Kant's Morals and Politics

This episode concerns the least celebrated aspect of one of the most celebrated philosophers of the European Enlightenment: Kant’s politics. Immanuel Kant is responsible for launching the thread of philosophic inquiry known as German Idealism. At the time, perhaps Kant was merely trying to address the skepticism of those such as Hume. Nevertheless, his philosophical attempt to delimit the bounds of reason - to reveal to humanity what we can, in fact, know by use of our reason - launched a revolution in philosophy. It continues through Hegel, Fichte, Schopenhauer, and, yes, Nietzsche. We have avoided a comprehensive episode on Kant’s philosophy because that would require not an episode, but a podcast, and have limited our inclusion of Kant to a few important aspects insofar as they’ve related to past topics. While Kant’s politics are generally considered among his lesser contributions to the philosophical world, I will advance the case here that we see his ideas reflected in the political ideologies of the modern world: his political optimism, his belief in reason as a governing principle, and his belief in perpetual peace. While Rousseau may have been about as far apart from Nietzsche as possible while sharing his romantic orientation towards history, Kant and Nietzsche are diametrically opposed in terms of their starting principles. Kant is arguably a match for Rousseau in terms of Nietzschean antipodes, but as to which is more opposed to Nietzsche than the other, I’ll leave that to the audience to decide.