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Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy
Hannah Arendt's last philosophical work was an intended three-part project entitled The Life of the Mind. Unfortunately, Arendt lived to complete only the first two parts, Thinking and Willing. Of the third, Judging, only the title page, with epigraphs from Cato and Goethe, was found after her death. As the titles suggest, Arendt conceived of her work as roughly parallel to the three Critiques of Immanuel Kant. In fact, while she began work on The Life of the Mind, Arendt lectured on "Kant's Political Philosophy," using the Critique of Judgment as her main text. The present volume brings Arendt's notes for these lectures together with other of her texts on the topic of judging and provides important clues to the likely direction of Arendt's thinking in this area.
174 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1982
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About the author
Hannah Arendt
398 books4,645 followersHannah Arendt (1906 – 1975) was one of the most influential political philosophers of the twentieth century. Born into a German-Jewish family, she was forced to leave Germany in 1933 and lived in Paris for the next eight years, working for a number of Jewish refugee organisations. In 1941 she immigrated to the United States and soon became part of a lively intellectual circle in New York. She held a number of academic positions at various American universities until her death in 1975. She is best known for two works that had a major impact both within and outside the academic community. The first, The Origins of Totalitarianism, published in 1951, was a study of the Nazi and Stalinist regimes that generated a wide-ranging debate on the nature and historical antecedents of the totalitarian phenomenon. The second, The Human Condition, published in 1958, was an original philosophical study that investigated the fundamental categories of the vita activa (labor, work, action). In addition to these two important works, Arendt published a number of influential essays on topics such as the nature of revolution, freedom, authority, tradition and the modern age. At the time of her death in 1975, she had completed the first two volumes of her last major philosophical work, The Life of the Mind, which examined the three fundamental faculties of the vita contemplativa (thinking, willing, judging).
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September 8, 2014
其实，本书收录了阿伦特于1970年在芝加哥大学教书期间，解读康德政治哲学的讲课笔记，共有十三堂课。翻过后，发现阿伦特并没有全面的概括康德的政治哲学体系，而仅是从康德的各本著作中深挖埋藏其中的政治哲学理念、以及政治哲学与康德其他思想的联系。
这十三章内容提到康德的写作历史、以及其政治哲学的发展路径，例如，康德政治哲学的两个重要未决问题、康德晚年思想中对国家机构的青睐、以及康德的道德理论不足于武装其政治哲学思想等问题。在阿伦特的眼里，康德的政治哲学较为隐晦、发展历程颇为曲折、并与前人和同时代哲学家有较大互动。
如果想系统性了解康德的政治哲学思想，我觉得这本书不是特别合适的入门读物，而其他同时代学者提供了更清晰、简介的归纳。
以下是早年参考了若干学者对康德政治哲学归纳后，习作的一篇小结。或稍有笔误，见谅。
A Summary of Kant’s Political Philosophy
I – Liberalism 经典自由主义
Kant’s political philosophies are tremendously difficult to read and understand from his original works. I put together the following summary of his political philosophies from the works of later scholars.
The main thesis of Kant's political philosophy is liberalism. This ideal is highly associative with other philosophers. In Kant's works, contentions of liberalism have affinities with those from a group of contemporary writers: David Hume, Adam Smith, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Baron de Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, James Madison, John Marshall and Daniel Webster. Some of these names in Chinese are well-known, such as 休谟、亚当史密斯、洛克、孟德斯鸠等。
Common to these contentions is the criticism that absolutist government, namely omnipotent or totalitarian regime in today's words, intrudes much too far into the citizen's lives. Under such system, ordinary people have no voice in determining their own destiny and no power to control that destiny if they have a voice. Today's North Korean provides a good example.
This conviction holds true not only for rulers with little or no concern for their people, for instance tyranny or monarchy, but also for paternalistic governments that benevolently but still despotically assume responsibility for the happiness of the citizens, for example the Soviet Communism. Instead of sustaining public true welfare, the later regime exacerbates natural human tendencies to selfishness and sloth, thereby encouraging dependence and servility and eventually curtailing the overall utility in the society. The fiasco occurred during “Big Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution” is a vivid example. People living in such states lack freedom, the freedom to pursue their lives and happiness as they see fit. According to liberalism, as opposed to the illiberality of tyranny, the proper function of government should be limited to protecting life, liberty and justice.
The role of civil laws conforms to such principle and can be specified as to protect each person's freedom from interference by others. Laws are mainly concerned with happiness only insofar as they limit what anyone may do in his pursuit of happiness to the condition of allowing all others the same freedom to pursue their ideals of happiness.
Kant put forth his proposals for a liberal state, and later British scholar John Gary has concluded the four main philosophical tenets underlying liberalism in his book with titles of:
1) individualistic 个人主义
2) egalitarian 平等主义
3) universalist 普世主义
4) meliorist 社会向善主义
These four characteristics give us a light beam guiding the organization of Kant's political theory. By understanding the evolution of these tenets and their connections, we can grasp the overall picture of Kant’s political philosophy.
II – Rationale of the State 国家存在的意义
A liberal advocate, Kant regarded the fundamental tasks of government as “negative” or “passive”, which impose passive constraints necessary to protect and promote each person's freedom. Here are two examples:
1) The legal system of the state must constrain both the power of the sovereign and the citizens' unregenerate desires.
2) The basic laws of the legal code should set out negative obligations and duties prohibiting people from interfering with the freedom of their fellow citizens.
In Kant’s view, the most basic function of civil law is not to grant entitlements which are proactive and positive, but to lay down obligations which are passive and negative. If people’s benefits arisen from living in the state are to sustain and social order and political stability are to endure, Kant believed that the citizenship should be constructed as a task or a responsibility to those moral conditions. On the other hand, rights and entitlements are derivatives in the sense that they arise only from corresponding duties that the state enforces. So in simple words, duties precede rights, and rights justify duties.
III - The universal principle of justice 公平的普世原则
Hobbes argues that people will yield the freedom they possess in the state of nature to civil authority only if they believe it is in their best personal interest to do so. And thus justification for any state must be egoistic or individualistic in nature. To neutralize the downsides of egoistic and individualism, Hobbes suggests that the state will have the power necessary to constrain the universal tendency to selfish and unruly behavior only if the power and the authority of the sovereign are absolute.
Unlike Hobbes, Kant argues that the overriding characteristic of a good state is not prevailing individualism but justice. Justice is not guaranteed merely by the existence of absolute governmental power. As a consequence, he provides that, no matter what might originally motivate people to submit to an authority, the ultimate justification for a society of free citizens must be moral in nature. However, since moral convictions are normally rooted in different and even conflicting religious or other cultural norms, how might it be possible to generate a system of laws that would be morally acceptable to everyone? The source of ethical conflict under one regime lies in here.
Kant's resolution is the proposal of a pre-political principle of legislation, guided by reason alone. That principle is called the "Universial Principle of Justice”. It has a role of regulating the entire legal structure of society, and states that only those civil arrangements that allow the most freedom for everyone alike are just (or right). Stated as compulsory for the citizens, the “Universal Principle of Justice” dictates that one should behave in such a way that his or her choices are compatible with the greatest amount of external freedom for everyone else.
Such a principle underlies all the laws of the ideal state Kant envisioned and requires that the essential legal structure protect the maximum freedom of all the citizens to pursue their own happiness and well-being by limiting lawful actions to those to which all members of a state can consent. The principle also provides a foundation for the obligation of the people to live in a law-abiding fashion. In fact, later contents of this review will show that the Universal Principle of Justice in an enriched form is also the fundamental moral norm for our personal life as well.
Finally, since this principle is the basis for any morally acceptable code, Kant maintains that it should be recognized and respected by every political body and in every political system. But what can ultimately validate the universal binding force of this principle? To me, the answer is not the church, the king, nor the interests and feelings of individuals. The only viable resolution would be through force; and if force is the ultimate validation of civil authority, Hobbe's view would prevail, not Kant's.
IV - A system of laws 法律体系
To summarize, then as Kant sees it, a state can be based either on force, on the arbitrary desire of a despot, or on the rule of law （武治、人治和法治）. And the rule of law is based on respect for every citizen and on the rational ability of each person to be self-governing, to make decisions and to take responsibility for himself or herself.
Civic Duties as Negative Laws
Civic duties are fundamentally negative rules of cooperation, limiting how people may behave toward rules of cooperation, limiting how people may behave toward each other. Underlying the legal structure of such a state must be the Universal Principle of Justice, which requires that civil laws ban conduct that would make communal collaboration impossible and which insists that the most basic laws are those each person can agree to and obey.
Like the Universal Principle of Justice, substantive laws immediately derived from it must be recognizable a priori - that is by reason alone; Since they are laws that ordinary people are obligated to obey, they must be laws that everyone of average intelligence can recognize as right and binding on them.
Such fundamental laws do not tolerate any behavior that would infringe on “the person of others, on their status of equality, on their ability to be self-determining and to function responsibly and with dignity, or on anything to which they have title, such as property, as well as legislating the obligation of parents to care for their children”. Taken together, these subsidiary principles make up a system of what Kant called the laws of natural justice.
