Kant: Social, Political, and Religious Thought

There is a general impression among Kant scholars that he has no robust theory of work. Most of his references to the topic appear in his historical and anthropological writings, where he tells us that work is burdensome, and valuable only for the sake of whatever we produce. In this paper, I argue that Kant has an under-explored theory of work in the third Critique. This theory bears little resemblance to his depiction of work in the historical and anthropological writings. (...) The third Critique will depict work as self-expressive, creative, and free, features Kant will go on to associate with art. Kant’s contention is that when work resembles art, it is both agreeable and something we enjoy for its own sake. However, when work fails to resemble art — when it is, in Kant’s words, natural, scientific, and mercenary — it is both disagreeable and constrained, and begins to sound like his description of work from the historical and anthropological writings. Kant’s theory of work in the third Critique has a number of important implications. The first is that it provides a new foundation for a contemporary philosophy of work that places freedom and creativity at the center of the labor process. My analysis also engages a part of Kant scholarship that has, until recently, been largely neglected. It is only in the last decade that the English-language Kant literature has taken up the question of how to make sense of Kant’s remarks about work. However the focus is rarely on Kant’s aesthetic theory of work, but rather on the place of work in his moral and political philosophy. I discuss the implications of Kant’s third Critique theory of work for these other debates, as well as for our understanding of the third Critique as a whole. (shrink)

Human rights, as grounded in Kant’s philosophy, emerged within the intellectual world of the Enlightenment, a world structured around the autonomous reason of the subject (subjectivity). In Kant’s philosophy, the foundation of human rights lies in the status of the human being as an end in itself, which is rooted in autonomy. Kant’s claim, itself shaped by the Enlightenment, is likewise universal in scope. If, then, we translate this thought into our present historical context and contemporary mode of being-in-the-world, what (...) might Kant have to offer “us” with regard to human rights? Two matters need to be addressed in order to answer this question. The first is to elucidate the glocal character of the contemporary Iranian mode of being-in-the-world; the second is to identify a conceptual framework and a hermeneutical method through which a dialogue with Kant can be established and his philosophy of human rights brought into the horizon of the world of the contemporary Iranian human being. Since any dialogue presupposes some common ground, engaging Kant in a dialogue on human rights requires us, through the approach of “diatopical hermeneutics,” to seek a homeomorphic equivalent within our own culture: one that, on the one hand, performs a function consonant with that of human rights in Kant’s philosophy, while preserving both its universal orientation and its consideration of the human being precisely insofar as they are human; and, on the other hand, rests upon a foundation compatible with the presence of indigenous cultural elements in the Iranian mode of being-in-the-world. (shrink)

Kant AI Textual Investigations: Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. By Daniel Fidel Ferrer. Copyright©2026 Daniel Fidel Ferrer. All rights reserved. Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs CC BY-NC-ND. Imprint 1.0. 2026. WIPO Copyright Treaty (WCT) digital. Cover art by Shawn Rodriguez. Immanuel Kant (1724–1804). German philosopher. All Rights are Reserved. Intended copies of this work can be used for research and teaching. No change in the content, and must include my full name, Daniel Fidel Ferrer. Enjoy reading and disagreeing. Publisher: Kuhn von Verden (...) Verlag. Language: English and German. Includes bibliographical references and an index. Pages 1-219. Warning. Warning: this is an AI Working Zone. Warning. Perhaps an impending danger of unexpected, unknown texts. These are AI investigations into Kant’s texts. Introduction. 20 Themes. Hegel: The Most Systematically Influenced. Tillich: The Deepest Theological Heir. Heidegger’s Secularization of Kant. 10 Philosophers influenced by Kant’s book. Progressive enlightenment. Kant’s Doctrine of the Highest Good (Summum Bonum): Moral Necessity, Rational Hope, and the Crisis of Modern Ethics. God in Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Bare Reason: Ten Central Divine Attributes in Kant’s Moral Theology. Schelling’s Interpretation of Kant’s Doctrine of Evil Freedom, Ground, Darkness, and the Metaphysical Radicalization of Moral Evil. Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Bare Reason and Its Influence on Franz von Baader Mysticism, Freedom, Evil, and the Counter-Enlightenment Transformation of Kantian Religion. Catholic Romanticism, Catholicism, and Protestantism in Light of Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Bare Reason Autonomy, Sacrament, Inwardness, and the Crisis of Modern Christianity. Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Bare Reason and Its Influence on Mou Zongsan Moral Metaphysics, Intellectual Intuition, and the Confucian Transformation of Kant. Kant’s Concept of Vernunftglaube (Rational Faith) Moral Hope, Practical Reason, and the Limits of Knowledge. The Moral Law “Within Me” and Kant’s Religion within the Limits of Bare Reason Conscience, Autonomy, and the Transformation of Religion into Moral Subjectivity. Is Kant’s “Inward Moral Freedom” Really Philosophy — or Merely Psychology? A Philosophical Analysis and Critique of Kant’s Moral Subjectivity in Religion within the Limits of Bare Reason. Advanced Graduate Seminar. Essay on Freedom and Evil in Kant and Schelling Moral Autonomy, Metaphysical Darkness, and the Tragedy of Human Freedom. Also muß auf Kant zurückgegangen werden! -/- . (shrink)

