In this episode, we dig into the Doctrine of Right in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals to see what he has to say about the state. Turns out he’s a fan, because the state is what guarantees the possibility of justice and perpetual peace. Nice! But he also thinks that the state should be authorized to kill you. And that you don’t have the right to rebel even if the sovereign is abusing their power. And that you shouldn’t think too hard about the origin of the state. And that human beings are transcendentally disposed to malevolent violence toward each other? So let’s call this a mixed bag, maybe.
leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil
References:
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Music:
“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com
“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN
In this episode, we dig into the Doctrine of Right in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals to see what he has to say about the state. Turns out he’s a fan, because the state is what guarantees the possibility of justice and perpetual peace. Nice! But he also thinks that the state should be authorized to kill you. And that you don’t have the right to rebel even if the sovereign is abusing their power. And that you shouldn’t think too hard about the origin of the state. And that human beings are transcendentally disposed to malevolent violence toward each other? So let’s call this a mixed bag, maybe.
leftofphilosophy.com | @leftofphil
References:
Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary Gregor (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991).
Music:
“Vintage Memories” by Schematist | schematist.bandcamp.com
“My Space” by Overu | https://get.slip.stream/KqmvAN
So this is what he says. He says, for the government's business of guiding the people by laws is made easier when the feeling for decency, the census decori as negative taste, interesting, is not deadened by what offends the moral sense, such as begging, uproar on the streets, stentions and public prostitution. Venus Volgi.
Speaker 4:Volgivaga.
Speaker 2:This is what's up to philosophy. I'm Gil. Here with me today is Lillian Owen and Will. Hey guys, hey yo.
Speaker 2:For today's episode we're going back to one of our old faves, the all destroyer himself, emmanuel Kantz. Long time listeners will know that he was the subject of the first episode of our what is Dialectics series, episode 13, way back in May 2021. That focused mostly on the first critique. Then Kant was also part of the story when we had Jacob Blumenfeld join us for episode 54 last December when we talked about the idea of property in German idealism. I'll use this opportunity to shout out that Jacob's book on that subject the concept of property and conflict and Hegel, freedom, right and recognition was published just last month by Rotledge. So you should go, grab a copy and, as one does with external things, possess it as your own. So this isn't entirely new territory, but we're focusing in on the metaphysics of morals today. It's a late text, from 1797.
Speaker 2:Most people who have read some of Kant's moral philosophy are probably familiar with the grounding for the metaphysics of morals which he wrote in 1785. Others may know the second critique, the critique of practical reason, from 1788. If in those texts, kant laid the groundwork for practical metaphysics and developed a critical account of the limits of practical reason. In this book, he's actually doing the metaphysics itself. That means giving an account of the nature and extent of the duties that we have, both to ourselves and to others, and determining the kinds of social and political structures that are appropriate for ensuring that these duties can be carried out in accordance with the laws of freedom. This book is wild. It covers everything from asking about how many drinks you should have at a dinner party to reflections on the idea of cosmopolitan peace and how it interacts with the empirical fact that there are coastlines. It is divided into two parts.
Speaker 2:There is a doctrine of virtue, which deals with duties for which, as Kant says, no external law giving is possible, and a doctrine of right, where external laws can and should be prescribed. This just means that there are some things that you should adopt as ends, namely, you should aim at your own perfection and at the house, you should aim at your own action and at the happiness of others, but that there's no consistent or reasonable way to make laws that enforce this. Nobody can make you want to do the right thing, but we can still specify what it looks like when you do want to do the right thing. That's the sphere of virtue. By contrast, there's also a sphere of right, which doesn't have to do with the ends that you adopt, but rather with how you act, and specifically with how you act in public in relation to others. It is possible, and Kant thinks necessary, to lay down laws. Theft, for instance, is a violation of one's duty to others, and it is also the sort of thing that we can outlaw and punish.
Speaker 2:I feel like I should apologize, maybe a little bit, that I've asked us to read and discuss only the doctrine of right today, not because I don't think it's interesting I think there's lots of fascinating stuff here, and hopefully you all thought so too but rather because the doctrine of virtue is so bananas it barely feels like reading Kant. He talks about the duty to be sympathetic alongside casuistical questions about how much sex it's okay to have for pleasure. Not much, it turns out. If you, the listener, are at all familiar with Kantian ways of thinking about morality, you really owe yourself a read through of the doctrine of virtue, and maybe we'll come back to it in a future episode. But like I said, today we're talking about the doctrine of right. The doctrine of right is itself divided into private right, which deals primarily with private property, and public right, which talks about the rights of citizens, states and nations and very briefly touches on this idea of cosmopolitanism at the end. So go check out the episode with Jacob If you want to hear us talk about the bits about private right. Today we're taking a closer look at public right.
Speaker 2:For Kant, as always, everything has to do with freedom. He writes, quote any action is right if it can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law or if, on its maximum, the freedom of choice of each can coexist with everyone's freedom in accordance with the universal law. End quote. That is, concretely speaking, my action is right if it doesn't mean that I'm constricting the freedom of any others. Constraining the freedom of others is wrong, but this also and immediately means that it's right to prevent anyone from constraining others freedom. This in fact authorizes coercion. The principle of freedom makes it not just possible but morally necessary to use force to prevent anyone's freedom from being constrained by the choices of others. The concept of freedom thus implies a priori duty and coercion. Bad news for the libertarian set. Things then start to move very quickly from this concept of freedom, implying coercion, right. Coercion in the form of universally enforceable laws.
Speaker 2:Kant will derive the objective, practical necessity of the state, with a sovereign legislator expressing the general will of the people, an executive branch carrying out this legislative will and a judiciary. These three aspects of state authority are, kant says, beyond reproach. Kantian unconditionality takes on a fearsome new form in state authority here. I don't want to go on too, too much longer, but there's just so much more, and some of it is frankly mind blowing. Kant determines, for instance, that there is never any right to rebel, but that one is also immediately duty bound to respect the authority of the new government if a rebellion happens to succeed. It is imperative that you not think too hard about the historical origin of the state that you live in. There isn't a priori duty to enter into society and leave behind the state of nature. There's even a duty to write the metaphysics of morals, although I think Kant probably enjoyed himself maybe spoiling the moral purity of his intention.
