POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY THE POLITICAL THEORIES OF THE GERMAN W IDEALISTS. I Immanuel Kant HEN the storm of revolution broke over Europe, Kant was the generally recognized leader of German philosophy. His Critique of the Pure Reason, published in 1781, was in the most literal sense an epoch-making work. It produced at once a profound impression on the intellectual life of Germany, and its influence, sustained and promoted by that of the other works that followed it, fixed the lines in which philosophy moved for a century. Yet Kant was not, in the substance of his thought, an innovator. His rôle was rather that of the harmonizer and systematizer of familiar but conflicting doctrines. In metaphysics he mediatized between the dogmatists and intuitionists on the one side and the skeptics and empiricists on the other, who in their reciprocal antagonism had brought philosophy to an impasse. Fundamentally Kant was with the intuitionists. For him, as for them, ultimate truth. and reality were predicable of ideas that were independent of sense-perception and experience. Yet his analysis of the intellectual faculties, especially of reason itself, gave a new and fruitful aspect to this ancient idealism. At the same time Kant took the doctrines of the empiricists into his system, by a dualism that got as near to formal unity as any like system in history. His Critique of the Pure Reason was followed in 1788 by a Critique of the Practical Reason. As the first presented the categories and formulas through which all phases of existence could be known in thought, the second presented the categories and formulas through which existence could be known in experience. What is thinkable was the subject of the one; what is observable, of the other. To use Kant's own expressions, the one deals with the noumenal, the other with the phenomenal. Of these two fields of speculation, Kant's most distinctive work was done in the former. By temperament and training he was a closet philosopher, and his genius found most to attract it in what was remote from the thought and action of every-day life. Thus his political philosophy was far stronger in its analysis and definition of the ultimate concepts, liberty, law, rights, state, than in its treatment of government and administration. Kant's proper field was obviously Staatslehre rather than Staatsrecht or Politik. In neither branch of the science, however, did he make any original contribution. His function was to cast the dominant ideas of the later eighteenth century into the categories and formulas of his critical philosophy. His doctrine as to the origin and nature of the state is merely Rousseau's, put into the garb of Kantian terminology and logic; his analysis of government follows Montesquieu in like manner. Kant's admiration for these two French writers' was deep and unconcealed, and his incorporation of their ideas into his system was destined to promote greatly the influence of liberalism when the Kantian system got a firm hold on intellectual Germany. Kant's political philosophy was embodied chiefly in his Metaphysical First Principles of the Theory of Law, written in his old age and published in 1796.2 A year earlier some phases of his doctrine were presented in his brochure, For Perpetual Peace.3 A brief summary of his leading ideas will show how far from novel they were." 2 1 Especially Rousseau. See Paulsen, Immanuel Kant, translation, p. 39. Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre. This constitutes part i of the Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Sittenlehre, of which part ii is Tugendlehre. The Rechtslehre, preceded by Kant's general introduction to the Sittenlehre, has been translated by W. Hastie, with the title, The Philosophy of Law (Edinburgh, 1887). Zum ewigem Frieden. A very systematic presentation of Kantian political theory in condensed form may be found in Levkovits, Die Staatslehre auf Kantischer Grundlage (Berner Studien zur Philosophie, vol. xiv). Men are naturally free and equal. A state is the product of a contract through which individuals put their inalienable rights under the guaranty of the people (Volk). The people only is the sovereign and the supreme law-maker; the general will is the ultimate source of law. A constitution is an act of the general will through which a crowd (Menge) becomes a people (Volk). There are three powers in every state: the sovereign legislative (Herrschergewalt, Souverainetät), the executive and the judicial. The separation of the first two in exercise is indispensable to liberty. The forms of state are three in number: autocracy, aristocracy and democracy. The forms of government are two: republican and despotic, according as there is or is not a separation of the legislative and the executive powers. Any form of government (Regierungsform) that is not representative Kant declares to be out of rational consideration (eine Unform); but the function of representation may be vested in king or nobility as well as in elected deputies. This body of doctrine is obviously an attempted blend of Rousseau and Montesquieu. If such a blend were logically possible, the subtle intellect of Kant might be expected to succeed in making it. But the difficulties are too great. Upon the dogma of sovereignty, absolute and indefeasible, in the general will of the