Immanuel Kant and the “New Enlightenment”. International Conference Report

Startseva, Arina; Sabanov, Aleksandr O.

doi:10.5922/0207-6918-2023-1-7

Kantian Sbornik

2023

DOI: 10.5922/0207-6918-2023-1-7

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Immanuel Kant and the “New Enlightenment”. International Conference Report

Arina Startseva

Aleksandr O. Sabanov

Abstract: The review surveys the main ideas discussed at the international scientific conference “Immanuel Kant and the ‘New Enlightenment’” hosted by the Immanuel Kant Baltic Federal University (IKBFU) in Kaliningrad on 20-22 April 2022. It was organised by IKBFU’s research unit Academia Kantiana with the support of the Petersburg Dialogue Forum. Speakers analysed the theses of the Report to the Club of Rome, Come on! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet (2018), whose authors, Ernst U… Show more

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Kant and the New Enlightenment: On the Balance between Duty and Utilitarian Ends

Zilber

2023

Kantian Sbornik

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The relation between Kant’s philosophy and the “philosophy of balance” as it is described in the report Come on! Capitalism, Short-termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet, delivered to the Club of Rome in 2018, requires some analysis. The authors of the report consider Kant to be a philosopher of European Enlightenment which laid the foundations of the modern world, but also proved to be the source of global problems. The report characterises the philosophy of the Enlightenment as lop-sided rationalism which dismisses everything that does not possess desirable properties. In exchange, the authors offer a philosophy of balance, described in several points as the balance between conflicting values. The overarching problem of the philosophy of balance is the restraining of egoism. For this reason I first examine the relationship between duty and human inclinations in Kant’s ethics. I then demonstrate that the topic of political forecasts and the recommendations which Kant prescribes both in his philosophy of history and in his reflections on politics, right and justice, essentially boils down to three points of the philosophy of balance: the balance between development and justice (Kantian republicanism), between the speed and stability of development (external policy, the Kantian peace project), and between the short-term and long-term perspectives (reform policy). I then touch upon the problem of the implementation of Kantian principles in politics in the light of the reception of Kant in the modern theories of social conflicts, the communication theory of J. Habermas and the justice theory of J. Rawls. The overall conclusion is that Kant’s philosophy is not a philosophy of exclusion, capitalist values and utilitarianism and is not their ideological basis.

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Kant and the New Enlightenment: On the Balance between Duty and Utilitarian Ends

Zilber

2023

Kantian Sbornik

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Reclaiming the “Cultural Mandate”: The Idea of Sustainable Development in the Kantian Perspective

Chaly

2023

Kantian Sbornik

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In the Club of Rome report Come on! Capitalism, Short-Termism, Population and the Destruction of the Planet (2018) Kant, along with other “old” Enlighteners, is presented as the father of a world-view which led to the destabilisation of the environment in which humanity exists. The authors of the report argue that the “old Enlightenment” with its individualism, faith in the market and a consumerist attitude to nature should be scrapped. I maintain that this assessment of Kant’s philosophy is groundless and that his ideas allow us both to conduct a more profound diagnosis of the crisis and to propose a more solidly founded strategy of overcoming it. First, I sum up the position of the authors concerning the loss of sustainability of development which they attribute to the philosophy of Enlightenment. Next, I outline the history and content of the notion of “sustainable development” and offer an analysis of the sources of progressivist commitment to the conquest of nature which lie outside Modern Times in the idea of the “cultural mandate”. Then I present the Kantian diagnosis of the causes of the crisis which attributes it to humankind’s failure to “mature”. I compare the idea of “the full world” formulated by the authors of the report with the idea of the “the world come of age” and their diagnosis of “capitalism — short-termism — depletion of resources” with the Kantian assessment of the attempts to escape from the predicaments of the present into the past or the future. I draw attention to Kant’s solutions to some of the specific problems indicated in the report. Instead of the strategy of “return of the cultural mandate”, proposed at this time by the authors of the report, the Kantian answer to the crisis is a “Copernican turn” and re-direction of the cultivating effort to the inner moral development of the human being.

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Immanuel Kant and the “New Enlightenment”. International Conference Report

Cited by 2 publications

References 10 publications

Kant and the New Enlightenment: On the Balance between Duty and Utilitarian Ends

Kant and the New Enlightenment: On the Balance between Duty and Utilitarian Ends

Reclaiming the “Cultural Mandate”: The Idea of Sustainable Development in the Kantian Perspective

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