Public Reason 10 (1): 3-14

© 2018 by Public Reason

Kant’s ‘Bund’: A Voluntary Reading

Julian Katz

Tulane University

Abstract: In ‘Kant’s Changing Cosmopolitanism’ and Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship, Pauline Kleingeld argues that, in ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent,’ Kant meant for the Bund (usually translated as ‘federation’) of states to be a coercive federation. Kleingeld admits that there is a disparity between this earlier coercive idea of the Bund and Kant’s talk of a voluntary (i.e., non-coercive) congress in Toward Perpetual Peace and The Metaphysics of Morals. She explains this disparity by: (1) appealing to a semantic ambiguity in the term ‘Bund’; (2) making claims about with which contemporary 18th century works Kant was acquainted; and ultimately (3) attempting to draw a parallel between the unsocial sociability of individual people within a state and the unsocial sociability of individual states in a larger community of states. In this paper, I argue that while Kleingeld’s claims are superficially supported by the text, her claims depend on her apparent conflating of teleology and morality.

Key words: Kleingeld, Kant, teleology, Just State, Bund, Federation, Congress, Inter-Governmental Organization.

Kant’s contribution to the peace project of the 18th century (i.e., the Just State considered both in a local civil condition and considered globally as a union of states) is still a great source of disagreement among scholars. This disagreement mirrors contemporary political debates concerning what it is about certain Intergovernmental Organizations (IGOs) (e.g., the UN, the European Union, the G8, and the United States) that leads to, or maintains, peace.[1] After all, we seem to have had some peace in the latter half of the 20th century and even now; but there is still the question of how IGOs contribute to this peace. IGOs could bring about peace through coercive means or it could be that the particular form of democracy in many of the countries that constitute the members of those IGOs promote a voluntary peace. Regarding the latter, for example: it seems that countries that hold similar political values seem to not go to war as easily, especially when those countries are democratic (Doyle 1983a, 212-13).[2] But what exactly it means for countries to share political values is itself a point of argument. For instance, in his book, Kant’s Political Legacy: Human Rights, Peace, Progress, Luigi Caranti discusses the disagreement as to whether liberal democracies and republics are identical (2017, 9). In Toward Perpetual Peace Kant, himself, seems to make a distinction between democracies and republics:

So that a republican constitution will not be confused with a democratic constitution (as usually happens), the following must be noted. […] [D]emocracy in the strict sense of the word is necessarily a despotism because it establishes an executive power in which all decide for and, if need be, against one (who thus does not agree), so that all, who are nevertheless not all, decide; and this is a contradiction of the general will with itself and with freedom. (TPP, 8:351-52)[3]

I will leave aside the obvious issue of what sort of voting situation Kant expects in republics that would not lead to a similar situation where the majority have somehow left out the minority from particular decisions. But suffice it to say, there is much one can say on whether countries that seem to share enough of the right democratic republican values can promote a peace. For my purposes, though, I wish to discuss Kant’s views on what kind of IGO contributes to a world peace; and I will be including Caranti’s discussion of the historical context of Kant’s view (Caranti 2017, 108-15). Kant argues that a very specific kind of intergovernmental organization is necessary for the peace between nations; however, there is disagreement, as one would expect, as to what constitutes the just IGO for Kant’s perpetual peace.

In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant tells us that, even among neighboring states, we must (that is, we have a duty to) leave the state of nature among nations “to enter a lawful condition.” He describes this lawful condition (what we are calling an IGO) among states as a “voluntary coalition of different states which can be dissolved at any time, [and specifically] not a federation (like that of the American states) […]” (MM, 6:350-351).[4] In other words, it is to be a congress of states without a coercive federal government. So, even though the Just State (JS), at the local level, has this form of government, the congress of states (the JS construed as a universal state, in other words) has no such federal government.[5] This is in contradistinction to Pauline Kleingeld’s position that Kant really did, at one time in his intellectual development, mean for his ‘congress’ to ultimately be one ruled by a single federal government analogous to the government of a local state (2009, 173-74, 177-79; 2012, 45-46). She explains this development by: (1) appealing to a semantic ambiguity in the term ‘Bund’; (2) making claims about with which 18th century works Kant was acquainted; and ultimately (3) attempting to draw a parallel between the unsocial sociability of individual people within a state and the unsocial sociability of individual states in a larger community of states. In this paper, I argue that while Kleingeld’s claims are superficially supported by the text, her claims depend on her apparent conflating of teleology and morality.

