display all the ideas for this combination of philosophers
26 ideas
| 21058 | Enlightenment requires the free use of reason in the public realm [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The public use of man's reason must always be free, and it alone can bring about enlightenment among men; the private use of reason may quite often be very narrowly restricted (…in a particular civil post or office). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Answer to 'What is Enlightenment?' [1784], p.55) | |
| A reaction: The private aspect seems to be the common restriction on speech by employees of the state. Does free speech have only instrumental value? Is the life of virtue possible without it? |
| 7670 | Kant is the father of the notion of exploitation as an evil [Kant, by Berlin] |
| Full Idea: Kant is the father of the notion of exploitation as an evil. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.3 | |
| A reaction: This is central to the idea of Kant as the main father of liberalism, the idea that every individual deserves respect, and hence has rights. The idea would also be a crucial element in Europe turning against slavery. |
| 5621 | The existence of reason depends on the freedom of citizens to agree, doubt and veto ideas [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The very existence of reason depends on freedom, which has no dictatorial authority, but whose claim is never anything more than the agreement of free citizens, each of whom must be able to express reservations, indeed even veto, without holding back. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Pure Reason [1781], B766/A738) | |
| A reaction: I think the biggest conflict within modern societies (as opposed to currently existing medieval ones) is between the freedom that is required for a rational society, and the restraint which is required for a virtuous society. What has highest value? |
| 21076 | Equality is where you cannot impose a legal obligation you yourself wouldn't endure [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Rightful equality within a state is a relationship among citizens where no-one can put anyone else under a legal obligation without submitting simultaneously to a law which requires that he can be put under the same kind of obligation by the other person. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 2.1st n) | |
| A reaction: This appears only to be legal equality, rather than political or economic or social equality. |
| 21407 | Equality is not being bound in ways you cannot bind others [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Our innate equality is independence from being bound by others to more than one can in turn bind them. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals I: Doctrine of Right [1797], Div B) | |
| A reaction: This doesn't seem to capture the whole concept. The two of us may be unequally oppressed by a third. We are unequal with the third, but also with one another, though with no binding relationships. |
| 21066 | Citizens can rise to any rank that talent, effort and luck can achieve [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Every member of the commonwealth must be entitled to reach any degree of rank which a subject can earn through his talent, his industry and his good fortune. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2-2) | |
| A reaction: This is equality of opportunity, which is a mantra for liberals, but has been subjected to good criticisms in modern times. The main question is whether there is formal and legal equality, or actual practical equality. |
| 20570 | There is now a growing universal community, and violations of rights are felt everywhere [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The peoples of the earth have entered in varying degrees into a universal community, and it has developed to the point where a violation of rights in one part of the world is felt everywhere. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 'Third') | |
| A reaction: I hope slavery was at the forefront of his mind when he wrote that. It is only in very recent times (since about 1960?) that major violations of rights are felt to matter to the whole human race. A long way to go, though. |
| 20571 | There are political and inter-national rights, but also universal cosmopolitan rights [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The idea of a cosmopolitan right is not fantastic and overstrained; it is a necessary complement to the unwritten code of political and international right, transforming it into a universal right of humanity. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 'Third') | |
| A reaction: The interesting thought is that there are no 'natural rights', but there can be universal rights insofar as there exists a universal community. See the UN Declaration of Human Rights c.1948. |
| 21065 | You can't make a contract renouncing your right to make contracts! [Kant] |
| Full Idea: No one can voluntarily renounce his rights by a contract ..to the effect that he has no rights but only duties, for such a contract would deprive him of the right to make a contract, and would thus invalidate the one he had already made. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 2-2) | |
| A reaction: Kant tries to establish all of his principles by showing that their denial is contradictory. But this example is blatantly wrong. King Lear didn't nullify his previous legislation when he abdicated, and his two daughters legally kept their territories. |
| 21084 | In the contract people lose their rights, but immediately regain them, in the new commonwealth [Kant] |
| Full Idea: By the original contract all members of the people give up their external freedom in order to receive it back at once as members of a commonweath. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals I: Doctrine of Right [1797], §47) | |
| A reaction: This tries to give the impression that absolutely nothing is lost in the original alienation of rights. It is probably better to say that you give up one set of freedoms, which are replaced by a different (and presumably superior) set. |
| 21090 | If someone has largely made something, then they own it [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Whatever someone has himself substantially made is his own undisputed property. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals I: Doctrine of Right [1797], §55) | |
| A reaction: To this extent Kant offers clear agreement with Locke about a self-evident property right. Ownership of land is the controversial bit. |
| 21057 | The highest ideal of social progress is a universal cosmopolitan existence [Kant] |
| Full Idea: There is hope that the highest purpose of nature, a universal cosmopolitan existence, will at last be realised as the matrix within which all the original capacities of the human race may develop. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Idea for a Universal History [1784], 8th) | |
| A reaction: Apart from Diogenes of Sinope, Kant seems to have been the first great champion of the cosmopolitan ideal. As I write (2018) the western world is putting up growing barriers against immigrants. I think my response may be to adopt Kantian cosmopolitanism. |
| 21087 | Human life is pointless without justice [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If justice perishes, there is no further point in men living on earth. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals I: Doctrine of Right [1797], §49 Gen E) | |
| A reaction: I suspect that human life is also pointless if it only involves justice, and nothing else worthwhile. Are there other things so good that we might sacrifice justice to achieve them? How about maximal utilitarian happiness? |
| 7591 | Kant completed Grotius's project of a non-religious basis for natural law [Scruton on Kant] |
| Full Idea: Kant is often held to have completed a task begun by Grotius, giving a basis for natural law which does not invoke the will of God, but rather commands God himself to obedience. | |
| From: comment on Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785]) by Roger Scruton - A Dictionary of Political Thought 'Kant' | |
| A reaction: This project, if successful, would clinch the naturalistic response to the Euthyphro Question (Ideas 336 and 337). It is a key issue for atheists, who generally wish to deny that their lack of religion leads inevitably to amorality. |
| 21088 | Justice asserts the death penalty for murder, from a priori laws [Kant] |
| Full Idea: All murderers …must suffer the death penalty. This is what justice, as the idea of judicial power, wills in accordance with universal laws of a priori origin. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals I: Doctrine of Right [1797], §49 Gen E) | |
| A reaction: Illustration of how giving a principle an a priori origin puts it beyond dispute. Kant is adamant that mercy mustn't interfere with the enactment of justice. And Kant obviously rejects any consequentialist approach. Remind me what is wrong with murder? |
| 7673 | Retributive punishment is better than being sent to hospital for your crimes [Kant, by Berlin] |
| Full Idea: Kant believed in retributive punishment, because he thought that a man would prefer being sent to prison to going to hospital. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785]) by Isaiah Berlin - The Roots of Romanticism Ch.4 | |
| A reaction: That is, even criminals welcome the dignity of being treated as if they are actually responsible for their deeds, and are not just victims of inner forces. Criminals demand free will! Truth is best, though; many of them are not responsible at all. |
| 21433 | Violation of rights deserves punishment, which is vengeance, rather than restitution [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Every deed that violates a man's right deserves punishment, the function of which is to avenge a crime on the one who committed it (not merely to make good the harm done). ...but no punishment may be inflicted out of hatred. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals II:Doctrine of Virtue [1797], 460-1 I.II) | |
| A reaction: A fairly hideous idea, confirming the image of Kant as someone who coldly perfoms ruthless duties. I don't think Kant ever offers any clarity for the concepts of 'deserving' or of 'avenging'. What is the appropriate vengeance for theft? |
| 21072 | The people (who have to fight) and not the head of state should declare a war [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Each state must be organised so that the head of state, for whom the war costs nothing (for he wages it at the expense of the people) must no longer have the deciding vote on whether war is to be declared or not, for the people who pay for it must decide. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (True in Theory, but not in Practice [1792], 3) | |
| A reaction: I would guess that he has Louis XIV particularly in mind. Imagine if Kant's proposal had been implemented in 1914. A referendum takes ages, and the people would need the facts (from the intelligence agencies). |
| 21073 | Hiring soldiers is to use them as instruments, ignoring their personal rights [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The hiring of men to kill or be killed seems to mean using them as mere machines and insturments in the hands of someone else (the state), which cannot easily be reconciled with the rights of man in one's own person. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 1.3) | |
| A reaction: Kant was not a pacificist, though this makes him sound like one. Some men go off to war with enthusiasm, and then regret it. Exploitation of rational beings may be the worst sin in Kant's Enlightenment world. |
| 21074 | Some trust in the enemy is needed during wartime, or peace would be impossible [Kant] |
| Full Idea: It must remain possible, even in wartime, to have some sort of trust in the attitude of the enemy, otherwise peace could not be concluded and the hostilities would turn into a war of extermination. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Perpetual Peace [1795], 1.6) | |
| A reaction: Consider the 'unconditional surrender' approach to the Nazis in 1944, and the peace of May 1945, made with very different Germans. How do you make peace with an enemy you cannot trust? |
| 21085 | The church has a political role, by offering a supreme power over people [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The church [as opposed to religion] fulfils a genuine political necessity, for it enables the people to regard themselves as subjects of an invisible supreme power to which they must pay homage. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals I: Doctrine of Right [1797], §49 Gen C) | |
| A reaction: I'm sure I remember Marx putting a different spin on this point… This idea captures the conservative attitude to established religion, at least in the UK. |
| 19739 | The maxim for suicide is committed to the value of life, and is thus contradictory [Kant] |
| Full Idea: If my maxim is to shorten my life if its continuance threatens more evil than pleasure ...it is seen that a system of nature by whose law the feeling intended to further life should actually destroy life would contradict itself, and could not subsist. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Lectures on Ethics [1780], 422:53) | |
| A reaction: [compressed] I take it this means that a potential suicide is assessing what is best for life, and is therefore implicitly committed to life. Not persuasive! Should we not terminate the life of a mass murderer in mid-crime? |
| 6188 | A permanent natural order could not universalise a rule permitting suicide [Kant] |
| Full Idea: The maxim of freely disposing of my life could not hold as a universal law of nature, …because no one could choose to end his life, for such an arrangement could not constitute a permanent natural order. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Critique of Practical Reason [1788], I.1.1.I) | |
| A reaction: This sort of claim brings out the advantanges of Aristotelian 'particularism' (expounded by Dancy). Obviously universal suicide isn't promising, but no one wants that. A few suicides in extreme cases will have no effect at all on the natural order. |
| 3730 | Non-rational beings only have a relative value, as means rather than as ends [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Beings whose existence depends not on our will but on nature have, if they are non-rational beings, only a relative value as means and are consequently called 'things' (rather than 'persons'). | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals [1785], 428.65) | |
| A reaction: Ugh. Is there nothing in between 'persons' and 'things'? How about a deeply comatose human, or an embryo? It is a gross distortion to think of a chimpanzee as a 'thing'. |
| 21423 | Men can only have duties to those who qualify as persons [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Man has duties only to men, ...since his duty to any other subject is moral constraint by that's subject's will. Hence the constraining (binding) subject must first be a person. Man can therefore have no duty to any beings other than men. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals II:Doctrine of Virtue [1797], 442 I.I) | |
| A reaction: This is good for illuminating why I am not a Kantian. It is not just that animals are ruled out - it is that whether you show respect depends on whether the recipient passes some test or other. Humans with brain damage may fail the test. |
| 21424 | Cruelty to animals is bad because it dulls our empathy for pain in humans [Kant] |
| Full Idea: Cruel treatment of animals is intimately opposed to man's duty to himself; ...for it dulls his shared feeling of their pain and so weakens and gradually uproots a natural predisposition that is very serviceable to morality in relations with other men. | |
| From: Immanuel Kant (Metaphysics of Morals II:Doctrine of Virtue [1797], 443 I.I) | |
| A reaction: This idea is quite shocking. Kant's rough contemporary Bentham was far more enlightened. If we could be certain that our feelings of empathy for pain were not dulled by cruelty to animals, then it would be fine. |