On the faculty ofdesire outer physician of the soul, one who nevertheless knows how to prescribe remedies that are for the most part not radical, but almost always merely palliative. 4 Where a great deal of affect is present, there is generally little passion; as with the French, who as a result of their vivacity are fickle in comparison with the Italians and Spaniards (as well as Indians and Chinese), who brood over revenge in their rage or are persistent in their love to the point of dementia. - Affects are honest and open, passions on the other hand are deceitful and hidden. The Chinese reproach the English with being impetuous and hotheaded, "like the Tartars"; but the English reproach the Chinese with being outand-out (though calm) deceivers, who do not allow this reproach to dissuade them at all in their passion. 5 - - Affect is like drunkenness that one sleeps off; passion is to be regarded as a dementia that broods over a representation which nestles itself deeper and deeper. -The person who loves to be sure can still remain quite clear-sighted; but the person who falls in love is inevitably blind to the faults of the beloved object, though the latter person will usually regain his sight eight days after the wedding. - Whoever is usually seized by affect like a fit .of madness, no matter how benign these affects may be, nevertheless resembles a deranged person; but since he quickly regrets the episode afterward, it is only a paroxysm that we call thoughtlessness. Some people even wish that they could get angry, and Socrates was doubtful as to whether it would not be good to get angry at times; but to have affect so much under one's control that one can coldbloodedly reflect whether one should get angry or not appears to be somewhat contradictory. - On the other hand, no human being wishes to have passion. For who wants to have himself put in chains when he can be free?
4
Marginal note in H: Affect is rash, but does not bear a grudge. If one gives it room, it is even amused at and loves that which has offended it. It is not hatred (passion). Love can be brought about by means of a momentary impression of a friendly smile, but quickly disappears.
5
But to be in love is a passion that one is never rid of. See also Parow 25: 416--417 and Menschenkunde 25: r I22-II2J.
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On the affects in particular A On the government ofthe mind with regard to the affects
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The principle of apathy - namely that the wise man must never be in a state of affect, not even in that of compassion with the misfortune of his best friend, is an entirely correct and sublime moral principle of the Stoic school; for affect makes us (more or less) blind. - Nevertheless, the wisdom of nature has planted in us the predisposition to compassion in order to handle the reins provisionally, until reason has achieved the necessary strength; that is to say, for the purpose of enlivening us, nature has added the incentive of pathological (sensible) impulse to the moral incentives for the good, as a temporary surrogate of reason. By the way, affect, considered by itself alone, is always imprudent; it makes itself incapable of pursuing its own end, and it is therefore unwise to allow it to come into being intentionally.- Nevertheless, reason, in representing the morally good by connecting its ideas with intuitions (examples) that have been imputed to them, can produce an enlivening of the will (in spiritual or political speeches to the people, or even in solitary speeches to oneself). Reason is thus enlivening the soul not as effect but rather as cause of an affect in respect to the good, and reason still always handles the reins, causing an enthusiasm of good resolution - an enthusiasm which, however, must be attributed to the faculty of desire and not to affect, as to a stronger sensible feeling. The natural gift of apathy, with sufficient strength of soul, is, as I have said,6 fortunate phlegm (in the moral sense). He who is gifted with it is, to be sure, on that account not yet a wise man, but he nevertheless has the support of nature, so that it will be easier for him to become one more easily than others. Generally speaking, it is not the intensity of a certain feeling that constitutes the affected state, but the lack of reflection in comparing this feeling with the sum of all feelings (of pleasure or displeasure). The rich person, whose servant clumsily breaks a beautiful and rare crystal goblet while carrying it around, would think nothing of this accident if, at the same moment, he were to compare this loss of one pleasure with the 6
See the remark on phlegm near .the beginning of §74.
On the faculty ofdesire
multitude of all the pleasures that his fortunate position as a rich man offers him. However, if he now gives himself over completely to this one feeling of pain (without quickly making that calculation in thought), then it is no wonder that, as a result, he feels as if his entire happiness were lost. B On the various affects themselves
The feeling that urges the subject to remain in the state he is in is agreeable; but the one that urges him to leave it is disagreeable. Combined with consciousness, the former is called enjoyment (voluptas), the latter lack of enjoyment (taedium). As affect the first feeling is called joy, the other sadness.- Exuberant joy (which is tempered by no concern about pain) and overwhelming sadness (which is alleviated by no hope), grief, are affects that threaten life. Nevertheless, we can see from the register of [zssl deaths that more human beings have lost their lives suddenly because of exuberant joy than because of grief. For the mind gives itself over completely to hope as an affect, owing to the unexpected offering of the prospect of immeasurable good fortune, and so the affect rises to the point of suffocation; on the other hand, continually fearful grief is naturally and always opposed by the mind, so that grief only kills slowly. Fright is suddenly aroused fear that disconcerts the mind. Similar to fright is the startling, 7 something that puzzles (though not yet alarms) us and arouses the mind to collect itself for reflection; it is the stimulus to astonishment (which already contains reflection in itself). This does not happen so easily to the experienced person; but it is proper for art to represent the usual from a point of view that will make it startling. Anger is fright that at the same time quickly stirs up powers to resist ill. Fear concerning an object that threatens an undetermined ill is anxiety. Anxiety can fasten on to someone without his knowing a particular object for it: an uneasiness arising from merely subjective causes (from a diseased state). Shame is anguish that comes from the worried contempt of a person who is present and, as such, it is an affect. Moreover, a person can also feel ashamed without the presence of the person before whom he is ashamed; however, then it is not an affect but, like grief, a passion for 7
das Auffallende.
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tormenting oneself persistently with contempt, but in vain; shame, on the other hand, as an affect, must occur suddenly. Affects are generally diseased occurrences (symptoms) and can be divided (by an analogy with Brown's system) 8 into sthenic affects, which come froni strength, and asthenic affects, which come from weakness. Sthenic affects are of such a nature as to excite the vital force, but in doing so they also often exhaust it as well; asthenic affects are of such a nature as to relax the vital force, but in doing so they often prepare for its recovery as well. - Laughing with affect is a convulsive cheerfulness. Weeping accompanies the meltir_~g sensation of a powerless wrath against fate or other human beings, like the sensation of an insult suffered from them; and this sensation is wistfulness. But both laughing and weeping cheer us up; for they are liberations from a hindrance to the vital force through their effusions (that is, we can laugh till we cry if we laugh till exhaustion). Laughing is masculine, weeping on the other hand is feminine (with men it is effeminate). And when tears glisten in a man's eyes, it is only his being moved to tears that can be forgiven, and this only if it comes from magnanimous but powerless sympathy with others' suffering, without letting the tears fall in drops, and still less if he accompanies them with sobs, thereby making a disgusting music.
On timidity and bravery9
§n Anxiety, anguish, horror, and terror are degrees of fear, that is, degrees of aversion to danger. The composure of the mind to take on fear with reflection is courage; the strength ofinner sense (Ataraxia) through which we do not easily allow ourselves to be put in fear is intrepidity. Lack of courage is cowardice; a lack of intrepidity is shyness. 10 8
9
John Bl"cl'wn (1735-I78S), English physician, author of Elementa Medicinae {r78o). Brown held that thci essence ofliving organisms consists in excitability, and called an excess of excitability the state of sthenia, and a lack of excitability the state of asthenia.
Von der Furchtsamkeit und tier Tapferkeit.
• The word poltroon (derived from pollex truncates) was rendered with murcus in later Latin and signified a human being who chops offhis thumb in order not to be allowed to go to war. [Claudius Salmasius (rs88-r653), French humanist and philologist, first created this etymology. However, the derivation is no longer accepted. On murcus, see also Ammianus Marcellinus 15.12.3- Ed.] 10
Marginal note in H: On vigorous and softening affects {tears, which provoke laughter)- On shame and audacity.
154
On the faculty ofdesire Stout-hearted is he who does not become frightened; courage has he who in reflecting on danger does not yield; brave is he whose courage is constant in danger. Foolhardy is the reckless person who ventures into dangers because he does not recognize them. Bold is he who ventures into dangers although he is aware of them; reckless, he who places himself in the greatest danger at the obvious impossibility of achieving his end (like Charles XII at Bender). n The Turks call their brave men (who are perhaps brave through opium) madmen. -Cowardice is thus dishonorable despair. Fright is not a habitual characteristic to be seized easily with fear, for this is called timidity; it is merely a state and accidental disposition, dependent for the most part merely on bodily causes, of feeling not prepared enough against a suddenly arising danger. When the unexpected approach of the enemy is announced to a commander who is in his dressing gown, this can easily stop the blood in the ventricles of the heart for an instant, and a certain general's physician noted that he was fainthearted and timid when he had acid indigestion. Stout-heartedness, however, is merely a quality of temperament. Courage, on the other hand, rests on principles and is a virtue. Reason then gives the resolute man strength that nature sometimes denies him. Being frightened in battle even produces salutary evacuations that have proverbially given rise to mockery (not having one's heart in the right place); but it has been noticed that those very sailors who at the call of combat hurry to their place of performance are afterward the most courageous in battle. The same thing has also been noted in the heron when the falcon hovers over him and he prepares himself for battle against it. Accordingly, patience is not courage. Patience is a feminine virtue; for it does not muster the force for resistance, but hopes to make suffering (enduring) imperceptible through habit. He who cries out under the surgeon's knife or under the pain of gout or stone is therefore not cowardly or weak in this condition; his cry is like cursing when one is The feeling through which nature strives to maintain itself in exactly the same condition is agreeable; however, that through which it is driven to go beyond it is unpleasant. That which is neither of the two is indifferent Anger belongs to the faculty of desire Anger is near Hallucinatio. Affects stimulate the circulation of the blood. I I
Charles XII ( 1682-1718), King of Sweden, was defeated by the Russians. See Voltaire, Histoire de Charles XII. In Voltaire's entry on "Characters" in his Dictionary, he remarks: "Charles XII in his illness on the way to Bender was no longer the same man; he was tractable as a child."
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out walking and bumps against a loose cobblestone (with one's big toe, from which the word hallucinari is derived}' 2 - it is rather an outburst of anger in which nature endeavors to break up the constriction of blood in the heart through cries.- However, the Indians of America display a particular kind of patience: when they are encircled they throw away their weapons and, without begging for mercy, calmly let themselves be massacred. Now in doing this, do they show more courage than the Europeans, who in this situation defend themselves to the last man? To me it seems to be merely a barbaric conceit by means of which to preserve the honor of their tribe, so that their enemy could not force them to lament and groan as evidence of their submission. However, courage as affect (consequently belonging in one respect to sensibility) can also be aroused by reason and thus be genuine bravery (strength of virtue). 13 If, in doing something worthy of honor, we do not allow ourselves to be intimidated by taunts and derisive ridicule of it, which is all the more dangerous when sharpened by wit, but instead pursue our own course steadfastly, we display a moral courage which many who show themselves as brave figures on the battlefield or in a duel do not possess. That is to say, to venture something that duty commands, even at the risk of being ridiculed by others, requires resoluteness, and even a high degree of courage; because love of honor is the constant companion of virtue, and he who is otherwise sufficiently prepared against violence seldom feels equal to ridicule if someone scornfully refuses this claim to honor. The propriety which presents an external semblance of courage, so that one does not compromise one's respect in comparing oneself to others, is called audacity; it is the opposite of timidity, a kind of shyness and concern not to appear favorably in the eyes of others.- As reasonable confidence in oneself, audacity cannot be reproached. 14 But the kind of
12
13 14
Kant, fOllowing philologists of the time, derives the word "hallucinate" from the Latin allex (the big toe) instead of the Greek alaomai (to wander or roam about). This derivation is no longer accepted. See also Kant's discussion of virtue as fortitude in The Metaphysics ofMorals 6: 380, as well as his remarks about bravery as moral strength at 6: 405. Marginal note in H: The grotesque, the gout baroc, the a Ia Cree, and the arabesque are all a false taste. In all affects the mind is moved by means of fotura consequentia. Fear is also in all of them. However, not the affects of anger or shame. Courage, which belongs to virtue (the virtue of bravery), occurs not merely in physical dangers or in those who died for external honors, but also in those who instead risked a little of the ridicule
On the faculty ofdesire audacityb in propriety that gives someone the semblance of not caring about the judgment of others concerning himself is impudence, impertinence, or, in milder terms, immodesty; it thus does not belong to courage in the moral sense of the term. Whether suicide also presupposes courage, or always despondency only, is not a moral question but merely a psychological one. ' 5 If it is committed merely in order not to outlive one's honor, therefore out of anger, then it appears to be courage; however, if it is due to exhaustion of patience in suffering as a result of sadness, which slowly exhausts all patience, then it is an act of despair. It seems to be a kind of heroism to the human being to look death straight in the eye and not fear it, when he can no longer love life. But if, although he fears death, he still cannot stop loving life in all circ*mstances, so that in order to proceed to suicide a mental disorder stemming from anguish must precede, then he dies of cowardice, because he can no longer bear the agonies oflife. -To a certain extent the manner of execution of the suicide allows this distinction of mental state to be recognized. If the chosen means are sudden and fatal without possible rescue, as in, for example, a pistol shot or a strong dose of mercury chloride (as a great king carried with him in war, in case he should be taken prisoner), ' 6 or deep water with one's pockets full of stones, then we cannot contest the courage of the person .who has committed suicide. However, if the chosen means are a rope that can still be cut by others, or an ordinary poison that can be removed from his body by the physician, or a slit in the throat that can be sewn up again and healed - attempts in which the subject, when he is saved, is himself normally happy and never attempts it again- then it is cowardly despair
of others, and this is pure moral courage. Knight Bayard Murcus. b
This word should really be written Driiustigkeit (from driiuen or drohen), not Dreistigkeit; because the tone or expression of such a human being makes others fear that he could also be crude. In the same way we write liederlich for liiderlich, although the former signifies a careless, mischievous, but otherwise not useless, good-natured human being, whereas liiderlich signifies a depraved human being who disgusts everyone else (from the word Luder}. [Neither of Kant's etymologies is accepted at present - Ed.]
'5
Kant does discuss suicide as a moral question elsewhere. See, e.g., The Metaphysics of Morals 6: 422-424 and Collins Moralphilosophie 27: 342, 346, 369--375, 391, 394, 1427-1428. I.e., Friedrich the Great (1712-t786), King of Prussia (174o-1786). Kiilpe refers readers to A. F. Biischling, Charakter Friedrichs des zweyten, 2nd ed. (1789), p. 431, where the author states that Frederick carried poison with him during the Seven Years War (1756-1763).
'6
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Anthropological Didactic from weakness, not vigorous despair, which still requires a strong frame of mind for such an act. It is not always just depraved, worthless souls who decide to rid themselves of the burden of life in this manner; on the contrary, we need not fear that such people, who have no feeling for true honor, will easily perform an act of this kind. - Although suicide will always remain horrible, and though by committing it the human being makes himself into a monster, still it is noteworthy that in times of public and legally declared injustice during a revolutionary state of affairs (for example, the Public Welfare Committee of the French Republic), honor-loving men (for example, Roland) 17 have sought to forestall execution by law through suicide, which in a constitutional state of affairs they themselves would have declared to be reprehensible. The reason for it is this: in every execution under a law there is something disgraceful, because it is punishment, and when the punishment is unjust, the man who falls victim to the law cannot acknowledge the punishment as one that is deserved. He proves it, however, owing to the fact that, having been doomed to death, he now prefers to choose death as a free human being and he inflicts it on himself. That is why tyrants (such as Nero) viewed it as a mark of favor to allow the condemned person to kill himself, because then it happened with more honor. 18 - - However, I do not desire to defend the morality of this. The courage of the warrior is still quite different from that of the duellist, even if the government takes an indulgent view of duelling, though without making it publicly permissible by law, and the army makes it a matter of honor as, so to speak, self-defense against insult, in
17
18
Jean Marie Roland de Ia Platiere (1734-1793), French revolutionary. Roland rose to power with the Girondists and became minister of the interior in 1792. King Louis XVI dismissed him in July, 1792, but he was restored to office after the overthrow of the monarchy in August, 1792. Accused of royalism in 1793, he resigned and fled Paris. When he learned that his wife (Jeanne Manon Phlipon Roland de Ia Platiere, also a well-known French revolutionary and Girondist) had been executed, he committed suicide on November 15, 1793 by falling upon his sword and piercing his heart. Marginal note in H: Thirst for revenge (faculty of desire) is a weakness Whether he who pales or blushes from anger is more dangerous? One can also have a moral love of enjoyment as well as one of benevolence. However, the former can become enthusiastic. (Love of benevolence.) Affect of morality. On the quantity of enthusiasm in religion, which, the higher it rises, the more it is purified of the sensible.... in what is moral.
On the faculty ofdesire which the commander-in-chief does not interfere. - In adopting the terrible principle of winking at the duel, the head of state has not reflected on it properly; for there are also worthless people who risk their lives in order to count for something, and those who put their own life on the line for the preservation of the state are not at all meant here. Bravery is courage in conformity with law; the courage, in doing what duty commands, not to shrink even from the loss of life. Fearlessness alone is of no consequence; rather, it must be joined with moral irreproachability (mens conscia recti), as in Sir Bayard (chevalier sans peur et sans reproche). 19
On affects that weaken themselves with respect to their end (impotentes animi motusyo
The affects of anger and shame have the peculiarity that they weaken themselves with respect to their end. They are suddenly aroused feelings of an evil21 in the form of an insult; however, because of their intensity they are at the same time unable to avert the evil. Who is more to be feared, he who turns pale in intense anger, or he who turns red in this situation? The first is to be feared immediately; the second is all the more to be feared later (on account ofhis vindictiveness). In the first case, the disconcerted person is frightened of himself; frightened that he will be carried away by the intensity of his use of violence, which he might later regret. In the second case fright suddenly changes into fear that his consciousness of his inability to defend himself might become visible.- Neither affect is detrimental to health if people are able to give vent to anger through the quick composure of the mind; but where this is not possible, then in part they are dangerous to life itself or, when their outbreak is restrained, in part they bequeath a rancor, that is, a mortification at not having responded in the proper way to an insult. Such rancor, however, is avoided if people can only have a chance to express the affects in words. But both affects are of the kind that make '9
20
Translation of Latin: a mind that knows what is right. Translation of French: the knight without fear or blame. Pierre Terrail, seigneur de Bayard (c. 1474-1524), French military hero, exhibited bravery and genius as a commander in the Italian Wars, and died in the battle of Sesia. Trans.: The disabled movements of the mind. ., ein Ubel.
I
59
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people speechless, and for this reason they present themselves in an unfavorable light. It is true that hot temper can be diminished through inner discipline of the mind; but the weakness of an extremely delicate feeling of honor that manifests itself in shame does not allow itself to be removed so easily. For as Home says22 (who himself was affected by this weakness- shyness about speaking in public), if the first attempt at audacity fails, it only makes us more timid; and there is no other remedy but to start our intercourse with people whose judgment concerning propriety matters little to us, and gradually23 get away from the supposed importance of the judgment of others concerning us, and in this way inwardly to consider ourselves on an equal footing with them. The habit here produces candor, which is equally far removed from shyness and insulting audacity. We sympathize with another person's shame in so far as it is painful to him, but we do not sympathize with his anger if he tells us with the affect of anger what provoked his anger; for while he is in such a state, the one who listens to his story (of an insult suffered) is himself not safe. 24 Surprise (confusion at finding oneself in an unexpected situation) at first impedes the natural play of thought and is therefore unpleasant; but later it promotes the influx of thought to the unexpected representation all the more and thus becomes an agreeable excitement of feeling. However, this affect is properly called astonishment only if we are thereby quite uncertain whether the perception takes place when we are awake or dreaming. A newcomer in the world is surprised at everything; but he who has become acquainted with the course of things through varied experience makes it a principle to be surprised at nothing (nihil admiran). On the other hand, he who thoughtfully and with a scrutinizing eye pursues the order of nature in its great variety falls into astonishment at a wisdom he did not expect: an admiration from which he cannot tear himself away (he cannot be surprised enough). However, such an.affect is stimulat~d only by reason, and is a kind of sacred awe at seeing the abyss of the slipersensible opening before one's feet. •• "Of Impudence and Modesty," in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller (Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1987), pp. 553f. " 3 Crossed out in H: gradually [to progress in dealings with him whose judgment is more significant, and thus further up to that of the most important person's more candid display of himself, which belongs to complete education. toward]. ' 4 Marginal note in H: ob fotura consequentia [trans.: on account of what the consequences will be]. 160
On the faculty ofdesire
On the affects by which nature promotes health mechanically §79
Health is promoted mechanically by nature through several affects. Laughing and crying in particular belong here. Anger is also a fairly reliable aid to digestion, if one can scold freely (without fear of resistance), and many a housewife has no other emotional exercise25 than the scolding of her children and servants. Now if the children and servants only submit patiently to it, an agreeable tiredness of the vital force spreads itself uniformly through her body; 26 however, this remedy is also not without its dangers, since she fears resistance by these members of the household. Good-natured laughing (not malicious laughing combined with bitterness) is on the other hand more popular and more fruitful: namely the kind of laughter that someone should have recommended to the Persian king who offered a prize to anyone "who would invent a new pleasure."The jerky (nearly convulsive) exhaling of air attached to laughter (of which sneezing is only a small but enlivening effect, if its sound is allowed to go unrestrained) strengthens the feeling of vital force through the wholesome exercise of the diaphragm. It may be a hired jester (harlequin) who makes us laugh, or a sly wit belonging to our circle of friends, a wag who seems to have no mischief in mind and does not join in the laughter, but with seeming simplicity suddenly releases a tense anticipation (like a taut string). The resulting laughter is always a shaking of the muscles involved in digestion, which promotes it far better than the physician's wisdom would do. Even a great absurdity of mistaken judgment can produce exactly the same effect, though at the expense of the allegedly cleverer man. c •s keine andere innigliche Motion. c
"6 durch die Maschine.
