Ripstein, Kant and barbarism

It’s hard to avoid concluding that Kant’s philosophy doesn’t interact with the real world very favorably.

Further, just like depotism / barbarism doesn’t have sufficient explanatory power, resist/not resist doesn’t describe reality very well either.

they are all prepared to pay at least some attention to welfare, anthropology, and psychology – all of which Kant (officially) disdains in favour of the sparse metaphysics of freedom-as-non-domination.

Kant held lectures on anthropology for decades and published an “Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View”. And the “Critique of Judgement” of course concerns itself with psychology and anthropology and presents us with an account of humanity and freedom that goes way beyond “sparse metaphysics”. Generally speaking it helps to take into account what Kant actually sets out to do and he tends to be pretty clear on that.

Chris- you might look at Robert Louden’s excellent _Kant’s Impure Ethics_ for a somewhat different view. I think it gives a more accurate account of how Kant’s various views and interests fit together than is given here.

I also doubt that a better account of Kant’s views will be published in English. But it seems to me important to emphasize that the reason why Kant neglects to pay attention to welfare, anthropology, and psychology is because his account of right is supposed to be an account of part of the “metaphysics of morals.” For Kant, once the metaphysical framework is in place – once we understand what we’re talking about when we’re talking about “right”, and the source of legitimate law, and the nature of property rights, and the grounds for coercion, etc. – then we will know when and how considerations of welfare, anthropology, and psychology become relevant in more concrete cases. Ripstein emphasizes repeatedly that the framework requires judgment to apply in specific circumstances – for example, in the determination of which specific laws would be legitimate or just. A similar point holds for determining the line between despotism and barbarism – although there is no doubt that a slave-holding society would count as barbaric. The point is to tell us which kinds of considerations are relevant in making that determination and why, not to give us a formula to apply. That said, I certainly agree that there is much more work to be done in exploring exactly these more concrete issues from within this framework.

For another good treatment of Kant’s doctrine of right that goes some way towards explaining Kant’s position on revolution, I recommend Joachim Hruschka and Sharon Byrd _Kant’s Doctrine of Right: A Commentary_ (CUP, 2010). I think Ripstein’s book is great and so deserves the company of this splendid interpretation.

I come pretty close to Kant (as interpreted by Ripstein, as summarised by Chris) on consequentialist grounds. If a revolution is to have good consequences it must (a) succeed (at least in part) (b) replace the existing government with a better one (c) not cost too many lives in the process.

The odds against meeting those conditions seem very long to me, particularly if the existing government guarantees personal security and property most of the time. The successful examples mostly involve “pushing at an open door”.

I read in some historical account of the rise of Nazism that, after the Munich Bierhalle fiasco, Hitler realised that the German people would not back a revolution, and thus decided to attempt to seize power with a semblance of legality. Which of course he did, as pointed out by Hidari @ 1.

But that’s beside the point. Ripstein wants to say that Kant would support (indeed require) the overthrow of the Third Reich on grounds of barbarism, regardless of how they came to power. In fact there is a section in that chapter on the irrelevance of history to the issue of legitimacy: “The existence of a rightful condition can no more be conditional on the prudence of its current rulers than it can on the justice of its founders”. (p. 335) So Hitler’s concern for legality and due process (!) wouldn’t help him on Ripstein’s account of Kant’s position. But, as Chris pointed out, it’s far from clear how we can make sense–let alone use–of the barbarism/despotism distinction, so for once the reductio ad Hitlerum (internets version: ‘OMG teh Nazis!!’) doesn’t seem out of place.

Chris, indeed not. Petitioning the sovereign may have its place, and displaying (or feigning) respect is usually a good idea with sovereigns, but so does non-compliance with unjust laws. There are lots of instances of successful non-compliance, and the costs of failure are typically smaller than with failed revolutions.

Jack Strocchi @15: Mill and Kant are utterly different. Kant is, in my ever-so-humble opinion, doctrinaire and utterly unphilosophical when it comes to substantive ethics and politics (and, btw, hopelessly indeterminable when it comes to the formal and abstract end of things). Which, pace JQ, is not to say he is never stopped-clock-right at the level of casuistry. But this kind of thing springs to mind:

Because of this continuity, however, that which transfers what is mine to the other is not one of the two separate wills (promittensis et acceptantis), but their united will. So the transfer does not take place in such a way that the promisor first abandons (derelinquat) his possession for the other’s advantage, or renounces (renunciat) his right, and the other immediately takes it up, or the reverse. Transfer is therefore an act in which an object belongs, for a moment, to both together, just when a stone that has been thrown reaches the apex of its parabolic path, it can be regarded as, for just a moment, simultaneously rising and falling, and so first passing from its rising motion to its falling.

