ABSTRACT
Immanuel Kant wrote an article entitled "Idea for a Universal History with Cosmopolitan Intent" in which he made a brilliant suggestion that helped to inspire Hegel's and Karl Marx's interpretations of history. Kant proposed that the moving force of human history was what he called Antagonism and that eventually it would lead men to peace on earth. He is not interested in psychology but in the possibility of actions about which psychology would be unable to say anything. Psychology is for Kant beside the point, and discrimination among motives does not concern him. Motives are by definition "sensuous" and irrational, and what reason demands, according to Kant, are actions prompted solely by respect for the moral law. Kant's remarks on interest in his short book on ethics fall very far short of the rigor he opposed to "popular" writing. And if he had been a little more rigorous he would also have been clearer.
