Towards “the true politics”: Kantian phenomenal approach to Utopianism

Flavio SILVESTRINI

Abstract: Kant took seriously care to distinguish his theory about republican constitutionalism from these projects developed by utopian thinkers, posing an out of time last level of civil progress as an ideal cosmopolitan society. In parallel with this model, his political project would take concrete form in a phenomenal republicanism of all States, which represented his true counterproposal to realist theorists of the State and of International System.

The claimed relevance of moral life in mankind however enabled him to establish the rules of «the true politics», not relegated into chimeric projects of earthly utopias, but, above all, unyielding toward empiricist simplifications of human history and nature.

Keywords: Kant, Utopia, Republic, “True Politics”.

From Utopia to Ideal Politics

In The Contest of Faculties (1798) we can find the only Kantian mention of Thomas More’s Utopia (1516): the Prussian philosopher wanted to report the realist and empiricist critics of the text, stigmatized as a “chimerical” project, as well as Atlantis by Plato, Oceana by Harrington and Severambia by Allais.

The inability of the utopian thinkers to adapt their ideas to the real world did not lead Kant to join political realism, which, on the contrary, constantly formed the real polemic target of his analysis, also in the writings concerning philosophy of history. After setting, however, utopian and realistic limits to his political project, Kant was able to determine a practical policy tending towards an ideal, albeit unattainable within the limits of human condition.

In the first section of Perpetual Peace (1796²), Kant condemned the theses of those who had identified «the true honour of the state […] in the continual expansion of its power by any means».[1] In the ranks of the Machiavellians implicitly mentioned, seemed to be the author of De Cive and Leviathan. Regardless of fidelity to the Hobbesian text, though flattened to a Machiavellian vision of the power, Kant had earlier put the theory of the philosopher from Malmesbury as a key point in his theory of the State. In the essay of 1793, On the Common Say, the second section, devoted to the dispute between theory and practice regarding the law of the State, was explicitly drafted Against Hobbes: while, for the English thinker, the need for the most effective conduct of the war had required the monopoly of power and the use of secret in its application, the Kantian theory was addressed to establish a constitutional warranty of the peace, centred on the citizenship ability to affect the power and on the publicity of political actions.

But, in Perpetual Peace we can also find a critic of the results, on international level, of the leviathan-like feature of the State. At this point, the Grotius’ legal theory was explicitly opposed, because extending the absolute State’s prerogatives to international relations. In Kantian interpretation of the Dutch thinker, the jus gentium was limited to jus belli (as jus ad bellum and jus in bello) and to a lesser way, to jus pacis. Even if Kant provided the “just war” and, as in the preliminary notes of Perpetual Peace, considered the regulated war, he made though opposition to the modern theorists of international law (Grotius, Pufendorf, Vattel). Like disguised supporters of aggression wars, they finally underwent legal norms to real facts: while recognizing State and international law, the first would ever prevail: if a mediation of disputes through shared rules had failed, each State remained a judge in its own to decide whether to wage war against its antagonist.

The Hobbes and Grotius positions were the target of the analysis that Kant carried on of the situation inside and outside the State; he showed of them the limiting (for the evolution of human legal relations) empiricist matrix and, conversely, opposed them a political process that should retrieve, even if in the form of phenomenal surrogate, precedence and priority of (moral and legal) theory over (legal and political) practices. Nevertheless, Kantian political project came to give evidence, more than to an implicit and universal moral basis, to an explicit legal structure.

The analysis of the thought of previous political writers, often forced within his dichotomous scheme (utopianism/realism), enabled Kant to develop an original third way to republican politics.

In the first appendix of Perpetual Peace (1796²), Kant could explain the method of the philosophical-political project presented in the treatise, reflecting On the disagreement between morality and politics.[2] On the one hand, it proved a radical critique of political-historical empiricism, on the other, the Prussian philosopher had the opportunity to develop a (theoretical and practical) science of politics that included, at different stages, «political wisdom» (Staatsweisheit) and «political prudence» (Staatsklugheit).[3] Two opposite personifications of political virtues faced each other in the reconstruction, based on two paradigmatic interpretations of moral ratio (right): «despotic moralist» (despotisierender Moralist) and «moral politician» (moralisierender Politiker).

