Kant: Political Writings (Cambridge Texts in the History of Political Thought)

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Summary: Transcendental Idealism makes for bad politics
Review: I wonder if stundents of politics, philosophy and history can actually take Kant seriously as anything other than a reactionary; after all, we must take him at his word when he tells us that he is going to deny knowledge in order to make room for freedom and faith. As Kant was well aware, freedom is hardly an unambiguous first principle. And like all other first principles, freedom cannot be deduced from some higher place. To further complicate matters, Kant finds it necessary to separate politics and morality. In fact, freedom is described by Kant as obedience to moral law that reason alone creates for itself. Politics, Kant tells us, is motivated by self interest. Therefore, while we might hope that political progress coincides with moral actions, we cannot know this. Knowledge is knowledge of necessity, and we cannot admit necessity in the realm of political, moral and human affairs without denying freedom and responsibility. Thus Kant's political musings are always subordinate to his explicit desire to "make room" for freedom and morality. The result is the denial of the practical value of politics as such. Hence there is no room left to practice politics in Kant's political philosophy. We should not be surprised that many who today wish to deny practical political considerations find inspiration in Kantian dreams of universal goverance, perpetual peace, and, above all, pietistic "reason."

One needs to be familiar with Kant's epistemology and resulting theory of subjectivity (agency) to understand the full weight of the conundrum described above. Just as Kant "discovered" the "faculties" that alone make knowledge possible he also found a way to rhetoricaly deny that knowledge to make room for freedom, morality and God. There is, however, no room left to practice politics in Kant's transcendental world because political practice does not measure up to his moral standards and cannot be said to count as knowledge in the world as he describes it. The real world of immanence and limits is simply beneath Kantian standards of trancendental freedom. The lesson for the statesman in all of this is that Kant's realm of transcendental ideals, freedom and morality is best left to the romantic age he spawned.Unfortunately, even the romantics Kant spawned, Fichte, Schelling, and even Schopenhauer, were more practical than Kant himself politcally.

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Summary: Best collection I've seen in English
Review: This is the best affordable paperback collection of Kant's essays on politics and the philosophy of history. You get Perpetual Peace, Idea for a Universal History, Contest of the Faculties, The End of all Things, Theory and Practice, What is Enlightenment and several other essays. Hans Reiss' introduction is well written and illuminating as well. There is another, cheaper collection published by Hackett Publishing Co. (Perpetual Peace and Other Essays). However, it is smaller and less comprehensive than this edition.