Abstract
Regarding domestic justice, Kant establishes republicanism as the requirement of governments. Defined as the division of legislative, administrative, and juridical branches, Kant’s republicanism aims to guarantee citizens’ independence, freedom, and equality and prevent despotism. Friedrich Schlegel criticizes Kant’s view by arguing that the mere legal division of the three powers is not sufficient to guarantee citizens’ independence, freedom, and equality or prevent despotism, and therefore he challenges Kant’s republicanism as an appropriate means for preventing injustice. Schlegel’s criticism, in my view, rightly points out the gap between the legal division of the three branches and ideal republicanism. To respond to Schlegel’s doubts, I present two arguments that elaborate on Kant’s republicanism, which could include active citizenship in addition to the legal division of the three branches. The first one argues that Kant’s republicanism, as merely the legal division of the three branches, would bring internal contradiction to the conception of republicanism. The second positively argues that the gap between the legal division of the three branches and ideal republicanism does not originate from the “gulf” between a particular will and the general will as described by Schlegel but from the vague overlap between a particular will and the general will. This argument also calls for the expansion of Kant’s republicanism with active citizenship.
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Notes
- 1.
Quotations from Kant are cited from Royal Prussian (later German)Academy of Sciences (ed) (1900-) Kants Gesammelte Schriften, Berlin: Georg Reimer, later Walter de Gruyter & Co. by volume and page number. The translation of Toward Perpetual Peace (hereafter PP) is from Practical Philosophy (1996a, 311–352); The Metaphysics of Morals (hereafter MM) is also from Practical Philosophy (1996b, 353–604); On the Common Saying: That may be correct in theory, but it is of no use in practice (hereafter TP) is from Practical Philosophy (1996c, 273–310).
- 2.
The form of sovereignty (forma imperii), which relates to the number of ruling powers, includes autocracy, aristocracy, and democracy (PP 8:352).
- 3.
Friedrich Schlegel’s 1796 essay Versuch über den Begriff des Republikanismus has been translated by Frederick Beiser as “Essay on the Concept of Republicanism occasioned by the Kantian tract ‘Perpetual Peace’” in The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics (1996, 93–112). References here are to Frederick Beiser’s translation.
- 4.
Here are Beiser’s explanations of those quotations within Schlegel’s texts in The Early Political Writings of the German Romantics. “Schlegel cites the first edition of Kant’s work Zum ewigen Frieden. Ein philosophischer Entwurf (Königsberg: Friedrich Nicolovius, 1795). His reference to this virtually inaccessible edition have been replaced by references to the more accessible Reiss edition (PW). Schlegel’s citations of Kant’s text frequently depart from the exact wording of the original. In these cases I have translated Schlegel’s exact words, not the original text. In citing Reiss’s edition, then, I am referring to the passages that correspond to Schlegel’s citations, not reproducing Reiss’s translation” (1996, 95).
- 5.
See fn. 5’s explanation.
- 6.
Arthur Ripstein reconstructs three arguments from Kant’s political writings to explain defects of the state of nature: the assurance argument, the unilateral choice argument, and the determinacy arguments. Ripstein argues “the three arguments generate three independent but coordinate branches of government.” See, Ripstein (2009, 173).
- 7.
Thomas Pogge states that the legislative branch has ultimate authority over other branches, because the legislative authority “decides how to institute executive and judicial agencies” (2009, 197). This interpretation describes Kant’s separation of governmental powers as “an extra-legal demand on the sovereign that it should confine itself to general legislation while delegating administrative and judicial decisions about particular cases to executive and judicial officers and agencies” (Ibid.).
- 8.
In a second analogy, Kant parallels the separation of governmental powers with the structure of a syllogism. “These [branches] are like the three propositions in a practical syllogism: the major premise, which contains the law of that will; the minor premise, which contains the command to behave in accordance with the law, that is, the principle of subsumption under the law; and the conclusion, which contains the verdict (sentence), what is laid down as right in the case at hand” (MM 6: 313). Under this analogy, the major premise is the legislative branch making the law. The minor premise is the executive executing the law. The conclusion is a judicial verdict on a particular case in accordance with law. Similar to the first analogy, if there is no separation of three branches, a juridical verdict has a risk of being arbitrary.
- 9.
A despotic government is the type where the ruler or its executive power does not subordinate to juridical or legislative authorities. “Democracy” is criticized by Kant as despotic, because the people occupy the position of both executive and judicial powers at the same time.
- 10.
See fn. 5’s explanation.
- 11.
Crispin Wright has written a series of articles on the philosophical problems of vagueness. Although his main focus is not on political theory, his psychological solution to the problem, and objections to supervaluationism, vagueness as rebus, and Epistemicism, could shed light on our discussion of the “vague overlap” between the general will and a particular will. See: Wright (2001); Wright (2003).
- 12.
Kant also presents a slightly different version of citizenship in part 2 of Theory and Practice. In this chapter, I only investigate The Metaphysics of Morals version of citizenship in sections 43–49 of the “Doctrine of Right.”
- 13.
Kant notoriously provides several examples about active and passive citizens. For example, children, domestic servants, the woodcutter, the Indian blacksmith, and women are passive citizens, while civil servants and school teachers are active citizens. We have to recognize Kant’s social and economic limitations of being in eighteenth century Prussia. Jacob Weinrib presents a charitable interpretation of Kant’s mature account of citizenship, which does not “exclude women or any other class of persons (with the exception of children, who are excluded on the basis of their dependency)” (Weinrib 2008, 14).
- 14.
A “good” legislator is one who satisfies the three features of active citizens. Together with the requirement of “equality,” every citizen should recognize the equal role of being state legislators between him-/herself and others. “Equality” as legal equality also implies that all citizens are equally constrained by the same legal authority without exception. In addition, every independent citizen should form the consent to legal authorities in terms of his/her own reason rather than others’ coercion, brainwashing, or deception.
- 15.
Ronald Beiner adopts terms “high-liberal” and “low-liberal” interpretations of citizenship to explain Kant’s conception of citizenship and suggests Kant’s citizenship is the one between “high-liberal” and “low-liberal” views. According to the “low-liberal” view, “politics is conceived as an instrumentality for securing a system of laws that allow each of us to get on with our individual purposes without unnecessary interference by the state, and citizenship is simply the title assumed by all those who participate in this arrangement.” Ripstein’s account of freedom is close to the “low-liberal” view. However, Kant’s account of active citizenship in MM, at least to a certain degree, challenges such a “low-liberal” account. See: Beiner (2011, 209–210).
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Deng, Y. (2016). The Expansion of Kant’s Republicanism with Active Citizenship. In: Cudd, A., Lee, Wc. (eds) Citizenship and Immigration - Borders, Migration and Political Membership in a Global Age. AMINTAPHIL: The Philosophical Foundations of Law and Justice, vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32786-0_5
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