around the overly simplistic judgments about Kant hating rhetoric as a unified and coherent whole, such as Bryan Garsten’s claim that Kant “objected to rhetoric because it dispersed judgment and so posed a threat to that authority [of reason].” Understanding why Kant may have focused on a limited conception of rhetoric shows us ways to find rhetoric in his system in an imaginative fashion, thus avoiding the need to judge Kant as for rhetoric or against it.

Garve and Kant on the Subject Matter of Morality While Cicero would have shuddered at being called a rhetorician, his thought was obviously focused on the social and on persuasion. Indeed, “ ‘Human fellowship’ seems to be his most central concern.” What is important for our investigation into a Kantian form of rhetoric would be the ways in which Kant—through his disagreement with Garve—would tend to generalize

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rhetoric (the persuasive use of language) in a negative fashion. Cicero will play an important role in this account. In his On Duties (De Officiis) Cicero connects morality to nature in a roundabout way, indicating that nature gave human beings the capacity of reason. Thus, his stoic propensities to valorize reasonable restraint are also a way of extolling the worth of nature in moral matters. It is “the same nature, by the power of reason, [that] unites one man to another for the fellowship both of common speech and of life.” Cicero connects the morally worthy to the “honorable,” a word stemming from terms denoting the value accorded to an officeholder by others (honestas, honestum). Cicero fundamentally ties his view of the subject matter of ethics to communication, honor, and the explicit judgment of others. Garve extends this notion of Ciceronian moral philosophy, emphasizing social position and the unifying role of the philosopher in harmonizing various ethical codes of social groups. Kant, in thinking about Cicero, was aware of “Garve’s arguments to the effect that each profession had its own moral code, that it should have its own code, and that philosophers should make distinct the ‘obscure maxims which people of different professions follow.’ ” In other words, Kant sees Garve as taking honor (Ehre) as a vitally important part of moral philosophy. He also sees the connections between this term (important in Prussian society because of its connection to the artisan guild system) and Cicero’s notion of honorableness. Honor is an interesting term because it implies some amount of externality—others judge one to be honorable. Even if these are implied others, the externality of this Garve-Cicero notion of honor is evident. Later, in Garve’s own summations of moral philosophy in 1798, the externality of honor becomes evident in two of his final summative maxims. In Eigene Betrachtungen über die allgemeinsten Grundsätze der Sittenlehre, Garve writes, [1] Act so that you appear in your performance as a sensible and noble man and that you express the character of an enlightened, peaceful, loving person, and a fullness of mind. [2] Act so that you preserve, in your sphere of action, the well-being and the perfection of all living beings in the same grades as their nature itself is sublime and excellent. Here we see the externality of honor and moral worth evident in his use of “appear” (erscheinen) and “express” (ausdrücken). Also, one sees the additional move that Garve makes—connecting honor to “well-being” (Wohlsein).

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This is a fundamental part of Garve’s philosophy, his commitment to happiness (Gluckseligkeit) as being a central motive of human activity. This focus on happiness is an important point in a later debate between Kant and Garve. In Kant’s 1793 essay “On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, but It Is of No Use in Practice,” he addresses Garve’s attacks on his moral philosophy. Garve had largely contested the Groundwork’s account of action motivated by duty alone, and not happiness. He doubted that one could really know when one is acting from respect for duty or merely from a concern for one’s happiness (self-love, as Kant often puts it). Thus, Garve doubted the ability of individuals to transcend self-love as a motive in moral action. This position is diametrically opposed to Kant’s moral philosophy. As Kant argues in the Groundwork and the 1793 essay, this focus on happiness is misleading because it makes the ends of morality contingent (only applying to individuals seeking that specific way of being happy), and it renders the achieving of such ends out of one’s control. As he puts it in his “On the Common Saying” essay, the desired connection between actual happiness and worthiness to be happy only places the latter in our control (8:279). How things actually turn out is often out of our control or foresight. Kant’s reply is that Garve is right—“no one can become aware with certainty of having performed his duty quite unselfishly; for that belongs to inner experience” (8:284). One simply can be deceiving one’s self that one’s motives are pure and not involving happiness. Kant points out that even though it may be the case that “no one has ever performed quite unselfishly (without admixture of other incentives) the duty he cognizes and also reveres,” one can still “become aware of a maxim of striving for such purity” (8:285). Thus, one can practically use the maxim of respect for duty to shape one’s character into such a being, as opposed to merely giving up on the entire endeavor of morality (as opposed to idiosyncratic pursuits of self-love) as Garve would seem to advocate. The motive of duty, according to Kant, is simply “far more powerful, forceful, and promising of results than all motives borrowed from the latter, selfish principle” (8:286). Whereas Garve takes self-love as justified by the lack of a certain moral psychology of motives, Kant takes morality in a more normative manner, focusing on how the human could act. The importance of this debate for Kant’s notion of rhetoric is simple. Such a disagreement can explain why Kant so often restricts his notion of rhetoric to end-based activity, especially those connected to maximizing pleasure. The limited notion of rhetoric and human persuasion in Kant could stem from the sort of Ciceronian concern with the appearance of honor combined with

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Garve’s focus on happiness as the moral motive. The negative references to rhetoric (typically Beredsamkeit) emerging from this mix would imply the communicative pursuit of favorable judgments of others or the persuading of others to get the objects of one’s happiness. In both cases, the notion of morality implied is not universal enough to fit the demands of Kant’s Groundwork. Rhetoric becomes a tool in a system of moral egoism, or the pursuit of one’s idiosyncratic self-interest. It assumes a fundamentally idiosyncratic notion of morality and thereby doesn’t fulfill Kant’s notion of moral autonomy. This is what Kant calls heteronomy in his moral writings. With Garve-Cicero in the background, one can see why the Groundwork resists conditionally good skills and ends (as in the beginning of the first section) and instead tries to give us the goal of instantiating the “Good Will” through our formation of maxims of action. Whether we can be successful at this project of inner determination is beside the point. Kant believes we can get an ideal of moral conduct from his ruminations and thereby feels no need to go down the path of manipulating others through communication to achieve one’s happiness (e.g., in the partial sense of rhetoric as manipulation). Even though the notion of happiness in Garve and Cicero is not egoistic in the common fashion, happiness of an agent still drives that agent to do good for self and others. This ultimate—if not immediate—focus on self is what often makes Kant suspicious of rhetorical means of interacting with others. Thus, Kant tends to define or explicate rhetoric in the one-sided way that he does because it seems to be a natural implication of the Garve-Cicero reading of morality as being fundamentally about achieving human happiness through interaction with others. If notions of happiness differ, then interactions more than likely will be perceived as manipulative by some of the parties.

Style and Kant’s Notion of Rhetoric Even beyond this placing of happiness at the root of Garve’s morality and reading of rhetorical activity, one can see a fundamental difference between the styles of Kant and Garve. I argue that Garve, through his translation and commentary on Cicero, provides a sort of contrast class to Kant’s project in philosophy. As Cicero was connected to skilled speaking and rhetoric, this contrast class becomes equivalent to the rhetorical in Kant’s mind. Thus, Garve’s style becomes the style of rhetoric qua practice, often leading Kant to evaluate rhetoric as simply skilled manipulation of unsuspecting others. Garve’s

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style can be taken in the following three dimensions: (1) his focus on a popular audience, (2) his desire to enlighten this audience in line with his own notions of happiness, and (3) his use of examples in his moral theorizing. Each of these can be contrasted to Kant’s style, which tends to (1) focus on a philosophical audience of specialists, (2) desire systematic coherence or correctness (over audience effects), and (3) emphasize principles and universalization in his argumentation (over examples). Christian Garve was a philosopher of the common people, or so he thought. He was “a talented translator and publicist who is often regarded as the quintessential representative of the popular philosophy movement that strongly influenced German letters in the period 1760–1790.” This group of thinkers was called the Popularphilosophen, and many of them (including Garve) saw themselves as “engaged in an educational task of drawing the public into philosophy and literature, taking very seriously the goal of popular enlightenment.” The popular philosophers clearly took issue with “scholastic philosophy,” or the ways of doing philosophy that set up barriers to its application to everyday life. Hence, Garve was concerned that Kant’s new, abstract vocabulary in the first Critique was yet another step away from actually engaging the common public with the activities of philosophy. On the contrary, Garve sought to engage the public through his translations of the classics and of contemporary work from the Scottish and English philosophical scenes. The popular philosophers saw their activities as rhetoric, as a persuasive appeal to the public, whether it was in the presentation of a “worthy” classic or the commentary on it that applied the thoughts of another place to contemporary Prussia. Garve and his fellow popular philosophers would later be labeled by Hegel as part of the general category of “Ciceronian philosophy,” further highlighting the linkages between this group of thinkers, Cicero, and the idea of rhetoric. Kant, on the other hand, would eschew popularity for a focus on an audience of philosophical peers. One notes that he published the scientific Critique of Pure Reason before the more popular Prolegomena. The latter can even be seen as a forced reaction to counter the bad press that the Garve-Feder review engendered. Kant clearly didn’t see his approach as popular. This may explain why rhetoric in Kant’s corpus tends to assume a popularized meaning—his main adversaries, Garve and his fellow popular philosophers, assumed the popular form of address and often explicitly allied themselves with rhetoric in theory (Cicero) and in practice (their use of literary examples to make philosophical points). Kant rejected this way of doing philosophy and, in doing so, rejected the notion of rhetoric that appeared connected to it in practice.

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Another important difference in style was in the ends of scholarship. The popular philosophers were political in a “very broad sense,” with their goal being “to promote the enlightenment of the people through cautious education, to strengthen religious belief and virtuous behavior in the public sphere, and to combat any perversion of reason which might result in immorality.” In Garve’s translations and commentaries, he made it clear that his goal was not “historical accuracy” but instead was the improvement of his contemporary audience. His loyalty was clearly with his readers and not the author being translated. Yet this concern for his actual audience betrays one of the fundamental moral worries Kant has with the negative sense of rhetoric—the abridgement of another individual’s autonomy, even if it is done for putatively good reasons. As Fania Oz-Salzberger puts it, “the immaturity of [Garve’s] public demanded, so he felt, conscientious transmission. It meant using the commentary to clarify the text, improve it, emphasize its deserving parts, point out its mistakes, and correct its blunders. The ultimate purpose was to enlighten the readers, not to do justice to an author.” This can be contrasted to Kant, who still believed that there was a meaningful difference between philosophy and the popularization of philosophy. Kant simply believed that what he was doing was the former, an abstract and necessarily difficult endeavor. He did not believe it was impossible to popularize these results, but simply that such a task was separate from the task that he set out to accomplish. Popularizing must be different from abstract theoretical endeavors, as Kant points out to Garve in a letter from 1783. There, Kant refers to the Göttingische review’s criticism of the first Critique and complains that this is “a criticism that can in fact be made of every philosophical writing, if it is not to conceal what is probably nonsense under a haze of apparent cleverness.” Kant was concerned that if one started with the goal of getting the audience to believe some proposition, then one may be committed to obfuscation or manipulation that is in line with this goal. This is what he believed was going on with the “literary cunning” of the anonymous Feder-Garve review, and one can see clearly why Kant would worry about the rhetorical philosophers such as Garve who start out with the primary goal of changing their audience. Garve’s rhetorical style was too close to this driven form of manipulative effect and is thus another reason why Kant was suspicious about any philosophical use of rhetoric. A third difference in style between Kant and Garve was the method of persuasion each chose. As is evidenced by the Groundwork, Kant used examples in a secondary sense, largely after he had deduced his versions of the moral law.

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On the other hand, Garve saw examples as the key to philosophical activity. They could serve as the bridge between philosophical activity and the everyday world of his audience. Garve employed examples in his quest to be a model “self-thinker” (Selbstdenker). While this is similar to Kant’s notion of personal enlightenment (Erziehung zur Mündigkeit), Oz-Salzberger points out that “Garve typically preferred education by example, and the appeal to men’s hearts as well as to their reason, to the rigid statement of truths which Kant deemed available to reason alone. Garve argued that Kant’s critical philosophy was not geared towards encouraging independent thinking and criticism in his readers: it was too technical, abstract, and obscure.” Garve justifies the use of examples in his commentary on Cicero, since many philosophers (including Cicero) feature examples prominently in their analysis “to make their teaching more charming and less abstract.” Examples, when drawn from everyday experience and not merely constructed for the purpose of theory, hold the power to connect with one’s popular audience and to expand what they believe about their era. This was part of Garve’s reasoning in translating texts such as Cicero’s De Officiis or Aristotle’s Rhetoric. The translations themselves served as examples that shed light on one era through their juxtaposition with another time. Within each text, the author can be more or less successful in the contemporary rhetorical situation depending on the sorts of examples on which they draw. For Kant, such a reliance on models and examples in moral theorizing courts disaster. In the Groundwork Kant is quite explicit about the harm that examples can do to morality: “Nor could one give any worse advice to morality than by wanting to derive it from examples [Beispielen]. For, every example of it represented to me must itself first be appraised in accordance with principles of morality, as to whether it is also worthy to serve as an original example [ursprünglichen Beispiele], that is, as a model [Muster]; it can by no means authoritatively provide the concept of morality” (4:408). Kant is worried here with individuals who attempt to derive morality and moral concepts from empirical instances. This is a clear case of the Groundwork responding to the style and rhetorical practices of Garve— examples come after theory, if at all. Kant’s argument is clear: examples presuppose moral theory to accurately and justifiably identify them as instances of morally worthy behavior. He even claims in the Groundwork that we need access to the moral standard of the categorical imperative to recognize “the Holy One of the Gospel” (4:408). Thus, Kant relegates examples to a very minor role in moral theorizing, using them to merely illustrate (but not justify) the categories of duties. The use of examples as the basis for moral theory

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would be misleading at best and manipulative at worst. As I argue in later chapters, however, examples do serve an important practical, rhetorical function in moral cultivation. It is clear that Kant’s Groundwork was not a continuation of Ciceronian themes. Instead, one can see it as a response to Garve’s subject-matter (happiness as incentive) and style (a popular, end-driven use of examples). Kant and Garve were wrestling with the difficult relationship of public enlightenment, moral cultivation, and the role that experts such as philosophers were to play in that educative endeavor. Thus, one can see Garve as instantiating the notion of rhetoric that Kant feared. This sense of rhetoric was connected to idiosyncratic incentives (happiness and self-love), a method of presentation that moved the audience without their explicit involvement as autonomous subjects and used forceful examples to get to such ends. As is evident in the next chapter, rhetoric becomes morally and aesthetically suspect when it fails to encourage the sort of spontaneity or freedom that Kant places at the heart of moral or aesthetic experience. Yet, one wonders, could Kant have redefined rhetoric to capture the beneficial senses of the term or perhaps the communicative uses of language that feature prominently in his moral and political thought? There are clearly references to rhetoric and skilled speaking in Kant’s writings that could be emphasized more—by commentators or Kant himself. This is an important question, and I return to Kantian grounds to rethink rhetoric in the next chapter of this study. With our explanation of the historical animosity between Kant and the popular philosophers completed, we can see better what kinds of theoretical commitments and stylistic practices Kant associated with the negative sense of persuasive communication or rhetoric. This allows us to see an opening for what follows—an exploration into how Kant can and does employ positive rhetorical or communicative means in his scheme of moral cultivation. When we examine his specific complaints about rhetoric in the next chapter, we see the possibility of an alternative way of categorizing and valuing poetry and rhetoric, one that does not essentially connect rhetoric to manipulation and leave mysterious the category of eloquence. As will become evident, Kant said many things both positive and negative about the capacity for persuasive, skilled speech. There is no consistent or coherent terminology employed, however, that captures the evaluative dimension between “good eloquence” and “rhetoric qua manipulation.” Such systemization of the rhetorical is left to us as sympathetic readers and interpreters of what Kant implied in his philosophy. It is all too easy to focus on the negative characterization and assert

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that Kant simply hated rhetoric. This chapter hopefully has demonstrated that there is more to the story of Kant and the concept of rhetoric and that the negative characterization of rhetoric as manipulation that he emphasized at points could be motivated by a strategic reason: opposing the thought and style of the Ciceronian popular philosophers. We need not be beholden to this past battle for strategic positioning, however. With sympathetic eyes, we can begin to disentangle different uses and senses of persuasive communicative means within the detailed later thought of Kant and begin to enunciate positive means of rhetorical practice. What might we find if we start to decrease our focus on rhetoric as manipulation and start to scour Kant’s work for evidence of skilled speaking and language use as forces that work for the moral development of individuals?

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Two kant on beauty, art, and rhetoric

Kant’s animosity to the rhetorical style evinced by Cicero’s contemporary defender Christian Garve reached its apex in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790). This work focused primarily on what Kant calls reflective judgments in both aesthetic and teleological applications. It was in the third Critique that Kant included a specific discussion of rhetoric as well. Kant’s overall view of rhetoric typically is read as negative primarily because of this discussion and the strategic disadvantage to which Kant places rhetoric in comparison to poetry. In Kant’s mature aesthetics poetry, and the beautiful arts in general, seems morally superior to the art of rhetoric. But Kant’s seemingly clear denunciation of rhetoric is a rather complex matter—one that requires us to leave our interpretations open to more nuanced views than we are accustomed to seeing connected to Kant’s philosophical thought. In the following chapters we identify a way that rhetoric can be morally valuable. But here it is essential to lay the groundwork for how the beautiful and the rhetorical can be connected to moral development and cultivation. As the first step in the reclamation of the rhetorical alongside the other arts, I consider one major power of the beautiful in moral matters—its ability to symbolically present vital concepts key to moral experience. This is Kant’s notion of “hypotyposis,” or the vivid presentation of a concept that ordinarily escapes our ability to understand it empirically. Second, I examine Kant’s account of rhetoric and how it differs from the sorts of art (e.g., poetry) that are said to be able to produce edifying effects. What I argue is that Kant’s read-

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ing of rhetoric is not wholly or simply negative; he leaves conceptual room for a positive use of communicative means of interacting with other humans. Third, to exemplify the textual basis for such a recovery of rhetoric in Kant, I argue that the status of fine art isn’t as clearly superior to rhetoric as many read it. In the third Critique Kant even foregrounded reasons to question whether poetry and fine art were ultimately productive of the free play of our mental faculties, thus undercutting a vital part to his reading of art as an experiential symbol of moral importance. The way to save poetry lies in the orientations of those producing and receiving it. If we can recover poetry, why can’t we redeem rhetoric in a similar way? This is the new experiment in which this book engages when trying to reconstruct the sense of educative rhetoric buried in Kant’s various texts.

The Experiential Value of the Beautiful The experience of the beautiful, or what Kant discusses as the “judgment of taste,” the experiences we have in light of scenes of natural beauty or works of fine art concerns those moments when we are captivated by some object or scene and foreground a disinterested attention that transcends our personal (and specific) interests. There is a pleasure, but not the sort of pleasure that accompanies looking at a new car listed at a bargain price. It is a disinterested pleasure in the mere experience of that object or scene. The experience is also connected with a sense of its universal nature—we expect others to similarly judge this object. This idea of the aesthetic is a vital topic in Kant’s third Critique. There are many specific questions and interpretive challenges associated with understanding what exactly Kant meant with his judgment of taste. Many have analyzed this rich topic before, and it is integral to understanding Kant’s aesthetics. Here I sidestep the aesthetic questions that can be posed concerning this work and instead focus on one aspect useful in the quest to understand the place of rhetoric in Kant’s philosophy. One such part is the value that the type of unique, reflective experience signified by the judgment of taste holds in relation to Kant’s moral system. This moral system becomes increasingly prominent in this rereading of Kant on rhetoric, but what one sees in the third Critique is the move to connect the experience of the beautiful closely to the moral qualities of disinterestedness, universality, a certain lack of purposiveness, and necessity. The judgment of taste is a subjective judgment (it concerns an object’s effect on me), yet it is a judgment that comes

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with the expectation that all similar beings would feel the same reflective universality. Why might Kant extol the free play of the faculties experienced in the judgment of taste or in the specific experience created by the fine arts? The experience of beauty for Kant is linked to the idea of moral improvement in a variety of ways. Here I focus on the experiential ways beauty is linked to morality, since such an experiential aspect is vital in my later attempts to connect rhetorical activity to moral improvement. In section 59 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant describes the role that the beautiful can play in indirectly representing an important aspect of our capacities as rational agents. Giving an alternate account from the analysis in section 29 of the intellectual interest in the beautiful, Kant argues in section 59 that the beautiful can cultivate a subject’s awareness of moral value. In addition to all the other effects of the judgment of taste on an individual, this section argues that it serves as a symbol of the beautiful and, as such, aids in the subject’s awareness of the possibility of moral action in the world. Kant begins this section of the third Critique by highlighting the only way our concepts can be shown to be real— through the provision of some sort of intuition of them. In regard to empirical concepts, such intuitions are “examples”; whereas if they are pure concepts of the understanding, they are “schemata” (5:351). Our concept of “cup” is shown to be real through and by those objects we point out with that concept in the physical world. The ideas of reason (such as God, freedom, and human immortality), however, can never be given adequate intuitions in the realm of experience. They are not the kind of objects we see in everyday life. They can be presented, however, in what Kant labels a “hypotyposis [Hypotypose]” (5:351) or a presentation (Darstellung) of a concept as sensible through means other than the giving of a corresponding empirical intuition. In schematic presentation, a corresponding intuition of a concept of the faculty of understanding is given a priori, or before any given experience. The other option for a presentation that goes beyond mere empirical instantiation in intuition (in experience, in other words) is presentation through symbolic means. In this case, the power of judgment provides a rule concerning the form of the reflection between object and concept similar to that of schematization but eschews utilizing the intuition itself as a representative token of the concept (5:351). In this way, a concept of reason can be presented by intuition but not directly in intuition; one does not “see” freedom or one’s moral vocation, but one can experience something analogous to it in one’s reflective experience of a presentation of it through sensible means (such as narrative).

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The symbols involved in hypotyposis utilize analogy to exhibit a specific concept that has no corresponding intuition. The power of judgment first applies a concept to the physical object at hand and then applies a rule of reflection concerning that object to the conceptual object that lacks representation. Take for instance the analogy Kant draws between the hand mill and the tyrannical state. The idea of such a state is represented in Kant’s hand mill analogy by drawing on the rule of similar causality. While Kant is not explicit about the content of this analogy, Kirk Pillow finds that Kant is drawing attention to how both the hand mill and the despot mangle anything that is fed to them—in the former, substance, and in the latter, the freedom of human subjects. The actual concept is not contained within the presentation, but is merely the rule or symbol for reflection of the subject. The hand mill functions as a symbol for the causality of the despotic state, instantiating reflection concerning the similar operation of each in its respective domain. The symbol serves as a presentation of a concept that has no direct representation, thereby allowing the individual subject to grasp the reality of the concept in question. Why does Kant claim that the beautiful is the symbol of the morally good in section 59 of his Critique of the Power of Judgment? The experience of the beautiful involves the presentation of several central features of moral experience. It is not identical to moral experience, but it is so similar in its form and operation (its “rule of causality”) that Kant finds it to be a valuable symbol of the moral experience (which seems to lack a pure and clearly identifiable phenomenal representation). Kant even labels the experience of beauty as a type of duty we expect of others, a claim that may cause some misinterpretations unless tempered by his moral philosophy. Kant surely cannot be talking about a duty to experience the beautiful, as he clearly leaves any such duty out of his moral writings (such as the Groundwork). Instead, he posits in later works such as the Metaphysics of Morals that respect for natural and animal beauty is an indirect duty to one’s self. Kant, unlike Friedrich Schiller, does not claim that taste is a necessary and sufficient condition for moral worth; Kant sees the symbolic presentation of beauty as an instrument for the development of rational control over one’s inclinations and the attainment of moral virtue. Kant’s argument in section 59 stems from the fact that the symbol of morality, the beautiful, is experientially available to all humans because their faculties are all similar in arrangement and can be naturally “activated” in free play by beautiful objects. What is demanded of everyone is the inherent claim within a judgment of taste—it demands the assent of all rational subjects sharing the same mental faculties (CJ 5:353).

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It is in this judgment of taste (i.e., of the beautiful) that subjects gain a symbolic presentation of their moral vocation as a free being. Kant points out that in this experience, “the mind is at the same time aware of a certain ennoblement and elevation above the mere receptivity for a pleasure from sensible impressions, and also esteems the value of others in accordance with a similar maxim of their power of judgment.” The experience of the beautiful highlights the capacity of the agent to be separate from mere sensibility in terms of pleasure, which Kant links to an agent’s ability to be causally moved by nonsensuous reasons (the moral law). The power of judgment, through such judgments of taste, sees itself as giving law to itself—one is being pleased by some aspect of the world that is not directly related to their interests as a specific, animal being. The rules that apply seem to be supplied by the mind itself, even though the mind did not design this object or scene. This experience of the beautiful is contrasted by Kant to the “heteronomy of the laws of experience” in terms of empirical judging (CJ 5:353). In the latter instance, the power of judgment has laws foisted on it by understanding. In the case of judgments of taste, the power of judgment is the source of its own reflective laws. This issuing of laws to one’s self involves the power of judgment in both the inner realm of mental faculties of the subject as well as with general qualities of experienced external objects. Thus, the intersubjective validity of judgments of taste comes from the power of judgment’s connection to the ground of inner freedom of the subject as a moral agent—this is the supposed supersensible that connects the theoretical faculty with the practical faculty to form a unity. As intimated in his previous two critiques, Kant is always concerned with how the two varieties of reason (practical and theoretical) serve each other or combine together. He posits in section 59 that the very ground that allows for claims of taste to be universally valid also relates to an experience (albeit symbolic) of such a substratum of freedom that connects the realms of reason and nature. While earlier parts of the “Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment” (a subsection of the CJ) deal with reasons why judgments of taste claim intersubjective validity, Kant claims in section 59 that the beautiful can provide particular subjects an experience of their moral freedom through symbolic presentation. There are four main parallels between the experience of the beautiful and the morally good. First, Kant notes that judgments about the beautiful please immediately through the act of reflection and not through concepts, as is done by the good. The immediacy of feeling after the experiences of the beautiful or the morally good is a common element in this symbolization of the

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latter in the former. The second aspect concerns the nature of this pleasure— both the beautiful and the morally good lack a connection to antecedent desires. Interests arise after the experience of the beautiful or the morally good (moral feeling, empirical or intellectual interest in the beautiful, etc.). The pleasure created by both experiences comes from human nature’s implication of elements that go beyond sensible determination. In the case of the morally good, the moral law is the nonsensuous source of our autonomy, and for the beautiful, our mental faculties and their interaction with nature highlight a source of pleasure that transcends sensuous pleasure. The third important convergence is that the freedom of the imagination in judging the beautiful object is “in accord with the lawfulness of the understanding.” In moral experience the freedom of the will agrees with itself through its own rational lawgiving—it gives its own law to itself. In the experience of beauty, it is as if the imagination was issuing law in line with the dictates of the understanding, leaving these two faculties outside of their normal hierarchical relationship. Fourth, “the subjective principle for judging of the beautiful is represented as universal, i.e., valid for everyone, but not as knowable by any universal concept” (CJ 5:354). The concepts implicated in morality are universally valid, but they are determinate concepts; this feature results in a strict demand for adherence from subjects. The beautiful involves such a universal validity, but the lack of determinate conceptual content leads one away from demanding of others that they recognize a given object as beautiful. While the beautiful and the morally good differ in important ways, Kant finds that there are enough similarities in their experiential qualities to identify the former as a symbolic presentation of the latter in an agent’s interaction with the physical world. Being the symbol of the morally good, the beautiful illustrates that the worlds of nature and freedom can converge. It is as if a part of the world of nature, in the experience of the beautiful object or scene, was designed by us to please our faculties of sense and understanding. The harmony created in us by such experiences seems as if it must be purposeful. While judgments of taste fall short of being an actual phenomenal experience of freedom, they can point the reflective agent to the realm of the moral through the world of nature. This bridging of the two realms through the sensible experience of the beautiful is Kant’s answer in the Critique of the Power of Judgment to doubts about the possibility of living up to the strict demands of morality in the physical world. Duty involves the idea of a will that includes subjective hindrances (inclinations) and as such locates the challenge to duty in the physical world—if an agent is to be virtuous, one must be able to surmount

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the physical forces (inclinations) in the physical world. The symbolic presentation of the morally good through the beautiful supports the possibility of countervailing inclinations being overcome in a human agent by respect for the moral law. This symbolic experience is taken by Kant to be more concrete evidence for the reality of the demands of morality—the only difference is that the present presentation of the beautiful provides for the possibility of future realizations of moral worth in a given agent’s will. Kant finds solace with the unification here of the two aspects of his critical philosophy—the straightforward command of the moral law and the possibility of the physical world being amenable to our following of this moral vocation. Kant finds that such a presentation offered by the experience of the beautiful can have definite effects in moral development in addition to being a symbol of the morally good (aiding in comprehending moral experience and duty). Humans typically associate beauty with implications of moral quality, but the actual experience of the symbolic presentation of the morally good can have an even greater cultivating effect on an agent. Discussing this value of beauty as a symbol of the morally good and its associated judgment of taste, Kant states, “Taste as it were makes possible the transition from sensible charm to the habitual moral interest without too violent of a leap by representing the imagination even in its freedom as purposively determinable for the understanding and teaching us to find a free satisfaction in the objects of the senses even without any sensible charm” (CJ 5:354). Several claims are evident in this passage. First, Kant explicitly connects the judgment of beauty with moral development, although not in a causally necessary manner. The experience of beauty is one of the types of experience that can help us morally improve. Second, the way taste operates involves the transcending of mere sensible charm to a purposeless purposiveness. In other words, the experience of an object, especially one without a designer or creator, seems designed to get us to react in a perfectively harmonious fashion. This latter state transcends the agendas of specific, limited physical creatures. Taste—reflected and promoted in the experience of the beautiful by a particular subject—is important because it is a means self-cultivation from mere animality to the type of autonomous agent moved not by sensibility but by practical reason. It helps us become fully free and rationally self-directing by showing us our freedom. The imagination is experienced as free from the constraints of nature in terms of purposive determination and also in its assisting the individual in locating pleasure free of sensuous interests. At the conclusion of section 59, Kant makes the important claim that receptivity to the commands of the moral law is height-

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ened by and through the exercise of taste, leading one to suspect that beauty as a symbol holds more potential than merely clarifying the nature of duty. As the present chapter shows, moral duty in Kant’s scheme involves a rigorous commitment to a form of disinterestedness or at least to a revaluing of self in regard to others. In addition to showing us an experiential analogue to the disinterested pursuit of duty, the experience of the beautiful can function in moral motivation as an incentive to be moral. It is an experience that informs as well as forms us into moral agents. With the experience of freedom revealed, we also are motivated to be and act as free in our future endeavors.

Rhetoric and the Beautiful The experience of the beautiful is clearly linked to moral cultivation in Kant’s account. Beauty as analogical presentation of vital parts to moral experience helps us experientially understand and will what is commanded by morality. But rarely does one see the concept of rhetoric linked to either beauty or moral improvement in accounts of Kant’s thought. Why does rhetoric lack the qualities necessary to promote such instances of hypotyposis, or symbolic presentations and experiences of morally edifying concepts? This book’s overarching argument is that rhetoric can create such experiences, but here we must examine why many see rhetoric as antithetical to such morally improving uses of human skill. Kant’s putative hostility toward rhetoric emerges most clearly in his Critique of the Power of Judgment. There, after discussing the free play of the faculties in experience of natural beauty, he expands his inquiry into the beautiful arts (schönen Künste). The subdivision most relevant to this inquiry is his division of “the arts of speech” (redenden Künste), which is subdivided into poetry (Dichtkunst) and rhetoric (Beredsamkeit) (5:321). This division of the speaking arts is also made in his textbook (derived from earlier lectures), Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798). There, he makes the same division between poetry and rhetoric (Dichtkunst and Beredsamkeit), but adds that they share the common characteristic of being “aimed at a frame of mind [Stimmung des Gemüths] whereby the mind is directly aroused to activity, and thus they have their place in a pragmatic anthropology, where one tries to know the human being according to what can be made of him” (7:246). Both are characterized as arts that have an effect on the mind or orientation of the listener. Yet Kant distinguishes between them based on how this effect is pursued. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant describes them as follows:

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“Rhetoric is the art of conducting a business of the understanding as a free play of the imagination; poetry that of carrying out a free play of the imagination as a business of the understanding” (5:321). In his Anthropology, a similar distinction emerges: “poetic art [Dichtkunst] as contrasted with rhetoric [Beredsamkeit] differs from it only by the way understanding and sensibility are mutually subordinated: poetic art is a play of sensibility ordered through understanding; rhetoric is a business of understanding animated through sensibility” (7:246). In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant expands his notion of rhetoric in the same fashion: “The orator [Redner] thus announces a matter of business and carries it out as if it were merely a play with ideas in order to entertain the audience. The poet announces merely an entertaining play with ideas, and yet as much results for the understanding as if he had merely had the intention of carrying on its business” (5:321). The poet, whose art induces a free play of the auditor’s faculties, does not intend this specific outcome. Poets are merely playing with concepts, and their artistic skill makes this a significant use of artistic materials in terms of the experience created in their audience. The orator, on the other hand, intends to accomplish goals and projects that are most likely connected to reasoning and concepts. The troublesome point, for Kant, is that the orator makes this look like play. They are conducting “business” (Geschäfte), a term saturated with end-directed, self-focused projects. Yet they play with metaphors, allusions, and all sorts of tropes just like poets do in their art. On the terms of Kant’s aesthetic theory (viz., practices that create the free play of the faculties), the poet comes out more respected than the orator. Beyond merely appearing to enable a free play of an audience’s faculties, Kant’s rhetor also violates moral strictures. In other words, Kant accuses rhetoric of being manipulative. Poetry is said to expand the mind of its auditors by freeing their imagination; it lets auditors feel the strength of their minds by letting them feel their own mental capacities at play (CJ 5:326). As seen in the terms introduced in the next chapter, poetry enhances one’s autonomy or capacity for free action. Rhetoric fails to freely affect such changes on the mindset of its audience. Such manipulation is a vital part to what seems like Kant’s seminal definition of rhetoric: “rhetoric [Beredsamkeit], insofar as by that is understood the art of persuasion [die Kunst zu überreden], i.e., of deceiving by means of beautiful illusion (as an ars oratoria) and not merely skill in speaking (eloquence and style), is a dialectic, which borrows from the art of poetry only as much as is necessary to win minds over to the advantage of the speaker before they can judge and to rob them of their freedom” (5:327). Kant continues on to say that such an art is not recommended for matters of

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civil deliberation (in courts, say) or in education, since it is merely silvertongued manipulation. Such a view of rhetoric as manipulation is noted by many others who have written on Kant’s relationship with rhetoric, yet few have speculated on where it might come from. Kant surely knew of John Locke’s attack on rhetoric in his 1689 work An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, as it was integrally tied to epistemological parts of that project that Kant valued. In his work Locke put the issue of rhetoric in terms consonant with Kant’s later attack on Beredsamkeit (rhetoric). In Book III of Locke’s work, rhetoric is assailed as part of the “wilful faults and neglects” to which human communication is prone to fall. Culminating Locke’s list of the ways words are misused, figurative speech and rhetoric are defined in a very similar way: “But yet if we would speak of things as they are, we must allow that all the art of rhetoric, besides order and clearness, all the artificial and figurative application of words eloquence hath invented, are for nothing else but to insinuate wrong ideas, move the passions, and thereby mislead the judgment, and so, indeed, are perfect cheats.” Rhetoric, on Locke’s account, is the purposeful use of figurative speech, allusion, and other such linguistic devices to subvert the true purpose of communication—the direct transmission of ideas for the ends of understanding. Locke, like Kant after him, admits that these devices make for “easier entertainment” while listening to this use of speech. These tactics become useful for the rhetor, however, since rhetoric on this account implicates merely a way to pursue one’s own strategic ends through communication. This end is usually not the normal one of conveying truths. Locke continues his account of the harms of rhetoric (more specifically, of figurative language and allusion) by connecting it to manipulation as Kant does in his account of Beredsamkeit: Therefore, however laudable or allowable oratory may render them in harangues and popular addresses, they are certainly in all discourses that pretend to inform or instruct, wholly to be avoided; and where truth and knowledge are concerned, cannot but be thought a great fault, either of the language or person that makes use of them. What, and how various, they are, it will be superfluous here to take notice; the books of rhetoric which abound in the world, will instruct those who want to be informed. Only I cannot but observe, how little the preservation and improvement of truth and knowledge, is the care and concern of mankind; since the arts of fallacy are endowed and preferred. It is evident how much men

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love to deceive, and be deceived, since rhetoric, that powerful instrument of error and deceit, has its established professors, is publicly taught, and has always been had in great reputation. For Locke, rhetoric was opposed to truth and truth-conveying discourse; it obfuscated important matters, typically for the ends of the orator. Kant’s linkage of rhetoric with deceit and “beautiful illusion” clearly echoes this Lockean criticism, yet Kant adds a more complex moral framework to this objection. Not only does rhetoric obscure truth, it also violates moral limits concerning humans that ought not be transgressed. How does rhetoric violate not only the demands of truth conveyance but also morality? It does this by being linked to manipulation of humans through their passions, a part of the human character that is importantly separate for Kant from their powers of reason. Reason, in its practical and theoretical form, plays an important role in human self-direction of activities of judgment. The passions were a constant threat to such free determination of our activities in this world. Rhetoric seemed to aim at these passional elements. Where did Kant get this additional characterization of rhetoric? Beyond Garve’s rhetorical self-styling and Ciceronian sympathies, it is useful to look to views of rhetoric that Kant may have had access to in his own time. By its nature, such an endeavor is necessarily speculative, since Kant does not clearly document his rhetorical explorations or influences. Yet we know that Kant seemed to know something about the work of Hugh Blair (who wrote on persuasion, rhetoric, and eloquence), although there are some indications that Kant seemed to not have read him very carefully. Blair had defined the core of rhetoric— “eloquence”—as the “art of persuasion; or the art of speaking in such a manner as to attain the end for which we speak. Its most essential requisites are, solid argument, clear method, and an appearance of sincerity in the speaker, with such graces of style and utterance, as shall invite and command attention.” The German translation of Blair that Kant would have had access to renders eloquence as “the art of persuasion” in the same terms that Kant eventually uses in the third Critique: die Kunst zu überreden. Yet whereas Blair’s definition of eloquence builds argument into rhetorical practice, other parts of Blair’s work build up the relationship between eloquence as art of persuasion and the passionate aspects of human nature. It is this relationship that Kant emphasizes in his account of Beredsamkeit as die Kunst zu überreden. Kant seems to resonate more with the hints in Blair’s account that describe the nature of the highest form of eloquence as “always

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the offspring of passion” (in the German translation, “jederzeit die Wirkung der Leidenschaft”). For Blair, this “higher degree of eloquence” involves “a greater power [that] is exerted over the human mind, and by which we are not only convinced, but are interested, agitated, and carried along with the speaker: our passions rise with his; we enter into all his emotions. . . . We are prompted to resolve, or to act, with vigor and warmth.” Blair can be seen as attributing the cause of audience action to the external effect of the orator stoking their emotions, as he explains that “by passion we mean that state of the mind [translated as “Zustand der Seele”] in which it is agitated and fired by some object it has in view.” The mindless, passionate nature of this type of persuasion emerges later in Blair’s description when he glosses it as “the universally acknowledged effect of enthusiasm in public speaking, for affecting their audience.” The translation of the latter part of this statement in the German edition of Kant’s day highlights the emotional, almost physical, forces at work: what is recognized is the “allgemein anerkannte Wirkung des Enthusiasmus und Art von Wärme des Redners auf die Gemüther der Zuhörer.” “Enthusiasm” (Enthusiasmus) in a speaker and the physical “heating” (Wärme des Redners auf die Gemüther der Zuhörer) of the passions of a listener by a speaker are not morally laudatory communicative means for Kant. They are part of the “deceitful art [hinterlistigen Kunst]” that uses language to “move people, like machines, to a judgment in important matters which must lose all weight for them in calm reflection.” The use of emotional appeals to stoke the passions in a way that they would not naturally and of an individual’s own accord be raised is problematic. This was the “art of the orator [Rednerkunst] (ars oratoria)” that used “the weakness of people for one’s own purposes (however well intentioned or even really good these may be)” (CJ 5:328n). From Kant’s point of view, such a powerful use of human communication as encapsulated by the concepts of Beredsamkeit and Rednerkunst was ultimately impugnable on moral grounds. The practice of using language to subvert the understanding through evoking the passions represented an external control over what should be an internally guided agent; such a use of rhetoric violates human autonomy. Other sources might have contributed to this characterization of rhetoric (e.g., that denoted by Kant’s description of Beredsamkeit and Rednerkunst). One of Kant’s pupils from the early 1780s, Daniel Jenisch (1762–1804), translated George Campbell’s 1776 Philosophy of Rhetoric into German in 1791. This translation was published a year after the first printing of Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment in April 1790, but one can speculate that Campbell’s

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ideas on rhetoric might have been in circulation in Kant’s intellectual circles before their formal publication. And, like Blair’s work, we can use these in a hermeneutically sympathetic attempt to figure out what trends of the time Kant’s views on rhetoric might reflect. Similar to Blair’s views, Campbell links rhetoric to purposive effects on an auditor’s passions. Campbell saw the art of rhetoric as a “useful art” that “not only pleases, but, by pleasing commands attention, rouses the passions, and often at last subdues the most stubborn resolution.” It is purposive in that it can be aimed at a variety of ends a speaker may pursue; indeed, at the very beginning of Book I, Campbell defines rhetoric by the presence of an end being pursued through speech. This sort of end-directedness combines with a powerful evocation of the passions to form the same sort of worries that Blair’s account might have provoked. But what can be said is that wherever Kant received his views of Beredsamkeit and Rednerkunst, Kant worried about a practice of manipulative rhetoric. This practice, through using and evoking passions in pursuit of a speaker’s own ends, results in an audience member’s “maxims and dispositions” being “subjectively corrupted” (CJ 5:327). Put simply, the evocation of emotions subverts the audience’s powers of reason to get their cooperation in pursuit of a speaker’s ends, which renders such a practice manipulative and harmful to audience freedom. Reason is the vital aspect to humans truly determining their own projects and actions. By subverting or minimizing the role of reason in the decision-making activities of their audience, rhetors harm an audience’s capacity for self-direction or autonomy. What Kant is objecting to is the fact that such rhetorical deception moves people without their choosing the maxims of action or without an accurate knowledge of the principle on which they are acting (viz., in cases of deception). As Robert J. Dostal puts it, the externality of this sort of rhetoric’s force means that “Rhetoric confines one to Unmündigkeit [tutelage]—external direction.” Of course, we know from Kant’s 1784 essay, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” that “enlightenment is the human being’s emergence from his self-incurred minority [Unmündigkeit]” (8:35). Such a rhetoric moves people as machines and keeps them in a state of non–self-direction. It does nothing to lift them from a state of minority or control by another agent. Kant’s notion of self-direction is elucidated in the 1780s and 1790s in the form of the moral autonomy that he wanted agents to cultivate. In either vocabulary, however, what Kant prized was rational self-direction, and rhetoric seemed to be a threat to the selfdirection of those whom a speaker addressed.

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Does this demonstrate that Kant clearly had one denotation to the term “rhetoric” and the sort of practice it implied? The negative notion of rhetoric as the “art of the orator” is Rednerkunst, a “deceitful art” (CJ 5:328n). But this is not the whole of rhetoric in Kant, especially if we mean by that term persuasive uses of skilled speech. What one sees is that in all his major discussions of this term as pejorative practice, room is still left for positive employments. We must remember that Kant explicitly excludes from his prominent definition of rhetoric (Beredsamkeit) “skill in speaking (eloquence and style) [bloße Wohlredenheit (Eloquenz und Stil)]” (5:327). And right next to his disparagement of this “deceitful art,” the “art of the orator [Rednerkunst] (ars oratoria),” Kant praises “eloquence and well-spokenness [Beredtheit und Wohlredenheit] (together, rhetoric [Rhetorik])” which “belong to beautiful art” (5:328n). Thus, while Kant hates a sense of rhetoric, it is unclear that his thought excludes all senses of rhetoric as skilled speaking. Finding a notion of rhetoric in Kant depends on what is identified as textually representing the concept of rhetoric and what interpretative choices are made in its emphasis. If we pose the question in a simple fashion—Kant has a notion of rhetoric, what is it and what is its value?—then the answer we will identify will be equally simple. Yet this simplicity is misleading. Taking Rednerkunst (or Beredsamkeit as eloquence in speaking for harmful goals) as the whole of Kant’s notion of rhetoric leaves us with rhetoric being glossed as manipulative skill in communication. There are other leads to follow, of course, that make the situation much more complex. Taking Kant’s references to Eloquenz and Rhetorik, or his nonpejorative references to the skill of Beredsamkeit or Beredtheit, one sees room to construct a Kantian sense of skillful communication that moves people in a nonmanipulative fashion. Such a sense of nonmanipulative rhetoric focuses on eloquently and skillfully using language to encourage the sort of dispositional change that is the core of Kant’s moral philosophy. Such a reclaimed, sympathetic sense of Kantian rhetoric can unite the goals of education and moral cultivation with the means of communication. Such communicative encouragement is not motivated by intentions to subvert the autonomy of other agents. It will freely educate or cultivate them. Indeed, after he indicates in the Critique of the Power of Judgment that “rhetoric” (as deception) is not suited for education, Kant advocates a certain way of communicating in educational situations—that of the use of ideas of reason (and morality) through “a lively presentation in examples [lebhaften Darstellung in Beispielen]” (5:327). This is similar to his advocacy of

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religious imagery, examples, and narrative in his Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) as a “vivid presentation” of the ideas of morality (6:132–33). As chapter 5 explicates, the religious context shows the applicability of persuasive communicative means (rhetoric in a nonpejorative sense) to adult development or cultivation. A reclaimed Kantian rhetoric uses examples, imagery, and narrative not to mislead the judgment of agents and thereby harm their quest for autonomy, but instead to engage agents’ judgment with ideas of moral importance. The main point that emerges from these considerations is that any claim that Kant hates the concept of rhetoric is misleading in how it simplifies both rhetoric and Kant’s stance on that communicative term. One conceptually shorthands the matter when one says, like Don Paul Abbott, that “Kant’s disdain for rhetoric is extraordinary.” There are clearly uses of communicative means of which Kant disapproves, but the general concept of rhetoric is not so perfectly determined that one can judge Kant as hostile to all its implications and employments. The fact is that Kant uses a variety of ways to denote communicative means and practices, some of which we have discussed in this chapter and others which appear in later chapters. The multitude of German terms (see table 1) that Kant uses to discuss the general idea of skilled, eloquent speaking necessarily ensures this will be complex conceptual terrain. Which one of these terms stands for rhetoric as a unified conceptual whole? What justifies an interpretative decision to exclude the context and use of some of these terms for the context and use of others? If one defines rhetoric as only that persuasion toward harmful, manipulative ends, then one can rightfully say Kant opposed “rhetoric.” Perhaps one could tether such a view to Kant’s use of Beredsamkeit. But how do we account for Kant’s positive conceptions of eloquence or even Rhetorik? Surely such terms should fit into a comprehensive conception of rhetoric. The most defensible route would be to recognize that the concept of communicatively interacting with others extends beyond one way of inflecting the practices of persuading others. What often misleads us are the simplifications and choices necessarily involved in translation and interpretation. Beredsamkeit is translated in the Critique of the Power of Judgment as “rhetoric” and, more important, as a practice that entails manipulation. Nearby, however, Eloquenz and Rhetorik are used and translated as “eloquence” and “rhetoric” in nonmanipulative senses. Beredsamkeit could as easily been translated as “eloquence.” Clearly, the larger genus of “skilled speaking” or eloquence is rel-

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Possible terms for “rhetoric” in Kant

Ausdruck Beredsamkeit Beredtheit bloße Wohlredenheit Eloquenz und Stil die Kunst zu überreden die redenden Künste Rednerkunst Rhetorik Sprache Sprechen Überredung Wohlredenheit

expression rhetoric eloquence skill in speaking eloquence and style the art of persuasion the speech arts the art of the orator rhetoric language speech persuasion well-spokenness

evant to Kant’s moral project. If one honors the complexity of the phenomena of human communication and the range of terms being used by Kant, one can conceptualize rhetoric simply as the persuasive use of language in community with others. The clearest point at which Kant’s various senses of rhetoric come into contact occurs in his Critique of the Power of Judgment. In one important passage that I have already noted, we see the foundation for the multivalent sense of rhetoric I want to make explicit in Kant’s thought. There, he differentiates “rhetoric [Beredsamkeit], insofar as by that is understood the art of persuasion, i.e., of deceiving by means of beautiful illusion (as an ars oratoria)” from “skill in speaking (eloquence and style) [bloße Wohlredenheit (Eloquenz und Stil)]” (5:327). Kant then objects to rhetoric being used in education or civil affairs, since these are such serious matters. What is telling, however, is the room for alternate conceptions of rhetoric that Kant leaves while he castigates one specific form of communicative practice. Kant advises that instead of rhetoric in these serious matters, we ought to rely on The merely distinct concept of these sorts of human affairs, combined with a lively presentation in examples [lebhaften Darstellung in Beispielen], and without offense against the rules of euphony in speech or of propriety in expression, for ideas of reason (which together constitute eloquence [Wohlredenheit]), already has in itself sufficient influence on human minds, without it being necessary to also bring to bear the machinery of persuasion [Maschinen der Überredung], which, since it can also be used for glossing over or concealing vice and error, can never entirely eradicate the deep-seated suspicion of artful trickery. (5:327)

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This passage, when combined with the former dismissals of rhetoric, contains the distinction between the sort of communicative practices Kant finds as morally valuable and those that he finds morally faulty. We can label these two senses of rhetoric as persuasive communicative interaction with others as (1) manipulative rhetoric and (2) nonmanipulative rhetoric. Later chapters give us the conceptual resources to flesh out the latter category as educative in quality and effect. For now, the conceptual contrast between these two uses is enough to show Kant’s take on the potentialities of communication. Manipulative rhetoric can be seen to have the following three characteristics. First, it involves an inequality of knowledge, mainly between what speakers know about their intentions and what the audience thinks they know about the speakers’ intentions. Such a lack of publicity of the speakers’ ultimate plans for the communicative encounter is essential for the sorts of deception and manipulation that Kant will fault on moral grounds. Second, this sort of rhetoric exerts a causal force on its listeners. It short-circuits their ability to rationally agree to what is said in the same way that speakers agree or disagree (for instance, in the case of speakers not “signing on” to a lie they are telling) and merely moves them as a machine. How rhetoric can treat humans as inherently valuable rational beings, or as machines with causality, is a theme in later chapters of this work. Third, another hallmark to this sort of rhetoric would be the idiosyncrasy of its goals. This is not as evident from the passage as the other two features, but it is there; when one resorts to “trickery,” it is only through keeping private one’s own goals in the interaction. One’s goals and ends in such an interaction tend to be hidden and self-focused—they don’t involve others the same way they implicate one’s self, and one does not give others the chance to rationally agree to help one in the pursuit of these goals. They are moved like machines for one’s purposes. The second sort of rhetoric—what I call nonmanipulative rhetoric—is intimated in this passage. It has four characteristics, all of which are explicated through the course of this book. First, nonmanipulative rhetoric features domain-specific concepts and knowledge. There is something to talk about and of which to persuade others. These are not merely pure ideas of reason, since Kant draws a distinction in this passage between “ideas of reason” and “the merely distinct concept of these sorts of human affairs.” He must be pointing to different constituents of education: parts that are specific to its practice and parts that reside in one’s faculty of practical reason (ideas of human moral worth, say). Second, when one argues about such matters, they do not speak the language of the mind. Their speech involves what Kant calls “lively pre-

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sentations,” especially through examples. As demonstrated in later chapters, there are a variety of techniques for using language to make present or palatable ideas resident in human reason. In other words, rhetorical style plays a role in “hypotyposis,” or making understandable abstract ideals to human agents who often want to be very concrete and specific. Third, this nonmanipulative practice of rhetoric does not offend certain negative rules or principles. Kant gestures toward “the rules of euphony in speech [Sprache] or of propriety in expression [Ausdruck],” and we can take him as meaning a moral sense of self-regulation, as hinted at with his use of Wohllauts and Wohlanständigkeit (“euphony in speech” and “propriety in expression,” respectively). He clearly advocates vivid, domain-sophisticated speech that does not cross the lines of “respectability” or “good soundingness.” These terms are not direct analogues with his moral concepts of choice, but it is clear that Kant’s sense of nonmanipulative rhetoric enshrines a great amount of respect for the various parties in the interaction. This respect for the plurality of agents involved in moral activity is a hallmark of Kant’s moral thought, starting with its valuation of rational agency in any form (as either speaker/agent or audience/ patient). Fourth, Kant’s nonmanipulative rhetoric features goals that are public or transitive across agents. Later chapters explore this further, but manipulative rhetoric typically gets its force and direction from individualized ends; nonmanipulative rhetoric features ends that are at least known to all and communicative practices that do not draw their power from sources unknown to one party (such as an audience ignorant of speakers’ lack of belief in their own utterances about some matter). Manipulative rhetoric is characterized by one agent treating other agents in a way that subverts their rational cooperation, whereas nonmanipulative rhetoric involves an agent using ways of moving and improving other agents that respects the audience’s powers of self-direction. This second sense is the sort of morally cultivating or educative rhetoric that this book explores, arguing that there are vital uses of nonmanipulative rhetoric that Kant encourages. As opposed to Dostal’s accusation that Kant’s only positive sense of rhetoric is as “style,” I make the argument that educative rhetoric does specify elements of invention and arrangement of content that have a vital impact on the states and powers of an audience. How one talks and argues has important educative significance in the quest to morally affect others. One must also notice that the vital difference between these two classes of rhetoric is not a specific tactic (e.g., the use of imaginative or figurative language) but instead the orientation behind the use of given tactics in specific situations by a rhetor. Figurative

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language can be used in a speaker’s purposive scheme to disempower the audience, or it could be used with the intention of empowering the audience. The vital feature of the immoral orientation is the valuing of the self-focused ends and goals over the ends and capacity for choice in the audience. The orientation behind manipulative uses of speech by some rhetors foregrounds the intention to use their audience as a mere means, whereas others might want to get their audiences to freely agree to pursue a certain presented path of action. In the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant refers to Quintilian’s ideal rhetor (misattributed to Cicero, however) as a moralized and eloquent agent: “He who has at his command, along with clear insight into the facts, language in all its richness and purity, and who, along with a fruitful imagination capable of presenting his ideas, feels a lively sympathy for the true good, is the vir bonus dicendi peritus, the speaker without art but full of vigor, as Cicero would have him, though he did not himself always remain true to this ideal” (5:328n). Regardless of his disagreements with the details of Cicero’s moral thought, Kant agrees with this general ideal of the perfect rhetor—one who is oriented or moralized in the right way and who consequently uses communicative means in interacting with an audience in the right way. Like Kant’s praise of the beautiful, such orators have imaginative ways of presenting ideas central to morality. They have access to domain-specific knowledge, as well as the publically accessible ideas of reason (such as the ideas of morality). Future chapters flesh out what moralization meant to Kant, but here it is enough to say that the orientation or disposition guiding a particular rhetor is vital in determining if the activity manipulates the audience, or if it respects and enhances that audience’s capacity for rational self-direction. The ideas of morality are not simply a way to affect an audience; they also govern a speaker or rhetor’s actions in pursuing specific goals. An ideal rhetor values the persons that compose the audience as morality would command. Assuming the focus on orientation as vital for analyzing the moral worth behind one’s concrete actions, there is much room left for an account of what kinds of communicative choices Kant would allow and encourage and those that he would find to be manipulative. The following chapters in this book provide a full account of what makes those practices typically implied by Kant’s mentions of Beredsamkeit undesirable and those implied by the mentions of Beredtheit, Rhetorik, Wohlredenheit, and Eloquenz desirable. The latter group of practices adds up to Kant’s educative rhetoric and is contrasted to the sense of manipulative rhetoric that Kant castigates.

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Problematizing Poetry, Recovering Rhetoric Even if we see the valuable moral role the experience of beauty plays, and the conceptual room to allow sympathetic senses of rhetoric into our reading of Kant’s overall project, one more problem arises. Rhetoric as purposive language use is not the fine art of poetry. Even if we think of rhetoric as the nonmanipulative use of skilled speech, the danger still exists that it is merely subtle manipulation of an audience through their passions. Poetry, as a fine art, is thought to avoid such a business of affecting a purposive change in an audience, whereas most rhetoric (even sympathetically characterized) does not. Poetry is the sort of linguistic practice that could create the free play of the faculties that Kant tied to the experience of the beautiful. Poetry is connected to taste and beauty primarily because of this freedom from practical ends. Rhetoric frequently moves people (often as machines) because of means enabled by an unscrupulous orator’s orientation, whereas poetry makes no pretenses to such end-based endeavors. Poets merely play with ideas in poems, whereas rhetors seem like they are playing with ideas in their speeches. In reality, rhetors (with good or bad intentions) do this for certain ends of success or effectiveness. This clearly compromises the universality and necessity of the aesthetic experience engendered by the use of persuasive speech, as these ends are one-sided (held only by the rhetor) and are not essential (they are chosen contingently by the rhetor). Kant notes that “beautiful art must be free art in a double sense: it must not be a matter of remuneration, a labor whose magnitude can be judged, enforced, or paid for in accordance with a determinate standard; but also, while the mind is certainly occupied, it must feel itself to be satisfied and stimulated (independently of remuneration) without looking beyond to another end” (CJ 5:321). Beautiful art cannot be an activity done through coercion or force of some sort and must not be connected too closely with a teleological end in the activity. Most rhetoric, on Kant’s account, would definitely fail the latter consideration, as it is clearly end-driven. Indeed, this is what enables its manipulative extremes—an agent wants a goal, so he or she says certain things that are supposed to help achieve that goal when attended to by an audience. The audience’s concerns or status as rational agents are secondary to the achieving of that specific end chosen by rhetors. Even in nonmanipulative employments, the purposiveness still exists—rhetoric seems at base to imply a commitment to somehow persuading or moving an audience to some end.