Many examples of this latter point could be given. But I shall cite only one, which I heard from the lips of the late Countess ofK- g, a lady who was a credit to her sex [Countess Charlotte Amalie von Keyserling (1729-1791). Kant was a frequent dinner guest at her estate - Ed.]. Count Sagramoso, who had been commissioned to establish the Order of the Knights of Malta in Poland (of Ostrogothic appointment), visited her, and by chance a schoolmaster appeared on the scene who was a native of Konigsberg and was visiting his relatives in Prussia, but who had been brought to Hamburg as organizer and curator of the natural history collection that some rich merchants kept as their hobby. In order to talk to him about something, the Count spoke in broken 161
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Weeping, an inhaling that occurs with (convulsive) sobs, when it is combined with an outburst of tears, is, as a soothing remedy, likewise a provision of nature for health; and a widow who, as one says, refuses to allow herself to be comforted - that is, who does not want the flow of tears to be stopped - is taking care of her health without knowing it or really wanting to. Anger, which might arise in this situation, would quickly check the flood of tears, but to her detriment; although not only sadness but also anger can bring women and children to tears. For their foeling of powerlessness against an evil, together with a strong affect (be it anger or sadness), calls upon the assistance of external natural signs which then (according to the right of the weaker) at least disarm a masculine soul. However, this expression of tenderness, as a weakness of the sex, must not move the sympathetic man to shedding tears, though it may well bring tears to his eyes; for in the first case he would violate his own sex and thus with his femininity not be able to serve as protector for the weaker sex, and in the second case he would not show the sympathy toward the other sex that his masculinity makes his duty- the duty, namely, of taking the other sex under his protection as befits the character that books of chivalry attribute to the brave man, which consists precisely in this protection. But why do young people prefer tragic drama and also prefer to perform it when they want to give their parents a treat; whereas old people prefer comedy, even burlesque? The reason for the former is in part exactly the same as the one that moves children to risk danger: presumably, by an instinct of nature to test their powers. But it is also partly because, given the frivolity of youth, no melancholy is left over from the distressing and terrifying impressions the moment the play has ended, but rather there is only a pleasant tiredness after vigorous
German: "lck abe in Amberg eine Ant geabt (ich habe in Hamburg eine Tante gehabt); aber die ist mir gestorbe~" [I have an aunt in Hamburg; but she is dead- Ed.] The schoolmaster immediately
pounced on the word Ant and asked: "Why didn't you have her skinned and stuffed?" He took the English word aunt, which means Tante, for Ente [duck-Ed.] and, because it occurred to him that it must have been a very rare specimen, deplored the great loss. One can imagine what laughter this misunderstanding must have caused. Marginal note in H: I refrain here from examples, but xx. Deep sigh. Sagramoso 3· the hieroglyphic, mysterious, intimating (a Ia Grecque} 4· that which is seen in a dream {arabesque}, both of them at the edges.
On the faculty ofdesire internal exercise, which puts them once again in a cheerful mood. On the other hand, with old people these impressions are not so easily blotted out, and they cannot bring back the cheerful mood in themselves so easily. By his antics a nimble-witted harlequin produces a beneficial shaking of their diaphragm and intestines, by which their appetite for the ensuing social supper is whetted, and thrives as a result of the lively conversation. 27
General remark Certain internal physical feelings are related to the affects, but they are not themselves affects because they are only momentary, transitory, and leave no trace of themselves behind: the shuddering that comes over children when they listen at night to their nurses' ghost stories is like this. - Shivering, as if one were being doused with cold water (as in a rainstorm), also belongs here. Not the perception of danger, but the mere thought of danger - though one knows that none is present - produces this sensation, which, when it is merely a moment of fright and not an outbreak of it, seems not to be disagreeable. Dizziness and even seasicknesl8 seem to belong, according to their cause, to the class of such imaginary dangers. 29 One can advance without tottering on a board that is lying on the ground; but if it lies over an abyss or, for someone with weak nerves, merely over a ditch, then the empty apprehension of danger often becomes really dangerous. The rolling of a ship even i.n a mild wind is an alternate sinking and being lifted up. With the sinking there occurs the effort of nature to raise itself (because all sinking generally carries the representation of danger with it); consequently the up and down movement of the stomach and intestines is connected mechanically with an impulse to vomit, which is then intensified when the patient looks out of the cabin window, catching alternate glimpses of the sky and the sea, whereby the illusion that the seat is giving way under him is even further heightened. '7
Marginal note in H: Striking, the remarkable, what puzzles, what excites the attention as
unexpected and in which one cannot immediately find oneself, is an inhibition with an outpouring following thereafter. ' 8 See also Kant's foomote at the beginning of §29, where he refers to his own experience with seasickness. '9
ideate Gefahren.
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[265]
An actor who is himself unmoved, but otherwise possesses understanding and a strong faculty of the power of imagination, can often stir others more by an affected (artificial) affect than by the real one. In the presence of his beloved, a serious lover is embarrassed, awkward, and not very captivating. But a man who merely pretends to be in love and has talent can play his role so naturally that he gets the poor deceived girl completely into his trap, just because his heart is unaffected and his head is clear; consequently he is in full possession of the free use of his skill and power to imitate the appearance of a lover very naturally. Good-natured (openhearted) -laughter is sociable (in so far as it belongs to the affect of cheerfulness); malicious (sneering) laughter is hostile. The distracted person (like Terrasson30 entering solemnly with his night cap instead of his wig on his head and his hat under his arm, full of the quarrel concerning the superiority of the ancients and the moderns with respect to the sciences), often gives rise to the first type oflaughter; he is laughed at, but still not ridiculed. We smile at the intelligent eccentric, but it doesn't cost him anything; he joins in the laughter. - A mechanical (spiritless) Iaugher is insipid and makes the social gathering tasteless. He who never laughs at all at a social gathering is either sullen or pedantic. Children, especially girls, must be accustomed early to frank and unrestrained smiling, because the cheerfulness of their facial features gradually leaves a mark within and establishes a disposition to cheerfulness, friendliness, and sociability, which is an early preparation for this approximation to the virtue of benevolence. A good-natured and at the same time cultivated way of stimulating a social gathering is to have someone in it as the butt of our wit (to pull his leg) without being caustic (to mock him without being offensive), provided that he is prepared to reply in kind with his own wit, thus bringing a cheerful laughter into the group. But if this happens at the expense of a simpleton whom one tosses to another like a ball, then the laughter
Abbe Jean Terrasson (r67o-I750), French author. Brandt locates the anecdote in Johann Christoph Gottsched, ed., Des Abbts Terrassons Philosophie, nach ihrem allgemeine Einf/usse, auf aile Gegenstiinde des Geistes und der Sitten (1756), pp. 45-46. Kant mentions Terrasson in a variety of texts- see, e.g., Friedlander 25: 540, Collins 25: 27, 136, Parow 25: 344, Mrongovius 25: 1350, Critique ofPure Reason Axix, Essay on the Diseases of the Head 2: 269.
On the faculty ofdesire a fool of, then it is a proof of bad taste as well as obtuse moral feeling on the part of those who can burst out laughing about this. However, the position of a court jester, whose function is to tease the king's distinguished servants and thus season the meal through laughter for the sake of the beneficial shaking of his diaphragm, is, depending on how one takes it, above or below all criticism.
On the passions §So The subjective possibility of the emergence of a certain desire, which precedes the representation of its object, is propensity (propensio); - the inner necessitation of the faculty of desire to take possession of this object before one even knows it is instinct (like the sexual instinct, or the parental instinct of the animal to protect its young, and so forth). - A sensible desire that serves the subject as a rule (habit) is called inclination (inclinatio ). -Inclination that prevents reason from comparing it with the sum of all inclinations in respect to a certain choice is passion (passio animt). Since passions can be paired with the calmest reflection, it is easy to see that they are not thoughtless, like affects, or stormy and transitory; rather, they take root and can even co-exist with rationalizing. - It is also easy to see that they do the greatest damage to freedom, and if affect is drunkenness, then passion is an illness that abhors all medicine, and it is therefore far worse than all those transitory emotions31 that at least stir up the resolution to be better; instead, passion is an enchantment that also refuses recuperation. One uses the term mania to designate passion (mania for honor, revenge, dominance, and so on), except for the passion of love, when it is not a case of being in love. The reason is that once the latter desire has been satisfied (by enjoyment), the desire, at least with regard to the very person involved, also stops. So one can list being passionately in love [among the passions] (as long as the other party persists in refusal), but one cannot list any physical love as passion, because it does not contain a constant principle with respect to its object. Passion always presupposes
3'
vorobergehende Gemiithsbewegungen.
[266]
Anthropological Didactic a maxim on the part of the subject, to act according to an end prescribed to him by his inclination. Passion is therefore always connected with his reason, and one can no more attribute passion to mere animals than to pure rational beings. The manias for honor, revenge, and so forth, just because they are never completely satisfied, are therefore counted among the passions as illnesses for which there is only a palliative remedy.
§81
[z67]
Passions are cancerous sores for pure practical reason, and for the most part they are incurable because the sick person does not want to be cured and flees from the dominion of principles, by which alone a cure could occur. In the sensibly practical too, reason goes from the general to the particular according to the principle: not to please one inclination by placing all the rest in the shade or in a dark corner, but rather to see to it that it can exist together with the totality of all inclinations. - The ambition of a human being may always be an inclination whose direction is approved by reason; but the ambitious person nevertheless also wants to be loved by others; he needs pleasant social intercourse with others, the maintenance of his financial position, and the like. However, if he is a passionately ambitious person, then he is blind to these ends, though his inclinations still summon him to them, and he overlooks completely the risk he is running that he will be hated by others, or avoided in social intercourse, or impoverished through his expenditures. It is folly (making part of one's end the whole) which directly contradicts the formal principle of reason itself. That is why passions are not, like affects, merely unfortunate states of mind full of many ills, but are without exception evil as well. And the most good-natured desire, even when it aims at what (according to matter) belongs to virtue, for example, beneficence, is still (according to form) riot merely pragmatically ruinous but also morally reprehensible, as soon as it turns into passion. Affect does a momentary damage to freedom and dominion over oneself. Passion abandons them and finds its pleasure and satisfaction in a slavish mind. But because reason still does not ease off with its summons to inner freedom, the unhappy man groans in his chains, which he nevertheless cannot break away from because they have already grown together with his limbs, so to speak. 166
On the faculty ofdesire Nevertheless, the passions have also found their eulogists32 (for where are they not found, once maliciousness has taken its seat among principles?), and it is said that "nothing great has ever been accomplished in the world without intense passions, and that Providence itself has wisely planted passions in human nature just like elastic springs. " 33 -Concerning the many inclinations, it may readily be admitted that those of a natural and animal need are ones that living nature (even that of the human being) cannot do without. But Providence has not willed that inclinations might, indeed even should, become passions. And while we may excuse a poet for presenting them from this point of view (that is, for saying with Pope: 34 "If reason is a magnet, then the passions are the wind"), the philosopher must not accept this principle, not even in order to praise the passions as a provisional arrangement of Providence, which would have intentionally placed them in human nature until the human race had reached the proper degree of culture.
Division of the passions The35 passions are divided into passions of natural (innate) inclination and passions of inclination that result from human culture (acquired). The passions of the first kind are the inclinations offreedom and sex, both of which are connected with affect. Those of the second kind are the manias for honor, dominance, and possession, which are not connected with the impetuosity of an affect but with the persistence of a maxim established for certain ends. The former can be called inflamed passions (passiones ardentes); the latter, like avarice, cold passions (frigidae). All passions, however, are always only desires directed by human beings to human beings, not to things; and while we can indeed have great inclination toward the utilization of a fertile field or a productive cow,
32 33
34
35
Kiilpe conjectures that Kant has Helvetius in mind- see De /'esprit m.6--8. Springfedern. The source of the remark is not known. See also Essay on the Diseases of the Head2: 267. Alexander Pope (1688--1744), Essay on Man, Epistle 2, line 108: "Reason the card, but Passion is the gale." Kant probably used Brockes's German translation (1740) for this quotation. Crossed out in H: The [are according to the chief classification A.) those of external freedom, therefore a passion of negative enjoyment, B. those of capacity, therefore passion of positive enjoyment either a.) of the
[268]
Anthropological Didactic we can have no affection for them (which consists in the inclination toward community with others), much less a passion.
A On the inclination to freedom as a passion §Sz
For the natural human being this is the most violent36 inclination of all, in a condition where he cannot avoid making reciprocal claims on others. Whoever is able to be happy only according to another person's choice (no matter how benevolent this other person may be) rightly feels that he is unhappy. For what guarantee has he that his powerful fellow human being's judgment about his well-being will agree with his own? The savage (not yet habituated to submission) knows no greater misfortune than to have this befall him, and rightly so, as long as no public law protects him until the time when discipline has gradually made him patient in submission. Hence his state of continuous warfare, by which he intends to keep others as far away from him as possible and to live scattered in the wilderness. Even the child who has just wrenched itself from the mother's womb seems to enter the world with loud cries, unlike all other animals, simply because it regards the inability to make use of its limbs as constraint, and thus it immediately announces its claim to freedom (a representation that no other animal has). d -Nomadic peoples, for 36 d
Natural human being: Naturmensch; most violent: heftigste.
Lucretius, as a poet, interprets this indeed remarkable phenomenon in the animal kingdom differently: Vagituque locum lugubri complet, ut aequumst Cui tantum in vita restet transire malorum! [Trans.: And fills the air with lamenting cries As it befits someone who still has to go through so much evil in his life. De rerum natura 5.227f. -Ed.]
[269]
Now the newborn child certainly cannot have this perspective; but the fact that his feeling of uncomfurtableness is not due to bodily pain but to an obscure idea (or a representation analogous to it) offreedom and its hindrance, injustice, is disclosed a few months later after the birth by the tears which accompany his screaming; they indicate a kind of exasperation when he strives to approach certain objects or in general merely strives to change his position and feels himself hindered in it. - This impulse to have his own way and to take any obstacle to it as an affront is marked particularly by his tone, and manifests a maliciousness that the mother finds necessary to punish, but he usually replies with still louder shrieking. The same thing happens when the child falls through his own fault. The young of other animals play, those of the human being quarrel early with each other, and it is as if a certain concept of justice (which relates to external freedom) develops along with their animality, and is not something to be learned gradually.
168
On the faculty ofdesire example, the Arabs, since they (like pastoral peoples) are not attached to any land, cling so strongly to their way of life, even though it is not entirely free of constraint, and moreover they are so high-spirited, that they look with contempt on settled peoples, and the hardship that is inseparable from their way of life has not been able to dissuade them from it over thousands of years. Mere hunting peoples (like the OlenniTungusz)37 have really ennobled themselves by this feeling of freedom (which has separated them from other tribes related to them).- Thus it is not only the concept of freedom under moral laws that arouses an affect, which is called enthusiasm, 38 but the mere sensible representation of outer freedom heightens the inclination to persist in it or to extend it into a violent passion, by analogy with the concept of right. With mere animals, even the most violent inclination (for example, the inclination to sexual union) is not called passion: because they have no reason, which alone establishes the concept of freedom and with which passion comes into collision. Accordingly, the outbreak of passion can be attributed to the human being.- It is said of human beings that they love certain things passionately (drinking, gambling, hunting) or hate them passionately (for example, musk or brandy). But one does not exactly call these various inclinations or disinclinations so many passions, because they are 39 only so many different instincts; that is, only so many different states of mere passivity in the faculty of desire, and they deserve to be classified, not according to the objects of the faculty of desire as things (which are innumerable), but rather according to the principle of the use or abuse that human beings make of their person and of their freedom under each other, when one human being makes another a mere means to his ends. - Passions actually are directed only to human beings and can also only be satisfied by them.
37
38
39
A Siberian ethnic group. See also Lectures on Physical Geography 9: 401-402. Enthusiasm. Crossed out in H: passion B The inclination toward possession of the capacity in general without using it is also passion. [One can love or hate something passionately, but merely through instinct, where understanding adds nothing, as with physical love of sex (physische Liebe des Geschlechts); but then the inclination is directed not to the species of the object but merely to the individual
[269]
[2 7o]
Anthropological Didactic These passions are the manias for honor, for dominance, and for possession. Since passions are inclinations that aim merely at the possession of the means for satisfying all inclinations which are concerned directly with the end, they have, in this respect, the appearance of reason; that is, they aspire to the idea of a faculty connected with freedom, by which alone ends in general can be attained. Possessing the means to whatever aims one chooses certainly extends much further than the inclination directed to one single inclination and its satisfaction. - Therefore they can also be called inclinations of delusion, which delusion consists in valuing the mere opinion of others regarding the worth of things as equal to their real worth. 40
B On the desire for vengeance as a passion
Passions can only be inclinations directed by human beings to human beings, in so far as they are directed to ends that harmonize or conflict with one another, that is, in so far as they are love or hatred. But the concept of right, because it follows directly from the concept of outer freedom, is a much more important and strongly moving impulse to the will than benevolence. So hatred arising from an injustice we have suffered, that is, the desire for vengeance, is a passion that follows irresistibly from the nature of the human being, and, malicious as it may be, maxims of reason are nevertheless interwoven with the inclination by virtue of the permissible desire for justice, whose analogue it is. This is why the desire for vengeance is one of the most violent and deeply rooted
40
Marginal note in H: The capacity to use the power of others for one's purposes Crossed ii'ut in H: worth. Division of the Passions
Passions are inclinations directed by human beings only to human beings, not to things, and even if the inclination to human beings fades away, not in so far as they are considered persons but merely as animal beings of the same species, in the inclination to sex, love to be sure can be passionate, but actually cannot be named a passion, because the latter presupposes maxims (not mere instinct) in proceedings with human beings. Freedom, law (of justice), and capacity (for carrying out) are not mere conditions, but also objects of a faculty of desire of the human being extended to passion, whereby practical reason underlies the inclination, since it proceeds according to maxims. 170
On the faculty ofdesire passions; even when it seems to have disappeared, a secret hatred, called rancor, is always left over, like a fire smoldering under the ashesY The desire to be in a state and relation with one's fellow human beings such that each can have the share that justice allots him is certainly no passion, but only a determining ground of free choice through pure practical reason. But the excitability of this desire through mere self-love, that is, just for one's own advantage, not for the purpose oflegislation for everyone, is the sensible impulse of hatred, hatred not of injustice, but rather against him who is unjust to us. Since this inclination (to pursue and destroy) is based on an idea, although admittedly the idea is applied selfishly, it transforms the desire for justice against the offender into the passion for retaliation, which is often violent to the point of madness, leading a man to expose himself to ruin if only his enemy does not escape it, and (in blood vengeance) making this hatred hereditary even between tribes, because, it is said, the blood of someone offended but not yet avenged cries out until the innocently spilled blood has once again been washed away with blood - even if this blood should be one of the offending man's innocent descendants.
C On the inclination toward the capacity ofhaving influence in general over other human beings
This inclination comes closest to technically practical reason, that is, to the maxim of prudence. - For getting other human beings' inclinations into one's power, so that one can direct and determine them according to one's intentions, is almost the same as possessing others as mere tools of one's will. No wonder that the striving after such a capacity becomes a passion.
4'
Marginal note in H: Passion is the receptivity of the inner compulsion of a human being through his own inclination in adherence to his ends. To be sure, passions therefore presuppose a sensible but nevertheless also a counteracting rational faculty of desire (they are therefore not applicable to mere animals), except that inclination in the former takes away pure practical reason, in the latter domination, taking possession of maxims in respect to either one's ends or the use of means toward them. To love or hate passionately. Unnaturalness and vindictiveness. All passions are directed by human beings only to human beings, in order to use them for one's purposes or also in ...
