THE LINKS BETWEEN SELF-CONSTITUTION AND KANT S ETHICAL COMMUNITY Irena Cronin, University of California, Los Angeles In passages 6:97 and 6:98 of Kant s Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, 1 there is a leap made between the notion of the human species self- constitution, which is internal, to the unity of the "whole" of the ethical community or universal republic, which is external. To date, there has been very little scholarship devoted to explicating the rationale behind the seeming leap found in these particular passages. This leap can be minimized by recognizing that Kant had a constitutional model of the human being that correlates in important ways to Plato s, which, given this, links directly to Kant s idea of the ethical community. Furthermore, recognizing this, it would explain why Kant had included God as an apt universal administrator or organizer for the ethical community, since he would serve as the exemplar of rationality. In order to accomplish the above, I will first discuss Plato s model of a soul, in terms of its parts and unity, and its direct correlation to the city- state, in terms of its parts and unity. I will then move on to Kant s model and how it relates to Plato s in both respects. Finally, I will tie this back to the passages of Religion 6:97 and 6:98 in order to make clear the links I have developed, and point out any issues that may remain unclear. 1 I have included the text from Religion 6:97 and 6:98 in an Appendix to this paper for easy reference. 1.
I. In Plato's Republic, 2 comparisons are made between the human soul and the constitution of a city- state. A city without a good constitution, that is, without justice, lacks unity, and is not viewed by Plato as one city, but many (422d- 423c; 462a- e), and is highly prone towards civil war. Those who would be vying for power during civil war include the three classes found in a city: 1) the rulers; 2) the auxiliaries, who in stable times serve as enforcers of laws and soldiers; and 3) the balance of the citizens who provide for the needs of the city, such as farmers, craftspeople, and merchants. In times of stability, and also identified with an ideal constitution, correct relations among each class, buttressed by each class inherently having their own appropriate and correct properties, are paramount and necessary. Ideally, the rulers would be the most wise in a city, would not rule with their own interests in mind, but rather with the interests of the whole unified city in mind (428b- 429a). The auxiliaries, whose main property should be courage, ideally carry beliefs that have been given to them by the rulers; these beliefs would guide them as to whether or not they should have fear in times of temptation, pleasure and pain (429a- 430c). When there is an agreement among the classes as to who should rule and who should be ruled, the city is deemed appropriately moderate or temperate in its nature (430e- 432b). Similarly, when 2 References to passages in this section are all from Plato s Republic, found in Plato: Complete Works, Translated by G. M. A. Grube (as revised by C. D. C. Reeve), Edited by John M. Cooper (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing Company, 1997). 971-1223. 2.
each of the classes adheres to the work it should do, the city as a whole is a just one (433a ff.). Plato then correlates these three properties of wisdom, temperance and justice to the human soul, which are then tied to different three parts reason, appetite, and spirit, respectively (436b- c, 439e- 441c). Spirit, or justice, would typically align itself with reason, and is seen as separate from reason since animals and small children are portrayed as having it. Furthermore, in cases where there is reason, spirit would be viewed as being ruled by reason (440e- 441c). Injustice or lack of spirit in the soul would cause a person to feel as if they were in a state of civil war, for the three different parts of their soul would be fighting each other for dominance; a person suffering from this kind of issue would not be able to make decisions, and would thus be severely debilitated (352c). According to Plato, what is internal has an external correspondence: reason in the soul corresponds to the ruler(s) of the city, spirit to the auxiliaries, who carry out the ruler or rulers orders, and appetite to the balance of the citizens. Rulers, auxiliaries and the balance of the citizens each have reason, spirit and appetite. However, there is inherently a much greater proportion of the suitable and relevant corresponding property found in each. In this way, discrete mappings and positive correlations from the internal to the external nature of things are made very clear. If the three parts of the soul are in a state of civil war, the person is incapable of acting as a unified whole. Similarly, in the case of a city- state during civil war, the city- state cannot act as a unified and coherent whole. 3.
For Plato, it is the constitution of a city that enables the city and its citizens to function as a unified whole, rendering the city capable of fulfilling all its constituent needs. Effectively, the constitution of a city would be embodied within the reasoning abilities that a ruler would have. II. In connecting Plato s model of the soul with Kant s, a relevant notion to focus on is Kant s idea of freedom, which all rational beings must act in accordance with under the law of a free will (Groundwork 4:446-448), and how it relates to the categorical imperative. According to Kant, a free will is not determined by any law outside of itself, that is, it is not "heteronomous. Given that a free will is autonomous, nothing is a law except that which one makes a law for oneself. Thus, Kant equates the law of a free will with the categorical imperative. Inclination for Kant ( appetite for Plato) puts forth a desired prospect, reason for both makes a decision as to whether or not to go through with an act to fulfill the inclination or appetite, and the decision for Kant has the form of a legislative act, while for Plato the operative term here is justice. The correlations are strong and clear here, for the formal structure of the action items and their origins are very similar in both Kant s and Plato s theories. With Kant, a universalizable action, which is governed by the categorical imperative, is essentially equated with an autonomous action. With Plato, just action essentially comes from constitutional procedure. The normative properties of universalizability and justice arise out of the metaphysical properties of 4.
