Polleit: Immanuel Kant and Libertarianism

My father was born in 1934 in the East Prussian city of Königsberg. In January 1945, he escaped on one of the last ships from his besieged and later fatally destroyed hometown. He was an East Prussian through and through, and in his library he had the collected works of Immanuel Kant (1724–1804), the Königsberg philosopher of the Enlightenment. I still remember well that my father pointed out to me–with a smile–that Kant’s original works were not entirely easy to read, but he nevertheless encouraged me to work through them; fortunately, he also helped me with references to more comprehensible secondary literature. This is how I gained a certain preformation or even a preference for the great philosopher of the Enlightenment.

Although I must admit: in early years I did not quite know how to make Kant’s insights usable for myself. Over the years, however, for various reasons, the idea of freedom came increasingly to the fore in my economic thinking—and that then created a direct form of contact with Kant’s ideal of the Enlightenment for me. It became increasingly clear to me that the unfree, the destructive ideas and theories of socialism, communism, fascism (which today mostly bear other headings—such as “Green Politics”, “Great Reset”or “Globalism”) cannot be defeated by economic insights alone, but that above all a great psychological awakening of people is required for this, precisely Enlightenment in the Kantian sense.

“Enlightenment,” according to Kant, “is man’s emergence from his self-incurred immaturity. Immaturity is the inability to use one’s own understanding without the guidance of another. This immaturity is self-incurred if its cause is not lack of understanding, but lack of resolution and courage to use it without the guidance of another.” Kant tells us: Think for yourself! Use your brain! Do not let yourself be guided, commanded, or bossed around by others! “Sapere aude”: Have the courage to use your own understanding without the guidance of another!” That is Kant’s “motto of the Enlightenment.”

But there is something in Kant’s work that has perhaps fascinated me even more strongly than the call for Enlightenment—because it is the foundation of the Enlightenment itself. And that is Kant’s theory of knowledge (or “epistemology”, as it is called by philosophers). The Italian philosopher of history and law Giambattista Vico (1668–1744) had already anticipated modern scientific and epistemological thinking with his principle “Verum ipsum factum” (translated: the truth is the made by man). Giambattista Vico thereby said that man can only understand what he himself has created. And therefore man cannot completely know nature—for it was made by God—but he can know history and society, which are after all the work of man.

Kant said, in brief (and here we see the proximity to Giambattista Vico’s consideration), that we humans experience the things in the world in which we live only as we can experience them with our faculty of knowledge. Kant formulates this in his “Critique of Pure Reason,” published in the year 1781 (under the heading “transcendental analytic”): Namely, that man actively structures his experience—through the forms of pure perception (space and time) and through the categories of his understanding (that is, the basic concepts of thinking). We know, according to Kant, the appearances of reality because and insofar as we “make” or constitute them—not the things in themselves. To understand how Kant arrived at this result, let us recall which questions moved him.

Kant was of the opinion that one can lead a successful life only if he holds fast to the following metaphysical assumptions: (1.) God is the ultimate cause of the universe, (2.) man has a free will, (3.) man has an immortal soul, and (4.) the world is meaningfully arranged and tailored to man. What does metaphysical mean? Metaphysics deals with questions that go beyond our sensory, that is, beyond what we humans can hear, see, taste, and feel. Kant, in his effort to find answers to the aforementioned metaphysical questions, first asks: Can metaphysics qualify at all as a science, can it support the aforementioned metaphysical assumptions with good reasons? Can that which we cannot perceive with our senses be an object of science? To answer this question, Kant arrives in his “Critique of Pure Reason” in the year 1781 at the following determination of metaphysical statements: They must be a priori and synthetic. What is meant by this shall now be briefly explained.

