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On the Popular Judgment That may be Right in Theory, but does not Hold Good in the Praxis - Immanuel Kant · Man Who Was Thursday, A Nightmare (Dramatic Reading)

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  Speaker 1: Introduction on the popular judgment that may be right in
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  Speaker 1: theory but does not hold good in the praxis. This
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  Speaker 1: is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the
• 0:19
  Speaker 1: public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit
• 0:24
  Speaker 1: LibriVox dot org. Editor's note for the purpose of this recording,
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: in order to reflect the complete essay as written by Kant,
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: and at the same time to render it as intelligible
• 0:41
  Speaker 1: as possible, I have recorded the introduction and first section
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: from John Robertson's seventeen ninety eight translation of this work. However,
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  Speaker 1: for parts two and three I have used Hasty's translation
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  Speaker 1: from eighteen ninety one from his book Kant's Principles of Politics,
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  Speaker 1: including his essay on Perpetual Piece, a Contribution to Political Science.
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  Speaker 1: The reason for this is that Hasty in his work
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  Speaker 1: does not present the essay as a whole, and further
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  Speaker 1: uses subject headings which detract from the unity of the work. However,
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  Speaker 1: Hasty's translation is far more accessible to the modern reader
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  Speaker 1: or listener, and is therefore much preferable for this kind
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  Speaker 1: of work. D. E. Whitkauer, sixth February two thousand seven
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  Speaker 1: end Editor's note on the popular judgment that may be
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  Speaker 1: right in theory, but does not hold good in the praxis.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Introduction from Essays and Treatises on Moral, political, and various
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  Speaker 1: philosophical subjects by Immanuel Kant, translated by John Richardson seventeen
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  Speaker 1: ninety eight. Introduction. The aggregate of even practical rules is
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  Speaker 1: denominated theory when these rules as principles are thought in
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  Speaker 1: a certain universality, and thereby is extracted from a multitude
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  Speaker 1: of conditions which necessarily have influence on their exercise. Conversely,
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  Speaker 1: not every handicraft, but only that attaining of an end
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  Speaker 1: is named praxis, which is thought as the observance of
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  Speaker 1: certain principles of procedure represented in the general. It is
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  Speaker 1: evident that between the theory and the praxis, a medium
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  Speaker 1: of connection and of transition from the one to the
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  Speaker 1: other is still required. Let the theory be ever so complete,
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  Speaker 1: for to the conception of understanding which comprises the rule,
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  Speaker 1: must be superadded an act of judgment, whereby the practitioner
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  Speaker 1: discriminates whether something be the case of the rule or not,
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  Speaker 1: and as rules by which the judgment could take its measures.
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  Speaker 1: In the subsumption cannot always be given, because that would
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  Speaker 1: go to the infinite. There may be theorists who never
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  Speaker 1: in their lives can become practitioners because they want judgment.
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  Speaker 1: For instance, physicians or lawyers, who may have prosecuted their
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  Speaker 1: studies successfully, but who, when they are to give advice,
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  Speaker 1: do not know how to proceed. But where this gift
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  Speaker 1: of nature is even to be met with, there may
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  Speaker 1: yet be a want of premises. That is, the theory
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  Speaker 1: may be incomplete, and the complement of it obtained, perhaps,
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  Speaker 1: but by experiments and experiences to be made still from
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  Speaker 1: which the physician, the farmer, or the financier, on quitting
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  Speaker 1: his school, ought to abstract rules for himself and render
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  Speaker 1: his theory complete. The theory, however, was not to be
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  Speaker 1: blamed if it did not suffice to the praxis. But
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  Speaker 1: the fault was that theory enough did not exist, which
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  Speaker 1: the man ought to have learned from experience, and which
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  Speaker 1: is real theory, though he is not able to communicate
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  Speaker 1: it and as a teacher to propound it systematically in
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  Speaker 1: universal positions. Consequently, can lay no claim to the title
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  Speaker 1: of a theoretical physician, farmer, et cetera. Nobody therefore can
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  Speaker 1: pretend to be practically versed in a science, and at
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  Speaker 1: the same time despise the theory, without exposing himself to
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  Speaker 1: be held and ignorant in his own province, believing by
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  Speaker 1: groping in experiments and experiences, without collecting for himself certain
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  Speaker 1: principles which constitute that properly named theory, and without having
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  Speaker 1: reflected on his business as a whole, which, when one
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  Speaker 1: proceeds in this methodically is termed a system to make
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  Speaker 1: more progress than the theory would permit. It is, however,
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  Speaker 1: more supportable that an ignorant should give out theory as
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  Speaker 1: unnecessary and which may be dispensed with in his opinionative praxis,
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  Speaker 1: than that a scialist should admit of it and of
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  Speaker 1: its use in the schools, in order to exercise the
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  Speaker 1: understanding only, but maintain at the same time that the
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  Speaker 1: praxis is quite of another nature, that when one quits
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  Speaker 1: the school and goes into the world, one perceives void
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  Speaker 1: ideals and philosophical reveries to be followed. In a word,
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  Speaker 1: that which is right in theory is of no validity
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  Speaker 1: for the praxis. It is often expressed, thus this or
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  Speaker 1: that position is valid. It is true in thesi, but
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  Speaker 1: not in hypothesy. Were empirical mechanists to pronounce in this
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  Speaker 1: manner on universal mechanics, or bombardiers on the mathematical doctrine
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  Speaker 1: of the throwing of bonds, that the theory in these
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  Speaker 1: sciences is indeed nicely excogitated, but is not at all
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  Speaker 1: valid in the praxis, because in the execution experience gives
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  Speaker 1: quite other results. They would be but laughed at. For
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  Speaker 1: if to the former were superadded the theory of friction to
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  Speaker 1: the latter the resistance of the air. Consequently, but more
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  Speaker 1: theory in general, they would harmonize perfectly with experience. But
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  Speaker 1: the case is quite different with a theory which concerns
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  Speaker 1: objects of intuition than with that in which objects are
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  Speaker 1: represented but by conceptions, with objects of mathematics and of philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: the latter of which perhaps may easily be thought and
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  Speaker 1: without censure on the part of reason, but perhaps not
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  Speaker 1: at all given, but may be void ideas merely of
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  Speaker 1: which no use whatsoever would be made in the praxis,
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  Speaker 1: or a use even disadvantageous to it. Therefore, that popular
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  Speaker 1: judgment may in such cases be perfectly correct, but in
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  Speaker 1: a theory which bottoms upon the conception of duty. The apprehension,
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  Speaker 1: on account of the void idealness of this conception ceases entirely,
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  Speaker 1: for it would not be duty to proceed on a
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  Speaker 1: certain effect of the will if this were not possible.
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  Speaker 1: An experience too, whether it be thought, has accomplished or
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  Speaker 1: continually approaching to the accomplishment. And this sort of theory
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  Speaker 1: only is the subject of the present treatise, for it
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  Speaker 1: is not seldom pretended of it to the scandal of philosophy,
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  Speaker 1: that what may be right in it is, however not
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  Speaker 1: valid for the praxis, and indeed in an imperious, disdainful tone,
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  Speaker 1: full of presumption, willing by experience to reform reason in
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  Speaker 1: that even in which it places its greatest honor, and
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  Speaker 1: with an arrogated wisdom, and mole's eyes which are fixed
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  Speaker 1: on experience, imagining to be able to see farther and
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  Speaker 1: better than with eyes which have fallen to the share
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  Speaker 1: of a being, may stand erect and to behold the heavens.
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  Speaker 1: This maxim become very common in our times, rich in
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  Speaker 1: sentences but poor in fact acts when it concerns anything
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  Speaker 1: moral duty, of law or of ethics, occasions the greatest mischief.
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  Speaker 1: For here we have to do with a canon of
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  Speaker 1: reason in the practical field, where the value of the
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  Speaker 1: praxis rests entirely upon its suitableness to the theory upon
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  Speaker 1: which it is built, and all is lost when the
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  Speaker 1: empirical and by consequence fortuitous conditions of the execution of
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  Speaker 1: the law are made conditions of the law itself. And
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  Speaker 1: thus a praxis which is calculated on a probable issue
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  Speaker 1: according to a precedent experience, becomes entitled to master the
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  Speaker 1: theory subsisting of itself. This treatise is divided according to
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  Speaker 1: the three different stations from which the man of honor,
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  Speaker 1: accustomed to pronounce so boldly on theories and on systems,
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  Speaker 1: is wont to judge his object consequently in a threefold quality,
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  Speaker 1: first as a private man but a man of business,
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  Speaker 1: second as a statesman, Third as a man of the
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  Speaker 1: world or a citizen of the world. In general. These
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  Speaker 1: three personages are unanimous in falling upon the schoolmen who
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  Speaker 1: elaborates theory for them all and for their greatest good,
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  Speaker 1: in order as they believe themselves better qualified to send
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  Speaker 1: him to his school. Ila sallake in Aula as a
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  Speaker 1: pedant who spoiled for the praxie, but stands in the
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  Speaker 1: way of their experienced wisdom. We shall therefore represent the
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  Speaker 1: relation in which the theory stands to the praxis in
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  Speaker 1: three sections. First in moral in general, with a view
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  Speaker 1: to the good of every man. Secondly, in politics with
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  Speaker 1: reference to the good of states. Thirdly in a cosmopolitical
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  Speaker 1: consideration with a view to the good of the human
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  Speaker 1: species in general, so far as it is engaged in
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  Speaker 1: advancing to that good in the series of generations of
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  Speaker 1: all future times. But the titles of the sections will
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  Speaker 1: be expressed for reasons which unfold themselves in the treatise itself,
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  Speaker 1: by the relation of the theory to the praxis in moral,
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  Speaker 1: in the law of States, and in the law of nations.
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  Speaker 1: End Introduction on the popular judgment that may be right
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  Speaker 1: in theory, but does not hold good in the Praxis
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  Speaker 1: by Manual Kant. This recording is in the public domain.
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  Speaker 1: Section one of on the popular judgment that may be
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  Speaker 1: right in theory but does not hold in the Praxis.
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  Speaker 1: This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in
• 12:06
  Speaker 1: the public domain. For more information, or to volunteer, please
• 12:11
  Speaker 1: visit LibriVox dot org. On the popular judgment that may
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: be right in theory but does not hold good in
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  Speaker 1: the Praxis by Immanuel Kant, Section one of the relation
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  Speaker 1: which the theory bears to the praxis in moral in general.
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  Speaker 1: In answer to a few objections started by Professor Garfey
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  Speaker 1: footnote confer Essays on different subjects moral and literary by
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  Speaker 1: Professor Garfey, Volume one, pages one eleven to one sixteen.
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  Speaker 1: I name the disputing of my position's objections, of this
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  Speaker 1: worthy man's to that in which he I hope wishes
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  Speaker 1: to agree with me, not a tax which, as positive assertions,
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  Speaker 1: would provoke to a defense for which it is neither
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  Speaker 1: the place here, Nor have I the inclination en footnote.
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  Speaker 1: Before I come to the proper point of dispute concerning
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  Speaker 1: what may be valid in the use of the same
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  Speaker 1: conception for the theory merely or for the praxis, I
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  Speaker 1: must compare my theory as I have represented it elsewhere,
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  Speaker 1: with a representation which mister Carfey gives of it. In
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  Speaker 1: order previously to see whether we understand one another. Heading
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  Speaker 1: a by way of introduction, I explained moral as a
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  Speaker 1: science which teaches not how we shall become happy, but
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  Speaker 1: how we shall become worthy of felicity. Footnote. The worthiness
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  Speaker 1: of being happy is that quality of a person resting
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  Speaker 1: upon the proper will of the subject, in conformity to
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  Speaker 1: which a universally legislative reason for nature, as well as
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  Speaker 1: for the free will, would harmonize with all the ends
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  Speaker 1: of this person. It is therefore totally different from the
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  Speaker 1: address in procuring happiness to one's self, for he is
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  Speaker 1: not worthy of this even and of the talent which
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  Speaker 1: nature has lent him for that purpose, when he has
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  Speaker 1: a will that does not accord with what only is
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  Speaker 1: suitable to a universal legislation, and cannot be comprehended therein
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  Speaker 1: that is which is repugnant to morality end footnote. At
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  Speaker 1: the same time, I did not neglect to observe that
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  Speaker 1: it thereby was not required a man, that, when the
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  Speaker 1: observance of duty was concerned, he should renounce his natural
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  Speaker 1: end felicity. For he cannot do that no more than
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  Speaker 1: any finite rea rational being in general. But he must
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  Speaker 1: when the commandment of duty is in question. Totally abstract
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  Speaker 1: from the consideration of felicity he must by no means
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  Speaker 1: make it the condition of the observance of the law
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  Speaker 1: prescribed to him by reason, Nay, as much as it
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  Speaker 1: is possible for him even to endeavor to become conscious
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  Speaker 1: to himself, that no springs derived from that source shall
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  Speaker 1: imperceptibly mix themselves with the determination of duty, which is
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  Speaker 1: effectuated by representing duty combined rather with sacrifices which its
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  Speaker 1: observance virtue costs, than with the advantages it yields us
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: in order to represent to ourselves the commandment of duty
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  Speaker 1: in its whole consequence or importance, requiring unconditional obedience enough
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  Speaker 1: for itself, and standing in need of no other influence,
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  Speaker 1: whatever subheading. A mister Garfay expresses this my position thus
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  Speaker 1: that I maintained that observance of the moral law is
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  Speaker 1: entirely without consideration of felicity the only scope of man,
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  Speaker 1: that it must be considered as the sole end of
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  Speaker 1: the creator Perenne. According to my theory, neither the morality
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  Speaker 1: of man of itself nor felicity of itself only, but
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  Speaker 1: the highest good possible in the world, which consists of
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  Speaker 1: the union and harmony of both, is the only end
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  Speaker 1: of the creator. End Perenne heading b I observed farther
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  Speaker 1: that this conception of duty has no occasion to bottom
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  Speaker 1: upon any particular end, but rather brings about another end
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  Speaker 1: for the will of man, namely to contribute to the
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  Speaker 1: utmost to the highest good possible in the world, universal
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  Speaker 1: felicity conjoined with the purest morality, and that felicity conformable
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  Speaker 1: to this morality in the universe, which, as it is,
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  Speaker 1: indeed in our power on one side, but not on
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: both sides taken together, extorts from reason in a practical view,
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  Speaker 1: the belief in a moral sovereign of the world and
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  Speaker 1: in a future life. Not as if the universal conception
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  Speaker 1: of duty should receive support and stability, but on the
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  Speaker 1: presupposition of both, that is a sure ground and the
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  Speaker 1: requisite strength of a spring, but that it may receive
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  Speaker 1: an object, but in that ideal of pure reason. Footnote
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  Speaker 1: the need or necessity of supposing a highest good possible
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  Speaker 1: by our cooperation in the world as the scope or
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  Speaker 1: final end of things, is not a need for want
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  Speaker 1: of moral springs, but in external relations in which only
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  Speaker 1: conformable to these springs, an object can be produced as
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  Speaker 1: end in itself, as moral scope for no will can
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  Speaker 1: be without all end, though when legal necessitation of actions
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  Speaker 1: merely is concerned, it must be abstracted from and the
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  Speaker 1: law only constitutes the determinative of the will. But every
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  Speaker 1: end is not moral, for example, that of proper felicity
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  Speaker 1: is not. But this must be disinterested, and the need
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  Speaker 1: of a scope given by pure reason, comprehending the whole
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  Speaker 1: of all ends. Under one principle, a world is the
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  Speaker 1: highest good possible by a co operation is a need
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  Speaker 1: of the disinterested wills, extending itself beyond the observation of
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  Speaker 1: the formal laws, to the production of an object, the
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  Speaker 1: chief good. This is a determination of will of a
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  Speaker 1: peculiar sort, namely by the idea of the whole of
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  Speaker 1: all ends. Where this is laid as a foundation to
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  Speaker 1: wit that when we stand in certain moral relations to
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  Speaker 1: things in the world, we must everywhere obey the moral law.
