One must always interpret a comprehensive philosopher’s remarks on applied matters in the context of his philosophical system.
Let me give an exaggerated, fictional example to stress this point about method. Suppose one reads …
- Chapter One of a philosopher’s book in which one finds affirmations that individuals should seek freedom and realize their true selves and that only in liberty can one find dignity and so on.
- In Chapter Two, one finds the philosopher arguing that one’s body is not one’s true self; rather one has an immaterial soul that is one’s real Self and that it comes to full actualization only upon separating from this physical realm.
- Chapter Three argues that when one’s true self is actualized, it does so by merging one’s self into an uber-Self of souls that are collectively real, and that one’s highest moral obligation is to achieve such a merger.
- As one works through Chapter Four, one learns that the philosopher believes that back in this material world the official state/church institutions are the temporal embodiment of one’s collectively true Self.
- Finally, in Chapter Five one reads the philosopher’s perfectly logical conclusion that individual freedom means obeying the state/church’s orders.
Excerpt from “Does Kant Have a Place in Classical Liberalism?”