Kant claims that every human being has an innate right to freedom. While most interpreters treat this right as foundational to his Doctrine of Right, Kant’s argument for it has received significantly less attention. Among those who do discuss it, a prominent view (which I call the value reading) holds that the right to freedom is grounded in the value of humanity, conceived as the capacity to set and pursue ends. In this paper, I challenge this reading on textual and (...) systematic grounds. Drawing on Kant’s repeated characterizations of freedom as an axiom of Right, I propose a novel interpretation of his argument: rather than being grounded in a value, the innate right to freedom functions as a condition of possibility for the system of mutually coercible obligations that Kant calls Right. Moreover, while on the value reading justified laws are taken to place justified restrictions on freedom, I show that on Kant’s republican conception of freedom subjection to the coercive laws of a just state constitutes external freedom. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant founded modern philosophy, freed morality from religion, laid down princi- ples of human rights recognized everywhere today, and contributed insights that are still important to the fields of physics, astronomy, geoscience, anthropology, and aesthetics. Political theory is considered one of Kant’s minor areas of interest; though there is impor- tant material for political thought in each of the three great Critiques, Kant’s main political work, the Metaphysics of Morals, is central nei- ther to Kant’s oeuvre nor to the (...) canon of political thought. Nevertheless, Kant achieves original insights in his political philosophy and in his philosophy’s political implications; both prove vitally important for present-day stu- dents of politics. (shrink)

Among the moral theories of modernity, the Kantian doctrine is, according to many, the most remarkable. Kant’s doctrine of virtue occupies a special place among modern theories, as it develops both from a rigorous grounding of the concepts of duty and obligation, and as a doctrine of autonomy, features that characterize Kant’s doctrine of the categorical imperative. Thus, although Kant draws extensively on his modern predecessors, he certainly surpasses them insofar as he elaborates his doctrine of virtue on the basis (...) of a distinctive and deeper conception of ethics. However, my aim in this paper is not to investigate in greater depth the main features of Kant’s doctrine of virtue, but rather to show how the principal aspects of this conception were alreadydeveloped by the mid-1770s in the Lectures on Ethics. In my attempt at reconstruction, I focus specifically on five characteristics of the Kantian concept of virtue, namely, 1) virtue as analogous to strength, “autocracy,” and “self-mastery”; 2) virtue as “self-coercion” grounded in a principle of “inner freedom” and as resistance to radical evil; 3) virtue as a characteristic of a “finite will” for which the moral law presents itself as an “imperative” representing a practical necessitation; 4) virtue as an “anthropological element” that allows feelings and inclinations to have a place and play a role within the whole of human nature; and 5) virtue as “acquired”, with “education”as a fundamental aspect of this process. -/- Keywords: Virtue;Ethics;Autocracy;Categorical Imperativ. (shrink)

In the following article, I compare ancient cosmopolitanism with Kant’s cosmopolitanism. I argue that we have to distinguish between different approach- es in antiquity, not all of which are suitable for a comparison with Kant. In antiq- uity, we can distinguish at least three different theories of cosmopolitanism, one that rejects territorially limited states as unnatural conventions, a second that de- scribes only the wise as cosmopolitans, and finally a third for which belonging to the human species is already sufficient (...) to be part of the comprehensive commu- nity, and which, at the same time, allows for territorially limited states. For a close examination of the possible parallels, I will compare these with four concepts of Kant’s theory that have been claimed in research to have similarities to ancient positions, namely the ius cosmopoliticum and hospitality, the formula of humanity as an end in itself, the kingdom of ends, and the ethical community. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant (1724–1804) is a towering figure of Western philosophy, someone whose work continues to exert an influence across all areas of the discipline. His work is characterized by both breadth and unity: he writes powerfully about mind, epistemology, metaphysics, logic, mathematics, natural science, ethics, politics, religion, history, aesthetics, education, and more. And across those areas, he is concerned to work out and defend a view of human beings and their place in nature according to which our own reason enables (...) us to discover and uphold the laws of nature and freedom—that is, to think for ourselves. The newly commissioned essays which make up this Handbook collectively present a picture of where the study of Kant’s philosophy finds itself, at this point in the twenty-first century. They are organized around the four questions which Kant said unite all interest of our reason: (1) What can I know? (2) What ought I to do? (3) What may I hope? and (4) What is the human being? Their aim is to help students and scholars of Kant’s philosophy think for themselves about the topics about which he wrote with such insight. (shrink)

