Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization 3030664678, 9783030664671

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Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization

Ana Marta González

Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization

Ana Marta González

Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization

Ana Marta González Departamento de Filosofía Universidad de Navarra Pamplona, Spain

ISBN 978-3-030-66467-1    ISBN 978-3-030-66468-8 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66468-8 © The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover pattern © John Rawsterne/patternhead.com This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

This book brings together some texts I have written over the years on different dimensions of Kant’s conception of culture. Some of those texts have been previously published in Spanish, while others appear here for the first time. I want to thank Luis Manuel Valdés Villanueva, Montserrat Herrero López, and Roberto Rodríguez Aramayo, editors of Teorema, Anuario Filosófico and Isegoría, for granting me the permission to translate and include the original texts here. I also wish to thank Christa Byker for her help in the translation of the texts. Finally, I extend my gratitude also to Brendan George for his support and advice during the editing process for Palgrave. Pamplona November 15, 2020

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Abbreviations

Citations of Kant’s works will follow the usual standards: initials in German, followed by the volume and page of the Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften, edited by the Königlich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften: Anth. AA07: pp. Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view GMS, AA04: pp. Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals IaG, AA08: pp. Idea for a universal history KpV: AA05: pp. Critique of Practical Reason KrV, Critique of Pure Reason KU, AA05: pp. Critique of the Power of Judgment MAM, AA08: pp. Conjectural beginning of human history MS: AA06: pp. Metaphysics of Morals PÄD, AA09: pp. Lectures on pedagogy RzAnt, AA15: pp. Reflexionen zur Anthropologie Rel. AA06: pp. Religion within the boundaries of mere reason RZH, AA08: pp. Review to Herder’s Ideas SF, AA07: pp. Conflict of Faculties TP, AA08: pp. On the common saying: that may be correct in theory, but is of no use in practice VvRM, AA02: pp. Of the different races of human beings ZeF, AA08: pp. Perpetual Peace

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Contents

1 Kantian Insights into the Autonomy of Culture  1 References  6 2 Culture and Happiness in Kant  9 1 A Teleological Argument for Morality and Culture 11 2 Nature’s Ultimate End: Culture in the Critique of Judgment 13 3 The Highest Good as Creation’s Final End 17 4 The Conflict between Happiness and Culture: And its Possible Resolution 19 References 27 3 Kant’s Dual Approach to Culture 29 1 A Genetic Approach to Culture: Culture as Nature’s Ultimate End 31 2 A Practical Approach to Culture: The Duty of Improving One’s Nature 39 3 Man’s Unsociable Sociability 46 References 53 4 Kant on Civilization and Cultural Pluralism 55 1 Civilized and Uncivilized Peoples 56 2 Toward a Universal Civilization? 60 3 Civilization as the Unit of Kant’s Philosophy of History 63

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4 Civilization, Aesthetics and Morality 65 5 A Kantian Insight for Reconciling Universality and Diversity 67 6 Recovering the Moral Value of Historical Humanity 69 References 80 5 Kantian Philosophy as a Philosophy of Culture 83 1 Introduction 83 2 Fundamental Notes on the Explicit Concept of Culture 86 3 Another Look at Kant’s Genetic Approach to Culture 88 4 Moral Approach to Culture 92 5 Toward a Critical Concept of Culture 95 6 Conclusion 97 References 98 Index101

About the Author

Ana  Marta  González is Full Professor of Philosophy and is also a researcher of the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Navarra (Spain). Departing from Kant’s practical philosophy, her research has led her to explore the intersections between moral philosophy and social sciences. Among her most recent publications is the volume coedited with Alejandro G.  Vigo entitled Emotion, Identity. From Kant onwards (Duncker & Humblot, 2019), and several journal articles including “Value and Obligation Once More: A Critical Asessment of Robert Stern’s ‘Hybrid’ Kant” (Metaphilosophy, 2020), “Practical identity, obligation and sociality” (The Journal of Social Philosophy, 2018), “The Pending Revolution: Kant as a Moral Revolutionary” (Filosofija. Sociologija, 2017), “Emoción, sentimiento y pasion en Kant” (Trans-Form-Açao, 2015), “Kant on history” (Estudos Kantianos, 2014), “Kant’s philosophy of education. Between relational and systemic approaches,” (The Journal of Philosophy of Education, 2011).

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CHAPTER 1

Kantian Insights into the Autonomy of Culture

Abstract  This book joins the contemporary recovery of Kant’s empirical works to highlight the relevance of his concept of culture for understanding the sources of various characteristic modern dilemmas, such as the tension between culture and happiness, the morally ambivalent nature of cultural progress, or the existing conflicts between a factual plurality of cultures and the historical forces pressing toward a universal civilization. Keywords  Humanities • Social sciences • Cultural realm • Moral duty

Starting in the late 1990s, and especially since the publication of Robert Louden’s Kant’s Impure Ethics (2000), increasing interest has emerged around the empirical side of Kant’s ethics. Persuaded that it has much to say in terms of making his moral theory more plausible, such interest not only has led to an increase of scholarly work on the Metaphysics of Morals, but has also boosted further interest in previously neglected aspects of Kant’s philosophy. This is especially true of his writings on philosophy of history and his Anthropology (Zammito 2002), which, until then, had mostly been taken up by Russian and French scholars (Zakydalsky 1999; Philonenko 1986). At the same time, new editions of Kant’s works came out, making most of his texts widely available in various languages.1 This © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. M. González, Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66468-8_1

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has significantly contributed to the ever-growing academic production interested in researching Kant’s contributions to the empirical sciences. (González 2009; Cohen 2009; Sánchez Madrid 2014) While all this scholarly effort is rendering a more complete and accurate image of Kant’s ethical thought than the one available some decades ago, more work on the philosophy is still needed in order to ponder all the valuable insights that emerge from this new picture. This additional work would particularly benefit philosophy of culture and the epistemology of the humanities and social sciences. While Kant himself did not explicitly develop those fields, plenty of indications throughout his work provide us with proper footing for reconstructing the main lines of his philosophy of culture, as well as of his philosophical approach to what we today designate as the humanities and social sciences. This book joins the contemporary recovery of Kant’s empirical works to highlight the relevance of his concept of culture for understanding the sources of various characteristic modern dilemmas, such as the tension between culture and happiness, the morally ambivalent nature of cultural progress, or the existing conflicts between a factual plurality of cultures and the historical forces pressing toward a universal civilization. With the exception of a 1989 short note from Nathan Rotenstreich, which called attention to certain displacements of meaning implicit in Kant’s various references to culture (Rotenstreich 1989), there have been few attempts to elucidate Kant’s concept of culture. Apart from the articles republished in this book—two of which go back to 2004—and a monograph I published in 2011 under the title Culture as Mediation (González 2011), there are few works that deal directly with Kant’s concept of culture. This may be due to the fact that our contemporary understanding of culture partly contrasts with Kant’s use of the term. Thus, when we use the term “culture,” we do so through the lens of cultural anthropology, which has defined it as the values and meanings shared by a people; accordingly, we assume that culture involves social life. Yet, at first sight, Kant’s view of culture is not quite the same. Instead, Kant tends to define it merely in terms of “perfection of human nature,” and thus in obvious contrast to the notion of happiness, which he basically describes as satisfaction of human inclinations, or as an ideal of the imagination; in any case, his view is rather individualistic. Eventually, he goes on to distinguish several senses of culture according to the different capacities or powers to be perfected, but there too reference to the social dimension of culture that

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we deem central to our understanding of this concept is far from evident. Of course, to the extent that some human capacities cannot be perfected outside of society, Kant’s concept of culture would be related to society. Yet this connection, despite its relevance, is somewhat external to the very definition of culture since the duty of culture remains a duty that man has to himself [MS, AA06:444].However, if we read what Kant has to say about culture more carefully, we realize that he did not restrict this concept to the individual human being; thus, in some contexts, he speaks of being civilized and being cultivated interchangeably, a usage that clearly involves a reference to society. It is in this sense that he speaks of “civil society” or of “civilization,” in which he sees the perfection of the human species. This way of speaking indicates that the term “civilization” has, for Kant, a “normative” dimension, which becomes manifest whenever Kant distinguishes between “civilized” and “uncivilized peoples”—a language that reminds us of the theories developed by nineteenth century anthropologists under the influence of the evolutionist paradigm. While this language was soon replaced by Diffusionism and other cultural theories, it bears witness to the modern philosophies of history that emerged in the eighteenth century and that Kant’s own work touches on. Of course, stressing the normative dimension implicit in Kant’s concept of civilization should not obscure the fact that he sharply distinguishes between being civilized and being moralized, between culture and morality. One English translation of Kant’s Education (1900, 1960) speaks of “discretion” to signify the “worldly prudence” (Klugheit) required in social contexts, ultimately the “knowledge of the world” that Kant deems so important in his Anthropology. Yet, Kant always distinguishes this type of knowledge, this culture, from morality as such. In other words, even if he constitutes civilization in an ideal to be realized, he avoids equating civilization with morality. “We live in a time of disciplinary training, culture, and civilization, but not by any means in a time of moralization” [PÄD, AA09:451], writes Kant. Human beings and peoples ought to perfect themselves; they ought to cultivate themselves, and to the extent that this task cannot be carried out apart from society, they ought to civilize themselves. Nevertheless, there is no continuous line between culture or civilization and morality. Thus, although in the context of his Education, he speaks of “moral culture,” he also makes clear that “moral culture must be based on maxims, not on discipline” [PÄD, AA09:480]. Accordingly, in the Metaphysics of Morals, he will be able to speak of a duty of culture— the duty of perfecting one’s nature so as to become a useful member of the

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world [MS, AA06:446]—distinguishing it from the duty to perfect one’s own moral disposition [MS, AA06:391–393]. The insurmountable distance that Kant introduces between culture and morality can be experienced and interpreted in many ways; whether celebrated or resented, it represents the recognition of a relatively autonomous cultural realm. For this alone Kant deserves credit as one of the fathers of the philosophy of culture. The fact that Kant’s concept of culture is at the origin of many paradoxical developments (Fischer 2005), or that it can only be fully understood in light of his philosophy of history, does not constitute an argument against this recognition. Indeed, on the one hand, the concept of culture can be considered relatively apart from its role in the philosophy of history. On the other, alongside Kant’s explicit conception of culture as “perfection of human nature”—which applied to the human species can be equated with “civilization”—I think it is possible to find in his work an implicit conception of culture as a “reflection or projection of man’s subjectivity,” which makes room for the idea of a specific “human world” in between nature and freedom. From this perspective, it is rather Kant’s philosophy of history that becomes an expression of human subjectivity and, hence, a dimension of culture. From this perspective, the fact that Kant himself does not regard history, society or culture as an object of a new science the way he regards nature to be an object of physical science (Habermas 2019: 34–35) does not make him a secondary figure in the development of the human and social sciences. On the contrary, just like his explicit approaches to culture—in the context of his moral philosophy or his philosophy of history—allow for moral and sociological accounts interested in describing the laws of cultural development, his implicit concept of culture is also witness to the human desire for meaning involved in all hermeneutical effort. In this way, Kant’s philosophy of culture places itself right before the division between social and hermeneutic approaches to the cultural realm, not only from a chronological perspective, but also from a systematic one. Indeed, although the differentiation between the humanities and social sciences represents a later development, the struggle these sciences encountered in distinguishing themselves from moral philosophy requires viewing culture as a relatively autonomous realm, which corresponds to an exact rendering of Kant’s philosophy of human affairs.

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The present collection takes up a detailed analysis of Kant’s concept of culture from the perspective of its relationship with happiness, moral duty, and civilization, providing a meditated insight into what I have described as Kant’s implicit conception of culture. “Culture and Happiness in Kant,” originally published in the Spanish journal Teorema (González 2004a), describes the conflict between happiness and culture, which partially follows from the conflict between nature and reason. It tries to show how Kant’s philosophy of history can be approached as an attempt to construct an imaginary ideal that helps mitigate said conflict. “Kant’s Dual Approach to Culture,” also originally published in Spanish in Anuario Filosófico (González 2004b), analyzes two different approaches to the notion of culture that explicitly emerge from Kant’s texts. The first, which can be called “genetic,” presents culture almost as the result of a natural dialectic. The second one, that I label “practical” because it should be shaped by moral reason, regards culture as a duty for human beings. “Kant on Civilization and Cultural Pluralism” analyzes the plurality of cultures from the perspective of Kant’s concept of civilization. I argue that, despite having a certain normative character, Kant’s concept of civilization leaves room for a historical and provisional plurality of cultures. However, this admission of a plurality of cultures is made only from a pragmatic and provisional perspective. It does not involve a positive appraisal of the plurality of cultures as such. The chapter provides an explanation for this result in the division of practical reason. In “Kantian Philosophy as a Philosophy of Culture,” originally published in Spanish in Isegoría (González 2014), I take a step further and argue that Kant’s entire critique, as the projection of a subjectivity that looks to nature for a sign of man’s rational and moral destiny, can be considered cultural in a deeper sense. This is ultimately possible because of reason’s reflexivity, which seeks its own interests, and shapes the world accordingly. From this perspective, I suggest that Kant’s philosophy can be regarded as a philosophy of culture. Except for slight changes, mostly due to the translation, I have left untouched the original pieces. On the whole, the picture that emerges from this collection will provide the reader with a novel insight into some characteristic tensions afflicting the modern conscience at both the psychological and social levels. Thus, if by pointing to the contrast between happiness and culture Kant seems to somehow anticipate Freud, by pointing that cultural

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progress can be also the result of inequality and war, he makes clear the morally ambivalent condition of culture and, ultimately, its distinction from morality. While Kant thinks that the desire to avoid the suffering derived from war can lead human beings to foster civilization, that is, to civilize human nature at the social level and thus inspire cultural progress aligned with morality, the fracture between civilization and morality persists. As he teaches us, not every instance of progress constitutes moral progress. Viewed in light of his philosophy of history, Kant’s concept of civilization represents an ideal for humanity as a whole, for which cultural diversity seems to have mere instrumental and provisional value. A closer look at the way he approaches the relationship between the factual plurality of cultures and said normative ideal certainly sheds light on contemporary tensions between globalizing trends and nationalist reactions. More broadly, it represents an invitation to recognize the peculiar status of the human being, bound to experience the unconditional requirements of reason while inhabiting an empirical world.

Note 1. See the Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant by Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. In the Spanish speaking world, see a new edition of Kant’s Anthropology, based on José Gaos’ original translation: 2014. Antropología en sentido pragmatic. Tr. Granja, D.  Mª & Leyva, G.  M. & Storandt, P. México: FCE.

References Cohen, A. 2009. Kant and the Human Sciences: Biology, Anthropology and History. New York: Palgrave Macmillan. Fischer, M. 2005. Was wird aus der Kultur?—Kulturphilosophie nach Kant. In Nach Kant: Erbe und Kritik, ed. I. Kaplow, 136–158. Münster: Lit Verlag. González, A.M. 2004a. Cultura y felicidad en Kant. Teorema. Revista internacional de filosofía 23 (1–3): 215–232. ———. 2004b. La doble aproximación de Kant a la cultura. Anuario Filosófico 37/3 (80): 679–711. ———. 2009. Kant’s Contributions to Social Theory. Kant Studien 100 (1): 77–105. ———. 2011. Culture as Mediation: Kant on Nature, Culture, and Morality. Hildesheim & Zürich & New York: Georg Olms Verlag.

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———. 2014. La filosofía kantiana como filosofía de la cultura. Isegoría. Revista de filosofía moral y política 51: 691–708. https://doi.org/10.3989/ isegoria.2014.051.08. Habermas, J. 2019. Auch eine Geschichte der Philosophie, Band I. Die okzidentale Konstellation von Glauben und Wissen. Berlin: Suhrkamp. Kant, I. 1900. On Education. Translated by Annette Churton, Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. Publishers [A more recent edition: Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960]. ———. 1996. Metaphysics of Morals. English Edition and translated by Mary J. Gregor, with an introduction by Roger J. Sullivan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007. Lectures on Pedagogy. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günther Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 434–485. Translated by Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Louden, R. 2000. Kant’s Impure Ethics: From Rational Beings to Human Beings. New York: Oxford University Press. Philonenko, A. 1986. La Théorie kantienne de l’histoire. Paris: Vrin. Rotenstreich, N. 1989. Morality and Culture: A Note on Kant. History of Philosophy Quarterly 6 (3): 303–316. Sánchez Madrid, N. (ed.) 2014. Kant and the Empirical Sciences. Estudos Kantianos 2 (2): 11–14. Zakydalsky, T. (ed.) 1999. Editor’s Introduction, Russian Studies in Philosophy 38 (3): 4–6. https://doi.org/10.2753/RSP1061-196738034. Zammito, J.H. 2002. Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER 2

Culture and Happiness in Kant

Abstract  In this chapter, I describe the conflict between happiness and culture, as it appears in Kant’s texts,—almost as an unsolvable conflict, which partially follows from the contraposition between nature and reason. Next, I show how Kant’s philosophy of history may be approached as an attempt to construct an imaginary ideal, that can help us to mitigate that conflict. Keywords  Culture • Happiness • Nature • Practical reason • Ideal • Imagination Kant characterizes happiness as a necessary end, derived from human beings’ condition as rational, finite beings. It “is not an ideal of reason but of imagination, resting merely upon empirical grounds” [GMS, AA04: 418]. Happiness is not the will’s determining principle, which relies exclusively on moral law. However, because decisions are never made in a vacuum, happiness—as an imaginary ideal—provides a context or a background for moral decisions.

This chapter was first published in Spanish: González, A. M. 2004. Cultura y felicidad en Kant. Teorema. Revista internacional de filosofía. 23/1–3: 215–232. (www.unioviedo.es/Teorema). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. M. González, Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66468-8_2

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The notion of “ideal” includes that of totality. Moreover, the idea of an imaginary totality provides a backdrop from which the subject can make decisions. Thus, the Kantian moral subject—if he is a human subject— naturally searches for happiness, but, upon acting, is able to restrict his imaginary ideal’s satisfaction, in correspondence with the demands of moral law.1 Certainly, subordinating happiness to the moral law could become a very demanding moral ideal. In fact, according to Kant, as the fulfillment of a life plan designed by one’s imagination in accordance with particular inclinations, happiness not even corresponds well to culture, understood as human nature’s perfection. For Kant, both happiness and culture, to the extent that and how they relate to nature, are strictly extrinsic to morality, insofar as morality is defined by reference to pure reason. However, the way in which happiness and culture relate to nature varies, and, consequently, their relationship with morality also varies. Thus, Kant considers culture to be nature’s end and an intermediate step towards morality. By contrast, happiness refers to the natural appetite that must be limited by and subordinate to morality. Happiness and culture follow a different teleology: happiness points toward the natural self’s satisfaction, while culture points toward the moral self’s fulfillment, even when it never reaches this fulfillment. However, this diverse teleology, which ultimately rests on the differences between nature and reason, generates a conflict that underscores man’s historical situation: the more we cultivate our nature, the more we advance progress and civilization, the more we alienate ourselves from nature, and the more difficult it is for us to achieve happiness. If these were Kant’s last words, Kantianism would be nothing more than moralism. But if happiness is an imaginary ideal, as he suggests, and if this ideal serves to contextualize moral decisions, then it must be possible to mitigate such moralism. This chapter describes the conflict between happiness and culture as seen in many Kantian texts. But, as suggested above, those texts do not accurately summarize Kant’s final word on the matter. Without ignoring this conflict, the doctrinal Kant is coherent with his enlightened convictions as he proposes, against all outward appearances, a vision of history in which happiness is granted a marked place. And, though some may argue that this view is nothing more than an unattainable ideal, it is all that Kant seems to need for his moral ideal—packaged in a renewed imaginary ideal—to remain sheltered from cultural harshness.

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1   A Teleological Argument for Morality and Culture For a reader familiar with the Critique of Pure Reason’s vision of nature, references to natural teleology may seem surprising. However, Kant does this without issue, both in Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim, and in the first section of Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, where he develops a teleological argument to show that practical reason cannot be explained if human nature’s end is happiness. 1.1  Happiness Is Not the End of Man’s Nature The Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals argument is classical and simple: nature does nothing in vain; and nature has endowed man with practical reason. This can only be explained if we accept that happiness is not the end of man’s nature because, according to Kant, human beings can achieve happiness more easily through instinct than through reason. That is, if happiness were human nature’s end, there would be no need for practical reason, which would even become a hindrance. Possessing practical reason implies that, when acting, both ends and means are taken into consideration; this introduces more opportunities for error, and, accordingly, unhappiness.2 For Kant, possessing practical reason can only be explained by noting that it is a faculty capable of influencing the will, which in turn becomes goodwill. Thus, he states: “the true vocation of reason must be to produce a will that is good, not perhaps as a means to other purposes, but good in itself, for which reason was absolutely necessary” [GMS, AA04: 396]. Thus, Kant does not seek to reduce all good to the moral good; he also recognizes that goodwill is not “the sole and complete good.” He tries to show, rather, that reason is the only thing capable of rescuing the will from a purely instrumental logic; the only thing capable of rescuing the will from the scope of relative good and raising it to the level of absolute good. This is because reason is the source of all universality and necessity on both the theoretical and practical levels. Here, necessity is called “obligation” and the experience of obligation is the experience of duty, which, for Kant, is the will’s intrinsic goodness. This, in turn, is “the highest good and the condition of every other, even of all demands for happiness” [GMS, AA04: 396].

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The words above are a simple formulation of Kant’s theory of the Highest Good, whereby morality—“the cultivation of reason”—is the necessary condition in awaiting happiness. Kant maintains that this doctrine, whereby morality is happiness’ limit and condition, is “entirely consistent with the wisdom of nature.” Moreover, he states that reason could even reduce happiness’ demands to a minimum “without nature proceeding unpurposively in the matter,” simply “because reason, which cognizes its highest practical vocation in the establishment of a good will, in attaining this purpose is capable only of its own kind of satisfaction, namely from fulfilling an end which in turn only reason determines, even if this should be combined with many infringements upon the ends of inclination” [GMS, AA04: 396].3 1.2  Culture is Nature’s End in Man In Idea for a Universal History Kant develops a similar argument, but his purpose is more positive: he is not interested in dissuading the reader that nature’s end is happiness, but rather in showing that this end is found in the development of practical reason. However, unlike in GMS, this development does not appear to be immediately linked to morality, but rather to a series of cultural achievements. The argument begins with a teleological principle: Nature has willed that the human being should produce everything that goes beyond the mechanical arrangement of his animal existence entirely out of himself, and participate in no other happiness or perfection than that which he has procured for himself free from instinct through his own reason. [IaG, AA08: 19]

Thus, nature does not intend for man’s happiness to be purely passive, but rather an ongoing activity. However, Kant goes further: man should expect no more happiness than that which he obtains through his rational effort.4 As in GMS, this argument is based upon the classic corollaries found in the teleology of nature: “for nature does nothing superfluous and is not wasteful in the use of means to its ends” [IaG, AA08:19]. However, “since it gave the human being reason, and the freedom of the will grounded on it, that was already a clear indication of its aim in regard to that endowment. For he should now not be guided by instinct or cared for and

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instructed by innate knowledge; rather he should produce everything out of himself” [IaG, AA08:19]. Here, Kant specifies what he means by “everything,” saying, “the invention of his means of nourishment, his clothing, his external safety and defense (for which nature gave him neither the horns of the steer, nor the claws of the lion, nor the teeth of the dog, but merely his hands), all gratification that can make life agreeable, all his insight and prudence and even the generosity of his will, should be entirely his own work” [IaG, AA08:19]. However, unlike in GMS, instead of linking practical reason to moral obligation, he links it to culture. According to Kant, nature intended for man to seek all sorts of artifices and cultural dispositions for himself. With man’s poor natural endowment included, this corresponds to nature’s plan, which “wishes” for man to develop from the natural state to a civilized state on his own, thereby acquiring a nobler conception of himself.5 Thus, he concludes: “just as if it had been more concerned about his rational self-esteem than about his well-being” [IaG, AA08:20].6 In effect, man’s self-esteem is found more in the awareness that he is the principle of his own life than in his knowledge of being superbly endowed by nature. However, nature itself has prepared the way for man to develop an awareness of himself as an active being and to that extent, he should take pride in being the principle agent of his life. In other words, nature itself has allowed human beings to develop themselves freely. Culture is the first fruit of this development; it is not, however, the only development. According to Kant, man’s “rational self-esteem” is preparation for the moral sentiment of “respect.”7 Thus, Kant suggests that nature, through culture, prepares the way for moral conscience.