I. AN INTRODUCTION TO THE INTERNATIONAL CONDITIONS OF JS

Kant asks us to think of ourselves as cosmopolitan citizens of the world (and not just as citizens of our individual and respective countries) in both the MM and ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent’ (MM, 6:352; UH, 8:22).[6] In the latter, Kant has a couple of theses regarding our natural teleology that are relevant to this point. Note the fifth thesis: “The greatest problem for the human species, whose solution nature compels it to seek, is to achieve a universal civil society administered in accord with the right” (UH, 8:22). This thesis refers to a universal civil society, or in other words: a civil society “for the [whole] human species.” Skipping forward to the seventh thesis: “The problem of establishing a perfect civil constitution depends on the problem of law-governed external relations among nations and cannot be solved unless the latter is [solved]” (UH, 8:24). So clearly there are some implicit global conditions on what counts as a JS.

Similarly, to our duty to leave the state of nature and enter in the civil condition between individual humans in close proximity, we have a duty to leave the state of nature among nations (MM, 6:344-45). I write ‘similarly’, because the duties to leave the respective states of nature are actually very different. The conditions that bring on the duty are, however, the same (hence I use ‘similarly to’ and not ‘exactly as’). Just to expound briefly on the difference: The duty to enter in a civil condition involves the implementation of the irresistible constitution of the civil condition itself (the general united will) uniting all in that local civil condition. But the duty to enter into a civil condition with other nations specifically restricts that union from having such an irresistible authority over the nations in that global civil condition. Consider the following:

The elements of the right of nations are these: (1) states, considered in external relation to one another, are (like lawless savages) by nature in a non-rightful condition. (2) This non-rightful condition is a condition of war (of the right of the stronger), even if it is not a condition of actual war and actual attacks being constantly made (hostilities). Although no state is wronged by another in this condition (insofar as neither wants anything better), this condition is in itself still wrong in the highest degree, and states neighboring upon one another are under obligation to leave it. (3) A league of nations in accordance with the idea of an original social contract is necessary, not in order to meddle in one another’s internal dissensions but to protect against attacks from without. (4) This alliance must, however, involve no sovereign authority (as in a civil constitution), but only an association (federation); it must be an alliance that can be renounced at any time and so must be renewed from time to time. (MM, 6:344-45)

In other words, the countries are in a state of nature with each other until they form this league of nations. Even if the countries are not at war, the condition is considered non-rightful because the states are in close proximity to one another and might war with each other in the future. The potential for the sovereignty of any particular general united will (of even one state among all nations) to be overtaken by some other general united will is enough to obligate the nations to enter into a sort of civil condition with the other nations of the world. Furthermore, and in the same vein, the reason they cannot have a sort of federal government forcing them to stay in a union is that to create such a super-government would be to create something more sovereign than all the sovereign general united wills (all of the states) in such a federation. Thus, this league of nations must be a voluntary congress of states where each state can choose to leave that union at any time.[7]

II. KLEINGELD’S DEVELOPMENTAL VIEW

However, there is a contention in the contemporary literature that this congress, at one time in Kant’s intellectual development (specifically in UH), involved a federal government. Most notably Kleingeld argues this in her book Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship and in her essay ‘Kant’s Changing Cosmopolitanism’ (2012; 2009).[8] In the former, for example, she writes:

In [Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Perspective], [Kant] advocates the establishment of a strong federation of states with coercive authority at the federal level, and […] he appeals to the enlightened self-interest of rulers to defend the feasibility of this ideal. He does not propose a merely voluntary association but argues that a strong, state-like federation of states is required to guarantee the external security of states. (Kleingeld 2012, 45)

