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In his famous essay “On Perpetual Peace”, Kant outlines the modern gamble surrounding morality. In contrast to classical and Christian models, where the person can be shaped to become virtuous, modern societies give up on this. Two main reasons they do. 1/5
(1) Kantian modernity dichotomises God and the world such that - how would this transformation of the person happen? By whom? And (2) who gets to decide what “the good” is? These kind of questions fuel religious wars and are outside the rational public space. So, instead 2/5
Kant offers the modern gamble. We stay crap people, but BECAUSE we’re crap people we’re so afraid of the consequences of acting badly (crime) that we act AS IF we were good, even though we’re crap! This is modernity’s gambit! Nation states quickly realize that this only works 3/5
If we have some kind of “militia” - a large group of uniformed enforcers who will force us to act as if we were (what some nation state considers) “good” and take us away to face the consequences when we don’t. This “militia” ends up being called “police”. 4/5
We’re seeing now (in the U.S. but also here in NS with Wortman) that having an armed militia enforce the subjective rules of this or that government is not all sunshine and soda. 5/5
And we forget that this is just one approach, bound to an operative ideology and it could be different. But the rationale behind is so old, the debates that led to it are like a zoom call braking up where we hear every 3rd or 4th word.