The method of deduction is literally (see Paul Guyer, can’t remember the title, in Deiter Henrich, Kant’s Transcendental Deductions) – and in the worst sense – legalistic. It’s all about advocacy – finding some formal basis or other for a claim presupposed to be correct. Which is why he never really justifies anything, just gives the Latin name of the species of tortoise the elephant is standing on. Which in turn is why his stuff has been given scant regard by political philosophers, and indeed by me, which is an admission of non-expertise if you like, but I prefer to think I can recognise a dud reasonably quickly and look elsewhere.

Mill, on the other hand, puts forward a brilliant conception of the relationship between the good, the right and the just, providing the best extant attempt at resolving the issue of deontology v consequentialism (see Brink, Brown, can’t remember more detail), and for good measure proposes that socialism might well be the best way forward (Principles Polit Econ, towards the end IIRC), though he is not willing to endorse it outright. Mill is fantastic.

BTW that wiki page is not too great. It has Ayn Rand in it, for one rather flippant thing. I expect the Stanford encyclopaedia of philosophy has a reasonable entry on deontology, but can’t be bothered to look.

Pr Q @ #18 said:

There are lots of instances of successful non-compliance, and the costs of failure are typically smaller than with failed revolutions.

On the whole its more civilized, and safer, to advocate changing laws, rather than law-makers. The US government could handle the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, but it drew the line at the Black Panthers.

Jack Strocchi – Right, well if the one-in-ten are all things like the socialism bit (I’ve just realised that word gets through now), that is quite a difference.

Anyway, you seem to be talking about mammalian bipeds and what sort of sounds might be expected to come out of their faceholes. I’m talking about philosophy; political philosophy, to be specific.

Chris- I’ve only read about half of Ripstein’s book so don’t want to express a full opinion on it. (I liked what I read a lot, but just got too behind on other obligations.) My impression was much like Jon’s above, if I understand him, that what Kant (and Ripstein) are doing is pretty abstract, and that it’s at least compatible w/ Louden’s position, that the application to concrete situations involves a clear role for anthropology and the like. And, we don’t have to think Kant was right on the details (or even big parts) of his anthropology to see that the framework it useful.

I’m familiar with that one, thanks. I actually meant the ref on deontology and consequentialism.

[aeiou] To elucidate some philosophical distinctions without political difference, the two most famous political philosophers of modern times are:

– Rawls – a (Kantian) deontological contractarian.
– Singer – a (Millian) teleological utilitarian.

Yet both would probably concur on the same basic polity – a social-democratic welfare state. And both would vote for a the same political party – the GREENs.

To make matters worse, Nozick, like Rawls, was a Kantian deontological contractarian. Yet his politics were miles off Rawls.

So what difference do underlying distinctions in ethical philosophy make? Not much, as far as I can tell. Whatever it is that drives political conflict its not abstract disputes about ethics.

(CB, I hope you won’t mind this quick reply to JQ, on a point of order as it were:)

Yes sorry John, I should have realised you would not be asking for further info on that – it was late. I may be out of date by up to about 15 years, and may have misremembered (but don’t have time to check) but I had, for Mill on indirect utilitarianism, David Brink, Mill’s Deliberative Utilitarianism in Phil & Pub Affs, 1992. There’s also David Lyons’s book Rights Welfare and Mill’s Moral Theory, which is less sanguine. The other allusion was to D.G. Brown, Mill on Liberty and Morality but I now STR it was less relevant.

apparently insane remarks of Kant about particular matters

I’m tempted to say that one should now read Ripstein’s Kant back into the three Critiques, on the theory that Kant did not put his insanity cap on/off depending on what book he was writing.

But then, Nietzsche had pretty much nothing useful to say about politics either.

(N. did say however that apparently absurd metaphysics should be explained by what morality the metaphysician was aiming at; surely someone has written a study of Kant’s moral philosophy, and maybe political as well, with this in mind?)