Speaker 2:There are discussions about the right of the state to punish criminal acts and to exercise clemency, the duty for states to form peaceful alliances with each other and the problem of living on a spherical globe and the question of, yes, settler colonialism. States must, kant argues, be constructed institutionally in such a way that the freedom of all citizens is safeguarded from any potential abuse of power, and this partly provides the justification for the mixed constitution he advocates. Just as each citizen in the polity is mutually and reciprocally duty bound, the different parts of the state are, each in their own way, reciprocally restrained in the name of freedom. In short, the Kant that emerges here is kind of a classical Republican, and the ultimate aim of the Doctrine of Right is, he says, nothing short of universal and lasting peace, which Kant says may never finally be achieved but which we can ever more closely approximate. So I think there's plenty to talk about, and I'd like to just open it up here by asking you all what you thought of this very strange late Kantian work.
Speaker 1:Oh, just one quick goes on. Awesome intro, but just one quick correction. You said the concept of the state that Kant advocates. No, what you I think what you meant to say was the concept of the state that reason advocates.
Speaker 4:Yo get him home. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is about Kant the man.
Speaker 1:No, no, no, he's just he's just like articulating what like the rational idea of the state is.
Speaker 2:He's not. He's not. Yeah, he did just he consulted. He consulted with the concept of right, a prior that's what I was trying to say.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so that was yeah other than that though that was lit.
Speaker 4:I'm really happy he did that for us.
Speaker 2:So I had to. I mean, I wasn't up to the task.
Speaker 4:I mean God, like where to start, I know.
Speaker 1:There's just it's a lot.
Speaker 4:Crazy.
Speaker 1:We just say that first first of all, this is a lot this. He's really like Kant. When he talks about, he's doing most. He's talking about mental subjects. He's in his zone. As soon as he starts talking about the historical, real, existing world, it just gets so loopy, it's loose baby, yeah, he.
Speaker 4:I just write this it's a fever dream.
Speaker 1:Someone told him to like someone's like, let him cook. And this is what he. This is what he did, this brain cook.
Speaker 4:Okay, so I guess where, where, where we could start is basically Kant's trying to figure out what are, what are the necessary and practical conditions for anyone to be secure in their possessions and, in their note, in their sense of self as a, as a rights bearing citizen. So far, so good. But then you know, it seems as if that this can only be accomplished through. You know how Kant derives the state and gosh. It was really funny that practical syllogism he uses. So figure out the executive, the legislative judiciary he's like. Here's the major premise, the minor premise, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1:I'm laughing. The structure of the state perfectly models the practical syllogism which is not a syllogism I knew existed until I read this.
Speaker 4:Yeah. So I didn't know you could do that, but you know Kant made it respectable. You know you could do that. And so his argument against, like the state of nature, is very strange. But you know, I'm not even saying things were all bad in the state of nature, you know. He's just saying that there wasn't the presence of justice, of stability, predictability and the types of creatures that he thinks you we must be. Now what's interesting here is that the state becomes almost this nearly incontestable lynchpin for holding together our society as rational creatures. And he thinks that, you know, without this state, the to contest or to rebel against this state would be to undo the very conditions for peace that were necessary for reason to do its work. And so I do love that. You know, the state gets a sort of metaphysical endowment of the life and possibility of irrational people. But I love that. He says. You know, I mean of course you can, like you, complain, and register.
Speaker 1:That was one of my favorite words. You're allowed to dissent, but you are allowed to complain. It's like the perfect.
Speaker 4:Grumble.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 4:You know, kovach, even you're allowed to, but rebel you cannot. And it's because for him and I hope he really elaborate how far this goes, like he even thinks about a bad sovereign and what you can, can and cannot do to a bad sovereign, which is you can never execute them or anything like that, because to do so would be to be to strike a blow at ourselves as rational creatures.
Speaker 1:OK, which there's. There's something that that was maybe for me the most striking part of all the things we read in this text was when he's describing the feeling one gets, the moral feel, the moral feeling that accompanies hearing anytime you hear of a monarch that was beheaded. It's like what Charles the first instead of healing.
Speaker 1:Yeah exactly, and he's just like I need to try to make sense of this. It's like as soon as I read anything about like Louis the 16th being killed, I just enter this like profound malaise and discomfort and you know, and he tries to give it, he tries to give an account of like why that is a necessary feeling, it's proof of like a world's constitution. It's like dude. This is like. This is entirely your own psychodrama, I think we.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, that's that what I think, maybe not a universal feeling. I'm just going to toss that out there, dude everything in here becomes.
Speaker 1:Can.
Speaker 4:I say something without y'all getting mad. Honestly, when I was reading that footnote, there was a part of this like wait, do I kind of feel that way, Like the Japanese former prime minister got a sassy? I was just like is this the end of reason? And I desperately wanted reason to stay. You know, anytime I see a leader get overthrown, okay, I get you.
Speaker 1:But I was, I'm sorry. That was one of those moments of just unadulterated happiness for me, fair enough, oh man.
Speaker 3:Okay, but like okay, can we like be serious for a second here, you guys, like I do feel like, like it does. Yeah, I feel like we're like, let's, let's read the metaphysics and morals and we're just like it is funny. I mean, I think his opinions are funny but like, surely, like the thing that makes him feel like he can just have these opinions or indulge in what is clearly like his, like a major set of rationalizations for his own moral intuitions, is that he thinks it's a good way of putting it.
Speaker 3:I mean, yeah, that's like plainly what happens.
Speaker 3:It's wild when it's just like this is kind of like this is just like what he thinks about the world and what we've done is like we did the first critique, and then we did the second critique, and then we did the third critique, and then we did the, and then we had the groundwork at some point in there and then like, really, what we're like amounting to is he needed to like understand the rational basis for like what was happening in modernity in this very specific way.
Speaker 3:So, and then you start wondering, was it all just one big moralism from the beginning? You know this is like my question, but surely there is like an integrated system here, like I like. So you know, we move at the beginning of the text from like private right, like in a discussion of innate rights and natural rights and why there are moral capacities for putting agents with these natural you know natural rights into relation with one another. And given that like need for being in so relation in order to have positive rights, it does seem like he has the grounds to say that actually justice is only possible in a set of relations that respects rights in a host of ways.
Speaker 1:In a rightful condition. In a rightful condition. Right In a rightful condition.
Speaker 3:Like. The reason he's saying that there's no justice in the state of nature is less literal than it is, I think, following from his understanding of the kind of beings we are Like if we don't live in a society that Rightful condition like, if we don't live in a rightful condition, then we by definition don't live under circumstances of justice and therefore we can't be free like and this is the problem we can't be free like that.
Speaker 1:Well, there's an important distinction there. We could have lawless freedom.
Speaker 3:Yeah, we could. It could be a free for all, but it cannot be yeah, yeah, but that's not like that.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 3:So I feel like I don't know. I just maybe I just want to say, like why does this shit start? Like why does this even sound like it starts? Making sense Would be nice.
Speaker 4:So yeah, yeah, I think I could speak to that, as you know the resident crypto content perhaps I think you know when I get swept up in this and obviously when you put pressure on this, the the whole thing starts to collapse in on itself. But the intuition I, it seems to me that conteps into is if states really cannot appeal to any higher order judge to Stabilize, you know, these relations of freedom and reciprocity. It says, if Kant is dealing with the fact that actually States and all that reside in us, elaborating them, you know there is not going to be, even if Contas religious, no, not gonna be any God that comes down and does it for us, and so the idea of trying to even slip into a constitution of people's right to rebellion, he thinks, then you are blowing up any certain foundation for there to be Commerce and relationships between states, because it's as if Contas, even with you, it turns out, even if this is somehow derived from reason, our priori, we are all there is to accomplish something like this, and so he's trying to create some type of foundation that you know will constrain us from Misusing our freedom to our own detriment, and so it seems like that's what he's dealing with, this sort of awesome responsibility we have as these creatures of reason. And Yet it seems as if you know, he realizes rebellions and revolutions happen and so it is possible for us to also reject what the one thing that can stabilize our relationships together. I mean that's kind of like my sort of best argument for what he's doing. This is kind of a test with the count reckoning with you.
Speaker 4:The sort of awesome power we have as human beings when it comes to not just establishing states and relationships but disestablishing them. And the work of Disestablishing them means that we can also make of ourselves the type of creatures who can't Develop the conditions that can approximate perpetual peace. Even though he does not seem really optimistic about perpetual peace happening, I think he actually even says it might be impossible, but that doesn't mean we can't approximate it. But that also means that in this effort to constrict and stabilize this freedom, he comes to these Incredible conclusions, like you, women having children out of wedlock, and he describes that that baby is Contraband, because you know this is happening outside law like there there is a.
Speaker 4:Fessization of law going on here like let's be real, is just. That is not a part of the polity it's like, so we cannot put this woman to death.
Speaker 3:I do think this is like. I think this is the link between, like the stuff that seems Argumentatively legitimate I'm gonna say I'm saying legit amix, I don't know it it seems legit to say to like, draw this connection but between, say, the state and private and public, right Through, you know, the moral law, like there's a, there's a, there's a big fat moralism that Ascends. You know, and I think a lot of people have the intuition that this is basically correct. Like when you talk to most people about politics or whatever like, what they are doing is usually inflating a moral principle to make sense of Aggregate political activities and conflicts and so on. And I think if you talk to any committed Kantian they will Confess that this is what they're doing like you can't have a legitimate criticism of society without like the more kind of moral theory that's strong in the Kantian sense Concept of autonomy, concepts of reciprocity, concepts of freedom, blah, blah, blah and so like. It's a way of like inflating morality very far and I think that to me the interesting thing is how wacky it does indeed become when you do that like it, act it like.
Speaker 3:It plainly is here, although from what I understand, it's kind of like Contemporary Kantians, especially people who do like human rights or international IR stuff. They'll be like well, you know that was weird, but we can do it, like we can definitely make this happen, like Cosmopolitanism, like that you know. So I just think that, like, these intuitions are very strong and I I would like to understand better. Like why does the weird shit come out? Like why does that always shake out? You know, the contemporary version of this is People talking about global governance, like we're gonna have one big global state. Like I think that's wild. Like I think global coordination in various respects is absolutely desirable. But, like you know, there are philosophy books written about like having a big-ass global state and I'm like hold on, there's nine billion people. What are you talking about?
Speaker 1:He at least is clear that it's got to be an association and not like a sovereign unity. That's impossible, but you get what I'm saying like things get a hundred percent, you know, and.
Speaker 3:I, I'm just wondering, why is that true? Like, why do you start? Does the smirting small with the more morality kind of lead to this, like aggressively, like free for all kind of like political theorizing? I don't, I don't know. Like like, like the baby can't be? Like you see what I'm saying, like the baby can't be, it's not in the moral universe because it wasn't contracted, because it didn't, it wasn't born in the moral universe and therefore it's outside of it.
Speaker 3:So you have to do something with it like that's so weird that, like you're, you just like repeat that reasoning over and over again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're where he says at some point he's like you know, Is there a duty of states to take care of like orphaned kids? And then he says, should it? Should like wealthy unmarried people be taxed extra for that? He's like maybe sort of a tricky problem. No one's really sad. I'm like what are you fucking?
Speaker 3:talking about.
Speaker 2:That's such a weird thing to say and to think what the hell.
Speaker 1:I mean, I think that's the right idea, though that like it is. That makes sense to me that if you start with a strong like, you ground your theory in your political theory in a Like, in an ethics, in a robust, like moral theory, you can end up in these really bizarre places. But I also think that, like I don't know, I feel like the other side of this doesn't get Asked enough, like some of the difficult questions that they can't answer as easily like. So if you're a realist and you want to like totally push, like moral normativity outside of the sphere of politics, then you've got to accept the, the identity of right and force, right, and I think that's is like other than freedom, that the central problem for him in this book is like how can we like is there such a thing as rightful force? And if so, like what is it? Is there like legitimate violence? Is there?