autonomy and constitutionality, respectively. 3 Kant s principle of self- love, as noted in Religion 6:32-39, is one which takes inclination as paramount over any moral consideration. A bad person, that is one who acts from self- love, does so without reason or deliberation, acting instead out of desire. For Plato, as outlined in Books VIII and IX of the Republic, there are four corresponding types that indulge in self- love, and one correct way that does not. Each of these types corresponds to different kinds of constitutions of the soul, with corollaries to state constitutions timocracy, oligarchy, democracy, and tyranny (listed in increasing degrees of corruption), and the correct constitution of aristocracy or monarchy, which is governed by reason. The timocratic person is interested foremost in appearances of honor, and becomes confused and divided when that which is the right thing to do also appears to be the dishonorable thing to do. The oligarchic person is portrayed as rigidly prudent, repressing what they see as unnecessary to survival, because those items or desires are viewed as unprofitable. Given a strong enough temptation, the oligarchic person may finally be overcome and divided. The democratic person does not repress unnecessary desires, minimally governing themselves, and appears as degenerate and wanton. If there is an appearance of a coherent and unified soul here, it is only accidental and fleeting. The tyrannical soul is the most chaotic and least reason- driven, effectively enslaving itself to its desires and obsessions (Republic 571a- 580a). 3 Christine Korsgaard, Self-Constitution in the Ethics of Plato and Kant, The Journal of Ethics 3:1 (1999): 13-14. 5.
Connecting Kant with Plato is the idea that the key unifying factor for human beings is the faculty of reason. According to Kant, as a rational being, one must act under the idea of freedom; the cause of one s choosing to act must be oneself, rather than be due to an incentive, and for Kant, only by willing universally can this be so. To act with incentive as your guiding cause would effectively hold your agency hostage, which is very similar to the outcome that a person with a tyrannical soul would have. For both Kant and Plato, reason is what makes a person unified and whole; acting without being governed by reason, that is, without self- government, results in chaos. III. In bringing this all back to the passages of Religion 6:97 and 6:98, it can be seen that correlations exist between what has just been discussed and with the arguments made in 6:97 that have to do with the human being s internal nature and those made in 6:98 having to do with the idea of an external universal republic. Passage 6:97 is the first passage under the second heading entitled The Human Being Ought to Leave the Ethical State of Nature in Order to Become a Member of an Ethical Community, of Division One of Part Three of the Religion. The question of why one should leave the ethical state of nature in order to become a member of an ethical community in the face of Kant s notion of autonomous will is one that I will address after I have made more clear what the links are between what I had put forth previously regarding similarities between the theories of Kant and Plato and the passages of Religion 6:97 and 6:98. 6.
In 6:97, Kant makes the comparison between the juridical state of nature and the ethical state of nature in terms of both being at a state of war; with the juridical state of nature, it is human being against human being, and with the ethical state of nature, it is the good principle in the human being attacked by the evil that lies in that very human being. Effectively, it is a civil war that rages within that human being and within every other. This idea directly corresponds to Plato s concept of the parts of the soul of a human being as existing at a state of war with each other. With Kant, the good principle in the human being is reliant on reason helming it, and as long as reason helms it, the human being will remain stable and whole; similarly, for Plato, when reason is in control, the human being is stable, unified, and whole. Before the moving to passage 6:98, Kant reiterates what he had remarked in the previous passage of 6:96, that human beings each corrupt one another due to their individual internal states of war, and also due to a lack of a unifying principle among them that could take each of them and set them right. As a result, Kant finds that the ethical state of nature that is defined by the human being s autonomous will is also a state defined by a public feuding, since the human being as essentially corrupted extends his internal moral feud to an external battleground to the detriment of the whole human race. Now, in passage 6.98, Kant puts forward the concept of a union of human beings into a whole who, using reason, would strive towards the same goal of the promotion of the highest good. It is not altogether clear what Kant means by highest good here, and even though there has been some scholarship on this 7.
