Kant seems, from the context, to be foreshadowing the idea of his critical philosophy, as putting man in his place in the order of creation.
“If there is any science,” he says just below, “which man really needs, it is that which I teach, to fill properly _that_ place which is assigned to man in creation; a science from which he can learn what one must be in order to be human.”
This throws light on the curious passage in the same set of notes, [1] where, in a discussion of the idea of Providence, Kant first refers to Newton’s discovery of order in the multiplicity of the planetary motions, and then proceeds,
“Rousseau first discovered, beneath the multiplicity of the forms assumed by man, the deeply latent nature of humanity, and the hidden law, according to which Providence is justified by his observations. Before that the objection of Alphonsus and of Manes [2] held the field. After Newton and Rousseau, God is justified, and henceforwards Pope’s doctrine is true.”
“Pope’s doctrine” is no doubt his Leibnitzian optimism, founded on a supposed insight into man’s true place in creation. [1] Rousseau’s { 243} “discovery,” which Kant here connects with this doctrine, must be his assertion of man’s natural goodness and freedom, which he tends to forfeit by departing in civilisation from the place assigned him by nature. It is clear that Rousseau’s impeachment of literature and civilisation had at this time made a considerable impression upon Kant. It is all the more interesting to see Kant retracing, on a very different scale, the development which Rousseau had initiated, from natural to social and ethical freedom.
[1] See passage cited from Kant, just above.
I subjoin two passages from the _Philosophy of Right_ (1796), which exhibit this later development, still in its connection with Rousseau’s phraseology.
“_The innate Right is one only_.--Freedom (independence of the constraining will of another), in as far as it can co-exist with the freedom of every other according to a universal law, is this unique original right, belonging to every human being by reason of his humanity.” [1]
[1] Kant’s _Werke_ (Rosenkrantz), ix. 42.
An indication of the embodiment of this freedom in the State may be given as follows: