Ripstein, Barbarism and Revolution

Over at Crooked Timber today there is an amusing, if also somewhat tiresome, response by Chris Bertram to Arthur Ripstein's recent book Force and Freedom which was subjected to a response of a different sort in a previous posting. Bertram does not focus on the topic that was taken up in that previous posting, namely, international right. Rather, Bertram emphasizes primarily the discussion, which is certainly innovative, of "barbarism".


Bertram correctly reports that Ripstein uses the notion of "barbarism" to address the "problem" posed by Kant's remarks on revolution in the Doctrine of Right. The problem is described in Ripstein's telling in terms of the difficulty that some states (notoriously, that of the Nazis) are such that they surely are no advance on the state of nature. Ripstein uses the notion of "barbarism" to characterize these states and, in so doing, to legitimate rebellion against them where rebellion now becomes characterized as "the creation of a state where there was none before" (Ripstein, 338).


There are certainly problems thinking about what Kant says about revolution and the way Ripstein tries to deal with it. Bertram's response is somewhat tiresome, however, since it reiterates a kind of sniggering, "oh, look, Kant has some bad arguments" form which I have discussed previously. This really is no kind of response to any philosopher. Bertram mentions, in his posting, how reading Ripstein made him prefer Rousseau, Marx and Hegel, above all for their attention to "anthropology". However, the number of "bad arguments" that one can find in each of these three, not least in their anthropology, are legion. So it might be better not to start a war of "who has the worst arguments".


Bertram also makes another error in his response to Ripstein when he insists on a set of responses that will transcend the "example" (if they can be termed that!) of the Nazis, insisting that, if the notion of "barbarism" is of any use it should also be able to guide our political responses to Franco's Spain and Israel. To suggest that the distinction, just as such, is sufficient to deal with such complex empirical situations is no more helpful than the view that Rousseau's accounts of where a republic exists and where it does not should so easily be applied. The other case given, however, that of the US when it had slavery is rather simpler since, as Ripstein states explicitly: "A condition in which some are not allowed to have anything as their own, or in which they are enslaved or murdered by others, is not a difficult case" (342). In such cases there is not a state of right since the state of right explicitly requires equal rights to freedom. So if there not such rights then, for everyone in such a condition, there is not an advance on the state of nature. This is precisely the point of Ripstein's invocation of the notion of "barbarism".


The point behind these objections to Kant seems, however, to be pointed up more by Bertram's demand for an anthropology that he rightly finds missing in the Doctrine of Right. As some have pointed out in response to Bertram's posting there is plenty of anthropological reflection by Kant if that is what you prefer (though there are good reasons not to prefer it, at least not as it is simply given). The Doctrine of Right is meant to provide a "strict" account of an a priori view of right though it requires supplementing by further "principles of application". There are good reasons for thinking this further supplementation is not well carried out by Ripstein and I have many reasons for disagreeing with Bertram that a "better book" on Kant's philosophy of right is unlikely to be written. Having said which, it would be good to see debate that centred not always on "examples" and "cases" but concerned itself rather more with principles, laws, rules and the generic basis of Kant's view.

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• Ripstein, Kant and barbarism (crookedtimber.org)

Ripstein and International Right

I've been reading Arthur Ripstein's recently published book Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy. The work is a commentary on Kant's Doctrine of Right though it is written in a style that is broadly reconstructive rather than being textually focused. This has advantages and disadvantages in the responses to particular topics and I'll be reviewing it elsewhere at a later date. However, for the purposes of this blog, I thought I would set out some thoughts on Ripstein's brief discussion of international right, which occurs toward the end of Chapter 7 of his book.


In this discussion Ripstein confronts the question of why the examination of the state of nature between states structurally differs from the state of nature between individuals. This difference is most apparent in Kant's failure to argue for a world state. The key element in Ripstein's assessment of Kant's failure to argue for a world state is a rejection of the view that this failure is grounded on some kind of empirical consideration. Rather than this being the case, suggests Ripstein, it is instead the case that Kant rejects the world state on normative grounds.


The state of nature between states parallels that between individuals in the sense that there is a need for some authority to determine the resolution of disputes. However, whereas Ripstein identifies three distinct arguments in the case of the state of nature between individuals aiming to show the need to leave the state of nature, he only identifies one argument in relation to the state of nature between states. The difference that emerges due to the paucity of argument in relation to the state of nature between states results, Ripstein points out, in the absence of discussion of legislative and executive international bodies. Only one kind of international body emerges, the one that is structurally parallel to the court at the national level.