• 19:15
  Speaker 1: And more than that, the duty still servenes to cause
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  Speaker 1: with all our might, that such a relation, a world
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  Speaker 1: suitable to the moral chief ends may exist. In this
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: man cogitates himself according to the analogy with the deity, which,
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  Speaker 1: though subjective, stands in need of no external thing. However,
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  Speaker 1: it cannot be thought that he should shut himself up
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  Speaker 1: within himself, but is destined to produce the chief good
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  Speaker 1: without himself, even by the consciousness of his all sufficiency,
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  Speaker 1: which necessity, which in man is duty in the supreme being,
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  Speaker 1: cannot be represented by us but as a moral need
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  Speaker 1: with man. Therefore, the spring that lies in the idea
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  Speaker 1: of the highest good possible in the world by his
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  Speaker 1: co operation is not the proper felicity thereby intended, but
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  Speaker 1: only this idea as end in itself. Consequently, its observance
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  Speaker 1: as duty, for it contains not a prospect of happiness absolutely,
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  Speaker 1: but a proportion between it and the worthiness of the subject,
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  Speaker 1: whatever it be, But a determination of the will, which
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  Speaker 1: limits itself in its design to belong to such a whole.
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  Speaker 1: To this condition is not interested end footnote, For duty
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  Speaker 1: in itself is nothing but limitation of the will to
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  Speaker 1: the condition of a universal legislation possible by an assumed
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  Speaker 1: maxim let. The object or the end of the will,
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  Speaker 1: be what it pleases. Consequently, even felicity, but from which
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  Speaker 1: and from every end that one may have it is
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  Speaker 1: hereby totally abstracted. In the question concerning the principle of
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  Speaker 1: moral the doctrine of the chief good, as ultimate end
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  Speaker 1: of a will determined by it and suitable to its laws,
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  Speaker 1: may then, as episodical, be passed over in silence, as
• 21:27
  Speaker 1: it will appear in the sequel that where the proper
• 21:30
  Speaker 1: point of dispute is concerned, no regard whatever is paid
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  Speaker 1: to it, but merely to the universal moral. Subheading B,
• 21:41
  Speaker 1: Mister Garfay reduces these positions to the following expressions, that
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: the virtuous neither can nor dares lose sight of that
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: point of view proper felicity, because otherwise he would totally
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  Speaker 1: lose the transition to the invisible world, that to the
• 21:58
  Speaker 1: conviction of the sistence of God and of immortality, which, however,
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: according to this theory, is absolutely necessary to give the
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  Speaker 1: system support and stability, and concludes, in order to comprehend
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  Speaker 1: in a small space the sum of the assertions ascribed
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  Speaker 1: to me. The virtuous, in consequence of those principles, aspires
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  Speaker 1: incessantly to be worthy of felicity, but in so far
• 22:25
  Speaker 1: as he is really virtuous, never to be happy parenne.
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  Speaker 1: The expression in so far occasions here an ambiguity which
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  Speaker 1: must first be removed. It may mean in the act
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  Speaker 1: in which he, as virtuous, subjects himself to his duty,
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  Speaker 1: and in that case this position harmonizes completely with my theory.
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: Or when he is but virtuous in general, and even
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  Speaker 1: where duty is not concerned and impugned, the virtuous shall
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  Speaker 1: pay no regard at all to felicity, and that contradicts
• 22:58
  Speaker 1: my assertions entirely and paren These objections, therefore, are nothing
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  Speaker 1: but misunderstandings, for I do not choose to hold them
• 23:09
  Speaker 1: misinterpretations whose possibility would seem very strange. Did not the
• 23:14
  Speaker 1: human propensity to follow the train of thought to which
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: it is once accustomed in even the judgment of others thoughts,
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  Speaker 1: and thus to transfer that to this sufficiently explain such
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: a phenomenon. A dogmatical assertion of the opposite follows this
• 23:30
  Speaker 1: polemical treatment of the above moral principle. Mister Garfay concludes analytically,
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: thus in the order of conceptions must precede the perception
• 23:42
  Speaker 1: and distinguishing of states, whereby the preference is given to
• 23:45
  Speaker 1: the one over the other, to the choice of one
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  Speaker 1: of them, and thus to the previous determination of a
• 23:52
  Speaker 1: certain end. But a state which a being endued with
• 23:57
  Speaker 1: the consciousness of himself and of his state. When the
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: state is present and perceived by him prefers to other
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: modes of being, is a good state, and a series
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: of such good states is the most general conception which
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: the word felicity expresses. Again, a law presupposes motives, but
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  Speaker 1: motives presuppose a previously perceived difference of a worse state
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  Speaker 1: from a better This difference perceived is the element of
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: the conception of felicity et cetera. Again, from felicity in
• 24:37
  Speaker 1: the most general sense of the word spring the motives
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: to every pursuit. Therefore, to the observance of the moral law,
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: I must first know in general that something is good
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: before I can inquire whether the observance of the moral
• 24:51
  Speaker 1: duties belongs to the rubric of the good. Man must
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: have a spring that puts him in motion, before an
• 24:59
  Speaker 1: aim can be set up up to him to which
• 25:01
  Speaker 1: this motion shall be directed. Footnote that is exactly what
• 25:08
  Speaker 1: I insist on. The spring which man can previously have
• 25:12
  Speaker 1: before an aim end is set up to him can
• 25:16
  Speaker 1: evidently be nothing but the law itself. By the reverence
• 25:20
  Speaker 1: which it undetermined, what ends one may have and may
• 25:25
  Speaker 1: attain by their observance inspires for the law in regard
• 25:31
  Speaker 1: of the formal of the arbitrament, is indeed the only
• 25:35
  Speaker 1: one that remains when we have abstracted from the matter
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: of the arbitrament the aim, as mister Garfey names it
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: end footnote. This argument is nothing more than a play
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: with the ambiguity of the word the good, as this
• 25:56
  Speaker 1: is either in itself and unconditionally good in contradiction to
• 26:01
  Speaker 1: that bad in itself, or never but good in a
• 26:06
  Speaker 1: conditional manner compared with the better or with the worse,
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: as the state of the choice of the former can
• 26:12
  Speaker 1: be but a comparatively better state, but in itself may
• 26:16
  Speaker 1: be bad. The maxim of an unconditional observance of a
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: categorically commanding law of the free arbitrament, that is, duty,
• 26:27
  Speaker 1: having no regard at all to ends as a foundation,
• 26:30
  Speaker 1: is essentially, that is, according to the species different from
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: the maxim to observe that end, which is named felicity
• 26:38
  Speaker 1: in general pointed out to us by nature itself as
• 26:42
  Speaker 1: a motive to a certain mode of action. For the
• 26:46
  Speaker 1: first is good in itself, but the second by no
• 26:49
  Speaker 1: means it may, in the event of the collision with duty,
• 26:54
  Speaker 1: be very bad. Whereas when a certain end is founded upon. Consequently,
• 27:01
  Speaker 1: no law commands unconditionally, but only on the condition of
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: this end. Thus two opposite actions may be both good
• 27:10
  Speaker 1: in a conditional manner, only one better than the other,
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: which latter would therefore be named comparatively bad, For they
• 27:19
  Speaker 1: are not different from one another according to the sort,
• 27:22
  Speaker 1: but merely according to the degree. And of this nature
• 27:26
  Speaker 1: are all actions whose motive is not the unconditional law
• 27:30
  Speaker 1: of reason duty, but an end arbitrarily laid by us
• 27:35
  Speaker 1: as a foundation. For this belongs to the sum of
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: all ends, whose attainment is denominated felicity. And one action
• 27:47
  Speaker 1: may contribute more, another less to my felicity consequently be
• 27:53
  Speaker 1: better or worse than the other. But the preferring of
• 27:57
  Speaker 1: the one state of the determination of the will to
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: the other other is an act of liberty merely fresmere facultatis,
• 28:05
  Speaker 1: as the jurists say, in which it is not at
• 28:09
  Speaker 1: all taken into consideration whether this determination of the will
• 28:14
  Speaker 1: be good or bad in itself. Therefore it is in
• 28:19
  Speaker 1: respect of both equapulent. A state of being in connection
• 28:25
  Speaker 1: with a certain given end, which I prefer to every
• 28:28
  Speaker 1: other of the same sort is a comparatively better state
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: in the field of felicity, which can be acknowledged as
• 28:36
  Speaker 1: good by reason, but in a conditional manner, so far
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: as one is worthy of it. But that state in which,
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: in case of the collision of any of my ends
• 28:48
  Speaker 1: with the moral law of duty, I am conscious to
• 28:50
  Speaker 1: myself to prefer this is not only a better state,
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: but that state only good in itself, a good from
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: a quite other field, where we have no regard at
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: all to ends which may present themselves to us consequently
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: to their sum felicity, and where not the matter of
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: the arbitrament an object upon which it bottoms, but the
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: mere form of the universal legality of its maxim constitutes
• 29:21
  Speaker 1: its determinative. Therefore, it cannot by any means be said
• 29:28
  Speaker 1: that I can reckon every state which I prefer to
• 29:31
  Speaker 1: every other mode of being, to felicity, For I must
• 29:36
  Speaker 1: first be certain that I do not act contrary to
• 29:39
  Speaker 1: my duty as I am, but then allowed to look
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: out for felicity, and to see how much of it
• 29:47
  Speaker 1: I can unite with that my morally not physically good state.
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: Footnote Felicity comprises all but nothing more then that with
• 30:01
  Speaker 1: which nature can supply us, but virtue that which nobody
• 30:07
  Speaker 1: but man himself can give himself or can take. Did
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: One on the contrary, say that by deviation from virtue,
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: man may incur at least reproaches and pure moral self censure.
• 30:22
  Speaker 1: Therefore discontentment consequently may make himself unhappy. That may perhaps
• 30:28
  Speaker 1: be granted. But the virtuous only, or he who is
• 30:33
  Speaker 1: on the way to become so, is capable of the
• 30:36
  Speaker 1: pure moral discontentment, not from the consequences of the action
• 30:40
  Speaker 1: pernicious to him, but from its illegality itself. Therefore, this
• 30:48
  Speaker 1: discontentment is not the cause, but only the effect of
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: his being virtuous, And the motive for being virtuous could
• 30:56
  Speaker 1: not be taken from this misfortune if one chooses to
• 31:00
  Speaker 1: name the pain occasioned by a misdeed end footnote. The
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: will must certainly have motives, but these are not certain
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: designed objects referred to the physical feeling as ends, but
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: nothing but the unconditional law itself, for which reason the
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: receptibility of the will to find itself under that law
• 31:26
  Speaker 1: as an unconditioned necessitation is termed moral feeling, which is
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: therefore not the cause but the effect of the determination
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: of the will, of which we would not have the
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: smallest perception in us if that necessitation in us did
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: not precede. Hence the old song that this feeling, consequently,
• 31:50
  Speaker 1: a pleasure which we make our end, constitutes the first
• 31:54
  Speaker 1: cause of the determination of the will. Of course, felicity
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: to whis which that pleasure belongs as element, the ground
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: of all objective necessity of acting. Therefore of all obligation
• 32:08
  Speaker 1: pertains to the reasoning toyings. When in alleging a cause
• 32:15
  Speaker 1: to a certain effect, one cannot cease inquiring. Thus at
• 32:19
  Speaker 1: last one makes the effect the cause of itself. At
• 32:25
  Speaker 1: present I come to the point which properly occupies us here, namely,
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: to try, by examples and to prove the interest of
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: the theory and of the practice opinionatively jarring in philosophy.
