1. Introduction
Two conflicting interpretations of the highest good dominate contemporary scholarship on Kant’s later writings. Some interpreters downplay the theological underpinnings of this concept and argue that, in the works following the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant primarily conceived of the highest good as a secular political ideal realizable through human agency alone (Yovel Reference Yovel1980, Rawls Reference Rawls2000, Reath Reference Reath1988). Although Kant underlined, in the second Critique, that the existence of God is a precondition of the proportionality of happiness to virtue, it is often argued that this theological conception of the highest good is no longer dominant from the Critique of the Power of Judgement onwards, including in his works dedicated to religion itself. The opposing interpretation, which has recently been restated by Pasternack (Reference Pasternack2017), sheds doubt on the existence of a so-called secular account of the highest good in Kant’s later writings and presents the totality of his writings on this subject as infused with theological elements (see also Beiser Reference Beiser and Guyer2006).
Against the proponents of the secular interpretation, one can show that there is indeed evidence that Kant never abandoned the proportionality of happiness to virtue as a defining feature of the highest good, and that an account of this proportionality condition necessarily relies on the postulate of the existence of God. Simply put, proponents of the theological interpretation are right to claim that Kant remained committed to the theological ideas he had expressed in the Critique of Practical Reason. Yet the theological interpretation is incomplete, as it does not provide us with a satisfactory account of the relationship between Kant’s discussions of the highest good and his political writings. It more precisely leaves an important question unanswered: why did Kant repeatedly mention our duty to promote the highest good in his social and political works if he rejected the idea that it can serve as a political ideal?
In this article, my main objective will be to define the political implications of the obligation to promote the highest good, which Kant famously describes as a duty ‘of the human race towards itself’ (Rel, 6: 97).Footnote 1 More specifically, I will argue that as the ‘unconditioned totality of the object of pure practical reason’ (CPrR, 5: 108), the highest good is a practical ideal that relates to both the social duties laid out in the last two books of the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason and the political duties discussed in Kant’s political writings such as the Doctrine of Right and the essay on Perpetual Peace. While arguing this claim, I will not side with the proponents of the secular interpretation, but rather seek to reconcile some central claims of both the secular and theological interpretations. The idea that the highest good serves as a social and political ideal in Kant’s philosophy, I contend, does not contradict the unitary account of such a concept defended by the proponents of the theological interpretation. Contrary to Reath (Reference Reath1988), we do not need to postulate a shift in Kant’s conception of the highest good to coherently conceive of it as of political significance. Yet it should be noted from the start that my argument does entail that Kant’s account of the highest good is not secular, as the possibility of its realization relies on theological elements in all of his writings, including his later political works. In a nutshell, Kant’s conception of the highest good is both political and theological – or theologico-political – and the idea that we have a duty to promote it is compatible with Kant’s claim that God is the only being who can create a state of affairs in which this good could be realized.
I take my interpretation to have two main advantages. First, like the theological interpretation, it dissolves the tension between Kant’s later political writings and the Critique of Practical Reason. Contrary to proponents of the secular interpretation, Kant’s discussions of the highest good form a coherent whole from the second Critique to the Metaphysics of Morals. Unlike the theological account, however, it clarifies the relationship between Kant’s political works, his moral theory and his philosophy of religion by explaining how the creation of a rightful condition and a federative union of political states committed to perpetual peace enables rational beings to pursue happiness and virtue, the two main components of the highest good.Footnote 2
After some brief remarks on the nature of the highest good in section 2, I show where both Beiser’s theological interpretation and the secular interpretation of the highest good are lacking (sections 3 and 4). I then lay the basis of my alternative account of the highest good in sections 5 and 6.
2. The Highest Good: Preliminary Remarks
In the Critique of Practical Reason, Kant defines the highest good (höchstes Gut) as ‘happiness in exact proportion to morality’ (CPrR, 5: 110). Although strength of will in moral action (i.e. virtue) must be seen as the supreme good (oberstes Gut), the highest good understood as the complete good (vollendetes Gut) must include happiness, which is itself described as ‘the state of a rational being in the world in the whole of whose existence everything goes according to his wish and will’ (CPrR, 5: 124). From this definition arises a problem: while the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason presents the highest good as the final end (Endzweck) of pure practical reason, the Analytic of Pure Practical Reason has already established that actions committed for the sake of happiness are not virtuous since, in such cases, respect for the moral law is not the determining ground of the will. Moreover, nothing in the sensible world allows us to believe that actions which are virtuous will necessarily be rewarded with happiness. Thus ‘no necessary connection of happiness with virtue in the world, adequate to the highest good, can be expected from the most meticulous observance of moral laws’ and our own practical reason therefore seems to command us to pursue an impossible end (CPrR, 5: 113–14). At first sight, the highest good appears to be unattainable, but in Kant’s view, a reason that would prescribe itself an unrealizable end would be thoroughly contradictory. If the end of practical reason is unreachable, we must conclude that its fundamental law is ‘directed to empty imaginary ends and must therefore in itself be false’ (CPrR, 5: 114). This antinomy leads Kant to two postulates of pure practical reason, which are subjectively necessary theoretical propositions that rational beings must accept to make sense of their a priori obligations, including the duty to promote the highest good. As Kant writes, ‘we ought to strive to promote the highest good (which must therefore be possible)’ (CPrR, 5: 125). To allow for this possibility, however, we must postulate the immortality of soul and the existence of God.
