Winston Hanks

11/29/13

Philosophy 403

Dr. Dilek Huseyinzadegan

Final Paper

Moral politicians, or those politicians whose politics conform to a moral system

based on natural right, are indispensable to the formation and development of the

cosmopolitan world-whole envisioned by Immanuel Kant. This is because such politicians

allow a moral system based on right to serve as a guide for their politics, in contrast to

moralising politicans who allow their politics to shape their own moral system. Alongside

nature, the moral politician serves as the most important force in the creation of a

cosmopolitan society since his morality gives his politics the capacity to enact the specific

change necessary to develop a cosmopolitan world system. Because of the relationship of

their politics to their morality, moralising politicians are unable to bring about this change,

and instead only hinder the formation and development of a cosmopolitan society. History

is replete with examples of such moralizing politicians, including most notably Adolf Hitler

and Otto Eichmann. Their public lives demonstrate perfectly why their politics was unable

to be endowed with the same capacity to affect change as the moral politician, and thus

why they could only serve as an obstacle to formation of a cosmopolitan world system.

The primary reason why moral politicians are necessary for the creation and

development of a cosmopolitan society is that they the are able to use politics as the

primary vehicle through which proper change, of the kind able to eventually bring about a

cosmopolitan society, may occur. This is made possible because of the relationship

between the moral politician’s morality and his politics. In the case of the moral politician,

his politics is always guided by his morality, which is based on right. In other words, his

morality is derived from the idea of Kant’s categorical imperative, which states that an

action should only be carried out if the actor would will his action to become a universal

law for all humankind. Hence, the moral politician carries out all actions -- including

political actions -- only insofar as they are in conformity with Kant’s categorical imperative.

In essence, the moral politician puts the good of humanity above all else, and uses this as

the guiding principle of his politics. Any act which he would not wish upon humanity as a

whole, either in the political or personal realm, is never carried out by such a politician. The

change affected by the moral politician can be understood as the necessary change needed

to develop a cosmopolitan society because the organization of such a society is the same as

that of the state which best approximates justice for all. Both the state and the

cosmopolitan society are organized on the concept of rightful duty; in other words, laws

are formulated and given based on the idea of the categorical imperative. So there is

demonstrable consistency between the moral politician’s actions and the eventual

organization of law-giving institutions at the international level once a cosmopolitan

society is formed.

The moral politician is able to primarily affect such change through his role in

managing the conflict arising out of the tension between the social and asocial tendencies

of human beings. Such conflict, according to Kant, is a result of the dual nature of humans

themselves. In other words, it is a result of both the social and asocial tendencies that

humans naturally possess. For instance, Kant notes that humans feel a need to live within

society because they feel better able to develop their own natural capacities within the

state. Yet at the same time, they also have within themselves the inherently unsocial

characteristic of wanting to do everything their own way. Humans also simultaneously

resist this inclination in other people. It is precisely this resistance which, according to

Kant, “awakens all man’s powers and induces him to overcome his tendency to

laziness”(44). As Kant points out, without such asocial tendencies, all human talents would

ultimately remain undeveloped since each person would do everything according to how

they personally felt, instead of working together with one another to compromise and find

solutions to meet their different wants and needs. Thus, the absence of such asocial

tendencies would mean that the ultimate end for which humans were created, or their

rational nature, would be left undeveloped and be nothing more than an “unfulfilled

void”(45). In addition, it would also mean that humans would never come together to form

state, something that Kant acknowledges would naturally happen if given enough time.

Kant writes that:

“through the desire for honour, power or property, it drives him to seek status among his fellows, whom he cannot bear yet cannot bear to leave. Then the first true steps are taken from barbarism to culture, which in fact consists in the social worthiness of man. All man’s talents are now gradually developed, his taste cultivated, and by a continual process of enlightenment, a beginning is made towards establishing a way of thinking which can with time transform the primitive natural capacity for moral discrimination into definite practical principles; and thus a pathologically enforced social union is transformed into a moral whole”(45).

Thus, through the continual process of enlightenment that such antagonism produces, the

natural sense of morality possessed by humans is in effect institutionalized through the

creation of the state. This process is precisely what is shaped by politics and so also by

extension politicians themselves. So it is through his politics that the moral politician helps

to oversee such conflict in such a way so as to have it serve as a means toward arriving at a

state which best approximates justice for all. As Kant concisely states:

“it only remains for men to create a good organization for the state, a task which is well within their capability, and to arrange it in such a way that their self-seeking energies are opposed to one another, each thereby neutralising or eliminating the destructive efforts of the rest”(112).

Hence, it is the primary role of the moral politician to arrange the organization of the state

by harnessing the conflict arising from different human tendencies so as to minimize the

collective effect of the self-serving interests of humans. As Kant points out:

“it is perfectly true that the will of all individual men to live in accordance with principles of freedom within a lawful constitution (i.e. the distributi- -ve unity of the will of all) is not sufficient for this purpose. Before so dif- -ficult a problem can be solved, all men together (i.e. the collective unity of the combined will) must desire to attain this goal (that of perpetual pe- -ace brought through the creation of a cosmopolitan society); only then can civil society exist as a single whole (117).

However, it is important to note that since and additional “unifying cause” must override

the differences existing among all individuals within the state, and since no single

individual can create it, the only way of making possible such an idea in practice is by force,

or in other words, by law. This is where the moral politician plays the greatest role: in the

formulation of such law. Only once this coercive authority of law is established may public

right then be based on such authority.