Legislations as Positive Laws
Due to the generality of such principles of law, there is a need for further, more define legislation, which Kant named "positive laws", having the force of law only after being enacted, to make matters of right more definite.
Positive laws specify what is required in matters that are otherwise arbitrary, pertaining, for example, to rules of the road and to procedures for acquiring and transferring property. They may vary and take into account of local customs, cultural beliefs, and economic factors, but they should no conflict with the Universal Principle of Justice.
Since the state has both the right and the duty to enact such laws, obedience to them should also be considered as a civic duty and, from the point of view of ethics, as a moral obligation as well. Few actual states will enact a system of laws that does not fail in one way or another to promote justice. In such cases, changes must be made, Kant wrote, but "not immediately or impetuously"
V - The Dignity of the Individual 个人的道德正直
Liberalism is committed to recognizing the dignity and worth of each and every human person. This concept may seem obviously right to us today, but at the time Kant was writing, it was a deeply radical proposal, opposed both to the then most prevalent kind of government, tyranny, as well as to the traditional conviction that what confers dignity on a person is only one's social position and rank - being royalty and nobility.
To the contrary, Kant argued, what gives everyone dignity is neither social status nor special talents nor accomplishments but the innate power of reason, the capacity of each individual to think and choose, not only to shape his or her own life but also to protect and promote reciprocal respect by enacting laws that can form the legal structure of life for everyone.
In this capacity, there are power and responsibilities arising from it. Kant called them to act on the Universal Principle of Justice "autonomy". In Kant's liberal political theory, the power of autonomy is what gives every person moral authority and status against the might of the state.
The basis of autonomy does not lie in each person's feelings, because desires and feelings are contingent and vary among people. They can not be a stable and reliable basis for universal rules of conduct able to sustain the fabric of society. In fact, according to Kant, appealing for practical guidance to anything that lies outside a person's reason, whatever it might be, is the very antithesis of autonomy, that is heteronomy. The institutions of society must be regulated by laws based on reason; only they will consistently protect freedom and ensure justice.
The notion of reciprocal respect underlies two further, coordinate principles of liberalism: equality and universality.
VI - Equality (Egalitarianism) 平等主义
The liberal state must also be egalitarian in the sense of recognizing that everyone has the same innate moral status. It means that the fundamental laws of the state should apply to everyone equally, with no exceptions made in favor of the wealthy or the powerful, the gifted or the educated. There should be no legally privileged class nor should there be any special protected interests.
Civil egalitarianism
Kant says that civil egalitarianism does not mean that government must try to ensure equality in possessions and power, any more than it should penalize those who happen to be physically or mentally superior in order to achieve what today is often referred to as "an even playing field."
Economic egalitariansim
Kant thinks that promotion of economic egalitariansim is, first of all, unworkable, because everyone has different and conflicting interests and aims; what is more important, the effort to achieve economic equality would also require continual violations of justice and civil liberty.
Political egalitarianism
What politcal egalitarianism require is equality of opportunity in the sense that everyone must be permitted to strive for and, if possible, attain whatever status to which he or she aspires within the opportunities of a free society: and no one may unlawfully hinder others' aspirations.
VII - Universalism 普世价值
The principle of equality also implies a principle of universality. Because justice demands a juridical condition that protects each person's freedom by protecting everyone's freedom, the administration of justice must be impersonal: or may not discriminate between persons on the basis of contingent particularities, including whatever special needs and interests different individuals may happen to have.
This characteristic runs directly contrary to a popular view today, the claim that cultural pluralism is more fundamental and more important than the moral unity of society as a whole.
VIII - Republicanism and the General Will 共和主义与共同意志
���
From Kant’s writing, I get the impression that he held that the proper form of government would be Republican.
In a tyranny or monarchy, the ultimate authority behind the law is supplied by sheer coercive power. Kant regarded the Universal Principle of Justice as providing the only alternative to the tyrannical exercise of power: the authority of government rests with the rational consent of the governed. And this principle entails the essence of republicanism.
To achieve that, Kant concluded that the ideal government must be a republic, in which the people obey laws they together could have legislated through their representatives. Such a government may have any of three forms of sovereignty - monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy- as long as the constitution is republican at least in sprits.
Only a government that is republican in spirit will respect all its citizens as free, equal, and autonomous individuals and will restrict civil law to universal negative principles of justice and will enact positive laws compatible with such principles, laws therefore that could be chosen by every autonomous person. Only a liberal republic will protect life and property and ensure an environment of reciprocal respect within which each person can lawfully pursue whatever activities he or she wishes, unimpeded by others.
Question 1:
A question that Kant attempted to answer is how to maintain a healthy representative / republican government. Kant held that what will keep a representative government from degenerating into a democratic tyranny that ignores the rights of minorities is the requirement that the executive and judicial branches be constitutionally insulated from direct popular pressures that could reintroduce arbitrary privileges on behalf of the majority at the expense of a minority - or vice versa.
Question 2:
Another question that Kant dealt with is what is the role of using coercive forces in a liberal society. Kant wrote that, given the selfishness typical of human nature, we can not count on" everyone always to respect the person and property of others”. (This piece will reveal itself as a true axiom, if readers have lived through the Cultural Revolution in China.) So the state may and often must use coercion to counteract such abuses.
The only way to use coercive forces to protect freedom can be shown to be just by an appeal to the ultimate norm of rationality, the principle of non-contradiction. He held, that whatever "counteracts the hindering of an effect promotes this effect and is consistent with it"; and so force used to protect freedom is consistent with everyone's harmonious exercise of freedom of behavior.
Thus, the conclusion to this question is that the force used to protect freedom, in Kant’s thoughts, is the only coercion that may be exercised against the citizens by the state.
IX - Kant's Moral Theory 康德道德理论与政治哲学思想的关系
The path of his political liberalism captures and reflects the main themes of his moral theory. Kant’s following arguments reveal his moral ideals:
1) Moral norms cannot be based on experience. In the foundations (378-91, 406-12), Kant focused on the need for a "pure moral philosophy completely cleansed of anything empirical”.
2) Morality shall be situated firmly within the public forum. There it consists fundamentally in standards of justice prohibiting policies that others can not rationally accept and therefore articulating norms fit to serve as laws within a state that respects all its citizens.
As a consequence, in the Foundations Kant's first formulation of the Categorical Imperative, the Formula of Universal Law, requires us to test proposed basic moral axioms by the criterion of whether they can serve as public laws of everyone.
3) Necessity is never an adequate excuse for violating moral standards, for they hold universally and absolutely.
4) Effectiveness is not a measure of moral characters, but Kant treated it as a prudential norm.
5) Kant learned from enlightenment that dignity of each person is his or her own reason. Each has the power of autonomy and therefore the right and the responsibility to conduct self-governing, in control of his or her own destiny.
这十三章内容提到康德的写作历史、以及其政治哲学的发展路径，例如，康德政治哲学的两个重要未决问题、康德晚年思想中对国家机构的青睐、以及康德的道德理论不足于武装其政治哲学思想等问题。在阿伦特的眼里，康德的政治哲学较为隐晦、发展历程颇为曲折、并与前人和同时代哲学家有较大互动。
如果想系统性了解康德的政治哲学思想，我觉得这本书不是特别合适的入门读物，而其他同时代学者提供了更清晰、简介的归纳。
以下是早年参考了若干学者对康德政治哲学归纳后，习作的一篇小结。或稍有笔误，见谅。
A Summary of Kant’s Political Philosophy
I – Liberalism 经典自由主义
Kant’s political philosophies are tremendously difficult to read and understand from his original works. I put together the following summary of his political philosophies from the works of later scholars.
The main thesis of Kant's political philosophy is liberalism. This ideal is highly associative with other philosophers. In Kant's works, contentions of liberalism have affinities with those from a group of contemporary writers: David Hume, Adam Smith, John Locke, Edmund Burke, Friedrich Schiller, Wilhelm von Humboldt, Baron de Montesquieu, Alexis de Tocqueville, James Madison, John Marshall and Daniel Webster. Some of these names in Chinese are well-known, such as 休谟、亚当史密斯、洛克、孟德斯鸠等。
Common to these contentions is the criticism that absolutist government, namely omnipotent or totalitarian regime in today's words, intrudes much too far into the citizen's lives. Under such system, ordinary people have no voice in determining their own destiny and no power to control that destiny if they have a voice. Today's North Korean provides a good example.
This conviction holds true not only for rulers with little or no concern for their people, for instance tyranny or monarchy, but also for paternalistic governments that benevolently but still despotically assume responsibility for the happiness of the citizens, for example the Soviet Communism. Instead of sustaining public true welfare, the later regime exacerbates natural human tendencies to selfishness and sloth, thereby encouraging dependence and servility and eventually curtailing the overall utility in the society. The fiasco occurred during “Big Leap Forward” and “Cultural Revolution” is a vivid example. People living in such states lack freedom, the freedom to pursue their lives and happiness as they see fit. According to liberalism, as opposed to the illiberality of tyranny, the proper function of government should be limited to protecting life, liberty and justice.