In section 3, I consider why we must postulate that our soul is immortal to make sense of the highest good. For now, let us examine how moral belief in the existence of God removes contradictions from the idea that the highest good is ‘the necessary object of a will determinable by the moral law’ (CPrR, 5: 122). One obstacle is that nature does not seem to be conducive to the proportionality of happiness to virtue. In our everyday experience of the world, we meet immoral individuals who appear to be content as well as sorrowful virtuous agents. Yet the idea of God as the moral author of the world allows practical agents to believe that the proportionality condition can nonetheless be fulfilled by him: ‘if the world is the product of an intelligent creator’, the agent thinks, ‘it must be so that virtuous individuals will be rewarded for their behaviour’. It would be false to claim that such reasoning leads to knowledge, as it only gives rise to rational belief (Glaube). In Kant’s view, however, rational belief in the mere possibility of the highest good is sufficient for us to accept that our duty to promote it is real, and that the moral law is therefore not a ‘phantom of the mind’ (Hirngespinst) (CPJ, §91, 5: 472).
3. Realizing the Good through Human Action: The Secular Interpretation of the Highest Good
Did Kant remain faithful to his original treatment of the highest good? Proponents of the secular interpretation argue that he did not. According to an influential reading, there are in fact two conceptions of the highest good in Kant’s practical philosophy: the theological conception of the second Critique sketched in the previous section, and a later secular conception in which the proportionality of happiness to virtue – the possibility of which is warranted by the postulate of God’s existence – is no longer a component of the highest good. Andrews Reath thus argues that, in the writings of the 1790s, ‘the highest good need not be viewed as a theological notion’, and that ‘the proportionality of virtue and happiness is not essential to the doctrine’ (Reath Reference Reath1988: 594). According to his perspective, the secular account found in later works is also thoroughly political. Indeed, a careful reading of Kant’s late works such as the Critique of the Power of Judgement and the Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason would show that he there portrayed the highest good as a social and political state of affairs to be achieved in this world through human activity alone.
Yovel (Reference Yovel1980: 72) similarly argues that Kant significantly modified his account of the highest good:
In the first two Critiques, Kant tends to think of the highest good as a separate world, transcendent to our world and, in fact, a sort of critical and rational version of the notion of the next world … However, from the third Critique on, Kant’s conception changes. The highest good becomes the ‘final end of creation’ itself, i.e., the consummate state of this world. Its realization is conceived as ‘the kingdom of God on earth’ and despite its infinite remoteness, it involves a concrete synthesis, to be realized in time, between the moral will and empirical reality.
Such a transformation of Kant’s conception of the highest good would be the result of a deep shift from the first stage of Kant’s practical philosophy, where he envisions the moral will as pure and devoid of any content, to a second material stage in which he is mostly interested in ‘objectified moral praxis including such systems as politics, jurisprudence, education, etc.’ (Yovel Reference Yovel1980: 79). In this later period, happiness would lose its position as the empirical element of the highest good and would be replaced by the more general representation of the realization of noumenal freedom in the sensible world.
It is true that Kant only specifies the relationship between our social and political obligations and the general duty to promote the highest good from the Critique of the Power of Judgement onwards. However, this late specification does not support the claim that Kant traded a theological conception of the highest good for a secular one. There are five theological features of Kant’s early characterizations of the highest good that, according to the proponents of the secular interpretation, are no longer of central importance in his later descriptions of the concept. Yet all of these features still play a decisive role in Kant’s later reflections, and there is therefore no need to postulate a shift in his view.
Happiness as a Component of the Highest Good
As just noted, Yovel argues that in Kant’s later works the objectification of morality replaces happiness as the second component of the highest good. However, there is strong evidence that Kant conceives of happiness as a component of the highest good in both the Critique of Practical Reason and his subsequent works. In the Critique of the Power of Judgement, for instance, he defines ‘the highest and best thing in the world’ as the ‘happiness of rational beings harmoniously coinciding with conformity to the moral law’ (CPJ, §87, 5: 459), using a turn of phrase which is strongly reminiscent of his discussion of the highest good in the second Critique. In even later works, he sees no need to modify the definition of the highest good found in the second and third Critiques. In the Religion, he characterizes it as happiness proportioned to the observance of duty (Rel, 6: 5) and in ‘On the Common Saying’ as ‘universal happiness combined with and in conformity with the purest morality’ (TP, 8: 279).
It would be difficult to deny that Kant was deeply preoccupied, as Yovel insists, by the question of knowing how transcendental freedom can have effects in the phenomenal world. However, this does not support the conclusion that Kant eventually came to conceive of the manifestation of freedom in nature as the highest good itself. On the contrary, textual evidence suggests that the definitions of this concept found in the Critique of Practical Reason, the Critique of the Power of Judgement, the Religion and ‘On the Common Saying’ are very similar.
