Kant on Community

Abstract

<p>This chapter examines the concept of community through its different facets and far-reaching implications in Kant’s philosophy. It first addresses the concept of community as one of the twelves categories in the <em>Critique of Pure Reason</em>, showing its synthetizing role for the categories of substance and causality. It argues that Kant’s concept of the phenomenal world assumes a communalistic unity in reference to which individual objects acquire their identities. The main part of the chapter then focuses on Kant’s practical philosophy, in which the notion of community plays an even more significant role, even though Kant’s concept of autonomy and the theory of the categorical imperative may seem to be founded on an individualistic conception of morality. Not only does the formula of humanity presuppose the intersubjective endorsability of moral maxims in a community of rational agents, but more importantly the realization of the highest good in the unity of morality and happiness requires the idea of a kingdom of ends in which every autonomous agent can be considered a law-giving member. In the earthly world, the kingdom of ends has to be realized by the establishment of a political and an ethical community, to which the last two sections of the chapter are devoted. While a political community is concerned with the external freedom of rational agents to protect everyone as free and equal, an ethical community aims at cultivating the virtue of rational agents towards holiness.<br></p>