Kant on Community: A Reply to Gehrke

Some attempts have been made in recent research on Immanuel Kant and rheto ric to enunciate guidance he may have for communicative practice and ethics. This is promising, since Kant has held relatively minor role in contemporary analyses of rhetoric and communication ethics, due to misunderstandings both on part and on the part of commentators. I firmly believe that Kant's works contain insights on community and the role of rhetoric therein, and that accounts that attempt to mine these resources must do appropriate justice to the depth and breadth of writings. Otherwise, one risks solving problems that Kant already solved elsewhere, or worse yet, one risks misidentifying problem in Kant by not giving developed due attention in the first place. In what follows, I will discuss one recent contribution to the philosophy and rhetoric literature by Pat Gehrke in this journal that I believe falls prey to such problems.1 While I applaud attempt to bring Kant back into discussions of communica tion ethics and rhetoric by rebuilding notion of community, I must voice some concerns I have over account of Kant on community. Indeed, this seems to be in the spirit of Gehrke's analysis, which begins by lamenting the loss of much richness and complexity of Kant's thought in the work of modern commentators, as well as their lack of focus on what Kant's own works say about his articulation of ground for duty to community.21 take Gehrke at word, and will explore how true of an account this is in terms of both the problems in Kant's as well as Gehrke's putative Kantian solution.3 Research considering the relationship between Kant's moral philosophy and rhetoric has been quite sparse. Robert Dostal's account notes Kant's hostil ity to rhetoric as conceived in terms of the manipulative production of what we can call human effects, but ends right where Kant becomes interesting the connection between historical/religious forms of community and communica tive interaction among agents.4 A more recent analysis of Kant's implications for rhetoric comes from Gehrke. Gehrke's purpose is to combine a reading