issue, its meaning still remains murky. 4 An explanation that was provided by Kant can be found in the following excerpt from Religion 6:5: So morality really has no need of an end for right conduct; on the contrary, the law that contains the formal condition of the use of freedom in general suffices to it. Yet an end proceeds from morality just the same; for it cannot possibly be a matter of indifference to reason how to answer the question, What is then the result of this right conduct of ours? nor to what we are to direct our doings or nondoings, even granted this is not fully in our control, at least as something with which they are to harmonize. And this is indeed only the idea of an object that unites within itself the formal condition of all such ends as we ought to have (duty) with everything which is conditional upon ends we have and which conforms to duty (happiness proportioned to its observance), that is, the idea of a highest good in the world, for whose possibility we must assume a higher, moral, most holy, and omnipotent being who alone can unite the two elements of this good. (The bolding is mine.) Kant does make clear, however, that this highest good which, as per 6:98 is equal to the highest moral good, could only be accomplished through a universal republic based on the laws of virtue, and that this universal republic, this ethical community, could only occur through a union of persons, which, in addition to each striving for their own individual moral perfection, would be united as a whole toward the end of moral perfection. Even though the link between Kant s end of the highest moral good and its culmination in a universal republic appears to be stronger and more complicated 4 Some scholarship on this issue includes: Allen M. Wood, Kant s Moral Religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970). Chapter 3: The Highest Good, 69-99; John Rawls, Lectures on the History of Moral Philosophy, Edited by Barbara Herman (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000) 313-17; and Sharon Anderson-Gold, God and Community: An Inquiry into the Religious Implications of the Highest Good, In Kant s Philosophy of Religion Reconsidered, Edited by Philip J. Rossi and Michael Wreen (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1991). 113-31. 8.
than the one between Plato s motivation of rational unity and its culmination in an aristocracy or monarchy (though it is clear that with Kant, reason is of paramount importance), there are definite parallels which can be made between the two theories which can illuminate Kant s leap in 6:97-98 of internal self- constitution to external ethical community. With Plato, the same issues of self- constitution extend externally to political constitution. Internal and external states of civil war are due to the same causes, which are rooted in reason being attacked and distorted by desire. Division of the soul is thus directly related to division in the state. Similarly, with Kant, the same issues of self- constitution extend externally to affect each and every human being. However, in contrast to the political idealism of Plato, and with many years of history of wars and governments between them, Kant here does not have a metaphysical extension to the political constitution, or what he calls the juridical state of nature (which he also refers to in Religion 6:97 as a a state of war of every human being against every other ). Kant writes: But woe to the legislator who would want to bring about through coercion a polity directed to ethical ends The citizen of the political community therefore remains, so far as the latter s lawgiving authority is concerned, totally free: he may wish to enter with his fellow citizens into an ethical union over and above the political one (Religion 6:96) Kant has extended what had been seen by Plato to be the natural purview of ethical ends, the political constitution, out to the universal republic, the ethical community. Additionally, instead of an autocrat or monarch who would be in charge as it is with Plato, for Kant, it would be a higher moral being, that is God, 9.
that would serve as the unifying entity, unifying individuals of varying reason and goodness into a whole where the highest moral good can come to pass. (Republic 6:98) God, the entity of the highest rationale, viewed here by Kant as an idea, could be viewed as an extension, albeit a perfect one, of an individual s rationale. And it is an individual s rationale in understanding duty that would serve as guiding an individual towards goodness (God would not need this guidance since he is deemed as perfect). For both God and the individual, it is reason that serves as the organizing tool, and both are seen as utilizing reason to control moral corruption. It is the same in Plato s system, with the autocrat or monarch standing in for God, and without the notion of duty needed as a motivation. So, the core link between self- constitution as described in Religion 6:97 and ethical community as put forth in Religion 6:98 can be viewed as one of direct extension from internal to external realms. Comparing Plato s parallel metaphysical vision here with Kant s has been helpful in illuminating the relevant details and structure of Kant s theory. Besides those issues that have illuminated here through comparison, there remains a main issue that Plato cannot help us with. IV. The main issue that remains outstanding is why human beings, as described by Kant, with their autonomous wills and a given understanding of duties through reason, would be as weak and corruptible as put forth in Religion 6:97. A related 10.