The despotic moralist

He played politics in terms of a moral-philosophical wisdom on external relations of men (legal framework). He excluded beforehand from his legal and political theory the moral as a doctrine of virtues, concerning the inner adherence to ethical laws.[4]

 This idea of politics was developed through two contemporary writings. In the first, Kant disproved the Common Saying: This May be True in Theory, but it does not Apply in Practice (1793). On the specific of political relations, he came to the conclusion that there can be no conflict between politics (Politik), as an applied branch of right (ausübende Rechtslehre), and morality (Moral), as a theoretical (theoretische) branch of right.[5] Each norm and political action should have been brought back to a previous (and prevalent) theoretical doctrine of law. Its purpose was not to lead people towards a single natural happiness, but to allow everyone to practice their own freedom and pursue their own goal, «such is the requirement of pure reason, which legislates a priori, regardless of all empirical ends».[6] By identifying the merely legal status of the human community united under a civil constitution, it was based on three principles applicable to each member of the newly-formed political community: freedom as a man; equality as a subject; independence as a citizen.[7] They were not identified by positive laws of an existent State, but pre-existed to it, as a condition to establish a legal and political framework «in accordance with pure rational principles of external human right»[8] relative to human beings in general.

The despotic moralist brought to the extreme a conception of policies following the dictates identified by the morality and mediated by the pure theory of law; through the faculty of judgment, he could bring the concrete case for application of theoretical rules (problema morale).

The politician who established the right would therefore put the world in the condition that would allow the coexistence of mutual freedom, at the best level of compatibility with public laws: republicanism (Republikanism). This was the political regime in which there was complete application of the political principle (Staatsprinzip) of the separation of executive power from the legislative one. The republican politician had a transcendental knowledge of those right principles, which Kant would indeed develop in the Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Firstly it was confirmed that pure reason would be released from any practical matters, because «reason commands how men are to act even though no example of this could be found, and it takes no account of the advantages we can thereby gain, which only experience could teach us.»[9]

Kant stated a conception of politics which linked together the demands of morality with a pragmatic attitude for the historical context. Prudence, which was guided by morality in working with, would operate essentially as a context-sensitive application of general norms, or as a pragmatic implementation of the pure ideas of right.

In this process the rules of the public-political judgment became fundamental. With the first pure principle of law it was ruled that «all actions relating to the rights of other men are unjust if their maxim is not compatible with publicity»;[10] from what «political moralist» (moralischen Politiker) would calibrate the tools for evaluating his action. It was thus presented a particular conception of morality, in its normative-legal frame, so that the formal legal principle was based on the recognition of external freedom. As a pure form of public law, this principle determined the idea of Republic, where, theoretically, it was possible to realize «publicity» of the power (Publizität).[11] Such political theory of political praxis was then referred to the idea of pure juridical wisdom; that was further due to the categorical imperatives identified by pure reason in its practical use. The despotic moralist’s policy should be assessed as a terminal of a process of public and compelling evidence of a formal principle, which had animated universal normative precepts. The form of politics, in this case, was a consequence of the formality of the moral law, as a guarantee of a universalization bond due to the first categorical imperative.

It was important to frame the feature of «the true politics» (Wahre Politik), as specified in Perpetual Peace, that couldn’t «take a single step without first paying tribute to morality»,[12] but, as further developed in Vorarbeiten zum öffentlichen Recht (1797), conditioned by the need to agree with the idea of public law, it should have «not only proceed honestly, but also openly (offen)». Finally, Kant outlined the tasks of «politics as science» (Politik als Wissenschaft) «system of laws for the protection of rights and the satisfaction of the people.»[13]

In the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), Kant had also specified the ultimate goal of the pure theory of law, «an universal and perpetual peace treaty.» It would be implemented with the peaceful coexistence of all mankind under one, perfect republican constitutional regime, «the rule on which this constitution is based must not simply be derived from the experience,» but «from the absolute ideal of a rightful association of men under public laws».[14] It was specified, in legal terms, what the practical reason indicated as absolute maxim: the elimination of war between men and between states.

