## 1. The Place of Political Philosophy within Kant's Philosophical System



Kant's political philosophy is a branch of practical philosophy,
one-half of one of the broadest divisions in Kant's thought
between practical and theoretical philosophy. Political philosophy is
also to be distinguished within practical philosophy from both
empirically-based elements and from virtue proper. The separation from
virtue is treated later in this section. Regarding the empirical
elements, it is worth mentioning that practical philosophy, as a set
of rules governing free behavior of rational beings, covers all human
action in both its pure and applied (empirical, or
"impure") aspects. Pure practical philosophy, the rational
elements of practical philosophy in abstraction from anything
empirical, is called by Kant "metaphysics of morals"
(4:388). Kant so emphasized the priority of the pure aspect of
political philosophy that he wrote part of his essay "On the
Common Saying: That May be Correct in Theory, but it is of No Use in
Practice" in opposition to the view he associates with Hobbes
that the politician need not be concerned with abstract right but only
with pragmatic governance (8:289-306). Yet Kant also included
the more pragmatic, impure, empirical study of human behavior as part
of practical philosophy. For ethics in general, Kant called the
empirical study of human beings as agents within particular cultures
and with particular natural capacities "anthropology".
Some of Kant's social philosophy fits into this rubric (see
section 10). While Kant always based his claims about right on a
priori principle, he was applying the a priori principles to actually
existing beings, so he did at times include empirical claims in his
analysis. Some of these empirical claims are quite general and
uncontroversial (e.g. that there are a plurality of human beings
living on the limited surface of a sphere) while others are more
specific to Kant's own time, place, and individual biases (e.g. his
views on women).



Political philosophy is not only a branch of Kant's practical
philosophy, it strongly depends upon Kant's core practical
philosophy for its basis. Kant's practical philosophy and the
categorical imperative that governs it were intended to form the
ground not only for what is thought today to be ethics proper but also
for everything that broadly speaking had to do with deliberative human
behavior. He defined practical philosophy as that concerned with
"rules of behavior in regard to free choice", as opposed
to theoretical philosophy that concerned "the rule of
knowledge" (Kant 27: 243). Practical philosophy provided rules
to govern human deliberative action. The *Groundwork for the
Metaphysics of Morals* provided Kant's main arguments that
the categorical imperative is the supreme rule for human deliberative
action. In its Preface, he notes that the *Groundwork* is to be
a preparatory book for a future *Metaphysics of Morals*. Twelve
years later he published that *Metaphysics of Morals* in two
parts, the "Doctrine of Right" and the "Doctrine of
Virtue". Both are equally parts of Kant's practical
philosophy, and both thus have the categorical imperative as their
highest principle.



The book *Metaphysics of Morals* has two distinct parts: the
"Doctrine of Right" and the "Doctrine of
Virtue". Kant sought to separate political rights and duties
from what we might call morals in the narrow sense. He limits right by
stating three conditions (6:230) that have to be met for something to
be enforceable as right: first, right concerns only actions that have
influence on other persons, directly or indirectly, meaning duties to
the self are excluded; second, right does not concern the wish but
only the choice of others, meaning that not mere desires but only
decisions which bring about actions are at stake; and third, right
does not concern the matter of the other's act but only the
form, meaning no particular desires or ends are assumed on the part of
the agents. As an example of the latter he considers trade, which for
right must have the form of being freely agreed by both parties but
can have any matter or purpose the agents want. These criteria appear
to be less rigid than Kant ultimately intends, for the term
"influence" is vague enough that it might include
far-reaching minor effects. They would also include under right
actions even those imperfect duties that "influence"
others by improving their lot, such as beneficent acts of charity.
John Stuart Mill's "harm principle" does not face
this problem since it specifies that the influence to be subject to
law is always negative. While Kant must include consideration of
beneficent action as part of right, he does not conclude that
beneficent actions are required by right but only that most are
permitted by right and others violate right. His focus on free
individual choice entails that any beneficent action that interferes
with or usurps the recipient's free choice is wrong (for
example, improving the recipient's property without permission
as opposed to merely donating money to a fund made available to the
recipient at the recipient's discretion). Kant summarizes these
conditions with a definition of the concept of right as "the sum of
the conditions under which the choice of one can be united with the
choice of another in accordance with a universal law of freedom"
(6:230).



