Founder of a Metaphysics of Morals 289"Freedom" clearly takes center stage here as well. The essay starts with
the same contrast between freedom of the will and the natural world of
phenomena that is already familiar from the first Critique and the review
of Schulz. Indeed, Kant characterizes history (or better, historiography)
as concerned with the temporal sequence of phenomena. He just hopes that
"if it examines the free exercise of the human will on a large scale, it will be
able to discover regular progression among freely willed actions."^58 Such
a regular progression would not be due to any rational purpose of human¬
ity, but would have to be ascribed to nature itself. He seeks "a guiding prin¬
ciple" for a history of "the free exercise of the human will on a large scale."
To this end, Kant formulates in somewhat dogmatic fashion and with
little defense nine propositions. The first maintains that all natural capac¬
ities of a creature are "destined" to be fully developed sooner or later. If
nature has a plan, then the plan must be fulfilled. In the second proposi¬
tion, he claims that our reason is such that it can be developed fully only
in the species, not in an individual. Our lives are too short to allow the lat¬
ter. Third, "nature has willed that man should produce entirely by his own
initiative everything which goes beyond the mechanical ordering of his
animal existence, and that he should not partake of any other happiness or
perfection than that which he has procured for himself without instinct
and by his own reason."^59 Fourth, nature brings about the full development
of our natural faculties by an antagonism within society. In the long run,
this antagonism leads to a law-governed social order. Kant calls this the
"unsocial sociability." Though people may not be able to bear one another
many a time, they still seek the approval and respect of others. Fifth, the
greatest problem for the human species posed by nature is the develop¬
ment of "a civil society which can administer justice universally."^60 This
is, according to the sixth proposition, both the most difficult and the last
problem to be solved by humanity. This is because man is an animal who
needs a master, at least when he lives together with other human beings,
because he has a tendency to abuse the others. This master can ultimately
be found only in man himself, and that makes the task difficult, indeed
impossible: "for from such crooked wood as man is made of, nothing per¬
fectly straight can be built."^61 Another part of the reason this is so diffi¬
cult becomes clear from the seventh proposition, which states that a perfect
civil constitution presupposes a "law-governed external relationship with
other states, and cannot be solved unless the latter is also solved."^62 Thus,
eighth, the history of the human race as a whole can be regarded as "a
hidden plan of nature" to bring about both a perfect civil constitution and