Kant: Origin and Utopia

Abstract

Kant: Origin and Utopia WALTER MOSER Speaking of Kant without touching on any one of his Critiques may seem pretentious. For the purposes of this study, however, I made the tactical choice of dealing only with shorter texts, in order to treat the double problem of origin and utopia in its discursive and textual realiza­ tion in Kant. Basically, the term ‘discourse’ here has the definition used in the work of Michel Foucault,1 though, contrary to his ques­ tioning of the units as given, I propose as units the discursive fields as historically indicated by their institutional delimitations. ‘Text’ desig­ nates the particular, material realization of a discourse showing inter­ nal structure and functioning. My reading of Kant centers on two of his treatises, Conjectural Beginnings of Human History (1786) and Eternal Peace: A Philosophical Project (1795), with the Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens,2 Kant’s great scientific treatise of 1755, kept in the back­ ground for purposes of comparison. I will examine particularly in the first two texts (hereafter Conjectures and Project) the face-to-face en­ counter of origin and utopia in terms of discursive and textual choices and constraints resulting from the specificity of this double problem. Since this conflict manifests itself in most of Kant’s writings and thus touches different discursive fields—including the philosopher’s physi­ cal, anthropological, and political lucubrations in the three texts pro­ posed above—it enables the reader to analyze the connections be253 254 / WALTER MOSER tween these fields as well as their contribution to Kant’s discursive system. While the Conjectures and the Project may be only minor works in Kant’s canon, they are nonetheless complex enough to challenge any­ one wishing to make them the object and locus of a process of critical reading. Of particular interest to discourse analysis is Kant’s awareness of the discursive problems he faces when he is about to cross the borderlines of established fields of discourse. His explicit discussions of how a philosopher should write about origin and utopia provide deci­ sively a focus of special interest in these two texts. To begin on the thematic level, let us examine two terms which first appear in Kant’s cosmogony as part of his mechanical world model, but which then remain constantly present in his writings be­ tween 1755 and 1795: We must consider the fact that creation cannot be constant, unless we oppose to the general force of attraction a force which moves in all its parts, an equally generalized opposing force which adequately resists the propensity [Hung] of the first to ruin and disorder unless therefore we add centrifugal forces which, combined with the central penchant [ZentraL neigung = force of gravity] determine a systematic and general constitution : we will be obliged to posit a general centre for the whole universe. This centre will ensure the coherence of all the parts and permit us to conceive of nature as a single system. (T, I, 337; my italics) Since “all worlds form a single edifice” (T, I, 337), Kant’s world machine to be unified needs a central point of origin and two opposing forces. These elements account for the existence and functioning of the whole universe. They also determine the following chronology of the cosmogonic process of creation: 1. Out of the initial chaos, the establishment of a center and origin of the process of creation. 2. The force of gravity which makes all particles of matter fall towards this center. 3. An opposing force (repulsion of particles) which allows the heavenly bodies to come into being by slightly inclining the movement of these particles. Kant: Origin and Utopia I 255 4. A provisional equilibrium between these two forces. Established locally, this equilibrium is synonymous with the existence of a single world. Once the decisive inclination has been introduced, the created world is subjected to a general declivity which makes it run steadily down a slope toward a final catastrophe. Hang and Neigung thus become key terms in Kant’s model of the physical world. The mechanical concep­ tualization they imply, however, is not restricted to the understanding of cosmic phenomena; it also applies to...