In addition to these three conditions for right, Kant also offers
direct contrasts between right and virtue. He thinks both relate to
freedom but in different ways: right concerns outer freedom and virtue
concerns inner freedom (being master of one's own passions)
(6:406-07). Right concerns acts themselves independent of the
motive an agent may have for performing them, virtue concerns the
proper motive for dutiful actions (6:218-221). In another
formulation (6:380-81) he says that right concerns universality
as a formal condition of freedom while virtue concerns a necessary end
beyond the mere formality of universality, thus appearing to tie the
distinction to the first two formulas of the categorical imperative in
the *Groundwork*. In yet another he says that right concerns
narrow duties and virtue wide duties (6:390). In the Feyerabend
lectures, Kant notes that right is the subset of morally correct
actions that are also coercible (27:1327). These various alternative
formulations of the distinction would exclude imperfect duties not
because imperfect duties do not "influence" others (they
do) but because, as imperfect, they cannot be coerced in particular
instances, since imperfect duties always allow for the moderating role
of an individual's inclinations. While these various
formulations of the distinction appear to be quite different, they can
in general be summarized by saying that right concerns outer action
corresponding to perfect duty that affects others regardless of the
individual's internal motivations or goals.


## 2. Freedom as the Basis of the State



"There is only one innate right," says Kant,
"Freedom (independence from being constrained by another's
choice), insofar as it can coexist with the freedom of every other in
accordance with a universal law" (6:237). Kant rejects any other
basis for the state, in particular arguing that the welfare of
citizens cannot be the basis of state power. He argues that a state
cannot legitimately impose any particular conception of happiness upon
its citizens (8:290-91). To do so would be for the ruler to
treat citizens as children, assuming that they are unable to
understand what is truly useful or harmful to themselves.



This claim must be understood in light of Kant's more general
claim that moral law cannot be based upon happiness or any other given
empirical good. In the *Groundwork* Kant contrasts an ethics of
autonomy, in which the will (*Wille*, or practical reason
itself) is the basis of its own law, from the ethics of heteronomy, in
which something independent of the will, such as happiness, is the
basis of moral law (4:440-41). In the *Critique of Practical
Reason* he argues that happiness (the agreeableness of life when
things go in accordance with one's wishes and desires), although
universally sought by human beings, is not specific enough to entail
any particular universal desires in human beings. Further, even were
there any universal desires among human beings, those desires would,
as empirical, be merely contingent and thus unworthy of being the
basis of any pure moral law (5:25-26). No particular conception
of happiness can be the basis of the pure principle of the state, and
the general conception of happiness is too vague to serve as the basis
of a law. Hence, a "universal principle of right" cannot
be based upon happiness but only on something truly universal, such as
freedom. The "universal principle of right" Kant offers is
thus "Any action is right if it can coexist with
everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law, or if on
its maxim the freedom of choice of each can coexist with
everyone's freedom in accordance with a universal law"
(6:230).



