On the Ineffable Unity of Morality and Politics in Kant

This article investigates the ethical and political implications of Kant’s linguistic choice of the well-known expression ‘categorical imperative’ to designate the core of his moral philosophy. The article’s central claim is that the formulation of the categorical imperative answers to an objective difficulty that Kant had to confront: the language of the philosophical tradition prevented Kant expressing the ontological nexus that binds politics and morals, except through a binomial. Drawing together the accusative etymology of the term category – already derivable from, and present in, Socrates’ trial – and Agamben’s hypothesis about the imperative – vis-à-vis indicative – nature of the original linguistic act, the article addresses the possibility that the linguistic structure of the categorical imperative might reveal a redundancy, an intrinsic pleonasm or a semantic overlap, in Kant’s supreme moral principle. To assess this possibility and Kant’s reasons for this hermetic formulation, the article compares the use of the term category within the shift from the ‘categories’ in the Critique of Pure Reason to the ‘categorical’ in the Groundwork and Critique of Practical Reason. In doing so, the article rules out that a pleonastic overlap occurs when using the terms ‘categorical’ and ‘imperative’. It argues, instead, in support of understanding the categorical imperative’s structure as being hendiadys-like, where both terms are mutually irreducible to one another, and assesses the ontological implications of this understanding. Moreover, it is claimed that the hendiadys-like understanding of the categorical imperative has significant implications for ethical and political theories – especially for those most often associated with Rawls’ version of political liberalism. Rawls’ approach to Kant’s three formulations of the categorical imperative shows a deep understanding of the ontological assumptions behind Kant’s terminology. Yet, this awareness has failed to reverberate in today’s political theory and international political theory, although it frequently takes inspiration from Kant, and even sometimes precisely through Rawls. Such awareness, we argue, would rather primarily demand a radical rethinking of the categories of the political, which we show are ontologically inseparable from morality. Our account, we conclude, has a noteworthy impact on issues related to the liberal definition of humanity, the expression and respect of human rights within politics, and the uptake of those rights in the international political order.