There are statements, according to Kant (he spoke of “judgments”), whose truth content is experience-dependent; and there are statements whose truth content is experience-independent. Experience-dependent statements Kant calls a posteriori. Example: The stove plate is hot. I know that because I previously touched the stove plate. Such experience-dependent statements Kant designates as a posteriori. Experience-independent statements that are insightfully true, whose validation requires no experience, Kant on the other hand calls a priori. For example, we find a priori statements in logic—such as the principle of (excluded) contradiction: It cannot be the case that a statement is true, and it cannot simultaneously be the case that the statement is not true. The principle stands for an a priori true knowledge. One cannot deny the truth content of an a priori statement without contradiction; its denial already presupposes its validity.

It should be emphasized here that when Kant speaks of a priori, it is not essentially about every kind of a priori statements, but about “pure” a priori statements in particular. The adjective “pure” in Kant’s book title “Critique of Pure Reason” refers exactly to this point. With the addition “pure”, Kant means statements that operate with concepts and ideas that are entirely experience-independent, to which therefore no experience is mixed in at all. An example of such a pure a priori statement would for Kant be the following: “In a circle, all points on the circumference have the same distance to the center of the circle.” This statement is true, and indeed experience-independently. We cannot verify the statement through experience. On the one hand, we cannot measure all possible circles and thereby finally classify the statement as true or false (the number of circles that one would have to draw for testing purposes is infinite). On the other hand, we also cannot draw a circle perfectly. For there are always measurement and manufacturing inaccuracies that prevent that. Kant would therefore regard the sentence “All points on the circumference have the same distance to the center of the circle” as a pure a priori statement. For we verify it with no experience at all, but solely with experience-independent concepts that originate from our reason. In view of the pure a priori, Kant speaks of “pure concepts of the understanding,” that is, special a priori concepts, those to which no experience is mixed in at all, which therefore also in content originate from the understanding—and without which we, as will become clear presently, cannot gain any objective knowledge of the real world.

Kant makes a further distinction: namely into analytic statements and into synthetic statements. “Bachelors are unmarried” is an analytic statement: “Bachelors” is the subject of the sentence, and “unmarried” is its adjective. In an analytic sentence, the adjective (here: unmarried) only expresses what is already contained in the subject (here: bachelor). An analytic statement therefore does not expand knowledge; it merely explicates what is already thought along with the subject. This is different in a synthetic statement—such as “Water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius.” That water freezes at 0 degrees Celsius is not already contained in the word “water,” but must be brought into experience by trying out. Synthetic statements are, according to Kant, knowledge-expanding.

Thereby Kant arrives at a four-field matrix (at a twofold disjunction). Statements a priori and a posteriori on the one side, and analytic and synthetic statements on the other side.

What is of particular interest here are the synthetic statements a priori (represented as field (3)) in the matrix. That is, statements that expand our knowledge (that are synthetic), and that at the same time are also true experience-independently (that hold a priori). Synthetic judgments a priori are for Kant the conditions of the possibility of experience, which go back to the fact that we exercise our faculty of knowledge. In other words: All objects of our experience must satisfy these conditions. Therefore statements that claim that the objects of experience are precisely subject to these conditions are synthetic statements a priori. Kant formulates it thus: “… the conditions of the possibility of experience in general are at the same time conditions of the possibility of the objects of experience, and have therefore objective validity in a synthetic judgment a priori.” (Perhaps you now understand well why my father pointed out to me the difficulties in Kant’s writings!) Therefore once again formulated quite understandably: We humans do not know the objects of our experience as they are, but only as we can know them, that is, in dependence on our faculty of knowledge. We impose a priori concepts on the objects of our perception; and those statements that claim that objects of our experience are subject to these necessary conditions are synthetic statements a priori, as Kant understands them.

And with these insights we can now switch over to the works of the Austrian economist and social philosopher Ludwig von Mises (1881–1973). Mises presents an exceedingly far-reaching message, underestimated to this day, for many even unknown: Namely, that economics, the science of human action, is not an empirical science, but that it is an a priori science of action (the concept a priori here rightly already reminds us of Kant). How does Mises justify his statement that economics is not an empirical science, but that it is an a priori science of action?

