Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics by Dilek Huseyinzadegan

Abstract

Reviewed by: Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics by Dilek Huseyinzadegan Omar Dahbour Dilek Huseyinzadegan. Kant's Nonideal Theory of Politics. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press, 2019. Pp. xii + 204. Paperback, $34.95. In this work the author attempts two, rather different, tasks in rethinking the nature of Kant's contributions to political philosophy. First, she argues that Kant's political writings depart methodologically from his critical writings on epistemology and morality. This is the significance of her use of the term 'nonideal theory' to designate the distinctive methodology that is supposedly operative in later Kantian texts such as part 1 of the Metaphysics of Morals, and especially the essays on enlightenment, world history, and war and peace. Second, she maintains that Kant's distinctive contributions to political philosophy derive not from entailments of his moral philosophy, but from specific theses he advocates concerning the nature of legitimate government, historical progress, and international relations. The author's primary claim concerning Kant's method for thinking about political life is that it is distinct from the ideal theory used in his three critiques on epistemology, morality, and aesthetics. While the Metaphysics of Morals contains an "ideal" conception of peace (7), the nonideal theory contained in the other essays provides a guide to the "pursuit of peace" (11). On her view, Kant derives his ideal theory from "formal" notions of personhood and rights (7). But Kant was interested in more than simply working out the conceptual implications of his basic notion of moral rightness. While the central concept of Kant's moral theory is right (Recht), the corresponding concept in his political theory is "purposiveness" (Zweckmässigkeit). The latter is taken to be a "regulative principle of teleology" that justifies the existence of certain values (e.g. "perpetual peace") and institutions (e.g. a federation of states) based on the purposiveness of (human) nature leading toward these ends (10). Kant regarded political norms to be goals that are realizable through a historical process. As the author writes, this is not provable as such, but is a "useful assumption" (31). Clearly, Kant's philosophy of history plays a central role here. It is, as the author admits, a hypothetical reconstruction of world history—even, as she provocatively refers to it, a "historical novel" (27, 51)! Yet, on her account, it shows the importance of narrative in justifying, for instance, the cosmopolitan ideas that Kant espoused (42, 50). At this point, some concerns about this approach emerge. First, Kant's contribution to the philosophy of history is not, despite the author's claims, unprecedented. What is interesting in Kant's case is the particular story he told; but then the importance of Kant's input is not methodological (i.e. with respect to methodology in the philosophy of history, to which Kant contributes nothing unique), but substantive. Second, does Kant's approach truly address what the author refers to as the "feasibility concern" regarding his substantive political proposals (115)? If Kant's teleological reconstruction of human history were based on a thick, empirical account (as, for instance, Hegel's was), maybe so. But Kant's "hypothetical" history is nothing of the sort. The answers here lie not in the methodological originality of Kant's approach, but in the substantive value of the particular norms and institutions that he advocated. Above all, the idea of a cosmopolitan world order has been extremely influential. This order is, on the author's account, a possible, pragmatic result of various historical tendencies—including Kant's notion of "unsocial sociability"—rather than a simple product of postulated moral ideals. Peace, in other words, is a political goal, rather than a moral goal, and is to be achieved not on the basis (only) of moral incentives, but also of the practical incentive of peoples' need for accommodation with one another (102–3). This practical incentive gives rise to the three political proposals that Kant advocates: republican government, a federation of states, and a right of hospitality (117). The combined effect of the enactment of these proposals was to be the condition of "perpetual peace" that Kant envisaged as the necessary end of world history (13). There are, however, some reasons...