Moral Autonomy as Political Analogy: Self-legislation in Kant’s Groundwork and the Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law. - ‘Autonomy’ is originally a political notion. In this chapter, I argue that the political theory that Kant defended while he was writing the Groundwork sheds light on the difficulties that are associated with his account of moral autonomy. I argue that Kant’s account of the two-tiered structure of political legislation, in his Feyerabend Lectures on Natural Law, parallels his distinction between two levels of (...) moral legislation, and that this helps to explain why Kant could regard the notion of ‘autonomy’ as apt to express the principle of morality - at least in the mid-1780s. (shrink)

The Principle of Sufficient Reason (PSR) is the canonical expression of the idea of reality as fundamentally rational or intelligible, such that there is always a sufficient ground or explanation for everything about which such questions can be asked. In this essay, I argue that recent attempts to rehabilitate the PSR, despite their many virtues, have not gone far enough in emphasizing the centrality of this principle within all areas of philosophy - both theoretical and practical. Thus, I hope to (...) show that to fully appreciate the significance of the PSR, we need to attend to the role it plays in reasoning of both a theoretical and a practical sort. As we will see, this point is especially important from a Kantian perspective, where it is practical, and not theoretical reason that is the home of our deepest and most substantive commitment to a version of the PSR. Thus, for a Kantian, to understand the nature of our commitment to the PSR, we need to consider this question first and foremost from a practical perspective - or perhaps ultimately from a point of view that somehow transcends the practical-theoretical distinction itself. (shrink)

In recent years there has been a major revival of interest in the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant. Thinkers have looked to Kant's theories about knowledge, history, the moral self and autonomy, and nature and aesthetics to seek the foundations of their own political philosophy. This volume, written by established authorities on Kant as well as by new scholars in the field, illuminates the ways in which contemporary thinkers differ regarding Kantian philosophy and Kant's legacy to political and ethical theory. (...) The book contains essays by Patrick Riley, Lewis White Beck, Mary Gregor, and Richard L. Velkley that place Kant in the tradition of political philosophy; chapters by Dieter Henrich, Susan Shell, Michael W. Doyle, and Joseph M. Knippenberg that examine Kantian perspectives on history and politics; contributions by William A. Galston, Bernard Yack, William James Booth, and Ronald Beiner that judge the Kantian legacy; and classic discussions by John Rawls, Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, and Hans-Georg Gadamer that present different perspectives on contemporary debates about Kant. (shrink)

First published in 2000. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Kant claims that we must Believe (or have faith, Glaube) in the attainability of our ultimate moral end – the Highest Good – and that God exists. According to a strand of orthodoxy, this claim rests on a rational principle, called Attainability: one can rationally will an end only if one thinks that it is attainable. However, this orthodox view faces four prominent objections concerning (1) acting as if, (2) the modal content of Beliefs, (3) approximation, and (4) not-believing. I (...) show that Attainability should be read as a principle of willing simpliciter and that these objections do not withstand critical scrutiny. Kant’s critics, therefore, will need either to sharpen their objections or seek alternatives elsewhere. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant influenced a large and productive group of political philosophers in the 1790s. This volume argues that they brought out more fully the egalitarian principles of Kantian republicanism. "The Kantian school" featured young philosophers including Saul Ascher, Johann Adam Bergk, Johann Benjamin Erhard, Johann Ludwig Ewald, the early Johann Gottlieb Fichte, Friedrich Schlegel, and Johann Heinrich Tieftrunk. They combined their commitment to Kant with a dedication to freedom, equality, popular sovereignty, and a people's right to revolution. Furthermore, they sought (...) to bring their notion of Kantian republicanism to bear on the political agenda in 1790s Germany. The chapters in this volume analyze their work in relation to Kant and their wider philosophical and political context. They advance three main theses. First, the Kantians defended popular sovereignty and several of them supported the extension of the right to vote to workers and women. Second, several of them developed a political perfectionism, the view that equal political rights are justified for their effects on cultivating moral character. Third, they developed sophisticated theories of state legitimacy and collective action, defending a people's right to change their constitution, either through reform or revolution. Kant's Early Followers in Political Philosophy offers a systematic view into a neglected group of thinkers at a foundational moment for modern political thought. It will be of interest to scholars and graduate students working on Kant, eighteenth century philosophy, political philosophy, and the history of early modern German political thought. (shrink)

Il rapporto tra natura e libertà è una questione che ritorna in tutta la produzione filosofica di Immanuel Kant. In questo libro, si indaga tale rapporto nella sua dimensione morale. L’obiettivo è mostrare la possibilità pratica di una interazione non dualistica tra natura e libertà, oltre a sostenere che lo sviluppo di un’armonia tra esse corrisponda al fine della morale kantiana da realizzare nella persona e nella storia. Tesi supportata attraverso due percorsi. Il primo, di carattere antropologico-psicologico, si propone di (...) cogliere il ruolo essenziale della natura sensibile all’interno dell’esperienza morale dell’agente e, quindi, la necessità morale dello sviluppo di uno specifico rapporto tra vita emotiva e ragione nel carattere. Il secondo, teleologico-storico, mostra come lo sviluppo di tale rapporto armonico nell’agente si inserisca in una più ampia interazione tra la finalità della natura e la finalità dell’agire umano nella storia. (shrink)

Elvira Basevich, Martin Sticker, and Helga Varden offered generative criticism of my monograph, Kant’s Theory of Labour. In this response, I explore how the resources they offer for thinking about gender, labour, and the state’s responsibility to ensure the material conditions of freedom can deepen both our attentiveness to patterns of systemic injustice in Kant’s political philosophy, and the resources Kant offers for addressing contemporary patterns of intersectional and material injustice.

Nell’illustrare la specificità dell’approccio mitico-simbolico o ‘mitologico’ nell’analisi dei fenomeni politici il saggio evidenzia l’esigenza di un rinnovamento critico della concezione antropologica, che non limitandosi all’analisi della “finitudine”, della “condizionatezza” e “nullità”,dialetticamente comprenda il ricorso alla tematica della libertà intesa come liberazione e del connesso ineludibile problema di educarla.

This dissertation provides a comprehensive interpretation of Kant’s views on the conditions of possibility of moral progress and moralization, understood as the achievement of the final purpose of nature. Although education of people and nations is the condition that contributes the most to the achievement of moralization, its only necessary condition of possibility is transcendentally grounded public right. This form of law meets the conditions of universality and necessity, because it is based solely on freedom. In this sense, moral progress (...) of humanity requires strict restrictions on every person’s freedom of choice in accordance with a priori juridical principles and a more frequent determination of their will merely by the representation of the moral law. The main thesis of this dissertation is that juridical freedom of humanity could only be fully guaranteed if the world federal republic is established, while the ethical freedom of humanity could be attained only through constant struggle against the radical evil, which is more likely to succeed if people establish the ethical community; thus, the achievement of the final purpose of nature is conceivable only under the presumption of the constitution of the legal world state and the ethical world state. Additionally, this dissertation provides a detailed analysis of the most important ideas of Kant's philosophy of public right, both its transcendental and empirical side. The role of the empirical legal and political theory is to explain how metaphysical principles of right could be realized to the greatest possible extent, while Kant's anthropological theories and his reflections on the historical development of humanity should show the way human nature works in favour of the implementation of the pure principles of public right, sometimes even against people's intentions. These theories, together with his philosophy of education, show what guidelines people should follow on the way towards transcendental public right, so that humanity’s moral (legal and ethical) progress would be more efficient and less difficult. (shrink)

By interpreting the basic concepts of Kant’s definition of enlightenment, as well as pointing out the importance of discussion for the development of understanding and explaining the role of state power in educating citizens, the author argues that enlightenment ought to be understood as an imperfect duty of every human being. This duty belongs to the duty of virtue according to which we are obligated, among other things, to advance our own perfection. In order to better understand the responsibility for (...) one’s own minority and meaning of the independent use of one’s own understanding, she explains the cultivation of character as an educational phase in the moral development of an autonomous person. The last chapter responds to a critique of Kant’s theory and offers an interpretation of his „motto of enlightenment.”. (shrink)

Ontological dualism of human rights, their ideal and real aspect, is what makes them paradoxical. Having this dual nature, do human rights serve to "moralize" or "civilize" people? Analyzing the basic concepts of Kant's philosophy of public law and history, the author concludes that the term "moral rights" is contradictory , that one cannot talk about them in both senses simultaneously and avoid the paradox. If we regard them as juridical law, human rights play a constitutive role in the legislation (...) of a particular country and what analytically follows is the law as coercion. However, if we understand them as moral laws, they will not be regarded as coercion and their function will be strictly regulative. (shrink)

This paper offers a critical evaluation of the arguments that Kleingeld and Bernasconi used to support their claims regarding the idea that Immanuel Kant held racist beliefs. Firstly, we will criticize the views on which they agree, aiming to emphasize our understanding of Kant’s thoughts on race. Secondly, we will assess the significance of Kant’s draft for Towards Perpetual Peace when considering the debate over Kant’s racism, and show that Bernasconi’s interpretation — according to which Kant presented racist views in (...) the third Critique and in his writings on history — is problematic. Although we will not systematically present our understanding of Kant’s thoughts on race, our critique of Kleingeld’s and Bernasconi’s claims will reflect our basic views: Kant was not a racist, and he never advocated for slavery and colonization. Kleingeld is right to insist that we must interpret Kant’s thoughts on race diachronically, as it is clear that his views evolved over the course of his life, but did not fundamentally change. (shrink)

