Kant and Classical Liberalism

This evening, after our make-shift academic conference for Academic Skills III and accompanying drinks, I began to read something I thought about reading for a while: the Cato Unbound edition on Immanuel Kant and Classical Liberalism.

Now, for those unfamiliar: Cato Unbound is a “Journal of Debate”published by the D.C.-based Cato Institute. While Cato is well-known as a Libertarian think tank, Cato Unbound takes no stance. Instead, a lead essay on a topic typically related to one of Cato’s policy research areas is contrasted with accompanying “response essays”. In this case, Mark D. White, a professor of philosophy and a Kant scholar at CUNY- Staten Island, argues that contra Ayn Rand and popular conception, Kant is best viewed as a classical liberal in line with Hayek, Spooner, and others.

White’s argument begins with Kant’s conception of the individual. Kant’s ethics, White claims, originate in “autonomy”, a capacity to make choices free from undue interference from either society, other individuals, or parts of ourselves outside of our moral code. Equal autonomy leads to all humans having a hypothetical state of dignity, which sets all persons at an equal level of moral value. It also is the characterizing feature of a person, as opposed to a ”thing”.

Kant’s famous universalization, proceeding from his second formulation of the categorical imperative, originates in this equal dignity of persons. No one has greater or lesser dignity than any other, so all must be held to the same moral standard. (This already has implications from governance, a la Michael Huemer’s conception of the problem of political authority: if dignity is equal among all persons, why does the state get to act otherwise than a non-state actor?)

Skipping over White’s rejection of Kant’s hypothetical status as a “rigid moralist”, as Rand was apt to characterize him to his sequitur on Kant’s philosophy of political authority, White introduces the “Universal principle of justice”: the state can only take actions in line with the rightful freedom of all. White claims this rightful freedom is the freedom to be treated not only as an end-in-oneself, but also to maintain the individual’s right of non-interference i.e. to maintain their right to autonomy. This framework leads him to believe Kant the ideal expositor of classical liberalism/libertarianism.

Three things stick out to me:

First, Kant’s characterization of ethics consisting of acting between two proscribed extremes seems to me derivative of Aristotle’s Virtue ethics and his Golden mean. e.g. courage laying between cowardice and foolhardiness. I’m not familiar enough with Kant’s intellectual pedigree to say, but it seems like there is a plausible relation there.

Second, I find it entirely unclear how dignity results from autonomy. It cannot be that we all are equal in how much we give into external-social/and internal-impulsive forces versus of moral code, as that is patently false; one needs only to read the lives of heroes or look at those who are disciplined to see so. (although it could be said that us normal persons who fall short are in fact fulfilling our own moral codes nonetheless. This moral code would have to be unconscious and implicit. Nonetheless, this seems to be a ridiculous objection. Why characterize morality in this way at all? It is much more useful to characterize morality as ideal action and impulse as what you feel like doing, in the moment.) It also cannot be that we all have the same capacity. After all, we do have evidence that certain brain structures and certain levels of neurochemicals, none to mention genetic factors, do play a role in action/non action, moral behavior, etc. (For example, I recall reading about a study in which persons with high natural levels of serotonin were more likely to be hyper-competitive in high-intensity sports, e.g. wrestling. Insofar as this is considered a virtue {and Plato certainly would} we are not equal in it.) How then would we characterize equal levels of autonomy, and therefore equal levels of dignity?

While I remain unconvinced that Kant himself was a classical liberal in the same sense as the American founders or Hayek, Prof. White has convinced me that Kant’s philosophy proffers a useful framework for the philosophy of freedom. I look forwards to reading and reflecting on the rest of the debate.