• 32:41
  Speaker 1: Mister Garfay, in his above mentioned essay gives the best
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: testimony of this. First says he speaking of the distinction
• 32:49
  Speaker 1: which I find between a doctrine how we shall become happy,
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: and that how we shall become worthy of felicity. I
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: for my partic knowledge that I perfectly comprehend this partition
• 33:03
  Speaker 1: of ideas in my head, but that I do not
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: find this partition of the wishes and aspirations in my heart,
• 33:11
  Speaker 1: that it is even incomprehensible to me how any one
• 33:15
  Speaker 1: person can be conscious to himself of having purely separated
• 33:19
  Speaker 1: his desire for felicity itself, and therefore discharged his duty
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: quite disinterestedly. I first reply to the latter, namely, I
• 33:32
  Speaker 1: willingly grant that no man can with certainty be conscious
• 33:36
  Speaker 1: to himself of having discharged his duty quite disinterestedly, for
• 33:41
  Speaker 1: that belongs to internal experience, and to this consciousness of
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: the state of his mind would belong a thoroughly clear
• 33:49
  Speaker 1: representation of all the collateral representations and considerations associating themselves
• 33:55
  Speaker 1: with the conception of duty by imagination, tude, and inclination,
• 34:03
  Speaker 1: which cannot be required in any case. The non existence
• 34:07
  Speaker 1: of something cannot be an object of experience. Consequently, an
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: advantage thought in secret cannot. But man is conscious to
• 34:18
  Speaker 1: himself with the greatest distinctness that he ought to discharge
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: his duty quite disinterestedly, and must totally separate his desire
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: for felicity from the conception of duty in order to
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: have it quite pure. Or did he believe not to
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: be conscious of this, It can be required of him
• 34:40
  Speaker 1: that he be so, as far as it is in
• 34:43
  Speaker 1: his power, because just in this purity is to be
• 34:47
  Speaker 1: met with the real value of morality, and he must
• 34:51
  Speaker 1: therefore be able to do so. Perhaps no man may
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: have ever quite disinterestedly discharged, without ans mixture of other springs,
• 35:01
  Speaker 1: his duty acknowledged and even honored by him. Perhaps no one,
• 35:08
  Speaker 1: notwithstanding the greatest efforts, will ever reach so far, but
• 35:14
  Speaker 1: as much as he can perceive in himself by the
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: most careful self examination, to be conscious to himself not
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: only of no such co operating motives, but rather of
• 35:26
  Speaker 1: self denial with regard to many things opposing the idea
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: of duty, consequently of the maxim to aspire to that purity,
• 35:35
  Speaker 1: that he is able to do so, and that is
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: enough for the observance of his duty. Whereas to adopt
• 35:44
  Speaker 1: as a maxim the favoring of the influence of such
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: motives under the pretext that human nature does not allow
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: such a purity, which, however, he cannot maintain with certitude,
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: is the death of all morality. As to the laconic
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: confection of mister Garfey to wit not to find in
• 36:05
  Speaker 1: his heart that partition more properly separation, I make no
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: hesitation to contradict him directly in his self accusation, and
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: to protect his heart against his head. He honest man
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: always found it actually in his heart in the determination
• 36:25
  Speaker 1: of his will. But they would only not accord for
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: the behoof of speculation and for the comprehending of what
• 36:35
  Speaker 1: is incomprehensible inexplicable, namely the possibility of categorical imperatives such
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: as those of duty, are in his head with the
• 36:45
  Speaker 1: common principles of psychological explications, which collectively bottom upon the
• 36:52
  Speaker 1: mechanism of the necessity of nature. Footnote. Professor Garfay, in
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: his Observations on Cicero on Duties, page sixty nine, seventeen
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: eighty three edition, makes this remarkable confession, which is at
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: the same time worthy of his ingenuity. Liberty, according to
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: my most intimate conviction, will always remain inextricable and will
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: never be explained. A proof of actuality cannot absolutely be
• 37:31
  Speaker 1: met with either in an immediate or mediate experience, and
• 37:35
  Speaker 1: one cannot assume it without all proof as a proof
• 37:39
  Speaker 1: of it cannot be given from theoretical grounds merely, for
• 37:43
  Speaker 1: these must be sought in experience. Therefore from practical positions
• 37:47
  Speaker 1: of reason merely, but not from technically practical ones, for
• 37:51
  Speaker 1: these would require grounds of experience. Consequently, but from morally
• 37:57
  Speaker 1: practical positions, it is surprising that Professor Garveay had not
• 38:03
  Speaker 1: recourse to the conception of liberty in order to save
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: the possibility at least of such imperatives. End footnote. But
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: when mister Garveay at last says, such fine distinctions become
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: obscure in reflecting on particular objects, but they are lost
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: entirely when acting is in question, when they are to
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: be applied to appetites and views. The simpler and quicker
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: the step is by which we pass from the considerations
• 38:38
  Speaker 1: of the motives to real action. And the more divested
• 38:42
  Speaker 1: of clear representations, the less it is possible to cognize
• 38:46
  Speaker 1: precisely and certainly the determinate weight which every motive has
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: added to direct the step so and not otherwise I
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: must be allowed to contradict him flatly and with an
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: audible voice. The conception of duty, in its whole purity,
• 39:06
  Speaker 1: is not only beyond all comparison, simpler, more prospicuous, more
• 39:11
  Speaker 1: conceivable to everybody for practical use, and more natural than
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: any motive taken from felicity or mingled with it, and
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: having regard to it, which always requires great art and reflection.
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: But in the judgment of even the most common human reason,
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: when it is but brought to this and with separation
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: from nay even in opposition to these, to the will
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: of man, far more energetical, penetrating and promises more success,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: and all the motives borrowed from the latter interested principle.
• 39:48
  Speaker 1: Let us, for example, put the case that a certain
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: person has in his hands another's property which was entrusted
• 39:57
  Speaker 1: to him depositum, whose proprietor is dead, and that his
• 40:02
  Speaker 1: heir is neither no nor can ever hear of that property.
• 40:07
  Speaker 1: Let this case be propounded even to a child of
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: eight or nine years old, and at the same time,
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: that this detainer of this deposit is without his fault,
• 40:19
  Speaker 1: exactly at this instant, totally ruined in his circumstances, and
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: sees around him a wife and a numerous family of
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: helpless children, melancholy and dejected through want, from which distressing
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: situation he would be immediately relieved should he appropriate that
• 40:38
  Speaker 1: deposit to himself. Let him, at the same time be
• 40:43
  Speaker 1: humane and beneficent, But that air opulent and uncharitable, and
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: in the highest degree luxurious and prodigal, so that the
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: sedition to his fortune would be like throwing a drop
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: of water into the ocean. And were it now asked
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: whether the detainer, under these circumstances can be allowed to
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: apply this deposit to his own use, the answer would
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: certainly be no. And instead of all grounds, nothing but
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: that it is wrong, that is repugnant to duty. Nothing
• 41:22
  Speaker 1: is clearer than this, And indeed not that the detainer
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: promotes his own felicity by giving up the deposit, For
• 41:31
  Speaker 1: if he expected the fixing of his resolution from the
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: view to felicity, he might reason. Thus, if I return
• 41:38
  Speaker 1: this deposit to its proper owner without it being demanded,
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: I shall, in all probability be rewarded for my honesty.
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: Or should I not be rewarded, I shall acquire a
• 41:49
  Speaker 1: good reputation, which may be highly advantageous to me. But
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: all this is very uncertain. On the other hand, many
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: doubts occur. If I should keep the deposit in order
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: to relieve my distresses. At once, I would should I
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: make a speedy use of it, incur suspicion, and everybody
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: would inquire how I came to better my fortune. So
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: suddenly but were I to proceed in this slowly, the
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: misery would increase to so high a degree that it
• 42:21
  Speaker 1: would not be possible afterwards to remedy it. The will, therefore,
• 42:26
  Speaker 1: according to the maxim of felicity, hesitates between its springs
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: what it shall conclude, For it looks to the consequence,
• 42:36
  Speaker 1: and that is very uncertain. It requires a good understanding
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: to disentangle oneself from the crowd of arguments and counter arguments,
• 42:45
  Speaker 1: and not to deceive oneself in the summing up. Whereas
• 42:50
  Speaker 1: when one questions oneself what is duty here, one is
• 42:55
  Speaker 1: at no loss at all what answer to give, but
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: is immediately certain ought to be done. Nay, if the
• 43:03
  Speaker 1: conception of duty has any weight with us, we even
• 43:07
  Speaker 1: feel an aversion to enter, but on the calculation of
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: advantages which might arise to us from the transgression of
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: our duty, as if we still had the choice here.
• 43:18
  Speaker 1: It therefore contradicts even proper experience. That these distinctions, which
• 43:24
  Speaker 1: as shown above are not so fine as mister Garvey fancies,
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: but are written in the most legible characters in the
• 43:32
  Speaker 1: soul of man, are as he expresses himself totally lost
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: when acting is in question, It does not indeed contradict
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: that experience which exhibits the history of the maxims drawn
• 43:48
  Speaker 1: from the one or from the other principle, For there
• 43:51
  Speaker 1: it evinces, unfortunately, that they, for the most part flow
• 43:56
  Speaker 1: from the latter self interest. But the experience, which can
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: be but internal, that no idea elevates the human mind
• 44:05
  Speaker 1: more and animates it to ecstasy, even than that of
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: a pure moral sentiment, revering duty above all, struggling with
• 44:15
  Speaker 1: the innumerable evils of life, and even with its seducing allurements,
• 44:21
  Speaker 1: and yet overcoming them, as it is supposed with reason
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: that man is able to do it, that man is
• 44:31
  Speaker 1: conscious to himself that he can do this because he
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: ought to do it, opens in him a depth of
• 44:39
  Speaker 1: godlike predispositions, which makes him feel, in a manner a
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: solemn shudder, and reflect on the grandeur and sublimity of
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: his real destination. And were he frequently made attentive and
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: accustomed to disburden virtue totally of all the riches and
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: spoil of the advanceages which it can make from the
• 45:01
  Speaker 1: observance of duty, and to represent it to himself in
• 45:06
  Speaker 1: its whole purity, were it a principle in the private
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: as well as in the public instruction to make constant
• 45:13
  Speaker 1: use of it a method of inculcating duties which has
• 45:17
  Speaker 1: almost always been neglected, the morality of men would soon
• 45:22
  Speaker 1: be on a better footing. That the experience of history
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: has not yet had the good consequence which moralists wished
• 45:31
  Speaker 1: to evince. Is the fault of the false presupposition that
• 45:36
  Speaker 1: the spring derived from the idea of duty in itself
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: is far too fine for the common conception, whereas the
• 45:43
  Speaker 1: courser spring, taken from certain advantages to be expected in
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: this world, nay even in a future, from the observance
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: of the law, without attending to it as a spring,
• 45:56
  Speaker 1: would act more forcibly on the mind. And that to
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: give the aspiring to felicity the preference to that which
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: reason makes the highest condition, namely, the worthiness of being happy,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: has hitherto been made the principle of education and of
• 46:13
  Speaker 1: the propounding from the pulpit for precepts how one may
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: make himself happy, or at least avoid his disadvantage. Are
• 46:23
  Speaker 1: no commandments. They bind nobody absolutely, and he, after he
• 46:30
  Speaker 1: has been warned, may choose what pleases. When he is
• 46:34
  Speaker 1: content with suffering, whatever may happen to him. He has
• 46:40
  Speaker 1: then no reason to consider the evils which may arise
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: to him from the neglect of the advice given him
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: as punishments, for these reach only the free of the
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: wrongful will. But nature and inclination cannot give laws to liberty.
• 46:56
  Speaker 1: Quite differently circumstanced is the idea of duty, whose transgression,
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: without having regard to the disadvantages arising to men therefrom
• 47:07
  Speaker 1: acts immediately on the mind and renders them, in their
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: own eyes culpable and punishable. Here is now a clear
• 47:17
  Speaker 1: proof that in moral all that is right in theory
• 47:21
  Speaker 1: must be valid. For the praxis too in the quality
• 47:25
  Speaker 1: of a man as a being subjected to certain duties
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: by his own reason. Every one is a man of business,
• 47:34
  Speaker 1: and as he, as a man, never grows too tall
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: for the school of wisdom, he cannot, as opinionatively better
• 47:44
  Speaker 1: versed by experience in what a man is and what
• 47:47
  Speaker 1: can be required of him, with arrogant contempt, send back
• 47:52
  Speaker 1: to the school the adherers to the theory. For all
• 47:56
  Speaker 1: this experience does not help him to avoid the precept
• 48:00
  Speaker 1: of theory, but only to teach how it when it
• 48:05
  Speaker 1: is adopted as a principle may be better and more
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: generally put in execution, but which pragmatical address is not
• 48:14
  Speaker 1: the subject of the present discussion. End. Section one of
• 48:24
  Speaker 1: the relation which the theory bears to the praxis in
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: moral in general. From on the popular judgment that may
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: be right in theory but does not hold good in
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: the Praxis by Immanuel Kante. This recording is in the
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: public domain. Section two on the popular judgment that may
• 49:02
  Speaker 1: be right in theory, but does not hold good in
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: the praxis. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings
• 49:11
  Speaker 1: are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer,
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: please visit LibriVox dot org. On the popular judgment that
• 49:22
  Speaker 1: may be right in theory, but does not hold good
• 49:25
  Speaker 1: in the Praxis by Manual Kant. Section two of the
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: relation which the theory bears to the praxis in the
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: Law of State against Hobbes, this recording being taken from
• 49:41
  Speaker 1: Hasties translation eighteen ninety one in his book Kant's Principles
• 49:49
  Speaker 1: of Politics, including his essay on Perpetual Peace, a contribution
• 49:54
  Speaker 1: to Political science. Title as given in Hasty's Trends The
• 50:01
  Speaker 1: Principles of Political Right considered in connection with the relation
• 50:05
  Speaker 1: of theory to practice in the right of the state.
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: The establishment of a civil constitution in society is one
• 50:15
  Speaker 1: of the most important facts in human history. In the
• 50:19
  Speaker 1: principle on which it is founded, this institution differs from
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: all the other forms of social union among mankind. Viewed
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: as a compact, and compared with other modes of compact
• 50:33
  Speaker 1: by which numbers of men are united into one society,
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: the formation of a civil constitution has much in common
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: with all other forms of social union in respect of
• 50:43
  Speaker 1: the mode in which it is carried out in practice.
• 50:47
  Speaker 1: But while all such compacts are established for the purpose
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: of promoting in common some chosen end, the civil union
• 50:55
  Speaker 1: is essentially distinguished from all others by the principle on
• 50:59
  Speaker 1: which it is based. In all social contracts we find
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: a union of a number of persons for the purpose
• 51:06
  Speaker 1: of carrying out some one end, which they all have
• 51:10
  Speaker 1: in common. But a union of a multitude of men
• 51:14
  Speaker 1: viewed as an end in itself that every person ought
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: to carry out, and which consequently is a primary and
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: unconditional duty amid all the external relations of men who
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: cannot help exercising a mutual influence on one another is
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: at once peculiar and unique of its kind. Such a
• 51:35
  Speaker 1: union is only to be found in a society, which,
• 51:38
  Speaker 1: by being formed into a civil state, constitutes a commonwealth. Now,
• 51:44
  Speaker 1: the end which in such external relations is itself a duty,
• 51:48
  Speaker 1: and even the highest formal condition, the conduccio sinequan non
• 51:54
  Speaker 1: of all other external duties, is the realization of the
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: rights of men under public compulsory laws, by which every
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: individual can have what is his own assigned to him
• 52:07
  Speaker 1: and secured against the encroachments or assaults of others. The
• 52:13
  Speaker 1: idea of an external right, however, arises wholly out of
• 52:18
  Speaker 1: the idea of human freedom or liberty in the external
• 52:22
  Speaker 1: relations of men to one another. As such, it has
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: nothing specially to do with the realization of happiness as
• 52:30
  Speaker 1: a purpose which all men naturally have, or with prescription
• 52:34
  Speaker 1: of the means of attaining it, And it is absolutely
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: necessary that this end shall not be mixed up with
• 52:41
  Speaker 1: the laws of right as their motive. Right in general
• 52:46
  Speaker 1: may be defined as the limitation of the freedom of
• 52:48
  Speaker 1: any individual to the extent of its agreement with the
• 52:51
  Speaker 1: freedom of all other individuals, in so far as this
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: is possible by a universal law, public right again, is
• 53:01
  Speaker 1: the sum of the external laws which make such a
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: complete agreement of freedom in society possible. Now, as all
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: limitation of freedom by external acts of the will of
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: another is a mode of coercion or compulsion, it follows
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: that the civil constitution is a relation of free men
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: who live under coercive laws without prejudicing their liberty otherwise
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: in the whole of their connection with others. For reason
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: itself wills. This by reason is here meant the pure
• 53:37
  Speaker 1: innate law giving reason, which gives no regard to any
• 53:42
  Speaker 1: end that is derived from experience, such as are all
• 53:46
  Speaker 1: comprehended under the general name of happiness. In respect of
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: any such end, or in what any individual may place it,
• 53:56
  Speaker 1: men may think quite differently, so that their will could
• 54:00
  Speaker 1: not be brought under any common principle, nor consequently under
• 54:05
  Speaker 1: any external laws that would be compatible with the liberty
• 54:09
  Speaker 1: of all. The civil state, then, regarded merely as a
• 54:14
  Speaker 1: social state that is regulated by laws of right, is
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: founded upon the following rational principles. First, the liberty of
• 54:24
  Speaker 1: every member of the society as a man. Second, the
• 54:29
  Speaker 1: equality of every member of the society with every other
• 54:33
  Speaker 1: as a subject. Third, the self dependency of every member
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: of the commonwealth as a citizen. These principles are not
• 54:46
  Speaker 1: so much laws given by the state when it is established,
• 54:49
  Speaker 1: as rather fundamental conditions according to which alone the institution
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: of a state is possible in conformity with pure rational
• 54:58
  Speaker 1: principles of externals human right generally, First, the liberty of
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: every member of the state as a man is the
• 55:09
  Speaker 1: first principle in the constitution of a rational commonwealth. I
• 55:14
  Speaker 1: would express this principle in the following form. No one
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: has a right to compel me to be happy in
• 55:21
  Speaker 1: the peculiar way in which he may think of the
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: well being of other men. But everyone is entitled to
• 55:29
  Speaker 1: seek his own happiness in the way that seems to
• 55:32
  Speaker 1: him best, if it does not infringe the liberty of
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: others in striving after a similar end for themselves, when
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: their liberty is capable of consisting with the right of
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: liberty in all others. According to possible universal laws, a
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: government founded upon the principle of benevolence towards the people,
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: after the analogy of a father to his children, and
• 55:58
  Speaker 1: therefore called a maternal government, would be one in which
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: the subjects would be regarded as children or miners, unable
• 56:06
  Speaker 1: to distinguish what is beneficial or injurious to them. These
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: subjects would be thus compelled to act in a merely
• 56:13
  Speaker 1: passive way, and they would be trained to expect solely
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: from the judgment of the sovereign, and just as he
• 56:20
  Speaker 1: might will it merely out of his goodness, all that
• 56:24
  Speaker 1: ought to make them happy. Such a government would be
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: the greatest conceivable despotism, for it would present a constitution
• 56:33
  Speaker 1: that would abolish all liberty in the subjects and leave
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: them no rights. It is not a paternal government, but
• 56:41
  Speaker 1: only a patriotic government that is adapted for men who
• 56:45
  Speaker 1: are capable of rights, and at the same time fitted
• 56:49
  Speaker 1: to give scope to the good will of the ruler.