The role of civil laws conforms to such principle and can be specified as to protect each person's freedom from interference by others. Laws are mainly concerned with happiness only insofar as they limit what anyone may do in his pursuit of happiness to the condition of allowing all others the same freedom to pursue their ideals of happiness.
Kant put forth his proposals for a liberal state, and later British scholar John Gary has concluded the four main philosophical tenets underlying liberalism in his book with titles of:
1) individualistic 个人主义
2) egalitarian 平等主义
3) universalist 普世主义
4) meliorist 社会向善主义
These four characteristics give us a light beam guiding the organization of Kant's political theory. By understanding the evolution of these tenets and their connections, we can grasp the overall picture of Kant’s political philosophy.
II – Rationale of the State 国家存在的意义
A liberal advocate, Kant regarded the fundamental tasks of government as “negative” or “passive”, which impose passive constraints necessary to protect and promote each person's freedom. Here are two examples:
1) The legal system of the state must constrain both the power of the sovereign and the citizens' unregenerate desires.
2) The basic laws of the legal code should set out negative obligations and duties prohibiting people from interfering with the freedom of their fellow citizens.
In Kant’s view, the most basic function of civil law is not to grant entitlements which are proactive and positive, but to lay down obligations which are passive and negative. If people’s benefits arisen from living in the state are to sustain and social order and political stability are to endure, Kant believed that the citizenship should be constructed as a task or a responsibility to those moral conditions. On the other hand, rights and entitlements are derivatives in the sense that they arise only from corresponding duties that the state enforces. So in simple words, duties precede rights, and rights justify duties.
III - The universal principle of justice 公平的普世原则
Hobbes argues that people will yield the freedom they possess in the state of nature to civil authority only if they believe it is in their best personal interest to do so. And thus justification for any state must be egoistic or individualistic in nature. To neutralize the downsides of egoistic and individualism, Hobbes suggests that the state will have the power necessary to constrain the universal tendency to selfish and unruly behavior only if the power and the authority of the sovereign are absolute.
Unlike Hobbes, Kant argues that the overriding characteristic of a good state is not prevailing individualism but justice. Justice is not guaranteed merely by the existence of absolute governmental power. As a consequence, he provides that, no matter what might originally motivate people to submit to an authority, the ultimate justification for a society of free citizens must be moral in nature. However, since moral convictions are normally rooted in different and even conflicting religious or other cultural norms, how might it be possible to generate a system of laws that would be morally acceptable to everyone? The source of ethical conflict under one regime lies in here.
Kant's resolution is the proposal of a pre-political principle of legislation, guided by reason alone. That principle is called the "Universial Principle of Justice”. It has a role of regulating the entire legal structure of society, and states that only those civil arrangements that allow the most freedom for everyone alike are just (or right). Stated as compulsory for the citizens, the “Universal Principle of Justice” dictates that one should behave in such a way that his or her choices are compatible with the greatest amount of external freedom for everyone else.
Such a principle underlies all the laws of the ideal state Kant envisioned and requires that the essential legal structure protect the maximum freedom of all the citizens to pursue their own happiness and well-being by limiting lawful actions to those to which all members of a state can consent. The principle also provides a foundation for the obligation of the people to live in a law-abiding fashion. In fact, later contents of this review will show that the Universal Principle of Justice in an enriched form is also the fundamental moral norm for our personal life as well.
Finally, since this principle is the basis for any morally acceptable code, Kant maintains that it should be recognized and respected by every political body and in every political system. But what can ultimately validate the universal binding force of this principle? To me, the answer is not the church, the king, nor the interests and feelings of individuals. The only viable resolution would be through force; and if force is the ultimate validation of civil authority, Hobbe's view would prevail, not Kant's.
IV - A system of laws 法律体系
To summarize, then as Kant sees it, a state can be based either on force, on the arbitrary desire of a despot, or on the rule of law （武治、人治和法治）. And the rule of law is based on respect for every citizen and on the rational ability of each person to be self-governing, to make decisions and to take responsibility for himself or herself.
Civic Duties as Negative Laws
Civic duties are fundamentally negative rules of cooperation, limiting how people may behave toward rules of cooperation, limiting how people may behave toward each other. Underlying the legal structure of such a state must be the Universal Principle of Justice, which requires that civil laws ban conduct that would make communal collaboration impossible and which insists that the most basic laws are those each person can agree to and obey.
Like the Universal Principle of Justice, substantive laws immediately derived from it must be recognizable a priori - that is by reason alone; Since they are laws that ordinary people are obligated to obey, they must be laws that everyone of average intelligence can recognize as right and binding on them.
Such fundamental laws do not tolerate any behavior that would infringe on “the person of others, on their status of equality, on their ability to be self-determining and to function responsibly and with dignity, or on anything to which they have title, such as property, as well as legislating the obligation of parents to care for their children”. Taken together, these subsidiary principles make up a system of what Kant called the laws of natural justice.
Legislations as Positive Laws
Due to the generality of such principles of law, there is a need for further, more define legislation, which Kant named "positive laws", having the force of law only after being enacted, to make matters of right more definite.
Positive laws specify what is required in matters that are otherwise arbitrary, pertaining, for example, to rules of the road and to procedures for acquiring and transferring property. They may vary and take into account of local customs, cultural beliefs, and economic factors, but they should no conflict with the Universal Principle of Justice.
Since the state has both the right and the duty to enact such laws, obedience to them should also be considered as a civic duty and, from the point of view of ethics, as a moral obligation as well. Few actual states will enact a system of laws that does not fail in one way or another to promote justice. In such cases, changes must be made, Kant wrote, but "not immediately or impetuously"
V - The Dignity of the Individual 个人的道德正直
Liberalism is committed to recognizing the dignity and worth of each and every human person. This concept may seem obviously right to us today, but at the time Kant was writing, it was a deeply radical proposal, opposed both to the then most prevalent kind of government, tyranny, as well as to the traditional conviction that what confers dignity on a person is only one's social position and rank - being royalty and nobility.
To the contrary, Kant argued, what gives everyone dignity is neither social status nor special talents nor accomplishments but the innate power of reason, the capacity of each individual to think and choose, not only to shape his or her own life but also to protect and promote reciprocal respect by enacting laws that can form the legal structure of life for everyone.
In this capacity, there are power and responsibilities arising from it. Kant called them to act on the Universal Principle of Justice "autonomy". In Kant's liberal political theory, the power of autonomy is what gives every person moral authority and status against the might of the state.
The basis of autonomy does not lie in each person's feelings, because desires and feelings are contingent and vary among people. They can not be a stable and reliable basis for universal rules of conduct able to sustain the fabric of society. In fact, according to Kant, appealing for practical guidance to anything that lies outside a person's reason, whatever it might be, is the very antithesis of autonomy, that is heteronomy. The institutions of society must be regulated by laws based on reason; only they will consistently protect freedom and ensure justice.
The notion of reciprocal respect underlies two further, coordinate principles of liberalism: equality and universality.
VI - Equality (Egalitarianism) 平等主义
The liberal state must also be egalitarian in the sense of recognizing that everyone has the same innate moral status. It means that the fundamental laws of the state should apply to everyone equally, with no exceptions made in favor of the wealthy or the powerful, the gifted or the educated. There should be no legally privileged class nor should there be any special protected interests.
Civil egalitarianism
Kant says that civil egalitarianism does not mean that government must try to ensure equality in possessions and power, any more than it should penalize those who happen to be physically or mentally superior in order to achieve what today is often referred to as "an even playing field."
Economic egalitariansim
Kant thinks that promotion of economic egalitariansim is, first of all, unworkable, because everyone has different and conflicting interests and aims; what is more important, the effort to achieve economic equality would also require continual violations of justice and civil liberty.
Political egalitarianism
What politcal egalitarianism require is equality of opportunity in the sense that everyone must be permitted to strive for and, if possible, attain whatever status to which he or she aspires within the opportunities of a free society: and no one may unlawfully hinder others' aspirations.
VII - Universalism 普世价值
The principle of equality also implies a principle of universality. Because justice demands a juridical condition that protects each person's freedom by protecting everyone's freedom, the administration of justice must be impersonal: or may not discriminate between persons on the basis of contingent particularities, including whatever special needs and interests different individuals may happen to have.
This characteristic runs directly contrary to a popular view today, the claim that cultural pluralism is more fundamental and more important than the moral unity of society as a whole.
VIII - Republicanism and the General Will 共和主义与共同意志
���
From Kant’s writing, I get the impression that he held that the proper form of government would be Republican.
In a tyranny or monarchy, the ultimate authority behind the law is supplied by sheer coercive power. Kant regarded the Universal Principle of Justice as providing the only alternative to the tyrannical exercise of power: the authority of government rests with the rational consent of the governed. And this principle entails the essence of republicanism.
