Kant on Peoples, The People, and the State
Frederick Rauscher·
Michigan State University, USA
Abstract
There
are two senses of the word “people”, first as an ethnic group and second as the
collection of citizens of a state. How do they relate to one another and to the
state? I show that in his political philosophy Kant insists that “people” in
this second sense is constituted only in terms of being subject to a single
state, while in his social philosophy he allows for an ethnic conception of
peoples that share a language and culture and have distinct characters. In his philosophy of history he insists that
the general historical correspondence between ethnic peoples and states is both
natural and positive for development toward peace, both because linguistic and
religious differences deter the formation of a single world-encompassing state
and because their competition through war eventually leads to perpetual peace. Nevertheless I argue that Kant’s insistence
on the a priori basis of right combined with the mature development of state
and international institutions give reasons that states should not correspond
to ethnic peoples.
Keywords
Laws,
Nation, People, Ethnicity, Progress, Religion, State
In 1989 in the
German Democratic Republic, the Communist leaders were faced with tens of
thousands of citizens taking to the streets with the slogan “Wir sind das Volk” (“We are the people”). This slogan challenged the legitimacy of a
state purporting to represent the people: the actual people disagreed. Soon after the opening of the Berlin wall, some
demonstrators subtly altered the slogan to “Wir sind ein Volk” (“We are one people”), which claimed that the
citizens of both of the two German states, east and west, were one entity and
thus deserved one corresponding state rather than two. But how are these
slogans related? The German term “Volk”, like the English term “People”, is
ambiguous. It can refer to (roughly) an ethnic group whether or not they reside
in one single sovereign state: “one people” above. I will call this meaning “ethnic peoples”. Or
it can refer to the collective consisting of (roughly) the citizens who
constitute a particular state: “the people” above. This is the sense of “the people” generally
used in social contract theory, and I will call this meaning “political
peoples”. Kant uses the term “Volk” in
both senses.[1] Would Kant say that ethnic people and political
people are more or less the same thing considered from different angles? Should states have a one-to-one correlation
to ethnic peoples? I will show that while there is for Kant a natural
correlation historically between ethnic peoples and states, in the full
development of right states ought not correspond to ethnic peoples.[2]
I.
People in the political
sense
The political sense
of “people” denotes the citizens in the civil condition in contrast to the state
apparatus itself. In Kant’s final
version of his social contract theory in the Doctrine of Right, the
people always hold ultimate sovereignty through their united will and thus have
legislative authority to make all the laws to which they are subject (RL,
6:313-14). But sovereignty is exercised
through the entity that represents the people, the actual legislative
institution, whether a single individual monarch or a set of representatives in
an assembly. The best form of government is a republic in which the people
elect their representatives who then wield this legislative authority. Kant is clear, however, that any legislative
authority in a state has that authority only by virtue of representing the
people (RL 6:340-41).
Political peoples
exist only in and by means of a state.
Kant identifies the entity I am calling “political people” only in
relation to an actually existing state. There is no unified, single “political
people” until a state exists. Of course
groups of persons exist who might form a state, but they are not yet a
political people. This claim is clearest
in the discussions of whether the people have a right to judge whether the
government’s actions are just. In the
Doctrine of Right, Kant explains “since a people must be regarded as already
united under a general legislative will in order to judge with rightful force
about the supreme state authority, it cannot and may not judge otherwise than
as the present head of state wills it to” (6:318). Kant insists that in order
to be able to rightfully judge that the highest state authority is governing
unjustly, a people must have a collective identity or unity.[3] The only thing
that can unify a people for purposes of determining right is a state. Hence the unity can only come in a state, and
more importantly only through the actual state as the unifying
institution. So the only way that a
people can be said to be unified for purposes of right is in and through a
state.