The Highest Good as Proportionality
Reath (Reference Reath1988: 594) suggests that in Kant’s later works the highest good is still defined as the combination of virtue and happiness, though not predominantly ‘by a relation of proportionality’. Yet as Pasternack (Reference Pasternack2017: 443–7) argues, such an interpretation is not easy to reconcile with Kant’s writings of the 1790s, where he repeatedly presents the proportionality condition as a component of the highest good. In the Religion, for example, he writes:
since human capacity does not suffice to effect happiness in the world proportionate to the worthiness to be happy, an omnipotent moral being must be assumed as the ruler of the world, under whose care this would come about, i.e., morality leads inevitably to religion. (Rel, 6: 8n.)Footnote 3
Here the function played by the postulate of the existence of God is precisely the same as in the Critique of Practical Reason. Rational beings can be virtuous through the exercise of their noumenal freedom, they can also seek happiness through the fulfilment of their personal ends, but only a divine being can make virtue the ground of happiness. Interestingly, Reath believes that the proportionality condition need not lead to a theological interpretation of the highest good even though he himself defends a secular interpretation in which the proportionality condition plays no role. As he explains, it would indeed be possible to ‘construct the idea of a historical state of affairs in which social institutions were arranged to promote happiness in proportion to virtue’ (Reath Reference Reath1988: 602). In such a state of affairs, the activity of God would no longer be required in order for the proportionality condition to be met. However, as the passage from the Religion quoted above indicates, Kant still believed in the 1790s that only an omnipotent moral being can ensure the proportionality condition. Finite rational beings do not have the power to distribute happiness in proportion to virtue for they can be certain neither that they themselves act from duty nor that they are correct when they ascribe specific motives to others. For instance, our fellow rational beings sometimes praise us for committing seemingly altruistic actions that were in fact motivated by selfish considerations. What is more, we often struggle ourselves to determine whether our actions were self-interested or genuinely other-regarding: did I give to charity because I desired to help others or because I wanted my friends to think highly of me? As Kant makes clear in the Groundwork, the motives of our actions are never transparent to us and it is always possible for sensible desires to disguise themselves as respect for the moral law.Footnote 4 In fact, attempts to distribute happiness and suffering proportionally to virtue rely on a mistaken belief in our own omniscience when only the moral author of the world has both the knowledge and power required to ensure proportionality. Because of this inaptitude, we must believe in the existence of a being ‘who knows the heart in order to penetrate to the most intimate parts of the dispositions of each and everyone and, as must be in every community, give to each according to the worth of his actions’ (Rel, 6: 99). In Kant’s view, judging the moral worth of our actions and ensuring that happiness is distributed accordingly are unachievable tasks for human beings. They must be left to God.
Human Action and Divine Assistance
The secular interpretation rests on the claim that Kant first conceived the highest good as ‘the eternal work of God’ but eventually came to portray it as a historical task of mankind which could be realized through human agency alone (Yovel Reference Yovel1980: 78). There are two main reasons to resist this affirmation. First, Kant always considered human freedom to be a necessary albeit not sufficient condition of the realization of the highest good. Such an idea is central not only to his later works, but also to the Critique of Practical Reason, where rational beings are described as lawgiving members of a kingdom of morals for whom ‘it is a priori (morally) necessary to produce the highest good through the freedom of the will’ (CPrR, 5: 113). In fact, in even earlier works of the Critical period such as ‘What is Orientation in Thinking?’, the importance of human freedom to the realization of the highest good is underlined: such a good, Kant argues, is ‘possible in the world insofar as it is possible only through freedom’ (WOT, 8: 139). Here the realization of the bonum consummatum is not conceived of as the work of God alone, but as a joint endeavour.Footnote 5
Second, Kant’s later political writings shed doubt on the thesis that he eventually came to conceive of the highest good as a worldly state of affairs to be realized through human agency alone. In ‘On the Common Saying’, he mentions that happiness combined with pure morality is ‘within our control from one quarter but not from both taken together’ (TP, 8: 279). One must therefore conclude that the practical postulates laid out in the second Critique still hold, and that we must believe in a moral ruler of the world and in a future life to allow for the objectivity of our duty to promote the highest good. Kant’s essay on Perpetual Peace is also telling in this regard, as human striving toward the good is there characterized as depending on ‘divine intervention or collaboration (concursus)’, the concept of which is appropriate and necessary ‘from a morally practical point of view’ (TPP, 8: 361–2).Footnote 6 In both the Critique of Practical Reason and Kant’s later works, the highest good is described as a state of affairs which human beings have the duty to promote while being conscious that their efforts will not bring about its realization.
The Universal Scope of the Highest Good
How many rational beings need to be happy in order for the highest good to obtain? One important view in the contemporary secondary literature is that throughout his life Kant conceived of the highest good as a state of affairs in which all rational beings are virtuous and happy (Engstrom Reference Engstrom1992). In such a state of affairs, happiness and virtue would not only be proportioned, but also maximized.Footnote 7 Against this suggestion, Reath argues that in the second Critique and earlier works the highest good designates a situation ‘in which all individuals eventually take part’, but not in Kant’s later writings. In his view, conceiving of the highest good as the maximization of virtue and happiness ‘always leads to a theological conception’ as the only way to accommodate it is to see the highest good ‘as occurring in another world’ (Reath Reference Reath1988: 603). Yet, in later works, the maximization condition would be marginalized and the highest good would correspond to a state of affairs in which all individuals subordinate their individual ends to the moral law without necessarily being happy. In a nutshell, the maximal happiness of all would no longer be a component of the highest good.
It is worth noting that Kant’s remarks on the scope of the highest good are scarce and quite unclear.Footnote 8 As a result, there is room for reasonable disagreement on this issue. In my view, the maximality requirement must be endorsed on conceptual grounds. As Reath notes, both virtue and happiness (i.e. the satisfaction of our individual ends) have value, the former unconditionally and the latter only conditionally, that is, provided that it conforms to the moral law. If this is true, a state of affairs in which all rational beings are maximally virtuous and happy will have more value than the situation described by Reath, in which only some virtuous rational beings are happy. Yet, as the complete good (that is, a ‘whole which is not part of a still greater whole of the same kind’), the highest good simply cannot be surpassed in value (CPrR, 5: 110), so it must correspond to a state of affairs in which all rational beings are virtuous and happy. All states of affairs in which at least one moral agent is not perfectly virtuous and perfectly happy can be surpassed in value by one in which all are, but only the latter fits with Kant’s own definition of the highest good according to which such a good is second to none. This explains why, in the Religion, Kant identifies the highest good with an ethical society that includes the ‘totality of human beings’ (Rel, 6: 96).
