So, I am back from the UK and Europe. I have been back for a bit, as I had to come home early, but that was due to some health problems. Everything seems to be OK right now, but who knows..
At any rate, the conference was very interesting and I met some really nice people. Hopefully I can keep in contact, and I was even given a rave review by Gary Banham.
Seeing as how I am now back, and "back" in my writing/thinking space, I have started to tackle the permissive law (PL) again. I think I am onto something, but that is for another day -- and peer reviewed journal space. :-)
But, I think I cam across something rather interesting today while is search of evidence for my understanding of Kant's PL. Dare I expose my thoughts? Well...I'll do a little fancy footwork in the finished piece, but I think for now I can with some safety throw my ideas out there.
Here goes:
I was reading and working on the permissive law today, reviewing Perpetual Peace, and I was going through the last section on publicity, when it really dawned on me that all these discussions about Kant's inconsistency between TPP and the Metaphysics on the topic of publicity, are totally mistaken! I haven't seen anything like what I am about to say, but if it is out there, I would love to hear who and when and where...
This is what I have thought of today:
In relation to, let's call, the "small state preventive war problem," Kant does NOT contradict himself. Here is my interpretation.
When Kant considers the small aggressor state and its public maxim, he is doing so in a section of examples that highlight what he calls a possible "antinomy between politics and morality." He uses 3 examples to highlight this antinomy: the promise of one state to another to give aid, but the lending state cannot lend aid without causing harm to itself; a growth in power where a small state wages preventive war towards another state; a large state wants a contiguous state's territory for the large state's self-preservation.
In each of these examples, it appears there is an antinomy between politics and morality... but, Kant nowhere describes the antinomy. My reconstruction would run something like this:
Premise: Principle of Publicity, i.e. "all actions that affect the rights of other men are wrong if their maxim is not consistent with publicity."
Thesis: It is possible to will a maxim of publicity without being ineffectual.
Antithesis: It is not possible to will a maxim of publicity without being ineffectual.
Solution: Transcendental Principle of Publicity, i.e. "all maxims that require publicity (in order not to fail of their end [i.e. be effectual]) agree with both politics and morality."
This can only take place in a Kingdom of Ends --- or a condition of Perpetual Peace --- because only in a condition of true "public" right where all "states" remove the provisional status of the state of nature between states can true publicity of maxims become effectual. As long as "he who has decisively supreme power has no need to keep his maxims secret" remains possible, then we cannot will public maxims. The thesis corresponds to his Kingdom of Ends, or the intelligible world, the antithesis corresponds to the international system as we know it, or the empirical world.
The question then becomes whether we are given a permission to omit our maxims from public discourse because of this. This kind of "permissive law" business with the talk of reform, top down or otherwise, until the "time is right." I think, at first glance, yes.
Which would explain why in the Metaphysics section 56, at 6:346, Kant says "in the state of nature an attack by the lesser power is indeed legitimate," and before that says "the right to go to war (to engage in hostilities is the way in which a state is *permitted* [erlaubt] to prosecute its rights against another state." Gregor even footnotes: "In 'Toward Perpetual Peace,' however, Kant reaches the opposite conclusion by using his "principle of publicity."(footnote 34). I wonder if this is the problem of a cursory reading? Or Gregor's footnote?
I think I am going to run with this unless flagged otherwise by someone whom I respect and very familiar with this literature tells me "NO!".
