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The very idea of a universal history*

Barry Hindess

Australian National University

Towards the end of his life Immanuel Kant produced some relatively short texts which, each from a

different perspective, outline a vision of humanitys future. The earliest is his Idea for a Universal

History from a Cosmopolitan Purpose,published in 1784, which outlines natures plan for the

development of humanity that we should move through a world federation of constitutional

republics to a final cosmopolitical condition and the means it employs to ensure the plans

fulfilment.1 Here, Kant insists that morality, reason and the image of the ideal future state of

humanity play only a limited part in this development, and then only in its final stages. On the

Common Saying: This May be True in Theory but it does not Apply in Practicefollowed in 1793.2

Its third section disputes the view, which Kant attributes to Moses Mendelssohn, that while

individuals may progress, humanity as a whole does not. Perpetual Peace appeared in 1795,

arguing that the cosmopolitical condition is the only way to ensure a lasting peace a peace, that is,which is something more than an interval between one war and the next and that we have a duty

to work towards its realisation.3 Two years later, in the first part of The Metaphysics of Morals,

Kant brings a sustained ethical critique to bear on the actions which contribute to humanitys

movement towards its ideal future condition, arguing that many of them are morally indefensible.4

The argument of this last text thus confirms the claim in the first that morality, reason and ideals

play only a limited part in our history, but views this fact from another, deontological, perspective.

It also compliments the argument of the third by suggesting that the progress of humanity will often

involve us in conduct which is reprehensible. To focus on one text to the exclusion of the others

would be to risk misunderstanding Kants views on these matters, as we shall see, but together they

offer a complex and sophisticated analysis of the past, present and future conditions of humanity.5

Kants cosmopolitan outlook continues to be widely admired and, while natures plan is now rarely

invoked in academic writing, contemporary readers will find much that is familiar in the story he

presents. The details, however, are often disputed. Kants more sympathetic critics focus on the

future, broadly endorsing his cosmopolitan vision but offering rather more complex accounts of

* This paper has been written as part of a joint project (with Bruce Buchan and Christine Helliwell), Government,Social Science, and the Concept of Society, which is supported by the Australian Research Council, and it draws onsome of our unpublished work. The present draft has benefited from discussion in the CSPTseminar at the University

of Victoria, British Columbia, and from the comments and advice of Bill Connolly, Dick Flathman, Cindy Holder, IanHunter, and Jim Tully.

1 Immanuel Kant, Idea for a Universal History inKant: Political Writings, ed. H. Reiss. Cambridge, CambridgeUniversity Press, 1991: 41-53.

2 On the Common Saying: This May be True in Theory but it does not Apply in Practice inKant: PoliticalWritings, ed. H. Reiss. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991: 61-92

3 Immanuel Kant, Perpetual Peace inKant: Political Writings, ed. H. Reiss. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press,1991: 93-130.

4 Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1996.

5 It is no less problematic to read these texts independently of Kants broader philosophy. They might usefully be read,for example, as elaborating on the political ramifications of his Critique of the Power of Judgement(Cambridge,

Cambridge University Press, 2000), especially sections 76, 7 and 83-6. The failings of the discipline of InternationalRelations in this respect are discussed in Jens Bartelson, (1995). "The Trial of Judgment: a Note on Kant and the

Paradoxes of Internationalism." International Studies Quarterly 34: 255-79, Mark Franke, (2001). Global Limits.Immanuel Kant, International Relations, and Critique of World Politics (Albany, State University of New York Press),

and Kimberly Hutchings, (1996).Kant, Critique and Politics. London & New York, Routledge.

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what is likely to happen, and of what we should do, as we move towards its realisation. 6 They

rarely question his description of the condition of humanity in his own time or of the past which has

led up to it. Writers in the Hegelian and Marxist traditions, while not substantially disputing the

idea of history as progressive development, have offered alternative accounts of the overall

mechanisms of historical development and correspondingly different versions of its projected

terminus. In these cases, too, the societies of the modern West are seen as the most advancedportions of humanity. Finally, and again without disputing his account of the past, realist critics

have insisted on the utopian character of Kants vision of the future. His cosmopolitanism is thus

seen as encouraging, if only indirectly, a tendency towards moral crusading in international affairs.

Too often, E. H Carr suggests, such appeals to principle serve merely as a disguise for the interests

of the privileged.7 The point is well taken, but it is one that Kant himself makes, forcefully and

repeatedly, throughout The Metaphysics of Morals. He insists, to take just one example, that it is

mere Jesuitism to claim that we might be authorized to use force to bring these human beings

(savages) into a rightful condition (as with American Indians, the Hottentots, and the inhabitants of

New Holland.8 Kant and his realist critics agree that moral crusades pose a serious danger to peace

and that the modern states system is more advanced than any historical alternative. They differ over

the scope for further radical improvement in the international order.

This paper, in contrast, examines aspects of Kants analysis which such responses take for granted,

or at least fail to question. The greater part of my discussion focuses not on Kants cosmopolitan

vision of the future and how we might get there, but rather on the foundations of this vision in his

understanding of historical development and of the past and present condition of humanity. I will

argue that there are serious flaws in these foundations and that a cosmopolitanism which rests upon

them must therefore be regarded as deeply problematic. Recognition of these flaws suggests the

possibility of other kinds of universalism which avoid the pretensions of Kantian cosmopolitanism

and its descendents.