• 56:53
  Speaker 1: By patriotic is meant that condition of mind in which
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: everyone in the state, the head of it not a accepted,
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: regards the commonwealth as the maternal bosom, and the country
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: as the paternal soil out of and on which he
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: himself has sprung into being, and which he also must
• 57:13
  Speaker 1: leave to others as a dear inheritance. Thus, and thus
• 57:19
  Speaker 1: only can he hold himself entitled to protect the rights
• 57:23
  Speaker 1: of his fatherland by laws of the common will. But
• 57:27
  Speaker 1: not to subject it to an unconditional purpose of his
• 57:30
  Speaker 1: own at pleasure. This right of liberty thus belongs to
• 57:35
  Speaker 1: him as a man while he is a member of
• 57:38
  Speaker 1: the commonwealth, or in point of fact, so far as
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: he is a being capable of rights generally. Second, the
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: equality of every member of the state as a subject
• 57:54
  Speaker 1: is the second principle in the constitution of a rational commonwealth.
• 57:59
  Speaker 1: The formula of this principle may be put thus, every
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: member of the commonwealth has rights against every other that
• 58:07
  Speaker 1: may be enforced by compulsory laws, from which only the
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: sovereign or supreme ruler of the state is accepted, because
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: he is regarded not as a mere member of the commonwealth,
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: but as its creator or maintainer, and he alone has
• 58:24
  Speaker 1: the right to compel without being himself subject to compulsory law. All, however,
• 58:32
  Speaker 1: who live under laws in a state are its subjects,
• 58:37
  Speaker 1: and consequently they are subjected to the compulsory law like
• 58:41
  Speaker 1: all other members of the commonwealth. One only, whether an
• 58:46
  Speaker 1: individual sovereign or a collective body constituting the supreme head
• 58:51
  Speaker 1: of the state, and as such being accepted as the
• 58:54
  Speaker 1: medium through which alone all rightful coercion or compulsion can
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: be exercised, for should the head of state also be
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: subject to compulsion, there would no longer be a supreme head,
• 59:08
  Speaker 1: and the series of members subordinate and supeordinate would go
• 59:12
  Speaker 1: on upwards ad infinitum. Again, where there in the state
• 59:18
  Speaker 1: to such powers as persons exempt from legal compulsion, neither
• 59:22
  Speaker 1: of them would be subject to compulsory laws, and as
• 59:25
  Speaker 1: such the one could do no wrong to the other,
• 59:28
  Speaker 1: which is impossible. This thoroughgoing equality of the individual men
• 59:35
  Speaker 1: in a state as its subjects, is however, quite compatible
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: with the greatest inequality in the extent and degrees of
• 59:42
  Speaker 1: their possessions, whether consisting in corporeal or spiritual superiority over others,
• 59:49
  Speaker 1: or in the external gifts of fortune, or in rights generally,
• 59:53
  Speaker 1: of which there may be many. In relation to others, Thus,
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: the prosperity of the one may greatly depend on the
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 1: will of the other, as in the case of the poor.
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 1: In relation to the rich. One may even have of
• 1:00:08
  Speaker 1: necessity to obey and another to command, as in the
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: relation of children to parents, and of wife to husband. Again,
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 1: one may have to work and the other to pay,
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 1: as in the case of a day laborer, and so on.
• 1:00:26
  Speaker 1: But in relation to the involved law of right, which
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: as the expression of the universal will of the state,
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 1: can be only one, and which regards the form of
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 1: the right, and not the matter or object to which
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 1: the right refers. In all cases, the persons as subjects
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 1: are to be regarded as all equal to one another.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 1: For no one has a right to compel or coerce
• 1:00:51
  Speaker 1: anyone whomsoever in the state, otherwise than by public law
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 1: and through the sovereign or ruler executing it. And any
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 1: one may resist another thus far and through the same medium.
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 1: On the other hand, no one can lose this right
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 1: as a title to proceed by legal compulsion against others,
• 1:01:14
  Speaker 1: except by his own fault or a criminal act. Nor
• 1:01:18
  Speaker 1: can any one divest himself of it voluntarily or by
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: a compact, so as to bring it about by a
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: supposed act of right, that he should have no rights,
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 1: but only duties towards others, For in so doing he
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: would be depriving himself of the right of making a compact,
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: and consequently the act would annul itself. Out of this
• 1:01:42
  Speaker 1: idea of the equality of men as subjects in the Commonwealth,
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 1: there arises the following formula. Every member of the state
• 1:01:50
  Speaker 1: should have it made possible for him to attain to
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: any position or rank that may belong to any subject
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 1: to which his talent is industry, or his fortune may
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: be capable of raising. Him and his fellow subjects are
• 1:02:03
  Speaker 1: not entitled to stand in the way by any hereditary
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: prerogative forming the exclusive privilege of a certain class in
• 1:02:12
  Speaker 1: order to keep him and his posterity forever below them.
• 1:02:18
  Speaker 1: For all right just consists in restriction of the liberty
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: of another to the condition that is consistent with my
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: liberty according to a universal law. And public right in
• 1:02:30
  Speaker 1: a commonwealth is only the product of actual legislation conformable
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: to this principle, and conjoined with power in virtue of
• 1:02:39
  Speaker 1: which all who belong to a nation as its subjects
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: find themselves in a rightful state status juridicus, constituted and
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 1: regulated by law. And as such, this state is in
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: fact a condition of equality, inasmuch as it is determined
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: by the action and reaction of free wills limiting one
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: another according to the universal law of freedom, and it
• 1:03:08
  Speaker 1: thus constitutes the civil state of human society. Hence the
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: inborn right of all individuals in this sphere that is
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: considered as being prior to their having actually entered upon
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: juridical action. To bring compulsion to bear upon any others
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: is entirely identical and equal throughout, on the assumption that
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 1: they are always to remain within the bounds of unanimity
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 1: and concord in the mutual use of their liberty. Now,
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: birth is not an act on the part of him
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: who is born, and consequently it does not entail upon
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: him any inequality in the state of right, nor any
• 1:03:51
  Speaker 1: subjection under laws of compulsion, other than what is common
• 1:03:55
  Speaker 1: to him with all others as a subject of the
• 1:03:58
  Speaker 1: one supreme legislative power. And therefore there can be no
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 1: inborn privilege by way of right in any member of
• 1:04:06
  Speaker 1: the Commonwealth as a subject before another fellow subject. Nor consequently,
• 1:04:13
  Speaker 1: has anyone a right to transmit the privilege or prerogative
• 1:04:17
  Speaker 1: of the rank which he holds in the Commonwealth to
• 1:04:20
  Speaker 1: his posterity, so that they should be, as it were,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 1: qualified by birth for the rank of nobility, nor should
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 1: they be prevented from attaining to the higher stages in
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 1: the gradations of social rank by their own merit. Everything
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: else that partakes of the nature of a thing and
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 1: does not relate to my personality may be bequeathed, and
• 1:04:44
  Speaker 1: since such things may be acquired as property, they may
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 1: also be alienated or disponed. Hence, after a number of generations,
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: a considerable inequality in external circumstances may arise among the
• 1:05:00
  Speaker 1: members of a commonwealth, producing such relations as those of
• 1:05:04
  Speaker 1: master and servant, landlord and tenant, et cetera. These circumstances
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: and relations, however, ought not to hinder any of the
• 1:05:14
  Speaker 1: subjects of the state from rising to such positions, as
• 1:05:17
  Speaker 1: their talent, their industry, and their fortune may make it
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: possible for them to fill. For otherwise such a one
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: would be qualified to coerce without being liable to be
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: coerced by the counter action of others in return, and
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: he would rise above the stage of being a fellow subject. Further,
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 1: no man who lives under the legalized conditions of a
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: commonwealth can fall out of this equality otherwise than by
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 1: his own crime, and never either by compact or through
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: any military occupancy. For he cannot, by any legal act,
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 1: whether of himself or of another, cease to be the
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: owner of himself, or enter into the class of domestic cattle,
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: which are used for all sorts of services at will,
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: and are maintained in this condition without their consent, as
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 1: long as there is a will to do it, although
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 1: under the limitation which is sometimes sanctioned even by religion,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: as among the Hindus, that they are not to be
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: mutilated or slain under any conditions. He is to be
• 1:06:28
  Speaker 1: regarded as happy, who is conscious that it depends only
• 1:06:31
  Speaker 1: on himself, that is, on his faculty or earnest will,
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: or on circumstances which he cannot impute to any other,
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: and not on the irresistible will of others, that he
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: does not rise to a stage of equality with others, who,
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: as his fellow subjects, have no advantage over him, as
• 1:06:51
  Speaker 1: far as right is concerned. Third, the dependency of a
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 1: member of the Commonwealth as a citizen or fellow legislator
• 1:07:07
  Speaker 1: is the third principle or condition of right in the state.
• 1:07:12
  Speaker 1: In the matter of the legislation itself. All are to
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: be regarded as free and equal under the already existing
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 1: public laws, but they are not to be all regarded
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 1: as equal in relation to the right to give or
• 1:07:27
  Speaker 1: enact these laws. Those who are not capable of this
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 1: right are notwithstanding, subject to the observance of the laws
• 1:07:36
  Speaker 1: as members of the commonwealth, and thereby they participate in
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: the protection which is in accordance therewith. They are, however,
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 1: not to be regarded as citizens, but as protected fellow subjects.
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: All right, in fact, depends on the laws. A public law, however,
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 1: which determines for all what is to be legally allowed
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: or not allowed in their regard, is the act of
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: a public will, from which all right proceeds, and which
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: therefore itself can do no wrong to any one. For this, however,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 1: there is no other will competent than that of the
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: whole people, as it is only when all determine about all,
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 1: that each one, in consequence determines about himself. For it
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: is only to himself that one can do no wrong.
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: But if it be another will that is in question,
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 1: then the mere will of any one different from it
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 1: could determine nothing for it which might not be wrong.
• 1:08:44
  Speaker 1: And consequently the law of such a will would require
• 1:08:47
  Speaker 1: another law to limit its legislation. And thus no particular
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 1: will can be legislative for a commonwealth. Properly speaking, in
• 1:08:59
  Speaker 1: order to make out this, the ideas of the external liberty, equality,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: and unity of the will of all are to be
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 1: taken into account, and for the last of these self
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: dependency is the condition, since the exercising of a vote
• 1:09:16
  Speaker 1: is required when the former two ideas are taken along
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: with it. The fundamental law thus indicated, which can only
• 1:09:24
  Speaker 1: arise out of the universal united will of the people,
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 1: is what is called the original contract. Now, anyone who
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 1: has the right of voting in this system of legislation
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 1: is a citizen as distinguished from a burgess. He is
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: a citoien as distinguished from a bourgeois. The quality requisite
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 1: for this status, in addition to the natural one of
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 1: not being a child or a woman, is solely this
• 1:09:59
  Speaker 1: that the individ juwele is his own master by right
• 1:10:02
  Speaker 1: sui juris, and consequently that he has some property that
• 1:10:07
  Speaker 1: supports him, under which may be reckoned any art or handicraft,
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 1: or any fine art or science. Otherwise put, the condition
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: in those cases in which the citizen must acquire from
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: others in order to live is that he only acquires
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: it by alienation of what is his own, and not
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: by a consent given to others to make use of
• 1:10:30
  Speaker 1: his powers, and consequently that he serves no one but
• 1:10:35
  Speaker 1: the commonwealth in the proper sense of the term. In
• 1:10:41
  Speaker 1: this relation, those who are skilled in the arts, and
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 1: large or small proprietors are all equal to one another,
• 1:10:49
  Speaker 1: as in fact each one is entitled only to one vote.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: As regards proprietors, the question might be considered as to
• 1:10:58
  Speaker 1: how it may have happened. I write that any one
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: has got as his own more land than he can
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: himself use with his own hands, for acquisition by military
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: occupation is not primary acquisition. And how it has happened
• 1:11:15
  Speaker 1: that many men, who otherwise might have altogether been able
• 1:11:19
  Speaker 1: to acquire an independent possession, have been brought to the
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: position of merely serving such a one in order to
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: be able to live. But without entering here upon the
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 1: consideration of this question, it is manifest that it would
• 1:11:35
  Speaker 1: at once be contrary to the previous principle of equality
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 1: if a law were to invest such persons with the
• 1:11:41
  Speaker 1: privilege of a class, so that their descendants should either
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: always continue to be great proprietors of land in a
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: manner of fiefs, without such being able to be sold
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: or divided by inheritance, and thus coming to be applied
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: for the use of more of the people, or if
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: even in carrying out such divisions, that no one but
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: he who belonged to a certain class arbitrarily regulated in
• 1:12:09
  Speaker 1: this connection, could acquire any part of such land. The
• 1:12:14
  Speaker 1: great possessor of an estate does, in fact annihilate as
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 1: many smaller owners and their voices as might occupy the
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 1: place he takes up. He does not vote in their name,
• 1:12:25
  Speaker 1: and he has consequently only one vote. It thus must
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: be left to depend merely on the means, the industry,
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 1: and the fortune of each member of the commonwealth, that
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 1: each one may acquire a part of it, and all
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: its members the whole. But these distinctions cannot be brought
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: into consideration in connection with a universal legislation, and hence
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: the number of those qualified to have a voice in
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: the legislation must be reckoned by the heads of those
• 1:12:58
  Speaker 1: who are in possession, and not according to the extent
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: of their possessions. Furthermore, all who have this right of
• 1:13:08
  Speaker 1: voting must agree in order to realize the laws of
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: public justice, for otherwise there would arise a conflict of
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: right between those who were not in agreement with it
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: and the others who were, and this would give rise
• 1:13:23
  Speaker 1: to the need of a higher principle of right, that
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 1: the conflict might be decided. A universal agreement cannot be
• 1:13:31
  Speaker 1: expected from a whole people, and consequently it is only
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: a plurality of voices, and not even of those who
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: immediately vote in a large nation, but only of their
• 1:13:41
  Speaker 1: delegates as representative of the people, that can alone be
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: foreseen as practically attainable. And hence even the principle of
• 1:13:52
  Speaker 1: making the majority of votes suffice as representing the general consent,
• 1:13:57
  Speaker 1: will have to be taken as by compact, and it
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: must thus be regarded as the ultimate basis of the
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: establishment of any civil constitution. We have next to consider
• 1:14:11
  Speaker 1: what follows, by way of corollary from the principles thus enunciated.
