Immanuel Kant is widely regarded as one of the most influential philosophers of all time. Born in Königsberg, Germany, in 1724, at the advent of the Age of Enlightenment, his ideas shaped thinking on philosophy and politics at his time and to this day. Politically, Kant is difficult to place, and he has been claimed to be both a conservative and a progressive. Ayn Rand called him “the most evil man in mankind’s history,” but there are important ideas in his work that are easily reconcilable with individualism and classical liberalism. Here we take a brief look at whether Immanuel Kant was really a libertarian.
Kant wrote many books and essays, but his two key works are Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and The Metaphysics of Morals (1797), which contain his main theories on morality and the rights of man.
Critique of Pure Reason, Kant’s main work on epistemology, is best known for the distinction between “das Ding an sich” (the thing in itself) and “das Ding für mich” (the thing for me), that is, what an object really is and how is appears to a human being observing it. Kant argued that we can only have real knowledge of how we perceive an object through experience, which to us forms a world of phenomena that obeys scientific and mathematical truths. But these are mere appearances that do not give us certainty about the true nature of things. There exists a different reality, an a priory world which comes before human experience shape how it is perceived by us. Crucially, Kant argued in Critique of Practical Reason (1788) that moral precepts belong to this a priori world; that is, they are absolute and invariable.
Kant did not propose a way to unify the worlds of science and morality, but he did speculate that history would eventually lead to one being found. As such, he identified the progress of ideas as a passage from barbarism to enlightenment through a largely inadvertent process driven not by reason but rather by the conflicts of the two worlds: the natural environment and human psychology. This philosophical method, known as the dialectic, at its core states that things aren’t permanent but exist in a state of “becoming,” and it is a view of history that Kant shared with Plato and Socrates and he inspired Hegel in this respect, who in turn heavily influenced Karl Marx (1818-1883). Dialectics prescribes conflict, and while Kant and Hegel dealt in the abstract with the progress of ideas, Marx developed with his dialectic materialism a concrete theory of conflict between the material conditions of the classes as the driving force behind societal development, which is stands in clear opposition to a free-market, capitalist view of trade and division of labour – and as such cooperation – as the foundations for human progress.
The notion of duty is central to Kant’s theory of politics and rights, which sees morality as based in these eternal, a priori, laws. Moral actions must be based in duty for its own sake, which means any action motivated by emotions or to further happiness or even the greater “good” cannot be considered moral. Perhaps Kant’s most famous idea is the Categorical imperative, which he set out in The Metaphysics of Morals. Kant formulated this in two distinct ways, the first of which is known as universalisation: “Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.” His second formulation, humanity, tells us to “act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.” Kant’s philosophy is therefore a total rejection of utilitarianism and imbues the individual with an intrinsic worth.
At first glance, both formulations of the Categorical Imperative seem compatible with an individualistic philosophy with private property at its heart. According to the universalisation principle, an action is only right if it is always right: so, for example, unless stealing should be accepted in general throughout society, then the sanctity of private property must be upheld by all morally acting individuals, always, because a valuable moral proposition should be generally applicable to all circumstances and throughout society. The humanity principle is equally easy to get behind: it tells us that the ends never justify the means. It would be immoral to sacrifice one man to save the lives of thousands.
However, with Kant, things are never straightforward. For example, though he sympathised with the American and French Revolutions as a spectator to these historical events, in his philosophy Kant was fervently against revolution and opposed to the establishment of a constitutional state. Despite his emphasis on the individual as the central moral actor, he saw no right to revolt against the state, no matter how badly a ruler might treat his subjects. Kant was heavily influenced by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), whose social contract theory insists on the state as the guarantor of individual rights and thus, rebelling against the state is incoherent. This reactionary side to his thinking has led many to see Kant as a conservative at heart, but he has equally been claimed by progressives, and certainly at the time, his emphasis on the individual was a liberal position. And Kant was of course a major influence for G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831), from whom we can trace direct lines to both Marxism and modern progressive politics.
Kant was certainly a lot less collectivist in his thinking than Rousseau, who believed that society has a general will expressed though laws, whereas Kant places the individual at the core of moral action and explores how laws can be consistently made universal. Rousseau saw the state as a prerequisite for property rights, but for Kant, these aren’t the creation of governments, rather, private property is inevitably in the interest of rational individuals. In the end, though, in a seemingly utilitarian fashion, Kant saw the state as a necessary to mediate in disputes and prevent chaos. The American philosopher, Robert Paul Wolff, argues that Kant’s belief that the individual has moral autonomy precludes that he could be subject to the will of another. The individual may therefore submit to laws made by others, but such laws carry no moral authority. Wolff’s argument, which he used to make a case for anarchy, underline a basic libertarian streak in Kant’s philosophy, but it remains that he rejected any right to resistance against the rulers.
Individualists may criticise the Categorical Imperative for stating that what may be considered a good action is universally the same for all people. One of Kant’s most ardent critics was Ayn Rand, who clashed with Kant’s rejection of reason as the source of ultimate knowledge as well as his insistence that actions are only moral if they are motivated by duty; that is, that no reward, such as fulfilment of personal preferences, can be involved. This means that actions motivated by for example compassion are not moral. For Kant, all motivations other than obedience to a higher moral duty are in the end self-serving. In Rand’s Objectivist philosophy, however, the ideal moral life is one of reason, purpose, and self-esteem and she upholds selfishness as a virtue, which is exactly the sort of motivation which in Kant’s austere view is incapable of rendering an action moral. But as Wolff points out, a classical liberal view of coerced actions being amoral is perfectly aligned with this aspect of Kant’s thinking.
Immanuel Kant was by no means a libertarian in the modern sense of the word. But his ideas contain within them many aspects that are consistent with an individualist ideology. Kant’s premise of the moral sovereignty of the individual was certainly radical for his time, and even though this doesn’t lead him to outright question the legitimacy of the state, he clearly recognises that there should be limits to state power. The purpose of government is primarily that of enforcing laws that protect the rights of men, and he recognises a clear distinction between the spheres of persuasion and coercion, between social interaction and government. Kant wasn’t a libertarian, but he is very much of the classical liberal tradition, and it is possible for modern libertarians to adhere to much of Kant’s philosophy on morality and rights.