Kant also
discusses this issue in several Reflections over the decades. A Reflection from the 1770’s makes the point
that prior to the establishment of a state there is no political people but
only a group of individual persons: “The actus {act} through which a
multitude becomes a people through its unification already constitutes a
souverain power which they transfer to someone else through a law. For pacta
{contracts} are laws and already suppose a legislative power.” (R7769. 1769–75, 19:511). A Reflection in the 1780s makes the related
point that if any existing state were to dissolve so that there were a return
to a state of nature with no legitimate authority, then the people would
likewise no longer be a single entity as a political people:: “for in this latter situation they would
cease to be a people” (R 8043, 19:590).[4]
In the Doctrine of
Right Kant does not equate this political people with ethnic people, even in
some passages where one might expect some discussion of the link. For example, in discussing a native land (“Vaterland”)
and immigration, he says “a country (territorium) whose inhabitants are
citizens of it simply by its constitution, without their having to perform any
special act to establish this right (and so are citizens by birth), is called
their native land” (RL 6:337); he never identifies these citizens as being
members of a common ethnic people.
Immigration by non-natives is described only in terms of foreigner (“Auslander”)
and not in terms of foreign peoples. He
does use the term “Volk” in reference to peoples in international law,
where he directly denies that a people are defined by having a common ancestry,
although they can be seen as having a different kind of unity:
As natives of a country, those who constitute a people
can be looked upon analogously to descendants of the same ancestors (congeniti)
even though they are not. Yet in an
intellectual sense and from the perspective of rights, since they are born of
the same mother (the republic) they constitute as it were one family (gens,
natio) whose members (citizens of the state) are of equally high birth. (RL
6:343).
The Doctrine of Right, then, identifies a people
through their sharing a state rather than sharing a common ancestry. Here Kant
even says that “they are born of the same mother (the republic)”.
One should note
that in the passages just quoted Kant denies that the citizens of a single
country are descendants of the same ancestors.
I will show in the next section that one of the marks of an ethnic
people is common ancestry. This appears
to be a rather straightforward way to preclude the identification of a
political people and an ethnic people, but it is not conclusive. First, it is still possible that Kant is
saying that some political peoples need not be descendants of the same
ancestors, leaving open that others are descendants of the same ancestors and
hence ethnic peoples. He says that a
political people “can” be treated as having a common ancestry even if they do
not actually share one. He does not
state that all political peoples fail to have a common ancestry.
Second, the
correspondence between political and ethnic peoples need not be a complete
coextension; that is, if the overwhelming majority of persons in a state are
members of one ethnic people, then even if a small minority of persons are
members of other ethnic peoples, for the purposes of the issue in this paper,
the ethnic and political peoples would correspond. There is no precise way to
draw a line, but if the majority ethnic people is large enough to completely
dominate the political and cultural life of the country, particularly if there
are no other states with such a majority of the same ethnic people, then it can
be said to have its own state and to correspond to the political people. So
Kant’s claim in the Doctrine of Right that the political people are not
descendants of the same ancestors does not by itself resolve the main issue in
this paper.
Third, there is an
important limitation to Kant’s overall point: it is restricted to the
“perspective of rights” (RL 6:343). This means that Kant is not denying that
the population that constitutes a single entity as a political people in a
state as defined by right cannot also be considered a single entity as a
different kind of people from other perspectives. The definition of a political
people in terms of their unity through the state is specifically geared toward
their political action as a single entity – whether and how they are allowed to
exercise their sovereign power. They may
only act as a single entity – and this includes judging the actions of the
government – when there is an institution that embodies the will of the
people. But they may exist and be
described as an ethnic people in other senses independent of this action. So Kant’s strictly political conception of
“people” requires for purposes of right that the unity of a political people,
their existence as such an entity, is dependent upon their organization into a
state and is expressed only through the state institutions.[5] But he does
not exclude that the human beings who constitute this political people can have
some kind of identity independent of this strictly rightful conception, and
this leaves open the question of whether political peoples should correspond to
ethnic peoples.
II. People in the Ethnic Sense
Kant clearly uses
the term “Volk” in the sense of ethnic peoples in several places.[6] I will first
examine the several ways he differentiates among ethnic peoples and then note
the role of character for an ethnic people.