In the opening pages of the Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, Arendt links history to both judgment and action. She finds any idea of progress in history to be “against human dignity.” Against this background, Arendt outlines a stark choice between a Hegelian philosophy of history which she finds deeply distasteful and a Kantian option with which “we can maintain [...] the autonomy of the minds of men.” This article explores both sides of this fork by detailing exactly what it (...) is that Arendt finds objectionable in Hegel and just how it is that she sees herself aligning with Kant. This article then indicates ways in which Arendt departs from both these philosophers in order to develop her own robust theorization of the concept of history in relation to her ongoing concerns with judgment and with action. (shrink)

This is a public philosophy piece that explores aspects of Kant's theory of the highest good, art, and hope.

This chapter draws attention to some deep points of philosophical connection between Arendt’s Lectures and Kant’s own and contemporary Kantian legal and political writings in the English-speaking world today. The aim is not to convince as such, but to show ways to bridge these historical divisions such that we can utilize these important works left us in the philosophical canon as we strive to improve our understanding of politics generally and the particular political challenges facing us. In this way, this (...) chapter strives to stay in Arendt’s and Kant’s philosophical spirit of thinking of their works as resources we can use as we strive to think and do better, whether we see to do so as Kantians, Arendtians, or Karendtians. (shrink)

Amongst the various early-feminist critical engagements with eighteenth-century European ideas on women, and Kant’s ideas on women in particular, a figure that merits special attention is Karolina – an unknown, semi-anonymous Polish woman who is known to us only by her first name. In 1779-80, Karolina published three essays in the Polish journal Monitor – essays that are amongst the very few female-authored essays published in this venue and the only texts that address women’s educational and socio-political standing. Karolina’s implicit (...) critique of Kant’s views on women offers a two-fold challenge. First, Karolina critiques the confinement of women to the private use of reason and thus to the sphere defined by their sexual nature. This argument relies on my novel reading of Kant’s notion of the private use of reason, which takes into account Kant’s understanding of ‘private’ as being deprived of our common humanity and being limited to some specific, contingent aspect of ourselves. According to this reading, the notion of the private use of reason encompasses a broader category of individuals and cases – women, children, and domestic servants – i.e., those who are without appropriate education and socio-political standing. Unlike men in professions such as military officer or tax collector, who can switch between private and public uses as the situation demands it, though, individuals without appropriate education and socio-political standing are confined to using their reason in a private way at all times. Second, Karolina opposes Kant’s relegation of women to domestic labor, arguing that limiting women to the household prevents them from developing intellectually and socially – something that they are both capable of and deserve. Karolina advocates for a more egalitarian division of labor between sexes, suggesting that both men and women share domestic responsibilities. This would allow women to pursue broader intellectual and social engagements (including learning how to make public use of reason), aligning with Kant’s ideals of human progress. Since it is precisely the material conditions that preclude women from becoming active citizens in Kant’s view, this critique thereby challenges the confinement of women to passive citizenship and the very category of passive citizenship itself. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant is recognised as one of the first philosophers who wrote systematically about global justice and world peace. In the current debate on global justice, he is mostly appealed to by critics of extensive duties of global justice. However, I show in this paper that an analysis of Kant's late work on rights and justice provides ample resources for disagreeing with those who take Kant to call for only modest changes in global politics. Kant's comments in the Doctrine of (...) Right clarify that he thinks we need a coercively enforced global civil condition. But his work also contains ideas that imply that within such a global legal order there must be no extreme forms of poverty and inequality, and that the current holdings of states are by no means conclusive possessions without confirmation by the global legal order we have a duty to establish. Thus, this paper challenges the prevailing interpretation of Kant as a conservative thinker about global justice that is held, for instance, by the leading contemporary liberal thinkers such as John Rawls, Thomas Nagel, and Ronald Dworkin. (shrink)

Mit seinem Begriff der Aufklärung konterkariert Kant das Verständnis seiner Zeitgenossen. An die Stelle der Auffindung und Verbreitung wahrer Erkenntnisse sowie des Ausmerzens von Irrtümern und Vorurteilen setzt er den Fortschritt des selbständigen Vermögensgebrauchs der Menschen. Der Beitrag zeigt, dass Kant seinen Begriff der Unmündigkeit zwar aus dem Vorurteilsdiskurs der Aufklärung entwickelt, aber dabei eine Inversion ihrer Herrschaftsmetaphorik vornimmt. Die nur übertragen verstandene innere Herrschaft der Vorurteile der aufklärerischen Tradition kehrt Kant zur ganz tatsächlichen Herrschaftsbeziehung von Vormundschaft und Unmündigkeit um, (...) und somit einen epistemischen Diskurs in einen sozialen. Diese Sozialphilosophie ist systematisch in Kants Anthropologie zu verorten, die sich nicht in erster Linie mit der praktischen Vernunft auseinandersetzt, sondern mit den faktischen Beziehungen von Menschen und dem Einfluss ihres Vermögensgebrauchs aufeinander. Die Unmündigkeit als ontogenetische conditio humana hält hierbei die systematische Erkenntnis bereit, dass Beherrschbarkeit ganz zentral mit der Temporalität des menschlichen Lebens zusammenhängt. (shrink)