[271]
Anthropological Didactic
[272]
This capacity contains as it were a threefold power in itself: honor, authority, and money, through which, if one is in possession of them, one can get to every human being and use him according to his purposes, if not by means of one of these influences, then by means of another. -The inclinations for this, if they become passions, are the manias for honor,for domination, and for possession. It is true that here the human being becomes the dupe (the deceived) of his own inclinations, and in his use of such means he misses his final end; but here we are not speaking of wisdom, which admits of no passions at all, but only of prudence, by which one can manage fools. However, the passions in general, as violent as they may be as sensible incentives, are still sheer weaknesses in view of what reason prescribes to the human being. 42 Therefore the clever man's capacity to use the passions for his purposes may be proportionately smaller, the greater the passion is that dominates other human beings. Mania for honor is the weakness of human beings which enables a person to have influence on them through their opinion; mania for domination, through their fear; and mania for possession, through their own interest. - Each is a slavish disposition by means of which another person, when he has taken possession of it, has the capacity to use a person's own inclinations for his purposes.- But consciousness of having this capacity and of possessing the means to satisfy one's inclinations stimulates the passion even more than actually using it does.
a The mania for honor
§Ss Mania for honor is not love ofhonor, an esteem that the human being is permitted to expect from others because of his inner (moral) worth; rather it is striving after the reputation of honor, where semblance43 sufficek Here arrogance is permitted· (an unjustified demand that others think little of themselves in comparison with us, a foolishness that acts contrary to its own end) -this arrogance, I say, needs only to be flattered, and one already has control over the fool by means of this passion. 4'
Marginal note in H: The capacity in itself, the possession of the means increases more the passion
43
Schein.
than the use of it: it is agreeable for oneself.
On the foculty ofdesire Flatterers, e the yes-men who gladly concede high-sounding talk to an important man, nourish this passion that makes him weak, and are the ruin of the great and powerful who abandon themselves to this spell. A"ogance is an inappropriate desire for honor that acts contrary to its own end, and cannot be regarded as an intentional means of using other human beings (whom it repels) for one's ends; rather the arrogant man is an instrument of rogues, and is called a fool. Once a very intelligent and upright merchant asked me: "Why is the arrogant person always base as well?" (He had known from experience that the man who boasted with his wealth as a superior commercial power later, upon the decline of his fortune, did not hesitate to grovel.) My opinion was this: that, since arrogance is the unjustified demand on another person that he despise himself in comparison to others, such a thought cannot enter the head of anyone except one who feels ready to debase himself, and that arrogance itself already supplies a never-deceiving, foreboding sign of the baseness of such human beings. 44
b The mania for domination This passion is intrinsically unjust, and its manifestation summons everything against it. It starts, however, from the fear of being dominated by others, and is then soon intent on placing the advantage of force over them, which is nevertheless a precarious and unjust means of using other human beings for one's own purposes: in part it is imprudent because it arouses opposition, and in part it is unjust because it is contrary to freedom under law, to which everyone can lay claim.- As concerns the indirect art of domination, for example, that of the female sex by means of love which she inspires in the male sex, in order to use him for her purposes, it is not included under this tide; for it does not employ force, but knows how to dominate and bind its subject through his own inclination. -Not that the female part of our species is free from the • The word Schmeichler [flatterer- Ed.] was originally supposed to be Schmiegler (one who bows and scrapes before people), in order to lead at will a conceited, powerful person through his arrogance; just as the word Heuchler [hypocrite- Ed.] (actually it should be written Hiiuchler [breather- Ed.] should have designated a deceiver who feigns his false humility before a powerful clergyman by means of deep sighs mixed with his speech. [Marginal note in H: Arrogance is base bowing and scraping. Valiant passion.] 44
See also Kant's discussion of arrogance and "pride proper" (animus elatus) in The Metaphysics of
Morals 6: 465-466.
173
[273]
Anthropological Didactic inclination to dominate the male part (exactly the opposite is true), but it does not use the same means for this purpose as the male part, that is, it does not use the advantage of strength (which is here what is meant by the word dominate); but rather the advantage of charm, which comprehends an inclination of the other part to be dominated. [274]
c The mania for possession Money is the solution, and all doors that are closed to the man of lesser wealth open to him whom Plutus favors. The invention of this means, which does not have (or at least should not have) any use other than that of serving merely as a means for the exchange of human beings' industry, and with it, however, everything that is also physically good among them, has, especially after it was represented by metal, brought forth a mania for possession which finally, even without enjoyment in the mere possession, and even with the renunciation (of the miser) of making any use of it, contains a power that people believe satisfactorily replaces the lack of every other power. This passion is, if not always morally reprehensible, completely banal, 45 is cultivated merely mechanically, and is attached especially to old people (as a substitute for their natural incapacity). On account of the great influence of this universal means of exchange it has also secured the name of afaculty46 purely and simply, and it is a passion such that, once it has set in, no modification is possible. And if the first of the three passions makes one hated, the second makes one foared, and the third makes one despised. r 45 46
ganz geistlos. Vermogen. This word can also mean fortune, means, wealth, substance. Kant may be playing on these multiple meanings here.
r Contempt is here to be understood in a moral sense; for in a civil sense, if it turns out to be true, as Pope says, that "the devil, in a golden rain of fifty to a hundred falls into the lap of the usurer and takes P natural inclinations (of propensity) that are incurred in comparison with the <material inclinations (of impulse)> (those of habituation and imitation)] Division On formal inclination in the <use> play of vital power in general. They are r. inclination to enjoyment in general, 2. to occupation in general, 3· to leisureliness. a. Because I abstract here from the object of desire (of matter), the aversion of nature to an emptiness in the feeling of its existence, that is, boredom, is by itself enough of an impulse for every cultivated human being to fill up this emptiness. -The desire for continuous enjoyment, be it physical or even aesthetic (where it is called luxury), is a luxurious living which is at the
174
On the faculty ofdesire
On the inclination of delusion as a passion §86 By delusion, as an incentive of desires, I understand the inner practical illusion of taking what is subjective in the motivating cause for objective. From time to time nature wants the stronger stimulations of passion in order to regenerate the activity of the human being, so that he does not lose the feeling of life completely in mere enjoyment. To this end it has very wisely and beneficently simulated objects for the naturally lazy human being, which according to his imagination are real ends (ways of acquiring honor, control, and money). These objects give the person who is reluctant to undertake any work47 enough to keep him occupied and busy doing nothing, so that the interest which he takes in them is an interest of mere delusion. And nature therefore really is playing with the human being and spurring him (the subject) to its ends; while he stands convinced (objectively) that he has set his own end.- These inclinations of delusion, just because fantasy is a self-creator in them, are apt to become passionate in the highest degree, especially when they are applied to competition among human beings. The games of the boy in hitting a ball, wrestling, running, playing soldier; later on the games of the man in playing chess and cards (where in the first activity the mere advantage of the understanding is intended, in the second also plain profit); finally, the games of the citizen, who tries his luck in public gatherings with faro or dice- taken together, they are unknowingly the spurs of a wiser nature to daring deeds, to test human beings' powers in competition with others; actually so that their vital same time an erosion oflife, where one becomes hungrier the more one enjoys. (n. This is true also of the aimless mania for reading.) b. Occupation during leisure, which is therefore not called business but play, and which aims at victory in conflict with others, contains an incentive to maximal stimulation of inclinations; even if this does not aim at acquisition (without interested intention). However, in gambling this is often intensified into the most violent passion; while [the refmement of qualities of intercourse is pretended calmness and even polite behavior in order skillfully to hide the inner raging fury. And the ruined person tries to put on a good face while he is taken advantage of. It is not so easy to explain why games of chance exert such a strong fascination among civilized and uncivilized peoples (Chinese and American savages). However, it is even more difficult to explain it as a way to maintain social intercourse, or indeed to explain how it is valued as promoting humanity.- People with unclear concepts: hunters, fishermen, perhaps also sailors, are frrst and foremost common lottery piayers and are on the whole superstitious.] 47
Geschiifi.
175
[275]
Anthropological Didactic force in general is preserved from weakening and kept active. Two such contestants believe that they are playing with each other; in fact, however, nature plays with both of them - which reason can clearly convince them about, if they consider how badly the means chosen by them suit their end. -But the well-being they feel while stimulated in this way, because it is closely related to ideas of illusion (though ill-construed), is for this very reason the cause of a propensity to the most violent and longlasting passion. g Inclinations of illusion make weak human beings superstitious and superstitious human beings weak, that is, inclined to expect interesting results from circ*mstances that cannot be natural causes (something to fear or hope for). Hunters, fishermen, gamblers too (especially in lotteries) are superstitious, and the illusion that leads to the delusion of taking the subjective for the objective, the voice of inner sense for knowledge of the thing itself, also makes the propensity to superstition comprehensible.
On the highest physical good §87 The greatest sensuous enjoyment, which is not accompanied by any admixture ofloathing at all, is resting after work, when one is in a healthy state. -In this state, the propensity to rest without having first worked is laziness.- Nevertheless, a somewhat long refusal to go back again to one's business, and the sweet for niente48 for the purpose of collecting one's powers, is not yet laziness; for (even in play) one can be occupied agreeably and usefully at the same time, and even changing the type of work according to its specific nature is a varied recreation. On the other hand, ittakes considerable determination to return to a piece of hard work that has been left unfinished. Among the three vices: laziness, cowardice, and duplicity, the first appears to be the most contemptible. But in this judging of laziness, g
48
A man in Hamburg, who had gambled away his fortune there, now spent his time watching the players. Someone asked him how he felt when he remembered that he once had such a fortune. The man replied: "Ifl had it again, I would still not know how to use it in a more agreeable way." Trans.: doing nothing.
On the faculty ofdesire one can often do much wrong to a human being. For nature has also wisely placed the aversion to continuous work in many a subject, an instinct that is beneficial both to the subject and to others, because, for example, man cannot stand any prolonged or frequently repeated expenditure of power without exhaustion, but needs certain pauses for recreation. Not without reason Demetrius49 therefore also could have allotted an altar to this demon (laziness); for, if laziness did not intervene, indefatigable malice would commit far more ill in the world than it does now; if cowardice did not take pity on human beings, militant blood-thirst would soon wipe them out; and if there were no duplicity, then, because of the innate malice of human nature, entire states would soon be overthrown [for among the many scoundrels united in conspiracy in great number (for example, in a regiment), there will always be one who will betray it]. The strongest impulses of nature are love oflift and sexual love, which represent the invisible reason (of the ruler of the world) that provides generally for the highest physical good 5° of the human race by means of a power higher than human reason, without human reason having to work toward it. Love oflife is to maintain the individual; sexual love, the species. For by means of the general mixing of the sexes, the life of our species endowed with reason is progressively maintained, despite the fact that this species intentionally works toward its own destruction (by war). 5 ' Nevertheless, this does not prevent rational creatures, who grow constantly in culture even in the midst of war, from representing unequivocally the prospect of a state of happiness for the human race in future centuries, a state which will never again regress. 52
49
The reference is uncertain. Kiilpe suggests that Kant may be referring to Demetrius of Phalerum (34s?-283 BC). Brandt, following Adickes, thinks that Demetrius Poliorcetes, King of Macedon (336-283 oc) is intended. See also Rejlexionen S36 (Is: 23S) and I448 {Is: 632), and Polybius I8.S4·
so das physische Weltbeste. 5 ' Marginal note in H: To be sure not a higher level of humanity, as with the Americans, also not to a specifically different one- rather, to a greater humanization humanisatio. Is humanity comprehended in perpetual progress to perfection? Is the human species becoming increasingly better or worse, or does it remain with the same moral content? From the time the child is in the arms of its nurse until old age, the proportion of cunning, deception, and evil is always the same. The answer to the question, whether there shall be war or not, is [?] continually determined by the highest persons in power. The highest level of culture is when the state of war between peoples is in equilibrium, and the means to this is the question of who among them shall inquire whether war shall be or not. s• der nicht mehr riickgiingig sein wird.
177
[2 77 ]
Anthropological Didactic
On the highest moral-physical good §88 The two kinds of good, the physical and the moral, cannot be mixed together; for then they would neutralize themselves and not work at all toward the end of true happiness. Rather, inclination to good living and virtue conflict with each other, and the limitation of the principle ofthe former through the latter constitute, in their collision, the entire end of the well-behaved 53 human being, a being who is partly sensible but partly moral and intellectual. But since it is difficult to prevent mixing in practice, the end of happiness needs to be broken down by counteracting agents (reagentia) in order to know which elements in what proportion can provide, when they are combined, the enjoyment of a moral happiness. The way of thinking characteristic of the union of good living with virtue in social intercourse is humanity. What matters here is not the degree of good living, since one person requires much, another little, depending on what seems to him to be necessary. Rather, what matters is only the kind of relationship whereby the inclination to good living is limited by the law of virtue. Sociability is also a virtue, but the social inclination often becomes a passion. If, however, social enjoyment is boastfully heightened by extravagance, then this false sociability ceases to be virtue and is a luxurious living54 that is detrimental to humanity. ***
[27 8]
Music, dance, and games form a speechless social gathering (for the few words necessary for games establish no conversation, which requires a mutual exchange of thoughts). Games, which some pretend should merely serve to fill the void of conversation after the meal, are after all usually the main thing: a means of acquisition whereby affects are vigormisly stirred, where a certain convention of self-interest is established so that the players can plunder each other with the greatest politeness, and where a complete egoism is laid down as a principle that no one denies as long as the game lasts. Despite all the culture these manners may bring about, such conversation hardly promises really to 53
wohlgeartet.
54
ein Wohlleben.
On the faculty ofdesire promote the union of social good living with virtue, and so it hardly promises to promote true humanity. The good living that still seems to harmonize best with true humanity is a good meal in good company (and if possible, also alternating company). Chesterfield 55 says that the company must not number fewer than the graces or more than the muses. h When I manage a dinner party composed of nothing but men of taste (aesthetically united), i in so far as they intend not merely to have a meal in common but to enjoy one another's company (this is why their number cannot amount to many more than the number of graces), this little dinner party must have the purpose not only of physical satisfaction which each guest can have by himself alone - but also social enjoyment, for which physical enjoyment must seem to be only the vehicle. That number is just enough to keep the conversation from slackening or the guests from dividing into separate small groups with those sitting next to them. The latter situation is not at all a conversation of taste, which must always bring culture with it, where each always talks with all (not merely with his neighbor). On the other hand, so-called festive entertainments (feasts and grand banquets) are altogether tasteless. It goes without saying that in all dinner parties, even one at an inn, whatever is said publicly by an indiscreet table companion to the detriment of someone absent may not be used outside this party and may not be gossiped about. 55
Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl of Chesterfield (r694-1773), English statesman and author. Chesterfield's literary fame rests primarily upon his letters to his illegitimate son, Philip Stanhope (first published in 1774). Kant refers to Chesterfield in other works as well- e.g., The Metaphysics of Morals 6: 428, Busolt 25: 14S2-r4S3, 1529, Menschenkunde 25: roSS, II52, Pil/au 25: 776, Zusiitze 25: 1540, I543, I 55 I.
h
Ten at a table; because the host, who serves the guests, does not count himself along with them. Crossed out in H: muses [And <not> neither the candor of the conversation should be anxiously restricted (as at a Table d'hote), nor should there be any conversation without choice and context, as at the Lord Mayor's banquet (because every overly large dinner party is vulgar).] Marginal note in H: so much for the critique of physical taste. At a festive table, where the presence ofladies by itself restricts men's freedom within the bounds of good manners, sometimes a sudden silence sets in which is unpleasant because it threatens the company with boredom, and no one trusts himself to introduce something new and appropriate for the resumption of the conversation- he cannot pull it out of thin air, but rather should get it from the news of the day; however, it must be interesting. A single person, particularly the hostess, can often prevent this standstill all by herself and keep the conversation flowing so that, as at a concert, it ends with universal and complete gaiety and, because of this, is all the more beneficial. It is like Plato's symposium, of which the guest said: "Your meals are pleasing not only when one enjoys them, but also as often as one thinks of them." [The reference is not to Plato's dialogue the Symposium, but probably to an anecdote from Athenaeus, Deipnosophistae 10.14- Ed.]
i
179
[279]
Anthropological Didactic
[z8o]
For even without making a special agreement about it, any such symposium has a certain holiness and a duty of secrecy about it with respect to what could later cause inconvenience, outside the group, to its members; for without this trust, the healthy enjoyment of moral culture within a social gathering and the enjoyment of this social gathering itself would be denied. - Therefore, if something derogatory were said about my best friend in a so-called public party (for actually even the largest dinner party is always only a private party, and only the state party56 as such is public in its idea)- I would, I must say, defend him and, if necessary, take on his cause with severity and bitterness of expression; but I would not let myself be used as the instrument for spreading this evil report and carrying it to the man it concerns. - It is not merely a social taste that must guide the conversation; there are also principles that should serve as the limiting condition on the freedom with which human beings openly exchange their thoughts in social intercourse. There is something analogous here to ancient customs in the trust between human beings who eat together at the same table; for example, those of the Arab, with whom a stranger can feel safe as soon as he has merely been able to coax a refreshment from him (a drink of water) in his tent; or when the deputies coming from Moscow to meet the Russian Tsarina offered her salt and bread, and by the enjoyment of them she could regard herself as safe from all snares by the right of hospitality.Eating together at one table is regarded as the formality of such a covenant of safety. Eating alone (solipsismus convictorii) 57 is unhealthy for a scholar who philosophizes; i it is not restoration but exhaustion (especially if it becomes
56 57
nur die staatsbiirgerliche iiberhaupt. Trans.: the solitary person at the table. Marginal note in H: For eating alone by oneself refectory. For the ~an who philosophizes must constantly carry his thoughts with him, in order to find out througp numerous trials what principles he should tie them to; and ideas, because they are not intuitions, float in the air before him, so to speak. The historical or mathematical scholar, on the other hand, can put them down before himself and so, with pen in hand, according to universal rules of reason, arrange them empirically, just like facts; and because his ideas are arranged in certain points, he can continue his work on the following day where he left off. -As concerns the philosopher, one cannot regard him as a 11Jorker on the building of the sciences, that is, not as scholars work; rather one must regard him as an investigator of 11Jisdom. He is the mere idea of a person who takes the final end of all knowledge as his object, practically and (for the purposes of the practical) theoretically too, and one cannot use this name "philosopher" in the plural, but only in the singular (the philosopher judges like this or that): for he signifies a mere idea, whereas to say philosophers would indicate a plurality of something that is surely absolute unity. 180
On the faculty ofdesire solitary ftasting): fatiguing work rather than a stimulating play of thoughts. The savoring human being who weakens himself in thought during his solitary meal gradually loses his sprightliness, which, on the other hand, he would have gained if a table companion with alternative ideas had offered stimulation through new material which he himself had not been able to track down. At a full table, where the number of courses is intended only to keep the guests together for a long time (coenam due ere), 58 the conversation usually goes through three stages: 1) na"ation, 2) arguing, 59 and 3)}esting.- A. The first stage concerns the news of the day, first domestic, then foreign, that has flowed in from personal letters and newspapers. - B. When this first appetite has been satisfied, the party becomes even livelier, for in subtle reasoning6o it is difficult to avoid diversity of judgment over one and the same object that has been brought up, and since no one exactly has the lowest opinion of his own judgment, a dispute arises which stirs up the appetite for food and drink and also makes the appetite wholesome in proportion to the liveliness of this dispute and the participation in it.- C. But because arguing is always a kind of work and exertion of one's powers, it eventually becomes tiresome as a result of engaging in it while eating rather copiously: thus the conversation sinks naturally to the mere play of wit, partly also to please the women present, against whom the small, deliberate, but not shameful attacks on their sex enable them to show their own wit to advantage. And so the meal ends with laughter, which, if it is loud and good-natured, has actually been determined by nature to help the stomach in the digestive process through the movement of the diaphragm and intestines, thus promoting physical wellbeing. Meanwhile the participants in the feast believe- one wonders how much! -that they have found culture of the spirit in one of nature's purposes. - Dinner music at a festive banquet of fine gentlemen is the most tasteless absurdity that revelry has ever contrived. The rules for a tasteful feast that animates the company are: a) to choose topics for conversation that interest everyone and always provide someone with the opportunity to add something appropriate, b) not to allow deadly silences to set in, but only momentary pauses in the conversation, c) not to change the topic unnecessarily or jump from one subject to another: for at the end of the feast, as at the end of a drama 58
Trans.: to keep the people at the dinne~ table.
59
Riisonniren.
6o
Vemiinfteln.
[z81]
Anthropological Didactic
[282]
(and the entire life of a reasonable human being, when completed, is also a drama), the mind inevitably occupies itself with reminiscing on various phases of the conversation; and if it cannot discover a connecting thread, it feels confused and realizes with indignation that it has not progressed in culture, but rather regressed. -A topic that is entertaining must almost be exhausted before proceeding to another one'; and when the conversation comes to a standstill, one must know how to slip some related topic into the group, without their noticing it, as an experiment: in this way one individual in the group can take over the management of the conversation, unnoticed and unenvied. d) Not to let dogmatism 61 arise or persist, either in oneself or in one's companions in the group; rather, since this conversation should not be business but merely play, one should avert such seriousness by means of a skillful and suitable jest. e) In a serious conflict that nevertheless cannot be avoided, carefully to maintain discipline over oneself and one's affects, so that mutual respect and benevolence always shine forth - here what matters is more the tone (which must be neither noisy nor arrogant) of the conversation than the content, so that no guest returns home from the gathering estranged from the others. 62 No matter how insignificant these laws of refmed humanity63 may seem, especially if one compares them to pure moral laws, nevertheless, anything that promotes. sociability, even if it consists only in pleasing maxims or manners, is a garment that dresses virtue to advantage, a garment which is also to be recommended in a serious respect. - The cynic's purism and the anchorite's mortification of the flesh, 'without social good living,64 are distorted forms of virtue which do not make virtue inviting; rather, being forsaken by the graces, they can make no claim to humanity.