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Poetry lacks such an obvious teleology. All the poet does is “announce a mere play with ideas, but accomplishes something that is worthy of business, namely providing nourishment to the understanding in play, and giving life to its concepts through the imagination” (CJ 5:321). The poet, for Kant, doesn’t try to change the audience; this effect simply happens as a fortunate side effect. This benefit is provided through the free play induced in an auditor by the poet and by the content of poetic art. This latter content is captured in Kant’s notion of aesthetic ideas (ästhetischer Ideen). Whereas other ideas and concepts presented in language contain rules for their construction and application, aesthetic ideas share with rational ideas the distinction of going beyond the world of sense in some important fashion. Rational ideas, or ideas of reason (Vernunftideen), contain a concept of the supersensible and thus cannot be wholly captured in any given sensible intuition (5:342). These ideas of reason can be presented through hypotyposis, though. Included in this category are the ideas of freedom, God, and immortality from Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (1788). Aesthetic ideas, on the other hand, “cannot become a cognition, because [they are] an intuition (of the imagination) for which a concept can never be found adequate” (5:342). An aesthetic idea is a “representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e., concept, to be adequate to it, which consequently, no language fully attains or can make intelligible” (5:314). Poets can use aesthetic ideas in their work, even though their art is linguistic, because they use language to point at these ideas. Their work does not determinately or concretely exhaust the content of these concepts. Poetry leads to elaborative rich thinking, whereas other uses of language (say, rhetoric) lead to matters being settled in thought or action. On this Kantian view, rhetoric leads to decisive action; poetry leads to more free play involving thought and rich concepts that have no simple meaning. Thus, two main problems stand out for a comprehensive concept of rhetoric being connected to Kant’s ideal of art that somehow connects to the experiential benefits of the beautiful. First, rhetoric is essentially end-driven, so it might be seen as effectively manipulative and nonaesthetic on Kantian grounds. It does not encourage the free play of the faculties that other linguistic arts (viz., poetry) enable. Focusing on rhetoric as nonmanipulative persuasion (via a speaker’s orientation) might not be enough to alleviate this worry, since its end-directedness and the focus on effectiveness in achieving any end of a speaker renders it teleological in a way that art cannot be. Second, rhetoric’s force also may seem to come from its practical use of determinate concepts

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(e.g., purposive language designed to affect an end) in its messages. This use of concepts is problematic, as rhetoric seemingly cannot trade in those rich and indeterminate ideas that Kant notes as “aesthetic ideas.” Poetry can use such ideas, since it lacks specific ends that would be gained through determinate concept usage. It is not overtly aimed toward the persuasion of the audience, on this account. How can such objections be overcome if one wants to sort out a Kantian sense of rhetoric as artful and as an important part of his moral project? I offer an answer to this question by first problematizing poetry and then by reclaiming it as art along with rhetoric in its good employments. While Kant clearly elevated poetry as a beautiful art over rhetoric, one can see that Kant was ultimately skeptical of such fine art as a disinterested creator of the free play of the faculties. Why would poetry, for example, come under such skeptical criticism given its stated ability to convey aesthetic ideas? The reason is simple. Fine art, as a human endeavor, is saturated with concepts and the teleology they presuppose. Art is created by a purposive agent (the artist), and this more often than not brings in concepts of ends that are desired. These could simply be mimetic ends (a desire to accurately represent real object x), but they are still the sort of limited conceptual overlay on the art object about which Kant is concerned. Such a conceptual overlay of specific desired ends introduces ideas of perfection and aptness of the object to those ends and hence hurts an art object’s universal or free beauty (CJ 5:230). For Kant, fine art cannot match the nonpurposive purpose seen in works of natural beauty— the latter seem designed to evoke a harmonious response in us, even though we have no evidence there was a designer behind the appearance of that landscape, say. He argues that one can be taken by the song of a nightingale as a beautiful object until one discovers it is merely a deceptive ploy of a landlord attempting to please guests at his house (5:302). Once it is discovered that the pleasing sound is not of nature but is of human construction (a hidden whistling servant), one is distracted by the conceptual overlay of deception for a specific end (pleasing paying customers). The conceptual content is what evokes and controls our response to the fake birdsong, and this is not radically different from other putatively nondeceptive works of well-wrought drama. Kant is concerned about the teleological directing of one agent’s experience by another agent’s activity. As Paul Guyer notes, this shaping of experience is problematic on moral grounds as “our response to the beauty and sublimity of nature stands in more intimate connection, both as it were theoretical and practical, to our freedom than does our response to art.” Kant assumes that

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“a work of art may either be taken for a natural beauty, in which case it defrauds us and is thereby obviously disqualified from even symbolic moral significance by its own immorality, or else that it is explicitly recognized as the product of the intentional activity of another person, in which case it can hardly symbolize our own autonomy.” The fake birdsong deceptively mimics nature. Even if it were performed in a concert hall, Kant would still wonder if our response to it was truly autonomous, or if it was merely falling in line with the forethought and desires of the creating artist. Like rhetoric, art seems to fall into concerns about manipulation. While Kant advances a theory of genius to allow for art that creates its own rules (through naturally inspired talent), it is clear that genius also could be misused in manipulative or nonoriginal senses. Again, one can ask, why insist on the division between poetry as art and rhetoric as manipulation if both sorts of purposive human activities have worrisome aspects? Given this newly enunciated doubt about poetry, must rhetoric necessarily be opposed to poetry and to nonmanipulative ways of communicating? If this is the case, the hope for this project of elucidating a Kantian rhetoric would be slim. Or might rhetoric be redeemed in the same way that poetry could be saved? Many think that Kant is prima facie opposed to rhetoric as a beautiful art—a practice that is nonmanipulative and correlated with the free play of the faculties. Indeed, Kant gives this impression when he sometimes characterizes rhetoric as mere manipulation. But two things should give us pause here. (1) As noted in the previous section, Kant does not equate rhetoric qua manipulation to all human communication. Thus, it seems that Kant does not a priori exclude rhetoric from art or from nonmanipulative communicative activities. (2) The division of the beautiful arts and their modalities (word, gesture, and tone) in the section of the Critique of the Power of Judgment that defines poetry and rhetoric is clearly labeled as an “experiment [Versuch]” (5:320). Even more than this, it is identified as only one of “several experiments [mancherlei Versuchen]” (5:320n) or attempts that could be made at dividing up the beautiful arts. Not only could other attempts be made at analyzing the arts, but Kant indicates that these could and should (kann und soll) be attempted (5:320). Might another Kantian way of analyzing rhetoric and poetry delineate and preserve space for the nonmanipulative sense of rhetoric I have argued is present in Kant’s aesthetic system? What I want to propose is that poetry and rhetoric—all the arts in general— can be divided in another way within the bounds of Kant’s general account. This way of analyzing the arts would focus on the disposition or state of mind

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involved in the activity and its reception. There are ways of taking an object and there are ways of seeing the values of doing that activity as an agent. Thus, a receiver might be oriented toward an action in such a way as to foreground ends and progress or as the kind of object conducive to the free play of one’s cognitive faculties. The same sort of orientation choices confront doers, be they aspiring poets or speakers. Their manner of thinking can focus them on outcomes, or on the process of communicating important ideas. This issue of orientation is the “manner of thinking” (Denkungsart) that Kant discusses (CJ 5:274), as well as the “disposition of mind” (Gemutsstimmung) to which he refers (2:273). He also calls this one’s “comportment of mind” (Gesinnung) at various places. This is what I referred to as the “orientation” of the rhetor in the previous section. G. Felicitas Munzel thoroughly tracks these terms through Kant’s precritical and critical work and finds them to be important constituent parts to what we would identify in Kant as a notion of character. Both of these terms are inherently connected to the project of pursuing morality or the ways we interact with and value other human agents vis-à-vis our own pursuits. Denkungsart deals with how we adopt principles or maxims to guide our thinking and actions; Munzel concludes that “maxim adoption is definitive of the conduct of thought itself.” In Kant’s later moral work, this is the choice that comes down to how we guide ourselves in and through evaluative choices inherent in our maxims. Later chapters explore how Kant fleshes this out in his works on morality, but here we can see that consistently setting maxims to determine who we are over a span of activity is a vital part to what it means to take part in forming one’s character. It is a vital component to the Kantian scheme of moral cultivation that I sketch in this book. And it also is an important object of rhetorical activity. Also built into my use of orientation is Gesinnung. This term features prominently in Kant’s work in the 1790s, and it is often difficult to distinguish it as a concept from Denkungsart. Indeed, they both are very similar in that they concern how agents orient themselves toward others through the actionguiding maxims they put in place. Munzel’s analysis integrally connects Gesinnung to the realm of morality: “In a morally good character, comportment of mind consists in conformity to the spirit of the law characterizing the maxims, activities, and capacities of mind.” One might be tempted to make the following distinction to clarify matters for the following study. Whereas Denkungsart covers a range of maxim choices, one’s Gesinnung summarizes the moral orientation of agents—how they value and act in light of their ends and the ends of others and how they treat other agents. Both would be ways of

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pointing out the fact that, for Kant, how agents orient themselves toward others matters. This orientation involves issues of means-ends calculation, systemic unity (among maxims chosen), and, most important, issues of value. What values guide our use of certain means? In Kant’s third Critique, some of these references to orientation come in his discussion of the sublime, which, albeit different from the experience of the beautiful, focuses on similar linguistic or natural objects being taken as sublime or beautiful due largely to the state of mind of a receiver. The example of the “starry heavens” is given as possibly sublime—but only if it is taken or judged not in its conceptual aspects but instead as a “broad all-embracing vault” (CJ 5:270). The sublimity of this natural object depends on the subject taking it in a nonconceptual way. In a similar fashion, Kant discusses art and the necessary purpose that comes with it, but he notes that “beautiful art must be regarded as nature, although of course one is aware of it as art” (5:307). Such an object striking us as art depends on how we orient ourselves toward it. By manipulating one’s orientation toward a given communicative act, can one detach such interests while hearing a speech, the paragon of rhetorical practice? For instance, one can admire the beautiful shape or form of “wildflower, a bird, an insect, etc. in order to marvel at it, to love it, and to be unwilling for it to be entirely absent from nature, even though some harm might come to him from it rather than there being any prospect of advantage to him from it” (CJ 5:299). Can one take such an immediate and intellectual interest in a speech or argument? Like the natural object, the speech can represent (1) a threat to the interest of the auditor and (2) an object that is conceptually loaded. Focusing on either of these features decreases the aesthetic impact of such an object. Kant points out that we can take the natural object as if it were free from the limits imposed by (1) and (2); thus it is conceivable that speech artifacts also can be seen as free from their practical effects on us or from their overly intentional nature. How would such auditors orient themselves toward such an art object (a rhetorical artifact) to render it artful on Kant’s account? How could it be part of his moralization of aesthetics, rendered as an instance or symbol of the sort of disinterested freedom he connects to the beautiful at section 59? Our clue lies in an excursus Kant puts in his Critique of the Power of Judgment—an analysis of three “maxims of the common understanding” (5:294). Here, he indicates that taste and its “fundamental principles” are elucidated by these three maxims: “1. To think for oneself; 2. To think in the position of everyone else; 3. To always think in accord with oneself.” These are all con-

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nected to a certain “way of thinking [Denkungsart]” (5:294–95). Notice that these represent an orientation or way of thinking that attempts to do justice to one’s autonomy as an individual agent and as a socially instantiated agent. Kant’s notion of the sensus communis captures this sense of individual uses of reason reflecting social settings. Individuals must consistently think for themselves but must also recognize others as equally autonomous and independent beings. In Kant’s moral philosophy, this is the recognition enshrined in the main three formulations of the moral law in the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). As is explored in the next chapter, the Formula of Universal Law (FUL) and the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself (FHE) capture the systemic consistency of a system of agents, and Kant’s notions of autonomy appearing around the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (FKE) capture the notion of individual autonomy and worth. If one wants to find a way that rhetoric or poetry can be nonmanipulative uses of conceptual and purposive language, one need only to look at this orientation or way of thinking available to individuals producing and consuming communicative artifacts. If the speaker or poet fails to respect others in line with FHE or maxim 2, “To think in the position of everyone else,” the moral value of the object in question will be impugned as manipulative. Even if it is well-intentioned, it still fails to respect the audience members as equal to the rhetor or poet. The agent’s orientation fails to place the requisite value on the perspectives of others, and hence the agent’s action is characterized as manipulative. Additionally, the orientation of the auditor makes a difference as to the artful nature of the speech or poem—if the object is seen as if it was concept and purpose free, then one can appreciate it in an aesthetic sense as Kant says we do with the flower or starry heavens. If agents are oriented toward a speech or poem in terms of how it may affect them, then they are not experiencing it in a disinterested fashion. Such a use of a created object by auditors is not necessarily morally questionable (as they did not create the object to manipulate themselves in this fashion), but such experience will clearly not be of the free sort Kant wants occupying the aesthetic portions of our lives. It also risks running afoul of the moral limits discussed in the next chapter concerning how agents ought to be valued. Thus both poetry and rhetoric can be seen as either the manipulative or nonmanipulative uses of linguistic symbols, and the orientations behind the poets or rhetors can be either manipulative or nonmanipulative. Manipulative orientations would be ones that violate the moral strictures of how we ought to value others or that discourage one from thinking from all perspectives.

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They are defined by an extreme self-focus or valuation. Nonmanipulative uses of language would be ones that respect each point of view involved—the speaker’s and hearer’s perspectives. This sort of nonegoistic use of language is what happens in some poetry, but clearly not all poetry. Kant often worried that poetry was close to egoistic dreaming that others simply could not understand. Good poetry is original and understandable by others. This is analogous to the situation in moral experience where a sense of individual direction is limited by a respect for other people’s projects and pursuits. This is the sort of merging of freedom and coercion hinted at in Kant’s vague references to the “art of reciprocal communication” that occur at the end of the first half of his Critique of the Power of Judgment (5:350). This is the use of language that entails thinking through all perspectives and that minds all the consequences involved in the communicative act. All agents are equal on such a scheme. Rhetors cannot be morally effective if they think they are superior to their audience and can operate without full disclosure of important points. Freedom in moral experience and freedom in aesthetic experience, for Kant, have the crucial similarity of respecting both an agent’s response to some stimuli and an agent’s activity toward others. The art object is purposively created, but its creator should not overemphasize its effectiveness in achieving certain ends, nor should its hearer jump toward the ends it projects. In other words, a Kantian sense of nonmanipulative rhetoric would foreground orientations that create rhetoric without remote ends—a rhetoric that features an emphasis on the present communicative experience. What would it mean to see rhetorical objects without teleological ends or purposes that one pursues? Isn’t this ignoring the purposive nature of rhetorical activity? Explaining this conundrum is the point of this present book. But it is not different in kind from the sort of ignoring that happens when Kant allows art objects created by humans into the pantheon of those things that spur on aesthetic experience. Nothing mysterious happens here in a human’s experience. If orientation can make the difference in relation to art objects (and conceptually loaded natural objects) being experienced with disinterest and a universal appreciation, then one can see the same sort of appreciation occurring with speeches experienced with the right way of thinking. Speeches use metaphors, artistic elements, and so on; art objects often include orations. All of this is so similar that the main difference must be in one’s way of thinking through or engaging these objects. One can appreciate a speech in real life the same way one appreciates a speech in literature—as if it was presented for its form and style. As I explore in chapter 6, there are ways to alter

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one’s orientation toward linguistic action such that most practical effects are bracketed—this would be a view of argument as free play, and not as a serious business of the understanding. Of course, this represents a disengagement of rhetoric from action to some extent, but Kant would approve of this type of move since it is such disinterest and distance that allows for those maxims of thought to operate. We shall see in future chapters the way this disengagement is effected in specific realms of moral activity. In general terms, one can think from the position of others only when one is distanced from their own affects, passions, and direct drives to action. If one follows this experiment out, Kant would seem to be advancing a certain stoicism of speech reception—appreciating the rhetorical object not for its effects outside the communicative experience, but for its form and performance in that experience. The role of aesthetic ideas in speech still remains unclear. Poetry is wonderful because it richly incorporates aesthetic ideas as its content. The natural genius of the poet finds novel ways to place these aesthetic ideas in sensuous clothing. No rule could be taught for how to do this, of course. Would not the same sense of creativity apply for rhetorical activity? A great oration would not follow mechanistic rules of eloquence—each speech and speaker would be different in a variety of ways. Additionally, the purposiveness of rhetorical objects does not seem related to the content of aesthetic ideas. Great speeches could just as easily contain the prototypical aesthetic ideas as great poetry. What would genius contribute to rhetorical action? For Kant, it is clear that it would add spirit (Geist). He notes that “Spirit, in an aesthetic significance, means the animating principles in the mind. That, however, by which this principles animates the soul, the material which it uses for this purpose, is that which purposively sets the mental powers into motion, i.e., into a play that is self-maintaining and even strengthens the powers to that end.” This principle is “nothing other than the faculty for the presentation of aesthetic ideas” (CJ 5:313). Genius in rhetorical activity would be the gift of being able to place aesthetic ideas into orations—regardless of the ends that a speaker or listener adds to or subtracts from such experience. The moral use of genius would be the employment in speech creation or the recognition in speech reception of such ideas with the right moralized orientation. The aesthetic ideas are in the content of the oration, as they would be in the poem. Its didactic purpose is something outside of that content determination. Thus, we see that orientation toward rhetoric as manipulation is a separate point from the ability of rhetorical objects—be it in poetry, drama, or real life—to contain aesthetic ideas such as “invisible beings, the kingdom of the blessed,

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the kingdom of hell, eternity, creation, etc.” (5:314). Kant’s frequent emphasis on rhetoric as purely manipulative in orientation does not seem to logically preclude certain types of content in orations. He clearly points out that “poetry and oratory also derive the spirit which animates their works solely from the aesthetic attributes of the objects, which go alongside the logical ones, and give the imagination an impetus to think more, although in an undeveloped way, than can be comprehended in a concept, and hence in determinate linguistic expression” (5:315).

Orientation and Experience The starting point that this chapter has established is that orientation or disposition will be important terms not only in Kant’s moral thought but also in regard to the linguistic arts. The exact orientation constitutive of moralization is explicated in the following chapters, but here I have advanced the surely controversial point that all uses of language—rhetoric and poetry—can be beautiful arts, but only under certain conditions of disposition of the agents involved. Uses of language can be manipulative or nonmanipulative in how they are conceptualized. The choices between these two orientations occur in the speaker and the auditor. Additionally, these uses of language can be connected to the rich content of aesthetic ideas or bereft of the rich, imaginative use of language and aesthetic ideas. The latter sort of activity may be characterized in standard argumentative prose. The rich and evocative language of speeches (such as the religious sermons Kant often praises) are the sort of “lively presentation” that occurs when aesthetic ideas are instantiated in creative and new ways of using language. It is in these two new dimensions that rhetoric can be seen as equal to poetry and as a valuable part of aesthetic experience. A crucial point to be made in the following chapters is the functioning of communicative experience in a fashion characterized by hypotyposis. Whereas one reading indicates that only the judgment of the beautiful can stand in as an experiential analogue to moral experience, this chapter has tried to confound such a one-dimensional account with its new experiment in categorizing the arts of language (poetry and rhetoric). Can certain orientations in speakers and listeners turn the communicative experiences of persuasion and rhetoric into experiential analogues of morally educative matters? If we take the right way of thinking about such activities, can they help us become more moral and

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virtuous? If so, Kant’s nonmanipulative rhetoric can be positively construed as an educative or morally cultivating communicative practice. The account of Kant’s educative rhetoric in the later chapters of this work argues that rhetorical experience can serve as an experiential reminder of vital moral points and in doing so can readily assist us in our cultivation of self and others. In other words, the experience of communicative activity is shown to be morally edifying on Kantian grounds. It both reflects and affects our orientations, and the intelligent use of communicative experience can shape the orientations of attentive others toward a fully moralized state. To get to this endpoint, we must thoroughly flesh out the sort of nonmanipulative use of language, laden with aesthetic ideas, that is surely the sort of assertive yet respectful discourse that Kant postulated as the enigmatic “art of reciprocal communication.” All these dimensions of the moral employment of rhetorical means are addressed in the following chapters. But first we turn to the issue only anticipated in this present chapter—that a vital point of Kant’s moral philosophy concerns agents donning certain orientations toward self and others. The next chapter details Kant’s moral goal, as well as the fundamental problem of progressing toward sustainable uses of our power of choice, both in external actions and in our internal choice of ends to pursue and value. If I am right that a valuable way of seeing Kant’s moral theory is as an account of how to create agents who use their freedom of choice in certain ways, then the ways of reorienting rational agents assumes much prominence. This would create the space for rhetoric to be used in an attempt to persuasively and freely create such agents. It represents the type of rhetoric that can assume a vital role in Kantian moral cultivation by delineating manipulative and nonmanipulative means to change such agents and their dispositions.

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Three freedom, coercion, and the search for the ideal community

Rhetoric, conceptualized as the purposive use of eloquent communication, is one of the grandest tools available to humans. It can be animated and guided by a range of orientations in both speaker and audience member. In other words, various ways of valuing self and other lie behind a variety of its specific instantiations. Before we can identify a positive sense of rhetoric and communicative means in Kant’s architectonic thought, it is important to see the ends at which rhetoric might be aimed and the sort of orientation it ought to instantiate. As the previous chapter indicates, one of Kant’s reservations about rhetoric was a moral consideration—rhetors treated their audience members as machines or objects to be moved about, not like free rational agents. This objection is clearly in line with Kant’s primary value of freedom. Indeed, in his lectures on ethics (as recorded by Collins), given in the winter semester of 1784–85, Kant claims that since humans alone can motivate their actions from considerations separate from the realm of nature, “Freedom is thus the inner worth of the world” (LEC 27:344). Yet freedom is not a given in this ultimate and valuable sense. It easily can be rendered nonideal. If freedom is lawless and random by being tied to changeable and nonsustainable inclinations, Kant finds that “insofar as it [freedom] is not restrained under certain rules of conditioned employment, it is the most terrible thing there could ever be. . . . If freedom is not restricted by objective rules, the result is much savage disorder” (27:344). This notion of freedom and its related concept—autonomy—

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are vitally important for Kant’s moral system. If his moral philosophy amounts to anything of enduring value, it must be in positing an endpoint for our endeavors to become better individuals and better group members through freedom. What is at stake for rhetoric in Kant’s political philosophy? One way to answer this question is by evoking a common distinction, that between coercion and persuasion. Persuasion is typically seen as the desirable member of this distinction, since coercion seems to rest on the use of one-sided force. One coerces me into a car at gun point, against my choice and wishes; alternatively, one might persuade me to follow them by using words with which I agree. This is a standard way of parsing the forces involved in each of these activities. Coercion seems problematic because it violates a sort of value we place on selves as agents. Persuasion is often connected to our rhetorical activities, since such practical discussion and argument move people in purposive ways without resorting to overt force. What Kant contributes to this distinction is complexity—Kant’s views on rhetoric move it closer to a coercion with words, and his views on political philosophy hold a rational role for the coercing of individuals through threats of force and punishment. Thus rests the complex fortunes of freedom and human agency in a world filled with subtle and explicit forces that often threaten action based on reason. Kant’s moral and political philosophy not only holds obstacles to seeing a vibrant role for rhetoric in the public sphere but also creates the challenge that I argue rhetoric can solve: how we can use persuasion, not force, to effectively create better agents and communities. This chapter sets the stage for the reading of Kantian rhetoric as moral persuasion that I wish to give. Revising the role for rhetoric in Kant means being clear on the permissible ends that rhetoric may be called on to achieve and the ways in which such ends can be achieved without violating the respect we owe to other agents. In other words, the task is to give a reading of rhetoric as allowable persuasion, not as manipulative use of coercive forces. Differentiating manipulative communication from nonmanipulative communication implies a conception of individual autonomy, as well as a notion of coercion of otherwise free agents. I argue that Kant’s moral system posits autonomy— in its individual and systemic instantiations—as the ultimate moral end. Later chapters make the case that rhetoric is an important means by which humans can cash out the promise of socialized living that Kant emphasizes in his anthropology lectures, published as Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View: “The human being is destined by his reason to live in a society with

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human beings and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to moralize himself by means of the arts and sciences. No matter how great his animal tendency may be to give himself over passively to the impulses of ease and good living, which he calls happiness, he is still destined to make himself worthy of humanity by actively struggling with the obstacles that cling to him because of the crudity of his nature” (7:324–25). We are destined to cultivate ourselves into free, autonomous moral agents. Creating and sustaining political communities of a certain sort are part of this process, but what else can we do to overcome the obstacles of our human nature? I ultimately argue that rhetoric—eloquent human communication—serves as one clear means of moral cultivation in Kant’s system. Rhetoric in its nonmanipulative form is an important means to move humans toward the dispositions constitutive of true freedom. Yet I must provide a rough sketch as to what this moral system entails. Using the central idea of freedom, this chapter examines the problematics of two of Kant’s most famous works: the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals (1785) and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). As discussed in the previous chapter, there is evidence that the first text was intended as some sort of rejoinder to Christian Garve and the popular philosophers, so our examination starts there. Whatever its intentions, the Groundwork’s exposition of the core of Kant’s philosophy has had important intellectual impacts; Paul Guyer notes that it “has remained one of the most important and influential works in modern moral philosophy since it was published in 1785. . . . The Groundwork can be regarded as the paradigmatic expression of the ideals of the European Enlightenment.” While Kant’s ideas on autonomy evolved, the Groundwork remains a vital expression of this central value and endpoint in Kant’s moral thought. Indeed, one can see the Groundwork as putting “before us an image of the nobility of the life we can lead if we try to regulate our conduct by the fundamental principle of morality instead of acting out of self-interest and excusing our so acting by denying our own freedom.” The task of this chapter is to flesh out this image of the moral agent and freedom as an individual and communal ideal in Kant’s Groundwork and Metaphysics of Morals. This notion of freedom can be seen both as freedom from sensuous causes such as inclination and as freedom of positive determination (through the moral law). This composite notion of freedom is what Kant refers to as “autonomy,” or the self-direction through the moral lawgiving of one’s will. Kant’s reading of the value of autonomy is complex, and its details evolved from the 1780s to the late 1790s. Thus, this chapter first examines Kant’s

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exposition of the moral law through its various formulations in the Groundwork before considering his later work on the value of freedom. The Groundwork is an incredibly rich starting point for explicating Kant’s ethical system and, as such, has been addressed by a multitude of Kant scholars, including Allen Wood, Henry Allison, and Paul Guyer. This chapter cannot supplant such detailed work; indeed, it heavily relies on interpretations and arguments exposed in this tradition of Kant scholarship. I emphasize one reading of the sequence of various formulations of the moral law to highlight the notions of freedom and moral cultivation that assumes importance in later chapters. Such a progression in the Groundwork eventually culminates with the autonomy of a specific agent imagined in harmony with all other such agents (viz., the ideal of the kingdom of ends). This transition is discussed, since it signals a transition from individual notions of autonomy to a harmony of universal legislators (agents) that individual moral acts presuppose as an ideal. After this has been examined, Kant’s discussion of this idealized kingdom of ends in Groundwork III is examined in regard to how the two-fold perspective of the world of nature and the intelligible world (the kingdom of ends) relates to the human agent. Kant was always fascinated by the dual nature of humans—both as creatures of the natural, causal world and putatively of the moral realm of reason. While humans are torn between both realms, the ultimate message of the Groundwork is that humans must presuppose their participation in the intelligible realm and, more important, tailor their actions and exercises of will to approximate this state in their physical condition. Kant’s Groundwork sets this project in both individual and communal terms, a theme that is magnified in the analysis of his Metaphysics of Morals in the latter half of this chapter.

Formulations of the Categorical Imperative In his analysis of moral worth in the Groundwork, Kant argues that the moral law can be expressed in a variety of formulations. Grounding all these abstractions, however, is a simple but powerful conception of the “good will.” What makes us moral or virtuous? Kant begins the Groundwork by examining the source of moral worth in human actions and dispositions. He points out that all “virtues” and characteristics, such as strength and coolness, can be used for vicious purposes, rendering their value only conditionally good—dependent on certain purposes, situations, and so on. What is morally good must be absolutely good for Kant; even considerations of specific outcomes desired by an

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agent do not hold as unconditional, as these results can be thwarted by unfortunate luck, natural circumstances, and so forth. They also do not necessarily hold for all desiring agents. The ultimate conclusion of Groundwork I is that the good will is the highest, unconditioned good. The notion of the good will is integrally connected to the notion of duty, which “contains that of a good will though under certain subjective limitations and hindrances, which . . . bring it [the good will] out by contrast and make it shine forth all the more brightly” (GMM 4:397). A human being can possess this good will, but having such a will requires a constitution that includes alternate motivations and temptations, such as the inclinations or desires. These factors result in the human being not being subjectively necessitated by the moral law; in other words, it is not specified in advance that they will do the right thing. Duty is a command on agents, one that they may or may not actually follow. Individual agents are objectively determined by this notion of duty, which stems from the imperative of the moral law. Subjective determination appears to be the uncertain domain of control of individual agents with their reason and inclinations. What is crucial to Kant’s conception of duty is that an action is done from duty, not merely in accord with duty. Only the former has moral worth, whereas the latter could be done for less-than-worthy reasons (self-love, greed, etc.). Kant’s well-known example of this from his Groundwork is that of the honest shopkeeper who doesn’t raise his prices just to take advantage of an immature (or gullible) client. When is such an external action (not manipulating prices) morally worthy? Kant’s basic answer is that it is morally worthy when an agent does it out of respect for that action being the right thing to do, as opposed to doing it simply to avoid gaining a bad reputation. The former motivation is moral; the latter is merely prudential—simply another way to sate one’s own desires through business activities. For Kant, individual agents are subjectively determined by their maxim, a principle of volition within the subjects themselves. We choose to be kind to our friend Paul, say, since we make it a rule to be kind to our friends. We may act from this general maxim with a very specific action, such as providing them a drink in a favorite cup. Such maxims may or may not attain the functional status of a practical law, which is an objective principle of volition that all should have (GMM 4:401). Kant maintains that individuals are objectively, but not subjectively, necessitated by the moral law—otherwise such agents would be “holy wills,” constrained to will from duty on every occasion. Individual agents can have moral worth if and only if they choose to act from duty.

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But what is duty? To answer this question, Kant provides his analysis of the moral law in Groundwork II. Duty, for Kant, is integrally connected to the source of determination of individual rational agents and thereby is connected to the sense of freedom that Kant is interested in fostering (viz., autonomy). A brief sketch of how human agency is related to the moral law in Kant’s scheme suffices for our purpose of delineating his notion of freedom. In Groundwork II he analyzes the concept of the moral law and its relation to rational beings to discern the possibility of such a moral imperative. Kant operates on the assumption that everything in the world that we can experience (including our own actions) must operate according to some sort of law. The unique feature of rational beings is that they can represent their possible actions in accordance with a representation of laws (principles), such as “always be kind to friends.” This capacity to formulate principles or maxims on which the subject acts is constitutive of the agent’s will (Wille). One’s will is subjectively contingent, since reason does not always determine it (GMM 4:412). All rational beings are subject to objective principles of action, which Kant labels as “imperatives.” Some of these are hypothetical, which command a certain action in certain conditions. For instance, if agents want to win a baseball game, they should attempt to score more runs than their opponents. This will not do for a moral command, since one may not desire the initially stated goal (e.g., winning that game). What Kant wants for the foundation of morality is a moral law (imperative) that commands categorically and in an unconditioned manner. Such a categorical imperative is found in the moral law; all other imperatives are conditioned and have the status of a principle, but only the categorical imperative has the status of a practical law (4:420). Such an imperative must be removed from any sensuous conditions, such as desires and inclinations, since those would render it conditioned—not everyone has those traits, nor are their desires always the same. Instead, the moral law (the categorical imperative) contains nothing beyond the form of universal law and the necessity that individual maxims be in conformity with this law. This has historically been a problematic move for Kant, but it is where he starts. Kant provides the first formulation of this categorical imperative, referred to as the Formula of Universal Law (FUL)—“act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law.” Kant further explains this law with respect to the state of nature; just as everything in the physical world occurs according to laws, so one should “act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your will a universal law of nature” (4:421). This

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second formulation can be referred to as the Formula of the Universal Law of Nature (FULN). It simply amplifies the former with an analogy to the operation of laws in the realm of nature or the physical universe. Overall, the objective determinant of rational willing is this categorical imperative, even though we are not actually necessitated (subjectively) to follow it. Duty consists in the demand that individuals make their subjective maxim of volition conform to this universal form of willing. These two delineations of the first formulation of the categorical imperative may not be as clear as one would hope. This problem, however, is alleviated somewhat when Kant discusses the other formulations of the moral law. Before those formulations are discussed, a few important details of this formulation (taking FUL as subsuming the essential features of FULN) should be noted. One notices that the formal aspect that Kant is drawing on in this formulation is nonsensuous and does not include material from the physical world. It is the mere form of one’s maxim that is tested by FUL. This form must be capable of being universalized, which provides two important tests of a maxim—it must either be able to be thought without contradiction or it must be able to be coherently willed by the agent. As Kant indicates, “Some actions are so constituted that their maxim cannot even be thought without contradiction as a universal law of nature, far less could one will that it should become such” (GMM 4:424). The first test involves the logical possibility of the universalization of a certain maxim to all rational agents involved. For instance, false promises to others cannot be consistently willed as universal law (or as a universal law of nature) because doing so would result in the putative collapse of the institution (promising) that allows promise breaking to happen. Additionally, suicide operates on a maxim that also would be impossible to be thought as universal law, as Kant finds that it involves a contradiction with the same maxim that preserves life (4:422). What the examples of false promising and suicide represent are the classes of perfect duties to one’s self and to others. They are negative in that they forbid a certain maxim and its entailed action (lying, suicide) because the maxim cannot be conceived of as universal law. Other duties emerge in regard to one’s self and to others that are not as strict or clear-cut. They are labeled as “imperfect duties” by Kant. These duties involve the command to not adopt certain maxims that preclude other morally enjoined maxims or actions. Kant provides the duties of self-cultivation and benevolence to others as examples of these imperfect duties commanded by the moral law. They are “imperfect” because they do not always specify an

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action that is to be done or not done. Agents do not have to develop all talents or any specific talents, for instance; what agents must not do is operate on the maxim of never developing any of their talents. This seems to imply a commitment to the maxim to develop some talents at some (optimal) times. What is considered to be a transgression of duty is the adoption of maxims antithetical to these broad maxims; in such a case agents may find it possible to conceive of such maxims as potential universal laws, but instead find it “impossible to will that their maxim be raised to the universality of a law of nature because such a will would contradict itself ” (GMM 4:424). What seems to differentiate the two types of nonuniversalization that violate FUL is the difference between logical contradiction and the ability to be effective in what agents want to accomplish through their willing certain maxims. Some actions are constituted in such a way (i.e., lying) that one cannot even conceive of the maxims of these actions as being universal law. The second test relies on individuals making an exception for themselves to be successful in a given action connected with their willing of a certain maxim. In the case of rational beings and their talents, agents cannot will a maxim that ignores the development of their talents to increase present enjoyment since they may find themselves in future situations where honed talents would bring about more enjoyment (4:423). They could conceive of a state of nature in which all rational beings spend their days in a supine fashion, but they cannot will that this be a universal law because it contradicts the purpose of their initial willing. It would entail giving up their hopes of successful activities and endeavors, now and in the indeterminate future. Both conceptions of universalization seek universal and unconditioned elements in one’s will, but each operates at different levels—the former at the level of logical possibility and the latter at the level of the ability of agents to actively will without contradiction with their other ends. The negative nature of the first test provides the foundation for strict (perfect) duties flowing from the moral law, and the latter provides the roots for imperfect duties dealing with the ends an agent should set. FUL provides the form of dutiful willing, but rational creatures still need some type of end connected to their acts of volition. Kant scours the landscape of reason for an end that is also a duty to have, thus avoiding the subjective conditions that most ends are liable to have. Unlike the multitude of ends held by the range of human agents, such an end would abstract from all material elements that subjective ends possess and instead would involve an unconditional motive that is objectively necessary for agents to possess. Such an end must be an end in itself and must not be reliant on any condition or

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particularity. Kant finds that all individuals, given their recognition of the worth of humanity in their person, would accept that the ground for such an end is that “rational nature exists as an end in itself.” This universal ground for the worth of rational nature leads to the second formulation of the categorical imperative, the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself (FHE): “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (GMM 4:428–29). This end is one that all rational beings should have—it is an end that is also a duty to have. FHE contains an important addition to the categorical imperative as instantiated in FUL. Whereas FUL specifies the form of a maxim in accord with duty, FHE specifies its “material,” namely, that a particular maxim is to preserve and promote humanity. Notice that this material is not conditioned in the sense of specific desired outcomes and hypothetical imperatives. Instead, Kant finds that FHE serves as “the supreme limiting condition of the freedom of action of every human being” (GMM 4:431). This end in itself limits all other specific or contingent ends when they start to interfere with its realization. This end is realized in a negative fashion (not destroying rational nature or humanity) and in a positive fashion (promoting the development of rational nature or humanity) (4:430). The former appears in strict, perfect duties— lying and suicide, for instance, violate the very basis of humanity in that these actions operate on a maxim fundamentally at odds with the value of rational nature in self and others. In the Groundwork strict duties are identified by their negative protection of humanity from acts that would violate this end in itself. The second category, that of imperfect duties, deals with the furthering of humanity, either in one’s self or in others. No action can be said to be absolutely crucial to the furthering of humanity, unless it is tied with an action that would damage humanity—if that is the case, it would fall under a perfect duty to preserve humanity. What Kant has in mind with this second category are maxims that further humanity’s development in terms of benevolence and self-development. While a subjective end that does not harm or further humanity can be conceived without contradiction, a morally worthy agent should will a subjective end in accord with the supreme end of FHE. Thus, one should adopt the end of promoting humanity in the person of one’s self and also promote humanity through helping achieve the ends that others have set. These ends are not tied to any definite actions that can be commanded or forbidden, but they are ends that one should hold and that are related to FHE, the supreme limiting condition of all ends subjects may hold. I am not com-

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manded to help my neighbor cut down this tree, but such assistance would be part of an agent’s general strategy to help others in their reasonable endeavors if possible. In terms of the practical lawgiving from the perspective of the rational agent, Kant argues in the Groundwork that “the ground of all practical lawgiving lies (in accordance with the first principle) objectively in the rule and the form of universality which makes it fit to be a law (possibly a law of nature); subjectively, however, it lies in the end” (GMM 4:431). FUL deals with the objective determination of maxims according to duty, and FHE addresses the subjective selection of the ends within one’s maxims. From the perspective of the agent, FUL serves as a test of his or her maxim’s fitness to be universal law (and consequently morally worthy), and FHE serves as a guide to what specific ends one should hold (i.e., those in accord with humanity as an end in itself). It is this addition of the second formulation (FHE) that leads Kant to the third version of the moral law, the Formula of Autonomy. Each of these iterations adds further detail to what Kant’s version of morality uniquely contributes to what we think about human autonomy and freedom.

From Individual Autonomy to the Kingdom of Ends Instead of talking about “freedom,” Kant’s ideal becomes “autonomy”—a reason-based combination of freedom from external determinants and freedom of internal determination of one’s own projects. The introduction of the Formula of Autonomy (FA) is an important part of Groundwork II, as it sets up the transition from individual autonomy to the concept of the kingdom of ends. This is a crucial point, as rhetorical means become valuable as they instantiate the law-like harmonization of individual and communal autonomy. The central challenge to Kant’s ethics is to describe how agents are free of the constraint imposed by the laws issued from others (such as human and divine lawgivers), but without those same agents becoming arbitrary or capricious in their actions. Kant’s solution is to characterize humans as giving the moral law that binds them. Both giving and being bound by the moral law is the core to Kant’s notion of autonomy. This section examines FA in relation to the agent’s giving of law in his or her choice of maxims and actions and discusses the transition of this individual concept to an idea rooted in a different perspective—that of a system of agents acting in harmony according to universal laws. The Formula of Autonomy, as first enunciated by Kant, addresses

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“the idea of the will of every rational being as a will giving universal law” (GMM 4:431). The will of the rational agent is able to choose to act from an idea of universal law as opposed to following the laws of the natural world. Since this law comes from that agent’s rational nature, Kant conceives of such a will as a “lawgiver.” This idea is an integral one to a rational agent’s self-conception as a free being—what is truly assumed when agents suppose they are free or autonomous in that they always can act independently from purely natural or animal causes (i.e., those sensuously conditioned). As all instances of action based on the natural world are conditioned by some interest or inclination, Kant argues that one is not bound to the moral law by some interest or desire. Instead, FA enunciates the lawgiving status of rational agents, free of all interests that conditionally constrain it, and is therefore unconditioned (4:432). FA states that individual agents give a formal, abstract, universal law that they also follow. Agents obey such a law because they create it. Agents are both ruled and ruler. If the law was given by someone else (such as a king or God), agents would need some interest to follow it (fear of punishment, desire for divine favor, etc.) (4:433). This represents a distinction between the principles of autonomy and heteronomy. The former deals with the will as giving law to itself, whereas the latter addresses the will following certain rules out of some external interest. Autonomy, for Kant, is a positive notion of freedom that emphasizes the ability of rational agents to be the cause of their own actions independent from external incentives (such as desires based in the natural world). This conception of subjects as giving and following universal law is the source of dignity, a worth that goes beyond any other price or value (GMM 4:436). Kant finds that FA addresses the individual level of the exercise of autonomy, but it also must be related to the context of individual action—the community of all rational beings. Connected to FA is a notion of community, namely the “very fruitful concept [sehr fruchtbaren Begriff] . . . of a kingdom [Reich] of ends.” FA involves agents appraising themselves from the individualized perspective of their giving universal law, but it is also possible to think of a group of similar rational beings in a parallel way. Agents must address the relation of their ability to determine their actions through the giving of universal law (autonomy) to the equal autonomy of other agents (real or hypothetical). Notice that the term Kant uses for this community of ends is “Reich,” which can be translated as “kingdom, “realm,” or “commonwealth.” In each way, one observes the emphasis on a law-governed unity of people. Kant further elucidates this concept, stating, “By a kingdom [Reich] I understand a

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systematic union of various rational beings through common laws” (4:433). Such a kingdom is constituted by a union of individual agents acting on laws each gives to themselves. Since such laws are universalizable, we can see that the laws apply to all. Kant indicates that this must result in the concept of the kingdom of ends excluding a focus on idiosyncratic personal ends and foregrounding ends that all agents hold (such as the value of their humanity). It is an all-inclusive system, in which agents use their freedom in a way that furthers the harmony of the system. What truly holds this concept together, according to Kant, is the ideal of agents treating one another as ends in themselves. It is from this ideal of rational agents and their behavior that the system of ends in themselves emerges—that is, the kingdom or commonwealth of ends. Within this kingdom, rational agents must conceive of themselves as sovereign (as the lawgiver) in that they are not subject to the will of other agents. In addition, agents must also consider themselves as a member of this system and as subject to the laws issued by self and others (4:433). In a system of autonomous agents, each legislates to all, including themselves. Moral worth, in this account, is the quality of maxims willed from duty that makes an individual agent’s chosen maxims fit for being universal law in a possible kingdom of ends. If my maxims—willed at the individual level (per FA)—are truly fit for all, one can see them as nonproblematic laws for such a harmonious collection of agents. It is this use of autonomy that is ultimately free in the sense that it is self-sustaining and can harmonize with other intrinsically valuable agents exerting their own autonomy. Kant introduces the exact formulation of the moral law that involves the kingdom of ends by comparing FUL, FHE, and FA. While each is objectively a formulation of the same moral law, there is a subjective difference among them—namely, how each relates to the rational agent. Kant demonstrates this by illuminating the three parts to any maxim that one may adopt. Each maxim has a form, which involves its universality; it is this element that is tested and validated by FUL. Each maxim has an end that serves as its matter; while these can include personal ends, the supreme limiting condition is the end of humanity in the person of one’s self and others (FHE). This limits all conditional ends based on personal projects and inclinations. Lastly, Kant points toward “a complete determination of all maxims” through the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (FKE), “namely that all maxims from one’s own lawgiving are to harmonize with a possible kingdom of ends as with [zu] a kingdom of nature” (GMM 4:436). Paul Guyer and Thomas Pogge argue that the translation of zu as “with” is misleading. Instead, they advise the more literal rendering of

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zu as “into,” leading Guyer to translate the phrase as “all maxims from our own legislation ought to harmonize into [zu] a possible kingdom of ends, as a kingdom of nature.” This translation emphasizes the ideal nature of the kingdom of ends. As a heuristic concept, it guides the use and systemization of individual autonomy represented by FA into a harmonious community of such agents. FUL is well suited for moral appraisal of maxims, but the complete combination of ends, universal lawgiving, and agent status all unite in FKE, rendering this formulation as the complete determination of the maxims one could adopt. The ideal of the kingdom of ends is represented in this imperative, and it is this ideal that Kant further develops in Groundwork III with his analysis of human autonomy.

The Kingdom of Ends as the Ideal of Freedom FKE presents Kant’s ultimate notion of the categorical imperative and how it culminates in the position of the rational agent as part of a system of ends in themselves. This system is of crucial import later in this chapter, as it informs Kant’s navigation of the contours of political force and ethical virtue in the Metaphysics of Morals. Of pressing importance now is the status of this concept—does such a kingdom refer to actual states of the world, or is it used in a regulative sense? Does it describe an actual state of human relations in the world, or is it an intellectual means to help guide our action in an imperfect world? For Kant, the answer is the latter, as he explicitly states that the kingdom of ends is an ideal to guide practice (GMM 4:433). It may never be actualized in the world, but it still serves a cognitively valuable role in moral activity. This is Barbara Herman’s judgment, as she argues that “although the ideal cannot exist, even in example, it is not ‘a figment of the brain.’ The ideal supplies reason with a standard of judgment.” The kingdom of ends is “an ideal in this sense, [as] it is a representation of an idea of reason (the moral law) as an individual thing.” The FKE formulation, like some of the rhetorical tactics I consider later, gains traction by presenting a lofty ideal of reason in a particularized form. This enables its comprehension by contingent agents and renders it much more useful for the moral project of cultivation toward individual autonomy. For this ideal to give any purchase on understanding the relation between the moral law and a community among rational agents, the underlying perspectives of moral judgment must be examined, especially in regard to the

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constituent unit of such a kingdom, the individual rational agent. The concept of a kingdom of ends is a “fruitful” one for Kant mainly because it functions in a regulative and teleological fashion—it helps rational agents define their relation to others and explains how such a community ideally would function. It also cashes out the abstract ideal of the moral law in the concrete settings of human community. As Herman puts it, “The unrepresentable perfection of the moral law as a law is not that of the perfection of the individual will, but of the systematic unity, or order, of rational beings under a law of autonomy.” Thus, I argue that the kingdom of ends included in FKE is the ideal of free action among a community of autonomous agents. Before such an argument can be advanced, it is interesting to note that Kant does not exclude the actual existence of such an ideal system on logical grounds. The kingdom of ends is given as a concept through an analogy with the kingdom of nature. The kingdom of ends operates according to maxims given by subjects to themselves, whereas the kingdom of nature operates according to causes expressed in the “laws of nature.” The physical world does not necessarily preclude the existence of a kingdom of ends since the latter merely requires the coordination and cooperation of rational agents (who choose maxims fit to be universal law). This state of affairs is recognized as possible by Kant, who claims, “such a kingdom of ends would actually come into existence through maxims whose rule the categorical imperative prescribes to all rational beings if they were universally followed” (GMM 4:438). This is the same point that Kant alludes to in his Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), where he describes the idea of the “moral world” as an “object of pure reason in its practical use and a corpus mysticum of the rational beings in it, insofar as their free choice under moral laws has thoroughgoing systematic unity in itself and as well as with the freedom of everyone else” (A808/B836). This ideal, however, is precluded from empirical realization only when humans make choices contrary to the moral law. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues that since humans have control only over the self-legislation of their own maxims, there is no guarantee of actually realizing this system— individuals simply have to uphold the duties that the moral law commands of them (A809/B837). In the Groundwork Kant extends this idea, indicating, “It is true that, even though a rational being scrupulously follows this maxim himself, he cannot for that reason count upon every other to be faithful to the same maxim nor can he count upon the kingdom of nature and its purposive order to harmonize with him, as a fitting member, toward a kingdom of ends possible through himself ” (4:438). What agents must do, as in the Critique of

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Pure Reason, is to uphold the moral law and strive to determine their actions from the concept of duty contained in the moral law. If all individual agents determine their will in a similar manner, it appears that the only thing that could possibly deter the instantiation of such a kingdom of ends is possible friction with the prevailing laws of nature. Kant stops short of making such a claim because his interest appears to be in employing the kingdom of ends as a regulative ideal that always will be useful in guiding rational agents in their conduct; some of Kant’s later works (such as his work on history and anthropology) even gesture at ways nature and human history can be seen as assisting us in our moral endeavors. Yet here such a perfection of agents and the system that they form is not to be expected by actual agents; instead, agents are to follow the moral law in the exercise of their autonomy and hope that others will contribute their part to the pursuit of such a kingdom of ends. Groundwork III further explores the way that humans conceive of themselves as rational agents and what this means for moral thought. Typically, this section is framed as Kant’s attempt to show that the moral laws just discussed apply to us as rational beings. It also fleshes out the perspectives underlying the two “kingdoms” in which humans reside and that form our complex self-conception. One of the most important parts of this work is how Kant reconciles the apparent contradiction in the self-conception of agents as both objects affected by the world of sense (natural laws) and as free causes (determining their will from nonsensuous motivations). Kant believes that the solution to this dualism in how humans conceive of themselves is not to be found in an epistemological reading of their objective knowledge (theoretical knowledge of the external world) but instead in a perspectival manner involving the standpoints from which agents consider their existence in the world (4:450). Human theoretical knowledge is relegated in the Critique of Pure Reason to the world of appearances—the realm of nature and its objects. We often appear to be one of these objects in the natural world. Kant argues that one must assume that behind this world of objects and relations conditioned by human forms of intuition and thought are things as they are in themselves, leading to the world of sense (nature) being differentiated from the postulated world of understanding (the intelligible realm). Humans find themselves affected by objects and relations under the laws of the natural world (such as desires, inclinations, etc.) but also find themselves as having ideas that stem from pure reason that go beyond all notions of sensation. These ideas of reason include ideals such as that of the kingdom of ends and the moral law, which are related to the world of sense but do not stem

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from this realm for all we know. From this analysis of the worlds of nature and reason, Kant states that an individual can conceive of himself from “two standpoints from which he can regard himself and cognize laws for the use of his powers and consequently for all his actions; first, insofar as he belongs to the world of sense, under laws of nature (heteronomy); second, as belonging to the intelligible world, under laws which, being independent of nature, are not empirical but grounded merely in reason” (GMM 4:452). These two standpoints comprise the examination of agents as being situated in the world of appearances (nature) and as participating in the world of understanding (the intelligible world). Agents find that they share important aspects of causation and existence with the world of natural phenomena, such as adhering to causal laws and being influenced by heteronomous causes such as desires fixated on external objects. Agents’ self-conception also can proceed from the vantage point of the postulated noumenal or intelligible realm, in which they find that their faculty of pure reason forces them to conceive of their practical existence in ways that differ from that of the phenomenal world. From this perspective agents see themselves as free from external determinants and as able to determine their will from self-created universal laws (i.e., maxims in accord with the moral law). Autonomy and true freedom (in the sense of the sustained ability to self-legislate) are found to be inextricably linked in rational agents; humans must conceive of themselves as such agents due to their ability to have ideas such as the moral law as a source of determination and self-legislation. Agents must see themselves as objects in the world of nature and also as autonomous agents in the intelligible world. In other words, they must see themselves as phenomenon and as noumenon. These standpoints do not involve constitutive theoretical claims about the structure of the world and the objects to be experienced in it. Instead, they comprise the regulative ideas that humans (as well as other rational beings) are guided by in their selfchosen actions. Indeed, Kant argues, “All human beings think of themselves as having free will. From this come all judgments upon actions as being such that they ought to have been done even though they were not done” (GMM 4:455). Instead of theoretical claims about the actual freedom of humans dealt with in the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant moves such a self-conception to the realm of the practical, indicating that such a view of ourselves is forced on us by the way we take account of our own capabilities in action. Knowing all that we know about human psychology and the causes of human action, we still act as if we see ourselves as free in a deeper, transcendental sense. We may

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know that 90 percent of all customers like us will purchase a certain brand of car, for instance, but that does not warrant the abdication of our act of deliberating over what car we will pick in our present situation of car buying. We are forced to see ourselves as free. It is our postulated participation in the intelligible world (the noumenal realm) that is valued more in terms of practical action. It is this aspect that gives human actions the potential for moral worth. When humans decide how they are to act and on what to base their maxims, the two worlds stand out in an ascending order. For Kant, the “lower” world is that of the world of sense. Confining our self-conception solely to this world eliminates the noble goals that the ideals of reason postulate for us. If we conceive of ourselves as members of the intelligible realm, then our subsequent actions and maxims potentially can qualify us for participation in this sort of realm. If we confine ourselves to heteronomous motivations, then we are truly fit for the freedom of a turnspit—the desire- and inclination-based pull of the natural world. In practical matters the standpoint of the intelligible realm serves as the ideal to which our action and willing aspires. It is the realm that also can be conceived of as the kingdom of ends, involving individuals acting autonomously and not heteronomously, limiting their freedom so that the freedom of all is preserved and promoted. Commenting on this ideal of the kingdom of ends, Kant remarks, The idea of a pure world of understanding as a whole of all intelligences, to which we ourselves belong as rational beings (though on the other side we are also members of the world of sense), remains always a useful and permitted idea [eine brauchbare und erlaubte Idee] for the sake of a rational belief, even if all knowledge stops at its boundary—useful and permitted for producing in us a lively interest in the moral law by means of the noble ideal of a universal kingdom of ends in themselves (rational beings) to which we can belong as members only when we carefully conduct ourselves in accordance with maxims of freedom as if they were laws of nature. (GMM 4:462–63) Important insights to the practical value of the differing standpoints open to human agents are available in this passage. One notices that Kant wants to preclude the extension of theoretical knowledge beyond the realm of the phenomenal. He is not claiming that this line of reasoning gives us knowledge of our ultimate nature in the way that some branch of science might give us insight into the nature of the brain (as a material object). Instead, the realm of

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understanding is a useful (practical) concept for ordering conceptions of our autonomy and for guiding our choice of maxims. This conception of ourselves as partaking in the universal kingdom of ends through the determination of our will from the moral law is labeled as a “noble ideal,” leading one to see that the self-conception of one as a member of the intelligible realm of ends in oneself is the preferred practical standpoint. Ideally, all agents will conceive of themselves as participating in a kingdom of ends, at which point such a kingdom actually may occur in the physical world (GMM 4:438). This ideal of a system of ends in themselves guides action because it is a more noble conception of one’s nature qua rational agent than the alternate conception from the standpoint of the natural world (objects being determined by external causes and laws). The kingdom of ends discussed in Groundwork II becomes the practical ideal of our participation in the intelligible world in Groundwork III; the autonomy spoken of in FA becomes the ideal included in FKE of a system of agents acting to be truly free—that is, acting in such a way as to preserve and promote their autonomy as rational agents.

Freedom’s Evolution After the Groundwork Kant’s argument in Groundwork III is far from persuasive to all. Part of its stated purpose is to prove that the moral law is binding on us as rational creatures. In other words, he sets out to prove that we are the type of free creatures who are obligated by the moral law. His reasoning seems to have the smell of a weak argument, one that doesn’t really show us that we are free in the sense required by the moral law (free from determination from the sensuous world in some regard, at least). More is discussed in later chapters about how Kant’s Groundwork III argument fits into his rhetorical scheme and the moral project to get agents to conceive of themselves in certain ways. Yet here I must note a significant problem that pushed the evolution of his thought in the Groundwork to the version evident in the Metaphysics of Morals. The Groundwork gives a rich characterization of freedom as autonomy and what it would look like in individual and systemic forms, yet it was far from Kant’s final word on the topic. The reason for this was fairly simple. Kant so closely ties our freedom from inclinations to agents acting from nonsensuous causes (i.e., the moral law) that one is hard pressed to see how one could be freely immoral. This is the point made by Kant’s contemporary Karl Leonhard Reinhold in 1792 and later by Henry Sidgwick. If true freedom is following the moral law

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and not the incentives of the natural (causal) world, then agents are free only when being moral—if they act or will immorally, they are by definition not acting freely (and hence cannot be held responsible for that action). Reinhold’s criticism may be part of the reason that Kant’s reading of freedom and autonomy undergoes an important shift in the 1790s, culminating with his Metaphysics of Morals account of action and end setting. In 1793 Kant finally published his Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. This work employs a distinction that was not emphasized in previous works—that between will (Wille) and the power of choice (Willkür). The former retains its associations with the moral law and reason as in the Groundwork, but Kant subtly moves the locus of spontaneity to one’s ability to choose what to incorporate into one’s maxims as incentives. This addition of Willkür to the explanatory story allows Kant to continue to claim that agents are both subjectively undetermined (they take a truly active role in the determination of their maxims) and objectively determined (in that the moral law commands what they ought to do in all cases). The power of choice, in regard to specific maxims, cannot be determined by “any incentive except so far as the human being has incorporated it into his maxim (has made it into a universal rule for himself, according to which he wills to conduct himself); only in this way can an incentive, whatever it may be, coexist with the absolute spontaneity of the power of choice (of freedom)” (RBR 6:24). With this “incorporation account,” Kant can now maintain these stances of subjective indetermination and objective determination without relegating moral action to a wholly different category (as was said to be the case in the Reinhold criticism). In acting primarily from our idiosyncratic inclinations, we can have free choice and not be fully autonomous. As I discuss later, the Religion picture specifically portrays an agent as freely choosing to incorporate the motives of self-love (e.g., one’s desires) and respect for the moral law in differing ways. Ideally, moral agents subordinate the concerns of self-love to the motive of respect for the moral law, whereas fundamentally immoral agents subordinate the motive provided by the moral law to their idiosyncratic desires through their power of choice. Both are freely choosing what to build into their maxims, yet it is the former that represents the sort of sustainable and systemic consistency that Kant connects to autonomy. A system of such equal agents, of course, is what Kant would picture through the ideal of the kingdom of ends. One final change must be noted concerning the natural side to human nature represented by our inclinations or desires. Kant often spoke in the Groundwork as if the inclinations were bad or diametrically opposed to our

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hopes of autonomy. For instance, he labels them as “a powerful counterweight to all the commands of duty,” closely connected to the notion of “happiness” (4:405). Later in the Groundwork Kant claims that the inclinations and their specific objects are “conditional,” which means that they do not hold the same amount of value as do intrinsically valuable rational agents. He even goes so far as to argue that “the inclinations themselves, as sources of needs, are so far from having an absolute worth, so as to make one wish to have them, that it must instead be the universal wish of every rational being to be altogether free from them [gänzlich davon frei zu sein]” (4:428). It appears as if agents would want to free themselves from the inclinations altogether through the moral project. Yet this reading may be hasty, since the davon preposition in the quoted phrase can be translated in the sense of being “free from” their control, as opposed to “free of ” them (i.e., without inclinations). In line with this meaning, in Kant’s Religion we see that “Considered in themselves natural inclinations are good, i.e., not reprehensible, and to want to extirpate them would not only be futile but harmful and blameworthy as well” (6:58). There are a variety of reasons why inclinations can grow out of control and cause problems for agents striving toward autonomy. This is why Kant still maintains in the Religion that the inclinations do present some sort of force inclining agents to incorporate them as primary in their maxims, making “more difficult the execution of the good maxims opposing them.” This culminates in the notion of evil, with “genuine evil consist[ing] in our will not to resist inclinations when they invite transgression” (6:59). What is clear throughout all of this is that moral good is not determined by the inclinations, since that would be particularized (to one agent and one situation), nor are the inclinations innocuous elements to human psychology. They do seem to exert some sort of pull on agents’ use of their power of choice. Inclinations seem to incline one to incorporate them as the primary motivation in one’s maxim. This is why Kant continues to see them as being a “counterweight” in some important sense to the demands of moral duty.

Freedom and Force in the Metaphysics of Morals Kant’s 1797 work, the Metaphysics of Morals, provides an important picture of how his political and ethical thought applied in community settings appropriate for our concern with rhetorical activity among individuals. It extends the Religion’s program of modifying the conception of autonomy and freedom

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enunciated in the Groundwork. The Metaphysics of Morals is composed of two main sections, the “Doctrine of Right” (Rechtslehre, DR) and the “Doctrine of Virtue” (Tugendslehre, DV). In the extensive introduction to the work, Kant explains why he has now divided moral philosophy, a seemingly unified concept in the Groundwork, into a complicated system that covers rights and duties enforceable by political entities (states) and covers maxims and ends from which the virtuous agent should act. This division attempts to formulate a rich notion of autonomy by including both the internal and external uses of freedom. The important locus of freedom for Kant in the Metaphysics of Morals lies in free choice (Willkür). When agents choose to act based on the incentives of practical reason (the moral law), they are acting as truly free or autonomous beings. What they are free from is the natural world—including interests such as inclinations, which Kant labels as “sensible impulse, stimulus” and as falling under the title of “animal choice (arbitrium brutum)” (MM 6:214). Such agents are constantly pulled by constituent factors of their interaction with the natural world (the world experienced through the senses), but they are not strictly determined by this causal influence. Instead, they possess the ability to be free from these inclinations and stimuli of the external world. Kant is extending his analysis of freedom from the Groundwork, in which he discussed the sources of determination for human actions. In his introduction to the Metaphysics of Morals, freedom of choice is divided into negative and positive concepts. The negative concept of freedom concerns the human ability to determine action free from the pull of inclinations (stimuli from the external world). The positive concept of freedom, integrally linked to this negative notion, involves the moral law as a source of determination separate from the inclinations. Whereas willing and acting were largely conflated in the Groundwork, in the Metaphysics of Morals Kant divides individuals’ freedom into outer freedom and inner freedom (6:214). The former category refers to the external actions of individuals that can be assumed to be a consequence of purposive choice on their part. These actions are grouped under the “external use of choice” by agents. Inner freedom, on the other hand, refers to the internal use of choice by agents to pursue certain ends, and it is often connected to certain external actions (the choice of a certain maxim is a necessary but not sufficient condition to agents actually acting). Morality concerns inner freedom of choice, whereas legality concerns external freedom of action. This conceptual split is of great importance, as it divides Kant’s discussion of duties and obligations into those agents have in their external and internal use of choice. These

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areas of external and internal choice are separated into the categories of right (Recht) and virtue (Tugend), respectively. In this text, Kant continues his Groundwork account of humans and their important separation in some regards from the realm of nature. In terms of choice, humans are said to be creatures that can determine their actions from incentives based in pure reason in its practical form or from inclinations based in the natural world. Kant argues that humans have the ability to act on maxims incorporating respect for the moral law or on those incorporating materials from the natural world. The moral law comes from the will (Wille), whereas agents’ maxims come from their faculty of choice (Willkür)—Kant labels the latter as the only capacity that can be labeled as “free,” as the will is itself only directed toward the moral law (MM 6:226). This freedom of inner choice must not be taken as actually demonstrating certain aspects of humans as objects to be met with in experience. Kant argues, We cannot present theoretically freedom as a noumenon, that is, freedom regarded as the ability of the human being merely as intelligence, and show how it can exercise constraint upon his sensible choice; we cannot therefore present freedom as a positive property. But we can indeed see that, although experience shows that the human being as a sensible being is able to choose in opposition to as well as in conformity with the law, his freedom as an intelligible being cannot be defined by this, since appearances cannot make any supersensible object (such as free choice) understandable. (MM 6:226) The status of freedom as a moral or practical concept is emphasized in this passage from the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant wants to prevent the postulation of freedom as an actual part of the world of nature (i.e., as a quality of human beings qua natural beings), since the topic of freedom and determinism was addressed in the Critique of Pure Reason as falling outside the bounds of the theoretical employment of reason. Like the ideal of the kingdom of ends and the intelligible realm in the Groundwork, freedom is a vital part of how we should think of ourselves and our abilities to act in the world. Freedom of choice is thus ultimately analyzed in two regards—the external use of choice (external freedom) and internal use of choice (end setting often connected to an agent’s external behavior). The main distinguishing factor between these two types of freedom lies in how one is to apply coercion or force to change a given use of choice. External freedom is simply the external

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action of an agent and as such is seen as vulnerable to coercion in the DR. Threats, rewards, and so on are often effective at altering external, overt behavior. The internal setting of maxims and ends that results in a range of external actions, however, is not open to coercion or force from others and is relegated to the DV’s account of the moral worth or virtue certain agents possess or lack. The external use of choice can be controlled under external laws from the state, whereas the inner choice can only be subject to internal laws given by agents themselves. In both cases Kant emphasizes the role of lawgiving as important to the law-governed exercise of internal or external choice. In either type of lawgiving, Kant finds two elements “first, a law, which represents an action that is to be done as objectively necessary, that is, which makes the action a duty; and second, an incentive, which connects a ground for determining choice to this action subjectively with the representation of the law. Hence the second element is this: that the law makes duty the incentive” (MM 6:218). It is the normative nature of laws, both external (of right) and internal (of virtue) that Kant wants to emphasize here—each law stipulates a duty and relates it to some type of incentive. Moral laws command that agents value ends in a certain manner; external laws, such as those in political systems, command them to act in a certain way toward others. The element of incentive is what truly differentiates the two sorts of laws, according to Kant. He points out that “all lawgiving can therefore be distinguished with respect to the incentive. . . . That lawgiving which makes an action a duty and also makes this duty the incentive is ethical. But that lawgiving which does not include the incentive of duty in the law and so admits an incentive other than the idea of duty itself is juridical.” Juridical law, covering external choice of actions, involves incentives that “must be drawn from pathological determining grounds of choice, inclinations and aversions, and among these, from aversions; for it is a lawgiving which constrains, not an allurement, which invites” (6:219). Laws constraining external choice of overt action can include external, natural manners of constraint (say, threats of punishment), whereas lawgiving in terms of internal constraint cannot involve the choice of others besides the agent.

