Immanuel Kant and the Hope for Cosmological Progress
Part of a Series on the Philosophy of History
Monday 22 April 2024 is the tricentennial of the birth of Immanuel Kant (22 April 1724 to 12 February 1804), who was born three hundred years ago today in Königsberg, now Kaliningrad, on this day in 1724. Kant is counted among the greatest of philosophers, and his legacy is both large and complicated. Though Kant is notorious for the difficulty of his style, he could also be clear and to the point when he wanted to be. Near the end of the Critique of Pure Reason he wrote:
“The whole interest of my reason, whether speculative or practical, is concentrated in the three following questions: 1. What can I know? 2. What should I do? What may I hope?”
These three questions explain the epistemology of the Critique of Pure Reason, the ethics of the Critique of Practical Reason, and the philosophy of history that flows through all of Kant’s thought. Kant wrote about philosophy of history throughout his life, including during his pre-critical period, i.e., before his three critiques. Kant’s philosophy of history, then, spans his entire career, but he never wrote a Critique of Historical Reason, or any major work specifically on the philosophy of history. If we want a Kantian philosophy of history, we have to reconstruct it from his shorter writings, but Kant left us with enough material that this reconstruction is possible. Kant was an extremely systematic thinker, so that he often summarizes his arguments in explicitly numbered propositions; this makes it all the easier for us to extract Kant’s salient points.
The works by Kant that I will mention here are, in chronological order, Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, March 1755), Critique of Pure Reason (Kritik der reinen Vernunft, first edition 1781), “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose” (“Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht,” 1784), “Speculative Beginnings of Human History” (Mutmaßlicher Anfang der Menschengeschichte, 1786), Critique of Practical Reason (Kritik der praktischen Vernunft, 1788), Critique of Judgment (Kritik der Urteilskraft, 1790), “The End of All Things” (“Das Ende aller Dinge,” June 1794), Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch (“Zum ewigen Frieden,” 1795), and Conflict of Faculties (Der Streit der Fakultäten, 1798). If we take these works, or the relevant sections of these works, and rearrange them, integrating them in the order of the period of history to which they give exposition, we arrive at an all-embracing philosophy of history that extends beyond humanity to the whole of the cosmos.
Kant’s early book Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens (Allgemeine Naturgeschichte und Theorie des Himmels, 1755), gives us the cosmological context of Kant’s understanding of the place of human beings in the universe. Much of Kant’s conception is modern, and sounds very familiar to us:
“The universe, by its immeasurable greatness and the infinite variety and beauty that shine from it on all sides, fills us with silent wonder. If the presentation of all this perfection moves the imagination, the understanding is seized by another kind of rapture when, from another point of view, it considers how such magnificence and such greatness can flow from a single law, with an eternal and perfect order.”
That was Kant in 1755, during his pre-critical period, but this is mirrored in a famous passage from the end of Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason (1787):
“Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing admiration and reverence, the more often and more steadily one reflects on them: the starry heavens above me and the moral law within me. I do not need to search for them and merely conjecture them as though they were veiled in obscurity or in the transcendent region beyond my horizon; I see them before me and connect them immediately with the consciousness of my existence. The first begins from the place I occupy in the external world of sense and extends the connection in which I stand into an unbounded magnitude with worlds upon worlds and systems of systems, and moreover into the unbounded times of their periodic motion, their beginning and their duration. The second begins from my invisible self, my personality, and presents me in a world which has true infinity but which can be discovered only by the understanding, and I cognize that my connection with that world (and thereby with all those visible worlds as well) is not merely contingent, as in the first case, but universal and necessary.”
