In his work titled “Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose”(1784), Kant considers the role philosophers have to play in analyzing and integrating the events of human history. For Kant, philosophy can give the history of mankind a purpose or significance beyond the culmination of individual human lives. Like many thinkers from the Enlightenment period, Kant expresses an anxiety, in light of the causal nature of the physical world, about the possible loss of meaning in human existence if every event were to be a link in a causal chain. Kant attempts to endow the march of history with an overarching meaning that can be found beyond our experience. He wonders how history could be possible without a grounding, a priori principle. The philosopher is best positioned to determine this principle by using the power of abstraction and synthesis that follows a rigorous procedure to deduce what the ultimate aim towards which mankind progresses. In what follows, I would like to consider whether Kant’s claims about the arc of history are meant to be descriptive or normative, resolve the anxiety around the difficulty of gleaning objective meaning from history, and discuss the validity of determining the value of different human epochs.
From this short work, it appears that Kant sees the role of a philosopher of history as reducing the progress of humanity to that of natural laws. He sees the natural laws, like those developed by Isaac Newton for the movement of celestial bodies, as analogous to a guiding principle of humanity that is obscured by all the seemingly random events of the past. Kant conceptualizes history as “concerned with giving an account of these phenomena, no matter how deeply concealed their causes may be.” Regardless of how we think about the reality of natural laws, the mathematical kind that approximately map onto the world, his approach behooves us to ask if moral laws and Kant’s idea of a “universal history” is meant to be a metaphysical claim or just an attempt to prescribe the way in which we should view progress in human society? A hint at the way Kant may think about it appears towards the end of the essay: “Yet if it may be assumed that nature does not work without a plan and purposeful end, even amidst the arbitrary play of human freedom, this idea might nevertheless prove useful. And although we are too short-sighted to perceive the hidden mechanism of nature’s scheme, this idea might yet serve as a guide to us in representing an otherwise planless aggregate of human actions as conforming to a system.” Judging by his tone here, it seems reasonable to assume that Kant is not suggesting that all the postulates found in this essay are meant to describe the way the world actually is, but the way things ought to be. Yet, there is tension even in this excerpt. He concedes that his idea may merely be a guide but then suggests that assuming a cosmopolitan aim is only in lieu of perceiving the hidden mechanism once we are no longer too short-sighted. But if we accept that he means to be prescriptive, this reading is congruent with his conception of the hypothetical and categorical imperatives and his notions of the phenomena and the noumena. The categorical imperative is derived from the way the world is, in and of itself, divorced from the cause and effect relationship that we find in the world of the phenomenal. It seems here that Kant is extolling the philosopher of history to look at the world in the same way without making a metaphysical claim. He goes on to add that “even when it (human history) was regarded as the disjointed product of unregulated freedom… if we assume a plan of nature, we have grounds for greater hopes.” Here, Kant appears to be making a normative claim about how the philosopher of history should analyze the sequence of historical events. For him, if we assume a plan and an end, we can best define how it is we got to where we are and best deduce how to get to where we are ultimately going, which for Kant was the moral perfection of the human race.
Yet, though in places we can read Kant as making normative claims, in others Kant’s wording can read as assertions about how the world actually is. “Nature does nothing unnecessarily,” it “gave man reason and freedom of will based on reason,” and “seems here to have taken pleasure” in providing enough initial tools to begin our quest for moral perfection. Besides the looseness with which he ascribes human characteristics to the whole of creation, there is no qualification by which he makes these assertions. Granted, Kant claims his series of theses to only be postulates and just a “ground for greater hopes,” but I struggle with assuming that this is the way that human progress actually occurs. I would agree with Kant that it would be useful to aim for a better state of humanity, but if it is simply useful I would qualify my statements as they are made and not append the paper at the end. Further, “nature” does an incredible amount of things unnecessarily, plate tectonics and genetic mutations are perfect examples of that. I will grant that Kant would have not have had knowledge of these phenomena, but surely he must have been aware of the many mental and physical disorders that plague humanity and all of creation in general. Assuming he was aware, what would be necessary about these conditions for the progress of human morality? If “history is concerned with giving an account of these phenomena, no matter how deeply concealed their causes may be,” then the historian should be concerned with giving an actual account and not a prescription for a better future.