The Doctrine of Right and the Realm of Coercive Force The totality of all laws possible in external lawgiving is titled the “Doctrine of Right (Ius)” (MM 6:229). This is the subject of Kant’s DR, where he attempts

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to provide a universal, necessary conception of right (Recht) that goes beyond merely appealing to positivist notions of law. Such a simple appeal to law being what is commanded by a legislator becomes an empty tautology unless one can provide some reason why certain positive laws are right and just. Kant indicates that the concept of “right” has to do, first, only with the external and indeed practical relation of one person to another, insofar as their actions, as deeds, can have (direct or indirect) influence on each other. But, second, it does not signify a relation of one’s choice to the mere wish (hence also to the mere need) of the other . . . but only in relation to the other’s choice. Third, in this reciprocal relation of choice no account at all is taken of the matter of choice, that is, of the end each has in mind with the object he wants. . . . All that is in question is the form in the relation of choice on the part of both, insofar as choice is regarded merely as free, and whether the action of one can be united with the freedom of the other in accordance with universal law. (6:230) This discussion of the aspects of right is very important for understanding the following analysis of the rights of people, governments, and the community of nations. Right, at the most basic level of application, addresses the use of choice by individuals on the external or physical level. It covers the observable actions that affect others around us. The important aspect for the DR is not the end that an agent holds in doing an action, but the mere external action itself. For example, the DR does not concern itself with whether a potential murderer elected not to kill another person from fear of retribution (punishment) or from the motive of valuing the humanity of the other person (per FHE, say). Instead, the DR focuses only on the action (or, more specifically, the lack of action involving harming another person), which in this case was right since it did not formally prohibit the reciprocal use of choice of others (particularly their would-be victim). The action of murdering the other person is inherently not right because it infringes on the freedom of action on the part of the other agent. The ability of all agents to use their freedom must be unified according to a universal law, since material issues (such as differing levels of physical ability or causal effect) are not being taken into account at this stage of the DR. Whether or not the would-be victim was a mean, cruel drain on society would make no difference to their rights in terms of freedom of

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external action. What is of utmost importance is that the action of killing the other person would not be a use of choice that could be made into a universal law. To explain why such actions cannot be made into universal laws, Kant offers his “Universal Principle of Right,” which stipulates that “any action is right if it can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone’s freedom in accordance with a universal law” (MM 6:230). In a state of right, actions should be allowed that do not adversely affect the capability for action of others; the freedom of others to act can be infringed upon only when they are exercising it in such a way as to not allow for the exercise of freedom of all in a law-like (universal) manner. While this appears to cover both the external action and the maxim of that action, Kant is quick to point out that it is the hindrance of another person’s freedom that is the absolutely crucial aspect of this principle. It is this element that is considered as “wrong” if it “cannot coexist with freedom in accordance with a universal law.” The jurisdiction of the DR does not include the maxim of these actions in its lawgiving, however. As Kant clearly states, “it cannot be required that this principle of all maxims be itself in turn my maxim, that is, it cannot be required that I make it the maxim of my action; for anyone can be free so long as I do not impair his freedom by my external action, even though I am quite indifferent to his freedom or would like in my heart to infringe upon it. That I make it my maxim to act rightly is a demand that ethics makes on me.” External lawgiving cannot address these internal motives—that is, the domain of internal freedom and virtue, and not that of right. A law of right constrains the maxims of an individual only insofar as these maxims are inherently linked to actions that infringe on the freedom of others. In such a case, the maxims are both inscrutable to external sources and unnecessary because it is the infringement of others’ actions through one’s external choice that is of ultimate importance. Kant argues that the principle of right “is indeed a law that lays an obligation on me, but it does not at all expect, far less demand, that I myself should limit my freedom to those conditions just for the sake of this obligation; instead, reason says only that freedom is limited to those conditions in conformity with the idea of it and that it may also be actively limited by others” (6:231). The very concept of freedom involves the reciprocal freedom of all free agents. A condition of external freedom is one in which all can act according to universal laws; if such a rightful condition does not hold, then that state and its

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agents are not truly free. In regard to external interaction among agents, it would not be a state of right. Another important consequence of this conception of freedom and the free condition is the limited endorsement of coercion. Given that a wrongful use of freedom on the part of one agent hinders the rightful use of freedom on the part of another agent (“rightful” in that it supposedly would not limit the freedom of others in a wrongful way), one is authorized to resist this wrongful use to preserve freedom. As noted previously, freedom is the condition in which all use external freedom according to universal law; any use of freedom on the external level that accords with such a state is right. Thus, the external use of freedom to hinder a hindrance of freedom (a wrongful act or actor) is in itself an act that preserves freedom—as Kant states, it “is consistent with freedom in accordance with universal laws, that is, it is right.” According to Kant, this authorization to use coercive measures to bring another’s actions into accord with a state of freedom is not a synthetic proposition. It is a proposition analytically connected to the concept of right (a state of reciprocal freedom) by the principle of contradiction (MM 6:231). For Kant, the concept of right includes an equal coercion—the state of lawful external freedom is constituted by an equal coercion by all agents on all agents. Freedom implies coercion in a certain disciplined manner in order to be both systemic and sustainable. Since right and its authorization to utilize coercion address only the external actions of agents, Kant postulates that these “completely external rights” are those “that are not mingled with anything ethical, [and require] only external grounds for determining choice.” External lawgiving offers laws addressing external actions and connects with this concept of reciprocal freedom for all the authorization to act against nonreciprocal external actions. The ethical is separated from this domain of juridical laws, which instead of examining the moral worth of agents and their actions, merely looks at the legality of actions (do they accord with the concept of freedom according to universal laws). These rights are labeled by Kant as “strict” rights, and they are “based on everyone’s consciousness of obligation in accordance with a law; but if it is to remain pure, this consciousness may not and cannot be appealed to as an incentive to determine his choice in accordance with this law” (MM 6:232). Instead of relying on the motivation of the agent, strict right is confined to only external uses of choice that can be examined as to how they accord with universal use of freedom on the part of others. The rights of individuals to action imply an

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obligation of others to respect these rights. When this respect is violated by the action of another agent that wrongfully constrains the freedom of the innocent individual, steps can be taken to coerce the offending person into compliance with a state of right (freedom for all according to universal laws). Kant offers an interesting excursus on the justification for such an authorization to use coercion. Drawing an analogy to the a priori intuitions involved when an individual constructs the concepts of objects of mathematics, Kant argues that the mind must construct the concept of the law of reciprocal coercion, and from it comes the concept of right as involving coercion against offending uses of freedom. This presentation of the concept of reciprocal coercion and right is “the construction of that concept, that is, the presentation of it in pure intuition a priori, by analogy with presenting the possibility of bodies moving freely under the law of equality of action and reaction” (MM 6:232). Like Newton’s law of action and reaction that inspires Kant, the concept of right emerges when one thinks of an equal coercion applied by all members of a system on one another. To gain insight into this argument presented in the Metaphysics of Morals, it is necessary to bring in Kant’s thoughts on the equality of action and reaction from his Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science (1786). In considering the relations of material bodies to one another, Kant agrees with Newton’s third law of motion and gives his “third mechanical law,” which stipulates, “in all communication of motion, action and reaction are always equal to one another” (4:544). We always must represent actions of bodies as being reciprocal in that they must be seen as affecting one another’s position, motion, and so on, even if only in a small amount commensurate with the differences in objects involved. Expanding on why this must be the case, Kant argues, This is, then, the mechanical law of the equality of action and reaction. This law is based on the fact that no communication of motion takes place except insofar as a community of these motions is presupposed. . . . There is yet another, namely, dynamical, law of the equality of the action and reaction of matters, not insofar as one matter communicates its motion to another, but insofar as this first matter originally imparts its motion to the second one and by means of the second one’s resistance the motion is at the same time produced in the first. (4:548) The interaction of material bodies occurs in a community, meaning that these motions all occur in a relational manner. For one body to be seen as affecting

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another body, some sort of reciprocal interaction must be presupposed, no matter how extreme or subtle. Thus, action on one body and the reaction affected on the other body are consistent in this community of interaction. For example, when one billiard ball hits a stationary ball at an incredible speed, the speeding ball will produce motion in the stationary ball and the stationary ball’s reaction (via resistance) will be conveyed to the speeding ball in the form of reduced speed. In terms of the community of human bodies, Kant seems to want to analogously apply such a law to equally free (in the external sense) humans. This community of humans is composed of individuals who all effectively have the same capabilities to act on the external level (to possess objects, to run, to hit, etc.). With this “equal” force of freedom of external action, such a community can be said to be a functioning community (viz., according to laws) only if all the equal forces of action and reaction cancel each other out—this is the state of rightful freedom according to universal laws. Marcus Willaschek gives a related, but slightly different, reading of this physical analogy in Kant’s DR—“what corresponds in the realm of Right to pressure and counterpressure in dynamics is the resistance to rightful uses of freedom, on the one hand, and rightful uses of coercion, on the others. Coercion must be equal to the hindrance of rightful freedom.” One can clearly see the pressures or forces involved in coercive measures, but surely one also can see the sort of forces exerted on other agents by an agent’s power of choice. This systemic interaction between such agents can be “free” or universal in how such equal agents appear to function, or it can be unbalanced, necessitating the sort of counterpressures Willaschek discusses. My point is this—even without external coercion, a state of agents can be harmoniously integrated in how they use their external powers of choice. When these choices exceed the state of harmony, coercion can be used to create a state of rightful interaction. This is the normative aspect to right, an addition that might be missed if one focuses solely on the similarity of communities of humans to those of physical objects. If one’s force is increased beyond the resistance of others to equal that force, there is no covering natural law similar to that of equal action and equal reaction—it is not a state of external freedom of choice in accord with universal law. Kant introduces coercion as being an integral means to create the possibility of humans functioning equally and evenly through their external freedom. Kant explains this elucidation in the Metaphysics of Morals: “it is not so much the concept of right as rather a fully reciprocal and equal coercion brought under a universal law and consistent with it, that makes the presentation of

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that concept possible” (6:233). Kant provides a similar elucidation of right in “On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, but It Is of No Use in Practice” (1793). In an important passage, Kant describes this notion of right as emerging from the condition of the equality of action and reaction on the part of acting subjects: For all right consists merely in the limitation of the freedom of every other to the condition [Bedingung] that it can coexist with my freedom in accordance with a universal law, and public right (with a commonwealth) is merely the condition [Zustand] of an actual legislation in conformity with this principle and joined with power, by virtue of which all those belonging to a people of subjects are in a rightful condition as such, namely a condition of equality of action and reaction of a choice limiting one another in conformity with a universal law of freedom . . . . Hence the innate right of each in this condition . . . is altogether equal with respect to the authorization to coerce every other to remain always within the bounds of the consistency of the use of his freedom with mine. (8:292–93) A state of right is tied to mutual coercion. In other words, right is a state in which all actions and reactions of individuals using their external freedom are equal. Since the innate right of all agents entails innate equality in terms of ability to act in an external fashion, right emerges when the force of each (equal) agent is contained in a law-like state of equal freedom for all. Agents may differ in specific material situations or the external skills needed to achieve certain ends, but looked at simply as humans with the capacity to choose inner and external paths of choice, there is no reason why the effects of one individual ought to preclude the effects of another person’s choice. Coercion of external action is merely the construction and maintenance of this equality of our fundamental moral capacity of choice in the realm we have some control over (viz., the realm of humans as physical objects interacting). Without coercion, there is no guarantee that our external actions will be harmonious or universally systematic. Clearly, Kant’s system of right focuses on the abstract, formal use of external freedom in a community of individuals. Such a use of freedom involves the rights of individuals to reciprocally coerce others into complying with such a state, as such compliance is constitutive of the state of right. In discussing these enforceable rights of individuals to certain uses of their external freedom

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of choice (namely, the ability to affect others in a way that is in accordance with a universal law), Kant elaborates the divisions of his exposition of the DR. While this study need not go into all the details of the rights of individuals, governments, and nations, it is important to note the fundamental divisions of right. Kant points out that one could divide rights into natural rights or positive rights. Natural rights stem from a priori principles, whereas positive rights flow from the lawgiving of a specific legislator. The “highest division of rights” according to Kant is that of innate rights and acquired rights. This division takes rights as “moral capacities for putting others under obligations” and as such entails a right to coerce any infractions of such obligations to accord with a state of right according to universal law. Only one innate right exists, and it concerns an internal capacity of the human being—the innate right to freedom of both end setting and external action in pursuit of such ends. Kant indicates, “Freedom (independence from being constrained by another’s choice), insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with a universal law, is the only original right belonging to every man by virtue of his humanity.” This right to freedom is constituted by individuals’ innate equality, their being their own master, their being beyond reproach, and their right to affect another insofar as they do not diminish what belongs to the other person (MM 6:237–38). The presumption ought to be for maximizing the use of human freedom. Externally, they ought to be able to use their freedom in any way toward others, as long as it does not diminish what is theirs in terms of innate right (freedom) or acquired rights (such as property rights). For instance, Kant seems to allow for unpopular speech, as long as it does not materially injure or damage what belongs to the other person. All the other rights Kant discusses in the DR are external in that they are acquired through or implied in the use of external freedom in a community of agents.

The “Doctrine of Virtue” and Inner Freedom In the introduction to the “Doctrine of Virtue” (DV), Kant approaches humans as willing and end-setting beings. The DV addresses duties that involve ends and as such cannot be dictated through external lawgiving. The incentive to these laws must be internal to agents and sufficient to determine their choice in regard to the adoption of that end. People must choose why they act or refrain from acting in a certain fashion. As Kant argued in the Groundwork,

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duty involves constraint of some variety. The internal constraint provided by the categorical imperative (the moral law) is felt as a struggle of conflicting motivations by beings not necessarily subjectively determined by it. Thus, such beings can act in accordance with such an imperative or they can act against it. Similar to the account in the Groundwork, Kant continues to describe the inclinations as offering opposition to the subjective determination of individuals to act in accord with the moral law. This situation allows for the concept of virtue to be applicable to humans as agents. Virtue is the capability to withstand that which opposes the moral disposition within an agent and integrally involves opposition from the realm of nature. Kant points out that humans are particularly susceptible to impulses of nature, which “involve obstacles within the human being’s mind to his fulfillment of duty and (sometimes powerful) forces opposing it” (MM 6:380). Virtue is the ability of an agent to will maxims that accord with duty, especially when opposed to contrary grounds of determination (such as one’s inclinations). Virtue is “a selfconstraint in accordance with a principle of inner freedom, and so through the mere representation of one’s duty in accordance with its formal law” (6:394). The DV provides a scheme of how agents are to will in accordance with such a formal law and hence actively engage in self-constraint or selfdiscipline concerning how they choose the ends for which they act. The DV attempts to provide the ends that virtuous agents would set that check—but not eliminate—the ends of inclination and nature and demonstrate that individuals are acting from the idea of duty and not from other personal ends. Whereas the DR cannot address such internal uses of choice, the DV can lay out the objective determination of duties of ends of rational agents. These ends are going to be related to what Kant labels the “supreme principle of the doctrine of virtue,” which stipulates that one should “act in accordance with a maxim of ends that it can be a universal law for everyone to have” (MM 6:395). What kind of maxim of ends does Kant see as virtuous? To answer that question, one must first consider the nature of action and its relation to ends. No action (as a means) can be undertaken without an end, as “an end is an object of free choice, the representation of which determines it to an action (by which the object is brought about)” (6:384–85). Every action, as a free and purposive undertaking of a rational being, must have an end to which the action “aims” or aspires. Kant clearly indicates that “to have any end of action whatsoever is an act of freedom on the part of the acting subject, not an effect of nature” (6:385). The use of inner freedom to choose a certain end to attain through action is an important component of one’s freedom. Unlike

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natural objects, an agent’s actions are not effects but teleological undertakings animated by a certain purpose. Since all rational action must entail an end, and since the categorical imperative is binding on human beings, Kant’s position is that there must be ends that we are duty bound to incorporate into our maxims. These ends that one must always incorporate into their maxims (as self-constraint) are “one’s own perfection and the happiness of others” (MM 6:385). These are the ways that the Religion’s fundamental choice of incorporation—respecting as primary either the moral law or self-love—gets explicated in the Metaphysics of Morals. There is no duty to further one’s happiness, as Kant finds that this is already a natural inclination in all humans and as such need not be commanded as a duty. The duty to perfect or cultivate one’s self involves a holistic improvement of the highest nature of humanity, including one’s ability to reason and to be an autonomous being. One must “cultivate one’s faculties (or natural predispositions),” which includes such theoretical faculties as the understanding as the source of all theoretical and practical concepts. A practical capacity of choice must also be improved so that human agents increasingly are able to set their own ends and resist inclinations and sensible impulses. Like in the Groundwork, the high point of this cultivation is acting with the moral law “as also the incentive to his actions that conform with duty” (6:387)—the doing of duties from the incentive of duty itself, and not from any other incentive (such as inclination, self-love, etc.). This type of selfperfection will have its analogues in education, as the next chapter demonstrates. Perfecting others, however, cannot be a duty since the notion of “perfection” consists in this—“that he himself is able to set his end with his own concepts of duty” (6:386). One cannot make another perfect, as this would be a contradiction of the concept of perfection—it entails one’s own choice to be perfect in morally relevant ways, and this sort of internal choice cannot be coerced by others. The happiness of others is a duty placed on an individual due to the fact that all humans wish to be happy by nature, albeit in different ways. Given this general inclination of humans, one should not oppose the plans of others but instead should adopt them as one’s end as well. Kant recognizes that this involves some scrutiny on the part of the duty-bound agent—not all sources of happiness are allowable by moral conduct. Kant points out that in promoting the happiness of others, it is “[their] (permitted) end I thus make my own end as well” (MM 6:388). This often entails helping others to be free from pain, adversity, and need. Like the duty to one’s own perfection, this duty hinges on

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the key idea of humanity as an end in itself; humanity and, along with it, freedom are key elements in Kant’s moral thought ranging from the Groundwork to the Metaphysics of Morals. As such, these ends must be incorporated into an agent’s maxim since this is the respect due to humanity as intrinsically valuable. The formal principle of morality—the moral law as it is explained in the Groundwork—is very similar to the supreme principle of virtue in the Metaphysics of Morals. The former principle, paraphrased in the latter text, commands, “So act that the maxim of your action could become a universal law” (MM 6:389). Kant’s formulation of the principle of virtue, however, adds “that this principle [the categorical imperative] is to be thought as the law of your own will and not that of will in general, which could also be the will of others” (6:389). Considerations of an agent’s virtue concern a specific person’s will and acting upon a self-determined end. Virtue is an inner quest in which an individual ought to take part. Kant discusses the various applications of this conception of virtue to human behavior and interpersonal situations. For instance, he examines the various duties humans have to themselves and the duties that they have in regard to the treatment of others. For the purposes of this inquiry, a close examination of these derivative duties is not necessary. It is sufficient to note the foundation of these duties in the principle of virtue, which stipulates the ends that agents must will—the perfection of themselves and the happiness of others. Like FHE’s postulation of humanity as an end in itself, both of these duties deal with the end of humanity, either in one’s self or in the form of others. The ability to consistently hold these ends informs the notion of virtue, which Kant further describes as “the moral strength of a human being’s will in fulfilling his duty, a moral constraint through his own lawgiving reason, insofar as this constitutes itself an authority executing the law” (6:405). The focus in the DV is on the ways that humans should display and practice moral strength over their will and over the opposing inclinations that attempt to divert them from the path of duty. In a sense, the only coercion allowable or effective in the arena of virtue is a self-coercion.

Right, Virtue, and the Challenge of Self-Cultivation The traditional way of picturing right and virtue is to read duties of right as largely unrelated to duties of virtue. Right and virtue are often seen as separate because of Kant’s comments about the difference lying in the ability to apply

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coercion—duties of right address merely external actions that impact the freedom of others and are thus amenable to the use of coercion by others (regardless of the acting agent’s motivations). Commentators such as Allen Wood and Thomas Pogge argue that the line dividing the two realms of duty allows no crossover and that the external duties of right are functionally unrelated to the internal duties of virtue. Others (such as Paul Guyer and Bernd Ludwig) attempt to provide a linkage across that boundary. Instead of entering into this dispute, it may be useful to imagine the relation between these two realms as a hierarchical one, with the kingdom of ends being the best case of agents cooperating in a rational manner. This is intimated in Guyer’s reading when he argues that “the principle of right can surely be seen as the consequence of applying the formula of universal law to a subset of maxims for one’s own actions, namely, those concerning the exercise of one’s external freedom, that is, the expression of one’s choice in bodily and public actions, where that might interfere with the exercise of external freedom by others.” Such a hierarchical view would see the two types of duties as unified at a higher, more ideal level, whereas from the standpoint of externally controlled systems, they are more akin to natural systems using law-like forces to create a state of harmony. Duties of right, ideally, ought to implicate not only harmonious outer action but also the harmonious internal action of willing presented in FKE. The ideal of the kingdom of ends from the Groundwork concerns a system of autonomous agents willing and acting in a sustainable and systemic fashion. These agents choose ends with the right sort of moral motivation, forming a morally harmonious system—they are self-legislating (autonomous) and act from the moral law. These agents respect one another through the supreme limiting condition of FHE, their self-legislation accords with FUL and FA, and a kingdom of ends is actually realized—they act in the right way from the right reasons. The actions specified as duties of right are done in this state from the moral law and not from external sources such as coercion, self-love, and inclination. The less ideal state is that of the kingdom of nature, a state that applies to all phenomenal objects that exist according to external laws. Whether it is a forest ecosystem or humans regarded as animal beings, such a physical system can attain harmonious interaction through external laws, such as the laws of nature or statutory laws (operating on physical drives such as aversion). Such a state concerns the regulation and management of a system of interacting bodies—like the equality of action and reaction discussed earlier, right and external freedom emerge in a system that operates according to some

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universal law covering the interaction of agents who are equally free to act in an external sense. The motivations of such agents are not important in such a system; what is important is the instantiation of equilibrium among the equal externalized forces of human action. Right is the minimal case of community that draws on an analogy with the kingdom of nature because it conceives of humans as phenomenon. The externalized freedom of action is systemically preserved. The ideal state, however, comes closer to picturing humans as noumenal, transcendentally free agents and consequently represents the standard to which Kant wishes human communities to aspire. Kant even indicates in his essay “Toward Perpetual Peace” (1795) that a nation of “devils” could arrange, assuming they are reasonable creatures, a rightful state of equal external freedom (8:366). Moral worth does not seem intrinsically connected to creating and maintaining states of harmonious external action—these devilish agents could perhaps be internally motivated by a uniform egoism, not moral concern for others. There are some areas of the Metaphysics of Morals where Kant explicitly acknowledges that the DR and the DV “overlap” in a way that makes right a part of morality. For instance, Kant talks of duties of right being “indirectly ethical” and that the rights of a human being are linked to the commands of morality—he states, “it is the doctrine of virtue that commands us to hold the right of human beings sacred” (6:394). In his earlier lectures on ethics (recorded by Collins in 1784–85), Kant links the upholding of rights to the valuing of an agent’s humanity; he argues, “if he throws away his rights, he throws away his humanity” (LEC 27:435). The same theme is at work in both of these earlier lectures and in the later Metaphysics of Morals—the value of humanity and protections against undue force are integrally linked. Right must connect at some level to the conception of agents as homo noumena, or humans conceived as rational beings with ways to direct their activity that extend beyond the realm of nature and its inclinations. But this connection is unclear, as right involves the judgment of others that is limited to physical manifestations of intentional action (the effects of humans as phenomena in the natural world). One is commanded by FHE to respect the rights of others; if such a command is not heeded in external action, political authorities can judge and coerce external freedom of choice into a state that allows for the universal external freedom of all. Notice that the ideal is that of all agents upholding duties of right (particularly to others) from the motivation of the moral law. If such an ideal is not instantiated, the DR still serves as a minimal case of agents using judgment and connected coercion to create a state of (external) freedom among

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equally free agents. Arthur Ripstein makes this point in his reading of Kant’s political philosophy—“each person’s entitlement to be his or her own master is only consistent with the entitlements of others if public legal institutions are in place. . . . The consistent exercise of the right to freedom by a plurality of persons cannot be conceived apart from a public legal order.” These institutions, of course, are the coercion implied in the state of right. To have external freedom of choice is to be limited (e.g., coerced) in certain systemic ways. Yet we should not end the story there in thinking of right and how it relates to morality. Instead of separating right and virtue in a strong sense, Kant states the case for the DR being a part of morality in his “Toward Perpetual Peace”— “This principle [of public right] is not to be regarded as ethical only (belonging to the doctrine of virtue) but also as juridical (bearing upon the right of human beings)” (8:381). If one approaches these duties from the standpoint of a judging agent, then these strict duties are seen not only as a part of ethics but also as a part of right, highlighting the fact that they are duties that can be judged and coerced by other agents. We are quite able to observe and judge the effects of actions on others. The inner aspect of observing the setting of ends, however, is something that can be done exclusively by agents themselves. This ideal of the kingdom of ends commanded by FKE concerns the state human societies should strive to achieve. Whether any given community does achieve it is beside the point—it is a regulative ideal that guides action and practical thought. This perspective, through its ideal nature, stipulates a system of agents whom one knows are all acting in accord with right and with certain dispositions from the moral law. When an agent considers his or her actual or particularized standpoint, this knowledge of real intentions disappears—all that is left is the ability to judge external actions of individuals as interacting parts of a system of agents. The ideal is useful precisely because it abstracts from the epistemic limits on judgments imposed by human nature and the anchoring of one’s self in a particular agent’s position. One can think of what an entire system of such agents would look like. It thereby becomes an ideal that any individual can help a given community strive toward by participating as a part of such a system. This system is ideally composed of rational agents who are perfect in the sense that they are always able to act out of respect for the moral law. This composite kingdom of ends includes agents who respect others from the moral law, even when their contrary inclinations tempt them with other maxims or actions not grounded in a primary respect for the moral law.

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The ideal of the kingdom of ends offers individuals a choice as agents concerning what type of self-conception they can have. To detail this aspect of the relation between morality and right, it is helpful to examine Kant’s lectures recorded by Johann Friedrich Vigilantius in the fall of 1793 (LEV). These lecture notes are important insofar as they address the fundamental linkage between morality and right; Kant begins by addressing morality in general and then proceeds to much of the material that would come out in the Metaphysics of Morals in 1797. Kant distinguishes between the causes of human behavior that stem from their “dual nature . . . [as] a natural being and a free being.” Human action can be caused by a motivum, which determines an agent’s action “according to the laws of freedom, and thus treats him as a free being.” This appears to be the type of inner self-direction spoken of in FA, as individuals operate according to laws of their own legislation that are not conditioned on inclinations or objects of the natural world. The alternative source of causation is a stimulus, which “determines man’s arbitrium [choice] according to the laws of nature, and is the sensory impulse” (LEV 27:493). This cause of a certain action or choice is conditioned on the natural world, in a fashion similar to how nature conditions the choices of animals. This type of cause leads agents to act based on their natural drives and inclinations and not upon the unconditioned causes found in the moral law. The motivum concerns an agent conceived of as spontaneous and free due to the determining ground of practical reason (27:494). This distinction relates to Kant’s concerns in the Groundwork with humans seen as natural beings and as free or autonomous beings. Later in these lectures, Kant is noted as making the division between moral compulsion and pathological compulsion. The former is “compulsion by the mere idea of the moral law” (27:519), which involves the representation of duty and an incentive to action being internal to that representation (i.e., seeing what is commanded by the moral law and doing it because it is commanded). The latter type of compulsion “results by the law of any kind of inclination, and is drawn, therefore, from sensory impulses and personal inclinations” (27:520). This type of stimulus motivates through laws and objects of the natural world, such as the inclinations and the law-like connections inclinations have with the objects of one’s satisfaction. Given this distinction, one can observe how the kingdom of ends and the kingdom of nature fall into a hierarchical relationship. The system of agents brought into lawful harmony (in terms of external freedom) is but a shadow of the ideal kingdom of ends—the former is the minimal case of rational community created through pathological compulsion (aversion) based on the world of

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nature. The latter—the most full realization of an autonomous community— resides in the kingdom of ends in which such natural compulsion is not needed. The ideal involves simply moral compulsion at the level of selfconstraint. Each agent is pictured as an autonomous member of this system, without the need to coerce or control other agents through aversion or appetite. Each acts in respectful ways from the right self-chosen reasons. The principle of right is Kant’s recognition of the motivational dualism within human nature. Humans are both rational beings and animal beings, torn between the imperatives of reason and the demands of sensuous existence. The kingdom of ends is not a necessary consequence of any natural arrangement, and so the principle of right allows for the basis of such a system to exist. By coercing equally free beings into a state of equal action and reaction, a state of right can be brought into existence. Such a state is not a kingdom of ends, but is the starting point for a progression that ideally ends in such a perfection of individual and system. The principle of right is the minimal systemic condition that must be realized as a precursor to the kingdom of ends (as an ideal). The linkage between the principle of right and the moral law is the core of practical reason because it highlights the telos of moral cultivation—the kingdom of ends. The former state indicates realizable starting conditions that take into account both weakness in human nature and limitation in human judgment, and the latter state highlights the perfection of a harmonious system of internally and externally free agents. How does one move from a state of right to a state of virtue? The LEV discusses one intriguing way that right might relate to the ideal kingdom of ends. In these lectures Kant gives more explicit links leading from the principle of right to this systemic ideal. When agents are not well disposed in manner or habit, coercive force might efficaciously be brought to bear. Even in these cases, Kant holds the specific hope that the determining power of the inclinations can be weakened by the sensory compulsion, fostering dispositions controlled by reason, not by other inclinations. Discussing the application of external coercion, he writes, “If the countermeasures are adequate to weaken the inclination, and enliven his [the offending agent’s] sensory feeling by another contrary feeling in collision with it, we are then in a position to ensure that continuing habituation will weaken the power of inclination, and thereafter moral grounds have an impact, so that by removal of the obstacle he is thus made free, and can be brought, by this pathological expedient, to a recognition of his duty” (27:522). Kant is arguing that physical coercion can help individuals proceed toward the ideal of the kingdom of ends by weakening

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the control of the inclinations. In his work on religion Kant defines “evil” as making “the incentives of self-love and their inclinations the condition of compliance with the moral law” (RBR 6:36). Kant advances the claim in the Religion that all humans recognize the force of the moral law; it is just the extent to which they elevate or subordinate inclination-based maxims to it that determines whether they are morally good or evil. The laws given by the principle of right can be seen as one way of habituating individual agents to gain control over their inclinations and thus determine their maxims and actions from the moral law. The telos of the kingdom of ends is the ideal toward which individual agents in a community of rational agents should freely aspire. One step toward such a community is assisting in the cultivation of individual agents concerning the control of their inclinations. Coercive measures designed to bring about a state of right might help to accomplish such habituated control over the inclinations by disabling their power over an agent. There is a deeper problem with this seemingly allowable connection of force and moral cultivation, however. It has to do with how we can freely enable an agent’s choice to pursue self-perfection.

The Problem of Force How does a community move from a state of external harmony to the internal harmony of end setting implied by FKE? The kingdom of ends included in FKE is the ideal endpoint of free action among a community of free agents, the goal of moral action in a system of humans (GMM 4:462–63). Yet this mere ideal does not go so far as to vouch for the probability of actualizing this arrangement, since it depends on the combined (moral) actions of all human agents operating under their own guidance, a skeptical point Kant seems to anticipate earlier in the Critique of Pure Reason. There, in the earlier (and more hedonistically tinged version of his moral system), Kant opines on the commands of morality and the commensurate worthiness to be happy. These commands affect everyone, so there is a systemically consistent moral world that is postulated. But “this system of self-rewarding morality is only an idea, the realization of which rests on the condition that everyone do what he should, i.e., that all actions of rational beings occur as if they arose from a highest will that comprehends all private choice in or under itself ” (A809/B837–A810/B838). Kant is under no illusion that everyone doing their moral duty is probable— indeed, it is highly unlikely given the constitutional temptations proffered by

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human inclinations toward nonsystematicity. He still believes that we ought to act in accord with moral commands, since their validity does not depend on a certain number of agents actually doing them. If all goes as it should, such a system of moral agents ought to be evident. Regardless of how others use their freedom, Kant’s point even in the 1780s was that we ought to do our part in what morality commands. Given a state of virtue as an endpoint, how can humans move toward its realization? Forming a civil state is a start, since it brings the external freedom of individuals into a harmonious whole. External coercion through incentives such as reward and punishment is allowable in that it tends to create a state of external equality among equally free agents. What the law and its coercion cannot do is to determine the use of an agent’s internal freedom. Agents must determine if they are going to be solely moved by the internal incentive of the moral law (respect for the law in itself), and no threat of external coercion can cause this. All such coercion can cause is the increased possibility of others setting certain ends out of fear or promise of reward, but it can never create such end-driven behavior from respect that clings to the act of the internal lawgiving of agents. Respect is a matter of choice, and agents retain the ultimate control over their freely chosen ends. A brainwashed or fear-driven agent is hardly autonomous on this Kantian account. The state of right is an important step toward Kant’s ultimate aim—a state of existence that preserves and promotes the freedom of rational agents—since right entails a system of agents upholding the subset of perfect, enforceable duties to others. What it does not secure, and cannot secure, is the internally motivated adoption of such duties to others (such as not lying on contracts, not harming others) from the motive of respect for the moral law, the moral worth of others (FHE), and so forth. Coercion can at most force or push agents to use their external choice of actions in specific ways—it cannot determine the specific reason why they act. The state of right also seems powerless to make agents adopt the ends that Kant associates with imperfect duties in the DV. Political measures cannot get hold of Kant’s ultimate endpoint—the free adoption of the ends of morality as one’s own ends and motives. If external (political or legal) coercive measures are inherently insufficient, what steps can be taken to progress from a state of external freedom (Recht) to one of a system of agents willing and acting in line with duty from the idea of duty itself (the goal enshrined in FKE)? This leads to the first of two interlocking problems facing Kant’s mature moral philosophy—namely, what I call the “problem of force.” The prospects concerning moral improvement seem relatively bleak, since nothing actively

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can be done by any given agent or government. One cannot choose for other agents, since ends central to “moral perfection” involve the agent in question freely choosing that end (MM 6:385). In the case of moral perfection or selfmastery, this end cannot be pushed by others. If it could be encouraged by others in a forceful way, it would entail a contradiction, since “the perfection of another human being, as a person, consists just in this: that he himself is able [vermögend ist] to set his end in accordance with his own concepts of duty; and it is self-contradictory to require that I do (make it my duty to do) something that only the other himself can do” (6:386). Moral perfection— becoming the sort of agent one ought to become—means being a certain kind of autonomous being in how one uses one’s internal and external powers of choice. Affecting the internal freedom of others seems either impossible or, at best, immoral since it contradicts the whole idea of autonomy if it directed by a heteronomous and outside source. At a systemic level of communities, the situation appears hopeless. One appears resigned to simply wait for others to choose the right ends in their activities as maxim-choosing beings. This hopelessness appears based in the nature of force and human autonomy and leaves agents wishing for a morally improved community with the following options: (1) the (positive) use of coercive force or (2) the (negative) facilitation of freedom to choose to morally perfect or develop one’s self. The former is impermissible on Kant’s account of autonomy, since it violates the nature of self-perfection for a willing agent. Being morally cultivated means freely choosing to be that way. One is consigned to mere inaction as the core to systemic moral cultivation of others, it seems. The latter option, although morally acceptable as it clears room for the use of another agent’s freedom of choice, seems hopeless because it offers no guarantee or likelihood that all individuals will actually take advantage of such an opportunity to self-cultivate.

The Problem of Manipulation and Autonomy One might be tempted to see persuasion as the antidote to coercion, a form of force that can navigate the dilemma of forced choice and free acceptance that lies at the heart of moral cultivation. Yet one must then deal with the second problem—what can be called the problem of manipulation. Simply put, how can rhetoric exert an effective force to persuade others to morally improve themselves without being unallowable manipulation? How can rhetoric be effective and preserve and promote the autonomy of all involved? This is

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the question that animated many of Kant’s remarks about rhetoric harming human dignity or affecting them as machines. Rhetoric seems like a clear threat to their autonomy. Regardless of the increasing complexity of the Kantian story on will and freedom, one can see the basic notion of autonomy remaining as an exercise of choice that helps to preserve and to promote the very capability of freedom itself. While choices to follow sensible inclinations are still somewhat free in that they are the result of spontaneity in an agent’s choice (Willkür), they are not truly free or autonomous from external conditions and do not preserve or promote agents’ ability to act from their own faculty of reason as lawgiving (the positive notion of freedom). Paul Guyer describes this as a type or token distinction, with each action being a token of “freedom”—each moral action preserves and extends the capability of the agent to act from the conception of duty and each immoral action shortcircuits the continued use of freedom on the part of agents (such as in cases of addiction or through generally contradicting the ends that they set out to achieve). From a systemic point of view, immoral actions would not lead to or instantiate a system of agents willing and acting as those depicted in the kingdom of ends. Fixating on one’s inclinations as a primary motive would inevitably lead to conflict with the inclinations of other agents, and one’s inclinations over time may become unsustainable. With Kant’s rich conception of autonomy and moral action enunciated, we are now at the point where we can focus more on the sort of action class that serves as the focus of this book—those actions that are communicative or rhetorical. I now use this foundation to offer a characterization of what the manipulative orientation behind the sorts of bad rhetoric that Kant fixated on in the previous chapter. “Manipulation” is usually employed to indicate an action done, as when one manipulates others who plan to spend time with other people by saying something such as “I will be so lonely without you.” Such an utterance seems to be manipulative given its likely effects on others, but one might notice a curious fact about it on further inspection. Is this utterance always manipulative? Probably not, since there are situations where it is an honest declaration. Is it manipulative because it is animated by the idiosyncratic purpose of the one uttering it? This also seems to go too far, because it would count too much as morally problematic. For instance, Walter Fisher notes, “All rhetorical interaction is manipulative in the sense that communicators intend messages, and all communicators are strategic in their chosen causes, selections of materials, designs of composition, and styles of presentation. Every communicator, in other words, seeks to make the best

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possible case for his or her position.” What seems to be manipulation in speech is a certain subset of these types of interactions, those in which “there is evidence that the audience is being ‘played,’ ‘worked,’ or otherwise used for the communicator’s ends rather than for their own ends.” This is closer to the Kantian notion of manipulation, save for the fact that Fisher seems to exclude purposive action on the part of the speaker. Kant would not find all intelligent, purpose-driven activity manipulative. What renders it too purposive, or purposive in the wrong way? It must be the sort of dispositional problem pointed out when agents fail to follow FHE and properly value the others with whom they interact. In communication, one key feature to manipulative utterances would be that they involve an orientation of the speaker that does not value the listener in the right way and that leads them to not totally divulge vital facts or beliefs to the listener. The goals, intentions, and real beliefs of the speaker are not revealed completely to the listener, although they are known to the speaker. A crucial aspect to this is that such information would matter to the listener’s reaction to the original utterance. If one revealed such intentions, goals, or beliefs, one’s utterance would no longer be effective—one would impotently say, for instance, “I’m just jealous of your other friends, but hear me out—I will be so lonely without you.” In this case, the listener would know that it is not loneliness that motivates the utterance but instead the lesscommendable emotion of jealousy. That choice of meaningful reaction to a message is taken from the listener by the speaker’s actions, animated and guided by purposes that run afoul of FHE. The vital feature of the manipulative orientation of a speaker is now evident from Kant’s Groundwork. Manipulative speakers fail to respect or promote the autonomy of the other agent involved in the communicative situation. They do this by occluding important beliefs or purposes relevant to the other participant’s reasoning or reaction. This is contrary to the charge issued by Kant’s FHE and FKE—we should treat others always as ends in themselves, and our autonomy must be worked into a sustainable systemic whole with the autonomy of others. Notice that such moral laws foreground the intention enshrined in the maxim of an agent. Such maxims indicate what value the other possesses and, more important, what actions are available in pursuing one’s ends in regard to that other agent. When I treat another as an end, it is not simply that I do some specific action. Instead, an action is couched in a context inflected and conditioned by the subjective features of my intention and values vis-à-vis the other. I can and do undertake a certain action because it is allowed and advised by this way of valuing the other in

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relation to myself. In cases that violate FHE, one is treating and valuing one’s humanity as sacred, but one is not valuing the other as an equal. In the case of communicative manipulation, this unequal valuing occurs in what we reveal and conceal from the other concerning our goals, intentions, and real beliefs relevant to that utterance. Indeed, the utterance’s causal efficacy depends on our concealing such inner elements behind the outer act of speaking. Thomas Hill Jr. defines manipulation in terms that fit this reading of communicative manipulation: “Manipulation, broadly conceived, can perhaps be understood as intentionally causing or encouraging people to make the decisions one wants them to make by actively promoting their making the decisions in ways that rational persons would not want to make their decisions.” In the case of manipulative rhetoric, speakers are oriented by their devaluing of others such that they hide some important features of the situation from listeners that such auditors would want to know. If speakers know their utterance means more than to them and the listener than what the listener believes it means, would not a listener think this was a relevant fact to know about this attempt at persuasive communication? If one knew that certain words were being said solely to use the audience’s emotions to get a favorable vote, might those words lose their intended effectiveness? The manipulative orientation is revealed as the opposite of moral orientation, or those dispositional structures motivated by FHE. Nonmanipulative rhetors do not conceal relevant and important features of what they believe or what they intend precisely because they value the other as moral equals to themselves. A system of such communicators would animate their communicative activities by the guide of the moral law and its various formulations discussed here. In the ideal case, the autonomy of speaker and audience would be preserved and promoted in an equal fashion per the ideal of the kingdom of ends (FKE). There is much more to say on how exactly humanity and the equality of value inherent in a system of human agents is protected in persuasive communication. But the vital distinction that allows a Kantian sense of rhetoric to be explicated should be evident. Conceptually, there is room for forms of communicative activity aimed toward persuasion and audience change that are animated by a valuing of autonomy, as well as for forms of communication motivated by an orientation that values self above an autonomous other. It is in the former realm of nonmanipulative interaction that Kantian rhetoric resides. Yet this dialectic between force (here in the form of manipulation) and free, autonomous choice is a recurring challenge for Kant’s moral system.

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The problems of force and manipulation now set the course of the remainder of this book. They are clearly related—how can we move a community and its agents toward more cultivated states without manipulating them at the expense of their autonomy? How can nonmanipulative rhetoric marshal any educative or enlightening force on free agents? The fundamental question that the rest of this inquiry is concerned with is how to address these problems in the scheme of Kantian moral cultivation that I have expounded. How can one move agents from a state of external harmony (e.g., the state created in external freedom by coercive measures) to the ideal state of external choices harmonizing because of certain internal choices in end setting? How can one agent forcefully but freely encourage or cause the cultivation of another? External incentives would seem to fail, since there is no sure way that they will predictably or permissibly affect the inner disposition of their target agents. What I want to suggest is that Kant often turned to what we can call rhetorical force to encourage such cultivation in social settings. He didn’t use this term, but that is no damning criticism for this constructive engagement with Kant. What the following chapters demonstrate is that Kant—especially in his later writings in the 1790s—continually turned to communicative and symbolic means as ways that human agents could shape one another in the quest to cultivate autonomous agents. We do not find any discourse on rhetoric or public oratory in Kant, but we can find a sense of rhetoric in Kant that plays a vital role in the moral system just outlined. That role is the free but forceful middle ground between waiting on others to self-cultivate and manipulatively forcing them to “freely” choose self-perfection.

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Four pedagogical educative rhetoric: education, rhetoric, and the use of example

Freedom, in the form of individual and communal autonomy, lies at the end of the road that Kant’s moral system travels. It ranges over external action as well as the internal choices we make about what ends we value. Unless it is a community covered in a seamless blanket of silence, it most likely involves agents talking to one another and persuading others of their (morally allowable) points and projects. It is a freely communicating system of autonomous agents. Yet as the previous chapters have demonstrated, Kant has not fared well in his relationship to those who study rhetoric. It is as if Kant’s community is assumed to be a community of noninteraction. In his detailed account of the standard philosophical rejection of rhetoric, Bryan Garsten laments Kant’s “quick dismissal of persuasion and rhetoric” and aligns him with the view that conceived of rhetoric as “a threat to enlightenment and free thought.” Rhetoric, appealing to specific audiences and specific emotional stances of those audiences, compromised the reasonability and universality that Kant attributed to ideal beings. Reason was the ultimate arbiter, but it was an internal power, according to Garsten. Kant saw rhetoric as an external form of manipulation. Garsten puts a fine point to this—“there were only two options for Kant—discipline from outside or self-discipline.” Rhetoric is said to be the former, so it must be excluded from the latter category of ideal moral agency. What is interesting to note here, as in any discussion of Kant and rhetoric, is what is assumed about the actual practices pointed out by the

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terms “rhetoric” and “philosophy.” Garsten’s analysis, while a fascinating look at the “politics of persuasion,” does seem to simplify Kant’s references to “rhetoric” to mean only rhetoric as manipulation. There is no Kantian sense of rhetoric as nonmanipulative communicative practice in Garsten’s analysis, it seems. As I have demonstrated in the earlier chapters, this is far from the monolithic truth of Kant’s mentions of rhetoric. It is not the only way we can reconstruct Kant’s relationship to rhetoric. One must also notice that by connecting “rhetoric” with “exclusive external manipulation,” Garsten (and others) get what they want—a Kant that did not and cannot allow rhetoric a meaningful role in his moral system. Yet if one emphasizes the mentions of rhetoric and rhetorical skills I noted in chapter 2, one could sympathetically exhume a different relationship between Kant and rhetoric. An easy way to get to this point is to challenge the dichotomy that Garsten identifies between “discipline from outside” and “self-discipline.” Acknowledging the Kantian pedigree of this split, one can still ask, might there be a form of rhetoric that does not manipulate but that is an external way to encourage self-discipline and self-cultivation? The minute one begins to consider such a possibility, one can see the limits to thinking of Kant as simply antirhetorical. If one can move the practice of rhetoric beyond forcing individuals to action or truncated belief through fear and appeals to self-love, one can find a meaningful sense of rhetoric in Kant. One must note the similarity of this way of setting up the scene—(unfree) external discipline or self-discipline—with the problem of force noted in the previous chapter. Kant’s moral philosophy is grand in its scope, but there is a cost to such a powerful system. It bifurcates the areas in which the power of choice can be exercised and strictly limits the realm of inner choice or maxim determination to the agents themselves. This is incredibly uplifting, as it evinces a faith in human powers to transcend any given situation in determining why they act in certain fashions. Thus, inner choice is connected to the reasons we incorporate into our maxims or subjective rules of action through self-determination—in this situation and ones similar to it. The fundamental choice, of course, is between acting out of respect for the moral law per the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself (FHE) or acting out of a primary concern for self-love or one’s idiosyncratic interests. The previous chapter ended with the problem of force, or the question of how we can move from coerced external harmony among actions to the internal, systemic harmony presupposed in Kant’s ideal of the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (FKE)—a system of agents acting in the right ways because of the right freely chosen internal ends or motivations.

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Right is merely a preliminary step toward such a goal, but it is not the final goal for Kant. Beyond harmonious outer actions lies a community of agents striving to become an actual kingdom of ends. How do we encourage others to make respect for the moral law the primary motive in their use of the power of choice, without compromising the freedom or spontaneity inherent in that power of choice? How do we encourage individuals to freely pursue the path of self-discipline and cultivation that lies at the heart of Kant’s moral system? At one point, Kant offers a stab at a solution: “How, then, are we to seek this perfection, and from whence is it to be hoped for? From nowhere else but education” (LEC 27:471). Coercive power over others extends only so far, but education seems to offer a form of “soft force” that encourages (but does not force) development in a certain cultivated direction. How much progress is made toward that end by actual communities of agents depends on the cultivation of individuals through their efforts of growth, education, and selfdefinition as rational and autonomous agents. Yet what exact magic occurs in the process of education that preserves agent autonomy while simultaneously moving such individuals toward the state of virtue? What this chapter explores is the role that rhetoric and communicative devices play in the educational cultivation of moralized humans. In other words, fleshing out the process of education causes us to look to rhetorical means of persuasion, and in doing so we begin to see how rhetoric addresses the problem of force in Kant’s moral philosophy. One such communicative tool employed is example, which has a long history in rhetoric, dating back to Aristotle’s formalization of the art of rhetoric. Here we take this as a starting point to finding the rhetorical Kant. Such a rhetorical device (example) will allow us to extrapolate the sense of educative rhetoric one can find in Kant—the purposive use of language and narrative elements to enhance an auditor’s powers of reason, as opposed to those uses that degrade, confuse, or subvert such capabilities. This sort of enhancement in the Kantian scheme fits into the cultivation of the agent as a moral being. This sort of rhetoric is nonmanipulative insofar as it does not compromise an auditor’s autonomy, and it is truly educative in that it cultivates the power of autonomy in line with the ideal of the kingdom of ends. Not only are rhetorical devices such as example used in Kant’s own practical works, such as in the Groundwork (1785), but he also advocates for their use in the education of children in his Lectures on Pedagogy (1803). They represent a perfect opening for a sustained discussion of Kantian forms of rhetoric and their relation to his system of morality. To motivate such an account of rhetoric in Kant’s

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educational thought, I start with the problem that seems to be a dangerous impediment to his scheme of moral cultivation—the very permissibility of effective moral education in light of agent freedom. After discussing this problem of education, a concern not unrelated to the dynamics involved in the problem of force from the previous chapter, I connect education to Kant’s concerns about rhetoric. Kant is notably hostile to rhetoric, but only one version of it—that of persuasive speech used with an orientation toward selfish and manipulative use of one’s social skill. Avoiding such an orientation is the primary aim of education. The material covered in this chapter is not exclusive of adults, but it begins with the topic of education of the young. Later chapters show how such an educative rhetoric and its devices apply to adults, but the challenges to moral persuasion and development addressed here are those presented by the case of children, as they are less-than-fully developed rational agents. Thus, education is a vitally important testing ground of Kantian moral and rhetorical theory. It is needed to prepare agents for the rigorous demands of culture and morality, and it involves agents who are the least susceptible to direct moral persuasion and argument (since they are not fully rational agents yet). Kant places communicative means at the heart of his pedagogical discussions (viz., catechism, dialogue, the analysis of examples, and the use of religious narrative) and extends these methods to adults. How can these notions of education and freedom, moral persuasion and moral cultivation, example and the demands of universal morality all fit together? In the following discussion, I explain the room available for an educative or nonmanipulative rhetoric in Kant’s system and particularly how example plays a major role in such a rhetoric. I proceed as follows. (1) I identify the problems of education—most prominently those dealing with how external means can be used to cultivate freely choosing moral agents. (2) The problem with education and its use of force in moral cultivation is shown to connect to Kant’s analysis of rhetoric as manipulation. How can both rhetoric and education (as external force) be used to cultivate morally autonomous agents in Kant’s scheme? Kant often recommends the use of examples, but at other points argues against their educative employment in moral matters. (3) I analyze the problems with examples that Kant elucidates at various points in his work. (4) I attempt to smooth over such inconsistencies and argue that example (more specifically, its rhetorical employment in the process of moral cultivation) plays a vital and nonmanipulative role in cultivating children from individuals possessing social prudence and skillfulness to agents instantiating

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Kantian autonomy. (5) This attempt to use examples to cultivate sensitive and socially artful creatures is then mined for what it has to offer for understanding the rhetoric of example in Kant. Whereas others have insisted that examples tend to function in an ambiguous fashion, I argue that Kant illustrates the clarity examples can have in internally motivating agents toward moral change.

The Problem of Education For Kant, education plays a vital role in the ongoing project of morality. Kant taught a course on education four times, as early as 1776–77 to as late as 1786–87. Around the 1785 publication of the Groundwork, well-known for its abstract and rather rigorous account of moral motivation, Kant remained concerned with how to inculcate moral motivations in agents. In the Groundwork the endpoint of moral cultivation is the agent who acts from respect for duty and not merely from the lures of inclination (even if the action is “in accord with duty”). In his Lectures on Pedagogy, Kant puts this in terms of the character or disposition that a child is to develop. Children are not merely to be “trained,” but “what really matters is that they learn to think. This aims at principles from which all actions arise” (9:450). The maxims that ought to guide the child’s actions, of course, are those that enshrine respect for the moral law. Education is the process of creating and cultivating such agents. One may quickly claim that the problem of force—the challenge of moving a system of agents from external harmony of action to inner respect and virtue—is solvable by education. Yet this solution is too quick and liable to produce more problems requiring explanation. The issue for both our earlier quandaries about coercive force and the challenges facing education lies in how Kant frames the particulars of moral willing. First of all, there is the notion of self-perfection being self-chosen that Kant puts clearly in the Metaphysics of Morals. There, he maintains that self-perfection involves the internal use of freedom in setting ends for one’s activities and therefore cannot be coerced in the same manner as external action (e.g., 6:230). Such coercion of internal ends, if possible (say, through “brainwashing”), would be manipulative insofar as agents themselves are not choosing those ends—they are chosen by the manipulator. This is problematic for Kant’s educational project in that it appears to put an insurmountable gulf between the internal action of setting the right ends (viz., those morally worthy ones) and external actions aimed at

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influencing the use of such choice, including the attempts at habituation and training that could be employed by teachers. Lewis White Beck recognizes this tension, stating that “when Kant is dealing with education, however, he relaxes some of this rigor; he does not even seem to see that his strict moral philosophy has, and can have, no place for moral education.” The rigor of demanding that moral cultivation be integrally linked to the free choice of agents themselves seems to disappear in education or, even worse, seems to be a reason against the efficacy of educational endeavors. Samuel Ajzenstat notices this problem, pointing out that “in On Education the tension between means and ends takes the following form. Character is to consist of unswerving mental self-determination whose devotion to pure principle yields neither to external forces nor to internal feelings. Yet this character is produced precisely through the action of the external forces of reward and punishment on the internal feelings of pleasure and pain. . . . Early discipline produces effects that transcend the coercive means used to produce them.” “Coercive means,” or external forces used by the teacher (either involving incentives or fear appeals), are used to affect what Kant insists must be a freely chosen act of self-determination. The question arises, how can any external action (such as discipline or training from educational institutions) ever reliably or permissibly lead to the sort of internal change desired in moral cultivation? A second problem that arises for Kant stems from how he discusses moral change in individuals. Not only is there a barrier between inclination and the power of choice (Willkür), but he often talks about the process of moral cultivation being an instantaneous process. One simply chooses to prioritize the moral law in determining action-guiding maxims. This is problematic, however, since education presupposes a development over time. Commentators such as William K. Frankena trace this tension to Kant’s discussion of phenomena and noumena, and the reading of humans caught between the causal force of inclination and the spontaneity of their power of will. If inclinations and their effects reside at the level of nature and sensuous causality, and moral cultivation lies at the level of some spontaneous, nonnatural power of choice, then the moral change sought must be something radically different from a causal process of the gradual development of humans as natural beings. As Frankena puts it, “This [focus on nonnatural senses of choice] seems to imply that moral education is not just phenomenal, but epiphenomenal, a kind of lantern-show reflecting what is really going on behind the scenes. We may have to engage in it but the issue is decided elsewhere.” Education seems to affect the natural side of the human being, the side driven by habit and incli-

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nation, whereas morality concerns our use of a power always at our command (that of choice of what kind of maxims to follow). Kant contributes to this sort of problematic understanding of education with his notion of dual standpoints in the Groundwork (e.g., 4:451), as well as with his discussion of “universal disposition” (allgemeinen Gesinnung) and “appearances” (Erscheinungen) of this disposition at 6:73 in his Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. The former (the ideal, moral disposition) involves the religious change of heart desired in morally worthy willing, and the latter (the appearances of one’s specific disposition) is what appears in the historical struggle of an individual across some determinate span of time. The endpoint of moral development seems instantaneously within students’ grasp, if they but use their power of internal choice in the right way; education, however, takes time and involves students who are not already in possession of the cultivated disposition (Gesinnung) desired. How then can moral education ever affect this “universal disposition” that enshrines respect for the moral law in its maxims? Both of these concerns center on the relation of freedom and inclination in how one determines actions. As discussed in the previous chapter, Kant wants agents who are free from the determining power of their inclinations (GMM 4:428) and with the freedom of self-determination (viz., through their practical reason, the moral law). These problems begin to be less problematic if one reconceptualizes the goal of education as fostering a specific self-conception instead of what the second problem presupposes—a rigid ontological split between two “selves” (phenomenal and noumenal) involved in education. Instead, if one sees Kant’s talk of “universal disposition” and “apparent disposition” as ways of discussing the project of moral change instead of as concepts denoting two separate levels of ontology, then one is better positioned to address the problem of education. Since this study on rhetoric focuses on Kant’s ethical thought as it pertains to the rich human world of action, I indirectly address the second problem mentioned earlier (involving the temporal disjunction between the putatively noumenal and phenomenal selves) by foregrounding the idea of self-conception or disposition (Gesinnung). The choice for agents is what sort of character they ought to enshrine now, what sort of disposition toward others, self, and action they ought to instantiate or make present. While the issue of temporality is sidestepped, the causal question still remains—how can I freely determine my disposition or self-conception in light of external means that seem to encourage cultivation? In other words, one still needs an account of how educational (or external) means can be used to cultivate (or cause) moral ends. I believe that this is the

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project that Kant embarks on largely in the 1790s, a stance supported by other studies. While not the only means, one vital way of achieving such change is education, and the way it functions in regard to internal freedom must be explored. I argue that education functions largely through teachers employing what I call “educative rhetoric”—the use of speech and symbolic means to create or instantiate the sort of change desired in the pupil. I focus on one tactic in such a rhetoric, that of the use of example to hone the moral judgment of pupils. This sets the stage for the full sense of educative rhetoric explained in the following chapters—the use of communicative means to move individuals toward the ideal of the kingdom of ends.

Education and the Cultivation of Dispositions Before I discuss the rhetorical use of examples in moral education proper, it is important to elucidate Kant’s general education scheme. One place to find this is in Kant’s lectures on education. Kant’s Pedagogy is a loosely organized discussion of education; at times, this looseness gets so extreme that his own usually careful schemas are put in contradictory forms. Such textual confusion is largely due to the convoluted history of this text’s path to publication. At the end of his career, Kant handed over the scattered notes from his course on pedagogy to be published by his friend and colleague, Friedrich Theodor Rink. The notes were fragmented and on small pieces of paper, so Rink probably exerted some influence on organizing them in their published form. Yet we do not have the original notes (the einzelne Papierschnitzel) to ascertain the fidelity of Kant’s presentation of this material to Rink’s ordering for publication. This has caused commentators such as Beck to claim the Pedagogy is not truly a Kantian text, whereas others have found it a useful presentation of his thought on education. Amid all the conflicting divisions of education evident in the published text, one standard split stands out—the division between the discipline and training of young people and their moral formation (Bildung). Education is said to accomplish both of these tasks when it is successful (9:441). Two questions must be answered to clarify the nature of these tasks, however. First, what exactly is the distinction between these two levels of education? And second, why ought one think of this education progression as a dispositional change? Why is moral formation an important part to education beyond any knowledge or skills one may gain?

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Kant often uses the term “discipline [Disciplin]” in the Pedagogy and defines it as that which “changes animal nature into human nature” (9:441). Later he notes that “to discipline means to seek to prevent animality from doing damage to humanity, both in the individual and in society” (9:449). Thus, discipline is the formation of a character in the negative sense—one forms a character that is not led astray by inclinations or passions, the parts of our animal nature. The positive partner to discipline is what Kant calls “instruction [Unterweisung]” (9:442). Here the individual’s character is developed by the acquisition of skills useful for self and society. Such skillfulness includes the abilities of writing, reading, and even some facility with music (9:449). Both fine art and the communicative arts are included in the development of character. Another part to this phase of education is what Kant calls “pragmatic formation,” whereby the student “is formed into a citizen, thus receiving public value. There he learns not only how to direct civil society for his purposes, but also how to fit in with civil society” (9:455). Contrary to those who think it is hard to find advocacy for rhetorical skills in Kant’s original corpus, Kant explicitly connects this prudential formation of effective citizens to communicative abilities: “In the instruction of children one must seek gradually to combine knowledge and ability. . . . Furthermore, knowledge and speech must be combined (eloquence, fluency, ease in talking)” (9:474). Such skills can be useful, and they are not a priori manipulative or deceptive. Kant extols the importance that these rhetorical abilities hold in creating the sort of effective citizens society requires. The problem is that the disposition that often accompanies such skills is not necessarily moralized (meaning one that respects individuals intrinsically or as equal to one’s own value). This is the prudential disposition—the orientation toward activity that foregrounds achieving self-centered results in one’s actions—that Kant worried about with rhetoric and its manipulation of people by exploiting their desires and needs. Indeed, how Kant describes this prudential formation comes dangerously close to the rhetoric he criticizes in the Critique of the Power of Judgment— “worldly prudence . . . consists in the art of using our skillfulness effectively, that is, of how to use human beings for one’s purposes” (9:486). He then discusses the communicative dimensions of “the art of external appearance” or “propriety.” Kant is clearly sensitive to the social benefits that communicative skill can bring one, as well as the potential for moral trouble it holds. What is vital to note is that without specific moral constraints placed on such communicative skillfulness by the concepts of morality (say, FHE), the skills of

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worldly prudence could lead to an effective but malicious citizen. The skills of persuasive communication are not prima facie immoral, but the disposition most often linked to them is one directed toward what Kant calls in the Groundwork “hypothetical imperatives” or imperatives of skill—the ways to achieve certain contingent, subject-centered ends. In other words, these skills are typically found in the self-centered pursuit of ends that one agent desires, often at the expense of the projects of others interacting with that individual. This typical disposition is not inherently moral insofar as it lacks the respect for the moral law (viz., FUL and FHE) that characterizes the moral disposition. It is a skillful pursuit that valorizes the ends of self-love. Beyond mere prudential skill and pragmatic formation comes what Kant calls “moral formation” (Bildung), or “moralization.” Here the individual has acquired “the disposition to choose nothing but good ends. Good ends are those which are necessarily approved by everyone and which can be the simultaneous ends of everyone” (Pedagogy 9:450). An individual selects and pursues ends in regard to others following the principles of universalization (Formula of Universal Law, FUL) and limited by respect for others as autonomous beings (FHE). When all this comes together, a harmonious and equal system of agents is instantiated, as postulated in Kant’s Groundwork “Formula of the Kingdom [Reich] of Ends.” This is the sort of autonomy and self-direction that Kant discussed in the Groundwork, and in the Pedagogy it is also closely connected to being the source of one’s own activity. As he argued in his essay, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” (1784), enlightenment is the removal of a self-incurred tutelage or minority and the instantiation of self-direction. The source of direction that is truly one’s own and that is truly a sign of enlightenment stems from our practical reason—the faculty of providing conceptions of rules upon which one can then act. In Pedagogy Kant points out that “Moral culture must be based on maxims, not on discipline. The latter prevents bad habits, the former forms the way of thinking. . . . Discipline leaves us only with a habit which, after all, fades away over the years” (9:480). For Kant, habits are unthinking and instilled from outside of the agent—through the teacher, the environment, and so on. Moral formation involving maxims, on the other hand, comes from within the agent, since maxims are consciously held, self-originating subjective guides to action. In other words, moralization aims at the formation of the sort of character guided by consciously held maxims and not on a disposition oriented merely toward external stimuli and incentives (9:481). While skill and prudential abilities (such as persuasive speaking) are important for an efficacious agent,

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the problem of education reaches a new depth with Kant’s introduction of moralization—how can externally originating means of education cultivate one’s disposition from that of mere prudential skillfulness to one of a moral skillfulness? This is another way of explicating how exactly education can move us from external rightness to internal virtue.