Just as he assumes that human beings are divisible into distinct racial
groups, he also assumes that human beings have a natural division into distinct
ethnic groups.[7] In his
discussion of ethnic peoples, unlike his discussion of what he takes to be the
four races, Kant never identifies all the different ethnic peoples. But he does provide ways to try to identify
specific ethnic peoples. Kant mentions four interrelated to divide the human
species into peoples: inhabitation, ancestry, language, and religion.
When Kant defines “people”
in the Anthropology book,[8] he bases it on inhabitation of a common region but
also links it in part to common ancestry using the term “nation”.
“By the word people (populus) is meant a
multitude of human beings united in a region insofar as they constitute a
whole. This multitude, or even the part of it that recognizes itself as united
into a civil whole through common ancestry, is called a nation (gens). That part that exempts itself from these laws
(the unruly crowd within this people) is called a rabble (vulgas),
whose illegal association is the mob (agere per turbas) – conduct
that excludes them from the quality of a citizen. (Anth 7:311)
The people – Kant uses the term “Volk” –
consists of the multitude of individuals in a region, a geographical
characteristic. This same multitude
could be considered a “nation” – Kant uses the term “Nation” – if it is
united by common ancestry, although Kant also seems to indicate that perhaps
only “a part of it” would count for this common ancestry. Thus Kant does distinguish between the
potential of a unity between a group of individuals based on geography and a
group of individuals based on ancestry.[9] Kant also here invokes another political element by
contrasting the “nation” with the “rabble”, or those who do not see themselves
as belonging to that particular legal order. Even those people in the rabble,
however, would be included in the ethnic people (Volk) based upon
inhabitation of a common region. And if what distinguishes them from others is
that they do not want to be part of the civil whole, then that distinction does
not preclude the rabble from being part of the common ancestry as well.
Kant does not get
into much detail about possible distinctions between habitation and common
ancestry. Historically portions of some
ethnic peoples have migrated so that they do not dwell in any one unified area
of habitation although they may originally have had a specific geographical
location. The Roma, for example, do not
have a current specific geographical homeland.
In Kant’s time ethnic peoples tended to have more or less clearly
identifiable regions of habitation, but many of these areas included migrants
from other ethnic groups as well. European settlement of colonies in North and
South America was upending the traditional habitation and homelands of
indigenous peoples as well as mixing various settler, enslaved, and indigenous
ethnic groups together in the new colonies. Another issue Kant does not discuss
is the scope of the “common ancestry” of the ethnic peoples that might occupy a
particular area. For example the part of
Europe called “Germany” at the time consisted of many groups such as Bavarians,
Prussians, and Saxons that might claim to be distinct ethnic peoples even while
falling within the broader German ethnic people. Kant treats Germans as a single ethnic people
in his Anthropology. Thus, there is
certainly some imprecision in using inhabitation and common ancestry as marks
for identifying ethnic peoples, but these marks are functional enough for
Kant’s purposes.
Ethnic peoples can
also be identified by the two other marks Kant provides: a common language or
common religion. In “Toward Perpetual
Peace” Kant says “we see peoples whose unity of language enables us to
recognize the unity of their descent, such as the Samoyeds on the Arctic Ocean
on the one and on the other a people of similar language two hundred miles
distant in the Altaian Mountains” (ZeF 8:364).
Thus there is at least a connection between common language and ethnic
peoplehood. Kant also makes the
connection between a language and an ethnic people in his brief “Postscript of a Friend” to Christian
Gottlieb Mielcke’s 1800 Lithuanian-German and German-Lithuanian Dictionary: “It
is still of importance for the formation of every small people in a country . .
. to instruct it in the schools and from the pulpit according to the model of
the purest . . . language . . . and to make this language more and more
current, because thereby the language becomes more suited to the peculiarity of
the people and the latter’s comprehension becomes more enlightened” (NMW 8:445).[10] The
self-understanding of an ethnic people is tied to its language. In the published Anthropology, when
comparing the French and English, Kant takes their different aptitudes to have
been shaped by language yet also “derived from the innate character of the
original people of their ancestry” (Anth 7:312).