To achieve that, Kant concluded that the ideal government must be a republic, in which the people obey laws they together could have legislated through their representatives. Such a government may have any of three forms of sovereignty - monarchy, aristocracy, or democracy- as long as the constitution is republican at least in sprits.
Only a government that is republican in spirit will respect all its citizens as free, equal, and autonomous individuals and will restrict civil law to universal negative principles of justice and will enact positive laws compatible with such principles, laws therefore that could be chosen by every autonomous person. Only a liberal republic will protect life and property and ensure an environment of reciprocal respect within which each person can lawfully pursue whatever activities he or she wishes, unimpeded by others.
Question 1:
A question that Kant attempted to answer is how to maintain a healthy representative / republican government. Kant held that what will keep a representative government from degenerating into a democratic tyranny that ignores the rights of minorities is the requirement that the executive and judicial branches be constitutionally insulated from direct popular pressures that could reintroduce arbitrary privileges on behalf of the majority at the expense of a minority - or vice versa.
Question 2:
Another question that Kant dealt with is what is the role of using coercive forces in a liberal society. Kant wrote that, given the selfishness typical of human nature, we can not count on" everyone always to respect the person and property of others”. (This piece will reveal itself as a true axiom, if readers have lived through the Cultural Revolution in China.) So the state may and often must use coercion to counteract such abuses.
The only way to use coercive forces to protect freedom can be shown to be just by an appeal to the ultimate norm of rationality, the principle of non-contradiction. He held, that whatever "counteracts the hindering of an effect promotes this effect and is consistent with it"; and so force used to protect freedom is consistent with everyone's harmonious exercise of freedom of behavior.
Thus, the conclusion to this question is that the force used to protect freedom, in Kant’s thoughts, is the only coercion that may be exercised against the citizens by the state.
IX - Kant's Moral Theory 康德道德理论与政治哲学思想的关系
The path of his political liberalism captures and reflects the main themes of his moral theory. Kant’s following arguments reveal his moral ideals:
1) Moral norms cannot be based on experience. In the foundations (378-91, 406-12), Kant focused on the need for a "pure moral philosophy completely cleansed of anything empirical”.
2) Morality shall be situated firmly within the public forum. There it consists fundamentally in standards of justice prohibiting policies that others can not rationally accept and therefore articulating norms fit to serve as laws within a state that respects all its citizens.
As a consequence, in the Foundations Kant's first formulation of the Categorical Imperative, the Formula of Universal Law, requires us to test proposed basic moral axioms by the criterion of whether they can serve as public laws of everyone.
3) Necessity is never an adequate excuse for violating moral standards, for they hold universally and absolutely.
4) Effectiveness is not a measure of moral characters, but Kant treated it as a prudential norm.
5) Kant learned from enlightenment that dignity of each person is his or her own reason. Each has the power of autonomy and therefore the right and the responsibility to conduct self-governing, in control of his or her own destiny.
June 14, 2012
C’est en écoutant une entrevue télévisée où Michel Onfray m’avait laissé perplexe en évoquant la « dimension politique » de la pensée kantienne et surtout l’influence de cette dernière sur des gens comme Eichmann que je me suis senti interpellé à lire ce livre puisque, selon Onfray, c’est Arendt qui aurait mise en lumière cette dimension politique et ce lien entre Kant et la dimension administrative des camps de concentration nazis.
Ces affirmations m’apparaissaient extraordinairement surprenantes étant donné que Kant n’a écrit que quelques opuscules sur le politique et bien souvent sur un ton ironique et badin qui fait contraste avec ses œuvres majeures. De plus, si certaines idées politiques kantiennes se démarquent de ces écrits mineurs au sein de son œuvre, ce sont avant tout la notion de cosmopolitisme, de citoyenneté du monde ou encore celle de la légalité dans la Métaphysique de moeurs.
C’est donc pour en avoir le cœur net que j’ai été lire ce livre d’Arendt consacré à la question du politique chez Kant.
Or, dès le premier paragraphe, c’est un tout autre son de cloche que l’on entend. Arendt écrit en effet, que « Kant...n’a jamais écrit une philosophie politique. » (p.21) De plus, la perspective d’Arendt n’entend pas non plus s’attarder aux rares écrits où la question est directement évoquée par Kant, mais explorer plutôt la Critique de la faculté de juger en partant de l’idée que le jugement est au fondement de l’activité politique et que Kant aurait pu, sinon peut-être du, aborder la question dans cette optique. C’est ainsi l’absence de capacité de juger d’Eichmann qui en aurait fait un instrument aussi parfait pour le nazisme.
Bref, cette réflexion brillante (et malheureusement inachevée car Arendt est décédée alors qu’elle travaillait sur le sujet) concerne avant tout le jugement et n’a rien à voir avec le nazisme proprement dit, hormis l’exemple d’Eichmann et autres collaborationnistes qu’Arendt tente de comprendre en tant qu’ils seraient dénués de faculté de jugement.
De plus, il faut comprendre que ce travail ne se fait pas dans une perspective herméneutique propres aux exégèses académiques, mais plutôt à des fins d'appropriation philosophique. L’avertissement de Heidegger dans l’avant-propos de la 2e édition de son Kant et le problème de la métaphysique, selon lequel « [u]n tel dialogue de pensée entre des penseurs est [...] soumis à d’autres lois que les méthodes de la philologie historique, dont la tâche est différente » (p.55) me semble donc aussi parfaitement approprié à ce livre. Dans les deux livres, on trouve en effet très clairement les lignes de préoccupations d’Heidegger de d’Arendt, mais, malgré de multiples allusions et citations, assez peu de Kant.
Ces affirmations m’apparaissaient extraordinairement surprenantes étant donné que Kant n’a écrit que quelques opuscules sur le politique et bien souvent sur un ton ironique et badin qui fait contraste avec ses œuvres majeures. De plus, si certaines idées politiques kantiennes se démarquent de ces écrits mineurs au sein de son œuvre, ce sont avant tout la notion de cosmopolitisme, de citoyenneté du monde ou encore celle de la légalité dans la Métaphysique de moeurs.
C’est donc pour en avoir le cœur net que j’ai été lire ce livre d’Arendt consacré à la question du politique chez Kant.
Or, dès le premier paragraphe, c’est un tout autre son de cloche que l’on entend. Arendt écrit en effet, que « Kant...n’a jamais écrit une philosophie politique. » (p.21) De plus, la perspective d’Arendt n’entend pas non plus s’attarder aux rares écrits où la question est directement évoquée par Kant, mais explorer plutôt la Critique de la faculté de juger en partant de l’idée que le jugement est au fondement de l’activité politique et que Kant aurait pu, sinon peut-être du, aborder la question dans cette optique. C’est ainsi l’absence de capacité de juger d’Eichmann qui en aurait fait un instrument aussi parfait pour le nazisme.
Bref, cette réflexion brillante (et malheureusement inachevée car Arendt est décédée alors qu’elle travaillait sur le sujet) concerne avant tout le jugement et n’a rien à voir avec le nazisme proprement dit, hormis l’exemple d’Eichmann et autres collaborationnistes qu’Arendt tente de comprendre en tant qu’ils seraient dénués de faculté de jugement.
De plus, il faut comprendre que ce travail ne se fait pas dans une perspective herméneutique propres aux exégèses académiques, mais plutôt à des fins d'appropriation philosophique. L’avertissement de Heidegger dans l’avant-propos de la 2e édition de son Kant et le problème de la métaphysique, selon lequel « [u]n tel dialogue de pensée entre des penseurs est [...] soumis à d’autres lois que les méthodes de la philologie historique, dont la tâche est différente » (p.55) me semble donc aussi parfaitement approprié à ce livre. Dans les deux livres, on trouve en effet très clairement les lignes de préoccupations d’Heidegger de d’Arendt, mais, malgré de multiples allusions et citations, assez peu de Kant.
July 20, 2021
A última lição valeu a quarta estrela
September 5, 2025
Rather misleadingly titled, this volume stitches together the eponymous Kant lectures that Arendt delivered in 1970, excerpts from two of Arendt's other writings, and the lengthy interpretive essay by the editor. Arendt never lived to write the third volume of her trilogy The Life of the Mind, which was to be titled Judging. This volume is meant to partially fill the gap, collecting what Arendt did write about the faculty of judgment and then (in the interpretive essay) making an effort of synthesis/extrapolation. All the texts contained here are dense and sometimes obscure, but worthwhile for deepening our understanding of Arendt's mature thought.
Arendt is known for her defense of politics—the crowning activity of the vita activa, understood as words and deeds performed before others in the space of appearances—over against the elevation of the vita contemplativa by the Western philosophical tradition. It's tempting to read Arendt as a romantic who idolizes the Greek polis and ends up with a too idealistic, aesthetic view of political action. But this isn't really fair, especially when we take into account Arendt's later works. Arendt was deeply concerned with the role of the spectator who observes and judges everything that takes place in the political realm. In fact, it is the spectators, not the actors, who constitute the public realm. Only the Spectator-Judge who stands removed from the drama can tell a story about it, rendering the actors' deeds meaningful and ultimately reconciling human beings to their world. As Pythagoras said (and Arendt liked to quote), life is like a festival where "the best people come as spectators."
