On Susan Shell's "Kant's Theory of Property"

Author(s): Patrick Riley

Source: Political Theory, Vol. 6, No. 1 (Feb., 1978), pp. 91-99
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc.
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/190887
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 ON SUSAN SHELL'S
"KANT'S THEORY

OF PROPERTY"

PATRICK RILEY
University of Wisconsin, Madison

IT IS ALWAYS REASONABLE to ask whether an inter-

pretation is as sound as it is merely "conceivable," whether an inter-
preter has endowed bare possibility with probability, or probability
with irresistible necessity. Now Susan Shell, in her effective and in-
geniously argued "Kant's Theory of Property," has certainly avoided
claiming necessity for her quasi-Hegelian view of Kant: the critical
philosophy "can" be understood, she urges, and was understood by
Hegel as "an explanation and defense of man's appropriation of the
world." This "appropriation," she goes on, takes two forms: "one,
theoretical and epistemological, concerns objects of knowledge; the
other, practical and political, concerns objects of the will." Looked at
"from this perspective," she claims, Kant's thought "can" be construed
as "a study in human alienation," and his epistemology and politics
can be viewed as "means of partially overcoming this alienation." And,
she concludes by suggesting that "the central problem uniting Kant's
speculative philosophy and his politics is his perception of the human
subject as a 'stranger' who must appropriate and so transform the world
if it is to be his own."
Obviously, then, Professor Shell claims no necessity for her inter-
pretation: she speaks of a "perspective" which "can" be employed and
which she thinks Hegel employed. Still, a reading can have some plausi-
bility, and even a certain limited force, without being a "natural"

POLITICAL THEORY, Vol. 6 No. 1, February 1978

? 1978 Sage Publications, Inc.

1911

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[92] POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1978

reading. And so it is fair to ask: would a reader of the Critique of Pure

Reason, arriving at the "Transcendental Deduction" (whose impor-
tance Professor Shell stresses), naturallb come up with the notion that
(for Kant) thinking involves the "appropriation" of an "alien" world by
a "stranger" who "transforms" that world by conceiving it? Or would
one use this language only if one were trying (perhaps even straining) to
find a "parallel" between Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy,
trying to persuade oneself that "the justification of property is, for Kant
not merely the concern of jurisprudence, but . . . the task of critical phi-
losophy"? And even if one were searching for such a parallel, should one
abandon Kantian language-which does, after all, speak in quasi-
juridical fashion of our "right" to "use" certain concepts'-and employ
the Hegelian-cum-Kojeve-cum-early Marx vocabulary of alienation,
transformation, appropriation, negation, and so forth? Isn't this alien-
ation something alien to a philosopher as angstfrei as Kant-Kant
an sich, as it were, seen without benefit of an Hegelian perspective which
"can" be deployed?
This is not to say that a notion such as alienation never appears any-
where in Kant: indeed, in an important letter to Moses Mendelssohn
dealing precisely with the Critique, Kant says that he regrets that
Mendelssohn feels "alienated from metaphysics";2 and the terms ap-
propriation and negation are to be found occasionally in Kant as well,
though not perhaps in the sense in which Professor Shell employs them.
But the point to be made here is that when the notions of alienation. ap-
propriation, transformation, and negation are used as an ensemble, as
a family of related concepts, then they constitute not a mere stringing
together of terms occasionally to be found in Kant, but a quasi-Hege-
lian ensemble which refracts Kant through a post-Kantian lens. And
this lens isn't even purely Hegelian, since the Hegel of alienation, ap-
propriation, transformation, and negation is a Hegel partly recon-
structed by interpreters such as Kojeve who read the Master and Ser-
vant "tableau" in the Phenomenology as if it were (in George Kelly's
telling phrase) "a synoptic clue to a whole philosophy."3 So, in viewing
the entire Kantian critical enterprise as being concerned with the
"justification of property," property that is appropriated by an "alien-
ated" "stranger" and "transformed" by his activity, Professor Shell is
looking at Kant through a prism which is partly genuinely Hegelian,
partly "Hegelian" as reconstructed by Kojeve and partisans of early
Marx; and it is not to be expected that Kant should filter through this

