Kant’s leap of faith

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Notes

1. The translations used in this review are those of Mary Gregor from 1996 and H. B. Nisbet from 1991, hence the title selected. Caranti relies in Gregor’s translation, while Molloy uses, in addition to these two, also Schwarz from 1988 (see Endnote 6.

2. Both books were also, coincidentally, reviewed together for the same issue of Kantian Review, albeit by different authors. In his review of Caranti, Carlos J. Pereira di Silvo (2018) discusses Caranti’s criticism of democratic peace theory in particular, which I will not investigate here. I have elsewhere critically discussed Doyle and other liberal readings of Kant (Vaha 2018). In the review of Molloy, respectively, Howard Williams (2018) offers a convincing critique of Molloy’s treatment of Kant as a political theologian.

3. The three sections do not always fit well together. I agree with Pereira di Silvo that the last part on political agency and progress is the most interesting one; yet, its ideas appear underdeveloped (Pereira di Silvo 2018, 685).

4. The book has, quite deservedly, already won two book prizes: 2018 Susan Strange Book Prize from the British International Studies Association and 2018 Sussex International Theory Prize from the Center for Advanced International Theory.

5. Caranti makes a compelling argument that moral personality based on autonomy could be extended to other sentient beings, i.e. animals (at least some mammals) as well: ‘While we believe that, of all the animal world, the capacity to act from duty is most developed in the human species, we all believe that humans do not possess it exclusively’ (Caranti, 2017, 68).

6. When discussing human nature, evil and salvation, Molloy interestingly switches the translation of Toward Perpetual Peace he uses. Referring to the Second Definitive Article of perpetual peace, Molloy writes that ‘Kant reprises radical evil by reference to the “wickedness” of human nature that showed openly in the free relationship of peoples’ (Molloy, 2017, 152–153, emphasis mine). The reference Molloy uses here is that of Wolfgang Schwarz from 1988. Interestingly, this is the first time Molloy exchanges the translation from either Gregor or Nisbet for Schwarz, which occurs at a very late stage in the book and in relation to the crucial steps of his argument about the theological foundations of Kant’s thought. The change of translation is, however, hardly a coincidence. If compared to the Gregor or Nisbet translations used earlier, one finds a small yet rather peculiar point important to Molloy’s overall argument. The original German sentence quoted above is the following: ‘Bei der Bösartikgeit der menschlichen Natur….’ The word ‘Bösartikgeit’ is translated as ‘the depravity of human nature’ by Nisbet (Kant 1991, 103) and as ‘the malevolence of human nature’ in Gregor (Kant 1996b, 326). While both ‘depravity’ and ‘malevolence’ refer to ‘evilness’, ‘wickedness’ has a clear religious connotation with ‘sinfulness’ that the two other alternatives lack. Another potential translation for ‘Bösartikgeit’ would be ‘malign’ (given that ‘Bösartigkeit’ is also used when referring to a ‘malign tumour’ in German language, for instance). It is worth noting that Molloy has only resorted to Schwarz’s translation here, which – compared to the other two he uses throughout the book – is evidently the most Christian translation of them all.

7. Caranti argues interestingly how modern science would problematise Kant’s propositions of natural dispositions in Idea, and how, consequently, in light of modern science, we should merely dismiss the first three propositions on human nature. According to Caranti, ‘contemporary science can account for the differentiation and evolution of the species without making any reference to a pre-fixed, God-given set of characteristics for each species’ (Caranti, 2017, 212, emphasis mine). The ‘pre-established end’ of nature, Caranti argues, makes Kant’s argument vulnerable of unnecessary circularity (ibid., 213).