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FIAT IUSTITIA, PEREAT MUNDUS: IMMANUEL KANT, FRIEDRICH GENTZ, AND THE POSSIBILITY OF PRUDENTIAL ENLIGHTENMENT*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 April 2015

JONATHAN GREEN
JONATHAN GREEN*
Affiliation:
Trinity Hall, University of Cambridge E-mail: jag202@cam.ac.uk
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Abstract

Since the early twentieth century, historians of political thought have read Immanuel Kant's interventions into debates over the French Revolution—his essay on “Theory and Practice” (1795), and his tract on Perpetual Peace (1793)—against Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790). Kant is said to have upheld the sovereignty of pure reason for political practice, over and against Burke's stubborn traditionalism. What this dichotomy ignores, however, is that Kant's first public comments on the Revolution were directed not against Burke's Reflections, but against a heavily edited German version of the text published in 1793 by Kant's former student, Friedrich Gentz (1764–1832). The central thrust of Gentz's translation was that while Kant's normative theory of politics was admirable, it needed to be complemented with a prudential grasp of statecraft in order to be made practicable. Without prudence, the rights of man would remain an empty ideal. In responding to Gentz, Kant entered into a debate over whether philosophical reason and political prudence are mutually compatible. His dogmatic refusal to endorse such an alliance, even in the face of the Terror, places his political thought in an unfavourable light.

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Modern Intellectual History , Volume 14 , Issue 1 , April 2017 , pp. 35 - 65
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Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2015 

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Richard Bourke, Christopher Meckstroth, Isaac Nakhimovsky, Joachim Whaley and the two anonymous referees of Modern Intellectual History for their helpful comments on earlier drafts of this article.

References

1 Burke, Edmund, Reflections on the Revolution in France, ed. Clark, J. C. D. (Stanford, CA, 2001), 412–13Google Scholar.

2 Quoted in von Ense, Karl August Varnhagen, Denkwürdigkeiten und vermischte Schriften, 9 vols. (Leipzig, 1843–59), 7: 427Google Scholar. All translations are my own unless otherwise noted. The exceptions to this rule are Kant's “Theory and Practice” and Perpetual Peace, where I have generally relied on Gregor, Mary's renderings in The Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, ed. Wood, Allen (Cambridge, 1996)Google Scholar.

3 Kant to Spener, Carl, 22 March 1793, in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, ed. der Wissenschaften, Königlich-Preussischen Akademie, 29 vols. (Berlin, 1902–), 9: 417 Google Scholar.

4 Immanuel Kant, “Über den Gemeinspruch: Das mag in der Theorie richtig sein, taugt aber nicht für die Praxis,” Berlinische Monatsschrift, 22 (Sept. 1793), 201–84; repr. in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 8: 273–313 (hereafter “Theorie und Praxis”).

5 Kant, Immanuel, Zum ewigen Frieden (Königsberg, 1795)Google Scholar; repr. in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 8: 343–86.

6 Kant, “Theorie und Praxis,” 276–7, translation mine.

7 Burke, Reflections, 217.

8 “In that hall let Aeolus lord it / and rule within the barred prison of the winds.” See Virgil, Aeneid, trans. H. R. Fairclough, Bk 1, ll. 140–41.

9 Wittichen, Paul, “Kant und Burke,” Historische Zeitschrift, 93/2 (1904), 253–5, at 254Google Scholar.

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11 Wittichen, “Kant und Burke,” 254–5.

12 Ibid., 255. The poles of Wittichen's “antagonism” between Kantian reason and tradition were captured in the title of Friedrich Meinecke's widely read Weltbürgertum und Nationalstaat (Munich, 1908).

13 Maliks, Reidar, “The State of Freedom: Kant and His Conservative Critics,” in Skinner, Quentin and van Gelderen, Martin, eds., Freedom and the Construction of Europe, 2 vols. (Cambridge, 2013), 2: 188–207, at 198CrossRefGoogle Scholar. See also Maliks, , Kant's Politics in Context (Oxford, 2014), esp. 39–79 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14 See Allen Wood, “Introduction [to “Theory and Practice”],” in The Works of Immanuel Kant: Practical Philosophy, 275–6; Henrich, Dieter, Über Theorie und Praxis (Frankfurt, 1967), 9–16 Google Scholar; and Beiser, Frederick, Enlightenment, Revolution and Romanticism: The Genesis of Modern German Political Thought (Cambridge, MA, 1992), 38–48 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15 According to Maliks (“The State of Freedom,” 190), Gentz's conservatism was rooted in “skepticism about theorists in general.” Henrich (Theorie und Praxis, 21), sees it as simple “Humean pragmatism,” and Beiser (Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism, 326), has denounced it as “the greatest intelligence in the service of the greatest stupidity.”