The Highest Good as Realizable in a Future World
The relationship between Kant’s account of the highest good and the Christian concept of a future world is the subject of some disagreement. According to the secular interpretation, there is a fundamental difference between Kant’s discussion of the highest good ‘in a world’ in the first two Critiques and his treatment of the highest good ‘in the world’ from the Critique of the Power of Judgement onwards. While the former expression rests on the representation of a transcendent world separate from nature which strongly resembles the religious notion of the Kingdom of God in heaven, the latter may seem to imply that the highest good can be realized in the physical-causal order. Before 1790, Kant would have offered a critical and rational version of the Christian paradise, but the change in vocabulary is taken as evidence by some that in his later writings ‘the highest good and the given world no longer signify two different worlds but two states, present and ideal, of the same world’ and becomes ‘a historical goal’ (Yovel Reference Yovel1980: 72).
It is unlikely that Kant ever believed that the highest good could be realized in the sensible world. The bonum consummatum requires universal virtue and universal happiness, but works such as Religion within Boundaries of Mere Reason make it clear that human beings will always be tempted to transgress the moral law. By so arguing, Kant remains faithful to the ideas expressed in the Dialectic of Pure Practical Reason, where he explains that holiness (i.e. perfect virtue) cannot be reached in nature and that we must therefore believe in the immortality of the soul. Indeed, we can only allow for the possibility of a finite rational being reaching holiness if we suppose her existence to be temporally infinite. Along with Kant’s continual insistence on the idea that the proportionality condition can only be ensured through the activity of an omnipotent moral being, the postulate of immortality and the idea of an afterlife is part of what makes Kant’s conception of the highest good theological. How these ideas relate to his discussion of the ‘ethical society’ as a rendition of the highest good in Kant’s Religion will be the object of section 5.
In general, those remarks of Kant which may be interpreted as relying on traditional Christian theology are not scarcer in his later writings than in the second Critique. In his political works, he still argues that the possibility of the highest good rests on the rational belief ‘in a moral ruler of the world and in a future life’ (TP, 8: 279). Yet even if such remarks were indeed scarcer, it would be incautious to put so much weight on a change of terminology between the second and third Critiques. On this question, I side with Pasternack. As he explains, it is a mistake to consider that Kant uses ‘in the world’ to refer to the physical-causal order, thereby excluding things that belong to the world of understanding such as post-mortem existence. Not only does Kant use the expression ‘in the world’ in writings where he undoubtedly links the highest good to a future eternal life (PM, 20: 298), but he also warns his readers not to conflate Welt with Natur. As Pasternack (Reference Pasternack2017: 446) notes, in the Critique of Pure Reason:
[Kant] begins by distinguishing between ‘two expressions, world and nature, which are sometimes run together’ (A418/B446). And then, to help distinguish the two, he limits the meaning of ‘nature’ to ‘the unity in the existence of appearances’ (A419/B447), but then assigns to ‘world’ a ‘transcendental sense,’ such that when dealing with ‘cosmological ideas,’ one can use ‘world’ to extend more broadly, beyond just the phenomenal, to the ‘sum total of existing things’ (A419/B447).
All things considered, there is therefore no reason to consider that the phrase ‘in the world’ is meant to exclude the possibility that the highest good be realized in a future life.
In summary, we can formulate objections against each of the five main arguments used to defend the view that Kant eventually marginalized the account of the highest good found in the Critique of Practical Reason and developed a thoroughly secular one in his later works.Footnote 9 In addition, Kantian philosophers who wish to defend a secular account of the highest good will need to face the objections of scholars who consider that any coherent account of the highest good must rest on theological commitments (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2017; Palmquist Reference Palmquist2009).
4. A City of God? The Theological Interpretation of the Highest Good
In its most influential version (Beiser Reference Beiser and Guyer2006), the theological interpretation of Kant’s account of the highest good rests on three claims that contradict the secular interpretation. I endorse the first of these claims, which has already been discussed in the previous section: Kant’s discussion of the highest good in his later works is consistent with his treatment of the concept in the Critique of Practical Reason. The second claim is that Kant’s conception of the highest good is ‘fundamentally Christian, indeed Protestant’ and that it is ‘utterly contrary to his intention to interpret it as secular and humanist’ (Beiser Reference Beiser and Guyer2006: 590). According to Beiser, Kant saw his entire ethics as Christian doctrine and his theory of the highest good is essentially a moralized version of the Augustinian notion of the city of God. Not only is the existence of God posited as a practical postulate, it is argued, but the justification of such a postulate closely resembles the Old Testament, more precisely the ‘ancient lament of Job: Life is unfair, and we live in an unjust world where the vicious prosper and the virtuous suffer’ (Beiser Reference Beiser and Guyer2006: 597). In this context, justice can only be restored through divine intervention. The third central claim of the theological interpretation is the most problematic. After considering its religious underpinnings, Beiser (Reference Beiser and Guyer2006: 603) goes on to argue that Kant’s account of the highest good is thoroughly apolitical: ‘unlike his more idealistic successors, Kant does not think that the highest good can be a political ideal, one achieved through the state’.
