Kant’s Logic of Political Transformation

Abstract

Kant clearly believes in the necessity of political reform. But he is on the oft-repeated record as outlawing revolution. What he does offer politics are a priori ideas of reason, specifically a pure republican constitution and a perpetual peace.¹ These are active ideas, they for our use, as per Kant’s practical philosophy, that he first sets out in the Dialectic of the first Critique. In the Metaphysics of Morals Kant calls ‘a perfectly rightful constitution among human beings’ the thing in itself (TL, 6:371)² and stipulates that the idea of a pure constitution, ‘if it is attempted and carried out by gradual reform in accordance with firm principles, … can lead to continual approximation to the highest political good, perpetual peace’ (RL, 6:354). Herein lies the apparent paradox of Kant’s logic of political transformation: the progress towards the better seems to take place without any achievement. How are we to apply the ideas of reason, of noumenal status, as they are if we cannot ever attain them? What conditions, and what are the conditions of, political change? What plausible foundations are there for this asymptotic progress? Understanding Kant’s account of political change is problematic because it seems as if there should be a passage from the specific imperfect condition to the perfect unconditioned condition, but he explicitly denies the possibility of such a transition.