16 For Gentz's political thought see Kronenbitter, Günther, Wort und Macht: Friedrich Gentz als politischer Schriftsteller (Berlin, 1994)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Raphaël Cahen, “La pensée politique de Friedrich Gentz: Penseur post-Lumières et acteur du renouveau de l’ordre européen au temps des revolutions” (unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Provence, 2014).

17 Gentz, Betrachtungen, 1: 89.

18 Ibid., 1: 89–90, 95.

19 For the extent to which Gentz's edition of the Reflections reinterpreted Burke's arguments through a Kantian paradigm see Green, Jonathan, “Friedrich Gentz's Translation of Burke's Reflections ,” Historical Journal, 57/3 (Sept. 2014), 639–59CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 Kant, “Theorie und Praxis,” 275, italics in original.

21 Gentz presented his analyses of the Revolution in two annotated translations of French histories of the movement— Gentz, Friedrich, Mallet du Pan über die französische Revolution und die Ursachen ihrer Dauer (Berlin, 1794)Google Scholar, and Gentz, , Mouniers Entwicklung der Ursachen welche Frankreich gehindert haben zu Freiheit zu gelangen, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1795)Google Scholar—both of which have been partially reprinted in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 263–536.

22 Gentz, Betrachtungen, in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 180–81.

23 Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden, 378.

24 Gentz to Garve, 5 March 1790, in Wittichen, F. P., ed., Briefe von und an Gentz, 3 vols. (Berlin, 1909), 1: 158–9Google Scholar.

25 Gentz to Garve, 5 Dec. 1790, in Wittichen, Briefe von und an Gentz, 1: 179.

26 See Gentz, , “Über den Ursprung und die obersten Prinzipien des Rechts,” Berlinische Monatsschrift, 18 (April 1791), 370–96Google Scholar; repr. in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 7: 7–33.

27 Gentz to Garve, 5 Dec. 1790, in Wittichen, Briefe von und an Gentz, 1: 178.

28 Gentz, Betrachtungen, in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 29.

29 Immanuel Kant, “Beantwortung der Frage: Was ist Aufklärung?”, Berlinische Monatsschrift, 12 (Dec. 1784), 481–94; repr. in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 8: 35–42.

30 Ibid., 8: 36.

31 Ibid., 8: 35–6.

32 See Gentz to Garve, 5 March 1790, in Wittichen, Briefe von und an Gentz, 1: 155; see also Kronenbitter, Wort und Macht, 32–4.

33 In 1790 Gentz told Garve that he was reading the Wealth of Nations “for a third time”; see Gentz to Garve, 5 Dec. 1790, in Wittichen, Briefe von und an Gentz, 1: 181.

34 For this tradition see Pocock, J. G. A., “Clergy and Commerce: The Conservative Enlightenment in England,” in Ajello, R., ed., L’età dei Lumi: Studi Storici sul Settecento Europeo in onore di Franco Venturi, 2 vols. (Naples, 1985), 1: 523–62Google Scholar; for Burke's place within it see Bourke, Richard, “Burke, Enlightenment and Romanticism,” in Dwan, David and Insole, Christopher, eds., The Cambridge Companion to Edmund Burke (Cambridge, 2012), 27–40 CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

35 Gentz, Betrachtungen, in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 212.

36 Ibid., 6: 9–10.

37 Ibid., 6: 26–7.

38 Ibid.

39 For Gentz's distinction between reformist and radical wings within the German Enlightenment see Hunter, Ian, Rival Enlightenments (Cambridge, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

40 Gentz, Betrachtungen, 1: 2.

41 According to Gentz, Burke's critique of rationalism belied a “lack of secure first principles”; see Gentz, Betrachtungen, in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 114–15.