Both of these passages sound like they could be straight out of Carl Sagan, invoking, as they do, both the grandeur of the cosmos and the smallness of humanity within this grandeur. But it isn’t all exactly like this in Kant. While Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens is written in a primarily naturalistic idiom, it is interspersed throughout with ethical observations and assurances that divine providence is at work in nature. Here’s another quote from later in the book that gives a sense of Kant’s big picture conception of nature:
“…we ought not to lament the perishing of a world as a real loss of Nature. She proves her riches by a sort of prodigality which, while certain parts pay their tribute to mortality, maintains itself unimpaired by numberless new generations in the whole range of its perfection. What an innumerable multitude of flowers and insects are destroyed by a single cold day! And how little are they missed, although they are glorious products of the art of nature and demonstrations of the Divine Omnipotence! In another place, however, this loss is again compensated for to superabundance. Man who seems to be the masterpiece of the creation, is himself not excepted from this law. Nature proves that she is quite as rich and quite as inexhaustible in the production of what is most excellent among the creatures, as of what is most trivial, and that even their destruction is a necessary shading amid the multiplicity of her suns, because their production costs her nothing. The injurious influences of infected air, earthquakes, and inundations sweep whole peoples from the earth; but it does not appear that nature has thereby suffered any damage. In the same way whole worlds and systems quit the stage of the universe, after they have played out their parts. The infinitude of the creation is great enough to make a world, or a Milky Way of worlds, look in comparison with it, what a flower or an insect does in comparison with the earth. But while nature thus adorns eternity with changing scenes, God continues engaged in incessant creation in forming the matter for the construction of still greater worlds. Let us then accustom our eye to these terrible catastrophes as being the common ways of providence, and regard them even with a sort of complacency. And in fact nothing is more befitting the riches of nature than such an attitude towards her. For when a world-system in the long succession of its duration exhausts all the manifold variation which its structure can embrace; when it has at last become a superfluous member in the chain of beings ; there is nothing more becoming than that it should play the last part in the drama of the closing changes of the universe, a part which belongs to every finite thing, namely, that it should pay its tribute to mortality. Nature — as has been said — already shows in the smallest part of her system that rule of procedure which eternal fate has prescribed to her on the whole. And, I say it again, the greatness of what has to perish, is not the least obstacle to it ; for all that is great becomes small, nay, it becomes as it were a mere point, when it is compared with the Infinitude which creation has to exhibit in unlimited space throughout the succession of eternity.”
That is Kant’s conception of natural history. In contrast to this, Kant gives us the beginnings of human history in “Conjectural beginning of human history” (also translated as “Speculative Beginning of Human History,” 1786). Kant formulates what we would today call a rational reconstruction of prehistory. The Enlightenment thinkers keenly felt the gap between the Biblical creation story and the beginning of recorded history, and in an attempt to fill this gap Kant interpolated a speculative account. This is, essentially, a grand exercise of what Collingwood called the “a priori historical imagination,” which fills in gaps in the historical record between known events, but Kant pushes this idea far beyond what Collingwood envisaged. In his “Conjectural beginning of human history,” Kant identifies four stages in the development of the human mind as key to the beginning of human history:
“…reason soon began to stir and sought, by comparing foods with what was presented to him as similar to those foods by a different sense than the one to which instinct was bound, say by the sense of sight, to extend his knowledge of foodstuffs beyond the confines of mere instinct. Even though it was not advised by instinct.”
This we could call the Neolithic agricultural revolution, which was not only a technological revolution but also revolutionized our conceptual framework.
“After the instinct of nourishment, by means of which nature preserves each individual, the instinct of sex is most prominent, by means of which nature preserves each species. Having now stirred for the first time, reason did not fail to exert its influence on this instinct. The human being soon discovered that the appeal of sex, which in animals is based on stimuli that are merely temporary and mostly periodic, could be extended and even augmented through his imagination, which compelled him, to be sure, with more moderation, but also in a more enduring and consistent manner the more the object is withdrawn from the senses… Refusal was the feat by means of which stimuli that were merely sensual were converted to those that were dependent on ideas. Mere animal desire was gradually converted to love and, with this, the feeling of mere pleasure was converted to a taste for beauty, initially only in the human being, but then also in nature. Decency, an inclination to inspire the respect of others toward our persons through good manners (the hiding of that which could arouse disdain), as the actual basis of all true sociability, was the first signal to the development of the human being as a moral creature. — A small beginning, but one which is epoch-making insofar as it entirely changes the direction of the way of thinking, is more important than the entire, incalculable series of subsequent expansions of culture.”
Stable societies and the origins of morality are derived from control and transmutation of the sexual instinct. We can see in which a Kantian anticipation of Freud’s thesis in Civilization and its Discontents.
“The third stage of reason, after it had meddled with the immediately felt needs, was the conscious anticipation of the future. This ability to enjoy not just the current moment in life but also to represent to oneself the future, often far in advance, is the most distinguishing mark of the human being’s capacity to prepare himself for distant ends in accordance with his destiny. But it is also the most inexhaustible source of worry and distress aroused by the uncertainty of the future, something from which all animals are free.”
Planning for the future is already implicit in the innovation of agriculture, but the future orientation of human thought develops only slowly to the point of explicit planning and preparation for the future.
“The fourth and final stage, by means of which reason completely raised the human being above its society with animals, was that he understood (however vaguely), that he was actually the end of nature, and that nothing that lived on earth could compete with him in this regard.”
Today we might call this anthropocentrism, or even a non-Copernican conception of human centrality to nature, but to Kant it was an article of faith; however, we shall see that even this explicit claim of human centrality has its limits and is superseded by a cosmological imperative in which human beings are not central.
Kant’s “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective” (“Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltbürgerlicher Absicht” 1786) lays out Kant’s framework for human history much as Kant’s work on Universal Natural History lays out Kant’s framework for natural history. Kant explicitly formulated nine propositions in this work, as follows:
FIRST PROPOSITION All of a creature’s natural predispositions are destined eventually to develop fully and in accordance with their purpose.
This teleology is central to Kant’s work — the third critique, the Critique of Judgment, is mostly concerned with teleology — and this is Kant’s explicit formulation of teleology as a principle of development and therefore of history.
SECOND PROPOSITION In the human being (as the only rational creature on earth), those natural predispositions aimed at the use of its reason are to be developed in full only in the species, but not in the individual.
It is the entirety of humanity that will see the realization of the telos anticipated in the first proposition.
THIRD PROPOSITION Nature has willed that human beings produce everything that extends beyond the mechanical organization of their animal existence completely on their own, and that they shall not partake in any happiness or perfection other than that which they attain free of instinct and by means of their own reason.
We are, as a species, building a human world, and it is this human world that is independent of nature in which our happiness and our perfection are to be realized.
FOURTH PROPOSITION The means that nature employs in order to bring about the development of all of the predispositions of humans is their antagonism in society, insofar as this antagonism ultimately becomes the cause of a law-governed organization of society.
The human world we are building is defined by what Kant called humanity’s “unsocial sociability” — this anticipates Hegel and Marx on conflict as an engine of social development. For Kant, this social conflict is what pushes us to eventually create a law-governed society. (This argument is re-stated in Perpetual Peace.)
FIFTH PROPOSITION The greatest problem for the human species to which nature compels it to seek a solution is the achievement of a civil society which administers right universally.
The human world of a law-government civil society is the greatest challenge we will face as a species.
SIXTH PROPOSITION This problem is both the most difficult and also the last to be solved by the human species.
The human world of a law-governed society will be the last human construction to be perfected, being the end of the entirety of human development.
SEVENTH PROPOSITION The problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution is dependent upon the problem of a law-governed external relation between states and cannot be solved without having first solved the latter.
Here we can shoehorn in Kant’s Perpetual Peace (“Zum ewigen Frieden,” 1795), which goes into this point in much greater detail. Let us set aside “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective” for the moment to consider the six provisions that Kant lays out in Perpetual Peace as the conditions for peace:
- ‘‘No peace settlement which secretly reserves issues for a future war shall be considered valid.”
- ‘‘No independently existing state (irrespective of whether it is large or small) shall be able to be acquired by another state through inheritance, exchange, purchase, or gift.’’
- ‘‘Standing armies (miles perpetuus) shall gradually be abolished entirely.’’
- ‘‘The state shall not contract debts in connection with its foreign affairs.’’
