Kant and the critique of the ethics-first approach to politics

Abstract

Contemporary ‘realists’ attack the Kantian influence on political philosophy. A main charge is that Kantians fail to understand the specificity of politics and neglect to develop a ‘distinctively political thought’ that differs from moral philosophy. Instead, the critics say, Kantians are guilty of an ‘ethics-first approach to politics,’ in which political theory is a mere application of moral principles. But what does this ethics-first approach have to do with Kant himself? Very little. This article shows how Kant’s approach to political theory at a fundamental level includes political institutions, power, and coercion as well as disagreement, security, and coordination problems. In contrast to realists, Kant has a fundamental principle, which can explain why and guide how we ought to approach the political question, namely the norm of equal freedom. Yet, Kant’s theory does not take the form of a moralistic ought addressed to the isolated individual, but concerns a problem that we share as interdependent beings and that requires common institutions. The fruitfulness of the Kantian approach, then, is that it can take the political question seriously without being uncritical of actual politics and power, and that it can be normative without being moralistic.

Keywords:

• Immanuel Kant
• realism
• ideal theory
• the political question
• freedom

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Pablo Gilabert, Otried Höffe, Loren King, Enzo Rossi, Reidar Maliks, Howard Williams, and Allen Wood for comments. Earlier versions of the paper were presented at two workshops on ‘Fact and Norms’ at the University of Copenhagen, 2013 and 2015; United Kingdom Kant Society Annual Conference, Keele University, UK, 3–6 September 2015; and Association for Legal and Social Philosophy 2013 Annual Conference, ‘Combining Theory and Practice,’ University of Stirling, Scotland, UK, 24–25 June 2013. I am grateful to the organizers and participants.

Notes

1. This point has also been noted by realists (see Rossi & Sleat, 2014).

2. References to Kant will be given with volume and page number of Kant’s gesammelte Schriften or the Akademieausgabe. ‘MM’ stands for The Metaphysics of Morals, ‘PP’ stands for ‘Toward Perpetual Peace,’ and ‘TP’ stands for ‘On the Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory, but it is of no Use in Practice.’ For translations, see Kant (1996).

3. When I write Kant's moral philosophy or M below, I refer to the moral philosophy of the Groundwork and the Second Critique.

4. Kant's notion of the rechtlicher Zustand is the predecessor of the later idea of the Rechtsstaat, which in English can be translated as a state under the rule of law or a constitutional state (Byrd & Hruschka, 2010, pp. 25–28). I also use ‘public legal order.’

5. This distinguishes Kant clearly from what Williams (2005, pp. 1–2) calls ‘the enactment model’ of political moralism, which is the model where political theory formulates principles, and politics is the separate means for realizing these principles. Williams suggests that there is also a ‘structural model’ of political moralism, which is a model where morality offers conditions for or constraints on the exercise of political power. Kant's theory of Right clearly does set constraints on the exercise of political power, but my contention is that these constraints are not derived from an independently conceived moral theory.

6. Revolution is, therefore, arguably, legitimate under barbarism (Ripstein, 2009, pp. 336–343).