In the lectures, Arendt draws on Kant's account of judgment in his third critique—which isn't about politics, but aesthetics. Yet Arendt reads The Critique of Judgment as the seed of Kant's unwritten political philosophy. For Arendt, "taste" or aesthetic judgment and political judgment are closely related, both suspended between the outer world of appearance/experience and the inner world of reflection. Both kinds of judgments pertain to our existence as social creatures because they are inherently intersubjective: we court the favor of the universal human community in making them, and this requires us to adopt an "enlarged mentality" that takes into account the whole range of particular human perspectives. For Arendt, judgment is the faculty by which the spectator (poet, historian, or storyteller) rescues particulars from historical oblivion, honoring them and bestowing meaning on them. This enterprise is not just social or political, but deeply existential. In making judgments, we rise above the tyranny of History to re-collect and redeem the past. This alone, in Arendt's final analysis, is the condition under which we can embrace our freedom in the world of time.
Arendt is known for her defense of politics—the crowning activity of the vita activa, understood as words and deeds performed before others in the space of appearances—over against the elevation of the vita contemplativa by the Western philosophical tradition. It's tempting to read Arendt as a romantic who idolizes the Greek polis and ends up with a too idealistic, aesthetic view of political action. But this isn't really fair, especially when we take into account Arendt's later works. Arendt was deeply concerned with the role of the spectator who observes and judges everything that takes place in the political realm. In fact, it is the spectators, not the actors, who constitute the public realm. Only the Spectator-Judge who stands removed from the drama can tell a story about it, rendering the actors' deeds meaningful and ultimately reconciling human beings to their world. As Pythagoras said (and Arendt liked to quote), life is like a festival where "the best people come as spectators."
In the lectures, Arendt draws on Kant's account of judgment in his third critique—which isn't about politics, but aesthetics. Yet Arendt reads The Critique of Judgment as the seed of Kant's unwritten political philosophy. For Arendt, "taste" or aesthetic judgment and political judgment are closely related, both suspended between the outer world of appearance/experience and the inner world of reflection. Both kinds of judgments pertain to our existence as social creatures because they are inherently intersubjective: we court the favor of the universal human community in making them, and this requires us to adopt an "enlarged mentality" that takes into account the whole range of particular human perspectives. For Arendt, judgment is the faculty by which the spectator (poet, historian, or storyteller) rescues particulars from historical oblivion, honoring them and bestowing meaning on them. This enterprise is not just social or political, but deeply existential. In making judgments, we rise above the tyranny of History to re-collect and redeem the past. This alone, in Arendt's final analysis, is the condition under which we can embrace our freedom in the world of time.
March 18, 2024
As mere lecture notes, one can hardly complain too much. Certainly food for thought, and also some obvious connections to Heidegger’s reading of Kant, too (which is hardly surprising).
Read
October 2, 2020Kant’ın Siyaset Felsefesi Üzerine Dersler-Arendt derleyen ve yorumlayan: Ronald Beiner
Aşağıdaki notlar önce Beiner’den sonra Arendt’ten seçtiğim kısımlardan oluşmaktadır.
Arendt’in Kantçı ‘anlama yetisi’ (Verstand) terimi understanding terimiyle değil, intellect olarak çevirir/kullanır Arendt.
Sf15 Beiner “İnsanlık Durumu’nun en önemli tezi, modernliğin insani deneyimleri giderek artan bir şekilde öznelleştirdiği ve böylece insanları en hayati gereksinimlerinden mahrum ettiğidir.”
Sf16 Öznelleşmeyle mücadele konusunda bir başka önemli kaynak Heidegger’dir.
Sf21 Arendt Birinci Ders’in sonunda, çok yerinde bir gözlemle, Kantın eleştiri öncesi dönemde ahlak felsefesiyle eleştiriyi birleştirdiğini, eleştirel felsefesindeyse bu ikisini birbirinden kesinkes ayırdığını belirtir. Kantın olgunluk döneminde ahlakı beğeniden koparmak suretiyle aklın alanına sıkı sıkıya yerleştirdiği ve böylece kendini, beğeniyi ahlakla kaynaştıran Shaftesbury gibi İngiliz ahlaki duyu filozoflarından ayırmak istediği doğrudur. (Beiner)
Sf22 Öyle görünüyor ki Arendt, Pratik Aklın Eleştirisinin makul bir etik teorisi sunamadığı kanısında (Beiner)
Sf24 “Arendt’in, Kantın estetiğiyle yapmak istediği şey; John Rawls’un Kantın ahlak felsefesiyle yaptığına benzer: Estetiği transandental boyutlarından arındırmak ve ondan bir siyaset felsefesi çıkarmak” Beiner
Sf27 Kant derslerini, Strauss-Kojeve tartışmasına verilmiş dolaylı bir cevap olarak okumak mümkün; yani Strauss’un Ksenophon ve Platon’u ile Kojeve’in Hegel’ine karşı, Arendt’in Kantı 3. Bir seçenek olarak sunduğu bir çalışma olarak.
Arendt, Kantın düşüncesine içkin olan bireycilik sorununu, allgemein kavramını evrensel yerine ‘genel’ diye çevirerek aşmaya çalışır.
Bundan sonrası Arendt’in notlarından oluşuyor.
Sf41 Kant hiçbir zaman bir siyaset felsefesi kaleme almadı.
Sf44 18.yyın egemen kavramı olan ilerleme, Kant için melankolik bir mefhumdur.
Sf61 bir insanın başına gelebilecek en büyük talihsizlik kendini hor görmektir. Başka birinin ona duyduğu saygıyı değil de ‘özsaygımı [Selbstbiligung] yitirmek başıma gelecek en büyük kötülük olurdu, der bir yerde Kant.
Sf65 Felsefenin insanlara her şeyden önce nasıl öleceklerini öğrettiğine dair yaygın Roma ve geç antik dönem anlayışı, onun bayağılaştırılmış biçimidir. (Bu, Yunan’a yabancıdır: Yunanistandan ithal edilen felsefe, Roma’da yaşlıların işiydi; oysa Yunanistanda tam tersine gençler içindi.)
Selbstdenken ‘kendi aklını kullanmak’
Sf79 Kant için eleştiribir yanda dogmatik metafizikle, öte yanda da şüphecilikle ikili bir karşıtlık içindedir. Biyografik olarak söylersek: Kant için eleştiri, hem eski metafizik okullarını- Wolff ve Leibniz- hem de onu dogmatik uykusundan uyandıran Hume’un yeni şüpheciliğini aşmasının yolu oldu.
Sf87 Sokratik tarz, Kant açısından başka bir sebeple de önemliydi. Sokrates, hiçbir cemaatin üyesi değildi ve kendisi bir okul kurmamıştı. Pazar yerine gelen herkesi kabul ettiği için filozof denince akla gelen kişi olmuştu. Okullar ve cemaatler (Kantçı tabirle) aydınlanmamışlardır çünkü kurucularının öğretilerine bağlıdırlar.
Sf129 İmgelem, yani burada olmayanı buradaymış gibi sunma yetisi
Sf138 Kanta göre ortak duyu, sensu privatus’tan farklı olarak bir topluluk duyusudur, sensus communis’tir.
Sf179 Kant için ‘yargı’ teması ‘pratik akıl’dan çok daha büyük bir önem taşır. Yargı Yetisinin Eleştirisinde özgürlük iradenin değil, imgelem gücünün öncülü olarak tanımlanmıştır.
Sf183 Arendt, phronesis ve sophia arasındaki Aristotelesçi ayrıma başvurur. 2.si ortak duyuyu aşma çabasındadır; 1.siyse kaynağını, “dünyanın müşterek doğasını önümüze seren”, “kişiye kamusal alanda, müşterek dünyada konumlanma imkanı veren” ortak duyudan alır.
Sf208/9 Kanta göre estetik beğeni, ilgiden bağımsızdır; pratikten ziyade temaşaya dayalıdır, heteronom değil otonomdur.
Sf217 İlerleme fikrinin kensisi- şayet bu, koşullarda bir değişim veya dünyanın iyileştirilmesinin ötesinde bir anlam taşıyorsa- Kant’ın insan onuru anlayışıyla çelişmektedir. İlerlemeye inanmak, insan onuruna aykırıdır.
1918-19 Alman ve Bavyera Räte’leri, 1956 Macar isyanı gibi Arendt’in anmaktan çok hoşlandığı muhtelif deneyimler
Hegel Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht (dünya tarihi, dünya mahkemesidir) diyordu.
Yaşlı Cato ‘Victix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni’ (kazanılan dava tanrıları, kaybedilense Cato’yu memnun eder) diyordu.
