Nature and Freedom: Kant's Teleological Conception in the Context of Political Civilization

Kant's teleological conception of nature has a distinct orientation towards political civilization, specifically manifested in the fact that cultivation and civilization are the final ends for humankind to reflect on and guide the process of natural history. At the same time, the construction of a legitimate order of freedom or a rightful state is not only the fundamental aim of cultural or civilizational progress, but also the formal condition for pursuing the ultimate end of humankind. And the cosmopolitan communication and union is the highest expression of the human civilization form. In this sense, the continuous innovation and improvement of political civilization or the form of human union is a necessary prerequisite for the full development of human natural predispositions and moral endowment, which also conforms to the ultimate end of creation. However, whether it is the construction and improvement of the human civilization form or the pursuit of the ideal of perpetual peace through continuous improvement based on moral politics, it is neither a speculative assumption nor a providential arrangement. Instead, it requires going through a long and even cruel social antagonism, manifested as the intertwined parallel of the natural history of freedom and the free history of nature. In this process, it is necessary to rely on human reasonable agency or the will of universal legislation and through various imperfect experiments to gradually get rid of the barbaric natural state and realize a civilized society under universal rule of law. And to manifest the systematic union and the reconstruction of the civilization form in the sense of the human species, and to realize the leap from a league of nations, a world republic to a cosmopolitan community, is the only way to the ideal of the highest good and human hope.