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: We have before us the idea of an original contract
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: as the only condition upon which civil and therefore wholly
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: rightful constitution can be founded among men, and as the
• 1:14:28
  Speaker 1: only basis upon which a state can be established. But
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: this fundamental condition, whether called an original contract or a
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 1: social compact, may be viewed as the coalition of all
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 1: the private and particular wills of a people into one
• 1:14:45
  Speaker 1: common and public will, having a purely juridical legislation as
• 1:14:50
  Speaker 1: its end. But it is not necessary to presuppose this
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: contract or compact to have been actually a fact, nor indeed,
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 1: is it possible as a fact. We have not to
• 1:15:03
  Speaker 1: deal with it as if it had first to be
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 1: proved from history that a people into whose rights and
• 1:15:10
  Speaker 1: obligations we have entered as their descendants, did actually, on
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: a certain occasion execute such a contract, and that a
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 1: certain evidence or instrument regarding it, of an oral or
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 1: written kind must have been transmitted, so as to constitute
• 1:15:26
  Speaker 1: an obligation that shall be binding in any existing civil constitution.
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: In short, this idea is merely an idea of reason,
• 1:15:38
  Speaker 1: but it has undoubtedly a practical reality. For it ought
• 1:15:43
  Speaker 1: to bind every legislator by the condition that he shall
• 1:15:47
  Speaker 1: enact such laws as might have arisen from the united
• 1:15:50
  Speaker 1: will of a whole people, and it will likewise be
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: binding upon every subject in so far as he will
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 1: be a citizen. So he shall regard the law as
• 1:16:02
  Speaker 1: if he had consented to it of his own will.
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 1: This is the test of the rightfulness of every public law.
• 1:16:10
  Speaker 1: If the law be of such a nature that it
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 1: is impossible that the whole people could give their assent
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 1: to it, it is not a just law. An instance
• 1:16:20
  Speaker 1: of this kind would be a law enacting that a
• 1:16:23
  Speaker 1: certain class of subjects should have all the privileges of
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 1: hereditary rank by mere birth. But if it be merely
• 1:16:32
  Speaker 1: possible that a people could consent to a law, it
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: is a duty to regard it as just, even supposing
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: that the people were the moment in such a position
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: or mood, that if it were referred to them, their
• 1:16:46
  Speaker 1: consent to it would probably be refused. Footnote. If, for example,
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 1: a proportioned war tax were imposed on all the subjects,
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: they are not entitled because it is birse udensome to
• 1:17:00
  Speaker 1: say that it is unjust because somehow, according to their opinion,
• 1:17:04
  Speaker 1: the war was unnecessary, For they are not entitled to
• 1:17:08
  Speaker 1: judge of this. Whereas, because it is at least always
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 1: possible that the war was inevitable and the tax indispensable,
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: it must be regarded as rightful in the judgment of
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: the subject. If, however, in such a war, certain owners
• 1:17:24
  Speaker 1: of property were to be burdened by imposts from which
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: others of the same class were spared, it is easily
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: seen that a whole people could not concur in such
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: a law, and it is entitled at the least to
• 1:17:38
  Speaker 1: make protestation against it, because it could not regard this
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: unequal distribution of the public burdens as just and footnote.
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: This limitation, however, manifestly applies only to the judgment of
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: the legislator, and not to that of the subject. If, then,
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 1: under a certain actual state of the law, the people
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 1: should conclude that the continuance of that law would probably
• 1:18:08
  Speaker 1: take away their happiness, what would they have to do?
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: Would it not be a duty to resist the law?
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: The answer can only be that the people should do
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: nothing but obey. For the question here does not turn
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 1: upon the happiness which the subject may expect from some
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: special institution or mode of administering the commonwealth. But the
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 1: primary concern is purely that of the right which has
• 1:18:35
  Speaker 1: thus to be secured to every individual. This is the
• 1:18:41
  Speaker 1: supreme principle from which all the maxims relating to the
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: commonwealth must proceed, and it cannot be limited by anything else.
• 1:18:50
  Speaker 1: In regard to the interest of happiness, No principle that
• 1:18:54
  Speaker 1: could be universally applicable can be laid down for the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 1: guidance of legislation, for not only the circumstances of the time,
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: but the very contradictory and ever changing opinions which men
• 1:19:08
  Speaker 1: have of what will constitute happiness make it impossible to
• 1:19:12
  Speaker 1: lay down fixed principles regarding it, and so the idea
• 1:19:16
  Speaker 1: of happiness taken by itself is not available. As a
• 1:19:20
  Speaker 1: principle of legislation. No one can prescribe for another as
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: to what he shall find happiness. In the principle Salus
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 1: publicas prima civitatis lex est remains undiminished in value and authority,
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 1: and the public weal, which has first of all to
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 1: be taken into consideration, is just the maintenance of that
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: legal constitution by which the liberty of all is secured
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: through the laws. Along with this, the individual is left
• 1:19:59
  Speaker 1: undisturbed his right to seek his happiness in whatever way
• 1:20:03
  Speaker 1: may seem to him best, if only he does not
• 1:20:06
  Speaker 1: infringe the universal liberty secured through the law by violating
• 1:20:11
  Speaker 1: the rights of other fellow subjects. When the sovereign power
• 1:20:16
  Speaker 1: enacts laws which are directed primarily towards the happiness of
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: the citizens out of regard to their well being, the
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: state of the population, and such like, this is not
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: done from its being the end for which the civil
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: constitution is established, but merely as a means of securing
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: the state of right, especially against the external enemies of
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: the people. The government must be capable of judging, and
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: is alone to judge, whether such legislation belongs to the
• 1:20:48
  Speaker 1: constitution of the commonwealth, and whether it is requisite in
• 1:20:53
  Speaker 1: order to secure its strength and steadfastness, both within himself
• 1:20:59
  Speaker 1: and against foreigner enemies. But this is not to be
• 1:21:02
  Speaker 1: done as if the aim were to make the people happy,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 1: even against their will, but only to bring it about
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 1: that they shall exist as a commonwealth. Footnote. Here belongs
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 1: certain prohibitions of imports, in order that the means of
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: acquisition may be promoted in the best interests of the subjects,
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 1: and not for the advantage of strangers and the encouragement
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: of the industry of others. Because the state without the
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: prosperity of the people would not possess sufficient power to
• 1:21:35
  Speaker 1: resist external enemies or to maintain itself as a commonwealth
• 1:21:42
  Speaker 1: end footnote. In thus judging whether any such measure can
• 1:21:48
  Speaker 1: be taken prudently or not, the legislature may indeed err,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 1: but he does not err in so far as he
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: considers whether the law does or does not agree with
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 1: the principle of right, and in doing so he has
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 1: an infallible criterion in the idea of the original contract
• 1:22:10
  Speaker 1: viewed as an essential idea of reason, and hence he
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: does not require, as would be the case with the
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: principle of happiness, to wait for experience to instruct him
• 1:22:22
  Speaker 1: about the utility rather than the rightness of his proposed measure.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: For if it is only not contradictory in itself that
• 1:22:31
  Speaker 1: a whole people should agree to such a law, however
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: unpleasant may be its results, in fact, it would as
• 1:22:38
  Speaker 1: such be conformable to write. If a public law be
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 1: thus conformable to write, it is irreprehensible, and hence it
• 1:22:50
  Speaker 1: will give the right to coerce. And on the other hand,
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: it would involve the prohibition of active resistance to the
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: will of the legislature. The power in the states which
• 1:23:04
  Speaker 1: gives effect to the law is likewise irresistible, and no
• 1:23:10
  Speaker 1: rightful commonwealth exists without such a power to suppress all
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: internal resistance to it, For such resistance would proceed according
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 1: to a rule which, if made universal, would destroy all
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: civil constitutionalism, and would annihilate the only state in which
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 1: men can live in the actual possession of rights. Hence,
• 1:23:35
  Speaker 1: it follows that all resistance to the sovereign legislative power,
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: every kind of instigation to bring the discontent of the
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: subjects into active form, and rebellion or insurrection of every
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 1: degree and kind constitute the highest and most punishable crimes
• 1:23:54
  Speaker 1: in the Commonwealth, for they would destroy its very foundations.
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: Of them is therefore absolute, so that even if the
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: supreme power or the sovereign as its agent, were to
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 1: violate the original contract, and thereby, in the judgment of
• 1:24:12
  Speaker 1: the subject, to lose the right of making the laws,
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 1: yet as the government has been empowered to proceed even
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: thus tyrannically, no right of resistance can be allowed to
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: the subject as a power antagonistic to the state. The
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: reason of this is that in the actually existing civil constitution,
• 1:24:34
  Speaker 1: the people have no longer the right to determine by
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: their judgment how it is to be administered. For suppose
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 1: they had such a right, and that it was directly
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 1: opposed to the judgment of the actual head of state,
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 1: who would there be to decide with which of them
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: the right lay. Evidently neither of them could do this,
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 1: as it makes them judges in their own cause. There
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 1: would therefore have to be another sovereign head above the
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: sovereign head to decide between it and the people. But
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: this is a contradiction. Nor can some supposed right of necessity,
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: which is at best a spurious thing, such as is
• 1:25:17
  Speaker 1: the right to do wrong in an extreme physical necessity,
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: come in here as a lever for the removal of
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: the barrier, thus limiting the voluntary power of the people.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: For the head of the state may just as well
• 1:25:33
  Speaker 1: think to justify his hard procedure against the subjects by
• 1:25:36
  Speaker 1: the fact of their obstinacy and intractability, as they to
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: justify their revolt by complaining against him about their undue suffering.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: Who shall decide between them? It is only he who
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: is in possession of the supreme public administration of right,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 1: or who is otherwise the head of state, who can
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: do this, And no one in the Commonwealth can have
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: the right to contest his possession of the power to
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 1: do it. Nevertheless, I find excellent men asserting such a
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: right on the part of the subject to resist the
• 1:26:13
  Speaker 1: higher authority under certain circumstances. Among these I shall only
• 1:26:19
  Speaker 1: now refer to achenvol a very cautious, distinct and careful writer,
• 1:26:26
  Speaker 1: in his Doctrine of Natural Right. He says, if the
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 1: danger which threatens the commonwealth from longer toleration of the
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: injustice of the sovereign is greater than what may be
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 1: anticipated from taking up arms, then the people may resist
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: such a sovereign, and in order to maintain their rights,
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: they may break their compact of submission and dethrone him
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: as a tyrant. And hence he infers that in this
• 1:26:54
  Speaker 1: way the people return to the state of nature in
• 1:26:57
  Speaker 1: relation to their previous head. I am willing to believe
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: that neither Achenval nor any of the worthy men who
• 1:27:07
  Speaker 1: agree with him in this sort of reasoning, would have
• 1:27:10
  Speaker 1: ever given their advice or consent in any case to
• 1:27:13
  Speaker 1: enterprises of so dangerous a nature. Nor can it be
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 1: well doubted that if the revolutions by which Switzerland, the
• 1:27:24
  Speaker 1: United Netherlands, and even Great Britain acquired the political constitutions
• 1:27:29
  Speaker 1: now so celebrated had failed, the readers of history would
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 1: have seen in the execution of the leaders now so
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: highly lauded, only the punishment deserved by great political criminals.
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: The result thus usually becomes intermingled with our judgment of
• 1:27:48
  Speaker 1: the principles of right in question, although the former is
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: always uncertain in fact, whereas the latter are always certain
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: in themselves. It is, however, clear that as regards these principles,
• 1:28:02
  Speaker 1: the people, by their mode of seeking to assert their rights,
• 1:28:05
  Speaker 1: commit the greatest wrong, even if it be admitted that
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 1: the rebellion might do no wrong to the ruling sovereign,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 1: who had violated the actual compact upon which his relation
• 1:28:16
  Speaker 1: to the people was founded in a sort of joyous ententree.
• 1:28:20
  Speaker 1: For if this mode of conduct were adopted as a
• 1:28:24
  Speaker 1: maxim all rightful political constitution would be made uncertain, and
• 1:28:30
  Speaker 1: a natural state of utter lawlessness would be introduced, in
• 1:28:34
  Speaker 1: which all right at least would cease to have effect.
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: With regard to this tendency in so many thoughtful writers
• 1:28:43
  Speaker 1: to encourage the people to their own detriment, I will
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 1: only observe that there are two influences commonly at work
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 1: in determining it. It is partly caused by the common illusion,
• 1:28:55
  Speaker 1: which substantiates the principle of happiness as the criterion of
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: judgment on the principle of right is really in question.
• 1:29:04
  Speaker 1: And again, where there is no record of anything like
• 1:29:08
  Speaker 1: compact actually proposed to the commonwealth or accepted by the sovereign,
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: or sanctioned by both these thinkers have assumed the idea
• 1:29:17
  Speaker 1: of an original contract, which is always involved in reason,
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: as a thing which must have actually happened, and thus
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: they suppose that the right was always reserved to the
• 1:29:31
  Speaker 1: people in the case of any gross violation of it,
• 1:29:34
  Speaker 1: in their judgment to resile from it at pleasure footnote. However,
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: the actual compact of the people with the ruler may
• 1:29:45
  Speaker 1: be violated. The people cannot in fact directly offer opposition
• 1:29:50
  Speaker 1: as a commonwealth, but only by mutiny and rebellion, for
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: the hitherto existing constitution is then broken through by the people,
• 1:30:00
  Speaker 1: whereas the organization of a new commonwealth has still defined place.