6' 63 64
Rechthaberei. 62 mit dem anderen entzweiet. See alsoJ(ant's discussions of the meaning of"humanity" in the Critique ofthe Power of]udgment 5: J55
182
Anthropology~
Part II
Anthropological Characteristic. On the way of cognizing the interior of the human being from the exterior3 2
Division 1) The character of the person, 2) the character of the sexes, 3) the character of the peoples, 4) the character of the species. 4
' Marginal note in H: Anthropology 1st Part Anthropological Didactic What is the human being? 2nd Part Anthropological Characteristic How is the peculiarity of each human being to be cognized? The former is as it were the doctrine of elements of anthropology, the latter is the doctrine of method. 2
3
4
Charakteristik. Von der Art, das lnnere des Menschen aus dem A"ujleren zu erkennen. The terms "person," "sexes," "peoples," and "species" all appear in the singular here as well as in later section titles (7: 285, 303, JII, 321). Butthe intended meaning of the second and third terms seems to be plural rather than singular.
[285]
A The character of the person From a pragmatic consideration, the universal, natural (not civil) doctrine of signs (semiotica universalis) uses the word character in two senses: because on the one hand it is said that a certain human being has this or that (physical) character; on the other hand that he simply has a character (a moral character), which can only be one, or nothing at all. The first is the distinguishing mark of the human being as a sensible or natural being; the second is the distinguishing mark of the human being as a rational being endowed with freedom. The man of principles, from whom one knows what to expect, not from his instinct, for example, but from his will, has a character.- Therefore in the Characteristic one can, without tautology, divide what belongs to a human being's faculty of desire (what is practical) into what is characteristic in a) his natural aptitude or natural predisposition, b) his temperament or sensibility, and c) his character purely and simply, or way of thinking. 1 - The first two predispositions indicate what can be made of the human being; the last (moral) predisposition indicates what he is prepared to make of himself.
I On natural aptitude To say that the human being has a good disposition 2 means that he is not stubborn but compliant; that he may get angry, but is easily appeased and bears no grudge (is negatively good). - On the other hand, to be able to say of him that "he has a good heart," though this also still • Natural aptitude: Nature//, natural predisposition: Naturanlage, way of thinking: Denkungsart. • ein gut Gemuth.
[286]
Anthropological Characteristic pertains to sensibility, is intended to say more. It is an impulse toward the practical good, even if it is not exercised according to principles, so that both the person of good disposition and the person of good heart are people whom a shrewd guest can use as he pleases.- Accordingly, natural aptitude has more (subjectively) to do with the feeling of pleasure or displeasure, as to how one human being is affected by another (and in this his natural aptitude can have something characteristic), than (objectively) with the faculty of desire, where life manifests itself not merely in feeling, internally, but also in activity, externally, though merely in accordance with incentives of sensibility. Now temperament exists in this relation, and must still be distinguished from a habitual disposition (incurred through habit), because a habitual disposition is not founded upon any natural predisposition, but on mere occasional causes.
II On temperament
[287]
From a physiological point of view, when one speaks of temperament one means physical constitution (strong or weak build) and complexion (fluid elements moving regularly through the body by means of the vital power, which also includes heat or cold in the treatment of these humors). However, considered psychologically, that is, when one means temperament of soul (faculties of feeling and desire), those terms borrowed from the constitution of the blood will be introduced only in accordance with the analogy that the play of feelings and desires has with corporeal causes of movement (the most prominent of which is the blood). Hence it follows that the temperaments which we attribute merely to the soul may well also have corporeal factors in the human being, as covertly contributing causes: -furthermore, since,first, they can be divided generally into temperaments offeeling and activity, and since, second, each of them can be connected with the excitability (intensio) or slackening (remissio) of the vital power, only four simple temperaments can be laid down (as in the four syllogistic figures, by means of the medius terminus): 3 the sanguine, the melancholy, the choleric, and the phlegmatic. By this means, the old forms can then be retained, and they only receive a more
3
Trans.: middle term.
186
The character ofthe person comfortable interpretation suited to the spirit of this doctrine of temperaments. This is why terms referring to the constitution ofthe blood do not serve to indicate the cause of the phenomena observed in a sensibly affected human being - whether according to the pathology of humors or of nerves: 4 they serve only to classify these phenomena according to observed effects. For in order properly to give to a human being the tide of a particular class, one does not need to know beforehand what chemical blood-mixture it is that authorizes the designation of a certain property of temperament; rather, one needs to know which feelings and inclinations one has observed combined in him. So the general division of the doctrine of temperaments can be the division into temperaments of feeling and temperaments of activity; and this division can again be divided into two kinds by means of subdivision, which together give us the four temperaments. 5 - I count the sanguine, A, and its opposite, the melancholy, B, as temperaments of feeling. - The former has the peculiarity that sensations are quickly and strongly affected, but not deeply penetrating (they do not last). On the other hand, in the latter temperament sensations are less striking, but they get themselves rooted deeply. One must locate this distinction of temperaments of feeling in this, and not in the tendency to cheerfulness or sadness. For the thoughtlessness of the sanguine temperament disposes it to gaiety; on the other hand, the pensiveness that broods over a sensation deprives gaiety of its easy variability, without thereby exactly producing sadness. - But since every change that one has under one's control generally stimulates and strengthens the mind, he who makes light of whatever happens to him is certainly happier, if not wiser, than he who clings to sensations that benumb his vital power.
4
5
Adherents of the first group viewed the humors as the starting point of diseases; adherents of the second group, nerves. C. L. Hoffmann (1721-1807) was the chief representative of Humoralpathology; W. C. Cullen (1712-1790), of Nerves-pathology. Marginal note in H: If one temperament should be mixed with another, they resist each other, they neutralize each other- however, if one at times alternates with another, then it is a mere mood and not a definite temperament. One does not know what one should make of the human being. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness, melancholy and insanity, high-mindedness and stubbornness, coldness and persistence.
Anthropological Characteristic I Temperaments offoe ling
A The sanguine temperament of the light-blooded person
[288]
The sanguine person indicates his sensibility and is recognizable in the following signs: he is carefree and of good cheer; he attributes a great importance to each thing for the moment, and the next moment may not give it another thought. He makes promises in all honesty, but does not keep his word because he has not reflected deeply enough beforehand whether he will be able to keep it. He is good-natured enough to render help to others, but he is a bad debtor and always asks for extensions. He is a good companion, jocular and high-spirited, he does not like to attribute great importance to anything ( Vive Ia bagatelle!),6 and all human beings are his friends. He is not usually an evil human being, but he is a sinner hard to convert; indeed, he regrets something very much but quickly forgets this regret (which never becomes grief). Business tires him, and yet he busies himself indefatigably with things that are mere play; for play involves change, and perseverance is not his thing. B The melancholy temperament of the heavy-blooded person He who is disposed to melancholy (not the person afflicted with melancholy, for this signifies a condition, not the mere propensity to a condition) attributes a great importance to all things that concern himself, finds cause for concern everywhere and directs his attention first to difficulties, just as the sanguine person, on the other hand, begins with hope of success: therefore the melancholy person also thinks deeply, just as the sanguine person thinks only superficially. He makes promises with difficulty, for keeping his word is dear to him, but the capacity to do so is questionable. Not that all this happens from moral causes (for we are speaking here of sensible incentives), but rather that the opposite inconveniences him, and just because of this makes him apprehensive, mistrustful, and suspicious, and thereby also insusceptible to cheerfulness. -Moreover, this state of mind, if it is habitual, is nevertheless contrary to that of the philanthropist, which is more an inherited quality of the sanguine person, at least in its impulse; for 6
Trans.: three cheers for trifles!
188
The character ofthe person he who must himself do without joy will find it hard not to begrudge it to others.
II Temperaments of activity C The choleric temperament of the hot-blooded person One says of him: he is hot-tempered, flares up quickly like straw-fire, readily allows himself to be calmed if the other person gives in, is thereupon angry without hatred, and in fact loves the other person all the more for quickly having given in to him. - His activity is rash, but not persistent.- He is busy, but reluctant to undertake business himself just because he is not persistent in it; so he likes to be the mere commander-in-chief who presides over it, but does not want to carry it out himself. Hence his ruling passion is ambition; he likes to take part in public affairs and wants to be loudly praised. Accordingly he loves the show1 and pomp offormalities; he gladly takes others under his wing and according to appearances is magnanimous, not from love, however, but from pride, for he loves himself more. - He has a high opinion of order and therefore appears to be cleverer than he is. He is avaricious in order not to be stingy; polite, but with ceremony; stiff and affected in social intercourse; likes any flatterer who is the butt of his wit; suffers more wounds because of the opposition of others to his proud arrogance than the miser ever suffers because of opposition to his avaricious arrogance; for a little caustic wit directed at him completely blows away the aura of his importance, whereas the miser is at least compensated for this by his profit. - In short, the choleric temperament is the least happy of all, because it calls up the most opposition to itself. D The phlegmatic temperament of the cold-blooded person
Phlegm signifies lack ofaffect, not indolence (lifelessness); and therefore one should not immediately call a person who has much phlegm a phlegmatic or say that he is phlegmatic and place him under this title in the class of idlers.
7
tier Schein.
Anthropological Characteristic
[290]
Phlegm, as weakness, is the propensity to inactivity, not to let oneselfbe moved to business even by strong incentives. Insensitivity to such stimuli is voluntary uselessness, and the desires aim only at satiety and sleep. Phlegm, as strength, on the other hand, is the quality of not being moved easily or rashly but, if slowly, then persistently.-- He who has a good dose of phlegm in his composition warms up slowly, but retains the warmth longer. He does not easily fly into a rage, but reflects first whether he should become angry; when the choleric person, on the other hand, may fall into a rage at not being able to bring the steadfast man out of his cold-bloodedness, The cold-blooded man has nothing to regret if he has been equipped by nature with a quite ordinary portion of reason, in addition to this phlegm; without being brilliant, he will still proceed from principles and not from instinct. His fortunate temperament takes the place of wisdom, and even in ordinary life one often calls him the philosopher. As a result of this he is superior to others, without offending their vanity. One often calls him sly as well; for all the bullets and projectiles fired at him bounce off him as from a sack of wool. He is a conciliatory husband, and knows how to establish dominion over his wife and relatives by seeming to comply with everyone's wishes; for by his unbending but considerate will he knows how to bring their wills round to his- just as bodies with small mass and great velocity penetrate an obstacle on impact, whereas bodies with less velocity and greater mass carry along with themselves the obstacle that stands in their path, without destroying it. If one temperament should be an associate of another - as it is commonly believed - for example, A
The sanguine
c The choleric
[291]
-
B
The melancholy
D
The phlegmatic,
then they either oppose each other or neutralize each other. The former occurs if one tries to think of the sanguine as united with the melancholy in one and the same subject; likewise the choleric with the phlegmatic: for they (A and B, likewise C and D) stand in contradiction to one
The character of the person another.- The latter, namely neutralization, would occur in the mixing (chemical, so to speak) of the sanguine with the choleric, and the melancholy with the phlegmatic (A and C, likewise Band D). For good-natured cheerfulness cannot be conceived of as being fused with forbidding anger in one and the same act, any more than the pain of the self-tormentor can be conceived of as being fused with the contented repose of the self-sufficient mind. -If, however, one of these two states alternates with the other in the same subject, then the result is mere moodiness,8 not a specific temperament. Therefore there is no composite temperament, for example, a sanguinecholeric temperament (which all windbags want to have, since then they can claim to be the gracious but also stem master). Rather, there are in all only four temperaments, and each of them is simple, and one does not know what should be made of the human being who attributes a mixed one to himself. Cheerfulness and thoughtlessness, melancholy and insanity, highmindedness and stubbornness, finally coldness and feeble-mindedness are only distinguished as effects of temperament in relation to their causes.a
III On character as the way of thinking To be able to simply say of a human being: "he has a character" is not only to have saUl a great deal about him, but is also to have praised him a great deal; for this is a rarity, which inspires profound respect and admiration toward him. If by this term 'character' one generally understands that which can definitely be expected of a person, whether good or bad, then one usually adds that he has this or that character, and then the term signifies his
8
das blojJe Launen.
• What influence the variety of temperament has upon public affairs, or vice versa (through the effect which the habitual exercise in public affairs has on temperament), is claimed to have been discovered partly by experience and partly also with the assistance of conjectures about occasional causes. Thus it is said, for example, that in religion the choleric is orthodox the sanguine is latitudinarian the melancholic is enthusiast the phlegmatic is indifferentist. But these are tossed-off judgments which are worth as much for Characteristic as scurrilous wit allows them (valent, quantum possunt). [Trans.: they are worth as much as is attributed to them- Ed.]
[292]
Anthropological Characteristic way of sensing. - But simply to have a character signifies that property of the will by which the subject binds himself to definite practical principles that he has prescribed to himself irrevocably by his own reason. Although these principles may sometimes indeed be false and incorrect, nevertheless the formal element of the will in general, to act according to firm principles (not to fly off hither and yon, like a swarm of gnats), has something precious and admirable in it; for it is also something rare. Here it does not depend on what nature makes of the human being, but on what the human being makes of himself, for the former belongs to temperament (where the subject is for the most part passive), and only the latter enables one to recognize that he has a character. All other good and useful properties of the human being have a price that allows them to be exchanged with other things that have just as much use; talent has a market price, since the sovereign or lord of the manor can use a talented human being in all sorts of ways; - temperament has a fancy price,9 one can have an enjoyable time with such a person, he is a pleasant companion; - but character has an inner worth,b and is beyond all price.
On the qualities that follow merely from the human being's having or not having character
[2931
1) The imitator (in moral matters) is without character; for character consists precisely in originality in the way of thinking. He who has
[293]
9
ein Affektionspreis.
b
A seafarer listened to the dispute in a society led by scholars over the rank of their respective faculties. He decided it in his own way, namely: how much would a human being he had captured bring in for him at the sale in the marketplace in Algiers? No human being there can use a theologian''or jurist, but the physician knows a trade and can be worth cash. - King James I of England \vas asked by the wet nurse who had breast-fed him to make her son a gentleman (a man of refinement). James answered: "That I cannot do. I can make him an earl, but he must make himself a gentleman." - Diogenes (the Cynic), as the story goes [see Diogenes Laertius, Lives ofEminent Philosophers 6.74- Ed.], was captured on a sea voyage near the island of Crete and offered for sale at a public slave market. "What can you do? What do you know?" asked the broker who had put him on the stand. "I know how to rule," answered the philosopher, "and you find me a buyer who needs a master." The merchant, moved by this strange demand, concluded the sale by this strange transaction: he turned his son over to Diogenes for education, to make of him what he wanted; meanwhile he himself conducted business in Asia for several years, and then upon his return he received his previously uncouth son transformed into a skillful, well-mannered, virtuous human being.- Thus, approximately, can one estimate the gradation of human worth.
The character ofthe person character derives his conduct from a source that he has opened by himself. 10 However, the rational human being must not be an eccentric; indeed, he never will be, since he relies on principles that are valid for everyone. The imitator is the mimicker of the man who has a character. Good-naturedness from temperament' 1 is a painting of watercolors and not a trait of character; but a trait of character drawn in caricature is an outrageous mockery pushed on the man of true character: because he does not take part in evil once it has become public custom (fashion), and, consequently, he is presented as an eccentric. 2) Maliciousness from temperamental predisposition is nevertheless less bad than good-naturedness from temperamental predisposition without character; for by character one can get the upper hand over maliciousness from temperamental predisposition. -Even a human being of evil character (like Sulla), though he arouses disgust through the violence of his firm maxims, is nevertheless also an object of admiration: as we admire strength of soul generally, in comparison with goodness of soul. Both must be found united in the same subject in order to bring out what is more an ideal than something that exists in reality; namely the right to the title of greatness ofsoul. 3) The rigid, inflexible disposition 12 which accompanies a formed resolution (as, for example, in Charles XII) is indeed a natural predisposition very favorable to character, but it is not yet a determinate character as such. For character requires maxims that proceed from reason and morally practical principles. Therefore one cannot rightly say tha:t the malice of this human being is a quality of his character; for then it would be diabolic. The human being, however, never sanctions the evil in himself, and so there is actually no malice from prin.'ciples; but only from the forsaking of them. -
Accordingly, it is best to present negatively the principles that relate to character. They are: a. Not intentionally to say what is false; consequently, also to speak with caution so that one does not bring upon oneself the disgrace of retraction. 10 12
aus einer von ihm selbst geiiffoeten Q!Jel/e. Der steife, unbeigsame Sinn.
11
Die Gutartigkeit aus Temperament.
193
[294]
Anthropological Characteristic b. Not to dissemble; appearing well disposed in public, but being hostile behind people's backs. c. Not to break one's (legitimate) promise; 13 which also includes honoring even the memory of a friendship now broken off, and not abusing later on the former confidence and candor of the other person. d. Not to enter into an association of taste with evil-minded human beings, and, bearing in mind the noscitur ex socio etc., 14 to limit the association only to business. e. Not to pay attention to gossip derived from the shallow and malicious judgment of others; for paying attention to it already indicates weakness. Also, to moderate our fear of offending against fashion, which is a fleeting, changeable thing; and, if it has already acquired some importance in its influence, then at least not to extend its command into morality. xs
[29 5]
The human being who is conscious of having character in his way of thinking does not have it by nature; he must always have acquired it. One may also assume that the grounding of character is like a kind of rebirth, a certain solemnity of making a vow to oneself; which makes the resolution and the moment when this transformation took place unforgettable to him, like the beginning of a new epoch. - Education, examples, and teaching generally cannot bring about this firmness and persistence in principles gradually, but only, as it were, by an explosion which happens one time as a result of weariness at the unstable condition of instinct. Perhaps there are only a few who have attempted this revolution before the age of thirty, and fewer still who have firmly established it before they are forty. -Wanting to become a better human being in a fragmentary way is a futile endeavor, since one impression dies out while one works on another; the grounding of character, however, is absolute unity of the inner principle of conduct as such. - It is also said that poets have no character,,Jor example, they would rather insult their best friends than give up a witty inspiration; or that character is not to be sought at all 13 14
15
Sein (erlaubtes) Versprechen. The Dohna version of the anthropology lectures contains the full proverb: Noscitur ex socio, qui non cognoscitur ex se (p. 314). Trans.: He who cannot be characterized by his own merits can be characterized by the company he keeps. See also Parow 25: 393, Mrongovius 25: 1390, Rejlexion 7187, 19: 267. ihr Gebot wenigstens nicht aufdie Sittlichkeit auszudenleen. AI and A2: "then ... morality." H reads: "then it is still better, as one says, to be a fool in fashion than a fool out offashion."
194
The character of the person among courtiers, who must put up with all fashions; and that with clergymen, who court the Lord of Heaven as well as the lords of the earth in one and the same pitch, firmness of character is in a troublesome condition; and, accordingly, it probably is and will remain only a pious wish that they have inner (moral) character. But perhaps the philosophers are to blame for this, because they have never yet isolated this concept and placed it in a sufficiently bright light, and have sought to present virtue only in fragments but have never tried to present it whole, in its beautiful form, and to make it interesting for all human beings. In a word: the only proof within a human being's consciousness that he has character is that he has made truthfulness his supreme maxim, in the heart of his confessions to himself as well as in his behavior toward everyone else; and since to have this is the minimum that one can demand of a reasonable human being, but at the same time also the maximum of inner worth (of human dignity), then to be a man of principles (to have a determinate character) must be possible for the most common human reason and yet, according to its dignity, be superior to the greatest talent. ' 6
On physiognomy Physiognomy is the art of judging a human being's way of sensing or way of thinking according to his visible form; consequently, it judges the interior by the exterior.- Here one does not judge him in his unhealthy, but in his healthy condition; not when his mind is agitated, but when it is at rest. - It: goes without saying that if he who is being judged for this purpose perceives that someone is observing him and spying out his interior, his ·mind is not at rest but in a state of constraint and inner agitation, indeed even indignation, at seeing himself exposed to another's censure. If a watch has a fine case, one cannot judge with certainty from this (says a famous watchmaker) that the interior is also good; but if the case is poorly made, one can with considerable certainty conclude that the interior is also no good; for the craftsman will hardly discredit a piece of work on which he has worked diligently and well by neglecting its exterior, which costs him the least labor. But it would be absurd to '6
Marginal note in H: Cut stones Camee and intaglio
195
[296]
Anthropological Characteristic
conclude here, by the analogy of a human craftsman with the inscrutable Creator of nature, that the same holds for Him: that, for example, He would have added a good soul to a beautiful body in order to recommend the human being, whom he created, to other human beings and promote him, or, on the other hand, frighten one person away from another (by means of the hie niger est, hunc tu Romane caveto ). 17 For taste, which contains a merely subjective ground of satisfaction or dissatisfaction of one human being with another (according to their beauty or ugliness), cannot serve as a guide to wisdom, which has its existence objectively with certain natural qualities as its end (which we absolutely cannot understand), in order to assume that these two heterogeneous things 18 are united in the human being for one and the same end.