To unpack Ripstein's account of international right requires, however, not merely reading his view of the Doctrine of Right, but, also, his account of Perpetual Peace. At Ak. 8: 356, during the discussion of the 2nd definitive article of perpetual peace, Kant argues for a pacific league. In arguing for this idea Kant makes clear that the pacific league only aims at "preserving and securing" the freedom of a state and of the states in league with it. What Kant rules out here  is "public laws and coercion" as part of this league. In ruling out "public laws and coercion" Kant clearly does prevent the pacific league from having a legislature and the disbarring of coercion also prevents the creation of the league being seen as parallel to the creation of the state of right itself. However, Kant next adds to this point the view that the focal point for the creation of the pacific league will be the formation of republics which will tend to band  together, thus indicating that this view of the pacific league is of a piece with a "republican peace" hypothesis. See also my earlier posting for reflections on the peculiar structure of the argument of the 2nd definitive article.


Ripstein points to two differences between the state and private persons. The first difference is that the state does not have external objects of choice or, otherwise put, it does not "acquire" its territory. It is, in some sense, necessarily in possession of it or its territory is an analogue to the body of the person. Due to this point the need to establish the ground of property, required to establish the state of right, does not apply to the pacific league. This is used by Ripstein to rule out part of the requirement for public laws and coercion under them.


The second difference between the state and the situation of private persons, according to Ripstein, is that the state is a public rightful condition. It can only act in a public way so the basis of conflict between states can only be defensive whilst private persons can act in private ways and hence in ways towards each other that could be aggressive. This second argument is not provided by Kant in an explicit form and is meant to show the specific rationale for why the pacific league needs no coercive power.


At this point Ripstein's analysis articulates the point of the republican peace hypothesis as an a priori claim about the form of republican governance as the ideal of public right itself. The problem is that the imperfect realisation of this in existent states, an imperfect realisation that ensures that all states are at best partially despotic and at worst barbaric, ensures that in relations between states there are grounds for fearing actions of others. This point mitigates against the assurance of peace that would attach to republican states were such completely realised.


Ripstein's analysis, like the one I presented sometime ago, shows that the 2nd definitive article effectively dissolves into the 1st. After treating the 2nd definitive article, Ripstein moves to the discussion of the "congress of states" argued for in the Doctrine of Right. The "congress" is specifically related to a public right of nations and the resolution of disputes between states carried out by it is explicitly described by Kant as akin to a court. This model fits Ripstein's general assessment of international right and rules out a sovereign authority. However, one of the texts Ripstein does not consider is the piece on theory and practice where Kant provided a model of international right that is less congenial to Ripstein's account. In this earlier text Kant referred to "a right of nations, based on public laws accompanied by power to which each state would have to submit" (Ak. 8: 312) with the explicit analogy to the state of nature between individuals invoked as a basis. In this text, at least at this point, Kant considers a model of international right that does not fit Ripstein's model but which suggests instead a need for public laws and coercion. The earlier text perhaps corresponds better to a situation in which the model of republics is not perfectly realised and hence the overcoming of the international state of nature is envisaged as requiring their supersession. This also suggests that it is perhaps less evident than Ripstein thinks that Kant has a clear normative argument against the world state.

Report on UK Kant Society Conference 2009

Having just returned from attending this event, held this year at Lancaster University, it struck me as worthwhile to do a posting on the major themes that emerged from it and to note some of the ways this seems significant in relation to contemporary Kantian philosophy. Before moving on to an account of these general points I should mention three factors that seriously impressed me. The first was the number and quality of graduate papers this year. As occurred earlier this year when I co-organized the annual conference of the British Society for the History of Philosophy, the graduate contributions were of very high quality. As with the BSHP, graduates who attended demonstrated that there are good grounds for hope with regard to the continuation of philosophical research of serious value.

The second factor was the surprisingly high number of US contributors this year. Like the first factor this is a welcome development, revealing as it does the increasingly international nature of philosophical work. The third factor was the larger number of women philosophers, a development, like the first two, promising a more creative future for philosophical research.