Kant also suggests
in “Toward Perpetual Peace” that religion can define an ethnic people. Nature “makes use of two means to prevent
peoples from intermingling and to separate them: differences of language and of
religion” (ZeF 8:367). If language is
tied to common descent, it certainly need not be an inherited trait. Religion of course is not inherited either and
Kant stresses that it is too contingent of a mark to play any part in forming a
character. But both of these are
correlated with different peoples. I
will return to this issue later in discussing whether peoples should be
naturally divided into distinct states.
There are, then,
these four ways – inhabitation, ancestry, language, and religion– in which the
different ethnic peoples are identified.
Kant dedicated the
second half of his Anthropology to the different ways that human beings have
characters, as individuals, according to sex, to peoples, to race, and finally
common to the human species as a whole. In the Anthropology lectures, Kant
discusses “the character of the peoples” in ways that indicate that he believes
that ethnic peoples have characteristics in some natural way. For example, in the Friedländer lectures of
1775-76 Kant says[11]:
It is surely possible that something characteristic could
be determined in the whole of a people who, through long duration, through
climate and other causes, has in the end received a unique ingrained
constitution. The determination of the
character must not be taken from contingent matter, for example, from religion,
otherwise it is based on chance; rather the hereditary peculiarity, uniform in
determination, which has yet remained an essential component among all the
variations of the nation, must be picked out. (V-Anth/Fried 25:654)
Kant then devotes many pages to descriptions of some
particular characters for some, mainly European, ethnic peoples. I will not
delve into his characterizations in any detail here. I will simply note that Kant did believe that
the human species could be divided into ethnic peoples, and that those ethnic
peoples possessed particular distinct characteristics that set them apart from
other ethnic peoples culturally. Kant does not claim that every single
individual within any particular ethnic people possesses precisely those characteristics
but views them as a generalization over the whole population as exhibited in a
paradigm example. In the book On the
Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime, his first published account of
“national characters”, although limited to characteristics related to the
sublime and the beautiful, he offers this disclaimer: “One can readily guess
that only a tolerable level of accuracy can be demanded in such a depiction,
that its prototypes stand out in the large crowds of those who make claim to a
finer feeling, and that no nation is lacking in casts of mind which unite the
foremost predominant qualities of this kind” (GSE 2:243). These national characters, then, are not
supposed to be universally applicable descriptions of each member of the ethnic
people in question but rather a description of a prototypical individual who
best exhibits the differences between the average persons of each ethnic people
from other ethnic peoples. The fact that
an ethnic people has a distinct character[12] has some bearing on whether states should correspond
to ethnic peoples.
III.
Why Kant thought that
states tended to correspond to ethnic peoples
This section of my
paper will look at the reasons Kant gives for the fact that states often tend
to, or should, correspond to ethnic peoples.[13] The following
section will look at reasons that Kant could give that there should be no
correlation between ethnic peoples and states. Since political peoples have a
one-to-one correlation with states because political peoples are defined by
their unity in one state, these sections are asking whether political peoples
ought to correspond to ethnic peoples.
One reason Kant
gives in favor of a correlation between ethnic peoples and states is so that an
ethnic people may have laws that reflect their own culture. This reason appears in Kant’s book Physical
Geography and corresponding parts of his course lectures on the topic,
although not in his specific discussion of various ethnic peoples but in the
introductory section on the scope of the subject of physical geography. While
the book concerns “physical geography”, which is knowledge of nature through a
physical description of the earth (PG 9:157), Kant notes that it is important
to see the relation of the physical to other possible “geographies”, including
moral geography and political geography (PG 9:164). He observes that laws reflect the ethnic
people’s particular characteristics:
If the fundamental principle of civil society is
universal law and an irresistible force exerted against anyone who breaches
this law, and if the laws are based on the nature of the soil and of the
inhabitants, then political geography also belongs here because it is
founded on physical geography. (PG 9:164, my emphasis)
Kant provides two examples in which the direction of
rivers and the presence of deserts has affected the political situations in
Russia and Persia, neither of which concern characters of the ethnic
peoples. But this discussion of
political geography is connected to “moral geography”, which concerns the
various characteristics of ethnic peoples through custom and mores. Kant’s examples of “moral geography” include
the various degrees to which different ethnic peoples treat parricide as either
a horrible crime deserving of extremely severe punishment or as a justifiable
action expressing a filial duty in certain situations (PG 9:164). Combining the claims about moral and
political geography, one can assume that Kant takes as natural that different
laws in a national political jurisdiction will reflect differences among the
ethnic peoples. There is thus some hint
that cultural differences among ethnic peoples can justify a distinction into
states on that basis.