Kants achievement in these historical texts was less to present a new vision of history than to

provide a concise and systematic formulation of themes that were already well-established among

educated Europeans of his time, imbue them with a sense ofmoral necessity, and to extrapolate

them into the future. HisIdea for a Universal History was an idea whose time had come; and it has

yet, unfortunately, to pass away. While, as I have noted, Kants account of the mechanisms of

historical development has been disputed, the most important features of his description of the past

and present condition of humanity have been, and continue to be, widely accepted. They remain

influential in the academic social sciences and in significant areas of practical politics, most

obviously, perhaps, in the national and international politics of development and the government of

indigenous peoples.

Kants history should be seen, then, not only as a source from which later cosmopolitan ideas have

flowed, but also as an important symptom of difficulties in Western political and social thought

which have still to be overcome. It provides a useful point of entry into the examination of a

pervasive, and still remarkably influential, historical understanding of humanity. I begin with

Kants Idea for a Universal History, noting how it draws on themes that were already well-

6 A representative selection can be found in James Bohman and Matthias Lutz-Bachmann, eds.Perpetual Peace.Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal. (Cambridge: Mass., MIT Press, 1997). In contrast to these sympathetic critics,

William Connolly presents a radically different account of what cosmopolitanism should look like. See especiallyChapter 7 in hisNeuropolitics: Thinking, Culture, Speed(Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2002).

7 E. H. CarrThe twenty years' crisis, 1919-1939: an introduction to the study of international relations.(New York,Harper & Row, 1964, p. 93).

8MMp. 53

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established in European thought. We shall see that Kant does not present his universal history as an

exercise in empirical composition. He makes no attempt to synthesise what is known about the past

and present conditions of the diverse sections of humanity and to extrapolate the results into the

future. What gives his history the appearance of universality, rather, is his insistence that they all

belong within the one telos, and can thus be ranked in terms of their distance from its eventual

realisation. This paper focuses on two central features of this teleological structure itstemporalising of difference, and its telos in the figure of man and explores their political and

ethical ramifications.

Kants universal history

Kants Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose aims to show that, behind the

apparently senseless course of human events it is nevertheless possible to identify a purpose in

nature.9 Before turning to the content of natures plan we should note Kants view of its

epistemological and moral significance. Kant argues in his Critique of judgement that, like the

concepts of necessity, contingency, and freedom, the concept of purpose does not pertain to the

objects themselves. Rather it is a regulative idea which is as valid for our human power ofjudgementas if it were an objective principle.10 In particular, then, the judgement that the human

being is 'the ultimate end of nature here on earth, in accordance with which all other natural things

constitute a system of ends'11 is less a product of our experience of nature than the only rational

means of imposing order upon it. Elsewhere, Kant argues that this judgement is also a requirement

of practical reason.12 Mendelssohns claim that humanity as a whole does not progress cannot, in

Kants view, be reconciled with the morality of a wise creator and ruler of the world. I have an

innate duty, he writes, to influence posterity in such a way that it will make constant progress.

Moreover, since humanity is constantly progressing in cultural matters (in keeping with its natural

purpose), it is also engaged in progressive improvement in relation to the moral end of its

existence.13 Kants cosmopolitan teleology, and the ranking of different sections of humanity to

which it gives rise, is thus to be viewed as a moral necessity. While his history draws on numerous

factual propositions, its overall structure is immune to empirical refutation. Despite the often

destructive empirical history of human interaction, we have to believe in the reality of human

progress, to acknowledge that, while it may at times be interrupted, it can never be broken off.14

Moral progress requires that humanitys unsocial qualities be brought under control. The

interactions of individuals must therefore be regulated by lawful power in a whole, which is civil

society and the interactions of civil societies themselves be regulated by a larger cosmopolitan

whole, for only in this case can the greatest development of the natural dispositions occur. 15 Thus,

returning to KantsIdea, it seems that natures secret plan is to ensure that humanity moves on from

its present condition, first, to a world federation of constitutional republics and then to its finalstage in a universal cosmopolitical existence, within which all the original capacities of the

human race may develop.16 What Kant means by a constitutional republic is a state in which

9 Idea, p. 42. cf. Brett Bowden In the name of progress and peace: the standard of civilisation and the universalisingproject.Alternatives 29 (1) 2004: 43-69.

10 Judgement, p. 274

11 ibid., p. 297

12 See the discussion in ConnollyNeuropolitics, pp. 180-5

13Theory and Practice,pp.88-9

14 ibid.

15Judgementp. 30016Idea p. 51

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individual rights are protected by law and government operates on the basis of the real or presumed

consent of its subjects. Kant suggests that this political form has been attained, or at least

approximated, in parts of Western Europe and that it represents the highest form of social

organisation achieved to date. Kant is no friend of democracy which, in a sense that was

conventional in his time, he takes to be a system in which people govern themselves directly.

Instead, like the American federalists, he argues in favour of a republic with a system ofrepresentative government.17 In many respects, then, we could substitute the term representative

government or even democracy in what has since become its most familiar usage for Kants

constitutional republic without significant distortion of his meaning. Natures immediate task is

thus to secure the spread of what we now call democracy across the globe. This is also the path to

universal peace and, since they are already the most advanced, democratic states are the ones best

fitted to carry this movement forward.