Once again, I find this statement to be in tension with Kant’s discussion of the highest good in his later writings, at least when it comes to his political works and the Religion. Although it is true that Kant did not believe the highest good to be achievable through human agency alone, this affirmation does not entail that it cannot serve as a political ideal. In fact, my intention is precisely to argue that it does. Indeed, Kant makes references to the highest good in all of his major political works, most notably in ‘On the Common Saying’ and in his essay on Perpetual Peace, but also in the Doctrine of Right (MM, §62, 6: 355), where he speaks of the ‘highest political good’.Footnote 10 In the Religion, our duty to promote the highest good is also unequivocally described as a collective enterprise, for it ‘will not be brought about solely through the striving of one individual person for his own moral perfection but requires rather a union of such persons into a whole toward that very end’ (Rel, 6: 97–8). The resulting union can more precisely be described as an ‘ethical society’ (ethische Gesellschaft) or ‘Kingdom of Virtue’ (Reich der Tugend) in which all rational beings have the obligation to live together (Rel, 6: 95). If we take these remarks seriously, a main interpretative concern should be to identify the social and political implications of our duty to promote the highest good and to explain how this general duty relates to the ones discussed in the Metaphysics of Morals and in Kant’s political essays. This will be my task in the remaining sections of this article. In section 5, I examine the social implications of Kant’s account of the highest good by building on Pasternack’s interpretation of Religion III. Section 6 then considers how key elements of Kant’s doctrine of the highest good relate to our political duties to live in a rightful condition and to enter a federative union of free states devoted to the achievement of perpetual peace.
5. Churches as Ethical Societies: The Social Dimension of the Pursuit of the Highest Good
No discussion of the collective implications of our duty to promote the highest good is more detailed than the one found in the third and fourth books of the Religion. There Kant imagines a universal ethical society (ethische Gesellschaft) of rational beings living under the banner of virtue who would form an ‘absolute ethical whole’ (Rel, 6: 96). In fact, he explains that we have a moral obligation to enter such an association with other rational beings, speaking of a ‘duty sui generis of the human race toward itself’ to establish a society devoted to the promotion of the highest good as a good common to all (Rel, 6: 97). Only then will human beings have a reasonable chance of gaining the upper hand against radical evil. While a juridico-civil state comprises human beings who live together under the authority of enforceable public laws, an ethico-civil state regroups human beings who live under laws of virtue without being coerced to do so. In his political writings, indeed, Kant argues that we are morally entitled to coerce other rational beings to live with us in what he describes as a ‘rightful condition’ (rechtlicher Zustand), that is, a political state in which the outer freedom of all is protected by the government. By way of contrast, an ethico-civil state is an association that no one can coerce us to create. All individuals must freely make the decision to leave what Kant describes as the ‘ethical state of nature’, that is, a society in which human beings have not yet joined moral forces with others to overcome their propensity to evil. Nevertheless, it would be false to claim that the juridico-civil and ethico-civil states are not related to each other, given that the latter presupposes the existence of the former. In Kant’s view, the ethical society can only exist in the midst of the juridico-civil state: ‘without the foundation of a political community, it could never be brought into existence by human beings’ (Rel, 6: 94).Footnote 11
How can a universal ethical society exist within the confines of a political state? The answer is that such a community will take the form of a church, that is, a society of rational beings who consider themselves to be living ‘under divine moral legislation’ (Rel, 6: 101). These remarks are of special importance for our purpose. In Reath’s view, Kant’s discussion of the ethical society in part III of the Religion is one of the clearest references to a secular and institutional conception of the highest good according to which human beings can realize it on earth, and it is my contention that such a conception cannot be found in Kant’s later writings. Indeed, Kant’s statement that the ethical society ‘cannot be realized by human organisation except in the form of a church’ is already a sign that his account of the highest good in the Religion is not purely secular. Yet the characterization of the ethical society as a church is not the main reason to consider that Kant maintained the theological conception of the highest good found in the Critique of Practical Reason in his later works. Instead, it is Kant’s discussion of the relationship that exists between what he calls the church visible and the church invisible that remains the clearest reference to this theological conception. In Kant’s philosophy of religion, the church invisible is the idea of the complete realization of the highest good in a ‘union of all upright human beings under direct yet moral divine world-governance’ (Rel, 6: 101). This church is deemed invisible as it is ‘not the object of a possible experience’ (Rel, 6: 101). In other words, the church invisible is tantamount to the ‘Kingdom of God on earth’, but its appearance in the world of senses is unfortunately ‘postponed to an unseen distance’ (Rel, 6: 151).
However, the merely noumenal possibility of the realization of the universal ethical society does not dispense rational beings of the obligation to create a phenomenal ‘union of human beings into a whole that accords with this ideal’, that is, a church visible which will allow them to collectively promote moral behaviour in society (Rel, 6: 101). That said, the commendable creation of visible churches should not lead their members to lose sight of the idea that any institutional church will remain an imperfect realization of the highest good, that is, the mere ‘schema of the invisible Kingdom of God on earth’ (Rel, 6: 151). Kant’s philosophy of religion precludes the idea that the highest good can be realized through human agency, as it portrays all institutional ethical societies as mere approximations of it.Footnote 12 In fact, Kant even contends that considering a visible church to be the achievement of the Kingdom of God on earth is an instance of ‘religious illusion’ (Religionswahn) (Rel, 6: 168). As he writes in part IV of the Religion, all churches are admirable ‘attempts by poor mortals to give sensible representation to the Kingdom of God on earth’, but they deserve equal blame ‘when (in a visible church) they mistake the form of the representation of this idea for the thing itself’ (Rel, 6: 175). Church members who believe that the Kingdom of God can be realized on earth through their own religious efforts may be moral saints, but they are nonetheless subject to ‘madness’ (Wahnsinn).