issue is why human beings given their autonomous wills would willfully allow themselves to be guided by any entity outside of themselves. Both issues cannot be adequately solved by bringing in Plato, for Plato did not have a parallel theory for autonomous will, much less a notion of the human will. In order for the passages of Religion 6:97-98 to be made more fully coherent, these two issues would need to have somewhat satisfactory answers. As it stands, some inferences can be made. 5 With the issue of human corruptibility, it could be said that Kant s idea of autonomous will and its guiding reason is an ideal one that applies to the human being as a species, 6 and that among particular individual human beings there is actually more of a range of autonomy and reason that exists. 7 Given this to be the case, a certain level of moral corruption could then more easily be envisioned as a norm for human beings, in the sense of humans being susceptible to moral corruption both internally (since evil is naturally found within) and externally (by being exposed to another s evil). And, as such, it would then not be surprising that human beings in general would want some moral guidance since they would typically be ravaged from the civil war raging inside of them. However, it appears that the actual recognition of a need for moral guidance 5 What follows are merely suggestions to solve the puzzle that has been presented, and are not to be taken as totally sufficient in tackling the issue, as Kant does not provide enough detail to supply more grounded answers. 6 According to Kant, the human being is viewed as having the power of autonomous action, outside of the cases and/or periods of early childhood, insanity, or great sadness. (Rawls, 294) 7 This does not disturb the notion that autonomy of the will is the foundation of morality. 11.
would first be necessary, and this would be difficult for those that have had their rationality assailed; such is definitely the problem for Plato s tyrants, who have the most divided soul (rendering them slaves of themselves), yet believe that they have the most to gain given their political situation. Perhaps, in these types of cases for Kant, autonomy would be so reduced, rendering the self- assailed so weak, that others could come in and control them at will. However, Kant claims that outside of ourselves: we have a duty sui generis, not of human beings toward human beings but of the human race toward itself. For every species of rational beings is objectively in the idea of reason destined to a common end, namely the promotion of the highest good as a good common to all. (Religion 6:98) I will not touch upon exactly what Kant meant by every species of rational beings for I cannot exactly tell, and not knowing the breadth of this does not take away from my argument. I have also previously spoken about the highest good, so I will not address it here again. To ask why Kant considered this a duty would be similar to inquiring why he had relegated other duties as such, and this kind of inquiry does not appear to be fruitful, except to notice that, as with other duties, it is reason that initially forms and informs the human being. If it is true, as Kant would have us believe, that human beings mutually corrupt each other, then the converse would also be possible, that they would be able to mutually instill goodness in each other. The mechanism by which this would then happen would be via ties of duty. 12.
Understood in this way, it may be seen that within Kant s framework, it is reason that is the guiding force towards goodness, both at the individual level and at the level of a union of individuals constituting the whole of a universal republic. And with this kind of understanding, it can also be seen that the universal republic serves as the external whole to the individual human being s internal whole, with reason running right through it. Any benefit due to the existence and successful workings of the universal republic in terms of providing crucial moral guidance on how individuals should treat themselves, in addition to how individuals should treat others, which one may implicate to be part of Kant s theory given what he stated in Religion 6:97 and 6:98, would serve to reinforce the need for such a universal republic. Given the comparisons I have made between Plato s and Kant s theories, and other arguments I have made here within, the links between self- constitution and Kant s universal republic, his ethical community, should now appear as more evident and theoretically more fitting. 13.
Appendix From: Immanuel Kant, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, Translated by George Di Giovanni, In Religion and Rational Theology, Edited by Allen W. Wood and George Di Giovanni (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, c2005), 132-33. Beginning of Section Two, The Human Being Ought to Leave the Ethical State of Nature in Order to Become a Member of an Ethical Community : 6:97-6:98: Just as the juridical state of nature is a state of war of every human being against every other, so too is the ethical state of nature one in which the good principle, which resides in every human being, is incessantly attacked by the evil which is found in him and in every other as well. Human beings (as we remarked above) mutually corrupt one another s moral predisposition and, even with the good will of each individual, because of the lack of a principle which united them, they deviate through their dissensions from the common goal of goodness, as though they were instruments of evil, and expose one another to the danger of falling once again under its dominion. Further, just as the state of a lawless external (brutish) freedom and independence from coercive laws is a state of injustice and of way, each against each, which a human being ought to leave behind in order to enter into a politico-civil state, so is the ethical state of nature a public feuding between the principles of virtue and a state of inner immortality which the human being ought to endeavor to leave behind as soon as possible. Now, here we have a duty sui generis, not of human beings toward human beings but of the human race toward itself. For every species of rational beings is objectively in the idea of reason destined to a common end, namely the promotion of the highest good as a good common to all. But, since this highest moral good will not be brought about solely through the striving of one individual person for his own moral perfection but requires rather a union of such persons into a whole toward that very end, [i.e.] toward a system of well-disposed human beings in which, and through the unity of which alone, the highest moral good can come to pass, yet the idea of such a whole, as a universal republic based on the laws of virtue, differs entirely from all moral laws (which concern what we know to reside within our power), for it is the idea of working toward a whole of which we cannot know whether as a whole it is also in our power: so the duty in question differs from all others in kind and in principle. We can already anticipate that this duty will need the presupposition of another idea, namely, of a higher moral being through whose universal organization the forces of single individuals, insufficient on their own, are united for a common effect. 14.
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