Important

History of European Ideas 25 (1999) 217}241
Autonomy, History and Political Freedom

in Kant's Political Philosophy
Gunnar Beck
11 Manor Place, Oxford OX1 3UP, UK
The idea of autonomy, it is commonly argued, is central not only to Kant's moral
philosophy, it also represents `the luminous core of his political philosophya [1]. It
provides, most commentators agree, the unifying link between Kant's theories of
morality, law and politics; it is central to Kant's uncompromising repudiation of all
forms of political perfectionism and paternalism; and it represents the moral basis and
justi"cation for Kant's theory of rights and his defence of a liberal, republican
constitution as the best safeguard against their violation.
Central to Kant's doctrine of autonomy is the claim that every individual has
complete and unmediated consciousness of the imperatives of morality as à fact of
reasona or ìdea of reasona [2] which tells him what is rational and ought to be done
by all men alike independently of what they may each subjectively want or prefer to
do instead. It is in virtue of this inborn moral faculty that every adult in possession of
the ordinary human faculties can know and do his moral duty. This capacity of being
fully self-governing in moral matters Kant calls àutonomya [3]. Autonomy requires,
positively, obedience to the moral law and, negatively, that man does so voluntarily
and of his own free choice. It is as autonomous agents that individuals realise their
proper destiny, something that every man, no matter how uneducated or impover-
ished, can achieve [3, pp. 389, 397, 402}405; 2, pp. 8n, 30, 36, 91, 92; 4]. For both the
knowledge required for doing what duty requires as well as the volitional capacity to
withstand con#icting urges and desires, Kant insists in the Groundwork, are constitu-
tive of the basic humanity of all men.
Autonomy, on Kant's view, is a quintessentially individual project of human
self-realisation. It follows that no man can assume responsibility for the moral
perfection of another and that autonomy cannot be enforced. For the threat of
coercion may dissuade men from acting on their immoral intentions and prompt them
to do as they are told, but since they do so reluctantly their (im)moral condition
remains unchanged for they lack that in which all moral value resides, a morally good
will or motive. This good will would be absent too in cases where the agent's volition
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218 G. Beck / History of European Ideas 25 (1999) 217}241
has been subject to moral indoctrination or manipulation. For the self-direction

requirement of autonomy not only requires the will to do good but likewise clear and
undiminished consciousness of one's ability to will otherwise. Such is the reasoning
behind Kant's rejection of all forms of coercive and pedagogical political perfection-
ism. For all (moral) perfection is self-perfection with clear awareness of the sacri"ces
this may involve.
Kant's doctrine of autonomy has clear political implications. While the notion that
morality can be legislated for and enforced is dismissed as an internally incoherent
idea, moral indoctrination and manipulation are held incompatible with the very idea
of autonomy as they deprive the will of its self-directing capacity. Not all political
arrangements, therefore, are compatible with the moral ends of man. The question
that follows is: Does autonomy require a particular political order and, if so, is this
a liberal order? That this question can be answered in the a$rmative is the almost
unanimous view of contemporary Kant scholars.
Mary Gregor, in her Laws of Freedoms [5], emphasises that, for Kant, both political
and legal theory form part of the metaphysics of morals. If autonomous self-direction
is man's moral end, she argues, it follows that no one may violate his capacity for
autonomy and each has an absolute right to whatever autonomy requires of him. This
`right of humanity within our own person is, Kant maintains, the "rst condition of all
duty and the foundation of all obligationa. Yet, `since the moral goodness of our
actions lies in their motivesa, and since juridical legislation ìs necessarily indi!erenta
and cannot extend `to the motives from which we acta, the duties enjoined by juridical
legislation must be actions which are morally necessary independently of our attitude
of willa [5, pp. 26, 27]. Or, in other words, if law and politics cannot force men to be
good, then in what sense, if any, can juridical laws be necessary for morality.
The answer to this question, Gregor argues, lies in the self-direction requirement of
Kant's notion of autonomy: òur choice of ends must be left free, i.e. arbitrary and
lawlessa [5, p. 67]. For men can be autonomous only if they choose to be so, and this
means that more than one course of action must be open to them. They, therefore,
must be free in the external sense, free from constraint by others and free to choose
between ends that are moral and those that are not. Ìt is morally necessary that each
of us, as a free agent, be able to express his freedom in external actionsa for it is òuter
freedom as that absence of compulsion which allows the subject of the law to act in
pursuit of his own ends, whatever these may bea [5, p. 27]. `Man's capacity for
morally autonomous choicea, therefore, ìs the basis of his moral title to freedom in
his relations with other men, and we cannot justify outer freedom, as a moral concept,
without deriving it from this moral capacitya [5, p. 38]. It is this outer or external
liberty which is a necessary means to inner freedom or autonomy that Law aims to
realise [5, pp. 36, 37].
Each man in possession of the ordinary human faculties is capable of autonomy.
This capacity, for Kant, gives him a unique, inborn dignity and, Gregor argues, grants
G. Beck / History of European Ideas 25 (1999) 217}241 219
him a moral title to external liberty. This right must be respected at all costs and by
everyone for unless man is free to choose and act on his own ends he cannot be
autonomous. And since this right is common to all men, it follows that the external
freedom it a!ords to each cannot be unlimited but must be restricted so that it can
`co-exist with the freedom of everyone else in accordance with a universal lawa [6].
Man's moral title to external freedom thus carries with it a correlative duty to respect
the same right in others. Observance of this duty is the condition under which each
can enjoy the external freedom necessary for autonomy. And since men cannot be
relied upon observing this duty voluntarily, it must be enforced. This is the o$ce of
Law which enforces those duties all men must observe so that each can enjoy the
greatest external liberty compatible with the like liberty of everyone else. The imposi-
tion of constraint on the individual to this end is morally sanctioned and just because
the bounds set by the rule of law are necessary to enforce those conditions of mutual
external freedom subject to which alone a multiplicity of co-existing individuals may
choose for themselves which ends to pursue free from restraint by others [7].
Constraint to this end is just and does not constitute a violation of individual
autonomy because the limitation it places on the individual's external liberty is itself
the necessary condition for its realisation. Lawful constraint therefore, Gregor claims,
is `contained analytically in the concept of outer freedoma [7, p. 43]. And like the
right to external freedom, it is derived directly from `man's nature as a free, moral
agenta [7, p. 39].
Kant's justi"cation of the need for a system of juridical laws and of the coercive
authority of the State as indispensable social and political conditions for the realisa-
tion of individual autonomy, Gregor argues, also sets the limits for the legitimate
exercise of coercion [7, p. 32]. Law's moral title to compel, for Kant, she argues, is
limited to the enforcement of the requirements of maximum equal liberty; and the
employment of coercion for any other end than that required for the protection of
men's right to external freedom constitutes itself a violation of this right and becomes
`mere arbitrary violencea [7, p. 31]. Like ethical laws, thus, juridical laws are not
concerned with promoting human happiness. Unlike ethics, however, law and govern-
ment are not and cannot be concerned with the realisation of virtue and moral
perfection. Their o$ce is restricted to the enforcement of those constraints on his
freedom of action that each man must accept for all to retain the capacity for free
choice which is morally necessary for the realisation of autonomy. It is in this strictly
limited sense, Gregor argues, that law and government are for Kant a necessary but
never a su$cient condition for the realisation of moral autonomy.