Example and Moral Development In answering this question, one must seek a means of education that is not merely manipulative or that produces merely manipulative or skilled individuals without the requisite inner respect for moral concerns (viz., FUL and FHE). This parallels the delicate motion that must be made in the problem of force and in the cultivation of autonomous agents. At many points in Kant’s work, examples seem to be a vital way to go about this sort of cultivation of inner disposition toward action, self, and others. But in spite of all his explicit advocacy of examples and their use in moral cultivation, Kant enunciates strong reasons as to why they are not ultimately valuable in moral matters. Is Kant confused about this fundamental tool in both rhetoric and education, the example? Before explaining how examples can be useful in an educative or nonmanipulative rhetoric that aims at the transformation of prudential skillfulness to moral concern in individuals, it is important to examine four reasons why examples may not be the most effective means in moral cultivation. I eventually argue, however, that the employment of a certain sort of example overcomes these limitations and thereby constitutes a vital pedagogical form of Kant’s educative rhetoric. 1. In Groundwork Kant is quite explicit about the harm that examples can do to morality. They distract us from the point of moral philosophy—to give us insight into the standard of morality. He clearly states, “Nor could one give any worse advice to morality than by wanting to derive it from examples [Beispielen]. For, every example of it represented to me must itself first be appraised in accordance with principles of morality, as to whether it is also worthy to serve as an original example [ursprünglichen Beispiele], that is, as a model [Muster]; it can by no means authoritatively provide the concept of morality.” Kant is concerned here with individuals who attempt to derive morality and moral concepts from empirical instances, or those—such as Garve and the popular philosophers—who leave moral discourse at the level of specific examples. The critique is simple: examples presuppose moral theory to

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accurately and justifiably identify them as examples of morally worthy or laudable behavior. Even “the holy one of the gospels,” Jesus, must be identified as good from an application of moral theory to that instance (4:408). The majority of the work in moral cultivation, on this account, is done by theory; examples only distract or feed on this fundamental value. Thus, Kant relegates examples to a very minor role in his Groundwork, using them to merely illustrate (but not justify) the categories of duties that fall out of FUL and FHE. It is not clear what their educative value is beyond mere illustrations. 2. The use of examples in education is said by Kant to risk arousing jealousy or envy in addressed agents. In the “Doctrine of the Methods of Ethics” portion of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant addresses the use of examples in pedagogy and argues that examples used for emulation (i.e., be like that “good boy”) are counterproductive. Such an employment of instances only causes students to hate those examples or model students, not to act more like them (6:480). Kant expands on this point in the lectures recorded by Johann Friedrich Vigilantius in fall of 1793, pointing out that the high standard set by the example of others arouses envy and hate, since “if the object clothed with merits were not there, the child would itself pass for a model who would not be loaded with faults” (LEV 27:694). If such normative examples weren’t there, one’s ethical burdens and moral expectations (at the hands of others) would be that much reduced. One would be the model, in other words, and not have to follow that other person as a model. It seems that examples are not only unhelpful in deriving the moral law, but that they also increase the power of harmful inclinations in educative situations—surely not something Kant would want to endorse in his educational works! 3. Another danger in the use of models in moral education is that they seem to encourage imitation. This is a point that Kant mentions at Groundwork 4:408 and Metaphysics of Morals 6:479–80, where he faults examples in moral matters because they encourage a mindless imitation by those attending to them. Robert Louden connects this objection to the Kantian worry of forfeiting our autonomy in our actions. I believe that the root of this type of concern stems from two facts about most examples. First, examples tend to show us only actions and results, but not the inner aspect of end setting by an agent that is so important to moral worth for Kant. He claims that “what others give us [viz., their conduct] can establish no maxim of virtue” (MM 6:480), since such maxims are internal features of willing not usually observable to other agents. Kant has worries at other points about certainty in knowing one’s own motivations (MM 6:392; GMM 4:407), so it is not surprising that he

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wonders about the reliability of imputing motives to externalized examples. The best examples can give us is an account of one way of behaving in a situation, and the risk is that an auditor will merely ape that behavior. This, of course, lacks moral worth insofar as it is motivated by the incentive of doing the same external action as the depicted agent instead of being motivated by the incentive of respect for the moral law. The consequences of this third problem are simple—examples seem to lack educative value, as they possess a fundamental uncertainty about the really important feature of moral action (the maxim behind it) and thereby lead to confusion at best or, at worst, a mere copying of external actions (thus leading to mere legality or conformity of external actions, lacking inner moral worth). 4. A final concern with the use of examples in educative circumstances is that they may lead to an empty “hero-worship” or romantic enthusiasm. In the Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Kant calls these “examples of so-called noble (supermeritorious) actions” and faults them for instilling in children “longings for inaccessible perfection” (5:155). This is problematic, not only insofar as such perfection cannot be realized, but also because it distracts attention away from the true realm of moral cultivation—the everyday situations where children will have choices to make in terms of what incentives they incorporate into their maxims. Tales of actions and motivations that are quite remote from everyday concerns do not cultivate the sort of engaged moral agent Kant thinks education ought to produce. Instead, it produces “fantasizers” (5:157) who may be more concerned about the moral worth of heroic actions and not about the moral worth (or lack thereof) behind their own actions. Fictional or mythical examples run an increased risk of incurring such a cost, since such cases are often set in extraordinary or unreal situations. Thus, Kant would be wary of examples that put the goal of perfection outside the child’s domain of activity. Two points are clear about examples and this list of four problems that they can cause. First, examples do seem to have an important role in moral education. They are invoked in all three of Kant’s important works on moral theory. This role, however, is not to establish or justify the moral law; it does seem to be related to the comprehension or motivation of the agent being cultivated. In the Metaphysics of Morals Kant follows his warnings about envy and the lack of inner insight into moral agency from examples with a clear statement of how examples are to be correctly used—“A good example (exemplary conduct) should not serve as a model but only as proof that it is really possible to act in conformity with duty” (6:480). Second, the use of examples in moral

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education should be adapted to one’s context and audience. Their use is therefore rhetorical—examples are employed in certain ways for certain effects in regard to a specific audience. This use also necessitates an account of how examples can be motivating and how outer examples depicting external conduct could ever reveal the possibilities of inner states of affairs. Such an account is an analysis of the rhetorical functioning of examples in discursive situations. I will return to this account in the next section. Another curious feature of examples and their use occurs when one examines the sorts of examples Kant employs in talking about both moral education and moral theory in general. Many of Kant’s examples in his Metaphysics of Morals and his lectures on ethics involve actual people and situations— these can be identified as real examples, such as those implied in the Critique of Practical Reason when Kant suggests using ancient and modern biographies for examples in moral education (5:154). Yet opposed to Metaphysics of Morals 6:480, these examples do not show the possibility of acting based on moral motives, since one lacks access to the actual thought patterns or motives of the agents portrayed. Contrast this class of examples to another—hypothetical examples employed in Kant’s elucidation of duties in the Groundwork (4:421–23, 4:429–30). There Kant takes the liberty of stipulating a situation, an agent, and a maxim to argue for the immorality of suicide in the face of impending sorrow, lying promises if one is in need, and so forth. These examples are not “real” insofar as they are fictional and created by Kant. One is hard pressed to see how they can prove the real possibility of any sort of conduct (viz., willing from respect for the moral law). The real examples even have a shade of hypothetical fact about them in Kant’s employment; indeed, he seems to stipulate motives and maxims to historical figures in much the same way as he does in his constructed examples. While it seems that examples showing the inner motives of agents are desired (and would avoid much of the force of the previous four criticisms of examples in moral education), it is unclear how examples with any hypothetical or stipulated element could prove the possibility of some actual manner of willing (viz., internal end setting). They are, in an important sense, unreal and fictional. This is precisely where looking at Kant’s moral theory and scheme of moral education through the lens of rhetorical function can be of use. If one looks at such examples as proving in a theoretical sense the possibility of certain ways of causation in the natural and phenomenal world (e.g., a story depicting a normal human could leap over a large chasm), then one will fail to see how they can be convincing in any way. The examples are either wholly fabricated,

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or the key elements (viz., the maxims) are imputed in an almost-stipulated fashion. They fail to prove much about the real world. But if one looks at them in a practical sense as not involving or referring to objects of the phenomenal world, then one can allow the stipulated details of such examples as long as they yield the sort of practical benefit anticipated by their rhetorical employment. Kant makes a similar move with the concepts of God, freedom, and immortality in the Critique of Practical Reason—they are taken as postulates connected to our practice of morality and not as descriptive statements about the world of nature and its causal sequences (5:122–34). A similar use of argument can be found in Groundwork III, as discussed in chapter 6. Like the use of example, the argument in Groundwork III can be called motivational or rhetorical insofar as it aims at producing an experience through discursive means that motivates or persuades that agent to adopt a certain self-conception. It is not a theoretical argument about the nature of selves and this world. It is about how agents conceive of themselves as practical and how they guide their behavior—in other words, it concerns what sort of character or disposition they possess or assume. The remainder of the present chapter takes the same approach to Kant’s use of examples—how can examples, stipulated as they often are, be used in motivating agents to become morally cultivated or move from prudential dispositions to moral dispositions? If I can give such an account, it will go a distance toward explaining the role of rhetoric in solving Kant’s problem of force, or the purposive use of discursive means to freely affect certain desired changes in human agents.

The Rhetorical Functioning of Examples The basic explanation of the rhetorical functioning of examples in Kant has to address this fundamental problem—if examples are to show the real possibility of acting from moral motives (something that actual, external examples cannot illustrate), how can created or stipulated examples show such a real possibility? Stipulated examples can illuminate the inner drives of agents precisely because liberties are taken with what we assume we know about agential motivations. Thus, Kant talks about Socrates’ motivations with the certainty that can only come from having stipulated these motivations in the act of narratively recounting his story (LEC 27:316) and about Jesus as being stipulated as being either a holy will (perfect) or subjectively undetermined and imperfect (RBR 6:64). Like characters in a fictional story, such examples clearly deal

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with the inner constituents of action, but they cannot show that actual agents can or do act like this. We must continue to look for an answer to how stipulated examples can show that an actual agent possesses the capacity to act from respect for duty (MM 6:480). We are still left to divine the motivational power of such examples. I believe that the key to Kant’s employment of examples comes in what they instantiate—the mindset they actualize in an attending agent—and not in what they point to in the world of the example. The experience of the example highlights what is internally possible, as opposed to taking the example as referring to an empirical instance of some sort of external behavior by another agent (e.g., Socrates, Jesus, Superman). Emphasizing the latter as the value of examples risks the problems discussed in the previous section—jealousy, envy, hatred, imitation, and a focus on legality of external actions. Additionally, such an approach cannot get the sort of imputational certainty Kant desires in discerning motivations connected to moral worth. The education comes in the effect these examples have on their auditor (viz., the student), and this can be labeled as a rhetorical effect. It is not a matter of logical truth; it is a matter of affecting these moral truths or beliefs in actual humans. Kant was readily aware of the effects of communicative activity and emphasized them within his later work. For instance, he acknowledges the “edifying power” of speech to create moral dispositions in listeners; in his lectures he notes that sermons can be edifying in that they can “build something. We thus have to erect a special edifice of disposition and moral conduct.” Yet the sermon does not build anything alone—it occurs only in relation to an actual audience and their response to the sermon. As Kant puts it, “The edifying-power of the preacher does not consist, therefore, in words, gestures, voice, etc.; he has it insofar as his sermon has the power to establish in his hearers a God-fearing frame of mind. To edify is therefore as much as to say how it is shown forth and fashioned, when a fabric of piety is created in anyone” (LEC 27:318). What Kant is claiming here is that the power of the message ultimately does not lie in any specific tactic or modality of delivery. Instead, its power seems to lay in the experience it puts its audience through—the instantiating or establishment of a “God-fearing frame of mind.” The end desired (a certain disposition) is an integral part of the means of communication. The end is, to a real extent, instantiated in the means of the sermon as communicative experience. This is what can be called end-instantiating logic, and it represents the tactic that characterizes Kant’s rhetoric of reason in his religious and moral work. Here we must note that it is the vital core of his educative rhetoric. Merely

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manipulative rhetoric does not have this feature; in many cases, the experience of the speech is as a mere goad to get the hearer to (unknowingly) do what the speaker wills. This accounts for Kant’s stated opposition to a common form of rhetoric, since he sees that version as the “deceitful art” of moving people “like machines” (CJ 5:328n). How exactly does this “lively presentation in examples [lebhaften Darstellung in Beispielen]” (CJ 5:327) operate in Kant’s educative or nonmanipulative rhetoric? Examples seem to present something unknown or not totally understood to the auditor. This notion of the presentation of remote, abstract concepts is a kind of what Kant calls “schematism,” or the rendering of “a concept comprehensible through analogy with something of the senses” (RBR 6:65n). There are two main types of schematism in Kant. The first—not the sort that is at work in examples—is the “schematism of object-determination,” or the way of expanding our knowledge of the objects of experience (e.g., those of the natural world or science). This object-focused schematism is used in a theoretical sense and applies to our knowledge of actual objects in the natural world. The second type of schematism—what Kant thinks is at work in religious and moral matters—is what he calls “schematism of analogy,” or the use of sensible analogy to present something purely conceptual (and thus not about our experiences in the natural world). It denotes a way of making rarified concepts more palatable to humans who have a range of natural or sensible experiences along with their experience as reasoning beings. This practice of sense making through schematism is effectively the same idea that is used in his notion of “hypotyposis” in his Critique of the Power of Judgment (5:351), and it is also employed when he explains why sermons and religious narratives personify God (RBR 6:65n). Such a “means of elucidation [Erläuterung]” in sermons, for instance, is a practical, rhetorical technique not of proving something about the world but of making something comprehensible and palatable to a subject. Of course, comprehension could refer to theoretical matters—but this is clearly not Kant’s sense as he distinguishes the two types of schematism. Instead, what must be comprehensible to us are certain ways of thinking about the object at hand. Such ways of thinking are dispositions or orientations, and they are connected to virtue explicitly in Kant’s Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View (1798) when he defines virtue (in inner choice, as the previous chapter put it) as “moral strength in adherence to one’s duty, which never should become habit but should always emerge entirely new and original from one’s way of thinking [Denkungsart]” (7:147). Virtue is the way one is disposed toward acting—whether one chooses to act from

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respect for the moral law instead of from concern with self-love (effectively, inclination). This orientation or disposition can be of varying strengths (the most important difference between the Groundwork and Metaphysics of Morals accounts of moral worth), but one’s disposition always has either pure maxims guiding one’s actions or impure maxims that admit self-love as equal (or greater) in importance to the moral law (RBR 6:36). Uncultivated humans typically fall into the latter camp for Kant. Examples make comprehensible a certain way of thinking or disposition to an attending subject. It is my argument that they do this by instantiating a certain way of thinking. Why think examples are vital to this use of an educative rhetoric? In Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (1781/1787), the importance of examples is explained—“This is also the sole and great utility of examples: that they sharpen the power of judgment” (A134/B173). They do more harm than good, Kant continues, if they are used to expand one’s knowledge. Yet they must have some noetic value if they make important subjects comprehensible to an auditor. Barbara Herman correctly identifies a central concern in Kant’s educational thought—judgment—but I believe she too quickly explains it with the idea of “practice in judging” through educational exercises. Some account must be given as to how example’s edifying effect is rhetorically accomplished through its employment in education. To get such an account of the rhetorical functioning of examples, we turn to Kant’s “Doctrine of the Method of Pure Practical Reason” in his Critique of Practical Reason. In this section he begins to confront the educational problem of moving individuals from mere legality of external action (e.g., not telling lies) to possessing morality of disposition (e.g., not telling lies because of respect for the moral law). This parallels the problem of moving from external harmony of action to internal virtue in the Metaphysics of Morals. The difficulty, of course, is in how one can approach an “uncultivated [ungebildetes] or degraded [verwildertes] mind” with the goal of instilling a moral disposition or character (5:152). Kant’s general strategy, applicable to children as well as adults, is to begin with prudential concerns driven by inclination and then move to moral motives. Examples and their rhetorical employment parallel this general development. Part of example’s connection to prudential matters comes not only in their content (situations of specific action) but also in their form—Kant notes a natural propensity in humans (scholars and nonscholars alike) to love storytelling and, more important, to transition from story telling to story analysis (viz., argument over moral worth, motives, and so on of certain characters in the stories) (CPrR 5:153; see also APV 7:280). Thus, examples as

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ministories also would seem to provoke such engaging analysis. This is why Kant wonders why educators of young people have not long since made use of this propensity of reason to enter with pleasure upon even the most subtle examination of the practical questions put to them and why they have not, after first laying the foundation in a purely moral catechism, searched through the biographies of ancient and modern times in order to have at hand instances for the duties presented, in which, especially by comparison of similar actions under different circumstances, they would well activate their pupil’s appraisal in marking the lesser or greater moral import of such actions. (CPrR 5:154) Two important points are raised in this passage (or sentence, as the tortuous Kantian style renders it). First, the use of examples is connected to dialogues involving questions and answers between a teacher and a pupil, or what Kant refers to as “moral catechism” at Metaphysics of Morals 6:478–82 (cf. Pedagogy 9:490). Others have discussed Kant’s notion of catechism in his moral philosophy, and I explicitly link it to rhetorical activities in the coming chapter addressing his religious work. I am concerned here with the second point— that examples have a vital rhetorical role to play in moral education. Commentators such as G. Felicitas Munzel insightfully identify the use of examples as “exhortatory means” of education but too often fall into discussing their use in religious communication. How examples function as rhetorical means in nonreligious situations needs further explanation. A clue to how such examples operate emerges immediately after the lengthy passage just discussed—Kant notes that frequent practice in analyzing examples would result in a child becoming “very acute and thereby not a little interested [in matters of moral worth], since he would feel the progress of his faculty of judgment” (CPrR 5:154). In other words, this sort of practice would result in children becoming more interested in moral endeavors through feeling their own capacity for moral judgment. One way of taking this is what could be called the “mere habituation” route—examples are efficacious because they establish certain habits in us. This seems to be the explanation that Herman employs, as well as Munzel when she advocates a Kantian habit of judging. While a wide notion of habit may be useful in moral education, Kant seems to have problems with habit in general—he clearly distances it from moral dispositions in Anthropology, claiming that “Habit (assuetudo),

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however, is a physical inner necessitation to proceed in the same manner that one has proceeded until now. It deprives even good actions of their moral worth because it impairs the freedom of the mind and, moreover, leads to thoughtless repetition of the very same act” (7:149). Whether or not Kant would allow “habit” to involve habits of thought is an important issue, but he is clearly opposed to habit being the explanation of moral cultivation and worth. Thus, we cannot lean too heavily on Kant’s claim that “by mere habituation [Gewohnheit], repeatedly looking on such actions as deserving approval or censure, would make a good foundation for uprightness in the future conduct of life” (CPrR 5:154–55). Perhaps the pattern or set practice (Gewohnheit) referred to concerns one’s attention and its objects, but it is clear that the practice of judgment and consequent conclusions must be based on conscious patterns (viz., those determined by a consciously chosen maxim). Mere habit cannot be the sole or leading explanation for moral cultivation through examples. The more fruitful lead to follow from that passage concerns Kant’s experiential terminology—activating the “pupil’s appraisal,” the child feeling “the progress of his faculty of judgment,” and so forth. It is clear that Kant is drawing attention to the experience of attending to the examples; the educative value, I argue, is best placed within that experience, as opposed to in some general habits emplaced after the teaching is finished. How does the experience of examples actually edify or work? What one notices in many of Kant’s examples, and especially in his passages on the educative use of examples, is that they display a progression from impure or prudential concerns to strictly moral concerns (viz., willing from respect for duty). Thus, Kant calls the teacher’s attention to the use of examples that proceed from externally correct actions to those done with the right internal reasons (CPrR 5:159). This point is again couched in the language of habit, but one sees the work is really being done by the conscious judgment of the subject’s motivation in such examples. The habitual pattern followed is only that of attending to specific moral matters in the first place; one’s judgment is engaged by the particulars of the situation, and the example artfully used by the teacher will not discourage judgment but will necessitate it (cf. Kant’s discussion of casuistical examples at MM 6:411). Students come to such examples with certain predispositions at a certain stage of development; for instance, most students still subordinate respect for the moral law to inclinations or self-love in the sorts of maxims that guide their behaviors. This is the same subordination that Kant notes as present in the ethical individual in his Religion. Cultivation, of course, reverses this ordering and results in agents being

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morally worthy due to making respect for the moral law the primary motive in their activities. Kant uses the example (historical, but with key motivational features being stipulated) of those involved with Anne Boleyn and her tribulations. Through engaging the presented figure of an agent who is being coerced into taking part in immoral actions, the students experience the transition from one who values positive rewards, to one fearful of external threats and pain, to one who cares for the purity of one’s heart and motives regardless of her external suffering. Kant points out that such a use of example results in the “young listener [being] raised step by step from mere approval to admiration, from that to amazement, and finally to the greatest veneration and a lively wish that he himself could be such a man (though certainly not in such circumstances)” (CPrR 5:156). As the teacher and student go through the act of judging and analyzing this example, the student experiences these different dispositional reactions to motives, both the dispositions of characters stipulated in the example and those that the student could take toward the matters involved in the example. Such a dispositional reaction (a way of thinking about some subject, be it a real or imagined instance) is an instance of moral attention on the Kantian scheme, since it is an instantiation of proper respect for the moral law as motive. What such examples accomplish is, in Kant’s educational terminology, the transition from the stage of skillfulness and discipline to the stage of moral concern (“formation” or Bildung). Instead of looking at the would-be conspirator in the Boleyn example as one who can succeed or fail at procuring certain social ends (power, position, safety of loved ones, etc.), the student is brought to attend to the moral motivations of one acting from either self-love or the idea of duty. The notion of a subject’s consciousness of their activity of judging is brought up in the Critique of Practical Reason, where Kant explains the efficacy of examples: “there is no doubt that this exercise and the consciousness of a cultivation of our reason in judging merely about the practical, arising from this exercise, must gradually produce a certain interest in reason’s law itself and hence in morally good actions. For, we finally come to like something the contemplation of which lets us feel a more extended use of our cognitive powers, which is especially furthered by that in which we find moral correctness” (5:159–60). The engagement of a subject with an example raises this “consciousness of a cultivation” in judging moral motives (as opposed to being set in our attention to merely prudential concerns); we “feel” the use of this power. The analysis of an example is an instance of what it is like to be a morally concerned, sensitive, and attentive agent, as opposed to one that

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glosses over moral concerns through the force of habit or a sole focus on prudential issues (self-love). This experience when engaging with a given example is an instance of a cultivated disposition, one that has formative power for establishing a character over time. If one doubts that the experience of the example is an instantiation of such a goal, look at how Kant discusses the formation of character in his Anthropology—“Education, examples, and teaching generally cannot bring about this firmness and persistence in principles [character] gradually, but only, as it were, by an explosion which happens one time as a result of weariness at the unstable condition of instinct” (7:294). When agents truly understand the example and see the judgments the teacher wants them to attend to, then they instantiate the sort of morally attuned disposition that Kant wants them to adopt as their long-term, consistent self-conceptions. Children cannot be blamed for being focused on self-love, since morality is an accomplishment. Even in the face of self-love and human frailty, individuals are predisposed to the good (RBR 6:26), but they must develop and balance these constituent parts. Two of the “predispositions [Anlagen] to the good” from Kant’s religious writings would seem to shed additional light on a subject’s experience of examples and how it can be an important part of an educative rhetoric. Kant points out that we are predisposed to “humanity,” which involves a tendency to “self-love which is physical and yet involves comparison. . . . Out of this self-love originates the inclination to gain worth in the opinion of others” (6:27). This is the social tendency in humans to measure their worth in regard to others, as well as to demand the right amount of respect from others (Rousseau’s “amour propre,” effectively). By itself, attention to others’ opinions often contributes to the social care and concern that mark well-formed communities. When it is undeveloped, unbalanced, or misdeveloped, problems emerge. Often this lack of balance occurs through an overemphasis on what respect we are due from others, which consequently occludes the respect we ought to be giving them simply by virtue of their rational nature. Another important predisposition that Kant identifies in Religion that contributes to our good is our tendency to “personality.” This predisposition marks our “susceptibility to respect for the moral law as of itself a sufficient incentive to the power of choice” (6:28). It is only by instantiating such a respect for moral incentives that we become truly responsible and fully human. In other words, only when there is a developed balance among the concerns of the predispositions toward animality (self-love in regard to one’s body), humanity (self-love in regard to social relations), and personality (sub-

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ordinating self-love to respect for the moral law) can humans count themselves as morally cultivated. This same sort of division and desired balance emerges in Kant’s anthropological writings and mirrors the shift from discipline and instruction to moral formation. Humans develop their technical predisposition for manipulating things and their pragmatic predisposition to “use other human beings skillfully for [their] purposes,” but both of these must be balanced by the development of the moral predisposition. What is this latter predisposition? It is the human’s ability to be cultivated into a being that treats “himself and others according to the principle of freedom under laws” (APV 7:322). Kant even explicitly links the pragmatic predisposition to “education in both instruction and training (discipline)” (7:323–24). The pragmatic concern of skillfulness in social situations is equivalent to his notion of prudential skill in the Pedagogy—and both can be causes for concern if they are developed alone. This is what Kant fears, I submit, in his image of rhetoric. He is concerned with skillful and nonmoralized orators. This combination of characteristics allows such individuals to effectively prey on the weaknesses, passions, and inclinations of their audience such that they can “direct and determine them according to one’s intentions, [which] is almost the same as possessing others as mere tools of one’s will” (APV 7:271). The purposive and persuasive use of language is not prima facie objectionable to Kant (for instance, see his extolling of political speech and examples at 7:254); what is objectionable is the nonmoralized use of such prudential rhetorical skills. Perhaps Kant erred merely in overstating his case against an evaluative notion of rhetoric, though he cannot be accused of excluding the powers of speech and language altogether from his system.

Kant’s Educative Rhetoric and the Rhetoric of Exemplarity Thus we arrive at the heart of Kant’s educative rhetoric. It is the directed use, often in educational or religious settings, of linguistic devices to show the real possibility and desirability of instantiating the moral disposition. In the case of the education of the young, it typically consists in the use of stipulated examples. The moral disposition desired is one that is conscious of the moral incentive, something often lost on those that have developed social skills only at the service of self-love. While social skills (oratory, manners, skills of social interaction, etc.) are important, they do not exhaust moral cultivation because

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they lack a necessary connection to the foundation of moral worth—a conscious recognition of the moral incentive as enshrined in one’s guiding maxims. Examples employed by a rhetor (a teacher, a pastor, etc.) are engaging because they partake in the lively form of narrative and they readily make themselves available for moral judgment. In the pedagogical contexts of Kant’s educative rhetoric, examples are powerful because they are an instance of moral judgment—in other words, they are a sensed and realized subjective experience of the progression from prudential concerns to moral concerns, from conceiving of oneself as socially efficacious to morally autonomous. This is vital in moving individuals from mere external harmony to internal autonomy through respect for the moral law. What has been revealed as possible by examples is not the physical possibility of a given behavior in light of nature’s web of cause-andeffect relationships. What has been revealed is a certain way of thinking, a certain disposition toward why one acts in regard to self and others. This analysis of Kant gives us a new way to think about rhetorical devices such as the pedagogical use of example. This chapter has focused on examples, but future chapters explore additional means such a nonmanipulative, educative rhetoric can employ. This account also augments the contemporary work on example in the field of rhetorical studies and its focus on the epistemological and logical limits of examples in argument. The fundamental role of example in moral persuasion, or the causing of an agent to initiate some program of self-cultivation, is left unaddressed by these approaches. The reading of what kind of force example uses is also up for grabs. For instance, one can see examples as rhetorically effective ways to move a simple-minded audience or as ways to subvert rational judgment through their particularized and emotional content. Concerns of this type motivate much of what Aristotle says about example’s persuasive power in his Art of Rhetoric. The contemporary literature on example has tended to anchor its discussion on Aristotle, wondering if arguments from example are connected to ways of reasoning that involve general premises (moving from “part to whole”) or if they move from “part to part” or particular instance to another particular instance in an immediately inductive fashion. This question has stimulated a line of debate, all of which centers around the part to whole concerns involved in reasoning through example. Gerard Hauser has argued that example “in performance and in perception . . . is an argument based on an unmediated inference, a recognition,” whereas William Benoit maintains that “the essence of the form of Aristotle’s conception of the example includes a mediating generalization.” As Hauser elsewhere puts it, the debate is over the connections between

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the “formal requirements” and the “epistemological requirements” of reasoning in Aristotle’s analysis of the example. Both readings of example focus on the role of judgment and its particulars as vital to Aristotle’s contribution to this rhetorical aspect to public argument. Both readings miss the point that Kant has been emphasizing, namely the use of examples in practical education or cultivation. It is here that one can ascertain another path to take in theorizing the rhetorical powers and uses of example. Example does not merely function as a form of judgment or truth finding. Samuel McCormick also has sensed that examples can play a moral or practical role in rhetorical activity. He has begun to address the moral employment of example in his work on Christine de Pizan, where his analysis of the moral power of examples puts a heavy emphasis on ambiguity. In de Pizan’s 1405 letter to Queen Isabeau of France, de Pizan treads dangerous ground in her attempt to convince the queen to argue for intervention in internal power struggles that threaten to tear her nation apart. As McCormick documents, de Pizan must employ examples in her risky persuasion of a royal figure; effectively, examples serve as a means of indirect, ambiguous royal persuasion and critique with the ultimate goal of getting the queen to support a course of action she might not consider wise. The use of exemplary figures leads de Pizan’s royal interlocutor to have “moments of self-reflection mediated through the worlds of her admirable and infamous predecessors” and to be drawn by the “ ‘eternal remembrance’ and ‘perpetual glory’ [that] are the lasting, earthly rewards for her intervention in the Orleans-Burgundy conflict.” These examples do not aim to teach the queen certain facts about the objects of this world. Instead, they aim to convince her that a certain path of action is the moral one to take. But what sort of normative power do these examples draw on in this effort of moral persuasion? McCormick’s analysis of the moral power of example, while useful, is clearly an externalist reading—the locus of what makes de Pizan’s auditor’s action moral are its anticipated effects on self and others. What should cause the queen to act in this right way is her reflection on the action’s “earthly rewards” for her and those she values. Instead of a focus on external incentives to the moral agent, how might we theorize examples if one wanted (following Kant) an internalist account of moral change? What this present chapter on Kant’s use of examples can show is that examples can function in moral argument in a way that makes use of their clarifying power and in a way that respects the internalism of moral motivation in Kant’s ethics—the moral agent acting in the right way out of respect for the moral law.

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While McCormick’s approach is augmented by this Kantian account, it does make the fundamentally important move of conceptualizing examples not merely as epistemological devices but also as motivational, persuasive, or rhetorical devices. This is a substantially different framing of examples than that assumed by those debating example’s exact role as part of inductive reasoning strategies. Instead, examples are taken in a practical sense or as pedagogical tools for developing their auditor in some fashion. This begins to reflect the rhetorical lineage to this debate. Emphasizing this practical angle to rhetoric in general, Jeffrey Walker has argued forcefully that what defines the rhetorical tradition is not a lineage of theory or criticism but “a pedagogical tradition, in which the primal scene is the declamation exercise, a ‘theater’ of antilogistic argument, where the performer not only contemplates and critiques but also, and more importantly, rehearses and directly (if fictively) experiences both rhetorical performance and the values of a rhetorical culture devoted to free debate.” Such declaimed speeches are examples, a fact that brings the pedagogical entailments of the rhetorical tradition closer to the arguments over the role of example in abstract reasoning. The declamation of example speeches, a major (and much maligned tactic) of rhetorical educators from the Sophists to the Romans, serves as a way to perform and enact certain “habits of thought and speech.” Yet philosophers commonly have two concerns about this enacted, practical use of examples. First, how do we know the direction or endpoint of such educational efforts? Perhaps one is saying what an audience wants to hear, all in pursuit of manipulative goals. This is one of the major criticisms of rhetorical training in Plato’s Phaedrus. Second, philosophers criticize this practice as merely practicing bad argument or as trying to ascertain guiding theory from uninstructive particular instances. This is Aristotle’s criticism of sophistic pedagogy involving example speeches in Sophistical Refutations. We also have seen Kant make a similar objection to using examples in deducing moral theory. How can we conceive of example such that we avoid seeing it merely as another strategy of reasoning? How can we see example as an effective and ethical means of rhetorical education? In the final section of this chapter, I argue that the Kantian reading of examples and educative rhetoric helps us answer these worries. Examples can serve an autonomy-enhancing rhetorical function insofar as they are purposive uses of language aimed at having the effect of developing agents from prudential concerns to moral concerns, from discipline and instruction to moral formation, and from pragmatic dispositions to more fully moral dispositions. I conclude this chapter with five important implications of the preceding analysis.

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1. Examples do not have to foster ambiguity to be rhetorically effective McCormick’s analysis foregrounds ambiguity in how examples work, but the preceding analysis has illustrated how examples can overtly clarify as well as mystify or displace in moral persuasion. Part of the ambiguity of examples in McCormick’s reading comes from the sociopolitical employment of examples, as they are a “linguistic device for introducing ambiguity into any given rhetorical situation, and in so doing opening up opportunities for political judgment and social transformation.” Such examples are ambiguous as a persuasive device by not openly criticizing the power of persons or addressees. Additionally, they are ambiguous as to the temporal vantage points implied, since they concern events and viewpoints from the past and from the queen’s future. What can be gained from Kant’s use of examples is that clarity and directly exercising a specified capacity of judgment are important uses of examples. In Kant’s system the goal of clearly addressing an interlocutor is much more admirable. Clearly displaying (through engagement with a presented example) the power of the agent addressed is an important way to convince her that she can use that power—she can be such a moral agent who acts not out of concern for external rewards but from a duty-respecting disposition. Indeed, she just displayed such powers in her analysis of that example. The power, of course, for this kind of inner, experiential clarity comes from the stipulated nature of Kant’s examples. The inner aspects of the depicted agents in question are stipulated or constructed by the rhetor, thus giving them revelatory power not about those portrayed agents, but about the agent attending to and judging the example. It is in the experience of the attendee that the real work of the examples occurs. Giving an agent a carefully constructed example can show them how to move from crass, selffocused concerns to the disposition of moralized judgment, as occurred in thinking through the Boleyn example noted by Kant. One might start by worrying about such an agent’s earthly fortune, but through the rhetorical experience created by the use of the example, such an agent ends at the moralized point of seeing a greater priority on moral motives as opposed to those of self-love. 2. The motivational power of examples can be internal and not merely external With what power do examples move us? This question is of utmost importance for thinkers such as Kant, as external motivation (being motivated by

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gains provided by external causes) is one of the main obstacles to overcome. Do children—or even adults—do something because it will get them approval from others, monetary gain, power over others, and so on? Is it virtuous because of these features? In the state of right, such external incentives can be effective in aligning our external choices and actions. For Kant’s complete moral system, however, moral justification and motivation must be internal to the agent in question. The right thing to do is right not because of any contingent matters of fate or fortune (as he argues in GMM); instead, it is right because all rational agents could act in that way. Regardless of what we think of Kant’s form of ethics, one can see his point in education. Do we want children to act in a certain way because of intrinsic or extrinsic motivational factors? Do we want to reserve the possibility of intrinsic motivation being an important motivational factor for such developing agents? Indeed, autonomy does seem connected to determining our own actions on our terms. In the preceding account of examples, Kant acknowledges this emphasis and fits his use of example as a rhetorical device to this commitment. Thus, one can analyze the moral power of examples in the way McCormick does, as largely focused on getting one to view one’s actions and inactions from a variety of temporal and agential standpoints. But this exploration in a Kantian educative rhetoric highlights another path we can take—examples as affecting a sort of intrinsic motivation. For instance, one sees the externalist path to a rhetoric of example in McCormick’s description of the power of example. After highlighting Christine de Pizan’s examples to the queen, one sees the externalist ring to how such examples are said to function: However, as Christine is careful to insist, there is more involved in the achievement of “eternal remembrance” than Isabeau’s willingness to be guided by these exemplary figures. She must not only learn from her predecessors, but also do so in such a way that ensures the well-being of her royal subjects. Christine develops this important requirement in her letter’s conclusion, where she insists that, should Isabeau model her conduct on “the tales of your predecessors who reigned nobly,” the French subjects “will pray for you” and, hearing their prayers, God will “grant you a good and long life, and at the end, perpetual glory.” External considerations—the opinions and well-being of others (viz., her subjects), history’s thoughts of an agent, success in one’s endeavors of rulership, and so on—are the “earthly rewards” that are foregrounded in McCormick’s

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analysis of example. The focus here seems to be on the dispositions of prudential skill and pragmatic formation. In other words, McCormick’s analysis of example seems inclined toward considering example in relation to one’s external projects and how one succeeds at these. This is not prima facie objectionable, of course. As a more comprehensive account, the sense of Kantian educative or nonmanipulative rhetoric discussed here would highlight the internalist use of example—example used to clarify what experience (of judging, say) one went through and how it instantiated a certain disposition. When de Pizan’s examples foreground “fame and glory, not communion with the eternal—the rewards of political activity, not the promise of philosophic apolitia—these are the queen’s incentives to follow in the footsteps of her noble predecessors, and in so doing to dry the tears of her loyal subjects,” one sees examples operating in an externalist fashion. One also could say these examples are externally motivating. They focus one’s attention on external goals, states of affairs, or incentives to move one to action. Kant’s use of example— and his general notion of nonmanipulative rhetoric—is internalist or internally motivating. Such examples instantiate a certain way of reacting, a certain way of judging moral activity. Unique to Kant’s moral scheme, of course, is that this disposition does not foreground success, goals, incentives, and so on. It features a concern for the value of rational agency and respect for the moral law as intrinsically motivating concerns. 3. Internally motivating rhetorical devices preserve and promote audience autonomy The sort of example employed in Kantian educative rhetoric can be said to preserve and promote an attending agent’s autonomy. Kant argues in his Groundwork that this is the secret behind maxims that pass the various versions of the moral law—they preserve and promote rational agency in self or others. The strength of this claim may be arguable in its extreme applications, but one sees the general point—rhetoric becomes manipulative when it shortcircuits the thought process of one agent for the purposive gain of another agent. The former agent would not consent to this, hence Kant’s problems with lying promises and dominating tyrants. Thus, a general characteristic of Kantian rhetoric is its insistence on using internally motivating means. Examples that appeal to an agent to “do x because of its beneficial rewards” are rhetorical tactics that are extremely prone to abuse. Of course, sometimes this can be an accurate presentation of what one wants to accomplish. What Kant

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is highlighting is that in the serious game of moral cultivation—an endeavor that often involves addressing vulnerable populations such as children or cognitive unequals—we best respect the agency of the other by appealing to internally motivating examples. What are these examples? As demonstrated in the previous sections, they are examples that create an experience that comes with a certain moralized disposition. They lead the auditor into the right moral state of prioritizing motives, ends, and other related moral matters. In other words, the rhetorical device of internally motivating examples creates the opportunity for one to experience a certain disposition—in this case, a certain way of judging and ranking moral incentives. This account is supported by William Kirkwood’s analysis of the power of religious parables: some parables are constructed so that they become an instance of the state of mind the religious rhetor wants to show the addressee. Kirkwood argues for the power of many parables, claiming that “altering the mood or state of awareness of listeners is a significant confrontative strategy in its own right.” Indeed, he claims that many parables serve as “exemplars of states of awareness” and that one can learn about these states through the experience of the parable. These are “revealing accounts” insofar as they show a certain state of mind (an inner aspect to an agent) and “they can call attention to what should have observed in listeners’ own experience, but somehow got lost in the shuffle.” Kantian educative rhetoric paints a similar picture of the efficacy of examples. They draw attention to a way of thinking or judging (viz., the disposition connected to morality on Kant’s account) that we all can potentially follow. We simply have to be moved or persuaded to adopt that path of self-cultivation or education. One cannot (justifiably) externally motivate someone to have a certain internal way of thinking about things—this is Kant’s concern with moral internalism and the abuse of rhetorical prowess. This is the tension that drives the troublesome problem of force that arises from his analysis of freedom in the Metaphysics of Morals. Instead of being an autonomy-subverting external force, Kant’s stipulated examples serve as clear, powerful occasions for the experience of the moral disposition. In Kirkwood’s terms, they are revealing accounts that foster an experience of a certain state of awareness—that of being sensitive to moral motivations in agents and in one’s reactions to agents. 4. This experiential approach forms the core of a reclaimed Kantian rhetoric The experiential approach that has just been extrapolated from Kant’s reading of examples highlights the state of the attending auditor. The experience of a

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subject in the rhetorical act is paramount in the experiential approach to rhetorical activity. What is the quality of that experience? What is the quality of the disposition instantiated or caused by certain messages or texts? This is the sort of understanding of the rhetorical experience that finds resonance in Michael Leff and Andrew Sachs’s description of rhetorical activity: “Rhetorical meaning, of course, is not autotelic; it is designed to reach out and to guide the audience’s understanding of and behavior within that world. . . . The critical process seeks to explain how the rhetorical performance invites certain kinds of response.” One could inquire about the effects of the experience of a given text on the auditor’s future experience, but the experiential approach noted earlier considers it important to just look at the experience of the text or rhetorical artifact, not to see it merely as a cause of something in the future (say, of one being a moral agent). The experience of that text by an auditor is the effect of interest. The Kantian rhetoric enunciated here shows how devices such as example could operate under an experiential approach to rhetoric. The focus would be on the experienced quality, including states of awareness or dispositions connected to attending to textual details in a certain way, which a rhetorical text (such as an example) creates. When one combines this with Kant’s deontological moral sensibilities (viz., that virtue lies in holding a certain maxim or state of mind), one sees how such an internally motivating use of examples is a clear case of what I call end-instantiating logic. Oftentimes, one sees something (say, art) as a mere cause of some future effect. This is one way of looking at the efficacy of that artifact, but it does not exhaust all aspects involved. Another way of reading the experience remains—by focusing on the phenomenological experience of attending to that artifact by a subject. In terms of examples, one can ask how they create certain sorts of beings in the future (i.e., do they motivate one to work harder next semester?), or one could ask what sort of being (or disposition or state of awareness) they instantiate now in the act of attending. The genius of Kant’s educative rhetoric is that his moral internalism drives him to show how examples can be an instance of the endpoint to which he wants to move agents. At the same time, the instantiation of this endpoint (of freely judging and being disposed to the moral motive) is a result of that agent’s activity—they have not been tricked, manipulated (however well-intentioned), or duped as might be the case in misleading or ambiguous examples. Internally motivating examples preserve and promote agential freedom by being an instance of those powers in action.

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5. An educative rhetoric can be a general account of rhetoric in Kant One can see that Kant’s educative rhetoric highlights the connection of rhetoric to morality through the process of education. Yet rhetoric and education can become forms of autonomy-stifling manipulation. While Kant was clearly opposed to manipulative uses of language, not all uses of symbolic persuasion are manipulative. Thus, Kant’s educative rhetoric must also be a nonmanipulative rhetoric. As for the subjects of such a rhetoric, not all education or moral improvement is confined to children. If we distinguish between formal pedagogical employments and a more general educative sense, we see how Kant’s educative rhetoric applies to both children and adults. Moralization beyond worldly prudence is clearly a developmental goal that continues to elude many adults, a fact attested to by Kant’s concern with developing these sorts of agents in his later moral writings. These points are confirmed when Kant advocates the practice of moral persuasion among adults in the lectures recorded by Johann Friedrich Vigilantius in the fall of 1793. Kant explains such a persuasive use of communication: “This happens when the other, having a right to do so, confronts the subject with his duty, i.e., the moral law by which he ought to act. If this confrontation makes an impression on the agent, he determines his will by an Idea of reason, creates through his reason that conception of his duty which already lay previously within him, and is only quickened by the other, and determines himself according to the moral law” (LEV 27:521). Of course, not every communicative confrontation “makes an impression” on any given agent, so Kant was always attentive to identifying more effective means of elucidation or “lively presentation [lebhaften Darstellung]” (CJ 5:327). The challenges to such moral persuasion are only compounded in the case of children, as they are less-than-fully developed rational agents. If an agent already holds a cultivated, moralized disposition, then the use of such examples in an educative rhetoric might be superfluous. One can appeal to their sense of duty. Yet many children and adults still possess the impurity of disposition that Kant highlights in Religion—humans always retain inclinations “to gain worth in the opinion of others” (6:27). This is the sort of inclination that is resident in the children that still must acquire a fully moralized disposition. For adults facing such social inclinations, examples can be the sort of experiential reminder of moralization they need to don the correct disposition in social interaction and judgment. The use of examples would still instantiate an educative rhetoric in that it helps to refine an adult’s way of approaching certain situations and features. Like the child, the adult is put

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through a certain process of attending to a moral situation and thus experiences the moralized disposition of judging moral matters in a certain fashion. In this way, Kant’s educative rhetoric becomes a version of Terry Papillion’s “hypodeictic rhetoric,” or a “rhetoric that uses praise and blame—mostly praise—and a strong sense of comparison to set out situations as examples for those around to learn and from which those around could create policy for the future.” Of course, in Kant’s employment, the praise and blame and the comparisons are internal to one’s experience of thinking through an example. One sees prudential ways to evaluate moral matters and then feels the superiority of a moralized way of evaluating such matters in working through a stipulated example involving agents with certain dispositions. Papillion’s focus on a “more profound sense of epideictic” in Isocrates can illustrate the connection of Kant’s use of examples to the rhetorical tradition—like Isocrates, Kant encourages the engagement of examples for their educational, dispositional benefits, as opposed to any specific bit of content resident in a certain exercise. Kant’s moral thought goes beyond that of Isocrates, but one can still see the experiential extension to ways we conceive of rhetorical pedagogy and the moral cultivation of adults and children. The experience of examples instantiates certain dispositions, which then are likely to be actualized in future experiences of that agent. Examples are a participatory form of moral education in Kant’s rhetorical scheme. Kant’s use of examples in the practice of moral judgment shares some major experiential characteristics with the imitation of examples in the classical rhetorical tradition. Robert Terrill addresses this in his account of the classical rhetorical practice of imitatio, or the imitation and analysis of model speeches, pointing out that “the student engaged in mimetic pedagogy strives to take on some characteristics of the exemplar, but never to become the exemplar.” This did not simply increase one’s knowledge of the modeled speeches; such a pedagogy aimed at “the cultivation of a set of habituated attitudes toward fellow citizens.” These attitudes deal specifically with the varieties of viewpoints represented in situations and texts, which had to be assessed “along multiple lines of effectiveness rather than a single point of authenticity.” While Kant does not place much stock in habit, he does value the formation of dispositions connected to moral judgment and action. Kant would not object to the experiential perspective taking that occurs in the reenactment and analysis of speeches, but he would wonder about the eventual decision over which perspective is superior and worthy to be learned from for future deliberation. Add to this his concern with the form of moral reasoning—what

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kinds of incentives we take into account—and Kant’s divergence with the standard practice of imitatio becomes apparent. His educative rhetoric opens up possibilities, but it is also concerned with directional or valenced possibilities. It is moral cultivation in a certain direction of development, not just the imitation of a variety of ways of reasoning. In terms of the rhetorical device of example, Kant’s ideal students do not simply imitate the example or the actions contained therein—they judge the example in a certain developmental way and experience the superiority of moral ways of looking at situations. What sticks with agents after this instantiation of judgment is that general way of judging moral matters. The way examples operate in Kant’s educative rhetoric is by evoking the experience of transitioning from the prudential stage to the moral stage of development in the subject’s interaction with the example at hand. As Kant puts it in a public letter concerning Johan Bernhard Basedow’s experimental schools (which Kant greatly admired), “The good has an irresistible power [Gewalt] when it is before one’s eyes” (2:448). Examples put the experience of the moral disposition “before our eyes,” and this, in short, is the source of their power in a Kantian educative rhetoric. Kant’s educative or nonmanipulative rhetoric can now be said to have the following features. (1) It uses linguistic devices such as vivid description, example, narration, and argument in ways that predictably aim toward the moral cultivation of the individuals addressed. (2) It depends on or affects a state of mind, disposition, or orientation in its auditor as the key to its nonautonomy compromising force. (3) This disposition is educative and motivational—it shows us something we may have missed (a way of reranking moral matters versus self-love), and it shows us the desirability of this way of thinking and judging. In this way, it shares many commonalities to developmental approaches to moral judgment and the lack of “downward” movement from higher-levels of moral reasoning. (4) This way of revealing and commending a certain disposition preserves and promotes the agent’s autonomy by integrally involving that agent in the process of change. This is the vital difference between educative rhetoric and coercive measures (incentives of pleasure or pain, brainwashing, etc.). One might even call Kant’s rhetoric self-educative, since one’s autonomy and discipline play such a central role in nonmanipulative persuasion. Yet I resist such a label, as it may distract from the intrinsically dialogic character of rhetorical activity—one agent persuading others. Future chapters explore the various ways that we can see such an educative rhetoric in Kant’s systematic thought. He clearly didn’t write any work titled “The Rhetoric,” nor did he opine at length about how to be a great orator. Yet he did talk about or

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imply communicative means to moral improvement at many places in his work, and all that is stopping us from exhuming a useable form of rhetoric in Kant from these areas are our own inhibitions. If we want to paint Kant as one who simply hates rhetoric and thinks all rhetoric and communication must be manipulative, then we can so bury our heads in the textual sand. If we want to try to find a way to make the relationship between Kant and rhetoric more complex, and potentially more useful, then we must follow these leads and assist Kant’s argument when he has remained silent. In the coming chapters, I follow this sympathetic and constructive path and argue that we can find a sense of educative or nonmanipulative rhetoric in various domains discussed by Kant, ranging from religious dialogue and ritual to our practices of criticism and conversation.

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Five religious educative rhetoric: religion and ritual as rhetorical means of moral cultivation

It is not disingenuous to say that one needs a certain amount of faith to find a sense of rhetoric in Kant. He produced no textbooks on proper speaking, and as illustrated in previous chapters, his pronouncements on the art of rhetoric are too easily construed as hostile and negative. To a very real degree, one must have faith that there is a sense of rhetoric in Kant to unearth rhetoric in Kant. Otherwise, one simply and quickly dismisses any connection between his thought and rhetoric. Looking for terminological symmetry to complement the relation between faith and rhetoric, could one say that there is an account of rhetoric in Kant’s reading of faith? This chapter extends the previous chapter’s analysis of Kantian educative rhetoric in the realm of faith and religious activity. Kant was an intensely religious man, albeit one infused with a unique blend of pietist sensibilities. He saw religion as an inward practice— a feature that attracted him to a reading of Christianity as an “inner” religion of the heart. His critical sensibilities made him recoil from religious claims being granted the same status as “theoretical” or “truth” claims about objects of experience. Instead, religion was akin to the practical. It shaped human activities by offering a vision of hopes and ideals, and it did not replace what could now be called a “scientific” view of the world of objects and phenomena. Kant’s account of religion has received renewed attention in recent years, but its relevance to rhetoric and persuasion remains unexplored. Interestingly enough, Robert J. Dostal’s important early examination of rhetoric in

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Kant’s system largely avoids the relation of rhetoric to religion. He highlights the problems Kant has with rhetoric qua manipulation and ends by claiming that Kant’s “hope for politics is a moral citizenry,” one that “cannot be answered in the politics or history—in the polis.” He invokes a quotation from 6:95 in Kant’s Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793) to the effect that an ideal community of moral wills depends on the improbable cooperation of actual individual wills. The emphasis on the communal in Kantian moral cultivation is a step in right direction, but Dostal simply does not see the relevance of Kant’s account of religion for a Kantian account of rhetoric. Religion and religious activity are vital for Kant, since they concern the synthesis of two vital features to the morally worthy human life—community and moral virtue. As earlier chapters have illustrated, Kantian freedom in its individual and systemic forms requires a certain way of orienting oneself toward others. This way of orienting oneself involves seeing others as fundamentally equal to yourself (per FHE), consistency in willing in relation to others’ purposive willing (per FUL), and the ideal of a system of such agents following these guides (FKE). Yet, as I have argued earlier, one can force others to act morally only in their external freedom (thus, in a state of external rightfulness). Inner virtue requires freely choosing certain ends as more important than others and requires that an individual be integrally involved in constructing his or her orientation or disposition (Gesinnung, for Kant). One cannot force another to choose certain ends freely. This leads to what I have called the “problem of force.” The situation concerning moral improvement seems relatively bleak, since nothing actively can be done. This hopelessness appears to be based in the nature of force and human autonomy and leaves agents wishing for a morally improved community faced with the following (unpalatable) options: (1) the (positive, active) use of coercive force, which is unacceptable since it violates the nature of self-perfection as an agent with free choice, or (2) the (negative, passive) facilitation of freedom to choose to morally perfect and develop one’s self, which (although morally acceptable) seems hopeless because it offers no guarantee that all individuals will actually take advantage of such an opportunity to self-cultivate. How do we form a community of rightful and virtuous agents if we can marshal no active force toward this end and instead simply must wait for each individual to make the choices that result in virtue? As I argued in the previous chapter, the concept of rhetorical activity and the nonmanipulative force of educative rhetoric offer us a way out of the problem of force. Expanding on the opportunity missed by Dostal, I describe how

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Kant’s account of religious activity can enrich the sense of educative rhetoric I enunciated in the previous chapter. This educative rhetoric has three characteristics in its general form: (1) it is nonmanipulative (positively meaning it upholds the world of all involved per FHE); (2) it promises efficacy in reorienting individual agents toward virtuous ways of willing and acting; and (3) it tends to instantiate the end it seeks to promulgate (e.g., autonomy). I argue for three senses of educative rhetoric, each with their own strengths, domains of application, and range of content: pedagogical educative rhetoric, religious educative rhetoric, and critical educative rhetoric. The first is primarily relevant in the educational settings discussed in the previous chapter and highlighted the way to instantiate the sort of moral reasoner that Kant desired in his scheme of moral cultivation. The third is discussed in the next chapter and focuses on how and why we critically communicate with others. The second sense, however, is addressed in detail in this chapter. These contexts entail specific rhetorical, persuasive means to encourage moral development in an autonomy-preserving fashion. What has been overlooked by most commentators on Kant’s Religion is the extent to which it features rhetorical or communicative means to persuade people to choose the virtuous. Elucidating this usage of the rhetorical may prove to be a boon to more general accounts of Kant’s moral system. For example, Robert Louden complains about Kant’s “lack of specificity in describing how the church as a social institution is to be structured, and in explaining what it is to do in order to effectively promote moral universal community.” The rhetorical may be the key to unlocking the mystery of how exactly religious activity leads to moral cultivation—rhetorical and communicative means may provide the necessary educative, nonmanipulative persuasion that brings efficacy to religious activities and community. Here I argue that certain forms of religious activity are, for Kant, an effective and autonomy-preserving means of instilling the community-focused orientation sought in Kant’s account of the kingdom of ends. Whereas political community with certain coercive laws can create a state of right, it is other types of community (e.g., the ethical or religious) that can best create a state of virtue among agents. The communicative interactions in Kant’s religious community is shown to instantiate the sort of moral disposition or orientation desired in morally cultivated adults. This chapter focuses on two rhetorical ways this is accomplished. The first portion of this chapter examines religious narrative and symbols—and the communication surrounding them— as vivid ways of presenting the moral disposition or orientation. The latter part of the chapter centers on religious rituals as rhetorical, persuasive ways of

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performing the moral disposition in communal settings. Through the vivid presentation and performance of such dispositions, Kant’s religious educative rhetoric seeks to persuade individuals to move toward the goal of selfimprovement, all the while avoiding the pitfalls of ego focus, self-love, and competition with others. In other words, Kant’s religious rhetoric is a communal means to encourage communal orientations in individual agents in line with the ideal of the kingdom of ends.

Social Problems, Social Solutions Kant’s mature religious thought serves as a continuation of his moral philosophy into the 1790s and focuses on the tensions between individual human nature and the normative ideal of community that he thinks we ought to affect. This reading is fairly uncontroversial. For Kant, both good and evil are evident in the human condition, implying the human ability to will out of respect for the moral motive and our tendency to devalue such a motive, respectively. Commentators such as Sharon Anderson-Gold and Allen Wood note the social emphasis of human evil given in Kant’s Religion and that in Books III and IV of that work Kant provides the notion of a visible church and ethical community as a solution to these social problems. Elsewhere, Philip Rossi and Gordon Michalson highlight the importance of the church for Kant’s scheme of morality. Religion is noted as a way to fight the corrupting tendencies in human nature and to actively cultivate our ability to respect self and others according to the dictates of the moral law. What is not noted in precise terms in many commentators, however, is how the religious community discussed in Kant’s Religion functions as a way to cultivate finite beings to the level of being able to consistently will (as well as choosing to will) from respect for duty. Kant’s moral philosophy is significantly altered by the introduction of the ethical community in his Religion. I argue in the coming sections that this community is a locus for a new type of force, namely a rhetorical force that is different from heteronomous coercion. In line with the educative rhetoric elucidated before, the advised rhetoric to be practiced in religious settings is a nonmanipulative form of persuasion. To introduce this notion of ethical community and its entailed concept of rhetorical force, a few words must be said as to the problem it attempts to solve. As noted in earlier chapters, the Religion begins the change to a more complex Kantian analysis of the will. Instead of the will being correlated to

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maxim choice and practical reason itself, it is now removed a step. Our will is, effectively, our practical reason—the source of the moral law described in previous chapters. This is the standard of virtuous activity, if we but choose to act from it as primary motive. The spontaneity that governs our maxim selection is now referred to as our power of “choice” (Willkür), which is then responsible for incorporating various incentives and concerns into one’s action-governing maxims. It is this power of choice that allows us to be selfgoverned morally or immorally. In his Religion Kant argues that one’s power of choice in regard to maxims cannot be determined by “any incentive except so far as the human being has incorporated it into his maxim (has made it into a universal rule for himself, according to which he wills to conduct himself); only in this way can an incentive, whatever it may be, coexist with the absolute spontaneity of the power of choice (of freedom)” (6:24). The free agent determines the power of some incentive, as opposed to being determined by that incentive’s power. Kant identifies the basic incentives as twofold: respect for the moral law on one hand and self-love (Selbstliebe), stemming from one’s inclinations on the other hand. For humans, evil relates to the subordination of the former incentive by the latter (idiosyncratic) concern in the maxim that guides an agent in a particular situation. One can see this as the battle between a focus on needs and interests that involve only one person (viz., the agent acting) and concerns at a more systemic level (viz., concerns with sustainable patterns of intrapersonal and interpersonal willing). The latter focus is highlighted interpersonally in the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself (FHE) strictures against using another person as a mere means and also at the level of systemic consistency among equal willing agents (e.g., FKE). In the Religion Kant posits the basis of evil in free, spontaneous choices that militate against true, sustainable, and systemic autonomy. An evil individual does not always set out to accomplish monstrous aims of extraordinary scope—instead, the root of evil lies in the choice to value the personal incentives of self-love more than the incentive of the moral law and the systematicity that it entails. Such a ranking of value is most evident in cases of conflict between the moral law’s demands and one’s idiosyncratic needs stemming from self-love. As Kant puts it in the Religion, such an agent “makes the incentives of self-love and their inclinations the condition of compliance with the moral law—whereas it is this latter that, as the supreme condition of the satisfaction of the former, should have been incorporated into the universal maxims of the power of choice as the sole incentive” (6:36). Subordinating the incentive of the moral law to one’s concerns for self-love is a tendency of all

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humans and therefore grounds Kant’s claim that human nature has a propensity (Hang) for evil. Humans have a tendency to simply make personal gain, self-love, and their own version of happiness the conditions for following the moral law, when it should be the opposite—moral concerns ought to temper, constrain, and guide our strivings for happiness and individual pleasure. This is a more basic echo of the problem enunciated in the previous chapter, but there it concerned the pragmatically skilled orator or pupil pursuing idiosyncratic goals that lacked the systematicity or unconditional respect for others that the moral law enshrines. In Kant’s religious thought, we get even more elucidation of the risks of self-love. Following Rousseau, Kant worries about the magnification of our self-focus in the presence of others. We begin to compare ourselves and our perceived worth to others, and this tends to breed what can be called “social vices.” The social situation of a human agent beset by self-love begets “envy, addiction to power, avarice, and the malignant inclinations associated with these . . . as soon as he is among human beings” (RBR 6:93). Social settings magnify or compound the challenge previously enunciated—we fail to judge matters in the right way, we set our pragmatic skills solely to the service of our idiosyncratic goals, we ignore the value and pursuits of others, and so forth all the more when we are among others. It is in the Religion that Kant claims that an ethical community must be created to fight the sources of evil, since they manifest themselves in strength primarily in social situations. For social problems, one must enact a social solution (6:94). The ethical community continues the moral education of its members toward the possession of a disposition that incorporates the moral law as a superior incentive to those of the inclinations (and passions) (6:48), as well as providing disincentives toward competitive causes of vice in social situations. Such a society is established under the “special unifying principle of its own (virtue)” and serves as a “union which has for its end the prevention of this evil and the promotion of the good in the human being—an ever enduring and expanding society, solely designed for the preservation of morality by counteracting evil with united forces” (6:94). A political state is formed to escape from the “juridical state of nature” in which individuals find themselves without coercive laws to codify and enforce rights claims they have. Humans move from a lawless, juridical state of nature to a juridical civil state (a political state) when a system of joint public laws is created and enforced (6:95). In the political community, however, individuals are still in a state of hostility with others, not in terms of mere external action but in terms of the often-different values they give to their ends

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and to the ends of others (self-love, opposed to ways of valuing from the equality of consideration, love, and respect commanded by the moral law). This ethical state of nature is one of public feuding between the principles of virtue and self-love for supremacy in individuals’ maxims. A community of agents committed to the primacy of the former over the latter is a direct solution to this situation. If humans are commanded by morality to form such a community, there must be a realistic hope that they can do so. This is Kant’s well-known “ought implies can” mantra, indicating that what morality commands we should be able to undertake with some inkling of possible success. What must be done includes not merely individual moral action from respect for the moral law but the formation of a “church visible” (sichtbare Kirche) as an actual step toward the ideal of the “church invisible” (unsichtbare Kirche) among all humans, regardless of affiliations of nation, race, ethnicity, social status, and so forth. Kant is talking about both real and ideal communities here, connecting such communities to the virtue-provoking material inherent in religion. The invisible church is the ideal ethical community that we ought to aspire to form—a community that encompasses all agents who are members of it by virtue of their willing of the moral law over the incentives of inclination. Kant’s account of religion is very much at the service of his moral philosophy. This grounds his hope that such a community can be universal or all-inclusive. This community or “church” is described by Kant as “the mere idea of the union of all upright human beings under direct yet moral divine world-governance, as serves for the archetype of any such governance to be founded by human beings.” The church for Kant, as a communal site of religious practice, means both an ideal goal (the universal, invisible church) and an actual, improvable vehicle to reach that goal in history (the visible church). The historicity of the visible church leads Kant to call it by the label of the “ecclesiastical church,” but his idea is that the historical and revelation-based aspects of such visible churches will gradually fall off from the kernel of morality that serves as the basis for any and all duties. The focus will not be dominated by matters of historical revelation but instead by the moral core to such a community—the imperative to help self and others make the moral law the primary motive for activity. The marks of the true church (i.e., the ideal of the invisible church) are its universality (in terms of membership), its purity (in terms of its emphasis on the moral law alone), its relation (to and among the freedom of each of its members), and its modality (the unchangeableness of its constitution, i.e. its core being the moral law) (RBR 6:101–2). As

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the visible church instantiates more and more of the ideal qualities of the invisible church, the ethical community can be said to be more like the universal or true church. The visible church is merely the historical and imperfect form of the ethical community as it progresses through history toward the ideally perfect ethical community or universal church. The notions of rhetoric and rhetorical force that arise from the substantive activities of the visible church answer the question of what type of force can be noncoercive yet fairly efficacious for moving individuals toward the state of moral cultivation. Kant clearly states that the right kind of religious community is needed, or at least extremely useful, for actualizing this goal. Wood has written on the importance of the ethical community (the visible church), emphasizing its role in the overcoming of the social causes of evil. His basic argument is as follows: (1) Humans are inherently evil (e.g., they hold a propensity to subordinate the moral law to their own self-interest once in social situations). A key element to this is our “unsocial sociability,” or need to be integrated into society along with a natural antagonism concerning others. (2) The solution to this problem can either be a social one (organizing into a community that attempts to fight the root of evil, viz. ambition, self-love, etc.) or an antisocial one (in isolating one’s self from the other members of the community). (3) The option of isolation is unacceptable, since it violates perfect and imperfect duties we have to others. (4) Therefore, the solution we are obligated to pursue is the formation of a specific type of community (the ethical community or visible church). Wood’s argument precludes the option of isolation on moral grounds. This may be problematic, as it is not immediately clear that isolating one’s self actively and culpably violates duties to others. This problem can be avoided by instead looking at the visible church as a way to escape a type of isolation each member is already mired in—that of the ethical state of nature with its disjointed individualistic focus prompted by self-love and ambition. In his “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View” (1784), Kant argues that reason requires such a community for trial, practice, and instruction as a way to progress in insight (8:18–19). He argues that this “unsociable sociability” of humans involves an “inclination to associate with others” (8:20) in an effort to gain their assistance and support but that the agent also holds “a strong propensity to isolate himself from others” (8:21) due to the desire to have everything go in accordance with his wishes. The heart of unsocial sociability involves a tension that bases itself on the worth of one’s own projects (in terms of how they can be helped by the presence of others), as well as a need to isolate one’s self from the hegemony of

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others. Isolation is a part of the social condition, a part generated by the same tendency that Kant draws from when discussing the root of evil. We want to be with others, but we are constantly skeptical of their motives. We thereby like the company of others, but strive to remain independent of them. Instead of Wood’s choice of isolation or community, the real choice in the Religion is whether one is a member of a community as an isolated or insulated individual (as in the ethical state of nature) or as an individual as a community member (as in the varying degrees of the ethical community). Are we alone while among others, or do we see ourselves as part of the group around us? It is the second that is the payoff of the visible church, since it is able to break down the barriers that divide individuals in the state of “calm hostility” that characterizes agents who do not have any guarantee that others’ intentions are based on moral incentives (instead of mere self-love). Individuals in the ethical community are involved in institutions that use forms of discourse that draw on their own practical reason, and as such the communicative interactions that follow are shaped accordingly. Individuals are reoriented toward their relationship to others; they now see themselves as autonomous subjects within a community of similarly autonomous and morally valuable individuals. The forms of force used to affect such a change in orientation are what I call the regulative and constitutive notions of rhetorical force in Kant’s visible church. Regulative notions of rhetorical force concern how speech use should be limited or restricted; constitutive notions concern the appropriate content for given acts of speech. The concept of the visible church occupies a middle point between the state of right (political, external harmony established by coercion) and the ideal state of individuals governing themselves under the law of virtue (as indicated in the universal church and the kingdom of ends), since the visible church is hailed as a vehicle to gradually lead humans to progress toward a community that encompasses all human agents of their own free volition. It is the effective middle state primarily because it instantiates or encourages the sort of individuals that the kingdom of ends requires. How it encourages this, however, can be ascertained only by considering the specific rhetorical practices used in such a religious community. In other words, the question becomes, how is one to give an account of the efficacy of the visible church that does not involve brute force that dissolves autonomy or a laissez-faire isolation that helplessly waits for individuals to perfect themselves? I argue that the type of autonomy-preserving force that is applied in such a community comes from the practice of rhetoric tethered to a community formed

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around a slowly evolving historical religion. Such an account involves two parts: those discursive practices revolving around religious symbols and myths and those embodied practices that center on religious ritual.

