Quote of the Day (Immanuel Kant, Defining ‘Enlightenment’)

“Enlightenment is man's release from his self-incurred tutelage. Tutelage is man's inability to make use of his understanding without direction from another. Self-incurred is this tutelage when its cause lies not in lack of reason but in lack of resolution and courage to use it without direction from another. Sapere aude! [from Horace, Epodes, 1, 2, 40] ‘Have courage to use your own reason!’ — that is the motto of enlightenment.”— German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), "What Is Enlightenment?" (1784), in On History, edited by Lewis White Beck (1963)

Last month marked the 300^th birthday of Immanuel Kant in Königsberg, near the southeastern shore of the Baltic Sea. As I learned from Lea Ypi’s essay from April in The Financial Times, his place of birth—and the extent to which his legacy belongs to one nation, rather than all humanity—has become tied up in the epic, blood-soaked wars of the 20^th century that saw Konigsburg shift from East Prussian—i.e., German—control to that of Russia.

Unfortunately, changed European borders have, in the case of this pivotal modern philosopher, certainly proven the first half of George Orwell’s 1984 dictum that “Those who control the present, control the past and those who control the past control the future.” We are about to see, as the struggle over Crimea moves into another phase, whether the second part of that statement will hold true.

I first encountered Kant in the famous Contemporary Civilization” course at Columbia University. I came away with two points that have lingered in my mind about him ever since.

First, he was so quirkily regular in his habits, the legend went, that the residents of Königsberg set their clocks to coincide with his afternoon walk.

Second, though a constellation of thinkers were trying to come up with a more convenient way of viewing the world, it was Kant who offered the definition of “Enlightenment” with which I began this post—and which has come to characterize an entire strain of thought in 18^th century Europe and America.

Humanity can only change by beginning a public questioning of what is true and what is false.  But, Kant implied, it is inhibited by laziness and cowardice.

In moving Europe further away the sway of religion, Kant and other philosophers of his movement looked to “enlightened” rulers—i.e., “benevolent despots”—like Frederick the Great of Prussia and Maria Theresa of Austria to spread education, learning and culture.

In time, the despots became less benevolent (if they ever really were) and the continent became continually rocked by great-power struggles.

My class had read the philosopher’s stringently argued Critique of Pure Reason. What I was not aware of, however, until I read Ypi’s essay, was how difficult it was for Kant to maintain the independence of thought he advocated in his writings with the necessity of survival when Königsberg came under the influence of a foreign power: perhaps not so surprisingly, considering current events, Russia.

In 1759, Kant petitioned Russian Empress Elizabeth, asking for an academic post.  But 11 years later, once the Russians withdrew, Kant went back to his original Prussian rulers and was granted a full professorship.

In recent times, some elements in Russia highlighted that reversal, calling Kant a “turncoat.” That term might be a bit strong, but “opportunist” might apply better—and even that is hardly a compliment or term of endearment.

Did Kant feel disgusted with this ideological maneuvering? Maybe, because late in life he was writing, in no uncertain terms: “No state shall forcibly interfere in the constitution and government of another state.”

Having already seen Konigsberg change hands in his thirties, he had, by his seventies, lived long enough to see how the French Revolution had introduced the notion of an entire nation in arms—and collapsed any idea that civilian populations should be off limits in wars.

In 1795, Kent wrote the piercing essay “Toward Perpetual Peace,” warning, a century and a half before Hiroshima and Nagasaki, about how “a war of extermination in which the simultaneous annihilation of both parties . . . would let perpetual peace come about only in the vast graveyard of the human race.”

Instead, he advocated a “cosmopolitan right,” based on the belief that “a violation of right on one place of the Earth is felt in all.”

Kant’s ideas have not only influenced notions of public education, but also the formation of organizations dedicated to preserving international security and guarding against the outbreak of war, such as the European Union and the United Nations.

(For yet another view of Kant focusing on the question of his Prussian or Russian identity, please see this essay by Robert R. Clewis in the April/May issue of Philosophy Now Magazine.)

This Day in Revolutionary War History (Steuben, Army Trainer, Arrives at Valley Forge)

Feb. 23, 1778—Midway in a dispiriting, even deadly, winter encampment, a German visitor with a murky past and few English-speaking skills arrived to give the Continental Army much-needed discipline and even hope. Baron Friedrich Wilhelm von Steuben wasn’t really entitled to use that aristocratic “von,” he had inflated his military resume, and he didn’t mention other, decidedly dodgy rumors about his past. But he ended up precisely drilling the Continentals in the fundamentals of fighting, along with writing the first U.S. Army training manual. The American army may be said to have begun in earnest with him at Valley Forge.

It’s easy to imagine the reaction of George Washington when Steuben showed up at his Valley Forge headquarters: Oh no, not another headache! That same month, with the redcoats occupying Philadelphia, with his forces having dwindled to half the 12,000 he had started the winter with, the American commander-in-chief had needed to convince clueless delegates from the Continental Congress that, without immediate aid, his starving forces would cease to exist as a fighting unit. No sooner was he done with that problem than Steuben’s presence raised another.

