¹ For a contemporary version of this argument, that liberalism turns us into “mayflies,” see Deneen, Patrick, Why Liberalism Failed (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2018), 74CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

² Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, in The Portable Edmund Burke, ed. Kramnick, Isaac (New York: Penguin Books, 1999), 456Google Scholar.

³ Ibid., 457.

⁴ Ibid., 458.

⁵ See Shell, Susan, The Right of Reason: A Study of Kant's Philosophy and Politics (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Velkley, Richard, Freedom and the End of Reason: On the Moral Foundation of Kant's Critical Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Guyer, Paul, Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002)Google Scholar.

⁶ See Velkley, Freedom and the End of Reason; Guyer, Kant on Freedom; Yovel, Yirmiahu, Kant and the Philosophy of History (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980)Google Scholar; Anderson-Gold, Sharon, Unnecessary Evil: History and Moral Progress in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant (New York: State University of New York Press, 2001)Google Scholar; Wood, Allen, Kant's Ethical Thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sweet, Kristi E., Kant on Practical Life: from Duty to History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁷ In what follows, I use the following abbreviations for references to Kant's texts. Pagination corresponds to the Akademie edition, and translations are from the Cambridge edition of Kant's works (Paul Guyer and Allen Wood, general eds.).

CB

“The Conjectural Beginning of Human History,” trans. Allen W. Wood

CPR

Critique of Pure Reason, trans. Paul Guyer and Allen W. Wood

CPrR

Critique of Practical Reason, trans. Mary J. Gregor

CF

Conflict of the Faculties, trans. Mary J. Gregor and Robert Anchor

CJ

Critique of the Power of Judgment, trans. Paul Guyer and Eric Matthews

DMM

Drafts on the Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Frederick Rauscher and Kenneth R. Westphal

I

“Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim,” trans. Allen W. Wood

LE

Lectures on Ethics (Collins), trans. Peter Heath

LNR

Lectures on Natural Right (Feyerabend), trans. Frederick Rauscher and Kenneth R. Westphal

MM

The Metaphysics of Morals, trans. Mary J. Gregor

PP

“Toward Perpetual Peace,” trans. Mary J. Gregor

R

Reflections, trans. Frederick Rauscher and Kenneth R. Westphal

Re

Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone, trans. George di Giovanni

RH

Review of Herder's Ideas, trans. Allen W. Wood

⁸ Kant makes the point about the valuelessness of the happy life already in the 1780s. In “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim” (1784), Kant argues that if human beings lived a “pastoral life of perfect concord, contentment, and mutual love,” we would be “good-natured as the sheep [we] tended” and would “give [our] existence hardly any greater worth than that of [our] domesticated beasts; [we] would not fill the void in creation in regard to [our] end as rational nature” (I 8:21). Reviewing Herder's Ideas, Kant critiques Herder's support for happiness being the highest good by suggesting that the “happy inhabitants of Tahiti” could not “give a satisfying answer to the question why they exist at all, and whether it would not have been just as good to have this island populated with happy sheep and cattle as with human beings who are happy merely enjoying themselves” (RH 8:65).

⁹ Thomas Pogge, “Kant on Ends and the Meaning of Life,” in Reclaiming the History of Ethics: Essays for John Rawls, ed. Andrews Reath et al. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 361—87. See also Goldman, Loren, “In Defense of Blinders: On Kant, Political Hope, and the Need for Practical Belief,” Political Theory 40, no. 4 (2012): 497–523CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Paul Weithman, Rawls, Political Liberalism, and Reasonable Faith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), chap. 10.

¹⁰ Patrick Riley, Kant's Political Philosophy (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Littlefield, 1983); Allen D. Rosen, Kant's Theory of Justice (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1993); Taylor, Robert S., “Kant's Political Religion: The Transparency of Perpetual Peace and the Highest Good,” Review of Politics 72, no. 1 (2010): 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹¹ The status of Kant's lecture notes as a good guide to his thought remains a contested issue. I assume here that Feyerabend is a good guide, but see the important discussion in Frederick Rauscher, “Did Kant Justify the French Revolution Ex Post Facto?,” in Reading Kant's Lectures, ed. Robert R. Clewis (Berlin: De Gruyter, 2015).

¹² See Guyer, Kant on Freedom.

¹³ See Christine Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 122.

¹⁴ Waldron, Jeremy, “Kant's Legal Positivism,” Harvard Law Review 109, no. 7 (1996): 1535–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁵ Kant makes similar points about undermining the condition of right in the context of his discussion of stealing (MM 6:333) and of lying (“On the Supposed Right to Lie”).

¹⁶ In the Introduction to the Doctrine of Right, Kant reveals that freedom is the substantive value that right seeks to realize: “our own freedom” is the basis for “putting others under obligation, that is, the concept of a right” (MM 6:239).