Speaker 2:water. It's linear. What are?
Speaker 1:you and all that, and I think that, like an, as somebody who just want to say, as somebody who generally Tends to sympathize, like much more in that realist direction, particularly in a kind of Machiavellian or spinosistic direction, I find it hard to relinquish. I find it hard to relinquish the, the, the importance of of Not collapsing right and force into one another like I mean, it got. It's the old Thrasymachus problem of, like, what are the right of the strongest? Or you know, justice is the right of the strongest, or something you know. So I don't, I just feel like that doesn't they have to answer that.
Speaker 1:So you have all these quirks with moralism, but there's also, like you know, any kind of fucking violence and abuse. Is you have to consider right, if right is equivalent to force Right, like I find that like and I think most people, like you said, referring to people's intuitions, find that abhorrent and so yeah, okay, I'm gonna let you guys get an award and enjoys in a second, but like, I'm very motivated by this problem because I Think that that's exactly the right contrast.
Speaker 3:Oh, and like, that's like where the like that the money shot of, like political philosophy is there.
Speaker 3:I think there's two.
Speaker 3:There's like the fact from the facts norms problem, and then I think, or the fact value distinction, like how do you develop social criticism, or what a political philosophy like with respect to Picking aside on that question, and then I think this kind of like power versus right, picking aside on that question, is like the other major one, and so I think it's totally right to say that, like he Can't, kant is on the one side and that's the appeal, because the question is how can a realist avoid that problem?
Speaker 3:I don't know if they can avoid it in terms of like needing no ethical theory, but what I would love to be convinced by is that there is some ethical theory that isn't the same thing as what we Think of when we talk about moral philosophy that is available to us like I think, like you know, I think that's what people like McIntyre are pushing at with like revised, reviving the like Aristotelian ideas of the good or whatever you know, and there's problems with that too. But I think the way out of this can't just be like no morals I think there are realists who want that, I'm just not convinced but like no morals.
Speaker 1:Yeah, feels tough.
Speaker 3:But it might be that there's other morals. But I do feel like Kant is the person who, like, sets that agenda, because that is what's driving all this. He's like there can't be this anarchic state system Like realism can't be true. So in the political political realism.
Speaker 4:It certainly can't be true. If something like perpetual peace is a thing that you know we ought to aim for in order to realize the type of creatures that we are, I think you, it's very strange that I think the respect I have for this Kantian text is All at once he wants there to be a type of final cause of what we are doing by final cause and end that we are aiming at. But Kant is really almost the cycle in liquid, disturbed by the historical contingency of origins and how Indulces.
Speaker 1:That is a good way of putting it. It's worth just saying right away. You mentioned it in the intro, gil, but multiple times in this text, he he comes, he like Articulates this idea that it's really important, in fact it's a moral imperative, not to think about the origin of your state Like, not like it's it's. He says you know it's. He puts the odds structure in there.
Speaker 1:It's a punishable offense. Like do not, you should have no curiosity about the origin of your state, because he knows, obviously he's not like this much of an idiot. Like he knows that like all states were founded, the brutality, violence, genocide, colonization, like that's the origin of states. And yet we're supposed to treat them as these, like sacred Rightful, these bearers of the rightful condition, right In which make which make possible, like living in common in a rightful way and, yes, justice and so on.
Speaker 2:Right, yeah, can I read the?
Speaker 4:quote real quick yeah, read it.
Speaker 4:A people should not inquire with any practical aim in view, I think that's probably People should not inquire, with any practical aim in view, into the origin of the supreme authority to which it is subject. That is, a subject ought not to rationalize, for the sake of action, about the origin of this authority as a right that can still be called into question with regard to the obedience he owes it. Yeah, so it's not. It's not only a duty not to inquire. You cannot inquire with some type of practical aim that's supposed to follow from that inquiry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because I think he knows that, like there's no possible practical takeaway other than well, this is illegitimate, or just like the state's contingent.
Speaker 1:It's a matter of historical contingency that it came into existence. It isn't this universal, god-like structure.
Speaker 4:It becomes the type of pragmatic solution to, maybe particular problems. But that means it also frees future people to say, well, those problems, those solutions aren't ours, and so maybe we need to rethink this entire structure. But the historical contingency problem it's almost like Kant's worry is the exact opposite of what Nietzsche loves to do with genealogy. I could imagine, like Kant and Nietzsche, if they met, they'd be horrified by the other person.
Speaker 4:Yeah, and because the historical contingency of origins throws open this question of the difference between right and violence. If it seems as if it is actually as a practical aim understood, that violence precedes what we understand by right, then this structure that Kant is trying to develop of why it is almost quasi not quasi, it is rational but quasi-natural for us to organize ourselves this way, then you're into realism, and Kant would be aghast by a universe that seems as if it is simply a structure of violence and contingency, and so origins need to be shrouded, as it concerns practical aims but ends in goals those need to be brought clear into view.
Speaker 2:Does this follow as quickly as that, though? I want to just maybe think with Kant for a second and ask you guys, just like as an actual question right, if the origin of the state is illegitimate, does it therefore follow that everything that happens in the state is tainted, that there's no, therefore, possibility of this being right or they're being justice, because I could see why someone would say that, but it also feels very fast, right, like things come from where they come from, and then do they have to be marked by that origin forever?
Speaker 1:Does that make sense? Yeah, I mean I want to say like and here I'm just like kind of picking up from Foucault's side to be defended, where again he's doing in a very Nietzschean vein, trying to say exactly what you're saying, will which is that like, if you try to look at the actual genealogy of states in the way that they're founding and the warlike nature of their founding and the violence and destruction of their founding carries through, it depends Gildy answered the question like how much does it carry through to the present? Like how much can the present, how much can you read in the present state of things that like destructive or genocidal or like violent founding of the state? And I mean it's not like you can't read it at all. I mean, like in settler colonial states, I mean it's not hard to like read continuing consequences of that moment of unrightful foundation, right? So, yeah, I just think it really depends on how much.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I mean the language Foucault uses is like he talks in those lectures about the need to learn to read the, to be able to discern the ongoing war, that the war never ended, right, the founding war never ended, and that it continues through various institutions.
