Fiorella Tomassini

This paper challenges the widely accepted view that right governs action, and only actions, while ethics governs maxims. It argues that principles of right not only apply to actions but also impose constraints on maxims. However, while ethics provides us with a principle for adopting maxims, right formulates only a negative principle —it merely specifies which maxims are contrary to right. This interpretation not only offers an exegetical advantage over readings that consider right as concerning only actions but also presents Kant’s moral philosophy as a more coherent theory, in which the notion that moral laws should govern maxims is central. If right, according to Kant, is to be understood as part of a moral theory that establishes duties and obligations through principles of pure reason, then right, as a system of normative principles, must be able to impose constraints on the subjective principles on which we act.

My aim in this article is twofold: on the one hand, I present Rehberg’s critique of Kant’s 1793 essay regarding some fundamental issues in his moral and legal theory; on the other hand, I outline possible responses to these objections found in Kant’s final system of morals. Part of these answers can be traced to the way in which Kant refines his conception of public right and the republican ideal, especially the notion of innate freedom, independence, and citizenship. They are also found in the section on private right of the Doctrine of Right, in which he deals with topics such as private property, labor contracts, and domestic rights whose treatment is absent in previous texts. Importantly, vis-à-vis Rehberg’s criticisms, in his systematic theory of right Kant brings independence and self-mastery into his definition of innate right, but also introduces a new category of private right that accommodates dependent relationships in the domestic sphere by making them compatible with moral personality. In this way, Rehberg’s engagement with Kant’s political project allows us to examine his republican ideal in the light of an intellectual context in which philosophical efforts to discredit human freedom, social equality and material independence as desirable prospects were not an exception

The textbook Immanuel Kant assigned for his course on Naturrecht was Gottfried Achenwall’s Ius naturae, translated as Natural Law. Kant described Achenwall as a “respectable” man who was “cautious, precise and modest” (TP 8: 301), and his own legal and political theory is in many ways indebted to Achenwall. But Kant was highly critical of the most fundamental tenets of Achenwall’s account, including his account of obligation, his philosophical foundation of natural law, and his theory of the state – to mention just a few. In the only known transcript of his course, known as the Feyerabend lectures (1784), Kant not only explains Achenwall’s theory but also criticizes him and expounds his own alternative theory. Since it is not always obvious from these lecture notes whether Kant is explaining Achenwall, criticizing him, or presenting his own theory, we must compare the transcript to the textbook. Thus, one must have Achenwall on one’s desk when reading Kant’s Feyerabend lectures on natural law. Our aim in this essay is to introduce Achenwall and his handbook to readers of Kant’s Feyerabend lectures. In this essay, we start with some background information about Achenwall and his work (Section 2). We then discuss Achenwall’s position on freedom and obligation, natural law and right (Section 3), and his theory of property and the state (Section 4). We end by pointing out a few of the main points of disagreement between Kant and Achenwall that emerge from the Feyerabend lectures (Section 5).

This chapters explores Schlegel’s view on transitional forms of republicanism in his Essay on the Concept of Republicanism Occasioned by the Kantian Tract Perpetual Peace (1796). These rightful – but necessarily temporally limited – types of collective action are insurrection and provisional dictatorship. These forms of republicanism are absent in Kant’s theory of right, as they are manifestly incompatible with his account of popular sovereignty. Since Schlegel endorses a different view of sovereignty, the people, and the state, he is able to combine Kantian principles of justice with a defense of revolution and dictatorship as legitimate ways of implementing the republican ideal. This makes Schlegel’s argument on transitional forms of republicanism Kantian in “spirit,” although based on two claims that oppose the “letter” of Kant’s theory of right, namely an account of the people as having the power to depose the ruler or to suspend the law and an understanding of the state as a means rather than an end in itself.

In this paper I examine the relationship between the principle of right and the principle of morals [Sitten] in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals. My interpretation denies that the principle of right is derived from the categorical imperative, but neither does it adhere to the independence thesis. I present a third way of understanding the relationship between the law of right and the universal law of morals: the latter is needed in order to formulate the former, but it is not sufficient. The principle of right is obtained by applying the categorical imperative to the concept of right. I highlight the discussion on the subject within the late eighteenth-century German natural law tradition and similar arguments found in Achenwall.

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.

This paper aims to analyze Schlegel’s critique of Kant’s political philosophy regarding two issues: the republican ideal and the justification of revolution. In the Versuch, Schlegel connects republic and democracy, and opposes Kant’s thesis according to which revolution is not morally allowed. The insurrection of the people is vindicated as a form of political action that aims at the institution of a republican regime. I argue that Schlegel’s view on revolution rests on two central claims: first, on a Rousseaunean account of the people as a constituent power, and second, on the rejection of the Kantian doctrine about the unconditional necessity of the state.