Gregor's interpretation which locates the ethical foundations of Kant's politics
"rmly in his doctrine of autonomy, has become common currency amongst contem-
porary Kant scholars. The following, therefore, are only examples. Mulholland who
expressly acknowledges his indebtedness to Gregor's work [8], argues that the
formalistic ethics of the Groundwork provides an adequate basis for Kant's theory of
rights. For, besides the internal condition of a morally good will, autonomy also
requires external conditions which provide à non-teleological constitutive structurea
within which it is possible for claims about rights to be `primarya and `not subject to
claims about the public gooda [8, pp. 2,4]. It is the protection of these rights which is
the object of the civil law. Law for Kant, Mulholland a$rms Gregor's conclusions,
makes autonomy possible by creating and securing its external Mo( glichkeitsbedingun-
gen [8, pp. 402, 403]. And Weinrib declares that `the principle of right is therefore the
external aspect of practical reason, or practical reason as it pertains to interaction
among free willsa [9]. Charles Taylor argues that on Kant's view each individual has
a right to external freedom in virtue of his status as a moral agent and òriginator of
endsa, and that `the only ground on which we can restrict the freedom of one such
agent2 is to harmonize it with the freedom of othersa [10]. The need for the
`regulation of freedoma designed `to protect the right of one against the othera is `the
ground for the existence and preservation of the statea and the ènd of politicsa,
beyond which ìt ought not to be concerned with anything elsea [10, p. 115]. The
proper o$ce of government thus for Kant, Taylor argues, is restricted to `guarantee-
ing negative libertya and `dispensing justice equallya [10, p. 118]. And to try to do
either more or less constitutes nothing less than à rejection of [man's] status as a free,
rational agenta [10, p. 115]. Taylor's conclusions are a$rmed by Sullivan who writes
that in `Kant's liberal political theory, the power of autonomy is what gives every
person moral authority and status against the might of the statea by giving each and
every person a right to external freedom which `should be recognized and respected
by every political body and in every political systema [11]. `True to the liberal
tradition, thena Sullivan writes, `Kant regarded the fundamental task of government
as negative, as imposing those constraints that are necessary to protect and promote
freedoma [11, p. 10]. And ònly those civil arrangements are just (or right) that allow
the most freedom for everyone alikea [11, p. 12].
Kant's political writings are now widely discussed as important contributions to the
`classicala liberal political tradition thanks largely to the in#uence of Rawls and
Nozick who have both claimed a Kantian basis to their theories of rights and justice.
Central to Kant's practical philosophy, Rawls argues, is the attempt to give a rational
foundation for certain principles of justice that are compelling for all rational beings.
This rational foundation is the idea of autonomy which, for Kant, has a regulative role
for all of human life. `Kant helda, Rawls writes, `that a person is acting autonomously
when the principles of his action are chosen by him as the most adequate possible
expression of his nature as a free and equal rational beinga [12]. When we are acting
autonomously we are expressing our nature as rational beings, but in order to act
autonomously we must possess the liberty to choose. Each man therefore has a right
to liberty of choice which ìt is rational to want whatever else one wantsa [13] and
which therefore has a prior claim on our allegiance over any other political values.
This &priority of the right over the good' guarantees `the value of persons that Kant
says is beyond all pricea [13, p. 586], it #ows directly from man's nature as an
autonomous agent and hence it ìs part of being rationala [13, p. 253].
Central to Kant's liberalism, Rawls argues, is the assumption that all human beings
share a common moral nature and that political reasoning should proceed from the
premises provided by that common identity. In A Theory of Justice Rawls expressly
accepts these assumptions for his own thought and the original position is construed
as a device that allows us to represent our true identity as free and equal moral agents
in our deliberations. If we make rational judgements from the standpoint provided by
our shared moral identity, then we will choose political principles that give priority to
individual liberty over other values * a position which, Rawls argues, is central not
only to his own liberalism but Kant's too.
In his later work Rawls abandons Kant's `metaphysical doctrine about the nature
of the selfa [14] and the moral universalism implicit in A Theory of Justice, providing
instead what he calls a non-metaphysical or political theory of liberalism which is
based on a certain basic beliefs and an overlapping consensus embedded in the
political tradition and institutions of a liberal democratic public culture and valid
only for the participants in its alleged homogeneous and coherent structure. Kant's
liberalism by contrast, Rawls reiterates his earlier reading, rests on a `comprehensive
moral viewa, the doctrine of autonomy as the ideal `to govern most if not all of lifea
[15]. It is precisely these universalistic and metaphysical claims which Rawls con-
tinues to regard as central to Kant's liberalism and which he rejects in his own later
revised theory of justice.
Nozick, too, locates the foundations of Kant's theory of rights and politics in the
doctrine of human autonomy and the requirement of the second formulation of the
categorical imperative, that we treat persons as ends and not merely as means. Based
on this anti-utilitarian principle, Nozick argues, individual rights express the inviola-
bility of persons and impose limits or `side constraintsa on the actions others may
permissibly undertake in pursuit of their own purposes [16]. The only legitimate kind
of political order compatible with this moral position, Nozick concludes, is à
minimal state, limited to the narrow functions of protection against force, theft, fraud,
enforcement of contracts, and so ona [17]. Nozick's repudiation of any redistributive
activity on the part of the state as an infringement of individual rights may echo
Kant's theory of the ends and limits of state action; yet Nozick's allegedly Kantian
theory of rights draws heavily on Locke's theory of property, while Nozick's ethically
un(der)developed version of the idea of the individual as an end in itself ignores that, in
Kant's case, this notion was embedded in a comprehensive ethical theory within the
framework of which the principle of autonomy is derived from the analysis of the
concepts of goodness and moral obligation in general and without which the central
place of the doctrine of men as ends-in-themselves in Kant's practical philosophy
cannot be understood.
All the above authors are agreed on the view which locates the foundations of
Kant's political philosophy in his theory of autonomy. On Kant's view, they claim,
man can be autonomous only if he possesses the right not only to do his moral duty
but also to disregard it. He thus must have a right to external freedom, which includes
the liberty to do what is morally wrong. Every individual possesses this right which is
limited only by the like right of others. Man's external freedom, it follows, must be
limited so that it can co-exist with the like freedom of everyone else. The juridical
condition that protects each person's freedom by protecting and limiting everyone
else's freedom, which Kant extends to include certain rights such as the right to private
property, is de"ned by him as justice. The function of civil law is to administer justice,
and it is the enforcement of just civil law which is the proper task of good government.
This is a summary of the standard view of Kant's liberal political philosophy.
Most commentators then go on to conclude that Kant's liberalism is essentially
rights-based, that these individual rights derive their justi"cation from the concept of
the autonomous agent and from the translation of the principles of Kant's ethics into
the sphere of politics, and that Kant's liberal, individualistic theory of the state is
a direct result of his insistence on voluntary, individual choice as the necessary,
though not su$cient condition of autonomous action. In view of this interpretation
the conservative elements of Kant's politics and especially his rejection of the right to
revolution are generally presented as the authoritarian or Hobbesian residue in
Kant's political thought strangely at odds and ultimately irreconcilably opposed to
the main body and central tenets of Kant's politics.
In what follows I shall argue that this interpretation of the relation between Kant's
moral and political theories in terms of the concept of autonomous agency and its
social and political presuppositions, that is, the right to external freedom as a neces-
sary condition for individual self-mastery, is #awed in several crucial respects. First, it
lacks any textual evidence in Kant's writings in support of the alleged derivation of the
right to external liberty from the requirements of autonomy. Second, it con#icts with
Kant's de"nition of autonomy as a morally good will. And third, it ignores the textual
evidence in Kant's writings on politics and history which suggests a justi"cation of the
right to external liberty in terms not of the formalistic ethics of the Groundwork but of
Kant's doctrine of &ends that are also duties' as outlined in part two of The Metaphysics
of Morals.
II
Kant's theory of the state has a dual basis arising from man's nature as a dual
rational-natural being. The prudential necessity of the state, Kant argues, rests on the
empirical circumstances arising from man's sel"sh or appetitive nature and his
&unsocial sociability'. Human beings do not only have moral purposes but natural
needs and desires. Social co-operation enables men to satisfy their natural needs and
desires more e!ectively but social existence also creates con#icts of interest. For
essentially Hobbesian reasons these can be settled only by laws of civil association
that are enforced by government. Men accept or can be expected to accept the
constraints imposed by political authority because on this condition alone, that is, at
the price of giving up his unlimited natural liberty, can each enjoy the security and
protection he desires. For such agreement, Kant echoes Hobbes, all that is required is
that purely egoistically motivated individuals are su$ciently intelligent to recognise
that their own sel"sh interests are best served by entering into a civil union with laws
that will at once restrain and protect them and thereby help them achieve at least
some of their goals. And since rulers themselves are subject to private ambitions and
cannot be trusted to discharge their task for the bene"t of the governed, their subjects,
Kant argues following both Locke and Montesquieu, will favour constitutional and
institutional arrangements designed to minimise the danger of abuse of power
wherever and whenever circumstances induce rulers to assent to them. The principal
factor of human motivation favouring the emergence of a liberal republican political
order, Kant seems to argue, is fear: the fear by each of everyone else.