Yet the greatest problem confronting humanity, as Kant acknowledges, is that of

establishing such a civil society which is able to administer justice in the greatest way

possible. For Kant, the development of all natural capacities is the highest purpose of

nature and can be accomplished only within a society. However, while such a society must

be designed to allow for the greatest degree of human freedom to exist, it must also be

designed to allow for, as Kant notes, “the most precise specification and preservation of the

limits of this freedom in order that it can co-exist with the freedom of others”(45). In other

words, society must enact laws which allow for a maximum degree of freedom while also

taking steps to ensure that such freedom does not infringe on the freedom of other persons.

Moral politicians must play a critical role in the development of these laws, in order for

such a society to exist.

Yet developing a solution to this problem is challenging. The primary issue is that if

humans live among one another, they are animals who also need a master. So while

humans may seek to enact laws limiting the freedom of others, they will always exempt

themselves from having to obey such laws wherever they can. Thus, the highest authority

which can create a system of universal justice for all must be just in itself, but yet also a

human. That is, such an authority must be just by its very nature, and not be due to any

external condition, such as laws given to it by a master. Of course, this is the ultimate

difficulty since humans can never fully embody justice as they are imperfect. Luckily

however, nature does not require that this state of affairs be fully implemented, but only

that such a scenario be approximated to the greatest degree possible.

But how can such a scenario be approximated? For Kant, the existence of a political

state which most closely mirrors a perfect administration of justice is dependent on the

development of “law-governed relationship[s] with other states”(47). That is, the existence

of such a state is dependent on legal power legitimized through an international legal

system. Such a relationship between states can be thought of simply as a bigger and more

international or “cosmopolitan” version of the same political system which social

antagonism led individual humans to develop among themselves. That is, it is dependent on

the existence of an cosmopolitan political system which is brought about and functions in

the exact same way as did the individual political system, but simply on a larger level.

Assuming nature to be purposive (as Kant does), it uses the inherent unsociability of states

just as it does with the unsociability of individual human beings – namely, as a means

towards arriving at a state which best approximates justice for all. Once this is achieved,

Kant argues, a type of equilibrium can be reached among state relations at the international

level, which can in turn allow for the existence of a cosmopolitan civil society which best

approximates justice for each of its individual citizens. This can be made possible since

citizens comprise and live within such states, which themselves reach a point where they

are governed and assured security not based on the authority of an external master, but on

the power derived from their federation of states. In this way, Kant is able to solve the

problem of establishing a perfectly just civil society at the state level without having to rely

on an external human, and hence imperfect, master. Instead of such laws given by a master,

they are made possible by nature and ultimately derived from the international federation

of states, which in turn does not need to be given laws by any external source since it can

develop them within itself through the interactions between separate states.

However, as Kant points out, moralising politicians (or political moralists) on the

contrary do not embrace a system of morality based on natural right. Moreover, instead of

their moral system acting as a guide for their politics, their politics and political

opportunities guide their personal sense of morality. In fact, many political principles of

such politicians are directly contrary to to right, yet are covered up under the assumption

that humans are incapable of acting according to right because of their imperfect nature.

Because of this, Kant argues, such politicians make real progress impossible.

Hence, Kant writes that:

“But moralising politicians, for what they are worth, try to cover up political principles which are contrary to right, under the pretext that human nature is incapable of attaining the good which reason prescribes as an idea. They therefore make progress impossible, and eternalise the violation of right

Thus, because such politicians allow their politics to guide their morality, they are

never able to aid in the formation of the society, and much less in the transition that a

society makes from becoming a state to existing alongside other states in a cosmopolitan

society. In effect, because the relationship of the moralising politician’s politics to his

morality, his politics is unable to conform to the structure of law-giving institutions at the

level of a cosmopolitan society, which are based solely on right, and derived from the

categorical imperative. This relationship is what stops his politics from being able to bring

about the change given by the moral politician.

The inability of politician moralists to affect the political change necessary for the

formation and development of a cosmopolitan society can be seen through the examples of

many persons throughout history. Once case is that of Otto Adolf Eichmann who served as

a lieutenant colonel in the German Schutzstaffel (a German paramilitary organization

active during the second world war) and acted as one of the major organizers of the

holocaust. During his trial in Jerusalem after the war, Eichmann claimed that his actions

were justified since he always acted according to Kant’s categorical imperative. However,

he also admitted that once he was charged with carrying out the so-called “final-solution”

to exterminate all of the Jews in Germany and had decided to accept such orders, that he

was no longer acting according to the categorical imperative. Further, as Hannah Arendt

notes in her Report on the Banality of Evil, Eichmann had distorted the categorical

imperative to mean that one should “act in such a way that the Fuhrer, if he knew your

action, would approve of it”(121). Hence, Eichmann had distorted Kant’s morality to suit

his own end and the orders of his superiors. He did not let the morality of the categorical

imperative guide his decisions, instead he did the opposite. The case of Adolf Hitler is also

not dissimilar to that of Eichmann. Hitler was certainly an ideologue; however, his chief

concern as leader of the Party was to enact his own political agenda at the time. There was

no sense of morality that guided his politics. Instead, he let his politics dictate his sense of

morality. This is evident from his formulation and endorsement of, among other policy

initiatives, the “final-solution” as a means to create what he believed to be a more “pure”

Aryan race.