This explains why happiness is not universal, but not why freedom is
universal. By "freedom" in political philosophy, Kant is
not referring to the transcendental conception of freedom usually
associated with the problem of the freedom of the will amid
determinism in accordance with laws of nature, a solution to which is
provided in the Third Antinomy of the *Critique of Pure
Reason*. Rather, freedom in political philosophy is defined, as in
the claim above about the only innate right, as "independence
from being constrained by another's choice". His concern
in political philosophy is not with *laws of nature*
determining a human being's choice but by *other human
beings* determining a human being's choice, hence the kind
of freedom Kant is concerned with in political philosophy is
individual freedom of action. Still, the universality of political
freedom is linked to transcendental freedom. Kant assumes that a human
being's use of choice (at least when it is properly guided by
reason) is free in the transcendental sense. Since every human being
does enjoy transcendental freedom by virtue of being rational, freedom
of choice is a universal human attribute. And this freedom of choice
is to be respected and promoted, even when this choice is not
exercised in rational or virtuous activity. Presumably respecting
freedom of choice involves allowing it to be effective in determining
actions; this is why Kant calls political freedom, or
"independence from being constrained by another's
choice", the only innate right. One might still object that this
freedom of choice is incapable of being the basis of a pure principle
of right for the same reason that happiness was incapable of being its
basis, namely, that it is too vague in itself and that when specified
by the particular decisions individuals make with their free choice,
it loses its universality. Kant holds that this problem does not arise
for freedom, since freedom of choice can be understood both in terms
of its content (the particular decisions individuals make) and its
form (the free, unconstrained nature of choice of any possible
particular end) (6:230). Freedom is universal in the proper sense
because, unlike happiness, it can be understood in such a way that it
is susceptible to specification without losing its universality. Right
will be based on the form of free choice.



The very existence of a state might seem to some as a limitation of
freedom, since a state possesses power to control the external freedom
of individual citizens through force. This is the basic claim of
anarchism. Kant holds in contrast that there is no innate right to
unlimited freedom but only an innate right to freedom "insofar as it
can coexist with the freedom of every other in accordance with
universal law" (6:237). Rightful freedom for each individual is
limited, and the state is not an impediment to freedom but is the
means for freedom. State action that is a hindrance to freedom can,
when properly directed, support and maintain rightful freedom if the
state action is aimed at hindering actions that themselves would
hinder the rightful freedom of others and thus be wrongful uses of
freedom. Given a subject's action that would limit the freedom
of another subject, the state may hinder the first subject to defend
the second by "hindering a hindrance to freedom". Such
state coercion is compatible with the maximal freedom demanded in the
principle of right because it does not reduce overall freedom but
instead provides the necessary background conditions needed to secure
rightful freedom. The amount of freedom lost by the first subject
through direct state coercion is equal to the amount gained by the
second subject through lifting the hindrance to actions. State action
sustains the maximal amount of freedom consistent with identical
freedom for all without reducing it.



Freedom is not the only basis for principles underlying the state. In
"Theory and Practice" Kant makes freedom the first of
three principles (8:290):


1. The freedom of every member of the state as a human being.
2. The equality of each with every other as a subject.
3. The independence of every member of a commonwealth as a
citizen.



Freedom as discussed in "Theory and Practice" stresses the
autonomous right of all individuals to conceive of happiness in their
own way. Interference with another's freedom is understood as
coercing the other to be happy as the former sees fit. The direct link
to action comes when pursuing that autonomously chosen conception of
happiness. Each may pursue happiness as they see fit provided that
their pursuit does not infringe upon others' similar
pursuits.



Equality is not substantive but formal. Each member of the state is
equal to every other member of the state before the law. Each has
equal coercive right, that is, the right to invoke the power of the
state to enforce the laws on one's behalf. (Kant exempts the
head of state from this equality, since the head of state cannot be
coerced by anyone else). This formal equality is perfectly compatible
with the inequality of members of the state in income, physical power,
mental ability, possessions, etc. Further, this equality supports an
equality of opportunity: every office or rank in the political
structure must be open to all subjects without regard for any
hereditary or similar restrictions.



Independence concerns citizens as subject to laws they give
themselves, i.e. as co-legislators of the laws. This self-governance
can be understood as the application in political philosophy of the
idea of autonomy of the will in the *Groundwork*. While this
principle appears to require universal democratic decision making for
particular laws, Kant uses empirically-based reasoning to argue that
this full citizenship does not extend to all. Kant excludes women and
children, simply claiming that their exclusion is natural, as well as
anyone who is not "one's own master", i.e. lacks economic
self-sufficiency. These individuals who are dependent upon others in
life have what Kant calls "passive" citizenship in the *Doctrine of
Right*. Hence decision making is not universal. While Kant thereby
denies women and others full citizenship in the ability to take part
in legislation, he stresses that he is not denying them the rights
entailed by freedom and equality as "passive" members of
the state. In the *Doctrine of Right* he also adds that the
political system must allow anyone in the passive condition to work
their way up to independence and an active condition. With this
restriction in mind, particular laws are to be determined by a
majority of the citizens with voting rights, as will be discussed in
section 4.


