Summary: Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose

Is there a meaning to history? Or is history merely a random process?

For Kant, chance is merely an illusion. Indeed, human actions are determined just like any other natural event, according to the universal laws of nature.¹

In fact, as Kant established in the Critique of Practical Reason, there is phenomenal determinism, even though freedom exists as a noumenon.

History is nothing but the phenomenal totality of human actions and therefore falls under the principle of determinism.

What appears disorderly and irrational from the standpoint of the individual is, when viewed from that of the species, revealed as a progressive and continuous—albeit slow—development of its original dispositions.²

Kant offers two examples to illustrate this hidden order beneath an apparently chaotic surface. Births, deaths, and marriages may seem to occur irregularly, by chance, or according to the fluctuating will of individuals. However, statistical tables reveal that, in the end, they follow constant natural laws. Similarly, rainfall, though seemingly erratic, maintains a broadly stable average over any given territory.

In fact, there is a sense of History, which Kant calls the design of Nature, pursued unconsciously by human beings:

Men taken individually, and even whole peoples, scarcely give a thought to the fact that in pursuing their particular ends each according to his own good pleasure, they are unwittingly following, like a common thread, the purpose of Nature, which is itself unknown to them, and are working to further its realization.³

Given the abundance of absurdity and vice in human affairs, no rational individual purpose can be assumed—but perhaps a purpose of Nature can.

Kant traces the main thread of this History through nine propositions.

Proposition 1: All the natural dispositions of a creature are destined one day to develop completely and in accordance with an end.⁴

Thus, an unused organ is a contradiction in terms. This is confirmed, from a biological standpoint, by medical science—specifically by dissection. If this principle were false, we would be dealing not with a Nature that conforms to laws, but with one that operates without purpose.

Proposition 2: man's natural dispositions to reason develop fully only in the species, not in the individual.

Kant defines reason as a power to extend far beyond natural instinct the rules and designs which command the use of all one's powers.⁵

Proposition 3: Man can partake in no felicity or perfection other than that which he has created for himself—independently of instinct—through his own reason.⁶

It is worth noting that man is born almost naked, devoid of natural advantages. For his protection, he possesses neither the bull's horn, nor the lion's claw, nor the dog's fangs—only hands. It is as if nature intended man to owe his progress solely to himself, as though its aim were not to make him happy, but to make him deserving of happiness.

Proposition 4: The means by which nature brings about the development of all human dispositions is their antagonism within society.⁷

The foundation of this antagonism lies in what Kant famously calls the unsociable sociability of human beings.⁸ That is, their inclination to enter into society, coupled with a resistance to doing so—a tension that perpetually threatens to tear it apart.

Man recognises the benefits of society (for in this state, he develops more fully), yet at the same time, he exhibits an unsociable tendency: the desire to impose his own will upon everything,⁹ to resist others, and so forth.

It is precisely this resistance that awakens all of man's strength and drives him to overcome his natural tendency towards indolence.

¹ Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, Introduction
² ibid.
³ ibid.
⁴ prop.1
⁵ prop.2
⁶ prop.3
⁷ prop.4
⁸ ibid.
⁹ ibid.