If Kants vision of our immediate future seems depressingly familiar, so too is his account of the

past. Kant assures us that men are driven from the state of nature by their unsocial sociability, by

their dependence on others and the conflicts which their interaction produces. It is to escape the

insecurity of this condition that men finally agree to form civil societies or states. Theestablishment of civil society, initially out of desperation, provides the conditions in which human

attributes and qualities can be further cultivated, thus gradually transforming society itself into a

moral and rational whole. Kant tells us that, without the unsocial qualities which drive this

movement, men might have remained indefinitely in an Arcadian condition. Their talents would

then have remained undeveloped, and their existence would be worth little more than that of their

domesticated animals. Once men attain the social condition, competition and conflict between them

leads eventually to the formation of civil societies in which right is administered according to law.

Kant suggests that this last is the most difficult practical problem facing humanity, and that its

solution will be found only at a late stage and after many unsuccessful attempts. 18

He argues, as we have seen, that membership of a constitutional republic fosters the natural

capacities of individuals. It also promotes their common action for the good of the collectivity.

These republics therefore tend to be wealthier and more powerful than other states of comparable

size and natural endowments. This fact itself is a force for further change:

But if the citizen is deterred from seeking his personal welfare in any way he chooses which

is consistent with the freedom of others, the vitality of business in general and hence also the

strength of the whole are held in check. For this reason, restrictions placed upon personal

activities are increasingly relaxed, and general freedom of religion is granted. And thus,

although folly and caprice creep in at times, enlightenment gradually arises. It is a great

benefit which the human race must reap even from its rulers self-seeking schemes of

expansion, if only they realise what is to their own advantage.19

Competition and conflict between states will therefore tend to favour constitutional republics, and

to promote the spread of constitutionalism throughout the world. Finally, even constitutional states

find themselves in a state of nature in their relations with other states. Like men in this condition,

states have a duty to move beyond it. However, what really forces them to change is not duty but

conflict and competition, which will lead states, just as they have lead men, to seek some way of

overcoming the insecurity of the state of nature. Wars can thus be seen as natures attempts to bring

about new political relationships between states. Together with conquest and revolution, they will

eventually lead to the formation of a world federation of constitutional republics.

17 cfPPfirst definitive article, pp. 99f.

18Idea, p. 4719 ibid., p. 51

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There is little in the substance of this historical vision that is novel or distinctive. 20 Even Kants

extrapolation from recent developments in Europe to present a universal vision of the future can be

found in the work of earlier writers. Kant refers to St Pierre and Rousseau21, although he suggests

that we have much further to go than they had believed before a lasting peace can be realised. What

he does in the Idea for a Universal History and related works is bring together and imbue with asense of moral necessity themes which would have been familiar to most of his readers. Both the

themes and the associated normative commitment will be familiar still to his readers today, most

especially the idea that all sections of humanity should be seen as belonging to the one

developmental history. Discussion of Kants work thus allows us to address issues of continuing

significance in social and political thought. Later sections of this paper explore the ramifications of

Kants attempt to bring all of humanity together into a single history and the role within this history

of what Foucault calls the figure of man. However, before addressing these issues, I comment on

the tensions which Kant himself identifies between reason, morality and the mechanisms involved

in the realisation of natures plan.

Morality, reason and natures plan

We are required, then, to see nature as aiming to develop mans natural capacities of rationality and

moral autonomy. Yet the capacities themselves play only a limited role in the plans actual

realisation. The principal driving force, in Kants view, is mans unsocial sociability, peoples

tendency to come together in society, coupled, however, with a continual resistance which

constantly threatens to break this society up22. This leads to conflict and competition between

individuals, and later also between states, which in turn leads to the development of their best

qualities:

In the same way, trees in a forest, by seeking to deprive each other of air and sunlight, compeleach other to find these by upward growth, so that they grow beautiful and straight (p. 46)

Kants argument implies that mans natural capacities of rationality and moral autonomy will be

poorly cultivated and developed in all but the later stages of this history. Even the inhabitants of

constitutional republics have a long way to go.

We are cultivatedto a high degree by art and science. We are civilisedto the point of excess

in all kinds of social courtesies and proprieties. But we are still a long way from the point

where we could consider ourselves morally mature.23

We should understand nature, in other words, as relying largely on our propensities to competition

and conflict. However, we should also acknowledge that it may be possible for the more

enlightened inhabitants of constitutional republics such as Kant himself and the more perceptiveof his readers to discern the general character of natures plan and to reflect on what should be

done to speed its progress. Such individuals may be tempted to see themselves as better placed than

their contemporaries in other parts of the world to speak in the name of humanity itself. We might

add that as our moral sensibilities develop, so also does our capacity to measure our actions against

the standard of what is right. This will be possible to some extent for anyone who has advanced

20 The relevant aspects of political thought in the period are discussed in Edward KeeneBeyond the AnarchicalSociety (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002) and Richard TuckThe rights of War and Peace (Oxford,

Oxford University Press, 1999)

21Idea, p. 47

22ibid. p. 4423 ibid., p. 49

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much beyond the earliest stages of human development, but the issue will be particularly poignant

for those who have some understanding of what natures plan requires.

Like Kants Idea, his Perpetual Peace assigns constitutional republics a distinctive role in the

moral development of humanity.24 The first definitive article insists that the constitution of every

state should be republican, otherwise a lasting peace cannot be assured. The second describes thelaw of nations as resting on a federation of free states extending gradually to encompass all states

and thus leading to perpetual peace:

For if by good fortune one powerful and enlightened nation can form a republic (which is by

its nature inclined to seek perpetual peace), this will provide a focal point for federal

association among other states. These will join up with the first one, thus securing the

freedom of each state in accordance with the idea of international right, and the whole will

gradually spread further and further by a series of alliances of this kind. 25

This view of the special place, and thus also the special moral and political responsibility, of

constitutional republics (ie. democratic states) in the emerging world order has a disturbing

resonance in our own time.26 Its contemporary echoes are certainly worth exploring, but my interestin this paper is with a different question: on what understanding of history, and especially of the

present condition of our contemporaries who do not yet live in constitutional republics, does this

view rest? I turn to this question in the following section.