Kant notes in
several scattered places that the political system of an ethnic people that has
its own state is shaped in part by the character of that ethnic people. In the Anthropology Mrongovius of 1784, for
example, he concludes the section on national character with this statement:
“Now the political constitution of the form of government, education, in short,
everything that pertains to anthropology, is grounded on the depiction of this
national character” (V-Anth/Mron 25:1414).
In the early Hesse Geography lecture, Kant stresses that an ethnic
people’s character will influence the everyday functioning of the government:
“One does not know whether the government is a consequence of the character of
the people [Nation] or the character a consequence of the government,
yet it is natural for a people [Nation] who erect a government to direct
it according to their inclination and their character, and for the government
that rules the people [Volk] to do so in accordance with their cast of
mind” (V-PG/HESSE 26.2:126). In the Anthropology book he holds that in
order for a political constitution to shape a distinct character of an ethnic
people, it must itself be distinct, and there must be some causal explanation
for the distinct character of the political system: “To claim that the kind of
character a people will have depends entirely on its form of government is an
ungrounded assertion that explains nothing; for from where does the government
itself get its particular character?” (Anth 7:313).
One must be clear
about the extent to which Kant would accept these differences in a legal code
stemming from differences among the ethnic people. Variations in the laws in Kant’s mature
theory are allowed only to the extent that they remain within the a priori
confines of the Principle of Right.[14] This
restriction does not by itself settle the issue. On the one hand, Kant’s insistence that any
state that provides a lawful order is to a great extent just and must be obeyed
for that reason would allow for different cultural practices of different
peoples to be enshrined into law. Hence one state might allow parricide in
certain circumstances while another might not, in the same way that some states
might today allow for assisted suicide or some forms of euthanasia while others
treat them as murder. On the other hand,
Kant himself insists upon some content for a state’s laws. Laws that routinely
sentenced those convicted of murder to something less than capital punishment,
or that prevented private property, or that required individuals to adhere to a
particular religious doctrine, would all be unjustifiable. But presumably even this limitation allows
for wide variations between legal orders in different states.
The second and
third reasons for an ethnic/political people correspondence in a state lies in
Kant’s theory of history: differences
between ethnic peoples prevent the creation of a tyrannical world state, and competition
between ethnic peoples fuels wars that eventually lead to peace. In Perpetual
Peace Kant argues that nature wills that the earth be populated by a
plurality of states, and that in order to ensure this, nature uses the
mechanism of diversity of languages and religions to differentiate ethnic
peoples (ZeF 8:367). The resulting
plurality of states helps to prevent any one government from becoming too
powerful and ultimately prevents the creation of a possibly tyrannical single
world state. The “unsocial sociability”
that is one of the unintended driving forces of progress in history, as
described in Kant’s essay “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan
Aim”, applies not only to individuals within a particular society but also to
the competition between states themselves (IaG 8:24). The division of the world into a plurality of
competing states leads to war, which in turn leads eventually to the
international institutions to promote peace.