In natural science one proceeds as follows: One formulates hypotheses (if-then statements), and subsequently tests the hypotheses, thus tries to confirm or reject their truth content by trying out. The statements gained in this way are—in Kant’s words—a posteriori. But precisely this empirical procedure (which is common and accepted in the natural sciences) is, according to Mises, not possible in the realm of human action. Here the reasons:

(1.) The objects of knowledge in natural science are something quite different from the acting human. In the natural sciences it is about e.g. atoms, electrons, stones, planets—that is, about inanimate, soulless objects that merely react to impulses from outside, that have no will, that do not set goals for themselves, do not choose means to achieve their goals. The acting human, however, has a will, he acts, that is, he chooses between different goals, he selects means to achieve his objectives. The human, his action, thus in no way resembles a constant stimulus-response function, as is the case with natural-scientific objects.

(2.) In natural science one researches as follows: A is caused by B. And B is caused by C. And C is caused by D. And so on. (And perhaps one thereby eventually arrives at the cause of everything. But so far that has not yet been fathomed.) One proceeds thus in natural science because one simply does not know the ultimate reason of the phenomena that one wants to explain. That is totally different with a view to the acting human. Here one knows the ultimate given: It is the acting human who decides to act in a certain way. The statement that the human acts is inescapably true, it is an “ultimate given”: There are no external factors that one could adduce in order to explain human action with scientific means.

And with the knowledge that “Man acts” one now has a (logically) unassailable, irrefutably true starting point for the science of human action. For if one thinks more precisely about the sentence “Man acts,” then one recognizes that one cannot deny it without contradiction. Whoever says “Man does not act,” he acts, and thereby contradicts what he has said, thus says something false. The sentence “Man acts” is valid a priori. Human action is always goal-related—that too cannot be denied without contradiction. The actor must employ means in order to achieve goals. Means are scarce; were they not scarce, they would not be means. Time is a means that must be employed in action; there is no timeless action. Whoever acts presupposes cause-effect, that is, causality. The acting human has a time preference: The earlier satisfaction of needs is valued higher than the later (under otherwise equal circumstances). The manifestation of time preference is the originary interest. Time preference and originary interest are always there, can never disappear, fall to zero or below zero. Also concepts such as costs and revenue, profit and loss are action-logically thought along with in the sentence “Man acts,” the same holds for exchanging, value, price.

With the sentence “Man acts” Mises thus presents a true, inescapable statement; it can be categorised as an ultimate given in the scientific field of human action. The sentence “Man acts” is even (and that I have recently advocated in an essay for a book in honor of Hans Hermann Hoppe) a pure a priori, or rather I see in the sentences that can be formulated from Mises’s logic of action synthetic judgments a priori, as I understand them in Kant’s work.

From the sentence “Man acts” further true statements in economics can be derived. Here some examples: The voluntarily carried out exchange makes all participants in it better off—in comparison to the situation in which the exchange had not taken place. Or: The increase in the supply of goods leads, with unchanged demand, to a decline in the price of goods. Or: An increase in the quantity of money lowers the purchasing power of the money unit—in comparison to the situation in which the quantity of money had not been expanded. All these statements are a priori, they are true experience-independently. One does not have to test, to carry out laboratory experiments to find out their truth content.

With action-logical thinking one can also categorize more complex economic statements as true or false. Here three examples: If fiat money is generated and put into circulation, then overconsumption and malinvestments set in. Or: Socialism is impracticable, it is not an economic system at all, ends in chaos. Or: There are no just taxes, there cannot be any. Or: The state (as we know it today) did not come about through voluntary decisions of people, but through coercion and violence, and it is also kept alive through coercion and violence and not through voluntariness.

Action-logical thinking in the realm of economics thus allows us to formulate true statements—statements, that is, whose truth content is independent of experience. With action-logical thinking one can also reveal the truth content of economic theories without first having to try them out. One presumably already senses what tremendous explosive force lies therein! Whoever practices economics as an a priori science of human action and not as an empirical science sees the world literally through a different pair of glasses: He often comes up with judgements that are entirely different from those of the (empirically oriented) mainstream economists (and the people that have been informed, hypnotized, hyper-normalized by them).