## 3. Social Contract



Kant provides two distinct discussions of social contract. One
concerns property and will be treated in more detail in section 5
below. The second discussion of social contract comes in the essay
"Theory and Practice" in the context of an a priori
restriction on the legitimate policies the sovereign may pursue. There
is also a briefer statement in the *Doctrine of Right*
(6:315-16). The sovereign must recognize the "original
contract" as an idea of reason that forces the sovereign to
"give his laws in such a way that they could have arisen from
the united will of a whole people and to regard each subject, insofar
as he wants to be a citizen, as if he has joined in voting for such a
will" (8:297). This original contract, Kant stresses, is not a
historical event but only an idea of reason, that is, is a concept
generated by reason itself with no possible empirical reference that
is used by reason to guide empirical thought or action. Any rights and
duties stemming from an original contract do so not because of any
particular historical provenance, but because of the rightful
relations embodied in the original contract. No empirical act, as a
historical act would be, could be the foundation of any rightful
duties or rights. The idea of an original contract limits the
sovereign as legislator. No law may be promulgated that "a whole
people could not possibly give its consent to" (8:297). The
consent at issue, however, is also not an empirical consent based upon
any actual act. The set of actual particular desires of citizens is
not the basis of determining whether they could possibly consent to a
law. Rather, the kind of possibility at issue appears to be one of
rational possible unanimity based upon fair distributions of burdens
and rights in abstraction from empirical facts or desires.
Kant's two examples both exemplify this consideration of
possible rational unanimity. His first example is a law that would
provide hereditary privileges to members of a certain class of
subjects. This law would be unjust because it would be irrational for
those who would not be members of this class to agree to accept fewer
privileges than members of the class. One might say that no possible
empirical information could cause all individuals to agree to this
law. Kant's second example concerns a war tax. If the tax is
administered fairly, it would not be unjust. Kant adds that even if
the actual citizens opposed the war, the war tax would be just because
it is possible that the war is being waged for legitimate reasons that
the state but not the citizens know about. Here possible empirical
information might cause all citizens to approve the law. In both these
examples, the conception of "possible consent" abstracts
from actual desires individual citizens have. The possible consent is
not based upon a hypothetical vote given actual preferences but is
based on a rational conception of agreement given any possible
empirical information.



Kant's view is similar to the social contract theory of Hobbes
in a few important respects. The social contract is not a historical
document and does not involve a historical act. In fact it can be
dangerous to the stability of the state to even search history for
such empirical justification of state power (6:318). The current state
must be understood, regardless of its origin, to embody the social
contact. The social contract is a rational justification for state
power, not a result of actual deal-making among individuals or between
them and a government. The social contract is not voluntary; rather,
individuals may be forced into the civil condition against their
consent (6:256). Social contract is not based on any actual consent
such as a voluntary choice to form a civil society along with others.
Since the social contract reflects reason, each human being as a
rational being already contains the basis for rational agreement to
the state. Are individuals then coerced to recognize their subjection
to state power against their will? Since Kant defines
"will" as "practical reason itself"
(*Groundwork*, 4:412), the answer for him is "no."
If one defines "will" as arbitrary choice, then the answer
is "yes." Kant holds that individuals can be coerced to
leave the state of nature and enter a civil condition (6:307), but
since the state of nature, like the social contract, is merely an idea
of reason, this authorization for coercion means that now individuals
are rightfully subject to the coercive power of the state regardless
of any explicit consent on their part. This dichotomy between
agreement based on one's empirical will and agreement based on one's
pure practical reason also arises with regard to Kant's theory
of punishment (section 7). A substantial difference between Kant on
the one hand and Hobbes and Locke on the other hand is that the latter
base their arguments on the individual benefit for each party to the
contract, whereas Kant bases his argument on Right itself, understood
as freedom for all persons in general, not just for the individual
benefit that the parties to the contract obtain in their own
particular freedom. To this extent Kant is influenced more by
Rousseau's idea of the General Will.