These second and
third reasons related to a world state and world peace both feature some good
that is supposed to arise from the existence of independent competing
states. The correspondence between
ethnic peoples and political peoples in states is then a good because the
competition between ethnic peoples as political peoples amplifies the
competition between states. If there
were no division of humanity into ethnic peoples, or if ethnic peoples did not
have distinct and contrasting characters, then there would be fewer reasons for
the development of competing states through political peoples, and a single,
tyrannical world state would be more likely to develop (although there could be
other reasons for division into states, such as geographical isolation or
administrative convenience). Further, a
lack of ethnic peoples or competition among them would eliminate one way that
human unsocial sociability is expressed at the state level, thus making wars
less likely. Given the role that the plurality of ethnic peoples has in history
as a driving force for the formation of multiple states for them as political
peoples, both to prevent tyranny and to promote peace, and noting the ways that
a legal order might reflect the particular character of a people, Kant must,
then, take these factors to be reasons for a division into states based on a
correspondence of ethnic and political peoples.[15]
IV.
Reasons Against
Correlating States with Ethnic Peoples
This section will
look at elements of Kant’s social and political philosophy that could function
as reasons to reject the correlation between ethnic peoples and political
peoples in states. I will suggest three reasons corresponding to the three
reasons just given that Kant has for this correlation. I present these three
reasons in the reverse order to the previous section. These are reasons I draw
from Kant’s philosophy and are not explicitly given by Kant himself as reasons
to avoid states in which ethnic and political peoples coincide. Kant does not
make these connections, but I suggest that they are strong reasons he does have
for preferring states that are not centered on one ethnic people.
First, the
historical reasons that Kant gives for the correlation of ethnic peoples and
political peoples works in the opposite direction as well. If Kant is right that the competition among
distinct states has a positive role in historical progress, it does so mainly
by driving the competition among states that leads to war. As wars become more and more destructive,
states turn out of self-interest to peaceful means of settling disputes. Once
the international organizations have been established, or are within reach of
imminent establishment, the need for this competition among states is past; in
fact competition among different ethnic peoples through states should be
decreased in order to make war less likely. It would be more likely for a state that sees
itself as representing a particular ethnic people to go to war on behalf of
some imagined ethnic competition than it would for a state that represented a
plurality of non-dominant ethnic peoples.
If ethnic peoples were divided into multiple states, and if each state
contained a diverse mixture of ethnic peoples, then rivalry among ethnic
peoples would be less likely to lead to state-vs-state wars. In this way denying ethnic peoples
correlation with political peoples in states contributes to perpetual peace. Thus at a certain point in historical
development the competition among states fueled by an ethnic/political peoples
correspondence turns from a good, as a means to cause wars to bring about
institutions for peace, to an evil, as an instigation toward possible wars
despite the existence of institutions for peace.
The second reason
continues this reappraisal of the historical role of ethnic peoples as
political peoples. Kant had worried
about a single world state becoming tyrannical and had seen the separation of
ethnic peoples as political peoples in their own states as a good to prevent a
single world state. But once history has
reached a point of international cooperation, the set of existing states would
likely become more or less permanent. No
state would have reason to try to take over and absorb other states through
wars because each state is able to cooperate with all other states through the
international system. There would be no
incentive for any particular state to try to attain world dominance. Thus regardless of whether political peoples
in those cooperating states correspond to ethnic peoples, the international
system would retain a division into states rather than merge into one world
state. In this case, unlike the case of
competition leading to wars, the result is not that ethnic peoples-based states
are bad, but that the historical function they played is no longer needed. A world state is unlikely to emerge from the
international cooperative institutions among states. Separation of states along ethnic peoples
lines would not be needed, since states would have no incentive to combine
anyway.
The third reason
relates to the expression of the character of an ethnic people in the laws, and
has to do with the structure of Kant’s practical philosophy overall. I take this third reason to be the best
Kantian reason to avoid correlating ethnic peoples with political peoples. Kant
stresses that a priori claims of reason have priority over any empirical
claims.[16] In the political realm, the demands of right
limit the normative claim of particular facts about human nature and thus
ethnic peoples or cultures. In practice
this means that as individuals emigrate from one nation to another – provided
of course for Kant that the second state allows for immigration – any laws that
are based upon particular cultural features of ethnic peoples must be relaxed
or changed to accommodate the new immigrants, because these new immigrants now
form part of the political people of that state. Recall that Kant always defines political
people in relation to the state itself rather than anything related to ethnic
peoples. Thus, even though the legal
order might initially reflect the culture of an ethnic people, if members of other
ethnic peoples join the state, their rights supersede the earlier ethnic
culture.
