Chris Meckstroth (University of Cambridge), 'Kant on Progress in Democracy'
Kant's philosophy of history has been interpreted many ways. Many of the best accounts agree that his notion of progress was not predictive but a principle we ought to act on even if do not know it is true (so long as we cannot prove it impossible). Less frequently is it understood exactly how this built on the classic debate over theodicy beginning with Bayle and Leibniz. This makes much clearer the status of the argument and the role it is supposed to play in saving morality and so our obligation to act for the end of peace. But even less often is it considered what a radical move Kant made by transposing this sort of argument, in Leibniz concerning individual conscience, into the space of political judgment occupied first by an enlightened monarch and then, ultimately, by a self-governing people, represented by a monarch. This amounts to superimposing a secularised version of the theodicy argument on the judgment of a collective political agent. So we get an argument about the conscience of a state and its duties to act on certain assumptions originally designed to secure faith in the salvation of individual souls. This is a different way of thinking about a people's progress in self governance than we are accustomed to today. But it offers a perspective that may in some ways remain powerful, just because it focuses on the conditions of collective action and judgment rather than on causal factors that so often fail to predict or manage progress in democracy – or indeed peace among peoples.
Organized by KanDem -- The Kantian Foundations of Democracy