There are many ways in which churches can help their members live a moral life. First, they represent a network of support and advice that can help human beings navigate moral dilemmas and resist the temptation to commit wrongful actions. As Reath (Reference Reath1988: 617) notes, ‘one’s disposition to act from the Moral Law is strengthened when it is given public support, and when one can count on others to do so as well’. Second, churches are social spaces in which individuals relate to each other as collaborators instead of adversaries. As Pasternack notes, indeed, the pursuit of our individual interests often conflicts with the goals of others. When this happens, those that could be our allies transform into competitors: ‘one person receives the tenure track offer, while others remain stuck as adjuncts. One corporation’s new branding strategies take market share from its less creative competitors’, etc. (Pasternack Reference Pasternack2017: 454). For their part, religious associations are usually free of competition. In fact, they often allow members to benefit from each other’s progress toward virtue. When my peers behave in a rightful manner, I lose nothing, and I may even benefit from their altruistic actions if they are directed at me. Third and relatedly, churches generally promote solidarity and mutual assistance. As good works illustrate, they provide individuals with the opportunity to fulfil their duty to contribute to the happiness of others by assisting those in need.
In summary, Kant explains in the Religion that we must unite with others to find the necessary moral strength to live a virtuous life. In his view, churches enable rational beings to do so by relying on each other’s moral support. As I would now like to show, however, churches are not the only type of associations that rational beings must create if they want to fulfil their duty to promote the highest good. To do so, they must also live in a rightful condition with others and enter a federative union of political states committed to the protection of freedom through perpetual peace.
6. Virtue, Happiness, Peace and Freedom: The Political Implications of Kant’s Doctrine of the Highest Good
In his political writings, Kant defines our obligation to promote the highest good as ‘the duty to bring it about as far as we can that such a relation (a world in keeping with the moral highest ends) exists’ (TP, 8: 280). But how, precisely, does this duty relate to the political obligations discussed in the Doctrine of Right and Kant’s essay on Perpetual Peace? My suggestion is twofold. First, entering what Kant describes as ‘a rightful condition’ – and achieving perpetual peace through the formation of a federative union of states ‘having as its only purpose the avoidance of war’ (TPP, 8: 385) – are necessary (albeit not sufficient) conditions of the realization of the highest good. Until rational beings live in a federative union of political states that peacefully respects each other’s sovereignty, the world will lack perfect virtue and happiness, and the highest good will elude us. Second, I contend that Kant’s doctrine of the highest good – including its theological elements – can help political agents fulfil their political duties by bolstering their motivation to act in a rightful manner.
Let us first consider the idea that creating a lawful association, that is, a political state in which the outer freedom of all is secured, is a necessary condition of the highest good. If this is true, rational beings will not be in a position to bring about the highest good as far as they can except in a political state in which citizens are free. In the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant makes it clear that we have a duty to leave the state of nature. As he writes, ‘a civil constitution, though its realization is subjectively contingent, is still objectively necessary, that is, necessary as a duty’ (TP, 8: 264). A rational being living side-by-side with others in the state of nature who would refuse to enter a rightful condition could therefore not comply with the full requirements of virtue for she would remain oblivious to an imperative of her own reason: ‘You ought to enter this condition’ (TP, 8: 306). Insofar as virtue is itself a component of the highest good, this entails that such a good cannot be promoted elsewhere than in a free political state, for a community of rational beings living outside the state would necessarily be an association of individuals who fail to comply with at least one of their duties.
In fact, Kant not only conceives of life in a rightful condition as a necessary condition of the highest good, but also portrays it as efficiently promoting the happiness and virtue of subjects bound by the rule of law. It is well known that in the Doctrine of Virtue Kant argues that promoting the happiness of others is a duty of virtue for all rational beings. By way of contrast, the role played by happiness in Kant’s political writings often goes unnoticed. This is surprising given that he describes the proper task of politics as nothing other than to ‘conform with the universal end of the public (happiness)’ and ‘to make the public satisfied with its condition’ (TPP, 8: 386). In other words, a political state helps its citizens seek happiness by protecting their freedom to pursue their individual ends provided that they do not infringe on the freedom of others while doing so. Evidently, the increase in happiness which results from the creation of a rightful condition cannot be the ground of our duty to enter this condition, for Kant’s reasoning would then be heteronomous. We must rather say that the moral law provides us with this duty, the likely effect of which will amount to a general increase in happiness. Throughout his life, Kant struggled to make his readers understand that his practical philosophy does not prohibit the quest for happiness, but rather encourages it. In the Groundwork, he goes as far as to state that rational beings have an indirect duty to assure their own happiness, as unsatisfied needs could easily become a temptation to transgress our duties (G, 4: 399).
More puzzling is Kant’s claim that citizens who live in a free political state are not only more likely to be happy than if they live in the state of nature, but also more virtuous given that ‘the good moral education of a people is to be expected from a good state constitution’ (TPP, 8: 366). As he denies that we have a moral duty to seek the perfection of others in the Doctrine of Virtue, we could be led to the conclusion that it is not the state’s business to make its citizens virtuous. After all, Kant does characterize situations in which paternalistic governments treat their citizens as children as ‘the greatest despotism thinkable’ (TP, 8: 291), and condemns the legislator who would want to ‘bring about through coercion a polity directed to ethical ends’ (Rel, 6: 96). Perhaps the best way to reconcile these seemingly conflicting statements is to note that Kant did not object to the moral education of young citizens, as his Lectures on Pedagogy and the Methodenlehren of both the Critique of Practical Reason and the Doctrine of Virtue suggest, but simply argued that a government should not treat adults as children.Footnote 13 A detailed treatment of Kant’s views on education is beyond the scope of this article, but it is still important to our enquiry that he believed that a rightful condition promotes the two main components of the highest good.