2   Nature’s Ultimate End: Culture in the Critique of Judgment However, all that nature can do in stimulating culture is preparing the ground for the exercise of moral reason, but it can never directly replace it or produce it. This is because, according to Kant, there is a chasm between nature and practical-moral reason, which only freedom can fill in.8 Thus, culture may be seen as an “ultimate end of nature,” but not as an automatic cause of morally correct action. In other words: the processes of civilization and moralization are not identical.

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However, unlike the divergence between morality and happiness, lack of identity between culture and morality does not prevent culture from aligning itself with nature’s moral end; culture can be seen as something that nature can further to facilitate morality’s development. Indeed, according to Kant, nature may in fact further two very different things: “either the kind of end that can be satisfied by the beneficence of nature itself, or (…) the aptitude and skill for all sorts of ends for which [man] can use nature (external and internal). The first end of nature would be the happiness, the second the culture of the human being” [KU, AA05: 430]. But Kant considers that only culture, understood as “skill for all sorts of ends,” [MS, AA06: 444] can be an effect of nature in line with man’s moral destiny. Happiness, understood as the satisfaction of natural desires, would rather constitute a hindrance, an obstacle to this end. Thus, we must assume that the satisfaction of our inclinations does not necessarily further our natural abilities.9 In all of the arguments in the third Critique, Kant presupposes man’s moral destiny, emphasizing that it can only but rest firmly on the factum of reason, on the fact of morality. If there is anything that cannot be doubted, for practical purposes, it is precisely this. However, such “practical purposes” also refer to our interpretation of nature, thus helping or hindering man’s attainment of his moral ends. From this perspective—that of the critical Kant—there are varying interpretations. The first supposes that nature favors the attainment of man’s moral vocation; the other presents difficulties precisely by conceiving of nature as oriented toward human happiness. 2.1  Why Happiness Cannot be Nature’s Ultimate End To prevent any misunderstanding, Kant states that happiness is neither a concept abstracted from instincts nor derived from animality, but rather is “a mere idea of a state to which he would make his instincts adequate under merely empirical conditions (which is impossible)” [KU, AA05: 430]. Kant understands that the idea of happiness, which unites the incentives of our sensible nature [see Rel, AA06: 37], is generated from the Understanding, as well as from the imagination and senses. However, because of its ultimate sensible origin, happiness is subject to many changes, and thus it is impossible to think of a universal law of nature that could advance mankind’s happiness as “the” ultimate end of nature.10 Kant understands that there are many ideas of happiness, which are as

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changing as human beings are, and that for every human being there is a different idea of happiness at each life stage.11 In addition, even if we were able to reduce the idea of happiness to the satisfaction of some genuine, natural necessity agreed upon by all, or even if we were able to provide for all of our needs, it would be impossible to reconcile “what the human being understands by happiness and what is in fact his own ultimate natural end”12—which is no other than culture. Here we encounter a radical discrepancy between happiness as a subjective concept and culture as an objective concept. Thus, there will always be an asymmetry between our needs and our ability to meet them because human nature “is not of the sort to call a halt anywhere in possession and enjoyment and to be satisfied” [KU, AA05: 430]. According to Kant, nature has not been particularly benevolent to human beings, who are subject to the same dangers and threats that other animals experience [see KU, AA05: 436]. Moreover, man’s nature makes it particularly difficult for him to achieve the happiness that Kant conceives of as an ideal of harmonious life; here, he specifically references “the conflict in the natural predispositions of the human being.” Man is responsible for many of the ills that afflict him, such as “the oppression of domination,” and “the barbarism of war;” moreover, he sometimes appears to work “hard for the destruction of his own species.” Thus, “even if the most beneficent nature outside of us had made the happiness of our species its end, that end would not be attained in a system of nature upon the earth, because the nature inside of us is not receptive to that” [KU, AA05: 430]. In Kant’s view, this lack of receptivity for happiness is internal to human beings. Kant does not refer here to the “radical evil” that he discusses at length in Religion; rather, he is referring to the lack of receptivity that “the nature inside of us” has toward happiness. Such lack of receptivity, according to Kant, originates in the fact that our nature is characterized precisely by “the conflict in the natural predispositions of the human being.” Kant summarizes this conflict in terms of “unsociable sociability,” an ambivalent characteristic that leads us to associate with similar people, just as quickly as it leads us to double down on our idiosyncrasy. Kant thinks that human nature exhibits a deep ambivalence: subject as it is to the natural law of antagonism,13 it opposes any natural plan of happiness, understood in terms of harmonious coexistence. This antagonism can be overcome only when a moral principle is involved, leading the rational and moral man to consider himself “the titular lord of nature,”

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whose vocation is “to be the ultimate end of nature.” Thus, we find an implied teleological consideration of nature, ordered toward its moral end; simultaneously, man is called to order nature toward this moral end. Certainly, the latter will always remain subject to a condition, namely that human beings have “the understanding and the will to give to nature and to himself a relation to an end that can be sufficient for itself independently of nature, which can thus be a final end, which, however, must not be sought in nature at all” [KU, AA05: 431]. Thus, in order to truly be nature’s end, man must apply his understanding and will to nature’s mechanism, so that it results in a state that is favorable to morality. Hence, when referring to culture as the “end of nature,” Kant has this state in mind. 2.2  Culture as Aptitude for All Sorts of Ends and Nature’s End According to Kant, nature’s ultimate end should be what nature can do to prepare man “for what he must himself do in order to be a final end;” this end, in turn, must distinguish itself “from all those ends the possibility of which depends upon conditions which can be expected only from nature” [KU, AA05: 431]. However, an end whose fulfillment simply depends on nature is another way of describing happiness, for which Kant now offers a different definition, namely “the sum of all the ends that are possible through nature outside and inside of the human being” [KU, AA05: 431]. Kant again insists that happiness cannot be nature’s ultimate end. This, he argues, is not just because the contingency of human inclinations makes satisfaction impossible, but also because such satisfaction, if it were possible, would make man “incapable of setting a final end for his own existence and of agreeing with that end” [KU, AA05: 431]. His argument reiterates the one found in the GMS: if nature had intended for man to be happy, man would not be endowed with practical reason. But in this case, the argument is flipped: because human beings have a moral destiny, nature’s ultimate end cannot be an obstacle to it. Thus, if our inclinations were completely satisfied, practical reason would be absurd.14 Therefore, happiness cannot be considered nature’s end because it does not prepare human beings for morality. Accordingly, since nature cannot further morality by itself, it must, through its own mechanism, help further the formal and subjective condition to set ends for oneself in general. In other words, “the aptitude for setting himself ends at all (independent from nature in his determination

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of ends)” [KU, AA05: 431]. This, precisely, is the broader definition of culture that Kant offers: “the production of the aptitude of a rational being for any ends in general (thus those of his freedom) is culture.” Culture, therefore, is nature’s ultimate end for the human species, as opposed to the “earthly happiness” or even “order and consensus in irrational nature outside him” [KU, AA05: 431], because in this case man simply would appear as nature’s instrument. However, far from being nature’s instrument, human beings, as rational beings, are not just the “ultimate end of nature,” but something more, namely, the “final end of creation.”

3   The Highest Good as Creation’s Final End Kant distinguishes between the “final end of nature” and “the final end of creation” that is, “the final end of the existence of a world.” Thus, while the expression “final end of nature” refers to that which can be advanced or promoted in man by nature alone (culture), the term “final end of creation” refers to man’s rational nature, that is, man as a moral being.15 It is implicit here that, for Kant, creation’s final end must necessarily reference morality. However, creation’s final end is not morality, pure and simple. Through the first two Critiques, we know that it refers to the Highest Good; that is, not just to morality, but also to happiness proportionate to morality. However, the radical discrepancy between nature’s teleology— whose end is culture—and happiness highlights the problem of how the Highest Good should be carried out. There is no clear, linear, path from one to the other. How, then, does the Highest Good appear? In the Critique of Practical Reason [KPV], Kant appears to place the Highest Good in the afterlife and to reserve the calculus of harmony between morality and happiness for God. However, the vision set forth in the Critique of Judgment [KU] is somewhat different. Although Kant refers to God in both works, he does so on different terms; as Andrews Reath shows, he makes this more compatible with the practical dimension which, for Kant, has the Highest Good (Reath 1988). Thus, in the KpV Kant affirms that there is a duty to further the Highest Good. Difficulty arises because all that we can directly promote is morality; however, how this morality can, in turn, further or cause happiness eludes us. Surely, we could simply wait for God to promote harmony in the afterlife, which Kant suggests in KPV. But this interpretation does not explain how furthering

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the Highest Good—and not just moral virtue—constitutes a moral duty since happiness, ultimately, is entrusted to God. The KU’s approach is different. In this work, Kant also takes on the fact that “given all of the capacities of our reason, it is impossible for us to represent these two requirements of the final end that is set for us by the moral law as both connected by merely natural causes and adequate to the idea of the final end as so conceived” [KU, AA05: 450]. Thus, he returns to God, although in a different way since the existence of God is presupposed in order to ensure the possibility of achieving “the final end in the world (a happiness of rational beings harmoniously coinciding with conformity to the moral law, as the highest and best thing in the world) by conformity to the moral law” [KU, AA05: 451]. Here, God does not directly carry out the Highest Good, but rather guarantees that the historical achievement of the Highest Good is possible; said achievement is thus man’s responsibility. Yet, how could man establish such a state, given the radical discrepancy between morality and happiness? Contrary to what it may seem, the answer to this question neither diminishes morality’s purity, nor mitigates the gap between happiness and morality, which is exasperated by culture’s development. However, Kant does not lack resources to tackle this problem. Before discussing them, however, the discrepancy between happiness and culture must be further detailed, thus showing that Kant’s response is not open to eudemonist interpretations, but rather favors an ascetic view of culture. This view is implicit when considering that culture, not happiness, orders nature toward morality. The Highest Good—an equilibrium between morality and happiness—can only instill itself in the world to the extent that human beings, following this teleology, distance themselves from happiness by cultivating their nature and committing to the moral ideal, which, according to Kant, is an unwavering part of the highest good. Morality is what separates human beings from other natural beings,16 and only to the extent that man abides by morality can he be considered creation’s final end. That is to say, as a purely natural being, man is not nature’s final end, nor is he so in as far as he is a being susceptible to happiness; rather, only as a moral being does man give meaning to the world’s existence: But if I ask about the final end of creation: Why must humans beings exist?, then the issue is about an objective supreme end, such as the highest reason

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would require for its creation. Now if one answers: so that beings should exist, whom that supreme cause can benefit, then one contradicts the condition to which the reason of a human being subjects even his inmost wish for happiness (namely its correspondence with his own internal moral legislation). This proves that happiness can only be a conditioned end, and that the human being can thus be the final end of creation only as a moral being. [KU, AA05: 436]17

According to Kant, happiness cannot be nature’s ultimate end, let alone creation’s final end. This point is clearly expressed in his review of a book written by Herder. In an obvious confrontation with this author (Herder believes that Providence’s first end is the individual’s happiness), Kant notes: Does the author really mean that if the happy inhabitants of Tahiti, never visited by more cultured nations, had been destined to live for thousands of centuries in their tranquil indolence, one could give a satisfying answer to the question why they exist at all, and whether it would not have been just as good to have this island populated with happy sheep and cattle as with human beings who are happy merely enjoying themselves? [RZH, AA08: 64]

Of course, one must recall the Kantian definition of happiness. Here, happiness has nothing to do with the Greek eudaimonia or the Christian beatitudo. It is not contemplation, neither in the Greek sense nor in the Christian sense. It is, rather, the satisfaction of one’s inclinations in accordance with an ideal presented by the imagination. In Kantian terms, happiness only has a place in the world if it is restricted and subject to compliance with the moral law.18

4   The Conflict between Happiness and Culture: And its Possible Resolution Because happiness cannot be considered nature’s ultimate end, the following question in Anthropology is particularly pressing: “Now the question here is (with or against Rousseau) whether the character of the human species, with respect to its natural predisposition, fares better in the crudity of its nature than with the arts of culture, where there is no end in sight?” [Anth, AA07: 323–324]

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4.1  The Conflict between Natural Man and Civilized Man in Providence’s Plan The problem that Anthropology raises presupposes the idea of “natural man,” as opposed to civilized man; this corresponds to the idea of a nature that, perfectible by sociability and culture, is inevitably doomed to distance itself from a kind of happiness that would seemingly be more attainable in a state of pure nature. Kant’s approach to this question derives from his own interpretation of Rousseau [MAM AA08: 116], who identified a conflict between nature and culture. Here, nature is understood as a purely physical nature, while culture is understood as a step backward from man’s (natural) destiny. However, Kant does not consider this thesis to be Rousseau’s last words on the subject; Rousseau, through educational and political theories, attempts to solve a far more complicated problem, namely: “this conflict between the striving of humanity toward its moral vocation, on the one side, and the unalterable following of the laws placed in its nature for the crude and animal condition, on the other side” [MAM AA08: 117].19 That is, Rousseau ultimately aspires to reconcile nature and culture. Kant fundamentally agrees with that view. For example, according to Kant the conflict between nature and culture is the reason for “all true ills that oppress human life, and all vices that dishonour it” [MAM AA08: 116–118]. This is because natural inclinations, despite being good in themselves, pertain to the realm of nature and cannot be extended to encompass culture’s ends; thus, culture does not enhance nature, but, in a way, contradicts it.20 However, Kant gives an optimistic twist to the conflict between instinctual nature and reason, suggesting that through it, and through the evils it creates, nature—here, another name for providence—comes to “force” a civilizing process, leading human beings to establish a republican constitution, advancing the ideal of perpetual peace. According to Kant, such a process would be slow; Sharon Anderson Gold (2001: 53–62) stresses that it will take generations.21 In any case, according to Kant, considering this ideal would serve to mitigate the nostalgia for “paradise lost.” Kant was well aware that the vision of a culture progressively negating man’s happiness could lead many to think that Providence had been unfair to human beings.22 Against this, in the distancing of reason from happiness, he hopes to see a sign that human life has an ulterior and more dignified end.23 As I have repeatedly

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pointed out, for Kant, the fact that reason is unable to lead us to happiness signifies its moral destiny.24 Thus, in his Review of Herder’s Ideas, he notes: “But what if the genuine end of providence were not this shadowy image of happiness, which each makes for himself, but rather the always proceeding and growing activity and culture that is put in play by it, whose greatest possible degree is only the product of a state constitution ordered in accordance with concepts of human right, and consequently something that can be a work of human beings themselves?” [RZH, AA08: 64] 4.2  Indirect Happiness The arguments that Kant uses in his attempt to justify Providence require that man look beyond himself and commit to the advancement of moral ends. These arguments are aimed at reinforcing a final situation: human beings have left the natural state and entered into a cultural state. Happiness has been definitively left behind and there is no sense in yearning for it.25 If man were to give in to this illusion, as Kant suggests, he would deceive himself; for, unlike non-rational animals, destiny or the human vocation requires leaving the natural state and engaging in a common project.26 However, this means that the particular individual must engage in such progress, disregarding his own happiness. Indeed, for Kant, history does not begin with human nature understood as instinct, but as a reason. Having said that, as the driving force of historical progress, irreducible to mere nature, reason does “not operate instinctively, but rather needs attempts, practice and instruction in order gradually to progress from one stage of insight to another” [IaG, AA08: 19]. In accordance with this, every little piece of progress toward knowledge and culture takes a long time and, since individual lives are brief, it necessarily requires many generations.27 According to Kant, human beings must be prepared to undertake such an effort: man must be able to align his life to the service of this rational project.28 But can a human being commit himself to such a rational ideal, subject as he is to so many sensible stimulations and weaknesses? It is precisely at this point that happiness’ definition as an imaginary ideal can be helpful. As Dieter Henrich (1992) once suggested, Kantian philosophy of history itself can be seen as a careful construction of such an ideal. One might add that it is a cultural construction that incorporates an ideal of happiness indeterminate enough so that everyone can imagine his or her own version.

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Indeed, as we have seen, creation’s final end is the Highest Good. For Kant, the Highest Good is a balance between morality and happiness. This happiness can never be achieved directly, but rather only through morality. It is not a good that almost automatically ensues when one works morally; rather, it is a good that results from all men’s moral commitment (Reath 1988): when each and every one commits to promoting the happiness of others. This is certainly one of the duties that Kant highlights in The Metaphysics of Morals, and we cannot lose sight of it when imaginatively constructing the moral ideal that Kant outlines in his considerations on the Kingdom of Ends. In its simplicity, this ideal outlines a moral space in which each person strives for the other’s happiness, completely unconcerned with his own, which, at the same time, others further. This is the practical way in which one might imagine the secular attainment of the Highest Good’s ideal. Accordingly, Kant did not just want to propose a rational-moral ideal; he would have also liked to propose an imaginary ideal capable of countering other visions of happiness, and, ultimately, capable of mobilizing human being’s moral energies during the present historical situation. Kant tried to critically substantiate this idea in KU, thus proposing an interpretation of nature that is compatible with the moral ideal as outlined in the first Critique. Whether or not this foundation is sufficient or if, conversely, it proves excessive, making morality superfluous, is, as we are all aware, a controversial question.

Notes 1. From this perspective, the moral evil that Kant shows in Religion would be nothing other than an inverted order of incentives. Thus, instead of subordinating happiness to the law, moral law becomes subordinate to happiness. 2. In this argument, Kant refers to an entirely different concept of happiness, which is neither Greek eudaimonia nor Christian beatitudo. His concept of happiness not only encompasses the satisfaction of natural tendencies— self-­preservation, well-being, and so on—but it also seemingly reduces theoretical reasoning to just another one of these tendencies. In effect, as stated in GMS, happiness is not man’s end because of theoretical reason’s presence, but rather because of practical reason’s presence. According to Kant, theoretical reason is compatible with an existence that seeks the satisfaction of one’s inclinations, including theoretical ones.

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3. It is interesting to note that in GMS, Kant speaks of “cultivation of reason” almost synonymously with morality. This is a reduction because, in Kantian terms, culture cannot be reduced to “cultivation of reason.” However, referring to morals in such a way helps one understand Kant’s position in KU. After developing an argument to show that human beings are not nature’s end, Kant speaks of culture—not just of morality—as nature’s end. Morality cannot be “produced” by nature, while culture, or a certain conception of culture, can be. 4. There is a compelling reason for this: the fact that man cannot achieve more happiness than that which he seeks by his own effort indirectly contributes to his self-esteem. In this way, it contributes to creating the idea of dignity, which is a moral idea, according to Kant. We can almost hear the echoes of the “worthiness to be happy” highlighted in the Critique of Pure Reason (KrV, A813/B841). 5. “In this it seems to have pleased nature to exercise its greatest frugality, and to have measured out its animal endowment so tightly, so precisely to the highest need of an initial existence, as though it willed that the human being, if he were someday to have laboured himself from the greatest crudity to the height of the greatest skillfulness, the inner perfection of his mode of thought, and (as far as possible on earth) thereby to happiness, may have only his own merit alone to thank for it; just as if it had been more concerned about his rational self-esteem than about his well-being. For in this course of human affairs there is a whole host of hardships that await the human being” [IaG, AA08: 20]. 6. See Akk, 15, Reflexionen zur Anthropologie, n. 1418, p. 618: “Der letzte Zwek der Natur ist die Grosste Vollkommenheit und Glückseeligkeit der Menschen, in so fern sie selbst davon die Urheber sind.” 7. “But it appears to have been no aim at all to nature that he should live well; but only that he should labour and work himself up so far that he might make himself worthy of well-being through his conduct of life” [IaG, AA08: 20]. 8. This statement must be qualified by considering the role of reflexive judgment. 9. Although one might be tempted to think that this approach follows from ignoring the role of Aristotle’s “habit” in perfecting one’s inclinations such consideration is not pertinent here, because we are dealing with a kind of psychology and metaphysics that is radically different from that of Aristotle. Unlike Aristotle, Kant sharply distinguishes between happiness and perfection, two dimensions, which remained united in the classical eudaimonia. Spaemann highlights that in the modern age (Spaemann 1989), this concept experienced a split between subjective elements (now identified with happiness) and objective aspects (now identified with perfection). Thus,

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although both dimensions belong to nature, and therefore, in Kantian terms, are extrinsic to morality, culture in the Kantian conception has more to do with objective perfection. 10. “He outlines this idea himself, and indeed, thanks to the involvement of his understanding with his imagination and his senses, in so many ways and with such frequent changes that even if nature were to be completely subjected to his will it could still assume no determinate universal and fixed law at all by means of which to correspond with this unstable concept and thus with the end that each arbitrarily sets for himself” [KU, AA05: 430, §83]. 11. This is the view found in Herder’s Ideas for the philosophy of the history of humanity and expressed in one of Kant’s commentaries. In it, Herder expressly says: “first the happiness of an animal, then of a child, then of a youth, and finally that of a man” [RZH, AA08: 64]. 12. “But even if we sought either to reduce this concept to the genuine natural need concerning which our species is in thoroughgoing self-consensus, or, alternatively, to increase as much as possible the skill for fulfilling ends that have been thought up, what the human being understands by happiness and what is in fact his own ultimate natural end (not an end of freedom) would still never be attained by him; for his nature is not of the sort to call a halt anywhere in possession and enjoyment and to be satisfied” [KU, AA05:430, §83]. 13. From this perspective, he writes, man is not merely a source of action, but also a “link in the chain of natural ends,” “a means for the preservation of the purposiveness in the mechanism of the other members” [KU, AA05: 431]. 14. This explains the meaning of an example he often mentioned, that is, the lives of South Sea inhabitants [see GMS, AA04: 423]. 15. “If the mere mechanism of nature is assumed as the basis for the explanation of its purposiveness, then one cannot ask why the things in the world exist; for on such an idealistic system, what is at issue is only the physical possibility of things (which for us to conceive of as ends would be mere sophistry, without any object); whether one assigns this form of things to chance or to blind necessity, in either case that question would be empty. But if we assume that the connection to ends in the world is real and assume that there is a special kind of causality for it, namely that of an intentionally acting cause, then we cannot stop at the question why things in the world (organized beings) have this or that form, or are placed by nature in relation to this or that other thing […] the final end cannot be an end that nature would be sufficient to produce in accordance with its idea, because it is unconditioned […]. Now we have in the world only a single sort of being whose causality is teleological, that is, aimed at ends and at the same time so constituted that the law in accordance with which they

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have to determine the ends is represented by themselves as unconditioned and independent of natural conditions, yet as necessary in itself. The being of this sort is the human being, though considered as noumenon: the only natural being in which we can nevertheless cognize, on the basis of its own constitution, a supersensible faculty (freedom) and even the law of the causality together with the object that it can set for itself as the highest end (the highest good in the world)” [KU, AA05: 434–5, §84]. 16. “Only in the human being, although in him only as a subject of morality, is unconditional legislation with regard to ends to be found, which therefore makes him alone capable of being a final end, to which the whole of nature is teleologically subordinated” [KU, AA05: 436]. 17. “Further, the commonest judgment of healthy human reason is in complete agreement with this, namely, that it is only as a moral being that the human being can be a final end of creation, if we but direct its judging to this question and give it occasion to investigate it. What does it help, one will ask, that this person has so much talent, even that he is very active with it, and thereby exercises a useful influence on the common weal, and also has a great value in relation to his own state of happiness as well as to the advantage of others, if he does not possess a good will? If one considers what is inside him, he is a contemptible object; and if creation is not to be entirely without a final end, then he, who as a human also belongs to it, must nevertheless, as an evil person, in a world under moral laws, be prepared, in accordance with them, to sacrifice his subjective end (of happiness), as the sole condition under which his existence can be congruent with the final end” [KU, AA05: 443, §86]. 18. “The human being can thus be the final end of creation only as a moral being; as far as his state is concerned, happiness is connected to it only as a consequence, in proportion to the correspondence with that end as the end of his existence” [KU, AA05: 436, §84]. 19. See the parallel text from Anthropology: “Rousseau wrote three works on the damage done to our species by 1. leaving nature for culture, which weakened our strength, 2. civilization, which caused inequality and mutual oppression, 3. presumed moralization, which brought about unnatural education and the deformation of our way of thinking.—These three works, I maintain, which present the state of nature as a state of innocence (a paradise guarded against our return by the gatekeeper with a fiery sword), should serve his Social Contract, Émile, and Savoyard Vicar only as a guiding thread for finding our way out of the labyrinth of evil with which our species has surrounded itself by its own fault.—Rousseau did not really want the human being to go back to the state of nature, but rather to look back at it from the stage where he now stands. He assumed that the human being is good by nature (as far as nature allows good to be transmitted), but good in a ­negative way; that is, he is not evil of his own accord and on

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purpose, but only in danger of being infected and ruined by evil or inept leaders and examples” [Anth, AA07: 327]. 20. See the examples that Kant cites in note [MAM AA08: 117]. It draws attention to the lack of harmony between man’s biological maturity and his civil maturity. Another of his favorite examples—one with which he surely identified—refers to the time required to develop science. A final example that Kant points out refers to the moral inequality between men, which he interpreted in terms of unequal rights. 21. Thus, in Anthropology: “The human being is destined by his reason to live in a society with 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” [Anth, AA07: 324–325]. 22. He states this while remembering Herder’s statements regarding Providence; Providence sets individual happiness above “the artificial final ends of large societies.” In his “Review,” Kant puts the following words into Herder’s mouth: “Providence thought beneficently when it gave preference to the easier happiness of individual human beings over the artificial final ends of large societies and as far as possible saved those precious state machines for later time”[RZH, AA08: 64]. 23. “And to this extent we must admit that the judgment of those who greatly moderate, and even reduce below zero, eulogies extolling the advantages that reason is supposed to procure for us with regard to the happiness and satisfaction of life is by no means surly or ungrateful to the goodness of the government of the world; we must admit, instead, that these judgments have as their convert basis the idea of another and far worthier purpose of one´s existence, to which therefore, and not to happiness, reason is properly destined, and to which, as supreme condition, the private purpose of the human being must for the most part defer” [GMS, AA04: 396]. 24. “Since reason is not sufficiently competent to guide the will surely with regard to its objects and the satisfaction of all our needs (which it to some extent even multiplies)—an end to which an implanted natural instinct would have led much more certainly; and since reason is nevertheless given to us as a practical faculty, that is, as one that is to influence the will; then, where nature has everywhere else gone to work purposively in distributing its capacities, the true vocation of reason must be to produce a will that is good, not perhaps as a means to other purposes, but good in itself, for which reason was absolutely necessary” [GMS, AA04: 396].

