Political Writings by
Immanuel Kant
My rating:
2 of 5 stars
The Enlightenment’s most prominent German is known for his comprehensive and systematic works in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics; however, he never wrote a dedicated work on his political philosophy.
Immanuel Kant’s Political Writings edited by Hans Reiss is a collection of either complete or selected portions of works over the course of the philosopher’s career that attempts to give the reader a in-depth understanding of Kant’s political philosophy.
Over the course of 272 pages of text, Reiss’ aim was to outline the central tenets of Kant’s political thinking and aim through his constructed framework of moral philosophy and the philosophy of history. As it says on the back cover of the book, “Kant’s aim was to establish the philosophical principles on which a just and lasting peace could be based, and to provide a philosophical vindication of representative, constitutional government that would guarantee respect for the political rights of all individuals.” The one problem is that frankly, I only learned that in Reiss’ introduction and postscript—along with the back cover itself—not from any of the selections from Kant’s work presented in the collection. Honestly I think I would have preferred a volume of Reiss writing an explanation of Kant’s political ideas for 272 pages than what I read as a whole especially because in the postscript Reiss wrote that Kant disagreed with rebellion of established government and thus thought the French Revolution was wrong but Reiss explained that Kant viewed the American Revolution favorably along the U.S. Constitution but didn’t explain why the latter revolution was different from the former in Kant’s mind. Reiss put in selections from “The Metaphysics of Morals” and an appendix from “The Critique of Pure Reason”, the former Reiss had to explain the entire work up until the selection so the reader would know what Kant’s frame of mind was and the later one long paragraph about the right form of a constitution. From what I can gather, “Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch” might have been the only complete important work in the collection and while it was interesting, to say I was impressed with Kant’s explanation of his political philosophy—or what could be drawn out—would be a lie though not because it was badly written, it just fine. Overall, I was not really impressed by the book because while it is a collection, it feels more Kant writing about political theory at certain points in a bigger work than articulating a political philosophy.
Immanuel Kant’s Political Writings is a volume from passages from a life’s work which frankly pales in comparison to editor Hans Reiss’ explanations of Kant’s thinking than his actual words presented to reader.
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