It is a requirement of lasting peace and of the fulfilment of natures plan that every state should be a

republic. Nevertheless, in the Second Appendix toPerpetual Peace, Kant insists that those who live

under non-republican regimes have no right to rebel. And again, the establishment of a world

federation of constitutional republics is the next stage in the development of natures plan. This

does not mean, however, that the wars, imperial conquests and revolutions which eventually bring

this federation into being are themselves defensible in terms of right. The third definitive article of

Perpetual Peace limits cosmopolitan right to the conditions of universal hospitality, and roundly

condemns the inhospitable behaviour of the civilised states of his time:

all this is the work of powers who make endless ado about their piety, and who wish to be

considered as chosen believers while they live on the fruits of iniquity.27

The Metaphysics of Morals, too, is particularly clear in its condemnation of European imperial

adventures and the excuses advanced to justify them. Kant notes, for example, that there is no

shortage of plausible arguments to suggest that the use of violence may be required to bring culture

and development to the uncivilised. Even so, he maintains that all those good intentions cannot

wash away the stain of injustice in the means used for them'. 28

It would be tempting, and not entirely mistaken, to follow Sankar Muthu in reading Kantscommentary as evidence of an implacable hostility to imperialism itself.29 This would be

unfortunate, and not only, as my opening paragraph suggested, because it misses the complexity of

Kants analysis.30 Just as Kants treatment of the distinctive moral and political role of

constitutional republics in the emerging global order has continued to resonate, so too does has his

24 James Tully The Kantian Idea of Europe in Anthony Pagden, ed., The Idea of Europe from Antiquity to theEuropean Union (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2002: 331-358.

25PP, p. 104

26 cf Nicholas Onuf, (1998). The Republican Legacy in International Thought. Cambridge, Cambridge UniversityPress.

27PP,p. 107

28 ibid., p. 12229 Sankar MuthuEnlightenment Against Empire, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2003.

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cultivated distaste for the dirty work of empire. The latter, in fact, was a striking feature of Western

imperial administration. Edward Said finds a particularly clear example in Arthur Balfours defense

of British policy towards Egypt. Balfour tells his audience that the work of government

we have taken upon ourselves in Egypt and elsewhere is not a work worthy of a philosopher

that it is the dirty work, the inferior work, of carrying on the necessary labour.31

But the most familiar example, at least to political theorists, of the administrators distaste for the

dirty work of empire appears in the writings of John Stuart Mill, who, like his father, spent much of

his adult life as a senior officer of the British East India Company. In his Considerations on

Representative Government, Mill observes that, unlike their superiors in London, colonial

administrators on the ground will often be tempted to 'think the people of the country mere dirt

under their feet' and to treat them accordingly. He adds that it will be extremely difficult for the

colonial government itself to eradicate such conduct. Mill uses this point to introduce the more

general theme that imperial rule 'is as likely to produce evil as good'. 'Real good government', he

insists, 'is not compatible with the conditions of the case. There is but a choice of imperfections'. 32

Mills discussion here is revealing in a number of respects. First and most obviously it displays

Mills recognition that distinctly unsavoury practices were an inescapable part of the Companysrule over its Indian subjects. Second, it suggests that, while these practices may be reprehensible

they are also necessary. The latter perception was a striking component of the imperial sensibility,

as was the ambivalence which it promoted among imperial officials about aspects of their own

conduct.33 It remains influential in the post-colonial (if not post-imperial) world of humanitarian

and other interventions on behalf of the international community.

Commentators have often seen such expressions of distaste for actions which were nonetheless

regarded as necessary as straight forward examples of imperial hypocrisy. Hypocrisy plays a part in

most human endeavours, and its absence here would be surprising, but Kants discussion suggests

that there may also be something more complex at work. He tells us that we have to interpret

natures plan as aiming to develop all of mans ethical and other capacities in the course of history,

not that nature itself is to be regarded as a moral agent. On the contrary, the means through which

nature pursues its objectives are selected on the basis of their effectiveness, not their moral

qualities. It relies primarily on mans unsocial sociability that is, on competition, conflict,

oppression and revolt to achieve its ends. This is the point of the analogy noted earlier between

men and the trees in a forest which, by seeking to deprive each other of air and sunlight, compel

each other to find these by upward growth, so that they grow beautiful and straight.34 The

development of mans moral qualities is one outcome of conflict and competition between them

but, even in the Europe of Kants time, these qualities do little to carry humanity forward. In Kants

condemnation of European imperial adventures (and again in his rejection of a right to insurrection

against unjust rulers) we observe an uncompromising refusal to equate what is right either withwhat may be beneficial or with what may be necessary for the advance of natures plan.

30 See James Tully The Persistence of empire: a legacy of colonialism and decolonization presented at the AnnualConference for the Study of political Thought, Chicago, 2004, for a more nuanced appreciation of Kants understandingof modern imperialism.

31 cited in Edward Said, (1985). Orientalism. London, Penguin, p. 33

32 John Stuart Mill, (1977[1865]). Considerations on Representative Government. Collected Works of John StuartMill. J. M. Robson. Toronto, University of Toronto Press. XIX: 371-577, pp. 371, 372-3.