While Kant insists that the case for liberal republicanism could be conclusively
established even if based purely on an appeal to prudential considerations, he
nevertheless never ceased to emphasise the unity of his theory of justice and his ethical
theory. Politics, he insists, requires an ethical basis [18]. Peace, satisfaction of want
and pleasure may be that which all people necessarily desire and act in pursuit of most
of the time, but the attainment of these ends, Kant insists, would have no value at all if
it did not at the same time further the realisation of man's moral ends. Politics is
ethically sanctioned only to the extent to which it furthers or makes at least possible
the moral self-perfection of individuals. Egoism as the dominant motive behind
human actions may explain the historical emergence of the state and why men, in fact,
obey its commands for purely prudential reasons, but it cannot show why men should
obey the law when it does not seem in their interest and fear of punishment may not
provide a su$cient motive for obedience. It fails to establish the moral rightness of
juridical coercion. What is needful, therefore, are an argument why the political union
in which men enter, ought to be a liberal one based on mutual respect of life and one
another's right to external liberty, and a normative justi"cation of a liberal political
order which explains why men should not merely be interested in the maintenance of
a liberal political order but why they are obligated to obey it by dint of the respect
they owe others and themselves. Such a justi"cation would have to go beyond the
long-term interest prudential individuals ought to take in the continued existence of
the social system for the satisfaction of their inter-connected security and other needs
but must be deduced directly from the external and this means social requirements of
their moral rather than his natural purposes.
The concept which unites politics and morals as the `practicala and `theoreticala
branches, respectively, of Kant's practical philosophy is the concept of `right [Recht]a
[18, p. 116]. `Righta, he writes, `must never be adapted to politics, but politics must at
all times be adapted to righta [19]. No term bears more weight in Kant's political
theorising than right. `The rights of man must be held sacred, however great
a sacri"ce the ruling power may have to make. There can be no half measures here2
[f]or all politics must bend the knee before righta [18, p. 125]. Kant distinguishes
natural and acquired rights. The latter are concerned with matters that are both
morally indi!erent and not essential to political stability; such rights may therefore
vary according to time and place. Natural rights, by contrast, are the moral criterion
by which we distinguish just and unjust political regimes. Speci"c natural rights
include the right to one's physical, psychological, mental, and moral integrity, the
right to obey only laws to which we have given our consent (or ought to have done so),
and the right to acquire property [20]. All these, Kant holds, are ultimately derived
from the right to `[f]reedom (independence from being constrained by another's
choice), insofar as it can coexist with the liberty of every other in accordance with
a universal lawa [20, p. 63]. This right to liberty, Kant insists, is `the sole original
In German the word Recht can mean either &right' or &law'. Kant uses the term in both senses but it is
generally clear which is meant: Recht in the sense of a person's &right' implies a corresponding duty to
respect it on the part of others, whilst Recht as law denotes the existing system of juridical conditions
governing men's relations to one another and their obligations to the state, taken as a whole.
righta which forms the basis of the entire system of rights and which `belongs to every
man in virtue of his humanitya [20, p. 63]. This right, Kant insists, cannot be derived
from expediency or the force of circumstances but must be based on a priori principles
of reason, man's ultimate purposes as a rational, moral and not as a natural desiring
being. Its sources in Kant's moral philosophy, it has been shown, are generally located
in Kant's doctrine of autonomy. We may ask: First, how "rm is the textual evidence
for the alleged link between Kant's maximum equal liberty principle and the notion of
autonomy? Second, does the realisation of individual autonomy analytically imply, as
is commonly argued, the agent's liberty of choice?
In the Groundwork Kant writes that all men stand under the moral imperative to
treat others àlways as an end and never merely as a meansa [21]. It is from this
`moral imperative which is a proposition commanding dutya, Kant adds in the
Doctrine of Right, that `the capacity for putting others under obligation, that is, the
concept of Right, can afterward be explicateda [22]. `Rational nature exists as an end
in itselfa [23]. And it is due to the respect each man is owed `by virtue of his
humanitya, rational nature within him, that he has an ìnnate right to freedoma [24].
And since this right may not be limited for any other purpose than that of freedom, it
is a right to the greatest external liberty compatible with the like freedom of others
[24, pp. 63, 64]. In the subsequent book of the same work Kant then adds that only
that civil condition in which all men are guaranteed maximum equal liberty and the
constitution of which `conforms most fully to principles of Righta is one of `public
justicea. Justice is a `condition which reason, by a categorical imperative, makes it
obligatory for us to strive aftera [25]. Nowhere in his political writings, however, does
Kant justify man's right to external liberty by express reference to the requirements of
autonomous agency.
Carr concedes that `Kant never o!ers an argument speci"cally designed to meet
this needa but adds that ìt is not di$cult to imagine the kind of argument2to do the
joba. For `[t]o treat another as an end, for Kant, is to permit this other to operate as
a self-legislating or autonomous being. It is to accord him the free use of his will to be
self-governing, and this means refraining from actions that would hinder another's
exercise of this autonomya [26]. Carr's conclusion is a$rmed by both Sullivan and
Bielefeldt. The external demands of Kant's moral law, they argue, appear as the
political principle of right. Hence only a state conforming to the Principle of Right
which secures the greatest equal liberty for all can be fully acceptable to persons who
view themselves as autonomous agents [27,28]. Such attempts to link the right to
external freedom to the notion of autonomy in the absence of any unequivocal textual
evidence rest on two major assumptions. First, that Kantian autonomy indeed
requires as one of its conditions the external freedom or power to act. Second, that the
&treating others as ends' requirement of the second formula of the Categorical
Imperative can only be read as and thus is coterminous with the demand to respect
their capacity for autonomy.
In the Groundwork Kant de"nes autonomy as `the property of the will of being
a law to itself (independently of any property belonging to the objects of volition)a [3].
It is the capacity of the will to be self-determining in accordance with the moral law.
Kant distinguishes two types of freedom both of which are involved in autonomy.
Negative freedom is the capacity of the will, possessed by human beings but lacking in
animals, for free choice as independence from determination by sensuous impulses
and the laws of nature that govern them [3, p. 446]. It is free will in the radical,
incompatibilist sense, that is, the agent's contra-causal power to choose between at
least two equally possible courses of action. Without freedom in the negative sense,
Kant never tires to insist, there can be no moral responsibility. Positive freedom, by
contrast, is the capacity of rational willing which Kant equates with obedience to the
moral law. It refers to one and only one way in which man's negative freedom may be
exercised [3, pp. 446, 447]. Positive freedom, thus, is the same as autonomy: the will's
capacity for rational self-determination or, put di!erently, the determination of man's
will in accordance with his innate moral purposes.
The autonomous will is free but constrained by the requirements of duty. It is
constrained in that it is not lawless but determined in accordance with the moral law.
Autonomy in the full sense consists in one and only one course of action, doing our
duty. But the autonomous will is free in a lower, the negative sense in that this
constraint has to be self-imposed. Autonomy, thus, is self-constraint in accordance
with one's purposes as a rational agent. It requires deliberate and voluntary commit-
ment to follow the path of duty in full awareness of other, commonly more alluring
options open to us. It thus presupposes the capacity to do otherwise, that is, to choose
between at least two equally possible courses of action open to us. Though the reality
of freedom in this negative or incompatibilist sense, Kant concedes in the Critique of
Practical Reason, can never be proved theoretically, it must be assumed as the
presupposition of moral responsibility without which there could be neither praise
nor blame, indeed no moral judgement of human actions at all.
Yet when Kant talks about autonomy as involving voluntary commitment and
a morally good will or motive on the part of the agent, he does not, in fact, go on to say
that such autonomous acts of volition must be translated into external actions.