To give an
example: suppose that because an ethnic
people historically shared a particular religion that was reflected in the
legal order, citizens never had a conflict with state mandated duties such as
jury duty and their culture’s religious holidays or sabbath days. This could
occur as part of a normal weekly division into work days and rest days. State mandated duties such as jury duty would
only be imposed on work days that already reflected the culture’s religious
calendar and weekly patterns. Suppose that new citizens arrive who are from a
non-dominant ethnic people and have different religious holidays. They ought to receive state accommodation for
exemption from state mandated duties to reflect their religious holidays or
sabbath. Such accommodation would be a
way to equalize the burden so that state mandated duties such as jury duty did
not conflict with anyone’s religious beliefs, whether from the majority ethnic
people or not. The empirical legal order would have to be altered to reflect
the equal right of all members of the political people, now composed of several
different ethnic peoples, to practice their religions.
The example I just
gave shows that as a state previously dominated by one ethnic people as the
political people shifted so that multiple ethnic peoples become members of the
political people, the law would have to develop to take into account the various
characters, religions, practices, or customs of the different ethnic
groups. But notice that there is a very
important shift in the purpose of the law.
When only one ethnic people dominate, the reason the law does not
require state mandated duties on religious holidays is because the people’s
culture, their character, embedded that holiday in their practices. But when other ethnic peoples’ needs arise to
have their religious holidays reflected in these state mandated duties, the
reason for the law becomes not that it reflects the particular culture of the
ethnic peoples but that it reflects the right of different citizens to equal
treatment under the law, in this case equal recognition of religions rather
than preferential treatment for one religion.
The development of
a legal order toward a more universal, all-inclusive view of legal rights would
be beneficial for strengthening the recognition of the genuine basis of
right. As long as states are correlated
with ethnic peoples, and particular legal orders reflect the empirical cultural
differences among those peoples, citizens would be confronted with laws that
reflect both the universal a priori basis of right and the empirical cultural
specificity of one ethnic people. The
relative importance of universal right would be harder for citizens to
comprehend. But if each state contained
multiple ethnic peoples, and the legal order correspondingly reflected a more
universal basis of the right of human beings, the basis of right in our shared
rational nature would be more obvious. Very roughly speaking, to the extent that a
single ethnic people’s character is reflected in the laws, to that extent the
universal basis of right is shrouded and hidden.
The example I gave
related to religious practices tied to ethnic peoples but the point broadly
extends to any cultural custom or practice embedded into the laws. If the law
prevents citizens from pursuing their own ends as they see fit, then the law
falls short of the Kantian standard. Customs
that prescribe or prohibit certain kinds of behavior are based upon the
empirically-derived character of an ethnic people and not upon the a priori
rights of individual citizens. Customary
beliefs about the nature or roles of the genders that become enshrined in law,
or restrictions on types of medical interventions are other examples. Even if there were only one ethnic people in
a state, individuals born into that ethnic group ought not to be legally
restricted from choosing and pursuing ends that do not correspond to that
ethnic group’s conception of the good. A
state whose political people is constituted by a number of different ethnic
peoples would be more likely to have laws that reflect not one particular
ethnic people but the more abstract rights of individuals.
V. Conclusion.
I began this paper
by raising the issue of the relationship between ethnic peoples and political
peoples in Kant. These two different
concepts that emerge from two different aspects of Kant’s philosophy – the a
priori theory of right and the empirical theory of human being – come together
in the question of whether a state’s political people ought to correspond to an
ethnic people. Kant expected that as a
matter of history this would happen, and that there were some positive benefits
from this correspondence. Particular
laws could match the culture of an ethnic people, and competition among ethnic
people through states could lead to peace among a plurality of states. These reasons in favor of a correspondence of
ethnic peoples with political peoples in states, however, are overshadowed by
other reasons within Kant’s own philosophy that stress the more general
characteristic of political rights and the desire to avoid causes of wars
once historical development has reached
a stage characterized by international organizations to guarantee peace. The better
situation for all human beings is one in which states no longer correspond
one-on-one with ethnic peoples.
