Flikschuh on Kant on Progress

Katrin Flikschuh came to Essex yesterday and spoke about Kant’s comments on moral progress in Gemeinspruch III. Whilst this wasn’t officially part of the tpn project, I though it might be fun to blog this anyway. Katrin has kindly made the paper, entitled "Duty, Nature, Right: Kant's Response to Mendelssohn in Gemeinspruch III", available to all. It is, however, a work in progress, so please don't quote it without her permission.

The seminar was great fun, and the paper really interesting. I’m not going to summarise in any detail, as I’m too lazy. Also, I shall probably say more about the first than the second half of the presentation (as most of the discussion focussed on this). But the idea went something like this...

Kant makes some really puzzling claims in Gemeinspruch III whilst replying to Moses Mendelssohn’s argument that mankind does not/cannot exhibit progress. In particular, Kant employs a teleological argument maintaining that nature “wills” humanity’s moral progress. Katrin’s proposal is to interpret this against the background of Kant’s later political philosophy, in particular the Doctrine of Right. The argument against Mendelssohn is complex, beginning with a reformulation of the issue. One must not ask whether humanity is progressing but whether it is capable of so progressing. As such, one asks a practical rather than a theoretical question. The aim is not a hypothesis that humanity is in fact progressing, but the entitlement to the postulate that it is. This, Kant argues, can be gained via the a priori recognition of our ‘inborn duty to influence posterity in such a way that it will make constant progress’. This, Kant maintains, Mendelssohn must acknowledge as he recognises that individuals may make moral progress, and recognising and acting on this duty is a condition of such progress. But if we recognise that there is such a duty then, since ought implies can, we must be entitled to believe that our actions are not in vain. So we are entitled to believe that humanity is progressing.

But now comes a puzzle. Kant goes on to claim that purely in terms of a natural process, war weariness etc. will lead to (externally understood) moral progress. The reference to duty and reason goes by the board. How can we explain this? It is all the more puzzling given that Kant suggests that this teleological claim is merely an uncertain hypothesis. But hasn’t he explicitly denied that it is a theoretical question?

[Now it is at this point that I start to get confused – so help me out someone].

The solution is that, read in the light of the later political philosophy, we should think of Kant’s claim as involving another postulate. This time is would be an entitlement to believe that providence has arranged nature so as to make human moral progress possible. The thought is that we should interpret nature in terms of our ends. We understand the non-sensible principles of right by analogy with/as interpretations of the sensible laws of nature. Or, at least, this is the direction in which Kant’s later political philosophy is moving.

As I said, the discussion focussed primarily on the first part – the argument against Mendelssohn. The points I recall were the following:

1. Kant gives an account of teleology in the 3^rd Critique, why not use it in understanding his political teleological arguments?

2. Kant only succeeds in an argument against Mendelssohn if we think that the latter accepts a Kantian account of the duties we have. But might not Mendelssohn reply that our duties are, perhaps, towards the posterity of, say, our family or just ourselves? In which case, he might continue to maintain that individuals can progress but that humanity as a whole cannot. That is, Mendelssohn may have a different idea of (individual) moral progress than Kant.

3. How does Kant get from an entitlement to believe that mankind can progress to an entitlement to believe that mankind does progress? Isn’t it plausible to think that only the former is licensed by the content of the relevant duty?

4. These are odd postulates in that they seem to be open to empirical refutation. We are being asked to believe that we have an entitlement to accept something that may go against all the empirical evidence. In this way, they are unlike the postulates that one usually thinks of at work in Kant.

Now Katrin had some characteristically compelling answers to these questions, but I think perhaps it is time for me to stop and let others have their say.