A striking epitaph on a stone memorial is all that survives of the old Prussian city of Königsberg in the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, writes Martin Mansergh. The words open the conclusion to the Critique of Practical Reason:
"Two things fill the mind with ever new and increasing wonder and reverence, the more often and more intensively one reflects on them: the starry heaven above me, and the moral law within me."
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) died 200 years ago this month. He has some claim to be regarded as the greatest secular philosopher of modern times. His writings have a profundity and moral stature that mark them out.
Two achievements crown the mature Enlightenment; first, the foundation of the United States of America, though any connection to the Enlightenment distresses Hobbesian neo-conservatives; and secondly, the philosophy of Kant. Two events disgrace and discredit the Enlightenment; the deification of reason at the height of the frenzied reign of terror in Paris; and that most cynical piece of raison d'état, the partitions of Poland by the so-called enlightened despots of Prussia, Russia, and Austria between 1772 and 1795, which led to its disappearance from the map, until those same crowns bit the dust in 1918 and Poland re-emerged.
The European Union has adapted as its anthem the choral setting of Schiller's Ode to Joy in the last movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. A political essay of Kant's, To Eternal Peace, could equally serve as an intellectual foundation of the European Union.
For Kant, the motto of the Enlightenment was a radical one, sapere aude, "dare to know". "Enlightenment is man's growing out of a self-imposed status of being a minor. Being a minor is the incapacity to use one's understanding except at the direction of another." It came from a lack of courage rather than of understanding. While Kant laid great stress on duty, this was something that came from the inner self, not from external authority. (Unfortunately, Pflicht or duty was later traduced with an automatic Pavlovian response to any expression of authority). His famous categorical imperative is a variation of the biblical golden rule, to do unto others, what you would they would do unto you. "Behave as if your act of will could always be valid as a general principle."
Kant saw religion as being founded on, and as an expression of, morality. There was a belief that divine providence would assist in unseen ways those who behaved in an upright manner. Religion belonged to the realm of faith, and could not be demonstrated by reason. The creation of the kingdom of heaven on earth was the final object of mankind. Human beings should be treated as ends in themselves, not as means.
Kant combined both rational and empirical traditions. The critical method was a halfway house between dogmatism and scepticism. He did not deny like Berkeley the existence of things in themselves. Only we have no means of knowing them, as we perceive everything from specific angles.
Kant was fortunate that his ground-breaking work, Critique of Pure Reason, was published in 1781 during the reign of Frederick the Great, whose attitude was, "Let them think what they like, so long as they obey". His nephew, Frederick William II (1786-97), was, under the impact of the French revolution, less tolerant, and forbade Kant, the most famous philosopher in his kingdom, to teach or write about religion.
The contempt was mutual. The title of Kant's political essay To Eternal Peace could have been taken, as he noted satirically, from a Dutch inn sign depicting the peace of a graveyard.
With astonishing boldness, he posited as the first definitive article of an eternal peace that "the civic constitution in every state should be republican", by which he meant a representative one. A state was not a dynastic patrimony, but a society of human beings, over whom no one but themselves had the right to order or dispose of.
Citizens should have the right to decide on war, given how much it cost them in every way. Large standing armies were a cause of war. Despots (or later dictators) living in luxury did not suffer the effects of war, but could decide arbitrarily on it. Representative government invoked the rule of law instead of arbitrary will. The total destruction of his city by the end of Hitler's war vindicated his political philosophy in the most awful manner. Democracies almost never go to war with each other.
He further believed that international law would be best established in a federation of free states, that would continually broaden out. This would involve loss of a lawless freedom or sovereignty, but was necessary to prevent war.
He concluded bitingly that rulers could not be expected to be philosophers, because power inevitably polluted the free exercise of reason. But rulers should not silence or diminish the class of philosophers, but let them speak openly, to mutual benefit.
Shrewdly, he recognised politically that, while humans wanted concord and harmony, nature favoured discord and disagreement, so as to stir human beings into making efforts to resolve difficulties, a precursor to Hegel's dialectic.
Kant was a generation older than the great German classical writers, Goethe, Schiller and their Weimar contemporaries. At the Forum on Europe on Thursday, I heard Blair Horan, general secretary of the Civil and Public Service Union, state that the trade union movement was 100 per cent for Berlin rather than for Boston. Opinion polls tend to suggest otherwise. If Berlin is to be a model, we would benefit greatly, if we could deepen our knowledge of contemporary Germany and its long cultural heritage.
Germany is our largest EU partner, and the most centrally placed in the new Europe of the 25, and like Austria, a gateway to Mitteleuropa. The philosophy of Kant would not be the easiest introduction, but it is a richly rewarding one.