Speaker 4:And yeah, yeah, I like that, but I think the I think another way I would respond to Gild's, you know good question here is we have to keep in mind Kant's other aim with this project, which is Kant is trying to keep a lid on the notion of rebellion and revolution. And so if it turns out that the state emerged from a type of 1797, he's not yeah, he's looking around and it seems like, you know, this is obviously on the horizon.
Speaker 4:So if the state emerges from violence, it doesn't have to be that the state is bad. But if you admit that into the very narrative and theory of the state, then it becomes harder to make an argument for why future revolutions aren't. You know, we can't justify future revolutions with sort of post hoc rationalization of. It will have been necessary to do this. And so I think you know there's the Kant that's trying to preserve a type of stability understood as allegiance to the state. And I think you know that's what's really important from the even if you're unhappy and dissatisfied, you must still remain committed to this state. But the emergent, the historically contingent merge of the state in a context of force, I wonder if Kant is thinking that that threatens to weaken the allegiance as subjects feel to the state and thus weaken the allegiance subjects feel to themselves to stabilize their relationships, to secure possession and duties and all that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think that, like, there's like maybe two steps to making this into like a syllogism that Kant's trying to construct. And one is that there's always, always a duty to exit the state of nature and to like enter into a civil society. They're like, that is like an a priori unconditional duty that you have to form social bonds and to try to create something like justice and peace. And then the second step is like anything other than like reform, right, however much you're suffering in dignity is under an abusive sovereign, however fucked up the state is if you do anything other than reform, if you're actually an insurrectionist or interested in rebellion, he thinks that, like, your aim is not a better constitution, it's the abolition of, like the rightful condition itself, right, and if you, if those two claims are right, then he's like, you know, argument for there being no right to rebel works, right, there's no version of trying to, you know, replace the king that isn't actually aiming at the dissolution of society as such, which you can't want. He thinks kind of crazy.
Speaker 1:It's kind of a crazy to think that it's a bit of a step back, even from Locke, who said that like tyrannical or abusive, like government is a state of war, like it's not. It's not a civil, you're not in the civil condition. Yeah, if your state, if your state isn't just like, if it's not acting justly or structured in a just way, you're actually still in the state of nature. Yeah, it's good to think that you know this motherfucker like, you know he's so and you know it's 150 years later and it's like not actually you're still in a civil condition, even when it's, even when it's garbage. Even Hobbes was like if you're not safe, like if you're bought, if you're not being kept safe, if your security isn't guaranteed, then you're actually not in in civil condition. And he's just like you have to accept these abuses.
Speaker 4:Like oh okay, I'm, what I was going to say is not going to be more controversial than that. Yeah, kant takes the cake on that. Yeah, but the controversial thing I want to say is that I think Kant put does put his thumb on the very hard question that I think many of us perhaps socialist revolutionaries, communists, whatever you you call yourselves you know eventually, I think, have to have an answer for, which is Kant is trying to say you might want to try to justify rebellion by saying that's a particularly bad sovereign, but he seems to think the structure of our actions can't help. There's I can almost hear a type of searching existentialism here can't help, but also make a more general claim. You might want to constrain it to that context, but once you had opened the door to insurrection, kant's going to ask well, what principles do?
Speaker 1:you have to decide what's the maximum reaction to universal maximum.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that doesn't have to constantly just be ad hoc, you know, saying oh, no, no, no, but in this particular set of conditions, and all of that. That's why I can't you even like you. This is you. Let's call him woke up. He looks at the world, he thinks other colonialism is bad, but he's definitely not going to say yes, those lands were taken. He is not going to say those from whom those lands are taken have a right to rebel and engage in revolution.
Speaker 4:Maybe Kant, the individual unfortunately never told us, this is like, yeah, it's pretty bad. You know, something should probably done to restitute them. He wasn't willing to go that far. And so the controversial thing I was going to say is you know, we might say insurrection, rebellion at times can be good. But then you'll say you might have people who look at, like you know, the January 6 thing, and they want to say, well, that's a bad version, and you can have all sorts of reasons.
Speaker 4:But I think Kant would say those reasons, you know, they're at Hark, they're partial, and then we look at other insurrections and rebellions and we'll say that that is good. And I'm not saying we can't make those distinctions and all of that. But you know, kant clearly thinks you that is, you know, incredibly. You know a ground of shifting sands, and so it is. Either are we in favor of things like insurrections, rebellions and principle, or are we committed to the idea that actually, in principle, we think the status quo in the state should be conserved, but there are these highly specific, specified conditions in which we'll say yes, or you could say it's not up to you to say yes or no. Rebellions happen, but then you're closer to the realism, I think.
Speaker 1:I think this view of his can only, like he can only really be sustained because of other views he has about the teleological direction of history and the stuff he says in what is enlightenment about. You know, you know, if you allow public reason to exercise itself, then like you don't need revolutions, basically because revolution is being impatient, like what really is going to, what really is going to do. The job is like if you allow public reason to flourish, if you allow people to criticize, right, if you look, if you allow criticism, and then you're going to like in his mind, like you're going to get there, like we're getting there anyways, guys, like we're making our way slowly towards like the regular idea of perpetual peace and of a just state and all that. So like the revolution thing is actually just going to backtrack on that. It's just going to, like you know, create more problems than it's going to solve. But if you don't have that, frankly completely wrong. Like idea, just like the free, like the free use of public.
Speaker 1:I love Conn, but like anti progress, no, but like that free people to like freely talk means like 100% that's going to bring us in the direction of, you know, of greater freedom.
Speaker 2:Then it's, then it, then it becomes, I think, a more ridiculous looking like way of just categorically rejecting I mean like he's such like a, he's such a committed, like gradualist in this regard that, like even stuff that he identifies as being wrong, he's like you can't get rid of them too quickly. So, like there's an example he's talking about, like he's talking about hereditary, like nobility, and he asks like whether or not, like the state has the right to set aside a particular class of people as being like meriting like a noble status. And he's like no, especially in the hereditary case. That's fucking absurd and arbitrary and stupid and you shouldn't do that. He's like, and of course we've got some of those like nobles hanging around still because of we've inherited some stuff from feudalism which was really just about war and that well, that sucked. But you know, even then he's like just don't appoint new ones. You know he's like you can't just abolish the. He can't just abolish these like class of nobles, just like, don't have new, new ones after these guys die.