On the guidance of nature to physiognomy
[29 7]
If we are to put our trust in someone, no matter how highly he comes recommended to us, it is a natural impulse to look him in the face first, particularly in the eyes, in order to find out what we can expect from him. What is revolting or attractive in his gestures determines our choice or makes us suspicious even before we have inquired about his morals, and so it is incontestable that there is a physiognomic Characteristic, which, however, can never become a science, because the peculiarity of a human form, which indicates certain inclinations or faculties of the subject being looked at, cannot be understood by description according to concepts but only by illustration and presentation in intuition or by an imitation of it; whereby the human form in general is set out to judgment according to its varieties, each one of which is supposed to point to a special inner quality of the human being. The caricatures of human heads by Baptista Porta, 19 which present animal h,e'itds compared analogically with certain characteristic human faces, and from which conclusions were supposed to be drawn about a similarity of natural predispositions in both, have long been forgotten. 17
18 19
Trans.: This one is black-hearted; therefore, Roman, beware of him. See Horace, Satires 1.4.85. "These two heterogeneous things" refers to body and soul. But as Gregor notes, the sentence as a whole is difficult to follow. Giambattista Porta (154o-I6IS), author of De Humana Physiognomia (158o), in which human faces are explained by means of animal faces. See also Rejlexion 918, 15: 403-405.
The character of the person Lavate?0 spread this taste widely by silhouettes, which became popular and inexpensive wares for a while, but recently they have been completely abandoned.- Now almost nothing remains of this, except perhaps the ambiguous remark (of von Archenholzt 1 that the face of a human being which one imitates by means of a grimace to oneself alone also stirs up certain thoughts and sensations, which agree with the imitated person's character. Thus there is no longer any demand for physiognomy as the art of searching out the interior of the human being by means of certain external, involuntary signs; and nothing remains of it but the art of cultivating taste, and to be more precise not taste in things but in morals, manners, and customs, in order to promote human relations and knowledge of human beings generally by means of a critique which would come to the aid of this knowledge. Division ofphysiognomy On Characteristic: 1. in the structure of the face, face, 3· in the habitual gesture of the foce (mien).
2.
in the ftatures of the
A On the structure of the face It is noteworthy that the Greek artists - in statues, cameos, and intagliosalso had an ideal in mind of the structure of the face (for gods and heroes), which was meant to express eternal youth and at the same time a repose free from all affects, without putting in anything charming. - The Greek perpendicular profile makes the eyes deeper set than they should be according to our taste (which leans toward what is charming), and even a Venus de Medici lacks charm. - The reason for this may be that since the ideal should be a firm, unalterable norm, a nose springing out of the face from the forehead at an angle (where the angle may be greater or smaller) would yield no firm rule of form, as is nevertheless required of that which belongs to the norm. The modern Greeks, despite their otherwise Johann Caspar Lavater (I74I-I8oi), Swiss theologian and mystic. He wrote several books on metaphysics, but is remembered chiefly for his work on physiognomy. See also Lavater's letter to Kant of AprilS, 1774 and Kant's two replies (10: 165-166, 175-180). ., Johann Wilhelm von Archenholz (1743-1812), editor of the journal Literatur und Viilkerkunde from 178z to 1791. In vol. 4 (1784): 857--86o of this journal there appears an article entitled "Ein Scherflein zur Physiognomik" (signed with the initials "M. Y."), which Kiilpe surmises is the source of Kant's remark. (See esp. p. 859.) 20
197
Anthropological Characteristic [298]
beautifully formed bodies, still do not have that severe perpendicularity of proftle in their faces, which seems to prove that these ideal facial structures in works of art were prototypes. - According to these mythological models, the eyes happen to lie deeper and have been placed somewhat in the shade of the base of the nose; on the other hand nowadays one considers human faces more beautiful that have a nose with a slight deviation from the direction of the forehead (an indentation at the base of the nose). When we pursue our observations of human beings as they actually are, it becomes apparent that a!) exactly measured conformity to the rule generally indicates a very ordinary human being who is without spirit. The mean seems to be the basic measurement and the basis of beauty; but it is far from being beauty itself, because for this something characteristic is required.- However, one can also come across this characteristic in a face without beauty, where the expression speaks very well for the face, though in some other respect (perhaps moral or aesthetic). That is, one may find fault with a face here, there a forehead, nose, chin,. or color of hair, and so on, and yet admit that it is still more pleasing for the individuality of the person than if it were in perfect conformity to the rule, since this generally also carries lack of character with it. But one should never reproach a face with ugliness if in its features it does not betray the expression of a mind corrupted by vice or by a natural but unfortunate propensity to vice; for example, a certain feature of sneering as soon as one begins to speak, or of looking another person in the face with impudence that is untempered by gentleness, and thereby showing that one thinks nothing of his judgment.- There are men whose faces are (as the French say) rebarbaratif, 22 faces with which, as the saying goes, one can drive children to bed; or who have a face lacerated and made grotesque by smallpox; or who have, as the Dutch say, a wanschapenes23 face (a face imagined as it were in delusion or in a dream). But at the same time people with such faces still show such good-naturedness and cheerfulness that they can make fun of their own faces, which therefore by no means can be called ugly, although they would not be offended if a lady said of them (as was said of Pelisson24 at the Acadernie •• Trans.: forbidding, repulsive. (The correct French word is rebarbatif.) " 3 Trans.: misshapen, shapeless. 24 Paul Pellisson-Fontanier (1624-1693), French philosopher and member of the Academy in Paris. The remark was made by Madame de Sevigne.
The character of the person fran~aise):
"Pelisson abuses the privilege men have of being ugly." It is even more wicked and stupid when a human being from whom one may expect manners behaves like rabble by reproaching a handicapped person with his physical defects, which often serve only to enhance his spiritual merits. If this happens to someone who has met with an accident in his early youth (for example, if he is called "you blind dog," or "you lame dog"), it makes that person really malicious and gradually embitters him toward people who, because they are well formed, think that they are better. Generally, people who have never left their country make an object of ridicule of the unfamiliar faces of strangers. Thus little children in Japan run after the Dutch businessmen there, calling out "Oh, what big eyes, what big eyes!," and the Chinese find the red hair of many Europeans who visit their country horrid, but their blue eyes ridiculous. As concerns the bare skull and its structure which constitutes the basis of its shape, for example, that of the Negroes, the Kalmyks, the South Sea Indians, and so on, as they have been described by Camper and especially Blumenbach,25 observations about it belong more to physical geography than to pragmatic anthropology. A mean between the two can be the remark that even among us the forehead of the male sex is generally flat, while that of the female is more rounded. Whether a hump on the nose indicates a satirist - whether the peculiarity of the shape of the Chinese face, of which it is said that the lower jaw projects slightly beyond the upper, is an indication of their stubbornness- or whether the forehead of the Americans, overgrown with hair on both sides, is a sign of innate feeble-mindedness, and so forth, these are conjectures that permit only an uncertain interpretation. 26
25
26
The Kalmyks, a semi-nomadic branch of the Oirat Mongols, migrated from Chinese Turkistan to the steppe west of the mouth of the Volga river in the mid seventeenth century. Petrus Camper (I722-1789), Dutch anatomist and naturalist, author of On the Natural Difference of Facial Features (Berlin, 1792). See also Anth 7: 322; Critique of the Power ofJudgments: 304, 428; The Conflict of the Faculties 7: 89; Zusiitze 25: 1552. Johann Friedrich Blumenbach (I752-I84o), German anatomist and naturalist, professor of medicine at Giittingen, author of Manual of Natural History (Giittingen, I779). See also Critique of the Power of Judgment 5: 424, The Conflict of the Faculties 7: 89. In his letter to Blumenbach of August 5, 1790, Kant writes: "I have found much instruction in your writings" (I I: I85). Marginal note in H: Hume in thought and Rousseau On skulls" according to Camper and Blurnenbach. Spherical head, not flat forehead. Heydegger
199
[299]
Anthropological Characteristic B On what is characteristic in the features of the face
[3oo]
It does a man no harm, even in the judgment of the female sex, if his face has been disfigured and made unpleasing because of the coloring of his skin or pockmarks; for if good-naturedness shines forth from his eyes, and if at the same time from his glance the expression of a man valiant in the consciousness of his power and at peace shines forth, then he can always be liked and lovable, and this holds good universally.- One jokes with such people and their amiability (per antiphrasin); and a woman can be proud to have such a husband in her possession. Such a face is not a caricature; for a caricature is an intentionally exaggerated sketch (a distortion) of the face in affect, 27 devised for derision and belonging to mimicry. It must rather be included among a variety that lies in nature, and must not be called a distorted face (which would be repulsive); for even if it is not lovely it can inspire love, and although it is without beauty it is still not ugly. c C On what is characteristic in facial expressions28 Expressions are facial features put into play, and this results more or less from strong affect, the propensity to which is a characteristic trait of the human being. It is difficult not to betray the imprint of an affect by any expression; it betrays itself by the painstaking restraint in gesture or in the tone itself, and he who is too weak to govern his affects will expose his interior through the play of expressions (against the wish of his reason), which he would like to hide and conceal from the eyes of others. But if one finds 27
c
des Gesichts im Ajfekt. Heidegger, a German musician in London, was a grotesquely formed but bright and intelligent man, with whom refined people liked to associate for the sake of conversation. -Once it occurred to him at' a drinking party to claim to a lord that he had the ugliest face in London. The lord reflected and wagered that he could present a face still uglier, and then sent out for a drunken woman, at whose appearance the whole party burst into laughter and called out: "Heidegger, you have lost the bet." "Not so fast," he replied, "let the woman wear my wig and I shall put on her headdress; then we shall see." As this happened, everyone fell into laughter, to the point of suffocation, for the woman looked like a very well-bred man, and the man like a witch. This proves that in order to call anyone beautiful, or at least tolerably pretty, one must not judge absolutely but always only relatively, and that someone must not call a man ugly just because he is perhaps not pretty. -Only repulsive physical defects of the face can justify this verdict .
•s Von dem Charakteristischen der Mienen. 200
The character ofthe person
out about them, those who are masters in this art are not exactly regarded as the best human beings with whom one can deal in confidence, especially if they are practiced in affecting expressions that contradict what they do. The art of interpreting expressions that unintentionally reveal one's [3or] interior, while nevertheless thereby lying about it, can provide the occasion for many fine remarks, of which I wish to consider only one. - If someone who is otherwise not cross-eyed looks at the tip of his nose while relating something and consequently crosses his eyes, then what he is relating is always a lie. - However, one must not include here the defective eye condition of a cross-eyed person, who can be entirely free from this vice. Moreover, there are gestures established by nature, by which human beings of all races29 and climates understand each other, even without prior agreement. To these gestures belong nodding the head (in affirmation), shaking the head (in disavowal), raising the head (in defiance), shaking the head (in astonishment), turning up one's nose (in derision), laughing derisively (sneering), making a long face (upon refusal of a request),frowning (in annoyance), quickly opening and closing the mouth (bah!), beckoning toward and waving away from oneself with the hands, beating the hands together over the head (in surprise), making a fist (in threatening), bowing, putting the finger on the mouth (compescere Iabella ),30 in order to command silence, hissing, and so forth.
Random remarks Frequently repeated expressions that accompany emotion, 31 even involuntarily, gradually become permanent facial features, which, however, disappear in death. Consequently, as Lavater remarks, the terrifying face that betrays the scoundrel in life ennobles itself (negatively) in death, so to speak: for then, when all the muscles relax, there remains as it were the expression of repose, which is innocent. - Thus it can also happen that a man who has gone through his youth uncorrupted may still in later years, despite his good health, acquire another face because of debauchery. But from this nothing should be inferred about his natural predisposition. '9
von allen Gattungen.
30
Trans.: to close the lips (with one's fmger). 201
3'
Gemiithsbewegung.
Anthropological Characteristic
[Joz]
One also speaks of a common face in contrast with one that is refined. The latter signifies nothing more than an assumed importance, combined with a courtly manner of ingratiation, which thrives only in big cities, where human beings rub against one another and grind away their roughness. Therefore, when civil servants, born and brought up in the country, are promoted with their families to notable municipal positions, or even when they only qualify for such service in accordance with their rank, they show something common, not merely in their manners, but also in their facial expression. For, having dealt almost exclusively with their subordinates, they felt free and easy in their sphere of activity, so that their facial muscles did not acquire the flexibility required for cultivating the play of expression appropriate to dealings with people in all relationships - toward superiors, inferiors, and equals - and to the affects connected with them. To have this play of expression without compromising oneself is required for a good reception in society. On the other hand, when human beings of equal rank accustomed to urbane manners become conscious of their superiority over others in this respect, this consciousness, if it becomes habitual by long practice, molds their faces with permanent features. Devotees of a dominant32 religion or cult, when they have long been disciplined and, so to speak, hardened in the mechanical practices of devotion, introduce national features into a whole people, within the boundaries of that religion or cult, traits that even characterize them physiognomically. Thus Herr Fr. Nicolai33 speaks of the embarrassing sanctimonious (fatale gebenedeiete) faces in Bavaria; whereas John Bull of old England carries even on his face the freedom to be impolite wherever he may go in foreign lands or toward foreigners in his own country. So there is also a national physiognomy, though it should not necessarily be thought of as innate. -There are characteristic marks in societies that the law has brought together for punishment. Regarding the prisoners in Amster~~m's Rasphuis, Paris's Bicetre, and London's Newgate, a skillful and well-traveled German physician remarks that they were mostly bony fellows and conscious of their superiority, but that there were none about 3• 33
machthabende. Christoph Friedrich Nicolai (1733-18II), writer, publisher, and merchant in Berlin; one of the Popularphilosophen and founding editor of the journal Allgemeine deutsche Bibliothek. See his Beschreibung einer Reise durch Deutschland und die Schweiz im Jahre I78I, vol. 6, pp. 544, 752f. See also Zusiitze 25: 1549, 1556. 202
The character of the person
whom it would be permissible to say, with the actor Quin: 34 "If this fellow is not a scoundrel, then the Creator does not write a legible hand." For in order to pass sentence so strongly, more power of discrimination would be needed than any mortal may claim to possess between the play that nature carries on with the forms it develops in order to produce mere diversity of temperaments, and what this does or does not do for morality.
34
The German physician is Johann Friedrich Grimm (1737-1821). See his Bemerkungen eines Reisenden durch Deutschland, Frankreich, England, und Holland in Briefen (Altenburg, 1775), p. 334· See also Friedlander 25: 668, Pillau 25: 828, Menschenkunde 25: I 18o-n8I, Mrongovius 25: 1307, 1384, 1402. The actor is James Qjlin (1693-1766), who worked in England. See also Friedlander 25: 672.
[303]
B The character of the sexes In all machines that are supposed to accomplish with little power just as much as those with great power, art must be put in. Consequently, one can already assume that the provision of nature put more art into the organization of the female part than of the male; for it furnished the man with greater power than the woman in order to bring both into the most intimate physical union, which, in so far as they are nevertheless also rational beings, it orders to the end most important to it, the preservation of the species. And moreover, in this quality of theirs (as rational animals), it provided them with social inclinations in order to make their sexual companionship persist in a domestic umon. Two persons convening at random is insufficient for the unity and indissolubility of a union; one partner must yield to the other, and, in turn, one must be superior to the other in some way, in order to be able to rule over or govern him. For in the equality of claims of two people who cannot do without each other, self-love produces nothing but squabbling. In the progress of culture, each partner must be superior in a different way: the man must be superior to the woman through his physical power ·and courage, while the woman must be superior to the man through her natural talent for mastering his desire for her; on the other hand in still uncivilized conditions superiority is simply on the side of the man. - For this reason, in anthropology the characteristic features of the female sex, more than those of the male sex, are a topic of study for the philosopher. In the crude state of nature one can no more recognize these characteristic features than those of crab apples and wild pears, which reveal their diversity only through grafting or 204
The character of the sexes inoculation; for culture does not introduce these feminine qualities, it only allows them to develop and become recognizable under favorable conditions. Feminine ways are called weaknesses. One jokes about them; fools ridicule them, but reasonable people see very well that they are just the levers women use for governing men and using them for their own purposes. Man is easy to study, woman does not betray her secret, although she is poor at keeping another person's secret (because of her loquacity). He loves domestic peace and gladly submits to her regime, simply in order not to find himself hindered in his own concerns; she does not shy away from domestic warfare, which she conducts with her tongue, and for which nature endowed her with loquacity and eloquence full of affect, 1 which disarms the man. He relies on the right of the stronger to give orders at home because he is supposed to protect it against external enemies; she relies on the right of the weaker to be protected by the male partner against men, and disarms him by tears of exasperation while reproaching him with his lack of generosity. 2 In the crude state of nature it is certainly different. There the woman is a domestic animal. The man leads the way with weapons in his hand, and the woman follows him loaded down with his household belongings. But even where a barbaric civil constitution makes polygamy legal, the most favored woman in his kennel (called a harem) knows how to achieve dominion over the man, and he has no end of trouble creating a tolerable peace amid the quarrel of many women to be the one (who is to rule over him). In civil society the woman does not give herself up to the man's desire without marriage, and indeed monogamous marriage. Where civilization has not yet ascended to feminine freedom in gallantry (where a woman openly has lovers other than her husband), the man punishes his wife if ' affektvolle Beredtheit. • Marginal note in H: Why a woman (Venus) also marries the ugliest man (Vulcan) and is not laughed at about it Among unrefined groups of people the woman is a beast of burden. Hearne of Hudson Bay. [Samuel Hearne (1745-1792), British fur trader. Hired by the Hudson's Bay Company, Hearne made three expeditions to northern Canada. See his Journey from Prince of Wales Fort on Hudson's Bay to the Northern Ocean (1795)- Ed.] - On the last favor of the Cicisheo. The beatings of the Russians out oflove and jealousy. 205
[304]
Anthropological Characteristic
[3o5]
she threatens him with a rival. a But when gallantry has become the fashion and jealousy ridiculous (as never fails to happen in a time of luxury), the feminine character reveals itself: by extending favors toward men, woman lays claim to freedom and, at the same time, to the conquest of the entire male sex. - This inclination, though it indeed stands in ill repute under the name of coquetry, is nevertheless not without a real basis of justification. For a young wife is always in danger of becoming a widow, and this causes her to extend her charms over all men whose fortunate circ*mstances make them marriageable; so that, should this situation occur, she would not be lacking in suitors. Pope3 believes that one can characterize the female sex (the cultivated part of it, of course) by two points: the inclination to dominate and the inclination to enjoyment. - However, by the latter one must understand not domestic but public enjoyment, where woman can show herself to advantage and distinguish herself; and then the latter inclination also dissolves into the former, namely: not to yield to her rivals in pleasing others, but to triumph over them all, if possible, by her taste and charm.-However, even the first-mentioned inclination, like inclination generally, is not suitable for characterizing a class ofhuman beings in general in their conduct toward others. For inclination toward what is advantageous to us is common to all human beings, and so too is the inclination to dominate, so far as this is possible for us; therefore it does not characterize a class. However, the fact that this sex is constantly feuding with itself, whereas it remains on very good terms with the other sex, might rather be considered
• The old saying of the Russians that women suspect their husbands of keeping other women if they do not get a beating now and then by them is usually regarded as fiction. [Kiilpe refers readers here to "Von Weibern, die erst dann, wenn sie geschlagen werden, ihre Manner lieben," Berlinische Monatsschrift 13 (1789), pp. 551ff., as well as to Carl Friedrich Fliigel, Geschichte des Groteskekomischen (1788), p. 181. Brandt has found a much earlier text where a similar saying occurs - Sigmund von Herberstein, Moscoviter 71JUnderbare Historien (1567), p. LVIII - Ed.] However, lri:· Cook's Travels one fmds that when an English sailor on Tahiti saw an Indian punishing his wife by beating her, the sailor, wanting to be gallant, attacked the husband with threats. The woman turned on the spot against the Englishman and asked how it concerned him: the husband must do this! [See James Cook, Captain Cooks dritte und letzte Reise, oder Geschichte einer Entdeckungsreise nach dem stillen Ocean (1789), esp. the reports on Tahiti (3: 45-46) and on Friendship Island (4: 394)-- Ed.]- Accordingly, one will also find that when the married woman openly practices gallantry and her husband pays no attention to it, but compensates himself for it by drinking and card parties, or wooing other women, then not merely contempt but also hatred overcomes the female partner: because the woman recognizes by this that he now places no worth at all in her, and that he abandons his wife indifferently to others to gnaw on the same bone. 3
Alexander Pope, Moral Essays, Epistle 2, lines 209-210. See also Menschenkunde 25: 1190. 206
The character ofthe sexes as its character, were this not merely the natural result of rivalry to win the advantage of one over others in the favor and devotion of men. In that case, inclination to dominate is woman's real aim, while enjoyment in public, by which the scope of her charm is widened, is only the means for providing the effect for that inclination. 4 One can only come to the characterization of this sex if one uses as one's principle not what we make our end, but what nature's end was in establishing womankind; and since this end itself, by means of the foolishness of human beings, must still be wisdom according to nature's purpose, these conjectural ends can also serve to indicate the principle for characterizing woman- a principle which does not depend on our choice but on a higher purpose for the human race. These ends are: 1) the preservation of the species, 2) the cultivation of society and its refinement by womankind.