In the latter, she writes:

Kant uses [the term ‘cosmopolitan condition’] to refer to a situation in which the external relations among states are governed by enforced laws. This of course requires a higher-level political institution, which he refers to as a ‘federation of peoples’ or a ‘federation of states’ […] (8:24) This is to have legislative, executive, and juridical powers at the federal level, including a ‘united power giving emphasis to that law’ (8:26).[9] (Kleingeld 2009, 174)

She essentially argues in both works that in line with what Kant argues about unsocial sociability concerning the JS at the local level, unsocial sociability can only really help us to acquire that moral whole if the unsocial aspect of individual nations in a community of nations is tempered by the irresistible authority of a constitution over and above the states in that community.[10]

Part of Kleingeld’s argument is purely historical. She points out that Kant is presenting his cosmopolitan ideal in a long tradition of proposals, and not in a vacuum. “[Kant] himself acknowledges the Abbé de Saint-Pierre and Jean-Jacques Rousseau as his predecessors (IaG 8:24, GTP 8:313).”[11] Saint-Pierre, Kleingeld points out, had argued for something like this over and above the Christian rulers of Europe “with a permanent senate and an international court of arbitration, backed up by an international military force, to settle disputes between the member states.”[12] Rousseau had apparently summarized Saint-Pierre’s views and presented them, in 1761, under the title: ‘Extrait du Projet de Paix Perpétuelle de Monsieur l’Abbé de Saint Pierre’ (1761). However, in ‘Jugement sur la Paix Perpétuelle,’ written around the same time as the former, Rousseau distances himself from Saint-Pierre’s views (1782).[13] Kleingeld argues that it follows from this information that Kant could not have read this latter text of Rousseau’s since Kant clearly wants to espouse some of Saint-Pierre’s views concerning international peace.[14] In this historical vein, she points out that Kant “does not propose a merely voluntary association but argues that a strong, state-like federation of states is required to guarantee the external security of states” (Kleingeld 2012, 44-45).[15]

Another line of argument (and perhaps the main line of argument) she makes is to simply interpret the creation of a league of nations as exactly like the creation of a local JS, in that they both teleologically explain how the unsocial sociability of humanity leads to the creation of a moral whole (in the sense of the JS, anyway).[16] Here is a notable quote to this effect from both Kant on Cosmopolitanism and ‘Kant’s Changing Cosmopolitanism’:

Kant argues, [in Idea for a Universal History], that the way in which states leave the international state of nature to join into a state-like federation is structurally similar to the way individuals leave the state of nature to join into a state. […] Individuals unite into a state ‘in which freedom under external laws can be encountered combined, in the greatest possible degree, with irresistible power’ (IaG 8:22). Similarly, Kant claims, states will ultimately be forced, by the hardship resulting from the rivalry and wars between them, to exit the state of nature and enter a juridical condition. States exhibit ‘the same unsociability’ as individuals; they experience ‘precisely the ills that pressured individual human beings and compelled them to enter into a lawful civil condition,’ and thus states too will come to see the advantages of joining a federation with common laws and law enforcement (IaG 8:24). (Kleingeld 2012, 45-46; 2009, 177-78)

In other words, on Kleingeld’s reading, Kant has argued that individuals in the state of nature have a kind of unsocial sociability that can only have the teleology of serving to help us create a moral whole. Furthermore, this moral whole is understood (by both myself and Kleingeld) to include not just the JS at the local level, but also at the global level (i.e., not merely locally, but internationally as well).[17] This is apparent, she argues, from the fifth, sixth, and seventh theses in UH. The seventh thesis says essentially that the civil condition requires solving the problem of international relations between nations: “a perfect civil condition depends on the problem of law-governed external relations among nations and cannot be solved unless the latter is [solved]” (UH, 8:24). It is within the discussion of this seventh thesis that Kleingeld finds the textual evidence that states, like individuals, must enter into a union with an irresistible constitution over and above them. That is: since states exhibit the same unsocial sociability, they must need to enter into the very same type of civil condition as individuals.