Speaker 1:Can you imagine the horror of him watching the Jacobins and like reading about the Jacobins in his new space house?
Speaker 3:Yeah, I think the reason that he was, I mean, I think it's it's right to say that it does start to look weirder if he doesn't have the fundamentally like modernist and teleological way of thinking about where human beings are going. And in that sense it's actually kind of. Some of this is kind of optimistic, you know, because I think the sympathetic reading to Kant is that he's really sympathetic to the French Revolution. It's just that he doesn't like where that went. You know, and there's a lot of, and I think that this is what makes this is going a little tangential to what I actually planned on saying.
Speaker 3:But this is what makes liberalism such an interesting political ideology because after the sort of experiment with, like radical republicanism and a series of revolutions and important most importantly, the French Revolution, the way of kind of responding, like turning that set of ideas in a more liberal direction and the demand to moderate the, the speed and pace and unrulyness of emancipation, like it's both a cudgel that like the conservative wing of history likes to wield and it's also one that liberals like to wield.
Speaker 3:And, importantly, these are not the same people. So liberals can become very conservative but like they're not the same as conservatives who are against the French Revolution and that's what makes them slippery. Because, like, if you're gonna I think I've said this before that the one, like, the one thing that you know you know a real conservative if you talk about France even today, in 2024, and they call the French Revolutionaries terrorists, and you know they like, you know that, like the kind of revulsion at the French Revolution, that's what gets a real, a true conservative going. I mean, there's a lot of other tells, but I really think that's the real one.
Speaker 3:And like, and I think that liberals like Kant, who react to that, that's what makes them oscillate and strange and ambiguous and complicated, because he's not saying no. So anyway, I had a whole different point I was gonna make. I don't know what happened. I went into a different direction. Oh yeah, it does make sense. It does make sense because if you think that the reason he is able to walk that line and create that ambiguity is because he's kind of confident that you don't need it, so like the metaphysics matters, to like how he thinks okay, well, why would you need to have another revolution? This is where we're headed, people, and that's all to the good.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and just to give some context, to like in the conflict of faculties, conflict of the faculties. Kant says that about the French, he talks about the French Revolution and he says that like it's to be admired as a marker of the progress of reason, but the actors involved in it are to be admonished morally. It's an amazing position to hold.
Speaker 2:Like yeah, yeah yeah.
Speaker 4:It's great that the event happened. Oh, that's my boy though.
Speaker 1:It's the great that the event happened but the people that did it are evil.
Speaker 2:Well, there's like a I mean, there's also something feeling himself being torn in these two directions to and connecting it back to the kind of like, revulsion at the realism that, just, like you know, right, just is the right of the stronger and this is, like you know, just can't be. He's got a line. There's a discussion the discussion of punishment is fascinating, I think about like the right of states to punish, because there he has, basically, is like, actually like.
Speaker 2:First of all, one thing that's fascinating is complete rejection of any pragmatic justification for punishment. He says, like if you're punishing someone for committing a crime with any practical view in mind, you're doing it wrong, right, like it's not for the reform of the of the person who's committed the crime, it's not for, like you know, certainly not the pleasure of the people who are harmed, it's just because they've done something wrong. No end further than that is possible without ruining justice. And he says, if justice goes, there is no longer any value in men's living on the earth. And quote, which is like the pathos is off the fucking charts, Like I don't know, I don't know what it would mean to believe that Not right, but it's crazy.
Speaker 1:Like you know what I mean. That's my feeling about that.
Speaker 4:I love how you said that that's not not right. It's pretty crazy, I mean. I mean, but okay, so, like, a couple of things I'd love to say is, like you know, okay, so I understand that a lot of people look at this text and they think this is, this is probably the worst of late con, maybe. Maybe the only thing is that it's worse when he's obviously senile and he kind of, you know, he reverts back to some of his racist views and apparently the explanation is like yeah, he was just losing his mind, so he wasn't there.
Speaker 1:I think when he brought up the hot dots in here, I was really expecting way worse than what we got.
Speaker 4:No, yeah, it was actually. It wasn't based, but it was like oh okay, cool, okay okay.
Speaker 1:You shouldn't take not bad. You shouldn't take the savages land.
Speaker 4:You shouldn't you know he's like, don't do it by lying to them and all, but you're watching the state emerge as a type of fetish for Kant to kind of you resolve these conflicts and anxieties that he has, like you know. So, gil, you read one crazy line. How about this? When he's talking about you know how someone must die for a particular type of crime, even if a civil society were to be dissolved by the consent of all its members for example with the people inhabiting an island decided to separate and disperse throughout the world.
Speaker 4:The last murder of remaining in prison would first have to be executed, so that each has done to him what his deeds deserve, and blood guilt does not cling to the people for not having insisted upon this punishment, for otherwise the people can be regarded as collaborators in this public violation of justice. My God, when I read this I was like let him live. But he's like no, you have unfinished business. You're not even going to keep going with this society.
Speaker 2:shit, you still got to kill this guy.
Speaker 4:Like what you all care.
Speaker 2:You know, but you can see what's going on with cut?
Speaker 4:It's like he thinks without the state. And there's a. There's another line that you know I won't read out, but it's wildly. Says about churches, how they're necessary for the state because inculcates in people. You know the practice of believing in invisible power, which he clearly thinks the state is animated by the type of invisible power. We never see freedom, we never see full justice, and all of that the state is why I have to be a fetish, because without it what sense would we have to be on this planet?
Speaker 4:And I guess the kind of question I have for you all is in what way do you think we still have the type of metaphysical view of the state? You know, sometimes I hear how some liberals talk about the state. It seems like the state isn't simply an instrument for coordinating essential economic, political and social functions. The state is life. You must be permanently, absolutely committed to it, because without it you are nothing. So don't excavate the state, Don't try to get beyond it. The state is reason, and when I'm reading I'm like wow, I'm seeing how this idea of liberalism is like emerging and flowering, but instead comes like and that's good, that's good, that's good, actually, that's good, actually it just really seems like a real worry about the sort of the radical potential of human action and wants to.