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25. “One certainly need not accept as his real opinion the hypochondriac (illhumored) portrayal which Rousseau paints of the human species, when it ventures out of the state of nature, for a recommendation to re-enter that state and return to the woods. By means of this picture he expressed our species´ difficulty in walking the path of continuous approximation to its destiny” [Anth, AA07: 326]. 26. As he pointed out in Anthropology, “it must be noted that with all other animals left to themselves, each individual reaches its complete destiny; however with the human being only the species, at best, reaches it” [Anth, AA07:324; IaG, AA08: 19]. According to Kant, this is a sign that the human species’ vocation or destiny cannot be decided apart from progress, that is, it cannot be separated from culture and history [Anth, AA07: 323–324]. 27. “Hence every human being would have to live exceedingly long in order to learn how he is to make a complete use of all his natural predispositions; or if nature has only set the term of his life as short (as has actually happened), then nature perhaps needs an immense series of generations, each of which transmits its enlightenment to the next, in order finally to proper its germs in our species to that stage of development which is completely suited to its aim” [IaG, AA08: 19]. 28. Although this view strongly suggests that the individual’s good should yield to the species’ good, it is important to note that the way in which Kant conceives of the species’ good—in terms of moral and cultural progress—is also the way in which he views the individual: as the individual nature’s perfection and moral pursuit. His purpose, therefore, is not to subordinate the individual to the species, but rather to illustrate the strong connection between the individual and species’ moral destiny. In other words, if you do not worry about the human race’s moral destiny, you will not fulfill your own destiny or vocation. This is because one’s vocation consists of morality, which demands human nature’s (and the species’) perfection.

References Anderson Gold, S. 2001. Unnecessary Evil. History and Moral Progress in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant. New York: State University of New York Press. Henrich, D. 1992. Aesthetic Judgment and the Moral Image of the World. Stanford: Eckart Foster Editorial. Kant, I. 1996. Metaphysics of Morals. English Edition and Translated by Mary J. Gregor, with an introduction by Roger J. Sullivan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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———. 1997a. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by Mary J.  Gregor, with an introduction by Christine M.  Korsgaard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997b. Critique of Practical Reason. English Edition and Translated by Mary J.  Gregor, with an introduction by Andrews Reath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998a. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (eds.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998b. Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. English Edition by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. English Edition: Paul Guyer. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007a. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. In Anthropology, History, and Education. English Edition by G.  Zöller and R. B. Louden, 121–159. Translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007b. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günther Zöller and Robert B.  Louden, 227–429. Trans. Robert B.  Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007c. Review of J. G. Herder’s Ideas for the Philosophy of Humanity. Parts I and 2 (1785). In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günther Zöller and Robert B.  Louden, 121–142. Translated by Allen Wood, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007d. Conjectural Beginnings of Human History. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 160–175. Translated by Allen Wood, Cambridge University Press. Reath, A. 1988. Two Conceptions of the Highest Good in Kant. Journal of the History of Philosophy 26 (4): 593–619. Spaemann, R. 1989. Glück und Wohlwollen. Versuch über Ethik. Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta.

CHAPTER 3

Kant’s Dual Approach to Culture

Abstract  This chapter explores one aspect of Kant’s crucial contribution to the philosophy of culture. It does so by analyzing two different approaches to the notion of culture, which are explicit in his work. The first, which may be called “genetic”, presents culture almost as a result of a natural dialectic. The second, called “practical”, regards culture as a task for the human being. Reason’s ability to compare and man’s unsocial sociability are highlighted as basic elements for the development of culture. Keywords  Nature • Moral conscience • Freedom • Education • Sociability • Moral vocation The century of Enlightenment trusted in the humanizing virtues of reason and was optimistic about the possibility of educating human nature so that humanity as a whole might move toward a freer and more civilized form of life, which many thought would also be happier.

This chapter was originally published in Spanish as González, A. M. 2004. La doble aproximación de Kant a la cultura. Anuario Filosófico. 37/3, 80: 679–711. (https://revistas.unav.edu/index.php/anuario-­filosofico/index). © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. M. González, Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66468-8_3

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Certainly, this century did not lack dissenting voices. Rousseau’s dissention is perhaps the best known in that he did not unreservedly share the optimism of his contemporaries. An original critic of his time, he saw expressions of natural man’s corruption in civilization and in the development of the arts and sciences. As Norbert Rath (1996: 47) notes, for Rousseau man was not corrupted by sin; rather, sin consisted in the very establishment of culture and its achievements. It is conceivable that this was not Rousseau’s last word on the topic: after his devastating diagnosis, his political and pedagogical theories can be seen as proposals to improve man’s historical situation. This is at least how Kant saw it; in his philosophy of history, he echoes the ambivalence with which Rousseau treated culture and, in general, the process of civilization, which was, on the one hand, the result of corruption and, on the other, a path to a new moral state. Kant, in his philosophy of history, intended to strengthen this hope and rejected a purely negative view of the process of civilization, presenting it, in addition, as an almost necessary complement to his moral philosophy at a time when he began to look longingly to the lost paradise. In what follows, I intend to reconstruct what can be called the Kantian philosophy of culture. It overlaps with his philosophy of history—which is a partially theoretical discipline—but also partly exceeds it precisely to the extent that Kant refers to culture—that is, man’s acquisition of it—in terms of duty, thus constituting it as an object of practical philosophy. This double perspective accounts for Kant’s dual approach to culture, which gives the title to this chapter: the first perspective is deemed genetic and treats culture as a unique product of nature’s dialectic or antagonism; the second perspective, which is properly practical, faces culture in terms of the task imposed on every human being to perfect his own natural endowment. There are epistemological and ontological similarities and differences between both perspectives. Further examining them would, among other things, deepen our understanding of judgment’s role in Kant’s practical philosophy. In this chapter, however, my only concern will be showing the potentialities of Kant’s dual approach to culture. Kant, once again, represents a privileged link between Enlightenment and romantic thought, while anticipating other contemporary approaches.

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1   A Genetic Approach to Culture: Culture as Nature’s Ultimate End Among Kant’s writings on the philosophy of history, his short essay entitled Conjectural beginning of human history offers a particularly rich account of culture’s dynamism. In it, Kant surprises us with a philosophical reading of Genesis. Allen Wood points out that he is being satiric about Herder’s own reading, included in his Ideas for the Philosophy of History of Humanity (Wood 1999: 233). As a matter of fact, Kant studied and outlined its first two parts. Certainly, Herder and Kant represent two conflicting visions regarding civilization’s origins, development, and end. Their positions ultimately point to two different anthropologies, as Zammito (2002) has argued, and such contrast is reflected in the authors’ diverse approaches to the book of Genesis. Thus, although neither treats it as revelation, Herder chooses a philological-exegetical approach, primarily seeing it as a work of art which founded a cultural tradition; by contrast, Kant reads it in more conceptual terms, making it clear from the beginning that, within this text, he seeks to engage in nothing more than “a mere pleasure trip.” It is worth noting that these different approaches are integral to Herder’s emphasis on language’s role for the development of culture. According to Herder (1989: 141), language develops through education and constitutes a link between reason and culture’s progress; but for Kant, culture is directly linked to the exercise of reason and freedom; there is almost no mention of “language”. Likewise, although both authors refer to culture as occurring after the fall, they do it in different terms: Herder interprets sin in terms of transgression, and Kant does so naturalistically. Nevertheless, Herder (1989: 419) argues that the artificial life that results from sin still constitutes a development of antecedent, natural dispositions, and thus sees insertion in a cultural tradition as necessary for humanity’s development (Rath 1996: 53). Kant, by contrast, interprets cultural progress in terms of humanity’s abandonment of nature, implicitly seeing humanity’s progress from the perspective of a progressive identification with morality’s universal ideals. Kant begins his essay assuming the existence of a fully developed human adult, capable of “standing and walking,” able to “speak, even discourse, that is, speak according to connected words and concepts” and therefore capable of thinking. However, this does not mean he is a cultural being. Unlike Herder (1989: 336), Kant assumes that man should previously

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acquire these skills himself because, otherwise—that is, if they were innate or from nature—they would be hereditary like many other natural aspects, which contradicts experience. Kant does not delve into the problem of language’s origin. Following Genesis almost by line, Kant also speaks of the couple responsible for the human race’s propagation. He argues that if nature had allowed for different lines of descent, human’s ultimate vocation would have been endangered very early on; according to Kant, this vocation is sociability [MAM, AA08: 110].1 Nature, however, has favored this end by placing the first couple “in a place secured against the attack of predators and richly provisioned by nature with all means of nourishment,” a place that satisfied their natural need without introducing conflict of any kind. Yet, after this preamble, describing the natural environment of the first couple, Kant intends to merely “consider the development of what is moral” of human actions [MAM, AA08: 111] which, he sustains, involves assuming the above mentioned skills; we see, then, that right from the outset Kant draws a clear distinction between the origin of skills such as walking or standing and even discursive capacity, on the one hand, and the origin of a moral conscience, on the other. However, new steps must still precede moral conscience’s definitive emergence. Specifically, Kant refers to abandoning one’s natural instinct as a guide for behavior. Such abandonment, in his view, is due to reason’s awakening, which he takes here as a general ability to draw comparisons. Kant’s explanation of this step involves a naturalistic interpretation of original sin: the act of taking the forbidden fruit is simply explained as having eaten a fruit that is unsuitable for our nature, thus disobeying our natural instinct. In other words, Kant interprets the Biblical account of sin as if it entailed a contradiction to our instinct, rather than a transgression of God’s command.2 In any case, according to Kant, this first choice was made possible by reason’s comparative ability. This ability appears linked to the increase of “knowledge (…) beyond the limits of the instinct,” which, in turn, increases desire’s scope, beyond simply natural desires. In effect, according to Kant, “it is a property of reason that with the assistance of the power of the imagination it can concoct desires not only without a natural drive directed to them by even contrary to it.” [MAM, AA08: 111] Kant refers to these desires as “concupiscence,” source of “a whole swarm of dispensable inclinations” that can be found at culture’s base.

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Thus, the abandonment of nature and the first step toward the cultural state rests on the development of reason’s comparative ability, which presented man with an “occasion for deserting the natural drive.” In line with his naturalistic interpretation of original sin, Kant justifies the emergence of reason’s comparative ability with the example of an animal—perhaps a snake—to whose nature tasting this fruit was “suited to such a gratification as was, on the contrary, disadvantageous to the human.” But, according to Kant, at the precise moment man abandoned his instincts’ guidance, he “discovered in himself a faculty of choosing for himself a way of living and not being bound to a single one, as other animals are” [MAM, AA08: 112]. These words allow us to glimpse at the notion of culture as a “way of living” originated and developed in freedom, and marked by plurality in its very concept. However, according to Kant, this discovery is ambivalent: “upon the momentary delight that this marked superiority might have awakened in him, anxiety and fright must have followed right away, concerning how he, who still did not know the hidden properties and remote effects of anything, should deal with this newly discovered faculty.” [MAM, AA08: 112] Kant summarizes man’s first experience of freedom with a powerful image: man “stood as it were, on the brink of an abyss” [MAM, AA08: 112]. Indeed, man’s new experience of freedom made him realize that his former protection was gone. Until then, nature had provided him with certain standards. From that moment on, however, an indefinite horizon of possibilities opened up before his eyes without the support of any guidance. After abandoning his natural instinct, man had to learn to live in freedom and discover different laws to govern his new way of life. Here, Kant is clearly referring to the moral law. However, man is still far from it because he has just begun to walk along culture’s path. The second, cultural, step toward morality requires considering the changes that reason’s awakening had on sexual instincts. According to Kant, reason did not delay in making its influence on this area of life known. As Christine M. Korsgaard (2009: 118) notes, we can consider Kant’s interpretation of this influence as an anticipation of Freud. Indeed, his interpretation of the famous fig leaf passage points to the sublimation of the sexual instincts as a way to explain romantic love. Thus, he says, “refusal was the first artifice for leading from the merely sensed stimulus over to ideal ones, from merely animal desire gradually over to love, and with the latter form the feeling of the merely agreeable over to the taste

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for beauty, in the beginning only in human beings but then, however, also in nature” [MAM, AA08: 112. See: KU, AA05: 210; § 5]. In addition to the aesthetic dimension, Kant similarly explains other matters—decency, for example, which is a characteristic of civilization. His explanation refers to qualities that emerged from the sublimation of some form of self-love, preparing the way for morality’s emergence: “propriety, an inclination by good conduct to influence others to 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 creature” [MAM, AA08: 113]. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant refers to decency—more precisely, to honor—as a sort of temporary morality that pulls man from his worst inclinations and, thus, has a civilizing, historical role. However, this temporary morality must immediately give primacy to true morality; otherwise its intrinsic duplicity runs the risk of corrupting man’s heart [KrV, A 748/B776]. Kant uses the word “culture” for the first time when referring to decency. Thus, he states “a small beginning, which, however, is epoch making, in that it gives an entirely new direction to the mode of thought— and is more important than the entire immeasurable series of extensions of culture that followed upon it” [MAM, AA08: 113]. We must not overlook the reference to “an entirely new direction to the mode of thought” (Denkungsart) in these words. From what we have seen thus far, it is possible to infer its most characteristic features. This mind-set brings into play the rational capacity to delay or suspend natural desires’ satisfaction, which, in turn, presupposes the ability to expand and redefine those same desires and goals. However, as we have just seen, Kant introduces a new consideration in reason’s process, namely: “an inclination by good conduct to influence others to respect for us (through the concealment of that which could incite low esteem).” Thus, this “entirely new direction to the mode of thought” necessarily refers to others, particularly to the opinion that others can form of us. Seemingly, for Kant, relying on others’ opinions to a high degree forms part of culture’s foundation [See: KU, AA05: 297; § 41]. This justifies his view that decency’s implicit advance is “more important than the entire immeasurable series of extensions of culture that followed upon it.” Many later cultural developments are related to reason’s third step toward morality, namely, “the deliberate expectation of the future.” In this case we are not dealing with reason combined with natural instinct, but rather with a reason that is able to move toward future goals. Thus, Kant

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references “the man, who had to nourish himself and his spouse, together with their future children, foresaw the ever-growing troubles of his labour;” he also indicates the woman who “foresaw with fear that which nature had subjected her sex , and additionally still those which the more powerful man would lay upon her;” lastly, he mentions how both “foresaw with fear that which, after a troubled life, lying in the background of the painting, befalls unavoidably all animals, to be sure, yet without worrying them—namely, death.” [MAM, AA08: 113] The image that Kant outlines by following Genesis is one of pain rather than of happiness. This is not the first time Kant separates reason and happiness. We need only recall the first section of the Groundwork where, in order to support his argument that our rational nature’s end is not happiness, but rather morality, Kant draws attention to the hatred of reason among those specifically working to cultivate it: “for,—he declares—after calculating all the advantages they draw—I do not say from the invention of all the arts of common luxury, but even from the sciences (which seem to them to be, at bottom, only a luxury of the understanding)—they find that they have in fact only brought more trouble upon themselves instead of gaining in happiness; and because of this they finally envy rather than despise the more common run of people, who are closer to the guidance of mere natural instinct and do not allow their reason much influence on their behaviour” [GMS, AA04: 396]. Having said that, the previous text does not just show the differences between reason and happiness; to the extent that Kant defines happiness as an ideal of the imagination, [GMS, AA04: 418–9] by which man can satisfy his particular inclinations, such ideal seems destined to challenge reason, which pursues universality both in culture and morality. It certainly would be destined to challenge reason if man could not change the imaginary ideal with his reason. At any rate, such change could take place only later. Human beings initially experience the contradiction between reason’s universality and the particularity of their desire for happiness. This contradiction is absolutely evident in the prospect of death. Reason’s universal vocation requires us to pursue culture and morality; we do this, to some extent, by ignoring the thought of our death. Such thinking, however, affects every human being’s life. Therefore, for each individual, culture presents itself as a life lived with a more or less conscious expectation of death. This represents a stimulus to come out of oneself, pausing one’s thought regarding death, to engage in advancing reason’s3 universal ends. While Herder (1989: 342) stresses

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cultural traditions’ humanizing role and refuses to give up the ideal of individual happiness, Kant unintentionally emphasizes what we might call culture’s ascetic element. This ascetic view is paradoxical, as we can see in Groundwork, because it favors the advancement of reason’s universal ends over individual happiness. If it were to come down to it, though, this vision should save a person disappointed in his expectations about ​​happiness from the temptation to commit suicide [GMS, AA04: 422]. In summary, to the extent that man is a rational being, he is destined to abandon his solely natural life and commence a life of freedom. Moreover, because he is rational, he is able to refuse instincts’ immediacy and develop a more refined nature, socially reinforcing his own sense of respect. Being a rational being entails a conscious expectation of death. According to Kant, these are reason’s effects on our nature, as well as culture’s roots. Assuming that actual human existence begins with the use of reason, it must be a cultural existence. However, man experiences his existence in a division between his moral self, identified with reason’s aims, and his empirical self, which takes pleasure in the imaginary ideal, that is, happiness. According to Kant, culture bridges the gap between these two and it is in culture where one experiences beauty. Thus, in the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant argues that beauty and art symbolically link nature and freedom, writing, “Taste as it were makes possible the transition from sensible charm to the habitual moral interest without too violent a leap” [KU, AA05: 354, § 59]. This idea, which Schiller (1989) would use to his advantage in later works, allows us to connect Kant’s philosophy of culture with his aesthetics. Without cultivating one’s taste, the transition between animal nature and humanity (which fully corresponds with culture) could be experienced as an incurable wound linked to reason itself or to the fact of freedom. Neither beauty nor art can completely heal such a wound, as the symbol does not refer to overcoming such a division. Consequently—as Kierkegaard put it—man cannot remain in the aesthetic stage. According to Kant, he must take another step toward humanity, which goes beyond a strict consideration of culture. Kant is obviously thinking of the moral conscience’s emergence, which we uniquely experience in our judgment of the sublime in nature. In effect, although culture is already required to make such a judgment,4 and culture is its condition of possibility, this—as Kant argues in the third Critique—does not mean that the judgment of the sublime is “first generated by culture and so to speak introduced into society merely as a matter of convention; rather it has its foundation in human

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nature, and indeed in that which can be required of everyone and demanded of him along with healthy understanding, namely in the predisposition to the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e., to that which is moral” [KU, AA05: 265, § 29]. How morality emerges continues to be a mystery. In this context, Kant only states that moral conscience is preceded by man’s growing awareness of his own condition as “end of nature” and, ultimately, his superiority over other animals. This is because man’s perception of himself as nature’s ruler implicitly suggests that any human being should be considered holding a right to share with us in nature’s gifts.5 Kant locates the moral law’s entrance and the final “release of the human being from the mother’s womb of nature” [MAM, AA08:114] in this sense of equality among human beings, and the respect derived from it. Culture prepares the way for the moral law. Once discovered, man no longer needs nature’s guidance and can fully trust his reason. His reason orders him to establish the Kingdom of Ends on earth as a necessary condition for achieving the highest good. As we know, this notion includes a hope for happiness proportional to the moral vocation man strives to achieve. This idea represents what Yirmiyahu Yovel deemed “historical imperative.” (Yovel 1980: 138) In this sense, one must await the coming of said Kingdom so that man, as a transformed being, may recover the happiness that culture apparently stole from him. This is because, as previously noted, Kant believes that abandoning paradise benefited the species, though not necessarily the individual, who was thereafter afflicted by a host of physical and moral ills.6 If, however, Kant deems that the transition to culture is beneficial, it is only because, unlike Herder (1989: 342), he sees the species, and not the individual, as history’s protagonist and the object of Providence’s provision. However, in the cultural state, the individual cannot help but feel the divide between his moral destiny and his happiness. Kant also attempts to answer Rousseau’s question on “how culture must proceed in order properly to develop the predispositions of humanity as a moral species to their vocation, so that the latter no longer conflict with humanity as a natural species” throughout his own writings in Pedagogy and Philosophy of History. Thus, recognizing the evils that result from the conflict between nature and morality, Kant points to an ideal state in which morality no longer collides with nature, a state in which the cultural artifice is perfected so that “perfect art—as Kant argues—again becomes nature” [MAM, AA08: 118].7

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What Kant ultimately hopes is that once the social artifice, promoter of civilization, has fulfilled its mission, it will finally give prominence to morality itself. However, he expresses this in terms of a return to nature. Certainly it is not a true return. Man’s first nature has been lost forever. As Rath (1996: 58) notes, that loss is the price paid for our humanity. However, in the wake of Rousseau, and in anticipation of the romantics, Kant cannot help but appreciate the first nature’s proximity. And since it can no longer be regained in its original state, Kant seeks to recover a transformed version of it, perhaps at history’s end. Thus he points out an ideal: a state in which moral principles have been incorporated as if they were part of one’s nature.8 And, although it is an impossible ideal, it still retains a certain aesthetic correlation with the immediate interest that nature’s beauty awakens in morally cultivated souls [KU, AA05: 301, § 42]. In effect, in Kant’s third Critique he repeatedly implies that the spirit’s moral cultivation aesthetically revives appreciation and concern for nature. Thus, his final words in the Critique of the Aesthetic Power of Judgment are eloquent: “the true propaedeutic for the grounding of taste—states Kant—is the development of moral ideas and the cultivation of the moral feeling; for only when sensibility is brought into accord with this can genuine taste assume a determinate, unalterable form” [KU, AA05: 356, § 60]. With these words, Kant echoes the classical ideal of a kind of sensibility in harmony with moral sentiment. However, he does so in his own historical time and according to his own terms since there would be no need to highlight aesthetics as complementary to morality if the two had not been divided in the modern era, which, to some extent, were united in classical ethics. For example, Aristotle presents the virtuous man as a criterion for distinguishing between true and false pleasures. In proposing a formal ethic, Kant does not forget the classic ideal and realizes he still has a pending task. Therefore, while granting aesthetics autonomy, he highlights its connection to ethics. At the same time, while speaking of taste without consideration of moral ideals, we must remember that these ideals are captured in the Kingdom of Ends, that is, in living a republican life, both in the juridical and ethical spheres. In practice, therefore, this involves a kind of taste integrated into said ideal, destined to adopt that which the ideal itself reinforces, that is, “a determinate, unalterable form” [KU, AA05:356]. One might ask how such a process occurs: how do universal moral ideas affect taste? Kant suggests the answer when referring to the communicability of judgment of taste. In any case, moral ideas’ origin cannot be

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explained genetically, as a result of nature’s internal dialectic. Kant makes a jump here: culture prepares moral ideas’ development, and, in turn, moral development’s ideas affect taste. However, moral ideas as such cannot be explained simply as a cultural product. Once moral conscience has appeared, a new principle comes into play in mankind’s history. Moral reason, in effect, is not only responsible for preserving and extending a republican juridical form, but also for achieving an ethical community as described in Religion, based on non-coercive laws and virtue [Rel. AA06: 98]. According to Kant, we have the right to assume that nature will continue its work, forcing man—even for pragmatic reasons—to progress toward a cosmopolitan legal order. However, morality requires man to actively promote this end as a precondition of a universal ethical community. For this reason, man must cultivate his own nature and thus train himself to achieve humanity’s end. Therefore, Kant refers to a duty to acquire culture.