Sf226 (Kantta)bütün insanlar 2 temel yetiye sahiptir: anlama yetisi (intellect) ve imgelem yetisi. İmgelem yetisi özgürlükle, anlama yetisiyse kurala-uygunlukla örtüşür.
Aşağıdaki notlar önce Beiner’den sonra Arendt’ten seçtiğim kısımlardan oluşmaktadır.
Arendt’in Kantçı ‘anlama yetisi’ (Verstand) terimi understanding terimiyle değil, intellect olarak çevirir/kullanır Arendt.
Sf15 Beiner “İnsanlık Durumu’nun en önemli tezi, modernliğin insani deneyimleri giderek artan bir şekilde öznelleştirdiği ve böylece insanları en hayati gereksinimlerinden mahrum ettiğidir.”
Sf16 Öznelleşmeyle mücadele konusunda bir başka önemli kaynak Heidegger’dir.
Sf21 Arendt Birinci Ders’in sonunda, çok yerinde bir gözlemle, Kantın eleştiri öncesi dönemde ahlak felsefesiyle eleştiriyi birleştirdiğini, eleştirel felsefesindeyse bu ikisini birbirinden kesinkes ayırdığını belirtir. Kantın olgunluk döneminde ahlakı beğeniden koparmak suretiyle aklın alanına sıkı sıkıya yerleştirdiği ve böylece kendini, beğeniyi ahlakla kaynaştıran Shaftesbury gibi İngiliz ahlaki duyu filozoflarından ayırmak istediği doğrudur. (Beiner)
Sf22 Öyle görünüyor ki Arendt, Pratik Aklın Eleştirisinin makul bir etik teorisi sunamadığı kanısında (Beiner)
Sf24 “Arendt’in, Kantın estetiğiyle yapmak istediği şey; John Rawls’un Kantın ahlak felsefesiyle yaptığına benzer: Estetiği transandental boyutlarından arındırmak ve ondan bir siyaset felsefesi çıkarmak” Beiner
Sf27 Kant derslerini, Strauss-Kojeve tartışmasına verilmiş dolaylı bir cevap olarak okumak mümkün; yani Strauss’un Ksenophon ve Platon’u ile Kojeve’in Hegel’ine karşı, Arendt’in Kantı 3. Bir seçenek olarak sunduğu bir çalışma olarak.
Arendt, Kantın düşüncesine içkin olan bireycilik sorununu, allgemein kavramını evrensel yerine ‘genel’ diye çevirerek aşmaya çalışır.
Bundan sonrası Arendt’in notlarından oluşuyor.
Sf41 Kant hiçbir zaman bir siyaset felsefesi kaleme almadı.
Sf44 18.yyın egemen kavramı olan ilerleme, Kant için melankolik bir mefhumdur.
Sf61 bir insanın başına gelebilecek en büyük talihsizlik kendini hor görmektir. Başka birinin ona duyduğu saygıyı değil de ‘özsaygımı [Selbstbiligung] yitirmek başıma gelecek en büyük kötülük olurdu, der bir yerde Kant.
Sf65 Felsefenin insanlara her şeyden önce nasıl öleceklerini öğrettiğine dair yaygın Roma ve geç antik dönem anlayışı, onun bayağılaştırılmış biçimidir. (Bu, Yunan’a yabancıdır: Yunanistandan ithal edilen felsefe, Roma’da yaşlıların işiydi; oysa Yunanistanda tam tersine gençler içindi.)
Selbstdenken ‘kendi aklını kullanmak’
Sf79 Kant için eleştiribir yanda dogmatik metafizikle, öte yanda da şüphecilikle ikili bir karşıtlık içindedir. Biyografik olarak söylersek: Kant için eleştiri, hem eski metafizik okullarını- Wolff ve Leibniz- hem de onu dogmatik uykusundan uyandıran Hume’un yeni şüpheciliğini aşmasının yolu oldu.
Sf87 Sokratik tarz, Kant açısından başka bir sebeple de önemliydi. Sokrates, hiçbir cemaatin üyesi değildi ve kendisi bir okul kurmamıştı. Pazar yerine gelen herkesi kabul ettiği için filozof denince akla gelen kişi olmuştu. Okullar ve cemaatler (Kantçı tabirle) aydınlanmamışlardır çünkü kurucularının öğretilerine bağlıdırlar.
Sf129 İmgelem, yani burada olmayanı buradaymış gibi sunma yetisi
Sf138 Kanta göre ortak duyu, sensu privatus’tan farklı olarak bir topluluk duyusudur, sensus communis’tir.
Sf179 Kant için ‘yargı’ teması ‘pratik akıl’dan çok daha büyük bir önem taşır. Yargı Yetisinin Eleştirisinde özgürlük iradenin değil, imgelem gücünün öncülü olarak tanımlanmıştır.
Sf183 Arendt, phronesis ve sophia arasındaki Aristotelesçi ayrıma başvurur. 2.si ortak duyuyu aşma çabasındadır; 1.siyse kaynağını, “dünyanın müşterek doğasını önümüze seren”, “kişiye kamusal alanda, müşterek dünyada konumlanma imkanı veren” ortak duyudan alır.
Sf208/9 Kanta göre estetik beğeni, ilgiden bağımsızdır; pratikten ziyade temaşaya dayalıdır, heteronom değil otonomdur.
Sf217 İlerleme fikrinin kensisi- şayet bu, koşullarda bir değişim veya dünyanın iyileştirilmesinin ötesinde bir anlam taşıyorsa- Kant’ın insan onuru anlayışıyla çelişmektedir. İlerlemeye inanmak, insan onuruna aykırıdır.
1918-19 Alman ve Bavyera Räte’leri, 1956 Macar isyanı gibi Arendt’in anmaktan çok hoşlandığı muhtelif deneyimler
Hegel Die Weltgeschichte ist das Weltgericht (dünya tarihi, dünya mahkemesidir) diyordu.
Yaşlı Cato ‘Victix causa deis placuit, sed victa Catoni’ (kazanılan dava tanrıları, kaybedilense Cato’yu memnun eder) diyordu.
Sf226 (Kantta)bütün insanlar 2 temel yetiye sahiptir: anlama yetisi (intellect) ve imgelem yetisi. İmgelem yetisi özgürlükle, anlama yetisiyse kurala-uygunlukla örtüşür.
April 5, 2012
Hannah Arendt dissects specific texts of Kant's to create a political philosophy in her lectures on Kant. At times its quite good; at other parts I have no clue what the hell is going on. I enjoyed part 2, interpretive essay; because I understood most of it and wasn't as lost in part 1. Not that anyone cares...
I have posted the many many quotes I enjoyed from the book because I know you will not read this book (you have an attention span of a three year old and love everything convenient). So here is a summary of the book in nice, easily digestible quotes. Your welcome... you lazy fuck.
"Do not take this whole realm of human affairs too seriously"
"Philosophy by its very nature is something esoteric which is not made for the mob nor is it capable of being prepared for the mob; philosophy is philosophy only to the extent that it is the very opposite of the intellect and even more the opposite of common sense, by which we understand the local and temporary limitations of generations; in its relation to this common sense, the world of philosophy as such is a world turned upside down."
And the polemical point is again against "the arrogant pretensions of the Schools," which claim to be the sole "possessors of truths," truths that are not only "matters of general human concern" but also "within the reach of the great mass of men- ever to be held in the highest esteem by us. So much for the universities."
Kant believes "enlightenment and revolution belong together."
"it is clear that the art of critical thinking always has political implications...critical thought is in principle anti-authoritarian"
"Thinking, as Kant agreed with Plato, is the silent dialogue of myself with myself, and that thinking is a solitary business...is one thing on which all thinkers would agree."
"Kant knew quite well that a world government would be the worst tyranny imaginable"
"Nations engaged in a war are like two drunkards bludgeoning each other in a china shop."
"In Marx himself, on the other hand, the classless society and the realm of freedom, based on abundance, will result in everyone's indulging in some sort of hobby."
"Only in Marxian utopianism was freedom in this sense of the genuinely new not abandoned."
"the inherited wisdom of the past fails us as soon as we try to apply it honestly to the central political experiences of our own time."
"But confronted by the unique horror of totalitarianism, we suddenly discover "the fact that we have lost our tools of understanding. Our quest for meaning is at the same time prompted and frustrated by our inability to originate meaning."
"the abandonment of culture as an exchange value and the substitution for it of a concern with something of a wholly different nature: entertainment. (Mass man is defined by "his capacity for consumption, accompanied by inability to judge, or even to distinguish, as well as fateful alienation from the world"
"Consumer's society cannot possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong exclusively to the space of worldly appearances, because its central attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to everything it touches"
"The common element of connecting art and politics is that they both are phenomena of the public world"
"every claim in the sphere of human affairs to an absolute truth, whose validity needs no support from the side of opinion, strikes at the very roots of all politics and all governments."
"the more people's standpoints I have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and the better I can imagine how I would feel and think if I were in their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative thinking and the more valid my final conclusions, my opinion."
