Kantian Unsocial Sociability: Good Out of Evil
Commenting on the Fourth Proposition in Kant's ‘Idea for a Universal History’, this chapter discusses earlier ideas of sociability to bring out the originality of Kant's notion of ‘unsocial sociability’. The Epicureans, the Stoics, Grotius, Hobbes, Pufendorf, Mandeville, Hutcheson, and Rousseau are among those mentioned. Kant sees our unsocial sociability as a spur to individual and social improvement. What makes sociability so difficult for us, Kant thinks, is the radical evil in the human will, which perversely leads us to freely choose what we ought to avoid.
Keywords: Epicureans, Grotius, Hobbes, Hutcheson, improvement, Kant, Mandeville, Pufendorf, Rousseau, Stoics
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