Kant Felsefesinde Politik Olanın Yeri

Abstract

The last half century has witnessed a gradual growth of the literature on the relationship between Kant’s philosophy and its political aspects. From the quasi-political metaphysical narrative in the Critique of Pure Reason to Rechtslehre, some metaphors and concepts in Kant’s philosophy and Kant’s so called political texts has been opened to discussion. Even if the discussions in which some of Kantian views has been appreciated and some others outmoded, invoked there is such a thing as Kant’s political philosophy, this political philosophy has been regarded as an accidental or a secondary element in Kant’s philosophy. Moreover, possibly the most important question remains unanswered: Why Kant has a political philosophy, or why Kant’s philosophy has political elements –that is metaphors, concepts, ideas and so on. To be able to answer these questions, it is not sufficient to examine only Kant’s political texts. Because in the light of Kant’s insistence on the systematical unity, and that unity as an architectonic is about main interests of human reason, the presence of political elements in Kant’s philosophy have to have an essential rationale, not an accidental one. So, to be able to see the place of the political in Kant’s philosophy, one must go over Kant’s philosophy as a whole. And, with this aim, one must firstly examine the Critiques as the core of Kant’s philosophy which questions the legitimacy of humankind’s theoretical and practical interests and claims in the level of its pure rational faculties. This effort will constitute the first chapter of the study, and by going through three critiques of Kant, show rational foundations of essential interests of humanity. And so, it will state that essential determination of human is in the practical, not in the theoretical. The second chapter under the heading of “Kant’s political philosophy,” will try to give a description about some political themes occur in Kant’s philosophy: Enlightenment, history and human progress, republic, perpetual peace and so on. And the third chapter will try to show that it has an undeniable role for systematical unity that Critique claims, to think and realize the political, so the political has not a contingent but a necessary place in Kant’s philosophy, and lastly, that the conceptual framework which the critique produces pretty matches with Kantian politics.