What role does divine providence play in Kant’s idea of universal history?

In his Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose, Kant is sparing in his use of the

word ‘providence’, distinguishing it from the frequently-used and personified ‘nature’, which

operates within a teleological structure. It is only by exploring the relationship between nature

and telos in Kant’s vision of universal history that one is able to uncover the position of

providence within it. But what is the nature of Kant’s providence? This essay’s title assumes a

coupling of providence with the divine, and to commence my argument I would like the reader to

attempt to disentangle these two concepts from each other in order for us to eventually arrive at

a more flexible and nuanced relationship between them. We will see that Kant does not adopt a

staunch ‘Augustinian’ vision of providence; one in which the divine play’s a more ‘hands-on’ role

in its enactment, in which God progressively reveals His plan to His creations.1 Neither is he

actively proposing an idea of the world without any conception of the divine whatsoever.

Focusing on Idea, but drawing from wider works, in this essay I will argue that providence in

Kant is not a religiously-occupied referent to the cause of nature’s operation on human

experience across history. Yet neither are the entirety of providence’s hermeneutic trappings

without a sense of the divine, as providence itself refers to a thought-process that is imbricated

in moral-religious life. Granted, my attempt at defining this concept in the negative does not

make for perfect ontological clarity, but in my analysis, I would also like to foreground a similar

sense of evasiveness that penetrates the language concerned with providence in Idea as Kant

strives to bridge theoretical and practical reason. His argument in Idea at once acts normatively,

prescribing action, yet at the same time does not shy from its own sense of radical doubt.

1
Loewith, pp160-173.
Let us first establish Kant’s idea of universal history. According to Idea, human experience

appears chaotic upon first glance, yet it is the role of history to allow us to hope that human

events actually unfold in some kind of order, even if this order transcends human knowledge.

Upon close inspection of our affairs over time, Kant contends that humans act in accordance

with natural laws and that man’s natural predispositions, aimed at the use of reason, are

developed by nature.2 Nature, wanting discord, cultivates human reason through antagonisms,

which are provoked by our innate ‘unsocial sociability’. 3 As these conflicts are resolved over

time and generations, human society is gradually improved; culture and political structures

evolve. Kant is aware that this trajectory has every chance of straying off course because

humans are prone to irrational instinct, however the ideal of this vision of universal history is that

our rational capacities will be developed to the fullest possible extent, and through the adoption

of a cosmopolitan existence, humanity will eventually arrive at a state of global, perpetual

peace.

There is an interdependence here between the work of both nature and teleology in providing

structure to human experience. Nature is the operating force that makes for a teleological

structure. It is the very mechanism that operates towards bringing about our ‘end’. Nature not

only acts in the interest of refining our rational capacities, but the way in which we perceive the

operation of nature itself in Idea appeals to our rationality as we see it acting systematically. In

The Critique of Pure Reason, reason is said to require the order of systematic structures, and

this is why we regard the phenomenal world as having a systematic unity.4 Teleology here, then,

answers this need for order in a more holistic sense. It is a force that encompasses the

operations of nature and systematises them further into inclining towards a set direction. Kant

2
See Kant, Idea, Ak8:17, p3.
3
Kant, Idea, Ak8:20, p6.
4
Kleingeld, p205.
writes in The Contest of the Faculties that it would be rational to assume that the direction of

telos works towards bringing about our moral progress. However our perfectibility appears

untenable from the perspective of theoretical reason. 5 If humans were entirely good by nature (if

we were without selfishness, irrational instinct and “childish vanity” 6) we could certainly expect a

moral trajectory, but we simply are not.7 As we cannot know what humanity’s end would look

like, or if it has an end at all, in order to achieve or even near the goal of our own perfectibility

we should act as if we’re on a eudaemonic trajectory; a trajectory towards our happiness and

betterment.8 So while we cannot actually know of the existence of a telos, let alone a positive

one, it is nevertheless a justifiable belief to uphold, and is without risk, as it helps us to

collectively strive toward reason over time.

It is here that the principle of rational hope takes its place in Kant's work, as it is a concept that

situates itself between attitudes of belief and knowledge when knowledge is not entirely

apparent. Rational hope guides our actions in the phenomenal world as, according to Chignell, it

is a hope that is “rational only if the subject is not in a position to be certain that p is really

impossible.”9 Although not referenced fully in Idea, hope and conditionality saturate its language

to the extent that Jacques Derrida implies that Kant’s recognition of limits and awareness of risk

amidst rational optimism gives the entire discourse its form.10 For example, Kant writes; “the

world would have to progress if it is to be adequate to certain rational aims; it may seem that

such a project could yield only a novel.”11 There is an importance to fiction and to conditionality;

5
See Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, Ak6:350, p145. “[P]erpetual peace…is indeed an unachievable idea.”
6
Kant, Idea, Ak8:21, p7.
7
Kant, Contest, Ak7:84, p157.
8
Kant, Contest, Ak7:81-2, p152.
9
Chignell, p197.
10
Derrida p5-6
11
Kant, Idea, Ak8:29, p15. Italics mine.
they each self-legitimise in calling upon practical reason regardless of their lack of empirical

purchase.