The conference theme this year was "Kant: morality and society" and the organizer, Garrath Williams, is to be commended for bringing together a wide range of papers on the theme in question, many of great interest. The three plenary papers were certainly very different in both approach and focus. The first, by Stephen Darwall, covered the question of an alleged "gap" in Kant's derivation of the formula of universal law, treating this gap as appearing in both the first and second parts of the Groundwork but presenting his own theory of the need for a "second-person" standpoint as indicating a way of amending the derivation so that it succeed. Somewhat surprisingly, given his theme, Darwall did not refer to earlier work on this question such as appears in the books of Bruce Aune and Samuel Kerstein. An additional problem with Darwall's treatment of the alleged "gap" is that it appears to rest on the presumption that such strange creatures as principled egoists and act consequentialists not only exist but, in existing, have to be committed to the view that others should adopt the same principles! Despite these problems the paper was a thoughtful contribution and certainly suggests reasons both for reading his new book on the second personal standpoint in more detail and treating it to a more extended response.

The second plenary paper was by Arthur Ripstein and concerned the theory, adopted by John Rawls from H.L.A. Hart, that we need to distinguish between laws/rules and their "benefits". This theory, whose remoter origin resides in utilitarian responses to "rule-fetishism" has an inherently de-bunking effect on the understanding of rules, and was opposed point by point by Ripstein to a Kantian theory. The interesting point about Ripstein's treatment of Kantian theory was that he reprised the central motifs of the account of "private right" in the Doctrine of Right and showed in the process that it was with regard particularly to these elements that the distinction between rules and their "benefits" was especially prominent. Ripstein's highly impressive paper brought out the need, by contrast to this theory, for Kantians to emphasize a view of rules that did not regard the "benefits" of them as something intrinsically separable from them. Ripstein has elsewhere extended his treatment of the Doctrine of Right and this account, like that of Darwall, bears much more extended investigation.

The final plenary speech, by Tamar Schapiro, contrasted markedly with the earlier two in being a more general paper that was less strictly focused directly on Kantian themes. Schapiro's paper concerned a distinction between two pictures of the relationship between passion and action. On one picture (argued to be shared by both empiricists and rationalists) the agent is viewed as unitary and passions and reasons treated as part of a continuum, not different in principle. As opposed to this, the other view, identified as Kantian, treats passions and reasons as different in kind and passions as generally adopted in the light of reasons. The effect of this second picture, Schapiro argued, was a bipartite, not a unitary, view of agency. Debate concerning this paper centred on arguments as to whether Kant is really committed to such a bipartite picture of agency with many claiming that this is not so though wishing to maintain the division between passions and reasons that Schapiro drew. The discussion subsequent to this paper was in many respects more engaging than the paper itself but also brought out clearly the questions posed for philosophy of action by Kantian practical philosophy.

The parallel sessions divided between those at which faculty members spoke and those devoted to graduate students. Topics discussed in them included Kant's view of suicide (taken to be unsustainable in itself but revealing of some key elements of his general view), the relationship of duties to humans and duties to animals, the relationship between Kantian ethics and aesthetics, the nature of Kantian respect, further reflections on the derivation of the formula of universal law, two papers on aspects of the doctrine of right, and, perhaps most impressively, a paper on provisional duty by Heather Roff. In the only paper specifically focused on the question of international right Roff demonstrated in detail both that all duties at this level are provisional and that the question of their provisionality raises important questions for Kant's whole Doctrine of Right. This paper was perhaps the single most inspiring one delivered at the conference and indicative of the centrality of the area of international right for the study of the whole of Kant's practical philosophy.

For domestic reasons I had to miss the final day of the conference and so this report is not complete. However, from the events I attended what becomes clear is a division between two general types of work being undertaken on Kantian practical philosophy. On the one hand are papers which are either highly general in feel (such as the plenary by Schapiro) or specifically focused on clarifying questions in Kant's critique of morality, especially as found in the Groundwork. The characteristics of these papers is that they are engaged in foundational questions, whether of moral philosophy, moral psychology or philosophy of action. On the other hand are papers either focused on the doctrine of right directly or on questions that require a concern with Kantian casuistry or with the implications of the general practical philosophy. The latter sort of papers are the sort that are more capable of speaking to other non-Kantian philosophers or to a broader public concerned with moral and political questions though the former kind remain significant in requiring us constantly to return to the basis of Kantian views.