Melvin Lasky

Utopia & Revolution

The revolutionary Kant wrestled with Kant the reformer. When he militantly insisted that 'the rights of man must be held sacred,' he could not help but go on to say, 'One cannot compromise here and seek the middle course of a pragmatic conditional law between the morally right and the expedient. All politics must bend its knee before the right.' Fiat justitia, pereat mundus-a 'true maxim' whose meaning, zu deutsch, he spelled out as 'Let justice reign even if all the rascals in the world should perish from it'-was for him 'a stout principle of right.' But when he thought of abstractions as the motive force of human action, he had his hesitations. 'Very few people act from principles, and that is good; the more general the principles are and the most steadfastly a person adheres to them, the more damage is done.' More than that there was on occasion a distinct tone of aversion in his attitude toward 'general philanthropy.' 'Love of mankind as a whole contains the largest volume but the lowest intensity. If I am interested in the well-being of a particular man in proportion to my love of mankind, my interest will be small.' With such a small interest, what prospect could there be for the fulfillment of the duty to respect one's neighbor and 'never to use him merely as a means for my purposes but to honor his dignity'? Surely only a dim hope.

For clearly, as Kant came to fear, it was not only rascals who perished in an uncompromising, unpragmatic reign of justice. Inasmuch as the revolutionary upheaval produced its effects 'tempestuously and violently,' it could hardly be 'ushered in according to plan without damage to freedom.' How indeed could its mistakes be expunged except through yet another 'new (and at any time dangerous) revolution'? And if, in fact, a revolution accomplished 'the fall of personal despotism or of avaricious or tyrannical oppression,' would this constitute a real victory for enlightenment and 'a true reform in ways of thinking'? For would not 'new prejudices serve as well as old ones to harness the great unthinking masses'? No, the transition to a new progressive order of affairs could only be effected through 'gradually advancing reform.'