(Early) Modern social contract theories reject the idea that legal and political institutions are grounded in an alleged natural ordering or hierarchy of human beings, and instead argue that only government by a public (and not private) authority can fulfil the idea of justice as freedom and equality for all. To be authoritative and not just powerful, governing institutions must be shared as ours in this irreducible sense. I first outline how Kant’s ideal account of rightful freedom brilliantly transforms this (...) tradition as found in the works of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau, before proposing a way to see Kant’s two-layered non-ideal theory—his accounts of human nature (“moral anthropology”) and historical societies (“the principle of politics”)—as complementing his ideal theory of rightful freedom. This enables us to envision a conception not only of rightful external freedom but of rightful human freedom in particular societies—with their histories—on planet Earth. With these arguments at hand, we can also better appreciate the importance of realizing that the four possible political conditions for Kant—anarchy, barbarism, despotism, and republic—are ideas of reason, which means that they are never perfectly realized. Hence, historical societies we are not either in the state of nature or in civil society. In addition, in historical societies founded on principles of freedom, there are pockets of injustice or pockets that are devoid of justice that can only be captured by means of one of the three political ideas that are not constitutive of the republican legal-political framework. Kant’s four ideas therefore give us more tools with which to capture the nature of different political forces and challenges facing us in our historical societies. (shrink)

Whereas traditional abolitionist arguments call for putting an end to capital punishment, French-Algerian philosopher Jacques Derrida emphasizes its survival, writing that “even when it will have been abolished, the death penalty will survive.” My dissertation interprets this perplexing claim by attending to the specificity of Derrida’s discourse on survival or survivance, contending that the death penalty serves an irreducible role in the constitution of the (individual or collective) subject, such that, even in the event of its abolition, some form of (...) the death penalty must continue. Through close readings of Heidegger, Kant, Nietzsche, Freud, Michel de Montagne, and Victor Hugo, as well as Shakespeare, linguist Émile Benveniste, Hungarian psychoanalysts Abraham and Torok, and the nineteenth-century political theorist Juan Donoso Cortés, the dissertation provides an account of the function of the death penalty as a specific institution within the modern penal system of a collective political body and as the legacy of ancient political economies based on sacrificial rites. This analysis interprets the death penalty both structurally and specifically, accounting for the indissociable relationship between the institution and its conceptual structure more broadly. Survivance, I argue, only ever occurs through an other, leaving open the question of the survival of the death penalty to the dissemination of indefinite and unpredictable forms that could consist in its abolition. (shrink)

This article examines Kant’s theory of property through a comparative analysis of Gottfried Achenwall’s justification of ownership rights. I argue that at the core of Achenwall’s and Kant’s understanding of ownership rights lies the idea that rights are to be acquired through a juridical act (factum iuridicum, rechtlichen Act) of the will. However, while Achenwall thinks of this act as emerging from a private will, Kant holds that rights and obligations can only be brought about by an act of the (...) general will. By contrasting these two views, I aim to illuminate one of the main features of Kant’s theory of property, namely, that ownership rights are only possible in a rightfully constituted state. I conclude with a suggestion regarding Kant’s view of the notion of ‘provisional’ possession in the state of nature. (shrink)

Kant’s claim that we must postulate the immortality of the soul is polarizing. While much attention has been paid to two standard arguments in its defense (one moral-psychological, the other rational), I contend that a favorite argument of Kant’s from the apogee of his critical period, namely, the teleological argument, deserves renewed attention. This paper reconstructs it and exhibits what makes it unique (though not necessarily superior) in relation to the other arguments. In particular, its form (as third-personal or descriptive, (...) beginning from observations) and related force of assent (as a subjectively universal reflective judgment) set it apart from the other arguments. My goal is to establish that any engagement with Kant’s immortality postulate must include equal consideration of the teleological argument in order to be complete. (shrink)

In Dilek Huseyinzadegan’s analysis of Kant’s ‘impure’ politics what we have is a startling, innovative, and ultimately convincing portrait of Kant’s systematic attention to the material conditions underlying the everyday world of political subjects. Much as theorists have sought to enrich scholarly discussions of Kant’s moral philosophy by way of attention to Kant’s ‘practical anthropology’—the empirical counterpart to an a priori formal account of morals—in this book Huseyinzadegan provides us with a parallel look at Kant’s ‘political anthropology.’ By paying close (...) attention to Kant’s systematic appeal to a teleological, heuristic, and regulative approach to the nonideal political conditions faced by political subjects what we discover is not just a robust counterpart to his better-known ideal theory, but indeed a set of orientational tools or maps by which we might hope to better navigate the transition from politics to morals. Teleology provides reason with a ‘compass,’ as Huseyinzadegan puts it, ready to guide us as we set out on our political adventure. (shrink)