The political moralist or the moralizing politician

At the politician curving public behaviour towards the principles of a previous moral philosophy, Kant could easily oppose, in the first appendix to Perpetual Peace, the political moralist. He, otherwise, framed public action in a purely conservative manner, converted from an alleged, encompassing historical and empirical knowledge of men, as they were (were) and not as they should (and could) be. Furthermore, convinced of the inadequacy of moral wisdom in the shaping of public-policy actions, directed to men of non-perfectible, evident nature, he reduced the political practice in problema technicum: weighted choice of the most suitable ways to achieve known policy aims. This civil practice seemed to be animated by a «material principle», which offer a proper orientation for an effective public action. The political choices could not be the subject of justification, though devoted to the pursuit of public happiness; it was not republican politics, unable to include any moral and universally legal perspective of the human condition. The wider operating discretion on the means to be employed was related to the ability to remodel, towards predetermined purposes, morality and law; these, now absorbed in the operating mode of prudence, were totally deviating from the idea of transcendental external relationships among men. The political moralist could, finally, be considered «moralizing politician» (moralisierender Politiker): he was able «to fashion his morality to suit his own advantage as a statesman»,[15] keeping men in a non-republican regime. The political moralists looked to a legal science which had removed any philosophical and moral foundation; they were inspired by mere historical reconstruction of the success or the fallacy of real types of constitution, putting under investigation the sustainability of republican systems formally inspired by the pure practical reason.[16]

The moral politician

Both of two type of politician stiffened in conceiving a plausible relationship between wisdom and prudence with regard to politics, but they were evaluated very differently in Kant’s writings. The political moralist, as noticed, was not oriented to act upon any improvement of human coexistence, impossible in the forms of a prior morality and unworkable with the instruments of policy. The despotic moralist, potentially ineffective in changing the world without knowing it, could run into mistakes but could learn from experience. The political man driven by intangible moral principles had, of course, the goal of achieving them: in political terms this was translated into an aware effort to turn autocracy in republican regime, the only appropriate to give rules accordingly to a transcendental conception of public law. If this aim were pursued «by adopting or recommending premature measures»,[17] he would have contravened the prudence which, otherwise, would had advised to wait in this transformation considering the real condition of the subjects/citizens. Having learned from past mistakes, he would set out towards a better policy, that would had been more prudent; even if he built a personal and empirical way to politics, he would had not compromised that general and impersonal foundation of morality. Prudence, relocated in the political agenda, would always had had «as a limiting condition»[18] pure principles of law.

In other words, if for Kant both combinations of wisdom and prudence could fall in error, otherwise they could be evaluated in a very different way, taking in account the different role of morality in political actions. Politicians had to held human rights sacred, «there can be no half measures here, […] hybrid solutions such as pragmatically conditioned right halfway (Mittelding) between right and utility».[19] Otherwise, it should never been compromised the maxim that «all politics must bend the knee before right, although politics may hope in return to arrive, however slowly, at a stage of lasting brilliance».[20]

The right deformed by the pragmatic was not morally viable, but, otherwise, it was possible to conform political prudence to the pure idea of right. This option, in the Kantian political theory, was leading to a moral and gradual approach to the republican constitutionalism: categorical imperatives, that could not be negotiated, would had affected hypothetical imperatives derived from prudence.