I. When nature entrusted to woman's womb its dearest pledge, namely the species, in the fetus by which the race5 is to propagate and perpetuate itself, nature was frightened so to speak about the preservation of the species and so implanted this ftar - namely fear of physical injury and timidity before similar dangers - in woman's nature; through which weakness this sex rightfully demands male protection for itself. II. Since nature also wanted to instill the finer feelings that belong to culture - namely those of sociablity and propriety - it made this sex man's ruler through her modesty and eloquence in speech and expression. It made her clever while still young in claiming gentle and courteous treatment by the male, so that he would find himselfimperceptibly fettered by a child through his own magnanimity, and led by her, if not to morality itself, to that which is its cloak, moral decency, 6 which is the preparation for morality and its recommendation.
Random remarks Woman wants to dominate, man to be dominated (especially before marriage).- This was the reason for the gallantry of ancient knighthood.- She
4
5
Marginal note in H: Woman seeks to please all men because, if her man dies, she has hope for · another, whom she has pleased. Species: Species; race: Gattung. 6 zu dem, was ihr Kleid ist, dem gesitteten Anstande. 207
[3o6]
Anthropological Characteristic
[307]
acquires confidence early in her ability to please. The young man is always afraid of displeasing and, consequently, is embarrassed (self-conscious) in the company ofladies.- She maintains, merely from the claim of her sex, this pride of the woman to restrain all man's importunities through the respect that she inspires, and the right to demand respect for herself without even deserving it. -The woman refuses, the man woos; her surrender is a favor.- Nature wants that the woman be sought after, therefore she herself does not need to be so particular in her choice (in matters of taste) as the man, whom nature has also built more coarsely, and who already pleases the woman ifonly his physique shows that he has the strength and ability to protect her. For if she were disgusted with regard to the beauty of his physique and refined in her choice, then she would have to do the wooing in order to be able to fall in love, while he would have to appear to refuse; which would entirely degrade the value ofher sex, even in the eyes of the man.- She must appear to be cold in love, whereas the man must appear to be full of affect. Not to respond to an amorous advance seems to be shameful to the man, but to lend an ear easily seems shameful to the woman. -The desire of the latter to allow her charms to play on all refined men is coquetry, the affectation of appearing to be in love with all women is gallantry; both can be a mere affectation that has become the fashion, without any serious consequence: as with cicisbeism,7 an affected freedom of the married woman, or, in the same way, the courtesan system that formerly existed in Italy. (In the Historia Concilii Tridentini it is reported, among other things: erant ibi etiam 300 honestae meretrices, quas cortegianas vocant.) 8 It is said of this courtesan syst~m that its well-mannered public associations contained more refined culture than did mixed companies in private houses. - In marriage the man woos only his own wife, but the woman has an inclination for all men; out of jealousy, she dresses up only for the eyes of her own sex, in order to outdo other women in charm or 7
8
Marginalnote in H: Of all female virtues none is required except that she firmly stand her ground against the attempt on her female honor (not to give herself away without honor). [Concerning the cicisbeo or cavaliere servente, Kiilpe refers readers to Samuel Sharp, Letters from Italy I765-66 (London, 1767), pp. 18ff., 73ff., 257; and Neues Hamburgisches Magazin 2 (1767), pp.249ff.: "Einige Briefe iiber ltalien und iiber die Sitten und Gewohnheiten diese Landes von Samuel Sharp," pp. 255 f., 263ff. See also Encyclopedia Britannica, uth ed., s.v. "cicisbeo": "The cicisbeo was the professional gallant of a married woman, who attended her at all public entertainments, it being considered unfashionable for the husband to be the escort"- Ed.] Trans.: there were also 300 kept mistresses, who are called courtesans. The author of the text (which was originally published in Italian) is Paolo Sarpi (1552-1623). Kiilpe reports that he could not locate Kant's citation after searching through the eight-volume Latin translation. 208
The character of the sexes fashionableness. The man, on the other hand, dresses up only for the feminine sex; if one can call this dressing up, when it goes only so far as not to disgrace his wife by his clothes.- The man judges feminine mistakes leniently, but the woman judges them very strictly (in public); and young women, if they were allowed to choose whether a male or female tribunal should pass judgment on their offenses, would certainly choose the former for their judge.- When refined luxury has reached a high level, the woman appears demure only by compulsion and makes no secret of wishing that she might rather be a man, so that she could give her inclinations larger and freer latitude; no man, however, would want to be a woman. The woman does not ask about the man's continence before marriage; but for him this same question on the part of the woman is of infinite importance.- In marriage, women scoff at intolerance (the jealousy of men in general), but it is only a joke of theirs; on this subject the unmarried woman judges with great severity. -As concerns scholarly women: they use their books somewhat like their watch, that is, they carry one so that it will be seen that they have one; though it is usually not running or not set by the sun. 9 Feminine virtue or lack of virtue is very different from masculine virtue or lack of virtue, not only in kind but also as regards incentive. She should be patient; he must be tolerant. She is sensitin:; he is sentimenta/. 10 - Man's economic activity consists in acquiring, woman's l.;oSI in saving. -The man is jealous when he loves; the woman is jealous even when she does not love, because every lover won by other women is one lost from her circle of admirers. - The man has his own taste, 1 1 the woman makes herself the object of everyone's taste.- "What the world says is true, and what it does, good'' is a feminine principle that is hard to unite with a character in the narrow sense of the term. However, there have still been heroic women who, in connection with their own household, have upheld with glory a character suitable to their vocation. - Milton 12 was encouraged by his wife to accept the position of Latin Secretary, which was offered to him after Cromwell's death, 9 See also Maria Charlotta Jacobi's letter to Kant of June 12, 1762 (10: 39); Observations on the Feeling ofthe BeautifUl and the Sublime 2: 229-230; Rejlexion 1299, 15: 572. 10 Patient: geduldig; tolerant: duldend; sensitive: empfindlich; sentimental: empfindsam. (In these two sentences Kant is playing on the sound and meaning of related German adjectives.) 11
hat Geschmack for sich.
12
John Milton (1608--1674), English poet. Kiilpe, referring to a book by Alfred Stem (Milton und seine Zeit [1879], Part II, Book IV, pp. 12, 196), claims that the following anecdote is false.
209
Anthropological Characteristic though it was against his principles now to declare a government lawful which he had previously described as unlawful. "Ah, my dear," he replied; "you and others of your sex want to travel in coaches, but I must be an honorable man."- Socrates' wife, perhaps also Job's, were similarly driven into the corner by their valiant husbands; but masculine virtue upheld itself in these men's characters, without, however, diminishing the merit of feminine virtue in theirs, given the relation in which they were placed.
Pragmatic consequences
[309)
The feminine sex must train and discipline itself in practical matters; the masculine sex understands nothing of this. The young husband rules over his older spouse. This is based on jealousy, according to which the party that is subordinate to the other in sexual power 13 guards itself against encroachment on its rights by the other party and thus feels compelled to submit to being obliging and attentive in its treatment of the other party.- This is why every experienced wife will advise against marriage with a young man, even with one of just the same age; for with the passing of years the female party certainly ages earlier than the male, and even if one disregards this inequality, one cannot safely count on the harmony that is based on equality. A young, intelligent woman will have better luck in marriage with a healthy but, nevertheless, noticeably older man. However, a man who perhaps has already lewdly squandered his sexual power before marriage will be the fool in his own house, for he can have this domestic domination only in so far as he does not fail to fulfill any reasonable demands. Hume notes 14 that women (even old maids) are more annoyed by satires on marriage than by gibes against their sex.- For these gibes can never be serious, whereas the former could well become serious if the difficultie~ of the niarried state are correctly illuminated, which the unmarried person is spared. However, skepticism on this topic is '3
Geschlechtsvermogen.
'4
In the opening statement of his essay "Of Love and Marriage," Hume writes: "I know not whence it proceeds, that women are so apt to take amiss every thing which is said in disparagement of the married state; and always consider a satyr upon matrimony a satyr upon themselves" (in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller [Indianapolis: Liberty Press, 1987], p. 557). See also Reflexion 1283, rs: 565, Parow 25: 458, Menschenkunde 25: r 193, Mrongovius 25: 1393. 210
The character of the sexes bound to have bad consequences for the whole feminine sex, because this sex would be degraded to a mere means for satisfying the desire of the other sex, which, however, can easily result in boredom and unfaithfulness.- Woman becomes free by marriage; man loses his freedom by it. It is never a woman's concern to spy out the moral properties in a man, especially a young man, before the wedding. She believes that she can improve him; an intelligent woman, she says, surely can set right a badly behaved man, in which judgment she generally finds herself deceived in the most lamentable manner. This also applies to the naive woman who believes that the debaucheries of her husband before marriage can be overlooked, because, if only he has not exhausted himself, this instinct will now be sufficiently provided for by his wife. - These good children do not consider that dissoluteness in this area consists precisely in change of pleasure, and that the monotony 15 of marriage will soon lead him back to his former way of life. b Who, then, should have supreme command in the household? - for there certainly can be only one who coordinates all transactions 16 in accordance with one end, which is his. - I would say, in the language of gallantry (though not without truth): the woman should dominate and the man should govern; for inclination dominates, and understanding governs.- The husband's behavior must show that to him the welfare of his [3 1o] wife is closest to his heart. But since the man must know best how he stands and how far he can go, he will be like a minister to his monarch who is mindful only of enjoyment. For example, if he undertakes a festival or the building of a palace, the minister will first declare his due compliancy with the order, even if at present there is no money in the treasury, and even if certain more urgent necessities must first be attended to, and so on - so that the most high and mighty master can do all that he wills, but under the condition that his minister suggests to him what this will is. 17 Since the woman is to be sought after (this is required for the refusal necessary to her sex), even in marriage she will be generally seeking to '5 b
das Einerlei. The consequence of this is, as in Voltaire's Voyage de Scarmentado: "Finally," he says, "I returned to my fatherland, Candia, took a wife there, soon became a cuckold, and found that this is the most comfortable life of all." [See the conclusion to Voltaire's Histoire des voyages de Scarmentado- Ed.]
'6
aile Geschafte.
'7
The most high and mighty master: der hiichstgebietende Herr, suggests to him what this will is:
diesen Willen ihm sein Minister an die Hand giebt. 211
Anthropological Characteristic please; so that, if she by chance should become a widow while young, she will fmd suitors for herself. -With the matrimonial alliance, the man lays aside all such ciaims. The-refore jealousy caused by this coquetry of women is unjust. Conjugal love, however, is by its nature intolerant. Women occasionally ridicule this intolerance, but, as has already been mentioned above, they do so in jest; for if a husband were patient and indulgent when a stranger encroached upon his rights, this would result in his wife's contempt and also hatred toward such a husband. The fact that fathers generally spoil their daughters and mothers their sons; and that among the latter the wildest son, if only he is daring, is usually spoiled by the mother, appears to have its cause in the prospect of each parent's needs in case the other should die; for if the wife dies before the husband, he can still have a mainstay in his oldest daughter, and if the wife loses her husband, then the grown-up, well-behaved son has the duty incumbent on him, and also the natural inclination within him, to honor her, to support her, and to make her life as a widow pleasant.
[Jn]
I have dwelt longer on this section of Characteristic than may seem proportionate to the other divisions of anthropology; but nature has also put into her economy here such a rich treasure of arrangements for her end, which is nothing less than the maintenance of the species, that when the occasion arises for closer researches there will still be more than enough material, in its problems, to admire the wisdom of gradually developing natural predispositions and to use it for practical purposes.
212
C The character of the peoples By the word people (populus) is meant a multitude of human beings united in a region, in so far as they constitute a whole. This multitude, or even the part of it that recognizes itself as united into a civil whole through common ancestry, is called a nation (gens). The part that exempts itself from these laws (the unruly crowd within this people) is called a rabble (vulgus), a whose illegal association is the mob (agere per turbas), I - conduct that excludes them from the quality of a citizen. Hume thinks that if each individual in a nation is intent on assuming his own particular character (as with the English), the nation itself has no character. 2 It seems to me that he is mistaken; for affectation of a character is precisely the general character of the people to which he himself belongs, and it is contempt for all foreigners, particularly because the English believe that they alone can boast of a respectable constitution that combines civil freedom internally with power against outsiders. 3 A character like this is arrogant rudeness, in contrast to the politeness that easily becomes familiar; it is obstinate behavior toward every other • The abusive name Ia canaille du peuple probably has its origin in canalicola, an idler going to and fro along the canal in ancient Rome and teasing the crowd of working people (cavillator et ridicularius, vid. Plautus, Curcul.). [The terms cavillator and ridicularius do not appear in Plautus' Curculio, but rather in his Miles Gloriosus 3·1.47· See also his Truculentus 3.2.I5-16, and Gellius, Noctes Atticae 4.20.3. Kant's etymology is also false. Canaille actually means "dog-people," and is derived from the Latin canis (dog) - Ed.] ' Trans.: acting like rabble. Quality: f:!!lalitiit. • Hume, in his essay "Of National Characters," writes: "the ENGUSH, of any people in the universe, have the least of a national character; unless this very singularity may pass for such" (in Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, ed. Eugene F. Miller [Indianapolis: Liberty Press, I987], p. 207). See also Friedlander 25: 630, Pit/au 25: 832, Mrongovius 25: 1398, Ref/exion I I I3, rs: 496. 3
Macht gegen AujJen. 213
Anthropo/Qgical Characteristic
[312]
person from supposed self-sufficiency, where one believes that one has no need of anybody else and so can be excused from kindness toward other people. Thus the two most civilized peoples on ear~h, b England and France, have contrasting characters, and perhaps chiefly because of this ~e in a constant feud with each other. Also because of their innate character, of which the acquired and artificial character is only the result, England and France are perhaps the only peoples to which one can assign a definite and - as long as they do not become mixed by the violence of war4 unchangeable character. -That French has become the universal language of cot)versation, especially in the feminine world, and English the most widely used language of commerce, c especially among business people, probably lies in the difference in their continental and insular situation. 1-:!owever, as concerns their natural aptitude, what they actually have at present, and its formation by means of language, this must be derived from the innate character of.the original·people of their ancestry; but the documents for this are lacking. - In an anthropology from a pragmatic point of view, howeve~,· the only thing that matters to us i~ to present the character ofboth, as they are now, in some examples, and, as far as possible, systematically; which m~es it possible to judge what each can expect from the other and how each could use the other to his own advantage~ , Hereditary maxims, or those which hav:e become, as it were, second nature through long usage, as well as t~e maxims grafted upon th~, which express the sensibility of a people; are only so many risky attempts to classify5 the varieties in the natural tendency of entire peoples, and
'·
b
4
It is understood that in this classification the Gennan people is disregarded; for otherwise the praise of the author, who i~ Gennan, would be self-praise.
Crossed ork:~~ H: war [which, because of the difference in their natural predispositions, is di(fitult
to avoid]. i:
·
. ·
c
The commercial spirit also shows certain modifications of its pride in the difference of tone used in bragging. The Englishman says: "The man is worth a million"; the Dutchman: "He commands a million"; the Frenchman: "He has a million."
5
Crossed out in H: classify [The Frenchman characterizes himself to his advantage through his excellent talent <skill> and the propensity to consistently agreeable and philanthropic relations. The Etranger is, under this title, already under his protection. His liveliness makes him inclined to surprise, which can often be healthy, but more often
The character ofthe peoples more empirically for geographers than according to principles of reason for philosophers. d To claim that the kind of character a people will have depends entirely on its form of government is. an ungrounded assertion that explains nothing; for from where does, the government itself get its particular character?- Climate and soilalso cannot furnish the key here; for migrations of entire peoples have proven that they do not change their character as a result of their new place of residence; instead they merely adapt it to the circ*mstances, while language, type of occupation, and even type of dress always reveal traces of their ancestry, and consequently also their character. --I shall sketch their portrait somewhat more from the side of their faults and deviations from the rule than from the more beautiful side (but, nevertheless, not in caricature); for, in addition to the fact that flattery corrupts while criticism improves, the critic offends less against the self-love of human beings when he merely confronts them all, without exception, with their faults than when, by praising some more and others less, he only stirs up the envy of those judged against one another. 1. The French nation is characterized among all others by its taste for conversation, with regard to which it is the model for all the rest. It is courteous, especially toward foreigners who visit France, even if it is now out of fashion to be courtly. The Frenchman is courteous, not because of interest, but rather because of taste's immediate need to talk with others. Since this taste particularly concerns association with women of high society, the language ofladies has become the common language of high society, and-1t is indisputable that an inclination of this kind must also have an influence on willingness in rendering· services, helpful benevo:.. lence, and, gradually, on universal philanthropy according to principles. Arid so it must make such a people as a whole lovable. d
[313]
If the Turks, who. call Christian Europe Frankestan, traveled in order to get to know human beings and their national character (which no people other than the European does, and which proves the limitedness in spirit of all others), they would perhaps divide the European people in the following way, according to the defects shown in its character: 1) The land offashion (France).- 2) The land ofmoods (England). - 3) The land ofancestry (Spain). - 4) The land ofsplendor (Italy).- 5) _The land oftitles (Gennany, together with Sweden and Denmark, as German peoples).- 6) The land oflords (Polimd}, where every citizen wants to be a lord but none of these lords, except him who is not a citizen, wants to be a subject. - - Russia and European Turkey, both largely of Asiatic ancestry, would lie outside Frankestan: the first is of Slavic, the other of Arabic origin, both are descended from two 11ncestral peoples who once extended their domination over a larger part of Europe than any other people, and they have fallen into the condition of a constitution of law without [313] freedom, where no one therefore is a citizen.
215
Anthropological Characteristic
[3r4]
The other side of the coin is a vivacity that is not sufficiently kept in check by considered principles, 6 and to clear-sighted reason it is thoughtlessness not to allow certain forms to endure for long, when they have proved satisfactory, just because they are old or have been praised excessively; and it is an infectious spirit offreedom, which probably also pulls reason itself into its play, and, in the relations of the people to the state, causes an enthusiasm that shakes everything and goes beyond all bounds.- The peculiarities of this people, sketched plainly7 but nevertheless according to life, easily permit without further description the delineation of a whole merely through disconnected fragments jotted down, as materials for Characteristic. The words esprit (instead of bon sens),frivolite, galanterie, petit maitre, coquette, itouderie, point d'honneur, bon ton, bureau d'esprit, bon mot, lettre de cachet, and so forth, cannot easily be translated into other languages, because they denote more the peculiarity of the sensibility of the nation that uses them than the object that the thinking person8 has in mind. 2. The English people. The ancient tribe of Britonse (a Celtic people) seem to have been human beings of a capable kind, but the immigrations of tribes of German and French peoples (for the brief presence of the Romans could leave no noticeable trace) have obliterated the originality of this people, as their mixed language proves. And since the insular situation of their land, which protects them fairly well against attacks from without and rather invites them to become aggressors, made them a powerful people of maritime commerce, they have a character that they have acquired for themselves when they actually have none by nature. Accordingly the character of the Englishman cannot signify anything other than the principle learned from early teaching and example, that he must make a character for himself, that is, affect to have one. For an inflexible disposition to stick to a voluntarily adopted principle and not to deviate from a certain rule (no matter which) gives a man the
6
As Brandt notes, here Kant is describing the character of the French in light of the French Revolution, which began in 1789. See also Kant's more supportive remarks about the Revolution (and public reaction to it) in The Conflict of the Faculties 7: 85-86.
7
in schwarzer Kunst.
8
der Denkende.