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 Riley / ON SHELL [93]

prism in a wholly recognizable shape.4 (One should be the more careful,

actually, in supplying Kant with a transformed form which is alien to
him, in view of his clear strictures on this point in his "Open letter on
Fichte's Wissenschaftslehre": "Since some reviewers maintain that the
Critique is not to be taken literally ... and that anyone who wants to
understand the Critique must first master the requisite 'standpoint' . . .
because Kant's precise words, like Aristotle's, will kill the mind, I there-
fore declare again that the Critique is to be understood by considering
exactly what it says.")5
Nor is the superimposition of this alien transforming quasi-Hegelian
vocabulary merely a question of the wrong "tone" or of the wrong
"color": it runs the risk of saying things that Kant explicitly ruled out. If
(to take an example), one views Kant's theory of knowledge as "an epis-
temology which ascribes the unity and order of things to the informing
activity of human reason"-to quote Professor Shell's summary of the
Critique-is the notion of "transformation" an adequate "shorthand"
way of summing up this epistemology? Does not the notion of trans-
forming (as distinguished from informing) involve what Kant com-
plained of in Fichte-namely leaving "things in themselves" (even as
"transcendental object = X") wholly out of account and treating "ego"
as all-creative, all-formative.6 Only if "the informing activity of human
reason" can be expressed in a kind of nondistorting shorthand by the
notions of transformation and appropriation is it an advantage to treat
Kant in non-Kantian language; but one can reasonably doubt this ad-
vantageousness. Similarly, one can doubt whether the Kantian notion
that self-knowledge has limits is best expressed in this language: "The
mind's transcendental synthesis is, paradoxically, expressed in the
grounding concept of something utterly alien. Self-awareness, and
critical philosophy, cannot penetrate beyond this seeming negation. In
a world whose affinities the mind has itself conferred, reason remains
a partial stranger to itself." Each of these sentences is subtly trans-
formed by the use of a single non-Kantian term: the first by "alien," the
second by "negation," the third by "stranger." But these three small
transformations simply shore up the great transformation of Professor
Shell's perspective. "Transformation," then, is indeed an appropriate
word: but only insofar as Kant is being transformed by this inter-
pretation, not insofar as his epistemology can be styled "transfor-
mative."
One cannot exactly claim, for that matter, that the notions of "ap-
propriation" and "mental property" are much more helpful: indeed, so

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[94] POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1978

anxious is Professor Shell to find a parallel between ownership and

epistemology ("having" in general) that she actually falls into claiming
that in the Transcendental Deduction Kant calls "mental property"
das Meine. If he had used that phrase in that connection, it might
well support the existence of a strong parallel: for das Meine (together
with das Deine) is indeed a juridical term, a term descritpive of proper-
ty; it is nothing other than the German form of the old Roman-law
notion of meum (and the corresponding tuum). A mere "meine" (as
contrasted with das Meine) would not have served Professor Shell's
interpretive purpose: for in all of Kant's epistemological arguments
that use the term "mine" it is clear that "ours" or even "one's" would
serve equally well; and indeed "unser[e]" appears more frequently in the
text than "mein[e]."7 Besides, to extract a notion of "mental property"
from a mere "meine" would have been too evidently presumptuous; it
would have involved squeezing a substantive doctrine out of a mere pos-
sessive pronoun, hacking a political theory out of bare grammar. Hence
the need for das Meine, a genuinely juridical term; but the fact is that the
phrase das Meine does not appear, at all, in the Transcendental De-
duction-not in the original version of 1781 ("A") or in the revised
version of 1787 ("B").8 (Nor, incidentally, does the phrase appear any-
where else in the Critique of Pure Reason, or in the Prolegomena written
to popularize the Critique.) Again one asks: even if the phrase, das
Meine, were actually in the Transcendental Deduction (as it is not, but
neither is mental property), would it naturally and accurately express
Kant's clearly stated aim of showing by what right (quidjuris)we use the
concepts which we do use?9 Does "rightful use of concepts" naturally
translate into "appropria-tion" of das Meine? Or is it simply that Kant
can be viewed in the light of those notions? But if that light has no
necessity, and if it is a transforming rather than an illuminating light
that gets Kant to seem to say things that are, indeed, not impossible for
him, but that fail to flow naturally from his actual words, then what is
the advantage of this "can?"
There isafter all, some advantage to this "can," to this perspective; but
Professor Shell, in appealing to a nonexistent das Meine and in super-
imposing a quasi-Hegelian vocabulary, has obscured what is perfectly
valid in her argument and which sometimes emerges in a natural and il-
luminating way. Indeed, when she sticks to Kantian language and leaves
aside what he can be seen as, she is often very penetrating: "The'Trans-
cendental Deduction' of the Critique of Pure Reason would establish
the 'rights of reason' to the use of its concepts; the juridical deduction in

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 Riley / ON SHELL [95]

the Doctrine of Rights would establish the rights of rational beings

to their use of objects in the world." That is economically, elegantly, and
very justly expressed: it points out a genuine if limited parallel between
Kant's theoretical and practical philosophy, and it refrains from all
"transforming." And there are substantial passages-amounting to
more than one-half of Professor Shell's paper-that sustain this just
expression, that make exactly the right claims.-