This improving path, which allowed to reconsider the political prudence without undermining the integrity of wisdom, was referred by Kant to the «moral politician» (moralischer Politiker). This one, more than a third personification of politics, specified the role of the despotic moralist: he had learned, through the failure of his policies, the hypothetical imperatives of prudence, though placing them, in the political agenda, subdued to morality. «Wise as serpents, and harmless as doves»,[21] he would not ever yielded to immoral compromises in order to achieve his own ends, even if just; he would, also, taken lessons from flawed experiences, by building an empirical political science never freed by morality.

Between Respublica noumenon and Respublica phaenomenon

In search of the republican constitution, was outlined the alternative between a policy that would give immediate effect to the pure principles of public law and another one that, while taking that model as a regulative ideal, passed through discrete historical stages, as many evolutionary steps of the constitutional regime. If the first path was personified by despotic moralist, still inexperienced with the contingency of human events, the second one was attributable to the moral politician, conscious of having to include elements of political prudence in a morally unexceptionable public conduct.

The implementation of utopian ideas of Plato, More, Harrington and Allais had occurred, for Kant, only once in history, with tragic results, during the Cromwell’s «despotic republic» (despotischen Republik). What, however, Kant proposed, in order not to jeopardize the evolutionary logic of discovery in human life, was a fair meeting point between ideality and reality of politics: it could certainly be accepted some instances of utopian thought, always regarding them as political ideals, without claiming to fully fill of them political action.[22] Through their stubborn and ineffective application to the human race, it would result a fair temperament of wisdom and prudence. Such was the level of receptiveness Kant gave to the teachings of political realism, surely losing to the ideals of politics, but useful in providing assessment tools for concrete life in society.

In other words, solving the connection between homo noumenicus and homo phaenomenicus, Kant solved the ideal relationship between the pure idea of constitution and one political regime fell in the domain of historical reality. Every civil society would give of the ideal republic «a representation in agreement with the laws of freedom»,[23] providing on the stage of human history a plurality of phenomenal republics. The care of this political-institutional process would be attributable to those monarchs capable of governing in republican form, «acting by analogy with the laws which a people would give itself in conformity with universal principles of right».[24]

The noumenal model of universal coexistence would occur when men, given their rational capacities as well, would had founded a «world republic»[25] peaceful and just (Weltrepublik), governed by a unifying cosmopolitan law. With the support of historical analysis, this philosophical and political ideal was flanked by a phenomenal way to the republican peace: all peoples, after centuries of conflict, would adopt for mere convenience republican constitutions and would regulate their relations through the same principles, «republicanism in all States, individually and collectively»[26] (Republikanismus aller Staaten und samt Sonders). As was known, the concrete, imperfect, interpretation of the ideal constitutional system, both domestic and international, were in the Kantian text effectively represented in the formula of «negative substitute»[27] (negatives Surrogat).

The Prussian philosopher established that a people, to leave the state of nature, where no law was connected to juridical protection, decided to submit to the coercion of a «civil state constitution» (Verfassung staatsbürgerliche). Where internal discord had not acted toward this, the external war, as was explained in the Perpetual Peace, would be the driving force for the initial constitution of the political community, since the proximity of a people to another induced the State to be prepared to resist as a potentate. The natural condition of political associations, formed as power mechanism, would lead them through a progressive «improvement of the political constitution» (Verbesserung der Staatsverfassung), towards a «world civil constitution» (Verfassung weltbürgerliche).

After showing the scientific falsification of a policy merely based on experience, Kant began to investigate the defects of the historical theory of the realists, underlining the connection between political and historical development. In fact, the dual paradigm of politics – spreadable between the politician who was pursuing the dictates of morality and politician that, otherwise, believed it ineffective for governing –  further allowed Königsberg philosopher to set two opposite historical paradigms.

Along with an empiricist interpretation of history, he refused a eudemonic interpretation, founded in the millenarian expectations of a mankind ethical improvement, that was on the «quantity of good».[28] Kant believed this hope unfounded, since the application to the philosophy of the history of a utopian conception of mankind involved an unnatural change of human nature. On the contrary, the very presence in humans of a moral law, in the form of imperative, postulated the possible human choice between good and evil. Quite different quality, however, was required by obedience to the law, the external constraint of human acts non-concerning the intrinsic morality of the act to be performed.

