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Interview
Paul Guyer
Paul Guyer is an American philosopher and a leading scholar of both Immanuel Kant and aesthetics. AmirAli Maleki interviews him about Kant’s political and moral vision.
Why study Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) and German Idealism in the modern world? Can this philosophy have any lessons for us?
I think that the metaphysics of the school we call ‘German Idealism’, culminating in Hegel (1770-1831), is fanciful and of no particular use. I do think that German Idealism continued Kant’s emphasis on the foundational value of freedom, but not always as clearly expressed as Kant expressed it himself. The basic idea of Kant’s moral philosophy in general, and his philosophy of Recht – the enforceable part of morality – in particular, is that everyone should have as much personal freedom, freedom of belief, and freedom to set and pursue their own ends, as is compatible with everyone else having an equal degree of freedom. This is a simple idea, but many people, individually or collectively, don’t seem to get it. I actually think that some of the best philosophers in the British and American post-Hegelian tradition, such as T.H. Green, Josiah Royce, and H.J. Paton, understood it better than say Fichte or Hegel; and of course John Rawls understood it very well. He drew a lot on Kant.
In my opinion, philosophy is ever-growing and cannot be limited to a specific nation. But many commentators believe that philosophy in Germany is the perfection of thought. Do you think that is correct?
I certainly would not claim that, although as I have just said, I do think Kant’s basic ideas about freedom have enduring value. I do not think that speakers of any one language, let alone residents of particular geopolitical entities – which we know are historical contingencies – have any special claim to philosophical ability. Having said which, the particular educational, cultural, legal, even religious conditions of some particular places at some particular times may make them particularly receptive to good philosophy; or particularly hostile to it.
In his Critique of Practical Reason (1788), Kant points out that although the moral law always supercedes any form of personal desire, humans cannot be expected to forget their own happiness. I want to know here, what’s the balance point for Kant between moral law and personal happiness? And if Kant wanted to invite people to the moral law in today’s world, and at the same time promise them their personal happiness will be preserved, what analysis might he give?
I think that the connection between morality and happiness in Kant is subtle. He insists that the fundamental principle of morality cannot be to seek to satisfy one’s desire for one’s own happiness (or that of any other particular person or family group) no matter what, because that will inevitably lead to conflicts. But neither does morality require one always to disregard one’s own desire for happiness, although in particular situations it might. Kant makes clear what morality requires in Part One of Religion Within the Boundaries of Mere Reason (1793): morality requires that one adopt as one’s fundamental maxim – to subordinate one’s self-love to morality if or when they are in conflict. But what is the fundamental principle of morality? As I said – that each person should have as much freedom as is compatible with equal freedom for everyone else. And what is freedom? In Kant’s view, the ability to set and pursue one’s own ends. And what is happiness? Simply the condition that results from the realization of one’s ends, whatever they are. So what Kant’s principle actually prescribes is the pursuit of happiness within the constraint that everyone else has the same right to pursue their happiness, so some way must be found in which each person can pursue their own happiness compatible with others doing the same. Of course, Kant is right to observe that much of the time people do not keep to this constraint, and thus some moral people end up being unhappy because of the immoral actions of others. This moves him to defer the realization of the highest good to a ‘future life’ in his first two Critiques, and to there invoke the authorship of nature by God to make up for what does not seem to come about solely by human effort. Yet in his third Critique [Of Judgement, 1790], and say the 1793 essay Theory and Practice, he downplays the postulate of immortality, and simply suggests that it is the task of humankind to work toward the day when human beings will enjoy the greatest happiness possible within the constraint of everyone being equally free to pursue their own happiness. Here ‘their own’ always includes that of their family or friends, or whomever they care about as much as themselves.
As you imply, Kant sometimes claims morality requires a ‘final end’ or ultimate goal in the world, which religion provides. But since the moral duty originates from the moral agent in the ‘ kingdom of ends’, can’t the religion roped in by Kant be called a human creation that happens to evolve throughout history through moral experiments? In your opinion, is Kant a secular thinker?
It’s too simple to classify Kant as either a religious or a secular thinker. In his late work – from 1790 on – I believe that Kant describes the highest good as a condition that we have to believe can be realized within the natural history of humanity. Otherwise our efforts to be moral would be pointless and undermined. But he does continue to think that we need to be able to believe in the existence of God in order to rationally believe that human nature is capable of this achievement. I do not accept this point myself. Kant always describes his own religion as a ‘religion of pure reason’, not cultural, as his peer Moses Mendelssohn did in Jerusalem (1783). But Kant does think that because human nature weaves together both reason and sensory experience, humans need some scripture and liturgy to promote their morality. Unlike Mendelssohn – perhaps in implicit but intended contrast to Mendelssohn – he believes that only one scripture can serve this purpose – in other words, that in their support for the religion of reason, all human beings should use the same support. I think that this was a terrible mistake, and that Mendelssohn was much wiser on this point. My 2020 book, Reason and Experience in Mendelssohn and Kant, has much more on this.
