Immanuel Kant, born on April 22, 1724, would have celebrated his three hundredth birthday this yr. And the German Structure, the Fundamental Regulation (Grundgesetz) turns 75 years previous in just a few days. What do these two imply to one another? What does Kant’s philosophy should do with the Fundamental Regulation?
All of the faves are flawed. Kant invoked dignity, freedom and equality – and he betrayed these values on the similar time. The Fundamental Regulation didn’t undertake his or every other philosophy – but it actually drew on it in 3 ways (see, in additional element and with references, right here, pp. 680-687 [in German]): With its assure of human dignity, the Fundamental Regulation tailored (1.) Kant’’s self-purpose system for the specific crucial, (2.) the prohibition to deal with people like issues and (3.) the concept of human dignity as a supply of categorical, or absolute, prohibitions, as parts of Kant’s philosophy. Nevertheless, within the face of the Holocaust and as its counter-image, they got a traditionally new which means.
Based on Kant’s so-called self-purpose system, the specific crucial is, firstly, the commandment to „by no means deal with all others merely as means, however at all times concurrently ends in themselves“, because it says within the Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals. Kant formulates the prohibition of utilizing individuals as mere means, secondly, additionally as a prohibition of reifying them, of degrading them to a factor. They’re „not a factor – not one thing for use merely as a way”, or, as Kant places it within the Metaphysics of Morals: „[A] human being can by no means be handled merely as a way to the needs of one other or be put among the many objects of rights to issues: his innate persona protects him from this“.
Thirdly, in line with Kant, human dignity is a supply of categorical moral duties to chorus from sure acts. Within the elementary controversy between „deontological“ and „consequentialist“ ethics, Kant is likely one of the founders and important proponents of a deontological method. Such a deontological understanding of human dignity is diametrically against the concept of justifying violations of dignity by weighing up and offsetting it in opposition to positive factors for a better good. Kant makes this clear, for instance, within the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals: „Within the realm of ends, all the pieces has both a worth or a dignity. What has a worth will be changed by one thing else as an equal; what, alternatively, is above all worth, and subsequently doesn’t enable for an equal, has a dignity.“
In Kant’s system, these remarks on human dignity belong, as can’t be emphasised strongly sufficient, to the doctrine of advantage (Tugendlehre), to not the doctrine of legislation (Rechtslehre). Nevertheless, he additionally drew on a few of the primary concepts in his doctrine of legislation, for instance in justifying a prohibition of merciless types of executing the loss of life penalty.
In drafting Germany’s Fundamental Regulation in 1948 and 1949, the Parliamentary Council drew on this widespread understanding of Kant’s formulations, which have been usually identified on the time as a part of the overall instructional heritage. It’s subsequently potential to defend the thesis of a partial, historic reception of Kantian concepts by the historic framers and adopters of the structure.
Nevertheless, such a reception or adaptation does (after all) not imply incorporation. As an alternative, it’s on the similar time a reinterpretation. Three essential variations between Kant’s philosophy and the Grundgesetz ought to be significantly emphasised.
Firstly, Kant’s ethical and authorized philosophy would at the very least supply appreciable resistance to such an incorporation. For one factor, as already talked about, Kant doesn’t equate the doctrine of advantage with the doctrine of legislation, and far much less he equates it with optimistic legislation. Even the place the doctrine of legislation takes up primary concepts of human dignity, this doesn’t essentially imply any affect on optimistic legislation for the arch-positivist Kant, who denied any proper of resistance.
Secondly, in its deliberations, the Parliamentary Council hooked up nice significance to the ideological neutrality of the Fundamental Regulation, which forbids blanket incorporation of a selected philosophy as a lot as that of a selected faith. Within the debate on pure legislation, Theodor Heuss and Carlo Schmid specifically emphasised that the Fundamental Regulation couldn’t be interpreted by recourse to Christian pure legislation, for instance, however that the structure’s concretization of the values of dignity, freedom and equality have to be and stay decisive for its obligatory additional improvement.
And thirdly, not like Kant, the framers and adopters of the German Structure regarded the capability for autonomy not as a obligatory prerequisite for human dignity, however solely as its centrally protected good, the place it exists. This ends in explicit from the truth that the Parliamentary Council categorized the „euthanasia“ murders of mentally disabled individuals as a paradigmatic case of a violation of human dignity.
There was subsequently no incorporation of Kant’s philosophy into the structure. There was, nevertheless, an adaptation and reinterpretation of sure parts and formulations of Kantian philosophy – above all of the self-purpose system and the prohibition of treating individuals like issues, but additionally the essential deontological concept of rights that are inviolable within the sense of being balancing-proof, which means that they can’t be outweighed by even the best positive factors for a supposedly better good.
After we commemorate Kant right now, on his three hundredth birthday, his racism have to be taken under consideration simply as a lot because the blind spots of Western Enlightenment philosophy. These embrace, for instance, the concept a thinker might decide substantial rules of morality or the philosophy of legislation a priori in his chamber, with out regard to the historic circumstances and the processes of democratic decision-making, in addition to an unreflected perception in progress within the concept of historical past.
On the similar time, nevertheless, it doesn’t appear out of the query to adapt parts of Kantian philosophy in a well timed trend, because the approaches of John Rawls or Jürgen Habermas present, for instance – if they’re themselves up to date, for instance with Danielle Allen or Anna Katharina Mangold, and the rights to democratic participation and equality are given their correct weight. The optimistic constitutional legislation of the German Structure reveals appreciable correspondence with such approaches, not least due to that dynamic improvement by the Federal Constitutional Court docket which its authentic public which means calls for. There is no such thing as a cause, then, to desert the Enlightenment concept of equality, in line with which everybody has the identical proper to dignity and the free pursuit of their happiness.
This blogpost is an English translation of the German model „Immanuel Kants 300. Geburtstag und das Grundgesetz“ (created with the assistance of DeepL).