Kant and the French Revolution. A Contribution to the Theory of Political Enthusiasm

Abstract

This article is an attempt to explicate the notion of political enthusiasm through which Immanuel Kant expressed his attitude to the French Revolution. Enthusiasm as a purely rational affect, not as a collectively experienced, irrational euphoria, functions in the Kant’s deliberations an important heuristic function because it allows him to justify the positive meaning of the revolution, which at the level of empirical facts turned out to be an escalation of violence. The first section outlines the definition of politics that will be useful in the further analysis of the category of enthusiasm. The main point of reference here is Hannah Arendt’s political theory. In the second part I attempt to clarify the ambiguous attitude of Kant to the French Revolution, which from the moral perspective was unequivocally condemned by him, and from the aesthetic and political perspective – evaluated very favorably. The key to understand this ambivalence is the category of publicity (Publizität). In the third section I move to the main theme of the article, i.e. the issues of enthusiasm in a political context.