#32 Kant’s Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View
Preface to the lecture and an explanatory letter to a student
Immanuel Kant wrote:
All cultural progress, by means of which the human being advances his education, has the goal of applying this acquired knowledge and skill for the world’s use. But the most important object in the world to which he can apply them is the human being: because the human being is his own final end. Therefore to know the human being according to his species as an earthly being endowed with reason especially deserves to be called knowledge of the world, even though he constitutes only one part of the creatures on earth.
A doctrine of the knowledge of the human being, systematically formulated (anthropology), can exist either in a physiological or in a pragmatic point of view. Physiological knowledge of the human being concerns the investigation of what nature makes of the human being; pragmatic, the investigation of what he as a free-acting being makes of himself, or can and should make of himself. He who ponders natural phenomena, for example, what the causes of the faculty of memory may rest on, can speculate back and forth over the traces of impressions remaining in the brain, but in doing so he must admit that in this play of his representations he is a mere observer and must let nature runs its course, for he does not know the cranial nerves and fibers, nor does he understand how to put them to use for his purposes. Therefore all theoretical speculation about this is a pure waste of time. But if he uses perceptions concerning what has been found to hinder or stimulate memory in order to enlarge it or make it agile, and if he requires knowledge of the human being for this, then this would be a part of anthropology with a pragmatic purpose, and this is precisely what concerns us here.
Such an anthropology, considered as knowledge of the world, which must come after our schooling, is actually not yet called pragmatic when it contains an extensive knowledge of things in the world, for example, animals, plants, and minerals from various lands and climates, but only when it contains knowledge of the human being as a citizen of the world. Therefore, even knowledge of the races of human beings as products belonging to the play of nature is not yet counted as pragmatic knowledge of the world, but only as theoretical knowledge of the world.
In addition, the expressions “to know the world” and “to have the world” are rather far from each other in their meaning, since one only understands the play that one has watched, while the other has participated in it. But the anthropologist is in a very unfavorable position for judging so-called high society, the estate of the nobles, because they are too close to one another, but too far from others.
Travel belongs to the means of broadening the range of anthropology, even if it is only the reading of travel books. But if one wants to know what to look for abroad, in order to broaden the range of anthropology, first one must have acquired knowledge of human beings at home, through social intercourse with one’s townsmen or countrymen. Without such a plan (which already presupposes knowledge of human beings) the citizen of the world remains very limited with regard to his anthropology. General knowledge always precedes local knowledge here, if the latter is to be ordered and directed through philosophy: in the absence of which all acquired knowledge can yield nothing more than fragmentary groping around and no science.
However, all such attempts to arrive at such a science with thoroughness encounter considerable difficulties that are inherent in human nature itself.
1. If a human being notices that someone is observing him and trying to study him, he will either appear embarrassed (self-conscious) and cannot show himself as he really is; or he dissembles, and does not want to be known as he is.
2. Even if he only wants to study himself, he will reach a critical point, particularly as concerns his condition in affect, which normally does not allow dissimulation: that is to say, when the incentives are active, he does not observe himself, and when he does not observe himself, the incentives are at rest.
3. Circumstances of place and time, when they are constant, produce habits which, as is said, are second nature, and make it difficult for the human being to judge how to consider himself, but even more difficult to judge how he should form an idea of others with whom he is in contact; for the variation of conditions in which the human being is placed by his fate or, if he is an adventurer, places himself, make it very difficult for anthropology to rise to the rank of a formal science.
Finally, while not exactly sources for anthropology, these are nevertheless aids: world history, biographies, even plays and novels. For although the latter two are not actually based on experience and truth, but only on invention, and while here the exaggeration of characters and situations in which human beings are placed is allowed, as if in a dream, thus appearing to show us nothing concerning knowledge of human beings — yet even so, in such characters as are sketched by [novelists and playwrights] the main features must have been taken from the observation of the real actions of human beings: for while they are exaggerated in degree, they must nevertheless correspond to human nature in kind.
An anthropology written from a pragmatic point of view that is systematically designed and yet popular (through reference to examples which can be found by every reader), yields an advantage for the reading public: the completeness of the headings under which this or that observed human quality of practical relevance can be subsumed offers readers many occasions and invitations to make each particular into a theme of its own, so as to place it in the appropriate category. Through this means the details of the work are naturally divided among the connoisseurs of this study, and they are gradually united into a whole through the unity of the plan. As a result, the growth of science for the common good is promoted and accelerated.
From the translator’s Introduction:
In a letter written toward the end of 1773 to his former student Marcus Herz, Kant notes:
This winter, for the second time, I am giving a lecture course on anthropology, which I now intend to make into a proper academic discipline … The intention that I have is to disclose through it the sources of all the sciences, the science of morals, of skill, of social intercourse, of the method of educating and governing human beings, and thus of everything that pertains to the practical … I include so many observations of ordinary life that my listeners have constant occasion to compare their ordinary experience with my remarks and thus, from beginning to end, find the lectures entertaining and never dry. In my spare time, I am working on a preparatory exercise for students out of this (in my opinion) very pleasant empirical study of skill, prudence, and even wisdom that, along with physical geography and distinct from all other instruction, can be called knowledge of the world.
… Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View had the largest first printing of all of Kant’s books, and by nearly all accounts the course for which the lectures were first prepared was also his most popular and successful. Intended for a broad audience, they reveal not only Kant’s unique contribution to the newly emerging field of anthropology, but also his desire to offer students a practical view of the world and of humanity’s place in it. At the same time, Kantian anthropology does not form an entirely uniform narrative, but is rather an eclectic venture revealing multiple origins, competing concerns and goals, as well as multiple application possibilities…
Immanuel Kant, ‘Anthropology from a pragmatic point of view’ (1798), translated by Robert B. Louden, in Immanuel Kant: Anthropology, History, and Education, edited by Günter Zöeller and Robert B. Louden, Cambridge 2007 [227, 228, 231-233]