Religious Narrative and Rhetorical Force in the Ethical Community The visible church—also known in Kant’s work as the ethical community—is an important institution in moving toward the ideal community specified by the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (FKE) and the invisible church since it serves as a locus for free public discourse. This general point has been noted by Philip Rossi and others. What I want to emphasize, however, is that the start of a constitutive notion of rhetoric (including the style and subject matter of argument) can be found in Kant’s Religion. Rossi’s account, in particular, focuses on the visible church’s “social authority,” or its way of enabling its members to have inner progress (motivation to continue to work for moral progress) and outer progress (the social conditions of order that allow such motivation to be effective in shaping the observable actions of others). Rossi ultimately faults Kant’s account for not offering any “specification of the ways in which the full range of human social practices and institutions in the external order—and not just those which embody the political authority of the state—may be ordered so that they all effectively serve moral progress.” The most Kant offers, Rossi claims, are negative standards that differentiate the ethical community from any coercive community. Elsewhere Rossi argues that the role of the ethical community is to foster our public relationships to one another in such a way that we take mutual responsibility for sustaining the social conditions for maintaining our freedom. He maintains that the ethical community utilizes a noncoercive form of the social authority of reason. The coercive form of social authority is the force of reason as applied through statutory measures aimed at the creation of an external state of right. An important part of the noncoercive nature of social authority is its reliance on free discussion. Rossi believes that a key part to the ethical community is its members’ recognition of one another as fellow citizens with mutual responsibilities, a relation made evident in their discursive practices. Debate and rational disagreement are moral concerns for Kant, Rossi claims, and as such the ethical community encourages the correct form of debate through what he calls the “conditions for critical persuasion.” These conditions include the demands that all parties render themselves (and their

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positions) understandable, that all parties try to understand the positions of other parties, that no part of the discussion or argument is safe from criticism, and that the measure of success of such discussion is its production of a “common basis for action.” Central to Rossi’s account is that argument is a basis for action, but is itself not an action, and that perseverance, in trying to meet these demands of critical persuasion, is required to show “social respect” for the other participant’s freedom. In general, Rossi’s account is an informative start on how the ethical community connects to concerns of communication and rhetoric. What is needed, however, is clarification on the positive contributions of such a visible church to moral development. What Rossi’s account provides is a negative (or regulative) description of the social authority of the ethical community as simply not coercive, but no account is given of positive or constitutive notions of rhetoric. My use of “constitutive” implicates the material or content of communicative activities. A merely negative or regulative account would detail only how interaction proceeds; a positive or constitutive account would detail what is discussed. My aim in this chapter is to show how Kant’s religious writings ground both a negative or regulative and a positive or constitutive notion of rhetoric. In other words, what do citizens argue about, and from what do they draw in constructing their arguments and utterances? Rossi’s account is a useful procedural reading of Kant on communication, but I fear if we stop there we will fail to do complete justice to the unique Kantian claim that the ethical community is best conceived of as a religious community, the “visible church” progressing through history in the process of sloughing off its historical and empirical content and retaining its “kernel” of moral faith—the notion of the moral law and its associated practical beliefs. Rossi’s procedural account sounds very similar to a modern Habermasian scheme, and it must be assumed that there is more to Kant’s account of religious practice and communication than this minimalist one. At the very least, Kant’s strong notion of moral virtue must affect the specific content of communication as well as its procedural limits. Indeed, the Religion’s four books spend considerable time on the meaning and use of religious narrative and example in the ethical community, so it is not unreasonable that a positive Kantian account of how rhetorical practice constitutes the social authority of the visible church can be ascertained. Such an account provides not only indications of what the community does not do (i.e., coerce) but also details as to how it can bring a noncoercive means to bear that stimulates individual progress as well as community development. The account I now begin to build shows

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how rhetoric and what can be called “religious narrative” can assist in the progression from mere states of external right to ones more akin to the ideal of the invisible church. Surely Kant would allow nonmanipulative persuasion, as long as it preserves and promotes the autonomy of all parties involved in the interaction. Part of the efficacy of the visible church is its provision of a forum to facilitate argument that respects individuals and gathers their assent to its claims to truth. In doing so, such a notion of discourse upholds the internalism of moral motivation in Kant, since the individual is actively recognizing the truth of what the other is saying. This is also evident in his discussions of moral instruction in the Metaphysics of Morals, a vital part to the education and cultivation of human agents. This source, as well as the Religion, emphasizes empathetic agreement and its motivating force. In section 51 of the “Doctrine of the Methods of Ethics” in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant discusses the efficacy of teaching morality through what he labels “moral catechism” (moralischer Katechism). This teacher-led conversation with a student involves a series of questions posed to the student about matters of moral importance; the student eventually comes to his own conclusion on the matter, a conclusion that a skilled teacher can foresee and elicit from the student. This conversation ends in answers or conclusions that the student has given and will now memorize in detail and serves as an effective means at eliciting moral understanding because “it can be developed from [the student’s] ordinary reason” (6:479). This is a very similar technique to the analysis of examples in pedagogical contexts recounted in the previous chapter. What becomes evident is that the force of this conversational instructional technique springs from this same sort of recognition as was present in the experience of analyzing examples—seeing the truth of the teacher’s words (e.g., giving one’s assent to certain answers) is experientially realizing the motivational value of those moral positions. This form of dialogue surely is continued in the religious community, as it is a vital way to both educate and promote the autonomy of a pupil. In other words, such moral dialogues would have a place in religious discourse in Kant’s scheme. In the communicative practices among adults in the church community, one would suspect that Kant would continue his insistence that the doctrine of virtue (morality) precede the doctrine of religion (APV 7:333; MM 6:478). The reason why he insists on this becomes clear— reversing their order would result in the use of religious language that manipulates the participants through fear or promise of reward, as opposed to using concepts and judgments to which they can give free consent.

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What is the constitutive form of rhetoric in the visible church? Kant sternly warns against any type of rhetoric in the manipulative sense, such as in his essay, “What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking?” (1786). In this work, he inveighs against physically coercive systems that preclude free communication (and with it thought), as well as against “compulsion over conscience” that is exercised over others in a way that precludes their free thought and assent. Such force works not through physical coercion but through an equally pathological incentive of “prescribed formulas of belief accompanied by the anxious fear of the dangers of one’s own thinking” (8:145). Kant is attacking any communicative practice that employs fear and emotion to overwhelm reason, since reason is the only protection against freedom that turns on itself (8:144). In other words, we are free to follow bad incentives, and reason is our only hope of detecting and correcting such a state of affairs. The rhetoric of the visible church, if it is to approach the ideal of the invisible church, must not rely on fear and other such pathological incentives as motivational factors in such a rhetoric of manipulation. Instead, Kant’s religious community emphasizes a rhetoric of reason, which draws on concepts and experiences available to all agents. Kant notes that in all forms of faith, there lies a deep-seated “mystery” (Geheimnis) or “holiness” (Heiliges), “which can be cognized [gekannt] by every individual, yet cannot be professed [bekannt] publicly, i.e., cannot be communicated universally” (RBR 6:138). We sense something behind reality, and we sense our moral mission above the rest of nature. But we cannot prove such matters as we might hope to prove a hypothesis in natural science. These moral cognitions in religion are related to practical reason (e.g., the moral law) and are available for moral use in our communicative encounters. The greatest such object or cognition seems to be the concept of the highest good (summum bonum), identified in the Critique of Practical Reason as the object of practical reason and activity (5:122). This involves the unification of virtue and happiness (justified pleasure), a combination that does not always occur in this world of unfair gain, virtue leading to suffering, and others using their choice in immoral fashions. Yet we still can think about an ideal union of happiness and worthiness to be happy (viz., virtue) and how God may play a role in setting right what we fail to get right in our earthly existence. Such a combination is mysterious and ultimately not accessible to reason-based communication in terms of how it actually will be instantiated—how God actually will go about enabling this ideal state or how (and why) human freedom will collectively choose to elevate the moral law over individual self-love as incentive to practical action.

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These are discussed by Kant as the mystery of the call to be in the ethical community and that of satisfaction of and election to this demand (i.e., the realization of the kingdom of God at RBR 6:142–43). While these concepts are unknowable to us in a strong, theoretically exhaustive sense, they are still part of practical reason’s demand and the objective conditions involved in its realization. We can still think about being called to be part of a community that in some way helps achieve such a union of happiness and virtue here on earth. This mystery is why the postulate of God is needed in the Critique of Practical Reason and the Religion to ground the pursuit of moral activity, as well as why Kant claims that fundamental choices such as the privileging of the inclinations over the moral incentive are ultimately unexplainable in a strict causal sense (as this would deprive humans of their radical freedom to choose the good in any given situation) (RBR 6:59). What can be discussed and what we do have access to are moral concepts, and these are available for such a rhetoric that draws its force from our free and rational assent. Kant makes this point, arguing that “morality allows of open communication, even though its cause is not given to us” (6:138). We can talk about concepts such as God and the highest good, but we can never know if they are real in a theoretical (viz., scientific) sense, nor can we know where they come from; they are simply part of our nature as rational beings. We can use these concepts, however, to facilitate a certain quality of communal interaction. Although we do not know what explains our practical freedom (freedom from inclinations and freedom to act from the moral law as incentive), we can discuss the implications of the existential situation all humans finds themselves in by virtue of possessing reason (and accompanying concepts such as a notion of self-worth). Moral concepts, encompassing dignity, moral worth, and duty, as well as corollaries that support their possible actualization (such as God and immortality) are all open to a type of practical argumentation and discussion. This discussion does not rely on fear but instead rests on the rational acceptability of argument based on one’s access to its integral concepts and notions. This point is also why Kant seems to favor “natural religion” over “learned religion,” or at least he insists that “a religion can be natural, yet also revealed, if it is so constituted that human beings could and ought to have arrived at it on their own through the mere use of their reason” (RBR 6:155). Religious communities can be founded on revelation, but that can be only a historical “vehicle” that speeds up the delivery of a message fundamentally discoverable by one’s own reason. No “learned” clergy can argue or bully one into such a faith, nor can any miracle cajole one into realizing the truth of some

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doctrine; Kant insists on basing religion on morality (6:154), since this is the only way to preserve and promote the freedom of each individual against unscrupulous and deceiving agents, human or supernatural. Of particular concern to Kant is the earthly clergy, which “believes it can dispense with reason, and ultimately with scriptural scholarship itself ” (6:180), since it is the selfappointed guardian of such scripture. Needless to say, Kant objects to any such trumping of reason and individual freedom, and religious rhetoric must not propagate such force fundamentally founded in the nonmoral incentive of fear or anticipated reward. This reliance on morality in religion means that specific, imperfect religious communities have a base of intersubjectively accessible concepts and resources to which particular persuasive attempts can appeal. While I need not go into the specific reasons why Kant prefers the Christian faith to other faiths, I can simply point out that his reasoning approves of the Christian faith’s reliance on inner moral laws that are supposedly acceptable to all (6:162–63). The visible church is an effective locus for discussion premised and concluded on free acceptance. Both the form and content of communicative experience in this community preserve or promote autonomy. All members have access to the same moral concepts, and their acceptance of each is really just a matter of self-discovery for Kant. Thus, the rhetoric of reason draws on individuals to recognize these concepts and to see their motivational weight. Why should such self-discovery be public and in a community (the visible church) devoted to virtue? The answer is that our specific duties are often difficult to determine, as we often encounter situations of conflicting grounds of obligation (MM 6:224), and we must figure out what exactly our duty is given that situation. The presence of other interlocutors helps us see what we have missed. Such dialogism is evident in some of Kant’s texts—for instance, Kant includes sections called “casuistical questions” (kasuistische Fragen) after almost every enunciated duty in the “Doctrine of Virtue,” bringing up (but not answering) difficult cases that challenge the absoluteness of the duty just derived. For instance, after discussing the reasoning why suicide is always a violation of duties of virtue to oneself, Kant brings up a variety of “problematic cases” that seem to at least allow for the possibility of suicide being a worthy action—cases of a leader killing himself to escape imminent capture in a war to avoid a slower death by execution or a person committing suicide to avoid the painful ending promised by a developing case of rabies (MM 6:423–24). Kant finds these types of casuistical questions to be an important part of moral catechism and moral education (6:483–84), and question-based inter-

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action can be applied to his notion of religious community as part of the practice of rhetoric in the visible church. Since nonmanipulative rhetoric cannot be merely a one-way flow of orders or knowledge from the clergy, the rhetorical activity in the religious community must involve two-way discussion. A reasonable example of such discussion would be the sort of rational disagreement over such “tricky cases” as presented in Kant’s encouraged casuistry in his Metaphysics of Morals. Like Rossi’s analysis, the procedure preserves the participants’ freedom by allowing them to respond to the questions and cases however they see fit. In addition, however, the focus of constructive discussion among purposive speakers draws on the rhetorical force of concepts already in each individual (viz., moral concepts), which adds a constitutive dimension to the communicative activities of the visible church. A key element of this community, Kant finds, is the publicity of its discourse and the incentives attached to that discourse. The closer the discourse finds its force in the incentive offered by the moral law, the closer such a community draws to the ideal of the “Kingdom of God” (RBR 6:151), or the system of agents in which all freedom and end setting is maximally harmonized from internalized respect for each agent (as is the case in the kingdom of ends). Religious narratives and symbols provide most of the material for such free discussions in the visible church. The unique rhetorical force of discourse in the visible church comes from its employment of religious imagery or symbols. Often these are personal symbols—an agent whose life or activities parallel some aspect of our moral life. In section 52 of the “Doctrine of the Methods of Ethics” in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant turns his attention to the use of examples in moral pedagogy. The use of examples is said not to be a way of teaching any given rule of morality (since such a rule deals with “inscrutable” internal states judged by the nonsensuous moral law) but instead “proof that it is really possible to act in conformity with duty” (6:480). This proof cannot be taken in a strict sense, since it is always possible we will deceive ourselves (GMM 4:407), let alone be taken in by another’s self-deception. As discussed in the previous chapter, examples in pedagogical situations serve a similar role—they help shape moral judgment in morally worthy ways such that future uses of the power of judgment might follow a similar path. In religious settings, examples and symbols from religious traditions are important not as indicators of objects of experience (as would be the case in religion taken as science) but instead as sensible presentations of ideas and ways of ranking and valuing incentives that so often escape our attention. Kant makes this point in relation to what he believes is

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one of the best religious symbols available—that of Jesus, with “his unchanging purity of will” (RBR 6:64). Even the example of Jesus cannot “prove” that such behavior can be emulated by us, but it can provide a schema or model by which we “render a concept comprehensible through analogy with something of the senses” (6:65). This schema of analogy, provided by the religious imagery available in the life and teachings of Jesus, allows us to be able to recognize such an individual as an instance of the concept of moral perfection, although it does not prove such an intention or object does exist (6:63, 65). As the previous chapter illustrates, the recognition of a certain way of judging or valuing has a motivational power on the reasoner in question. Just as the beautiful is presented as a sensuous symbol of morality in section 59 of the Critique of the Power of Judgment, religious images such as that of Jesus can function as “vivid presentations” of the ideally moralized individual and thereby serve as content for moral discussion and argument over duties, moral elucidation, and so on. Historical elements of a particular faith must not be so exalted or reified that they eclipse the capacity of reason that is the ultimate connection between all humans, both inside and outside the visible church (although all are included in the ideal goal of the invisible church); instead, one looks in awe at Jesus’s words and stipulated disposition not because of some arbitrary divine authority but instead because his stipulated purity of will allows him to “be able to speak truly of himself as if the ideal of goodness were displayed incarnate in him (in his teaching and conduct)” (RBR 6:65–66). The example gains its power because it draws on (and presents in sensible form) conceptual resources already present in a given human agent. Symbols such as Jesus, as well as the religious narrative of his life, are useful in persuasive discourse over moral improvement just for this reason—they draw on resources available in every person. Later in the Religion Kant claims that “ecclesiastical faiths,” the historical versions of the visible church progressing toward the invisible church, are useful not in terms of having divinely commanded scriptures (since such claims to scriptural veracity conflict and are incommensurable across historical faiths) but instead only for the vivid presentation [lebendigen Darstellung] of its true object (virtue striving toward holiness), [and] it should at all times be taught and expounded in the interest of morality, and the point should thereby also be stressed, carefully and (since especially the ordinary human being has in him a constant propensity to slip into passive faith) repeatedly, that true religion is not to be placed in the knowledge or the profession

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of what God does or has done for our salvation, but in what we must do to become worthy of it. (6:132–33) Notice that Kant’s general scheme here isn’t wedded exclusively to Christian symbols. The vivid presentation offered by religion in general and its myriad narrative content can be used to show what Kant always found as a difficult fact about human moral behavior—virtue is always a struggle and is never a completed endeavor (MM 6:409). Religion tends to highlight this struggle, and it does this in Kant’s scheme through rhetorical means such as casuistical dispute and the discussion of religious symbols. Religious examples evoke and remind us of moral concepts we ought to have hold of already—the intrinsic worth of each individual, our fallibility through temptation, and the goodness of a supportive community. One can also see the presence of negative symbols in Kant’s religious community. These serve as focal points for explaining and discussing what should not be done, or how one should not be disposed toward their maxims and actions. The primary symbol of this kind in Kant’s Religion is the “evil being” or the “prince of this world.” Since this being is described as a “spirit,” one can assume that Kant is referring to Satan with this symbol. As a symbol diametrically opposed to the one represented by Jesus, Satan is said to seek “to establish dominion over minds by causing our first parents to rebel against their overlord and become dependent on him.” Even though Satan is not tempted himself by the pleasures of earthly goods, he uses such allurements to sway humans away from the good principle established originally within them. This principle, of course, is the moral law and its entailments (such as the inherent equality in value of each human being). Instead, “a Kingdom of Evil was thus set up here on earth in defiance of the good principle, and all of Adam’s (natural) descendents were subjected to it—and this with their own free consent, since the false show of this world’s goods diverted their gaze from the abyss of perdition in store for them” (6:79). This symbol does not excuse or explain our failure in our struggles of moralization. Instead, Satan as religious symbol vividly represents the constant evil tendency of humans to freely prioritize themselves and their idiosyncratic needs and wants over the value and projects of equal others. In a real sense, this evil being represents one way we are always capable of acting and one way that we are always tempted to act in pursuing our own ends. One must see the limitations that Kant emphasizes through this symbol; Satan does not cause us to transgress morality’s commands. Instead, he tempts us and we freely choose to act out of

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step with our moral nature. The contrasting symbolic effect of Satan brings into sharp resolution the purity of disposition represented by Jesus and in turn highlights the challenges of freely setting and ordering ends in any human community. This is why Kant employs such symbols in religious communicative activity—they serve as a vivid “symbolic vehicle for true religion.” We realize things all the more deeply about our own orientational struggles toward cultivation when we see the conceptual extremes laid out in symbolic form in religious material. In addition to the use of symbols, Kant’s religious rhetoric also incorporates what could be called “mythic narrative.” These are the more extended narrative elements that often form key parts to religious traditions. In the tradition with which Kant is primarily concerned, these narrative elements include the accounts of the divine origin of the earth, Jesus’s story, and so on. All of these are important not because they are literal accounts of how the world came to be this way (viz., theoretical beliefs); instead, they are important insofar as they allow a practical, moral interpretation. Indeed, in his Religion Kant praises “late Judaism and Christianity” for their “highly forced interpretations . . . directed to ends undoubtedly good and necessary to every human being” (6:111). He also applauds Greek, Roman, Islamic, and Hindu traditions for their emphasis on spiritual meanings over literal meanings in their received religious myths. Religious stories could be taken in an extremely literal sense, but such an approach grounds their value in dubious theoretical claims about experience that reason cannot allow. Emphasizing the spiritual, dispositional aspect allows these traditions to enhance the aspect of humans that reason commands be enhanced—their moral outlook and cultivation. Kant is effectively advancing a constructivist, practical account of interpretation. One can interpret important religious stories with the goal of finding a way to make them maximally effective in the project of cultivating human orientations. In the Religion Kant makes this clear: Nor can we charge such interpretations with dishonesty, provided that we do not wish to claim that the meaning we give to the symbols of a popular faith, or even to holy books, is exactly as intended by them, but leave this issue open and only assume the possibility that their authors may be so understood. For the final purpose of even the reading of these holy books, or the investigation of their content, is to make better human beings; whereas their historical element, which contributes nothing to

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this end, is something in itself quite indifferent, and one can do with it what one wills. (6:111) Accepting such stories as divine revelation, for Kant, was not to accept them as literal claims about the nature of the world—it was to read these stories with the expectation that they contain some morally edifying aspect. This is the sort of “moral faith” that Kant later praises in The Conflict of the Faculties (1798). There, he discusses the role of the interpretive practice that “improves and elevates the soul by reason,” even though the literal meaning of some religious texts go against such interpretations (7:42). Yet the complexity of mythic texts such as the New Testament require some reason-based principle of interpretation; one cannot simply go by their literal meaning. Interpreting these texts through appeals to “moral feeling” or individual religious inspiration is problematic, especially when added to the sort of interpretation that sees the mythic text as referring to the shared objective world. Such a practice lacks any “public touchstone of truth” and quickly becomes fantasy backed by clerical force (7:46). Like many things touched by Kant’s view of morality, religious interpretation gains value when it preserves and promotes the value of all humans connected with its practice. Basing appeals on historical revelation or feeling-based truth results in “ecclesiastical faith,” which ultimately “uses force on our conscience.” As is the case with most human activities, self-love tries to affect the actions of individual agents in religious communities—in such a faith driven by self-love, “everyone tries to put into or get out of dogma something in keeping with his own view” (CF 7:51). The only way to work around the temptation of using force on human agents in religious contexts is to avoid what can be called “strong” interpretations, which extract theoretical claims about the world shared by all agents from a given text, yet have no backing for such claims except uncertain historical facts, assurances of divine inspiration, or the mere enthusiasm or feeling of the one producing the interpretation. Kant points at the problems with reading dogma in this universal way at various points. Much better are “weaker” interpretations, or those uses of religious texts that remain open to other ways of reading a specific mythic narrative and that focus on an end to which all may agree. In Kant’s view, choosing to use a religious story for the ends of moral cultivation is a relatively nonobjectionable end, since the means of this pursuit are putatively moral concepts and dispositions to which we all have access at some point. Kant refers to such

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a weaker interpretation as “moral interpretation,” which does not force itself on us but instead works through us: it “is one given by the God within us; for since we cannot understand anyone unless he speaks to us through our own understanding and reason, it is only by concepts of our reason, insofar as they are pure moral concepts and hence infallible, that we can recognize the divinity of a teaching promulgated to us” (7:48). This is why he advises in the Religion, when speaking of religious examples as presented in mythic narrative, that we cannot do better than adopt, as a medium for the elucidations [Erläuterungen] of our ideas of a revealed religion in general, some book which contains [instances] of that sort, especially a book inextricably interwoven with teachings that are ethical and hence related to reason, and then hold it before us, one among a variety of books dealing with religion and virtue accredited to revelation, as an example of the practice, useful in itself, without thereby wanting to intrude into the business of those to whom is entrusted the interpretation of this very book as an aggregate of positive doctrines of revelation, or to challenge their exegesis based on scholarship. (6:156–57) Kant is clearly carving out a realm for weak, moral interpretation separate from that practiced by professional theologians. As indicated by his treatment of symbols, Kant wants to preserve a use for religious materials that enhances our rhetorical activities such as discussion and meaning making, among others. The visible church serves as the place for such rhetorical activity, whether it is fixated on symbols or myths. How might the free interpretation and discussion of the moral meaning of religious myths proceed? It is easy to see that Kant felt no restraint in critically engaging religious materials with a firm grasp of the moral law, nor did he believe that one should be tentative and deferential to professional interpretations. Even when the interpretations came from professional philosophers, the interpreting individuals always have “both the right and responsibility to engage in direct, uninhibited contact with the general public” in their activities, as Stephen Palmquist puts it. In his response to the general disputes between philosophers and theologians, Kant reveals his constructivist interpretive stance when he comments on the infamous narrative of Abraham being commanded by God to sacrifice his only son. Kant is shaken by this mythic story and responds that “Abraham should have replied to this suppos-

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edly divine voice: ‘That I ought not to kill my good son is quite certain. But that you, this apparition, are God—of that I am not certain, and never can be, not even if this voice rings down to me from (visible) heaven’ ” (CF 7:63n). This represents quite a combative response to one committed to a literal account of scripture as theoretical accounts of events in the shared world, but it loses some of its offense if one takes it as an example of what Kant was getting at with his notion of the moral use of myth in the rhetorical activities of the ethical community. It is simply material for the free response and development of the individual engaging it. Mythic material supplied by religion can be used to bring out the moral concepts we already possess. Kant provides another example of nonprofessional interpretative uses of religious myth in the process of moral cultivation. In his essay “Conjectural Beginnings of Human History” (1786), Kant responds to Johann Gottfried Herder’s (a former student of Kant’s) account of the Mosaic creation story and the Fall. Herder seemed to take too many of the religious stories contained in Genesis as literally true accounts of humanity’s origin. Displaying a contrary approach that combines satire with moral interpretation, Kant uses the Genesis account to usefully fill in “gaps” in our knowledge of the world (in this case, of our unrecorded past history) by taking them as morally edifying tales. Unlike Herder, we should not mistake the products of fictional imagination for knowledge of history, but we can practically speculate on “a history of the first development of freedom from its original predisposition in the nature of the human being.” This sort of speculation, while theoretically limited, can be practically useful. This is a significantly different endeavor than scientifically or theoretically documenting “the history of freedom in its progression, which can be grounded only on records” (8:109). Kant does warn that this is an exercise in interpretative play, and he uses language typically reserved for the “free play” of imaginative human activities that instantiate and promote human spontaneity: Nevertheless, since conjectures [Muthmaßungen] must not make too high claims on assent, but must always announce themselves as at most only a movement of the power of imagination, accompanying reason and indulged in for the recreation and health of the mind, but not for a serious business, they also cannot compare themselves with that kind of history which is proposed and believed as an actual record about the same occurrence, whose test rests on grounds entirely different from mere philosophy of nature. (8:109)

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Thus, Kant uses the myth of the Fall as his “map” on a “mere pleasure trip” of the imagination (8:109–10). But there is still a thread that connects this to experience, namely the connections made by one’s power of reason. Kant offers his interpretation in the sort of discursive, dialogic context analyzed previously from his Religion—he explicitly asks that “the reader will open the pages of that document (Genesis, chapter 2 through chapter 6) and will check step by step whether the path that philosophy takes in accordance with concepts will accord with that which the story [Geschichte] provides” (8:110). The reader is to check even the great Kant’s interpretation against the useful religious text available to all parties. Moral interpretations are meant to be checked against the faculty of reason that resides both in the interpreter and in the other communicative participants. Kant continues to give an account of human protohistory from the primordial couple in Genesis. Why was it a couple? Kant stipulates that this was the case “so he [the human being] could propagate his kind” (RBR 8:110). Why just one couple? This was the case, speculates Kant, so war would not erupt too soon. This couple is placed in a garden because of the rich resources available there. The couple evidenced human sociability (Geselligkeit) and eventually attained skillfulness in the use of their powers: “The first human could, therefore, stand and walk; he could speak [sprechen] (Genesis 2:20), even discourse [reden], i.e. speak according to connected words and concepts, hence think” (8:110). Notice that in his retelling, Kant foregrounds communicative skillfulness. Even more than this, he talks of “the drive to communicate [der Trieb sich mitzutheilen]” as what first moved humans to interact with other creatures. As indicated in the previous chapter, the vital move for Kant’s scheme of moral cultivation is the dispositional transition from a prudential, skillful agent to a moralized agent. This same progression plays out in his interpretation of Genesis in a more narrativized form. The original humans are guided by instinct and nature in their first estate; “as long as the inexperienced human being obeyed this call of nature, he did well for himself.” But “reason soon began to stir” and started to instill in the original humans comparisons that confounded the urges of desire. Sight is said to be one avenue of such comparisons. Kant claims that “it is a property of reason that with the assistance of the power of imagination it can concoct desires not only without a natural drive directed to them but even contrary to it” (8:111). Man became conscious of his faculty of reason and, more important, became “conscious of one’s reason as a faculty that can extend itself beyond the limits within which all animals are held, [this] was very important and decisive for his way of living.” This is what

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enabled man to make his “first attempt at a free choice” not dictated by natural urges (8:112). Yet for Kant, this part of the myth represents the epochal realization within humans, namely that they possess the ability to choose the direction of their lives and actions. Reason’s influence is portrayed as moving from the choice of food to the spiritualization and disciplining of sexual desires into love. Part of the latter effort involved restraining one’s sexual desires and the covering of one’s naked body. These are important developments to highlight, since they show that “propriety [Sittsamkeit], an inclination by good conduct to influence others to [have] respect for us (through the concealment of that which could incite low esteem), as the genuine foundation of all true sociability, gave the first hint toward the formation of the human being as a moral [sittlichen] creature.” Beyond such improvement in mores, humans begin to use their power of reason to look to the future (and away from a focus merely on the present), a source of both gain and inevitable worry (8:113). Humans could imaginatively anticipate solutions to problems and could create more problems through worrying about future failures and losses. Reason’s final step, according to Kant’s retelling of this mythic narrative, is when it made humans understand that they are above the animals of nature and that the human being was “the genuine end of nature” (8:114). Thus humans began to see that they had dominion over all animals, yet also realized they lack such dominion over other humans. Reason thereby created in humans an awareness of their inherent moral equality. Kant continues with his interpretation of the moral value of war and the shortness of human life in the societal quest for moral improvement, but the previous recounting is enough to illustrate our rhetorical purposes here. Kant saw and used such myths as the account of the Fall in Genesis to vividly present the human situation that emerges in more conceptual form in his moral work. The struggle between inclinations and a harmonizing, orderly reason are given a gripping narrative form with the progression of this original pair, and one begins to see the human equality presupposed in FHE and FKE in more vivid terms. Kant is using a moral interpretation of scripture to make a larger point concerning the pursuit of morality in our too often imperfect conditions—that we typically want to blame external factors for our failings. In a strong interpretation of the Fall, we blame our sins on the sins of Adam and Eve. Yet Kant does not want to encourage such excuses in the moral agents with whom he is engaging using this moralized retelling of the story of the Fall. He calls it a “representation [Vorstellung]” or “presentation [Darstellung]” that is “beneficial and serviceable to the human being for his instruction and improvement

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[through its] showing him that he must not blame providence for the ills that oppress him; that he is also not justified in ascribing his own misdeeds to an original crime of his ancestral parents.” Instead, the reader must see that “he would have behaved in precisely the same way under the same circumstances [as the original pair] and would have begun the first use of reason that way (even against nature’s hint)” (8:123). Thus, Kant gives an interpretive, vivid representation of a familiar myth to eliminate common moral failings (viz., the excuse that something else besides free choice is responsible for one’s improper ordering of incentives), and he effectively transmutes original sin in its historical sense to an innate weakness in the human faculty of choice. We are always tempted by comparisons and, ultimately, by the tension Kant points out: the conflict between our natural urges and the demands of reason to freely choose to cultivate ourselves into a moralized “second-nature” (8:117–18). This is also the challenge posited by Kant’s moral theory, but in his work on religious community we see the how rhetorical activity can play into the quest to form a moralized disposition. The interpretation and discussion of religious symbols and myths play an important role in the positive, constitutive activities of the visible church. We come to a notion of rhetorical force in Kant’s use of symbol and mythic narrative that does not collapse to manipulation of agents as mere machines or objects of nature. This type of force differs from the physical coercion offered by the state of right (political or civil union). Receptive agents on the brink of freely willing virtuous ends, as well as obeying duties of right from the recognition that they are also ethical commands, are susceptible to the rational influence of others. The ethical community (the visible church) is important for Kant’s thought in that it is an intermediate step between systems based on the use of physical force and the ideal state of internal force coming from the incentive of the moral law. The emphasis here is on fostering moral development and cultivation via internal motivation stimulated by rhetorical discourse that draws on conceptual resources within all participants. This community includes either the direct communication of moral concepts and duties facilitated by a community dedicated to discussing the moral law through the resources of reason (opposed to mere clerical authority) or the use of religious symbols and narrative as a vivid presentation of the concepts and incentives that lie within all moral agents. The force of religious concepts and symbols comes from within the agent, a fact Kant notices in his work, “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?” (1784). There he emphasizes the wrongness of clerics or nobles vesting in a specific religion any immu-

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nity from change or revision, since it violates the “touchstone of whatever can be decided upon as a law for a people,” which is “whether a people could impose such a law upon itself ” (8:39). Such a standard applies not only to the use of coercive law (such as the mentioned statutory limitations on religious critique) but also to any putative instantiation of the moral law in a specific maxim, as this maxim must still pass the tests of FUL and FKE, which respectively call for the universalizability of the maxim and its compatibility with the ends of all. The religious authorities are not there to bully through words; instead, as Palmquist notes, “the cleric’s true task is to foster a church environment wherein all members can freely explore whatever beliefs and actions are most likely to promote this moral end [i.e., one’s personal duty].” The true authority of the visible church comes from one’s own reason. It entails a notion of rational acceptability and communicative regulation that is found in Rossi’s analysis of the ethical community but is further fleshed out here by the specification of what morally cultivating discourse draws on for its content. As indicated previously, one could divide the sorts of force resident in Kant’s visible church into regulative and constitutive notions of rhetorical force. As for the first dimension of a Kantian rhetoric that can serve as a guide for how community is to function, as well as a justification for specific types of community, it is important to acknowledge that it is essentially procedural or regulative in terms of how discourse is to proceed. Thus, Rossi is on the right track when he highlights the free forms of persuasion and argument in Kant’s ethical community. A positive or constitutive conception of educative rhetoric can be found in Kant’s Religion, specifically one that draws on the community and practices of the visible church as subject matter for discourse and persuasion. The types of argument and the contents of arguments, on this account, involve a rhetorical force that garners its motivational power from within audience members, as opposed to swaying them from external incentives such as worldly harm or benefit. This type of rhetoric secures community and promotes it through the preservation of its members’ freedom as well as the promotion of this freedom. In general, the last point is accomplished by communicative interaction being based on warrants for the acceptability of claims that derive from one’s own reason, as opposed to the (inscrutable) decree of authorities (clerical or learned). In the Religion Kant hints at such a type of noncoercive rhetorical force by drawing an analogy to the functioning of a family. The true church is similar to a family wherein “under a common though invisible moral father, whose holy son, who knows the father’s will and yet stands in blood relation with all

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the members of the family, takes his father’s place by making the other members better acquainted with his will,” which then results in a “free, universal and enduring union of hearts” (6:102). The agreement is free and binding because it stems from grounds that all have available to them—in a family, that of the love of each and the recognized authority of the lead figure, and in religious community, from that of the moral law as given by our reason but as pictured as divinely justified. Persuasion that highlights and uses the resources of reason through such vivid images and myths is motivational because it stems from our own faculties, a fact that Kant notes in the Critique of Practical Reason: “consciousness of the law as also an incentive is inseparably combined with consciousness of a power ruling over sensibility, even if not always in effect” (5:159). We feel involved and valued in such interactions. Religious discourse and the community in which it is located offer a material that is within us and that reinforces our notion of the worth of ourselves and of other agents. As Paul Guyer notes, Kant begins and ends with the crucial fact that individuals recognize their ability of self-rule and its connection to their dignity. This is the normative element added to perceptions of humans as mutually interacting members of community, as well as the point at which Kant’s whole system aims—the preservation and promotion of human freedom, on both the internal/external and individual/community continuums. Religion can give us narrative material (scriptural and example-based) that draws on moral concepts we all share and allows free discourse about casuistical questions, as well as the notion of duty and moral worth itself. This last statement may lead some to a crucial question: is participation in the visible church necessary for progress toward the ideal form of (virtuous) community? This is another way of getting at the question of the role of religion in moral cultivation, as well as in ideal practices of communication. At one point in his discussion of Kant’s religious community, Wood notes that “the rational validity of any judgment rests on its universal communicability.” This would seem to preclude solely coercive uses of community, but it does not seem to necessitate all the theological baggage that comes along with membership in the visible church. Is religion necessary to become the sort of humans we ought to become? In terms of the purity and authority of religious material, Michel Despland indicates that Kant himself struggled to avoid coercive or paternalistic forms of extreme religious worship, as well as extreme “personal religion” movements (Schwärmerei). Could we get the benefits of this negative, procedural form of Kantian rhetoric without religious settings and content? Perhaps, and that may be the point of Kant’s argument about the

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unrestricted “public” use of one’s reason. The crucial question, however, is, can we get the benefits of the form of Kantian rhetoric without the material provided by the religious community? I believe Kant would firmly answer that we cannot. The reason is two fold. First, a minimal belief in God and other religious matters is presupposed by morality, as Kant argues in the Critique of Pure Reason and in the Critique of Practical Reason. Morality commands rigorous things of us, many of which fate and the ways of the world make unlikely to be realized. Postulating a God is a way of making sense of these demands and how our world tends to proceed. Second, and of more importance to this project, is the fact that human reason seems to need a sensible presentation of some aspects of practical reason and its ideas, and this can be provided in a unique way by religious symbolism and scripture. An abstract, universal faith grounded in morality does not seem capable of commanding “conviction universally” due to “the natural need of human beings to demand for even the highest concepts and grounds of reason something that the senses can hold on to, some confirmation from experience or the like” (RBR 6:109). This sensuous presentation should not be reified or fetishized as being absolutely true, as this is the fountainhead of forceful manipulation and coercion that Kant wishes to exclude from any community progressing toward the ideal type of community. Some sort of religious community (albeit minimal and not tied too strongly to the baggage of historical faiths) is needed as the context for the discussion of the material provided by religious symbols and mythic narrative. This sort of community has the potential to be long-lasting, strongly bonded, and growing—all the aspects that Kant values in morality and all features that would enhance its moral efficacy in educating imperfect human agents. What Kant is getting at with his use of “vivid presentation” through religious examples is a particular form of rhetorical proof traditionally called enargeia. Such a use of language has been noted by classical rhetoricians such as Cicero and Quintilian as the use of language to “construct a credible image which will take the audience into the presence of an object by attempting to place things before the eyes.” This rhetorical device implicates one’s senses (particularly that of sight) in an attempt to present an object or experience to the audience member. The rhetor cannot literally do this, so there is a mimetic aspect to the rhetorical production of enargeia. This presentation is not merely a presentation, but is a re-presentation in line with certain emotional valences calculated by the orator. As Ingunn Lunde points out, enargeia “has to do not only with the ways in which things are conceived or visualized by the speaker and subsequently by the listener, but also with the manner in which the speaker,

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and listener, situates him- or herself vis-à-vis the represented matter.” This involves audience orientation toward the value or importance of such a presented object or event. Thus, if a crime is vividly brought “before the eyes” of an audience through vivid presentation in speech, the audience feels present and immediate to the described or re-created event and judges it to be of a certain value. A qualified rhetor can predict with some frequency what such an audience reaction may be, but the bottom line remains that the audience still reacts to the presented matter in a way separate from the rhetor’s intentions and agency. The audience still plays a role in freely exercising their judgment, however manipulatively inclined or pushed around by external causes—a nod toward the Stoic roots of this practice. Kant’s evocation of “vivid presentation” in the Religion seems to be his way of incorporating this rhetorical tactic into his visible church community, albeit with safeguards to protect the autonomy of the individual communicators. In the Religion Kant is dealing with the challenge of talking about things with few experiential analogues. Morality and moral worth cannot be seen in the world directly, as there is always the chance that evil intentions lay beneath seemingly worthy actions. What one can do is to place Jesus (or another appropriate religious figure) as a symbol of such a person in front of themselves and others and discuss the details of such a presentation. The causality of the moral law and what it would be like in certain situations is better understood by the audience members engaging such a presentation. The beautiful or the sublime also come close to giving members an experiential realization of their freedom (via the beautiful) and their moral worth over nature (via the sublime). The use of religious imagery and myth is different in an important fashion because it is more of a discursive, hence enargeiatic, presentation of a point open to further discursive investigation and use. One can engage the activity that an exemplary religious figure would undertake in certain situations or why a certain action suggested by such a figure’s conduct or speech is morally worthy. In other words, the religious symbol presents moral concepts in a more understandable form and gives one the material for moral casuistry concerning difficult cases. Lunde, in her examination of enargeia, notes that instead of the standard dichotomy between “rhetorical evidence” and “real evidence,” enargeia intends the seeing (via the presentation) to count as a sort of evidence itself. On what does this evidence rely for its binding “force” or persuasive impact? Its basis seems to be the experience of the one having the experience evoked by the vivid presentation. In enargeia, rhetorical experience becomes a sort of proof or cultivating force. Like most forces in life, this

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can be abused—mean-spirited rhetors (and philosophers) can shape the case in such a way that simple auditors are highly inclined to see what the speaker wants them to see. Ideally, however, the power structure of the visible church has been leveled out and the material provided by religious symbols and myths has its force based in the very concepts resident in the human agent to start with—the idea of the moral law and its ancillary concepts. For Kant, the religious community’s use of religious symbols and narratives can serve as a way to vividly clarify that which we already know and thus can be seen as illocutionary uses of communication (viz., those oriented toward reaching mutual understanding) instead of simple perlocutionary manipulation of response. As individuated by their status as schemata of analogy, religious symbols and narratives employed in rhetorical interaction serve as a vivid cognitive means (through their connection to the concepts of morality) to understand the meaning of moral action and why one ought to take part in it. Instead of being strong theoretical truth claims, religious symbols and mythic narratives should be used as vehicles to transmit the practical truth of the moral law. The orientation of one reading and talking about such material must be that “the final purpose of even the reading of these holy books, or the investigation of their content, is to make better human beings” (RBR 6:111), or one is merely appealing to inscrutable revelation or authority and making strong claims to which one (and others) cannot fully and freely give assent. Discussion of religious material—the constitutive elements (subject matter) of a Kantian rhetoric aimed at moral cultivation—must always be open to public criticism, even when it comes from scholars of religion (6:114). This amplifies the seed of meaning within the tool of enargeia, that of rhetor presentation and audience reaction to a given subject matter brought before their eyes in a vivid and grabbing manner. Given Kant’s orientation toward the material offered in religious scripture, its use alone (via reading) and in community (via discussion of meaning and relevance to troublesome cases of duty) is based in one’s practical reason and “while instructing us also animates us” (6:112). Cognition of one’s duty, brought out in a sensuous presentation of it, is cognition of the motivating aspect of duty. The seeing of an enargeiatic presentation is the motivation for a certain disposition to be taken toward it; in the case of religious symbols and mythic narratives, the reaction is one of understanding the moral concepts, as well as their power in motivating us toward living in accord with them. This practical use of religious rhetorical resources plays out in the continuing attempt to create, as Kant puts it in “The End of All of Things” (1794), a “community [that] is susceptible and inclined

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to give a hearing not merely to the received pious doctrines but also to a practical reason which has been illuminated by them (which is also absolutely necessary for a religion)” (8:336). This hearing is Kant’s notion of a free communicative community that discursively mulls over the concepts of morality, as I have argued, using the material and context of existing religious communities. Kant’s conception of Christianity is that of a moral religion that relies less on authority and a rhetoric of manipulation and more on a rhetoric of reason that draws its force from the material in and assent of audiences addressed. This type of religion succeeds, according to Kant, since “its founder [Jesus] speaks not in the quality of a commander demanding obedience to his will, but in that of a friend of humanity who appeals to the hearts of his fellow human beings on behalf of their own well-understood will, i.e. of the way they would of themselves voluntarily act if they examined themselves properly” (8:338). The religious examples work as a symbol because they draw on and exemplify ideas resident in any rational agent; thus, one can say that their rhetorical force comes from within each agent, and not merely the hidden machinations of a purposive rhetor. In this sense, Kant’s use of symbols and religious myths parallels the analysis of narrative reasoning given by a contemporary rhetorical theorist, Walter Fisher, who argues that humans are inherently narrative beings and that they tend to evaluate internally consistent stories on the basis of what he calls “narrative fidelity.” This is the habit of people judging narratives based on “whether or not the stories they experience ring true with the stories they know to be true in their lives.” When there is a noticed consonance or consistency between vital parts of a presented narrative and the auditor’s experience (their past, held values, and so on), there is the chance for identification with the narrative and its counsels of action and belief. Fisher explains the conditions for this move: “We identify with stories or accounts when we find that they offer ‘good reasons’ for being accepted. . . . Reasons are good when they are perceived as (1) true to and consistent with what we think we know and what we value, (2) appropriate to whatever decision is pending, (3) promising in effects for ourselves and others, and (4) consistent with what we believe is an ideal basis for conduct.” The discussion of religious examples and narratives—and their applicability to difficult real-life situations—in religious settings draws on preexistent ideals in the audience and could therefore work through this same process of identification. A story of Jesus’s life or Kant’s retelling of the Fall is morally cultivating because it is a sensuous presentation of ideas to which we already

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have access (say, the challenge of being virtuous in the face of selfish, sensuous temptation), and the accessing of these ideas evoked by the story lead us to a firmer understanding of them and their worth in guiding action. Like the casuistical questions after each derived duty in the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant sees the elucidation and discussion of religious materials as clarifying the range and applicability of already determined (but rather abstract) ideas. In this sense, the Kantian use of religious rhetoric turns on rational audiences being reminded of certain moral concepts through the rhetorical means of vivid presentation. Religious symbols and narratives ring true to an auditor’s experience in this case because they draw on concepts that all rational agents ought to possess already.

Religious Ritual and Performative Force in the Ethical Community The goal of Kant’s educative rhetoric—in all its forms—is to make a certain facet of the moral disposition real and present. In this way, one can see vivid rhetorical techniques such as the use of symbol and myth as powerful communicative ways to make moral judgment and dispositions present to those who might need cultivation. This reading of the constitutive power of rhetoric in Kant’s moral thought serves as an extension of his concept of “hypotyposis,” or the experiential realization of some concept through a more sensible or understandable presentation. As discussed in chapter 2, hypotyposis plays an important role in Kant’s aesthetics, with beauty being a felt symbol of the morally good. Does the experience of verbally interpreting and discussing religious symbols and myths exhaust Kant’s religious educative rhetoric, a rhetoric that draws on vivid means of experiencing and presenting morally efficacious content? Or are there further performative or experiential ways of shaping our dispositions through religion? Overly cognitive readings of Kant on rhetoric might be tempted to stop with the discursive employments of religion and its symbols and myths as the hypotyposis of the ideas of morality. Yet a curious fact pushes against this. At the end of Kant’s Religion, four standard ritual activities employed in many religious communities are analyzed. Kant identifies praying, church going, initiations, and maintenance rituals as integral features to a living church community (6:194–200). Most analyses of Kant’s religious thought sidestep an experiential analysis of ritual and simply find rituals to be “symbolic” ways of serving God. Of course, rituals are symbolic in that they often employ language and vivid ways of presenting matters.

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Yet they are more than merely symbols themselves—they feature performed, embodied ways of acting in a meaningful fashion. They also often take place in and with a community of like-minded individuals. They communicate valuable lessons about station, morality, and how to interact with others. It is this combination of meaning, communicative power, and the potential to shape the dispositions of those involved that lead me to include ritual in Kant’s religious inflection of educative rhetoric. Indeed, one can see ritual as evoking the performative force of Kant’s internally motivating rhetoric to a high degree, as it often relies on performed action more than the exact words that are said in its performance. Rituals are important for Kant as they recognize and employ sensuous means—embodied, lived, and sensed aspects that clothe the high ideals of reason in human form. Like the use of discursive symbols and examples, rituals also can serve as schemata that represent a more abstract idea in an analogical, concrete form. The difference is that ritual represents the abstract ideas of reason in a lived, participatory manner, whereas the vivid presentation of religious symbols in discourse does so in verbal experience. Kant notes that many traditional rituals in the Christian community “have from antiquity been found to be good sensible intermediaries that serve as schemata for the duties, thus awakening and sustaining our attention to the true service of God” (RBR 6:193). This true service of God, for Kant, was following the dictates of morality as if they were commands of an all-powerful deity. Notice that this does not lapse into a divine command theory of morality; instead, it is an extension of the “postulate of practical reason” in the Critique of Practical Reason that concerns our belief in God as an equalizing addendum to our moral pursuits. God’s role is not as the source of moral law and its justification. Instead, the concept of God serves a motivational purpose, helping imperfect humans find the strength to carry on the moral project of valuing moral motives and ways of reasoning above the fixations of self-love. As Kant notes in his lectures from 1784, But the true service of God does not consist in outward observances, but in sanctified dispositions actively displayed in life by our action. The God-fearing man is he who venerates God’s most holy law, and whose fear of God accompanies all his actions; so acts of service to God are not special actions, since in all my actions I can serve God; and that is an incessant service of God, extending through the whole of life, and does not consist in special actions that have only to be observed at certain

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times. The fear and service of God are not special actions, but the form of all actions. (LEC 27:328) Kant’s point here is simple. Even though the moral law comes from our reason (and not from the privileged reason of some elite expert), we are to see the moral law as if it was commanded by the most rational of rational agents (God). In so doing, we can conceive of moral action as a way of serving God. Kant does not remove religion from life or morality; instead, he ties religion to morality in a way that retains the purity of the moral project. Since most of life occurs outside of formal religious activities, one sees Kant siding with the classical Socratic view of religion being subservient or secondary to morality itself. Yet religion holds a powerful motivational force—it helps to bring a greater sense and scope to our struggle to animate our actions with the right sort of disposition if we let religion infuse our actions with extra meaning and respect. Rituals, including “prayer and all sensory means, . . . are merely preparations for making our dispositions practical.” The wrong way to view religion and religious activity is as a “science of God” or as the “art of manipulating God.” These are the views presupposed when one looks toward religion as holding a slew of theoretical truths about the world, or as a means to affect the deity in ways favorable to our pursuits. Instead, religion ought to be seen as practical or as moral training. As Kant puts it in his lectures from 1784, “So we are not going to serve God, when we go to church; we go there only to school ourselves, so that we may thereafter serve Him in our lives. On coming out of church, we have to practice what we have trained for inside it, and so serve God only in our lives” (LEC 27:329). The visible church or the ethical community is a vital place for completing the transition from a state of rightful external action to moral inner dispositions because of the religious symbols that it offers and the ritual activity it so often features. The “true (moral) service of God . . . is just as invisible as the kingdom, i.e. it is a service of the heart (in spirit and truth), and can consist only in the disposition of obedience to all true duties as divine commands, not in actions determined exclusively for God.” Kant equates the demands of religion to the demands of morality, which means true religion is a matter not of external actions but of inner dispositions and orientations toward actions and other agents. But the content of religion—whether it is narrativized symbols or ritual activity—has a role to play, since “for the human being the invisible needs to be represented through something visible (sensible), indeed what is more, it must be accompanied by the visible for the sake of praxis [sinnlichen Veranstaltungen] and, though

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intellectual, made as it were an object of intuition (according to a certain analogy)” (RBR 6:192). Religion and religious activity thus become indispensable means to achieving moral cultivation or to reaching the state of inner virtue postulated as the ideal Kantian endpoint to a system of rational, but flawed, agents. In this final section of the present chapter, I focus on one specific type of religious ritual that Kant recommends—prayer. There are other sorts of rituals, of course, and I have analyzed some of their performative impacts elsewhere. Here I focus on prayer as it is the most explicitly rhetorical or communicative of rituals and because it mimics a form of address and persuasion that one might see in the everyday communication practices of requests and demands. Following chapter 2, we can say that prayer instantiates a unique form of communication: one that features a certain sort of (moral) orientation and that places distance between the act of communicating and the idiosyncratic goals or ends that one may want achieved. In this sense, such ends are the teleological elements that often render art or rhetoric as manipulative. As indicated in the previous chapters, the notion of orientation is also the locus for moral improvement or virtue. Prayer in an important sense combines communication and the right sort of distanced orientation in an educative synthesis to persuade self and others to adopt a moral disposition. Prayer stands out among the other ritual actions Kant discusses in the Religion, getting more attention in the text and notes than baptism, communion, and so forth. Palmquist is one of the few commentators that has registered this attention to prayer, and he explains that Kant “valued it more highly, perhaps because it is a form of service that is (or ought to be) inherently transcendental.” What does Palmquist mean by this term “transcendental”? Two things can be denoted by this way of analyzing prayer: prayer could be a means to affect a supernatural entity (viz., God), or prayer could be a way to affect our disposition, a feature of our character that must be believed to go beyond any specific natural habit one may possess at a given time. Palmquist favors the second reading, and for good reason—Kant is clearly against seeing religion or religious activity as a “means of grace.” This is what religious believers make of a given religious activity when they see it as “a means in itself capable of propitiating God and thus, through him, of satisfying all our wishes” (RBR 6:193). Such a view of prayer would see it as an effective way of forcing God to do the idiosyncratic will of the one who prays, a curious inversion of the power relationship in the deity-devotee dyad. Thus, Kant’s reading of prayer must give it some form of efficacy that does not involve transcenden-

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tal objects (such as God) or powers over such objects. What would be the point of prayer, if not to communicatively reach and affect a supernatural being? Herein lies the rhetorical aspect of prayer. Chapter 2 muses that Kant’s concern with rhetoric and fine art was not focused on their inherent nature, since both are humanly guided purposive endeavors. What really concerned Kant appears to be their contingent use as manipulative devices, an employment that relies on a nonmoralized orientation of the communicator or artist as much as it involves an invested (and perhaps gullible) orientation on the part of the listener or observer. Rhetoric or eloquence is not inherently manipulative; the orientations connected with its practitioners, however, often render it manipulative. Chapter 2 suggests that a detached or distanced orientation might be the secret to rendering rhetoric as aesthetic or valuable, since such a disposition causes one to not get caught up in the teleological features that enable manipulation. Yet it was an open question where such disinterested and free communication occurs. The point of this chapter has been to highlight the religious setting as a place where nonmanipulative communication can take place, since it involves arguments and discourse both purposive and distanced from the everyday world of activity. Arguing about religious symbols and what they say about virtue replicates everyday forms of assertion and argument, as well as distances itself from such realms due to the lack of focus on achieving self-focused results. The latter sort of result is often an issue when we attempt to persuade others in the juridical state of right. In the community devoted to the ethical, inner development of its members (viz., the ethical community or visible church), our persuasive attempts are distanced from idiosyncratic factors so typical of lives directed by one’s self-love. In a sense, this type of religious communication is free from the “dear self.” Prayer can be seen as a ritual instance of this sort of communication—it is not (ideally) meant as end-oriented persuasion of some divine addressee. Instead, it is a vivid, powerful communicative way to “edify” one’s inner disposition, or to render “the moral consequence of devotion upon a subject” (RBR 6:198n). In this way, prayer is not the persuasion of some actual deity. Instead, one can see it as either an individual or a group practice of self-persuasion. It is a way of rhetorically reorienting oneself through embodied, sensuous activity. If prayer isn’t a way of influencing an actual deity, then there is something strange about it. Indeed, Kant even admits this point: “It is in general an absurdity, to wish to talk with God. We can only talk to somebody we can see; but since we cannot intuit God, but can only believe that he exists, it is utterly absurd to talk with someone who is not intuited” (LEC 27:323). Verbally

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expressing one’s idiosyncratic needs to a deity also seems absurd. Such needs ought not to concern an omnipotent deity much, since “there is no reason to suppose it an aim of the highest wisdom to satisfy such a [sensuous, inclinationbased] wish” (LEV 27:728). Even if such “pathological” or inclination-based wishes concerned one’s deity, such an all-knowing being already would be aware of them. This sort of being would even see beyond the words uttered to the disposition or character of the one uttering them. In the face of such divine dispositional knowledge that goes beyond one’s own self-knowledge, why think that one can honestly ask anything of the deity? It is here that the nature of prayer as orientational self-persuasion comes to the forefront of Kant’s educative rhetoric in its religious settings. Following Kant, we can make the distinction between the constituent parts of prayer, whether in its communal or individual forms. Prayer has an outer, verbal aspect and an inner, dispositional aspect. Palmquist notes this sort of division and explains it in terms of Kant’s overall moral project. By making a distinction between the words uttered and the orientation behind the utterance of those words, “Kant is suggesting that the true heart (or pure core) of all prayer is an internal, dispositional spirit, not an external, verbal construction.” The words uttered often contain the worldly matters requested of God—this is where one may ask for the deity’s help in assisting in a variety of teleological pursuits. This is also where one may ask for forgiveness for specific sins or immoral actions. Both of these are problematic, since they would excuse us from doing what we can do in the demanding quest to become morally cultivated, to treat others as ends in themselves, and so forth. If through “begging and beseeching” we can hope that “God will forgive us everything” (LEC 27:331), morality largely will disappear—our immoral activities toward self and others could be replaced or undone simply by the means of prayer. For the Kantian project, moral cultivation requires that we act with certain moral dispositions or orientations toward self and others. This is irreplaceable, so prayer must not become a distraction from this vital part of moral cultivation. What is central to prayer is the orientation behind the utterance of specific words, or what Kant calls the “spirit of prayer,” or the “sincere wish to please God in all our doing and nondoings, i.e. the disposition, accompanying all our actions, to pursue these as though they occurred in the service of God.” What is pleasing to an omnipotent and all-knowing God? For Kant, the answer is simple—the use of our power of free choice to craft a disposition guided by the moral law and respect for others. Donning a morally virtuous disposition ought to please all limited rational agents, so it definitely would

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please an all-powerful rational agent (God). The spirit of prayer, like the moral disposition that values moral motives most highly, can animate all actions and “can and ought to be in us ‘without ceasing’ ” (RBR 6:195). Why do we need the communicative trappings of prayer, if all that matters is a certain orientation that can be found throughout one’s actions (including nonreligious actions)? This gets us to the rhetorical aspects of prayer—the verbal act of asking, supplicating, and so forth is integral to prayer’s edifying power over our dispositions. Kant points out the importance of what can be called “verbal prayer” (prayer as it is expressed in words) in his lectures from 1784: “It is a weakness of man, that he has to express his thoughts in words. . . . It is a weakness in man to clothe his dispositions in voice and words. But this use of the medium is appropriate to human weakness” (LEC 27:324). Humans need to see vivid and enlivened forms of the ideas of morality, it seems, so religious narrative, symbols, and lived activities must be allowed as means of available persuasion. The spirit of prayer—the right moral orientation behind one’s actions, including ritual activity—can be “clothe[d] . . . in words and formulas” to serve as “means for the continual stimulation of that disposition within us” (RBR 6:195). Verbal prayer is a necessary accompaniment to human weakness that is effective at instantiating the real endpoint desired—the moral disposition, or the spirit of prayer. Just as Kant sees the historical material and commitments falling away from religious symbols in favor of their moral use, he also recognizes the goal of eventually eliminating “verbal prayer”: “through the progressive purification and elevation of the moral disposition, the spirit of prayer alone should be sufficiently stimulated within us, and that its letter (at least so far as we are concerned) should finally fall away” (6:197). This resolves itself into what Palmquist calls the wordless ideal of “contemplative prayer,” an ideal similar to what can be called conscience or mindfully attending to the orientation behind one’s action. What must be avoided at all costs is the opposite progression—filling prayer activity with more and more words and shrinking the emphasis or attention on the orientation behind these words. This is the “courtly service” that Kant fears in organized religion, in which actual means for moral edification are transformed into more ways to value individual self-love over the moral motives of FUL and FHE. An explanation for the edifying power of prayer, taken in this subjective sense, is still lacking. Seen in the light of the last chapter, I argue that one can see the educative and internalist reading to prayer qua rhetorical self-persuasion— it creates a certain experienced instance of the endpoint of morality. For Kant, the endpoint of moral willing is success—however momentary—in

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one’s ongoing battle to correctly incorporate the moral motive into one’s maxims and to act on these incentives. Prayer, in this scheme, becomes an experienced instance of such a way of ordering incentives and thinking through them. Assuming that verbose and conditional prayers are minimized (since such prayers are often motivated by contingent incentives driven by self-love), one begins to see how verbal prayer could instantiate the spirit of prayer or the moral disposition that values moral incentives over the incentives of self-love. Instead of focusing on what one needs and wants, prayer (especially succinct varieties) purifies the disposition of the one who prays, since this action is free of the typical focus on idiosyncratic pursuits. The incentive to respect the universal moral law is not complicated, since most prayer expunges the incentives of self-love. Yet those who insist on seeing prayer as a means of grace will formulate their verbal prayer to be a veritable wish list of tasks for the deity to do for them. There are two mitigating factors that control this: the historical setting of much prayer in the tradition that Kant is advocating (Christianity) and the communal setting of many prayers. Kant was especially taken by tradition-bound formats of prayer, especially specific verbal prayers suggested by Christianity and the form of prayer activity itself. In terms of the latter, Kant was apparently impressed by the prohibition in Matthew 6:5–7 of gaudy, public prayer intended as a show to persuade others more than anything animated by internal respect for that activity itself. For instance, in his lectures from 1784, he notes that “The gospel inveighs against praying aloud in public on the streets. The prayer that is clothed in a formula teaches us that we should have no verbose prayers, and contains only the most necessary of our requirements; prayers should be directed only to dispositions” (LEC 27:324). Kant is referring here to Matthew’s prohibition of prayer as a means to persuade others of one’s goodness or holiness, an endeavor animated by an orientation that places primacy on the incentive of self-love. Instead, seeing prayer as a self-abnegating activity is the preferred means to edify one’s disposition. How exactly does it edify? Like the pedagogical forms of educative rhetoric discussed in the previous chapter, prayer can instantiate a disposition driven by respect for the moral law, and not by idiosyncratic desires. This is made evident in the type of tradition-bound prayer that Kant advocates. Although he acknowledges that human weakness will lead humans to ask for conditional, contingent needs (e.g., safety from “peril at sea,” LEC 27:326), he greatly admires the forms of prayer handed down by religious tradition that resist the abuses and ignorance that often beset attempts to ask one’s deity for specific needs. In the Christian tradition, Kant identifies the