Here a very important field of application: the state. Whoever thinks action-logically recognizes: The state (as we know it today) is an apparatus of coercion and violence that does not protect the freedom of people, but destroys it: The state pretends to protect property, yet it destroys it; and it also destroys the law that it pretends to protect. Or: One recognizes that the state (as we know it today) replaces commodity, or precious-metal, money with its own fiat money, not effect a better solution of the ‘money problem’, but to cater to its own needs (that is enriching and making more powerful those closely associated with the state). Or: One recognizes that the European Union is not a well-meaning institution, but an (inwardly and outwardly) aggressive cartel of states that dismantles the sovereignty of people in the nation-states, promotes a centralization of political power, destroys economic and civil liberties. Or: One understands that the so-called “Social Market Economy” (or: Soziale Marktwirtschaft”) is nothing good, but a manifestation of interventionism. And if it is not stopped, it leads into a command- and control-economy, in the extreme case into full socialism, into a system of unfreedom.

With the word unfreedom we now have the keyword (after we have briefly touched on the a priori basis in the works of Kant and Mises) to switch over to libertarianism. For that, first a reference to a real-world example: the American Declaration of Independence, which was signed today a good 250 years ago. The people in the British colonies strove to free themselves from British rule, British imperialism and its aristocratic structure of privileges. The revolutionaries in the colonies wanted to achieve the self-government of the people. They wanted no more rule, they wanted to shake off social oppression and economic exploitation. And that which they wanted to organize as ‘state’ was to be restricted to the strongest degree—a state that taxes little or not at all, that has no standing army, that does not intervene in free markets, that makes no debts, to which access to money production is denied and that is separated from the banking system. The American Revolution was at its core a libertarian freedom movement. What is libertarian?

The adjective libertarian stems from the noun libertarianism. And libertarianism goes back to Mises’s student Murray N. Rothbard (1926–1995). Rothbard built on the theoretical foundation that Ludwig von Mises had laid. To that belonged on the one hand the a priori thinking, the consistent application of the a priori logic of human action to economics. On the other hand Rothbard thought everything consistently through to the end—above all also the classical-liberal theory of the state and of freedom. From that Rothbard formulated libertarianism, which one can also designate as the hitherto most undaunted further development of liberalism.

Libertarianism rests, and that is central and quite easy to understand, on the non-aggression principle, which in turn has an a priori action-logical justification. According to the non-aggression principle, every person is owner of himself, has self-ownership of his body, and also has ownership of the external goods that he has acquired in the course of non-aggressive ways—that is, through original appropriation, production, and exchanging. All that can be derived from the a priori theory, the logic of action. One may think at this point, for example, of the a priori of argumentation, as the philosophers Otto Apel and Jürgen Habermas presented it in their discourse ethics in the 1980s. Truth claims are established through arguments, it is an intellectual undertaking (no boxing match, presupposes rational beings, and therefore one cannot argue with a gorilla.) And arguing cannot be denied without contradiction. Whoever says “Man does not argue,” he argues. One can therefore speak of the a priori of arguing. Arguing presupposes corporeality—I must, for example, employ my vocal cords in order to make myself heard; or I must press my fingers on the keyboard in order to write and send a mail. The arguer must also have exclusive control over his body. Otherwise he could not argue—and one cannot without contradiction argue that one cannot argue. The non-aggression principle implies ownership, the self-ownership of a person of himself.

And from that follows: No one can convincingly justify doing violence and coercion unasked to other (peacefully behaving) persons, behaving aggressively against them, taking away from them their property (their own body or the things that they have acquired in non-aggressive ways) unasked or using it without permission. Thereby it becomes obvious that the state (as we know it today) is entirely and completely incompatible with the a priori non-aggression principle. For the state (as we know it today) has elevated itself through the application of coercion and violence to the ultimate decision-maker over all conflicts on its territory, and it takes the liberty of levying taxes—thus does something that is forbidden to all others: Taking something away from someone against his will.