II

The search for parallels that "unite" Kant's theoretical and practical
philosophies lead Professor Shell to make an extraordinary claim about
the place of politics in Kant's thought-a claim introduced by a "paral-
lel" between thought and money:

As universal medium of ... exchange, money is, for Kant, the manmade, material
expression of an a priori, rational form. Likening it to books (which similarly
facilitate the circulation of ideas), Kant describes money as matter-mined from
the earth-to which man himself gives form. As the product of both nature and
universal human consent. money is a prototvpe of and substitute for the world
government which would, if only it could be achieved, embody the general will on
earth. In the absence of such perfect government, Kant asserts a duty to obey the
powers that be, softening the rigors of this command with the hope of a political
improvement brought on by intellectual and economic progress, i.e., the so-called
"spirit" of enlightenment and commerce. Money and thought, for Kant, almost
supplant politics as the means by which men are to obtain justice.

Since this striking closing sentence brings down the curtain on Part II
of Professor Shell's paper-which immediately moves on to a further
treatment of Hegel's "perspective" on Kant, and does not take up Kant's
politics again; and since, at the same time, it is hard to recognize in
Professor Shell's claim the Kant who could argue that "if public legal
justice perishes then it is no longer worthwhile for men to remain alive
on this earth,"'0 it is reasonable to ask whether the search for parallels
(surely money must be das Meine, if thought is!) has not permitted
Professor Shell to let Kantian politics wither away a little prematurely.
To be sure, Kant hoped that enlightenment and economic interdepend-
ence would help to further "eternal peace";" I but this never led him to
"ssupplant" politics with "money and thought." That being so, it may
be useful to consider briefly the "place" of politics in Kant's complete
practical philosophy.

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[96] POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1978

It is important to try at the outset to clarify the relation of Kant's

political philosophy to his moral philosophy, for he clearly sub-
ordinates politics to morality, but at the same time bases politics on
"right," not on utility or happiness: as he said in his letter to Jung-Stil-
ling (March 1789), "the laws . . . must be given not as arbitrary and
accidental commandments for some purposes that happen to be desired
but only insofar as they are necessary for the achievement of universal
freedom."'2 As is well known, Kant always insisted that the only un-
qualifiedly good thing on earth is a good willI3-a will that (to state it
provisionally) acts on the basis of maxims that can be universalized in
a way that does not violate the dignity of men as "ends in themselves."
Every element of this definition-the concept of will, the idea of
universality, the problem of persons as "ends"-is directly relevant to
Kant's political philosophy. For if a good or moral will is the only
unqualifiedly good thing on earth, then politics, among other "quali-
fied" goods, must be instrumental to morality: a merely powerful and
stable (even glorious) state which pursues moral evil cannot be praise-
worthy. And this is why Kant urges-in the same Eternal Peace that
stresses the importance of enlightenment and commercial interdepend-
ence-that "true politics cannot take a single step without first paying
hommage to morals." If, he grants, there exists "no freedom and no
moral law based upon it, and if everything which happens ... is simply
part of the mechanism of nature," then it is appropriate to manipulate
men as natural objects in order to govern them; but if rights is to be the
"limiting condition of politics," morality and politics must be conceded
to be "compatible," capable of coexistence. 14
The reason that one has a duty, for Kant, to enter into a "juridical
state of affairs"-a duty that he never supplants with anything else-is
that moral freedom involves both the "negative" freedom of the will
from "determination by sensible impulses" and the "positive" freedom
of a will that determines itself through reason (through the notion of
what "ought" to be); negative freedom is thus instrumental to )or the
condition of) positive freedom. If this is the case, and if "public legal
justice" can remove or control some of the objects that can incline
human will to be shaped by "impulse"-if politics can control, for in-
stance, a fear of violence that might lead one to violate the categorical
imperative-then politics is supportive of morality because it advances
negative freedom and creates an "environment" for the good will. This
point is well made by Kant himself in the first "Appendix" to Eternal