33 I have examined aspects of this ambivalence in Not at Home in the Empire. Social Identities 7(3) 2001: 363-377.34Idea, p. 46

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For if I say that nature wills that this or that should happen, this does not mean that nature

imposes on us a duty to do it, for duties can only be imposed by practical reason, acting

without external constraint.35

There are two points to notice about this passage. One, which Kant states explicitly, is that duties

cannot be imposed by outside agencies, and thus cannot be imposed on us by nature. The other is

that, in Kants deontological view, much of what we should understand nature as requiring toadvance its plan for humanity is morally indefensible. There cannot be a duty to perform such

actions. On the contrary, nature does it herself, whether we are willing or not. He hardly needs to

add that, when nature does it herself, our actions are the most important tools she has available.

A mans gotta do what a mans gotta do. Yet this compulsion, such as it is, does not make the action

right. Indeed, although Kant approaches the issue from another direction, this separation of what is

right from what just has to be done to achieve an end or to further a cause is the foundation of

political realism. Kants cosmopolitanism differs from other varieties of realism, not because it fails

to recognise this distinction, but because it has a different end in mind.

Time and the other

KantsIdea draws on two Aristotelian ideas: one of nature as teleological, which Kant interprets as

a regulative idea, and the other of man as a social animal. His first proposition is that:

All the natural capacities of a creature are destined sooner or later to be developed completely

and in conformity with their end.36

In the case of man, who is essentially a socialanimal, the relevant naturalcapacities cannot be

fully developed in an isolated individual. Kant follows Aristotle in identifying the natural capacities

which most distinguish man from other creatures as those of rationality and moral autonomy, and

again in claiming that these capacities can be properly developed only in an appropriate form of

political community. Both, in fact, are capacities of the kind which Western political thought has

required of the individual as citizen. However, where Aristotle sees the state as providing the

necessary conditions for the proper development of these capacities, and thus as the highest form of

human community, Kant sees the constitutional republic only as a first approximation to this form.

Since the internal development of a constitutional republic will be constrained by its relationships

with other states, Kant takes the view that the capacities of its members will also be constrained by

these relationships. They can be fully developed only in a political formation which encompasses

all of humanity. Thus, his second proposition insists that:

In man (as the only rational creature on earth), those natural capacities which are directed

towards the use of his reason are such that they could be fully developed only in the species,

but not in the individual.37

Kant argues that we should see human capacities as developing gradually throughout history, inpart as a consequence of changes in institutional arrangements. He suggests, in particular, that the

achievement first of the civil condition, in which interactions are governed by law, and later of the

constitutional republic, in which liberty is protected by law, should each be seen as providing

foundations for the further cultivation of human capacities.

There is little that is new in the content of this developmental view of human history. The image of

the different portions of humanity dispersed along a single continuum, starting from an original a-

social condition and progressing through the slow accumulation of institutions language,

35PP,p.112

36Idea,p. 4237 ibid.

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marriage, agriculture, property, money, law, writing, etc and the corresponding accumulation of

the moral and intellectual capacities which these institutions were thought to make possible, can

already be found in the attempts of Las Casas, Acosta and others to make sense of the evidence of

human diversity provided by the Americas and other areas new to European observation.38 Just how

this heterogeneous body of material came to be arrayed along this one dimension, and what aspects

of human diversity might have been lost in such an arrangement, are large and complex issueswhich cannot be addressed here.For the moment, let me just say that, rather than simply present this

material and ask what might be learned from it, most European commentators insisted on arranging

it in developmental terms, Montaigne, Diderot and Herder being perhaps the best known

exceptions. This developmental view of humanity, we might say, was less a product of the evidence

than a means of keeping it under control. By Kants time, it had been both condensed into brief

philosophical histories, for example, by Voltaire, and further refined and elaborated, most fully

perhaps in the works of the Scottish enlightenment. A closely related view of humanity appears in

the contractarian contrast between the state of nature and civil society, with the latter being seen as

providing secure foundations for the further development of social institutions and human

capacities. Finally, as Kant acknowledges, the vision of a future condition of universal peace had

been sketched by St Pierre and Rousseau.

It would be misleading to suggest that Kants historical sketches take any of these ideas further

although, as we shall see, his moralising perspective adds significant complications. Kant himself

observes that his idea of a universal history follows an a priori rule, and that it is not intended to

displace the work of history proper, which he sees as that of empiricalcomposition.

My idea is only a notion of what a philosophical mind, well acquainted with history, might be

able to attempt from a different angle.39

What he does, in fact, is to imbue these ideas with a significant normative dimension and bring

them together into a concise rhetorical whole. He does this by adapting their shared developmental

view of humanity, stripping it down to its barest essentials, and isolating (and to some extent

imposing) its central organising principle: the development and maturation of mans rational and

ethical capacities. This organising principle raises two sets of issues. One, which I take up in the

following section, concerns the implications of treating this developmental view of human

capacities as the key to our understanding of history. The other concerns the manner in which this

framework represents differences, especially those between the inhabitants of the constitutional

republics of Western Europe and their contemporaries in other parts of the world. If, as Kant

suggests, we should view our universal history, all peoples can be located along the one

developmental continuum, and if constitutional republics (todays democracies) represent the most

advanced stage so far achieved, then those who live in other ways must be seen as inhabiting stages

which are less advanced. Sankar Muthu suggests that the acknowledgement of cultural diversity is

one of the virtues of Kants anthropology. Yet it is precisely Kants understanding of diversitywhich leads him to place the rest of humanity some distance behind the peoples of the West. Far

from celebrating cultural differences, Kants hierarchical perspective requires us to see them as

deficiencies to be overcome.

