11/13/2009 Kant Lecture Notes #3 Page - 1 of 6 The teleology is a proposal regarding how we ought to think about the universe,

, nature, human nature, and history for practical purposes. He is recommending we adopt the teleology as a guide for thinking about how we ought to act, not about what is true (matter of theoretical reason.) Practical reason is about how to act. Practical reason is about the concerns we have for how we ought to act, given all the differences and circumstances among people. Within practical reason we are allowed to use the Ideas capital I. We cannot use them in theoretical reason, for the goal of theoretical reason is the truth. Ideas are only valid for practical purposes, we need to assume they are true in order to maintain our striving, our positive attitudes for achieving our goals, this is brought out by human nature and experience. We bring about the conclusion, or outcome, by our own attitudes, if we think we know we will fail this course, we are far less likely to study and with then fail the course. Read What is Orientation in Thinking Continutation of essay What is Enlightenment Public reason is not what we think it is. Kants terminology is confusing. 2 Different ways someone can use their reason. 1. Public reason The use of reason by private citizens speaking out as citizens or through writing in the form of journalism, letter, political pamphlets, and the like, intended to be heard by other members of the educated public. The goal being to improve society by criticizing institutions, values, practices, and the like questioning authority in order to improve peoples lives. Public reason is demanded by reason itself, because reason demands that all existing institutions, practices and the like be tested by reason. They ought to be criticized in order to improve them. We learn about, and improve our lives by criticizing any defects we find in society, the economy, government and the like, and maters that bear on peoples lives. The use of ones reason as a private citizen, this is the only legitimate kind of reason according to Kant. 2. Private reason Someone uses private reason when he speaks out as the occupier of public position, or social law. Like an educator, politican, clergyman etc. It is illegitimate because it means using ones position of authority to criticize an institution. The problem with this according to Kant is destroying the legitimacy of an institution. Kant has the same concern Hobbes does about not weakening the bonds that keep people safe from one an other, and keeping society safe as a whole. DOWN WITH RUTGERS!!! Being said by a professor of Rutgers, this is illegitimate. If it is said by a professor outside of class, on their off time this would fall under the realm of public reason, and is fine because all institutions must be criticized.

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Kants concern is with maintaining a minimum amount of societal stability. The law has to be respected to prevent anarchy, and to prevent revolution, and so if someone speaks out using private reason he risk undermining the legitimacy of the government itself, this ought to be allowed but only through means that allow for criticism while still maintaining the stability of institutions. Public reason maintains the authority of institutions and thus keeps society intact. It is always wrong to attempt to undermine societies stability through revolutionary means. The only thing Kant allows for is peaceful gradual reform, he argues for historical progress, if we criticize properly we can gradually improve society, if we use private reason we risk plunging everyone back into the state of nature. Most people who have any power in society have two different standpoints, the private standpoint as citizens which everyone has, where everyone is equal, many people have another standpoint, their public standpoint, such as that of a clergyman, and the like. People occupying these two different standpoints, only one of them can be the basis for public reason. Everyones opinions must be treated as having equal right to be articulated, this is the rights of citizens. P.57 The failure to attempt to improve society by increasing enlightenment is a crime against human nature. It is our nature to be developmental, progressive beings to improve our skills and institutions, to make them more just, more rational, more equal. P.58 To deny enlightenment is to trample on the sacred rights of mankind. We must live in a society respecting everyones value, not just on the basis of empirical means, but on the basis of ones ability to think and choose, which animals cannot do. Only rational beings can choose, so only rational beings can have a morality. Humans have no pre given nature that tells us how to be human, this is what reason does for us. P.57 He explains our destiny as a species is to perfect ourselves, this does not mean to become perfect, but to improve ourselves socially, morally, politically, and the like. P.58 He says the current age is not currently enlightened, but is undergoing enlightenment. Sometimes Kant wrights as if there is an endpoint to human development, but most of the time he rejects this in favor of the idea that enlightenment is a continues process of never ending improvement. It requires the courage to think for ones self, and that the government allows them to speak out and think for themselves. Enlightenment requires enlightened citizens and an enlightened ruler. He is well aware that reality is deficient about enlightenment, but his teleology says we must welcome and value enlightenment, and the more

11/13/2009 Kant Lecture Notes #3 Page - 3 of 6 we do this the more enlightened we will become. The more we think some goal is possible, the more we will try to achieve it. The way you define your possibilities will determine your outcome. On Perpetual Peace This contains the core of Kants political philosophy, especially his theory of justice. He develops to greater extent many of the ideas of other essays, especially his ideas of international justice or what he calls cosmopolitan. Politics must be guided by morality, and cannot be an independent framework of practices, and or ideas. The first major distinction is between morality and justice. Morality Involves varies rights, duties and principles. The nature of morality is that morality is purely voluntary, it is non-coercive. It is only about our personal subjective values and motives, intentions, and goals, no matter what they may be. Every individual decides on his own what he values, believes, or wants out of life for whatever reason. In morality every citizen is his own sovereign. Through reason we determine which actions are morally permissible. Robbing banks is morally wrong. Morality is about whatever laws or principles each of us chooses for ourselves using free will and our power of reason, it is up to us to choose on the basis of what we think are the right basis. (Explained more in Kants ethical theory.) Kant claims what makes us worthy of happiness is our ability to set happiness aside when thinking about what is morally right and wrong. Any individual has two different aspects or dimensions. 1. Our moral right to happiness, which means whatever we think will make us happy. This could mean robbing banks or working for the peace corps. Whatever goal or end an individual chooses for whatever reason he chooses it, and we have a right to pursue happiness. Happiness is not universal. 2. We also have the obligation, or duty to recognize restrictions on the pursuit of happiness. Morality determines which goals are permissible, which ones are right and wrong. It is universal in that there is a single set of moral values for all rational beings. Morality tells us which goals are right and wrong and thereby sets limits on our actions. This is all chosen by individuals and is a matter of voluntary. for more information read Groundwork. Morality involves only the voluntary actions of individuals and how we ought to think about happiness.