42 Burke, Reflections, 221.

43 Gentz, Betrachtungen, 1: 89, 93.

44 Ibid., 1: 92–3, 95. Gentz may have borrowed this image from Kant; see Immanuel Kant, Was heißt: Sich im Denken orientieren? (1786), in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 8: 133–47, at 135.

45 Ibid., 1: 93.

46 Gentz, Betrachtungen, in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 182.

47 Ibid., 6: 66.

48 Ibid., 6: 181. Though Gentz did not cite Kant, there was precedent in Kant's corpus. In his Grundlegung für Metaphysik der Sitten, Kant defined “anthropology” as a series of practical investigations into one's phenomenal circumstances, and argued that it was a prerequisite for making morality “effective in concreto in the conduct of one's life”; see Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 4: 387–463, at 388–9. Kant would later echo this sentiment in his Metaphysik der Sitten of 1797, claiming that “morality requires anthropology for its application to human beings”; see Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 205–493, at 412.

49 For Gentz on America see Gentz, Betrachtungen, in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 90–98.

50 Ibid., 6: 144.

51 See Beiser, Enlightenment, Revolution, and Romanticism, 287–8; and Aris, Reinhold, History of Political Thought in Germany (London, 1965), 251–8Google Scholar.

52 Rehberg, A. W., Untersuchungen über die Französische Revolution, 2 vols. (Hannover, 1793)Google Scholar.

53 Fichte, J. G., Beiträge zur Berichtigung der Urteile des Publikums über die Französische Revolution (Danzig, 1793)Google Scholar.

54 Spener to Kant, 9 March 1793, in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 11: 415–16.

55 See ibid., 11: 401–31.

56 Kiesewetter to Kant, 15 June 1793, in ibid., 11: 422.

57 See, for instance, Gentz to Garve, 8 Oct. 1784, in Wittichen, Briefe von und an Gentz, 1: 140–41.

58 See Gentz to Garve, 5 Dec. 1790, in ibid., 1: 182.

59 See Johann Biester to Kant, 4 March 1794, and Kiesewetter to Kant, 25 Nov. 1798, in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 11: 490 and 12: 266.

60 In 1792, the censor had reprimanded Kant for the heterodoxy of his Die Religion innerhalb der Grenzen der bloßen Vernunft, and forbade him from printing sections of it in the Monatsschrift; see Biester to Kant, 18 June 1792, in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 8: 329–33.

61 Kant, “Theorie und Praxis,” 273, translation mine.

62 Ibid., 275–6, translation mine.

63 Ibid., 275, italics in original.

64 Ibid., 276.

65 Ibid., 289. Kant's notes to this section of his essay suggest that he wrote it in mid-1793; that is, after the publication of Gentz's Reflections. See Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 23: 125–44.

66 Ibid., 290. Because Kant asserted these rights rather than deducing them from his more basic metaphysical commitments, there exists a long-standing interpretive debate about the relation between political freedom and moral autonomy in his thought. In this context, it is perhaps helpful to note that Gentz provided a Kantian derivation of political right from “the pure concept of humanity” in an article printed in the Monatsschrift in 1791, entitled “Über den Ursprung und die obersten Prinzipien des Rechts.” This might explain why Kant was content to assert his preferred catalogue of rights in “Theory and Practice,” rather than making their theoretical grounding explicit. For Gentz's essay see Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 8: 7–33; see also Green, “Gentz's Reflections,” 645–8.

67 Kant, “Theorie und Praxis,” 290–92, 295.

68 Ibid., 297–8.

69 Garve's charge was that Kant's rationalism is not able to inspire moral conduct in practice, since all human action assumes a eudemonistic idea of moral flourishing. In his response (ibid., 279–80), Kant argued that in the moment that the will acknowledges the sovereignty of moral duty, it postulates a conceptual end a priori (which it then pursues, of necessity). This response to Garve might therefore be read as a tacit rejection of Gentz's claim that in the pursuit of just ends, human actors often resort to immoral means. Insofar as one truly submits to the authority of reason, Kant argued, moral action will follow in due course.

70 Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden, 344.