2   A Practical Approach to Culture: The Duty of Improving One’s Nature In Metaphysics of Morals, Kant claims that man has a duty to seek his own perfection. This duty can be separated into two ideas: on the one hand, “cultivating one’s faculties (or natural predispositions);” and, on the other, the “cultivation of one’s will (moral cast of mind)” [MS, AA06: 387]. The former is directly related to Kant’s understanding of culture and, as we shall see, has only an indirect and limited relationship with morality’s cultivation. In effect, according to Kant, we have a moral duty to cultivate our nature so that we are better able to achieve reasons’ ends [MS, AA06: 392]. Kant argues that this is a moral duty, required by humanity, and understood as the “capacity to set oneself an end.”9 Hence, in his words, “the duty, to make ourselves worthy of humanity by culture in general, by procuring or promoting the capacity to realize all sorts of possible ends, so far as this is to be found in a human being himself” [MS, AA06: 392]. This suggests a definition of culture in line with human nature’s empowerment or perfection, thus enabling man to achieve any type of end. At first glance this might seem to echo the Aristotelian conception of habits. However, we must not overlook a crucial distinction.

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In Aristotle’s thought, man must perfect himself in order to live an ethical life. As we know, Aristotle associates man’s process of self-­perfection with his acquisition of both ethical and intellectual habits. This implies that perfecting human nature includes an ethical dimension. Moreover, to the extent that the ethical dimension is conceived in terms of virtue—and thus presupposes nature—the entire educational process intrinsically references nature. However, it seems that such an intrinsic reference to nature should be excluded from the Kantian approach because, for Kant, morality relies on pure practical reason. In effect, to the extent that he considers autonomy an aspect of moral-practical reason, Kant must reject any reference to nature as a possible standard of morality, even if it presents itself under the guise of moral virtue. Humanity demands to go beyond nature’s ends—in this case, inclinations [GMS, AA04: 425–6]—in order to propose its own ends. Kant warns that once man is released from his natural determination, which takes place as soon as he understands the idea of ​​moral law, he can no longer expect to be satisfied by nature alone, nor find happiness by satisfying his inclinations. As soon as man abandons nature he has no other choice but to continue refining and cultivating himself, in order to “be in a pragmatic respect a human being equal to the end of his existence” [MS, AA06: 444]. Meanwhile, he deems culture as a relatively independent (albeit, instrumental) mediation between nature and morality: it is neither pure nature, nor morality. From a practical perspective, culture appears as a perfection that every man—a moral agent—must acquire in order to be able to pursue any end that he proposes for himself. Thus, it allows for a plurality of lifestyles in service of morality. Cultivating our nature depends on the decision we make regarding the kind of life we want ​​ to live.10 However, there is a level of basic knowledge about the world that everyone should have because they are members of the human species. Kant focuses on this topic in Lectures on pedagogy. 2.1  The Need for Education As noted at the beginning of this work, Kant claims that “the human being is the only creature that must be educated” [PÄD, AA09: 441] because “an animal is already all that it can be because of its instinct; a foreign intelligence has already taken care of everything for it. But the

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human being needs his own intelligence. He has no instinct and must work out the plan of his conduct for himself. However, since the human being is not immediately in a position to do this, because he is in a raw state when he comes into the world, others must do it for him” [PÄD, AA09: 441]. Education has many ends. According to Kant, education must discipline man, that is, mitigate his animal instincts. But, in addition, education must cultivate men.11 Here, culture does not simply entail the ability to adapt to various ends, but it should also be understood as prudence and discretion (Klugheit). He refers to pragmatic intelligence necessary in social life, to know the world12 and to have a world (“die Welt kennen und Welt haben” [Anth, AA07:120]), so that men and women become “suited for human society, popular, and influential” [PÄD, AA09:450]. Interestingly, Kant associates this kind of knowledge with the process of refinement, civilization and civility. The latter, he notes, requires as prerequisites “manners, good behaviour and a certain prudence in virtue of which one is able to use all human beings for one’s own final purposes” [PÄD, AA09: 450]. Kant devoted an entire book to this kind of “knowledge of the world”— Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view. As we read in the Groundwork, it represents one of prudence and discretion’s possible meanings. In fact, Kant distinguishes between two types of prudence: “knowledge of the world” and “private prudence.” While “knowledge of the world” represents “a human being’s skill in influencing others so as to use them for his own purposes,” he describes private prudence as “the insight to unite all these purposes to his own enduring advantage” [GMS, AA04: 416].13 However, for Kant, the educational process does not simply end once we learn how to influence others in order to best achieve our goals. From his perspective, moral education or moralizing, which is neither civility, discretion nor prudence,14 should also be part of the educational process, even serving as its ultimate end: “the human being—he writes—should not merely be skilled for all sorts of ends, but should also acquire 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” [PÄD, AA09: 450]. Before proceeding let us highlight the distinction between discipline and culture. Despite sometimes including discipline as a part of culture, referring to a “culture of discipline,” Kant typically distinguishes between the two concepts. He attributes a negative connotation to

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discipline—ordering one’s inclinations, correcting one’s faults, and so on—and a positive connotation to culture—acquisition of skills and knowledge [KrV, A709/B737]. Thus understood, this distinction’s significance is seen when we consider that in the “Doctrine of Method” he refers to the Critique of Pure Reason as a “discipline of reason,” entrusted with the task of preventing any transcendent use of concepts.15 As such, the critique must precede Metaphysics, which Kant consequently interprets as “culture of human reason.”16 Such language, as we shall see, makes sense within his philosophy of history, which is central to reason’s history.17 Referring to education’s most ordinary meaning, Kant describes discipline’s role as the “liberation of the will from the despotism of desires, by which we are made, attached as we are to certain things of nature, incapable of choosing for ourselves” [KU, AA05: 432, § 83]. Although these words are adequate to describe discipline’s effect on individual human nature, namely, to create space for reason’s ends and, thus prepare for the moral use of reason, they are in fact from the Critique of the Power of Judgment. With them, Kant attempts to describe the civilizing process’ side effects on the human species. According to Kant, discipline must prepare the transition from the natural state to the civil state, marked by the establishment of a civil constitution. 2.2  The Civilizing Process Kant’s version of the civilizing process clearly reflects his debt to Rousseau, as well as his anticipation of Marx. For example, we find social inequality at the base of cultural growth. The image created before our eyes is eloquent: while the majority of society supplies others with everything needed for life, a privileged minority develops the arts and sciences, that is, culture’s less-necessary elements. Although at first glance everyone can benefit from this division of labor, inequality eventually increases. This has an ambivalent effect: on the one hand, it helps develop natural dispositions; but on the other hand, it encourages countless other vices, thus fuelling conflict.18 According to Kant, however, this conflict may be a misdirection led by nature’s astuteness, which, in this way, forces human beings to establish a civil constitution capable of ending the abuses that result from conflicting freedoms.19

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Moreover, according to Kant, in order to ensure the civil constitution’s effectiveness we must also be willing to work toward a cosmopolitan whole, thus preventing possible abuses by one state over another. Without this “system of all states” Nature—or Providence—even uses war “for developing to their highest degree all the talents that serve for culture” [KU, AA05: 433]. In this vision of human progress, Kant wishes to emphasize that civilization, with all its vices and moral ambiguities, is just a step in disciplining the inclinations and, therefore, another step that announces the future moral culture. In effect, for Kant, all artificial inclinations associated with civilization moderate natural inclinations’ harshness and vehemence, “which belong more to our animality and are most opposed to our education for our higher vocation.” [KU, AA05: 433–4; § 83]. By disciplining them, civilization creates space for mankind’s development. The arts and sciences hold a prominent role in the civilizing process, which disciplines man, although it does not definitively moralize him. In this regard Kant writes: Beautiful arts and sciences, which by means of a universally communicable pleasure and an elegance and refinement make human beings, if not morally better, at least better mannered for society, very much reduce the tyranny of sensible tendencies, and prepare humans for a sovereignty in which reason alone shall have power; while the evil that is visited upon us partly by nature, partly by the intolerant selfishness of human beings, at the same time calls forth, strengthens, and steels the powers of the soul not to be subjected to those, and thus allows us to feel an aptitude for higher ends, which lies hidden in us [KU, AA05: 433–4; § 83].

These words contain a hint of the civilizing effect of the arts, to which we referred to earlier.20 In general, for Kant, the fine arts have a civilizing and humanizing function to the extent that, while promoting communication and sociability, they prepare man for morality, that is, for the moral use of reason.21 But Kant also speaks of refinement that science fosters, and in this regard the historical judgment that deserves its own Critique of Pure Reason is relevant. Accordingly, just as social conflict promoted the conditions for the creation of a civil constitution to settle the inevitable conflicts in the natural state, dogmatists, and skeptics could settle their disputes by using the Critique. Indeed, it ended the natural state in which the sciences languished until then,22 initiating the civil state characterized by a true “republic of letters.”

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Thus, the arts and sciences—which are partially products of civilization’s vices—were meant to establish mankind’s discipline. What is true of mankind as a whole also applies to every individual in the education process. Education, however, does not end with the discipline of one’s inclinations. In a passage from Lectures on pedagogy, quoted above, Kant differentiates between educational goals in terms of “skill, worldly prudence and morality” [PÄD, AA09:486]. 2.3  Culture and Practical Reason This differentiation mimics the Kantian approach to practical reason in Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals by distinguishing between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. In this work, Kant distinguishes between the rules of skill (i.e. technical imperatives), prudence’s advice (i.e. pragmatic imperatives), and morality’s laws.23 The parallelism between education’s goals and practical reasons’ three forms24 clearly suggests a definition of education as rational shaping of human nature, thus becoming a useful tool for humanity. Understandably, from the Kantian approach, the educational process’ final end is moral culture; however, the distinction between pragmatic reason and morals, and, ultimately, the separation between hypothetical and categorical imperatives, allows us to separately contemplate the three meanings of cultural. Indeed, this is what Kant suggests in the passage from the Critique of the Power of Judgment, referred to above. In it, discipline emerges from the “culture of skill” and the civilizing process, in a dynamism that is apparently ruled by nature’s ingenuity and, in a way, by morality. Accordingly, the civilizing process appears almost as a natural movement leading to our own nature’s refinement. Certainly, this vision, typical of the Critique of the Power of Judgment and, in general, of philosophical writings, is the result of reflective judgment, and, ultimately, the product of reason’s moral interest. Nature’s mechanism may not even favor pragmatic culture. However, what seems to be clear is that there is no intrinsic relationship between pragmatic culture and morality. Is that really so? In order to answer this question, we must refer to the connection between Kant’s notions of discipline and “negative concept of freedom.” In a well-known passage from Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant characterizes negative freedom as an attribute of the will. Through this attribute, a rational being can be “efficient independently of alien

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causes determining it” [GMS, AA04: 446]. From this perspective, to the extent that the notion of cause involves that of universal law, a negative concept of freedom requires the notion of a universal law. In this case, this is the categorical imperative. Kant’s Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals sustains that through this and other considerations we can also synthetically acquire a positive notion of freedom, identical to that of morality. This thesis is controversial, as we know. It is important to note, however, that from a conceptual point of view, our lack of natural determination, that is, negative freedom, requires that a moral law be introduced a priori as a law of freedom. However, as previously highlighted, discipline’s effect on our nature simply reduces our inclinations’ dominance, thus allowing us to follow another type of law: the moral law. From a practical standpoint, this does not mean that discipline necessarily implies morality. Acting in accordance with moral law and, therefore, the practical achievement of positive freedom or morality ultimately depends on man. In other words, even if discipline opens the field of negative freedom, and even if negative freedom implies an a priori reference to moral law, there is still a gap between discipline and moral obligation. From this perspective, the distance between discipline and moral culture best explains moral freedom’s meaning: perhaps nature prepares the way for morality, but ultimately, it is a matter of self-determination. For this reason, Kant distinguishes between two duties that every person has toward himself; in addition to simply speaking of one’s duty to acquire culture, he also suggests a complementary duty to cultivate one’s own will (a “moral cast of mind)”: a duty that morality cultivates within us: “the greatest perfection of a human being is to do his duty from duty (for the law to be not only the rule but also the incentive of his actions)” [MS, AA06: 392]. Accordingly, both education and culture can be viewed as human nature’s rational formalization in three different ways: technical, pragmatic and moral. In particular, he presents education as a gradual path that introduces man to reason, ultimately leading him toward a moral culture. However, to the extent that this moral culture cannot be achieved without reason, an adequate education should stimulate children’s reason.25 This goal, which requires judgment and discernment,26 can only be achieved if other human beings are responsible for education.27 Precisely because of this, Kant understands that the art of education “must be perfected over the course of many generations.”28

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To that extent, Kant understands history as Nature (a secular name for God) working to stimulate human reason. First, it helps human being develops the ability to compare, forcing man to abandon the guide of instincts. Then, it introduces in human beings the idea of decency, and thinking of the future. This awakens the awareness that human destiny can no longer be understood as mere happiness in the sense of satisfying one’s natural inclinations. Lastly, Nature forces man to see himself as nature’s master, and to consider only other rational beings as his equals. Along with their equals, human beings discover their call to achieve the ideal of sociability—through and despite their own nature’s resistance. In the history that Kant outlines, this resistance—understood as our natural dispositions’ antagonism—plays a key role because all cultural development ultimately depends on it.

3   Man’s Unsociable Sociability Kant establishes man’s unsocial sociability at the basis of culture, along with the rational faculty of comparison. Although we have already read this in a passage from Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant explains its meaning primarily in a text from Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim. Here I understand by “antagonism”—he says—the unsociable sociability of human beings, i.e. their propensity to enter into society, which, however, is combined with a thoroughgoing resistance that constantly threatens to break up this society. The predisposition for this obviously lies in human nature. The human being has an inclination to become socialized, since in such a condition he feels himself as more a human being, i.e. feels the development of his natural predispositions. But he also has a great propensity to individualize (isolate) himself, because he simultaneously encounters in himself the unsociable property of willing to direct everything so as to get his own way (alles nach seinem Sinne), and hence expects resistance ­everywhere because he knows of himself that he is inclined on his side toward resistance against others. Now it is this resistance that awakens all the powers of the human being, brings him to overcome his propensity to indolence, and, driven by ambition, tyranny, and greed, to obtain for himself a rank among his fellows, whom he cannot stand, but also cannot leave alone. Thus happen the first true steps form crudity toward culture, which really

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consists in the social worth of the human being; thus all talents come bit by bit to be developed, taste is formed, and even, through progress in enlightenment, a beginning is made toward the foundation of a mode of thought which can with time transform the rude natural predisposition to make moral distinctions into determinate practical principles and hence transform a pathologically compelled agreement to form a society finally into a moral whole (…). [IaG, AA08: 20, 21]

According to this passage, the exact meaning of the natural dispositions’ principle of antagonism is “unsociable sociability,” which, according to Kant, can be found in every human being. In other words, the coexistence of a social impulse that we can identify with reasons’ universal-­ republican vocation and a liberal-individualistic impulse, by which everyone tries to avoid universal law. This antagonism is not only found at the base of moral evil, but also at culture’s foundations. Why is that? Kant suggests that diverse cultural manifestations result from affirming our own singularity in the face of our peers. Thus, culture arises because of ambition, vanity and the desire to gain importance among others. Although these are not morally neutral roots, Kant understands that the cultural process they propel causes a civilizing effect, thus paving the way for morality itself. From this point of view, cultural manifestations are no more than humanity’s footprints in history, always moving toward achieving its moral vocation. At this point, it is reasonable to ask whether we are bound to think of culture as morally corrupt, a view that would reflect Rousseau’s excessive influence; or whether it is necessary to regard individuality as something negative, as if it would merely amount to avoidance of universal moral law. As we know, Romantic authors coming after Kant thought that the expression of individual originality—not mere subjection to the universal standard along with other rational beings—was to be regarded in a positive light. We can no longer think otherwise. Kantian ethics, focusing on a republican ideal of coexistence, sanctions what Simmel would call “quantitative individualism”. Yet, Romanticism is going to develop an individualism based on differences, that Simmel designates as “qualitative individualism”, in order to distinguish it from the former. Examining the extent to which Kantian ethics can account for this latter individualism has yet to be accomplished.

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Notes 1. The controversial hypothesis implied here is that, ultimately, sociability refers to belonging to a single family. 2. Kant interprets this as such because he will later refer to natural instinct as “the voice of God which all animals obey” [MAM, AA08: 111]. This may sound strange because we tend to identify the voice of God with the spirit rather than with an instinct. This article maintains the position that Kant does not distinguish much between instinct and spirit. Inasmuch as they are both identified with the voice of God, they both represent heteronomous behavior. This analysis recalls Duns Scotus’ interpretation of a wellknown passage from Aristotle’s Metaphysics. In it, Aristotle cites the difference between natural and rational powers, noting that the former are directed ad unum, while the latter are ad opposita. Aristotle also explains that while actualizing a natural power simply requires appropriate circumstances, actualizing a rational power requires exercising choice. However, as Fernando Inciarte (1987: 259–273) noted in his interpretation of the Aristotelian passage, Duns Scotus includes intellect as one of the natural faculties. Thus, he argues that, unlike reason, the intellect is also oriented ad unum. Consequently, Scotus’ idea of freedom consists only in an ad opposita orientation, characteristic of reason. Moreover, Scotus interprets the difference between natural and rational powers in terms of “activation from outside” o “activation from within” This recalls the Kantian distinction between heteronomy and autonomy. In any case, the obvious result of this conception is that human beings cannot be deemed ‘free’ unless they are at least given the choice between what is natural and unnatural and, ultimately, unless one’s first choice is contrary to the voice of God since freedom consists of an ad opposita openness. 3. By contrast, only when Kant introduces the idea of morality is he able to introduce a relatively clear vision of the afterlife. 4. “In fact, without the development of moral ideas, that which we, prepared by culture, call sublime will appear merely repellent to the unrefined person” [KU, AA05: 265, § 29]. 5. In this reflection, moreover, Kant recognizes something like a “preparation from afar for the restrictions that reason was to lay on the will in the future in regard to his fellow human beings, and which far more than inclination and love is necessary to the establishment of society.” Love, which Kant explains in conjunction with sublimation of the sexual instinct, is found below the sense of justice associated with the perception of other rational beings as equals and as equally nature’s ends. 6. Thus, assuming that the species’ history somehow falls under the category of Nature while the individuals’ history falls under the category of Freedom,

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he writes, “The History of nature thus begins from good, for that is the work of God; the history of freedom from evil, for it is the work of the human being” [MAM, AA08: 115]. 7. This nature, however, is no longer simply primitive, nor the result of social conventions. Kant suggests the difference between them in a passage from Critique of the Power of Judgment, which compares “naiveté, which is the resistance of the uprightness that is originally natural to humanity” to “art of pretense that has become second.” The first is “uncorrupted, innocent nature, which one was not at all prepared to encounter and which he who allows it to be glimpsed did not even intend to expose;” naive nature knows nothing of the social artifice and, according to Kant, inspires a certain tenderness and nostalgia. See: [KU, AA05: 335; § 54]. 8. “With the present education the human being does not fully reach the purpose of his existence. For how differently do people live! There can only be uniformity among them if they act according to the same principles, and these principles would have to become their second nature.” [PÄD, AA09: 445]. See also: “Vices arise, for the most part, from the civilized state doing violence to nature, and yet it is our own vocation as human beings to emerge from our crude state of nature as animals. Perfect art becomes nature again” [PÄD, AA09: 492]. 9. In Groundwork, Kant indirectly considers this duty and uses it as an example to contrast the law of nature’s validity in his analysis of the categorical imperative [GMS, AA04: 423]. Kant states this more explicitly in Metaphysics of Morals: “A human being has a duty to himself to cultivate (cultura) his natural powers (powers of spirit, mind, and body), as means to all sorts of possible ends.—He owes it to himself (as a rational being) not to leave idle and, as it were, rusting away—he says—the natural predispositions and capacities that his reason can someday use” [MS, AA06: 444]. 10. Becoming cultured involves cultivating one’s spiritual faculties, as well as those of body and soul [MS, AA06: 445]. To decide “which of these natural perfections should take precedence, and in what proportion one against the other it may be a human being´s duty to himself to make these natural perfections his end, are matters left for him to choose in accordance with his own rational reflection about what sort of life he would like to lead and whether he has the powers necessary for it… for… a human being has a duty to himself to be a useful member of the world” [MS, AA06: 445–6]. 11. Although in this context culture simply means “instruction and teaching,” we will distinguish between culture’s three meanings: skill, prudence or discretion, and morality. The culture of skill refers to acquiring a “faculty which is sufficient for the carrying out of whatever purpose” [PÄD, AA09: 449]. See: [PÄD, AA09: 486], see commentary on this idea above.

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12. “This knowledge of the world serves to procure the pragmatic element for all otherwise acquired sciences and skills, by means of which they become useful not merely for the school but rather for life and through which the accomplished apprentice is introduced to the stage of his destiny, namely, the world” [VvRM, AA02: 443]. 13. Later he also notes: “a history is composed pragmatically when it makes us prudent, that, is, instructs the world how it can look after its advantage better than, or at least as well as, the world of earlier times” [GMS, AA04: 417]. 14. However, he still considers the civilizing process to be a temporary morality. See: [KrV, A748/B776]. 15. “The greatest and perhaps only utility of all philosophy of pure reason is thus negative, namely that it does not serve for expansion, as an organon, but rather, as a discipline, serves for the determination of boundaries, and instead of discovering truth it has only the silent merit of guarding against errors” [KrV, A795/B823]. 16. “Metaphysics is also the culmination of all culture of human reason […] That as mere speculation it serves more to prevent errors than to amplify cognition does not damage to its value, but rather gives it all the more dignity and authority through its office as censor, which secures the general order and unity, indeed the well-being of the scientific community, and prevents its cheerful and fruitful efforts from straying from the chief end, that of the general happiness” [KrV, A851/B879]. 17. See: [KrV, A751/B779-A752/B789]: Kant compares Critique of Pure Reason to the civil constitution by which man leaves the natural state. Also see the last chapter of Doctrine of Method: “History of Pure Reason.” 18. “But with the progress of this culture (the height of which, when the tendency to what is dispensable begins to destroy what is indispensable, is called luxury) calamities grow equally great on both sides, on the one side because of violence imposed from without, on the other because of dissatisfaction from within; yet this splendid misery is bound up with the development of the natural predispositions in the human race, and the end of nature itself, even if it is not our end, is hereby attained” [KU, AA05: 432, § 83]. 19. “The formal condition under which alone nature can attain this its final aim is that constitution in the relations of human beings with one another in which the abuse of reciprocally conflicting freedom is opposed by lawful power in a whole, which is called civil society; for only in this can the ­greatest development of the natural predispositions occur” [KU, AA05: 432, § 83]. See: [RzAnt, AA15:608, n. 1396]: “Der Mensch erreicht wirklikch [all] seine ganze Naturbestimmung, d.i. Entwicklung seiner Talente, durch den bürgerlichen Zwang. Es ist zu hoffen, er werde auch seine ganze

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moralische Bestimmung durch den moralischen Zwang erreichen. Denn alle Keime des moralisch Guten, wenn sie sich entwicklen, erstiken die physischen Keime des Bösen. Durch den bürgerlichen Zwang entwikeln sich alle Keime ohne unterschied. Dieses ist die Bestimung der Menschheit, aber nicht des einzelnen, sondern des Ganzen.” 20. In this and other texts, Kant appears to reduce art to a matter of Apollonian good taste and incorporate it in terms of sociability to the civilizing process, hardly considering the possibility of an art form in which a kind of individuality irreducible to the conditions social life could try to express itself. Although his reflections on art offer many suggestions, he prefers to highlight its “republican” vocation. For example, upon theorizing whether something must be sacrificed in the struggle between intelligence and taste, he concludes that intelligence must make this sacrifice. Kant explains art’s ultimate republican vocation by characterizing the fine arts as “a kind of representation that is purposive in itself and, though without an end, nevertheless promotes the cultivation of the mental powers for sociable communication” [KU, AA05: 306, § 44]. These words make it clear that art possesses its own logic. With them, Kant emphasizes art’s civilizing role, precisely because of its ability to stimulate social communicability. In effect, the universal communicability of taste, combined with the universal feeling of sympathy, open a horizon of specifically human sociability for Kant. This allows us to distinguish man from animal, but also introduces a meaning of “humanity” that differs from the aforementioned strictly moral meaning (the ability to propose ends for oneself). See: [KU, AA05: 355, § 60]. In many places, along with the meaning of “humanity,” which he calls “moral,” and sometimes equates to “personality,” Kant employs a strictly cultural meaning of humanity (also see [Rel. AA06: 27–28]), which, because of its civilizing function, he subordinates it to morality. 21. In this context, it is remarkable that Kant associates the perception of one’s own moral vocation with the judgment of the sublime [KU, AA05: 262, § 28] rather than with the judgment of beauty in nature. I use the word remarkable because it is precisely when speaking of the sublime that Kant admits the individual may remove himself from society on the basis of moral ideas [KU, AA05: 275–6]. However, not even judgment of the sublime can take place without regard to culture and civilization. Thus, Kant reminds us that “without the development of moral ideas, that which we, prepared by culture, call sublime will appear merely repellent to the unrefined person” [KU, AA05: 265, § 29]. That is, the judgment of the sublime presupposes moral ideas, as well as culture. Therefore, culture’s civilizing effect is not demonstrated by aesthetic judgment’s promotion of sociability, but rather by making judgment of the sublime possible. Thus, our moral vocation manifests itself in our consciousness. In various ways,