I argue that by considering Kant’s engagement with previous theorists of natural right, we can gain a clearer understanding of how he transformed the discipline from its foundations. To do this, I focus my analysis on Kant’s (critical) reception of two models of natural right with which he was very familiar: one from Alexander Baumgarten’s Elements of First Practical Philosophy [Initia philosophiae practicae primae], the other from Gottfried Achenwall’s Natural Law [Ius naturae]. The Initia served as a basis for Kant’s lectures on moral philosophy for over three decades and may thus be considered as having played an important role in shaping his practical philosophy as a whole. Achenwall’s Ius naturae was the textbook that Kant employed in his lectures on natural right for over two decades. I argue that Kant distances himself from previous models of natural right in three main regards: the identification of moral laws with laws of nature, the normative connection between the principles of right and a natural end, and the place of God as the author of moral laws. I then briefly discuss what Kant retains of Baumgarten’s and Achenwall’s models of natural right. Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals preserves the view that a rational doctrine of right belongs to a broader systematic doctrine that comprehends the entire system of duties. I address the question of the division of the Sittenlehre into two branches and claim that, whereas Kant did not consider Baumgarten’s answer to the problem of distinguishing juridical from ethical principles to be satisfactory, he found a key piece of his own resolution in Achenwall’s Ius naturae, namely the definition of right as a power to coerce.

In the Doctrine of Right Kant holds that the classical Ulpian command honeste vive is a juridical duty that has the particular feature of being internal. In this paper I explore the reasons why Kant denies that the duty to be an honorable human being comprises an ethical obligation and conceives it as a juridical duty to oneself. I will argue that, despite the conceptual problems that the systematical incorporation of this type of duty into the doctrine of morals might entail, these reasons are coherent. The fulfillment of the duty honeste vive involves a coercion to the self but at the same time does not necessarily imply the adoption of a moral end.

Like previous theorists of natural law, Kant believes in the possibility of a rational theory of ius, but also claims that the very concept of ius naturae and the method of investigation of its principles must be thoroughly reformulated. I will maintain that Kant solves the methodological problem of natural law theories by stating that a rational doctrine of Right concerns pure rational knowledge. Right must be conceived as a metaphysical doctrine in which its principles and laws are determined a priori. By conceiving the idea of a “metaphysics of morals” and linking Right with it, he finds a way both to conserve the notion of ius naturae ) and to purify it from any empirical or anthropological element.

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the doctrine of just war was one of the most popular theories in international law. According to this doctrine, the right to war is an integral part of natural law and, under specific circumstances, morally justified. To my mind, Kant was a fervent critic of the theory of just war. He critically reformulates the rational and normative principles of right in a way that leaves no place for war as a legitimate procedure to resolve a conflict between states. In section, I shall analyze the fundamental principles of ius gentium, in particular, the duty to leave the state of nature at the international level and the juridical form that the association between states must adopt. The exit of the state of nature between nations must generate an international legal framework that not only protects human rights but also safeguards the sovereignty of the peoples. In section, I shall examine Kant’s critique of the doctrine of just war in Zum ewigen Frieden and in the Rechtslehre, exploring why the idea of an ius ad bellum is incompatible with the critical reformulation of the right of nations proposed there.

Este trabajo analiza el argumento acerca de la aprioridad de la soberanía de la voluntad del pueblo en la sección El derecho público de la Doctrina del derecho. Allí Kant, más que presentar una tesis absolutamente original, como en la sección El derecho privado, en donde llega a la necesidad de la voluntad general legisladora a través del concepto de reciprocidad; sigue ideas de Rousseau y se centra en la libertad jurídica como dependencia de la ley que uno mismo se ha dado. Sostendré que, por motivos sistemáticos, Kant lleva a cabo una idealización normativa de la volonté générale rousseauniana. No obstante, la distinción fundamental entre respublica noumenon y respublica phaenomenon no implica que, desde una perspectiva práctica, el ideal republicano esté completamente escindido del ámbito fenoménico. Muy por el contrario, la república pura ejerce una fuerza normativa sobre la praxis política.

Se examina la posición de Kant con respecto a la vinculación del derecho con el impulso natural a la felicidad: si Estado se establece para satisfacer fines particulares, se termina justificando el despotismo y la rebelión popular. Se plantean dos hipótesis: a) el principio de la felicidad se debe reemplazar por la idea de una voluntad general legisladora como único criterio normativo-evaluativo de la legitimidad de la obligación política; b) este principio jurídico a prioriobliga al soberano y también al pueblo a adoptar la perspectiva de la voluntad general para juzgar el poder político vigente.

El propósito de este trabajo es ofrecer algunas consideraciones acerca del rol de la sección “El derecho privado” de la Doctrina del derechode Kant. Se propone que el análisis de “lo mío y tuyo exterior”, que tiene lugar en la sección en cuestión, tiene la función de mostrar que existe un tipo de derecho subjetivo vinculado con la posesión de objetos externos al arbitrio: los derechos adquiridos. Estos derechos, al igual que el derecho innato, exigen, para su ejercicio efectivo, la institución de un Estado legislado por la voluntad general.

Los primeros parágrafos de la sección “El derecho privado” de la Doctrina del derecho de Kant incluyen el conjunto de los elementos sistemáticos que conciernen a la justificación de los derechos relativos a la propiedad. El propósito central de este trabajo es analizar la función sistemática del concepto de “posesión común originaria” en la doctrina kantiana de la propiedad, con especial interés en el sentido novedoso que adquiere ese concepto —que pertenecía a la tradición del derecho natural— en su reformulación como un “concepto práctico de la razón, que contiene a priori, el principio según el cual tan solo los hombres pueden hacer uso del lugar sobre la tierra siguiendo leyes jurídicas”.