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 Riley / ON SHELL [971

Peace: government or public legal justice, he says, by putting an end to

outbreaks of lawlessness, "genuinely makes it much easier for the moral
capacities of men to develop into an immediate respect for right." For
everyone believes, Kant goes on, that he would always conform his con-
duct to what is right if only he could be certain that everyone else would
do likewise; and "the government in part guarantees this for him." By
creating a coercive order of public legal justice, then, "a great step is
taken toward morality . . . towards a state where the concept of duty
is recognized for its own sake."'5
In his late (1798) Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View,
Kant, far from suppianting politics as "the means by which men are to
obtain justice," develops and expands the importance of public legal
justice. The "mania for domination," he argues, "is intrinsically unjust
and its manifestation provokes everyone to oppose it. Its origin, how-
ever, is fear of being dominated by others; it tries to avert this by getting
a head start and dominating them. But it is a precarious and unjust
means of using others for one's purposes: it is imprudent because it
arouses their opposition, and it is unjust because it is contrary to free-
dom under law, to which everyone can lay claim."'6 Government, which
provides "freedom under law," can manage this psychology: it can
alleviate our desire to dominate others (out of fear that they will
dominate us) by creating a system of public legal justice in which only
law is coercive; thus both the fact of domination and the fear of domin-
ation can be (at least) moderated by government. And this may make it
much easier to exercise a good will.
In any event, politics and law serve a high purpose in Kant's prac-
tical philosophy: they are the guarantors of those (negative) conditions
that make respect for the dignity of men as "ends in themselves" more
nearly possible. They make the exercise of a good will less difficult by
removing impediments (such as fear of violence or domination) that
could incline (though never determine) the will to act on maxims that
cannot be universalized in a way that is congruent with the rights of
man. So in the end, there are two fundamental questions to be asked
about Kant's politics: (1) how well does Kantian "public legal justice"
succeed in being instrumental to morality? and (2) how adequate is the
Kantian morality to which politics is supposed to be instrumental? But
no reasonable answer to either question would involve the "sup-
planting" of politics by "thought and money."

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[98] POLITICAL THEORY / FEBRUARY 1978

III

The search for parallels which "unite" Kant's philosophy-a search

that turns up thought as mental property, concepts as das Meine, and
enlightenment coupled with money as a substitute for politics-leads to
an interesting but odd consequence with which one can reasonably con-
clude. That consequence is that while Kantian politics tends to wither
away in Professor Shell's "perspective," what she calls "epistemology" is
correspondingly politicized, so that everything that is drained away
from true politics is used to fatten epistemological notions (such as
thought, which is transformed into property, into something "ap-
propriated"). Thus there is, on this view, a kind of conservation of
(political) force: the total quantity of politics in the Kantian system
remains constant, but most of it turns up in epistemology, while true
politics is something that no one "has."

NOTES

1. Kant, Critique of Pure Reason, Norman Kemp Smith, tr. (London, 1

of 1929 ed.), pp. 120-125 (cited hereafter as Critique).
2. Kant, Philosophical Correspondence, 1759-99, Arnulf Zweig, tr. and ed. (Chi-
cago, 1967) p. 105 (cited hereafter as Philosophical Correspondence).
3. George A. Kelly, Idealism, Politics and History: Sources of Hegelian Thought,
(Cambridge, England 1969), p. 338.
4. For a fuller account of what Kojeve's reading "does" to Kant, cf. the author's
review of Kojeve's posthumous Kant (Paris, 1973) in the American Political Science
Review (June 1977).
5. Philosophical Correspondence, p. 254.
6. What Kant thought of Fichte on this point can be readily deduced from J. S.
Beck's letter to Kant (June 24, 1797), in Philosophical Correspondence, pp. 231-234.
7. Kant, Kritik der Reinen Vernunft, R. Schmidt, ed. (Hamburg, 1956), passim
(cxited hereafter as Kritik).
8. Ibid. pp. 126-19 1. It is perfectly true, however, that in the 1787 edition ("B") Kant
once speaks of "representations" as "belonging to me": Der Gedanke: diese in der Ans-
chauung gegebenen Vorstellungen gehoren mir insgesamt zu, heisst demnach soviel,
als ich vereinige sie in einem Selbstbewusstsein," and so on (B 134, Kritik, pp. 143-144).
But Professor Shell, though she appeals to a nonexistent das Meine, does not cite this
passage.
9. Critique. pp. 120-125.
10. Kant, The Metaphysical Elements of Justice, J. Ladd, tr. (Indianapolis, 1965),
p. 100.

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 Riley / ON SHELL [99]

1 1. Kant, "Eternal Peace," in Kant's Political Writings, H. Reiss, ed. (Cambridge,

England 1970), passim (cited hereafter as Eternal Peace-Reiss, ed.).
12. Philosophical Correspondence, p. 132. This letter makes it the more extra-
ordinary that Charles Taylor (in his remarkable new study, Hegel) should have charac-
terized Kant's politics as "utilitarian."
13. Kant, Fundamental Principles of the Metaphysic or Morals, T. K. Abbott, tr.
(Indianapolis, 1949), p. I Iff. Cf. Plato, Meno, 88e-89a: "So we maysay in general that the
goodness of nonspiritual assets depends on our spiritual character."
14. Eternal Peace-Reiss, ed., p. 118.
15. Ibid. p. 121n.
16. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View, M. Gregor, tr.. (The
Hague, 1974), p. 140.

Patrick Riley is associated with the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

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