Autonomy refers to a wholly internal state of the agent. It presupposes negative
freedom, the capacity to choose between equally possible objects of volition. For the
will can be morally good and thus autonomous only if it is free to will something other
than the good. Negative freedom can be obstructed by indoctrination, hypnosis or
any other form of mind control aimed at producing strict determination in our
volitional acts. By contrast, the absence of external liberty in no way diminishes
negative freedom as de"ned by Kant. For the agent retains his negative freedom and
with it his capacity for autonomy so long as he remains conscious of what is morally
good and evil and free to will either, even if, due to physical coercion or other external
impediments, he is unable to act on his morally good or bad will.
This view of autonomy coheres with Kant's general account of morality. What
morality commands must always be within our power to do. This, Kant insists, is true
only of men's intentions which it is always possible for them to shape in a morally
acceptable manner for as long as they have clear and complete awareness of their
duties. By contrast, men's physical power to achieve the intended e!ect can be
frustrated by some external agency or impediment. Morally signi"cant actions, then,
are not coterminous with performances in the world. Essentially, they are those &inner
actions' or intentions that precede and partly cause our physical movements. This
explains Kant's characterisation of à good willa as the only conceivable unquali"ed

good in the world. This will ìs not good because of what it e!ects or accomplishesa;
ìt is good through its willing alonea and remains so even if it ìs entirely lacking in
power to carry out its intentions; if by its utmost e!ort it still accomplishes nothing,
and only good will is lefta. What is required is a good will `not admittedly, as a mere
wish, but as the straining of every means so far as they are in our controla [3, pp. 393,
394]. So long as the agent does everything within his powers to act on his morally
good intentions, his good will remains undiminished. And for as long as the agent
possesses a morally good will, no external force can obstruct his internal state of
autonomy, even though restrictions on his external liberty may prevent the agent from
exercising his autonomy, i.e. to act in accordance with what he nevertheless accepts as
his duty and wills to act on. The normative justi"cation of man's right to external
freedom cannot, therefore, be derived from the concept of autonomy.
Autonomy is achieved in the impregnable inner citadel of a man's conscience, and it
can be achieved even if he is imprisoned or in some other way frustrated from acting
on his morally good maxims by the force of circumstances or deliberate external
coercion. It thus remains unclear in what sense external liberty may be necessary to
autonomy and, indeed, which classes of actions by any one man may ever be regarded
as violating or infringing upon the capacity for autonomy of another. Man, on
Kant's view, has a moral, legally unenforceable duty to strive toward autonomy but
this entails no right to external liberty and imposes no correlative legally enforceable
duties on others. Thus, while it is generally recognised that, on Kant's view, politics
cannot bring about a fundamental change in man's basic moral disposition and leaves
him in a moral &state of nature', it is equally erroneous to suggest that government's
prime duty is to safeguard the external liberty required for individual moral action.
For if, as Kant's de"nition of autonomy in terms of a morally good will suggests, men
can develop a morally good character even under authoritarian governments, then the
notion of autonomy cannot provide the basis for Kant's justi"cation of a liberal
political order. The absence of any unequivocal textual support in Kant's writings for
the alleged conceptual link between moral autonomy and man's right to external
freedom may, it appears, be more than a mere omission.
Characteristic of most existing interpretations of Kant's moral philosophy is
a one-sided concern with the formalistic ethics of the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of
Morals to the neglect of Kant's more substantive account of morality contained in his
later other writings on moral philosophy, especially part two of the Metaphysics of
Morals. This bias in favour of Kant's early systematic ethical writings is re#ected in
most accounts of the relation between Kant's political and his moral theory. Central
to the Groundwork is the view that actions are morally good not because they conform
to a substantive ideal of moral perfection but because they are willed in a certain
(rational) manner. Accordingly, the morally good or autonomous will cannot be
de"ned in terms of any material end or substantive ideal of the good it aims to realise
Except for the above cases of indoctrination, brainwashing, etc. which aim to bring about non-re#ective
necessitation in the will and thus to extinguish the capacity for autonomy altogether.
but solely in terms of those minimalist constraints that de"ne rational agency itself.
Much of the scholarly debate amongst moral philosophers has consequently revolved
around the question of whether the concept of autonomy succeeds or fails in furnish-
ing practical ethical prescriptions. Analogously, students of Kant's political thought
have focussed on the external or socio-political requirements of autonomous agency.
Scholarly interest in Kant's political writings has focussed principally on his work in
legal theory, notably the Doctrine of Right. Essential to Kant's political philosophy,
Kersting writes for example, are `the arguments and doctrines of his philosophy of
righta, whose justi"cation, in turn, `depends on his moral philosophya [29]. In this
work Kant aims both to justify political authority and to establish the normative
limits of this authority. This attempt to provide a rational foundation of political
authority and of man's right to external freedom is then linked by most of his
commentators to Kant's celebrated doctrine of autonomy in the Groundwork. For
both the use of coercive force by the state and its limitations, Carr argues, are bounded
by the rational constraints of the moral law and necessary conditions of Kantian
autonomy [26, p. 729]. In view of the above discussion such attempts to locate the
normative justi"cation of Kant's rights-based political philosophy in the concept of
autonomous agency and its socio-political presuppositions, must be rejected.
The principle of autonomy may be compatible with almost any state, yet Kant
clearly did not think that the nature of political arrangements was morally irrelevant,
nor that prudential or utilitarian calculations were left as the only foundations for
political philosophy `to be cashed out with the small change of hypothetical impera-
tives, good grounds, and shared needsa [30]. Kant never ceased to emphasise that his
philosophical inquiry into politics is part of the metaphysics of morals. Kersting again
speaks for many when he writes: `Kant revoked Machiavelli's separation between
morals and politics, and by integrating political philosophy under the authority of
pure practical reason re-created the old unity of morals and politics in a revolutionary
new conceptual framework and on the basis of a revolutionary new theory of
justi"cationa [30, p. 343]. Yet, if Kant's defence of a liberal, republican political order
cannot be justi"ed in terms of the principle of autonomy, what then is the unifying
principle linking Kant's theory of justice and his ethical theory and what is the
normative basis of Kant's justi"cation of the right to external liberty. These unifying
elements in Kant's practical philosophy, it is suggested in this article, can only be
found in Kant's later substantive ethics of the Doctrine of Virtue the political implica-
tions of which are developed most fully not in the Doctrine of Right but in Kant's
essays on politics and the philosophy of history.
III
In his essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose Kant suggests
a di!erent justi"cation for the right to external liberty which is commonly ignored. He
writes:
`The highest purpose of nature * i.e. the development of all natural capacities
* can be ful"lled for mankind only in society, and nature intends that man should
accomplish this, and indeed all his appointed ends, by his own e!orts. This purpose
can be ful"lled only in a society which has not only the greatest freedom, and
therefore a continual antagonism among its members, but also the most precise
speci"cation and preservation of the limits of this freedom in order that it can
co-exist with the freedom of others. The highest task which nature has set for
mankind must therefore be that of establishing a society in which freedom under
external laws would be combined to the greatest possible extent with irresistible
force, in other words of establishing a perfectly just civil constitution. For only
through the solution and ful"lment of this task can nature accomplish its other
intentions with our speciesa [31].
Kant here justi"es external liberty as a condition not for autonomous self-direction
but for the development of all those `natural capacitiesa, `powersa and `talentsa
which àre directed towards the use of [man's] reasona [31, pp. 42}45]. The develop-
ment of a morally good will is a quintessentially individual task to which politics
cannot contribute anything. This, by contrast, is not true of man's other distinctively
human qualities * notably his cognitive faculties * which reside in natural men only
as potentialities and which `would remain hidden for ever in a dormant statea without
`the unsocial sociability of mena, that is, their urge `to come together in societya to
enjoy the bene"ts of social co-operation and yet do so &as individuals' who retain `the
unsocial characteristic of wanting to direct everything in accordance with (their) own
ideasa and seek `status among (their) fellows, whom (they) cannot bear yet cannot
bear to leavea [31, pp. 44, 45]. The result of this àntagonisma characterising man's
social state are ènviously competitive vanitya, ìnsatiable desires for possession or
even powera and resultant inequalities in wealth, status and power, which Kant
presents as the driving forces behind man's transition `from barbarism to culturea and
as the creative tensions necessary for the development of his powers of mind and the
realisation of man's `rational naturea [31, pp. 42}45]. For these àsocial qualitiesa
though `far from admirable in themselvesa nevertheless induce men to overcome their
natural `tendency to lazinessa and `plunge instead into labour and hardshipsa in their
competitive struggle to outdo one another [31, pp. 44, 45].