## 4. Republics, Enlightenment, and Democracy



Kant was a central figure in the philosophy of the Enlightenment. One
of his popular essays, "An Answer to the Question: What is
Enlightenment?" discusses Enlightenment in terms of the use of
an individual's own reason (8:35f). To be Enlightened is to
emerge from one's self-incurred minority (juvenile) status to a
mature ability to think for oneself. In another essay, "What
Does it Mean to Orient Oneself in Thought?" Kant defines
Enlightenment as "the maxim of always thinking for
oneself" (8:146). "What is Enlightenment"
distinguishes between the public and private uses of reason. The
private use of reason is, for government officials, the use of reason
they must utilize in their official positions. For example, a member
of the clergy (who in Kant's Prussia were funded by the state)
is required to espouse the official doctrine in sermons and teachings.
The public use of reason is the use an individual makes of reason as a
scholar reaching the public world of readers. For example, the same
member of the clergy could, as a scholar, present perceived
shortcomings in that very same doctrine. Similarly, military officers
could, using public reason, question the value or appropriateness of
the orders they receive, but in their functions as military officers,
using private reason, they are obliged to obey the same orders. Kant
intends the debates using public reason to cover legislation and acts
of the state as well. Since the sovereign might err, and individual
citizens have the right to attempt to correct the error under the
assumption that the sovereign does not intend to err: "a citizen
must have, with the approval of the ruler himself, the authorization
to make known publicly his opinions about what it is in the
ruler's arrangements that seems to him to be a wrong against the
commonwealth," writes Kant in "Theory and Practice".
This freedom of the pen is "the sole palladium" of the
rights of the people, for without this means the people would have no
way to make any claims to rights at all (8:304).



One might expect from this emphasis that Kant would insist that the
proper political system is one that not only allows individuals to
think for themselves about political issues, but also contains a
mechanism such as voting to translate those well reasoned opinions
into government policy. One would be wrong. Kant does not stress
self-government. In his discussion in "Perpetual Peace" of
the traditional division of the types of government Kant classifies
governments in two dimensions (8:352). The first is the "form of
sovereignty", concerning who rules, and here Kant identifies the
traditional three forms: either rule by one person, rule by a small
group of people, or rule by all people. The second is the "form
of government" concerning how those people rule, and here Kant
offers a variation on the traditional good/bad dichotomy: either
republican or despotic. By "republican," Kant means
"separation of the executive power (the government) from the
legislative power". Despotism is their unity such that the same
ruler both gives and enforces laws, in essence making an individual
private will into the public will. Republics require representation in
order to ensure that the executive power only enforces the public will
by insisting that the executive enforce only laws that representatives
of the people, not the executive itself, make. But a republic is
compatible with a single individual acting as legislator provided that
others act as executives; for example, a monarch would issue laws in
the name of the people's will but the monarch's ministers
would enforce those laws. Kant's claim that such a government is
republican (see also 27:1384) showcases his view that a republican
government need not require actual participation of the people in
making the laws, even through elected representatives, as long as the
laws are promulgated with the whole united will of the people in mind.
Kant does, nonetheless, think that an elected representative
legislator is the best form of a republic (8:353). Whether elected or
unelected, the moral person who holds legislative power is
representative of the people united as a whole, and is thus
sovereign.



When Kant discusses voting for representatives, he adheres to many
prevailing prejudices of the time (8:295). The right to vote requires
"being one's own master" and hence having property
or some skill that can support one independently. The reason given for
this, that those who must acquire something from another to make a
living alienate what belongs to them, is so vague that Kant himself
admits in a footnote "It is, I admit, somewhat difficult to
determine what is required in order to be able to claim the rank of a
human being who is his own master." Kant also leaves women out
of the voting populations for what he calls "natural"
reasons which are left unspecified. Individuals who are not given the
right to vote are deemed "passive" citizens of the state who
nonetheless enjoy all other rights identified with freedom and
equality (6:315). Kant insists that in line with this freedom and
equality, all passive citizens of the state could work their way up to
the full status of "active" citizen.