The most important way in which rightful conditions promote virtue and happiness is by securing the conditions of outer freedom. Kant’s main task, in the Doctrine of Virtue, is to specify which obligatory ends rational beings must pursue, and the highest good corresponds to a state of affairs in which both these moral ends and the prudential ends individual set for themselves in their quest for happiness are fulfilled. By way of contrast, the creation of the political state aims to secure the means that each rational being must possess in order to have the capacity to reach those moral and prudential ends. It is easy to see that a human being deprived of outer freedom will find it nearly impossible to fulfil his duties of virtue: the slave who is forbidden to leave the house and does not enjoy any free time will find it considerably difficult, for instance, to meet her moral obligation to cultivate her natural talents. Taking the normativity of instrumental reason into account, we can also say that it would be irrational for an individual to embrace her duty to promote the highest good without simultaneously wishing to have the means necessary for the realization of her moral and prudential ends. This is at least true in Kant’s view, who explicitly states that ‘whoever wills the end, also wills (insofar as reason has decisive influence on his actions) the indispensably necessary means to it that are within his power’ (G, 4: 417). From this, we can infer that a rational moral agent who wishes to fulfil her moral and prudential aims must wish to possess the outer freedom necessary for them. As Kant is committed to the claim that only a rightful condition can secure the outer freedom of human beings, it follows that a rational moral agent cannot refuse to live in a free political state: only as a citizen is she enabled to pursue the highest good.Footnote 14 A free political state is, to use a specifically Kantian locution, a hindering of the hindrances to the pursuit of the bonum consummatum. In fact, the compatibility of life under public laws with happiness and virtue allows rational beings to avoid a practical contradiction: if the moral law prescribed that we live in political communities but such communities did not promote the highest good, the moral law would contradictorily prescribe that we create a state of affairs which hinders the realization of its very object.
We should also note that the political implications of the duty to promote the highest good extend well beyond the obligation to enter a rightful condition. Not only are rational beings morally obliged to live in a political state which warrants them a certain level of outer freedom, but the political states to which they belong have the duty to enter a federative union with the citizens of other states “that can lead to continual approximation to the highest political good, perpetual peace” (MM, §62, 6: 355).Footnote 15 Only within a federative union which is ‘given a priori and is necessary by principles of right’ is ‘the harmony of politics with morals’ possible (TPP, 8: 385). To be clear, Kant does not identify perpetual peace with the highest good as such, as only the highest good, not perpetual peace, requires the proportionality of happiness to virtue. We must rather say that perfect virtue, without which the highest good cannot exist, requires us to attain peace, even though the primary bearers of this duty are not ordinary citizens, but political leaders. Yet if the highest good requires virtue, and virtue itself requires life in a political state as well as the struggle for perpetual peace, it follows that the highest good requires life in a political state and the struggle for perpetual peace. It is in this very sense, I contend, that our political duties are necessary conditions of the highest good.
Still, what difference does it make in the practical life of political agents to know that living in a rightful condition and relinquishing war are requirements of the highest good? Is such an idea only worthy of consideration for philosophers interested in understanding the relationship between morality, theology and politics, or can it shape the concrete behaviour of citizens and political leaders? I wish to suggest that it can. To see this, let us first note that politics can be an especially disheartening enterprise for those who seek to promote justice. Indeed, many would agree with Kant’s suggestion that politics is rarely the realm of genuinely moral politicians. Instead, it is a sphere of human activity dominated by those he describes as ‘political moralists’, that is, individuals who ‘deal in machinations’ to satisfy their self-seeking inclinations while only pretending to respect the principles of right and virtue (TPP, 8: 373). Too often, indeed, politics rewards immoral behaviour. While peace activists and NGO workers struggle to meet altruistic goals – sometimes at the cost of their own freedom – corrupt and power-hungry politicians gain or consolidate power. At a global level, many nations that have committed atrocious crimes in past centuries are prosperous today, and political leaders who show little respect for peace occupy some of the most influential seats in international organizations. In a nutshell, if we had to select one domain in which Kant’s observation that happiness does not appear to be proportioned to virtue seems the truest, politics would be a strong contender.
For politicians who choose to subordinate politics to morality – and whose interests are often set back by the unscrupulous proponents of Realpolitik – Kant’s doctrine of the highest good can be a source of moral comfort. As we have seen, such a doctrine is based on the practical postulate that virtuous agents will be rewarded with happiness even if this only happens in a future life. In fact, it gives us reason to believe that the felicity of political moralists and the misfortune of moral politicians are temporary, for the world goes beyond what we can currently observe in nature. Although the Kingdom of God on earth is postponed to an unseen distance, we can still have faith that a state of affairs in which happiness is proportioned to virtue will eventually obtain. What is more, postulating the existence of an omnipotent being who ensures this can liberate political leaders from the dangerous illusion that governments should themselves attempt to proportion happiness to virtue, for instance by waging punitive wars against states that they do not deem worthy of it. In this sense, Kant’s doctrine of the highest good is a powerful lesson in political humility: the task of political leaders is to secure the outer freedom of all through republican government and peace, not to assert their self-conferred moral superiority over foreign nations.
Yet the existence of God and the proportionality condition are not the only elements of Kant’s doctrine of the highest good that can play a motivational role in politics. Just as valuable for this purpose is Kant’s description of a universal ethical society under which all rational beings live under laws of virtue. In the last section, I mentioned – following Pasternack – that we spend an important part of our life competing with others for social distinctions. When rational beings engage in war, however, they do much worse than treat each other as social adversaries; they relate as enemies who are ready to kill. To mentally prepare for the atrocity of war, combatants often engage in a process of moral depreciation that makes it psychologically bearable for them to take the lives of others. If I need to convince myself that it is morally acceptable for me to kill, it will help to portray my enemies as criminals or infidels and wilfully forget that they are in fact fellow rational beings. The history of politics indeed teaches us that religious differences often play a significant role in the mental process through which enemies are gradually deprived of the dignity and respect they owe to each other. In contrast, Kant’s discourse on the universal ethical society is a philosophical antidote to this process – and to religious discrimination in general – as it fosters a sense of universal peerhood. It more precisely reminds us that, although we may be tempted to exclude members of other religions from the moral circle, the highest good requires us to form a universal union with rational beings of all faiths. As Kant explains in Perpetual Peace, ‘there can indeed be historically different creeds … and just as many different religious books … but there can be only one single religion for all human beings and in all times’ (TPP, 8: 368). Certainly, we share different sectarian affiliations, but we are nevertheless bound by the same universal moral requirements as well as the duty to join forces with others in our struggle against radical evil.