• 1:30:06
  Speaker 1: In these circumstances, the state of anarchy arises with all
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 1: the abominations which are thereby at least made possible. And
• 1:30:13
  Speaker 1: the wrong which thus ensues is what is inflicted by
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 1: one party upon another in the people. Thus, from the
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 1: example referred to above, it is seen how the rebellious
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 1: subjects of that state strove at last to force on
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 1: each other a constitution which would have been far more
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 1: oppressive than the one they abandoned, as it would have
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 1: led to their being consumed by clergy and aristocrats instead
• 1:30:41
  Speaker 1: of their waiting for more equality in the distribution of
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 1: the burdens of the state under an all controlling head
• 1:30:49
  Speaker 1: end footnote. It thus becomes evident that the principle of happiness,
• 1:30:56
  Speaker 1: which is properly incapable of any definite determination as a principle,
• 1:31:01
  Speaker 1: may be the occasion of much evil in the sphere
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 1: of political right, just as it is in the sphere
• 1:31:07
  Speaker 1: of morals. And this will hold good even with the
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 1: best intentions in the part of those who teach and
• 1:31:14
  Speaker 1: inculcate it. The sovereign, acting on this principle, determines to
• 1:31:20
  Speaker 1: make the people happy according to his notions, and he
• 1:31:23
  Speaker 1: becomes a despot. The people will not give up their
• 1:31:28
  Speaker 1: common human claim to what they consider their own happiness,
• 1:31:32
  Speaker 1: and they become rebels. Now, if at the outset it
• 1:31:37
  Speaker 1: had been asked what is right and just by regard
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 1: to the established principles of reason, without regard to the
• 1:31:45
  Speaker 1: notions of the empiric the idea underlying the theory of
• 1:31:49
  Speaker 1: the social compact would always have incontestable authority. But it
• 1:31:55
  Speaker 1: would not be correct to treat it as an empirical fact,
• 1:31:59
  Speaker 1: as Danton would have it, For he thought that apart
• 1:32:03
  Speaker 1: from this fact, all rights found in any existing civil
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 1: constitution and all property would have to be declared null
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: and void. The idea in question is only to be
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 1: taken as a rational principle for the estimation and judgment
• 1:32:19
  Speaker 1: of all the public rights existing under a political constitution,
• 1:32:24
  Speaker 1: and so regarded, it then becomes evident that prior to
• 1:32:29
  Speaker 1: the existence of a common will, the people possess no
• 1:32:33
  Speaker 1: right of coercion in relation to their ruler, because they
• 1:32:37
  Speaker 1: can only bring such coercion to bear as a matter
• 1:32:40
  Speaker 1: of right through him. And when this will does exist,
• 1:32:47
  Speaker 1: no coercion can be exercised by the people against him,
• 1:32:51
  Speaker 1: because this would make them to be themselves the supreme ruler. Hence,
• 1:32:57
  Speaker 1: a right of compulsion or coercion in the form of
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 1: a resistance in word or deed against the sovereign head
• 1:33:04
  Speaker 1: of state can never belong of right to the people. Further,
• 1:33:12
  Speaker 1: we see this theory sufficiently confirmed in practice in the
• 1:33:17
  Speaker 1: Constitution of Great Britain. The people form such an important
• 1:33:21
  Speaker 1: element that it is represented as a model for the
• 1:33:24
  Speaker 1: whole world, and yet we find that it is entirely
• 1:33:29
  Speaker 1: silent about any right pertaining to the people. In case
• 1:33:32
  Speaker 1: the monarch should transgress the Contract of sixteen eighty eight,
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 1: And consequently, since there is no law upon the subject,
• 1:33:42
  Speaker 1: if there is any right of rebellion against him, should
• 1:33:45
  Speaker 1: he violate the Constitution, it can only be thereby secret reservation,
• 1:33:51
  Speaker 1: for it would be a manifest contradiction that the Constitution
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 1: should contain a law providing for such a case. That
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 1: would be to justify the overthrow of this subsisting constitution,
• 1:34:04
  Speaker 1: from which all particular laws arise, which would be absurd
• 1:34:09
  Speaker 1: even on the supposition that the contract was violated. Such
• 1:34:15
  Speaker 1: a constitution would be contradictory for this reason that it
• 1:34:19
  Speaker 1: would necessarily have to include a publicly constituted counter power,
• 1:34:24
  Speaker 1: which consequently would be a second sovereign in the state,
• 1:34:28
  Speaker 1: and its function would be to protect the rights of
• 1:34:31
  Speaker 1: the people against the other sovereign. Footnote. No law or
• 1:34:39
  Speaker 1: right in the state can be, as it were maliciously
• 1:34:42
  Speaker 1: concealed by a secret reservation, least of all the rights
• 1:34:46
  Speaker 1: which the people claim as belonging to the Constitution, because
• 1:34:50
  Speaker 1: all its laws must be conceived as having sprung from
• 1:34:53
  Speaker 1: a public will. If the Constitution allowed insurrection, it would
• 1:35:01
  Speaker 1: therefore publicly have to define the right to it, as
• 1:35:05
  Speaker 1: well as the way in which it was to be
• 1:35:06
  Speaker 1: put in practice end footnote. But the existence of this
• 1:35:15
  Speaker 1: second sovereign would likewise require a third whose function would
• 1:35:19
  Speaker 1: be to decide between these two, and to determine on
• 1:35:23
  Speaker 1: which side right and justice lay. Hence, such guides, or rather,
• 1:35:28
  Speaker 1: let us say, guardians of the people, perplexed by the
• 1:35:31
  Speaker 1: possibility of such an accusation should their enterprise fail in
• 1:35:36
  Speaker 1: any way, have rather contrived for the behoof of a
• 1:35:41
  Speaker 1: monarch who might be scared away by them, a voluntary
• 1:35:44
  Speaker 1: power of demitting the government, than claimed a presumptuous right
• 1:35:49
  Speaker 1: of deposition. But this view manifestly puts the Constitution into
• 1:35:55
  Speaker 1: contradiction with itself. Now, if in presence of these assertions,
• 1:36:01
  Speaker 1: the objection is not raised against me, as it certainly
• 1:36:04
  Speaker 1: should not, that I flatter the monarch too much by
• 1:36:08
  Speaker 1: this view of his inviolability, I may hope to be
• 1:36:13
  Speaker 1: also spared another objection from the opposite side. In a word,
• 1:36:18
  Speaker 1: I hope to be spared the contrary objection that I
• 1:36:21
  Speaker 1: assert too much in favor of the people when I
• 1:36:25
  Speaker 1: say that they have also their own inalienable rights as
• 1:36:29
  Speaker 1: against the sovereign of the state. Although these cannot be
• 1:36:33
  Speaker 1: justly regarded as rights of coercion or constraint. Hobbes is
• 1:36:39
  Speaker 1: of the opposite opinion. In his view, the sovereign as
• 1:36:44
  Speaker 1: head of state, is bound in nothing to the people
• 1:36:47
  Speaker 1: by compact, and can do no wrong to the citizens,
• 1:36:51
  Speaker 1: however he act towards them. This proposition would be quite
• 1:36:57
  Speaker 1: correct if by wrong we are understand that kind of
• 1:37:01
  Speaker 1: lesion which allows to the injured party a right of
• 1:37:05
  Speaker 1: coercion against the one who does the wrong. So it
• 1:37:09
  Speaker 1: is in the special relation. But taken generally, the proposition
• 1:37:14
  Speaker 1: is repulsive and appalling. Any subject who is not utterly
• 1:37:19
  Speaker 1: intractable must be able to suppose that his sovereign does
• 1:37:23
  Speaker 1: not really wish to do him wrong. Moreover, every man
• 1:37:28
  Speaker 1: must be held to have his own inalienable rights, which
• 1:37:32
  Speaker 1: cannot give up though he wished to do it, and
• 1:37:35
  Speaker 1: about which he is himself entitled to judge. But the
• 1:37:41
  Speaker 1: wrong in question, which in his opinion, is done to him, occurs,
• 1:37:46
  Speaker 1: according to that view, only from error or ignorance of
• 1:37:49
  Speaker 1: certain consequences that will ensue from the laws laid down
• 1:37:53
  Speaker 1: by the sovereign power. Consequently, the right must be conceded
• 1:37:59
  Speaker 1: to the citizen, and with the direct consent of the Sovereign,
• 1:38:04
  Speaker 1: that he shall be able to make his opinion publicly
• 1:38:07
  Speaker 1: known regarding what appears to him to be a wrong
• 1:38:10
  Speaker 1: committed against the Commonwealth by the enactments and administration of
• 1:38:14
  Speaker 1: the sovereign. For to assume that the sovereign power can
• 1:38:19
  Speaker 1: never err or never be ignorant of anything would amount
• 1:38:24
  Speaker 1: to regarding that power as favored with heavenly inspiration and
• 1:38:27
  Speaker 1: as exalted above the reach of mankind, which is absurd. Hence,
• 1:38:33
  Speaker 1: the liberty of the press is the sole plagion of
• 1:38:36
  Speaker 1: the rights of the people. But it must be exercised
• 1:38:40
  Speaker 1: within the limits of reverence and love for the Constitution
• 1:38:44
  Speaker 1: as it exists, while it must be sustained by the
• 1:38:48
  Speaker 1: liberal spirit of the subjects, which the Constitution itself tends
• 1:38:53
  Speaker 1: to inspire. And it must be so limited by the
• 1:38:56
  Speaker 1: wise precautions of those who exercise it, that their freedom
• 1:39:01
  Speaker 1: be not lost. To refuse this liberty to the people
• 1:39:06
  Speaker 1: amounts to taking from them all claim to write in
• 1:39:09
  Speaker 1: relation to the supreme power, and this is the view
• 1:39:13
  Speaker 1: of Hobbes. But more than this is involved, as the
• 1:39:18
  Speaker 1: will of the sovereign only commands the subjects as citizens
• 1:39:22
  Speaker 1: on the ground that he represents the general will of
• 1:39:25
  Speaker 1: the people. To deprive the people of this liberty would
• 1:39:29
  Speaker 1: be to withdraw from the sovereign power all knowledge of
• 1:39:32
  Speaker 1: what he would himself alter if he only knew it,
• 1:39:37
  Speaker 1: and it would thus put him into contradiction with himself. Moreover,
• 1:39:44
  Speaker 1: to instill an anxiety into the sovereign that independent thinking
• 1:39:47
  Speaker 1: and public utterance of it would of themselves excite trouble
• 1:39:51
  Speaker 1: in the state, would amount to exciting distrust against his
• 1:39:56
  Speaker 1: own power, or even awakening hatred against the people. There
• 1:40:01
  Speaker 1: is then a general principle according to which the people
• 1:40:04
  Speaker 1: may assert their rights negatively, so far as merely to
• 1:40:08
  Speaker 1: judge that a certain thing is to be regarded as
• 1:40:11
  Speaker 1: not ordained by the supreme legislation in accordance with their
• 1:40:15
  Speaker 1: best will. This principle may be expressed in the following proposition.
• 1:40:21
  Speaker 1: What a people could not ordain over itself ought not
• 1:40:25
  Speaker 1: to be ordained by the legislature over the people. For example,
• 1:40:31
  Speaker 1: the question may be raised as to whether a law
• 1:40:35
  Speaker 1: enacting that a certain regulated ecclesiastical constitution shall exist permanently
• 1:40:40
  Speaker 1: and for all time can be regarded as issuing from
• 1:40:44
  Speaker 1: the proper will of the lawgiver according to his real
• 1:40:47
  Speaker 1: intention in dealing with it. The position which first arises
• 1:40:53
  Speaker 1: is whether a people may make a law to itself
• 1:40:56
  Speaker 1: to the effect that certain dogmas and external forms of religion,
• 1:41:00
  Speaker 1: when once adopted, shall continue to be adopted for all time,
• 1:41:05
  Speaker 1: and therefore whether it may prevent itself in its own
• 1:41:08
  Speaker 1: descendants from advancing further in religious insight, or from altering
• 1:41:14
  Speaker 1: any old errors when they have become recognized as such.
• 1:41:19
  Speaker 1: It will thus become clear that an original contract of
• 1:41:22
  Speaker 1: the people which made such a position a law, would
• 1:41:27
  Speaker 1: be in itself null and void, because it is inconsistent
• 1:41:31
  Speaker 1: with the essential destination and purposes of mankind. Consequently, a
• 1:41:37
  Speaker 1: law enacted to such an effect is not to be
• 1:41:41
  Speaker 1: regarded as the proper will of the monarch, and counter
• 1:41:44
  Speaker 1: representations may therefore be made to him against it. In
• 1:41:50
  Speaker 1: all cases, however, even when such things have been ordained
• 1:41:54
  Speaker 1: by the supreme legislation, resistance is not to be offered
• 1:41:58
  Speaker 1: to them in word or deed, but they are only
• 1:42:02
  Speaker 1: to be opposed by the influence of general and public judgments.
• 1:42:09
  Speaker 1: In every commonwealth there must be obedience to course of
• 1:42:13
  Speaker 1: laws relating to the whole people, and regulated by the
• 1:42:16
  Speaker 1: mechanism of the political constitution. But at the same time
• 1:42:22
  Speaker 1: there must be a spirit of liberty among the people,
• 1:42:26
  Speaker 1: for everyone needs to be convinced by reason in things
• 1:42:29
  Speaker 1: relating to universal human duty, that such coercion is in
• 1:42:35
  Speaker 1: accordance with right. Without this, he would be in contradiction
• 1:42:40
  Speaker 1: with his own nature. Obedience without the spirit of liberty
• 1:42:45
  Speaker 1: is the cause and occasion of all secret societies, For
• 1:42:51
  Speaker 1: there is a natural tendency implanted in mankind to communicate
• 1:42:55
  Speaker 1: to one another what is in them, especially in what
• 1:42:59
  Speaker 1: bears upon man. Generally, such societies would therefore fall away
• 1:43:05
  Speaker 1: if such liberty were more favored. And how can governments
• 1:43:10
  Speaker 1: obtain the knowledge which is necessary for furthering their own
• 1:43:14
  Speaker 1: essential object otherwise than by giving scope, in its origin
• 1:43:19
  Speaker 1: and in its effects, to this estimable spirit of human liberty.
• 1:43:26
  Speaker 1: There is a certain practical spirit that professes to disregard
• 1:43:30
  Speaker 1: all principles of pure reason, and it expresses itself nowhere
• 1:43:35
  Speaker 1: with more presumption regarding theoretical truth than in reference to
• 1:43:40
  Speaker 1: the question as to the requisites of a good political constitution.
• 1:43:45
  Speaker 1: The cause of this is that where there has been
• 1:43:49
  Speaker 1: a legal constitution long in existence, the people have been
• 1:43:53
  Speaker 1: gradually accustomed to take that state in which everything has
• 1:43:57
  Speaker 1: hitherto advanced in a quiet course, as the rule by
• 1:44:01
  Speaker 1: which to judge of their happiness as well as their rights.