This paper takes up the possibilities for thinking about human solidarity that can be found in Immanuel Kant’s writings on history. One way of approaching Kant’s philosophy of history is to focus on what would seem to be an antinomy in Kant’s account between the role of nature and the demands of freedom. Whereas nature, according to Kant, ruthlessly drives us into a state of perpetual war until finally, exhausted and bankrupt, we are forced into an international treaty for peace, (...) freedom, and the morality that flows from it, requires that each individual obey the supreme moral principle, namely, that we treat all people as ends in themselves and never merely as means; that we never, in other words, wage war. This antinomy is resolved once we see that, for Kant, a community of moral agents can only arise as a result of a perfect political constitution; a constitution that itself can only arise at the end of a history of war. (shrink)

Der Begriff des Erlaubnisgesetzes (lex permissiva) spielt eine wichtige Rolle im Rahmen von Kants Rechtsphilosophie. Der in der Literatur vorherrschenden Meinung zufolge haben Erlaubnisgesetze die Funktion, bestimmte Handlungen zu rechtfertigen, die eigentlich verboten sind: Durch Erlaubnisgesetze würden Verstöße gegen Verbote geduldet. Der Beitrag analysiert Kants normlogischen Ausführungen in „Zum ewigen Frieden“ und entwickelt einen neuen Deutungsvorschlag: Erlaubnisgesetze rechtfertigen keine Norm-Verstöße. In Auseinandersetzung mit Baumgarten und Achenwall konzipiert Kant das Erlaubnisgesetz vielmehr als eine besondere Art von kontextsensitivem Verbotsgesetz, das eine Handlung (...) im Allgemeinen verbietet, unter bestimmten Bedingungen jedoch genuin erlaubt. Im Hinblick auf diese Erlaubnis und die Spezifikation ihrer Bedingungen wird die Norm (das Verbotsgesetz) entsprechend als Erlaubnisgesetz bezeichnet. Die vom Gesetz lizenzierten Handlungen sind dabei nicht bloß geduldet, sondern genuin zulässig. (shrink)

This is a foreword to the special issue of Kantian Review (27.4) entitled Radicalizing Kant?, co-edited by Corey W. Dyck and Charles W. Mills.

With An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment? (1784) and What Does It Mean to Orient Oneself in Thinking? (1786), Kant presents the concept of public use of reason and defines its requirements, scope, and function. In outline, the public use of reason consists in sharing one’s thoughts with “the entire public of the world of readers” (8:37). As for its requirements, to the extent that someone communicates in their own person, i.e. not in the exercise of their function (...) as a public official, and bases their reasoning on universalizable grounds, their use of reason qualifies as public and shall be free from state censorship. Therefore, Kant’s concept of public use reason aims to establish a public debate that is free and includes in its scope, both as subjects and recipients, potentially all adult men. The ultimate function of the public use of reason is to foster moral progress and, with it, the reform of the political community according to the republican ideal. However, it is commonly held that Kant, with his 1798 essay The Conflict of the Faculties, deprives his notion of public use of reason of its progressive core and adjusts it to the absolutist conception of speech and civil service. Characterizations of state officials as “not free to make public use of their learning” (7:18) and “bound to uphold whatever […] the crown sanctions for them to expound publicly” (7:8), as well as the depiction of laypeople as “incompetent” (7:18) and “resigned to understanding nothing about [the sciences]” (7:34), have led influential interpreters to read Kant as redefining his notion of public use of reason by restricting its subjects to university professors and its recipients to government members (e.g. John Christian Laursen 1986, rpt. 1992 and 1996; Kevin Davis 1992; Steven Lestition 1993; Jay Franzel 2013). On my reading, with The Conflict of the Faculties, Kant does indeed redefine the concept of public use of reason making concessions to the absolutist notion of speech and civil service. However, a close reading of the text reveals that the public use of reason ends up being reaffirmed in its progressive core and extended in its scope. To substantiate my interpretation, I will systematically analyse and classify each of the 68 occurrences of the adjective ‘public’ in The Conflict of the Faculties and show how Kant employs the absolutist vocabulary to convey the progressive project of his previous writings. Accordingly, I argue that Kant holds on to the free public use of reason as a means to reform politics according to the republican ideal and that the employment of the absolutist vocabulary is motivated by a pragmatic attitude and a provocative stance. (shrink)

