Abstract

Fortschritt und Vernunft establishes that Immanuel Kant’s little-known philosophy of history is serious, important, and consistent, coherent with his critical philosophy as well as with his ethics. Pauline Kleingeld argues persuasively that the “specifically Kantian” elements of Kant’s views are lost when the “somewhat awkward sentence ‘Kant claims that there are reasons to assume that there is progress in history’ is shortened to ‘Kant claims that there is progress in history’”. It is these “specifically Kantian” aspects that Kleingeld illuminates and finds still of possible use today. Fortschritt und Vernunft begins with careful readings of the arguments of Kant’s essays in the philosophy of history of 1784–95, along with Sections 82–4 of the Critique of Judgment and the third part of The Conflict of the Faculties. Part 2 considers the status and foundations of the philosophy of history in Kant’s critical thought, attending especially to the “conceptual swamp” of the conative language of “needs of reason”, to different accounts of teleology, and to the divergent arguments about the “highest good” in the three Critiques. Part 3 explores and draws together the historical narratives which are at work in Kant’s writings in political philosophy, anthropology, aesthetics, religion, education, and ethics. Historical progress requires far more than the mere working out of “unsociable sociability”; it is the process of cultivation and moralization whereby humanity learns to appreciate and act in accordance with the principle of morality.