ABSTRACT
The mind of the philosopher rests with satisfaction on a small number of objects; but the spectacle of stupidity, slavery, extravagance, barbarity, afflicts him still more often; and the friend of humanity can enjoy unmixed pleasure only by surrendering to the sweet hopes of the future. In every revolution, the friends of the executioner try to justify the necessary murder, and the friends of the victim gather to keep alive the tragic memory of a martyr. The root of the dilemma was in an uneasy association between the revolutionary category of the perfect and the political imperative of reason. Kant, for all his sedentary Konigsberg life, lived very much in the intellectual climate of the day, and his political temperament was ceaselessly engaged in the onrushing European events. In this context of essential temperament, the sharp contrasts in the ultimate messages of those three European masters of political metaphysics, More, Kant, and Marx, emerge most forcefully.