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Lord’s Prayer as the ideal form of verbal prayer that instantiates and builds the “spirit of prayer.” In a lengthy footnote on prayer, Kant remarks: The teacher of the gospel, however, has superbly expressed the spirit of prayer in a formula that at once renders prayer dispensable and by the same token itself as well (as a verbal formula). One finds nothing in it but the resolution to good life-conduct which, combined with the consciousness of our frailty, carries with it the standing wish to be a worthy member in the Kingdom of God; hence contains no actual request for something God in his wisdom might perhaps refuse but a wish instead which, if earnest (efficacious), will itself bring about its objective (to become a human being well-pleasing to God). (RBR 6:195n) The Lord’s Prayer, on this account, is an excellent example of words that instantiate and encourage the sort of moral disposition desired by Kant’s scheme of inner moral cultivation. By expunging all personalized requests in a prayer formula handed down through a religious tradition, praying individuals are forced to distance themselves from their ordinary orientations animated by self-love and idiosyncratic pursuits. Inclinations, and the words expressing a focus on them, are minimized in this formula—indeed, “even the wish for the means of preserving our existence for one day (the wish for bread) . . . is more an admission of what nature wills in us than a specially considered request for what the human being wills—the kind which would be for bread for another day, which is clearly enough excluded here” (RBR 6:195n). The human tendency is to grasp for more bread than they need now, since greediness is in the nature of human self-valuation. By freely participating in such a prayer formula that (1) is not designed by that individual, (2) features no specific requests for that individual, and (3) diminishes the emphasis on one’s will and its objects of choice, the individual participates in a rhetorical process of self-persuasion. One did not create this prayer, nor does it contain the exact words one would cry out to a human superior in a position to help with one’s worldly pursuits. Yet people can freely enter into this form of activity that another has designed and that makes them orient their thoughts toward something besides incentives animated by selflove. The trappings of religious tradition and deity simply magnify the awe and respect that such a process of reorientation engenders. How does such a rhetorical process of self-persuasion work? I can explain it more aptly perhaps by evoking the concept of “homology,” or a formal resemblance among “disparate

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orders of experience.” Barry Brummett has examined the discursive forms of “rhetorical homologies” and found this to be a useful analytical category. He roots this in certain types of experience: “An experience can be, among other things, kinesthetic, such as walking down the street, or it can be textual, such as viewing a film. Any particular experience thus has information or content: something happens, a difference is made, some new shift in one’s view of the world occurs; and it also has form: a pattern or structure that makes it like other experiences and links it to those experiences. Those are but different points on the continuum of abstraction.” When rendered in discursive form, such homologies have a rhetorical, persuasive effect on attending audiences. Kant’s analysis of prayer allows us to extend this reading of homology and rhetoric in an interesting way. Prayer is both experiential and embodied insofar as it often involves religious icons, bodily posture (e.g., kneeling), and a special setting (often in a type of church). It is also textual and verbal. It mimics simple everyday persuasive appeals or requests. Thus, it clearly combines the categories of textual and experiential or kinesthetic. It can be called an experiential rhetorical homology, as it goes beyond a formal resemblance between two sorts of texts. It highlights a formal resemblance between two different ways of acting—prayer activity and moral activity. The experience of prayer teaches us about the experience of donning the moral disposition, since it holds formal equivalences to a moral disposition. Both involve a diminution of the incentive of self-love and its idiosyncratic inclinations and instead prize a more general guideline to action. In the case of prayer, it is submission to a will greater than any present person (God), through a formula gifted to the one praying from a tradition long preceding one’s life. In the case of moral willing, it is following the incentive of the moral law over and above the pulls of one’s own inclinations and self-love. The experience of prayer, especially in its ideal form, becomes an experiential counterpart to the experience of the beautiful, which Kant identifies as a presentational symbol of the moral. As discussed in chapter 2, the experience of the beautiful is said to please immediately, please without any idiosyncratic interest, involve free judging, and entail a universal judgment—all of which are related to qualities of moral willing for Kant. The experience of the beautiful tells us about the experience of moral judgment and willing through common formal properties. What I am arguing in this section is that prayer is a similar experiential homology or hypotyposis of the moral disposition. Given its communicative setting and material, prayer serves as a rhetorical way to use the experience of communicating to shrink the power of self-love and to

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increase the universal, free, and abstract respect for the moral motive that comes with FUL’s and FHE’s difficult systemic demands. It is difficult to consider the needs and abilities of others as absolutely similar to one’s own dearly loved projects and pursuits; prayer is one way to help convince oneself to internalize and follow such a demanding view of others now and more often in the future. As in the pedagogical use of examples in chapter 4, prayer does this by instantiating such a respect and diminution now in the experience of praying. Although the Lord’s Prayer is the ideal form of verbal prayer for Kant, other more “tempting” forms of prayer can be acknowledged as morally edifying. The more specific a prayer becomes in its wording and requests, however, the less universal and general it becomes. It then risks becoming another discursive tool of an orientation animated by self-love and thus cannot serve as an educative instance of a moral orientation. This is not necessary, however, as I have hinted at in chapter 2 and in the present chapter. No utterance is necessarily manipulative for Kant, but orientations behind utterances can render them manipulative. Prayer, given the distanced form of communication it embodies, resists manipulative orientations, but it is not immune to them. The fascinating point is that both prayer and everyday communication can be either manipulative or educative forms of rhetoric depending on one’s orientation, and one’s orientation toward prayer or everyday utterance does much work in rendering them as educative or manipulative. Prayer simply excels as an educative tool because its tradition-bound features and removal from everyday life allow it to be compatible with a non–self-focused orientation more easily. This is why Kant recommends that we teach children to not become attached to any given wording of prayer—it “has no value in itself, but the only chore is rather the enlivening of the disposition to a life-conduct well-pleasing to God, and to this [end] speech serves only as an instrument of the imagination” (RBR 6:198). This instrument of speech in such settings has power primarily because it can be shaped to hold formal resemblances to the experience of moral activity. Prayer—especially in those forms rendered effectively immune to self-love from abstract, tradition-bound wording— serves as a powerful experiential rhetorical homology that schematizes and presents vital aspects of the moral disposition. The communal setting of many prayers is also an important aspect of Kant’s analysis of religious community. Although many of Kant’s examples of prayer are solitary, individual, or even contemplative, other places in his work evince his respect for communal worship or prayer. For instance, in his lectures on prayer and religion from 1784, he lumps together “prayer, responses,

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and the sermon” as forms of “moral training” in religious settings (LEC 27:329). The most important move toward the communal comes in the Religion’s footnote on prayer where Kant discusses “public prayer” as a counterpart to the “communal singing of the hymn of faith” and the “address formally directed to God through the mouth of the clergyman in the name of the whole congregation and embracing within itself every moral concern of human beings” (RBR 6:196–97n). Public sermons to a church community, like public prayer in that community, are a valuable communal tool for moral cultivation: This address, since it makes these concerns visible as a public issue, where the wish of each human being should be represented as united with the wishes of all toward one and the same end (the ushering in of the Kingdom of God), not only can elevate emotions to the point of moral exaltation (whereas private prayers, since they are absolved without this sublime idea, gradually lose their influence upon the mind through habituation) but also possesses a stronger rational basis than the other [private prayer] for clothing the moral wish, which constitutes the spirit of prayer, in the guise of a formal address, yet without any thought of evoking the presence of the supreme being, or some special power of this rhetorical figure [rednerischen Figur], as means of grace. (RBR 6:197n) The Kantian view of the bivalence of the rhetorical is evident here—public religious speech can be misused or properly used, depending on the animating orientation behind it. Thinking of prayer, sermons, and so forth as rhetorical means of grace abuses this rhetorical tool. Instead, one should see this rhetorical tool as a way to “excite the moral incentives of each individual though an external solemnity which portrays the union of all human beings in the shared desire for the Kingdom of God; and this cannot more appropriately be accomplished than by addressing the head of this kingdom as though he were especially present in that place” (6:197n). The same might be said of group prayer that Kant later says of the communion ritual: “[It] has in it something great which expands people’s narrow, selfish and intolerant cast of mind, especially in religious matters, to the idea of a cosmopolitan moral community, and it is a good means of enlivening a community to the moral disposition of brotherly love which it represents” (6:199–200). Both sorts of activity feature communal, nonindividually directed actions. If a vital feature to the moral community highlighted in the ideal of the kingdom of ends is an individual

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concern with systemic matters (harmony among willing agents, respecting others as much as oneself, etc.), then group rituals as prayer become a way of building and instantiating such an experience now. Communal worship and prayer are effective and edifying insofar as they instantiate a communal experience that goes beyond the type of experience an individual may orchestrate on one’s own. As Palmquist notes, Kant preferred public prayer to private prayer and tradition-set or formalized prayer to spontaneous individually responsive prayer. Such choices demonstrate that, for Kant, “the main purpose of prayer is to awaken the disposition of each person who prays, not to change God’s mind or perform some sort of miracle.” Here we see the reason behind the former choices—public prayer instantiates the sort of supportive, noncompetitive community that Kant features in his kingdom of ends and that he wishes to escape from in the state of right. People can preserve the external freedom of action of others without respecting them per FHE, of course. They may do so from incredibly self-centered and competitive motives. Freely choosing to participate in a form of worship whose content is not self-focused, in concert with others as equal voices, creates the sort of homological experience of supportive community membership in the present. In response to Wood’s concerns over human isolation and community discussed earlier in this chapter, one can see public, group prayer as a way to instantiate inner community with others through the external, tradition-bound trappings of no single agent’s design. If the prayer being uttered by all was designed by and for a particular present agent, perhaps self-love could be bolstered; but in the cases of public prayer that concern Kant, it is easy to be distanced and not animated by self-love since it is the tradition that is dictating communal activity, and not an agent’s inclination-based incentives.

Religious Community and Moral Cultivation Although Kant focused on Christianity in his explication of religion in its rational, philosophically informed inflection, he did not envision the invisible church as a tool of coercion, truth finding, or the exclusion of nonbelievers. He also did not explicitly condemn other religious traditions and their potential efficacy for the moral reorientation of human agents. He particularly liked the Christianity of the Gospels because it is an inner religion, focusing on how we orient ourselves toward activity, self, others, and the world. Distancing my

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project from a total defense of Kant’s religious thought, I have attempted to mine Kant’s musings on religious community for an addendum to the sort of educative rhetoric I enunciated in the previous chapter. What has emerged not only extends that analysis of rhetoric in Kant but also makes good on the sort of disinterested orientation toward discursive communication intimated in chapter 2. Religious symbols, mythic narratives, and ritual traditions are all general means to reorient one’s focus away from what a particular communicative word or utterance means for that individual. This chapter has discussed the rhetorical force of religious communication, both in the sense of the discursive presentation of the ideas of reason through religious symbols and narratives, as well as through the embodied experience of ritually communicating as a community. Symbols such as Jesus put a sensible form on abstract ideas of inner resolve and perfection and facilitate casuistical discussion of abstract moral concepts. Myths such as the allegorical account of the fall dramatize the struggle between reason and inclination in any human life. The discussion of these topics has a practical impact outside of the ethical community, but the concern here is how religious community freely encourages the cultivation process from a state of external rightfulness to an inner respect for all rational agents. Part of the answer to how the ethical community does this is through discursive, vivid presentations of the abstract ideals of morality through religious symbols and narratives. The second way religious community helps reorient us from self-love and our innate jealousy and competition with others is through instantiating a supportive community in present ritual activity. Individual rituals designed by a religious tradition displace one’s agency in a constructive fashion to rebuild the orientation of respect for the moral law, as opposed to our standard concern simply for words and goals that relate solely to our individual projects. Communal rituals such as group prayer lack the idiosyncratic or competitive focus characteristic even of the state of right; they instantiate a situation of group harmony, interpersonal commonality, and general interest characteristic of the state of virtue (e.g., FKE) and almost always lacking in the state of right. Religious community is thus an effective part of Kant’s scheme of moral cultivation—of transitioning from a state of external harmony to a state of both internal and external harmony—because of its rhetorical instruments. Rhetoric can be seen as a vital part of Kant’s system once again, particularly as a vital part of Kant’s religious mechanism (viz., religious symbols, narratives, and ritual communication). It does not matter that Kant rarely used words translatable as “rhetoric” in his Religion—as I demonstrate in early chapters,

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he was not consistent, exhaustive, nor specific in his use of “rhetoric” or similar terms elsewhere. To ignore the communicative tools resident in Kant’s religious community is to miss the specific way that organized religious community edifies. Simply being part of a community means nothing; what does the work is the discussion of religious content and the practice of communicative rituals in that community. To pay attention to these rhetorical features is to answer complaints about how exactly religion fits into Kant’s moral scheme. Discussion of religious examples and ritual communication provide rhetorical, experiential, and noncoercive ways to instantiate a moral disposition in individuals. In a very real sense, Kant’s religious community offers rhetorical means to both present and perform the moral disposition characteristic of the denizens of the ideal kingdom of ends. These means form the core of Kant’s educative rhetoric in its religious setting. But such a setting and such means do not exhaust all the ways that Kant’s educative rhetoric can function. To further round out the multifaceted notion of Kant’s educative rhetoric this study has proposed, we turn to the final chapter in this work. There, the discussion of rhetorical experience focuses on a term central to Kant’s approach—that of critical thought, judgment, and communication.

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Six critical educative rhetoric: kant and the demands of critical communication

The common judgment that Kant hated and abolished rhetoric—or communicative means of moving others—from his conception of the human community moving toward a state of virtue is clearly mistaken. As the previous chapters have illustrated, Kant held certain communicative means and practices in high regard. The general judgment that Kant’s work illustrates a “quick dismissal of persuasion and rhetoric” can only come from a rather limited view of what in Kant constitutes rhetoric. Many German words capture communicative phenomena in Kant’s work—there is no clear, wholesale dismissal of all rhetorical activity. What Kant feared in rhetoric as well as in education was the manipulation of rational beings. Going beyond this idea was the previous chapter, which illustrated specific content domains and communal settings in which certain rhetorical practices of persuasion were evident (viz., religious settings). All of this should illustrate the sort of educative rhetoric that can be found in and extracted from Kant’s corpus. This chapter broadens the scope of Kant’s educative rhetoric beyond its pedagogical and religious employments to what can be called its critical uses—its employment in making our own assertions and in evaluating the claims of others during our communicative interactions. In some ways, the ideas in this chapter are presaged by the analysis of the religiously tinged ethical community, where we see topics being discussed in a certain free way. Yet this chapter allows us to extend Kantian rhetoric beyond its religious employment to arenas that might be

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generally called “political.” How are we to debate, adopt, and hold beliefs about society, policies, and the ideas of others? In considering Kant’s views on free communication, I fully pay the promissory note issued in earlier chapters. In detailing Kant’s critical educative rhetoric in this chapter, I elucidate the sense of detached rhetoric that parallels the nonmanipulative uses of art. As one might recall from chapter 2, the same problems Kant had with rhetoric are discernable with fine art. Both involve concepts and ends, and both are open to being used manipulatively. A fine art object might be constructed to move us in the way the artist wants now, just as a finely wrought oration might be intended to result in our voting a certain way now. Even if they actualize no great evil, both employments do not preserve and promote the rational autonomy of the viewers or listeners. Thus, Kant would find the potential for such a use off-putting and worrisome. This chapter examines Kant’s thoughts on communication, expression, and critical thinking in an attempt to determine the sort of rhetorical activity that holds enough detachment to avoid the perils of the manipulation of listeners. Yet as listeners, individuals react to speakers in ways that evince varying levels of effect. Any such potential of moving agents like objects calls into question the morality or virtue of such evoked reactions, so I build into Kant’s sense of critical rhetoric a listener’s reaction to a rhetor. There are ways that this reaction (of a listener or critic) can preserve and promote rhetor autonomy as well as harm it. This chapter follows this path of argument: (1) The political problems with Kant’s supposed view of rhetoric are discussed. Primarily, this involves the demur that Kant removed rhetoric and judgment from everyday life to the activity of scholars. (2) If nonmanipulative or critical rhetoric can be conceived of as an everyday practice, what might it entail? I argue that it stems from and is conditioned by two factors—the anthropological grounding of unsocial sociability and the intuition that humans are equally valuable. The latter point appears most prominently in the rhetorical argument of Kant’s Groundwork III that we should conceive of ourselves as phenomenal as well as noumenal, so I detail what that argument claims. Using this foundation, one can extract a sense of Kantian critical rhetoric that forgoes the dangers of holding unfounded, self-focused opinions despite the disagreement of equal others. (3) Finally, I detail the main ways such a critical educative rhetoric is employed in Kant. The means of instantiation will be two-fold: some means will be selffocused (involving how agents see their communicative activities in regard to others) and additional means will be other-focused (involving how they deal with the utterances of others). These types of communicative means find their

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place in Kantian advice to the critical rhetor and the rhetorical critic. The overall goal of such a Kantian critical rhetoric is animated by the ideal of the kingdom of ends—communicating in concert with others while avoiding the deification of one’s self as superior to argumentative others or the objectification of communicative others as lower in value than one’s self.

The Kantian Avoidance of Political Rhetoric? Political topics encumbered much of Kant’s thinking activity, since the political was an obvious and necessary realm of his moral ideas and their application. In his historical writings, human political communities even assume an important role in the progress of humanity toward ever-enlightened states. As earlier chapters illustrate, political topics become important because they deal with the harmonization of external action, an outcome that is attainable through the use of certain types of force. Yet linking Kant’s political works with other facets of his thought is often difficult, since it frequently focuses on what we have called in chapter 3 the domain of “right” (Recht). The challenge there was how we are to move from external harmony to the internal harmony implied by a system of virtuous agents. Other areas, such as his religious thought, deal with nonnecessary or noncoercive ways to move away from states of mere rightfulness to states of inner virtue. Hannah Arendt’s work represents one of the outstanding attempts to link Kant’s writings on aesthetics to his political philosophy. In Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment, she finds an unwritten account of political philosophy that draws on ideas of the sensus communis (community or common sense) and universal communicability. Such a grounding serves not only the aesthetic ends of explaining our universal but particular reactions to art and nature, but also how we can use noncoercive practices of discussion and communication in service of Kantian political goals. Communication in political arenas, like our judgments concerning beauty, can foreground the universality and commonality we desire in the best political communities. Arendt’s ideas on community and communication are important, but they stop short of fully explicating a constitutive notion of rhetoric in Kant’s thought. Here I want to focus on extending the rich account of Kantian rhetoric that I have developed in previous chapters, so I focus largely on the reaction of one recent critic of her approach or of any approach that wants to find a robust or positive sense of rhetoric in Kant. Bryan Garsten’s account of rhetoric in Kant is important in

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that it focuses on the role of authority, sovereignty, and judgment in rhetorical practices. Put broadly, Garsten argues that Kant continues a line of philosophical thought that “objected to rhetoric because it dispersed judgment and so posed a threat to that authority [of a peace-keeping sovereign].” Garsten eventually defends the sense of practical judgment found in Cicero’s view of rhetorical activity and believes that the Kantian abdication of rhetoric is diametrically opposed to this type of account. In a sense, he is correct in noting Kant’s hostility to the “popular,” or Ciceronian, philosophers detailed in chapter 1. But so much depends on how one translates or conceptually shorthands Kant’s thought that we must always question if Kant really objected to “rhetoric” in toto. For Garsten, Kant’s way of viewing rhetoric weighed “the threat posed by an aristocracy of orators against that posed by the sovereignty of scholars.” The practice of “rhetoric” lay outside of the realm of scholars and their activities, and it suffered because of this fact. In arguing that Kant favored the latter option—the practice of critical reasoning by scholars instead of by a rhetorically active public—Garsten disagrees with Arendt. He finds that Kant “shunts [judgment] off into its own realm, stranding it from the substantive moral and political functions that it had in earlier thought and subordinating it to a conception of reason that was, as critics have always charged, overly formalistic.” This is the Kant of “pure reason,” the Kant viewed through Hegelian eyes, and not a Kant most would want to recover and defend. As the previous chapter has illustrated, there is a robust role for individual and communal uses of rhetoric in Kant if one looks for it in the right ways and in the right places. The ethical community of Kant’s visible church is one such place. But Garsten has a point—where is the Kant that calls for training in public oration, the Kant that advises mastering the art of rhetoric? One important part of any classical conception of rhetoric qua art from Aristotle onward is the emphasis on sensitivity and adaptation to one’s audience. Garsten uses this point to hammer the “universal communicability” demands of truth and art in Arendt’s recovery of Kant. Rhetorical messages are primarily not universal, since few things relevant to pressing decisions in the present are of such general scope. Yet Kant’s philosophy seems to demand that practices be universalizable. This fact about rhetorical messages leads those theorizing and practicing rhetoric to “recogniz[e] the ‘particular peculiarities’ of one’s audience . . . [as] necessary to communication.” Taking the particularized audience into account, Garsten puts the point like this: “If few things are universally communicable, if communication must adapt itself to an audience that is not universal but merely general, then techniques

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of adaptation are necessary. Those techniques comprise the art of rhetoric. To search for the preconditions of universal communicability is to search for the means by which rhetoric might be made unnecessary.” From this perspective, what makes the practice of rhetoric distinctive is the sensitivity to the individuals or groups one is trying to persuade. Often, such addressed groups are similar in certain ways that enable general strategies of argument (as is the case in Aristotle’s advice in his Rhetoric), but consideration of a “universal” method of persuasion seems ludicrous. Even more laughable would be one domain of content to persuade all potential audience members. What particular, contingent language would be used to convey this content? What conceptual or historical repertoire would it draw from to be understandable to any possible auditor? If an attention to particular, contingent, and effective means of persuasion characterizes the art of rhetoric, Kant should be seen as favoring the “sovereignty of scholars” instead of partaking in this dangerous game of rhetoric and oratory. Garsten limits Kant’s ways of influencing political structures to two vectors: (1) “providential history, which would guide even self-interested men toward the final idea of pacific republicanism” and (2) “the guidance of enlightened rulers.” The former option is undoubtedly present in Kant’s political writings, yet this fashion of describing it runs afoul of Kant’s mature moral work, which posits a state of virtue (perhaps combined with outer happiness in his summum bonum) as the most final of “final ideas.” Chapter 3 illustrates the inner aspect of moral worth or virtue for which political communities ought to strive. The second path identified in Garsten’s argument does not simply involve rulers; it involves rulers advised and enlightened by scholars. Kant, by referring to scholars, “meant most of all philosophers, who—unlike theologians and lawyers, the ‘higher’ faculties in German universities who were subject to close state supervision—deferred to no authority other than that of critical reason.” Such thinkers had the benefits of the authority of reason and reason-based investigation but also were detached or insulated from the demands of political power. The populace followed the dictates of a sovereign, who was shaped by philosophers following the demands of pure reason. On this account, it is no wonder that Garsten describes “Kant’s republicanism” as “a republicanism without rhetoric”—his republicanism lacks the “looseness” of partisan orators making probable arguments that a citizenry would have to evaluate and decide to follow. In this reading, the real sovereign or authority was not the coercion-wielding ruler but instead was the abstract,

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universal faculty of reason flowing through the free scholars to those directing state power. On Garsten’s reading, one sees the Kantian conundrum as a choice between simply letting rhetors appeal to an audience’s particularity instead of using reason-based appeals (since they are said to be uselessly universal) or in letting those truly comfortable with the demands of reasoning supply powerful individuals with the means of enlightenment for a given political state. I want to argue that this unnecessarily makes the opposition in Kant one of reason versus rhetoric. Given the descriptions of the varied forms of rhetoric in Kant’s work—ranging from eloquence to the “art of the orator”—why cannot one alternatively read the opposition as manipulative rhetoric versus nonmanipulative rhetoric? If rhetoric stands for a general concept of intentional speech and artful style, why must it be seen as necessarily devoid of reason and necessarily attached to immoral intentions? As was previously indicated, Kant praised eloquence and communicative style, and at other places made the point that it was the nonmoralized disposition that made the pragmatic skill of effective speaking dangerous. Claiming that Kant saw rhetoric as an evil activity is simplistic and wrong—there is a more nuanced position that can take better account of the ambiguities and claims in his work. Yet Garsten’s point—of rhetoric as a tradition of training individuals to communicatively adapt to their audience—must be addressed. This trajectory seems to prioritize the particular or contingent over the universal and thereby becomes something that must be worked into my account of Kant’s educative rhetoric. I also believe that Garsten is right in emphasizing the detachment of the scholars in Kant’s scheme. What I eventually argue, however, is that this detachment is an orientational or dispositional feature and as such is applicable to all forms of communicative activity. First, we must consider the “personal peculiarities” point. Audiences are interested in different things, have different histories of experience, and contingently value things in a different fashion. Effective orators must assess such particularities, judge what might work to move such an audience, and craft their speech in light of this. In so doing, rhetors adjust various appeals or “proofs” in light of that audience’s particular concerns, abilities, and history. Yet there is an important distinction that can be made. Let us start with an example—a politician running for office delivering a speech in an area decimated by recent factory closures. Such a politician, if she is a decent rhetor, will see quickly that this audience is concerned about ways to improve their

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economic conditions. She also will infer that the skills most of them have will be most directly related to manufacturing work. Thus, she gives a speech full of claims such as “If elected, I will alter the tax code in this locality to encourage more factories to open up here and to employ the capable men and women of this town.” She will realize that uttering claims such as “If elected, I will make sure more white-collar, actuarial jobs come to this city” or “If elected, I will reformulate our nation’s foreign policy” will probably not move this audience to believe that she is the candidate worth supporting. Such claims miss the concerns or capabilities of this audience and thus do not meet the conditions of rhetorical effectiveness. Let us expand this example with the candidate uttering, “Those who support me are the real Americans, the only ones capable of being good humans.” Or perhaps our politician subscribes to lying and makes a promise she knows she cannot keep (“If I am elected, I will give every one of my supporters $10 million as a reward!”). These utterances all show the range of adaptation of reasons or appeals to an audience, and they illustrate a crucial distinction. Kant did not insist that a reason be a reason for every potential listener; he does seem to insist, however, that it be a reason for everyone in a comparable situation. Notice the subtle distinction illustrated in these political utterances, especially the force on which they draw. The first three involve statements about what the politician may do, as well as subsidiary claims that certain policies (e.g., altering the tax code) will result in certain results (encouraging new business). Some of these are more relevant to an audience in that situation, and others are less relevant. If the audience wants end x (a job, say), and policy p seems likely to result in x, then the grounds of their newly offered support of the candidate is explained in a reasonable fashion. It involves the use of a reason that ought to bind others in a similar situation. The audience’s peculiarities are taken into account, specifically those that indicate which goals and outcomes they may value now. The final two utterances are interestingly different, as their power to move the audience comes from something else. The rhetor knows that this audience wants to feel good about their group membership and therefore uses the words of “true American” and “good human being” to please the audience and to form a good impression of the politician up for election. Such words move the audience as causes due to their particular desires and needs, not as reasons. The rhetor herself would probably not be moved by such appeals, knowing what she knows about the content and context of those claims. She employs them more as causes for desired outcomes and less as reasons for agreement in the rich Kantian sense.

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More will be said concerning this distinction in the next section, but for now it is enough to note that rhetorical appeals to audience particularities can involve either (1) features of an audience that are entailed by their nature as beings subject to natural causality (e.g., as emotional beings wanting to “fit in as Americans”), or (2) features of an audience that are entailed by their nature as a reason-giving being (e.g., a politician’s support of a policy that will accomplish goals that the audience holds and that other audiences could hold). Notice that this is not merely a distinction concerning the ways that words are inherently meaningful; it more generally concerns the orientation behind the uses of any given set of words. This especially comes to light in the case of lying utterances. A politician that had no intention of altering the city’s tax policy could utter the first utterance in an attempt to move the audience as a causal object—she knows that they are particularly sensitive to this topic, so she decides to utter a lying promise to get votes. These words are thereby animated by the orientation to use whatever it takes to achieve the orator’s ends, even if this involves thwarting the autonomy and powers of the audience (viz., their wish to vote for someone who will actually benefit them). This brings our examination back to what I identify as the core problem of rhetoric for Kant—it is too often effectively practiced by nonmoralized orators in a manipulative fashion. Its ability to move individuals comes with a cost. To manipulate in the ways of irrelevantly flattering or in lying to one’s audience, one cannot be animated by the notions of equality of agenthood inherent in Kant’s Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself (FHE) and Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (FKE). Manipulative rhetors instead privilege their self-love, inclinations, and projects over the abilities and projects of others. The type of nonmanipulative rhetoric that Kant does endorse involves the orientation toward language that takes it as reason giving, a decision that correlates with valuing one’s audience as an end in themselves. The themes of freedom and autonomy broached in chapter 3 are now brought to the forefront with Kant’s rhetoric of reason emphasizing the subjecthood of human agents.

The Self and Rhetorical Activity in Kantian Ethics Why should we bring in Kant’s ethical system when examining his sense of critical rhetoric? If anything is true in general about Kantian exegesis, it is that one part of Kant entails or implies many other parts of his corpus. In this case, there is a clear link between the value of humans and their activities as

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rhetorical beings. As chapter 3 has demonstrated, Kant demands systematicity among equally powerful agents and their actions. Why ought one’s basic freedom to act exclude another’s freedom to act? Simply being the first one to act in a certain way does not justifiably occlude the fact that each has the same innate faculties of choice that are implicated in FHE or the moral demand to treat others as intrinsically valuable. This state of right—a state of harmonious and equal external freedom of action—also includes the action of expression. Kant discusses free expression in the 1780s: “To this freedom, then, there also belongs the freedom to exhibit the thoughts and doubts which one cannot resolve oneself for public judgment without thereupon being decried as a malcontent and a dangerous citizen. This lies already in the original right of human reason, which recognizes no other judge than universal human reason itself, in which everyone has a voice; and since all improvement of which our condition is capable must come from this, such a right is holy, and must not be curtailed” (CPR A752/B780). This is an important statement of Kant’s views on the freedom of expression. Three points are noteworthy here. First, Kant clearly sides with a liberal view of the use of speech, even in situations where it may seem inappropriate or wrong in its claims. No one is authorized to coercively silence speech with which one simply disagrees or in cases of seemingly clear error. Such errors still offer material to human reason that contributes to its improvement. Second, one begins to see the idea of reasoned judgment underlying Kant’s notion of public rhetorical activity. Contra Garsten’s reading, Kant does not banish rhetorical activity (viz., persuasive speech) from the public realm in favor of an abstract hearing by some faculty of reason. For Kant, reason is something to which we all ought to have access, and for this reason everyone ought to be allowed to have their say. As a public, we judge such utterances. This is not done as a vote, nor is it decided by an abstract entity or sovereign hypostatized as reason, but instead occurs through the myriad of individual actions of discussion, judgment, belief adoption, and so on. The locus of reason is in actual, reasoning beings situated in specific contexts. Although Kant often fixates on the universal aspects of judgment (viz., the guiding moral law), he in no way denies the concrete situations of application. His mature moral works are full of “tough cases,” and even here in his Critique of Pure Reason, he acknowledges that expression and disagreement are vital parts to society’s improvement. Third, one sees in this passage the connection that later becomes explicit in his Religion—if such a right is “holy,” it ought to feature prominently in holy communities. As the previous chapter demonstrates,

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free and uncoerced discussion is an important part of the ethical community or visible church striving toward moral cultivation. Subtract the religious content (symbols and narratives), and one still sees a form of uncoerced expression in political matters. Such free discussion is predicated on the equal freedom and worth of its participants. This strong notion of individual value is an important part of Kant’s rhetorical scheme and must be explicated. As indicated in chapter 3, the connection of human freedom and value is the distinguishing feature of Kantian ethics. In his discussion of the various forms of the moral law in his Groundwork, we have seen Kant advance the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself: “So act that you use humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, always at the same time as an end, never merely as a means” (4:429). Allen Wood argues that this is the “Kantian principle which arguably has the greatest resonance with our culture’s moral consciousness. This idea even has the greatest universal appeal, since it seems to ground the human rights in terms of which decent people everywhere frame both their protests against obvious wrongs and their ideals of a better world.” It is also the feature that grounds the distinction in utterances and orientations illustrated in the previously mentioned example of the political speech. It is important that we see the unique argument behind FHE. It not only grounds the sense of rhetoric I explicate in this chapter but also employs interesting rhetorical features of its own. In the Groundwork Kant begins the argument for FHE as follows: “The ground of this principle is: rational nature exists as an end in itself. The human being necessarily represents his own existence in this way; so far it is thus a subjective principle of human actions. But every other rational being also represents his existence in this way consequent on just the same rational ground that also holds for me; thus it is at the same time an objective principle from which, as a supreme practical ground, it must be possible to derive all the laws of the will” (4:429). Commentators such as Wood point out the difficulty in the jump between the claim that I take my existence as intrinsically valuable to the claims that (1) all others represent themselves in this way and (2) that I should treat them in this way. In other words, the difficulty comes in moving from a subjective principle to an objective principle, since the latter will have the universality and necessity of the moral law. Following Christine Korsgaard, Wood points to the nature of rational agency and its important feature of assigning value to objects. If all value is value for and from humans, then humans must possess a different sort of nonderivative value. We value ourselves differently than any given object of

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value we cherish, and we have good reason from external evidence and analogical evidence from our own case to assume that others do this with themselves and their objects of value. This argument about the value of self and others is important for the Kantian project precisely because it enshrines the respect for all persons that most see as the fundamental feature of Kant’s ethics—humans have a value that goes beyond the value of objects. They have dignity, a worth beyond instrumental employments. No one believes that they should be treated as merely a means to achieve an end contingently valued by another agent, so Kant’s move from subjective to objective moral guidelines universalizes this reaction to other human agents and their value. If no one wants to be treated as a mere means, then all want to be treated as ends (not as mere means). This is a start, but it might not be the best argument for one not persuaded to adopt this view of the self as possessing a dignity beyond any particular use or value to others. Indeed, Kant notes the incompleteness of this proof for the applicability of FHE to humans in Groundwork II, claiming in a footnote, “Here I put forward this proposition as a postulate. The grounds for it will be found in the last Section” (4:429). Kant is referring to the notoriously difficult argument of Groundwork III that supposedly proves that we are the kind of free beings beholden to the categorical imperative. This argument for our freedom is easy to misunderstand. What I want to highlight here is the practical nature of its “proof.” It follows this line of reasoning: 1. We acknowledge a distinction between how something seems and how it might actually be (viz., the distinction between appearances and reality). 2. This distinction ought to be applicable to us as people. 3. We know about our appearances as contingent physical beings, but something more must be sayable about the “I” of our real self. 4. Reason is one characteristic that seems to apply to ourselves independent from our status as physical beings. 5. Reason’s law, therefore, separates us from the realm of natural law and puts us (seemingly) in the intelligible realm. 6. The moral law must be the law of reason, since the moral law is not empirical. 7. Thus, we must see the “I” as free from nature’s control and governed by the moral law of reason.

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This is effectively the argument Kant makes at 4:451–53 of his Groundwork. It starts with the distinction between appearance and reality that seems applicable in many cases and derives the powerful conclusion concerning our status as rational beings bound by the moral law. In other words, this argument supposedly proves that we are bound by the moral law, including the version of FHE that normatively commands us to take ourselves and others as intrinsically valuable ends. One way to misunderstand this argument, however, is as a theoretical proof of our transcendental freedom. In such a reading, one sees the argument as trying to prove that humans are really the sort of “first causes” that transcend nature. This way of understanding the argument takes Kant’s conclusion about ourselves to have the same status as other claims about the empirical world, thus leading a skeptical reader to wonder how Kant can make an empirical claim about human freedom that transcends the empirical world of sense in which we operate. This is clearly not Kant’s intention, as he states “Even as to himself, the human being cannot claim to cognize what he is in himself through the cognizance he has by inner sensation” (4:451), since such empirical means only gets at what we “appear” to be. It would be manifestly contradictory for Kant to say we can prove what we really are through words and concepts. What he is saying is more interesting, at least from a perspective animated by the concerns of rhetoric and moving people toward action. He is saying that we must regard ourselves from these two standpoints of the natural and intelligible worlds to best make sense of our experiences as causally affected creatures and as morally deliberating beings (4:452). In the language of Kant’s critiques, the claim is making a practical point, not a theoretical point, about objects to be encountered in the world. The practical point is how one ought to think about one’s self, regardless of how one already thinks of oneself as one among many physical objects in the natural world. The characteristic feature of the objects of the natural world, of course, is that of deterministic cause and effect. Kant is trying to find a reason to think of ourselves as more than simply natural objects in the world of sense. Kant’s arguments over freedom in the Critique of Pure Reason reach a curious impasse. The third antinomy (A444/B472) found equally good reasons to conclude that causality according to nature (consequents following antecedent causes according to strict laws of determination) both is and is not the only causal scheme of activity in the world. This does not theoretically establish the reality of nonnatural freedom in the realm of nature, however. Such

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nonnatural causality seems to be implied by any notion of freedom that gets human action beyond merely being caused in a deterministic fashion by some previous mental desire, inclination, external stimulus, experience, or so forth. It simply excludes the view of determinism being the only causal option allowed by our understanding of the natural world—somehow, I can hope, my actions are caused by me and not by some relic of the natural world, whether that stimuli is inside my head or outside of it. It leaves room for freedom that involves causation from nonnatural sources. Kant’s moral works pick up on this thread and provide practical reasons for believing that we possess such a power of causality transcending the sensuous incentives of nature. For the mature Kant, our spontaneity involves our ability to select and value incentives for our actions that come from the natural world or from reason itself. The former category includes all the incentives and inclinations unique to my natural being that can be grouped under the label of self-love; the latter category, for Kant, includes the incentive available in practical reason—that of the moral law in all its forms. One way of seeing the relation of Kant’s practical arguments (such as the one just recounted from the Groundwork) and the sense they possess is in relation to determinism—they encourage us to think of ourselves in a fashion that lies outside of the conceptual vocabulary of determinism through natural causes such as desires and inclinations. This is the sort of idea that appears in the example of the “malicious lie” in the Critique of Pure Reason. After seeing someone tell such a lie, Kant says, “One may first investigate its moving causes, through which it arose, judging on that basis how the lie and its consequences could be imputed to the person. With this first intent one goes into the sources of the person’s empirical character, seeking the wickedness of a natural temper insensitive to shame, part in carelessness and thoughtlessness; in so doing one does not leave out of account the occasioning causes. In all this one proceeds as with any investigation in the series of determining causes for a given natural effect” (A554/B582). The lie can be investigated as the effect of a chain of natural events, including certain states and causes of human psychology. If one stops there, however, one misses something crucial about human agents—the sort of freedom and spontaneity we attribute to them due to their status as human agents. This freedom is assumed to go beyond any present state of human psychological function or dysfunction. Kant continues, Now even if one believes the action to be determined by those causes, one nonetheless blames the agent, and not on account of his unhappy

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natural temper, not on account of the circumstances influencing him, not even on account of the life he has led previously; for one presupposes that it can be entirely set aside how that life was constituted, and that the series of conditions that transpired might not have been, but rather that this deed could be regarded as entirely unconditioned in regard to the previous state, as though with that act the agent had started a series of consequences entirely from himself. (A555/B583) What grounds this rich way of understanding an action that might be read as simply due to natural causes? In the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason from 1781, we see foreshadowing of the Groundwork III argument: “This blame is grounded on the law of reason, which regards reason as a cause that, regardless of all the empirical conditions just named, could have and ought to have determined the conduct of the person to be other than it is” (A555/B583). Like the Groundwork argument in 1785, the idea is similar—one can account for activity in terms of natural causes that deny a strong sense of agency, but some reason still exists for us to not totally extinguish the flame of agency from someone we are analyzing or judging. In the case of the malicious lie, we still hold that person morally responsible even though a causal story could be given explaining their action. Using the language of Groundwork III, one can causally explain human actions as natural phenomena, but that does not morally excuse such agents from certain normative expectations that come from thinking of ourselves from the standpoint of creatures guided by reason, a source of motivation different in kind from contingent natural motivations such as self-love or desire. Some commentators, such as Paul Guyer, read the Groundwork III argument as directed at a related but different target. Instead of arguing directly against determinism, Guyer sees the Groundwork III “two standpoint” argument— Kant’s way of arguing that we should see ourselves as natural objects as well as agents with freedom that goes beyond nature’s lines of causality—as an attempt to refute personal fatalism. According to Guyer, fatalism denotes “the doctrine that the outcome of our actions is fully determined by antecedent events beyond our own control no matter what we try to do or even succeed in doing at the moment of action.” Fatalism is a version of determinism, albeit one applied to our capacity for moral motivation. It effectively tells one that there is no point in trying to be moral, given the natural course of the world. Guyer notes that fatalism does not concern the “content of the moral law in the way that confusion about the relation between virtue and happiness would” but instead concerns

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“a threat to our commitment to attempt to do what the moral law requires of us.” The point of Kant’s argument, according to Guyer’s reading, is neither to prove determinism false nor to prove that we should not be determinists. It is not a theoretical argument about causal powers in the world in those regards. Instead, it aims to convince us not to adopt personal fatalism in our moral endeavors. In other words, it is a motivational attempt to get individuals to engage wholeheartedly in the project of morality. Yet we still may have worries about the actual freedom of others, since we lack any insight to their internal deliberations. This lack of knowledge of the freedom of others does not work against morality, for “uncertainty about the real freedom of others could lead us to temper our retributive instincts with humility and mercy.” Guyer’s point is that Groundwork III motivates us “to be rigorous in our moral demands on ourselves, but merciful in our judgments of others.” We do this by considering “empirical factors such as [another agent’s] impulses, temperament, education, and mental strength” in determining the degree of freedom we impute to such an agent and their actions. A drunken individual has less freedom at the time of offense and consequently is due more mercy. Guyer is pointing out the unique way that causal and moral factors figure into Kant’s scheme of imputation and judgment concerning self and others. Kant’s argument is an attempt to eliminate the fatalistic excuse against holding ourselves to a high moral standard and an attempt to insert charity in our frequent urges to judge others as lacking in moral worth. In other words, it is an attempt to eliminate the excuses we grant ourselves and to give such excuses to others whom we tend to judge harshly. This is a valuable reading of what is occurring in the perplexing argument of Groundwork III. Guyer is clearly correct about some of Kant’s discussions of degrees of imputability and freedom. If we see the other humans as subject to natural causes (strong desires such as jealousy, external factors difficult to resist, etc.), we might give them mercy in failing to overcome such circumstances that we might not have otherwise granted. And by thinking of ourselves as transcendentally free, we eliminate the fatalistic determinism of the world that saps our reasons for striving to be moral. The latter point, I believe, is without problem. This is clearly the tenor of Kant’s argument—we ought to think of ourselves in such a way that goes beyond mere schemes of natural causation. Yet the rub may lie in a too expansive application of the former part of Guyer’s argument regarding conceiving of others as partaking in chains of natural causation. Guyer’s reading is that the treating of human agents as causal objects—objects subject to rule-governed interactions of antecedent causes and consequent effects in the world of nature—leads to one treating

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other agents with mercy. We do not render the harm that comes with holding them to too high of a standard. This point is true as long as the objectification correlates with mercy and charity; yet we have no guarantee that seeing people as tempted and moved by natural causes that impugn their freedom necessarily entails charity or the sort of respect commanded by FHE. It could merely encourage a further and fuller treatment of them as objects of the natural world that must be dealt with in a causal manner. We could pity someone as a mere victim of circumstances, unlike ourselves (whom we proudly take as a truly free, rational agent). This worry, while not a necessary consequence of taking the argument in Guyer’s sense, does seem like a very real risk when we turn to ways of cashing out the ethical in practices of rhetorical activity. We must be wary of treating others and their utterances solely as causal objects, since this would exclude the respect we ought to show them as reason-giving, free beings. Two vital points must be made here. First, notice that the worries over taking others as merely causal objects dovetails nicely with the distinction in political claims in the previous example. The first utterances from the politician drew on the force of reason—they encapsulated reasons that later could be enunciated and shared with other reasoning beings in similar situations. The latter utterances are more problematic. They tended to be analyzable solely in the language of causal explanation. One could not later tell another agent that “I voted for that politician because she bolstered my self-esteem with impractical suggestions” and remain satisfied. Nor would the other individual to whom one recounted this fact stand a chance of being convinced to vote for this candidate because of this claim. One may say this in the sense of “I was fooled and now see I had an illusory reason to vote for that politician,” but then they are not recognizing it as a reason nor are they offering it as a reason (to support that politician) for the other agent to accept. It holds the status of statement about a cause, not a statement enshrining a reason. It is useful in discussing the actions of that voter as a causal object, but not as a reasoning being. Indeed, it seems to exclude the conception of such a being as a rational agent by that rhetoric—instead, the scheming political orator saw that audience member as a thing to be moved in accordance with rule-like causality. Say the right things that make the voter feel the right way, and the vote is hers. This is the sense of rhetoric qua manipulation that Kant does not support. It violates the intuitions in FHE, as well as the points against fatalism that he is at pains to push in his Groundwork III argument. We ought to see ourselves as creatures that go beyond mindless causation due to our faculty of

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reason; in important moral interactions with others, we also ought to extend this respect to them as well. Second, this account also shows us a way that nonmanipulative rhetoric can guide us in our communicative interactions with others. The latter part of this chapter details such guidelines, but here we see that Kant’s critical rhetoric foregrounds respect for others as reason-giving beings. Manipulative rhetoric sees other communicators as things to be moved. They are treated as mere causal objects, and not as humans that must at the same time be treated as rational, free beings that in some way transcend the realm of natural causality. The sense of Kantian critical rhetoric to follow codifies and explicates what it means to treat the utterances of one’s self and of others as issuing forth from intrinsically valuable rational agents, as opposed to creatures to move or affect through the use of the right causes. It is the exclusively causal use of language that enables the sense of rhetoric as manipulation that Kant decries. We return again to the starting (and ending) point for many explorations of rhetoric in Kant to notice the aspect of persuasion that we may have overlooked in chapter 2: “Rhetoric [Beredsamkeit], insofar as by that is understood the art of persuasion [die Kunst zu überreden], i.e., of deceiving by means of beautiful illusion (as an ars oratoria) and not merely skill in speaking (eloquence and style) [Wohlredenheit (Eloquenz und Stil)], is a dialectic, which borrows from the art of poetry only as much as is necessary to win minds over to the advantage of the speaker before they can judge and to rob them of their freedom” (CJ 5:327). Again we see the fundamental ambiguity of Kant on rhetoric—he clearly impugns Beredsamkeit and die Kunst zu überreden, but he praises Wohlredenheit (as well as Rhetorik in a footnote). The only principled way to make sense of this split in claims is to do justice to both utterances by explicating a distinction that may make sense of the apparent contradiction. In the present study, the distinction that has given us interpretative traction is between forms of rhetorical activity that are manipulative and nonmanipulative. Yet if we look closer at this passage with the argument from Groundwork III in mind, we can begin to make more sense out of this distinction and what it entails. Notice that Kant connects the negative form of rhetoric to “the art of persuasion” (die Kunst zu überreden). Persuasion is an important, but often overlooked, concept in Kant’s work. Toward the end of his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant makes the distinction between “conviction” (Überzeugung) and “persuasion” (Überredung) (A820/ B848). Gina Ercolini has been one of the few writing on Kant and rhetoric to highlight this connection, pointing out that “persuasion, as distinct from

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skilled speaking and eloquence, is a system of precepts, rules, and tricks designed to put the audience at disadvantage so the orator can take such advantage and infuse some predetermined end.” Ercolini is noting the concern of rhetoric as manipulation and, in the conceptual scheme of Groundwork III, the use of rhetoric that conceives of other communicative partners as mere causal objects. Indeed, seeing others as objects subject to causal forces is what facilitates the manipulative aspects of rhetoric qua practice—the right causes can be ascertained for this audience, and the right oratorical moves can be made to effect what the orator wants to occur. This orientation toward others and the activity of rhetoric enshrined in manipulative rhetoric produces persuasion, or “a mere semblance, since the ground of the judgment, which lies solely in the subject, is held to be objective. Hence such a judgment also has only private validity, and this taking something to be true cannot be communicated” (CPR A820/B848). Conviction is subtly different from persuasion, since “it is valid for everyone merely as long as he has reason, [and] its ground is objectively sufficient” (CPR A820/B848). Kant is pointing out two grounds for holding something to be true—internal and external to the agent in question. Subjectively, there may be grounds to hold something as true for me. Yet there also may be objective grounds to take something to be true for me and others. It is not necessary to fault Kant for an outmoded notion of objectivity and certain belief here; one can still see the use of this distinction given the previous practical reading of the Groundwork III argument. The key comes in how he describes persuasion, which is said to have “its ground only in the particular constitution of the subject” (CPR A820/B848). What Kant is getting at is simple— manipulative persuasion has a causal explanation for its adoption that does not rise to the level of being a reason for other rational beings. One may have voted for a particular politician because one’s low-self-esteem was assuaged by a certain grouping of flattering statements uttered by that politician, but recounting or explaining that fact to another voter does not act as a reason for that voter to vote for that politician. Similarly, telling another voter that “I was misled by lies that this politician uttered” would not equally beguile the other voter. Lies and statements treating individuals as causal objects have a certain power, but not when they are examined as reasons. Kant indicates that the way to ensure that subjective grounds of belief are truly objective is to test them in light of other communicators. Similar to his advocacy of the innate right of free expression, Kant claims,

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The touchstone of whether taking something to be true is conviction or mere persuasion is therefore, externally, the possibility of communicating it and finding it to be valid for the reason of every human being to take it to be true; for in that case there is at least a presumption that the ground of the agreement of all judgments, regardless of the difference among the subjects, rests on the common ground, namely the object [Objecte], with which they therefore all agree and through which the truth of the judgment is proved. (A820/B848–A821/B849) The arena of reason giving and rational activity is the realm of conscious representation of such reasons. Kant is pointing out that if we use interpersonal means to raise what may have caused our belief to the realm of such consideration, we will quickly see if it is a reason—if it would convince and move other attentive rational beings equally. If it does not, the inference is that it moves us by virtue of some aspect of our particularized self, our constitution as a natural being subject to causal laws. You cannot do this alone, Kant claims: “persuasion cannot be distinguished from conviction subjectively, when the subject has taken something to be true merely as an appearance of his own mind,” since true and apparently true beliefs feel the same to that experiencing subject. The best test is “the experiment [Versuch] one makes on the understanding of others, to see if the grounds that are valid for us have the same effect on the reason of others.” Such an experiment is merely “a means [Mittel], though only a subjective one, not for producing conviction, to be sure, but yet for revealing the merely private validity of the judgment, i.e., something in it that is mere persuasion” (CPR A821/B849). Notice the detachment in such an exercise. It is not directly aimed at the goal of persuading others of the claim that one takes to be true, although that may be a side effect. It is primarily aimed at testing that claim and determining the type of grounds it contains. If it fails to convince others as a reason for their belief, then it must have efficacy only insofar as it acts upon the original agent in question as a cause. This is the private validity that stops at particular agents; try as they might, they cannot elucidate its grounding and communicate this to others. They may be able to explain only why they believed this claim but not why others should believe it as well. Kant’s discussion of persuasion and conviction takes this sort of distinction into account. Expanding on the “experiment” of detachedly testing one’s claims in free discussion with others, he explains its emancipatory power: “If, moreover, one can unfold the subjective causes [subjektiven Ursachen] of the judgment, which we take to be objective grounds

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[objektive Gründe] for it, and thus explain taking something to be true deceptively as an occurrence in our mind, without having any need for the constitution of the object, then we expose the illusion and are no longer taken in by it, although we are always tempted to a certain degree if the subjective cause of the illusion depends upon our nature” (A821/849). If our nature (say, a predilection to enjoy ego-bolstering messages) is the effective cause of being moved by a message, it will not similarly move other rational agents when we couch it as a ground or reason to be examined as possibly belief-worthy. Rhetoric that manipulates identifies features of the specific audience at hand that allow for the right causes to be marshaled to move “people, like machines, to a judgment in important matters” (CJ 5:328n). Rhetoric that does not manipulate draws on the power of reasons with which any rational agent might agree; this is the sort of rhetorical activity that one can test or determine through the exercise in detached conversation noted in the Critique of Pure Reason. If a putative reason survives the test of being exposed to others, then it rises in status to a conviction-producing ground, as opposed to being merely a causal force uttered by a rhetor. At this point, we have a general notion of Kant’s critical rhetoric—it is the use of language to convey and test reason-bearing utterances. Such activity is grounded on the idea of its participants as equally valuable and rational beings, per FHE and the Groundwork III argument persuading us to see ourselves as going beyond the causal world of nature. Yet Garsten’s concern that the rhetorical activities of discussion and debate apply only to institutionalized scholars remains a troubling objection. There are at least four lines of response to this concern that show that the sort of detached, critical orientation toward rhetoric and its practitioners applies to all rational beings. First, we see that Kant intends for his advocacy of free expression and debate to apply to all people in his Critique of Pure Reason. This is evident from the preprofessional individuals captured in the scope of his claim. He asks if we should protect the young from the sort of dogmatic claims that he previously wanted to subject to public examination, and his answer is that we should not. Allowing a child to be exposed to such claims and to examine them with an eye toward determining their status as reasons is a beneficial exercise— indeed, “It cannot be difficult for him to dissolve those arguments into thin air, and thus he feels early his own power to defend himself fully against harmful deceptions of that sort, which must in the end lose all their plausibility for him” (A755/B783). This is in reference to young students using their powers of judgment and discussion before they become concretized in certain

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professions (such as scholar). Such critical rhetorical activity, like the pedagogical uses of example from chapter 4, highlight the nature of Kantian educative rhetoric as a broad-based practice of communication and judgment. Second, the “original right of human reason” that grounds Kant’s call for free expression in the Critique of Pure Reason at A752/B780 is like the innate right to freedom of choice in the Metaphysics of Morals—it applies to all humans qua rational beings and not solely to one profession. The external action of all humans in a society ought to be brought into systematic harmony, and the subset of this freedom that is public expression is also allowed in a systematic fashion. Kant does not claim that only scholars have the right and need of free public expression of thoughts and doubts; indeed, these thoughts and doubts could be problems that can afflict anyone functioning as a rational being examining the grounds for held beliefs. Third, in “An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment,” Kant publically calls for all people to emerge from their “self-incurred minority [Unmündigkeit].” The standard for the mature, free, or full use of reason is “to make use of one’s own understanding without direction from another” (8:35). People are told not to simply follow books, spiritual advisers, or other sorts of guardians. Such a litany of figures indicates a wide-ranging audience for Kant’s claims, not simply the few scholars that may gain a ruler’s ear. Kant clearly wanted a critical consciousness to infect the thinking and communicating of all people. He discusses this public use of reason in discursive venues and connects it to the “use which someone makes of it as a scholar before the entire public of the world of readers” (8:37). Yet Kant is taking a practice that he finds as most closely approximating or clothing the ideal—scholars engaged in the book-based modes of public argument of his time—and using it to highlight the normative way in which we ought to practice enlightened reasoning and communication. He is not claiming that all should be scholars in the institutional sense, nor is he claiming that only the set of institutionalized scholars can reach the state of free and enlightened thinker. Ercolini notes this confusing employment of the public activities of scholarship, arguing that “in Kant’s analysis, the role of the scholar takes on an interesting position. The scholar is neither an occupation, nor node of social identity, nor official position of expert, as it is so often presently conceived, but rather the scholar serves as a role one inhabits: an ethos, an attitude, an orientation of oneself toward others in a certain way.” The theme running through the present book gives a full form to this observation—that the focus in Kant’s educative rhetoric is on a detailed, moralized orientation toward communication, others, and one’s proj-

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ects. Just as morality (in the form of FHE) limits and conditions what we do in relation to others, the orientation connected with educative rhetoric conditions how and why we interact with others. The position of scholar or educative rhetor is not limited to certain institutionally sanctioned individuals; as an ideal, it can be instantiated by any rational being. Fourth, Kant’s strategy of using the idea of a sensus communis, or common sense, to ground judgments of taste (e.g., of the beautiful) highlight the applicability of such an ideal to all humans. In his Critique of the Power of Judgment, he invokes the concept of sensus communis to explain the role of taste in aesthetic judgments. This is more aptly called “communal sense” (5:295) as it is the postulated shared faculty of judging that allows one to expect that all similar agents will find a particular thing beautiful. It is not an empirical claim about shared beliefs. Instead, it fulfills a more regulative role, affecting how we think about our judgments in relation to the judgments of others. He even divides such a communal sense into sensus communis aestheticus and sensus communis logicus to account for its use as an ideal of commonality in both aesthetic and logical matters (5:295n). This common receptivity of all is later joined with “the capacity for being able to communicate one’s inmost self universally,” which “together constitute the sociability that is appropriate to humankind” (5:355). This then leads to Kant discussing the fundamental challenge of finding lawful sociability, or the “difficult task of uniting freedom (and thus also equality) with coercion (more from respect and subjection to duty than from fear)” through discovering “the art of the reciprocal communication of ideas of the most educated part with the cruder” (5:356). While one might take this art of reciprocal communication to be a method of distributing knowledge to the lower masses, this would be misreading Kant’s point. In an explanatory phrase, Kant operationalizes the goal of such communicative practices—“to discover that mean between higher culture and contented nature which constitutes the correct standard” (5:356). Thus, such a communicative practice involving presumptions about what all members of the community share is not an exclusionary, scholarly practice. Instead, it is a way of negotiating humanity’s dual nature as both rational being and causal part of nature. The wrong way to pursue such a goal is to hand its execution over to only some humans (scholars) or to assume that humans ought to abdicate or never develop their own rationality capacities. Like Kant’s moral philosophy, the goal is to harmonize and reconcile our sensuous nature (including our inclinations) with our nature as rational beings in community with others. Like the previous three reasons, this fourth observation highlights another

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way in which Garsten’s claim that Kant abdicates popular uses of judgment is limited. Reciprocal communication, critically thinking for one’s self, and striving to communicate freely with others are all important parts of Kant’s sense of nonmanipulative or educative rhetoric. Assuming we agree with the point I have been arguing—that Kant’s notion of nonmanipulative rhetoric is a practice that all can and should practice— why do we not already interact with others in this fashion? Why does Kant need the motivational or rhetorical argument of Groundwork III to move us to see ourselves and others as rational beings instead of mere causal objects that can be manipulated given enough skill? Part of the explanation has been given in the previous chapter’s account of human frailty and self-love. Humans tend to favor their own idiosyncratic needs over the needs and opportunities of others. Another way that Kant frames this propensity occurs in his historical writing. In his essay “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View” (1784), Kant examines humans’ natural “unsocial sociability” (ungesellige Geselligkeit) or “their propensity to enter into society, bound together with a mutual opposition which constantly threatens to break up the society.” Nature has given humans two important but contrary urges: “Man has an inclination to associate with others, because in society he feels himself to be more than man, i.e., as more than the developed form of his natural capacities. But he also has a strong propensity to isolate himself from others, because he finds in himself at the same time the unsocial characteristic of wishing to have everything go according to his own wish.” This is a natural extension of the self-focus promoted by self-love. Humans are constantly fixated on self-referential projects, yet there are pulls to be among others. We enter into community with others, but we expect them to oppose our projects. Such “opposition” is what “awakens all his powers, brings him to conquer his inclination to laziness and, propelled by vainglory, lust for power, and avarice, to achieve a rank among his fellows whom he cannot tolerate but from whom he cannot withdraw” (8:20–21). In Kant’s teleological way of viewing history, human unsocial sociability is an anthropological feature of our nature that draws us in two directions—toward community with others and toward a sort of isolation. As indicated in the previous chapter, such isolation is orientational and may occur when we are physically around other people. It is an orientation fueled by excessive self-love that sees one’s self as separate from other agents. Religious community—specifically its rituals and discourse—is one way Kant sees to mitigate such urges toward isolation and self-valuation. Yet discourse in more secular forms is not only conditioned by unsocial socia-

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bility but can also be used to shape our urges toward isolation. In our rhetorical activities, we are prone to unenlightened belief and to being manipulatively persuaded by others, but there are orientational ways in Kant’s critical rhetoric to both speak and listen in the right way. The final portion of this chapter explores the ways that Kant’s critical rhetoric can be extrapolated from his thought on free expression and debate.

The Practice of Kantian Critical Rhetoric Kantian critical rhetoric, the subset of his educative rhetoric that deals with how we interact with others in argumentative venues, concerns a certain way or orientation toward activity that tempers worldly pursuits with the moralized disposition resident in Kant’s account of moral cultivation. It typically concerns social activities of testing argumentative claims concerning topics of importance in Kant’s ideal republic. One easily could expand any historical limitations of this approach with the abstract ideal of FKE—the kingdom of ends, which would feature expansive debate among equals. This subtype of educative rhetoric is clearly related to the pedagogical and religious employments of rhetoric in Kant noted in the previous two chapters, but extends beyond a particular educational or religious context to the argumentative activities of citizens. The basic idea of this sort of rhetoric is that if citizens speak and listen to one another in the right way, they not only instantiate a moralized disposition in the present but help bring about its presence in future experience. John Poulakos has recognized the possibility of this strategy, noting that the sort of rhetoric that Kant does acknowledge as acceptable “is disinterested. Because thoroughly aestheticized, this kind of rhetoric seeks neither to persuade nor to manipulate nor to deceive; rather, it is a manifestation of artistic expression, pure and simple, the result of mental clarity, linguistic dexterity, imaginative resourcefulness, and ethical standing.” It is “an aesthetic yet purposeless rhetoric.” Poulakos’s intuition on the basic character of Kantian rhetoric is on the mark, yet as my exposition has shown, it is not simply aestheticized discourse. The purposeless purpose of aesthetic judgment may be one way that communicative activity is distanced from the ruinous influences of self-love and nonmoralized dispositions, but it is not the only way to accomplish this goal. This final section of the chapter analyzes the sort of critical rhetoric I believe a sympathetic reader can find in Kant’s philosophy. I organize this endeavor by analyzing this detached orientation

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toward communicative activity in two dimensions: those operative when a speaker is producing a message and those operative in the reception or judgment of the messages from others. In other words, I consider the citizen as critical rhetor and as rhetorical critic. Activities of both ethically producing a message and analyzing the arguments of others are included in this way of explicating Kantian rhetoric.