Now one important point in Kant’s discussion of the universal ethical society is that such moral requirements must be publicly proclaimed if they are to serve as a rallying point for rational beings dedicated to the pursuit of the highest good. In the ethical society, moral agents live under the banner of virtue. Presumably, there is more than one way which this idea can play a role in politics, but I wish to conclude by highlighting one of them. In contemporary politics, international organizations devoted to peacekeeping and the protection of individual liberties codify our moral obligations in universal charters of rights. As is the case for Kantian ethico-civil associations, membership in such organizations is voluntary since no governmental body possesses the authority to coerce sovereign nations into joining them. Undoubtedly, the international institutions we know today are not free of moral shortcomings. One could argue, for instance, that they unfairly concentrate political power in the hands of a few countries. Nevertheless, institutions like the United Nations bear similarities to the universal ethical society described by Kant, and they can reasonably be envisioned as imperfect manifestations of this ideal society in the phenomenal world. If this suggestion is plausible, moral politicians can find comfort in the thought that complying with the ethical guidelines of a peaceful league of nations is a step toward the highest good.Footnote 16 For if we truly wish to approximate Kant’s universal ethical society, we must first stop relating to each other as enemies and start behaving as political adversaries worthy of respect.
Certainly, becoming part of international organizations does not ipso facto fulfil our duty to promote the highest good. As we have seen in section 5, such a duty also has social dimensions. Once we become adversaries, we must still transform into allies within the ethical confines of a church. Let me also add that the previous remarks do not amount to the claim that our duties to enter a rightful condition and to form a federative union of republican states are derived from the concept of the highest good. As the Metaphysics of Morals makes clear, the duty to enter a rightful condition is an enforceable duty of right that stems from the need to secure the conditions of external freedom, most importantly the institution of private property (Ripstein Reference Ripstein2009; see also Hodgson Reference Hodgson2010). What is more, the duty to enter a federative union of peaceful nations is motivated by the disquieting thought that freedom will never be truly secured if republican states are at the mercy of belligerent nations. In other words, a rational being can arrive at the conclusions ‘I ought to enter a rightful condition’ and ‘my fellow citizens and I ought to enter a peaceful federative union with other states’ without invoking the concept of the highest good. Instead, such a concept will become an essential part of her reasoning if she pushes her reflection further by asking: ‘What does all of this amount to? What can I hope to achieve by fulfilling my political duties?’ And the answer to her question is the following: ‘I can contribute to the creation of a universal union which approximates a state of affairs in which all rational beings are virtuous and happy as a result; I can help achieve the highest good.’
Such remarks may seem naïve and Kant’s practical philosophy is often thought of as utopian. Yet if we pay close attention to ordinary political thinking, we will come to realize that it rests on a wide range of regulative ideas the mere possibility of which is sufficient for us believe that we have a duty to promote them. The thought that it is unlikely that we will succeed in eliminating firearms violence in our country of residence, for instance, does not stop us from reasonably striving to do so. In a similar way, the representation of a democracy in which there would be no gap between the will of the people and the decisions of its representative can lead us to enact political reforms even though we remain sceptical with regard to the likelihood that such a gap will ever be closed. Kant’s entire philosophy is built on the idea that the representation of ideals unattainable through human cognition or agency can still be practically determining. Just as the representation of a nature entirely ordered by empirical laws serves as incentive for the deepening our theoretical knowledge, the idea of a world in which moral subjects would be virtuous and happy can guide our political conduct. In this way, Kant’s practical philosophy is not at odds with our ordinary consciousness, which is marked by the hope that if we work to the best of our ability, we will at least get closer to the realization of our goals. Like ours, his account of the highest good rests on both moral faith and the necessity of human action. It is not apolitical, as it requires us to create a federative union of free political states which enable citizens to pursue virtue and happiness by safeguarding their outer freedom. It is also not secular – neither in the Critique of Practical Reason nor in his later works – as it rests on human reason’s faith that if it steadily seeks moral perfection, happiness will come.
7. Conclusion
Undoubtedly, many questions about Kant’s doctrine of the highest good remain to be answered. In this article, I have argued that political institutions secure the conditions necessary for the pursuit of moral improvement and happiness, but we might also conceive of them as having a more direct role in such efforts. We can imagine, for instance, political leaders who set moral examples for citizens and a state which encourages a worldview consonant with the highest good – including its religious elements – through moral education. Unlike contemporary political thinkers like Rawls (Reference Rawls1993), Kant is not a philosopher of state neutrality, but he nonetheless agrees with neutralists that the state cannot bring about a polity directed to ethical ends through coercion without becoming despotic. For this reason, adult citizens should have the opportunity to opt out of any moral education supported by the government. This, however, could still leave room for the public funding of non-governmental organizations that support moral ends. Hopefully, what precise institutional design and public policies are compatible with Kant’s account of the highest good – and his practical philosophy in general – are questions that will be addressed by future scholarship. In the end, my insistence on political institutions as securing the conditions for the pursuit of our duty to promote the highest good is meant to stimulate rather than foreclose reflection on such topics. In my view, arguing that Kant’s doctrine of the highest good is not apolitical represents but one step in the right direction.Footnote 17