71 Kant, “Theorie und Praxis,” 277.

72 Kant had been making this argument consistently since the mid-1780s against the natural law resistance theory of Gottfried Achenwall: see Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 27: 1319–94. For an interpretation of Kant's politics that places central emphasis on it see Waldron, Jeremy, “Kant's Legal Positivism,” Harvard Law Review, 109 (1996), 1535–66CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

73 Kant, “Theorie und Praxis,” 299.

74 See Gentz, “Über die Moralität in den Staatsrevolutionen,” in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 74–100.

75 Kant, “Theorie und Praxis,” 301.

76 Ibid., 303.

77 Ibid., 285, 301–2.

78 Friedrich Gentz, “Nachtrag zu den Räsonnement des Herrn Professor Kant über das Verhältnis zwischen Theorie und Praxis,” Berlinische Monatsschrift, 22 (Dec. 1793), 518–54; repr. in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 7: 35–72.

79 Gentz, “Nachtrag,” in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 35–6.

80 Kant, “Theorie und Praxis,” 273.

81 Gentz, “Nachtrag,” in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 37.

82 Ibid., 36, 43.

83 Ibid., 57.

84 Ibid., 56.

85 Ibid., 57–8, emphasis mine.

86 Ibid., 54–5.

87 du Pan, Jacques Mallet, Considérations sur la nature de la Révolution en France et sur les causes qui en prolongent la durée (Brussels, 1793)Google Scholar; Mounier, Jean Joseph, Recherches sur les causes qui ont empêché les Français de devenir libres (Geneva, 1792)Google Scholar.

88 Friedrich Gentz, Mallet du Pan über die französische Revolution, in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 6: 267, 284.

89 Gentz, Mouniers Entwicklung, 2: 9.

90 Mallet du Pan, Considérations, 14–15; cf. Gentz, Mallet du Pan über die französische Revolution, 54–6, 166.

91 Gentz, Mallet du Pan über die französische Revolution, 272.

92 Mallet du Pan, Considérations, 63.

93 See Johann Biester to Kant, 4 March 1794, in Kants Gesammelte Schriften, 9: 490–92.

94 See Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden, 353; for discussion see below.

95 For Kant's other interlocutors see Maliks, Kant's Politics, passim.

96 Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden, 349–50, translation mine.

97 Ibid., 373.

98 Ibid., 372.

99 Ibid., 372, 374.

100 Gentz, “Nachtrag,” in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 53.

101 Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden, 370, translation mine.

102 Ibid., 374, translation mine.

103 Ibid., 378.

104 Ibid., 353, translation mine.

105 Ibid., 378. Kant's slogan does not have ancient roots; Manlius's Loci Communes (1563) cites it as the motto of the Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I (r. 1558–64), which seems the likely antecedent for Kant's usage.

106 See, for instance, Heine, Heinrich, Zur Geschichte der Religion und Philosophie in Deutschland (1835), trans. Terry Pinkard as Concerning the History of Religion and Philosophy in Germany (Cambridge, 2007), 79 Google Scholar.

107 Kant, Zum ewigen Frieden, 378, translation mine. Kant had other reasons for trusting that his principles would ultimately lead to a more just world; these include his rational theology, his belief in historical progress, and his account of the “unsocial sociability” inherent in human nature.

108 Gentz, “Nachtrag,” in Gentz, Gesammelte Schriften, 66–7.

109 Fichte, J. G., “Über Machiavelli als Schriftsteller” (1807), in Fichte, Gesamtausgabe der Bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 42 vols. (Stuttgart and Bad Cannstatt, 1962–2012), 9: 245 Google Scholar. For Fichte's own attempt to harmonize the principles of right with the harsh realities of eighteenth-century power politics see Nakhimovsky, Isaac, The Closed Commercial State: Perpetual Peace and Commercial Society from Rousseau to Fichte (Princeton, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

110 Arendt, Hannah, “Friedrich von Gentz: Zu seinem 100. Todestag am 9. Juni,” Kölnische Zeitung, 8 June 1932 Google Scholar; repr. in Arendt, , Reflections on Literature and Culture, ed. Gottlieb, Susannah (Stanford, CA, 2007), 31–7Google Scholar; Schmitt, Carl, Politische Romantik (1919), trans. Guy Oakes (Cambridge, MA, 1986)Google Scholar.