Kant's state, then, does not require that actual decisions are
made by the people at large, even through elected representatives. He
holds that a single individual or small group can themselves
adequately represent the people at large simply by adopting the point
of view of the people. Insistence on a representative system (8:353)
is not insistence on an *elected* representative system.
Nonetheless it is clear that Kant holds that such an elective
representative system is ideal. Republican constitutions, he claims,
are prone to avoid war because, when the consent of the people is
needed, they will consider the costs they must endure in a war
(fighting, taxes, destruction of property, etc), whereas a
non-republican ruler may be insulated from such concerns. In the
"Doctrine of Right" he also notes that a republican system
not only represents the people but does so "by all the citizens
united and acting through their delegates" (6:342).


## 5. Property and Contract Right



The main text of the "Doctrine of Right" begins with a
discussion of property, showing the importance of this right for the
implementation of the innate right to freedom. Property is defined as
that "with which I am so connected that another's use of
it without my consent would wrong me" (6:245). In one sense, if
I am holding an object such as an apple, and another snatches it from
my hand, I have been wronged because in taking the object from my
physical possession, the other harms me because my body is affected.
Kant calls this "physical" or "sensible"
possession. It is not a sufficient sense of possession to count as
rightful possession of an object. Rightful possession must be
possession of an object so that another's use of the object
without my consent harms me even when I am not physically affected and
not currently using the object. If someone plucks an apple from my
tree, no matter where I am and no matter whether I am even aware of
the loss I am prevented from using that apple. Kant calls this
"intelligible possession".



His proof that there must be this intelligible possession and not
merely physical possession turns on the application of human choice
(6:246). An object of choice is one that some human has the capacity
to use as means for various ends or purposes. Rightful possession
would be the right to make use of such an object. Suppose that for
some particular object, no one is allowed to have rightful possession.
This would mean that a usable object would be beyond possible use. But
putting an object beyond rightful use when humans have the capacity to
use it would "annihilate" the object in a practical
respect, treat it as nothing. Kant claims that this is problematic
because in a practical respect an object is considered merely as an
object of possible choice. This consideration of the mere form alone,
the object simply as an object of choice, cannot contain any
prohibition of use for an object, for any such prohibition would be
freedom limiting itself for no reason. Thus in a practical respect an
object cannot be treated as nothing, and so the object must be
considered as at least potentially in rightful possession of some
human being or other. So all objects within human capacity for use
must be subject to rightful or intelligible possession.



Kant calls this postulate that all objects must be treated as
potential property of someone a "permissive law of practical reason"
(6:247). It authorizes individuals to act to obtain objects as
property, thus declaring a right to particular objects that goes
beyond the innate right to freedom. The particular distribution of
private property is a result of these particular acts of individuals.
This act of an individual does not alone create the property right in
those objects because such a one-sided declaration would violate the
universality of external right, since if one human being is to have
intelligible possession of a particular object, all other human beings
must refrain from using that object, and thus one individual is
unilaterally limiting the freedom of others. Kant recognizes that any
unilateral declaration by one person that an object belongs to that
person alone would infringe on the freedom of others. The only way
that intelligible possession is possible without violating the
principle of right is if there is an agreement that puts all under an
obligation to recognize each other's intelligible possessions.
Each person must acknowledge an obligation to refrain from using
objects that belong to others. The individual act of declaring a
particular object as property is rightful only when it harmonizes with
other similar individual acts of other persons regarding other
objects. Since no individual will can rightfully make and enforce such
a law obligating everyone to respect others' property, this
mutual obligation is possible only in accordance with a
"collective general (common) and powerful will", in other
words, only in a civil condition. The state itself obligates all
citizens to respect the property of other citizens. The state
functions as an objective, disinterested institution that resolves
disputes about individual property and enforces compliance with those
determinations. Without a state to enforce these property rights, they
are impossible.



