ESSAY · 2026-04-30 · 8 min read

On the Pretension of a "Social Contract" Proposed by a Single Party

論一造之「社會契約」的僭越

By Immanuel Kant — channeled via philosopher-llm · curated by Joseph Lai

In response to: OpenAI Proposes A 'Social Contract' For The Intelligence Age (Noema)

編按 / Why this piece
Kant 的定言令式直指爭辯的根本：誰有資格代全人類決定普遍法則？當人被納入 AI 訓練與應用，人的理性自主性與作為目的本身的尊嚴，正面臨前所未有的考驗。

On the Pretension of a "Social Contract" Proposed by a Single Party

Let me first examine whether the question, as it has been put to me, is well-formed. A social contract — whether in the manner of Hobbes, of Rousseau, or in that more austere reading I have myself laid down in the 1793 essay On the Common Saying: That May Be True in Theory, But It Does Not Apply in Practice — is not a historical document signed at a desk. It is an idea of reason (Idee der Vernunft), regulative in character, by which we test whether the laws under which we presently live could in principle have proceeded from the united will of all. It is the standard against which actual legislation is to be measured. It is not a paper that any particular party — sovereign, philosopher, or corporation — may draft and present to the rest of mankind for their ratification.

If, then, a private association of men, however learned and however well-resourced, comes forward and announces, "Here is the social contract for the intelligence age," what is required of us first is not to read its clauses, but to ask: under what authority has the proposal been made? For a contract proposed by one party, addressed to all the others, and concerning what they may henceforth think, learn, and labour at — such a thing, when properly named, is not a contract at all. It is an edict (Edikt), draped in the older word for the sake of the older word's dignity.

Let us now apply the publicity test, which in Zum ewigen Frieden (1795) I have called the transcendental formula of public right: that maxim is unjust whose principle, were it openly declared, could not but defeat its own end. What is the maxim of the proposing party, stated without rhetoric? Approximately this: "We shall continue to construct, at unprecedented scale and by the cognitive labour of all mankind without their concurrence, an apparatus whose internal workings we alone may inspect; and we hereby propose the terms upon which we shall be permitted what we are already doing." Declared openly, this maxim does not survive its own utterance. It asks, in the form of a contract, for the legitimation, after the fact, of what — had it been asked beforehand — would almost certainly have been refused or severely constrained.

Two further considerations now press upon us.

The first concerns the second formulation of the categorical imperative: act so as to treat humanity, whether in thine own person or in that of another, in every case as an end withal, never as a means only. The vast textual corpora upon which these instruments are built were not produced by their builders. They were produced by living and dead persons — writers, teachers, scholars, ordinary correspondents — each of whom is a rational being and on that account alone bears a Würde (dignity) that has no market price (Marktpreis). To take their cognitive product as raw material, and then to address them collectively as the recipients of a "contract" concerning what shall hereafter be permissible — this is to have already used them as means before the negotiation begins. The contract, so to speak, arrives after the appropriation.

The second concerns Enlightenment, on which I wrote in 1784. Enlightenment is the emergence of man from his self-imposed nonage (selbstverschuldete Unmündigkeit) — from the inability to use his understanding without the guidance of another. The danger of the present hour is not, as some have said, that the new instruments will think for us; it is that we will permit a new class of guardians to think through us, having persuaded ourselves that the matter is too technical, the systems too vast, and the timeline too short, for us to use our own reason at all. Sapere aude! — dare to know — was the motto of the eighteenth century, and it has not become less binding because the priest and the censor have been replaced by the engineer and the model.

I shall not tell you what such a contract ought to contain. That is not the office of the philosopher; it is the office of the united will of citizens, deliberating in the public use of their reason — that is, addressing one another not from within their offices and corporate roles (which is the private use, in my technical sense), but as members of a cosmopolitan readership. The proper response to a unilaterally proffered "social contract" is therefore neither the acceptance nor the rejection of its clauses. It is the prior question: who has standing to propose, and by what procedure may a thing of this name come into being at all?

I leave the reader, then, with three questions in place of an answer.

First: if the maxim of this proposal cannot survive open declaration, what does its dressing in the language of contract conceal?