Finally, Kleingeld further supplements her argument for her position through a semantic point about the chosen German word for what we see in the English as ‘federation’: the word ‘Bund.’ She points out that ‘Bund’ “is itself neutral as to whether or not the institution has the power to enforce its laws” (Kleingeld 2009, 178). Her argument here is essentially that since ‘Bund’ can be understood either as (1) a coercive federal government over and above the states that are unified within it or as (2) a non-coercive voluntary congress (as I interpret the concept), it clearly can mean the former in UH and then change in meaning to the latter in TPP. Again, relying on the historical point made earlier about Saint-Pierre, Kleingeld claims that the semantically neutral term allows her to make this claim about Kant’s position in UH.

III. A REVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT OF KANT’S BUND

Before I show what seems odd to me about this argument, there are some historical considerations that have already been discussed by Caranti: he points out that while Kleingeld is correct to claim that Kant is writing in a tradition, she is wrong to claim that Kant agreed with St. Pierre as a result.[18] There were two different traditions from which Kant drew: “(a) the natural law tradition, which includes the ancient ius gentium, and (b) preceding peace projects crafted and forcefully proposed by authors with whom Kant was certainly familiar.” But the second tradition, which is surely that to which Kleingeld was appealing, is not a clear case of simply carrying on the same view from thinker to thinker. There are few interesting and connected reasons to think this: First of all, Kant was living during the French Revolution, and there were very few democracies at the time. “France was perceived by the European autocracies not ‘merely’ as a dangerous model for domestic rebels but also as a new power ready to export its principles through some sort of republican crusade” (Caranti 2017, 108). Kant himself was living under a monarch when he wrote the MM and TPP, and thus his writing of them constitutes a break from what many in his country must have felt about the rabble in France. Thus, Kant’s view of the just IGO, while certainly influenced by St. Pierre (one can hardly deny the seventh thesis’s mention of St. Pierre by name), was more likely the culmination and evolution of a peace project going on in the 1700s. (Caranti 2017, 111-12)

According to Caranti, Kant argues against ius gentium, putting his view at odds with St. Pierre’s (thus simultaneously also denying the Rousseauvian claim that this federation would be created and enforced through the use of force). (2017, 110-13)[19] “[…] [Ius] gentium was mainly an attempt to identify […] the conditions that make war between states just, thus taking for granted that some wars were legitimate. […] [Kant] simply declares all wars as illegitimate” (Caranti 2017, 110-11).[20] The evidence for Caranti’s claim comes from TPP:

[…] [F]or Hugo Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel, and the like (only sorry comforters) – although their code, couched philosophically or diplomatically, has not the slightest lawful force and cannot even have such force (since states as such are not subject to a common external constraint) – are always duly cited in justification of an offensive war […]. (TPP, 8:355)

Kant uses this kind of argument against both the justification to go to war and the justification for rebellion. Hence this represents a departure from one fundamental aspect of St. Pierre’s coercive IGO: namely the idea that it can justly use war to enforce that countries act ‘rightly’ with each other. Even if, therefore, we grant that Kleingeld is right that Kant was not aware of ‘Jugement sur la Paix Perpétuelle,’ it seems odd to have Kant espouse a view that directly contradicts this position. Kleingeld, of course, ultimately agrees that Kant’s ‘Bund’ was to be non-coercive by MM and TPP. It is her claim that Kant changed his mind that is at issue. But I just want to point out that Caranti is not, here, merely saying that she should have noticed this from his latter works. Rather, his claim is stronger: from a historical point of view Kant likely was trying to juggle many different aspects of a longer peace project than merely one book by L’Abbé de St. Pierre, and perhaps Kant’s works should be interpreted to reflect that juggling act.