community, not even Kant's compelling logic can base three forms of state. There is no room-and Rousseau makes this clear' -for any such concept as autocracy (monarchy) or aristocracy, when the general will is sovereign. Kant sought to evade Rousseau's conclusion by resort to the dual aspect of philosophy. The sovereign conceived as the general will was, he said, an abstraction, a concept of pure reason (Gedankending). To give it objective, practical reality, it must be expressed in physical form, as one or few or many persons. Such an explanation, however, failed to sustain his case, in view of his repeated attribution of sovereignty to the people exclusively, whatever the form of the chief of the state (Staatsoberhaupt).3 Dunning, "Political Theories of Rousseau," POLITICAL SCIENCE QUARTERLY, vol. xxiv, p. 392. 'Rechtslehre, sec. 51. 1 Ibid. sec. 52. Kant's inconsistency here is due not only to his respect for Montesquieu, but also, probably, to the fact that he was an aged professor in a royal university of the kingdom of Prussia. It was hard in the days of Frederick the Great and his successors (as indeed it has remained to the present day) for a loyal subject of the Hohenzollerns to think of a king as merely a chief executive. Few philosophers have been able to free themselves from the idea that something, at least, of sovereignty inheres in the monarch, no matter how peremptorily they may preach the absolute supremacy of the people or the nation or the state. Kant's weakness at this point leads him into rather pitiable confusion in several places. He asserts most explicitly that the legislative power pertains solely to the people, yet finds room for a ruler of the people (Beherrscher des Volks) who is the legislator (Gesetzgeber), not the administrator (Regent), who has toward the people rights but no enforceable duties (Zwangspflichten), and whose transgressions of the constitution are above any effective control. Against this legislative chief of the state (das gesetzgebende Oberhaupt des Staats) there is no right of resistance; and Kant argues passionately against popular revolution. If a constitution is defective, changes must be made" only by the sovereign itself, through reform, not by the people, through revolution." The people (Volk) ought not even to inquire too closely into the origin of the supreme power (oberste Gewalt), no matter how it came into being. 2 The inconsistency and incoherence of such doctrine, which so severely test the patience of reader and translator, sprang partly from the conservatism of age and partly from the philosopher's natural antipathy toward turbulence and disorder. Kant's greatest influence was not due, however, to these features of his system, but rather to the exalted idealism of the psychol 1In the Rechtslehre compare sec. 46 with sec. 49 A. Hastie's English version contains al undant evidence of hard labor by the translator in the effort to make the passages consistent. At some points rather daring liberties are taken with the original. 244 . nur vom Souverän selbst durch Reform, aber nicht vom Volk, mithin durch Revolution." Rechtslehre, sec. 49 A, end. ogy and ethics on which his politics immediately depended. His dogmas of the categorical imperative, the autonomous will and humanity as an end in itself sustained a closely articulated system of principles that embodied the absolute truth at the basis of morals, law and politics. A conclusion of the pure reason had for Kant the same unconditional validity that the "idea" had for Plato. The element of will, however, entered very largely into the German's conception and distinguished it from the Greek's. Man appeared, abstractly considered, as rational will, free and self-sufficing. Morality, law and politics were but various aspects of the logical process through which the co-existence of two or more free rational wills could be conceived. Thus a supreme maxim of Kant's practical morality was: "So act that thy will can regard itself as dictating universal laws"; that is, do only that which is consistent with the same action by all others. And law in general (Recht) consists in "the possibility of harmonizing a general and reciprocal constraint with the liberty of each." The state, therefore, as a pure idea, is conceivable only through a formula in which the authority of the general will is consistent with the perfect freedom of the individual will. The formula is the social contract. Only through this is the jural state (Rechtsstaat) thinkable. Kant thus came out where Rousseau did, but his route thither was far longer and not less thorny. Throughout his wanderings in the desert of metaphysical subtleties the pillar of cloud and fire that unfailingly guided him was the supreme worth and dignity of a rational being. Liberty and equality, as the necessary attributes of such beings, gleam brightly through the murkiest depths of his Staatslehre. And while he assigned proper weight and significance to society and state and people, as collective entities, it was the reason-endowed individual with the autonomous will that was salient in his philosophy. The whole trend of Kant's influence, in political speculation at least, was individualistic; and one of the entertaining episodes in a 'Janet's analysis and criticism of Kant's ethics is admirable; Histoire de la Science Politique, vol. ii, pp. 574 et seq. |