Speaker 4:You know all wants. He's optimistic but he seems to be deeply terrified of what the radical opens of human action could do if it really did operate without particular types of illusions.
Speaker 2:So I just wanted to say too that like that's right and one of the things that I was kind of surprised by, but then, on reflection, it totally tracks that this would be the kind of argument he'd make, because, you know, the contrast is always between the civil state and the state of war.
Speaker 2:Right, the condition of war which characterizes the state of nature for which, of course, as we know all the way back from Hobbes doesn't mean there's actual violence, but just its possibility and it's sort of ever present threat, right. And then he says, when we get to the right of nations, yeah, well, in relation to each other, states are in a kind of lawless condition, so they're in the condition of war. But then he says like, okay, what sorts of rights and duties are there that bind the state when they're at war with each other? And there's a lot, there's a lot of shit that he says you can't do, even as a war, as a warring nation against another. You can't be subjecting people. It can't be an extermination, it's not for plunder, you're not allowed to use spies.
Speaker 4:Yeah, that's what I was just like. Okay, come on man. Like I'm not pro-war, but like what people are spies?
Speaker 2:Spies, I wouldn't have spies.
Speaker 1:That's what the pure idea of right dictates. Gil, no spies.
Speaker 2:I know, because no, again, on reflection, the argument is that, well, what is the point of a state, presumably to secure the conditions for peace in which, like, one can live freely amongst one's peers in a citizenship and like doing shit like that, using spies, undermines the very sort of legitimacy of a rightful state in which something like being a free being is possible. So like, yeah, you're not allowed to do that, you're no better than the murderer at that point and you don't belong to society in that moment. Right, and it's fascinating that, like even in the moment of actual war, he's like no justice has got to be respected. You know, there's not like, there's a, there are rules to this shit.
Speaker 4:But isn't that a weird part of the argument? Because at least when he says internal to the state, we know what the constraining mechanism is for justice to be effective, and that's the state. What's the constraining mechanism when states are at war?
Speaker 2:Well, there's no court that you can appeal to Right? There's no sovereign power above it. It literally just is like no, the constraining power is fucking reason.
Speaker 1:Reason yeah, practical reason Practical reason.
Speaker 4:I'm starting to see why the realists might not like this part. They're like what are you?
Speaker 2:kidding.
Speaker 4:But yeah, that's the only way where he can end up, I guess, right? Yeah, man, we just need to get the leaders of our countries to read the metaphysics of morals and, you know, maybe they might learn something about what they can and cannot do.
Speaker 2:It would be. Yeah, it would be very funny to try to like explain to Joe Biden that, like you know, spies aren't allowed according to pure practical reason and it's a priori investigation.
Speaker 1:Nor does like supporting like genocidal wars.
Speaker 2:Right, not allowed to do that. Can I just rehearse this one argument about death than the death penalty, because the death penalty stuff is among the wildest trip. Oh yeah, hold on. I love when he does so.
Speaker 3:He uses all these italics and like there's this sense where he goes. So here too, when sentence is pronounced on a number of criminals united on a plot, the best equalizer before public justice is death, and it rules.
Speaker 4:Like. Sometimes I'm like, why is?
Speaker 3:this man italicized so many words, but that one really hit hard.
Speaker 1:And as for churches, and churches is italicized yeah just like you already named a section of churches.
Speaker 4:Why did you?
Speaker 2:Okay. So he's got a really funny bit where he's like well, I'm not sure if you're going to be able to say that two people, an honorable person and a scoundrel, have both committed a murder and you ask them what the appropriate punishment would be and you go would you like to be killed in response, or would you be like to be submitted to like convict the labor for the rest of your life? And he says well, the honorable person would say correctly that they should die, right that they know that kill me please. I've violated, right and this is what I deserve, and the scoundrel would prefer convict labor. He does. Scoundrel doesn't deserve to get what he wants and the honorable man deserves to get his honorably recognized punishment.
Speaker 1:His shade for like his real revulsion really at moral depravity in this tax is pretty strong, Like when you like talks. When he talks about the police he's like yeah, obviously like the police serve the function of like security and convenience, but what's really important is that they serve the function of decency.
Speaker 3:So this is what he says.
Speaker 1:He says, for the government's business of guiding the people by laws is made easier when the feeling for decency the census decori as negative taste interesting is not deadened by what offends the moral sense, such as begging, uproar on the streets, stentions and public prostitution. Venus vulgis vulgivaga. I don't say penchees, I tried looking up Venus, vulgivaga it was tough to find Dude. I love the idea that if you encounter too many stentions, it deadens your moral sensibility If things like smell too bad, you lose your census decori.
Speaker 4:And you become. May he never go down certain streets in New York.
Speaker 2:City.
Speaker 4:That is all I am saying.
Speaker 1:Wow, or anywhere in Paris where it just reeks like piss everywhere.
Speaker 4:Is it bad that, at least for some of that, like I was reading that and I was like I don't know. I mean, well, this don't sound too bad. I like a clean smelling outside. He's too real for that.
Speaker 1:Well, the crypto-counseling is just like it's not so crypto, I know.
Speaker 4:The war inside me, Because he also says this strangely, about the death penalty. Yeah, me and Kant, we're at war with ourselves. We're unhappy. We're at the unhappy consciousness right. He describes the numinal person, the homo-numinous? Yes, I mean who legislates the penal law, and that's the homo-nominous person, and then there's the phenomenal person who might be like please don't kill me, please.
Speaker 2:Well, because he needs to have some way of saying that, like, what's going on here isn't suicide right, so he needs to say that the one who legislates and the one who's killed in accordance with universal laws of freedom are not the same guy, even though, presumably, I am a citizen in the society in which, once I kill someone, I am put to death for it. So he says, yeah, actually, in that moment you're no longer part of the active citizenship, you're no longer part of the legislative body. You've subtracted yourself from the community of rights bearers by murdering someone so sorry homo-phenomenon. I mean to the fucking electoral jail.