In parallel with this, Caranti notes that the political conversation, by the time of TPP, had developed some complexity; this naturally leads Kant to a more nuanced and evolved response to the peace project. Published only months before TPP, an anonymously published pamphlet, entitled Épitre du Vieux Cosmopolite Syrach à la Convention Nationale de France, debated the same issues that Kant had debated in TPP: 1) there is no right of interference between states, in line with the 5th preliminary article; 2) the world republic would not be created by force like its individual nation counterparts; and 3) the ‘world federation’ is attainable and thus a legitimate political goal. What is important about this, Caranti explains, is that it shows that TPP “appears as the answer [to these questions] by a world famous philosopher to the hottest political issues debated in the European context.” Kant was struggling to balance a few things: 1) the need for valuing the “autonomy and sovereignty of each people” as against Enlightenment principles; 2) how hard it is to implement perpetual peace as against the moral duty to strive for it; 3) admitting that violence can promote positive change as against the notion that there is no right to rebellion; 4) the practicality of provisional rules as against the necessity of permanent rules; and finally 5) that while we have a duty to strive for perpetual peace, and while it is perhaps guaranteed anyway (as in UH), it is not also the case that there is no need for that moral obligation as a result (Caranti 2017, 113-14). It seems that, on Caranti’s reading, Kleingeld has not offered us the whole picture of that to which Kant was responding, and perhaps the historical leg of her argument is broken.

IV. KLEINGELD’S SEEMINGLY QUESTION-BEGGING STRATEGY

In any case, the historical claims, along with what Kleingeld argues about the word ‘Bund’, seem to me to beg the question. Perhaps it would be fairer for me to say that Kleingeld depends on her main argument concerning unsocial sociability to be cogent. Certainly, if she is right about what Kant says in UH, and if Kant’s hope was to be in agreement with Saint-Pierre, then it would stand to reason that Kant might have either ignored or not read Rousseau’s counter proposals in ‘Jugement sur la Paix perpétuelle.’ But she ought not to claim the reverse, as she seems to: that Kant’s having ignored Rousseau’s latter work, along with his agreeing with St. Pierre, further supports her claims that Kant meant for the federation to be coercive. Furthermore, the ambiguity in the term ‘Bund’ does not support her claims unless she has succeeded already at convincing us that Kant meant for the federation to be coercive due to the unsocial sociability of states. Nevertheless, Kleingeld presents the ambiguity in the term as a kind of support for her historical point about Kant’s changing his view on what a ‘federation’ is supposed to be. Since we really cannot do much more here until we tackle what she says there about unsocial sociability, I will deal with that now.

Kleingeld does use the text effectively to argue for her position, but it seems to me that textual support from elsewhere (notably, in UH itself) re-contextualizes what Kant says in discussing the seventh thesis (and there is, thus, no need to build in the assumption that Kant has changed his mind to explain what he says there). Consider, for example, the very next, the eighth, thesis (and some of the discussion of this thesis):

One can regard the history of the human species […] as the realization of a hidden plan of nature to bring about an internally, and for this purpose, also an externally perfect national constitution, as the sole state in which all of humanity’s natural capacities can be developed. […] One sees that philosophy also has its chiliastic vision, but one whose occurrence can be promoted by its idea […], though only from afar, and it is thus anything but fanciful. (UH, 8:27)

The reference to a “chiliastic” view in the second sentence only supports the claim that Kant thought of the JS itself as a mere ideal; something that we cannot ultimately achieve, but for which we nonetheless have a duty to strive (MM, 6:350). Thus, though, we initially will attempt to go through a step similar to Saint-Pierre’s coercive federal government, it is in service of getting toward an externally perfect national constitution (teleologically, we may try to form coercive federations, but ultimately, we will want to make a voluntary congress to form that ‘externally perfect constitution’).[21] We can therefore allow that the seventh thesis speaks of a universal coercive federation, without at the same time making the ideal of the JS (the chiliastic vision) synonymous with this coercive federation. On my reading, the eighth thesis refers to the voluntary federation to which Kant alludes in the latter works.

