Unsociable Sociability, Moral Evil and the Origin of Human History in Kant

Abstract

The main thesis of this paper is that the principle through which Kant understands the origin of culture or of human history in the fourth thesis of the Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, the unsociable sociability, does not “conceptually” imply moral evil. I defend, against a long tradition of reading that supports the opposite, that culture is a product of two dispositions of human nature, which are original and independent from its moral (or immoral) character. Thus, if there were rational beings who were, like us, sociable and unsociable but, unlike us, did not have any news of the moral law, that is to say, that they were morally innocent, they would produce, nevertheless, culture. As a secondary thesis, I show that other relationships of implication between the concepts of unsociable sociability and moral evil can be established: on one hand, I inversely show that moral evil can “conceptually” imply unsociable sociability and, on the other, that the latter principle contingently implies moral evil when it is referred to human beings.