Abstract

WHEN Marx called Kant the "philosopher of the French Revolution," he did not have in mind the "jacobin" Kant who continued his enthusiastic support of the Revolution long after his freedom-loving younger contemporaries such as Schiller and Goethe had become disillusioned with its course. Marx’s image of Kant is in fact that of the "philosopher of the bourgeoisie" in its struggle for freedom from the constraints of the feudal order. The substitution of a socio-economic class for a political revolution in these two phrases entails a dangerous reduction of politics to economics which typifies a caricatural Marxism. What is more, such a reduction of course distorts the object of analysis, be it the Kantian philosophy, the French Revolution, or our own contemporary socio-political context.