We should not confuse teleological claims about what is true about us with what ought to be true. Some of the teleological claims will coincide with what we ought to do, but some will not. For example, we have unsocial aspects. We are violent when we are in too close a proximity. Teleologically, we can find a use for this unsociability in terms of how it brings out our other natural capacities best, in the context of our also having sociability. But we should not add that we ought to be unsocial. Otherwise Kant would be guilty, in UH, of the naturalistic fallacy. Rather, we simply have a teleology that ultimately does help us to bring about what ought to be. Similar, then, to unsocial sociability (and the inherent violence that goes along with it when humans are forced in close proximity in the state of nature), the creation of a Saint-Pierre style federation can be part of what we will do, in service what we ought to do later: i.e., to create that voluntary congress. Thus, Saint Pierre’s vision is not clearly what Kant has in mind as part of what we ought to bring about (but only, at most, what Kant thinks is part of our teleology on the way to making the world a moral whole).

V. CONCLUSION

Since making sense of the teleological arguments in UH cannot stop at the seventh thesis, when Kant has nine theses there, one must endeavor to understand the others. The eighth thesis is located only a couple of pages after the relevant passages quoted by Kleingeld and actually does a lot to explain the disparity between the explanation of the seventh thesis and what is said in the MM and in TPP. An “externally perfect civil constitution” serving all of humanity seems most straightforwardly to describe the JS considered globally (and not, say, the Kingdom of Ends).[22] It seems to me that this global view of the JS must be a voluntary congress of states (even in UH), and this seems further supported by the following two interesting bits from TPP: (1) aside from the rights of people in a given state, and aside from the rights of states in their voluntary congress, there is also the concern of the right of people to have a kind of world citizenship in “a universal nation of men (ius cosmopoliticum).” Kant writes that this latter right is “necessary in relationship to the idea […] of perpetual peace” (TPP, 8:349). Furthermore, (2) in Kant’s discussion of the second definitive article for perpetual peace – “The right of nations shall be based on a federation of free states” (TPP, 8:354) –, he writes concerning this federation:

This league [of peace] does not seek any power of the sort possessed by nations, but only the maintenance and security of each nation’s own freedom, as well as that of the other nations leagued with it, without their having thereby to subject themselves to civil laws and their constraints (as men in the state of nature must do) (TPP, 8:356).

Thus, it seems to me to be a bit myopic to view the seventh thesis as referring to the JS and to assume that Kant means for the eighth thesis to describe some other universal ideal (e.g., the Kingdom of Ends). We need not add the assumption that Kant has fundamentally changed his mind as to what constitutes the JS at the global level (unless we think he did this in the course of only two pages!).

jkatz9@tulane.edu

REFERENCES

Babst, D. 1964. Elective Governments – A Force for Peace. Wisconsin Sociologist 3: 9-14.

———. 1972. A Force for Peace. Industrial Research 14/2: 55-58.

Caranti, L. 2017. Kant’s Political Legacy: Human Rights, Peace, Progress. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.

Doyle, M. W. 1983a, 1983b. Kant, Liberal Legacies, and Foreign Affairs. Parts I and II, Philosophy and Public Affairs 12/3 and 12/4: 205-35, 323-53.

Kant, Immanuel. 1983. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent. In Ted Humphrey (trans. and ed.), Perpetual Peace and Other Essays: on Politic, History, and Morals, 29-40. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. [UH]

———. 1983. On the Proverb: That may be true in Theory, but is of No Practical Use. In Ted Humphrey (translated and edited), Perpetual Peace and Other Essays: on Politic, History, and Morals, 61-92. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company. [TT]

———. 1996. Metaphysics of Morals. Translated and edited by Mary J. Gregor. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. [MM]

———. 1996. Toward Perpetual Peace. In Mary J. Gregor (edited and translated), The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, 311-51. New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. [TPP]

———. 2003. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated and edited by Norman Kemp Smith. New York: Plagrave Macmillan. [CPR]

Kleingeld, Pauline. 2009. Kant’s Changing Cosmopolitanism. In Amélie Oksenberg Rorty and James Schmidt (eds.), Kant’s ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’: A critical guide, 171-86. New York: Cambridge University Press.