At the same time these qualities pose a constant threat to that social fabric, degree
of civil order and security of life and property which alone can harness their destruc-
tive potential and translate competitive rivalry into forces of cultural and economic
progress. To prevent competitive rivalry from degenerating into social chaos and
anarchy, to set the limits for the permissible pursuit of self-interest and, more
generally, to maintain the juridical structure necessary for cultural development, the
above-quoted passage suggests, is the proper o$ce of the state and the true justi"ca-
tion of its authority. In his political philosophy, thus, Kant is concerned with the
social, legal and political presuppositions of man's perfection not as a moral but as
a natural being. This account clearly con#icts with Kant's strict separation of man's
moral faculty from that of theoretical reason in the Groundwork no less than his
suggestion in this work that moral knowledge and the development of a morally good
will in no way depend on the development of man's cognitive capacities and thus on
education or natural intelligence, and his account of man's natural talents and
capacities in terms of morally neutral potentialities which can be used either for
morally good or bad ends and which can therefore be only of instrumental value. The
question that therefore needs to be addressed is: What is the moral relevance of the
development of man's natural capacities and how can their development constitute
the basis for a normative justi"cation of the authority of the state * a justi"cation
that is founded on Kant's moral teachings. Kant's answer is contained not in the
Groundwork but in his later work, The Metaphysics of Morals of 1797/98.
In this work Kant abandons the earlier &formalistic' or &proceduralistic' account of
morality of the Groundwork in favour of a substantive account of morality which
overcomes the formalism and ethical indeterminacy of the Categorical Imperative.
Central to Kant's account of moral agency in The Metaphysics of Morals is the notion
of ènds that are also duties [Zwecke, die zugleich Pyichten sind]a [32]. To the central
question of moral philosophy &What ought I to do?', Kant writes in the Critique of
Pure Reason, the answer must be: `Be virtuous, by doing that through which thou
becomest worthy of happinessa [33]. The only way in which the agent can attain such
worthiness, Kant then elaborates in The Metaphysics of Morals, is through the pursuit
of ends that are not desires but duties. These duties Kant no longer de"nes in terms of
the purely formal de"nitive constraints of rationality but in terms of those substantive
ends and purposes which raise man above `the animala within him and give human
life unique worth and dignity [34].
They are, "rst, the acquisition of culture and man's perfection of his natural
capacities, especially his mental powers, and, second, the promotion of the happiness
of others [34, pp. 190 et seq.]. Characteristic of these ends, Kant argues, is that they
furnish goals that can be made into subjective maxims guiding our actions which are
not also desires in the sense that they are not based on subjective feelings, interests or
inclinations but objective and universal principles which oblige all rational agents
irrespective of what they may each subjectively want or desire. Acting with these ends
in view represents a duty for each and a desire for no one. All men desire happiness,
but each above all desires it for himself and in so far as he extends his self-love to
others his benevolence and good will are naturally restricted to those he loves, likes or,
generally, those in whose welfare he takes an emotional or prudential interest which is
unrelated to their moral worth. The promotion of the happiness of others can be
regarded as a duty only if it contains an ìmpartialitya condition which obliges us to
abstract from our subjective point of view, personal preferences and antipathies. It is
a duty each owes to everyone. The cultivation of our natural capacities constitutes
a moral duty because, although these are implanted in men as gifts of nature and
useful to the realisation of all kinds of ends men may desire, their development is an
onerous task which requires e!ort and which con#icts with our immediate natural
desire for our own comfort and well being.
The doctrine of &ends that are also duties' is Kant's "nal considered answer to the
central problem associated with his insistence on the need for a non-emotive, speci"-
cally moral mode of volition, which was left unanswered in the Groundwork: Can there
be ends or objects of volition that are not, ultimately, reducible to some form of desire
for individual happiness? The validity of Kant's strict distinction between desire and
duty in terms of their underlying mode of volition * man's natural desire for his own
happiness and the rational regard for &the humanity within himself' respectively
* may be open to question but need not be of any concern here. What is important in
this context is not whether the performance of a duty need not also be desired but
Kant's admission, a revision of his initial position in the Groundwork, that moral
willing, no less than any other kind of volition, requires an ènd [Zweck]a or `matter
[Materie]a [2, pp. 24, 25; 35] for ìn the absence of all reference to an end no
determination of the will can take place in mana [2, p. 34; 36]. It is Kant's inclusion
amongst man's morally obligatory ends of his perfection of his natural capacities as an
onerous task at odds with man's natural tendency to laziness and inactivity, that
provides the link between Kant's moral and his political theory. To develop our
natural capacities and powers of reason is a moral obligation no less than the
promotion of the happiness of others on the grounds that both con#ict at least with
man's most immediate (biological) impulses and desires. Unlike the promotion of the
happiness of others, however, which is a quintessentially individual task, the develop-
ment of man's natural capacities is a cumulative and social entreprise which can
#ourish only if certain legal and political conditions obtain. Hence men who need one
another to leave the state of animality and develop their distinctively human faculties
also need the state to guarantee those goods * peace, order and security of property
* that alone make social co-operation possible. The imperative of self-development
thus implies the observance of certain political and legal duties. In The Metaphysics of
Morals Kant generally presents man's natural perfection as one of the objectively
good and morally obligatory ends of and hence as part of human virtue. Yet, in the
same work he also suggests that the development of our natural talents and mental
capacities is a moral obligation because the advance of our rationality is the only way
in which our moral nature can be fully realised.
`Natural perfection is the cultivation of any capacities whatever for furthering ends
set forth by reason. That this is a duty and so in itself an end, and that the
cultivation of our capacities, even without regard for the advantage it a!ords us, is
based on an unconditional (moral) imperative rather than a conditional (pragmatic)
one, can be shown in what characterises humanity (as distinguished from animal-
ity). Hence there is also bound up with the end of humanity in our own person the
rational will, and so the duty, to make ourselves worthy of humanity by culture in
general, by procuring or promoting the capacity to realise all sorts of possible ends,
so far as this is to be found in man himself. In other words, man has a duty to
cultivate the crude predispositions of his nature, by which the animal is "rst raised
into man. It is therefore a duty in itselfa [34, pp. 195, 191, 239}240]. See also the
excellent discussion by Kelly [37].
Natural self-development thus, for Kant, is a necessary means in our pursuit of
virtue * a position radically at odds with that of the Groundwork. It is developed in
The Metaphysics of Morals [38] but already stated clearly in Kant's Idea for a Universal
History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose.
It is in this work that Kant quali"es his position in the Groundwork inherited from
Rousseau that each man, no matter how uneducated or impoverished, possesses clear
and complete knowledge of the commands of morality as part of his basic unmediated
self-consciousness. In the Idea for a Universal History, by contrast, Kant argues that
nature has implanted in men only a `primitive natural capacity for moral discrimina-
tiona [31, p. 44]. This can be transformed into `de"nite practical principlesa only
`with timea and by means of èstablishing a way of thinkinga based on the develop-
ment of `reasona, `culturea and àrta, in short à continued process of enlightenmenta
[31, pp. 44, 45, 49]. Moral self-knowledge thus, far from being innate to the individual
mind as inferred by most commentators from the Groundwork [37], depends on
man's cultivation of his natural capacities and predispositions `the highesta of which
is ùnderstandinga. For it is by virtue of this `capacity for concepts and so too for
those concepts that have to do with dutya that man's latent moral capacity can be
developed into the capacity òf setting himself endsa and thereby become `worthy of
the humanity that dwells within hima [34, p. 191]. Natural perfection thus is crucial to
moral perfection. And since man's mental powers can be actualised only through
a process of gradual rational awakening, it follows that moral consciousness too must
be subject to historical development [31, pp. 43}45]. This process itself, Kant argues,
involves a transition from the lawless animal-like state of nature to the formation of
civil society. For moral consciousness presupposes cultural development which is
possible only when, under the protection of the state, the constant threat of death by
violence has been minimised. Only within the juridical structure of the state can men
enjoy those conditions necessary for the full development of their predisposition to
moral personality [28, p. 237]. Man can become human, i.e. rational and moral, only
in society, with time and under the authority of the state * a position commonly
associated with Fichte and above all Hegel but rarely with Kant.