While not pursuing intentionally moral improvement, republican politicians contributed in more general political path of a progressive history, so that the right pervasively approached more and more to its purest idea, which would had included this legal warranty all mankind and eventually this will also extend to nations in their external relations toward one another up to the realization of the cosmopolitan society, without the moral foundation in mankind having to be enlarged in the least.[29]

«Reform of the constitution» (Reform der Verfassung) and «evolution of a constitution governed by natural right»[30] (Evolution einer naturrechtlichen Verfassung) had become, in the Kantian search, the two terms to read the change in history, meaning, more strictly, legal-political and, more widely, relative to the natural end of the entire human species.[31]

The evolutive republican constitutionalism

As meeting point between political, historical and philosophical points of view, the Kantian theory of public right determined the external (constitutional) conditions so that men, through experience, not through the pure doctrine, could improve the quality of their coexistence.

Central to this balance between historical reality and philosophical ideals became the progressive construction of a constitutional republicanism (domestic and international) where found more and more definitive space the principle of freedom, and with it, equality and independence. This would be achieved in a constitutional structure of evolutionary society, receptive to the requests for a better civil life coming from the public-political sphere.

Of the evolution of human society Kant found historical proof with the Prussian institutions’ reform process, triggered off under Frederick II the Great (1740-1786). It was, «the century of Frederick», not «an enlightened age but an age of enlightenment»,[32] a season of ideas and institutions where a people was heading «gradually from the worse to the better».[33]

The constitutional evolution, through reasonable reforms, marked Kant’s rejection of any revolutionary process. The insurrection against an existing constitution would lead to a reversal of all the relationships governed by civil rights, «and thus of right altogether. And this is not a change but a dissolution of the civil constitution».[34] In the criticism of the revolution, there was a substantial Kantian wariness toward democracy, unable to give shape to a real republican model, enabled more effectively in the legal margins of a constitutional monarchy. At the root of this mistake there would be the lack of a double typological definition of State forms: «form of sovereignty»[35] (Form der Beherrschung) and «form of government»[36] (Form der Regierung). This second one was decisive to classify correctly a political regime: cause the life of a State could rank among «republican or despotic»[37] government (republikanisch oder despotisch).

Obviously, the constitutional monarch would rule in the spirit of republicanism, because only in the exercise of sovereignty, he would inform of republicanism throughout the State. Fredrick II had always acted in this way, proclaiming himself «only the highest servant of the State».[38] On the contrary, this was made impossible by the «democratic constitution»; this was a blatant praise of «power represented» made by Kant, against the force of numbers, in determining the republican political will.

Frederick was, therefore, the perfect interpreter of the spirit of republicanism through a constitutional monarchy. Conversely, the English monarch, regarded as constitutional following the regime instituted in the United Kingdom after 1688, had to be, in effect, evaluated despotic, while, paradoxically, some of the legal institutions of democracy were attributed to the British people. According to Kant, there were two patently contradictions in the “British Constitution”: the right of resistance of the people and the right to (decide) war of the sovereign.

On the first point, it was unconceivable a legal coercion of the sovereign by the people, because the people could constitute themselves only with the civil order, with the first spark of a general will beyond the individual ones, that was personified by the monarch himself. In The Common Saying, Kant firstly argued the logical (and legal) distinction between an «irreprehensible» and «irresistible» supreme power.[39] The first attribute indicated a norm «beyond reproach with respect to right»; but from this followed «the authority to coerce» and the prohibition «to resist». It would never had been existed «a rightfully established commonwealth […] without a force of this kind that suppresses all internal resistance»,[40] because this would had taken place according to a maxim which, become general, would had destroyed the whole civil constitution and uprooted the state (Zustand) where only humans had enjoyed rights.