The Kantian Critical Rhetor As indicated by such texts as the Critique of Pure Reason and “An Answer to the Question,” Kant clearly wanted an enlightened and articulate public. Much of his pedagogical thought aimed to temper necessary pragmatic skill (such as well-spokenness) with a moralized disposition. Kant did not portray his citizens as passive, nonspeaking individuals. But how would a Kantian orator or rhetor go about speaking? How would one construct messages to persuade others that something was worthy of belief or conviction? For Kant, the “canons” of rhetoric that would assume the utmost importance would be invention, style, and delivery, as these would have the most effect on an audience coming to the subjective grounds of potential conviction. These also hold the ability to give an audience subjective grounds to believe something that lacks real or objective grounds (viz., the state of persuasion). Thus, Kant would be concerned with what one says and how one says it in light of how it treats one’s audience. This is the rhetorical implication of the intrinsic value of rational nature enshrined in FHE. Does a speaker’s message or its delivery manipulate its audience, or does it preserve and promote their autonomy as rational beings? Too many may be tempted—taking their lead from the negative utterances in Kant on rhetoric—to see all eloquent speaking as thwarting rational autonomy. But this is clearly false. Kant uses eloquence or wellspokenness in ways that go beyond merely being logically nonfallacious. One can give a powerful, eloquent argument without lapsing into manipulation. One realm of content for the invention of such arguments is detailed in the chapter on religious community, but not all communication has to be filled with religious content. Even when we make secular arguments, we can make these more or less interesting, vivid, and invigorating to an audience. One need not eliminate all language that could render one’s message a “vivid presentation”—this is the strawman of Kant as advocating a rhetorical style of boring syllogistic prose more suited to the professional disputes of metaphysicians or

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logicians. Instead, one need only limit appeals to pathos or skewed grounds of logical proof with FHE. Does this way of putting the matter at hand obscure or hinder the audience’s ability to come to a reasoned decision, or does it enhance it? Indeed, invoking emotions at the right point might heighten an audience’s attention to the correct matter in the correct extent. What is clearly excluded from matters of argument invention, style of verbal presentation, and vocal delivery would be rhetorical techniques intentionally designed to achieve a purposive end of the rhetor’s without concern for audience autonomy in that rhetorical situation. The rhetor that intends to manipulate now to preserve an audience’s autonomy later would clearly fail the demands of FHE and Kant’s educative rhetoric, both of which demand instantiation of autonomy in the present action under consideration. Kant’s specialty was not public, popular address, so it is not surprising he did not have much to say on the use of hand gestures, metaphors, and so forth. But what he did have to offer public thinkers who would inevitably express themselves in spirited debate with others was a method of constructing messages in line with FHE and audience autonomy. He wanted individuals to be cosmopolitan in their reasoning and communicative decisions in regard to others. While not speaking of speech construction, Kant did write on how we ought to reason about and in concert with others. Given the connection that Kant makes between critical reasoning and public debate and expression in places such as the Critique of Pure Reason and “An Answer to the Question,” we can take such instruction also to apply to the construction and invention of communicative utterances. In his Critique of the Power of Judgment, he gives three maxims for “the common human understanding”: 1. To think for oneself [Selbstdenken]; 2. To think in the position of everyone else; 3. Always think in accord with oneself. (5:294) In his Anthropology he provides a similar list but further emphasizes the communicative use of reason in the second maxim of thought: 1. To think for oneself. 2. To think oneself (in communication with human beings) into the place of every other person. 3. Always think consistently with oneself. (7:228)

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In both cases, the first maxim indicates an “unprejudiced way of thinking [vorurtheilfreien],” but it implies “a reason that is never passive” (CJ 5:294). Yet to be truly active and unbiased or impartial, the second maxim is essential, as it represents what Kant calls a “broad-minded way [erweiterten]” of thinking. This is an expanded orientation or way of thinking (Denkungsart) that ought to be adopted by reasoners, and the version from Anthropology shows its communicative function—thinking from the perspective of others involves imagining communicating about specific topics with others. If one is broad-minded enough, one thinks from the standpoint of reason itself, or at least all the reasoning beings involved in a certain situation themselves. This is what Kant captures with his notion of sensus communis in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (5:293). This is the idea of a universal standpoint that sees the power of reasons to be approved of by rational, free beings separate from any natural bias or contingency. Natural causes such as habits, upbringing, and exposure to a certain ideology all represent those types of contingent, causal forces. What the Kantian view is pointing to in human communication is aptly captured in the account of moral philosophy given by Stephen Darwall, who analyzes Kant’s reading of moral activity in the sense of the type of reasons it offers. He captures this in the “second-person standpoint,” or “the perspective you and I take up when we make and acknowledge claims on one another’s conduct and will.” Such a standpoint applies when we take our reasons to apply to the other person addressed and vice versa. Such a “second-personal reason is one whose validity depends on presupposed authority and accountability relations between persons and, therefore, on the possibility of the reason’s being addressed person-to-person.” Korsgaard also notes this dispositional choice toward the reasons of others: “I can treat your reasons as nothing, as irrelevant to our decision; or I treat them as public reasons, with normative force for me; or I treat them as private reasons, with normative force only for you, that I see as tools or obstacles to the pursuit of my own ends.” It is only the second option, treating the reasons of others as public reasons, that, like Darwall’s reading of second-personal reasons, upholds the respect I should have for reason-giving creatures such as humans. This is a stance or orientation toward the actions—and, I would add, utterances—of others that takes them as fundamentally similar to one’s actions. This reciprocal respect enshrined in this stance runs so deep that reasons for that person’s beliefs are treated as potential reasons for my beliefs. The moral opposite of this stance is the “third-person perspective, that is, regarding for practical purposes, others (and oneself), not in relation to oneself, but as they are (or one is) ‘objectively’

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or ‘agent-neutrally’ (including as related to the person one is).” The difference between these types of reasons is not logical—they are not different sorts of reasons in themselves. What is different is the personal relation that underlies our reasoning with others—we see the reasons of another person as potentially binding reasons applicable to ourselves if we adopt the secondperson stance, whereas we see them as causal objects to be explained if we don Darwall’s third-person stance. The construction of rhetorical appeals also can be accommodated by this scheme. Do we use second-personal reasons in our address to others, or do we consciously use claims, tropes, and descriptions by which we ourselves would never be swayed? The latter case is what happens when we view the other interactant as a causal object that can be moved by utterance—we merely need to identify the correct way to do so given this person’s idiosyncratic tendencies. Kant’s three maxims capture an orientation or disposition toward others that would entail us using only second-personal reasons in our attempts to communicatively persuade them to view things in a certain way. These reasons may be surrounded by the sort of evocative and powerful language we may think appropriate to these points worthy of belief, but notice that rhetors are not allowed to use powerful language to compensate for a line of reasoning that they would not find believable on its own. This would violate FHE and the second maxim asking rhetors to place themselves in the position of others. Other manipulative rhetorical moves are prohibited by the third maxim encouraging rhetors to think (and consequently express themselves) consistently. Oftentimes, inconsistency is a mark of prioritizing one’s adapting to a given audience over delivering a consistent message among different audiences. Audience adaptation on this critical Kantian account would be allowable if it does not trump audience autonomy and does not compensate for a message that rhetors would not believe themselves. Radically changing a message depending on the audience clearly would violate the imaginative test enshrined in FHE or the first two maxims of thought, so the third maxim strikes against this tactic in thought (and presumably, in speaking). These maxims behind argument construction form the basis for a Kantian practice of ethical address of others in communication. Kant is advocating a sort of audience adaptation, but not the sort that would incline rhetors to manipulate others through mere persuasion. Manipulative adaptation would involve the sort of maxim that encourages rhetors to think from the perspective of others to identify grounds of persuasion that they would not be swayed by in their own deliberation. This is what the politician in the previous example does

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when she identifies a low self-esteem among her audience members and connects patriotism to a campaign feature that she would otherwise not think of as immediately related to her value as an American citizen. Instead, Kant’s maxims of communication encourage one to think from the position of others and for oneself in a rhetorical attempt to instantiate the ideal of FHE. Autonomy as assertive rhetors is acknowledged, but so is the freedom of the audience to decide on the merits of what is advocated by the rhetors’ speech. Rhetors can include eloquent ideas and ways of presenting them, but they should never forget how they would react if they were receiving those ideas in the position of the audience. If they would react negatively to such techniques and their manipulative powers if used against them, then they ought not to employ them in speaking to such an audience. This is the point of the first and second maxims enjoining message and speech construction (including style and delivery)—two features also focused on affecting the audience with both rhetor and audience perspectives in mind. The additional challenge posed by Kant’s critical rhetoric is not merely to be nonmanipulative and cosmopolitan (viz., involving the perspectives of other rational beings) but also to involve personal advocacy. How does one find room to advocate one’s position when thinking about the autonomy of others or about certain positions from the position of others? This points to a fundamental tension that Kant identifies with his “broad-minded way” (erweiterten) of thinking—that between being partisan or cosmopolitan reasoners. If the latter embodies the sort of temperance, perspective taking, and balanced judgment that characterizes enlightenment on Kant’s account, how can they vigorously and eloquently advocate a position? Such eloquent advocacy seems by its very nature one-sided or partisan. Critical thinkers seem to need to be in communication with others and ought to advocate their own position eloquently to others. Yet thinking from the perspective of others and trying to be broad-minded and universal might exclude the particularity of their partisan message or advocacy. Why take their position over another? Our activities as particularized or conditioned rhetorical beings seem to conflict, in typical antinomical fashion, with the demands of our nature as universal or rational beings. A good, critical thinker seems compelled to take a certain perspective and simultaneously to withhold judgment to respect the views of all others. The solution to this antinomy of cosmopolitan advocacy lies in the move to detach one’s personal self-interest from the act of asserting or presenting a persuasive argument. This is the move enshrined in Kant’s insistence in his Critique of Pure Reason that we test our potential convictions

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in concert with others to see if they are merely persuasive ideas (and hence not really worthy of belief by all). This is also the idea that undergirds Kant’s respect for skeptical approaches to advocacy. Kant has a complex relationship with ancient forms of skepticism. The important point for this inquiry into Kant and rhetoric, however, is that his focus on skepticism not only implicates rhetorical positions and theorists (such as Cicero’s explication of Carneades’s skepticism) but also renders Kant’s views on belief formation explicitly rhetorical in nature. Catalina Gonzales has explored the relationship between Kant and skepticism and emerges convinced that Kant’s skeptical method “agrees more with the Academic fallibilism of Carneades as depicted and embraced by Cicero” than by Pyrrhonism. The Ciceronian or Carneadean ideal of the “fallibilistic sage does not claim to have certain knowledge but does not suspend judgment either. Rather, he follows probable presentations and produces a ‘detached’ sort of judgment called ‘opinion’ to act on its basis.” This sort of judgment involves a detached stance but does not render the practice of judgment impractical or nonuseful—instead, “suspension of judgment does not preclude approval (a practical holding-to-be-true) but only assent (a theoretical holding-to-be-true).” This sort of skepticism of strong theoretical or world-orientated knowledge claims influences Kant’s views on logic, judgment, and (by implication) communication and argumentation. When a rhetor tests the grounds of belief in a community with others, a sort of detached advocacy occurs. One assents to a proposition, but still holds that it may not be completely satisfactory as conviction. In Kant’s published lectures on logic (Jäsche Logic, 1800), “belief ” (Glaube) is defined in a manner that codifies this fundamental fallibilism: “Believing is not a special source of cognition. It is a kind of incomplete holding-to-be-true with consciousness” (9:68n). It is a holding-to-be-true (Fürwahrhalten), or a claim assented to by a subject that has subjectively sufficient grounds but lacks objectively sufficient grounds. It falls short of knowing (Wissen), which meets both conditions. It exceeds, however, the state of opinion (Meinung), or the state of “opining, or holdingto-be-true based on a ground of cognition that is neither subjectively nor objectively sufficient” (9:66). Opinion is typically given over to the rhetorically inclined Sophists in the Platonic battle of rhetoric versus philosophy. Philosophers are often thought to privilege certainty, whereas the silvertongued Sophists emphasize the ever-changing world of flux and imperfect opinion. Yet Kant does not completely disparage opinion. In the realm of “empirical cognitions” (viz., not in the realms of the “sciences” of reason that he identifies), opinion is a necessary precursor to belief formation. In such

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areas Kant acknowledges that opinion “can be regarded as provisional judging (sub conditione suspensiva ad interim) that one cannot easily dispense with. One must opine before one accepts and maintains, but in doing so must guard oneself against holding an opinion to be more than mere opinion” (JL 9:66). Opinions seem to be starting points to marshal evidence or construct arguments behind a potential belief to which one may assent. Such opining, as Andrew Chignell has pointed out, is acceptable for Kant as “it is not masquerading (like Persuasion does) as objectively sufficient assent, and as a result the subject will avoid staking too much on it. . . . Opinions must be held in a weak fashion.” Opinions are the subjectively recognized beginning to creating a case that explicitly states the grounds on which a belief may be based. Such beliefs, when their grounds reach both subjective and objective sufficiency, become convictions. Without the fallibilism and critique built into Kant’s insistence on (1) the attitude of rhetors to test their opinions and beliefs and (2) a realm of free public debate in which to test their grounds, they may fall prey to the manipulative persuasion that Kant connects to the harmful form of rhetorical activity. Alternatively, rhetors following Kant’s three maxims for thinking tend to construct cases for their opinions or beliefs out of second-personal reasons and are inclined to test them in public advocacy with the attitude of skeptical fallibilism that underlies Kant’s notion of conditional assent. Such a skeptical procedure is linked to the rhetorical production and airing of arguments containing the grounds for such possible convictions. Kant argues in his logic lectures that “persuasion often precedes conviction” (JL 9:73), and he clearly states that the best way to ascertain whether one is persuaded or convinced is to test one’s claims in communication with others (e.g., CPR A821/B849). Thus, we can see that Kant is advocating a rhetorical or communicative method—animated by the skeptical or detached orientation of arguers—to advance and test claims that are partisan in nature. Passing this test supposedly means that these claims are determined to be convictions, or holdings-to-be-true of a cosmopolitan or reasonable nature. One could advance one’s claims in public settings merely to persuade others. Or one could advance one’s claims in an attempt to see if those claims are as good or certain as they appear. Openness to one’s advanced partisan views being wrong or incomplete is a necessary dispositional component to Kant’s critical rhetoric. Critical rhetors ought to follow the three maxims indicated previously in their construction and delivery of public messages; they also should see the process of public testing as a way to optimize beliefs, including their own views. This quest implicates them in using second-personal reasons in an effort to con-

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vince others that the grounds for their views are sufficient subjectively and objectively. Seeing one’s audience as mere causal objects, however, inclines one to find the right utterances to say to move them as causal objects. This approach does not evince the sort of fallibilistic or detached partisanship that is part of Kant’s critical rhetoric, and it does not facilitate the procedure of self-correction he details in his logic lectures: “To be able to pass from mere persuasion to conviction, then, we therefore must first of all reflect, i.e., see to which power of cognition a cognition belongs, and then investigate, i.e., test whether the grounds are sufficient or insufficient in respect of the object. Many remain with persuasion. Some come to reflection, few investigation” (JL 9:73). These three stages of persuasion, reflection, and investigation can be identified as the ideal progression Kantian critical rhetors follow in their public deliberations with and against others. The attempt of a subject (the “I” of the reasoner) to eloquently advance a belief with an attitude features a “deferral or reservation of our judgment, [which] consists in the resolution not to let a merely provisional judgment become determining. A provisional judgment is one in which I represent that while there are more grounds for the truth of thing than against it, these grounds still do not suffice for a determining or definitive judgment, through which I decide for the truth. Provisional judging is thus merely problematic judging with consciousness” (9:74). The orientation of such a mindful rhetor is one of passionate advocacy, but not so much passion and self-focus that the demands of respecting one’s audience and thinking from their perspective are overlooked. Consciously pursuing such detached rhetorical activity also allows us to avoid subjective sources of error—what Kant identifies as our own prejudices. These sources of error blossom from mindless imitation, custom, and inclination (JL 9:76). Most prejudices stem from the recurring concern noted in previous chapters—the natural urge of humans to privilege themselves and their projects over the selves, projects, and worth of others. Here this urge plays out in two directions—deference to the pride or prestige of some group or period (e.g., the wisdom of antiquity or one’s countrymen) or deference to one’s particular point of view (9:77–80). The former seems more connected to the honor-based ways of thinking rejected by Kant’s position in chapter 1. These ways of judging virtue were socially inflected and were too focused on contingent and often-wrong matters of what the multitude (here or in the past) believed. Society, of course, can judge wrongly for the right reasons and rightly for the wrong reasons. Emphasizing social approval and honor fails to touch the reasons why both others and I should believe someone worthy of

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commendation or imitation. Such an other-focus at best avoids the secondpersonal charge of moral belief formation and at worst denigrates the value of the acting agent by merely aping the actions and judgments of others. The second source of error—“prejudices of self-love or logical egoism” (9:80)—is obviously problematic for Kant’s ideal of equal agents forming the kingdom of ends (FKE), as well for the sort of equal consideration I ought to give myself and others in action (including communication). Consciously detaching our advocacy from our value as rational agents allows us to resist such a selffocus, which too often leads us to manipulate our audience in a causal fashion instead of honoring them with second-person reasons for belief. The maxims of thinking for ourselves and from the position of our audience in the public testing of our opinions and beliefs is the important way to instantiate the advised orientation resident in Kant’s critical rhetoric.

The Kantian Rhetorical Critic Kant’s critical rhetoric does not only concern the practice of asserting claims held to be true but also involves the activities of judging our views and those of others to see what is worthy of conviction. Some part of the judgment of our views as critical rhetors comes before assertive rhetorical advocacy, before the construction and delivery of argumentative claims and grounds for a specific audience. But other activities of judgment and reflection happen after our claims have been uttered in the communicative arena. As the tribunal of reason lies in each of us, Kantian agents function as a critical recipient and judge of the arguments of others or as a rhetorical critic. Such individuals bring a certain disposition or orientation of cosmopolitan criticism to bear on the claims of others. This critical stance concerns how we view other communicators, their messages, and the meaning of their argumentative utterances for our belief structure. Given the perspectival dialectic inherent in Kant’s maxims for critical thinking (including both self and audience), one could expect many of these same themes to apply to how we receive the argumentative messages of others. The distinction between audiences being causal objects or reasoning beings also is important, since in analyzing the messages of others we can take such utterances as causal objects or as reasons for our consideration as rational beings. Kantian rhetorical critics enter a scenario in which utterances may come from agents not sharing the detached critical orientation; such critics also

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enter into realms where utterances have effects. One such effect might be manipulation, as was the case in some of the misleading claims made by the politician in the earlier example. Yet Kantian rhetorical critics always must maintain the burdens of FHE and communicative cosmopolitanism in their advocacy and reception of arguments. Again we are stymied by Kant’s failure to write a clear treatise on public argument, but we do have his views of critical thinking and the public testing of views from which to construct an account of Kantian critical rhetoric. We may ask, what would Kant’s contribution be to how we conceptualize the criticism of the rhetorical activities of others? In this section I suggest that Kant’s unique contribution stems from the core to his ethical theory—the strong notion of personhood and personal value evident in such pronouncements as FHE and the Groundwork III argument for his view of human worth. The fundamental question for a Kantian rhetorical criticism is, do we treat all individuals involved in the communicative situation as ends in themselves? We often think of people harmed or addressed by a message as the only ones to be protected. This is evident in Philip Wander’s concerns over the objectification of the “third persona” excluded from a rhetor’s message. Audiences addressed (or ignored) by a message can be objectified as causal objects; they can be treated as objects to harm or move as the rhetor sees fit. Indeed, this orientation is often central to a rhetor’s manipulation of them, or of leading others to mistreat such a distant and objectified audience contrary to the respect they are due per FHE. It is only reasonable that a Kantian agent will look for the harm of an utterance, namely, the failure to preserve and promote the autonomy of human audience members. But one critical point of emphasis is added by Kantian critical rhetoric to the task of an agent qua critic of another rhetor’s discourse: the rhetor that the critic is attending to is also a participant in this communicative transaction. In the case of abstract argument testing, the rhetor may be an even more significant part, since the critic and the rhetor might be the only ones subjected to a certain message. In other cases, messages may be delivered only to friendly or like-minded audiences, leading critical considerations of excluded or objectified persons to necessarily refer to potential but not actual participants in the interaction. In most of these cases, however, an identifiable human rhetor is behind the actual message a critic is attending to, especially behind those sorts of discourse we can call “argumentative” attempts at persuasion. This enduring feature of assertoric authorship of speeches and related rhetorical phenomena would lead the Kantian rhetorical critic to foreground this central question: in our activities of criticism and the critical

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reception of utterances, do we treat the rhetor involved as a full human worthy of respect? As discussed earlier in this chapter, part of what it means to treat other agents as ends (as opposed to mere means) is not so much one’s actual use of them in external action, but instead concerns how we view them in relation to ourselves and the world. The argument of Groundwork III was that we ought to see ourselves as members of an intelligible realm, as something transcending the causal realm of nature. Seeing people as part of the natural world is a vital step in using or manipulating them as a mere means, since this conceptualization of a person as an object with predictable causal interactions with other natural objects is a vital starting point to intelligently using them for some contingent purpose. To see ourselves and others as going beyond nature and as possessing some sort of freedom to choose incentives for action is what gives us worth beyond any contingent usefulness or purposive employment by others. This is the core to the version of Kantian ethics detailed in this chapter and in earlier chapters, and it animates the sort of criticism that Kant’s view of nonmanipulative rhetoric finds appropriate. One standard approach in contemporary times to the criticism of discourse is the examination of ideologies within certain texts. A critical focus on ideology typically highlights a way of viewing messages that foreground concerns of power and utterance effect. Focusing on contemporary theorists and critics who use this term in discussing criticism may be helpful in elucidating the sort of critical reaction a Kantian agent is advised to have to the argumentative discourse of others. In regard to rhetorical matters, Edwin Black posits ideology as the currency of meaning in the interaction between an author (implied or real), an artifact, and an audience. Black grounds his notion of ethical criticism on the idea of the “second persona,” or the implied audience of a given utterance. The critic focuses solely on the “discourse alone, and extracts from it the audience it implies.” What characterizes personas— whether the first persona of the rhetor implied or the second persona of the audience assumed—is ideology. This, according to Black, is used in Karl Marx’s sense of “the network of interconnected convictions that functions in a man epistemically and that shapes his identity by determining how he views the world.” Ideologies are not neutral ways of shaping experience; they bias action and thought in certain ways that are discernable to a critic. The ideology implied in a discourse is to be examined, since “it will move [the auditor], unless he rejects it, to structure his experience on many subjects.” The discourse or speech is a bearer of ideology in its stylistic accouterments, and this

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ideology exerts a shaping or determining power on individuals. A critic looks at the sort of ideology a textual object advocates and ethically judges it based on what kind of character it tends to form or encourage in its audience. Another account of the interplay among texts as causal objects, ideology, and criticism comes in Wander’s work. For Wander, the important aspect of rhetorical action is power and how it plays out in discourse. Some rhetors have the power to speak and the power to choose about what to speak. Power moves those with it to speak in certain fashions; ideological criticism unearths that power and its effects and exposes them to the world. Ideological criticism might free audiences from the allure of hidden agendas, ideologies, and biases that normally go unnoticed. Perhaps Wander’s most significant contribution to the ethical criticism inherent in the growing attention in rhetoric to what can be called the “ideological turn” is the notion of the “third persona.” Black’s notion of the second persona represents the ideological subject of the discourse—who it pushes an accepting auditor to become—or, as Wander puts it, “an invitation” that “describes the being in the world it commends.” Yet the second persona is not everything that the audience could be invited to become. Such a plurality would ruin its ethical import, according to the Aristotelian line of thought concerning ethics inherent in Black’s notion of ideology—ideology is a link from the text to both the rhetor’s character and to the audience’s potential character after the act of persuasion. As Wander reads it, “What is negated through the Second Persona forms the silhouette of a Third Persona—the ‘it’ that is not present, that is objectified in a way that ‘you’ and ‘I’ are not.” The third persona is the image left out, those of whom the message does not speak. What audiences are privileged enough to be included in a text’s scope, its arguments, and its concerns? This is an interesting point and one of ethical importance, since many ethical lapses occur from inactivity, or not doing something one should have done to help another individual. Surely Wander is assuming some type of sorting principle, though, of relevant audiences or constituencies left out, since saying one specific utterance entails not saying a virtually infinite number of other assertable things. One cannot talk about everything in one utterance. Wander is rightfully concerned about the effects of power and interest on who is left out of a given discourse, who is rendered an object to be ignored or neglected. This treatment of other humans is unethical because of seemingly Kantian grounds of rendering them as objects—as Wander argues, “The objectification of certain individuals and groups discloses itself through what is and is not said about them and through actual conditions affecting their ability to speak for themselves.”

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The ideological critic gives voice to such oppressed people through an act of criticism, the method of “rhetorical contextualization” that Wander has recently described as “a systematic reflection on: (a) the ‘I’ of the author and the not ‘I’ or who the author is not; (b) what the text did and did not say; (c) what audiences were and were not addressed or explicitly run down; (d) what problems were defined and/or ignored; and (e) what solutions were or were not offered and for whom.” The critic is following the assumption that “the meaning of what is said, in rhetorical theory, includes what is and what is not said.” By looking at discourse from this way of what is said and not said, as opposed to taking what is said as merely an argument to be accepted, the critic gets under the ideological apparatus in operation. Ideological critique is said to speak for those who have been excluded unjustly, thus fulfilling the vital role of criticism animated by ethical concerns. Wander’s sort of ideological criticism was later followed by Raymie McKerrow’s “critical rhetoric,” which captures the orientation behind criticism that “examines the dimensions of domination and freedom as these are exercised in a relativized world” and that tries “to unmask or demystify the discourse of power.” Drawing on Anthony Giddens, McKerrow explains the focus of critical rhetoric: “the emphasis has shifted from the question ‘is this discourse true or false?’ to ‘how the discourse is mobilized to legitimate the sectional interests of hegemonic groups.” The critical rhetorician looks underneath the discourse to find the ethically problematic views enshrined in ideology-laden discourse; “The critique is directed to an analysis of discourse as it contributes to the interests of the ruling class, and as it empowers the ruled to present their interests in a forceful and compelling manner.” McKerrow bluntly connects the practice of criticism to ideology at another point: critiquing “the discourse of power which creates and sustains the social practices which control the dominated”; this could be called a “critique of ideologies.” Ideologies that dominate and that falsely constrain are the unit of analysis for McKerrow’s ideological rhetoric. Both the ways that communication systems and practices dominate individuals and groups and the ways that seemingly emancipatory practices still limit us can be exposed by the critical rhetorician in the performative act of critique. So worrisome are the ideological constraints in discourses that promise freedom that McKerrow promotes continual critique—“the telos that marks the project is one of never-ending skepticism, hence permanent criticism.” Others have criticized McKerrow’s notion of ideology critique, but here I must point to a theme that it crystallizes for virtually all the views that focus

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criticism on utterances as instances of ideology. All these views seem committed to the shift from seeing discourse as argumentative or reason bearing to a view that represents the discourse of others as power bearing. Indeed, McKerrow puts this in the clearest terms when he claims that his form of constant criticism takes utterances as bearers of social power rather than as bearers of truth. Thus, the critic should be attentive not to what is claimed and the reasons for such a claim but to the power structures at play in social moves to gain and maintain power over others. The assumed ethical criterion of action—including the critic’s activity—is not to be “duped” by an unconsciously assumed ideology. Thus, the need for constant criticism of domination and putative freedom arises. Another important theme that arises in these approaches is the causal implications of ideology as a sort of agential force, moving people and groups through the way it structures the world and composes individuals. This point is not totally off base, of course, since our conceptual repertoire influences the options we perceive as open to us. Yet ideological critics look deeper than an array of options being presented by a conceptual scheme—they see a system that infects an agent, a rhetor, or an audience. The act of criticism for such agents would be to expose or counteract the influence of a pernicious ideology resident in a given discourse or text. Kenneth Burke puts the causal implications of this point bluntly: “An ‘ideology’ is like a god coming down to earth, where it will inhabit a place pervaded by its presence. An ‘ideology’ is like a spirit taking up its abode in a body: it makes that body hop around in certain ways; and that body would have hopped around in different ways had a different ideology happened to inhabit it.” Ideology causes people to behave in certain predictable ways, and this is why it is ethically problematic. If it did not control or causally affect people’s agency, why worry about it? Ideology critique disabuses people of harmful ideologies and hence upholds (assumed) consequentialist standards—the cause of the worrisome effects of domination and false consciousness has been removed by the act of critique. Not all forms of ideology critique grant this causal point, but they do seem committed to chipping away the agency of the subject in favor of the agency of ideology— even if the latter comes to the former through a specific human rhetor. Humans are not unified, transcendental selves who direct their own courses of action, on this account. They are natural objects, perhaps with rich psychological mechanisms that explain their causality, and are increasingly affected by ideological forces outside of their own comprehension; it is the agency of the noble critic alone that can reveal and alleviate the deleterious effects of ideology’s moving of agents around in the world in harmful patterns.

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We therefore have two important commitments to this ideology-focused way of critically receiving the messages of argumentative others: (1) this approach insists on seeing utterances as bearers of power to the exclusion of their role as bearers of truth, and (2) it insists on attributing causal powers to ideologies or worldviews underneath literal utterances. Combining these two, one can characterize this way of pursuing ethical critique as a method of treating the utterances of a rhetor as causal objects. These objects (given messages or utterances) may be caused by certain interests known or unknown, and they may lead attentive audiences to slight or forget about oppressed groups. The ideologies pushed by these objects (utterances) encourage others—beyond the literal statement of the utterance—to see the world and others in varying ways, some of which are ethically problematic (viz., those ideologies that the critic has reason to dislike). The act of criticism is an act of intervention in this causal sequence, with the intended outcome of interrupting the replication of power relations, domination, and oppression. In Wander’s terms, it attempts to stop the objectification of excluded third personas. Yet, ironically, it does this by objectifying the utterances in question as causal objects of interest. One can see the problem that Kant’s critical rhetoric would point out in the commitments of forms of criticism that prioritize the ideological—such approaches objectify people and their utterances as physical units in causal sequences. Ideology is said to have caused the utterance in question (say, a political speech on free enterprise), and ideology explains the utterance’s effects or import (say, furthering a false consciousness about the benefits of capitalism). The utterance is analyzed in the same way that natural science aims to analyze its physical units—by representing causes and effects in rule-governed ways. Of course, the Kantian point of Groundwork III is that we should not aspire to analyze all human action as limited to the natural world of such causal rigidity (even if we can never have enough information to know the causes involved); this would be taking humans solely as causal objects. In addition to seeing ourselves as causal members of the world, we also should see ourselves as different kinds of beings, ones with the chance to freely insert ourselves into causal sequences. Causal accounts that reduce all human action to strict causal explanations do not leave the necessary Kantian room for accounts that allow humans the respect that comes with freely choosing their utterances. Three problems immediately present themselves to this fashion of cashing out Kant’s ethics for criticism. First, does not most criticism focus on the object of discourse, not on rhetors themselves, thereby sidestepping the concern with treating humans as objects? Second, does this argument miss the

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import of Guyer’s claim that the Groundwork III argument applies to ourselves as free beings but allows room to consider others as causally swayed by natural forces? Third, might this Kantian argument itself be guilty of objectifying the utterances of valued others—namely, the utterances and arguments of ideological critics? I deal with each of these concerns in turn. The first concern involves the closeness of connection between rhetor and rhetorical artifact, whether it is an argument uttered, a film produced, or a book written. Kant’s form of public argument testing often assumes an active public sphere of immediate, interpersonal dialogue. Even on the terms of his account, however, rhetorical activity is extended to include practices such as book publishing, which add the curious wrinkle that instances of discourse and utterance, unlike utterances in interpersonal dialogue, might often be separable from the agent in question. The immediacy of agency is a feature of many of Kant’s moral examples, though. For instance, Kant’s examples of suicide and lying at Groundwork 4:422 involve immediate personal contexts of action that have identifiable agents and patients. When I speak to you in interpersonal dialogue or argument, you know it’s me who is talking to you in that way. Yet rhetorical texts, especially in technologically mediated forms, can easily become distanced from the originating rhetor in question—one could write a book or a pamphlet and not know who receives it. An audience might not know an author publishing anonymously or under a pseudonym. This occurred to Kant, as evidenced the analysis in chapter 1 of the authorial fog surrounding the (initially anonymous) Garve-Feder review of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason. All one has access to immediately is the message. It is this kind of reasoning that might lead critics of the ideological persuasion to suggest that rhetorical messages or utterances are objects separable from their originators, thereby avoiding any concerns that a person was being treated as an object. Instead, the objection goes, the ideal critic is merely treating the object of rhetorical activity (an utterance) as an object to be explained in terms of causes and effects, ideologies and interests served. Yet this way of answering the Kantian move to respect the personhood of arguers fails due to the close linkage we attribute to utterance and self. In discourse that aims to use argument (in its various forms) to persuade auditors, one can see this linkage clearly. Communicators utter this message with its claims, not another possible message. Auditors can agree with the message or can challenge it with counterargument. The ideological approach does neither. Ideological critics respond to an argumentative claim with an undercutting analysis that attempts to explain the utterance in terms of power, interest, or

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motivation. Like McKerrow’s reading of critical rhetoric, the emphasis of critical response shifts from utterances as bearers of truth to utterances as bearers of power. In the world power is a matter of cause and effect, and this betrays the sort of objectification of human argumentative utterances that can occur in the practice of ethical criticism of rhetorical texts. This undercutting objectification of utterance occurs in interpersonal dialogue when one (acting as a critic of communication) accuses some claim x rhetor p makes to audience s (perhaps including the critic) as racist. Instead of the critic or s disputing x, the critic might say that x being said by p is motivated by p’s racism. At this point, the debate shifts—p is (rightfully) concerned about being an “instrument” of a pernicious racist ideology, and the truth of the assertion x is no longer foregrounded. Yet p in all likelihood asserted x because he or she found it to be a warrantable description of the world. Simplifying and moving the discussion to one of ideological powers (even if unconscious) infecting p and the utterance of x moves the debate away from a vital, personal exercise of autonomy in that agent’s assertion of some claim to another conversational partner. What has happened is that the utterance of p has become objectified—it is an object to be analyzed in terms of causes and effects. The ideology in that statement is causally determined and its effects are to be avoided. In other words, the utterance that the rhetor in question uttered as a statement with which he or she freely agrees has been rendered part of the natural world of causes and effects; the rhetor’s approval of it as a good argument (as possible conviction, say) also has been rendered a matter of ideological hegemony or power taking hold, as opposed to free choice based on some sort of incentive based in reason. The critic sees the utterance as a causal object, not as an utterance containing reasons for its acceptance. The justification offered by reasons seems to reach us at a different level than does a causal force such as gravity— reason-bearing activity involves me representing something as worth freely following in belief or action. Such a conscious representation—the key to Kant’s notion of the moral law motivating us through the representation of duty—is foreign to explanations that emphasize causes leading to certain effects in a mechanical fashion. It is no wonder that modern philosophers more sensitive to language than Kant was—such as Jürgen Habermas—critique the hermeneutics of suspicion enshrined in such ways of explaining the utterances of others as objectifying. Instead of taking utterances as the rhetor takes them (viz., as reasoned argument), we take them as objects of explanatory analysis.

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The second concern with ideological criticism focuses on the possibility that such a practice of criticism misses the valuable point of Guyer’s reading of Groundwork III. In other words, might the ideological approach to thinking about rhetorical artifacts be a sympathetic and morally sensitive way of engaging such utterances? What I argue, however, is that ideologically focused forms of ethical criticism (differentiated here from the Kantian form of ethical criticism) posit an unnecessary or morally unjustified difference in agential status between the critic and analyzed rhetors. When thinking about the assumptions of agency in ideology-focused forms of ethical criticism, one notices the opposite of Guyer’s reading of Kant’s purposes in Groundwork III occurring in these forms of criticism. Guyer believes Kant was concerned with a fundamental propensity of human judgment to grant ourselves frequent exceptions in moral matters but to never grant exceptions to others. These exceptions to moral behavior come in the form of causal factors influencing our following or not following the demands of duty. For example, we may excuse our dishonesty because of a difficult external situation, whereas we would blame another’s dishonesty in an equivalent situation on a fundamentally rotten moral character. I couldn’t have succeeded in doing the right thing given those obstacles; the other person, however, chose to do the wrong thing. Guyer has a point—there is a pragmatic use in Kant urging us to be strict in judging our own worth and to be more sensitive to causal explanations in judging others. This would encourage us to strive to be moral and to be charitably empathetic in our explanations of the missteps of others. Yet what I want to add to this account is one way that such a corrective can go wrong. Guyer is assuming that sensitivity to causal factors (upbringing, weakness of will, etc.) leads us to be more lenient in judging the moral worth of others and thereby be more respectful and kind to them than we might otherwise be. This is noble insofar as it creates the morally desirable outcomes. Yet we can think of cases in which attention to causal factors and influences gets so extreme that it occludes our treatment of someone as a person. I have argued this is what occurs when critics are so focused on the causal structure of ideology and utterance that they fail to respect the other person as utterer or rhetor. In the version of Kantian ethical criticism (the receptive part to what I have called his “critical educative rhetoric”) I am explicating here, then, we must amend Guyer’s analysis of Groundwork III to forestall oversensitivity to causal features. For Kantian ethical criticism, there must always be a basic respect given to rhetors proffering a message that they believe and take to be worthy of their belief.

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The third concern deals with what I anticipate will be a common objection. Is not the Kantian ethical critic (at least one theorizing criticism in general) objectifying the theoretical utterances of the ideological critic? Shouldn’t they take the ideological critic’s utterances seriously or as reason-bearing utterances? This criticism has a certain self-referential cleverness to it, but when one considers alternate ways to engage the position of ideological critique, one perceives the argumentative respect that the Kantian position enunciated in this chapter displays for the partisans of ideology critique. One could say that ideological critics are motivated by a habitual need to exert power over the world; given that they are academics trained in books and words, one might identify that way of acting as the safest way for them to exert control over the world and its forces of good and evil. Such a way of reacting to ideological criticism, in my mind, would be dehumanizing—it renders ideological critics not as reason-giving agents whom one should give a hearing to, but instead finds demeaning ways of dismissing them from all consideration. As becomes evident in the following pages, the Kantian position does not ignore reasons why ideology or power might be useful in analyzing utterances; what it does want to argumentatively dismiss, however, is the view that these are exclusive or primary considerations in our criticism of the utterances of others. The Kantian takes ideological critics’ arguments seriously, but this does not mean they have to ultimately agree with the import of these arguments. The agreement is a qualified one, as in the case (in Groundwork III) when the Kantian looks at natural science—causation is useful and valuable, but so is talk of freedom and agency. The dismissal of ideological criticism as an exclusionary practice in this chapter is not animated by objectifying ideological critics’ theoretical utterances. Instead, it is guided by an argumentative dismissal of the range of their claims, namely, that taking utterances of others as exclusively (in theory or in our critical practice) causal is the morally laudable orientation for critics to hold. Kantian ethical criticism allows taking utterances as causal objects in the world, but not so far as to eclipse the intimate connection between communication and a rich sense of rational agency that we postulate of ourselves (and hopefully other humans, per FHE). Beyond these specific concerns or objections, we see that Kant is pointing to a general critique of exclusionary, objectifying partisan forms of reasoning. This can occur in professional or everyday criticism. Unlike the cosmopolitan orientation behind the form of detached advocacy discussed in the previous section, partisan criticism is motivated by what Kant calls “self-love,” a characteristic of humanity that compels us to focus on idiosyncratic concerns

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such as our happiness and the continued sating of our desires. When we reason in a partisan fashion, we privilege something particular to us (or our favored group) at the expense of those with whom we reason. This can occur in situations of argument, and it is especially risked in our criticisms of the discourse of others that foregrounds their utterances as symptoms of ideologies at work. For such critics take their critical claims and reasons to have second-person status for their readers, yet deny such second-person status to the object of their criticism (viz., the utterance of another person and its causes and effects). If we look to Kant’s moral philosophy, we see the reasoning behind such a position—it fulfills the demands of self-love. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant discusses such issues in terms of how much self-esteem we should grant ourselves upon realizing the dignity that nature and the moral law give us: Moderation in one’s demands generally, that is, willing restriction of one’s self-love in view of the self-love of others, is called modesty. Lack of such moderation (lack of modesty) as regards one’s worthiness to be loved by others is called egotism (philautia). But lack of modesty in one’s claim to be respected by others is self-conceit (arrogantia). The respect that I have for others or that another can require from me (observantia aliis praestanda) is therefore recognition of a dignity (dignitas) in other human beings, that is, of a worth that has no price, no equivalent for which the object evaluated (aestimii) could be exchanged.—Judging something to be worthless is contempt. (6:462) This passage contains a number of useful points for constructing a Kantian notion of rhetorical criticism. First, criticism must respect the intrinsic value of humanity. This concern ties in closely to our sensuous urges toward selflove, so we always must be wary of privileging ourselves and our desires in an egotistical fashion. Second, respecting others, as opposed to thinking of them as different from the sort of being you are (one deserving a certain type of respect), entails that you always judge them as containing a dignity equal to your own. In the case of Kantian criticism, taking your reasons as secondperson reasons and their reasons as objects of causal study represents such a jarring difference in value that the Kantian would think that only a devaluing of the person behind the utterances studied could explain it. We judge other rhetors as a different kind of utterer than us, so we take their utterances differently than we take our own (or how we’d like others to take our utterances).

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We do not ask if we are persuaded by the reasons and claims being put forward; we only attempt to explain them in causal terms. Kantian rhetorical criticism involves an orientation to communication that engages the utterances and claims of others in a way that is insulated from self-conceit or egoism. In other words, Kantian rhetorical criticism serves as the diametric opposite of partisan criticism, or what can be called “argumentative self-conceit”—the view that my reasons, my ability to reason, and my ability to choose are all of a different order than the reasons, reasoning capacities, and freedom of the object of study or critique. The work of the partisan critic may imply this sort of attitude: “I am not moved by ideology; I am moved by the truth. Their utterances, on the other hand, are moved by such causal forces with their lack of agency.” Tendencies toward egoism, as was the case in Kant’s critical rhetoric, play a role here. In the Anthropology Kant discusses the inclinations toward egoism in human behavior, including the “logical egoist,” who “considers it unnecessary to test his judgment also by the understanding of others; as if he had no need at all for this touchstone (criterium veritatis externum)” (7:128). Instead, the nonegoist seeks the clash of ideas and truth claims with equal reasoners. If one treats an object of study (a human making utterances in a fashion similar to the critic) as a non–reason-bearing causal feature of the world, how can one be treating such an object as an equal? What would one say if the rhetor being studied were to dispute a critical charge of “utterance x being motivated by pernicious ideology y?” One sees how the endeavor of criticism, far from preserving the Kantian intuitions enshrined in FHE, tends instead to objectify discourse and its originating rhetors to make discourse easier to handle in causal reasoning. It becomes solely an object of causally focused scientific analysis. The point of Kantian rhetorical criticism, however, is that there is a cost to doing this. The cost comes in downgrading the dignity accorded to the object of study, namely the rhetor who is so closely connected to a specific utterance. Agency always must remain in how we think of other humans, even if we are analyzing the effects caused by the actions of others. We reach the stage where we can say something constructive about a Kantian form of criticism and critical argument reception. These themes do not exhaust Kant’s contribution to how we ought to act as a rhetorical critic in the detached testing of arguments, but they represent a start to applying his understudied thought to rhetorical arenas:

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1. Always treat the rhetor being studied or listened to as an equal. 2. Always consider the utterance or object of study as at least a bearer of truth claims and second-person reasons. Do not make causal explanations exclusionary of attributions of dignity to a rhetor. 3. Do not believe that your criticism of such utterances is certain or exclusive of alternative readings. These maxims of ethical criticism point to the unique Kantian contribution to criticism. All circle around the grounding of FHE, or the imperative to treat other people as possessing the same sort of dignity. What my discussion in this chapter has displayed is that by utilizing the Kantian ethical foundation in matters of criticism, we examine more closely what our treatment of the discourse of others says about those others—do we objectify the givers of arguments by exclusively objectifying the argument? As was illustrated by the analysis of second-personal reasons and Kant’s three maxims in message construction, it is but a small step from reasoning about others to communicating with others. Ways of reducing humans to causal objects when one should be communicating with them as equals are shunned by Kant’s starting point of FHE. Point 1 is an apt application of this stance. Do we treat the rhetor uttering some claim as similar to ourselves? If we do, we will attribute the same sort of meaning and value to their reasons as we expect others to do toward ours (such as the language constituting one’s critique). We trade in truth, not ideological forces, so the same assumption should ground our engagement with the argumentative other of the rhetor. The second point extends this in a corrective direction toward the approaches to ideological criticism addressed previously. Instead of seeing the rhetor’s speech as merely an object to be explained, the Kantian rhetorical critic will at least consider it as something to be analyzed in terms of argument and reason giving. In addition to its effects, does it bear acceptable claims and reasons for these claims? How does it speak to the rhetorical critic? Concerns over the strategic frame of the message, its context, and its potential effects can be examined, but they should not be the only things considered. Considering the truth of a rhetor’s claims is how we attribute dignity to that rhetor. Treating rhetors and their utterances only as causal objects is the path of giving them the worth of an object instead of the dignity of a human communicator. This will be a profitable line of response to what I anticipate will be the primary objection of an ideological critic to the Kantian view of criticism given here. The ideological

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critic might ask, are we to remain silent when some pernicious and awful text pushes its wrong-headed message on us, even if the rhetor is sincere? And probably the worst-case examples will be summoned to buttress such an objection—an enthusiastic sexist, Hitler’s stirring oratories, heavy-handed propaganda films produced by some unnamed government employee, and so forth. The Kantian view enunciated here would not advise us to ignore the ideological or causal dimensions of such utterances; it simply counsels us not to reduce the communicative encounter with others to merely causal factors. Consider the reasoning of a speech we react to as hateful and ideological, then dismiss it because of this reasoning. One can also consider how reading it as ideological might be useful, but one should never make the mistake of seeing it as merely an object moved by ideology. This is the objectification of utterances that agents—no matter how evil or unpalatable—take seriously, and we should extend at least minimal rational consideration to them and their authors. One of the difficult pills to swallow in Kantian ethics is that no evil act or intention results in agents forfeiting their humanity. They always have the chance to redeem themselves and choose to act morally in the next situation. And they must always be treated as intrinsically valuable, whether it is in war, in criminal proceedings, or in everyday debate. The “worst-case” examples brought up as part of this objection to Kantian ethical criticism force us to ask if we’re giving up on the humanity of the rhetors in question. Thus, Kantian ethical criticism asks us to be sympathetic to discursive opponents and their arguments as holding reasons that might sway us as much as they sway them. We can also examine their causal effects, but not in a fashion that excludes the sympathy inherent in considering them as reason-bearing moves in communication. How sympathetic to an opponent’s argument must a cosmopolitan critic be? The Kantian approach to rhetorical criticism would encourage a serious engagement with the message under consideration, not a simple partisan dismissal cloaked in a self-serving “broad-mindedness.” Kant’s version of broad-mindedness goes deeper than merely considering something with the purpose of rejecting it quickly. It is the fundamental humility that comes when agents know that their perspective is similar to others’ limited perspective and that their capacities or conclusions are not clearly better than others’ ability to reason or the conclusions they hold. As Kant puts it in his Anthropology, “Egoism can only be contrasted with pluralism, which is a frame of mind in which the self, instead of being enwrapped in itself as if it were the whole world, understands and behaves itself as a mere citizen of the

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world” (7:130). This is in direct contrast to what Kant later dubs as “dogmatism [Rechthaberei]” (7:281), or the self-conceited belief that one has the right answers and no changes can be made to such conclusions. The Kantian orientation to criticism in public discussion with others foregrounds a radical openness, with the most radical feature being an openness to being completely wrong even though you now believe that you are correct. This is the most difficult sort of openness to display, since self-love and our natural egoism provide formidable barriers to this self-threatening way of thinking and communicating. It is much easier to think of others as merely moved by harmful forces as opposed to the demands of thinking from their divergent points of view in an effort to be open to change or persuasion. These maxims all add up to produce what could be called the primary guideline of Kantian rhetorical criticism: a critic’s normative self-worth is revealed by the moral worth he or she attributes to the subjects of criticism, no matter how much he or she disagrees with them. With the full explication of Kant’s critical educative rhetoric, we reach the end of the overall goal of this project—to sympathetically elucidate the sort of rhetoric that Kant advocates (although confusedly) or would approve of if he were to focus more on matters of rhetorical theorizing. In its general sense, this is called educative rhetoric since it always seeks to preserve our capacities for autonomy at the individual level and move us as a community toward a systemic autonomy as equally valuable agents. The present chapter has added the sorts of argumentative encounters we see in everyday interaction to the employments of rhetoric in more pedagogical or religious settings. Here, argumentative practices of giving arguments and attending to the arguments of others are grouped under the general heading of critical educative rhetoric, with the production of arguments being analyzed as a form of critical rhetoric and the attending to argument being seen as an everyday form of rhetorical criticism. Both concern our intentions or orientations in communicating with others. The latter orientation focuses on criticism and is combined with the former orientation that centers on message construction and delivery. Both sides to the orientational coin of critical educative rhetoric are animated by FHE and its positing of humans as valuable ends in themselves. This chapter, beyond the previous two, has been more appropriative and constructive in method, but the theme of Kant’s system still exerts primary influence in all these ways of fleshing out his educative rhetoric—humans must think of themselves as playing a special role in nature, and we must take care as to how

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we value self and others in our activities. Here the activity of argument takes center stage. The communicative choices involved in addressing others and reacting to their messages can be guided by the moral law (namely, FHE and FUL) or could fail to value all agents equally or fail to act in ways that could be followed by all rational agents.

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conclusion: rhetorical experience and the promise of rhetorical practice

We could do worse to end this study of the traces of rhetorical practice in Kant’s detailed philosophy by returning to an idea he approvingly cited (but wrongly attributed to Cicero) in his Critique of the Power of Judgment—Quintilian’s emphasis of Cato’s “vir bonus dicendi peritus,” or the good person speaking well. According to one modern interpreter sensitive to the interplay between rhetoric and morality, Richard Lanham, this question of the relationship between rhetorical effectiveness and moral virtue is the primary contact point between rhetoric and philosophy. It informs and energizes the doubts and hopes that underlie rhetoric’s ethical standing. Lanham calls the question of whether rhetorical skill must correlate with moral virtue the “ ‘Q’ question in honor of its most famous non-answerer,” Quintilian. Lanham is referring to Quintilian’s rather famous begging of the question concerning the necessity of the relation between moral virtue and rhetorical prowess. Quintilian simply fails to show how the effective orator must be a virtuous person. Yet this question continues to haunt accounts that attempt to merge philosophical ruminations on virtue with the pragmatic skills of rhetoric. As we have seen from this discussion, Kant very much sides with what Lanham calls the “Weak Defense,” or the position that “there are two kinds of rhetoric, good and bad. The good kind is used in good causes, the bad kind in bad causes.” Lanham is a bit cynical about this defense, as he tethers the identification of good and bad rhetoric to predictable sides: my rhetoric is good; my opponent’s rhetoric

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is bad. He instead favors the “Strong Defense,” or the view that rhetorical interchange determines realities (including moral realities) in question, as opposed to merely conveying a preestablished truth or reality. Kant is clearly enough of a realist to worry about an idealist account of the power of language, but it should be clear from the preceding chapters that he isn’t simply identifying his native communicative practices as the good sort of rhetoric. Instead, Kant fits the pragmatic, effect-achieving practices of rhetoric into an orientational scheme; good rhetoric denotes those techniques of persuasion employed with the right intentions and value structures in place. Bad rhetoric, or manipulative rhetoric, is the range of communicative activities animated by an orientation that sees the self as the most important feature in the communicative equation. Thus, Kant answers the “‘Q’ question” with a nuanced reply—a moral agent may not necessarily be eloquent, but the most complete agent is perfected in pragmatic and moral ways. The complete agent is both a morally good person and a person who possesses the capacity to speak well.

Educative Rhetoric and the Promotion of Autonomy The sort of rhetoric I see Kant as advancing in a variety of arenas can be summed up as his educative rhetoric. The detailed reading of his educative rhetoric provided in this book will not satisfy everyone. Some will still insist on seeing Kant’s critical philosophy as totally excluding the rhetorical, with the category of the “rhetorical” probably still seen by some rhetorical scholars and philosophers as being opposed to the rational use of language. Yet there are choices in how one rationally presents and stylizes one’s case to others and in how one conceives of and values other agents in their discourse. There is no pure language of reason. Discussion and assertion involve communicative choices that govern and limit our persuasive pursuits. In this sense, choices of words, linguistic devices, ordering, and so forth are rhetorical. This study has demonstrated that one need not see rhetoric as opposed to reason. Indeed, philosophers ranging from Aristotle to Dewey make different decisions on how to address specific audiences. All make rhetorical decisions in the purpose and execution of their appeals to the judgment of others. Why not readjust our conceptual binaries and see if Kant’s thought features a positive role for communication and rhetoric? This study has attempted to show the viability of doing just this, starting with changing the division in Kant from rhetoric versus reason to one of manipulative rhetoric versus nonmanipulative rhetoric.

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Such a complex reading of the differing values of communication and persuasion has a prima facie validity given the various positive and negative utterances concerning rhetoric, communication, and speech noted in chapter 2. The category of manipulative rhetoric is filled with the practices of using language to thwart or sidestep the reason-based autonomy of audiences. Rhetors animating their utterances with such an orientation use people, in violation of the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself (FHE), as mere machines. Kant maligned this sort of rhetoric, and with justification. If rhetors value human autonomy, they must respect an audience’s freedom, even if it will be used to make unwise choices. Rhetors cannot make the choice for others, no matter how well intentioned. Alternatively, nonmanipulative rhetoric represents the sort of speech that noncoercively moves audiences and individuals to action and belief. Like human action guided by maxims in line with FHE, such rhetorical action does not thwart the power of an audience member’s reason; it appeals to reason in trying to convince this agent to agree with the rhetor’s point of view. Agreement is important for the nonmanipulative rhetor, but it is not the only aspect of value. The audience’s reason and autonomy are the qualities to be preserved and promoted in and through the rhetor’s persuasive appeals. Here is where the story gets more complicated. Grant that a rhetor is oriented to not thwart an audience member’s autonomy. What does the rhetor say, and how does he or she say it? What appeals does the rhetor make, and with what verbal and conceptual material? Being “reasonable” does not entail one determinate way of putting a case. This is precisely the point at which Kant’s rhetorical side becomes evident. He does give us hints about how we might speak to others in ideal circumstances and about what we might speak. The messages of rational beings, just because they are rational, do not come free of decisions about specific content, presentation, or organization. Kant’s rhetoric is a rhetoric of reason, and this implies a complex manner of speaking and address that respects the autonomy of other agents in form and content of presentation. The nonmanipulative rhetoric of reason that can be extracted from Kant is best labeled as educative rhetoric, since it serves as rhetorical means to noncoercively move others toward more beneficial, moralized, and virtuous states. It also enshrines the sort of moralized, nonselfish orientation in rhetors that Kant envisioned in all moral agents. Even though Kant did not write a treatise on rhetorical practices, one can see the outline of a rhetoric in his works that deal with the organization of people and states, his works discussing the aesthetic dimensions of life, and his works that discuss the progression of humans

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from social animals to moral agents. In this book I have argued that one can divide Kant’s advocated form of educative rhetoric into pedagogical, religious, and critical forms. This way of dividing Kant’s rhetoric also delineates different, but nonexclusive, realms of application. For instance, the use of examples might be very prevalent in teaching children moral reasoning, but it also could make an appearance in religious discussion (e.g., of some sacred example). More work can be performed on each of these forms or realms of application, of course. The point I hope to have established here, though, is that each of these practices emphasizes a reorienting use of the rhetorical experience of communicating individuals. As my reading of Kant’s moral and political theory shows, a vital (but by no means solitary) claim is that human virtue has to do with the state or intention of the agent in question. Such a focus can be read as highlighting the importance of the experience of willing out of respect for the moral law, as opposed to the different experience of acting out of concern for self-love or personal standing among social others. In a real sense, Kant’s ethics puts some amount of emphasis on the experience of agents in making their moral decisions that undergird their various actions. One of the key parts to moral experience is the specific maxim involved or, larger still, the enduring character or way of thinking (Denkungsart) that actions reveal in an agent’s character. Moral agents have one way of thinking and valuing in their willing of certain maxims of action; nonmoralized agents have a different way of thinking through the challenges of action. I have captured these dynamics in the concept of “orientation,” or one’s mental approach or disposition toward self and others and how one is to act in the world. If speaking is an action similar to any other action in Kant’s corpus, and actions can be done with certain intentional or orientational structures, then we see how Kant’s issue with rhetoric echoes his major concern—how can rhetorical action be moral and virtuous? What is unique about the category of communication in Kant is its bidirectionality. Moralized, cultivated agents address one another in certain nonmanipulative ways, and those ways of moralized address often are advocated as means of moral persuasion or educative effect. Herein lies an important claim in this project: as moral cultivation or virtue aims at a certain orientation in an agent, communication is one of the main ways Kant proposes to encourage this state. Talking to others in certain ways—be it by using examples in educative contexts, by religious narratives and symbols in the ethical community, or by certain Kantian ways of arguing—helps us don the desired, moralized orientation now and helps us and others instantiate it in the future. Certain ways of communicatively interact-

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ing with others becomes a means of moving individuals and groups toward the right sort of orientation toward self and other that Kant’s moral philosophy posits in the ideal of the kingdom of ends and the state of virtue. Communication becomes an answer to the problem of force I identify in Kant’s moral and political philosophy. How do we reorient agents away from prioritizing idiosyncratic desires stemming from self-love (including the social vices of jealousy and comparison with others) to valuing the systematic respect for all rational agents entailed by the moral law? Notice that Kant’s moral thought does not relegate human action to mindless rational behavior without individual pursuits and flair. Instead, it is a way of seeing Kant’s moral thought as asking us to value rational agency in the persons and plans of self and others in all our individualized pursuits. This is a difficult and imprecise endeavor. It is also a challenging one to affect in the real world, as valuing others’ autonomy often seems to entail letting them come to moralized states on their own. How do we move them toward the virtuous way of valuing others without making this decision for them? Making such a decision would be an artifact of our orientation or character, not theirs. It would be us being moral, not them instantiating a new cultivated outlook behind their external actions. It seems we must either force them to “freely” be moral (a standing contradiction) or simply wait for them to freely choose to follow the moral law. The value of communicative practice shines through at this point as a soft way to move individuals toward the virtuous. Coercive laws can force people to act in a certain manner, but upon closer inspection Kant’s allowable methods of convincing individuals to live up to their standing as moral beings tend to be communicative in nature. The methods involve creating certain experiences in the audience—be they students in a class, parishioners in a religious community, or arguers committed to reasoned discourse—that serve a cultivating function. The experience engendered by examples, religious symbols, certain ways of giving detached arguments, and so forth instantiates a certain way of relating to others and provides a significant amount of motivational force to that agent to continue down that path. Nothing from others can make the agent freely choose to value others as ends in themselves, and so on—that would be manipulation, be it physical or verbal. What such rhetorical experiences can do is to show agents moralized ways of reasoning, valuing, and interacting with others that hold a reason-satisfying value of their own. Since the states brought about by cultivating rhetorical experiences are accessible only by those experiencing them, communicative activity becomes a prime way to facilitate individuals’ understanding of moralized states and orientations, since these

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present experiences so easily and meaningfully engender thoughts, feelings, and ideas among its participants. Given the inherent motivational pull created by these rhetorical experiences, communicative activity becomes a rhetorical, persuasive way to move people toward the good. Since moralizing rhetorical experiences work with the free choice and judgment of those experiencing the states they create, they serve as a nonmanipulative, educative way to move individuals and groups toward further cultivated ways of setting ends and acting in regard to others. A certain type of rhetoric—educative rhetoric—becomes a way to understand a constellation of tactics in Kant’s mature work that exists to assist in moral cultivation.