An ‘ethical commonwealth’ is an interesting concept, and Kant claims that this republic is the only political condition that could be freely chosen and entered into. Maybe people who want to live outside of society can be forced to accept the law, but they cannot be forced to be virtuous. In the conditions in which I live, in Iran, only one moral law is acceptable by the power group and everyone must act according to it. But it seems that such a thing does not appear in Kant’s thought. For example, he points out that we can fulfill our moral duty without being forced or dogmatic. He talks about the concept of an ‘invisible church’ in this context. Let’s modernize this concept: for example, for my country we would need an ‘invisible mosque’ or an ‘invisible religion’ to bring about the highest good from every side according to the needs of the community. In this institution, there would be no compulsion, and everyone fulfills their duty according to their position in the society. So in my opinion, the ethical commonwealth is a pre-written idea that’s found in every nation, and this is the ‘earthly religion’ or the general law of a nation. But what’s your opinion? Is there ‘coercion in religion’ in Kant’s thought? And should religion be above the government or even in Kant’s intended republic? And what does Kant suggest regarding the separation of religion from politics?
“Kant does not approve of violence to achieve freedom” Battle of Mollwitz 1741
Kant’s view is clearly that coercion is justifiable only when it’s necessary to prevent someone from hindering the freedom of action of others. That is the proper function of Recht, or coercively enforceable law. Everything else must be left to an unforced respect for the moral law of individual agents. Kant could not be clearer about this matter.
Like Roger Williams, John Locke, and many other political philosophers of his time, Kant also believed that government should regulate religion only insofar as is necessary to preserve civil order – that is, only intervene when the religious practices of some would injure the freedom of others. There is no other Kantian justification for government interference in religious matters. In US terms, this means that the government should protect the free exercise of religion – itself meaning the practice of religion that does not restrict the freedom of others. It should however never be in the business of establishing religion or requiring any religious practice of any kind. This is the First Amendment to the US Constitution, which was at the time a necessary condition for ratification of the Constitution by several states.
Kant believes that we ourselves are the cause of our choices and of acting according to them, and that nothing from outside forces us into these actions. I think this is a fundamental and important message, since everything that happens in our lives depends on our choices. But, for example, if our choice is for a revolution, and this revolution becomes violent, yet we achieve freedom from oppression by it, can we still consider ourselves free people? Is this still a positive freedom from Kant’s point of view? My question is basically this: to what extent does Kant approve of violence to achieve a necessary goal such as freedom from the shackles of a tyrannical government?
Kant does not approve of violence to achieve freedom – and in particular, to improve an existing state. He does think that people must have the right to protest and suggest political improvements, and that rulers have an obligation to listen and to reform their states in the direction of improved justice, that is, more freedom. But he thinks that a ‘right to rebellion’ – in other words, a right to the use of coercion or violence against a government – is a formula for anarchy. It is however a highly contested matter in Kant scholarship what counts as a legitimate state with a legitimate claim to authority, and thus to a monopoly on the use of coercion. Does anything that calls itself a state – for example the Nazi ‘state’ from 1933-1945 – really count as a state that has a right to such a claim?
What do you think is the correct research method for Kant?
I don’t know what would count as a ‘Kantian research method’, or that there is any way to study him except by continued study of his own texts and of the best scholarly commentary and literature.
Can Kant still be analyzed in ways that are useful for today, or is his philosophy finished in this respect?
I certainly do think that his work has a continuing message, as I have been stressing, and that there is always room for continuing work in applying his general principles to circumstances that he hardly foresaw or could have foreseen. That work is never done, although it goes beyond Kant interpretation or scholarship, to the application of his principles.
What can we expect from philosophy for the future? Now that philosophy has taken a naturalistic form, what is its duty and what should it do? What is the purpose of philosophy? Do you think that philosophy should remain entirely in the academic field?
In my view, the work of philosophy is clarification and justification of our most fundamental concepts and principles – what Kant called ‘Aufsuchung und Feststellung’ (‘exploration and detection’). There will always be a need for that, because human knowledge and conditions are always changing. This work needs to be done by people who are well-trained and well-informed, so there should always be room for academic philosophy. But the work is not of much use if its results remain confined to academia: they need to be spread in culture more broadly.
• AmirAli Maleki is a philosophy researcher and the Editor of PraxisPublication.com. He works in the fields of political philosophy, Islamic philosophy, and hermeneutics.
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