It is in such evasive moments, when rational hope is adopted in regard to our perfectibility, yet

knowledge of its potential for execution is lacking, that the “perspective of providence” (as it is

referred to in Contest) operates in Kant’s idea of universal history.12 The word ‘providence’ itself

appears once in Idea and is similarly introduced alongside the notion of standpoint; “such a

justification of nature, or rather providence, is no insignificant motivation for choosing a

particular point of view when regarding the world.”13 These two references exhibit that the

concept of providence, like nature, is personified in exerting its own perspective upon us, while it

is also a tool of human conception; a concept that we can adopt and through which we can see

the world.

In Contest, providence is explained in more detail and “lies beyond the grasp of all human

wisdom [...] [extending] to the free actions of human being” seeing them unfold from such a

height as to be able to predict their direction.14 While our reason is limited only to viewing the

machinations of nature, providence sees nature operating towards a telos of perfectibility;

providence then presumes that there’s a positive cause behind this structure. By assuming

intentionality and systematic design behind nature, then, the consideration of design by a higher

intelligence is invited. This is jarring amidst a rhetorical environment that is constantly aware

and open to admitting the limits of its own, and our own, knowledge. Kant is so committed to

conditionality that he barely refers to the metaphysical in Idea, as there is no way of even

12
Kant, Contest, Ak7:83, p154.
13
Kant, Idea, Ak8:30, p16.
14
Kant, Contest, Ak7:83, p154.
approaching knowledge of the divine.15 While we can rationally hope for our perfectibility, as

there are practical steps available for us in order to attain it, rational hope does not extend to

religion as there is no way of ensuring either the possibility or impossibility of the divine. The

apparent paradox in the place of higher knowledge invoked in the notion of providence here is

soon resolved when we consider that it primarily stands as a regulative principle.

Kant stresses in the first Critique that in rational thought we “represent all connections as if they

were the ordinances of a supreme reason, of which our reason is a faint copy.” 16 Again the

importance of us acting conditionally (als ob) is foregrounded and it diverges greatly from

viewing the world with a belief in the divine. We can find structures towards our own perfectibility

in viewing nature as being ordered by providence and thus approaching ‘the divine’ as a model.

The idea of ‘supreme reason’ imposes an order for making an “aggregate of human morals into

a system”17 when we cannot know whether (or not) a system can ever exist, given that the

operations of nature seem to be inimical to those of morality because the laws that rule each are

completely divergent.

Our approach to the divine then is primarily assumptive for the purposes of our own rational

hope in achieving something close to perfectibility. God as a postulate provides individuals with

a basis for believing that their moral improvement is not entirely unachievable, given that this

postulate imposes an idea of a higher wisdom which imbues the phenomenal world with an

order that is conducive to moral incline. Religious belief is not necessary, let alone knowledge in

the divine. Theoretical and practical reason are then bridged with the addition of this regulative

principle as the moral emphasis that falls on practical reason is satisfied.

15
Kant, Critique, bxxx, p29: “I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowledge in order to make
room for faith.”
16
Kant, Critique, A678/B706, p555.
17
Kant, Idea, Ak8:29, p15.
Kant too implies that providence is not, in itself, a direct enactment of divine power. In an

extensive footnote in Perpetual Peace, he writes: “We may not overlook the teleological cause,

which points to the provisions of a wisdom that holds sway over nature. - But the conception

widespread in the academic world of a divine concurrence or collaboration (concursus) with

effects in the sensible world must be discarded.”18 God, if He is present at all, in His

omnipotence, would not need to complete his own providence as that would mean that it is

incomplete. But this lies, of course, outside of our sphere of knowledge.

I hope to have established that the notion of ‘providence’ in Kant’s idea of universal history

supposes but does not necessitate divine existence. So, to further problematise providence’s

position between these two gradients of religious presence I ask; does providence retain any

currency in an entirely secular reading of history’s telos in Idea? As noted, to set anything as an

‘end’ we would need to rationally hope that it is possible and then modify our actions according

to the that direction that this hope gives. This means that Kantian telos can be quite forgiving

and modest in scope when regarding the actual principles upon which it is based. According to

Wood, what is required by Kantian telos are four man-made conceptions; guidance (an offer of

direction for effort), feasibility, desirability and monotonicity (proximity to the end being more

desirable, ceteris paribus).19 These truly resonate with a reading of Idea given that Kant deems

perpetual peace as unachievable, so our aim throughout history is primarily its approximation

only. Does, then, Kant’s construction a telos for perpetual peace and the realisation of the

highest good without invoking a need for belief in its possibility suggest that our ‘end’ can be

achieved through purely natural means? The divine as a regulative postulate here seems

superfluous on practical grounds when viewing telos on this more limited scale as moral

18
Kant, Perpetual Peace, footnote to Ak8:362, p86.
19
Wood, Kant’s Moral Religion, p21.
perfectibility is rendered simply rational to strive for in and of itself. Without the need for a

transcendent causality, the concept of providence becomes a non-entity.

Kant’s conception of providence in his idea of universal history is not essentially religious; it

does not assume the actual and direct work of God on human affairs or reveal Kant’s own belief

in the divine whatsoever. Yet, when telos is viewed broadly, as inclining directly towards a

potentially unrealisable moral perfectibility, it does invoke a sense of the divine as a regulative

principle where higher knowledge is employed to merge practical and theoretical reason. While

providence invokes the divine, almost as a tool, in a conception of an entirely secular (and more

limited) telos it is disbanded. Providence can neither exist entirely among, nor entirely

abstracted from, the divine.

Catheryne Kelly.

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