Toward a Kantian Art of Rhetoric How would rhetors speak when practicing this form of Kantian rhetoric? What sort of inventional choices might rhetors make in constructing their messages? The preceding analysis has given us some clues to answer such questions, but here in the conclusion we can profitably speculate more on the practice of Kantian rhetoric. Kant did not write anything like an Art of Rhetoric, but we still may guess as to what kind of advice he might have given if he was so inclined. This is essentially what Jeffrey Walker does in reconstructing what Isocrates’ technê or rhetorical handbook might have looked like (even though we have only hints that such a thing existed). One way we could organize such a speculative endeavor would be around Aristotle’s way of conceiving rhetorical art as a sensitivity to pisteis, or the modes of proof available in any given situation. Aristotle, of course, groups the modes of proof into three, namely, ethos, pathos, and logos. Yet why would we want to place Kant in Aristotle’s camp or frame his rhetorical theory with Aristotle’s conceptual materials? An insightful critic might point toward Plato’s rejection of rhetoric in Gorgias as merely a habit or knack for flattering audiences. Is this not the same as the Kant who hated rhetoric as a means to move humans as mere machines? There, Socrates is depicted as waging a long discursive war against three defenders of rhetoric: Gorgias, Polus, and Callicles. Socrates maintains the position that rhetoric is mere flattery or a knack for making an audience think that one knows about what one speaks. Rhetoric is said to heavily feature appeals to the emotions of an audience and ultimately weaken the orator (through a dependence on the whims of a changeable audience). It is not what the philosopher ought to be doing. If one looks

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closely, however, one starts to see that Socrates does not dismiss all rhetoric or human communication. Around 502e Socrates begins to show his true target— the role of rhetoric as currently practiced. Shortly after that part of the dialogue, he makes the point that even though most orators of his day use rhetoric as a means of flattery of crowds as animated by base self-interest, one could conceive of rhetoric as “a beautiful thing, turning its efforts to the way the souls of the citizens would be the best they can possibly be, and struggling to say the best things, whether they’re more pleasing or more unpleasant to those who hear them.” This is the type of rhetor that cannot be found in Socrates’ Athens, it is said. This is the high standard that “true rhetoric” is to reach if it is to be educative. How does one reach this level of rhetorical skill? Between the Gorgias and the Phaedrus, Plato’s answer is simple: such an individual must have a knowledge of the condition of the addressee’s soul, and one must know how to use language to educatively move that soul to higher levels of perfection. This is one of the takeaway points of the Phaedrus, where Socrates clearly states that an artful rhetor is one who knows how to define the matter under discussion, one who knows “the nature of the soul, [and] must find out the class of speech adapted to each nature and must arrange and adorn his discourse accordingly, offering the complex soul elaborate and harmonious discourse, and simple talks to the simple soul.” This applies for both persuasion and instruction, according to Socrates. Why isn’t this the sort of rhetoric enunciated by Kant? He clearly shares the theme of diagnosing one’s audience and moving them to more cultivated states of soul or orientation. Yet there is a crucial difference—the true rhetoric portrayed in Plato’s dialogues largely abandons one-to-many forms of public address. The type of Socratic rhetoric enunciated in the Gorgias and the Phaedrus seems to preclude diagnosing the condition of soul in a mass of people and then adjusting one’s therapeutic dialogue to this variegated mass of souls. In other words, education and rhetoric that instructs seem to be very interpersonal endeavors, best done in the one-to-one dialogic format displayed in most of Plato’s works. This commitment also seems to ground Plato’s relative silence, in these dialogues and elsewhere, about what types of discourse are available for the different states of soul. Plato lacked a technê, or technical manual for good speaking, on such a reading, because the art of dialectic and interpersonal argument was all one really needed. While some might associate the antirhetorical Kant with such a reading of Plato, I am not convinced that Kant gives up on communicative action in public settings. Indeed, the arenas specified in the previous chapters (public argument, religion, and education)

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often imply both one-to-one and one-to-many interaction. And, opposite of Plato, Kant did devote energy to talking about specific communicative means suited to educative speaking. Aristotle famously differed from his mentor Plato by rendering rhetoric in more of an ethically neutral fashion; he portrayed rhetoric as an art that wasn’t devoted solely to the intimate interactions entailed by argument in its dialectic or eristic forms. Rhetoric in this account could be practiced in public forums such as courts, government deliberations, religious rituals, state ceremonies, and so forth. Thus, one could situate Kant as combining both Plato’s sensitivity to rhetoric as educative and Aristotle’s faith that rhetoric has usefulness in general types of public settings. These moves indicate that one usefully can see a Kantian educative rhetoric as an intellectual descendant of Plato’s true rhetoric and the Aristotelian version of rhetoric as an art of civic action. Kantian rhetoric implies a practice cognizant of (1) a moralized end (getting others to act as moralized agents) and (2) certain limiting conditions (viz., treating others as ends in themselves). These two features interact in rhetorical practice to produce guidelines for shaping others. Kantian rhetors want others to think in a certain expanded, rational sense (per FHE and FKE, for instance) but realize that they cannot trick such individuals into thinking this way. This might be one major difference from Aristotle’s emphasis (at some points) on the ethical neutrality of rhetoric—Kant would never simply describe how to bend an audience member in a certain way to get the desired judgment, as Aristotle seems to do in his extended discussion of appeals to emotion. Instead, the focus would be on inclining an agent in the direction of what is rational and fully autonomy protecting to do. Thus, Kant’s modes of persuasion might still fall on the three-fold typology that Aristotle provides, but with the goals and limitations set by important features of his moral philosophy (viz., FHE). Much can be said as to how the Kantian rhetor would actually speak. Here I end this project by offering some preliminary speculations as to how appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos might proceed on the grounds induced so far from Kant’s educative rhetoric. Aristotle’s way of analyzing the types of proof available is useful primarily because it is so comprehensive. It ranges over the speaker, the message, and the audience, as well as the interactions among these aspects in the persuasive situation. One crucial part to the equation, according to Aristotle, is the speaker’s character or the mode of proof of ethos. This is the portrayal of an individual’s character in the speech context, later subdivided by Aristotle into “good sense, good moral character, and goodwill.” What Aristotle empha-

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sizes is that speakers should use the artistic means under their control—the speech—in more ways than making a logical argument. Speakers use the speech to say, directly or indirectly, things about who they are and how they may treat the audience. Ethos is such a fundamental aspect to the speaking situation that Eugene Garver ties all the modes of proof effectively to this one; at the most basic level, “reasoning persuades because it is evidence of phronesis and character.” The speech can reveal whether this reasoner, the speaker, is not abusing or manipulating the one addressed. The skillful, but moralized, presence of practical reasoning (phronesis) is displayed in the speaker’s activity. This is very similar to Kant’s pragmatically skillful and moralized rhetor, save for Kant’s practical commitments to a guiding end outside of any specific context. This end outside of specific practices, of course, is the intrinsic dignity of the human being. A Kantian sense of ethos would foreground rhetorical practices that honor the transcendental (and hence, ever-present) value of human nature, both in the person of the speaker and in the audience. How might rhetors do this? The two direct ways are as follows: (1) showing charity and sympathy toward the audience at hand and (2) showing charity toward opposing positions or views. Kantian rhetors would be advised to always respect the audience, even in the difficult situation when they think that the audience is “illusioned” or at a lower cognitive level. Being illusioned does not prevent the audience from sensing they are being talked down to or even being used. To avoid this, speakers would choose language appropriate for the audience. Additionally, rhetors should be vigilant for signs that a specific audience does not understand the message (perhaps through observation of the audience’s nonverbal feedback). Speakers can also show sympathy with the audience, including showing signs of understanding the particular plight, situation, or needs of that audience. Showing that they truly care about an audience in their speech is a way to display ethos or the type of moralized character that inspires trust and respect. Showing that they also have a sympathetic view of the positions or people that disagree with their own take is an important step toward instantiating the rich respect that FHE commands in all situations. It is relatively easy for speakers to be very concerned with themselves, and audiences can see this in their speech when that message contrasts with the audience’s self-interest. Speakers can illustrate a moralized character in speeches by including sympathetic renderings of the views of others and even by acknowledging that they are advancing a position that may turn out to be wrong. This sense of displayed fallibilism in their rhetorical action is not the standard of today’s political

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discourse, say, but it still stands as the primary way to instantiate (communicatively) the equal respect inherent in Kantian moral theory. Chapter 6 details the specifics of a Kantian orientation toward the argumentative claims of self and other. Here, it is enough to point to specific actions that can instantiate such a practice—the word choice involved in describing the positions of opposing others, the time dedicated to making their case and to presenting the case of opposing others, statements of their own argumentative humility (“my argument may be wrong”), and so forth. Do they come across in their speech as strong, self-love driven rhetors who would use others as machines or tools to attain their own ends? Or do they come across as having the sort of moralized disposition that would treat the audience as equal in value to the rhetors themselves? The point I am extrapolating is that practicing Kantian rhetors are not only moral but also likely more effective, as rhetors satisfy an audience’s need to feel valued and respected. There is a better chance of moving the audience to positions in line with those with whom a moralized audience member would agree if the rhetors themselves appear morally disposed in their own rhetorical actions. Every rhetor is arguing or persuading about something. One of the questionable presuppositions of those presenting Kant as absolutely hostile to rhetoric is that he presumably would have people simply talk about ideas of reason or some other rarified material. The charge is that Kant wants everyone worth anything to speak as he does in his philosophical texts. I do not think this image is borne out by a thoughtful consideration of Kant’s life and works, however. In addition to his academic skirmishes, Kant clearly liked to debate a variety of topics, including issues of politics and everyday life with “common people” and military officers in jovial social settings. Kant clearly didn’t envision ordinary discussion sounding like his arguments in the Critique of Pure Reason, so it is unfair to portray him as opposed to argumentative content that involves everyday matters. The form of everyday argument also could be different than what goes on in philosophical writing. This is a point that Aristotle understood, but Socrates (in the Platonic dialogues) seemed not to have allowed. The best form of communication for Plato—dialectic— was what was used by philosophers in a variety of settings. There is the vague hint in the Gorgias that the true rhetor adapts to what is said to the state of the audience, but this is left unexplored in its Socratic form. Aristotle highlights the role that reasoning can take in rhetorical activity and points out its two forms—the enthymeme and example. The range and functioning of the latter is a point of much discussion, as noted in chapter 4 of this book. As Scott

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Consigny argues, enthymeme may be best understood as an incomplete argument that focuses on a certain subject matter: the realm of social reality that rhetors help to construct through their act of speaking. This is to be understood as a synthetic combination of two readings of Aristotle on rhetoric, with one interpretation seeing rhetoric as merely conveying preestablished content about a world already known and another reading seeing rhetoric as merely moving people to action. Kant is clearly not a social constructivist, but when we think deeply about his ethics, we see that social matters are difficult locations of extreme contestation. This is why he ends positive portrayals of duties of virtue in his Metaphysics of Morals with “casuistical questions” that undercut the simplicity and certainty of his presentation of the duties in question. In the religious community and political community, and even in pedagogical settings, Kantian rhetors engage the material of the social world, much of which is the matter of past and present discourse. This engagement includes how rhetors talk now about the matters at hand. Kantian rhetors construct arguments about this or that social matter; in a real sense, they and their audience determine such fungible social matters in the never-ending negotiation of figuring out what to think about such matters. Since final certainty always escapes us and the feelings of certainty brought on by argumentative self-love always tempts us, Kantian rhetors are wary of thinking one answer is right in some larger sense. It is the debate that matters, and how we conduct ourselves in that communicative interaction. The selection of argumentative content depends on the specific situation and issue, but some general guidance is available to Kantian rhetors. In their arguments, they should seek common ground for persuasion, since such common knowledge or ground facilitates the free acceptance of their message by that audience. If rhetors use what could be called “elite” or “specialized” sources of logical proof, the audience may have to simply accept their word that the presentation of such grounds is accurate, comprehensive, and decisive. Even if this is true, the procedural demands of Kant’s educative rhetoric are not met; the audience’s capacity for rationally guiding their activities and beliefs has not been promoted by mere agreement based on trust in the capacities of others (e.g., the rhetors). Kantian rhetors should expose the sources of their arguments as much as possible, allowing for inquiry into alternate uses (perhaps as evidence against their point) and conclusions. Common sources of proof often come from the shared experience of a given community. This experience is not wholly constructed or contingent but variable. For instance, a Kantian rhetor might find herself trying to persuade an

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audience to oppose a certain ballot proposition on the ground that the proposition doesn’t fully respect certain citizens as human agents. Perhaps this audience doesn’t already agree with the rhetor. Suppose further that this is a deep disagreement that will not be alleviated by simply stating the rhetor’s position against the ballot. How should rhetors construct and arrange their arguments? The speaker in this situation would be advised to speak to her audience in a way that displays the ethical respect the speaker has for the audience (ethos). The speaker also would do well to use sources of evidence that the audience could understand. Beyond these minimal requirements, how should the rhetor handle such logical grounds of proof (logos)? She ought to try to identify areas with which the audience may also agree in her attempt to convince them that this proposition fails to treat humans the way that they ought to be treated. Perhaps relevant stories (narrative examples) that humanize the people in question would be in order. Or perhaps the rhetor could appeal to past decisions the community has made that could guide or inspire action here. If the rhetor thinks that the audience could see the respect due to persons in this situation a bit differently, perhaps the rhetor could draw from recent experience or hypothetical first-person examples to show that a certain kind of treatment is disrespectful treatment. Above all, the Kantian rhetor would attempt to persuade by respecting the audience’s capacity to weigh the evidence (like the rhetor does) and come to a conclusion independent of any sensual incentives (such as those provided by self-love). In this sense, the Kantian reading of logos would highlight its procedural aspects—how arguments treat and empower all the individuals involved—in advising specific inventional moves or speech arrangement decisions in rhetorical activity. How speakers construct or present arguments says something about themselves and their audiences. Thus, Kantian educative rhetoric holds many similarities to the form of communicative ethics enunciated by Jürgen Habermas. His scheme of communicative rationality and its moral employment foregrounds a certain ideal of communicative interaction, one that emphasizes the inclusion of all opinions and a rejection of intimidation or the use of force. Additionally, it comes with the understanding that all claims are subject to criticism and that all participants are motivated by a search for mutual agreement and truth. Kant’s scheme is not opposed to these procedural characteristics. What Kant’s theory adds, however, is a rich notion of the good. This was described in chapter 3 of this present work, where Kant’s readings of autonomy and virtue at the individual level were discussed. Autonomy is a vital part of Kant’s rhetorical scheme, and it is the emphasis that moves

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Kant closer to the Platonic conception of true rhetoric as the cultivation of the souls of others. The Kantian rhetor takes substantive positions informed by the procedural and constitutive elements in Kant’s moral theory. For instance, the ideal of the kingdom of ends not only informs how one persuades (does the rhetor’s force preclude the autonomy of others in the audience?) but also provides an outcome state for which to aim in persuasive utterances. How can we move others toward moralized states (e.g., in their treatment of others) more in line with the ideal of equality in the kingdom of ends? Kant believed such moral ideals as those enshrined in the Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself (FHE) and the Formula of the Kingdom of Ends (FKE) are resident in all humans. Thus, rhetors can use such ideals in argumentative appeals to get audiences to think and act more in line with such ideals. They can illustrate (in their speech) a common revulsion to manipulation, say, to get the audience to eschew some maxim authorizing the manipulative treatment of others. As chapter 5 illustrates, they could even clothe such ideals in the narrative garb of religious or secular traditions to give it more purchase. The basic point is that Kantian rhetors would make an effort to respectfully include others and the positions of others in their argument; this concern also extends to equally accessible modes of proof for a position in front of some specific audience. One of the most vexing issues for the practice of rhetoric is the use of emotion. In Book I of the Rhetoric, Aristotle explicitly worries about bending the capacity for reasoning of one’s judge through emotional appeals (pathos), yet Book II provides much information that would be useful in altering the judge’s moods to favor a certain position. The question of how much emotion rhetors can evoke or use in pursuit of their persuasive ends also would be a vital question for Kantian educative rhetoric. Indeed, this may be what makes Kant’s preferred use of communication educative and not mere flattery or the causal effect of human action. Emotion allows various beneficial uses in rhetorical practice and is by no means merely undesirable. By what means can rhetors evoke emotion in their speeches? To what ends may it be used morally? To answer the first question, we refer again to the materials and practices covered in the previous chapters and gain a new explanation of the efficacy of these rhetorical materials. Examples and narrative, religious or secular, are captivating or effective in rhetorical pursuits by virtue of their liveliness or emotional connection to some audience. They narratively depict something we want to see in detail. The sort of narrative elements represented by symbols also evince this emotional characteristic; we care about that specific person or character more than most others. Thus, it is safe to say that the form of narrative is a

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vital way to evoke emotion on behalf of the Kantian rhetor’s persuasive activity. It involves an audience in a way that other grounds of proof (logical argument, say) does not. It can engage our interest in emotionally lively ways that a statement of mere facts might not. Narrative and symbols are also a commonly known ground of proof; we know the form of symbols and stories, we have preestablished emotional connections to such matters, and the rhetor can predictably see such means of proof in advance. An audience’s reaction to a narrative, for instance, has largely been set on the audience’s own terms, so the use of narrative is not wholly a matter of force on behalf of the rhetor’s ends. A large part of its efficacy comes from the audience buying into and attending to the experience of that narrative. As Aristotle points out in his discussion of pathos, narrative represents a way of inclining an audience to be more likely to notice certain things and to judge in certain ways. It is this last potential of appeals to pathos that particularly worries Kantian rhetors. The audience easily can be inclined too much. The question rhetors must ask is, am I achieving a persuasive end (agreement on issue x, say) in a way that promotes or preserves my audience’s capacity to freely consent to such matters? Or am I curtailing this capacity for informed self-direction, either in this decision (in regard to my message) or in regard to future decisions with which my audience may be faced? This is difficult to determine, as it often depends on inscrutable matters of audience capacity and their actual procedures of judgment. Yet rhetors can use at least two strategies in creating their speech that protects their audience from being abused through appeals to emotion. A first strategy is that they should not completely replace logical, enthymematic argument with emotion-producing examples and narratives. Particularity in reasoning about matters of some generality is a dangerous precedent to set. Even if rhetors believe their examples are true to the general nature of things, their arrangement and construction of arguments can protect both them and their audience from circumstances in which examples become overpowering in how they incline an audience to judge. If an audience wouldn’t judge in that manner in the absence of that emotional state, then one has grounds to worry that it is the causal mechanics of the emotion or passion that is affecting the reaction. On the other hand, emotion might be a good indicator of a moral problem; an action is decried as an injustice, say, and something would be amiss if one didn’t emotionally charge one’s language use commensurate with the action’s putative status as an injury to human dignity. A second strategy Kantian rhetors would follow is to avoid evoking emotional states in an audience that the rhetors themselves do not feel. This is related

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to the analysis of second-personal reasons given in the previous chapter. Reasons and grounds of proof need not be absolutely situation-independent or universal for Kant’s rhetors. Reasons simply need to be transitive among relevant agents in similar speaking and listening situations, including rhetors and their specific audience. If rhetors are not outraged by a certain policy proposal, they should not purposefully encourage the emotions associated with outrage in their audience. This is a case where a reason is seen as a reason by an audience, but only appears to be a reason for asserting speakers—they really do not find it as persuasive as their advocacy makes it seem. Such a move is probably motivated more from the effects that emotionalized ways of speaking about that policy would achieve through audience reaction than any truth that claims opposing that policy proposal contain. Kantian rhetors also would be concerned about treating the audience as mere machines or means, with the rhetors retaining their controlled and disciplined ability to determine their assent to beliefs and actions. An appeal to pathos should sharpen an audience’s attention to evidence, harm, or effects that matter; it should not distract the audience from elements that rhetors recognize as relevant but undesirable for their case. Again, we see the guiding hand of FHE as a device that limits rhetorical uses of pathos to those who preserve and promote an audience’s capacity for rational judgment now and in the future. We also see FHE as providing the content for critique and argument—it sharpens our sensitivity to how persons are being treated, and it is surely related to why we take infractions of this standard so seriously (and as emotionally charged) in everyday life. Much more could be said about the specific conduct of rhetors aiming to persuade an audience in Kant’s educative rhetoric, but this presentation hopefully has illustrated a certain speculative direction that could be followed. This start has been positioned between the extremes of Plato and Aristotle on the connection of ethics and rhetoric. In some ways, Kant combines the educative emphasis in rhetoric from Plato, including the role of the orientation of the souls involved in its practice, with the systematic concern with specific means evident in Aristotle (such as the shared means of example). This kind of hybrid approach to rhetoric in general, and rhetoric in Kant, offers much that is useful. It can easily complement contemporary accounts of rhetoric that want to recover the value of practice but retain room for social critique. For instance, Thomas Farrell’s recovery of an Aristotelian rhetoric of praxis is useful, but it lacks the orientational focus that the Kantian reading foregrounds. This is what allows us (like Kant) to talk of different classes of rhetoric, as opposed to claims such as “Rhetoric is the primary—indeed the only—humane

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manner for an argumentative culture to sustain public institutions that reflect on themselves, that learn, so to speak, from their own history.” Farrell is correct that certain types or uses of rhetoric fill this role, but more must be said specifically identifying these types or uses from other, less humane ways of talking within and through human institutions and practices. Kant’s ethical system gives us a way to do this, and it is one reason why we should continue to think about what his thought means—both in his historical context and as appropriatively applied to contemporary contexts. Put simply, Kant gives us a vocabulary we can use to understand the deepest moral problem of all, how to value ourselves and others while pursuing our worldly projects. In community settings, issues of how we value humans quickly connect to how we act and limit action. Kant gives us a flexible but useful ideal in his kingdom of ends and his reading of moral intention. It is this emphasis on intention or orientation behind any given action that I find as the key to unlocking Kant’s sense of educative rhetoric. This book has been a humble attempt to show one way of making the case that Kant didn’t leave rhetoric or communication out of his full moral system. The form of Kantian rhetoric extrapolated in this book has shown that there is a way for rhetorical activity to serve a cultivating or moralizing role in Kant’s moral philosophy. Agents act in the real world, as well as in Kant’s vision of the ideal community of rational agents. One very common form of action that has very real effects is our communication with others. The idealized kingdom of ends is not a realm of solitude or silence. Our communicative interactions can be just as harmful or purposive as any other activity we may undertake. Although many topics in Kant’s moral philosophy deserve continued investigation, this project has demonstrated that rhetoric should be added to that list. Sympathetic investigations of Kant on rhetorical activity will most likely center on moralized or nonmoralized orientations, as opposed to reading rhetoric as one class of observable behavior. Rhetorical activity—be it listening, arguing, praying, discussing religious symbols, or talking about a historical example—can help us along the path to becoming better moral agents. It does this by instantiating certain orientational endpoints in our present experience and rhetorical activities, as well as by noncoercively affecting such orientations in those to whom we speak. Virtue is always a struggle in Kant’s account, but, ideally, the means and end of the pursuit of virtue are not solitary. We need others for the success of our own projects, and we inevitably affect others along the way. The pursuit of the fullest freedom for ourselves will also imply a certain image of community around us. It is this focus on constructively using certain forms of com-

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munity that primes Kant’s philosophical thought as valuable for rhetorical inquiry, as driven as it is by issues of how we speak to others and how we build community through our words. Kant’s thought, when viewed with an emphasis on autonomy in individual and communal forms, holds a role for the rhetorical or the use of communicative means to actualize certain forms of interaction among agents of equal dignity, both now and in the future. The promise of rhetoric in Kant’s moral system is simple but stunning: when guided and employed with integrity and intelligence, our everyday rhetorical practices can cultivate both our autonomy and the autonomy of those around us.

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Notes introduction 1. Kant, “Thoughts on the Occasion.” 2. Frierson and Guyer, “Note on the Texts,” xlii. 3. Kuehn, Kant, 158–59. 4. For instance, the classic study of Kant’s aesthetics, Guyer, Claims of Taste, contains no indexed discussion of rhetoric. Two other important discussions of Kant’s aesthetics by philosophers—Guyer, Experience of Freedom, and Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste—also lack any mention of rhetoric. Even fine synoptic studies of Kant’s moral and political philosophy, such as Guyer, Nature and Freedom, do not engage the topic of rhetoric. Philip Rossi has written on communication in Kant, but his account tends to assume a negative or procedural account of communication (it should be free of coercion, be reason-driven, etc.). See his Social Authority of Reason. 5. Vaida, “Kant, Immanuel (1724–1804),” 373. 6. Abbott, “Morality of Rhetoric,” 274. 7. Vickers, In Defense of Rhetoric, 148. 8. Ibid., 201. 9. Ibid., 202. 10. Ibid., 203. 11. Ibid., 204. 12. Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion, 12. 13. Ibid., 86. 14. Ibid., 104. 15. Scholarship on Kant and rhetoric in rhetorical studies still has much room for development. The work started largely with Dostal, “Kant and Rhetoric”; historical accounts of Kant’s successors continue with Abbott, “Morality of Rhetoric.” Sympathetic reconstructions are mostly limited to S. Stroud, “Rhetoric and Moral Progress”; Gehrke, “Priority of Autonomy”; and Poulakos, “Depths of Rhetoric.” For the potential limitations of Gehrke’s account, see S. Stroud, “Kant on Community.” 16. For some comparable rereadings of familiar parts of Kant’s work, see Palmquist, Kant’s Critical Religion; Shell, Embodiment of Reason; and Svare, Body and Practice.

chapter 1 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7.

Kuehn, Kant, 220–21. Ibid., 129. Dostal, “Kant and Rhetoric,” 225. Kuehn, “Kant’s Critical Philosophy.” Ibid., 636. Ibid. Ibid., 640.

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8. Ibid., 641. 9. Kuehn, Kant, 277. 10. Ibid., 278. 11. Ibid. 12. Reich, “Kant and Greek Ethics (II.)”; see also Reich, “Kant and Greek Ethics (I.).” 13. DesJardins, “Terms of De Officiis.” 14. Kühn, “Kant and Cicero.” 15. Wood, “Supreme Principle of Morality,” 363–64. 16. Garsten, Saving Persuasion, 86. 17. May, “Cicero as Rhetorician.” 18. Kühn, “Kant and Cicero,” 274. 19. Cicero, On Duties, bk. 1, p. 6. 20. Kühn, “Kant and Cicero,” 274. 21. Ibid., 276. 22. Garve, Eigene Betrachtungen (translation mine). 23. Williams, “Christian Garve,” 174. 24. Ibid., 172. 25. Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment. 26. Van der Zande, “Image of Cicero.” 27. Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment, 191. 28. Ibid., 194. 29. Kant, Philosophical Correspondence, 101. 30. Oz-Salzberger, Translating the Enlightenment, 193. 31. Van der Zande, “Microscope of Experience.”

chapter 2 1. The translation of Kritik der Urteilskraft is found in Kant, Critique of the Power of Judgment. 2. Some important accounts of Kant’s analysis of taste and its relation to art and the aesthetic include Guyer, Claims of Taste, and Allison, Kant’s Theory of Taste. 3. Guyer, Experience of Freedom, recounts a variety of these ways. 4. Ibid., 315. 5. This reading of the analogy is given by Pillow, “Jupiter’s Eagle,” 195. 6. Goodreau, Role of the Sublime, argues that the sublime is an actual experience of our noumenal nature. This is a very provocative claim; what can be safely claimed of the sublime and the beautiful is that they involve the realms of both freedom and nature and use an experience in nature to imply certain conclusions about our supersensible nature. For an additional approach to the moral value of the sublime, see S. Stroud, “Living Large.” 7. This is the type of agent discussed in the next chapter’s account of the formulations of the categorical imperative in Groundwork II, especially the “Formula of Autonomy.” 8. Kant, Anthropology. This work was first published in 1798 and then issued in the form of a second edition in 1800. 9. Kant’s original emphases rendered in the translations as bold have been changed to italics for this text. 10. Gehrke, “Priority of Autonomy”; Rossi, “Social Authority of Reason”; Rossi, “Public Argument.” 11. Kant likely had access to Thiele’s 1741 Latin translation. Ezekiel Burridge also translated Locke’s work into Latin in 1701 as De intellectu humano.

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12. Locke, Human Understanding, 359. 13. Ibid., 372. 14. Ibid., 372–73. 15. Kant references Hugh Blair’s work at Anthropology 7:248, although he appears to misattribute a quotation to him there (see 519n). Blair’s major work, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, was originally published in 1783 and was translated in four volumes into German by Karl Gottfried Schreiter as Hugo Blair’s Vorlesungen über Rhetorik und schöne Wissenschaften between 1785 and 1789. 16. Blair, Hugo Blair’s Vorlesungen, 3:240. 17. Blair, Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 186; Blair, Hugo Blair’s Vorlesungen, 3:245. 18. Blair, Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 185. 19. Ibid., 186; Blair, Hugo Blair’s Vorlesungen, 3:245. 20. Blair, Rhetoric and Belles Lettres, 186. 21. Blair, Hugo Blair’s Vorlesungen, 3:247. 22. For more on Kant’s relation to Jenisch, see Kuehn, Kant, 275. For the German translation and commentary, see Jenisch, Philosophie der Rhetoric. 23. Campbell, Philosophy of Rhetoric, lxxiii. 24. It seems clear that Kant is not opposed to teaching rhetoric per se in schools. Kant revered the experimental school established by Johann Bernhard Basedow (1724–90)—the Philanthropinum—which included among its small staff a teacher of rhetoric. See Munzel, Kant’s Conception, 271. 25. Dostal, “Kant and Rhetoric,” 232. 26. Kant, “Answer to the Question.” 27. Kant, Religion. 28. Abbott, “Morality of Rhetoric,” 274. 29. Dostal, “Kant and Rhetoric,” 225–26. 30. The phrase “vir bonus dicendi peritus” is actually used in Quintilian’s Institutes of Oratory, bk. 12.1.1. Quintilian attributes it to Cato the Elder. 31. The translation of Kant’s Kritik der praktischen Vernunft used is Kant, Critique of Practical Reason. 32. Guyer, Experience of Freedom, 251, 268. 33. Munzel, Kant’s Conception, 56. 34. Ibid., 70. 35. The translation of Kant’s Grundlegung zur Metaphysic der Sitten used is Kant, Groundwork. 36. Penny, “Highest of All Arts.” chapter 3 1. The translation of Collins’s lecture notes used is found in Kant, Lectures on Ethics, 37–222. 2. Guyer, introduction to Kant’s “Groundwork,” xi. 3. Ibid., xliii. 4. See, for instance, Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought; Allison, Idealism and Freedom; and Guyer, Freedom, Law, and Happiness. 5. The reading of the three formulations of the categorical imperative is heavily indebted to Paul Guyer’s treatment in chapter 5 of his Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness. 6. For arguments concerning these two formations being separate instantiations of the categorical imperative, see Paton, Categorical Imperative. For arguments countering this position, see Guyer, Freedom, Law, and Happiness. I group them under the Formula of Universal Law for my purposes here.

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7. For more discussion on these two tests of universalization and contradiction, see Herman, Practice of Moral Judgment, chap. 7. 8. This point is argued forcefully in Korsgaard, Kingdom of Ends. See also Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought. 9. Guyer, Freedom, Law, and Happiness, 174; Pogge, “Categorical Imperative.” 10. Guyer’s translation of Groundwork 4:436, from Freedom, Law, and Happiness, 173. 11. Herman, Moral Literacy, 67. 12. Ibid., 69. 13. In this fashion of linking the cultivation of the community to that of its individuals, I extend the work of Shell, Limits of Autonomy. 14. Herman, Moral Literacy, 69. 15. See Groundwork 4:458, as well as the last chapter of this book. One must not see Kant’s concepts of these two “worlds” or standpoints as referring to two separate existing worlds of objects. For an analysis of this type of misreading of Kant’s perspectival noumenal and phenomenal distinction, see Allison, Idealism and Freedom, 18–20; see also Allison, Kant’s Transcendental Idealism. 16. Of course, some might accuse me of giving a “two-worlds” interpretation that ontologically separates human life into two realms—the noumenal and phenomenal. Such a move occurs only if one subscribes to talk of these two concepts in a theoretical sense. As is evident in the final chapter, I maintain (with Guyer) that Kant’s point of evoking such a distinction here is practical—it is not to describe the actual world(s), but to motivate us to conceive of ourselves and our powers in a certain way. 17. Guyer, “Proving Ourselves Free,” 128. 18. Translated in Kant, Religion, 39–216. 19. See my extended account of the Religion and the inclinations in S. Stroud, “Moral Cultivation.” 20. The translation of Metaphysic der Sitten used is found in Kant, Metaphysics of Morals. The first half of the work, the “Doctrine of Right,” was published approximately one year before the “Doctrine of Virtue” was released to the public. 21. The external use of freedom encompasses both actions and conditions (MM 6:230)— both of which can intrude on the exercise of the freedom of others. 22. Metaphysical Foundations, translated in Kant, Philosophy of Material Nature, 3–134. 23. Willaschek, “Which Imperatives for Right,” 82. 24. This focus seems to be a move made by Gehrke, “Priority of Autonomy.” Potential limitations to this account can be found in S. Stroud, “Kant on Community.” 25. This, of course, is one of Kant’s reasons in his Groundwork of why the concept of happiness is not fit to ground the moral law. It is too ambiguous and contradictory when individuals operationalize it. Thus, specific notions of happiness fail to be both universal and necessary on Kant’s account. See Groundwork I, especially 4:405. 26. For more on the debate concerning the relation between right and virtue in Kant’s philosophy, see Wood, “Final Form”; Pogge, “Is Kant’s Rechtslehre Comprehensive?”; Guyer, “Comments”; and Ludwig, “Comments.” 27. Guyer, “Comments,” 23. 28. Kant, “Toward Perpetual Peace.” 29. Ripstein, Force and Freedom, 9. 30. The translation of Vigilantius’s lecture notes used is found in Kant, Lectures on Ethics, 249–452. 31. Guyer, “Value of Reason,” 34–35. 32. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration, 117. 33. Hill, Autonomy and Self-Respect, 33.

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chapter 4 1. Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion, 86. 2. Ibid., 89. 3. The translation and arrangement of Über Pädagogik used is Kant, Lectures on Pedagogy. 4. Louden, Kant’s Human Being, 136. 5. Beck, “Kant on Education,” 22. 6. Ajzenstat, “Impotence of Reason,” 30. 7. Frankena, Three Historical Philosophers, 130. 8. See Guyer, Experience of Freedom, and S. Stroud, “Living Large.” 9. Louden, Kant’s Human Being, 136–37. 10. Beck, “Kant on Education”; Ajzenstat, “Impotence of Reason.” 11. Abbott, “Morality of Rhetoric.” 12. The translation of Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung? used is Kant, “Answer to the Question.” 13. For a related statement of this concern, see Louden, Kant’s Human Being, 92. 14. Ibid. 15. The translation of Kritik der reinen Vernunft used is Kant, Critique of Pure Reason. References are to the A/B edition pagination scheme. 16. Herman, “Training to Autonomy.” 17. Okshevsky, “Kant’s Catechism”; Fuhr, “Missing Voice.” 18. Munzel, Kant’s Conception, 292–95. 19. Herman, “Training to Autonomy”; Munzel, Kant’s Conception, 318–20. 20. Holly L. Wilson correctly stresses this point. Not only are these constituent parts to be developed, but they must be developed in the right proportions. See her analysis of this in Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology, 86–92. 21. Hauser, “Example in Aristotle’s Rhetoric,” 79. 22. Hauser, “Aristotle’s Example Revisited,” 179; Benoit, “On Aristotle’s Example,” 262. 23. Hauser, “Reply to Benoit,” 268. See also Benoit, “Aristotle’s Example.” 24. McCormick, “Mirrors for the Queen.” 25. Ibid., 284, 287. 26. Walker, “Difference,” 149. 27. Ibid. 28. Walker, Rhetoric and Poetics, 35. 29. See Aristotle, Complete Works of Aristotle, 183b–184a. 30. McCormick, “Mirrors for the Queen,” 284. 31. Ibid., 274. 32. Ibid., 289–90. 33. Ibid., 287. 34. Ibid. 35. Kirkwood, “Storytelling and Self-Confrontation.” 36. Ibid., 66. 37. Kirkwood, “Metaphors and Examples,” 431. 38. Kirkwood, “Rhetoric of Possibility,” 30–47; Kirkwood, “Metaphors and Examples,” 433. 39. Leff and Sachs, “Words,” 256. 40. I address similar experiential aspects to John Dewey’s reading of art and communication in S. Stroud, John Dewey. 41. Papillion, “Isocrates’ Techne,” 158. 42. Terrill, “Rhetorical Education,” 303. 43. Ibid., 296.

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44. Ibid., 298. 45. The letter (Dessau 1776) is translated in Louden, Anthropology, History, and Education, 98–105.

chapter 5 1. For more recent accounts of Kant’s religious thought, see Firestone and Jacobs, Defense of Kant’s Religion, and Firestone and Palmquist, New Philosophy of Religion. 2. Dostal, “Kant and Rhetoric,” 239. 3. The translation of Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft used is Kant, Religion. This translation is based on the second edition of the Religion, which was published in 1794 with the addition of a new preface and footnotes. 4. Louden, Kant’s Impure Ethics, 132. 5. Anderson-Gold, “God and Community”; Anderson-Gold, “Kant’s Ethical Commonwealth”; Anderson-Gold, Unnecessary Evil; Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought. 6. Rossi, “Final End”; Michalson, Problem of God. 7. For more on the social dimension of evil in the Religion, see Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought, 290; and Anderson-Gold, “God and Community.” For a different approach to the social nature of evil, consult Rossi, “War.” 8. I leave out many of the important issues entailed by the role of God in the possibility of achieving Kant’s ideal community. For more on Kant’s account of God, see Wood, Kant’s Rational Theology, and Michalson, Problem of God. See also Peters, Kant’s Philosophy of Hope, 101–2. Additionally, Palmquist, “Kant’s Religious Argument,” argues that these sections of the Religion constitute a religious argument for belief in the existence of God. 9. Wood, “Struggle Against Evil.” 10. Ibid., 503–5. 11. The translation of Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht used is Kant, “Idea for a Universal History.” 12. Notice that this view differs from Anderson-Gold’s conception of the ethical community as a locus of social or political reform. I would instead mark it as a primary institution to affect individual progress as a community member, with legal reform being a secondary effect of this process. For her argument, see Unnecessary Evil, 108. 13. For arguments concerning the necessity of religious community for the transition from right to a state of virtue, see Palmquist, “Kant’s Religious Argument.” 14. See Rossi, “Social Authority of Reason”; O’Neill, Constructions of Reason; and Moore, “Kant’s Ethical Community.” 15. Rossi, “Social Authority of Reason,” 681. 16. Rossi, “Public Argument.” 17. Ibid., 73. 18. Ibid., 73–74. 19. Ibid., 77, 81. 20. The evolution of the visible church is discussed in Palmquist, Kant’s Critical Religion, 165–88. 21. For instance, compare Rossi’s account to Cooke’s summary of Habermas’s formal-pragmatic presuppositions of communicative action (labeled in brackets): “Participants necessarily presuppose not only that all taking part are using the same linguistic expressions in the same way [consistency], that no relevant opinions have been suppressed or excluded [inclusivity], that no force is exerted except that of the better argument [noncoercion], and that everyone is motivated only by the desire for truth [truth orientation] but also that no validity claim is in

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principle exempt from the critical evaluation of the participants [criticism].” Cooke, Language and Reason, 34. 22. Wike, “Reply to Two Criticisms”; Herman, “Training to Autonomy.” 23. The translation of Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren? used is Kant, “What Does It Mean?” 24. For an account that begins to tie these together, see Stevenson, “Is There Any Hope?” 25. Kant makes it clear that there is only one true religion (based on reason), whereas there are a variety of faiths compatible with it (RBR 6:107–8). Thus, one could be a member of a range of faiths and still be a part of the community that Kant describes as the visible church. 26. Firestone and Jacobs, Defense of Kant’s “Religion,” advance the intriguing argument that Kant did not mean Jesus when he talked of the prototype of humanity. Instead, Kant meant something more along the lines of a Platonic ideal in the mind of God. This account has been valuable in provoking much discussion. For rejoinders to this position as well as others concerning reinterpreting Kant’s Religion, see Anderson, “Philosophical Significance”; Di Giovanni, “Chris L. Firestone”; Palmquist, “Cross-Examination”; and Michalson, “Defense of Not Defending.” For responses to such charges, see Firestone, “Response to Critics,” and Jacobs, “Reply to Critics.” As is apparent in this chapter, Kant wanted to use resources of historical religion in concert with moral concepts of reason in his quest for moral cultivation. Thus, I assume that the symbols of Jesus and other religious figures are referenced in Kant’s Religion when he talks about the merger of these ideals of reason in religious clothing. 27. There is nothing in Kant’s account that excludes other such personal symbols, of course. Kant’s point hinges on the personal symbol’s status as a dispositionally pure religious hero, as noted in Palmquist, Kant’s Critical Religion, 212. Other interesting candidates for such emulation may be the Buddha, Mahavira, or Confucius. The inner purity and outer harmony often attributed to such figures through the tales of their life conduct achieve the same sort of constitutive state as Kant finds in Jesus—an individual who is enough like us to provide a parallelism in anticipated actions but perfected enough to be seen as someone we are (currently) not. 28. Kant also evokes the “devil” or Satan in a recounted story at RBR 6:79n. 29. Palmquist, Kant’s Critical Religion, 211. 30. For instance, Kant highlights the tensions or contradictions in Paul on freedom and determinism (see CF 7:41). 31. For instance, see CF 7:49–50 and RBR 6:114. 32. Palmquist, “Philosophers,” 234; italics removed. 33. Kant, “Conjectural Beginnings.” 34. The connection of nakedness and Kant’s view of religious community also is noted by scholars of his Religion. The full title of that work (Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft) incorporates bloßen, a term that can be translated as either “bare” or “naked” in its adjectival modification of “reason.” See Shell, Limits of Autonomy, 204; and Palmquist, Kant’s Critical Religion, 118–19. For more on the role of the body in Kant’s work, see Shell, Embodiment of Reason. 35. Palmquist, Kant’s Critical Religion, 235. 36. Rossi, “Social Authority of Reason”; Rossi, “Public Argument.” 37. Guyer, “Value of Reason,” 28. 38. Wood, Kant’s Moral Religion, 202. 39. Despland, History and Religion, 214. 40. Louden notes just this tension between the Aufklärung writings of Kant and the religious ones; see Kant’s Impure Ethics, 129. Michalson notes a similar struggle, with Kant even doubting the actual supremacy of conscious autonomy in all cases, a possibility that Michalson notes as the quality that makes Religion such a tantalizing book for Kant studies; see Fallen Freedom, 140–42.

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41. Sharpling, “Rhetoric of Experience,” 173. 42. Lunde, “Rhetorical Enargeia.” 43. For an account of how such a practice plays out in the rhetoric of the Stoics (and those influenced by them), see S. Stroud, “William James.” 44. For an extended take on these uses, see Guyer, Experience of Freedom; S. Stroud, “Living Large”; Goodreau, Role of the Sublime; and S. Stroud, “Role of Beauty.” 45. Lunde, “Rhetorical Enargeia,” 54–55. 46. This dovetails nicely with my reading of Walter Fisher’s narrative paradigm and its relation to argument in S. Stroud, “Narrative as Argument.” One of my points there is that (in Indian texts at least) the experience of an auditor in relation to the text can serve as evidence for the veracity of the text’s claims. 47. Kant holds this point so strongly that he even uses the word “forced” in talking about how one can use scripture for moral ends (e.g., RBR 6:110). Note, however, that the use of force on a text is different from the use of force on a rational agent. In the case of religious texts, we are using them as means to improve the intrinsically valuable rational agents in the religious community. 48. Kant’s conception of Christianity is an idealized one, of course. He is fairly explicit that he seeks the moral core of Christianity, and this lies closer to the words of Jesus in the Gospels than it does in the actual practice and doctrine of church history (RBR 6:131). Demurs about actual religious practices and dysfunctions do not affect Kant’s basic point—there is a way to use religion for morally good, autonomy-enabling purposes. 49. Fisher, Human Communication as Narration. 50. Ibid., 64. 51. Ibid., 194. 52. For instance, see Despland, History and Religion, 211. 53. S. Stroud, “Ritual and Performative Force.” 54. Palmquist, “Critical Hermeneutic of Prayer,” 588. See also Palmquist, Kant’s Critical Religion. 55. Palmquist, “Critical Hermeneutic of Prayer,” 589. 56. Ibid., 597. 57. Brummett, Rhetorical Homologies, 2. 58. Ibid., 6. 59. Palmquist, “Critical Hermeneutic of Prayer,” 600. 60. One can see this sort of use of tradition and ritual in the Chinese tradition, specifically that of Confucianism. See the analysis of ritual and its cultivation of inner elements to human agents in Hall and Ames, Democracy of the Dead; Hagen, Philosophy of Xunzi; and S. Stroud, “Role of Aesthetic Experience.”

chapter 6 1. Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion, 86. 2. Arendt, Kant’s Political Philosophy. 3. Bryan Garsten, Saving Persuasion. 4. Ibid., 86. 5. Ibid., 87. 6. Ibid., 86. 7. Ibid., 104. 8. Ibid. 9. Ibid., 108. 10. Ibid.

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11. Ibid., 86. 12. Thus, the beautiful and sublime in nature are said to strike all humans similarly because they involve a situation beyond this specific training or language—in other words, they involve a bare situation that includes agents with comparable mental faculties of sense, understanding, and so forth. 13. Wood, “Humanity as an End.” 14. Ibid., 174–76; see also Korsgaard, Kingdom of Ends. 15. A similar reading of this argument appears in Guyer, “Proving Ourselves Free.” 16. Ibid., 124. 17. Ibid. 18. Ibid., 135. 19. Ercolini, “Kant’s Enlightenment Legacy,” 41. 20. Ibid., 3. 21. For an account of Kant’s aesthetic theory and its relation to communication, see Hove, “Communicative Implications,” 103–14. 22. Poulakos, “Depths of Rhetoric,” 346–47. 23. The case of using rhetoric to determine the minds of others—even if for “purposes that are in themselves legitimate and praiseworthy”—is forbidden in Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment 5:327. 24. For one take on what such a Kantian public looks like, consult O’Neill, Constructions of Reason. 25. Darwall, Second-Person Standpoint, 3. 26. Ibid., 8. 27. Korsgaard, Self-Constitution, 196. 28. Darwall, Second-Person Standpoint, 9. 29. Forster, Kant and Skepticism. 30. Gonzales, “Ciceronian Fallibilism,” 78. 31. Ibid., 70. 32. Ibid., 84. 33. The translation of the Jäsche Logic used is found in Kant, Lectures on Logic, 521–642. 34. For more on such received views of the Sophists and their relation to philosophy, see Schiappa, Protagoras and Logos, and Poulakos, Sophistical Rhetoric. 35. Chignell, “Belief in Kant,” 332–33. See also the critique of this sort of position in Pasternack, “Scope of Kantian Belief.” 36. Wander, “Third Persona.” 37. This Kantian point presages a phenomenon that is dealt with in contemporary debates known as selective exposure to partisan sources of information. For more on partisan habits of reasoning in their political guise, see N. Stroud, Niche News. 38. Black, “Second Persona.” 39. Ibid., 112. 40. Ibid. 41. Ibid., 113. 42. Wander, “Third Persona,” 204. 43. Ibid., 209. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid., 210. 46. Wander, “On Ideology,” 422. 47. Ibid. 48. McKerrow, “Critical Rhetoric,” 91. 49. Ibid., 93.

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50. Ibid., 92. 51. Ibid., 96. 52. For critiques of critical rhetoric, see Charland, “Finding a Horizon,” and Hariman, “Critical Rhetoric.” For a more recent challenge, consult S. Stroud, “Artful Criticism.” 53. Burke, Language as Symbolic Action, 6. 54. For views of ideology that attempt to break free of the deterministic cast of ideology, albeit by trekking into the unconscious and perhaps equally causal forms of dissolving human agency, see Gunn and Treat, “Zombie Trouble.” The Kantian orientation to agency developed in this chapter, driven by the unique and often misunderstood argument of Groundwork III, stands in stark contrast to any theoretical or causal way of exclusively understanding human agency. 55. Habermas, Moral Consciousness. 56. This line of reasoning might lead us to ask interesting questions about standard practices of professionalized ideological criticism in rhetorical studies. Is the way that we write ideological criticism palatable to “insiders,” or those who take those artifacts or utterances seriously? Or would they be offended by our account of what moves them and the utterances they value? Why don’t we write our arguments about the ideology present in some artifact with some notion of the various other ways to (justifiably) take that artifact? For instance, a critic could include a limitations section, or could acknowledge (or give) other possible, but mutually exclusive, readings of that same artifact. Or a critic could solicit the reaction and reasoning of an insider, one who takes the artifact in question as reason bearing, and include some account of this reaction in the professional act of criticism. All of these may be practical ways of doing justice to both an artifact’s reason-bearing and power-bearing capacities.

conclusion 1. This reference occurs at CJ 5:328n. 2. Lanham, Electronic Word, 155. 3. Ibid. 4. For instance, see the recent work on Kant’s anthropology and its connections to ethics and communication in Ercolini, “Ethics Improper.” 5. Walker, Genuine Teachers, 91–155. 6. Sachs, Plato Gorgias. 7. Ibid., 503a–b. 8. Plato, Phaedrus, 167. 9. An interesting analogue to this speculative use of Kant’s thought occurs in Palmquist, “Philosophers,” and the appendix authored to that essay by Palmquist and Mapplebeckpalmer. There, Kant’s thought is appropriatively applied to more modern forms of religious activity. 10. Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1378a. 11. Garver, Aristotle’s Rhetoric, 149. 12. See Kuehn, Kant. For Kant’s praise and practice of dinner conversation, see Melville, “Kant’s Dinner Party,” and Cohen, “Ultimate Kantian Experience.” 13. Consigny, “Aristotelian Rhetoric,” 286. For the positions to which Consigny is responding, see Holmberg, “Dialectical Rhetoric,” and Gaines, “Aristotle’s Rhetorical Rhetoric.” 14. Habermas, Moral Consciousness. 15. One sees a curious harmony between the Kantian emphasis on the internal features of moral judgment and a recent critique of the instructional use of ethical case studies in Pauly and Hutchison, “Moral Fables.” There, the authors fault approaches that evaluate ethical case studies

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based on consequences and argue that it is the quality of deliberation that is vital (and often ignored). Here, I am making a similar rhetorical point—that we ought to focus our discussions of the ethics of appeals to pathos on the quality of ethical deliberation fostered in an actual audience by our use of such appeals. 16. Farrell, Norms of Rhetorical Culture, 213.

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Wander, Philip C. “On Ideology: Second Thoughts.” Western Journal of Communication 75 (2011): 421–28. ———. “The Third Persona: An Ideological Turn in Rhetorical Theory.” Central States Speech Journal 35 (1984): 197–216. Wike, Victoria S. Kant on Happiness in Ethics. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994. ———. “A Reply to Two Criticisms Leveled Against Kant’s Treatment of Moral Education.” In Gerhardt, Horstmann, and Schumacher, Berliner Aufklärung, 3:364–69. Willaschek, Marcus. “Which Imperatives for Right? On the Non-prescriptive Character of Juridical Laws in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals.” In Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretative Essays, edited by Mark Timmons, 65–88. New York: Oxford University Press, 2002. Williams, Howard. “Christian Garve and Immanuel Kant: Theory and Practice in the German Enlightenment.” Enlightenment and Dissent 19 (2000): 171–92. Wilson, Holly L. Kant’s Pragmatic Anthropology: Its Origin, Meaning, and Critical Significance. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2006. Wood, Allen W. “The Final Form of Kant’s Practical Philosophy.” Supplement, Southern Journal of Philosophy 36 (1997): 1–20. ———. “Humanity as an End in Itself.” In Guyer, Kant’s “Groundwork,” 157–82. ———. Kant’s Ethical Thought. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1999. ———. Kant’s Moral Religion. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1970. ———. Kant’s Rational Theology. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1978. ———. “Religion, Ethical Community, and the Struggle Against Evil.” Faith and Philosophy 17 (2000): 498–511. ———. “The Supreme Principle of Morality.” In Guyer, Cambridge Companion to Kant, 342–80. Wood, Allen W., and George di Giovanni, trans. and ed. Religion and Rational Theology. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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Index Abbott, Don Paul, 5, 42 aesthetic ideas, 48–49, 55, 57 aesthetic judgment, 8, 28, 31–32, 34, 47, 207 Ajzenstat, Samuel, 108 Allison, Henry, 61 Anderson-Gold, Sharon, 141 Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, 59, 119, 121–22, 124, 210 Arendt, Hannah, 186–87 Aristotle, 2, 25, 105, 126–28, 234, 238, 240, 243, 245–47 art, 8, 29–30, 35–36, 49–50, 54, 133 audience, 166, 169, 185, 187–91, 209, 211–12, 215–19, 223, 242–47 autonomy, 10–11, 36, 40, 50, 53, 58–63, 67–77, 97–103, 107, 114, 128–32, 134, 146, 185, 217, 244–45 Basedow, Johan Bernhard, 136 beautiful, the. See beauty beauty, 28–35, 47, 49–50, 52, 56, 166, 178, 186 Beck, Lewis White, 108 belief, 7, 213, 225 Benoit, William, 126 Berkeley, George, 17 Black, Edwin, 218 Blair, Hugh, 38–39 Brummett, Barry, 178 Burke, Kenneth, 221 Campbell, George, 39–40 casuistical questions, 152, 169, 182, 243 catechism, 106, 121, 152 categorical imperative, 63, 89–90 character, 20, 110–11 Chignell, Andrew, 214 choice, 76–79, 81, 83, 85, 89, 94, 99, 104–5, 108, 142 Christianity, 4, 138, 154–57, 168, 170, 176–78, 181 church, 144–56, 158, 162–64, 167, 169–72 Cicero, 2, 9, 18–28, 38, 46, 165, 187, 213, 233

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clergy, 151–53, 157–58, 162–63 coercion, 59, 83–85, 90, 93–102, 105, 107, 136, 148–50, 237 communication, 8, 111, 162, 179, 182–83, 185, 187, 205–6, 209–10, 233, 236–37 community, 8, 68–70, 84–88, 91–92, 98, 103, 105, 140–47, 164, 168, 176–80, 248–49 Consigny, Scott, 242–43 conviction, 200–203, 208, 215 critical educative rhetoric, 12, 140, 184–85, 231–32, 236 critical rhetor, 208–16 critical rhetoric, 12, 185–86, 191, 203, 207, 214, 220 criticism. See rhetorical critic Critique of Practical Reason, 123–24, 164–65 Critique of Pure Reason, 14, 17, 18, 23–24, 71–73, 79, 96, 117, 120, 150, 165, 195, 203– 4, 209, 212, 242 Critique of the Power of Judgment, 4, 9, 16, 28–31, 33, 35–36, 39, 41–46, 50, 52–54, 111, 119, 154, 186, 205, 209–10, 233 Darwall, Stephen, 210–11 deception, 40–41, 50, 64, 119 declamation, 128 delivery, 208–9 Denkungsart, 51–53, 210, 236 desire, 33, 76, 174, 227, 237 Despland, Michel, 164 determinism, 196–200 dignity, 68, 99, 164, 194, 228–29, 246 discipline, 103–4, 108, 111 discussion, 147, 152–53, 168, 186, 214, 223, 231, 234 disinterest, 8, 10, 29, 35, 55, 173, 202–3, 212, 216–17, 226, 237 disposition. See orientation Doctrine of Right, 78, 80–88, 90–96 Doctrine of Virtue, 78, 80, 87–96, 149, 152 dogmatism. See partisanship Dostal, Robert J., 16, 40, 45, 138–39

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index duty, 21, 33, 35, 62–64, 77–78, 88–93, 96–98, 163 education, 3, 11, 37, 89, 102, 105–13 educative rhetoric, 9, 11–13, 15, 29, 44–46, 57, 110, 118–19, 125–37, 140, 170, 183–84, 204, 209, 231–38, 248 egoism, 22, 216, 227–28, 230–31 eloquence, 14–15, 26, 38, 41–43, 58, 60, 200–201, 208 enargeia, 12, 165–66 end-instantiating logic, 118, 133 enlightenment, 24–25, 40, 112 enthusiasm, 39, 115 enthymeme, 243, 246 epideictic, 2, 135 Ercolini, Gina, 200–201, 204 ethical community, 147–56, 163, 184 ethos, 238, 240–41, 244 evil, 11, 142–46, 155–56, 230 example, 11, 23–26, 30, 62, 106–7, 113–25, 153–54, 168, 183, 204, 237, 245–46 experiential rhetorical homology, 178 Farrell, Thomas, 247–48 fatalism, 197–99 Feder, Georg Friedrich Heinrich, 17–18, 23, 223 Fisher, Walter, 99–100, 168 Formula of Autonomy, 67–68, 70, 75, 94 Formula of Humanity as an End in Itself, 19, 66–67, 69, 81, 90, 92, 97, 100–101, 104, 111–12, 114, 139, 142, 161, 175, 179, 191–94, 199, 203, 217, 226, 228–29, 231–32, 235, 240–41, 245, 247 Formula of the Kingdom of Ends, 19, 69–70, 75, 91, 93–94, 100–101, 104, 112, 139, 142, 161, 163, 191, 207, 240, 245 Formula of Universal Law, 63–65, 67, 70, 112, 114, 139, 163, 175, 178, 232 Frankena, William K., 108 free expression, 192–93, 201–2, 204 free play, 29–31, 35–36, 47–48, 52–53, 159 free will, 6, 73, 98, 109, 122 freedom, 26, 30, 54, 58, 60, 68, 74, 78, 82, 99, 103, 106, 142, 151, 192, 195, 248 external, 8, 10, 78–80, 85–87 inner, 8, 10, 32–33, 78–80, 88–90, 98 Garsten, Bryan, 6, 19, 103–4, 186–89, 192, 203, 206 Garve, Christian, 9, 16, 18–27, 38, 60, 113, 223

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Garver, Eugene, 241 genius, 10, 55 Gesinnung, 51–52, 109, 139 gesture, 50 Giddens, Anthony, 220 God, 30, 68, 118, 150–51, 158–59, 165, 169–81 Gonzales, Catalina, 213 good will, 22, 61–62 Gorgias, 238, 242 Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, 10, 18–19, 21–22, 24–26, 31, 53, 60–75, 78–79, 100, 105, 107, 112, 116, 185, 193–94, 199, 201, 203, 222–23, 225 Guyer, Paul, 49, 60, 69–70, 91, 99, 164, 197–200, 223, 225 Habermas, Jürgen, 224, 244, 256 habit, 121–22, 135 Hamann, Johann Georg, 17–18 happiness, 3, 21–22, 26, 60, 77, 89, 96, 130–31, 150–51 Hauser, Gerard, 126–27 Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 23, 187 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 14–15, 159 Herman, Barbara, 70–71, 120 heteronomy, 68, 73–74 highest good, 150–51 Hill, Thomas, Jr., 101 homology, 177–78, 181 honor, 20, 21, 215 humanity, predisposition to, 124 Hume, David, 17 hypodeictic rhetoric, 135 hypotyposis, 28, 30–31, 35, 45, 48, 56, 119, 169, 178 idealism, 17 ideas of reason, 30, 48, 70, 72, 74 ideology, 210, 218–22, 224–30, 260 imitatio, 135–36 inclination, 34, 55, 60, 76–78, 88–89, 95, 97, 108–9, 111, 134, 174, 177, 181, 191, 196, 205 interpretation, 156–62, 167 invention, 208, 244 Isocrates, 135 Jenisch, Daniel, 39–40 Jesus, 114, 117–18, 154–57, 164, 168, 182, 257 judgment, 6, 11, 19–20, 29–32, 70, 92–93, 120–25, 129, 153–54, 166–68, 183, 186–87, 192, 214–16, 225

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index Kant, Immanuel academic career, 4 on death, 1–4 on rhetoric, 5–7, 9, 26, 240 relation to Christian Garve, 16–26 relation to Plato, 239–40, 245 rhetorical activity of, 3–4, 14, 23–25, 242 terms for rhetoric, 41–45, 240 kingdom of ends, 11, 61, 68, 70–72, 74–75, 93–96, 146, 153, 180–81, 186, 207 Kirkwood, William, 132 Korsgaard, Christine, 193, 210 Kuehn, Manfred, 17 Lanham, Richard, 233–34 Lectures on Pedagogy, 105, 107–13 Leff, Michael, 133 Locke, John, 37–38 logos, 238, 240, 244 Louden, Robert, 114, 140 Ludwig, Bernd, 91 Lunde, Ingunn, 165–66 lying, 64–65, 196–97, 201, 223 manipulation, 42, 44, 50, 52, 98–102, 104, 106, 113, 133, 139, 162, 179 manipulative rhetoric, 44, 46, 53, 56, 59, 99–102, 104, 106, 118–19, 201, 211–12, 233–35 Marx, Karl, 218 maxim, 51–53, 55, 62–63, 65, 66, 69, 71, 76–77, 88, 93, 98, 100, 104, 112, 144, 209 McCormick, Samuel, 127–37 McKerrow, Raymie, 220–21, 224 means, communicative, 8, 12, 15, 29, 37, 42, 46, 185–86, 248–49 Metaphysical Foundations of Natural Science, 84 Metaphysics of Morals, 7, 10, 18, 31, 60–61, 70–71, 75–92, 114–16, 153, 169, 204, 227, 243 moral cultivation, 8–9, 15, 30, 35, 41, 57, 60, 89, 95, 98, 102, 104–6, 108, 113, 122, 160, 174, 182, 193, 236–37, 248 moral law, 10, 32–35, 61–64, 67, 70, 72, 75, 78–79, 96, 127, 142, 171, 182, 194, 197, 236 moral value, 30, 44, 62–66, 69, 74, 92, 126, 166, 217, 231 Munzel, G. Felicitas, 51, 121 myth, 156–62, 165, 169, 182

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narrative, 42, 120–21, 126, 132, 140, 154–57, 167, 182, 245–46 nature, 33–34, 61, 64, 71–75, 78, 84–85, 88, 91–92, 195–96, 206, 218, 222 Newton, Isaac, 84 nonmanipulative rhetoric, 44, 47, 53–54, 56–57, 59, 101, 126, 134, 136–37, 173, 185, 203, 206, 234–35 noumena, 74, 79, 92, 94, 108–9 opinion, 214 orientation, 3, 9, 10, 35, 45–46, 48, 51–52, 55–58, 99–102, 107, 120, 139, 171, 175, 201, 206, 216, 236, 247 Oz-Salzberger, Fania, 24 Palmquist, Stephen, 158, 172, 174–75, 181 Papillion, Terry, 135 partisanship, 188, 203, 212, 214–15, 226–28, 230–31, 259 passion, 39, 60 pathos, 238, 240, 245–47 pedagogical educative rhetoric, 11, 140, 184, 236 perfection, 11, 97–98 personality, 124 persuasion, 4, 8, 11, 15, 26, 36, 38, 42, 49, 56, 59, 98, 101, 106, 126, 147, 164, 173, 188, 200–203, 211, 213–15, 243 Phaedrus, 128, 239 phenomena, 74, 76, 79, 92, 94, 108–9, 116, 221 Pillow, Kirk, 31 pisteis, 238 Plato, 5–7, 13, 128, 213, 239, 242, 247 pleasure, 21, 29, 32, 33, 49, 108 poetry, 4, 9, 28–29, 35–36, 47–49, 53–56 Pogge, Thomas, 69–70, 91 politics, 11, 24, 59, 80–87, 92, 104, 143–44, 185–88, 199 popular philosophers, 9, 23, 26–27, 113, 187 Poulakos, John, 207 prayer, 172–81 prejudice, 215–16 problem of force, 10, 97–98, 104, 107, 117, 139, 237 Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics, 17–18, 23 purposiveness, 29, 40, 47, 49–50, 54–55 Quintilian, 12, 46, 165, 233

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index reason, 7, 32, 34, 38, 73, 76, 95, 105, 107, 151–52, 159–61 Reich, Klaus, 19 Reinhold, Karl Leonhard, 75–76 Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, 7, 11, 42, 76–77, 109, 124, 134, 139–56, 158, 182, 192 religion, 4, 9, 56, 96, 138, 145–47, 151, 170–72, 181–83, 206 religious educative rhetoric, 12, 140, 167, 183–84, 236 respect, 21, 97, 105, 120, 123–24, 127, 131, 210, 227–28, 242 rhetoric appeals to audience and, 6–7, 23, 185, 187–91, 235, 244 art of persuasion and, 4–5, 7, 20, 40 manipulation and, 6, 9–10, 13, 16, 22, 36–38, 48–49, 98–102, 104, 150 poetry and, 35–37, 47, 50 pragmatic predisposition and, 125 terms for, 41, 185, 200 rhetorical critic, 12, 216–32, 260 rhetorical experience, 8, 132–33, 237–38, 258 rhetorical force, 102, 118, 128, 141, 145–47, 153, 162–63, 166–67, 189–91, 199 right, 10–11, 78–79, 80–87, 90–97, 105, 149, 186 Rink, Friedrich Theodor, 110 Ripstein, Arthur, 93 ritual, 11, 140–41, 169–72, 182, 206 Rossi, Philip, 141, 147–48, 153, 163 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, 143 Sachs, Andrew, 133 Satan, 155 schemata, 30, 119 schematism. See schemata second persona, 217, 219 second-personal reason, 210–11, 214–15 self-love, 21, 76, 89, 104, 112, 120, 124–25, 129, 141–47, 150, 170, 173, 175, 178, 182, 191, 196, 206, 216, 226–27, 231, 237, 243 sensus communis, 53, 186, 205, 210

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sermon, 56, 118–19, 180 Sidgwick, Henry, 75–76 skepticism, 213–14 skillfulness. See social prudence social prudence, 106, 111–13, 123, 125, 134, 208 Socrates, 117–18, 238–39 spirit, 55 standpoint, 72–73, 75, 93, 109, 194–201, 210, 254 stoicism, 20, 55, 166 style, 22, 121, 208 sublime, 20, 49, 52, 166, 252 summum bonum. See highest good symbol, 155–56, 162, 165–67, 169, 173, 178, 182, 237, 246, 257 taste, 29, 32, 34, 205 Terrill, Robert, 135 Theremin, Franz, 5 third persona, 219–20 tone, 50 understanding, 33, 36, 48 universality, 29, 33, 64, 144–45, 164, 187 unsocial sociability, 145–46, 206–7 Vaida, Clifford, 5 Vickers, Brian, 5 virtue, 10, 33–34, 61, 78–79, 88–97, 107, 119–20, 150, 248 vivid presentation, 9, 12, 28, 42, 44–45, 134, 154, 162, 165–66, 208 Von Funk, Johann Friedrich, 1–4 Walker, Jeffrey, 128, 238 Wander, Philip, 217, 222 will, 72, 76, 79, 88, 99 Willaschek, Marcus, 85 Wille. See will Willkür. See choice Wood, Allen, 16, 61, 91, 141, 145–46, 164, 181, 193 worldly prudence. See social prudence

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