Nothing was more despicable of the interruption of State’s constitutional life: Kant denied the right to resistance even to the sovereign violating the basic agreement with the people, acting as a tyrant. There was a link between the constitution which provided the right of resistance, and the one sprung from a revolution, that was, in fact, what had happened in the English kingdom.

This had hidden, indeed, a patent contradiction. The outcome of the Glorious Revolution was an institutional model in which the people believed to be in a republican regime, while the government was prevalent over the Parliament. Kant thought to reveal a perverse mechanism where a self-styled republican regime, based on corruption of the representatives practiced by the government, was blocking the development of the Enlightenment among the English people and, above all, was masking a despotism. Remembering the fundamental attributes of a republican constitution, where the final decision of the war was not up to an absolute ruler but to the people, «now the British monarch has conducted wars aplenty without seeking the consent for them. Therefore, this king is an absolute monarch, who ought not to be one, of course, according to the constitution».[41]

As legal theorist, now Kant faced with the impossible choice between a (revolutionary) society where there had been an interruption of sovereign power – with the rebellion to the representative of the supreme power of the State – and a (despotic) reality, in which that power could act in contravention of the sources of its legitimacy.

Kant had now clarified the incidence of substantial political behaviour (sovereign) in lead the people on the path of republicanism, so he could face with the inconsistencies between material and formal constitution. That was the contradiction that gripped not only presumptive republican monarchies but, above all, democracies. Ineffective in carrying forward a republican government, the democratic state would require a revolution for any constitutional change, and, above all, it could never get closer to that constitutional reality called civil society, the only permanent constitution where the law is the real sovereign and not dependent on any particular person. The ruler (Souverän) that gave the law «is as it were invisible, and is not an agent but the personified law itself».[42]

In connection with this judgment on the (in)capacity for institutional progress guaranteed by the combination of democracy and revolution, Kant proposed a historical and objective assessment of the French Revolution so peculiar for his time.[43] This divergence on the judgment is understandable only considering the different evaluation of political fact that he had set between the analysis of moral and legal foundations of a community and, in wider perspective, the philosophy of history.

The French Revolution was to be remembered not for the legal and institutional consequences, at all uncertain and weak facing the strong reaction of (autocratic) power, but for the irreversibility of that event in the evolutive history of human spirit, which had always aspired to have one State «by analogy with the laws that a people would give itself in conformity with universal principles of right».[44] It could be called «signum prognostikon» in the path of human enlightenment, because it had revealed in human nature a disposition and power for the better that no politician had ever been able to eradicate from the course of history.

The rapprochement between revolution and despotism was perfectly embodied by the experience of Cromwell, by the claim to make immediate and real a political utopia, that was, in some ways, the theoretical, political and historical limit of the French events. As for utopian texts, what had to be saved of the revolution was the theoretical potential (not the practical result) indicating to men the inevitable existence of an ideality made of reason and freedom.

Not at all convinced by the English model, Kant uncovered the patent fallacy of a seemingly constitutional monarchy, incapable of any progress and, above all, of avoiding an offensive war. After analysing the French revolutionary events, he drew from them an esprit du temps irrefutable, not estimating (lasting) their constitutional outcomes. Otherwise, he viewed in the development of the Prussian institutions, triggered off under Frederick II, a “third way” much more accessible to the republicanism.

This assessment assumed, in legal and political texts of Kant, the taste of bitter disillusionment, based on the fact that Prussia had not embarked on an irreversible path to enlightenment. After the death of that king, the thinker from Königsberg – who was so firmly linking the development of republican constitutions to the philosopher’s freedom of making public use of reason – had to experience the hard censorship that characterized the reign of Frederick William II (1786-1797).

Even in the face of this sudden stopping of the republican constitutionalism in Prussia, he did not question the confidence in a progressive history of human being. Through a more comprehensive philosophical investigation on legal-political spirit of the people, he came to put side by side «a people’s revolution or constitutional reform» that were ultimately failed: nothing, in fact, they would lose of their philosophical power of prediction, an evolutionary path towards a constitution conform to natural right, which indicated, as characteristic of mankind, the slow, uncertain, finally inexorable improvement of civil society.

