in this essay Kant circumvents the problem of evil in human nature, it is a fundamental issue for him. This is clear from another piece of writing among his late work: Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone. The problem of evil is perhaps above all a religious one. In short, it comes down to the apparent incompatibility of God’s power and God’s goodness: if God is almighty, then why does he not stop evil happening in the world?
Kant sees evil essentially as a consequence of the freedom that God has given humanity. ‘Man himself must make or have made himself into whatever, in a moral sense, whether good or evil, he is or is to become.’18 Those who have no choice, after all, cannot be held responsible. Throughout this treatise we see a collision between the hopeful idea of the moral perfectibility of humanity and a sober awareness of its tendency towards evil, described by Kant as arising from ‘the frailty of human nature, the lack of sufficient strength to follow out the principles it has chosen for itself’.19
Kant’s broad definition of evil makes clear it is not something that can simply be overcome. At the same time he does not believe that a ‘schlechthin böser Wille’ (a ‘malignant reason’ or ‘diabolical will’) exists in human beings, making them strive to do evil for its own sake, purely out of an urge for destruction. The Enlightenment, on which Kant very much placed his stamp, was based on the idea that reason and virtue are inseparably linked. The moral law commands that we must behave as better people, but it then follows that we must be capable of improving, otherwise the command is pointless.
Unlike Erasmus, Kant does not attach a great deal of value to religion, certainly not the historical religion that has taken shape in Christian churches. He remarks drily that its history ‘has served in no way to recommend it’.20 The religion that Kant chooses to defend has given up many of its pretentions and must serve morality above all else – a morality that is self-sufficient, because anyone who needs religion in order to act ethically is not truly autonomous.
So far as morality is based upon the conception of man as a free agent who, just because he is free, binds himself through his reason to unconditional laws, it stands in need neither of the idea of another Being over him, for him to apprehend his duty, nor of an incentive other than the law itself, for him to do his duty.21
So Kant does not dispense with God. On the contrary, he no doubt saw his own philosophy as the purest form of piety, namely a reconciliation of reason with religion. He continues to cling to the idea that ‘morality thus leads ineluctably to religion, through which it extends itself to the idea of a powerful moral lawgiver, outside of mankind’.22 Here too, however, the starting point remains morality, the domain of practical reason. Intentionally or otherwise, this reinforces a tendency towards a secular worldview.
As they wrestled with reason and religion, the Enlightenment thinkers were not of one mind in their thinking about how the unity and diversity of humanity could be reconciled. Whereas Erasmus looked critically at the prejudices of the English, Germans and French, Kant wrote about the differences between European peoples in a series of clichés. He characterized the French as having a natural aptitude for communication, but also as ‘frivolous’, by which he meant they had a desire for freedom but were not terribly interested in the consequences of that freedom.23 The German philosopher believed the French had an innate tendency to hazard everything, including rationality.
The inconsistencies of the Enlightenment thinkers relate not just to the national contrasts between European peoples but, more importantly, to the tension between the universal notion of human value and the practice of European domination of large parts of the rest of the world. The rise of cosmopolitanism coincided with the spread of colonialism, but the expansion of European power did not simply flow from a worldview in which white civilization was seen as an incontestable high point of history. In fact it was rather the reverse. Europeans now ruled over much of the globe, which created a need for justification, and contact with other cultures forced them to contemplate the place of their own civilization.
Classic racism – such as emerged in Europe and America in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries – offered an explanation for cultural differences.24 The theory can be summed up fairly easily. Humanity is divided into races, which have internal as well as external characteristics, and the morality and culture of the different racial groups is directly connected to their biological features. The different races also have an immutable order of merit. White civilization is at the top, next come the Asian peoples and at the bottom are the Africans.
Such racism is now associated with ignorance, but in those centuries it was a generally accepted worldview, its scientific foundations unquestioned. From a need to explore and categorize the natural world, the idea gradually arose that humans too, in all their variety, could be classified. Using increasingly precise methods – such as that endless measuring of skulls – the presumed races were discovered and described.
The doctrine of racial inequality can be seen as a product of the scientific attitude that the Enlightenment did so much to propagate. Indeed, great philosophers like Hume, Kant and Voltaire believed in a hierarchy of races, even though this belief was at odds with their philosophical principles. In his essay ‘Of National Characters’ (1741), David Hume observes, ‘I am apt to suspect the Negroes, and in general all other species of men to be naturally inferior to the whites. There never was any civilized nation of any other complexion than white, nor even any individual eminent in action or speculation.’ Later in the same paragraph he sneers, ‘In Jamaica, indeed, they talk of one negroe as a man of parts and learning; but it is likely he is admired for slender accomplishments, like a parrot, who speaks a few words plainly.’25
It takes little effort to put together a long list of such remarks, which demonstrate that the greatest minds of the modern era, almost without exception, had a view of the world that we would now describe as racist. As I have already noted, this was prompted in part by the voyages of discovery that brought Europeans into contact with ‘primitive’ peoples. How could the difference between them, in technological development in particular, otherwise be understood?
The discourses of Montesquieu are one good example. He wondered why ‘the laws, manners, and customs, even those which seem quite indifferent, such as their mode of dress, are the same to this very day, in Eastern countries, as they were a thousand years ago’. He then addresses the subject of laziness, ‘a sort of indolence of mind, naturally connected with that of the body, by means of which they grow incapable of any exertion or effort’. It is understandable that everything remains the same, since ‘once the soul has received an impression, she cannot change it’.26
So we see that great philosophers like Erasmus, Kant, Hume, Locke and Montesquieu, each in his own way, became caught up in the idea of a Christian and humanist Europe. That tradition formed the boundary of their imaginations, with all the contradictions and limitations it involved. Yet their legacy goes further. Despite the prejudices that all Enlightenment thinkers carried with them, cosmopolitanism is a valuable idea, since it attempts to think beyond differences and conceive of humanity as a whole.
That moral horizon lies far off. The lived reality makes all national and religious divides between people visible. Most want to belong to a group and thereby distinguish between themselves and others. A sense of community makes borders a necessity. Each of the founders of cosmopolitanism struggled with this, and their inconsistencies are telling. The ideal of world citizenship, with its attempt to reach beyond all differences, comes up against a stubborn reality. This clearly applies to the time in which the ideal first emerged, but it is also true of a world characterized by an increasingly frequent crossing of borders.
Notes
1 1 Desiderius Erasmus, The Complaint of Peace; to which is added Antipolemus; or, The Plea of Reason, Religion and Humanity, Against War, transl. thought to be by T. Paynell,
