Between Revolution and Reaction: The Political Significance of Kant’s Doctrine of the Idea

Abstract

This essay argues that Kant’s conception of regulative ideas of practical reason introduced in the Critique of Pure Reason serves an important twofold function in his political philosophy. First, Kant’s version of the ideal, Platonic republic acts as the a priori paradigm of a rightful state to which existing regimes can and should conform. Second, Kant frames the regulative status of such practical ideas as a resolution of the conflict between the extremes of dogmatism and skepticism. In his principal political writings from the 1790s—i. e., “Theory and Practice,” “Perpetual Peace,” and the Doctrine of Right—Kant draws on his account of practical ideas in the Critique to articulate a counterfactual norm of popular sovereignty that distinguishes his political standpoint from opponents on the left and the right. Radicals repeat the error of the dogmatists by affirming that the norm of collective self-legislation is completely attainable in experience. By contrast, conservatives make the mistake of the skeptics by denying that rational political standards can be applied to reality at all. I show that Kant reconciles these extremes through his model of gradual, non-violent political reform guided by the regulative ideal of a perfectly self-legislating state.