"In times of historical crisis, thinking ceases to be marginal affair in political matters because those who possess the capacity for critical thought are not swept away unthinkingly, like everyone else"
"For instance, for those accustomed to the ordinary brutality and oppression of conventional tyrannies, despotisms, and dictarships, it was difficult to recognize in twentieth-century totalitarianism something entirely novel and unprecedented. It requires a special quality of judgment to discriminate between what we are used to and what is genuinely new and different."
"The real danger in contemporary societies is that the bureaucratic, technocratic, and depoliticized structures of modern life encourage indifference and increasingly render men less discriminating, less capable of critical thinking, and less inclined to assume responsibility."
"that we will get an ultimate; which from above will decide for us...if this is the case, then we are lost. Because this actually demands that a new god will appear."
"Part of wisdom is knowledge of ignorance. The Socratic attitude is to know that one does not know. And this realization of our ignorance can be of great practical importance in the exercise of the power of judgment, which is after all related to action in the political sphere, into future action, and far-reaching action."
"Thinking is Socratic, that is to say negative; it destroys unexamined assumptions rather than discover truths."
"Life, said Pythagoras, is like a festival; just as some come to the festival to compete, some to ply their trade, but the best people come as spectators, so in life the slavish men go hunting for fame or gain, the philosophers for truth."---Diogenes Laertius
"But in Kant, also, you will find repeatedly the notion of how necessary war, catastrophes, and plain evil or pain are for the production of 'culture.' Without them, men would sink back into the brute state of mere animal satisfaction"
"The public realm is constituted by the critics and the spectators, not by the actors or the makers."
"He who reviews his day's and life's work when he is weary and worn out, generally arrives at a melancholy conclusion: this, however, is not the fault of day and life, but of weariness. In the midst of our work, and even our pleasures, we usually find no leisure to muse over life and existence: but should this for once actually happen, we should no longer concede the point to him who was waiting for the seventh day and for rest to find all things in existence very beautiful-- he had missed the right moment"--- Nietzsche
I have posted the many many quotes I enjoyed from the book because I know you will not read this book (you have an attention span of a three year old and love everything convenient). So here is a summary of the book in nice, easily digestible quotes. Your welcome... you lazy fuck.
"Do not take this whole realm of human affairs too seriously"
"Philosophy by its very nature is something esoteric which is not made for the mob nor is it capable of being prepared for the mob; philosophy is philosophy only to the extent that it is the very opposite of the intellect and even more the opposite of common sense, by which we understand the local and temporary limitations of generations; in its relation to this common sense, the world of philosophy as such is a world turned upside down."
And the polemical point is again against "the arrogant pretensions of the Schools," which claim to be the sole "possessors of truths," truths that are not only "matters of general human concern" but also "within the reach of the great mass of men- ever to be held in the highest esteem by us. So much for the universities."
Kant believes "enlightenment and revolution belong together."
"it is clear that the art of critical thinking always has political implications...critical thought is in principle anti-authoritarian"
"Thinking, as Kant agreed with Plato, is the silent dialogue of myself with myself, and that thinking is a solitary business...is one thing on which all thinkers would agree."
"Kant knew quite well that a world government would be the worst tyranny imaginable"
"Nations engaged in a war are like two drunkards bludgeoning each other in a china shop."
"In Marx himself, on the other hand, the classless society and the realm of freedom, based on abundance, will result in everyone's indulging in some sort of hobby."
"Only in Marxian utopianism was freedom in this sense of the genuinely new not abandoned."
"the inherited wisdom of the past fails us as soon as we try to apply it honestly to the central political experiences of our own time."
"But confronted by the unique horror of totalitarianism, we suddenly discover "the fact that we have lost our tools of understanding. Our quest for meaning is at the same time prompted and frustrated by our inability to originate meaning."
"the abandonment of culture as an exchange value and the substitution for it of a concern with something of a wholly different nature: entertainment. (Mass man is defined by "his capacity for consumption, accompanied by inability to judge, or even to distinguish, as well as fateful alienation from the world"
"Consumer's society cannot possibly know how to take care of a world and the things which belong exclusively to the space of worldly appearances, because its central attitude toward all objects, the attitude of consumption, spells ruin to everything it touches"
"The common element of connecting art and politics is that they both are phenomena of the public world"
"every claim in the sphere of human affairs to an absolute truth, whose validity needs no support from the side of opinion, strikes at the very roots of all politics and all governments."
"the more people's standpoints I have present in my mind while I am pondering a given issue, and the better I can imagine how I would feel and think if I were in their place, the stronger will be my capacity for representative thinking and the more valid my final conclusions, my opinion."
"In times of historical crisis, thinking ceases to be marginal affair in political matters because those who possess the capacity for critical thought are not swept away unthinkingly, like everyone else"
"For instance, for those accustomed to the ordinary brutality and oppression of conventional tyrannies, despotisms, and dictarships, it was difficult to recognize in twentieth-century totalitarianism something entirely novel and unprecedented. It requires a special quality of judgment to discriminate between what we are used to and what is genuinely new and different."
"The real danger in contemporary societies is that the bureaucratic, technocratic, and depoliticized structures of modern life encourage indifference and increasingly render men less discriminating, less capable of critical thinking, and less inclined to assume responsibility."
"that we will get an ultimate; which from above will decide for us...if this is the case, then we are lost. Because this actually demands that a new god will appear."
"Part of wisdom is knowledge of ignorance. The Socratic attitude is to know that one does not know. And this realization of our ignorance can be of great practical importance in the exercise of the power of judgment, which is after all related to action in the political sphere, into future action, and far-reaching action."
"Thinking is Socratic, that is to say negative; it destroys unexamined assumptions rather than discover truths."
"Life, said Pythagoras, is like a festival; just as some come to the festival to compete, some to ply their trade, but the best people come as spectators, so in life the slavish men go hunting for fame or gain, the philosophers for truth."---Diogenes Laertius
"But in Kant, also, you will find repeatedly the notion of how necessary war, catastrophes, and plain evil or pain are for the production of 'culture.' Without them, men would sink back into the brute state of mere animal satisfaction"
"The public realm is constituted by the critics and the spectators, not by the actors or the makers."
"He who reviews his day's and life's work when he is weary and worn out, generally arrives at a melancholy conclusion: this, however, is not the fault of day and life, but of weariness. In the midst of our work, and even our pleasures, we usually find no leisure to muse over life and existence: but should this for once actually happen, we should no longer concede the point to him who was waiting for the seventh day and for rest to find all things in existence very beautiful-- he had missed the right moment"--- Nietzsche
November 4, 2015
عند تناول مؤلفات حنة آرندت في مسألة الحكم، تعترضنا عقبة واضحة: هناك نظريتان مختلفتان، وهذا الكتاب يوضح الفارق الرقيق بينهما، وهو تناول الحكم من جهة الحياة العملية و من جهة المتفرج. كل متابع لفكر حنة آرندت يعرف أن نظرية الحكم كانت تستطيع أن تكون تتويجا لمسيرتها، وحلا للمأزق الذي وصلت إليه في كتبها السابقة حول حرية الإرادة (وخاصة محاكمة آيخمان)، لكنها ماتت قبل إنهاء الكتاب حول الحكم ة الفلسفة السسياسية لكانط. ما نقرأه في هذا الكتاب هو مجموعة من المحاضرات و المحاولات التي ألقتها حنة آرندت دون أن تصوغها في كتاب كامل، و هذا مؤسف جدا
على كل حال، تبقى المطالعة مشيقة، خاصة مع تأويل ألمعي و جديد على الفلسفة لكانط يدخل بعدا سياسيا على فلسفته و يسمح بإدخال الحكم معيارا إيتيقيا لمقاومة الممارسات المرفوضة
على كل حال، تبقى المطالعة مشيقة، خاصة مع تأويل ألمعي و جديد على الفلسفة لكانط يدخل بعدا سياسيا على فلسفته و يسمح بإدخال الحكم معيارا إيتيقيا لمقاومة الممارسات المرفوضة
April 9, 2011
This is a published series of lectures. As such, it is an accessible discussion of Kant's political theory, but particuarlly as it pertains to judgment and the relationship between art and politics in Kant's theoretical framework. As always, Arendt is rigorous and insightful.
April 7, 2015
"A la question 'Pourquoi y a-t-il des hommes plutôt que l'Homme ?', Kant aurait répondu : 'Afin qu'ils puissent se parler les uns aux autres.'"
September 3, 2025
Perhaps a slightly unconventional starting point for aesthetics, I would argue this is one of the richest readings of Kant out there. in contrast to a traditional introduction to aesthetics - often focusing on beauty, art, or the philosophy of art objects - Arendt treats aesthetic judgment as a way of engaging with the world.
Arendt takes Kant’s Critique of Judgment and flips it into a political key. For her, aesthetic judgment - the way we call something “beautiful” and expect others to agree - offers a model for politics itself: persuasive, communal, and rooted in shared imagination rather than hard rules.