You see: Action-logical thinking unmasks, disenchants the state—and indeed as a criminal organization. In Rothbard’s words: “The state is by nature an illegitimate institution of organized aggression, of organized and regularized crime against the persons and the property of its subjects … a profoundly asocial institution that lives parasitically off the productive activities of private citizens.”

Hans Hermann Hoppe emphasized further that the state expands ever further, becomes ever larger and more powerful and more dangerous, above all when the state power of coercion and violence can quasi be exercised by anyone at any time (when it is a “public good”), as is actually the case today in the modern majority democracies. From a minimal state there then becomes sooner or later a maximal state.

From the viewpoint of libertarian theory, precisely the state compulsory money monopoly proves to be a quite particularly evil institution. For the state (as we know it today) replaces commodity or precious-metal money with its own fiat money, grants itself a compulsory monopoly for the generation of the fiat money (and it issues licenses to commercial banks so that the latter can participate in the fiat-money production). The state fiat-money compulsory monopoly is not only inflationary, socially unjust (in the truest sense of the word), it not only provides for boom and bust, overindebtedness, promotes wars—it above all lets the state grow beyond all measure.

The ills for which the fiat money provides, in particular the exploitation and impoverishment of the broad population, financial and economic crises, are usually interpreted as consequences of the free market, of capitalism—namely by state-paid mainstream economists (most of them pursuing economics as an empirical science), by ideologues and demagogues. As solution they then demand more regulation, more laws, above all prohibitions, a strengthening of the state authorities—everything at the expense of the freedoms of citizens and entrepreneurs and in favor of state power. The broad population, which is often uninformed and/or wrongly advised (because it is delivered over to state propaganda and manipulation in school and university), usually does not possess the ability to contradict the state-prescribed narrative, to rebel against it.

The state fiat money provides for the growth of the state for yet another reason. In the modern majority democracies the politicians buy their majority of votes by distributing election gifts and paying for them with borrowed money—of course only after the state has equipped itself and its minions royally with salaries and pensions. To facilitate credit financing for the state, the state’s central bank privileges government bonds. The state thus lives unabashedly and unhindered on borrowed money. Firms receive state contracts, not a few of them are subsidized, and ever more people soon work directly (in the bureaucracy) and indirectly (in branches that only arise and thrive through state laws and regulations) for the state. Above all thanks to debt financing the state advances ever further and deeper into all economic and social areas: education (school, university), old-age provision, health, transport, environment, law and security, money and credit, capital investment, culture—everywhere the state becomes the dominant actor.

The freedoms of consumers and producers dwindle, the national economy is getting deformed gradually into a control- and command-economy in which the state and its bureaucrats—or rather the special-interest groups that hijack state and bureaucracy for their own purposes—determine ever more strongly who can produce what when and how much, and who may consume what when in what quantity. All this paves the way into socialism, and indeed initially through shortage and need for which the state expansion provides. The proliferating state paralyzes economic growth, scarce resources are employed inefficiently, there comes waste, mismanagement, corruption, decay of good morals.

Sooner or later the country’s debt sustainability deteriorates, and creditors eventually no longer want to give the state new credits, or if so, then only at interest rates that the net taxpayers cannot pay or (justifiably) do not want to pay. Then it is revealed that rulers and ruled are not able or willing to repay the accumulated debt load. To fend off bankruptcy, there remains only one way: The state central bank buys up the public debts, pays for the purchases with newly created money. The result is the debasement of the currency, high inflation or even hyperinflation, to be followed by economic and societal collapse—and a great crisis provides the opportunity for socialist ideologues and demagogues to expropriate the owners, to nationalize the means of production—to establish socialism. One way or another, that is what the future of the state (as we know it today) may well look like—when using insights from the a priori theory of human action, the libertarian theory.