Speaker 4:The homo-numinon already made the choice.
Speaker 1:He already picked the right thing. So much of this text is him struggling with the fact that human beings are not just transcendental subjects, like not just pure reason, but also anthropological creatures. I feel like the whole project would be so much easier and much quicker if you could just like legislate, talk about the self-legislation of transcendental subjects and not have to deal with this fact of being human. And then he's got to wade into all of these like empirical things, that where I have to say that's not when he shines.
Speaker 4:Even though he wades in a lot. That's not him at his best, but it's very strange that his defense of the state is very different than I think what maybe some conservatives defend the state, which is saying we are such corrupted creatures, we require this repression if we're going to live with one another. And Kant he doesn't want that nasty business to be part of the state. The state is the best of us. The state is because we have this capacity for reason, not because we're corrupted and cruel and selfish.
Speaker 3:And it should still be able to exercise the death penalty, because it's the best in us. Oh yeah, of course.
Speaker 2:Obviously, yeah, that's kind of what this is all about. That's the fun part.
Speaker 1:Make sure that all illegitimate children are annihilated in the street.
Speaker 4:Does this actually feel like this really is all about Kant wrestling with the death penalty of the state A?
Speaker 2:lot, I think.
Speaker 4:I mean like I think one okay.
Speaker 2:So here's one last thing I wanted to point out, and because on the one hand I agree with you, owen, and your characterization there, that like he seems to be trying to deal with the fact that we're not just transcendental subjects right, we've got this messy homophonomenon stuff, but then I don't know, because he says this is right at the beginning of public right, right of a state, section 44. He kind of makes it sound like violence is like an a priori or transcendental feature of human being. Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:It's not from experience, yeah, it is not from experience that we learn of men's maximum violence, of their malevolent tendency to attack one another before external legislation and died with power appears. It is therefore not some fact that makes coercion through public law necessary. He's like a priori, I can tell you that human beings are going to be violent towards each other and I'm like what the fuck are you talking about.
Speaker 1:However well-disposed in law-abiding they might be, it still lies a priori in the rational idea of such a condition that, oh fuck, there's a huge parenthesis.
Speaker 3:What, what.
Speaker 1:That before a public lawful condition is established, individual men, peoples and states can never be secure against violence from one another. Damn, since each has its own. That's a priori.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a priori, that's like a transcendental fact.
Speaker 1:That I am actually kind of that's. Yeah, I got to think about that one. Yeah, my best art be firm was like the states, the best of us.
Speaker 4:But now we've got transcendental violence Right.
Speaker 2:But then again, and then I want to just to connect that to like the very last lines of the part on the doctrine of right where he says that like morally practical reason pronounces us, it's irresistible veto, there is to be no war, right. He thinks that like all of this really is about like war shouldn't fucking happen, not between individuals. The state of war should be abolished between nations. We just shouldn't have war and like from that everything else follows. We've got like a transcendental propensity towards malevolent violence and the demand that there be no war and the whole of the doctrine of right is contained between those two ideas and it's not.
Speaker 3:I mean that's crazy, but I actually think he thinks a little too much of us. You know, like he didn't know we'd have like like senile presidents and shit. Like he thought he thought people in charge were like going to be like people who were manifesting the will of the people and he thought they would be like reasonable and rational people. Like I feel like he got a couple steps ahead of himself.
Speaker 4:He didn't think we'd live this long.
Speaker 3:No, I mean, I just like he was giving a lot of. He was giving a weird amount of credit to like state managers. You know what I mean.
Speaker 1:I wish I just lived a little bit longer, we could have got like a full assessment of his thoughts on the Napoleonic Wars and what Napoleon did to Europe, you know, just like violently imposing the values of the revolution. Quote unquote.
Speaker 4:Honestly, I'm glad you didn't let to see that. Imagine how conservative Kant might have become after that.
Speaker 2:I would have sounded bad. I think, yeah, there's no shot, there's no shot. It would have been a positive appraisal.
Speaker 1:Well, yeah, also he would have had to see pressure. I got dusted.
Speaker 4:Before we go. Can I just say that Kant's weird Also immigration policy where all at once this is so left leaning. It's like everyone has a right to visitation, like yes, bro, right to movements, but not a right to settle. Oh, okay, so we can vacation, but oh, we can't move permanently. That I guess I was surprised by that part. I thought maybe he was going to the place of life and people should be able to go wherever they need to. He's like you can go for a time in the spell but get out, like okay right.
Speaker 2:And also you have the right to emigrate, but you're not allowed to take anything fixed. Oh, no, no, your fixed property.
Speaker 4:You're not allowed to take that money with you.
Speaker 2:That belongs to this. Oh, that was a good one.
Speaker 4:Yeah, capitalists, eat your heart out.
Speaker 2:He's like nope, yeah, I mean that is that obviously goes without saying here that, like just he has no idea at all about the dynamics of capital, not a single thought. It's completely absent from the entire.
Speaker 1:But he knows what kind of state he like, kind of just reflexively knows what kind of state they need.
Speaker 4:Yeah right, because he talks about commerce, but he thinks of commerce simply almost like physical interaction. That's what.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's part of cosmopolitan right. Is that like everyone should have like the possibility of commerce with each other?
Speaker 1:He doesn't at least say that like it's. You know, wealthy people have to get ready to be like, have the shit taxed out of them, basically in order to give.
Speaker 4:He does say that, which I do like that they can't afford it and you know it's like a simple argument that.
Speaker 1:I'm surprised, even like, like libs, don't use more often which is like well, the conditions under which you need a rightful condition to make that wealth right. Okay, so you don't fucking own it.
Speaker 4:Yeah, wow, can't pill them into socialism. Pretty cool.
Speaker 2:That's right, big fan, all right. Well, I think that does it for us today. New episodes of what's up to philosophy come out every two weeks, wherever you get your podcasts. Also, check us out on YouTube for videos and live streams. Before closing out today, we'd like to take a minute to thank some of the people who are supporting the show on Patreon. We couldn't do this without you and we're really grateful.
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