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then, Kant suggests that the refinement associated with beauty and art helps discipline man’s inclinations, making the moral conscience’s development possible. See: [RzAnth, AA15:897, n. 1524]: “1. Unsere Cultur ist (ohne Plan) nur noch durch den Luxus belebt (Luxus in Wissenschaften; man lernet alles unter einander) [und] nicht durch den Zwek des allgemeinen Besten [nach einem Plane]. Daher vermehren sich die Bedürfnisse, die Sorgen, die Arbeit, Ungleichheit und Mühseeligkeit. 2. Unsere Civilisirung ist (erzwungen: eine Wirkung des Zwanges, nicht der Denkungsart) noch weit von der Vollkommenheit des Bürgers, d.e. der wahren Freiheit und Gleichheit unter weisen Gesetzen, entfernt. Wir sind verfeinert und geschliffen, aber nicht bürgerlich gesinnet (civilisirt). Der Mensch war nicht wie [Schaafe] das Hausvieh dazu bestimmt, dass er [zu] eine Heerde, sondern wie die Biene, dass er einen Stock ausmache. Hier aber hat die Natur den Plan gemacht, dort sollen wir ihn selbst erfinden. Bis daher hat die bürgerliche Einrichtung mehr vom Zufall and dem Willen des Stärkeren als der Vernunft und Freiheit abgehangen (England). 3. Wir haben sitten ohne Tugend, Geselligkeit statt Rechtschafffenheit und Eitelkeit statt Ehrliebe.” 22. See: [KrV, A751/B779-A752/B789]. 23. While the latter are categorical imperatives, both the rules of skill and prudence’s advice are hypothetical imperatives. Thus, prudence’s advice is formulated according to a necessary and natural end—happiness—, while the rules of skill are proposed according to any possible and rational end that an agent may have [GMS, AA04: 415]. 24. We must not forget, however, that, in the introduction to the Critique of the Power of Judgment, Kant notes that technical rules and rules of skill pertain to theoretical reason. See: [KU, AA05: 172–3]. 25. “The child should learn to act according to maxims whose fairness it itself understands. It is easy to see that this is hard to bring about in children, and that moral formation therefore also demands the most insight from the side of the parents and the teachers” [PÄD AA09: 480, 11–12]. 26. “The art of education arises mechanically only on those chance occasions when we learn by experience whether something is harmful or useful to people. All educational art which arises merely mechanically must carry with it many mistakes and defects, because it has no plan for its foundation. The art of education or pedagogy must therefore become judicious if it is to develop human nature so that the latter can reach its vocation” [PÄD AA09: 447, 15 and ff]. 27. “The human being can only become human through education. He is nothing except what education makes out of him. It must be noted that the human being is educated only by human beings, human beings who likewise have been educated” [PÄD AA09: 443, 3].

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28. “Education is an art, the practice of which must be perfected over the course of many generations. Each generation, provided with the knowledge of the preceding ones, is ever more able to bring about an education which develops all of the human being´s natural predispositions proportionally and purposively, thus leading the whole human species towards its vocation” [PÄD, AA09:446].

References Herder, Johann Gottfried. 1989. Ideen zur Philosophie der Geschichte der Menschheit. I, 4, III, in Werke, VI. Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag. Inciarte, F. 1987. Natura ad unum – Ratio ad opposita. Zur Transformation des Aristotelismus bei Duns Scotus. In Philosophie im Mittelalter. Entwicklungslinien und Paradigmen, ed. P.  Beckmann, L.  Honnefelder, G.  Scrimpf, and G. Wieland, 259–273. Hamburg: F. Meiner. Kant, I. 1996. Metaphysics of Morals. English Edition and Trans. Mary J. Gregor, with an introduction by Roger J.  Sullivan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997a. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Trans. Mary J. Gregor, with an introduction by Christine M.  Korsgaard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997b. Critique of Practical Reason. English Edition and Trans. Mary J.  Gregor, with an introduction by Andrews Reath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998a. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Paul Guyer and Ed. Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998b. Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. English Edition by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. English Edition: Paul Guyer. Trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007a. Of the different races of human beings. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günter Zöller and Robert B.  Louden, 82–97. Trans. Holly Wilson and Günter Zöller. ———. 2007b. Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim. In Anthropology, History, and Education. English Edition by G.  Zöller and R.  B. Louden, 121–159. Trans. Allen W.  Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007c. Conjectural Beginnings of Human History. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 160–175. Trans. Allen Wood. Cambridge University Press.

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———. 2007d. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of view. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günther Zöller and Robert B.  Louden, 227–429. Trans. Robert B.  Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007e. Lectures on pedagogy. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günther Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 434–485. Trans. Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Korsgaard, C.M. 2009. Self-Constitution. Agency, Identity, and Integrity. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Rath, N. 1996. Zweite Natur. Konzepte einer Vermittlung von Natur und Kultur in Anthropologie und Ästhetik um 1800. Münster: Waxmann. Schiller, F. 1989. Über die Ästhetische Erziehung des Menschen in einer Reihe von Briefen. In Dritter Brief. Sämtliche werke, 5th ed. München: Carl Hanser Verlag. Wood, A.W. 1999. Kant’s Ethical Thought. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Yovel, Y. 1980. Kant and the Philosophy of History. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zammito, J.H. 2002. Kant, Herder, and the Birth of Anthropology. Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press.

CHAPTER 4

Kant on Civilization and Cultural Pluralism

Abstract  Assuming a distinction between civilization and morality this chapter explores how Kant approaches the factual plurality of cultures. While the concept of civilization shares in some features of the pragmatic origin of culture, it also has, for Kant, a normative connotation; this is implicit in not only the distinction between civilized and uncivilized peoples, but also in the duty to work for the advancement of a cosmopolitan order in charge of advancing perpetual peace. In this context, it is reasonable to ask which role Kant envisions for the factual plurality of cultures. In this chapter, I intend to clarify the extent to which he takes such plurality simply as a matter of fact, or considers it in an evaluative light. Keywords  Cultural diversity • Highest political good • Religion • Languages • Genius Applying the concept of culture as “perfection of human nature” to the social realm leads to the modern concept of civilization. This word summarizes the culmination of the human cultural process at the species level, representing a step higher than a merely “technical disposition for manipulating things.” Indeed, Kant thinks civilization is rooted in a different “predisposition,” which nevertheless cannot be simply equated with the

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. M. González, Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66468-8_4

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“moral predisposition… (to treat himself and others according to the principle of freedom under laws)” [Anth. AA07:323]. He is namely thinking of the pragmatic predisposition to become civilized through culture, particularly through the cultivation of social qualities, and the natural tendency of his species in social relations to come out of the crudity of mere personal force and to become a well-mannered (if not yet moral) being destined for concord. [Anth. AA07: 323]

As it will be apparent below, apart from developing the social skills necessary for concord, civilization includes the development of arts and sciences, and, most importantly, juridical institutions. Yet, to the extent Kant usually speaks of civilization in the singular, a question remains as to the role of cultural diversity in such process.

1   Civilized and Uncivilized Peoples Researching Kant’s position on the plurality of cultures requires some conceptual work since the closest he comes to the contemporary concept of “culture,” as “a way of life shared by a community,” is in speaking of “peoples” and distinguishing between “civilized and uncivilized peoples.” It is clear, though, that the terms “peoples” and “culture” are not identical. In speaking of “peoples,” we don’t immediately refer to the way people live. And yet, the idea of diverse “ways of life” is somehow implied every time we speak of “peoples” in the plural form. From this perspective, the most salient difference between speaking of “peoples” and “cultures,” seems to lie in the connection of the term “people” to the idea of political organization of some kind. By contrast, we currently use the term culture sans political connotations to mean diverse ways of life within a given political community, or even a way of life shared by different peoples. Indeed, while political organization aims at favoring the peaceful and prosperous coexistence of individual freedoms according to the law, culture designates the shared meanings and values that sustain and emerge from that coexistence. This latter point, however, also suggests an indirect connection between politics and culture because coexistence under a common political power often results in shared cultural traits; at the same time, it is also clear that there is no identity between peoples—in the juridical,

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political sense—and cultures—in the anthropologist’s sense—: two peoples can share certain cultural traits simply because of frequent and extensive reciprocal commerce. Cultural and political realities ultimately follow different temporal paths; nevertheless, the fact that both politics and culture refer to human coexistence and reciprocal interaction explains why equating peoples and cultures might seem a sensible conceptual resource for investigating Kant’s approach to the plurality of cultures, a problem that he never put himself in these terms. Thus, from the perspective of human coexistence, we can justifiably take Kant’s reference to “peoples” as the closest term to our idea of “culture.” Along these lines, it is worth first noting that the very fact that Kant distinguishes between “civilized and uncivilized peoples” makes clear that he not only admits of a factual plurality of cultures, but also that he applies a “normative” standard to them, even if that standard is not a moral one. Indeed, although Kant usually associates the process of civilization with what he calls “culture of skill (Geschicklichkeit),” civilization itself cannot be reduced to the mere ability to produce “the aptitude of a rational being for any ends in general” [KU, AA05:431]. This explains that, in his Lectures on Pedagogy, Kant does not identify the process of civilization with “ability,” but rather with what Annette Churton translates as “discretion (Klugheit),” and Louden and Zöller as “worldly prudence,” ultimately that kind of pragmatic knowledge that, according to the Anthropology, makes one apt to live in society. Thus, after observing that, “Education must supply men with culture” for “it is culture which brings about ability,”1 he adds: It must be seen that the human being becomes prudent (Klug) also, well suited for human society, popular, and influential. This requires a certain form of culture, which is called civilizing. Its prerequisites are manners, good behavior and a certain prudence in virtue of which one is able to use all human beings for one’s own final purposes. This form of culture conforms to the changeable taste of each age. Thus just a few decades ago ceremonies were still loved in social intercourse. [PÄD, AA09:450]

In other words, there is no civilization without the worldly prudence and refinement required for gaining influence in society, something that, as Kant himself recognizes, is subject to “the ever-changing tastes of different ages.” Kant certainly follows Rousseau in thinking that society

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brings with it new kinds of goods and evils, including comparison and, through comparison, inequality, and hypocrisy. Yet, through all those evils, society also brings about civilization. According to the text, civilization seems to be made up of men using each other for their own ends: this is the function Kant ascribes to “discretion” (or worldly prudence), as opposed both to technical skill and morality.2 As stated above, discretion or prudence is the kind of knowledge one needs to conduct oneself in society, and constitutes for Kant a key element in the process of civilization.3 This is so although, at other times, Kant relates civilization directly to the development of a “culture of skill”—for instance in the third Critique; but then Kant supplies his account of the “culture of skill” with a reflection on the role that sociality plays in the development of skill itself: “Skill cannot very well be developed in the human race except by means of inequality among people” [KU, AA05:432]. In either case, he always thinks of civilization as a middle ground between nature and morality. Indeed, while he thinks of culture as being in continuity with nature,4 he also views it as directed to morality. Thus, as early as the KrV, he takes for granted that, “through this propensity to conceal themselves as well as to assume an appearance that is advantageous for them humans have not merely civilized themselves but gradually moralized themselves to a certain degree” [KrV A748/B776]. That “degree” is certainly far from what morality demands: We are cultivated in a high degree by art and science. We are civilized, perhaps to the point of being overburdened, by all sorts of social decorum and propriety. But very much is still lacking before we can be held to be already moralized. For the idea of morality still belongs to culture; but the use of this idea which comes down only to a resemblance of morals in love of honor and in external propriety constitutes only being civilized. [IAG, AA08:26]

Yet even this resemblance, as long as it is only provisional, [KrV, 748/ B776] paves the ground for morality, at least to the extent that it indirectly favors the “discipline of inclinations” such that man’s nature can be made receptive to the ends of morality: Beautiful arts and sciences, which by means of a universally communicable pleasure and an elegance and refinement make human beings, if not morally better, at least better mannered for society, very much reduce the tyranny of

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sensible tendencies, and prepare humans for a sovereignty in which reason alone shall have power. [KU, AA05:433]

Now, although Kant thinks individual human beings have a duty to cultivate themselves, so that they can “feel an aptitude for higher ends, which lies hidden in us,” [KU, AA05:434] he also thinks that the human species as such could also be civilized through a hidden plan of nature, or through a peculiar combination of nature’s mechanism and pragmatic intelligence, that would lead to the establishment of a civil constitution. Thus, while in Idea he merely mentions “a hidden plan of nature to bring about an inwardly and, to this end, also an externally perfect state constitution, as the only condition in which it can fully develop all its predispositions in humanity,” [IaG, AA08:27] in later works, he specifies that the “hidden plan of nature”—the external constitution, and, to a certain extent, cosmopolitan right—is achievable through a combination of nature and man’s pragmatic intelligence: Just as omnilateral violence and the need arising from it must finally bring a people to decide to subject itself to coercion that reason itself prescribes to them as means, namely to public law, and to enter into a civil constitution, so too must the need arising from the constant wars by which states in turn try to encroach upon or subjugate one another at last bring them, even against their will, to enter into a cosmopolitan constitution; or else, if this condition of universal peace is still more dangerous to freedom from another quarter, by leading to the most fearful despotism (as has indeed happened more than once with states that have grown too large), this need must still constrain states to enter a condition that is not a cosmopolitan commonwealth under a single head but is still a rightful condition of federation in accordance with a commonly agreed upon right of nations. [TP, AA08:310–11]

It is worth noting, though, that insofar as juridical institutions in charge of guaranteeing external freedom represent the culmination of civilization, the latter also emerges as a normative concept for Kant. It marks the difference between some (civilized) peoples and other (uncivilized) ones and, from this perspective, it can be regarded as a sort of regulative idea of Kant’s philosophy of history, which could be aptly, if only partially, read as a “process of civilization.” Indeed, while this process certainly involves economic growth, as well as progress in the arts and sciences, the whole point of these

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developments, according to Kant, is the advancement of a “republican constitution” that first makes external freedom possible. Only then, Kant argues, would a people abandon the state of nature and enter into a “civil state.” In other words, being civilized means advancing toward a republican constitution because it is only within this political frame that nature “can fully develop all its predispositions in humanity” [IaG, AA08:27]. Accordingly, any other form of government should be taken as provisional and its legitimacy as dependent on it pointing toward the gradual development of a republican form of government. Alternative forms of government are acceptable only to the extent they are on their way toward the republican form; diversity of regimes should therefore be transitory.

2   Toward a Universal Civilization? Yet, in his philosophy of history, Kant goes a step further to envision the possibility of developing a cosmopolitan right that would bring about the ideal of perpetual peace. Cosmopolitan right is supposed to arise in a process similar to that which had previously taken place at the state level i.e., from the state of nature to a civil state. In this context, it is fitting to ask whether Kant would admit a plurality of “civilized” peoples or if, rather, they too eventually give way to a single, universal civilization. [MS, AA06:353] 2.1   The Ambivalent Role of Cultural Diversity Now, in this regard, Kant makes quite clear that, while everyone is duty-­ bound to advance toward the cosmopolitan right that makes perpetual peace possible, creating a single universal civilization nevertheless entails risk. Indeed, the larger a political body is, the more possibilities there are for despotism.5 However, nature has provided us with a means to avoid that conclusion; Kant is thinking of cultural differences, especially those based on language and religion that, in his view, “bring with them the propensity to mutual hatred and pretexts for war” [ZeF, AA08:367]. Taking cultural difference as a pretext for war represents a constant throughout history. Yet, here, Kant also views said difference in a positive light, as a way to avoid the despotism that would follow from universal government; from this perspective, cultural difference is considered an element that favors freedom. On the other hand, however, he attributes this strategy to nature, rather than to man himself: whether we want it or

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not, as a matter of fact, existing cultural differences prevent excessive unity. Interestingly, he also attributes the opposite effect to nature, i.e., on a different level, nature works to promote unity among peoples by instilling in human beings the spirit of trade, “which sooner or later takes hold of every nation” [ZeF, AA08:368]. In reading this, it is hard not to think of contemporary trends such as globalization—which is mainly an economic process—and emergent nationalisms. As Kant observed, while “the spirit of trade” tends to foster relationships among different peoples, other cultural elements such as differences in religion and language hamper excessive uniformity. The question is whether the balance between those opposing trends can be solely entrusted to the mechanism of nature. The fact that Kant explicitly speaks of a duty to promote juridical institutions that favor perpetual peace’s development suggests a negative answer. Kant sees it as up to human beings to make use of the mechanism of nature6 in a way that best achieves the highest political good, that is, peace in freedom. Yet, were we to neglect our moral duty to foster the highest political good through the promotion of juridical institutions, Kant thinks that nature would arrive to the same end, only with more suffering. Or at least this is what emerges from his writings on philosophy of history, designed to raise hope in the possibility of realizing the highest good. The problem is that, far from reinforcing the duty to work for the highest good, the whole plan could be seen as an excuse to neglect said duty. Of course, neglecting our duties on those grounds would go against the moral law, which commands us to do all that we can to promote the highest good, irrespective of the presumed result. Yet, herein lies the problem: on the one hand, unless the highest good can be plausibly achieved through our action, moral law cannot command the promotion of the highest good. On the other hand, however, Kant provides us with an account that makes our (moral) action almost irrelevant in pursuit of that end. Thus, in KpV, he makes completely clear that the emergence of the highest good is conditioned by first developing moral virtue: only then can we legitimately think that God would make nature contribute to happiness according to moral virtue, thereby making up the highest good. Yet, in the writings on philosophy of history, the highest (political) good is presented as something that could follow solely from the workings of nature. One possible way out of this difficulty is found in recalling that the highest political good—perpetual peace—does not coincide with the highest good presented in the KrV or the KpV, but is rather a political

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pre-­condition for the latter. Indeed, in the KrV and the KpV, the highest good is presented as happiness proportionate to morality, while no mention is made of the highest political good. Yet, in the Religion, Kant says that only after achieving the highest political good can we even begin to think about the construction of an “ethical community,” (González 2010) even if the latter can only emerge from moral sources. (González 2017) Does Kant give us any hint of the role of cultures in an ethical community? 2.2  The Provisional Character of Cultural Diversity According to Kant, in absence of an ethical community, we would be ill positioned to overcome the workings of the evil principle in us. Yet, a careful reading of the Religion, in which reference is made to differences in cult, suggests that the development of an ethical community does not merely involve the overcoming of the evil principle, but also of all historical difference.7 Thus, although he speaks of different historical religions, in his view, they are supposed to give way to a single pure religion, which is in fact nothing other than morality.8 Implicit in this view is the idea that cult and historical differences are just empirical differences that do not reach to the heart of morality. This conclusion is coherent with Kant’s own position, i.e., morality relies on pure reason, which is universal. Just like he rejects a plurality of philosophies,9 he rejects a plurality of moralities. Accordingly, the differences we find in human mores can be attributed to empirical, rather than rational, grounds. Consequently, Kant thinks that a completely rational religion must get rid of those elements10 and cannot possibly accept them as constitutive. At most, it can accept them as transitory, provisional elements, acceptable insofar as they are viewed from an educational perspective, from the perspective of progress. Another paradoxical way of looking at this same idea is found in saying that mores, for Kant, do not reach into morality’s rational core. Neither can they lead by themselves to realize human vocation: With the present education—says Kant in his Education—the human being does not fully reach the purpose of his existence. For how differently do people live! There can only be uniformity among them if they act according to the same principles, and these principles would have to become their second nature. [PÄD, AA09:445]

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This text suggests that, for Kant, embracing moral principles ideally involves uniformity in the ways of living. Accordingly, while he certainly appreciates plurality from the perspective of pragmatic reason, it is not so clear that he appreciates it from the perspective of moral reason. This explains the Romantic critique thereof, i.e., Kant’s reason would not leave room for diverse ways of expressing and realizing the ideal of humanity. (González 2019) Yet, in light of the distinction between humanity and personality that Kant draws in the Religion, it would perhaps be more accurate to say that Kant considers the historical forms of humanity to be linked to the empirical realm, and subject to the workings of pragmatic reason,11 while the ideal of humanity is placed at the level of personality, which is linked to moral reason.12 Had he not introduced such a strong division between these two uses of reason, he would have been better positioned to show how moral value is embodied in different cultures, but worse positioned for critique.

3   Civilization as the Unit of Kant’s Philosophy of History Kant’s philosophy of history can be viewed as his elaborated answer to one of the questions that, according to him, define the practical interests of reason, namely, “What may I hope?” To this question, Kant offers an answer within the limits of his own critical system: Based on my duty to promote the highest good, and on its objective non-impossibility, I can reasonably expect the highest political good to arise, even if the emergence of a moral community, precondition for the highest good, could only be a matter of faith. Kant’s concept of civilization plays a crucial role in that philosophical history. So much so that it could be made the unit of a Kantian approach to history. Seen from the perspective of the human species, “civilization” represents a culmination in the evolving field of history, which cannot be approached solely from nature or solely from morality. Indeed, to the extent that civilization could be considered a result of a combination of nature and pragmatic reason, morality, and ultimately freedom, can easily be seen as a disruptive element in that history. The fact that human freedom can introduce itself as an original principle of action in the chain of natural events explains the desire to read empirical events in light of human intervention, and thus in light of human subjectivity. Yet, as Kant himself

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points out, looking for human subjectivity within history amounts to looking for the reflection of fallen man: The “history of nature begins from good, for that is the work of God; the history of freedom from evil, for it is the work of the human being,” [MAM, AA08:115] he writes. Fallen man has alienated himself from nature; history is the scenery of his ambiguous efforts to recover unity through the development of a moral culture, which would represent a sort of “second nature,” and bring uniformity to the various ways of life. In Kant’s view, civilization represents a relative, intermediate, culmination in that continuous effort, and cultural diversity has only a provisional role to play in that development. By approaching civilization in this way, Kant aims to provide us with a conjectural account of an otherwise chaotic history, one interpretation able to both counteract the sad spectacle of evil and reinforce moral commitment.13 He certainly expects that such a reading of history will make room for a consoling prospect into the future (which without a plan of nature one cannot hope for with any ground), in which the human species is represented in the remote distance as finally working itself upward toward the condition in which all germs nature has placed in it can be fully developed and its vocation here on earth can be fulfilled. [IaG, AA08:30]

Now, as he himself observes, far from being an empirical history, such history is “only a thought of that which a philosophical mind (which besides this would have to be very well versed in history) could attempt from another standpoint” [IaG, AA08:30–1]. This perspective, as pointed out above, is grounded on the practical-moral interest of reason, and is likewise intended to offer a satisfactory response to the systematic interest of reason. (González 2014) The “hopeful view of history” it provides is thus a reflection of man’s subjectivity, insofar as it is defined in rational-­ moral terms.14 Indeed: if we ultimately feel the need to develop a philosophy of history it is only because we experience the distance between history and the requirements of reason, i.e., between facts and norms, between pragmatic and moral rationality. Although Kant says that reason itself has a history and even tries to sketch its narrative (a claim that goes beyond the scope of the present argument), this attempt only serves to highlight the distance between particularity and diversity, on the one hand, and universality and uniformity on the other. Kant leaves the former to the empirical realm and the latter to the rational realm.

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At this point, one might expect that Kant’s account of aesthetic experience in the Third Critique would provide a basis for overcoming, at least relatively, the distance between the empirical and rational realms, and make room for appreciating cultural diversity in its own terms. After all, in this work he not only reflects on how civilization could emerge from a happy combination of nature and freedom but also provides an insightful account of how sociality and morality come together in aesthetic experience.

