Kant points out in Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose that free actions are only possible within the natural order, and that everything in nature has a function it brings to fruition through revolutions of antagonism between “actions and counter-actions” that either occur and persist randomly without reason, or are finely tuned to occur, or will eventually fall into a “hell of evils” (Kant, Idea 48). For Kant, the transcendental purpose for personkind, as distinct from the unreasoning animal kingdom, is the full development of our power of “reason, and freedom of will” (ibid 43) only possible to complete in “a society which has not only the greatest freedom, and therefore a continual antagonism among its members, but also the most precise specification and preservation of the limits of this freedom in order that it can co-exist with the freedom of others,” (ibid 45). However, we only observe the development of “the germs implanted by nature…to that degree which corresponds to nature’s original intention” (ibid) …over the course of “the history of the entire species” (ibid 41). Although this developmental process is spread out over such a long span of time, Kant’s opinion is “we can conclude with sufficient certainty that a movement of this kind does exist in reality,” and that if we “determine with certainty the shape of the whole cycle,” we can “by our own rational projects accelerate the coming of this period which will be so welcome to our descendants,” (ibid 50). The development of the whole cycle requires many smaller cycles, or revolutions, of an antagonism between “wanting to direct everything in accordance with [our] own ideas,” (ibid 44) and “co-existing with the freedom of others” (ibid 45). Without the antagonism of living in a society, our natural capacities lie dormant and undeveloped, and spoiled by unrestrained freedom, and “in isolation from others, [we] grow stunted, bent and twisted,” (ibid 46). Because we are “constructed from such warped wood…nature only requires of us that we should approximate to this idea” (ibid 47) of the greatest possible union of personkind (ibid 51).
The first antagonism (also) comes at the end of Kant’s What Is Enlightenment?: “…a lower degree of civil freedom, on the contrary, provides the mind with room for each [person] to extend [their]self to [their] full capacity. As nature has uncovered from under this hard shell the seed for which she most tenderly cares–the propensity and vocation to free thinking–this gradually works back upon the character of the people,” (Enlightenment 7). This antagonism is also found in Kant’s Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose: “A perfectly just civil constitution…is indeed the most stringent of all forms of necessity. …All the culture and art which adorn [personkind] and the finest social order [personkind] creates are fruits of [our] unsociability. For it is compelled by [our] own nature to discipline itself, and thus, by enforced art, to develop completely the germs which nature implanted,” (Idea 46).
Kant, Immanuel. Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. (1784) KANT Political Writings, ed. Reiss, Hans, transl. Nisbet, H.B., Cambridge University Press
Kant, Immanuel. What Is Enlightenment? (1784) KANT Political Writings, ed. Reiss, Hans, transl. Nisbet, H.B., Cambridge University Press.