Unfortunately, like so many aspects of Kants argument, this temporalising of difference remains all

too familiar even today. Johannes Fabians Time and the Other, which provides the title for this

section of the paper, has identified a tendency within anthropological discourse to locate the

38 Anthony Pagden, The Fall of Natural Man. The American Indian and the origins of comparative ethnology .Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1982.

Montaigne on cannibals. The views of Diderot and Herder are examined at length in MuthuEnlightenment.39Idea, p. 53

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peoples one studies as somehow representing a time that is now past. He writes of a denial of

coevalness, by which he means a tendency to place the referent(s) of anthropology in a Time

other than the present of the producer of anthropological discourse.40 This procedure may not be

problematic in historical writing about people and events located unambiguously in the past.

Fabians concern, however, is with its use in relation to ones contemporaries, most especially in

the practice and reporting of anthropological fieldwork. The appearance of a similar denial ofcoevalness in the work of Kant, and many others around his time and since, suggests that we are

dealing here with a more general feature of Western social thought.41

The Kantian framework suggests, in fact, that the most important task of empirical composition is

to locate diverse peoples at their appropriate positions on the one developmental continuum42, and

also, perhaps, to show how some have moved along it while others have fallen behind. Two

consequences of this approach are particularly worth noting here. First, it results in many of our

contemporaries being seen as remaining in the past, and thus as having failed to advance as much

as they should. Claude Levi-Strauss observation that the tropics are less exotic than out of date is

a relatively benign version of this perception.43 Far less benign is the treatment of many tribal

peoplesas really belonging in the remote past. 44 In this respect, Kants observations about the earlystages of human development have a disturbing contemporary relevance. Were it not for mans

unsocial sociability, he tells us, humanity might live in an Arcadian, pastoral condition in which

their specifically human talents remain dormant

And men, as good-natured as the sheep they tended, would scarcely render their existence

more valuable than that of their animals. The end for which they were created, their rational

nature, would be an unfilled void.45

Those of our own contemporaries who are thought to inhabit such a condition are regarded not only

as behind us in their social arrangements, but also as being significantly less rational as a result.

The Metaphysics of Morals adds a further twist to this disparaging perception by maintaining that

the state of nature is a condition in which rights are not protected by law, whereas it can be said of

a rightfulcondition that all human beings who could (even involuntarily) come into relations of

rights with one anotheroughtto enter this condition'.46 Kant insists that we have no right to impose

40 Johannes Fabian, Time and the Other: How Anthropology Makes its Object, New York, Columbia University Press,1983, p. 31.

41 The ramifications of this temporalising of the present are carefully explored (and even celebrated) in JamesChandler,England in 1819. The Politics of Literary Culture and the Case of Romantic Historicism. Chicago, Universityof Chicago Press, 1998.

42 George W. Stocking, Victorian Anthropology (New York, The Free Press, 1987). shows that this was the central taskof comparative ethnography throughout the nineteenth century. This view of ethnography was complicated, but notentirely displaced, in the early twentieth century by Boas insistence that cultural diversity was too great to be

encompassed within a single evolutionary scheme. See Plucienik forthcoming for discussion of the continuing impact

of this view in the practice of archaeology.

43 Claude Levi-Strauss, Tristes Tropiques. London, Penguin: 87.

44 The dangers of this perspective are widely acknowledged (see, for example the contributions of Marc Pinkoski &Michael Asch and of Mark Pluciennik in Alan Barnard (ed.)Hunter-Gatherers in History, Archeology, and

Anthropology (Berg, Oxford, New York, 2004) and equally, if not more widely ignored. The continued use by social

scientists of such apparently timeless categories as hunter-gatherer, peasant and tribal to refer both tocontemporary peoples and to others in the distant past is an index of the problem. Some of my early work (Barry

Hindess and Paul HirstPre-Capitalist Modes of Production London, Routledge, 1975) falls into this category. Theconsequences of this view for the treatment of indigenous peoples are examined in Paul KealEuropean Conquest and

the rights of Indigenous Peoples (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003)

45Idea, p. 4546MM, p. 85

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a civil condition on such peoples, but the fact that they have not imposed it on themselves is itself a

sign of the limited development of their moral capacities.47

Second, if all past and present peoples can be located somewhere along the one developmental

continuum, they have not always inhabited their locations in quite the same way. Consider a

location which is just below the formation of civil society on this continuum. Those who reachedthis location first would have been the most advanced people in the world at the time. Those who

inhabit it today live in a world dominated by states. Compared with the inhabitants of the latter, in

fact, they now appear to be backward or retarded, and even, perhaps, to have regressed from an

earlier, more advanced condition.48

By Kants time, suggestions of a parallel between the condition of peoples identified as backward

in the present and that of others in the past had become almost commonplace. We need only think

of Edmund Burkes letter of 9 June 1777 to William Robertson, in which he observes that all past

conditions are now 'under our view' on the surface of the globe, or Freidrich von Schillers

announcement, just a few years after the publication of Kants Idea, that we find societies arrayed

around us at various levels of development, as an adult might be surrounded by children ofdifferent ages, reminded by their example of what he himself once was and whence he started. th

These children, it seems, belong simultaneously to our past and to our present.