———. 2012. Kant and Cosmopolitanism: The Philosophical Ideal of World Citizenship. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques. 1761. Extrait du Projet de Paix Perpétuelle de Monsieur l’Abbé de Saint Pierre. In Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (eds.), Oeuvres Complètes vol. III, 563-89. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.

———. 1782. Jugement sur la Paix Perpétuelle. In Bernard Gagnebin and Marcel Raymond (eds.), Oeuvres Complètes vol. III, 591-600. Paris: Gallimard, 1964.

Saint-Pierre, Charles-Irénéé Castel, Abbé de. 1713. Projet pour rendre la Paix Perpétuelle en Europe. Utrecht: Schouten.

[1]  I use the abbreviation ‘IGO’ in line with Caranti’s usage of the same (2017, 10, 164, 193, 197-98).

[2]  There is disagreement on this claim. For further discussion see: Caranti (2017), Doyle (1983), and Babst (1964; 1972).

[3]  TPP refers to Toward Perpetual Peace.

[4]  MM refers to the Metaphysics of Morals.

[5]  This is contextually important to a larger project which discusses the local and global conditions of the JS. In the course of my larger project, I raise the point that Kant’s teleological view, portrayed in ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent,’ is meant only to be an optimistic view of how our teleology leads us to the same outcome as that which we ought to bring about. I will not discuss the local or global conditions of the JS. There will be some allusion, though, to the discussion of these conditions and some allusion to this agreement of our teleology with our moral goals.

[6]  UH refers to ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Intent.’

[7]  Kant says as much: “By a congress is here understood only a voluntary coalition of different states which can be dissolved at any time, not a federation (like that of the American states) which is based on a constitution and can therefore not be dissolved. – Only by such a congress can the idea of a public right of nations be realized, one to be established for deciding their disputes in a civil way, as if by a lawsuit, rather than in a barbaric way […], namely by war.” (MM, 6:351).

[8]  To be fair to Kleingeld, she ultimately allows that Kant rejects this federal government over states. She reads him as having changed his mind between having written UH and TPP. While I admit that Kant’s thought had to have evolved as he wrote, I do not think his fundamental system changed as much as Kleingeld is arguing. That said, I am only arguing against her interpretation of UH, and not also against her developmental claims about Kant’s thought, in general. Such an argument would require an altogether different paper.

[9]  All citations within this quote are meant to refer to AK pagination in UH. They are not my citations, but they are accurate to the text.

[10]  In the larger project I work out how the JS and the Kingdom of Ends are connected and what exactly one should understand by ‘moral whole.’ For now, it is sufficient that we are aware that there is a moral whole toward which unsocial sociability is meant to help us strive. Kleingeld and I agree that such a moral whole exists, though we may disagree as to what constitutes it.

[11]  By IaG, Kleingeld means to refer to UH. By GTP, she means to refer to ‘On the Proverb: That may be true in Theory, but is of No Practical Use.’

[12]  She is getting this from St. Pierre’s Projet pour rendre la Paix Perpétuelle en Europe. (1713)

[13]  Rousseau wrote ‘Extrait’ and ‘Jugement’ around the same time, but ‘Jugement’ was published posthumously in 1782. (Kleingeld 45).

[14]  I am here presenting Kleingeld’s position; not my own. Obviously, she is assuming her position on international government to be correct in making this assertion; a position with which I explicitly disagree.

[15]  I will respond to each part of what I perceive to be Kleingeld’s position, but only after first presenting all the lynch pins of that position.

[16]  I just mean that it is not clear what role the Kingdom of Ends plays with this talk of a moral whole. I resolve this in the larger project, of which this paper is a small part.

[17]  Of course, we disagree primarily on what Kant means in UH by the global conditions of that JS.

