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Kant on Non-Linear Progress
Møller, Sophie
2021
Abstract
Kant’s account of progress is often mistakenly portrayed as a steady movement toward realizing the highest political good. In this paper, I show that we also need to take non-linear progress into account. What exactly the highest political good is and whether it is realizable is a separate, complicated question, which I leave aside in this paper. Instead, I focus on whether and how political agents can be motivated by a belief in progress even in times when such a belief might seem unwarranted. My main concern is the following question: Is regression in terms of realizing our ideals a reason to abandon a belief in a Kantian account of political progress? As part of my answer to this question, I consider the relationship between Kant’s account of a guarantee of perpetual peace in the Treaty essay of the same name and his later reference to a historical sign in the Conflict of the Faculties. The paper considers how Kant’s account of progress allows us to confront apparent moments of regression within a substantive account of progress and a robust notion of what the realization of a political ideal would look like. I focus on how an individual in a Kantian account might be motivated by the idea of political progress and how his non-linear account of progress helps the agent to be further motivated to promote political change in situations of apparent regression.
Publisher
EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste
Source
Sophie Møller, "Kant on Non-Linear Progress" in: "Etica & Politica / Ethics & Politics (2021) XXIII/2", EUT Edizioni Università di Trieste, Trieste, 2021, pp. 127-147
Languages
en
Rights
Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 Internazionale
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