As Schillers analogy demonstrates all too clearly, this developmental framework is hardly a tool of

disinterested analysis. It serves first as a means of passing judgement on the moral and intellectual

capacities of different peoples, and then of assigning certain responsibilities to those whose

capacities are thought to be more advanced. Both KantsIdea and hisPerpetual Peace suggest that

this sense of responsibility will play its part in the progress of humanity, especially in its later

stages. The Metaphysics of Morals does not really disagree. It does, however, remind us that actions

performed in the name of humanity will often serve less elevated purposes in practice. Yet, even if

there is no ulterior motive, Kant insists that what we do under this banner is mere benevolence. It

should not be confused with what is right.

The figure of man

I have suggested that Kants Idea draws on a developmental view of humanity which appears, in

rather different forms, in the conjectural histories of the Scottish enlightenment and the

contractarian division between civil society and the state of nature. Humanity is seen, in effect, as

moving along a single continuum through a gradual accumulation of the institutions language,

marriage, writing, etc. which secure conditions in which ever more advanced and sophisticated

human capacities can be cultivated and refined. Yet, in insisting that the development of mansrational and ethical capacities should be seen as the organising principle behind natures plan, Kant

adds significant complications of his own. One is the claim, noted earlier, that this understanding of

natures purpose is a moral necessity, not a factual proposition. It draws on empirical history, but in

such a way as to resist any number of counter-examples. The rapacious history of modern

imperialism and the brutal and destructive conduct of some of the most powerful constitutional

47 Many authors take a less judgemental view here. Levi-Strauss discussion of the difference between hot societiesand others that resist the structural modification which would afford history a point of entry into their lives (The

Scope of Anthropology. London, Cape.1967: 46-7) suggests that, if some peoples have decided not to let history (andthus development) into their lives, this choice may not have been unreasonable.

48 This last is the view of India advanced by William Robertson and disputed by James Mill. See the discussion inDavid McInerneyJames Mill and the End of Civilization, PhD thesis, Australian National University, 2003

th Freidrich von Schiller The Nature and Value of Universal History.History and Theory 11(3) 1972[1789]: 325.

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republics in the world today should thus be seen, not as counting against his cosmopolitan history

but rather as showing how far even the most advanced portions of humanity have yet to go.

Another complication concerns his contentious view of morality, which rejects any kind of

consequentialism. Practical reason begins, he tells us, with

The principle which rests on mans freedom in his external relations and which states: Act insuch a way that you can wish your maxim to become a universal law (irrespective of what the

end in view may be).49

The political ramifications of this understanding of morality are explored at length in The

Metaphysics of Morals, but they also play an important part in the arguments ofPerpetual Peace,

from which the above formulation is taken,and the Idea for a Universal History. Its importance

for the latters account of human development is made clear in a passage quoted earlier:

We are cultivatedto a high degree by art and science. We are civilisedto the point of excess

in all kinds of social courtesies and proprieties. But we are still a long way from the point

where we could consider ourselves morally mature.50

If natures plan requires the development of our moral capacities, then it must involve more than

cultivation and refinement of the broad kind just noted. It requires, in fact, the cultivation of a veryspecific type of ethical persona, one that is capable both of identifying the principles relevant to the

circumstances of action and of acting accordingly.51

This rejection of consequentialism is the key to Kants condemnation of imperialism. He notes, as

we have seen, that humanitarian considerations often serve as a cover for other, less attractive

motivations. Yet, even if the appeal to these considerations was well founded we might think, for

example, of the urge to stop the daily killing and displacement of people in Darfur or the desire,

widely invoked after the event, to free Iraq from the oppressive rule of Sadam Hussein this would

amount only to a consequentialist case for taking action. Let us imagine that the result in these

cases is undeniably progressive in Kantian terms: bringing the people concerned into a rightful

condition52 or, in the case of Iraq, transforming an oppressive civil society into a constitutional

republic. Kants argument implies that such action would still not be justified. To see why, we need

only consider what might happen if all states were to claim, as a maxim of universal law, the right

to intervene in other states if they disapprove of how they manage their internal affairs. Kants

judgement in this case, as I noted earlier, would not be far removed from that of the realist strand in

international relations: there can be neither a right nor a duty to use force in order to bring people

into a civil condition or to improve the civil condition in which they now live.

Kant also reminds us that nature might choose to bring about such changes herself by working

through a mixture of humanitarian and other, less attractive impulses. In such cases, the maxim

which informs us that these actions are morally indefensible also tells us that it would be wrong toact unlawfully against them, for example by disobeying, or encouraging others to disobey, the

lawful commands of our rulers. There will thus be cases, as I noted earlier, in which the furtherance

of natures plan requires us to do what we know at the time to be wrong.

In this respect, Kants view of what is required for the development of human capacities cuts across

his understanding of morality. In most other respects, however, the different components of his

49PP,p. 122

50Idea,p. 49

51 The importance of this ethical persona for Kants work is carefully examined in Ian HunterRival Enlightenments(Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2001).

52MM, p. 53

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developmental understanding work in the same direction. The broader view, which relates the

presence of sophisticated and refined human capacities to the emergence of a certain kind of

institutional complexity, suggests that those who have yet to acquire modern Western institutions

will also tend to be less advanced in their moral and intellectual capacities. We might note that this

view clearly favours some kinds of cultivation over others. It is not obvious, for example, in what

sense the practices of self-cultivation valued in the West are more advanced than those required,say, to develop skills in tracking animals or to deal successfully with spirits. Here, as I suggested

earlier, the developmental view of humanity does not so much reflect the evidence of human

diversity as keep it under control.