This isn’t an easy read (I believe it’s based on lecture notes and can feel fragmentary at times), but it’s rewarding. While her reinterpretation is certainly creative, it could be argued her reading of Kant slightly "cherry picked" or at least selective; she emphasises the aspects that support her political project, sometimes at the expense of Kant’s original philosophical nuances. You don’t need to have read Kant to follow her main arguments, though if you’re so inclined, I would recommend reading "Critique of Judgment, Part I – Analytic of the Beautiful, Sections 1-5" (roughly the first third of the book). this focuses on the sections on aesthetic judgment, reflective judgment, and sensus communis will make her political reading much richer. Still, Arendt shows that aesthetics isn’t just about art - it’s about how we live together in a plural world.
Arendt takes Kant’s Critique of Judgment and flips it into a political key. For her, aesthetic judgment - the way we call something “beautiful” and expect others to agree - offers a model for politics itself: persuasive, communal, and rooted in shared imagination rather than hard rules.
This isn’t an easy read (I believe it’s based on lecture notes and can feel fragmentary at times), but it’s rewarding. While her reinterpretation is certainly creative, it could be argued her reading of Kant slightly "cherry picked" or at least selective; she emphasises the aspects that support her political project, sometimes at the expense of Kant’s original philosophical nuances. You don’t need to have read Kant to follow her main arguments, though if you’re so inclined, I would recommend reading "Critique of Judgment, Part I – Analytic of the Beautiful, Sections 1-5" (roughly the first third of the book). this focuses on the sections on aesthetic judgment, reflective judgment, and sensus communis will make her political reading much richer. Still, Arendt shows that aesthetics isn’t just about art - it’s about how we live together in a plural world.
December 12, 2019
As Arendt says Kant did not write about politics that much. Therefore, this book didn't meet my expectations. Most of the narration is about how Arendt perceives politics rather than Kant had thought about it.
What paid my attraction most is the importance that Kant gave progress. For him, history makes progress by the reason that always reaching a point and conflicting with itself.
Each -autonomous- individual is an end in itself, nobody is a tool for the other to flourish.
Socrates brought philosophy from heaven to the earth.
In terms of politics, he is for cosmopolitanism not particularism.
Man creates himself in his own image in the person of his object.
So, our identities are socially or politically constituted.
Before experince we have got some knowledge; it is a priori and its categories are analytical therefore universal.
After perceiving knowledge we obtain a posteriori knowledge; its categories are synthetic.
Kant believes that he carried out a revolution in philosophy the same as Copenicus did in science.
Instead of subject-centric way of thinking he puts object in the center of the thinking.
Kant, in this way, reconciles empricism and rationalism and makes philosophy its mediator.
What paid my attraction most is the importance that Kant gave progress. For him, history makes progress by the reason that always reaching a point and conflicting with itself.
Each -autonomous- individual is an end in itself, nobody is a tool for the other to flourish.
Socrates brought philosophy from heaven to the earth.
In terms of politics, he is for cosmopolitanism not particularism.
Man creates himself in his own image in the person of his object.
So, our identities are socially or politically constituted.
Before experince we have got some knowledge; it is a priori and its categories are analytical therefore universal.
After perceiving knowledge we obtain a posteriori knowledge; its categories are synthetic.
Kant believes that he carried out a revolution in philosophy the same as Copenicus did in science.
Instead of subject-centric way of thinking he puts object in the center of the thinking.
Kant, in this way, reconciles empricism and rationalism and makes philosophy its mediator.
January 22, 2021
This is not a terribly easy read. It is not because Arendt is very difficult to follow pers se, but because of the format. The book is an edited version of Arendt's lecture notes and it would have been good to have some thoughts expanded. Arendt argues for a long time why it is appropriate to construct a political philosophy by Kant, but I would have liked to know more about the content of that philosophy. Of course it is about judgement, but that is also somewhat underdeveloped here (as every commentator mentions). It is great to have the clarifying essay in the end.
March 22, 2021
You would be hard pressed to argue that this is a book about Kant - it is in name-only. Arendt's interpretation of Kant is, well, Arendtian. Which is not a bad thing. Arendt is a deeply original thinker and to work Kant's Critique of Aesthetic Judgement the way she does takes some serious imagination. Short, though at times very dense, it's a worthwhile read. The interpretive essay is a good start if you find the language inaccessible.
May 7, 2020
Well written, but it does not give much substance. It points in the direction of Kant being a cosmopolitan and somewhat pacifist. Maybe even this goes beyond Arendt's description of Kant's political philosophy.
April 6, 2022
Kant'ın aslında siyaset üzerine bir çalışması yok. Hannah Arendt, diğer çalışmalarından yola çıkarak Kant'ın siyaset felsefesini aydınlatmaya çalışıyor. Arendt'in diğer kitaplarına göre daha anlaşılır ve akıcı bir kitap olmuş.
March 18, 2024
Arendt is amazing!! Although I'm particularly interested in political philosophy, I can understand the connections Arendt establishes between aesthetics and political philosophy. And I really like her arguments about the audience.
Read
January 2, 2025I tried but could not get through this book, probably because of (my) life as it currently is. She was brilliant, I've read lots of her writing, including some of her books; but this time I could not do it.
November 30, 2020
Sometimes it's hard to distinguish
1. What she is saying Kant said,
2. Her interpretation of what she says Kant says,
3. What her own beliefs are.
Still, this was very good.
1. What she is saying Kant said,
2. Her interpretation of what she says Kant says,
3. What her own beliefs are.
Still, this was very good.
November 29, 2021
Really engaging and provocative, especially for thinking about how we approach our relating between universalising and particularity
June 5, 2022
Beautiful, profound, touching. Amazing use of Kant.
May 2, 2025
Disappointingly uncritical of Kant.
August 22, 2025
good intro into the topic of imagination
December 21, 2015
Un libro que intenta llenar el vacio de un libro que no se escribió (de Arendt) sobre otro libro que no se escribió (de Kant). Arendt intenta reconstruir en sus conferencias una filosofía política de Kant, no centrada en los actores políticos sino en los expectadores políticos (ej. los historiadores, los publicistas y lectores informados, etc.) pues sostiene que la relevancia de los acontecimiento políticos es mayor como un legado histórico para la humanidad que discute los eventos que para los mismos actores de los eventos, y para ello recurre a las ideas de la "Crítica del juicio" de Kant ("juicio" en el sentido de buen criterio) que tienen una estrecha relación con sus reflexiones sobre el gusto estético - los espectadores con buen gusto por las obras de arte en contraste con los genios creadores del arte. Arendt sostiene que para ejercer el juicio es necesaria la capacidad de distanciarse de la inmediatez de los acontecimientos a través de la imaginación y el sentido común o entendimiento común. Por todo esto las conferencias en ocasiones terminan hablando de cosas que no tienen nada que ver directamente con política, a menos que se tenga en cuenta que son los pilares de la reflexión arendtiana sobre la política.
El ensayo final del editor es interesante, y ayuda a darle contexto al libro, también incluye críticas a la teoría arendtiana de la política así como al a teoría kantiana del juicio.
Mi recomendación es que hay que leerlo sin detenerse demasiado, puesto que hay muchas interrogantes que la misma autora de la conferencia se hace a sí misma, y hay que tener presente que las conferencias no fueron pensadas para ser publicadas. Creo que las ideas centrales podían haber sido expuestas con menor extensión en una versión para publicar.
El ensayo final del editor es interesante, y ayuda a darle contexto al libro, también incluye críticas a la teoría arendtiana de la política así como al a teoría kantiana del juicio.
Mi recomendación es que hay que leerlo sin detenerse demasiado, puesto que hay muchas interrogantes que la misma autora de la conferencia se hace a sí misma, y hay que tener presente que las conferencias no fueron pensadas para ser publicadas. Creo que las ideas centrales podían haber sido expuestas con menor extensión en una versión para publicar.
July 21, 2012
Refreshing analysis of Kant's work to dissolve his Political philosophy. Contrary to the title of the book, half of time it deals with matters of taste and it is very intriguing to see which of them stood the test of time and how it evolved from the 18th century.
Arendt puts in bits and pieces of her own and relates it to general observations as is her good habit, which makes it even more interesting read.
Arendt puts in bits and pieces of her own and relates it to general observations as is her good habit, which makes it even more interesting read.
March 30, 2016
Usually Arendt tends to be scatter-brained if always insightful but this set of lectures on a Kantian political philosophy is more coherent and worth reading. The central theme of the work is judgement and she draws out the implications of the main body of Kant's thought (which was non-political) to meditate on important concepts like Will. The book finishes with a lengthy discussion by the translator which is also interesting.
March 29, 2007
من این کتابو نخوندم اما عزت الله فولادوند خیلی از این کتاب تعریف کرده اگه نسخه ای از اون هست معرفی کنید
September 19, 2007
Surprisingly not-boriing.
January 5, 2010
Really helpful to read along with The Human Condition.
May 28, 2024
Interesting, and explores many convincing arguments on the nature of judgment, but overall, not entirely convincing.
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