[18]  While Caranti never actually writes that Kleingeld is wrong, his assertions show that she could not possibly be right from this historical context. Caranti admits that “Kant’s ‘philosophical project’ does not arise from a void” (Caranti 2017, 108). But, as the reader will see, this already does a lot to undermine Kleingeld’s position.

[19]  I share some views in common with Caranti, but we do differ in some respects. In this case, I do think that Kant was really more interested in talking about peace than what justifies war, and except for rare cases of defensive wars where they are arguably legitimate, wars are generally illegitimate on my reading of Kant. Caranti’s claim that they are always illegitimate seems a bit strong to me.

[20]  Of course, it is a matter of debate whether Kant really thought all wars to be illegitimate. He seems to defend defensive wars, for example. “As for active violations which give a right to go to war, these include acts of retaliation […], a state’s taking it upon itself to obtain satisfaction for an offense committed against its people by the people of another state, instead of seeking compensation (by peaceful methods) from the other state” (MM, 6:346). This undermines Caranti’s claim in my view. But, in agreement with Caranti, it does seem to be the case that Kant was aiming for the conditions that might sustain a peace, rather than the conditions that would make it ok to go to war.

[21]  In a separate paper, I plan to make a positive argument for this claim. My presenting it here is meant merely to show that the text would seem to contextually support this simpler resolution to the dilemma Kleingeld is trying to resolve (simpler, that is, than the solution she espouses).

[22]  It is noteworthy that another way to read the eighth thesis is that it refers to the Kingdom of Ends, and that the seventh thesis, and all of Kant’s discussion there about St. Pierre, really does refer to the JS. In fact, the easiest way to make Kleingeld’s picture fit with Universal History is to read the eighth thesis this way. Kleingeld seems to make this move when she writes: “The final end of history according to the Idea seems to be identical to the ‘moral world’ discussed in the Critique of Pure Reason under the name of the highest good. In the first Critique, this is the ideal […] in which all agents act morally, and in which, as a consequence of their virtuous action, all are happy (A 809/B 837)” (2009, 185-86). The purpose of this paper, however, is merely to show that my way of reading the text keeps Kant consistent between his works on the topic of the JS considered globally.

I will just briefly say here that the Kingdom of Ends seems out of place in UH, since the work is about our teleology, and the Kingdom of Ends, in no work of Kant’s, is talked about in terms of teleology. Rather, the Kingdom of Ends is talked about as a hope that we must have as a result of our being moral. The question of the final ends of our existence are asked in the context of determinism; namely the questions in UH are asked in terms of cause and effect and what we can expect will happen as a result of what has happened. “Whatever concept one may form of freedom of the will in a metaphysical context, its appearances, human actions, like all other natural events, are certainly determined [bestimmt] in conformity with universal natural laws. History – which concerns itself with providing a narrative of these appearances, regardless of how deeply hidden their cause may be – allows us to hope that if we examine the play of the human will’s freedom in the large, we can discover its course to conform to rules [regelmässig] as well as to hope that what strikes us as complicated and unpredictable in the single individual may in the history of the entire species be discovered to be the steady progress and slow development of its original capacities” (UH, 8:17). Kant’s position is hopeful, in that when we look at UH and at the moral works, we see agreement between that which we ought to do and that which eventually will happen. But there are two points that need to be addressed: Firstly, the Kingdom of Ends is not something we ought to bring about, but rather a hoped for consequence of our doing what we ought to do (determined, so to speak, by the categorical imperative). For example, in the “Canon of Pure Reason” in the first Critique, Kant distinguishes between that which we ought to do (which he says is not appropriate to discuss in there in the first Critique) and that for which we can hope (CPR, A 805/B 833). Second, the Kingdom of Ends is noumenal and nothing phenomenal can cause anything noumenal, for the noumenal is defined as being separate from the laws of cause and effect (CPR, A 252/B 308). Thus to include the Kingdom of Ends in UH is, in a strict sense, unreasonable, from a teleological point of view.