This problem is at the same time the most difficult and the latest to be solved by the human species. The difficulty which the mere idea of this problem lays before our eyes is this: the human being is an animal which, when it lives among other species, has need of a master. For he certainly misuses his freedom in regard to others of his kind; and although a rational creature he wishes a law that sets limits to the freedom of all, his selfish animal inclination still misleads him into excepting himself from it where he may. Thus he needs a master, who breaks his stubborn will and necessitates him to obey a universally valid will with which everyone can be free. But where will he get his master? Nowhere else but from the human species. But this master is exactly as much an animal who has need of a master. Try as he may, therefore, there is no seeing how he can procure a supreme power for public right that is itself just, whether he seeks it in a single person or in a society of many who are selected for it. For every one of them will always misuse his freedom when he has no one to exercise authority over him in accordance with the laws. The highest supreme authority, however, ought to be just in itself and yet a human being. This problem is therefore the most difficult of all; indeed, its perfect solution is even impossible: out of such crooked wood as the human being is made, nothing straight can be fabricated. Only the approximation to this idea is laid upon us by nature.[1]
Kant “Idea for a universal history” (1784)
[1]
Immanuel Kant, “Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan aim” in Anthropology,
History, and Education, tr. Allen W. Wood, eds. Günter Zöller and Robert B. Louden
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), p. 113. See the Sixth Proposition.
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