Between Enthusiasm and Sublimity: Kant and the Judgment of the Revolution in The Conflict of the Faculties

Kant’s brief remarks on revolution in the second part of The Conflict of the Faculties have perplexed commentators. While in his political writings Kant claims that overthrowing the sovereign is always against moral duty, in Conflict he claims that a revolution can be a sign of the moral progress of humanity. The sign, however, works only indirectly, for it consists not in the revolutionary act itself, but rather in the “enthusiasm” felt by the spectators. These remarks have let commentators who are both sympathetic to Kant’s philosophy and critical of his categorical disavowal of revolution, such as Hannah Arendt and Jean-Francois Lyotard, to read Conflict as a central piece in what they see as a latent “Critique of Political Reason” unfolding in Kant’s later writings. This implicit Critique, according to both Arendt and Lyotard, would focus on political action and judgment, rather than on authority and right, as is the case with Kant’s explicitly political writings. Building on Arendt’s and Lyotard’s readings, my paper develops an interpretation of Kant’s remarks on revolution by analyzing its connections with the central premises of his practical philosophy. I focus on two central concepts in these remarks: 1) “Sign,” which connects the revolutionary act with the moral disposition of humanity; and 2) “Enthusiasm,” which is the feeling experienced by the spectators of the revolution. I interpret both concepts in light of Kant’s use of them in other parts of his work (“sign” appears in the Critique of Pure Reason, and “enthusiasm” is analyzed in the Critique of the Power of Judgment), as well as their use by some of his intellectual antecedents (Baumgarten and Shaftsbury). On the basis of this analysis, I argue that Kant’s remarks on revolution in Conflict do not contradict the central tenets of his practical philosophy, but rather shed light on an issue that had remained unexplored until this text, namely, the relationship between actions and the public world. More specifically, I show that Conflict presents a model for the possibility of uttering public judgments upon public actions. While this interpretation brings me close to Arendt’s, I depart from her by arguing that it is in the analysis of the sublime, more fundamentally than the analysis of the beautiful, that clarifies how this public judgment based on “enthusiasm” is possible. I conclude by connecting my interpretation of Kant’s remarks in Conflict with contemporary debates around the nature of political judgment among theorists influenced by Kant (Arendt, Lyotard, Rawls, Forst). Specifically, I claim that Kant’s understanding of political judgment emphasizes readiness to unpredictable events, rather than the application of established norms.