Justice Is about different rights, duties, and laws, which concern coercion of the state. Morality is unenforceable, the state cannot make someone be morally good, if you choose to be evil nothing can change you. Justice however is about the states power to coerce all individuals to obey the laws, it is what the sovereign does in Leviathan. The head of state

11/13/2009 Kant Lecture Notes #3 Page - 4 of 6 or government determines the laws of the state which all citizens are required to obey whether they want to or not. Justice - Coercion - Enforcement - Actions This is because without some framework of regulation, there will be anarchy as individuals choose happiness in any way they want and act to achieve it. This will produce social, economic, and political instability, making everyone less safe and endangering everyones ability to achieve happiness. We all need common ground rules governing our own actions and this is what justice provides. 2 Aspects to justice 1. Civil freedom Discussed on P.112, and P.122. The laws of the state ought to grant every citizen civil freedom. It is a space or zone where citizens are free to act as they wish to pursue happiness. Morality says you have the moral right to seek happiness, but morality is only about individuals, why should any other individual value your right to be happy? There must be a way to protect your moral right to the pursuit of happiness. You need to have justice along with morality, one of the principles of justice is the principle of civil freedom the freedom to live with others such that every member of that society has the right to pursue happiness, the right to choose for himself what he wants out of life. Civil freedom is the way peoples moral freedom as individuals is protected. Kant claims every citizen ought to be given equal amounts of civil freedom, no matter race, ethnicity, language, and the like. There must be an equality of distribution. Not just equal size shares, but maximum equality, everyones share should be as large as possible and of equal size, this is where enlightenment comes in, people should be given the freedom to criticize their society. 2. Political Freedom Kant is very conservative here. a. First of all the capacity to choose the laws of the state through voting, remember the goal of history is the creation of a federation of republics, or indirect democracies. It involves the capacity to colegislate by electing representatives by electing your will when selecting legislation. By voting you legislate with congress, it is a collaboration. This is his framework for a just state, his standard for justice as mandated by reason. All actual states must be tested by the standard.

11/13/2009 Kant Lecture Notes #3 Page - 5 of 6 We dont all necessarily have the same capacity to legislate, example in Kants time only men could vote, so they were tasked with taking into accord the will and desire of the family. (A) is an empirical claim, women have the reduced capacity to reason in this distinction, and those who are not self sufficient economically lack the capacity. This makes them passive citizens. Only active citizens have the right to vote, and to participate. b. The right to participate with other citizens in co legislation. Only active citizens have the right to represent the will of the governed, so this too is unequal. Political freedom does not involve equality like civil freedom does. This is a normative claim. Applying 1 and 2, as he says on P.122 Justice is applied for which all human beings ought to accept because they are rational Justice requires us to act externally in such a way according to a universal law. By externally he means acting on beliefs, by for example buying a present for your present for your professor of philosophy, or a gun to shoot him with. In terms of our actions that effect others we ought to use the theory of justice to determine which actions are permissible, only actions that do not violate the right of other citizens to act on their actions are permissible. Political freedom involves protection through the laws of the state, through the freedom of actions of citizens. Everyone gets the same freedom to act in order to be happy. What we ought to pursue in any society is the expansion of freedoms such that they are given to all, and as much as possible to protect us from others who want to infringe, or deny us of our own civil freedoms. You might say that #3 is a principle of justice because it is a law that every rational being ought to find convincing using their own reason. Justice you might is a condition in which every citizens freedom of action (external freedom) is coercively restricted to make it compatible with the same external freedom of all other citizens. Everyones freedom cannot infringe on anyone elses freedom. P.105 and P.123 Kant argues that it is a duty of reason that all human beings live in states acknowledging this universal rule of justice, because the alternative to living in a state is living in a state of nature where no one is safe from anyone else because there is no coercive power to keep anyone in check. We have a moral duty to live in a state, meaning a moral duty to be law abiding and never to rebel against the head of state. Any real state is always more just than the state of nature, so you are always worse off by undermining the ruler.

11/13/2009 Kant Lecture Notes #3 Page - 6 of 6 P.114, 116, 122-124 The universal law of justice is a duty for us to strive to achieve. We have an unconditional obligation to seek justice. Kant would allow that we have ample data from human history to defend the idea that we are unsociably social, and there is no doubt that we are evil creatures. So there is no doubt that we need to find a system to help us achieve what we are striving for. We know we need justice to keep us safe and to enable us to be able to seek happiness. P.100 What justifies this idea of the just state? Well the a priori use of reason, meaning the use of reason which transcends experience because experience is always variable and contingent. This is why Kant emphasizes the universality of reason. We cannot get universal, necessary, objective principles from experience, only from reason which transcends experience. This is why we all agree that 2 and 2 equals four no matter what our experiences might be, we have the ability as rational beings to set aside all that we perceive through the five senses, and engage in abstract reasoning. As with Hobbes we must find some common framework to live together in society. The a priori Idea is mentioned on P.100, there is the idea of a hypothetical social contract. Not a literal contract, but never the less according to reason every legislature has a moral obligation to frame his laws in such a way that they could have been produced by the united will of all the people.