Conflict between people drives history forward: unsocial sociability

Unsocial sociability

Immanuel Kant 1724 · 1804Set the limits of reason; act from duty.

What it claims

The history of humanity as a whole can be seen as the carrying out of a hidden plan of nature aiming at a perfect civil constitution, the only state in which all human dispositions can develop.

Why

People want to live together yet clash; this conflict forces them to develop their talents and give themselves laws.

The same idea through history

Immanuel Kant1795Kant takes up the same idea eleven years later: the antagonism of states may lead to a federation of free peoples and to peace. It is the political extension of his philosophy of history (see his argument on perpetual peace).

In short

"Conflict between people drives history forward: unsocial sociability" is an argument by Immanuel Kant (Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (1784), 4th and 8th propositions, 1795) on the question "Does history have a direction?" (answer: progress). Its claim: The history of humanity as a whole can be seen as the carrying out of a hidden plan of nature aiming at a perfect civil constitution, the only state in which all human dispositions can develop. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (1784), 4th and 8th propositions

Valid with an implicit premise

Kant published this short text in 1784, the same year as his answer to "What is Enlightenment?". He starts from a finding that disappoints him: looking at human actions, one sees mostly folly, vanity and a taste for destruction. Can a direction be found anyway? His answer is one "idea": conflict itself, because it pushes each person to surpass himself and all to impose laws on themselves, would be the means nature uses to develop all human dispositions. Note: Kant presents this as a guiding thread for writing history, not as a proven fact.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a world where conflict stimulates talents and sometimes produces laws, but may also destroy societies with no overall trend toward law.

Valid with P4. P4 is the heaviest premise: it assumes the average effect of conflict is to produce law rather than ruin. Without it, one can grant that conflict stimulates talents without concluding that it leads to law. Kant specifies that this plan is "hidden", that experience confirms it only "a little", and that he offers only a guiding thread (Leitfaden) for writing history.

Analogy. Kant compares people to trees in a forest: pressed against one another, they fight for air and light and grow straight and tall; isolated, they grow crooked and stunted. The competition that seems an evil makes them grow.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Objection anticipated by Kant 1784 · attacks premise 4

It remains strange that older generations seem to toil only for the sake of later ones, to prepare a step for them, while only the latest will have the happiness of living in the building on which so many of their ancestors worked, without being able to share the happiness they prepared.

Kant replies

Kant Kant's reply in the same text

Kant admits that this is enigmatic, but sees a necessity in it: if one admits that an animal species is to have reason, and that its individuals, all mortal, form an immortal species, then that species can reach the full development of its dispositions only in this way.

The debate goes on (our summary) Kant's reply does not say whether this sacrifice of individuals is just, but that it is the condition for the species' development. This is where his readers part: Hegel will speak of the "cunning of reason" and accept this price (see his argument), Adorno and Benjamin will refuse to justify it. Kant himself speaks of a "guiding thread" and not of an established fact. (Our summary.)

Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: can the species' progress justify the pain of generations who do not enjoy it? Kant holds it "enigmatic" and necessary; critics see in it the weak point of every philosophy of progress. Open point.

Johann Gottfried Herder 1774 · attacks the conclusion

There is no single ladder on which all epochs and peoples would climb: each culture has its centre of happiness in itself. Judging the ancients or other peoples as steps toward ours is failing to understand them.

a defender replies

We have not yet found a direct reply by Kant in the texts.

Immanuel Kant defender of the argument · 1785

Summary: in his reviews of Herder's Ideas (January and November 1785), Kant faults Herder's method, which proceeds by analogies and a bold imagination where a cautious reason is needed, and asks that contradictory travel reports first be carefully compared. He also objects that the destiny of humanity is not the happiness of each individual (he takes the example of the happy inhabitants of Tahiti), but the ever-growing activity and culture of the species.

The debate goes on (our summary) Herder, a former pupil of Kant, saw his Ideas for a Philosophy of the History of Mankind criticised by him in 1785. The two authors differ on the criterion: development of the whole species (Kant) or the specific worth of each culture (Herder). The reviews deal mainly with method and with the destiny of the species, and the 1784 text does not answer Herder in particular. (Our summary.)

Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: can cultures be compared on one scale of progress, or must each be judged by its own values? Open question, taken up by comparative history and anthropology. Kant criticised Herder in 1785, mainly on method; the question of a common scale remains discussed.

Theodor W. Adorno 1966 · attacks the conclusion

There is no universal history leading from savagery to humanity; there is one leading from the slingshot to the megaton bomb. What links the ages is the domination of nature, which turns into domination of people, and not the progress of freedom.

a defender replies

see the argument

No reply possible: objection raised in 1966, after the author's death (1804).

Jürgen Habermas defender of the argument · 1985

Summary: Habermas defends the Enlightenment project against the critique of Adorno and Horkheimer. In his view, their total critique of reason contradicts itself since it uses reason, and it neglects the potential of communicative reason. Modernity is for him an unfinished project, not a failure.

Amy Allen 2016

Summary: Allen argues that the defence of progress in Habermas and his heirs rests on a developmental story in which the modern West is the yardstick, a legacy of colonial thought. She proposes to ground critique on a genealogy of present practices rather than on a history of progress.

The debate goes on (our summary) Adorno does not reject all continuity: he says there is a history, but that of domination. The disagreement is over what counts as direction: technical mastery of conflicts or reduction of violence. (Our summary.)

Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: are institutions of law a real progress or the mask of a violence that perfects itself? Habermas defends the Enlightenment project; Allen judges that even his version contains a progress narrative to be given up. Both camps cite the twentieth century. Open point.