IV
There remains, however, one central problem. Kant may justify political authority
not in terms of the requirements of individual autonomy but as a necessary precondi-
tion for cultural progress and the development of man's rational faculties. Yet, he
leaves no doubt that enlightenment as the proper realisation of man's rational nature
is possible only under a republican constitution which maintains not only order and
security of life and property but grants all men maximum equal civil and intellectual
liberty. At the same time, Kant categorically denies men the right to rebel on the
grounds that any state, no matter how unjust and oppressive, is preferable to
revolution with its attendant danger of a reversion to anarchy and social and
economic chaos and must therefore be obeyed. Attempts to reconcile the seemingly
discordant liberal and authoritarian elements in Kant's political writings have gener-
ally been unsuccessful * due largely to the almost exclusive concern amongst his
commentators with Kant's ahistorical accounts of justice and of morality in the
Even Kelly, who emphasises Kant's evolutionary account of human reason, exempts practical reason
from the historical and cultural constraints of human reasoning: `[T]ime is the condition for our knowing
everything, with the single exception of the morala.
Doctrine of Right and the Groundwork respectively. Instead, I suggest, the tension
between Kant's liberalism and his unconditional rejection of a right to rebellion
against even the most authoritarian state can only be resolved by reference to his
evolutionary account of the development of human reason and his anti-constructivist
view of socio-political change and development.
The distinctive feature of man, according to Kant, is his dual nature as a rational-
natural being. Like natural creatures, he is subject to natural needs, wants and
impulses but, unlike them, he also possesses the faculties for rational thought and
understanding and for moral action. These enable him to withstand biological
impulse either out of prudential concern for his own long-term self-interest or out of
respect for his own status and dignity as a moral being who has obligations to himself
and to others. Kant's ahistorical account of these faculties in the "rst two Critiques
and the Groundwork may occasionally give rise to the impression that he conceived of
human reason in terms of a set of eternal and non-temporal concepts, categories and
ideas which are common to all adult individuals and not bound by cultural or
sociological factors. In the First Critique, for example, Kant writes: `Reason is present
in all the actions of men at all times and under all circumstances, and is always the
same; but it is not itself in time, and does not fall into any new state in which it was not
beforea [39]. Kant's political, historical and anthropological essays * some of which
date back to the mid 1780s * suggest a very di!erent and far less implausible reading
of his views regarding the nature and genesis of human reason.
Echoing positions commonly associated with Rousseau and Herder, Kant argues
that man can become human, that is, a cognitive and moral being, only in society. For
his natural predisposition to rationality in both its theoretical and its practical
capacity can be properly realised only in a community of men, through communica-
tion and education. `Company is indispensable to the thinkera [40]. Men thus, for
Kant, depend upon one another not merely for the satisfaction of their natural needs
and wants but also for the development of their highest faculty, the human mind. For
thinking, though generally a solitary business, Kant argues, depends on others to be
possible at all. It is in this vein that Kant writes that `man can only become man by
educationa [41] and that therefore, in spite of his antisocial drives and attitudes, `man
is a being meant for societya [34, p. 263]. For it is only amongst other men that man
can raise himself above the status of a mere natural creature and realise his &true'
nature as a cognitive and moral being. Thus, far from being committed to the
Cartesian view that `reason exists2whole and complete in each of usa [42], Kant in
fact argues that human reason is a social artefact which requires the individual's
integration into a communal culture based on shared systematic symbolism and
interaction in accordance with a mutually accessible and publicly communicable
conceptual structure without which human rationality cannot develop. Humanisation
and socialisation, thus, for Kant, are inter-related processes * a position he does not
only share with Rousseau and Herder but likewise with Fichte and Hegel. The
similarities, however, do not end here.
Human reason, Kant argues, is not merely socially constructed in the sense that the
individual's predisposition to rationality can be actualised only in a community of
other reasoning individuals and by means of education. Rather, this inter-personal
educative process by which individual reason is constituted, is itself embedded in

a long evolutionary process of the development of the human mind and mankind's
ascent from a state of animal-like `bondage to instincta and ùttermost barbarisma
[31, p. 43] to cultural and intellectual maturity. Kant writes:
Ìn man (as the only rational creature on earth), those natural capacities which are
directed towards the use of his reason are such that they could be fully developed
only in the species, but not in the individual. Reason, in a creature, is a faculty which
enables that creature to extend far beyond the limits of natural instinct the rules and
intentions it follows in using its various powers, and the range of its projects is
unbounded. But reason does not itself work instinctively, for it requires trial,
practice and instruction to enable it to progress gradually from one stage of insight
to the next. Accordingly, every individual man would have to live for a vast length
of time if he were to learn how to make complete use of all his natural capacities; or
if nature has "xed only a short term for each man's life (as is in fact the case), then it
will require a long, perhaps incalculable series of generations, each passing on its
enlightenment to the next, before the germs implanted by nature in our species can
be developed to that degree which corresponds to nature's original intentiona [31,
pp. 42, 43].
Man can be fully human only if he is rational. Human reason, however, becomes
rather than simply is. It can evolve only historically, through a long evolutionary
process of cultural and intellectual development which requires the accumulation of
great stores of knowledge and can progress only gradually, with many temporary
setbacks and through countless obstacles. Its goal, the complete development of all
man's natural capacities and the realisation of his rational nature, cannot be accom-
plished within the lifetime of the individual but only within that of the species. Man, as
a rational being, thus lives in a historical process. And it is not until mankind has
developed collectively toward a fuller expression of rationality that the individual can
attain proper awareness of his own purposes and guide himself. See e.g. Ìdea for
a Universal Historya, p. 44. This is &world history', seen in analogy to the organic
development of the individual * childhood, adolescence, maturity [43]. True free-
dom, for Kant, the individual's capacity for rational self-direction in accordance with
concepts of duty that can be crystallised only through the development of his
understanding, can be won only historically and collectively * a notion that was to
become the Leitmotiv of German philosophy for most of the nineteenth century.
The second formula of Kant's Categorical Imperative according to which humanity
must never be treated as a means but always as an end, now appears in a novel and
unfamiliar light. For if humanity is the end rather than the property of individuals,
`What remains disconcerting about all this is "rstly, that the earlier generations seem to perform their
laborious tasks only for the sake of the later ones, so as to prepare for them a further stage from which they
can raise still higher the structure intended by nature; and secondly, that only the later generations will in
fact have the good fortune to inhabit the building on which a whole series of their forefathers (admittedly,
without any conscious intention) had worked without themselves being able to share in the happiness they
were preparinga.
then individuals must accept as morally necessary whatever conditions and con-
straints must be in place for the cumulative process of cultural development by which
alone the collective end can be realised. And since until this collective developmental
process has run its course the actualisation of the human predisposition to rationality
in the individual mind is necessarily constrained by its evolutionary logic, it cannot be
the o$ce of individuals to cavil about the seeming imperfections of the present course
of events. Thus, far from being synonymous with the demand to respect the external
freedom of as yet imperfectly rational individuals, the &treating humanity as an end'
requirement of the second formula of the Categorical Imperative, if read in the context
of Kant's evolutionary account of human reason, would suggest nothing other than
that individuals must be treated as means to the realisation of their shared end, the
proper development of their distinctively human rational nature, and that, for as long
as this end has not been achieved, the historical exigencies of its realisation take
priority over all individual concerns. For before all men are treated as ends they must
become capable of setting themselves ends. It is in this light that the apparent tensions
within Kant's theory of the state have to be addressed.