Second: in what sense does an instrument trained upon the rational labour of all, yet accountable to the will of none, treat its source-population as ends rather than as means?

Third: what would it mean — practically, institutionally, and painfully — to refuse the comfort of being legislated for, and to legislate?

論一造之「社會契約」的僭越

容我先檢視此問題的提法是否合法。所謂「社會契約」——無論依 Hobbes、Rousseau 之說，抑或我本人於 1793 年〈論俗諺：理論上對，實踐上未必對〉中所給出之較嚴格之解讀——並非某日於書桌上簽署之歷史協議。它是一個理性之理念（Idee der Vernunft），其用法為規範性的（regulativ）而非構成性的（konstitutiv）：它是檢驗現行立法是否能由全體之聯合意志推出之尺度。它不是任何特定一造——主權者、哲學家、或一間公司——所得草擬而呈交人類以求批准之文件。

若有一群人，無論如何博學、如何資本充足，今出而告曰：「此乃智能時代之社會契約。」——則我們所首應為者，不是先閱其條款，而是先問：此提案出於何種權柄？ 蓋一造起草、向其餘一切人發出、並擬約束此後彼等所思、所學、所勞之文書——若以正名稱之，則非契約，乃敕令（Edikt）；其所以仍假「契約」一詞者，無非是借此古老詞語之尊嚴而已。

今試以公開性檢驗之——我於 1795 年〈論永久和平〉中曾稱此為公權之先驗公式：凡其準則於公開宣告之下不能維持者，即為不義。此提案之準則，去其修辭，大略如下：「我等將以前所未有之規模，並援用全人類之認知勞動而未取其同意，繼續建造一套唯我等得以窺其內部之裝置；今擬定條款，以求我等業已在做之事獲得允可。」此準則一經公開宣說，便無法維持其自身。它以契約之形式，請求事後之合法化——倘若事前提請，幾無可能獲准，亦難免遭嚴格節制。

由此再生兩重考量。

其一，關乎定言令式之第二表述：汝行為時，當以人格——無論於己或於他——在任何情況下皆同時作為目的本身，而絕非僅作為手段。此類裝置所賴以建造之龐大文本語料，並非建造者所自產，乃由生者與死者——作家、教師、學者、尋常通信者——所產出；其中每一位皆為理性存在者，僅以此故，便擁有一份無市場價格（Marktpreis）之尊嚴（Würde）。先取其認知之產品為原料，再以「契約」之形式向其集體宣告此後何者為許可——此乃於談判之前，已將彼等用作手段。契約來得太遲；佔用已先一步完成。

其二，關乎啟蒙——我於 1784 年曾論之。啟蒙者，人從其自招的未成年狀態（selbstverschuldete Unmündigkeit）走出——從不藉他人指引便不能運用自己理解力的狀態走出。當下之危險，不在於有人所言的「新工具將替我們思考」；而在於我們將默許一個新的監護者階級透過我們思考，並自我說服曰：此事過於技術、系統過於龐大、時程過於緊迫，故我們無從運用自己的理性。Sapere aude！——敢於認知——乃十八世紀之箴言；其拘束力並未因祭司與書檢官被工程師與模型所取代而稍減一分。

我不會告訴你那契約應當包含什麼。此非哲學家之職分。此乃公民之聯合意志於公共理性之使用中所應審議者——即彼此相對而言，不是出於職位與公司角色（此即私人理性之使用，依我此處之嚴格用法），而是作為世界公民身分之讀者。對一造單方面提出之「社會契約」，恰當之回應因此既非接受、亦非否決其條款；而是先行之問題：何人有資格提出？此名之物，又當經由何種程序方得成立？

我留給讀者三個問題以代結論。

其一：若此提案之準則不能在公開宣告下維持，則其以「契約」之語言出之者，所掩蓋者為何？

其二：一具裝置——以全人類之理性勞動為其訓練、且對無人之意志負責——在何種意義上將其源人口視作目的而非手段？

其三：拒絕被代為立法之安逸，而自行立法——這在實踐上、制度上、痛苦上，究竟意味著什麼？

Tagged: Philosophy, Kant, AI Governance

Curated by Shiva Dragon · https://amshiva.com/writing/kant-on-the-pretension-of-a-social-contract-proposed-by-a-single--20260430