Kantian Lessons in Times of Crisis: From Culture to Climate

Immanuel Kant is well known for his writings on the crisis of philosophy during the 18th century. Moreover, despite Kant’s early scientific writings on natural disasters and late political writings following developments after the French Revolution, commentators in Kant studies have yet to present a comprehensive account of Kant’s view on crisis, nor one that has value for making sense of environmental crises. Commentators have explored various sorts of crises with Kant as a guide, with studies as varied as the COVID-19 crisis (Altman 2022), refugee crises (Niesen 2017, Protopapadakis 2020), crises in higher education (Jenei, Kiss, and Shachina 2021), crisis during the French Revolution (Maliks 2014), ecological crisis (Naess 1993, Baumeister 2019), climate crisis (Bernstein 2019, Blöser 2024, Vereb 2022), and the crisis in liberal democracy (Auweele 2022). Despite the wide range of accounts invoking Kant and Kantianism, none of these elaborate on the nature of crisis in Kant. Further, even when they do talk about crisis in the context of the environment (the focus of the present paper), they usually do not do so from the perspective of Kant’s theory. This is unfortunate, as Kantian theory has provided insights for applied and global challenges today (Roff 2013, Krasnoff, Madrid, and Satne 2018, and Wayne 2014). Yet few commentators leverage what Kant has to say on crisis in particular to make sense of the ongoing climate emergency, which is compounded by converging environmental, cultural, and economic crises (Chakrabarty 2016). While this paper lacks the space to develop a robust theory of Kant’s view of crisis, it sets the stage. It does so by addressing three main questions. The answers provide lessons in an age of climate crisis. First, what does Kant have to say about crisis? I explore four diverging cases to illustrate a continuity of themes in Kant to develop a provisional account of Kantian crisis. The cases include Kant’s perception of crisis in philosophy, in the academy, in politics, and natural disaster. Second, I synthesize these findings to answer the following: from a Kantian perspective, are we in a crisis now, and if so, what kind? Finally, for Kant, what ought we to do in times of crisis? If there are such duties, who is ‘we’ at play? Theorizing on crisis provides insights into our current predicament, which allows for a reformulation of our duties with regard to that predicament. The view developed here, though provisional, makes multiple contributions. This includes exploring an underexamined area of applied Kant studies, despite related contributions in environmental ethics (Svoboda 2023, Varden 2022, Vereb 2022, Wallace 2021). The paper also indicates the continuing significance of Kant’s project, making it relevant to those outside of Kant scholarship. This parallels recent environmental contributions regarding canonical political theory figures. Environmental interpretations of figures span the canon from Hobbes and Marx to Rawls (Cannavo and Lane 2014, Rodeiro 2021, and Saito 2023). Finally, I suggest how the analysis developed here provides insights for those embroiled in climate ethics debates, especially those related to ecological collapse.