[This post was prompted by this short encyclopedia piece.--ES.]
Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal. Her giving to man reason and the freedom of the will which depends upon it is clear indication of her purpose. Man accordingly was not to be guided by instinct, not nurtured and instructed with ready-made knowledge; rather, he should bring forth everything out of his own resources. Securing his own food, shelter, safety and defense...all amusement which can make life pleasant, insight and intelligence, finally even goodness of heart-all this should be wholly his own work. In this, Nature seems to have moved with the strictest parsimony, and to have measured her animal gifts precisely to the most stringent needs of a beginning existence, just as if she had willed that, if man ever did advance from the lowest barbarity to the highest skill and mental perfection and thereby worked himself up to happiness (so far as it is possible on earth), he alone should have the credit and should have only himself to thank-exactly as if she aimed more at his rational self-esteem than at his well-being. For along this march of human affairs, there was a host of troubles awaiting him. But it seems not to have concerned Nature that he should live well, but only that he should work himself upward so as to make himself, through his own actions, worthy of life and of well-being.--I. Kant Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of View (1784). Translation by Lewis White Beck.
Kant's nature is a brilliant economizing-social planner; one that designs circumstances that are conducive to the optimal social good, yet requiring a market failure in praise (I almost wrote 'credit', but decided that would cause the wrong kind of confusion).
Nature operates with a mathematically exact least action principle ("Nature does nothing in vain, and in the use of means to her goals she is not prodigal...the strictest parsimony, and to have measured her...gifts precisely"). We can discern in this the combined influence(s) of Leibniz, Maupertuis, and Euler, but we should not ignore Newton's embrace of such a position in the First Rule of Reasoning.
Nature is, thus, like a constitutional legislator who provides the legal framework ("at the beginning") and helps define the possible rules of the game. Moreover, this constitutional legislator has features of all-seeing social planner because she provides just the right kind of initial endowments to everybody.
Within the permitted rules a beneficial, optimal outcome is possible: "happiness (so far as it is possible on earth)." Now one might object that this suggests that nature is really no more than a meagre optimizer--Kant clearly is suggesting that in this life we do not acquire a maximal amount of happiness. Fair enough. But nature is not really optimizing happiness--happiness is a human by-product; in the first instance, she seems to be optimizing human self-esteem.
So far so good, nature has taken a planning problem and solved it! We can even imagine her using Euler's Theorem [see here for a brilliant tutorial by the great Joan Robinson]; she figures out the optimal incentive structure measured by the distribution of praise ("he alone should have the credit and should have only himself to thank"). The passage fits a general, providentially sanctioned Enlightenment optimism about engineered, human progress.
But, Kant's stance is more complicated. For, as others have noted, Kant is relying on an invisible hand process: "Each, according to his own inclination, follows his own purpose, often in opposition to others; yet each individual and people, as if following some guiding thread, go toward a natural but to each of them unknown goal."
Now, echoing Smith, Kant's invisible hand need not remain invisible: providence works in such a great way that at some point her plan for us can become known and this can be instrumental in furthering her ends (see, especially, Kant's ninth thesis). By making nature's hand visible, that is, introducing some 'knowledge' about nature into the mix, we can also make possible a new, genuinely optimal end among humans: that is, (world wide) "civic union." [Kant's essay belongs to the genre of philosophical prophecy.] So, by way of mutual competition we end up in a friction-free, harmonious end-state. ("The friction among men, the inevitable antagonism, which is a mark of even the largest societies and political bodies, is used by Nature as a means to establish a condition of quiet and security.")
Of course, Kant relies on a non-trivial asymmetry: our possible knowledge of nature is limited. Even though we can know nature's plan and even the laws by which it is executed (and in so knowing move the plan along), "we are too blind to see the secret mechanism of" nature's "workings." (Kant is navigating a delicate line among different kinds of blindness--too much blindness lands us in Epicurean "blind chance," too little blindness in Spinozist necessity!) So,we need to stipulate some secret (or esoteric) knowledge among the constitutional legislators (social planners); for Kant's providential system to work there can't be any trade among the legislators and the citizens, that is, they have to remain isolated communities. That's not so easy even when the planner is God/nature because it rules out, say, prayer or sacrifice on our part. (Adam Smith thought that monotheism solved a market failure for slaves, who lacked property for sacrifice, in a pagan world; monotheists God was willing to accept otherwise worthless coin: prayer. [See also my remarks on Derrida/Condillac.])
Moreover, the revealed distribution of rewards does not adequately capture the marginal contribution of all the relevant factors. To be clear within the constitutional framework and once we leave aside initial endowments, one's credit might roughly matches one's marginal contribution. This is made possible by the limitless generosity of nature. In order to set up the the right rules, "a superior intelligence beholding all the passions of men without experiencing any of them would be needed." (Rousseau) It is an irony lost on those philosophers that babble (recall) on about marginal productivity equalling wages in what is said to be a free market, that it would require a God-like character to bring about this circumstance. (How would one reward that contribution?)
Moreover, Kant diagnoses a more subtle market failure in rewards. Leaving aside nature's gifts, we are inheritors of past labor:
"It remains strange that the earlier generations appear to carry through their toilsome labor only for the sake of the later, to prepare for them a foundation on which the later generations could erect the higher edifice which was Nature’s goal, and yet that only the latest of the generations should have the good fortune to inhabit the building on which a long line of their ancestors had (unintentionally) labored without being permitted to partake of the fortune they had prepared."
Whatever rewards past generations receive for their marginal contribution, our benefits are not priced into their labor. This is a matter of "fortune." Even if we take posterior fame as the proper currency, we tend to remember only the "sovereigns," a "Kepler" and a "Newton." This is a clear market failure. At the start of Wealth Nations, Smith explicitly calls attention to the contribution of the inventions of nameless common workmen, even a "boy." So, Kant's providential nature presupposes considerable unfairness that can only be rectified in heaven.
But the only immortality Kant discusses is that "the species is immortal." This notion of immortality is not introduced to ensure that everybody receives their marginal contribution somewhere (say, in heaven); rather, it is needed to prevent paradoxes arising from a last generation, which -- if perfectly unified and perfectly happy -- would have no incentive to keep working. So, Kant's perfect legislator works with a very long run: an infinite horizon. (Recall Foucault on theistic economics.)
Now, I am not denying that ideas that presuppose infinite horizons, perfectly wise legislators, and incentive-compatible reward mechanisms have "some use;" but I would prefer my defense of liberty on more humble and securer foundations.
Recent Comments