4   Civilization, Aesthetics and Morality In the Critique of Judgment, Kant speaks of an interest in the beautiful, which is related to social life, and brings about civilization.15 And, although his central focus is not this social aspect of beauty, he does show a particular interest in expounding the extent to which the refinement of taste may favor the education of moral feeling [KU, AA05:298] and, conversely, in showing how morality affects the aesthetic experience. In this context, the experience of beauty in nature appears as particularly relevant. According to Kant, immediate interest in the beauty in nature (rather than in that which originates in art) is a mark of a good soul [KU, AA05:298]. Kant grounds his assertion on reason’s interest in recognizing in nature a sign of moral ideas. He argues that, when it comes to immediate appreciation of beauty in nature, reason sees a sign of the realizability of moral ideas,16 and, since we have a duty to promote a moral world, moral reason cannot help but be deeply interested in it. Our interest in nature’s receptivity to moral ideals also partially explains the fact that “we often designate beautiful objects of nature or of art with names that seem to be grounded in a moral judging,” which Kant quotes to support his view of beauty as a symbol of morality [KU, AA05:354]. The analogy Kant draws between judgments of beauty and moral judgments contains several salient features. For example, experiencing that the beautiful pleases in absence of any interest, which distinguishes it from the agreeable, brings aesthetic experience closer to the experience of the morally good.17 This, of course, favors the thesis that the cultivation of taste is itself a step toward the promotion of morality.18 But the analogy between these judgments does not end there. According to Kant, to the extent that the cultivation of taste presupposes sociability, it is first made possible by

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civilization’s rise because the correct standard of beauty is only likely to arise within a civil society ruled by a republican form of government in which both highly and poorly cultivated men have the opportunity to communicate with one another: The age as well as the peoples in which the vigorous drive towards the lawful sociability by means of which a people constitutes an enduring commonwealth wrestled with the great difficulties surrounding the difficult task of uniting freedom (and thus also equality) with coercion (more from respect and subjection to duty than from fear): such an age and such a people had first of all to discover the art of reciprocal communication of the ideas of the most educated part with the cruder, the coordination of the breadth and refinement of the former with the natural simplicity of the latter, and in this way to discover that mean between higher culture and contented culture which constitutes the correct standard, not to be given by any universal rule, for taste as a universal human sense. [KU, AA05:356]

In fact, Kant notes that a society like the one described above is most likely to provide the standard of taste, not only for its age, but for later ages to come, that is, a society that brings together and facilitates the communication between highly refined people and people close to the state of nature. In saying this, he again contextualizes his aesthetics within his philosophy of history. Thus, he argues that a later age will find it more difficult to realize that ideal because it “will always be further from nature.” In saying this, he silently assumes that nature’s spontaneous simplicity constitutes a reference for freedom, because it inspires in us “a concept of the happy union of the lawful constraint of the highest culture with the force and correctness of a free nature, feeling its own worth, in one and the same people” [KU, AA05:356]. Apparently, these words would not merely indicate the main features of the standard of taste—the union of lawful constraint and free nature-, but would also point at a contingent genesis of such standard in the “happy union” of “highest culture” and “free nature” “in one and the same people.” Yet, this is not Kant’s last word on the subject. For he goes on saying that since taste is at bottom a faculty for the judging of the sensible rendering of moral ideas… it is evident that the true propaedeutic for the grounding of taste is the development of moral ideas and the cultivation of the moral feeling… for only when sensibility is brought into accord with this can genuine taste assume a determinate, unalterable form. [KU, AA05:356]

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Were we to take those latter words literally, we would be moved to conclude again that morality cancels the diversity of taste, just as it supposedly cancels cultural diversity. Like before, diversity has a place in Kant’s philosophy of history as long as it remains linked to civilization. But ultimately it is to be measured against an unalterable aesthetic standard.

5   A Kantian Insight for Reconciling Universality and Diversity While Kant accepts cultural or aesthetic diversity as part of civilization, such diversity is as transitory as the concept of civilization itself. Ideally, it is bound to disappear as soon as civilization gives place to a moral culture. It is important to note that the fact that such moral culture is merely an ideal—and thus, that civilization represents the only achievable historical result—does not change the essentially transitory character of civilization and cultural diversity. This is so because, in the final account, said transitory character is but a way of expressing history’s alienation of morality. Indeed, if morality alone reflects man’s rational subjectivity, then history, civilization and culture are not fully rational because they are unavoidably intertwined with the empirical. It is true that, in aesthetic experience, Kant finds a realm where the sensible and the rational dimensions come together;19 yet, their coming together is merely subjective and based on aesthetic pleasure.20 In addition, as we have just observed, even aesthetic pleasure would be transformed—if not properly constituted as such—with the development of moral ideas and cultivation of moral feeling, which would provide aesthetic standard with an unalterable form. It seems that, in order to make room for meaningful moral diversity, we would need something more than a subjective reflection of man’s rational-­ moral subjectivity. Instead, we would need an objective reflection of man’s entire subjectivity, that is, one that includes his empirical self, without thereby interpreting it in terms of “fallen humanity.” Now, it seems to me that the closest Kant comes to a concept of culture as objective reflection of man’s entire subjectivity—rational and empirical—is in his theory of genius: Genius really consists in the happy relation, which no science can teach and no diligence learn, of finding ideas for a given concept on the one hand and on the other hitting upon the expression for these, through which the subjective disposition of the mind that is thereby produced, as an accompaniment of a concept, can be communicated to others. [KU, AA05: 317]

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In that description, Kant highlights the genius’s talent for finding ideas and expressing them, such that they can be communicated to others. Thanks to the former, the genius unites the rational and the sensible; thanks to the latter, his work becomes socially—culturally—relevant. This latter talent, as Kant notes, is called spirit, and it makes universal communication of an idea by means of an artistic expression possible.21 Kant describes spirit as “a faculty for apprehending the rapidly passing play of the imagination and unifying it into a concept (which for that very reason is original and at the same time discloses a new rule, which could not have been deduced from any antecedent principles or examples), which can be communicated without the constraint of rules” [KU, AA05:317]. Through his spirit, the genius unifies the representations of the imagination in a new, original concept, which precisely because of its novelty, is not subject to any previous rule. Rather, the spirit establishes the rule for itself. Indeed, genius is also defined by Kant as “the inborn predisposition of the mind (ingenium) through which nature gives the rule to art” [KU, AA05:307]. If this does not mean that spirit and nature become one and the same thing in the genius, it at least means that he represents a close connection between them. Indeed, spirit is the faculty in charge of disclosing “a new rule” (to art), a rule that is given by nature. Were we to approach the realm of culture from this perspective, which Kant restricts to the realm of art, we would have an explanation that reconciles both universality and diversity, for, on the one hand, artistic expressions are supposed to take their inspiration from the (universal) idea itself; on the other, they elaborate, express and communicate this very idea in manifold and diverse ways, depending on the various representations of the imagination and the characteristics of the particular society in which the artistic expression is found to be meaningful. Kant’s theory of genius represents in itself a powerful insight in the way of reconciling universality and plurality. Nevertheless, its scope is limited. Applying the creative paradigm to the complete realm of culture—not just to art, but to all diversity of peoples throughout history—would mean looking at every single historical culture as a true expression of man’s entire subjectivity, and not merely as a transitional moment from nature to moral culture. According to Joas (1995: 72), such an approach is found in pragmatism.22 Yet, in order to follow that path, three fundamental changes in Kant’s system would be required as follows: (a) overcoming his rigid separation between the natural and moral self, (b) overcoming his sharp distinction

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between pragmatic and moral reason, which reproduces the separation between the natural and the moral self in the practical realm, and (c) disentangling the two meanings of “universality” in Kant’s account of the moral norm.

6   Recovering the Moral Value of Historical Humanity Kant’s extreme separation between pragmatic and moral reason can be regarded as a consequence of his anthropology, particularly the separation between man as a sensible being and man as a rational being. Thus, Kant sometimes defines the human being as a particular species of animal or as “offspring of the earth.” At other times, he defines him as a particular species of person, a rational being or as “a person who has duties his own reason lays upon him.” This way of approaching the human being contrasts with pre-modern thought. There, man was defined simply as a rational animal, that is, man was conceived of as a species within an animal genus. Yet, the real essence of man was not expressed in the genus—in his being an animal—but rather in his specific difference, i.e., his rationality. Being rational, in turn, could not define another species within a genus; it differentiated man from all other beings—and not just from animals, but also from other intellectual creatures like angels, who were seen not as rational creatures, but as intellectual ones. The difference between reason and intellect was important in both Greek and Medieval thought. Reason was seen as discursive intellect and, as such, only found in human beings, who are material and thereby subject to time. In contrast with that tradition, Kant begins to speak of “rational” as a species within a genus. Accordingly, he regards man as a type of rational being, along with many other possible ones, such as angels, Martians or God himself. At the same time, he refers to man as a species within the animal genus, for instance, when he speaks of “human animals.” Thus, we have two ways of referring to man, namely as a type of animal and as a type of rational being. Both ways never come together and man is placed simultaneously in two worlds. This is why it is not without surprise that we read in the Metaphysics of Morals, “Dividing something composite into two heterogeneous things yields no definite concept at all, and can lead us to none in ordering beings whose class distinctions are unknown to us” [MS, AA06:461].

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Here, he refers to Haller’s definition of man as “an ambiguous hybrid of angel and beast.” In this regard, Kant says that the first comparison (of angelic virtue and devilish vice) is an exaggeration. The second—although human beings do, alas, also fall into brutish vices—does not justify attributing to them a predisposition toward vices as a mark of their species any more than it justifies classifying stunted trees in a forest as a special kind of plant. One possible way out of this incoherence is to assume that Kant is not really placing man in two different worlds simultaneously, but rather taking different perspectives on one and the same world. Thus, if we take the perspective of practical reason, we learn to see man as a rational being. If we take the perspective of speculative reason, we may come to see him as another kind of sensible being sans his rational nature. Accordingly, the human being belongs to the system of nature as long as we consider him a phenomenon, that is, theoretically. But he belongs to the moral world of persons as soon as we consider him a noumenon, that is, practically. According to Kant, this explains how moral conscience works, the fact that one and the same human being is subject to the moral law and the one who administers the law [MS, AA06:439] as well as the otherwise confusing notion of “duties to oneself.”23 Yet, while explaining the dual nature of man merely in terms of epistemological perspectives may help overcome some difficulties, it leaves many others unsolved. Up to now, we have pointed out one of them, namely the unbridgeable gap between pragmatic reason and moral reason, but it can also be shown in terms of the unsurmountable distance between the particularity of empirical history, and the universality of pure morality. Starting in the first Critique, Kant shows his concern for constructing a moral theory free from empirical considerations. He did not mean that the empirical has no place in ethics, but rather that a metaphysics of morals should carefully distinguish between its pure and impure parts. At times— for example in the preface to the Groundwork—he calls this impure part “practical anthropology.” Later, he simply calls it the Metaphysics of Morals, as distinguished from the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals and the Critique of Practical Reason. While the latter two works deal with the pure part of moral philosophy, the Metaphysics of Morals includes reference to the empirical part. Of course, even then the distinction is not entirely clear. The second part of the Critique of Practical Reason—the part dealing with the highest good—also includes notions that are peculiar to human beings. However,

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this aspect does not essentially affect the formulation of the moral norm, which, according to Kant, is valid for every rational being, and therefore not only for human beings. Thus, the separation between the empirical and the rational self is implicit. As mentioned, in the practical realm, this separation finds expression in Kant’s sharp distinction between pragmatic and moral reason, which corresponds in part to his division of imperatives. As we know, Kant distinguishes between hypothetical and categorical imperatives; hypothetical imperatives can be both technical and pragmatic. The difference between them lies in the fact that the former prescribe the actions necessary for achieving the end of a certain art; the latter prescribe the ends deemed necessary for achieving happiness or welfare [GMS, AA04:415]. Finally, categorical imperatives prescribe actions absolutely, as ends in themselves. Both technical and pragmatic imperatives have to do with the means required to achieve certain ends; they both also involve a distance between action and its proposed end. This distance depends on the fact that the realization of those ends is subject to certain empirical conditions, and, as such, to space and time. Accordingly, the pursued ends can be thought of as extrinsic to the means deployed to achieve it. This latter feature, however, is truer of technical imperatives, which are related to the ends of art and give rules of skill, than of pragmatic ones, which are related to happiness and welfare and give counsel to prudence. [GMS, AA04:416,418]. Indeed, the kind of knowledge you need to build a house is different from the kind of knowledge you need to conduct a happy life. Unlike technical knowledge, which can be objectified and separated from the subject to the point of being transferred to machines, pragmatic knowledge is always embodied in the acting subject. Still, Kant remarks that pragmatic imperatives should be sharply distinguished from categorical ones in that the latter are not empirically conditioned rules, but rather consist in unconditional laws. Obviously, this does not mean that moral actions cannot pursue ends, or that they have to abstract from empirical incentives, since human agency requires some sort of sensible incentive and has always some end in view; it simply means that pursuing an end cannot be solely grounded in a merely sensible incentive, but rather must be determined by the law. In one of the formulations, Kant provides the categorical imperative—the so called “formula of Humanity”—and this thought is presented from the point of view of the acting subject and made equivalent to the intrinsic value of humanity.

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Yet, in the meantime, Kant draws a sharp contrast between happiness and morality, between the counsels of prudence aimed at satisfying the natural desire for happiness, and the moral laws that, issued by pure reason, convey our human dignity. Later, in the KpV, he relates both concepts in the idea of a highest good, but still does so in an extrinsic way since morality sets the condition for happiness, which is defined in terms of satisfaction of desires. The fact that, in the meantime, those desires may have been relatively shaped by moral reason and may have been partly moralized, does not change the main point: there is an insurmountable distance between morality and happiness, between moral law and prudence. It is important to note that Kant is not saying that pursuing one’s happiness is morally wrong. His point is, rather, that happiness must be pursued within a moral frame, set up by reason alone and without influence from our desires or inclinations. Thus, unlike pragmatic imperatives, the imperatives of morality have to do with fulfilling the moral law rather than with intently pursuing one’s advantage. Morality excludes privileging one’s own interests just because they are one’s own; instead, acting morally entails adopting a maxim that can be universalized as the principle of one’s behavior.24 We could also say that, for Kant, universality is the touchstone of morality: my particular reasons to act—my maxims—should be universalizable if they are to be morally right and my will is to be morally good. That is the basic message of the first formula of the categorical imperative, or of universal law. In Kant’s view, universality makes the moral principle suitable not only to human beings, but to every rational being, “not merely under contingent conditions and with exceptions, but with absolute necessity.”25 “Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law” [GMS, AA04:421]. Closely related to this is the formula of the Law of Nature: “Act as if the maxim of your action were to become through your will a universal law of nature.” Although Kant also provides two other formulas—the formula of Humanity and the formula of the Kingdom of Ends-, he holds the Formula of Universal Law to be the most basic since, according to him, the purpose of the other two formulas is “to bring an Idea of reason nearer to intuition;” he also generally takes the formula of Universal Law as the criterion for moral judgment. In either case, through the categorical imperative, the will gives itself a law and thus reveals itself as autonomous. This autonomy distinguishes not merely the will, but rather the good will.

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This approach to autonomy, however, implies a definition of moral law entirely apart from the demands of the inclinations. It is not that our sensible nature is completely closed to moral ideals. Kant works on the assumption that our sensibility is somehow receptive to those ideas; otherwise, his account of the feeling of respect would make no sense. Yet, it is instructive to compare Kant’s account of our sensible nature with that of Aristotle, who thought that the irrational part of the soul would find its proper culmination in obedience to reason: “virtues arise in us neither by nature nor contrary to nature, but nature gives us the capacity to acquire them, and completion comes through habituation.” (Aristotle, NE, 1103a24–5) While Kant would agree with Aristotle on the first part of that quote, it is unclear whether he would agree on the second part. This is not to say that Kant did not develop a theory of virtue. He most certainly did, but his theory of virtue is closer to the Stoics than to Aristotle. Thus, he defines virtue almost in terms of strength.26 Moreover, he ultimately defines virtue itself by reference to universal law in terms of one’s own subjection to a universal law. And this is, I think, a key point in understanding Kant’s intrinsic difficulty with the plurality of lifestyles and cultures. In order to better illustrate this point, it is useful to again resort to comparison with Aristotle, particularly his account of the moral canon. Indeed, as we know, Aristotle’s moral canon does not just prescribe doing what is courageous or just, but also doing it as the courageous/just man does it (Aristotle, NE 1113 a24–34). This assumes that mere subjection to a universal law does not make the action courageous, but rather it is made so by the fact that it is done as the courageous man does it. Thus, what the universal law prescribes is still too general, too abstract. The actual moral canon, however, corresponds not to that abstract law, but to the virtuous man. It is sometimes argued that Aristotle sets this canon because he lacks clear ideas about universal moral principles. I do not think that this is the main reason. He certainly did not show much interest in highlighting universal moral principles because he was not terribly concerned with grounding moral norms; his philosophical ethics was elaborated as an answer to the more practical question regarding how to live. In this context, he invites us to look at the spoudaios, the virtuous man, not to do what he materially did, but rather to do it in the way he did it. Very much like Kant, he places weight on the form of the action over its

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matter. Yet, unlike Kant, he sees that form not so much in terms of a universal principle as in virtuous behavior that takes into account the particular circumstances of a given society and culture. His approach manifests that goodness itself cannot be grasped in abstract formulas, and nor can it be reduced to voluntary subjection to universal moral law. Of course, Kant did not think this way either; he is clear that morality involves more than doing the right thing: it also involves doing it for the right reason. Yet, by inviting the reader to look at the way the spoudaios acts, Aristotle focuses on the mode, on the style of acting, thus highlighting the kind of embodiment of reason that is expressive of one’s own spirit as a unique synthesis of nature and freedom. While Kant’s criterion, because of his abstractness, may seem more universal, it is so at the price of making the embodiment of reason extrinsic to morality. Yet, this is a move that indirectly involves the moral devaluation of cultural diversity since, by restricting the moral to the abstract norm, the cultural ways of realizing that norm can no longer be moral. Their rationality can only be pragmatic. To conclude these reflections, we could say that Kant takes the plurality of cultures as a historical fact in need of rational justification so that it can be made compatible with humans’ moral destiny. This is why, despite the frequency with which cultural diversity is taken as a pretext for conflict, that diversity is positively interpreted within Kant’s philosophy of history as an element that helps avoid despotism. Yet, that positive appraisal of cultural diversity is narrowly linked to the rationality Kant projects onto historical events to make them consistent with reason’s hope for a better world. That rationality, however, remains extrinsic to the different cultures. Considered in themselves, the differences we find in the cultural realm have to be traced back to empirical sources, and cannot be considered as expressive of our moral selves.27 By sharply distinguishing between the natural and moral self, between pragmatic and moral reason, Kant is led to consider the plurality of cultures as a provisional feature of human existence that will ideally be overcome in a perfectly moral world. From this perspective, he is far from the positive Romantic appraisal of cultural plurality as many different ways of realizing the same humanity. The closest Kant comes to this kind of reconciliation between the universality of reason and cultural diversity is in his theory of genius.

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Notes 1. “The human being must be cultivated. Culture includes instruction and teaching. It is the procurement of skillfulness. The latter is possession of a faculty which is sufficient for the carrying out of whatever purpose. Thus, skillfulness determines no ends at all, but leaves this to the later circumstances. Some kinds of skillfulness are good in all cases, for example reading and writing; others only for some purposes, for example music, which makes us popular with others. Because of the multitude of purposes, skillfulness becomes, as it were, infinite” [PÄD, AA09: 450] 2. This is an aspect of “practical education:” “Practical education includes (1) skill (2) worldly prudence and (3) morality. As concerns skill, one must see that it is through and not superficial. One must not assume the appearance of knowing things that later one cannot bring about. In skill there must be thoroughness, which must gradually become a habit in the way of thinking. It is the essential thing for the character of a man. Skill is necessary for talent. As concerns worldly prudence, it consists in the art of using our skillfulness effectively, that is, of how to use human beings for one’s purposes. For this various things are needed. Strictly speaking, it is the last thing attained by the human being, but in terms of its worth it occupies the second rank. If the child is to be given over to worldly prudence, then it must be able to conceal itself and make itself impenetrable, but at the same time be able to scrutinize the other person. It must conceal itself particularly in regard to its character. The art of external appearance is propriety. And one must possess this art. To scrutinize others is difficult, but it is necessary to know this art well while making oneself impenetrable. This includes dissimulation, i.e., holding back one’s faults, and the previously mentioned external appearance. Dissimulation is not always hypocrisy, and can sometimes be allowed, but it borders very closely on dishonesty. Dissimulation is a desperate means. It is part of worldly prudence not to suddenly fly into a rage; but one must also not be too indolent. Thus one must not be vehement, but yet upright. Being upright is quite different from being vehement. An upright man (strenuous) is one who takes pleasure in willing. This is a part of the moderation of affect. Worldly prudence is a matter of temperament. Morality is a matter of character” [PÄD, AA09: 486]. 3. See also [Anth, AA07: 323–4]. 4. “Only culture can be the ultimate end that one has cause to ascribe to nature in regard to the human species.” [KU, AA05: 431] 5. “The idea of the right of nations presupposes the separation of many neighboring states independent of one another; and though such a condition is of itself a condition of war (unless a federative union of them prevents

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the outbreak of hostilities), this is nevertheless better, in accordance with the idea of reason, than the fusion of them by one power overgrowing the rest and passing into a universal monarchy, since as the range of government expands laws progressively lose their vigor, and a soulless despotism, after it has destroyed the seed of good, finally deteriorates into anarchy.” [ZeF, AA08: 367] 6. “Nature guarantees perpetual peace through the mechanism of human inclinations itself, with an assurance that is admittedly not adequate for predicting its future (theoretically) but that is still enough for practical purposes and makes it a duty to work toward this (not merely chimerical) end.” [ZeF, AA08: 368] 7. Thus, Kant contrasts “moral religion”—or pure rational faith—and “cults,” which depend on ecclesiastical faiths. See [Rel. AA06: 106–8]. 8. Thus, in a note to Perpetual Peace, he writes: “Different religions: an odd expression! Just as if one could also speak of different morals. There can indeed be historically different creeds, (to be found) not in religion but in the history of means used to promote it, which is the province of scholarship, and just as many different religious books (the Zendavesta, the Vedas, Koran, and so forth), but there can be only one single religion holding for all human beings and in all times. Those can therefore contain nothing more than the vehicle of religion, what is contingent and can differ according to differences of time and place” [ZeF, AA08: 368]. 9. Likewise, he would reject a plurality of philosophies: “Since, considered objectively, there can be only one human reason, there cannot be many philosophies” [MS, AA06: 207]. 10. “But what then is religion? Religion is the law in us, in so far as it receives emphasis from a lawgiver and judge above us; it is morals applied to the knowledge of God. If religion is not combined with morality, then it becomes nothing more than currying favor. Singing praises, prayers, and going to church should only give the human being new strength, new courage for improvement, or they should be the expression of a heart inspired by the idea of duty. They are only preparations for good works, but not good works themselves, and one cannot pleases the highest being otherwise than by becoming a better human being” [PÄD AA09: 494]. “A religion which is founded merely on theology can never contain anything moral. In such a religion one will have only fear on the one hand and intentions and dispositions geared toward reward on the other, resulting merely in a superstitious cult. Morality must therefore come first, theology then follow, and this is what is called religion (…) Religion without moral conscientiousness is a superstitious worship.” [PÄD, AA09: 494–5] 11. “The predisposition to humanity can be brought under the general title of a self-love which is physical and yet involves comparison (for which reason is required); that is, only in comparison with others does one judge oneself

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happy or unhappy. Out of this self-love originates the inclination to gain worth in the opinion of others, originally, of course, merely equal worth: not allowing anyone superiority over oneself, bound up with the constant anxiety that others might be striving for ascendancy; but from this arises gradually an unjust desire to acquire superiority for oneself over others… nature itself wanted to use the idea of such a competitiveness (which in itself does not exclude reciprocal love) as only an incentive to culture.” [Rel. AA06: 27] 12. “The predisposition to personality is the susceptibility to respect the moral law as of itself a sufficient incentive to the power of choice. This susceptibility to simple respect for the moral law within us would thus be the moral feeling, which by itself does not yet constitute an end of the natural predisposition but only insofar as it is an incentive of the power of choice. But now this is possible only because the free power of choice incorporates moral feeling into its maxim: so a power of choice so constituted is a good character, and this character, as in general every character of the free power of choice, is something that can only be acquired; yet, for its possibility there must be present in our nature a predisposition onto which nothing evil can be grafted. The idea of the moral law alone, together with the respect that is inseparable from it, cannot be properly called a predisposition to personality; it is personality itself (the idea of humanity considered wholly intellectually). The subjective ground, however, of our incorporating this incentive into our maxims seems to be an addition to personality, and hence seems to deserve the name of a predisposition on behalf of it.” [Rel. AA06: 27–28] 13. While Kant’s philosophy of history is intended to reinforce moral commitment, it can also weaken it. To the extent that it suggests that the highest political good can also arise from a combination of nature and pragmatic intelligence, it certainly has the potential to weaken moral commitment. 14. Of course, one need not take this approach to history, nor must one necessarily interpret civilizations as merely intermediate stages toward an ideal universal moral community. Kant himself considers other possible approaches to “empirical history” far less optimistically. Yet, his own approach is ultimately based on man’s moral interest. 15. “The beautiful interests empirically only in society… For himself alone a human being abandoned on a desert island would not adorn either his hut or himself, nor seek out or still less plant flowers in order to decorate himself; rather, only in society does it occur to him to be not merely a human being but also, in his own way, a refined human being (the beginning of civilization): for this is how we judge someone who is inclined to communicate his pleasure to others and is skilled at it, and who is not content with an object if he cannot feel his satisfaction in it in community with others.” [KU, AA05: 297]