This creation of a civil condition is Kant's first manner of
discussing a social contract mentioned in section 3. Prior to a civil
condition the only manner in which human beings can control things is
through empirical possession, actual occupation and use of land and
objects. In order to gain full property rights to land and objects,
individuals must all agree to respect the property rights of others in
a social contract. They are in fact required, as a duty, to enter into
a social condition in order to defend their own and everyone's
property rights. Only in such a society can persons exercise their
freedom, that is their pursuit of ends, by legitimately using objects
for their own purposes without regard for others. Hence a social
contract is the rational justification of the state because state
power is necessary for each individual to be guaranteed access to some
property in order to realize their freedom. While the discussion in
"Theory and Practice" of a social contract as an idea of
reason constrains the sovereign in promulgating laws, it does not
explain why the state is necessary in the first place. The discussion
in "Doctrine of Right" of property as the basis of a
social contract explains why individuals are in fact rationally
required to enter into a social contract.



A puzzle arises here with regard to property. If individuals are not
able to have any intelligible property prior to the existence of a
state, yet the state's role is to enforce property rights, where
does the original assignment of property to individuals occur? John
Locke had famously avoided this problem in his theory of property by
making property a product of a single individual's activity. By
"mixing" one's labor with an object in the commons,
one comes to have property in the object. Kant objects to
Locke's theory of property on the grounds that it makes property
a relation between a person and a thing rather than between the wills
of several persons (6:268-69). Since property is a relation of
wills that can occur only in a civil condition under a common
sovereign power, Kant suggests that prior to this civil condition
property can be acquired only in anticipation of and in conformity
with a civil condition. Provisional property is initial physical
appropriation of objects with the intention of making them rightful
property in a state (6:264, 267).



Property is of three types for Kant (6:247-48, 260). First is
the right to a thing, to corporeal objects in space. Examples of these
things include land, animals, and tools. The second is the right
against a person, the right to coerce that person to perform an
action. This is contract right. The third is the "right to a
person akin to a right to a thing", the most controversial of
Kant's categories in which he includes spouses, children, and
servants. Of these three types, the first has already been discussed
in relation to acquisition. The second of these, contract right,
involves the possession by one person of the "deed" of
another (6:274). One person is able to control the choice of another
in order to apply the other's causal powers to some end. At
first glance this contract right appears to violate the second formula
of the categorical imperative which states that persons are to be
treated always as ends and never merely as means. A contract appears
to be a case in which an individual is used merely as a means. A
homeowner, for example, hires a repair specialist specifically as a
means for repairing a house. Kant turns the tables on this problem by
showing that a contract is "the united choice of two
persons" and thus treats both parties to the contract as ends.
For example, he notes that the repair specialist who is contracted to
work on a house has agreed to the exchange in order to obtain a
personal end, namely, money (27:1319). Each party to the contract is
both means for the other and an end.



The third category, the right to a person akin to a thing, is
Kant's own fusion of the traditional categories of property and
contract. Kant argues that some contracts or rightful obligations such
as the parent-child relation allow one party to the contract to
control not only the choice of the other, but also to possess some
power over the body of the other, such as the power to insist that the
other remain in the household. Kant sees the spousal relation, the
parent-child relation, and the master-servant relation as the three
types of this rightful relation. In the case of children Kant
considers not only the parent's duty to nurture the child along with a
right to control the child but also the status of an adult child
remaining in the household, similar to the status of a servant.
Regarding servants Kant gives the head of the household a right to
control them while under contract without allowing any lifelong
control, which would amount to slavery as a complete denial of the
servant's freedom. His discussion of marriage, which focuses on this
legal relation in abstraction from empirical considerations such as
love, treats marriage as reciprocal access to the other's sexual
organs. While each partner in the marriage is using the other as a
means for enjoyment and thus as a thing, the marriage contract's
reciprocity "restores" their personality as ends in
themselves (6:278). Kant describes this legal relation as equal in
these powers of possession and in the communal property. Both men and
women must have reciprocal relations of this kind; for example, a
man's use of a prostitute as a thing violates her dignity as an
end in herself. Despite this equality at the level of a priori right,
Kant holds that men have a natural superiority in their capacity to
promote the couple's common interest, and that laws codifying
husbands's rule over wives are not unjust. Certainly
Kant's personal sexism plays a part in his views on marriage, as
it did in his exclusion of women from voting. Some of Kant's own
contemporaries objected to his views on women, and an early review of
the "Doctrine of Right" rejecting Kant's novel
category of property to persons akin to things prompted him to respond
in an Appendix to the book's second edition (6:356-372, esp
6:357-361).