• As Professor Busch correctly writes it (after the word britanni, not brittam). [Johann Georg Busch (r728-r8oo), professor of mathematics at the Hamburg Handelsakademie, author of many popular works in applied and commercial science. Kiilpe notes that he was not able to locate Busch's dictum concerning the spelling of"Britons."- Ed.] 216
The character ofthe peoples significance that one knows for certain what one has to expect from him, and he from others. That this character is more directly opposed to that of the French people than to any other is evident from the fact that it renounces all amiability toward others, and indeed even among the English people, whereas amiability is the most prominent social quality of the French. The Englishman claims only respect, and by the way, each wants only to live as he pleases.- For his compatriots the Englishman establishes great, benevolent institutions, unheard of among all other peoples.- However, the foreigner who has been driven to England's soil by fate and has fallen on hard times can die on the dunghill because he is not an Englishman, that is, not a human being. But even in his own country the Englishman isolates himself when he pays for his own dinner. He prefers to eat alone in a separate room than at the table d'hote, for the same money: for at the table d'hote, some politeness is required. And abroad, for example, in France, where Englishmen travel only to proclaim all the roads and inns as abominable (like D. Sharp),9 they gather in inns only for the sake of companionship among themselves. - But it is curious that while the French generally love the English nation and praise it respectfully, nevertheless the Englishman (who has never left his own country) generally hates and scorns the French. This is probably not due to rivalry among neighbors (for in this respect England considers itself indisputably superior to France), but to the commercial spirit in general, which makes the English merchants very unsociable in their assumption of high standing. f Since both peoples are close to each other with respect to their coasts and are separated only by a channel (which could very well be called a sea), their rivalry nevertheless causes in each of them a different kind of political character modified by their feud: concern on the one side and hatred on the other. These are the two forms of their incompatibility, of
9
Kant spells the name "Scharp"- Kiilpe corrects it to "Sharp," referring readers to Dr. Samuel Sharp. See Neues Hamburgisckes Magazin 2 (1767), pp. 259, 261. Sharp is called a "splenetic" doctor in Das deutscke Museum I (1786), p. 387.
r The commercial spirit itself is generally unsociable, like the aristocratic spirit. One house (as the merchant calls his establishment) is separated from another by its business, as one castle is separated from another by a drawbridge, and friendly relations without ceremony are hence proscribed, except with people under the protection of the house, who then, however, would not be regarded as members of it. 217
[JIS]
Anthropological Characteristic which one aims at self-preservation, the other at domination; however, in the contrary case 10 the aim is destruction of the other. We can now formulate more briefly the characterization of the others, whose national peculiarity is derivable not so much from their different types of culture - as is for the most part so in the preceding two cases - as from the predispositions of their nature, which results from the mixture of their originally different tribes. [316] 3· The Spaniard, who arose from the mixture of European with Arabian (Moorish) blood, displays in his public and private behavior a certain solemnity; and even toward superiors, to whom he is lawfully obedient, the peasant displays a consciousness of his own dignity. -The Spanish grandeur and the grandiloquence found even in their colloquial conversation point to a noble national pride. For this reason the familiar playfulness of the French is entirely repugnant to the Spaniard. He is moderate and wholeheartedly devoted to the laws, especially those of his ancient religion.- This gravity also does not hinder him fr_om enjoying himself on days of amusem*nt (for example, bringing in the harvest with ,song and dance), and when the fandango is fiddled on a summer evening, there is no lack of working people now at their leisure who dance to his music in the streets. -- This is his good side. The worse side is: he does not learn from foreigners; does not travel in order to get to know other peoples; g remains centuries behind in the sciences; resists any reform; is proud of not having to work; is of a romantic temperament of spirit, as the bullfight shows; is cruel, as the former Auto da Fe proves; and shows in his taste an origin that is partly non-European. 4· The Italian unites French vivacity (gaiety) with Spanish seriousness (tenacity), and his aesthetic character is a taste that is linked with affect; just as the view from his Alps down into the charming valleys presents matter for courage on the one hand and quiet enjoyment on the other. 10
im entgegesetzten Faile. Kant's meaning here is not clear. Marginal note in H: Russians and Poles
are not capable of any autonomy. The former, because they want to be without absolute masters; the latter, because they all want to be masters. French wit is superficial Gondoliers and Lazzaroni. g
The limitation of spirit of all peoples who are not prompted by disinterested curiosity to get to know the outside world with their own eyes, still less to be transplanted there (as citizens of the world), is something characteristic of them, whereby the French, English, and Germans favorably differ from other peoples.
218
The character of the peoples Temperament here is neither mixed nor unsteady (for then it would yield no character), rather it is a tuning of sensibility toward the feeling of the sublime, in so far as it is also compatible with the feeling of the beautiful.His countenance manifests the strong play of his sensations, and his face is full of expression. The pleading of an Italian advocate before the bar is so full of affect that it is like a declamation on the stage. Just as the Frenchman is preeminent in the taste for conversation, so is the Italian in the taste for art. The former prefers private amusem*nts; the latter, public: pompous pageantries, processions, great spectacles, carnivals, masquerades, the splendor of public buildings, pictures drawn with the brush or in mosaic, Roman antiquities in the grand style, in order to see and be seen in high society. However, along with these (let us not forget self-interest) the invention of exchange, banks, and the lottery. -This is his good side; and it also extends to the liberty that the gondolieri and lazzaroni 1 1 can take toward those of high rank. The worse side is: they converse, as Rousseau says, 12 in halls of splendor and sleep in rats' nests. Their conversazioni are like a stock exchange, where the lady of the house offers something tasty to a large social gathering, so that in wandering about they can share with each other the news of the day without even the necessity of friendship, and has supper with a chosen few from the group.- However, the evil side is knifings, bandits, assassins taking refuge in hallowed sanctuaries, neglect of duty by the police, and so forth; all of which is not so much to be blamed on the Romans as on their two-headed form of government. However, these are accusations that I can by no means justify and which the English generally circulate, who approve of no constitution but their own. 5· The Germans are reputed to have a good character, that is to say, one of honesty and domesticity: qualities that are not suited to splendor.- Of all civilized peoples, the German submits most easily and permanently to the government under which he lives, and is most distant from the rage for innovation and opposition to the established order. His character is phlegm combined with understanding; he neither rationalizes about the " Trans.: Neapolitan street loungers, lazybones. " In Bk. II, Ch. 8 of The Social Contract, Rousseau writes: "In Madrid, they have superb reception rooms, but no windows that close and their bedrooms are like rat holes" (trans. Maurice Cranston [New York: Penguin, 1968], p. 128). Rousseau makes these remarks with reference to the Spaniards, but Kant applies them to the Italians. See also Mrongovius 25: 1405.
219
[317]
Anthropological Characteristic
[318]
already established order nor thinks one up himself. At the same time, he is nevertheless the man of all countries and climates; he emigrates easily and is not passionately bound to his fatherland. But when he goes to a foreign country as a colonist, he soon contracts with his compatriots a kind of civil union that, by unity of language and, in part, also religion, settles him as part of a little clan, which under the higher authority distinguishes itself in a peaceful, moral condition, through industry, cleanliness, and thrift, from settlements of all other peoples. - So goes the praise that even the English give the Germans in North America. Since phlegm (taken in its good sense) is the temperament of cool reflection and perseverance in the pursuit of one's ends, together with endurance of the difficulties connected with the pursuit, one can expect as much from the talent of the German's correct understanding and profoundly reflective reason as from any other people capable of the highest culture; except in the department of wit and artistic taste, where he perhaps may not be equal to the French, English, and Italians. - Now this is his good side, in what can be accomplished through continuous industry, and for which geniush is just noe 3 required; the latter of which is also far less useful than German industriousness combined with the talent for sound understanding. - In his dealings with others, the German's character is modesty. More than any other people, he learns foreign languages, he is (as Robertson puts itY 4 a wholesale dealer in learning, and in the field of the sciences he is the first to get to the bottom of many things that are later utilized by others with much ado; he has no
h
Genius is the talent for discovering that which cannot be taught or learned. One can certainly be taught by others how one should make good verses, but not how to make a good poem; for this must spring by itself from the author's nature. Therefore one cannot expect that a poem be made to order and procured as a product for a good price; rather it must be expected just like an inspiration of which the poet himself cannot say how he came by it, that is, from an occasional disposition, w.hose source is unknown to him (scit genius, natale comes qui temperat astrum). [Horace, Epistles 2.2.187. Trans.: The genius knows, that companion who rules our birth starEd.]- Geni~s, therefore flashes as a momentary phenomenon, appearing at intervals and then disappearing again; it is not a light that can be kindled at will and kept burning for as long as one pleases, but an explosive flash that a happy impulse of the spirit lures from the productive power of imagination.
'3
Crossed out in H: not [Genius is required as a talent for producing that which cannot be
'4
<demanded> acquired through learning from another, but which can only be acquired through one's own inventiveness, such things are the works of genuine poets xx]. William Robertson (1721-1793), Scottish churchman and historian, author of the History of Scotland during the Reigns of[!peen Mary and King James VI (1759) and other works. The exact source of Kant's citation is uncertain. 220
The character ofthe peoples national pride, and is also too cosmopolitan to be deeply attached to his homeland. However, in his own country he is more hospitable to foreigners than any other nation (as Boswell admits);' 5 he strictly disciplines his children toward propriety, just as, in accordance with his propensity to order and rule, he would rather submit to despotism than get mixed up in innovations (especially unauthorized reforms in government).-- This is his good side. His unflattering side is his tendency to imitation and his low opinion of his own ability to be original (which is exactly the opposite of the defiant Englishman's); however, in particular there is a certain mania for method that allows him to punctiliously classify other citizens not, for example, according to a principle of approximation to equality, but rather according to degrees of superiority and order of rank; and in this schema of rank he is inexhaustible in the invention of titles (Edlen and Hochedlen, Wohland Hochwohl- and Hochgeboren), ' 6 and thus servile out of mere pedantry. To be sure, all of this may be attributable to the form of the German constitution, but one should not overlook the fact that the origin of this pedantic form itself comes from the spirit of the nation and the natural propensity of the German to lay out a ladder between the one who is to rule down to the one who is to be ruled, each rung of which is marked with the degree of reputation proper to it. For he who has no occupation, and hence also no title, is, as they say, nothing. The state, which confers these titles, certainly yields a profit, but also, without paying attention to side effects, it stirs up demands of a different significance among the subjects, which must appear ridiculous to other peoples. In fact, this mania for punctiliousness and this need for methodical division, in order for a whole to be grasped under one concept, reveals the limitation of the German's innate talent. Since Russia has not yet developed what is necessary for a definite concept of natural predispositions which lie ready in it; since Poland is '5
'6
James Boswell (174o--1795), Scottish writer, author of The Life of Samuel Johnson (1791). See p. 290 of the 1769 German translation of Boswell's Account ofCorsica, the Journal ofa Tour to that Island, and Memoirs of Pascal Paoli (Glasgow and London, 1768). See also Parow 25: 431, Mrongovius 25: 1408. The approximate English translations of these titles would be: Noble, Most Noble, The Honorable, The Most Honorable, The Right Honorable. Marginal note in H: Germans no originality in matters of spirit, rather imitation. 221
[319)
Anthropological Characteristic
[32o]
no longer at this stage; and since the nationals of European Turkey never have attained and never will attain what is necessary for the acquisition of a definite national character, 17 the sketch of them may rightly be passed over here. Anyway, since the question here is about innate, natural character which, so to speak, lies in the blood mixture of the human being, not characteristics of nations that are acquired and artificial (or spoiled by too much artifice), one must therefore be very cautious in sketching them. In the character of the Greeks under the harsh oppression of the Turks and the not much lighter oppression of their own Caloyers, 18 their temperament (vivacity and thoughtlessness) has no more disappeared than has the structure of their bodies, their shape, and facial features. This characteristic would, presumably, in fact reestablish itself if, by a happy turn of events, their form of religion and government would provide them the freedom to reestablish themselves. - Among another Christian people, the Armenians, a certain commercial spirit of a special kind prevails; they wander on foot from the borders of China all the way to Cape Corso on the coast of Guinea to carry on commerce. This indicates a separate origin of this reasonable and industrious people who, in a line from North-East to South-West, travel through almost the whole extent of the ancient continent and who know how to secure a peaceful reception by all the peoples they encounter. And it proves that their character is superior to the fickle and groveling character of the modern Greek, the first form of which we can no longer examine. - This much we can judge with probability: that the mixture of tribes (by extensive conquests), which graqually extinguishes their characters, is not beneficial to the human race- all so-called philanthropy notwithstanding.
'7
ein bestimmter Volkscharakter.
'8
The Caloyers are Greek Catholic monks belonging to the Order of St. Basil. Kiilpe lists the following remark from Jacob Friedrich von Bielfeld, Erste Grundlinien tier allgemeinen Gelehrsamkeit III (1767), as Kant's source: "In this church [i.e., the Greek] there are ... monks (of the Order of St. Basil) who are called Caloyers, and who wear a black dress almost like the Benedictines" (p. 252).
D The character of the races With regard to this subject I can refer to what Herr Privy Councilor Girtanner' has presented so beautifully and thoroughly in explanation and further development in his work (in accordance with my principles); I want only to make a further remark aboutfami(y kind 2 and the varieties or modifications that can be observed in one and the same race. Instead of assimilation, which nature intended in the melting together of different races, she has here made a law of exactly the opposite: namely in a people of the same race (for example, the white race), instead of allowing the formation of their characters constantly and progressively to approach one another in likeness - where ultimately only one and the same portrait would result, as in prints taken from the same copperplaterather to diversify to infinity the characters of the same tribe and even of the same family in physical and mental traits. -It is true that nurses, in order to flatter one of the parents, say: "The child has this from the father, and that from the mother"; but if this were true, all forms of human generation would have been exhausted long ago, and since fertility [32r] in matings is regenerated through the heterogeneity of individuals, reproduction would have been brought to a standstill. - So, for example, ash-colored hair (cendrie) does not come from the mixture of a brunette with a blond, but rather signifies a particular family kind. And nature has sufficient supply on hand so that she does not have to send, for want of ' Christoph Girtanner (176o-18oo), Uber das Kantische Prinzip for Naturgeschichte (Gi:ittingen, 1796). In his Preface, Girtanner notes that his book is an explanation of Kant's ideas and a commentary on them. Girtanner was named Privy Councilor of Saxe-Meiningen (a duchy in Thuringia) in 1793. • Familienschlag.
223
Anthropological Characteristic forms in reserve, a human being into the world who has already been there. Also, proximity of kinship notoriously results in infertility. 3
3
Marginal note in H: rst Stage
The human being is an animal created not merely for nature and instinct but also for fine art (die freie Kunst).
2nd Stage Judgment of the Spaniards in Mexico.
E The character of the species In order to indicate a character of a certain being's species, it is necessary that it be grasped under one concept with other species known to us. But also, the characteristic property (proprietas) by which they differ from each other has to be stated and used as a basis for distinguishing them. - But if we are comparing a kind of being that we know (A) with another kind of being that we do not know (non-A), then how can one expect or demand to indicate a character of the former when the middle term of the comparison (tertium comparationis) is missing to us? -The highest species concept may be that of a terrestrial rational being; however, we shall not be able to name its character because we have no knowledge of non-terrestrial rational beings that would enable us to indicate their characteristic property and so to characterize this terrestrial being among rational beings in general. - It seems, therefore, that the problem of indicating the character of the human species is absolutely insoluble, because the solution would have to be made through experience by means of the comparison of two species of rational being, but experience does not offer us this. 1
' Crossed out in H: this. [The human being is conscious of himself not merely as an animal that can reason (animal rationabile), but he is also conscious, irrespective of his animality, ofbeing a rational being (animal rationale); and in this quality he does not cognize himself through experience, for it
<would> can never teach him the
Anthropological Characteristic
[322]
Therefore, in order to assign the human being his class in the system of animate nature, nothing remains for us than to say that he has a character, which he himself creates, in so far as he is capable of perfecting himself according to ends that he himself adopts. By means of this the human being, as an animal endowed with the capacity of reason (animal rationabile), can make out of himself a rational animal (animal rationale)whereby he first preserves himself and his species; second, trains, instructs, and educates his species for domestic society; third, governs it as a systematic whole (arranged according to principles of reason) appropriate for society. But in comparison with the idea of possible rational beings on earth in general, the characteristic of the human species is this: that nature has planted in it the seed of discord, and has willed that its own reason bring concord out of this, or at least the constant approximation to it. It is true that in the idea concord is the end, but in actuality the former (discord) is the means, in nature's plan, of a supreme and, to us, inscrutable wisdom: to bring about the perfection of the human being through progressive culture, although with some sacrifice of his pleasures of life. Among the living inhabitants ofthe earth the human being is markedly distinguished from all other living beings by his technical predisposition for manipulating things (mechanically joined with consciousness), by his pragmatic predisposition (to use other human beings skillfully for his purposes), and by the moral predisposition in his being (to treat himself and others according to the principle of freedom under laws). And any one of these three levels can by itself alone already distinguish the human being characteristically as opposed to the other inhabitants of the earth.
I The technical predisposition The questions whether the human being was originally destined to walk on four feet (as Moscati 2 proposed, perhaps merely as a thesis for a dissertation), or on two feet; - whether the gibbon, the orang-utan, the chimpanzee, and so on are destined thus can show the pure character of his species>. However, in order to appreciate this character of his species, the comparison with a standard that can<not> be found anywhere else but in perfect humanity is necessary.] • Pietro Moscati (1739-1824), Italian physician and natural scientist. See also Kant, Review of Moscati's Work: On the Essential Physical Diffirences between the Structure of Animals and Human Beings 2: 421-425.
The character of the species [for thisP (wherein Linne and Camper disagree with each other); whether the human being is a herbivorous or (since he has a membranous stomach) a carnivorous animal;- whether, since he has neither claws nor fangs, consequently (without reason) no weapons, he is by nature a predator or a peaceable animal - - the answer to these questions is of no consequence. At any rate, this question could still be raised: whether the human being by nature is a sociable animal or a solitary one who shies away from his neighbors? The latter is the most probable. A first human couple, already fully developed, put there by nature in the midst of food supplies, if not at the same time given a natural instinct that is nevertheless not present in us in our present natural state, is difficult to reconcile with nature's provision for the preservation of the species. The first human being would drown in the first pond he saw before him, for swimming is already an art that one must learn; or he would eat poisonous roots and fruits and thus be in constant danger of dying. But if nature had implanted this instinct into the first human couple, how was it possible that they did not transmit it to their children; something that after all never happens now? It is true that songbirds teach their young certain songs and pass them on by tradition, so that a bird taken from the nest while still blind and reared in isolation has no song after it is grown up. But where did the first song come from; a for it was not learned, and if it had arisen instinctively, why did the young not inherit it? The characterization of the human being as a rational animal is already present in the form and organization of his hand, his fingers, and fingertips; 3
The text is unclear here. Kiilpe suggests that "to walk on two feet" be added after "destined." Gregor inserts "to walk upright or on all fours" after "destined." Vorlii.nder and Brandt, whom I have followed, suggest that "for this" (dazu) seems to be missing after "destined." Kiilpe also refers readers here to Christian Friedrich Ludwig, Grundriss der Naturgeschichte der Menschenspecies (Leipzig, 1796). In Sec. 2 ("Von den besonderen Unterschieden zwischen dem Menschen und den menschenniihnlichsten Affen"), Ludwig discusses the views of Linne (Linnaeus), Camper, and Moscati as well.
• One can assume with Sir Linne the hypothesis for the archaeology of nature that from the universal ocean that covered the entire earth there first emerged an island below the equator, like a mountain, on which gradually developed all climatic degrees of warmth, from the heat on its lower shores to the arctic cold on its summit, together with the plants and animals appropriate to them. Concerning birds of all kin!ls, it is assumed that songbirds imitated the innate organic sounds of all different sorts of voices, and that each, so far as its throat permitted, banded together with others, whereby each species made its own particular song, which one bird later imparted through instruction to another (like a tradition). And one also observes that finches and nightingales in different countries also introduce some variety in their songs.
227
[323]
Anthropological Characteristic partly through their structure, partly through their sensitive feeling. By this means nature has made the human being not suited for one way of manipulating things but undetermined for every way, consequently suited for the use of reason; and thereby has indicated the technical predisposition, or the predisposition of skill, of his species as a rational animal.
[324]
II The pragmatic predisposition to become civilized through culture, particularly through the cultivation of social qualities, and the natural tendency of his species in social relations to come out of the crudity of mere personal force and to become a well-mannered (if not yet moral) being destined for concord, is now a higher step. - The human being is capable of, and in need of, an education in both instruction and training (discipline). Now the question here is (with or against Rousseau) 4 whether the character of the human species, with respect to its natural predisposition, fares better in the crudity of its nature than with the arts of culture, where there is no end in sight? -First of all, it must be noted that with all other animals left to themselves, each individual reaches its complete vocation; however, with the human being only the species, at best, 5 reaches it; so that the human race can work its way up to its vocation only through progress in a series of innumerably many generations. To be sure, the goal always remains in prospect for him, but while the tendency to this final end can often be hindered, it can never be completely reversed. 6 III The moral predisposition The question here is: whether the human being is good by nature, or evil by nature, or whether he is by nature equally susceptible to one or the other, depending on whether this or 4
6
5 aber allenfolls nur die Gattung. See Rousseau's Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750). Crossed out in H: reversed [Now because the transition from the crude to the civilized condition is
228
The character of the species that formative hand falls on him (cereus in vitiumflecti etc.). 7 In the latter case the species itself would have no character. - But this case is selfcontradictory; for a being endowed with the power of practical reason and consciousness of freedom of his power of choice (a person) sees himself in this consciousness, even in the midst of the darkest representations, subject to a law of duty and to the feeling (which is then called moral feeling) that justice or injustice is done to him or, by him, to others. 8 Now this in itself is already the intelligible character ofhumanity as such, and in this respect the human being is good according to his innate predispositions (good by nature). But experience nevertheless also shows that in him there is a tendency actively to desire what is unlawful, even though he knows that it is unlawful; that is, a tendency to evil, which stirs as inevitably and as soon as he begins to make use of his freedom, and which can therefore be considered innate. Thus, according to his sensible character the human being must also be judged as evil (by nature). This is not self-contradictory if one is talking about the character of the species; for one can assume that its natural vocation consists in continual progress toward the better. The sum total of pragmatic anthropology, in respect to the vocation of the human being and the Characteristic of his formation, is the following. The human being is destined by his reason to live in a society with human beings and in it to cultivate himself, to civilize himself, and to moralize 7
8
Trans.: like wax to be molded toward evil. Crossed out in H: others. [Therefore one can also raise the question whether the human being by nature (that is, before he can think about the determining grounds of his free doing and forbearing, consequently before he can
Anthropological Characteristic [32 5]
himself by means of the arts and sciences. No matter how great his animal tendency may be to give himself over passively to the impulses of comfort and good living, which he calls happiness, he is still destined to make himself worthy of humanity by actively struggling with the obstacles that cling to him because of the crudity of his nature. The human being must therefore be educated to the good; but he who is to educate him is on the other hand a human being who still lies in the crudity of nature and who is now supposed to bring about what he himself needs. Hence the continuous deviation from his vocation with the always-repeated returns to it. - Let us state the difficulties in the solution of this problem and the obstacles to solving it.