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16. “Since it also interests reason that the ideas (for which it produces an immediate interest in the moral feeling) also have objective reality, i.e., that nature should at least show some trace or give a sign that it contains in itself some sort of ground for assuming a lawful correspondence of its products with our satisfaction that is independent of all interest… reason must take an interest in every manifestation of nature of a correspondence similar to this; consequently the mind cannot reflect on the beauty of nature without finding itself at the same time to be interested in it. Because of this affinity, however, this interest is moral, and he who takes such an interest in the beautiful in nature can do so only insofar as he has already firmly established his interest in the morally good. We thus have cause at least to suspect a predisposition to a good moral disposition in one who is immediately interested in the beauty of nature” [KU, AA05: 300]. 17. “The beautiful pleases immediately (but only in reflecting intuition, not, like morality, in the concept); 2) it pleases without any interest (the morally good is of course necessarily connected with an interest, but not with one that precedes judgment on the satisfaction, rather with one that is thereby first produced.” [KU, AA05: 354] 18. “Taste as it were makes possible the transition from sensible charm to the habitual moral interest without too violent 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 senses even without any sensible charm.” [KU, AA05: 354] 19. “Beauty is valid only for human beings, i.e., animal but also rational beings who are at the same time animal.” [KU, AA05: 210]. 20. According to Kant, aesthetic pleasure is but the expression of an adequacy between the form of some object (be it natural or artificial) and our faculties following the mere apprehension of the object. See [KU, AA05: 189]. 21. “The latter talent is really that which is called spirit, for to express what is un-nameable in the mental state in the case of a certain representation and to make it universally communicable, whether the expression consists in language, or painting, or in plastic art.” [KU, AA05: 317] 22. Joas suggests that instead of thinking of creativity as a democratization of the idea of genius, the latter represents a non-democratic distortion of the idea of creativity. 23. “When a human being is conscious of a duty to himself, he views himself, as the subject of duty, under two attributes: first as a sensible being, that is, as a human being (a member of one of the animal species), and second as an intelligible being (not merely as a being that has reason, since reason as a theoretical faculty could well be an attribute of a living corporeal being). The senses cannot attain this latter aspect of a human being; it can be ­cognized only in morally practical relations, where the incomprehensible

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property of freedom is revealed by the influence of reason on the inner lawgiving will. Now the human being as a natural being that has reason (homo phaenomenon) can be determined by his reason, as a cause, to actions in the sensible world, and so far, the concept of obligation does not come into consideration. But the same human being thought in terms of his personality, that is, as a being endowed with inner freedom (homo noumenon), is regarded as a being that can be put under obligation and, indeed, under obligation to himself (to the humanity in his own person). So the human being (taken in these two different senses) can acknowledge a duty to himself without falling into contradiction (because the concept of a human being is not thought in one and the same sense).” [MS, AA06: 418] 24. “If we now attend to ourselves in any transgression of a duty, we find that we do not really will that our maxim should become a universal law, since that is impossible for us, but that the opposite of our maxim should instead remain a universal law, only we take the liberty of making an exception to it for ourselves (or just for this once) to the advantage of our inclination. Consequently, if we weighed all cases from one and the same point of view, namely that of reason, we would find a contradiction in our own will, namely that a certain principle be objectively necessary as a universal law and yet subjectively not hold universally but allow exceptions.” [GMS, AA04: 424] 25. GMS, AA04: 408. Indeed, he insists: “it is of the greatest practical importance not to make its principles dependent upon the special nature of human reason, but instead, just because moral laws are to hold for every rational being as such, to derive them from the universal concept of a rational being as such, and in this way to set forth completely the whole of morals, which needs anthropology for its application to human beings, at first independently of this as pure philosophy, that is, as metaphysics.” [GMS, AA04: 412] 26. “Virtue is the strength of man’s maxims in fulfilling his duty. Strength of any kind can be recognized only by the obstacles it can overcome, and in the case of virtue these obstacles are natural inclinations, which can come into conflict with man’s moral resolution; and since it is man himself who puts these obstacles in the way of his maxims, virtue is not merely a self-­ constraint (for then one natural inclination could strive to overcome another), but also a self-constrain in accordance with a principle of inner freedom, and so through the mere representation of one’s duty in accordance with its formal law.” [MS, AA06: 394] 27. Korsgaard’s concept of “practical identity” could be seen as a way to overcome this difficulty (González 2019).

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References Aristotle. 2000. Nicomachean Ethics. Edited and translated by Roger Crisp. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. González, A.M. 2010. Kant and a Culture of Freedom. Archiv fur rechts-und sozialphilosophie. 96 (3): 291–308. ———. 2014. Kant on History. Estudos Kantianos. 2 (2): 265–290. ———. 2017. The Pending Revolution: Kant as a Moral Revolutionary. Filosofija. Sociologija. 28 (3): 194–203. ———. 2019. A Kantian Avenue Towards Korsgaard’s Notion of ‘practical identity:’ Kant on Humanity and Culture. In Reflexion, Gefühl, Identität im Anschluß an Kant, ed. A.G.  González and A.M.  Vigo, 41–70. Berlin: Duncker&Humblot. Joas, H. 1995. The Creativity of Action. Cambridge: Polity Press. Kant, I. 1900. On Education. Translated by Annette Churton, Boston: D. C. Heath & Co. Publishers [A more recent edition: Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960]. ———. 1996a. Metaphysics of Morals. English Edition and translated by Mary J. Gregor, with an introduction by Roger J. Sullivan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1996b. On the Common Saying: That May Be Correct in Theory, But It Is of No Use in Practice. In Practical Philosophy. English Edited and translated by Mary J.  Gregor, 273–310, with a general introduction by Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1996c. Toward Perpetual Peace. In Practical Philosophy. English Edition Mary J. Gregor, 311–352. Edited and translated by Mary J. Gregor, with a general introduction by Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997a. Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals. Translated by Mary J.  Gregor, with an introduction by Christine M.  Korsgaard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1997b. Critique of Practical Reason. English Edition and Translated by Mary J.  Gregor, with an introduction by Andrews Reath. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998a. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood (eds). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998b. Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. English Edition by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, with an introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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———. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. English Edition: Paul Guyer. Translated by Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007a. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, in Anthropology, History, and Education. English Edition by G.  Zöller and R. B. Louden, 121–159. Translated by Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007b. Conjectural Beginnings of Human History. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 160–175. Translated by Allen Wood, Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007c. Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, in Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günther Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 227–429. Translated by Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007d. Lectures on Pedagogy. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günther Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 434–485. Translated by Robert B. Louden, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

CHAPTER 5

Kantian Philosophy as a Philosophy of Culture

Abstract  Along with the explicit conception of culture as “perfection of human nature,” that we can easily recognize in Kant’s work, this article argues for the consideration of the entire critical enterprise as culture in a different sense: culture as projection of a subjectivity that seeks in nature the signs of human being’s rational and moral destiny. Accordingly, Kant’s philosophy can be regarded as philosophy of culture, something ultimately possible because of reason’s reflexivity, which realizes its own interests, and shapes the world in conformity with them. Keywords  Culture • Civilization • Education • Morality • Nature • Sociability • Judgment

1   Introduction Despite the influence of Rickert’s (1924) work, a neo-Kantian after all, on the controversial flourishing of philosophy of culture (Cassirer 2004), as well as on its reception by critical theory, the Kantian concept of culture has hardly been studied (Castillo 1990; González 2004a, b, 2011). This

This chapter was originally published as González, A. M. 2014. La filosofía kantiana como filosofía de la cultura. Isegoría. Journal of Moral and Political Philosophy 51: 691–708. doi: 10.3989 / isegoria.2014.051.08. © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 A. M. González, Kant on Culture, Happiness and Civilization, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-66468-8_5

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is, perhaps, because throughout Kant’s work the term “culture” seems to be of only anecdotal interest. However, upon carefully reading the passages where this term appears, one gets a sense of its nuances. It routinely appears in “minor” works, such as Idea for a Universal History, Lectures on Pedagogy, Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, etc., but it serves a functional purpose in “major” works, particularly in the first and third Critiques. This opens up his entire work to interpretation from the perspective of a philosophy of culture (Rickert 1924), without thereby diminishing the critical role of reason. In the Critique of Pure Reason we find a particularly clear example of this, for Kant uses the difference between discipline and culture to convey the difference between critique and metaphysics: The compulsion through which the constant propensity to stray from certain rules is limited and finally eradicated is called discipline. It is different from culture, which would merely produce a skill without first cancelling out another one that is already present. In the formation of a talent, therefore, which already has by itself a tendency to expression, discipline will make a negative contribution, but culture and doctrine a positive one. [KrV, A710/B738]

Thus, the Critique of Pure Reason, according to Kant, is “discipline of reason” and, as such, is responsible for setting limits to the culture of reason, which Kant calls metaphysics (KrV, BXXX; A851/B879.) An analogy may be helpful in highlighting these two different concepts in Pedagogy: just as discipline brings a child out of the natural state—ruled by an anarchy of personal propensities—and brings it toward the moral state [PÄD, 9: 441]—ruled by the empire of reason—critique represents a crucial step in the history of reason in as far as it brings man out of the natural state in the area of science, to introduce him in a civilized state (Castillo 1990: 41), in which each theoretical position is given what it fairly deserves: “without this, reason is as it were in the state of nature, and it cannot make its assertions and claims valid or secure them except through war” [KrV A752/B780]. However, “the state of nature is a state of injustice and violence, and one must necessarily leave it in order to submit himself to lawful coercion which alone limits our freedom in such a way that it can be consistent with the freedom of everyone else and thereby with the common good” [KrV A752 / B780].

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It is noteworthy that the KrV, which examines theoretical reason’s scope, uses such an obviously moral image that is linked to an Enlightenment philosophy of history (Philonenko 1986). In addition, if we consider science’s role in humanity’s progress, that passage represents an eloquent example of the civilizing nature that Kant ascribes to philosophical reflection, and, indirectly, to the legal conditions symbolizing the civilizing process. Civilization, indeed, includes both the negative task of criticism—which disciplines reason—and the positive of metaphysics—which cultivates it (Castillo 1990: 32–25). And both elements together make scientific progress possible. Thus, in Kant’s eyes, Critique appears on the one hand, situated within the history of reason, but, on the other, influencing the future development of science. Kant, therefore, adopts a reflexive attitude toward his own work. Such an attitude is characteristic of the transcendental method, and ultimately leads to consider reason’s work from the perspective of reason’s own interests. This point is a key in order to fully understand the nature of Kantian philosophy. Reason has interests, and those interests are critical in order to understand knowledge’s architectonic. With different approaches, Susan Neiman (1994), Axel Hutter (2003) and Monique Castillo (1990: 45)—who mainly focuses on the potential of reason’s teleology to preserve reason’s own autonomy from in front of factual history—have underlined this idea, of paramount importance in order to deepen one’s understanding of Kant’s concept of culture, beyond Kant’s own explicit remarks about culture. This chapter attempts to explain that all criticism can be understood as culture in a deeper sense, that is, culture as a projection of a subjectivity that looks for signs of man’s rational and moral destiny in nature. Along these lines, Kantian philosophy could be understood as a philosophy of culture, ultimately possible thanks to the reflexivity of reason, which makes it aware of its own interests (González 2009), thus making it possible to model the world according to them. Thus, although Kant initially approaches culture in classical terms—culture as “perfection of nature”—in the light of an enlightened philosophy of history, behind these statements we must recognize the critical Kant, for whom the activity of thinking opens space for a reflective conception of culture, in which culture appears as a projection of reason’s interests, ultimately, of human subjectivity. This is what I call Kant’s implicit concept of culture. In my view, said concept is necessary, from an epistemological point of view, in order to account for the expressivist connotations that,

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beginning with Romanticism, we now ascribe to culture. Indeed, as Taylor (1989) notes, the expressivist shift is to be attributed to the Romantics. Although Kant was contemporary to many of them, he always remained a philosopher of the Enlightenment: except for his reflections on the expressive talent of genius, there is no evidence in Kant’s work for an expressivist concept of culture, such as the one that has been attributed to Herder, Goethe and especially to W. von Humboldt (Cassirer 1993). Yet, what I have termed his implicit, critical concept of culture serves as a natural transition toward any expressivist concept of culture (Taylor 1989: 368–390).

2   Fundamental Notes on the Explicit Concept of Culture The most obvious meaning of culture found in Kant is perfection of human nature, a kind of mediation between rude nature and morality. Generally speaking, this concept of culture can also be understood in terms of “civilization” and it can be applied to both the individual and the species. This term, as Kant uses it, is fundamentally responsible for human beings’ temporal distension; either as individuals or as a species, human beings must leave the natural state in order to reach a moral state. The intermediate stage, or the cultural stage, is subject both to the laws of nature and to man’s ethical impulse; thus, it is a morally ambiguous stage. A text from KRV outlines culture’s moral ambiguity, while echoing back to Rousseau: There is a certain dishonesty in human nature, which yet in the end, like everything else that comes from nature, must contain a tendency to good purposes, namely an inclination to hide its true dispositions and to make a show of certain assumed ones that are held to be good and creditable. It is quite certain that through this propensity to conceal themselves as well as to assume an appearance that is advantageous for them humans have not merely civilized themselves but gradually moralized themselves to a certain degree, since no one could penetrate the mask of respectability, honourableness, and propriety, and one therefore found a school for self-improvement in the supposedly genuine examples of the good which he saw around himself. Yet this tendency to pretend to be better than one is and to express dispositions that one does not have serves as it were only provisionally to bring the human being out of his crudeness and first allow him to assume at least the manner of the good, which he recognizes; for later, when the genuine principles have finally been developed and incorporated into his way of thought,

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that duplicity must gradually be vigorously combated, for otherwise it corrupts the heart, and good dispositions cannot grow among the rampant weeds of fair acceptance. [KrV A748/B777]

The above excerpt views man from a historical perspective; here, man passes from a natural state to a moral state through a civilizing process. Yet, the agent of this history, or of this process, remains indeterminate: it can be nature as well as man. Moreover, the passage also highlights the civilizing process’ ambiguity: although it can temporarily advance the moral ideal, it eventually grows into an obstacle for man as hypocrisy. In a text from Religion, Kant asserts that this lack of honesty in human nature relates to the presence of three basic dispositions: animality, humanity, and personality [Rel. AA06: 26–7]. Finally, and in the same vein, this excerpt shows sociability’s crucial importance in the civilizing process. The clear distinction between culture and morality highlighted in the passage above—culture’s ambiguity—is not an obstacle for Kant to define the educational process in those same terms: a transition from nature to morality through culture. Thus, although education—strictly speaking—fulfills its purpose when youth are in a position to independently manage their lives, this also implies that each person must assume responsibility for his or her own culture. Hence, in Metaphysics of Morals, Kant presents culture as a duty that an already-educated adult must propose for him or herself. However, since performing one’s duties requires judgment, and, according to Kant, the historical sciences must direct this task, education also implies “knowledge of the world,” which is explained in the Anthropology. Man needs pragmatic knowledge in order to guide his actions wisely, thus serving his well-being. Knowledge’s pragmatic quality explains that both in the Anthropology and in his other texts on the philosophy of history Kant may refer to Nature or Providence as humanity’s teacher: Nature or Providence contribute to progress to the extent that they pragmatically force men, even those with no clear moral will, to adopt the political institutions necessary for peace: first, a civil constitution and then, a world order. In fact, pursuing such ends is a moral duty that Kant proposes in the Metaphysics of Morals. However, he thinks that these ends are best carried out, or guaranteed, by nature’s dynamic—man’s unsociable sociability— and thus, by the seeds of conflict that are present in human nature. Nature does not civilize humans painlessly.

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Kant’s dual approach to culture can be recognized in the Lectures on Pedagogy, Metaphysics of Morals, Anthropology, and his philosophy of history writings. Both the genetic and the practical approach to culture are characteristic of the Enlightenment. In the genetic approach—influenced by the “conjectural histories” developed during the Scottish Enlightenment—culture is primarily Nature’s work, a combination of natural processes and pragmatic reason; the moral-practical approach focuses on man as a person. In order to understand the critical concept of culture, we must briefly recall these two approaches.

3   Another Look at Kant’s Genetic Approach to Culture To explain the genetic approach to culture led by Nature we must first focus on the civilizing process, and, thus, accentuate the causal influence of two combined factors: natural events and pragmatic rationality. The latter pursues its own benefit by any means in a social context that constitutes itself an incentive for progress. Certainly, reason enables us to compare different objects, as Kant explains in Conjectural Beginning of Human History; however, for explaining the emergence of culture the relevant comparison, as Rousseau pointed out, is a comparison with one’s peers. Though comparison with one’s peers is at the basis of possible vices such as envy, ingratitude, joy in the misfortunes of others, and so on, which Kant characterizes as “vices of culture” [Rel. AA06: 27], nature does not wish for such vices. In fact, her sole intention is to use competitiveness— which does not necessarily exclude love—to spur culture. In a more positive vein, we find the same thought in Conjectural Beginnings: in this work, Kant places decency’s basis in the inclination to be valued by others. Thus, he describes decency as: The genuine foundation of all true sociability, [it] gave the first hint toward the formation of the human being as a moral creature. A small beginning, which, however, is epoch-making, in that it gives an entirely new direction to the mode of thought and is more important than the entire immeasurable series of extensions of culture that followed upon it. [MAM, AA08: 113]

Kant’s approach assumes that cultural progress is based on the “unsociable sociability of man”:

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The means nature employs in order to bring about the development of all its predispositions is their antagonism in society, insofar as the latter is in the end the cause of their lawful order. Here I understand by ‘antagonism’ the unsociable sociability of human beings, i.e. their propensity to enter into society, which, however, is combined with a thoroughgoing resistance that constantly threatens to break up this society. [IaG, AA08: 20–21]

While acknowledging man’s social impulse, Kant is also aware of his resistance to socialization; in other words, the strength of ones’ differences and individuality. According to Kant, every tendency responds to a different root and, while the tendency toward socialization foreshadows humanity’s moral vocation, the tendency toward isolation responds to man’s desire for happiness [IaG, AA08: 20–21]. Both are quite noteworthy: socialization tendencies prefigure morality, while individualistic tendencies illustrate man’s happy and selfish sides. Most important, however, is that the antagonism between these two inclinations leads to culture: Now it is this resistance that awakens all the powers of the human being, brings him to overcome his propensity to indolence, and, driven by ambition, tyranny and greed, to obtain for himself a rank among his fellows, whom he cannot stand, but also cannot leave alone. Thus happen the first true steps from crudity toward culture, which really consists in the social worth of the human being, thus all talents come bit by bit to be developed, taste is formed, and even, through progress is enlightenment, a beginning is made toward the foundation of a mode of thought which can with time transform the rude natural predisposition to make moral distinctions into determinate practical principles and hence transform a pathologically compelled agreement to form a society finally into a moral whole. [IaG, AA08: 20–21]

According to Kant, one’s “mode of thought” that is developed through the social civilizing process represents a crucial step toward stimulating human beings’ natural ability for moral judgment. It is striking that stimulating moral capacity through the development of culture appears as an almost natural process: It is as if our mere coexistence triggered a psychological mechanism to compare people to each other, as a way to ensure one’s own value. These considerations seem to reinforce the naturalist and dialectical bias in Kantian approach to culture. At the beginning of the civilizing process man is not simply a rational being, but more than anything, an insecure and fearful being. He is in need of many things, especially recognition from others. From this perspective, culture naturally compensates

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for our existential insecurity. Indeed, this particular way of acquiring value in our own eyes, by first acquiring value in others’ eyes, ultimately demonstrates nature’s astuteness. Nature is the main agent of this process, and, thus, prepares us for our moral destiny. In fact, Kant suggests that man’s sense of self-worth is due to nature. She, like a stepmother, leaves man in a situation to fight for himself [IaG, AA08: 20]. Nature inspires man’s sense of dignity and grants him an unmatched moral destiny, which is not to immediately satisfy his inclinations. Thus, nature promotes the discipline of human inclinations because, without it, man’s will would be unable to direct itself toward the ends that lead to positive culture, the culture of skill: The culture of skill—declares Kant in KU—is certainly the foremost subjective condition of aptitude for the promotion of ends in general; but it is still not sufficient for promoting the will in the determination and choice of its ends, which however is essential for an aptitude for ends. The latter condition of aptitude, which could be named the culture of training (discipline), is negative, and consists in the liberation of the will from the despotism of desires, by which we are made, attached as we are to certain things in nature, incapable of choosing for ourselves, while we turn into fetters the drives that nature has given us merely for guidance in order not to neglect or even injure the determination of the animality in us, while yet we are free enough to tighten or loosen them, to lengthen or shorten them, as the ends of reason require. [KU, 5: 432]

By disciplining inclinations, nature helps acquire what Kant designates as “negative freedom.” Without “negative freedom,” man could never subordinate himself to reason and morality’s ends. From then on, the positive culture of skill, comprised by the arts and sciences, would be in charge of civilizing man. Additionally, the arts and sciences play an important role in promoting and making communication possible. Beautiful arts and sciences, which by means of a universally communicable pleasure and an elegance and refinement make human beings, if not morally better, at least better mannered for society, very much reduce the tyranny of sensible tendencies, and prepare humans for a sovereignty in which reason alone shall have power. [KU, AA05: 433]

The culture of the arts and sciences makes communication possible, thus preparing the way for reason’s dominance. Kant uses an accurate

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historical example that took place during his lifetime to illustrate this point: The French Revolution would have never taken place without communication of ideas between the cultured and uncultured parts of society. In this context, Kant proposes a communication ideal between the classes as part of an aesthetic ideal, which is a moral ideal where culture and freedom meet [KU, AA05: 356]. This theoretical perspective on culture explains the past by recognizing a present moral ideal, intentionally pursued by Nature. Nature appears as mankind’s astute teacher, paradoxically leading man to his goal: the achievement of humanity’s moral vocation. This is paradoxical, however, because nature uses man’s unsociable sociability in order to promote culture and the moral ideal. Paragraph 83 of KU highlights the Old Regime’s inequalities. Kant, however, uses this to suggest that despite inequality and conflict, the arts and sciences have progressed; and, to an extent, this has all occurred at the price of social justice [KU, AA05: 432]. This paragraph particularly emphasizes refinement through the arts and sciences as morally ambiguous. On the one hand, this refinement generates more desire and produces more differences that easily incite social conflict. However, on the other hand, this “splendid misery,” the scandalous difference that spurs conflicts and revolutions, is also “one more incentive… for developing to their highest degree all the talents that serve culture” [KU, AA05: 432]. In effect, according to Kant, conflict—even war—can progress culture and, reluctantly, establish law [KU, AA05: 432–3]. In fact, one of Kant’s most controversial points refers to war as a disciplining factor and cultural promoter. However, one must not forget that Kant is writing here from the perspective of a philosopher of history; and, as such, he is attempting to make sense of the worst human evils. Thus, war can be seen as a means used by nature to discipline man’s inclinations and excite his moral sense, and thereby lead him to a legal condition. Kant considers Nature to be global progress’ ultimate agent. In On the Common Saying: that may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice, Kant writes that such progress does not depend upon what we do (e.g., on the education we give the younger generation) and by what methods we should proceed in order to bring it about, but instead upon what human nature will do in and with us to force us onto a track we would not readily take of our own accord. For only from nature, or rather from providence (since supreme wisdom is required for the complete

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fulfilment of this end), can we expect an outcome that is directed to the whole and from it to the parts, whereas people in their schemes set out only from the parts and may well remain with them, and may be able to reach the whole, as something too great for them, in their ideas but not in their influence, especially since, with their mutually adverse schemes, they would hardly unite for it by their own free resolution. [TP, AA08: 310]

Nature leads us toward our destiny through paths that we would not walk alone. These paths do not just go against what moral reason tells us; they also seemingly contradict our own limited desires for happiness. According to Kant, Nature’s action, rather than our own, permits us to reach good ends, and thus affects all humanity. As Monique Castillo points out, in history we find a dislocation between theoretical and practical reason (Castillo 1990: 54). In this context, the sense of Kant’s argument is clear: human beings do not control the fate of the world because the scope of their action-plans is not as broad as the world; even if it were, their plans could not unite the diversity of human plans and preserve freedom at the same time.