If human reason is itself the result of an evolutionary process, and if mankind has
a long and di$cult path to tread before man, as an individual, can come to proper
awareness of and will be able to realise his ends, then the imperfect reasoning and ends
of irrational men cannot allow of a philosophical inquiry into politics, nor do they
a!ord points of orientation for determining those political principles most propitious
to the progress of rationality. Reason cannot be the force which serves as the
mainspring of cultural and moral progress. For man's instinct is to compete with
other men rather than to work and live harmoniously with them. It is this unsocial
sociability of men and their resultant mutual antagonism which lead them to the
establishment of civil society in the "rst place that Kant identi"es as the impersonal
forces behind cultural progress. Once enclosed within a civil condition, he writes,
men's irascible characteristics which `make it impossible for them to exist side by side
for long in a state of wild freedoma, `have the most bene"cial e!ecta by providing an
arena within which the individual can "ght out his battles with others under generally
recognised rules [34, p. 45, 46]. In being forced to discipline their natural impulses and
unsocial characteristics by submitting to the authority of government, men come to
express in culture and skilful discipline those energies they would otherwise spend
wastefully in their natural state.
Man's unsocial sociability is the means to bring about the development of all
capacities implanted in men, but only in so far as the antagonism will eventually bring
about an order regulated by law. So, to harness the energies of our competitive and
abrasive spirits we have to become members of civil society. This explains Kant's
insistence that men are obliged to maintain the existing system of laws, whatever its
character may be. For even the `hard shella of a state where men enjoy only à lesser
degree of [civil freedom] gives the [mind of the people] enough room to expand to its
fullest extenta [44]. Kant even suggests that, in many circumstances, à high degree
Compare this to Nisbet's translation of this passage of [43]. Grammatically, there can be no doubt that
diesem refers to Geist and not to Freiheit. It is therefore misleadingly translated as ìntellectual freedoma.
of civil freedoma may be inimical to cultural progress [44]. This holds true especially
for the early stages of the process of cultural development which mankind has to
traverse on its way to intellectual maturity. For the more irrational and bonded to
instinct men still are the more likely they are to abuse their liberty as they lack the
prudential long-term reasoning which, in civilised men, tends to restrain natural
impulse and immediate desire. Thus despite the fact that civilised men remain as prone
to violate the moral law as their more irrational ancestors, they will nevertheless be
more peaceful as their greater understanding teaches them the prudential virtue of
self-control and the long-term bene"ts of social cooperation. &Enlightened' self-interest
makes the subjects more peaceable without necessarily improving them morally, and,
given certain socio-economic conditions, will also gradually persuade rulers that it
may be in their self-interest to extend individual liberties and grant their subjects
political rights. Despotic rule, Kant was convinced, could not last, and he therefore
preferred it to anarchy the danger of which he regarded as immanent to any act of
political rebellion. For the progress of human culture and rationality can never be
wholly reversed under even the most repressive regimes. By contrast, a reversion to
the lawless state of nature would cut the ground from under the very foundations of
civilisation. The prevention of anarchy, therefore, Kant insists, represents the central
problem of politics. Its solution takes priority over all considerations including those
of justice and the protection of individual rights for, once it has been achieved, Kant
con"dently expects, everything else will take care of itself as the pursuit of well-
considered self-interest will paradoxically contribute to constitutional reform and the
realisation of justice.
`[I]f he lives among others of his own species, man is an animal who needs a master.
For he certainly abuses his freedom in relation to others of his own kind. And even
although, as a rational creature, he desires a law to impose limits on the freedom of
all, he is still misled by his self-seeking animal inclinations into exempting himself
from the law where he can. He thus requires a master to break his self-will and force
him to obey a universally valid will under which everyone can be free. But where is
he to "nd such a master? Nowhere else but in the human species. But this master
will also be an animal who needs a master. Thus while man may try as he will, it is
hard to see how he can obtain for public justice a supreme authority which would
itself be just, whether he seeks this authority in a single person or in a group of many
persons selected for this purpose. For each one of them will always misuse his
freedom if he does not have anyone above him to apply force to him as the laws
should require it. Yet the highest authority has to be just in itself and yet also a man.
This is therefore the most di$cult of all tasks2Nothing straight can be con-
structed from such warped wood as that which man is made ofa [34, p. 46].
Men's natural constitution is such that they seek above all to satisfy their own
natural needs and desires which, if there are several of them, invariably leads them into
con#ict with one another. This mutual antagonism can be prevented from escalating
into open warfare only if they all submit to a supreme universally valid legislative will
which, by imposing one universal standard of right and binding every one equally,
alone can guarantee civil order and security. To this end, Kant argues, the authority of
this will must be absolute and backed up with overwhelming power. For the threat of
punishment backed up by irresistible force alone can prevent men from breaching the
peace and taking the law into their own hands. The problem is that this power, in
order to be e!ective, cannot itself be subject to any higher authority and must be
invested in an absolute ruler who, liable to all the passions of ordinary men, is yet
subject to none of their constraints and hence as liable to abuse his power and violate
their rights and liberties as each of his subjects would be if it were not for his authority
and power over them. To this problem, Kant insists, there cannot be a perfect
solution. For no matter how unjust, the ruler must be obeyed for what is worse yet
than even the worst kind of injustice by a despotic ruler is that which is worst of all,
the disintegration of civil authority into universal anarchy and violence which, Kant
insists, may always result from challenges to the established authorities and the
existing systems of law.
The danger of anarchy is worse than injustice not necessarily from the perspective
of the individual but, Kant insists, from that of the collective ends of mankind, man's
natural perfection and the realisation of his rational nature in time. Any government,
therefore, is better than none, and men have no right to rebel even against an unjust
ruler. For human culture and civilisation will survive and may progress in spite of
injustice. What they cannot survive is the disintegration of political authority. Injus-
tice may threaten the life of the individual; rebellion, however, by upsetting the whole
system of laws, threatens humanity. This is why the former is merely immoral, while
political rebellion is a crime punishable by death [45]. Moreover, since man's
propensity to evil is inextirpable, there is no reason to assume that a truly just ruler
will appear overnight. To overthrow the ruler, therefore, is not only illegitimate but
will also fail to achieve its end. For political revolution does not produce à true
reform in ways of thinkinga, and the new rulers will be as likely to abuse their power as
their predecessors [46]. All improvement and progress in politics men may hope for,
therefore, can only take place through the good o$ces of the sovereign, `not by the
movement of things from bottom to top, but from top to bottoma [47]. Yet it is not from
the good will of the ruler that constitutional reform and better government can be
expected. Ìt is not to be expected that Kings will philosophise or that philosophers
will become kings; nor is it to be desired, however, since the possession of power
inevitably corrupts the free judgement of reasona [18, pp. 113, 117]. Rulers, Kant
argues, will introduce political reforms, promote enlightenment and respect men's
liberties not out of a sense of justice but only out of self-interest and no sooner than
when circumstances will force them to. These conditions, Kant insists, can come into
being only in economically and culturally advanced societies.
Enlightenment means above all Selbstdenken, the capacity to think for oneself and
the courage of a never-passive reason to follow its own understanding without the
guidance of another. To be given to such passivity is what Kant calls prejudice, and
enlightenment is, "rst of all, liberation from prejudice and dogmatic beliefs. Selbstden-
`[W]e cannot assume that the moral attitude of the legislator will be such that, after the disorderly mass
has been united into a people, he will leave them to create a lawful constitution by their own common willa.
ken or critical thinking, however, depends on the free use of the faculty of reason and
the right to subject to free and open examination and debate all received opinions,
dogmatic beliefs and established authorities * generally referred to by Kant as the
individual's right `to make public use of [his] reasona [44, p. 55]. These can be
e!ectively protected only by a liberal, republican constitution. But since the develop-
ment of human reason is an evolutionary process, it cannot be inferred that maximum
civil and intellectual freedom are either indispensable or even most conducive to the
advance of human reason at every stage of development of a society and irrespective
of the prevailing socio-economic circumstances. Moreover, Kant argues, just as
individual freedom can be e!ectively protected only under a just republican constitu-
tion, so a viable republican order presupposes already a certain degree of public
enlightenment, an educated and prosperous middle class, emancipation from religious
fanaticism, and citizens who can and will play an active and watchful part in politics.
