Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose

The Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose is an essay by Immanuel Kant, consisting of a preface, nine sentences and their notice. He wrote it in 1784 at the age of 60 years.

Classification in the body of work

The writing is on the one hand associated with the field of political philosophy and can be seen as Vorwerk " Perpetual Peace " (1795 ). The title suggests a " history of the future " at, remarkably here, so universally applicable even in " Cosmopolitan Purpose ". It can be from the factory, a consensus will be read out similar to the categorical imperative: the freedom of the individual should indeed be as large as possible, subject to limits but if the company is affected.

The idea, on the other hand, as seen from the Kant - expert Werner flat as an application example of the Critique of Pure Reason, as the Scripture is retribution theoretical and not empirical. The main question of this work is thus in accordance with the requirements of a beneficial science of history. Kant presents in his introduction to the thesis: If we want history, then we must assume that there is a natural intention.

Summary

The first eight sentences serve as the forward line to a point in the last sentence. This states that the existing plant for perfection in everything is mint could only have a republican form of government in humans. Is this just a temporary condition on the path to true morality, it is nevertheless unumgehbar.

In the introduction, Kant sets out the view that the general history of mankind, though it when you look at a single time or a single individual, apparently does not behave according to rules, but considered in the Great seems to have a goal and feel a plan of nature can be subordinated. While each man could by his own free will, is presupposed by Kant, decide what he does and whether he would leave his instincts or his reason to control, but the sum of the individual events always behaving according to the nature of intention, even without that individuals about be aware. So the free will follow the same lines in the Grand ( statistically ). Individuals acting for vested interests and thereby initiate the sum their people in a way they had not intended.

Here it becomes clear that Kant starts from a parent, teleological worldview. Remains the idea of entelechy present, which actually means here is that humans and Menschkeitsgeschichte carry at least the plant for perfection in itself.