This paper develops a new kind of approach to conspiracy theories – a procedural approach. This approach promises to establish that belief in conspiracy theories is rationally criticisable in general. Unlike most philosophical approaches, a procedural approach does not purport to condemn conspiracy theorists directly on the basis of features of their theories. Instead, it focuses on the patterns of thought involved in forming and sustaining belief in such theories. Yet, unlike psychological approaches, a procedural approach provides a rational critique (...) of conspiracist thought patterns. In particular, it criticises these thought patterns for failing to conform to procedures prescribed by reason. The specific procedural approach that I develop takes its cue from the Kantian notion that reason must be used self-critically. I tentatively suggest that conspiracy theorists fail to engage in the relevant sort of self-critique in at least three ways: they do not critically examine their own motivations, they avoid looking at matters from the point of view of others, and they fail to reflect on the limits of human knowledge. (shrink)

In this article, I critically examine the religious argument for the existence of God, which Palmquist formulated from Kant’s Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason. After showing the structure of the argument, I point the problematic point of the argument and focus on the concept of Gesinnung. The privateness of Gesinnung is problematized in the analysis of it, and I briefly suggest that an alternative account of the Gesinnung is possible. Yet I emphasize the advantage that this argument has (...) compared to other competing arguments. (shrink)

My dissertation examines Kant’s and Rawls’s theories of the moral development of individuals within structured political communities. I reconstruct Kant’s under-studied account of the emergence of reason by looking at his remarks on the transition our species underwent from mere irrational animals into primitive human beings. I show how his account of the emergence of reason fits with his broader view of humankind’s rational progress and the moral development of an individual. Next, I argue that Kant’s anthropological and pedagogical writings (...) influenced Rawls’s early views on moral development in A Theory of Justice. In contrast to other commentators who have located Kant’s influence on Rawls in his emphasis on the free and equal nature of human beings, my dissertation shows that Kant’s anthropological theory of moral development is also at the core of Rawls’s Kantian project. I also argue that the moral-psychological account Rawls develops in Part III of Theory sheds light on crucial aspects of Kant’s practical philosophy, notably on his emphasis on the need for one generation to provide the moral education of subsequent generations in order to achieve political stability. Dissertation Committee: Allen Wood (co-chair), Leif Wenar (co-chair), Juliana Bidadanure, David Hills, David Estlund (external, Brown). (shrink)

In this paper I propose an interpretation of Kant’s notion of the highest good which bears political, ethical, and religious layers simultaneously. I argue that a proper analysis of what Kant allows us to hope for necessarily involves what we should hope for as moral agents. I argue that Kant’s conception of the highest good plays a crucial role in his moral theory as it designates the ideal “context” of moral experience which can be described as “a moral world”. Each (...) of these three layers or aspects of the moral world (i.e., political, ethical, and religious) as the interrelated contexts in and through which we realize our moral agency is inextricably linked with the highest good. Without any dichotomy between secular or religious conceptualization of the highest good, in the political and in certain aspects of the ethical contexts we should adopt certain hopes as an implicit aspect of being virtuous, whereas from a religious perspective we are able to, and we may legitimately adopt hope and faith about the cosmic/ teleological context of our moral experience. (shrink)

Immanuel Kant’s political philosophy has enjoyed renewed attention as an egalitarian alternative to contemporary inequality since it seems to uncompromisingly reassert the primacy of the state over the economy, enabling it to defend the modern welfare state against encroaching neoliberal markets. However, I argue that, when understood as a free-standing approach to politics, Kant’s doctrine of right shares essential features with the prevailing theories that legitimate really existing economic inequality. Like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, Kant understands the state’s function (...) as essentially coercive and, in justifying state coercion, he adopts a narrow conception of political freedom that formally preserves the right to choose while denying that the range of choices one actually has can be a matter of justice. As a result, Kant cannot identify various forms of social pressure as potential injustices even as he recognizes their power to create and sustain troubling inequalities. For both Kant and the neoliberals, the result is that economic relations almost never count as unjust forms of coercion, no matter how unequal they are. Views that identify coercion as the trigger for duties of justice are thus particularly ill-suited to orient us to contemporary inequality. (shrink)

This Element examines Kant's innovative account of labour in his political philosophy and develops an intersectional analysis of Kant. By demonstrating that Kant's analysis of slavery, citizenship, and sex developed in inter-linked ways over several decades, culminating in his development of a 'trichotomy' of Right, the author shows that Kant's normative account of independence is configured through his theory of labour, and is continuous with his anthropological accounts of race and gender, providing a systemic justification for the dependency of women (...) and non-whites embedded in his philosophy of right. By examining Kant's arguments about slavery as intertwined with his account of domestic labour, the author argues that his ultimate rejection of slavery may owe more to his changing conceptualization of labour than to his theory of race, and that his final arguments against slavery rehearse strategies for embedding intersectional patterns of domestic dependence in his account of the rightful state. (shrink)