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Reason and Realpolitik: Kant's “Critique of International Politics”*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 November 2009

Michael C. Williams
Michael C. Williams
Affiliation:
York University
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Abstract

Immanuel Kant remains a figure of enduring interest to students of international politics both for the content of his writings and for the place which those writings have come to occupy within contemporary debates in International Relations theory. But most of the secondary literature does not have a sufficient appreciation of Kant's wider philosophy and hence misunderstands or distorts his theory of international relations. Once this background is more fully appreciated, Kant's analysis becomes largely immune from many of the standard criticisms levelled against it. A reinterpretation of Kant's critique of international politics is important not only for the position which Kant has come to occupy in contemporary debates. It also raises anew fundamental questions about the theoretical and practical adequacy of the Realist theory of international relations which continues to dominate the discipline.

Résumé

Emmanuel Kant demeure une figure marquante dans l'étude de la politique internationale, à la fois pour ses écrits et pour la place centrale qu'ils tiennent parmi les débats théoriques contemporains en relations internationales. Pourtant ces débats situent mal les origines philosophiques de l'analyse kantienne et en viennent à la dénaturer. Lorsque ces origines sont mieux situées, la critique de l'analyse kantienne perd de sa pertinence. Une nouvelle lecture de la critique kantienne de la politique internationale est done importante. Elle permet de mieux situer Kant dans l'univers des débats contemporains, et elle remet en question l'à-propos de la théorie réaliste des relations internationales qui continue de dominer la discipline.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Political Science/Revue canadienne de science politique , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1992 , pp. 99 - 120
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Political Science Association (l'Association canadienne de science politique) and/et la Société québécoise de science politique 1992

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References

1 Capitalized references to International Relations here refer to the academic study of international politics. Similarly, Idealism and Realism refer to specific schools of thought within the discipline rather than broader categories of analysis.

2 On Thucydides, see Garst, Daniel, “Thucydides and NeoRealism,” International Studies Quarterly 33 (1989), 3–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Alker, Hayward, “The Dialectical Logic of Thucydides' Melian Dialogue,” American Political Science Review 82 (1988), 805–820CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Doyle, Michael, “Thucydidean Realism,” Review of International Studies 16 (1990), 183–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On Machiavelli, see Walker, R. B. J., “‘The Prince’ and the Pauper: Tradition, Modernity and Practice in the Theory of International Relations,” in DerDerian, J. and Shapiro, M., eds., International / Intertextual Relations: The Boundaries of Knowledge and Practice in World Politics (Lexington, Maryland: Lexington Books, 1989)Google Scholar. On Rousseau, see Williams, M. C., “Rousseau, Realism and Realpolitik,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 182 (1989), 185–203.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

3 Most recently, see Hurrell, Andrew, “Kant and the Kantian Paradigm in International Relations,” Review of International Studies 16(1990), 183–206CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

4 For a clear statement of this argument, see Clark, Ian, Reform and Resistance in the International Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980), 39.Google Scholar The complementary argument of Clark, Stanley Hoffmann and others who see Rousseau as Kant's intellectual opposite in each of these dualisms is something against which I have argued elsewhere (see Williams, “Rousseau, Realism and Realpolitik”).

5 Waltz, Kenneth, “Kant, Liberalism and War,” American Political Science Review 56 (1962), 331–340CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 To Kant, the key figures are Leibnitz on the side of the rationalists and Locke on that of the empiricists. He views Hume's work as the culmination of the conflict. A thorough explication of Kant's analytic arguments is Allison, H. E., Kant's Transcendental Idealism: An Interpretation and Defense (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1983).Google Scholar

7 An archetypal example of this form of reasoning is found in Aquinas' proof of the existence of God (see Summa Theologica 1, 1, 2, 3).

8 Kant, , Critique of Pure Reason, trans, by Kemp Smith, Norman (New York: St. Martins, 1965), 44.Google Scholar

9 Kant, , Critique of Practical Reason, trans, by White Beck, Lewis (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1981), 98.Google Scholar

10 Indeed he explicitly rejects such an “absolute idealist” stance. See, for example, Critique of Pure Reason, 88.

11 Ibid., 42; emphasis added.

12 In the “Transcendental Aesthetic” of the Critique of Pure Reason.

13 See ibid., 478–79.

14 Ibid., 476.

15 Ibid., 473.

16 Kant, , Critique of Practical Reason, 101.Google Scholar

17 See Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, trans, by Paton, H. J. (New York: Harper, 1964), 108–113Google Scholar, and Critique of Practical Reason, 59–70.