These conditions, Kant insists, cannot be created overnight but can only come into
being gradually as a result of a incremental process of inter-related economic, cultural
and social progress. With the expansion of foreign trade and new scienti"c discoveries,
rulers will increasingly recognise the economic and military bene"ts that can be
gained from encouraging commerce and private initiative as well as improvements in
education and scienti"c progress. In their concern for pro"ts, they will realise that, to
this end, it is in their self-interest gradually to extend the economic and intellectual
freedoms of their subjects. This favours the growth of an increasingly prosperous,
well-educated and con"dent burgher class which will eventually demand political
rights and constitutional reform. Throughout, this process of socio-economic change
and intellectual progress is sustained by the demands of international commercial and
military competition. Rulers are induced to foster economic development and pro-
mote the education of their citizens so that they can compete more e!ectively with
other states, and enlightened opinion will push governments slowly towards reform.
So the economically and militarily most powerful states will come to pursue policies
that favour enlightenment, justice, and republican politics, and competition between
states will ensure that others will slowly follow their lead * a process of political
reform that will eventually "nd expression in a just, republican constitution as the
matrix within which all the natural capacities of mankind may be fully developed and
men become truly enlightened [34, pp. 49}51].
In his moral philosophy Kant is concerned solely with man's ends as a rational,
moral being, puri"ed of all anthropological considerations. The principles of politics,
by contrast, Kant insists, must be framed in such a way that they take into account
man's #awed nature; nothing may be left to the fragile good will of fallible men and
everything must depend solely on their self-interested motivation, natural purposes,
needs and desires. A theory of politics, therefore, cannot be concerned with anything
other than those restraints self-interested individuals will accept in order to avoid
violent con#ict and the threat of mutual destruction. Inadvertently, Kant argues, the
acceptance of those conditions will also lead them to develop their talents by
transforming competitive rivalry from a mutually destructive into a culturally and
intellectually progressive force. To sustain this process all that is needful are internal
order, political stability and minimal security of life and property * conditions which
can be safeguarded even by oppressive, authoritarian governments. Yet, though
Kant's account of man's empirical nature and his theory of political obligation clearly
echo Hobbes', Kant di!ers from Hobbes in the rejection of the latter's essentially
ahistorical view of human nature and reason. For Kant, cultural and intellectual
development in turn create the conditions for political change and moral self-perfection.
Kant's philosophy of history is of central consequence for his political theory. For
history, Kant argues, is the evolutionary account of the emergence of the human
capacity to reason and of mankind's gradual development toward enlightenment
* a process which does not rely on meliorist political action nor on a moral
transformation of human nature but is sustained wholly by the mutually reinforcing
impersonal forces of economic development, intellectual progress and social change.
Rebellion, in consequence, is condemned by Kant not only as a threat to the whole
fabric of the legal and social order on which the progress of civilisation depends; it is
also unnecessary in the light of historical development. For once the economic, social
and cultural preconditions for the establishment of a viable republican constitution
are in place, political reform cannot be held up for long. And for as long as they are
not, to rebel against the powers that be cannot hasten but only retard the process of
reform. Progress, the dominant concept of the eighteenth century, thus assumes for
Kant a rather melancholy character; anticipating many of the themes that are later
found in Hegel, he repeatedly stresses its obviously sad implications for the life of the
individual. For all that is left for the individual is the quietist con"dence that sooner or
later, reason will assert itself and that the highest political good of humanity,
a republican constitution which administers justice impartially and guarantees free-
dom to all, will be realised not in his own life, but that of mankind as a whole.
Meanwhile, however, those who are not so fortunate as to live at the end of history
have to endure àn unending series of evils which2do not permit contentment to
prevaila [48]. For under historical conditions of con#ict, Kant gives preference to
order over justice and to the authority of the state over the demands of human and
civil rights [49].
In conclusion, the aim of this discussion has been to show that Kant's political
thought both has a normative basis in Kant's ethical theory and is committed to
a liberal ideal of the ends and limits of state action. Yet, the relation between Kant's
political and his moral theory cannot be accounted for in terms of the supposed
ahistorical analytical link between the concept of autonomy and man's right to
external liberty. Autonomy requires conscious and voluntary choice on the part of the
agent of the maxims on which he wills to act. To this end the agent must have clear
and complete awareness of his duties but his capacity for autonomous self-direction
remains undiminished if, due to external circumstances beyond his control, he is
prevented from acting on his intentions. Autonomy, for Kant, refers to a wholly
internal state of the agent which can be achieved without the translation of
autonomous acts of volitions into external actions. Hence its realisation does not
presuppose the agent's external freedom. The concept of autonomy cannot therefore
provide the normative basis for man's right to external freedom nor does it support
the liberal conclusion of a limited government ensuring maximum equal individual
liberty for its citizens. Rather, it has been shown, Kant's political views derive their
normative foundation from the doctrine of man's natural perfection as one of his
morally obligatory &ends that are also duties' as outlined in the substantive ethics of
The Metaphysics of Morals. This consistent core of Kant's moral and political philos-
ophy can only be adequately understood in the context of his philosophy of history
and his anthropology.
Natural perfection, i.e. cultural and intellectual development, Kant argues, is
essential to moral perfection for only rational men can achieve a proper awareness of
their moral ends and duties. And since human rationality can advance only gradually
and under certain socio-political conditions, these must be safeguarded by civil law
and government. The proper object of the state and the true justi"cation of its
authority thus for Kant is indeed to make freedom possible, but only by safeguarding
the minimal conditions of peaceful co-existence which are indispensable to collective
cultural and intellectual development. This evolutionary process of the emergence of
human rationality, Kant argues, can continue even under authoritarian governments
and it is only in its advanced stages that it requires the intellectual liberty and scope
for public examination and criticism of all inherited beliefs and opinions that can be
a!orded only by a liberal, republican constitution. Political liberalism is justi"ed by
Kant as the necessary "nal stage in the development of human consciousness when
dogmatic beliefs and ingrained prejudices can be overcome more easily in the forum of
open public debate where individuals are no longer discouraged from using their own
reason. By undermining unthinking reliance on the word of spiritual and political
authority and by encouraging critical thinking, intellectual liberty promotes rational
self-re#ection, reduces the instances of habitual and unre#ective human conduct and
thereby contributes to intellectual and moral self-reliance. It is in this sense that
liberalism is instrumental to man's moral perfection. It furthers the crystallization of
moral consciousness and thereby develops the capacity for moral self-direction; yet
nowhere in his later ethics or his essays does Kant suggest that the removal of external
impediments which may prevent individuals from acting on their consciously and
freely formed intentions, in any way a!ects their value as moral agents which resides
solely in their morally good or bad will. Kant's philosophy of history thus has
signi"cant consequences for his commitment to political liberalism which is far more
quali"ed and preoccupied with the historical dimension of man's political and moral
life than commonly suggested. Men are obliged to obey even a long succession of
illiberal, oppressive governments since their existence is a necessary, though deplor-
able moment in the providentialist historical process leading toward enlightenment
and the realisation of a liberal state. Liberalism thus, for Kant, is the end of political
development and not, as commonly argued, an ahistorical normative standard delin-
eating the bounds of political legitimacy.
It appears that the traditional contrast drawn between Kant's universalistic, liberal
theory of politics and Hegel's historicist, communitarian account of ethical and
political life must be revised.
References
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p. 64.
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with p. 120.
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[41] UG ber PaK dagogik, KGS IX, pp. 443, 444.

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[49] W. Kersting, Kant's concept of the state, in: Essays on Kant's Political Philosophy, p. 163.

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History of European Ideas 25 (1999) 217}241

Autonomy, History and Political Freedom

has been subject to moral indoctrination or manipulation. For the self-direction

explains Kant's characterisation of `a good willa as the only conceivable unquali"ed

educative process by which individual reason is constituted, is itself embedded in

[41] UG ber PaK dagogik, KGS IX, pp. 443, 444.

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