In the “Idea for a universal history,” Kant is concerned with the “dismal reign of chance” and the “melancholy haphazardness” by which we could think of the progression of human actions and events. Much of Kant’s work is concerned with reconciling moral responsibility against the consequences he saw from the laws of cause and effect. This is where I break from Kant’s appraisal of the arc of history. It is not more advantageous to assume a “guiding principle of reason” when analyzing the sequence of events that make up human history. It is better to accept the dismal reign of chance than to constantly try and abstract an overarching meaning, end, or intention to the progress of humanity. In my view, this is for a very simple reason: any meaning abstracted from human activity is insufficient to account for the magnitude of human suffering. It seems that if we accept Kant’s normative claims, the historian is better off assuming that the collapse of civilizations in violence, the suffering endured from smallpox and the plague is a part of a process that leads us to moral perfection. Here is where Kant is in danger of contradicting himself. Kant’s Principle of Humanity asks us to never treat a human being or rational creature as a means and only as an end. Yet he seems to be indicating that the 100 billion or so human beings who have already lived and died in the sequence of human events as a means by which we can arrive at the moral perfection of humanity. This is why I take the position that it is better to understand human progress without an “a priori rule” than to overlay one on top of it. To pick and choose significant events that fit into a narrative that demonstrates moral progress is to ignore all the backwards and sideways steps taken along the way. Further, it is to ignore the trillions of insignificant events that culminated in the events that historians build their narratives around. Kant indicates that he sees progress as “developed further with each revolution” but this is not representative of human history and opens himself up to accusations of being Western centric. Human progress is non-linear and does not always progress in times of revolution. Often, we see it collapse entirely. I think it a detriment and a disservice to those who have suffered to conceptualize their intricate and complex lives as in service of some march towards a perfect federation of peoples.
In pursuit of this perfect constitution, Kant frames human progress as an ascent away from savagery. But from where does he derive his conclusion that the savage was any more or less a moral creature than the ones of his day or of ours? Hunter gatherer societies would have had a system of morals and codes of behavior just like today. Kant judges the superiority of human epochs by the progress of morality while utilizing a mischaracterization of the way we used to be. Further, this is not the only metric by which we should be determining the value of human epochs. Given the prevalence of malaise, discontent, and depression in our modern society, one could argue that the human species might be happier still wandering the land finding sustenance when needed. It is presumptive of him to assume that the savage way of life is inferior to a state of global security. Kant conceptualizes our human progress as “abandoning a lawless state of savagery and entering a federation of peoples in which every state, even the smallest, could derive its security.” Yet, there is really no definitive way in which this could be judged as better or worse. Abandoning our nomadic lifestyle and setting up shop created many more problems than would have plagued the “savage,” but yet we are to assume that expansion and coexistence of all peoples is what was meant by nature. Kant views nature as driving us towards the maximization of our “natural capacities,” but it should go without saying that human beings have many natural capacities. Homo sapiens are violent and conciliatory, rational and irrational, communitarian and individualistic, yet he gives no instruction on how it is that nature selects which capacities to maximize. Our innate behavioral tendencies can be both beneficial and detrimental in service of “nature’s original intention” of the moral perfection of the human race. What remains to be seen is if this moral perfection results in a more satisfactory existence for those who live in this paradigm. The savages may yet still have something to say about the good life.
If we take Kant at his word towards the end of this work, we can view his assertions as a set of normative claims to assume if we humanity is to continually progress. The stories and narratives that we tell ourselves are very efficacious and it might be that in some cases philosophers of history are better off telling an inspiring story of the march of human progress. But in my view, this approach asks us to treat those who came before us as a means to an end, something explicitly prescribed against by Kant himself. Further, this does a disservice to the countless lives lost to history, each with an intricate story to tell. We need not fear the random and haphazard nature of loosely associated human events or the laws of cause and effect. In my eyes, it is more metaphysically accurate and rids the historian of having to try to make sense of a senseless world, or forcing her to abstract meaning where there is none to be found. Homo sapiens is the type of creature that learns from narrative. I just happen to think we can tell a better story without assuming that nature had any intention or that the arc of human history is nothing but loosely associated, purposeless events.
Works Cited:
Kant, Immanuel (2007). Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim (1784). In Anthropology, History, and Education. Cambridge University Press.
Dupré, Louis (1998). Kant’s Theory of History and Progress. Review of Metaphysics 51 (4):813 – 828.
The Westerlund Project 