Notes

^[1]     Unless otherwise indicated, quotes in English are from the translation provided in Cambridge Edition of Kant Political Writings, ed. by H.S. Reiss, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991. Perpetual Peace: a Philosophical Sketch, p. 68.

^[2]     PP, p. 94 ff.

^[3]     PP, p. 97.

^[4]     On this aspect, recently, with very interesting notations, see O. O’Neill, „Enactable and Enforceable: Kant’s Criteria for Right and Virtue”, in Kant-Studien, CVII, n. 1, 2016, pp. 111-25. On the irresoluble Kant’s connection under «the domain of morality» of ethics and politics, «despite his insistence upon the distinctness of Right from virtue», see K. Flikschuh, Hope as Prudence. Practical faith in Kant’s Political Thinking, in J. Stolzenberg, F. Rush (eds.), Faith and Reason, De Gruyter, Berlin, 2009.

^[5]     PP, p. 116. As was noticed by Klar, Kantian morality couldn’t exist as a pure theoretical science, because it needs a social practice, as well as political action (see S. Klar, Moral und Politik bei Kant, Königshausen & Neumann, Einbeck, 2007, p. 229).

^[6]     PP,  p. 73.

^[7]    On the variability of these philosophical-political categories in Kant’s writings see G. Marini, „Per una repubblica federale mondiale: il cosmopolitismo kantiano”, in G.M. Chiodi, G. Marini, R. Gatti (eds.), La filosofia politica di Kant, Franco Angeli, Milano, 2001, pp. 19-22.

^[8]     PP, p. 73.

^[9]     Metaphysics of Morals, p. 149.

^[10]  MM, p. 173.

^[11]   It’s explicit that the principle of publicity is the middle term between morality, right and politics, aimed to convert categorical imperatives in public laws (see G. Volker, Immanuel Kants Entwurf “Zum Ewigen Frieden”: eine Theorie der Politik, Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, Darmstadt, 1995, pp. 198-99). The process of publicity is related to the central role that Kant played, even in the political field, to public reason (see J. Keienburg, Immanuel Kant und die Öffentlichkeit der Vernunft, De Gruyter, Berlin/New York, 2011, pp. 23-27).

^[12]   PP, p. 125.

^[13]   Vorarbeiten zur Rechtslehre, in AA, Bd. XXIII, p. 346 (that translation is our original).

^[14]   MM, p. 174. For the linkage between morality and politics in Kantian theory is fundamental the role of honesty (Ehrlichkeit), as in the Kantian maxims «honesty is the best policy» and «honesty is better than any policy», with the conclusion that, without honesty, politics would be the pure evil, as opposite to morality; see on these topics G. Fröhlich, Form und Wert: die komplementären Begründungen der Ethik bei Immanuel Kant, Max Scheler und Edmund Husserl, Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg, 2011, p. 213.

^[15]   PP, p. 118.

^[16]   As was noticed, in the clash of the two levels of politics, ideal and real, the first always prevails in Kantian writings, not simply as the result of a mere comparison of two practicable options (see M. Mori, La pace e la ragione. Kant e le relazioni internazionali: politica, diritto e storia, il Mulino, Bologna, 2008, p. 117 and A. Pinzani, „Il concetto kantiano di repubblica tra ideale e realtà storica”, in M. Moneti Codignola, A. Pinzani, Diritto, politica e moralità in Kant, Mondadori, Milano, 2004, pp. 7-36).

^[17]   PP, p. 119.

^[18]  Ibidem, p. 98.

^[19]  Ibidem, p. 125.

^[20]  Ibidem, p. 125.

^[21]  Ibidem, p. 128.