A The first physical determination of this problem consists in the human being's impulse to preserve his species as an animal species. -But here already the natural phases of his development refuse to coincide with the civil phases. According to the first, the human being in his natural state, at least by his fifteenth year, is driven by the sexual instinct, and he is also capable of procreating and preserving his kind. According to the second, he can (on average) hardly venture upon it before his twentieth year. For even if, as a citizen of the world, the young man has the capacity early enough to satisfy his own inclination and his wife's; nevertheless, as a citizen of the state, he will not have the capacity for a long time to support his wife and children. -He must learn a trade, to bring in customers, in order to set up a household with his wife; but in the more refined classes of people his twenty-fifth year may well have passed before he is mature for his vocation.- Now with what does he fill up this interval of a forced and unnatural abstinence? Scarcely with anything else but vices. B
The drive to acquire science, as a form of culture that ennobles humanity, has altogether no proportion to the life span of the species. The scholar, when he has advanced in culture to the point where he himself can broaden the field, is called away by death, and his place is taken by the mere beginner who, shortly before the end of his life, after he too has just 230
The character of the species taken one step forward, in turn relinquishes his place to another.- What [326] a mass of knowledge, what discoveries of new methods would now be on hand if an Archimedes, a Newton, or a Lavoisier9 with their diligence and talent had been favored by nature with a hundred years of continuous life without decrease of vitality! But the progress of the species is always only fragmentary (according to time) and offers no guarantee against regression, with which it is always threatened by intervening revolutionary barbarism. 10
c The species seems to fare no better in achieving its vocation with respect to happiness, which man's nature constantly impels him to strive for; however, reason limits the condition of worthiness to be happy; that is, morality.- One certainly need not accept as his real opinion the hypochondriac (ill-humored) portrayal which Rousseau paints of the human species, when it ventures out of the state of nature, for a recommendation to reenter that state and return to the woods. By means of this picture he expressed our species' difficulty in walking the path of continuous approximation to its vocation. The portrayal is not a fabrication: - the experience of ancient and modern times must disconcert every thinking person and make him doubt whether our species will ever fare better. u Rousseau wrote three works on the damage done to our species by 1) leaving nature for culture, which weakened our strength, 2) civilization, which caused inequality and mutual oppression, 3) presumed moralization, which brought about unnatural education and the deformation of our way of thinking. -These three works, 12 I maintain, which present the state of nature as a state of innocence (a paradise guarded against our return by the gatekeeper with a fiery sword), should serve his Social Contract, Emile, and 9
Archimedes (287-212 BC), Greek mathematician, physicist, and inventor; Isaac Newton (1642-1727), English natural philosopher and mathematician; Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794), French chemist and physicist, guillotined during the Reign of Terror.
•o durch dazwischen tretende staatsumwiilzende Barbarei. '' Marginal notes in H: [The prosecutor - lawyer and judge. The intermediary is he who is
instructed to defend any matter, be it illusion or truth to him] That there is a cosmopolitan disposition in the human species, even with all the wars, which gradually in the course of political matters wins the upper hand over the selfish predispositions of peoples. •• Presumably, the Discourse on the Arts and Sciences (1750), the Discourse on the Origin ofInequality (1754), and Julie, ou Ia Nouvelle Hiloi"se (1761). 231
Anthropological Characteristic
[32 7]
Savoyard Vicar only as a guiding thread for finding our way out of the labyrinth of evil with which our species has surrounded itself by its own fault. - Rousseau did not really want the human being to go back to the state of nature, but rather to look back at it from the stage where he now stands. He assumed that the human being is good by nature (as far as nature allows good to be transmitted), but good in a negative way; that is, he is not evil of his own accord and on purpose, but only in danger of being infected and ruined by evil or inept leaders and examples. Since, however, good human beings, who must themselves have been educated for this purpose, are necessary for moral education, arid since there is probably not one among them who has no (innate or acquired) corruption in himself, the problem of moral education for our species remains unsolved even in the quality of the principle, not merely in degree, because an innate evil tendency in our species may be censured by common human reason, and perhaps also restrained, but it will thereby still not have been eradicated. In a civil constitution, which is the highest degree of artificial improvemene3 of the human species' good predisposition to the final end of its vocation, animality still manifests itself earlier and, at bottom, more powerfully than pure humanity. Domestic animals are more useful to the human being than wild animals only because of weakening. The human being's self-will is always ready to break out in aversion toward his neighbor, and he always presses his claim to unconditional freedom; freedom not merely to be independent of others, but even to be master over other beings who by nature are equal to him - which one even notices already in the smallest child. b This is because nature within '3 b
[328]
der hOchste Grad der kiinstlichen Steigerung. The cry of a newborn child is not the sound of distress but rather of indignation and furious anger; not because something hurts him, but because something annoys him: presumably because he wants to move and his inability to do so feels like a fetter through which his freedom is taken away from him. - What could nature's intention be here in letting the child come into the world with loud cries which, in the crude state ofnature, are extremely dangerous for himself and his mother? For a wolf or even a pig would thereby be lured to eat the child, if the mother is absent or exhausted from childbirth. However, no animal except the human being (as he is now) will loudly announce his existence at the moment of birth; which seems to have been so arranged by the wisdom of nature in order to preserve the species. One must therefore assume that in the first epoch of nature with respect to this class of animals (namely in the time of crudity), this crying of the child at birth did not yet exist; and then only later a second epoch set in, when both parents had already reached the level of culture necessary for domestic life; without our knowing how, or through what contributing causes, nature brought about such a development. This remark leads 232
The character of the species the human being strives to lead him from culture to morality, and not (as reason prescribes) beginning with morality and its law, to lead him to a culture designed to be appropriate to morality. This inevitably establishes a perverted, inappropriate tendency: for example, when religious instruction, which necessarily should be a moral culture, begins with historical culture, which is merely the culture of memory, and tries in vain to deduce morality from it. The education of the human race, taking its species as a whole, that is, collectively (universorum), not all of the individuals (singulorum), where the multitude does not yield a system but only an aggregate gathered together; and the tendency toward an envisaged civil constitution, which is to be based on the principle of freedom but at the same time on the principle of constraint in accordance with law: the human being expects these only from Providence; that is, from a wisdom that is not his, but which is still (through his own fault) an impotent idea of his own reason.This education from above, I maintain, is salutary but harsh and stern in the cultivation of nature, which extends through great hardship and almost to the extinction of the entire race. It consists in bringing forth the good which the human being has not intended, but which continues to maintain itself once it is there, from evil, which is always internally at odds with itself. Providence signifies precisely the same wisdom that we observe with admiration in the preservation of a species of organized natural beings, constantly working toward its destruction and yet always being protected, without therefore assuming a higher principle in such provisions than we assume to be in use already in the preservation of plants and animals. - As for the rest, the human species should and can itself be the creator of its good fortune; however, that it will do so cannot be inferred a priori from what is known to us about its natural predispositions, but only from experience and history, with expectation as well grounded as is necessary for us not to despair of its progress toward the better, but to promote its approach to this goal with all prudence and moral illumination (each to the best of his ability).
us far- for example, to the thought that upon major upheavals in nature this second epoch might be followed by a third, when an orang-utan or a chimpanzee developed the organs used for walking, handling objects, and speaking into the structure of a human being, whose innermost part contained an organ for the use of the understanding and which developed gradually through social culture.
233
[328]
[329]
Anthropological Characteristic
[330]
One can therefore say that the first character of the human being is the capacity as a rational being to obtain a character as such for his own person as well as for the society in which nature has placed him. This capacity, however, presupposes an already favorable natural predisposition and a tendency to the good in him; for evil is really without character (since it carries within itself conflict with itself and permits no lasting principle in itself). 14 The character of a living being is that which allows its vocation to be cognized in advance. - However, for the ends of nature one can assume as a principle that nature wants every creature to reach its vocation through the appropriate development of all predispositions of its nature, so that at least the species, if not every individual, fulfills nature's purpose. -With irrational animals this actually happens and is the wisdom of nature; however, with human beings only the species reaches it. We know of only one species of rational beings on earth; namely the human species, in which we also know only one natural tendency to this end; namely some day to bring about, by its own activity, the development of good out of evil. This is a prospect that can be expected with moral certainty (sufficient certainty for the duty of working toward this end), unless upheavals in nature suddenly cut it short. - For human beings are rational beings, to be sure malicious beings, but nevertheless ingenious beings who are also endowed with a moral predisposition. With the advance of culture they feel ever more strongly the ill which they selfishly inflict on one another; and since they see no other remedy for it than to subjugate the private interest (of the individual) to the public interest (of all united), they subjugate themselves, though reluctantly, to a discipline (of civil constraint). But in doing so they subjugate themselves only according to laws they themselves have given, and they feel themselves ennobled by this consciousness; namely of belonging to a species that is suited to the vocation of the human being, as reason represents it to him in the ideal. rs
'4
15
Marginal note in H: Quite different is the question, what one should do in order to furnish conviction for the moral law rather than just entry. Marginal note in H: The character of the species can only be drawn from history. That the human species taken collectively possesses in itself a striving toward artistic skill through which the selfishness of all individuals (singulorum) works toward the happiness of all (universorum) by means of the moral predisposition. '
234
The character of the species
Main features of the description of the human species' character I The human being was not meant to belong to a herd, like cattle, but to a hive, like the bee.- Necessity to be a member of some civil society or other. The simplest, least artificial way to establish such a society is to have one leader in this hive (monarchy).- But many such hives next to each other will soon attack each other like robber bees (war); not, however, as human beings do, in order to strengthen their own group by uniting with others - for here the comparison ends - but only to use by cunning or force others' industry for themselves. Each people seeks to strengthen itself through the subjugation of neighboring peoples, either from the desire to expand or the fear of being swallowed up by the other unless one beats him to it. Therefore civil or foreign war in our species, as great an evil as it may be, is yet at the same time the incentive to pass from the crude state of nature to the civil state. War is like a mechanical device of Providence, where to be sure the struggling forces injure each other through collision, but are nevertheless still regularly kept going for a long time through the push and pull of other incentives.
II Freedom and law (by which freedom is limited) are the two pivots around which civil legislation turns. -But in order for law to be effective and not an empty recommendation, a middle term c must be added; namely force, which, when connected with freedom, secures success for these principles. - Now one can conceive of four combinations of force with freedom and law: A. Law and freedom without force (anarchy). B. Law and force without freedom (despotism). C. Force without freedom and law (barbarism). D. Force with freedom and law (republic). The character of the species is that the human race as a whole has a natural tendency always to become better. The species can be considered collectively as a whole or distributively as the logical unity of the concept of the human being. The character of the species cannot be constituted historically through history alone. This is to be understood only of the human species as animal species. - It can be inferred from reason, provided that reason subjectively knows and modifies itself individually and in relation to others. c
By analogy with the medius terminus in a syllogism which, when connected with the subject and predicate of the judgment, yields the four syllogistic figures.
235
(JJI]
Anthropological Characteristic One sees that only the last combination deserves to be called a true civil constitution; by which, however, one does not have in view one of the three forms of state (democracy), but understands by republic only a state as such. And the old Brocardian dictum: Salus civitatis (not civium) suprema lex esto 16 does not mean that the physical well-being of the community (the happiness of the citizens) should serve as the supreme principle of the state constitution; for this well-being, which each individual depicts to himself according to his personal inclination in this way or that, is no good at all for an objective principle, which requires universality. The dictum says only that the rational well-being, the preservation of the state constitution once it exists, is the highest law of a civil society as such; for society endures only as a result of that constitution. 17 The character of the species, as it is known from the experience of all ages and by all peoples, is this: that, taken collectively (the human race as one whole), it is a multitude of persons, existing successively and side by side, who cannot do without being together peacefully and yet cannot avoid constantly being objectionable to one another. 18 Consequently, they feel destined by nature to [develop], through mutual compulsion under laws that come from themselves, into a cosmopolitan society (cosmopolitismus) that is constantly threatened by disunion but generally progresses toward a coalition. In itself it is an unattainable idea, but not a constitutive principle (the principle of anticipating lasting peace amid the '6
'7
'8
Trans.: The well-being of the state (not of the citizens) is the highest law. Compare Cicero, De Legibus 3.3: "Salus populi suprema lex esto" (the well-being of the people shall be the highest law). The version of the dictum cited by Kant can be traced to the collection of church laws compiled by Bishop Burchard ("Brocard" in French and Italian) ofWorms (d. 1025). Most of the laws were formulated as proverbs. Crossed out in H: constitution. [Now regarding what belongs to a character of the human species, this is not gathered from history in the way that it shows other human beings in different times and in different lands. For with the mixture of good and evil, which they
die das friedliche Beisammensein nicht entbehren und dabei dennoch einander bestiindig widerwiirtig zu sein nicht vermeiden kiinnen.
The character of the species most vigorous actions and reactions ofhuman beings). Rather, it is only a regulative principle: to pursue this diligently as the vocation of the human race, not without grounded supposition 19 of a natural tendency toward it. If one now asks whether the human species (which, when one thinks of it as a species of rational beings on earth in comparison with rational beings on other planets, as a multitude of creatures arising from one demiurge, can also be called a race)- whether, I say, it is to be regarded as a good or bad race, then I must confess that there is not much to boast about in it. Nevertheless, anyone who takes a look at human behavior not only in ancient history but also in recent history will often be tempted to take the part of Timon the misanthropist in his judgment; but far more often, and more to the point, that of Momus, 20 and find foolishness rather than malice the most striking characteristic mark of our species. But since foolishness combined with a lineament of malice (which is then called folly) is not to be underestimated in the moral physiognomy of our species, it is already clear enough from the concealment of a good part of one's thoughts, which every prudent human being finds necessary, 21 that in our race everyone finds it advisable to be on his guard and not to allow others to view completely how he is. This already betrays the propensity of our species to be evil-minded toward one another. It could well be that on some other planet there might be rational beings who could not think in any other way but aloud; that is, they could not have any thoughts that they did not at the same time utter, whether awake or dreaming, in the company of others or alone. What kind of behavior toward others would this produce, and how would it differ from that of our human species? Unless they were all pure as angels, it is inconceivable how they could live in peace together, how anyone could have any respect at all for anyone else, and how they could get on well together. - So it already belongs to the original composition of a human creature and to the concept of his species to explore the thoughts of others but to withhold one's own; a neat quality22 which then does not fail 19
nicht ohne gegriindete Vermuthung.
20
21
Timon of Athens, a famous misanthrope, was a semi-legendary character. Momus is the god of blame or censure. See, e.g., Plato, Republic 487a, Hesiod, Theogony 214. Marginal note in H: There could be beings who would not be able to think without at the same time speaking, therefore they could only think aloud. These beings would have an entirely different character than the human species.
22
saubere Eigenschaft.
237
[332]
Anthropological Characteristic
[333]
to progress gradually from dissimulation to intentional deception and finally to lying. This would then result in a caricature of our species that would warrantd not mere good-natured laughter at it but contempt for what constitutes its character, and the admission that this race of terrestrial rational beings deserves no honorable place among the (to us unknown) other rational beings - except that precisely this condemning judgment reveals a moral predisposition in us, an innate demand of reason, also to work against this propensity. So it presents the human species not as evil, but as a species of rational beings that strives among obstacles to rise out of evil in constant progress toward the good. In this its volition is generally good, but achievement is difficult because one cannot expect to reach the goal by the free agreement of individuals, but only. by a progressive organization of citizens of the earth into and toward the species as a system that is cosmopolitically united. 23
d
Frederick II once asked the excellent Sulzer, whom he valued according to his merits and whom he had entrusted with the administration of the schools in Silesia, how things were going there. Sulzer replied, "They're beginning to go better, now that we have built on the principle (of Rousseau's) that the human being is good by nature." "Ah (said the king), mon cher Sulzer, vous ne connaissez pas assez cette maudite race laquelle nous appartenons." [Trans.: my dear Sulzer, you don't really know this wretched race to which we belong- Ed.]-lt also belongs to the character of our species that, in striving toward a civil constitution, it also needs a discipline by religion, so that what cannot be achieved by external constraint can be brought about by internal constraint (the constraint of conscience). For the moral predisposition of the human being is used politically by legislators, a tendency that belongs to the character of the species. However, if morals do not precede religion in this discipline of the people, then religion makes itself lord over morals, and statutory religion becomes an instrument of state authority (politics) under religious despots: an evil that inevitably upsets and misguides character by governing it with deception (called statecraft). While publicly professing to be merely the first servant of the state, that great monarch could not conceal the contrary in his agonizing private confession, but he excused himself by attributing this corruption to the evil race called the human species. [Johann Georg Sulzer (172o--1779), aesthetician, member of the Berlin Academy of Sciences, translator ofHume's Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1756). See also Kant's reply to ''a letter from the late excellent Sulzer" in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics ofMorals 4: 41on. However, according to Kiilpe, Sulzer was never appointed administrator of the schools in Silesia, and only spoke personally with the King on one occasion. Kant's report of this alleged discussion perhaps comes from Christoph Friedrich Nicolai, Anekdoten von Konig Friedrich II. Von Preussen, znd ed. (1790)- Ed.]
a
[333]
23
in und zu der Gattung als einem System, das kosmopolitisch verbunden ist.
Index Abelard, Peter, I7 Abraham, 88 absent-mindedness, 78, 101, I02 abstinence, 230 abstraction, 19-20, 27, 37, Ioo, Io6; faculty of, 20 acumen, 95~6 Addison, Joseph, 28 affectation, 21, I33, 208 affect(s), 72, II4, I27, I3I, I49-I6S, 2oo; lack of affect, ISO affinity, 70 agreeable, the, 125-I27, I53 ambition, I66 amusem*nt, I28-I3I anarchy, 235 anger, ISO, 153, 156, I59 animals, I68, 232; have no passions, I66; representations in, 24 anthropologist, the, IS anthropology, 204, 2I2; and metaphysics, I8, 33-34; from a pragmatic point of view, 3-6, 2 I 4; indirectly pragmatic, I 09; in distinction to physical geography, I99; in distinction to psychology, 53; physiological, 3, 25, 69, I86; pragmatic, 63, 82, I43, 229-230 antiquities, Roman, 2I9 antiquity, 55 anxiety, 8o, I 53 apathy, 152 appearance(s), 33, 37; sensory, 37· See also deception(s) apperception, 33; pure, 32, 53; pure and empirical, 23; spontaneity of, 29 appetite, 51, I63, I8I. See also desire apprehension, 16, 23, 32 Arabs,74,88, I69, I8o
archaeology, of nature, 87, 227 Arcesilaus, 91 Archenholz, Johann Wilhelm von, 197 Archimedes, 23I Ariosto, Ludovico, 74 Aristotle, 44 Armenians, 222 Arouet, Fran~ois-Marie, 105, IIO. arrogance, 97, IOS, 173. See also pride art(s), 230; beautiful, 143, 145; mnemonic, 77; of pretence, 21; of writing, 78; perfect, 104; plastic, 142; poetic, I44 artists, 67, 120, I45; Greek, I97 association of representations, 69, 70, 75. IIS astonishment, I 6o astrology, 8 I, 87 astronomy, 87 attention, I9, 20, 27, 53, 55, I02-II9 audacity, I s6, I6o autodidacts, I22 avarice, I89. See also mania for possession Bacon, Francis, II9 balls, I47 Baratier, Jean Philippe, I22 barbarism, 235; revolutionary, 231 Baretti, Joseph, rr8 Bavaria, 202 Bayard (Terrail, Pierre), I 59 beauty, I36-I39, 146, I98 bewitchment (of the senses), 41 biographies, 5 Blair, Hugh, I45-I46 blind people, 52, 6I blood vengeance, I 7 I
239
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