Kantian Anthropology and a Sustainable Orientation for the Future

An overarching motif of Kant’s anthropology is the view of humanity as an essentially developmental species: humanity progresses on a pathway of perfection as it strives for an enlightened, cosmopolitan future. This paper attempts to hone in on the ethical insights of Kant’s underappreciated anthropological texts with an eye for their contemporary application. Specifically, I argue that aspects of Kant’s philosophy of history and understanding of humanity have interdisciplinary and ethical relevance for the global challenge of anthropogenic climate change. Problems of considerable difficulty for climate change concern the representation of the world-system as single holistic object of cognition and, secondly, the utilization of such a representation for confronting the global challenge of climate change. Kant’s anthropology can be an asset for both, as he considers nature to be a regulative unity, and humanity to be unfolding within it in accordance with the idea of a teleological narrative. My paper consists of two parts. (I) I highlight aspects of Kantian anthropology relevant for the global problems of climate change, employing primarily the Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Aim and Conjectural Beginning of Human History. (II) I connect these aspects to Kantian ethical theory to show that conceiving of climate change as a project challenging our historical progression instills in us the mettle to overcome it. I claim that there are four aspects of Kantian anthropology that are helpful for climate ethics. First, Kant’s vision of human progress can enjoin us to develop an attitude of solidarity in pursuit of our shared, heroic project of overcoming climate change. Second, the heroic project inspires us to act as citizens of the world, which includes the cultivation of virtues such as mindfulness and courage. Thirdly, Kant’s vision reminds us that our vocation, today, requires ecological stewardship. For us to fulfill this vocation, we need to strive for a kingdom of ends and treat moral agents with dignity. Since climate change creates inequitable and inhospitable environments, stewardship becomes a precondition for realizing our moral vocation. Lastly, Kant’s anthropological views oblige us to contribute to the perfection of the human species; failure to take part in this project makes one less morally perfect and precludes the harmonization of our ends. Because of an agent’s perfect duty toward perfection and duty for realizing a kingdom of ends, she ought to reawaken the cause for sustainable, cosmopolitan enlightenment. Reconsidering Kantian anthropology with an eye to our global predicament makes Kant’s seemingly dated teleological views relevant to the contemporary world of ethics and politics. This exploration indeed has important implications for the intergenerational, international ethics of climate change and gives us a heroic vision for a cosmopolitan world. It can, in a word, provide us with a future-oriented outlook for sustainability. In the last analysis, insights from Kant’s underappreciated anthropological texts are thus not only philosophically relevant with regard to Kant scholarship since they underscore the collective, non-individualist elements of his thought, but they also have practical significance for the pressing global concerns we face today.