Abstract
As a political philosopher, Kant belongs to the modern world and the Age of Enlightenment. Ancient political philosophy was often oriented to the community in a broad sense. The state — its laws, authority, and political rule — were seen as tools for sustaining a sense of community, educating the citizens in virtuous behavior, cultivating a shared tradition and sense of values. Such a conception is not unknown in the modern world, of course. It had some appeal to Rousseau, appealed even more to the German Romantics, and (though in a spirit more modern than Romantic) it underlies Hegel’s concept of the state as the rational expression of ethical life. Utilitarian political theories can also take this form. For many moderns, however — including Kant — the political state is viewed chiefly, even exclusively, as a coercive institution whose sole ultimate aim is maintaining the peace and security of a population, and protecting the rights of citizens.
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Notes
“Political philosophy is often thought of as an application of general moral principles to the factual circumstances that make political institutions necessary.... [But] Kant not only denies that political philosophy is an application of the Categorical Imperative to a specific situation; he also rejects the idea that political institutions are a response to unfortunate circumstances” (Arthur Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy [Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2009], 1–2).
See Adam Ferguson, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (1767; reprint, London: Transaction, 1995).
“Though the earth, and all inferior creatures, be common to all men, yet every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his. Whatsoever then he removes out of the state that nature hath provided, and left it in, he hath mixed his labour with, and joined to it something that is his own, and thereby makes it his property. It being by him removed from the common state nature hath placed it in, it hath by this labour something annexed to it, that excludes the common right of other men: for this labour being the unquestionable property of the labourer, no man but he can have a right to what that is once joined to, at least where there is enough, and as good, left in common for others” (John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, ed. C. B. Macpherson [Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980], ch. 5, §27).
Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals, trans. and ed. Walter Kaufmann (New York: Vintage, 1967), Third Essay, §9.
“Il n’est rien si dissociable et sociable que l’homme: l’un par son vice, l’autre par sa nature” (Michel Eyquem de Montaigne, “De la solitude,” in Essais, ed. André Tournon [Paris: Imprimerie nationale Éditions, 1998], 1:388). “There is nothing more unsociable than Man, and nothing more sociable: unsociable by his vice, sociable by his nature” (Michel de Montaigne, “Of Solitude,” in The Complete Essays, trans. and ed. M. A. Screech [London: Penguin, 1991], 267).
It is an important and original part of Kant’s theory of right to explicate the conditions of international right (the rightful relations between states) and also cosmopolitan right (the rights holding between human beings from different states simply as human beings) (MM 6:343–53; PP 8:354–60). But except for its contribution to the historical process by which the state constitution is perfected, Kant’s conception of the way peace between nations is to be promoted, through a federalism of free states or a state of nations whose members are states (IUH 8:24–28; TP 8:307–13; PP 8:343–86), lies beyond the scope of Kant’s political philosophy, regarded as the philosophy of law and the state. See Allen W. Wood, “Kant’s Project for Perpetual Peace,” in Cosmopolitics: Thinking and Feeling beyond the Nation, ed. Pheng Cheah and Bruce Robbins (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998), 59–76.
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, “The Social Contract” and Other Later Political Writings, trans. and ed. Victor Gourevitch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) bk. III, ch. 1.
For further discussion of these two “principles of publicity,” see Allen Wood, “Kant’s Principles of Publicity,” in Politics and Teleology in Kant, ed. Paul Formosa, Avery Goldman, and Tatiana Patrone (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2014), 76–92; and Allen W. Wood, The Tree Development of Each: Studies on Freedom, Right, and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014), ch. 4.
See Allen W. Wood, “Recht und Universität bei Kant,” in Kants “Streit der Fakultäten” oder der Ort der Bildung zwischen Lebenswelt und Wissenschaften, ed. Ludger Honnefelder et al. (Berlin: Berlin University Press, 2012), 66–88. It does not follow, therefore, that a state whose basic function is to protect rightful freedom must be a state with sharply limited powers and activities — a libertarian “night watchman” state, devoted only to the protection of existing property rights. In fact, Kant argues, the very opposite is more likely to be the case (WE 8:41). Kant’s political philosophy thus may be used to show that “libertarianism” cannot possibly name a coherent political philosophy but only a pernicious error that sophistically rationalizes gross injustice.
Regarding E, see Allen W. Wood, Kantian Ethics (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008), ch. 12;
and Allen W. Wood, “Punishment, Retribution, and the Coercive Enforcement of Right,” in Kant’s “Metaphysics of Morals”: A Critical Guide, ed. Lara Denis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 111–29.
Jan Joerden, “From Anarchy to Republic: Kant’s History of State Constations,” in Proceedings of the Eighth International Kant Congress, V 1\1 (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1995), 139–56;
Alyssa Bernstein, “Kant on Rights and Coercion in International Law: The Implications for Humanitarian Intervention,” Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik/International Yearbook for Right and Ethics 16 (2008): 57–100; and Ripstein, Force and Freedom, ch. 7.
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Wood, A. (2014). Kant’s Political Philosophy. In: Altman, M.C. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism. The Palgrave Handbook of German Idealism. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-137-33475-6_9
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