¹⁷ As is well-known, Kant does not clearly settle either on the structure of the international political institution or on its functions. See Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 225–26, and Kleingeld, Pauline, “Approaching Perpetual Peace: Kant's Defense of a League of States and His Ideal of a World Federation,” European Journal of Philosophy 12 (2004): 304–25CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁸ Cf. Henry Allison, Essays on Kant (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), chap. 14.

¹⁹ Taylor, “Kant's Political Religion”; Riley, Kant's Political Philosophy, chap. 6; and Howard Williams, Kant's Political Philosophy (New York: St. Martin's, 1983).

²⁰ I agree overall with Sweet, Kant on Practical Life, that the state does not just provide the “context” for moral improvement, but offers the “concrete practices that constitute the exercise of freedom itself” (143).

²¹ Cf. Goldman, “In Defense of Blinders.”

²² Kant's passage on the “nation of devils” has generated an enormous literature. For an influential take, see Otfried Höffe, “‘Even a Nation of Devils Needs the State’: The Dilemma of Natural Justice,” in Essays on Kant's Political Philosophy, ed. Howard Williams (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,1992), 120–42.

²³ L. W. Beck, “Kant and the Right to Revolution,” Journal of the History of Ideas 32 (1971): 411–22.

²⁴ Hill, Thomas E., “Questions about Kant's Opposition to Revolution,” Journal of Value Inquiry 36 (2002): 283–98CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Christine Korsgaard, “Taking the Law into Our Own Hands: Kant on the Right to Revolution,” in Reath, Reclaiming the History of Ethics, 297–328.

²⁵ Ripstein, Force and Freedom; Flikschuh, Katrin, “Reason, Right, and Revolution: Kant and Locke,” Philosophy & Public Affairs 36, no. 4 (2008): 375–404CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

²⁶ Kant's term heilig can be translated as “holy” or “sacred,” and I use these translations interchangeably here. For helpful discussions of Kant's rational theology and its bearing on his moral and political philosophy, see Allen Wood, Kant's Moral Religion (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1970) and James DiCenso, Kant, Religion, and Politics (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011).

²⁷ See Flikschuh, Katrin, Kant and Modern Political Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), chap. 5CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Sweet, Kant on Practical Life, 152–53, for good discussions of Kant on the general will.

²⁸ See also: “woe to him who acknowledges any politics other than that which holds sacred the laws of right” (DMM 23:345).

²⁹ Rosen, Kant's Theory of Justice, chap. 4.

³⁰ See Ellis, Elisabeth, Kant's Politics: Provisional Theory for an Uncertain World (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005)Google Scholar for an excellent account of the moral attitude citizens should take toward imperfect governments, granting “provisional” legitimacy to them on the way toward perfected republican government.

³¹ Of course, Kant has a graduated view of citizenship, in which some citizens possessed the right to vote, others not. A full discussion of citizenship is beyond the scope of this paper.

³² See Byrd, B. Sharon, “Kant's Theory of Punishment: Deterrence in Its Threat, Retribution in Its Execution,” Law and Philosophy 8, no. 2 (1989): 151–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Tunick, Mark, “Is Kant a Retributivist?,” History of Political Thought 17, no. 1 (1996): 60–78Google Scholar.

³³ See Merle, Jean-Christophe, “A Kantian Critique of Kant's Theory of Punishment,” Law and Philosophy 19 (2000): 311–38Google Scholar, and Allen Wood, “Punishment, Retribution, and the Coercive Enforcement of Right,” in The Metaphysics of Morals: A Critical Guide, ed. Lara Denis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 111–29.

³⁴ Shell, Susan Meld, “Kant on Punishment,” Kantian Review 1 (1997): 115–35CrossRefGoogle Scholar, discusses Kant's view of absolute value and punishment (117), but not the teleology in the practice of punishment.

³⁵ Ripstein, Force and Freedom, 305n13.

³⁶ Tunick, “Is Kant a Retributivist?,” 67.

³⁷ Ibid., 77–78.

³⁸ Byrd, “Kant's Theory of Punishment.”

³⁹ Sussman, David, “Shame and Punishment in Kant's Doctrine of Right,” Philosophical Quarterly 58, no. 231 (2008): 299–317CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

⁴⁰ Ibid., 311.

⁴¹ Cf. Brooks, Thom, “Kant's Theory of Punishment,” Utilitas 15, no. 2 (2003): 206–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, on Kant's distinction between positive and natural law in punishment.

⁴² Influenced by Kant, J. G. Fichte explicitly develops this suggestion in his Vocation of the Scholar lectures: “That which is called ‘death’ cannot interrupt my work; for my work must be completed, and it can never be completed in any amount of time. Consequently, my existence has no temporal limits: I am eternal” (Fichte, Early Philosophical Writings, trans. Dan Breazeale [Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1988], 168).

⁴³ Sandel, Michael, “Populism, Liberalism, and Democracy,” Philosophy and Social Criticism 44, no. 4 (2018): 353–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.