Kant: Political Writings

Kant's reviews (1785) of the first instalments of Johann Gottfried Herder's Ideas on the Philosophy of the History of Mankind (1784—91) and his Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History (1786) (which is virtually another reply to Herder's Ideas and also to his Oldest Document of Mankind1 are not specifically concerned with political questions—they do not deal with the theory of right which for Kant sets the framework within which politics ought to be conducted—but they deal with, and amplify, his conception of history, which is an integral part of his political thought. They also strikingly bring out the manner of his reasoning when interpreting history philosophically, thus revealing the boundaries between those interpretations and theories which can, in his view, be justified in relation to empirical or rational enquiries and those which must be dismissed as untenable speculations.

To appreciate these writings properly it is necessary to set them in the context of Kant's attitude to Herder (1744-1803), one of the seminal thinkers of eighteenth-century Germany. Herder's influence has been immense. His impact on literature, above all through his friendship with Goethe, whose mentor he was in his youth (they met in Strasbourg in 1770 where Goethe was a student of law and Herder had just undergone an eye operation) can hardly be overestimated. His contributions to aesthetics and poetics are also important. He proclaimed the inner coherence and historical uniqueness of works of literature which should not, in his view, be judged by an appeal to universal aesthetic criteria. He thus furthered, perhaps more than anyone else, the historical and genetic approach to the study of literature and history. He also put folk poetry on the map of literary taste. His writings engendered the belief in the nation as a cultural entity and promoted cultural and eventually political nationalism, although he himself never abandoned his eighteenth-century cosmopolitanism; that step was taken only by the German Romantics.

Herder was born in Morungen in East Prussia on 25 August 1744, the son of an impecunious school-teacher. By a stroke of good fortune he was able in 1762 to go to Königsberg (now Kaliningrad) to study at the university, earning his living as a tutor at the local grammar school, the Fridericianum.