Religion Within the Limits of Reason Alone, pages 85-86
Victory of virtue requires a social & political order
“Now man is in this perilous state through his own fault;
hence he is bound at the very least to strive with all his might to extricate himself from it. But
how? That is the question. When he looks around for the causes and circumstances which expose
him to this danger and keep him in it, he can easily convince himself that he is subject to
these not because of his own gross nature, so far as he is here a separate individual,
but because of mankind to whom he is related and bound.
It is not at the instigation of the former that what should properly be called the passions,
which cause such havoc in his original good predisposition, are aroused. His needs are but few
and his frame of mind in providing for them is temperate and tranquil. He is poor (or considers
himself so) only in his anxiety lest other men consider him poor and despise him on that account.
Envy, the lust for power, greed, and the malignant inclinations bound up with these,
besiege his nature, contented within itself, as soon as he is among men.
And it is not even necessary to assume that these are men sunk in evil and examples to lead
him astray; it suffices that they are at hand, that they surround him, and that they are men,
for them mutually to corrupt each other’s predispositions and make one another evil.
If no means could be discovered for the forming of an alliance uniquely designed
as a protection against this evil and for the furtherance of goodness in man—of a society,
enduring, ever extending itself, aiming solely at the maintenance of morality,
and counteracting evil with united forces—this
association with others would keep man, however much, as a single individual, he may have done to
throw off the sovereignty of evil, incessantly in danger of falling back under its dominion.
As far as we can see, therefore, the sovereignty of the good principle is attainable, so far as
men can work toward it, only through the establishment and spread of a society
in accordance with, and for the sake of, the laws of virtue, a society whose task and duty it is
rationally to impress these laws in all their scope upon the entire human race.
For only thus can we hope for a victory of the good over the evil principle. In addition
to prescribing laws to each individual, morally legislative reason also unfurls a
banner of virtue as a rallying point for all who love the good, that they may gather beneath it and
thus at the very start gain the upper hand over the evil which is attacking them without rest.”
Interpretation This passage comes from
the start of Book Three of Kant’s Religion, titled “The Victory of the Good Over the Evil Principle,
and the Founding of a Kingdom of God on Earth.” Kant begins by noting that all of us as moral
individuals struggle to be good in the face of the evil principle,
our own selfishness and passionate nature. The origin of evil, he suggests,
is not the heart of man as an individual, but rather his presence in a social group.
Life among other people seems, in and of itself, to incline us to vicious passions and behaviors.
(We may think of Rousseau’s influence here.) Because its source is in our social life,
the solution to this evil must be social and political as well.
This means that the Categorical Imperative cannot be just an individual rule for conduct,
but must be a structural principle of a good human society. Only in such a
society can individuals consistently overcome the evil principle and live virtuous lives.
Thus Kant will turn in Book Three to describing the political and social order
required by his new ethical religion: an ethical commonwealth, or kingdom of virtue,
in which operate the same rational principles that undergird the Categorical Imperative.
As a final observation, let me note that this necessary political order must be
ever-expanding, until it governs the entire human race,
according to Kant. The victory of reason and virtue will be a global victory.