• 1:44:06
  Speaker 1: On this account, they have not been accustomed to judge
• 1:44:09
  Speaker 1: of their condition in these respects according to the conceptions
• 1:44:13
  Speaker 1: which are furnished by reason regarding them. And thus they
• 1:44:18
  Speaker 1: come rather to prefer a continuance of their passive states
• 1:44:22
  Speaker 1: to the dangerous position of seeking for a better For
• 1:44:26
  Speaker 1: here too the maxim which Hippocrates lays down for the
• 1:44:29
  Speaker 1: physician finds application. Judgment is uncertain, experiment is dangerous. Thus
• 1:44:38
  Speaker 1: it is that all constitutions that have subsisted for some
• 1:44:42
  Speaker 1: length of time, whatever may be their defects, agree amid
• 1:44:47
  Speaker 1: all their differences in one result, namely, in producing a
• 1:44:52
  Speaker 1: certain contentment with every one's own. Hence, when regard is
• 1:44:59
  Speaker 1: given merely to the prosperity of the people, theory has
• 1:45:03
  Speaker 1: properly no place. But everything rests upon the practice that
• 1:45:07
  Speaker 1: follows experience. But the question arises whether there is anything
• 1:45:13
  Speaker 1: in reason that can find expression in the term political right,
• 1:45:18
  Speaker 1: and whether this conception is of binding force in the
• 1:45:21
  Speaker 1: case of men who stand in antagonism to each other
• 1:45:26
  Speaker 1: in virtue of their individual liberty. This involves the question
• 1:45:31
  Speaker 1: as to the objective and practical reality of such a
• 1:45:34
  Speaker 1: principle of right, and whether it can be applied without
• 1:45:38
  Speaker 1: regard to the mere well being or ill being which
• 1:45:41
  Speaker 1: may arise from it, the knowledge of which can only
• 1:45:44
  Speaker 1: rest upon experience. If there be such a basis of
• 1:45:49
  Speaker 1: political right, as has now been maintained, it must be
• 1:45:53
  Speaker 1: founded upon the principles of pure reason, for experience cannot
• 1:45:58
  Speaker 1: teach what is right and just in itself. And if
• 1:46:02
  Speaker 1: it be so, there is a theory of political right,
• 1:46:07
  Speaker 1: and no practice is valid which is not in conformity
• 1:46:11
  Speaker 1: with it. Against this position, objection could only be taken
• 1:46:16
  Speaker 1: in the following way. It might be alleged that although
• 1:46:21
  Speaker 1: men have in their minds the idea of rights as
• 1:46:24
  Speaker 1: belonging to them, they are still, on account of their
• 1:46:27
  Speaker 1: obtuseness and refractoriness, incapable and unworthy of being treated in
• 1:46:35
  Speaker 1: accordance with it. And hence it might be maintained that
• 1:46:39
  Speaker 1: a supreme power proceeding merely in accordance with rules of
• 1:46:43
  Speaker 1: expediency should and must keep them in order. This is
• 1:46:50
  Speaker 1: a leap of despair a sulto mortale. And it is
• 1:46:56
  Speaker 1: of such a kind that, since might only and not right,
• 1:47:01
  Speaker 1: comes into consideration, the people may then also be justified
• 1:47:06
  Speaker 1: in trying their best by force, And all legal constitution
• 1:47:11
  Speaker 1: is thus made uncertain. If there be no human right
• 1:47:16
  Speaker 1: which compels respect directly by its rationality, then all influences
• 1:47:21
  Speaker 1: put forth to control the arbitrary will and liberty of
• 1:47:25
  Speaker 1: men will be found unavailing. But if along with the
• 1:47:31
  Speaker 1: sentiment of benevolence, the principle of right speaks aloud, human
• 1:47:36
  Speaker 1: nature will show itself not to be so degenerate that
• 1:47:40
  Speaker 1: its voice will not be heard with reverence. We may
• 1:47:44
  Speaker 1: say of it in the words of Virgil, tum pietate
• 1:47:49
  Speaker 1: gravum meretisque siforte, virum quem conspeksere silent aretisque arbus as
• 1:48:00
  Speaker 1: stunt end. Section two of the relation which the theory
• 1:48:10
  Speaker 1: bears to the praxis in the Law of State, from
• 1:48:16
  Speaker 1: on the popular judgment that may be right in theory
• 1:48:20
  Speaker 1: but does not hold good in the Praxis by Immanuel Kant.
• 1:48:26
  Speaker 1: This recording is in the public domain. Section three, on
• 1:48:44
  Speaker 1: the popular judgment that may be right in theory but
• 1:48:49
  Speaker 1: does not hold good in the praxis. This is a
• 1:48:53
  Speaker 1: LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain.
• 1:48:58
  Speaker 1: For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox dot org.
• 1:49:06
  Speaker 1: On the popular judgment that may be right in theory
• 1:49:10
  Speaker 1: but does not hold good in the praxis by Immanuel Kant,
• 1:49:18
  Speaker 1: Section three of the relation which the theory bears to
• 1:49:23
  Speaker 1: the praxis in the Law of Nations contemplated in an
• 1:49:27
  Speaker 1: universal philanthropic, that is, cosmopolitical view against Moses Mendelssohn, translated
• 1:49:39
  Speaker 1: by Hasty eighteen ninety one in his Kant's Principles of Politics,
• 1:49:47
  Speaker 1: including his essay on Perpetual Peace, a contribution to Political
• 1:49:51
  Speaker 1: Science under Hasty's title the principle of progress considered in
• 1:49:58
  Speaker 1: connection with the relation of theory to practice in international law.
• 1:50:07
  Speaker 1: Does the human race, viewed as a whole, appear worthy
• 1:50:11
  Speaker 1: of being loved? Or is it an object which we
• 1:50:14
  Speaker 1: must look upon with repugnance, so that, while in order
• 1:50:19
  Speaker 1: to avoid misanthropy we continue to wish for it all
• 1:50:23
  Speaker 1: that is good, we yet can never expect good from it,
• 1:50:28
  Speaker 1: and would rather turn our eyes away from its ongoings.
• 1:50:33
  Speaker 1: The reply to this question will depend on the answer
• 1:50:36
  Speaker 1: that may be given to this other question. Is human
• 1:50:40
  Speaker 1: nature endowed with capacities from which we can infer that
• 1:50:44
  Speaker 1: the species will always advance to a better condition, so
• 1:50:48
  Speaker 1: that the evil of the present and the past times
• 1:50:52
  Speaker 1: will be lost in the good of the future. Under
• 1:50:58
  Speaker 1: such a condition, we may indeed love the race, at
• 1:51:02
  Speaker 1: least when viewed as continually approaching to the good, But
• 1:51:06
  Speaker 1: otherwise we might well despise or even hate it. Let
• 1:51:12
  Speaker 1: the affectation of a universal philanthropy, which at most would
• 1:51:16
  Speaker 1: then be only a benevolent wish and not a satisfied love,
• 1:51:21
  Speaker 1: express itself as it may. For what is and remains bad,
• 1:51:28
  Speaker 1: especially in the form of intentional and mutual violation of
• 1:51:31
  Speaker 1: the holiest rights of man, cannot but be hated, whatever
• 1:51:37
  Speaker 1: efforts may be made to constrain the feelings of love
• 1:51:40
  Speaker 1: towards it. Not that this dislike of human evil would
• 1:51:45
  Speaker 1: prompt us to inflict evil upon men, but it would
• 1:51:49
  Speaker 1: at least lead us to have as little to do
• 1:51:51
  Speaker 1: with them as possible. Moses Mendelssohn was of this latter opinion,
• 1:51:59
  Speaker 1: and he is posed it to his friend Lessing's hypothesis
• 1:52:04
  Speaker 1: of a divine education of the human race. It is,
• 1:52:09
  Speaker 1: in his view, a mere illusion to hold that the
• 1:52:13
  Speaker 1: whole of mankind here below shall always move forward in
• 1:52:17
  Speaker 1: the course of time, and thus perfect itself. He says,
• 1:52:22
  Speaker 1: we see the human race as a whole making oscillations
• 1:52:25
  Speaker 1: backward and forward, but it has never taken a few
• 1:52:29
  Speaker 1: steps forwards without soon sliding back with double rapidity to
• 1:52:33
  Speaker 1: its former state. This is then the very movement of
• 1:52:38
  Speaker 1: the stone of Sisyphus, And we might thus suppose, like
• 1:52:41
  Speaker 1: the Hindu, that the earth is a place for the
• 1:52:44
  Speaker 1: expiation of old and forgotten sins. The individual man, he continues, advances,
• 1:52:52
  Speaker 1: but mankind as a whole moves up and down between
• 1:52:56
  Speaker 1: fixed limits, and maintains through all periods of time about
• 1:52:59
  Speaker 1: the same stage of morality, the same amount of religion
• 1:53:03
  Speaker 1: and irreligion, of virtue and vice, of happiness and misery.
• 1:53:11
  Speaker 1: These assertions he introduces by saying, you would fain find
• 1:53:16
  Speaker 1: out what are the purposes of providence with regard to mankind,
• 1:53:21
  Speaker 1: but form no hypotheses. He had formerly said theory only
• 1:53:26
  Speaker 1: look around on what actually happens. And if you can
• 1:53:30
  Speaker 1: survey the history of all times upon what has happened
• 1:53:34
  Speaker 1: from the beginning. This gives facts. Thus much must have
• 1:53:40
  Speaker 1: belonged to the purpose of providence, and must have been
• 1:53:43
  Speaker 1: approved in the plan of wisdom, or at least must
• 1:53:46
  Speaker 1: have been adopted along with it. I am of a
• 1:53:51
  Speaker 1: different opinion. If it is spectacle worthy of a divinity
• 1:53:56
  Speaker 1: to see a virtuous man struggling with adversities and temptation,
• 1:54:00
  Speaker 1: and yet holding his ground against them, it is a
• 1:54:03
  Speaker 1: spectacle most unworthy, I will not say of a divinity,
• 1:54:08
  Speaker 1: but even of the commonest, well disposed man, to see
• 1:54:11
  Speaker 1: the human race making a few steps upward in virtue
• 1:54:15
  Speaker 1: from one period to another, and soon thereafter falling down again,
• 1:54:19
  Speaker 1: as deep into vice and misery as before. To gaze
• 1:54:23
  Speaker 1: for a short while upon this tragedy may be moving
• 1:54:26
  Speaker 1: and instructive, but the curtain must at last be let
• 1:54:30
  Speaker 1: fall upon it, for when prolonged in this manner, it
• 1:54:34
  Speaker 1: becomes a farce. And although the actors may not become
• 1:54:37
  Speaker 1: weary being fools, yet the spectator will become tired of it,
• 1:54:43
  Speaker 1: having enough in one or two acts where he has
• 1:54:46
  Speaker 1: got grounds to infer that this play that comes never
• 1:54:49
  Speaker 1: to an end, is but an eternal repetition of the
• 1:54:52
  Speaker 1: same thing. The punishment that follows at the close may, indeed,
• 1:54:57
  Speaker 1: in the case of a mere drama, compensate for the
• 1:55:01
  Speaker 1: unpleasant feelings by the issue of the whole. But to
• 1:55:04
  Speaker 1: see numberless vices, even accompanied with occasional virtues, towered and
• 1:55:10
  Speaker 1: heaped on each other in the world of reality in
• 1:55:13
  Speaker 1: order that there may be some grand retribution in the end, is,
• 1:55:17
  Speaker 1: at least, according to our ideas, altogether opposed to the
• 1:55:21
  Speaker 1: morality of a wise creator and governor of the world.
• 1:55:27
  Speaker 1: I will therefore venture to assume that as the human
• 1:55:30
  Speaker 1: race is continually advancing in civilization and culture as its
• 1:55:34
  Speaker 1: natural purpose, so it is continually making progress for the
• 1:55:38
  Speaker 1: better in relation to the moral end of its existence,
• 1:55:42
  Speaker 1: and that this progress, although it may be sometimes interrupted,
• 1:55:47
  Speaker 1: will never be entirely broken off or stopped. It is
• 1:55:51
  Speaker 1: not necessary for me to prove this assumption. The burden
• 1:55:55
  Speaker 1: of proof lies on its opponents, For I take my
• 1:55:58
  Speaker 1: stand upon my inn innate sense of duty. In this connection,
• 1:56:03
  Speaker 1: every member in the series of generations to which I
• 1:56:05
  Speaker 1: belong as a man, although mayhap not so well equipped
• 1:56:09
  Speaker 1: with the requisite moral qualifications as I ought to be
• 1:56:12
  Speaker 1: and consequently might be, is in fact prompted by his
• 1:56:17
  Speaker 1: sense of duty so to act in reference to posterity,
• 1:56:22
  Speaker 1: that they may always become better, and the possibility of
• 1:56:25
  Speaker 1: this must be assumed. This duty can thus be rightfully
• 1:56:30
  Speaker 1: transmitted from one member of the generations to another. Now,
• 1:56:35
  Speaker 1: whatever doubts may be drawn from history against my hopes,
• 1:56:39
  Speaker 1: and were they even of such a kind as in
• 1:56:41
  Speaker 1: the case of their being demonstrated, might move me to
• 1:56:44
  Speaker 1: desist from efforts which, according to all appearances, would be vain. Yet,
• 1:56:49
  Speaker 1: so long as this is not made out with complete certainty,
• 1:56:53
  Speaker 1: I am not entitled to give up the guidance of
• 1:56:56
  Speaker 1: duty which is clear, and to adopt the prudential rule
• 1:57:00
  Speaker 1: of not working at the unpracticable, since this is not clear,
• 1:57:04
  Speaker 1: but is mere hypothesis. And however uncertain I may always
• 1:57:09
  Speaker 1: be as to whether we may rightly hope that the
• 1:57:12
  Speaker 1: human race will attain to a better condition. Yet this
• 1:57:16
  Speaker 1: individual uncertainty cannot detract from the general rule of conduct,
• 1:57:21
  Speaker 1: or from the necessary assumption in the practical relation that
• 1:57:25
  Speaker 1: such a condition is practicable. This hope of better times,
• 1:57:33
  Speaker 1: without which an earnest desire to do something conducive to
• 1:57:36
  Speaker 1: the CommonWell being, would never have warmed the human heart
• 1:57:40
  Speaker 1: has always exercised an influence upon the practical conduct of
• 1:57:44
  Speaker 1: the well disposed of mankind, and the good Mendelssohn must
• 1:57:49
  Speaker 1: also have recognized its power in his own zealous efforts
• 1:57:52
  Speaker 1: for the enlightenment and prosperity of the nation to which
• 1:57:55
  Speaker 1: he belonged, for he could not have reasonably hoped by
• 1:57:59
  Speaker 1: himself alone to have accomplished those objects, unless others after
• 1:58:03
  Speaker 1: him were to advance further on the same path. In
• 1:58:08
  Speaker 1: presence of the saddening spectacle, not merely of the evils
• 1:58:11
  Speaker 1: which oppress the human race for natural causes, but still
• 1:58:15
  Speaker 1: more of those which men inflict on each other, the
• 1:58:18
  Speaker 1: heart is still gladdened by the prospect that it may
• 1:58:21
  Speaker 1: become better in the future, and that this will be
• 1:58:24
  Speaker 1: accomplished in part by our unselfish benevolence, even after we
• 1:58:29
  Speaker 1: have been long in the grave and have ceased to
• 1:58:32
  Speaker 1: be able to reap the fruits which we ourselves have sown.