- ‘‘No state shall forcibly interfere in the constitution and government of another state.’’
- ‘‘No state shall allow itself such hostilities in wartime as would make mutual trust in a future period of peace impossible. Such acts would include the employment of assassins (percussores), poisoners (venefici), breach of surrender, incitement of treason (perduellio) within the enemy state, etc.’’
Now, returning to “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective” we pick it up where I left off for Perpetual Peace:
EIGHTH PROPOSITION One can regard the history of the human species at large as the realization of a concealed plan of nature, meant to bring into being an internally and, to this end, externally perfect state constitution, as the only condition in which nature can fully develop all of its predispositions in humankind.
Again, this anticipates Hegel’s “cunning of reason,” in which humanity perfects its society and so allows for the greatest possible development of its powers through a process that humanity itself does not understand and is not typically conscious of being involved.
NINTH PROPOSITION A philosophical attempt to describe the universal history of the world according to a plan of nature that aims at the perfect civic union of the human species must be considered to be possible and even to promote this intention of nature.
It would be to our benefit to make this entire developmental process explicit to ourselves through its explicit exposition in a book or books, which can advance and facilitate the intention of nature for humanity to realize the perfections appropriate to it, chief among these being moral perfection and the perfection of a civil constitution.
After this schematic rendering of the entirety of human history, Kant gives his account of the end of history in “The End of All Things” (“Das Ende aller Dinge,” June 1794). Kant then re-visited the end of the world in a work in 1798 titled The Strife of the Faculties, which includes “An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?” Here Kant distinguishes among three conceptions of history: 1) The Terroristic manner of representing human history, which is declensionist, but morally declensionist; 2) A Eudaemonistic manner of representing human history, which is progressive, but, as with his terroristic manner of representing history, it is morally progressive; and 3) The abderitic hypothesis, which is morally mixed, consisting of moral declension and moral progress, which cancel each other out and render society stagnant. Presumably, in such a morally stagnant society
Clearly, Kant believed in progress, and his Enlightenment account of history seamlessly integrates divine providence and worldly human progress, but there is also a naturalism in Kant not found in earlier philosophical thought, and is rarely found after him. In his pre-critical Universal Natural History he repeatedly asserts that nature is prodigal in both its creation of entire worlds and their destruction. In Kant’s unwritten philosophy of history, the entire history of humanity must be placed in this larger context and subsumed by it, so that we, as humanity, are an expression of nature’s prodigality, and when we are eventually swept away, nature will not grieve for us, and it is right not to grieve for us. We are part of the greatness of what has to perish in order that even greater things come into being.
No one calls Kant a cyclical philosopher of history, and his Enlightenment belief in progress implies a strictly linear view, but his larger conception of cosmological history, within which human history is located, recognizes that progress, like greatness, comes and goes, appearing now here, now there, in the cosmos. If further progress with the resources of one world is swept away by a cosmic catastrophe, the larger cosmological project of progress will be picked up again on some other world. We could call this a spiral conception of history, in which worlds and species each make their contribution to cosmic progress and then pass from the scene of history. There is progress, then, but each realization of progress — presumably each realization of a perfect civil constitution — is but a rung on a greater ladder of progress.
What Kant argued in the second proposition of “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective” — namely, that “natural predispositions aimed at the use of its reason are to be developed in full only in the species, but not in the individual” — can be extrapolated on a cosmological scale, so that a given species on a given planet is an “individual,” while the complete development of reason is realized not in this individual species, but in the whole of the cosmos. This is a philosophy of progress, to be sure, but it is a philosophy of cosmological progress, in which human beings have a role to play, but we are ultimately dispensable and disposable. Our only consolation in such a universe is a rational hope in this process of cosmological progress itself.
Kant does not make this unforgiving doctrine explicit in his later writings, but it is clearly present in his early Universal Natural History, and this completes his generalization of ethics in its application to any rational being. Moral perfection is not for human beings alone, and the universe at large will realize a moral perfection that subsumes whatever moral perfection that human beings achieve on Earth.