Motivated variously by idealism, adventure, fame and the desire for land, visitors from abroad had been besieging the Continental Congress requesting military commissions. It was one thing if British soldiers (Lee, Stirling, Montgomery) had come over, but quite another when Lafayette, DeKalb, Pulaski and Kosciuszko did likewise. How trustworthy were their backgrounds? And how would they adapt to soldiers speaking a different language?

Additionally, how would native-born officers react to this interloper? The Continental Congress had gotten into the habit of awarding these foreigners, virtually sight unseen, major positions in the army, causing so much dissension that the lawmakers had been forced to suspend the practice. Nevertheless, what would the loyal Greene, Wayne and (at the time) Arnold think about another such officer, even if only here as a volunteer?

Steuben, like countless figures who, to borrow a phrase from historian Garry Wills, “invented America,” started by reinventing himself. He had perpetuated his grandfather’s claim that they were members of nobility. He then brought to General Washington a letter from America’s diplomat to France, Benjamin Franklin, introducing “His Excellency, Lieutenant General von Steuben, Apostle of Frederick the Great.” 

Actually, the highest rank he had attained in the Prussian Army, under the command of Europe’s reigning military genius, was captain. Steuben’s title while in the Prussian army as a staff officer was Deputy to the Quartermaster General--in French, “Lieutenant General Quarters Maitre,” then further mistranslated as “Lieutenant General.”

Another matter was harder to document, but potentially more explosive. According to Randy Shilts’ account of gays and lesbians in the American military, Conduct Unbecoming, a letter had come to the Prince of Hohenzollern-Hechingen (whom Steuben was serving as Grand Marshall, or administrator) in August 1777, accusing the onetime soldier of having “taken liberties with young boys which the law forbids and punishes severely.”

Was the charge true? Lending credence to it were the facts that Steuben never married or fathered children; that he had buffed up his lineage and military career; and that he had left the army in 1763. On the other hand, the source of the rumor was anonymous; the Seven Years War, in which Steuben had served (and been wounded twice), had just ended when he left the service; the thought of Frederick, himself a homosexual, drumming someone out of his service on a similar charge was a bit rich; and Shilts’ claim that the language skills of Steuben’s “interpreter” were inadequate has been disputed.

No Americans, including Franklin or Washington, knew anything about this when Steuben came to the patriot cause. The American general didn’t know what to make of him, period, aside from the fact that the Prussian was splendidly fitted out, with clothes he had picked in Europe to make him look every inch of what an American soldier called “a perfect personification of Mars,” the god of war. But Washington had a simple but effective method for judging him and other men: let’s see him prove himself. He told Steuben to inspect the troops and report what he saw.

What Steuben found, after talking to officers, looking at the huts, and sizing up the men’s bearing, was a mess. No European army could have held together under these conditions, he noted.

There was another way in which the Americans differed from the European troops with whom Steuben had trained: the matter of discipline. Americans wouldn’t simply obey an order; you had to tell them why they should. One could only imagine the Prussian’s astonishment when he discovered that.

Washington liked enough of what he learned from Steuben to appoint him Inspector General. In March, the German got to work training his men. He set about through two means: written and oral.

Steuben knew little English but a great deal of German, Russian (he had been a POW on the Russian front toward the end of the Seven Years’ War), and French. In addition to the translation assistance provided by Steuben’s secretary, Washington had two aides-de-camp whose French Huguenot descent gave them familiarity with the language, and whose extensive practice in writing out their chief’s orders gave them a firm hold of simple, direct military language. These two friends, John Laurens and Alexander Hamilton, made Steuben’s French-written training manual a reality for American troops.

Steuben’s personal inspection of the troops was more colorful. He would learn a few simple English words, then rely on aides for translation. If that didn't work, he resorted to sign language. If the troops still weren't absorbing the drill, he would curse and swear in German, leaving the recruits with more than a few chuckles. 

He picked Washington’s personal guard and 120 men from each of the states as part of a model unit. He kept his instructions simple, the better for the men to absorb what he was doing. He concentrated on drilling in bayonet, whose use, amazingly, the troops had never been trained for--this despite the fact that British troops had spread terror whenever they had employed them against the patriots.

By the time camp was over, Washington’s troops had been transformed under the Prussian’s care. They would not buckle anymore in the face of superior British training. The redcoats learned firsthand about this changed fighting force later that year after the Americans had broken camp, at the Battle of Monmouth, when the Continentals fought them to a bloody draw.

In the end, the new country that sprang from the American Revolution received more from Steuben than he had from it. Throughout the war, the Continental Congress continually ignored his requests for reimbursement of expenses, then his request for land.  It took three different state governments to donate lands (the best form of payment in those days of the young republic) to the now-retired soldier, and many of these he had to sell off to meet his expenses. Steuben died in 1794 in upstate New York.

 

(I took the photo accompanying this post on a visit to Valley Forge last October. The bronze statue by J. Otto Schweizer, erected in 1915, is located off of Route 23, near the Grand Parade grounds where Steuben proudly inspected the troops he had so masterfully drilled.)