The libertarian theory, libertarianism, as Murray N. Rothbard formulated it, does not only come with a knowledge-generating dimension, but also a practical-oriented strategy towards freedom. The latter Rothbard designated as the “one-two punch strategy.” He argues that libertarians (and “paleoconservatives” and “minimal-statists”) need a complementary approach to regain freedom, to roll back the state to the strongest degree possible—instead of relying solely on an “intellectual conversion” of the officeholders and those seeking to get into power. Rothbard called this having a “one-two punch” quasi up one’s sleeve:

“(T)he importance, for libertarians or for minimal government conservatives, of having a one-two punch in their armor: not simply of spreading correct ideas, but also of exposing the corrupt ruling elites and how they benefit from the existing system, more specifically how they are ripping us off. Ripping the mask off elites is “negative campaigning” at its finest and most fundamental.”

There is the “ideological punch,” that is, the building up of a group of well-trained libertarians whose persuasion work is based on correct principles and ideas. That means: Dissemination of libertarian and economic theory (drawing on the Austrian School of Economics), universal a priori ethics and the ideas of a peaceful society, in order to form a core of intellectuals, authors and influencers who can rigorously understand and represent the ideas of freedom.

And there is the “populist punch,” that is, the direct addressing of the masses of people through unsparing exposure of the ethical and economic defects of the state (as we know it today), through strict uncovering of how some elites (such as e.g. political functionaries, pseudo-entrepreneurs profiting from state money and regulation, technocrats, attitude journalists etc.) profit from the existing statist system and exploit the people—through compulsory levies, arbitrary regulations, transfer payments, inflation, wars and oppression.”

Rothbard emphasized that this strategy connects the abstract (that is, principle-oriented libertarianism) with the concrete (that is, the exposure of the existing statist system and its beneficiaries). Rothbard’s populist approach is confrontational and dynamic, it is meant to deliberately mobilize the exploited middle and working classes against the unholy alliance of the elites, who want to deprive them of the fruits of their labor and control them.

We have now connected important points with one another: From Kant’s a priori knowledge to Ludwig von Mises’s insight that economics is an a priori science of human action and not an empirical science; and on to libertarianism, which is also grounded in a priori theory.

By drawing these connections, Immanuel Kant is not to be presented as a forerunner, as the founding father, of libertarianism. But rather as the thinker who like no other before him provided the foundations to justify freedom, libertarianism most consistently and rigorously—and the last necessary steps for that were not taken by Kant himself, but by others, thanks to his preliminary work.

And whoever once gets wind of the fact that the freedom of man is not only an assumption, but that the freedom of man holds a priori, he perhaps already senses the intellectual firestorm that is contained in this knowledge—and which, once it is kindled, no one will any longer be able to stop.

The state, the politicians, have in the last decades succeeded in elevating themselves to power and holding themselves there through deception, lies and fraud: by psychologically manipulating people, politically suppressing and economically exploiting them.

But the swindle is now coming to light, truth is increasingly emerging: The state is bankrupt (the emperor has no clothes on, so to speak), and more and more people sense (without perhaps being able to justify it profoundly) that there is no justification for some people psychologically manipulating, politically suppressing and economically exploiting their fellow human beings.

To defend their territory, to suppress criticism, the state and its favorites set everything in motion to cover up, combat the truth, above all with ‘anti-Enlightenment’, restriction of freedom of speech, cancel culture, intimidation (through show trials, attacks on persons by the terror groups paid by the state etc.). For the state (as we know it today) and its favorites, the last battle has begun.

Freedom-loving, peaceful people set against that the firestorm of a priori knowledge, which, of that one should have no doubts, will kindle a firestorm of freedom, a firestorm that will burn down the false, evil foundations on which the state and its favorites have built their ruling power. So help to heat the fire of freedom even more strongly now, to kindle a firestorm of freedom—above all also by making the a priori insights your own and spreading them undauntedly.

I thank you for your attention!

This paper was presented at the 10^th Anniversary of the F. A. v. Hayek Society Club in Weimar, Germany, 15 August 2026.

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