4   Moral Approach to Culture However, although man’s specific contribution to moral progress is a partial one, he must contribute to achieving the Highest Good, and to acquiring culture. Therefore, along with the genetic approach to culture, in which nature’s acts on our inclinations are privileged, we cannot ignore the other side of the question. Kant makes this side equally explicit, especially in the Metaphysics of Morals, in noting that acquiring culture is man’s duty, as is promoting the Highest Good through his actions. Indeed, if man were not a rational being, he could be neither culture’s object nor subject. However, as long as we take him merely from the perspective of reason’s pragmatic dimension, we take man almost solely as culture’s object; from this perspective, culture appears almost as nothing more than a mechanical response to the obstacles that nature presents him. But man is not simply culture’s object; as a moral being, he is a subject that can, and should, play an active role in this process. As soon as he adopts a moral perspective, Kant shifts away from a naturalist approach. He affirms that every man has the duty to perfect his own nature. That is, “to cultivate his capacities (some among them more than

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others, insofar as people have different ends), and to be in a pragmatic respect a human being equal to the end of his existence” [MS AA06: 444–5]. Regardless of the end one proposes for one’s life, one must cultivate one’s nature in order to become “a useful member of the world” [MS, AA06: 446]. By adopting this practical-moral perspective, Kant considers man not only as an object but also as a subject. Thus, man is an agent of culture who does not simply cultivate his nature, but also directs history. The civilizing process, studied from the Enlightenment’s perspective and from a historical-natural viewpoint, attempts to uncover its governing laws. However, for Kant, man’s unsocial sociability is not the last word regarding human beings or history. In the Religion, Kant states that, in addition to man’s natural predispositions toward animality and humanity, he also has a specific predisposition toward personality. Personality’s development could, ideally, help counter the influence of a purely pragmatic principle. Indeed, according to Kant, neutralizing this pragmatic principle with the moral principle is not simply a matter of individual effort. Rather, this can only happen when this “good principle in us” promotes entry into an ethical community, founded on principles of virtue in addition to external laws. Kant’s reference to an “ethical community,” [Rel. AA06: 94–5] which he also mentions in the Religion, is relevant to culture’s destiny because it signifies that history is not just steered by nature’s blind mechanism and pragmatic reason. In effect, even if we accept that this mechanism alone leads to civil society throughout the world, Kant’s reference to a moral community suggests that Nature is not the only agent of history, especially because society’s ultimate goal is not just a legal one. Although history can be viewed from purely a theoretical and natural perspective—the product of blind forces—Kant seeks a moral sign. In “The Conflict of Faculties” Kant refers to a “historical sign (signum rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognostikon) demonstrating the tendency of the human race viewed in its entirety, that is, seen not as (a sum of) individuals (for that would yield an interminable enumeration and computation), but rather as divided into nations and states (as it is encountered on earth)” [SF, AA07: 84]. Kant believes he recognizes this sign in: the mode of thinking of the spectators which reveals itself publicly in this game of great revolutions, and manifests such a universal yet disinterested sympathy for the players on one side against those on the other, even at the

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risk that this partiality could become very disadvantageous for them if discovered. Owing to its universality, this mode of thinking demonstrates a character of the human race at large and all at once; owing to its disinterestedness, a moral character of humanity, at least in its predisposition, a character which not only permits people to hope for progress toward the better, but is already itself progress insofar as its capacity is sufficient for the present. [SF, AA07: 85]

His contemporaries’ enthusiastic and widespread reaction to the French Revolution led Kant to view this event as a moral cause exerting its influence in the world, defining humanity’s moral character in general (Castillo 1990: 26). This moral character does not apply to a particular people, because “genuine enthusiasm always moves only toward what is ideal and, indeed, to what is purely moral, such as the concept of right, and it cannot be grafted onto self-interest” [SF, AA07: 86]. According to Kant, that moral cause inserting itself into history is nothing other than Law, specifically: a people’s right to create a civil constitution for itself, and “the end (which is, at the same time, a duty), that that same national constitution alone be just and morally good in itself,” that is, “created in such a way as to avoid, by its very nature, principles permitting offensive war” [SF, AA07: 85]. While in many of his philosophy of history writings these two intertwined objectives—creating legal institutions and preventing war—seem guaranteed by nature’s mechanism, this partially aesthetic approach to history—aesthetic because of based on a sign—enables Kant to guarantee a space for the action of moral agents, who have a moral duty to promote civil constitutions and cosmopolitan law. Thus, depending on which perspective one adopts, law appears either as the result of nature’s mechanism or as a specifically moral institution. Law’s double consideration suggests its unique status within the field of culture. In effect, just as aesthetic pleasure can neither be identified with empirical nor practical pleasure, the law cannot be explained in terms of purely pragmatic or moral reason. Precisely because of this, beauty and law, in their own way, can be understood as moral symbols. This approach allows us to boldly suggest, given Kant’s silence on this matter, the possibility of considering culture in its totality as a symbolic sphere. These thoughts lead us to what was previously defined as an implicit concept of culture.

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5   Toward a Critical Concept of Culture The boldness consists in assuming that the analysis of phenomena such as art, scientific research, and law, as they appear in the Critique of Judgment, provide the foundations of a new, general concept of culture. This new concept of culture views Kant’s writings on the philosophy of history in light of a single epistemological principle. Despite Kant’s occasional references to culture scattered throughout his entire work, the fundamental key providing us with a general approach of culture is found primarily in the Third Critique. Primarily based on this work, we can begin to think of culture as a projection of reason’s interests, and, ultimately, of human subjectivity. This meaning of culture, thus, may connect with aspects from the romantic, symbolic approach to culture. Thus, as Muglioni notes, understanding culture is to think about the relationship between nature and freedom, and to understand nature as a condition for freedom (Muglioni 2011: 105). As noted at the beginning, the key to see this is to be found in the interests of reason. From Kant’s perspective, reason has a profound interest in unity. However, both the first and Second Critiques illustrate an unbridgeable gap between nature and freedom. Accordingly, reason must take an interest in anything that may breach this gap, even on a solely epistemological plane. Precisely, a symbolic consideration of art and law should serve to that purpose. In addition to its interest in unity, Reason has a specifically moral interest: namely, what it prescribes a priori must be achievable. In Kant’s Second Critique, he argues that reason a priori prescribes the Highest Good’s achievement, that is, a world in which morality and happiness are in harmony. Although in this work Kant appears to leave this achievement to God, postponing it for the afterlife, in the Third Critique and the Religion he considers them goals to be achieved throughout history. However, in order for us to believe that this is historically possible, Kant must provide us with a vision of nature in harmony with morality. In other words, reason’s interests—both the practical interest and the interest in unity—help us seek the foundation of nature and culture’s unifying factor. In the Third Critique, Kant discloses the epistemological key that allows us to propose this unifying vision of culture. Here, Kant reveals the Faculty of Judgment as an a priori principle; through this principle, we can consider nature in technical or artistic terms, thus explaining how our reason acts in crucial cultural experiences such as an aesthetic experience or scientific research [KU AA20: 219 ff].

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While Kant tried to account for experiences of beauty and organic beings, he found a new principle which served reason’s interests. Neither beauty nor organic beings can be explained by mechanisms, but rather, they can only be comprehended as having some purpose in nature [KU, AA05: 246]. Therefore, Kant discovered the silent request from the faculty of Judgment: consider nature as if it were ordered toward reason’s interests [KU, AA05: 459]. When Kant writes, “it is a command of our power of judgment to proceed in accordance with the principle of suitability of nature to our faculty of cognition as far as it reaches,” [KU, AA05: 188] he expressly notes that we must think of nature as suitable for our faculty of knowledge [KU, AA20: 233]. This, in turn, implies that we think of nature not just as a mechanism, but as an art or technique; in other words, teleologically. Kant insists that, in doing so, we are not at all saying that nature is teleological, but only using this principle as a heuristic tool in order to develop a “technical system of experience,” which differs from the “mechanic system of experience” [KU, AA20: 214]. Indeed, the a priori principle of Judgment is at the base of the expansion of Kantian “system of experience,” from a simple mechanical system to a technical or artistic system. Thus, Kant distinguishes between nature’s formal technique, which is merely ordered toward our faculties of knowledge, and nature’s real technique, which is thought to encompass certain purposes; [KU, AA20: 232] the former lays the foundations for aesthetic judgments; the latter, for teleological judgments. However, in both cases, man—his moral vocation—is seen as a heuristic principle that we must use to interpret culture. This follows from what Kant says of beauty as a moral symbol; he also clarifies this in the Critique of the Teleological Power of Judgment, where he informs the reader that man, as a moral being, directs nature’s technical system. In both cases, Kant takes a suprasensible principle—man as a moral being—as culture’s ordering factor. In the First Critique, Kant asks: “What sort of use can we make of our understanding, even in regard to experience, if we do not set ends before ourselves? The highest ends, however, are those of morality and only pure reason can grant us cognition of these” [KrV A 816/B844]. As we know, according to Kant, only the Understanding provides us with knowledge in the strict sense. However, Reason’s fundamental role is to guide us in practice [KU, AA05: 167]. Reason fulfills this task by providing a view of man clothed with moral dignity and responsible for achieving the Highest Good in this world.

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Moreover, Kant states in KpV that if the Will were physically able to fully achieve what Reason determines, then the Highest Good would be achieved in nature. Moreover, a nature whose law is the moral law would be a moral nature. Occasionally, Kant outlines this ideal as a kind of second nature, which is marked by an indirect naturalness, mediated by reason [MAM, AA08: 117–8]. Therefore, just because nature actually resists man’s moral determination does not mean man’s moralization is impossible. On the contrary, we must think of nature as if this ideal were possible, as if it were possible to moralize nature: We must think of it teleologically [GMS, AA04: 437]. The Third Critique epistemologically justifies this teleological way of thinking as a link between reason’s interests and our everyday experience (Torralba 2009). Thus, Kant’s discovery of the a priori principle of the Faculty of Judgment accounts for certain cultural experiences by referencing reason’s interests. Considering nature as oriented toward man’s needs, and, ultimately, toward his moral vocation, reinforces a view of man as a valued and dignified being. In order to inhabit the world, human beings must think teleologically, because this is the only way to achieve the ultimate harmony between nature and freedom. In fact, the teleological way of thinking is the background upon which we develop activities such as science, art, and even law; in other words, activities that constitute what we call culture. To the extent that this widening of experience is a response to human reason’s needs, the Third Critique lays the epistemological foundations for the human sphere, or culture. This is specifically marked by aspirations to bridge the gap between pure mechanical nature and pure reason or freedom [KU, AA05: 196]. Certainly, because this unity between nature and freedom is never complete in the current state of the world, cultural achievements are never, by definition, definitive. Rather, these cultural achievements are inherently open to historical continuation. The moral ideal remains before and behind this historical horizon, giving it meaning; while it projects itself and ourselves into the future, cultural achievements make it symbolically present among us.

6   Conclusion The perfectionist approach to culture, for which culture and civilization are synonymous, was quite common in the eighteenth century. Indeed, it persisted well into the nineteenth century among evolutionary theories of

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society. Kant shares this view, but as a transcendental philosopher, he possesses a deeper understanding of culture, as a realm of meaning aligned with reason’s ultimate interests. Another way to put it is characterizing culture as the projection of human subjectivity. This latter approach, a result of his critical work, is his most original contribution to the philosophy of culture. According to this approach, culture is a middle ground between nature and morality. It is not simply the result of interactions between natural causes and pragmatic reason, nor is it simply the result of man’s moral commitment to taking history by the reins. Rather, it represents reason’s ultimate interest in finding a meaning for human experience. Insofar as Kant’s philosophy makes room for both approaches, it allows us to best appreciate the difference between what we could term the “sociological” and the “hermeneutic” views of culture. While the sociological view of culture follows from approaching human phenomena as the result of more or less mechanical universal laws, the hermeneutic view of culture is accessible only through the exercise of reflexive judgment, finding its last interpretative key in man’s dignity and moral vocation.

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273–310. Trans. Mary Gregor, with a General Introduction by Allen Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1996b. The Conflict of Faculties. In Religion and Rational Theology. English Edition by Allen W. Wood and George di Giovanni, 233–328. Trans. Mary J. Gregor and Robert Anchor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1996c. Metaphysics of Morals. English Edition and Trans. Mary Gregor, with an Introduction by Roger J.  Sullivan. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998a. Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason. English Edition by Allen Wood and George di Giovanni, with an Introduction by Robert Merrihew Adams. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1998b. Critique of Pure Reason. Trans. Paul Guyer and Ed. Allen W. Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2000. Critique of the Power of Judgment. English Edition: Paul Guyer. Trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007a. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. In Anthropology, History, and Education. English Edition by G.  Zöller and R.  B. Louden, 121–159. Trans. Allen W.  Wood. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007b. Conjectural Beginnings of Human History. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 160–175. Trans. Allen Wood. Cambridge University Press. ———. 2007c. Lectures on Pedagogy. In Anthropology, History and Education. English Edition by Günther Zöller and Robert B. Louden, 434–485. Trans. Robert B. Louden. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Muglioni, J.M. 2011. La philosophie de l’histoire de Kant. La réponse de Kant à la question: Qu’est-ce que l’homme? Paris: Herman Éditeurs. Neiman, S. 1994. The Unity of Reason: Re-reading Kant. New  York: Oxford University Press. Philonenko, A. 1986. La théorie kantienne de l’histoire. Paris: Vrin. Rickert, H. 1924. Kant als philosoph der modernen kultur: ein geschichtsphilosophischer versuch. Tübingen: Verlag von J.C.B. Mohr (Paul Siebeck). Taylor, Ch. 1989. Sources of the Self. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Torralba, J.M. 2009. Libertad, objeto práctico y acción: la facultad del juicio en la filosofía moral de Kant. Hildesheim, New York, and Zürich: Georg Olms Verlag.

Index1

A Abyss, 33 Aesthetic, 34, 36, 38, 51n21, 65, 67, 78n20, 91, 94–96 Afterlife, 17, 48n3, 95 Ambition, 46, 47, 89 Anderson Gold, S., 20 Animality, 14, 43, 87, 90, 93 Antagonism, 15, 30, 46, 47, 89 Aristotle, 23n9, 38, 40, 48n2, 73 Artifice, 33, 37, 38, 49n7 Ascetic view, 18, 36 Autonomy, 38, 40, 48n2, 72, 73, 85 B Beatitudo, 19, 22n2 Beauty, 34, 36, 38, 51n21, 65, 78n16, 94, 96

C Cassirer, E., 83, 86 Castillo, M., 83–85, 92, 94 Categorical imperative, 45, 49n9, 71, 72 Churton, 57 Civilization, 2–6, 10, 13, 25n19, 30, 31, 34, 38, 41, 43, 44, 51n21, 55, 57–67, 77n15, 86, 97 Civilized state, 13, 49n8, 84 Civilizing process, 20, 42–44, 50n14, 51n20, 85, 87–89, 93 Civil society, 3, 50n19, 66, 93 Civil state, 42, 43, 60 Cohen, A., 2 Communication, 43, 51n20, 66, 68, 90 Comparison, 46, 58, 70, 73, 76n11, 88 Concupiscence, 32

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

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INDEX

Constitution, 20, 21, 25n15, 42, 43, 50n17, 50n19, 59, 60, 87, 94 Cosmopolitan, 11, 39, 43, 46, 59, 60, 94 Couple, 32 Cultural diversity, 6, 56, 60–63, 67, 74 Cultural progress, 6 Culture of skill, 44, 49n11, 57, 58, 90 D Death, 35, 36 Decency, 34, 46, 88 Desire, 4, 6, 32, 33, 35, 47, 72, 77n11, 89, 91 Destiny, 5, 14, 16, 20, 21, 27n25, 27n26, 27n28, 37, 46, 50n12, 74, 85, 90, 92, 93 Dignity, 23n4, 50n16, 72, 90, 96, 98 Discipline, 30, 41, 42, 44, 45, 50n15, 52n21, 58, 84, 90, 91 Discourse, 31 Discretion, 41, 49n11, 57 Dissimulation, 75n2 Division of labour, 42 Drive, 32, 33, 66 Duty, 3, 5, 11, 17, 30, 39, 45, 49n9, 49n10, 59–61, 63, 65, 66, 76n6, 76n10, 78n23, 79n24, 79n26, 87, 92, 94 E Education, 25n19, 31, 40–45, 49n8, 52n26, 52n27, 53n28, 65, 75n2, 87, 91 Embodiment, 74 Empirical self, 36, 67 Enthusiasm, 94 Envy, 35, 88 Ethical community, 39, 62, 93 Eudaimonia, 19, 22n2, 23n9

Evil, 15, 22n1, 25n17, 25n19, 43, 47, 49n6, 62, 64, 77n12 F Fine arts, 43, 51n20 Fischer, M., 4 Freedom, 4, 12, 13, 17, 24n12, 25n15, 31, 33, 36, 44, 45, 48n2, 49n6, 50n19, 59–61, 63, 66, 74, 78n18, 79n23, 79n26, 84, 90–92, 95, 97 Freud, Sigmund, 5, 33 Future, 34, 43, 46, 48n5, 64, 76n6, 85, 97 G Gaos, José, 6n1 Genius, 67, 68, 74, 78n22, 86 God, 17, 18, 32, 46, 48n2, 49n6, 61, 64, 69, 76n10, 95 Goethe, 86 González, A.M., 2, 83, 85 Granja, D.M., 6n1 Guyer, Paul, 6n1 H Habermas, J., 4 Haller, Albrecht von, 70 Happiness and culture, 5, 10, 18–22 Happiness and morality, 18, 72 Hatred, 35, 60 Henrich, D., 21 Herder, Johann Gottfried, 19, 21, 24n11, 26n22, 31, 35, 37, 86 Highest good, 11, 18, 25n15, 37, 61, 63, 70, 72 Highest political good, 61, 63, 77n13 Historical imperative, 37 Historical religions, 62

 INDEX 

History of freedom, 64 History of nature, 64 History of reason, 84, 85 Homo noumenon, 79n23 Homo phaenomenon, 79n23 Honour, 34 Hope, 30, 37, 61, 63, 64, 74, 94 Human species, 3, 40, 42 Humboldt, W. von, 86 Hutter, A., 85 Hypocrisy, 58, 75n2, 87 Hypothetical imperatives, 52n23, 71 I Ideal of, 2, 9, 15, 20, 21, 35, 36, 38, 46, 47, 60, 63 Imagination, 2, 9, 10, 14, 19, 24n10, 32, 35, 68, 78n18 Inciarte, F., 48n2 Inclinations, 2, 10, 14, 16, 19, 20, 22n2, 23n9, 32, 34, 35, 40, 42–46, 52n21, 58, 72, 73, 76n6, 79n26, 89–92 Individuality, 47, 51n20, 89 Inequality, 6, 25n19, 26n20, 42, 58, 91 Instinct, 11, 12, 26n24, 32–35, 40, 48n2, 48n5 Institution, 94 Interests, 5, 63, 72, 77n15, 78n16, 85, 95–98 J Joas, H., 68, 78n22 K Kierkegaard, Soren, 36 Kingdom of Ends, 22, 37, 38, 72

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Knowledge of the world, 41, 50n12, 87 Korsgaard, C.M., 33 L Labour, 23n7, 35 Language and religion, 60 Language’s, 31, 32 Leyva, G.M., 6n1 Louden, R., 1 Love, 33, 34, 48n5, 58, 76n11, 88 Luxury, 35, 50n18 M Manners, 41, 57 Marx, Karl, 42 Maturity, 26n20 Mechanism of nature, 24n15, 61 Mode of thought, 23n5, 34, 47, 88, 89 Moral community, 77n14, 93 Moral conscience, 13, 32, 36, 37, 39, 52n21, 70 Moral culture, 43–45, 56, 67, 68 Moral feeling, 38, 65, 66, 77n12, 78n16 Moral ideal, 10, 18, 22, 87, 91, 97 Moral interest, 36, 44, 64, 77n14, 78n18, 95 Morality’s, 14, 18, 31, 34, 39, 44, 62, 90 Moral law, 9, 10, 18, 19, 22n1, 33, 37, 40, 45, 47, 61, 72–74, 77n12, 97 Moral principle, 15, 72, 93 Moral progress, 6 Moral reason, 39 Moral self, 10, 36, 68, 74 Moral sentiment, 13, 38 Moral state, 30, 84, 86, 87

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INDEX

Moral symbol, 96 Muglioni, J.M., 95 N Natural dispositions, 31, 42, 46, 47 Natural state, 13, 21, 42, 43, 50n17, 84, 86, 87 Nature and freedom, 97 Nature and morality, 37, 40, 58, 86, 98 Nature and reason, 5, 10, 20 Nature’s astuteness, 42, 90 Neiman, S., 85 Noumenon, 25n15, 70 O Obligation, 11, 13, 45, 79n23 P Paradise, 20, 25n19, 30, 37 Peace, 20, 59–61, 76n6, 87 Personality, 51n20, 63, 77n12, 79n23, 87, 93 Philonenko, A., 1, 85 Political community, 56 Practical reason, 5, 11–13, 16, 22n2, 40, 44–46, 70, 92 Pragmatic imperatives, 44, 71, 72 Pragmatic knowledge, 71, 87 Pragmatic reason, 44, 63, 70, 88, 93, 98 Predispositions, 15, 27n27, 37, 39, 46, 49n9, 50n18, 50n19, 53n28, 59, 60, 89, 93 Progress, 2, 6, 10, 21, 27n26, 27n28, 31, 39, 43, 47, 50n18, 59, 62, 85, 87–89, 91, 92, 94 Propriety, 34, 58, 75n2, 86 Providence, 19–21, 26n22, 37, 43, 87

Prudence, 13, 41, 44, 49n11, 52n23, 57, 58, 71, 72, 75n2 Pure religion, 62 R Rath, N., 30, 31, 38 Rational animal, 69 Rational being, 17, 36, 44, 49n9, 57, 69–72, 79n25, 89, 92 Reason’s history, 42 Reason’s interest, 65 Reath, A., 17, 22 Refinement, 41, 43, 44, 52n21, 57, 58, 65, 66, 90, 91 Republican, 20, 38, 39, 47, 51n20, 60, 66 Republic of letters, 43 Respect, 13, 19, 34, 36, 37, 40, 66, 73, 77n12, 93 Rickert, H., 83 Rotenstreich, N., 2 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 19, 20, 25n19, 27n25, 30, 37, 38, 42, 47, 57, 86, 88 Rules of skill, 44, 52n23, 52n24, 71 S Sánchez Madrid, N., 2 Schiller, F., 36 Scotus, 48n2 Second nature, 49n8, 97 Self-esteem, 13, 23n4, 23n5 Sensibility, 38, 66, 73 Sensible nature, 14, 73 Sex, 35 Simmel, Georg, 47 Sociability, 15, 20, 32, 34, 43, 46–47, 48n1, 51n20, 51n21, 58, 65, 66, 87–89, 91, 93 Social life, 2, 41, 51n20, 65

 INDEX 

Spaemann, R., 23n9 Spirit, 38, 48n2, 49n9, 68, 74 Spirit of trade, 61 Splendid misery, 50n18, 91 Standard of taste, 66 Storandt, P., 6n1 Subjectivity, 4, 5, 64, 67, 68, 85, 95, 98 Sublimation, 33, 34, 48n5 Sublime, 36, 48n4, 51n21 System of experience, 96 System of nature, 15, 70 T Taylor, Ch., 86 Technical imperatives, 44, 71 Teleology, 10–12, 17, 18, 85 Torralba, J.M., 97 U Uniformity, 49n8, 61, 64 Universality, 11, 35, 64, 67–69, 72, 74, 94

V Violence, 49n8, 50n18, 59, 84 Virtue, 18, 39–41, 57, 61, 70, 73, 79n26, 93 Vocation, 11, 12, 14, 16, 20, 21, 26n24, 27n26, 27n28, 32, 35, 37, 43, 47, 49n8, 51n20, 51n21, 52n26, 53n28, 64, 89, 91, 96–98 W Wood, A.W., 6n1, 31 Worthiness to be happy, 23n4 Y Yovel, Y., 37 Z Zakydalsky, T., 1 Zammito, J.H., 1, 31

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