Kants understanding of morality favours a similar view of the condition of most non-Western

peoples. As an artefact of early modern Christian practices of the self, it too suggests that these

peoples, and many within the West itself, who do not cultivate an appropriate moral persona for

themselves will remain morally immature. Both perspectives leave ample space for the positive

valuation of qualities, such as courage and generosity, which might be thought to reflect a

primitive natural capacity for moral discrimination53 and thus to appear without mediation in the

conduct of less advanced peoples. Yet their overall effect is to promote the belief that mansnatural capacities are less developed among the peoples of the non-Western world, some of whom

appear close to the state of nature, than they are among the cultivated peoples of the modern West.

Finally, in this section, Kants understanding of mans natural capacities, and especially his focus

on morality and reason, clearly involves the image of man as both an object of knowledge and a

subject that knows.54 This figure of man, in Foucaults view, is central to the modern human

sciences, and he describes it as emerging within European thought around the beginning of the

nineteenth century. Christine Helliwell and I have argued that, like the idea of a self-contained

culture or society which it helps to sustain, the figure of man should be seen not simply as an

epistemic or cultural construct but also as a political one.55 As a subject that knows, man is

constituted by the faculties of reason and perception and is therefore capable of autonomous action,

at least in principle, while, as an object of knowledge, man appears as the effect of external forces

and stimuli. The qualities of rationality and moral autonomy which the rhetoric of nineteenth and

twentieth century liberal constitutionalism requires of the individual as citizen can thus be seen

both as representing the essence of man and as the product of very particular conditions.

An assertion of historical discontinuity presents a standing invitation to seek a continuity which

would undermine it. In this case, the appearance of the figure of man, not only in Kants 1784

account of natures plan but also, in less elaborated form, in the developmental histories on which

he draws, suggests that it may have a longer history than Foucaults discussion allows. Moreover,

the importance of the Americas and other areas new to European eyes to the composition of thesehistories suggests that the figure of man has another significant political aspect, that its formation is

directly linked, in fact, to the emergence of modern imperialism.

Conclusion

Kants vision of a cosmopolitan world order draws on a view of humanity as developing towards

the fullest realisation of mans moral and intellectual capacities. This is also, as Kants sees it, a

53Idea, p. 44

54 Michel Foucault The Order of Things, London Tavistock, 1970: 313

55 Christine Helliwell and Barry Hindess 'Culture', 'society' and the figure of man.History of the Human Sciences12(4) 1999: 1-20.

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condition in which mans natural tendencies to competition and conflict are regulated by law. Kant

presents this developmental view as a moral necessity, not an empirical generalisation, and we have

seen that it requires us to temporalise many kinds of difference. It suggests, in other words, that we

should regard many of our contemporaries as being literally behind the times, and thus as having

comparatively deficient moral and intellectual capacities. The latter, in turn, suggests that the more

enlightened have a responsibility to bring these others up to their own level. Kantscosmopolitanism thus involves judgements of superiority and inferiority and a sense of historical

responsibility, all of which are predicated on a developmental understanding of human diversity.

To say that Kants cosmopolitan vision is tarnished by his temporalising of difference would be to

understate the seriousness of the problem. It does not lie on the surface of Kants thought, and it

will not be removed by vigorous action with a soft cloth while leaving the underlying structure

intact. Kants temporalising of difference is a product of his teleological universalism, of the claim

to bring all portions of humanity within the one telos, and thus to be able to rank them according to

their distance from its realisation. If we are to avoid the temporalising of difference, then, we must

abandon the claim to universalism on which it rests. A universalising concern for humanity which

refused to temporalise difference would thus have little in common with the elitist cosmopolitanismof Kant and his successors.56 It would have no organising telos, let alone one that pretended to bring

peace and the realisation of human capacities together. Without the telos there can be no a priori

basis for ranking all sections of humanity in developmental terms, and thus no history which is

universal in Kants sense. Yet if the telos has to go, then so too must the twin conceits that dominate

contemporary political thought: that states are superior to non-state forms of social life and that

democracy Kants constitutional republic is the highest form of collective organisation

achieved to date. These excisions leave open the possibility of another, more modest, universal

history based simply on the recognition that it is no longer possible, and has not been for some

considerable time, for any significant portion of humanity to live in isolation from the rest. Like it

or not, we are all part of the one global history.

These excisions also leave open the possibility of a concern for humanity which assumes neither an

ethical warrant for imposing a more advanced way of life on others, which Kant also denies, nor a

comforting telos of the kind Kant all too clearly affirms to suggest that the costs of such wrongful

action will nevertheless be worth while. It is tempting to conclude, then, by saying that different

cultures, peoples and ways of life must learn to coexist, preferably on the basis of dialogue between

them, and that, since the option of non-interaction is not available, this should involve a willingness

to change and compromise on the part of all concerned. Lest this seem too bland, let me add that

the search for coexistence will be complicated by the many legacies of imperial oppression and

exploitation, by the sense of anger over continuing injustices and the complacent sense of

superiority which that anger has to confront, by the extent to which the developmental view ofhumanity has been taken up by those who are also it is victims, and by the difficulty of adapting the

institutional structures of states and the system of states to the desires of those who inhabit them.

Finally, if the figure of man is indeed linked directly to modern imperialism, then so too is much of

modern social and political thought. If we have no choice but to use concepts of culture, people,

nation, civilisation, etc., in our efforts to get a grip on these issues, we must also learn to think

against them.

56 See, for example, the closing chapter of ConnollyNeuropolitics and my Citizenship for All, Citizenship Studies, 8,3, 305-15.

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