Chris – Ripstein doesn’t make the case that the state *must* intervene in markets, regulate health and safety, etc. As you say (@29) he makes the case that it may legitimately do so. And I think you are right that this doesn’t rule out a very inegalitarian society. But I wouldn’t say that this shows they are equally just. What it shows is that they could both be (equally) legitimate. And that seems right to me.
The higher standard of justice requires that we address the question of which permissible scheme would be best for a legislator – and, more generally, citizen – to choose. Legislators must ask which laws best realize (or contribute to realizing) a system of equal freedom. Many considerations properly go into making such a judgment, certainly including welfare, psychology, anthropology, etc. This is the point at which there is a range of reasonable judgments (which is not to say that they are all equally correct). However, because public law is a form of mandatory cooperation, Ripstein argues that there is a presumption in favor of an equal distribution of burdens. (pp.258-259) Still, I agree, that the question of justice rather that legitimacy is exactly what needs more exploration within this framework – and you won’t be surprised that I think Rawls points in the right direction.

Chris Bertram @ 39
The world that includes the Victorian workhouse doesn’t have the same problem as the world that includes Nazi policies, though: you could have a world of smallholders behaving with complete justice among one another, and still have unjust laws that were unbearable for all or some of the population. For example–and this gets close to the Nazi example, though it isn’t exactly there–the state could make acceptance of support for smallholders, or for welfare recipients, or for both, contingent on acceptance of the majority religion. (This would arguably annoy members of that religion, as well as of the minority religions.) I don’t see how you could subsume the latter issue under questions of distribution, social justice, and so forth–“freedom” would seem to cover it better.

I think Kant’s account looks far from Rawls’s account because it should be understood as an account of legitimacy (as opposed to the more demanding standard of justice). Understood in that way, it turns out to be not too far from Rawls’s own account of decent societies (which do not even accept, let alone realize, the principles of liberal justice that he endorses). For both Kant and Rawls, a society that has a very unequal distribution of resources, but in which everyone in guaranteed what is needed to keep body and soul together – and that includes what is necessary to participate in the political order – might still be legitimate (or decent). (As an aside, a minimal state in the strongly libertarian sense would fail this requirement.)
On this reading, Kant said little about which among the permissible, legitimate orders would be the most just precisely because that would depend on empirical considerations of welfare, psychology, and anthropology. He was interested in the metaphysics of a rightful condition. So in that sense, there is still a long way to go in order to justify a particular conception of justice, and it can’t be done in the purely a priori way that he wants to proceed in the “Doctrine of Right”. Still, if we assume certain facts about human needs and vulnerabilities, the fact of reasonable pluralism, and other very broad but empirical facts like these, and if we assume that in a legitimate political order, we aim to give justifications of our policies in terms that others can reasonably accept, you can see how elements start to fall into place that make a kind of Rawlsian construction look like an attractive path to take from an account of legitimacy to an account of justice.

Real quick, the Rechtslehre is from the beginning anthropological– or ‘anthroponomical’ in Kant’s odd formulation. It holds only for human beings with a given nature of a certain, determinate sort. It is applied metaphysics.

The antebellum US is an interesting case re: right to revolution. Frederick Douglass argued against Garrison that abolitionists were duty-bound to remain in the Union and pursue the destruction of slavery through legitimate political means. Of course, it was the South that rebelled. Kant’s account at least offers a way to understand that rebellion as treasonous.

Also, doesn’t Kant leave room for a passive resistance form of civil disobedience?

On Judgment: Jon Mandle wrote: “On this reading, Kant said little about which among the permissible, legitimate orders would be the most just precisely because that would depend on empirical considerations of welfare, psychology, and anthropology.” I haven’t read all of it carefully, but Alexander Kaufmann has a book on Kant and the welfare state that pertains to this. Using Kant’s writing on reflective judgment, Kaufmann develops an account of political judgment that argues that policy makers in a Kantian state should implement policies to promote welfare. However, Kaufman’s arguments about political judgment and (I think) Mandle’s arguments are not (or need not) be seen to be about legitimacy per se. At least, it is not about Kant’s main test of legitimacy, the idea of the original contract, which says that if a people could not possibly will something, the legislator cannot legitimately will it for the people either. Kant seems to think there are things a legislator cannot will, but I think he would leave it up to the legislator’s judgment whether policies promoted the purpose of securing right.

or at least a lack of punctuation