References
All citations to Kant’s writings use the volume and page
number from Kant, Immanuel: Gesammelte Schriften Hrsg.: Bd. 1–22 Preussische
Akademie der Wissenschaften, Bd. 23 Deutsche Akademie der Wissenschaften zu
Berlin, ab Bd. 24 Akademie der Wissenschaften zu Göttingen. Berlin 1900ff. Specific materials are identified using
the abbreviations listed here.
Translations are taken from the Cambridge Edition of the Works of
Immanuel Kant; translations of material not appearing in the Cambridge Edition
are my own.
|
Anth |
Anthropologie in
pragmatischer Hinsicht
(Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View) |
|
GMS |
Grundlegung zur
Metaphysik der Sitten
(Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals) |
|
GSE |
Beobachtungen
über das Gefühl des
Schönen und Erhabenen (Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful
and Sublime) |
|
IaG |
Idee
zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte
in weltbürgerlicher Absicht
(Idea for a Universal History with
a Cosmopolitan Aim) |
|
MAM |
Muthmaßlicher
Anfang der Menschengeschichte
(Conjectural Beginnings of Human History) |
|
RL |
Metaphysische Anfangsgründe
der Rechtslehre (Doctrine of Right) |
|
NMW |
Nachschrift
zu Christian Gottlieb Mielckes Littauisch-deutschem und deutsch-littauischem
Wörterbuch (Postscript to Christian Gottlieb Mielckes Lithuanian-German and
German-Lithuanian Dictionary) |
|
PG |
Physische Geographie (Physical Geography) |
|
Refl |
Reflexion (Reflection) |
|
TP |
Über den
Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber
nicht für die Praxis (On the Common Saying: That May be
Correct in Theory, But it is of No Use in Practice) |
|
V-Anth/Fried |
Vorlesungen
Wintersemester
1775/1776 Friedländer
(Friedländer Lectures on Anthropology) |
|
V-Anth/Mensch |
Vorlesungen Wintersemester 1781/1782 Menschenkunde, Petersburg |
|
V-Anth/Mron |
Vorlesungen Wintersemester 1784/1785 Mrongovius (Mrongovius Lectures on Anthropology) |
|
V-NR/Feyerabend |
Naturrecht Feyerabend (Winter 1784) (Feyerabend Lectures on Natural
Right) |
|
V-PG/Hesse |
Vorlesungen über Physische Geographie (Hesse
Lectures on Physical Geography) |
|
ZeF |
Zum ewigen
Frieden (Toward Perpetual Peace) |
Other references
Alexy,
R. (2019), “Kant’s Non-Positivistic Conception of Law” Kantian Review vol. 24, pp. 497-512.
Kleingeld,
P. (2006), “Defending the Plurality of States: Cloots, Kant, and Rawls” Social
Theory and Practice vol. 32, pp. 559-578
Kleingeld,
P. (2012), Kant and Cosmopolitanism, Cambridge University Press,
Cambridge.
Shell,
S. (2010), “’Nachschrift Eines Freundes’: Kant on Language, Friendship, and the
Concept of a People” Kantian Review vol. 15, pp 88-117.
Stilz,
A. (2014), “Provisional Right and Non-State Peoples”, in K. Flikschuh and L.
Ypi (eds.) Kant and Colonialism, Oxford, pp. 197-220.
Stone,
M. (2017), “Kant’s Apparent Positivism”, in S. Kisilevsky and M. Stone (eds) Freedom and Force: Essays on Kant’s Legal
Philosophy, Hart Publishing, Oxford, pp. 165-179.
Waldron,
J. (1996), “Kant’s Legal Positivism” Harvard Law Review vol. 109, pp
1535-1566.