18 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 120. These apparently contradictory statements actually reflect the dialectical paradox underlying Kant's thought. For an exploration, see Jaspers, Karl, Kant, , ed. by Arendt, H., trans, by Manheim, R. (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich, 1962).Google Scholar

19 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, 88.

20 See ibid., 89–91.

21 Ibid., 96.

22 For Kant's distinction between the “political moralist” and the “moral politician,” see Kant, Perpetual Peace, in Forsyth, R., et al. , eds., The Theory of International Relations (London: Allen & Unwin, 1970), 233–234.Google Scholar

23 Kant, Perpetual Peace, 213–14.

24 An excellent exposition of this theme may be found in Jaspers, Kant, 66–68.

25 Kant, “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,” in White Beck, Lewis, ed., Kant On History (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1963), 17.Google Scholar

26 Kant, “An Old Question Raised Again: Is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?” in Beck, ed., Kant on History, 144.

27 For a thorough criticism of this often held but mistaken position, see Gallie, W. B., Philosophers of Peace and War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, chap. 1.

28 An attempt to defend the historical validity of Kant's theory and extend its principles to concrete questions of foreign policy is Michael W. Doyle, “Kant, Liberal Legacies and Foreign Affairs,” Philosophy and Public Affairs 12 (1983), 205–35, and 323–53.

29 This complicated question is clearly discussed by Jaspers, “Kant's ‘Perpetual Peace,’” in Philosophy and the World: Selected Essays (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 94.Google Scholar

30 Waltz, “Kant, Liberalism and War,” 336–37 especially. For reasons of space this criticism of Waltz must be limited, but it illustrates the inadequacy of his interpretation.

31 Ibid., 339–40.

32 Groundwork on the Metaphysics of Morals, 106

33 Critique of Practical Reason, 103. See also the formulation in the Critique of Pure Reason, 471.

34 Kant, “The Debate of the Departments,” in Beck, ed., Kant on History, 138.

35 Perpetual Peace, 221.

36 While it is not my intention here to pursue directly the implications of Kant's theory of knowledge for contemporary theories of international politics, consider its implications for Robert Gilpin's summary of contemporary Realism: “An offspring of modern science and the Enlightenment… Realism is based on the practice of states, and it seeks to understand how states have always behaved and presumably always will behave” (War and Change in World Politics [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981], 226). It is precisely this kind of claim which Kant seeks to analyze and undermine.

37 For Kant's statement of this argument, see “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,” 184–85; and especially “An Old Question Raised Again,” in Beck, ed., Kant on History. An excellent commentary is Saner, Hans, Kant's Political Thought, trans, by Ashton, E. B. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1973), 40–48Google Scholar especially.

38 Kant, “Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View,” in Beck, ed., Kant on History, 14.

39 Kant, “What Is Enlightenment?” in Beck, ed., Kant on History, 3–10.

40 For an effective summary, see Saner, Kant's Political Thought, 40.

41 See Clark, Reform and Resistance, 41. For a good brief analysis of the fundamental differences between Kant and the English liberals, see Dunn, John, Western Political Theory in the Face of the Future (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1980)Google Scholar, chap. 2.

42 Clark, Reform and Resistance, 35.

43 This point is summarized excellently in Beck's Introduction to Kant on History, xxv.

44 Jaspers, “Kant's ‘Perpetual Peace,’” 89–90, is again excellent on this theme.

45 I thus disagree fundamentally with the position put forward by Bethke Elshtain, Jean in “The Problem with Peace,” Millennium: Journal of International Studies 3 (1988), 441–449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

46 Kant, Perpetual Peace, 253. This formulation is nearly identical to a passage discussing morality in the Critique of Practical Reason, 127. A clearer illustration of the links between Kant's moral philosophy and his analysis of international relations could hardly be found.

47 On this point see Critique of Practical Reason, 86–87.

48 See Jaspers, “Kant's ‘Perpetual Peace,’” 118.