Kant’s Proleptic Philosophy of History: The World Well-Hoped

Abstract

The aim of this dissertation is to examine and helpfully elucidate Kant’s proleptic philosophy of history by pursuing lines of thought across both his critical and historical body of work. A key motivation for this goal stems from noticing certain repetitive explications of Kant’s philosophy across, among other subjects, history, biology, religion, teleology, culture, and education, which, as precise and careful in their detail, all seem to converge on key Kantian ideas of teleology and morality. Rather than concentrating on any one aspect of Kant’s proleptic philosophy, I set out to (i) investigate seemingly untenable problems with his characterization of reason in history, (ii) to counter what I take as a misreading, if not misattributions, of Kant’s proleptic, and not prophetic, thoughts on historical progress, (iii) to offer an original reflection on Kant’s use of a famous stoic phrase in two of his political essays, and (iv) to an attempt a close exegesis toward tying notions of teleology and hope with that of need. The approach that I take in these chapters is both problem centered and exegetical, and while I attempt to answer concerns in the secondary literature pertaining to Kant’s proleptic philosophy of history, I also stay close to the primary texts by providing references and citations to key claims and passages which reinforce Kant’s forceful portrait of the poietic power of human reason to create a world hospitable to its rational ends.