On the Triple Sign

Kant’s views on the impermissibility of political revolution are well known; the insistence on the principle of public right in Perpetual Peace (8:376), and the injunction to ‘obey’ in “What is Enlightenment?” (7:37) are but two examples. It is also the case that Kant recognises a telos for the human race, and one that will involve political progress; variously presented as working through us as ‘a natural purpose in the idiotic course of things human’ (7:18) or, in a more developed formulation in the third Critique, as guiding us towards the institution of that ‘formal condition’ under which nature can achieve that aim, ‘a civil society’ (5:432) An end implies movement towards that end; the difficulty for Kant is that, as an intelligible end, it cannot be domesticated as a blueprint. Nevertheless, its possibility must be kept open; we must be permitted to hope, even if we do not expect. The view I wish to develop is this; for Kant, the meaning of history lies, not in an intelligible end, since such a thing is not available to us as situated, historical and finite beings, but in ‘meaningfulness’ itself. By this I intend the view that the contemplative, or ‘reflective’ understanding of specific historical events (events of a certain weight and portent) alert us to the existence of an intelligible ground for our history as a species. This comes into focus, not by reflection on the representation and consequences of the event itself, but by the awareness of a particular ‘mode of thinking’ that alerts us to the significance of such events. This view is expressed in a short passage in ‘And Old Question Raised Again: is the Human Race Constantly Progressing?’ (Part 2 of ‘The Conflict of the Faculties). An ‘event of our time’ functions as ‘an intimation’ and ‘a historical sign’ (7:84) that the human race can be ‘the cause of its own advance’ (7:83) The ‘event of our time’ that Kant refers to is of course the French Revolution. In this essay, the significance he notes in ‘this mode of thinking’ sits oddly with his condemnation of revolution elsewhere. The importance of the event lies, not in ‘momentous deeds’ but [in] the mode of thinking of the spectators which reveals itself in the game of great revolutions, and manifests such universal, yet disinterested sympathy for the players on one side against those on the other ….(7:84) Because, here, ‘the moral character of humanity’ stands revealed. That which intimates the importance of this event is the ‘triple sign’ (rememorativum, demonstrativum, prognostikon) (7:84). This formulation directly recalls scholastic definitions of the Eucharist. It also recalls, in differing ways, two key concepts in Kant: the notion of a schema, familiar from the first Critique and that of the sublime, as set out in the Critique of Judgement. Finally, the anticipatory power of this sign is instantiated in the race, not in individuals but ‘as divided into nations and states’ (7:84): this is a political sign.