• 1:58:37
  Speaker 1: Arguments from experience against the success of such endeavors, resolved
• 1:58:41
  Speaker 1: and carried out in hope, are of no avail. For
• 1:58:45
  Speaker 1: the fact that something has not yet succeeded is no
• 1:58:49
  Speaker 1: proof that it will never succeed. Nor would such an
• 1:58:53
  Speaker 1: argument even justify the abandonment of any practical or technical efforts,
• 1:58:58
  Speaker 1: such as, for example, the attempts to make pleasure excursions
• 1:59:02
  Speaker 1: in aerostatic balloons. And still less would such conditions justify
• 1:59:08
  Speaker 1: the abandonment of a moral purpose, which as such becomes
• 1:59:12
  Speaker 1: a duty if its realization is not demonstrated to be impossible.
• 1:59:18
  Speaker 1: Besides all this, many proofs can be given that the
• 1:59:21
  Speaker 1: human race as a whole is actually farther advanced in
• 1:59:24
  Speaker 1: our age towards what is morally better than it ever
• 1:59:27
  Speaker 1: was before, and is even considerably so when its present
• 1:59:32
  Speaker 1: condition is compared with what it has been in all
• 1:59:35
  Speaker 1: former ages, notwithstanding temporary impediments, which, being transitory, can prove
• 1:59:42
  Speaker 1: nothing against the general position. And hence the cry about
• 1:59:46
  Speaker 1: the continually increasing degeneracy of the race just arises from
• 1:59:51
  Speaker 1: the fact that, as it stands on a higher stage
• 1:59:54
  Speaker 1: of morality, it sees so much the further before it,
• 1:59:59
  Speaker 1: and thus it it judgment on what men are in
• 2:00:02
  Speaker 1: comparison with what they ought to be becomes as in
• 2:00:06
  Speaker 1: our own self examination. The more secure the more the
• 2:00:10
  Speaker 1: stages of morality which mankind have already surmounted in the
• 2:00:14
  Speaker 1: whole course of the world's history as it is now
• 2:00:17
  Speaker 1: known to us. The question next arises as to the
• 2:00:22
  Speaker 1: means by which this continuous progress to the better may
• 2:00:25
  Speaker 1: be maintained and even hastened. When carefully considered, we soon
• 2:00:31
  Speaker 1: see that, as this process must go on to an
• 2:00:33
  Speaker 1: incalculable distance of time, it cannot depend so much on
• 2:00:39
  Speaker 1: what we may do of ourselves, for instance, on the
• 2:00:43
  Speaker 1: education we give to the younger generation, or on the
• 2:00:46
  Speaker 1: method by which we may proceed in order to realize it,
• 2:00:50
  Speaker 1: as on what human nature as such will do in
• 2:00:55
  Speaker 1: and with us, to compel us to move in a
• 2:00:57
  Speaker 1: track into which we would not read life have betaken ourselves.
• 2:01:02
  Speaker 1: For it is from human nature in general, or rather,
• 2:01:06
  Speaker 1: since supreme wisdom is requisite for the accomplishment of this end,
• 2:01:10
  Speaker 1: it is from providence alone that we can expect a
• 2:01:14
  Speaker 1: result which proceeds by relation to the whole and reacts
• 2:01:18
  Speaker 1: through the whole upon the parts. Men with their plans start,
• 2:01:24
  Speaker 1: on the contrary, only from the parts, and even continue
• 2:01:28
  Speaker 1: to regard the parts alone, while the whole as such
• 2:01:32
  Speaker 1: is viewed as too great for them to influence, that
• 2:01:35
  Speaker 1: as attainable by them only in idea and this holds
• 2:01:40
  Speaker 1: all the more, seeing that, being adverse to each other
• 2:01:43
  Speaker 1: in their plans, they would hardly be able to unite
• 2:01:47
  Speaker 1: together in order to influence the whole out of any
• 2:01:49
  Speaker 1: particular free purpose of their own. Nevertheless, universal violence and
• 2:01:56
  Speaker 1: the evils arising from it, at last force a people
• 2:01:59
  Speaker 1: of necessity to resolve to subject themselves to the constraint
• 2:02:03
  Speaker 1: of public law, which is the very means that reason
• 2:02:07
  Speaker 1: itself prescribes, and thus to form and enter into a
• 2:02:11
  Speaker 1: civil or political constitution. And in like manner, the evils
• 2:02:17
  Speaker 1: arising from constant wars by which the states seek to
• 2:02:21
  Speaker 1: reduce or subdue each other, bring them, at last, even
• 2:02:26
  Speaker 1: against their will, also to enter into a universal or
• 2:02:30
  Speaker 1: cosmopolitical constitution, or should such a condition of universal peace,
• 2:02:37
  Speaker 1: as has often been the case with overgone states, be
• 2:02:41
  Speaker 1: even more dangerous to liberty on another side than war,
• 2:02:45
  Speaker 1: by introducing the most terrible despotism than the evils from
• 2:02:49
  Speaker 1: which deliverance is sought, will compel the introduction of a
• 2:02:53
  Speaker 1: condition among the nations which does not assume the form
• 2:02:56
  Speaker 1: of a universal commonwealth or empire under one sovereign, but
• 2:03:00
  Speaker 1: of a federation regulated by law according to the right
• 2:03:05
  Speaker 1: of nations as concerted in common. For the advancing civilization
• 2:03:11
  Speaker 1: of the several states is accompanied with the growing propensity
• 2:03:15
  Speaker 1: to enlarge themselves at the cost of others by fraud
• 2:03:19
  Speaker 1: or force, and thus wars are multiplied and greater expenditures,
• 2:03:25
  Speaker 1: always caused by the necessary maintenance of increased standing armies,
• 2:03:29
  Speaker 1: kept in a state of readiness and discipline, and provided
• 2:03:33
  Speaker 1: ever and again with more numerous instruments of war. At
• 2:03:38
  Speaker 1: the same time, the prices of all the necessaries of
• 2:03:41
  Speaker 1: life must go on continually increasing, while there can be
• 2:03:45
  Speaker 1: no hope of a proportionately progressive growth of the metals
• 2:03:48
  Speaker 1: that represent them. Nor does peace ever last so long
• 2:03:54
  Speaker 1: that the savings during it would equal the expenditure required
• 2:03:58
  Speaker 1: for the next war against this evil. The introduction of
• 2:04:03
  Speaker 1: national debts is indeed an ingenious resource, but it is
• 2:04:08
  Speaker 1: one which must annihilate itself in the long run. Under
• 2:04:12
  Speaker 1: pressure of all these evils. What good will ought to
• 2:04:16
  Speaker 1: have done, but did not do, is at last brought
• 2:04:19
  Speaker 1: about by sheer weakness, so that every state becomes so
• 2:04:23
  Speaker 1: organized within that it is no longer the sovereign to
• 2:04:27
  Speaker 1: whom war properly cost nothing, since he carries it on
• 2:04:30
  Speaker 1: at the cost of the people. But it is the
• 2:04:33
  Speaker 1: people on whom the cost falls who have the deciding
• 2:04:37
  Speaker 1: voice as to whether there shall be a war or no.
• 2:04:42
  Speaker 1: This is necessarily implied in the realization of the idea
• 2:04:46
  Speaker 1: of the original contract. But when the decision of the
• 2:04:50
  Speaker 1: question of war falls to the people, neither will the
• 2:04:53
  Speaker 1: desire of aggrandizement nor mere verbal injuries be likely to
• 2:04:57
  Speaker 1: induce them to put themselves in danger of personal privation
• 2:05:01
  Speaker 1: and want by inflicting upon themselves the calamities of war,
• 2:05:06
  Speaker 1: which the sovereign in his own person escapes. And thus
• 2:05:11
  Speaker 1: posterity no longer oppressed by undeserved burdens, and owing it
• 2:05:17
  Speaker 1: not to the direct love of others for them, but
• 2:05:20
  Speaker 1: only to the rational self love of each age for itself,
• 2:05:24
  Speaker 1: will be able to make progress even in moral relations.
• 2:05:29
  Speaker 1: For each commonwealth, now become unable to injure any other
• 2:05:34
  Speaker 1: by violence, must maintain itself by right alone, and it
• 2:05:39
  Speaker 1: may hope, on real grounds, that the others, being constituted
• 2:05:43
  Speaker 1: like itself, will then come, on occasions of need to
• 2:05:47
  Speaker 1: its aid. This, however, it may be said, is only
• 2:05:53
  Speaker 1: opinion and mere hypothesis, and it is uncertain, Like all
• 2:05:59
  Speaker 1: the which aim at stating the only suitable natural cause
• 2:06:03
  Speaker 1: for a proposed effect that is not wholly in our
• 2:06:06
  Speaker 1: own power. Further, even regarded as such, the cause suggested,
• 2:06:13
  Speaker 1: when it is taken in relation to an already existing state,
• 2:06:16
  Speaker 1: does not contain a principle that is applicable to the
• 2:06:19
  Speaker 1: subject so as to compel the production of the effect,
• 2:06:24
  Speaker 1: but is only available through sovereigns who are free from compulsion.
• 2:06:30
  Speaker 1: But although it does not lie in the nature of men,
• 2:06:33
  Speaker 1: according to common experience, to make a voluntary renouncement of
• 2:06:37
  Speaker 1: their power, yet in pressing circumstances this is not at
• 2:06:42
  Speaker 1: all impossible, and so it may be regarded as an
• 2:06:46
  Speaker 1: expression not unsuitable to the moral wishes and hopes of
• 2:06:50
  Speaker 1: men conscious of their own incapability. When it is said
• 2:06:54
  Speaker 1: that the circumstances requisite for the end in question are
• 2:06:57
  Speaker 1: to be expected from providence, for it is to providence
• 2:07:03
  Speaker 1: we must look for the realization of the end of
• 2:07:06
  Speaker 1: humanity in the whole of the species, as furnishing the
• 2:07:11
  Speaker 1: means for the attainment of the final destination of man
• 2:07:15
  Speaker 1: through the free exercise of his powers, so far as
• 2:07:18
  Speaker 1: they can go for to this end, the purposes of
• 2:07:22
  Speaker 1: individual men regarded separately are directly opposed. Yet even the
• 2:07:29
  Speaker 1: oppositions of the inclinations from which evil arises, in their
• 2:07:33
  Speaker 1: mutual antagonism, give free play to reason and opportunity to
• 2:07:39
  Speaker 1: subject them all. And so instead of the evil which
• 2:07:44
  Speaker 1: destroys itself, it makes the good predominant, which, when it
• 2:07:49
  Speaker 1: is once established, will continue thereafter to maintain itself. Human
• 2:07:55
  Speaker 1: nature appears nowhere less amiable than in the relation of
• 2:08:00
  Speaker 1: whole nations to each other. No state is for a
• 2:08:05
  Speaker 1: moment secure against another in its independence or its possessions.
• 2:08:11
  Speaker 1: The will to subdue each other or to reduce their
• 2:08:14
  Speaker 1: power is always rampant, and the equipment for defense, which
• 2:08:20
  Speaker 1: often makes peace even more oppressive and more destructive of
• 2:08:23
  Speaker 1: internal prosperity than war, can never be relaxed. Against such evils.
• 2:08:31
  Speaker 1: There is no possible remedy but a system of international
• 2:08:34
  Speaker 1: right founded upon public laws conjoined with power, to which
• 2:08:39
  Speaker 1: every state must submit according to the analogy of the
• 2:08:44
  Speaker 1: civil or political right of individuals in any one state.
• 2:08:49
  Speaker 1: For a lasting universal peace on the basis of the
• 2:08:51
  Speaker 1: so called balance of power in Europe is a mere chimera.
• 2:08:58
  Speaker 1: It is like the house described by Swift, which was
• 2:09:01
  Speaker 1: built by an architect so perfectly in accordance with all
• 2:09:05
  Speaker 1: the laws of equilibrium, that when a sparrow lighted upon it,
• 2:09:09
  Speaker 1: it immediately fell. But it may be said, the states
• 2:09:14
  Speaker 1: will never submit to such compulsory laws. And the proposal
• 2:09:18
  Speaker 1: to institute a universal international state or union of nations,
• 2:09:22
  Speaker 1: a union under whose power all the separate states shall
• 2:09:25
  Speaker 1: voluntarily arrange themselves in order to obey its laws, may
• 2:09:30
  Speaker 1: sound ever so pretty in the theory of an Abbe
• 2:09:32
  Speaker 1: de Saint Pierre or Rousseau, but it is of no
• 2:09:37
  Speaker 1: value for practical purposes, and as such it has always
• 2:09:41
  Speaker 1: been laughed at by great statesmen, and still more by
• 2:09:44
  Speaker 1: sovereigns and rulers, as a childish and pedantic idea fit
• 2:09:49
  Speaker 1: only for the schools from which it takes its rise.
• 2:09:54
  Speaker 1: For my part, on the contrary, I trust to a
• 2:09:57
  Speaker 1: theory which is based upon the principle of right as
• 2:10:00
  Speaker 1: determining what the relations between men and states ought to be,
• 2:10:04
  Speaker 1: and which lays down to these earthly gods the maxim
• 2:10:08
  Speaker 1: that they ought so to proceed in their disputes, that
• 2:10:12
  Speaker 1: such a universal international state may be introduced thereby, and
• 2:10:17
  Speaker 1: to assume it therefore as not only possible in practice,
• 2:10:22
  Speaker 1: but such as may yet be presented in reality. Nay More,
• 2:10:28
  Speaker 1: this theory is further to be regarded as founded upon
• 2:10:31
  Speaker 1: the nature of things, which compels movement in a direction
• 2:10:35
  Speaker 1: even against the will of man. Thought of volentum ducunt
• 2:10:40
  Speaker 1: nolentum trajundt. Under the nature of things, human nature is
• 2:10:46
  Speaker 1: also to be taken into account. And as in human
• 2:10:50
  Speaker 1: nature there is always a living respect for right and duty,
• 2:10:55
  Speaker 1: I neither can nor will regard it as so sunk
• 2:10:58
  Speaker 1: in evil that the practical moral reason could ultimately fail
• 2:11:03
  Speaker 1: to triumph over this evil, even after many of its
• 2:11:07
  Speaker 1: attempts have failed. And so it is that I would
• 2:11:11
  Speaker 1: represent human nature as worthy to be loved in the
• 2:11:15
  Speaker 1: widest cosmopolitical relation. The position therefore holds good that what
• 2:11:22
  Speaker 1: is valid on rational grounds is a theory, is also
• 2:11:26
  Speaker 1: valid and good for practice. End section three of the
• 2:11:35
  Speaker 1: relation which the theory bears to the praxis in the
• 2:11:38
  Speaker 1: Law of Nations contemplated in a universal philanthropic, that is,
• 2:11:42
  Speaker 1: cosmopolitical view. End on the popular judgment that may be
• 2:11:51
  Speaker 1: right in theory but does not hold good in the
• 2:11:53
  Speaker 1: praxis by Immanuel Kant. This recording is in the public domain,