^[22]     As was perfectly stated by Cavallar: «Kant’s idealism is not utopian but anticipatory, and contradicts a typical cliché about the Enlightenment in general and Kant’s philosophy in particular, namely that it was utopian and only concerned with “pure reason” irrespective of historical contingencies.» (G. Cavallar, Kant’s Embedded Cosmopolitanism: History, Philosophy and Education for World Citizens, De Gruyter, Berlin/Boston, 2015, p. 13. With similar arguments, Reiss affirms, «Kant was not a blinkered visionary, nor was he even an unpractical utopian dreamer. As a scientist, he had learnt to respect fact. His own philosophical polemics and his attitude to the government of the day [a monarchy] reveal a keen awareness of the needs of the actual situation.» (H.S. Reiss, Introduction, in Kant Political Writings, cit., p. 39).

^[23]     The Contest of Faculties, p. 182.

^[24]     CF, p. 184.

^[25]   PP, p. 101.

^[26]   MM, p. 174.

^[27]   PP, p. 105. On the prominent role of the Surrogat to understand the Kantian mediation of ideal and real in political life see O. Höffe, Kant als Theoretiker der internationalen Rechtsgemeinschaft, in G. Schönrich, Y. Kato (eds.), Kant in der Diskussion der Moderne, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1996, pp. 326-59; J. Bohman Die Öffentlichkeit des Weltbürgers: Über Kants negatives Surrogat, in J. Bohman, M. Lutz-Bachmann (eds.), Frieden durch Recht: Kants Friedensschrift und das Problem einer neuen Weltordnung, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1996, pp. 87-113. See also the very accurate and precise reading of «Because prudence can only be regulatively guided by the categories of right, prudential judgment employs these ideas indirectly. That is, the universal demands of morality and the conditional character of the empirical situation are adjusted and coordinated in prudence insofar as prudence is not constituted by the demands of morality. Regulative ideas of right, such as the ideal constitutional republic, do not disregard prudential application but rather demand it.» (E.S. Nelson, Moral and Political Prudence in Kant, in «International Philosophical Quarterly», XLIV, n. 1, 2004, p. 307).

^[28]     MM, p. 179.

^[29]     CF, p. 183.

^[30]   CF, p. 184.

^[31]     As was noticed by Perni, Kant was interested in an evenemential history as long as a “history in an universal sense”, whose “red thread” would be the ultimate purpose of nature (R. Perni, Diritto, storia e pace perpetua. Un’analisi del cosmopolitismo kantiano, ETS, Pisa, 2012, p. 21). But, as was perfeclty inderlined by Tundo, Kantian approach to history reveals philosophy of an intentional civil progress, developed both internal and external of the State, but also a non-intentional moral progress of the mankind as a whole, otherwise impossible for the individual (L. Tundo, Kant utopia e senso della storia. Progresso, cosmopoli, pace, Dedalo, Bari, 1998, p. 104).

^[32]   On the Common Saying: “This May Be True in Theory, but It Does not Apply in Practice”, p. 58.

^[33]   Conjectures on the Beginning of Human History, p. 234.

^[34]   MM, p. 162.

^[35]     PP, p. 100.

^[36]     Ibidem, p. 101.

^[37]     Ibidem, p. 101.

^[38]   Ibidem, p. 101. On this Kantian typization of sovereignty see P. Formosa, The Ends of Politics: Kant on Sovereignty, Civil Disobedience and Cosmopolitanism, in P. Formosa, A. Goldman A., T. Patrone (eds.), Politics and Teleology in Kant, University of Wales Press, Cardiff, 2014, pp. 37-58.

^[39]   CS, p. 81.

^[40]   Ibidem, p. 81.

^[41]   CF, p. 186.

^[42]   CS, p. 77.

^[43]   For the composite judgement over French revolution in Kant see I. Fetscher, Immanuel Kant und die Französische Revolution, in Z. Batscha (ed.), Materialien zu Kants Rechtsphilosophie, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main, 1976, pp. 269-90.

^[44]     CF, p. 184.

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