## 6. Rebellion and Revolution



The very idea of a right to rebel against the government is
incoherent, Kant argued, because the embodiment of all right is the
actually existing state. By this he did not mean that any actually
existing state is always completely just, or that merely by virtue of
having power, the state could determine what justice is. He meant that
a rightful condition, the opposite of the state of nature, is possible
only when there is some means for individuals to be governed by the
"general legislative will" (6:320). Any state embodies the
general legislative will better than no state. While such reasoning
seems pragmatic, it is not. It is instead based upon the claims above
that a rightful condition requires the centralizing of coercive power
in a state as the only means of bringing about reciprocal coercion,
obligation, and objective settlement of disputes. Kant also argues
that a right to rebel would require that a people be authorized to
resist the state. This kind of authorization for action, however, is
an exercise of sovereign power, and any people who claimed such a
right would be claiming that it (the people) rather than the state
embodies sovereign power. It would thus "make the people, as
subject, by one and the same judgment sovereign over him to whom it is
subject" (6:320). This is a contradiction. The nature of
sovereignty is such that sovereign power cannot be shared. Were it
shared between the state and the people, then when a dispute arose
between them, who would judge whether the state or the people are
correct? There being no higher sovereign power to make such a
judgment, all other means for resolving the dispute fall outside of
rightful relations. This role of judgment relates to the judgment that
Kant discusses with regard to the social contract. Under the idea of a
social contract, the sovereign legislator may not make a law that the
people could not make for itself because it possesses irrational,
non-universal form. The state, not the people, is the judge of when a
law is rational (8:297). People who argue for a right to revolution,
Kant claims, misunderstand the nature of a social contract. They claim
that the social contract must have been an actual historical
occurrence from which the people could withdraw (8:301-02). But
since the social contact is only an idea of reason which sets moral
limits to the sovereign's legislative acts, and the
sovereign's judgment alone determines how these limits are to be
interpreted, there is no independent contractual agreement to which
the people could refer in its complaints. Citizens are still allowed
to voice their grievances through their use of public reason, but they
can do nothing more than attempt to persuade the sovereign to adopt or
repeal decisions.



While the people cannot rebel against the state, Kant does not insist
that citizens always obey the state. He allows at least for passive
civil disobedience. This comes in two forms: in a republican
representative system such as England's, there can be "a
negative resistance, that is, a refusal of the people (in parliament)
to accede to every demand the government puts forth as necessary for
administering the state" (6:322). In the context of this
discussion it is clear that Kant is referring to the use of the power
of the legislature to refuse funding, and therefore approval, of
actions of the executive. He clarifies that the legislature is not
allowed to dictate any positive action to the executive, its
legitimate resistance is only negative. A second form of acceptable
resistance applies to individuals. Kant mentions that citizens are
obligated to obey the sovereign "in whatever does not conflict
with inner morality" (6:371). He does not elaborate on the term
"inner morality".



Nor does Kant always reject the actions of revolutionaries. If a
revolution is successful, citizens have as much obligation to obey the
new regime as they had to obey the old one (6:323). Since the new
regime is in fact a state authority, it now possesses the right to
rule. Further, in his theory of history, Kant argues that progress in
the long run will come about in part through violent and unjust
actions such as wars. Kant even takes it as a sign of progress that
spectators of the French Revolution had greeted it with "a
wishful participation that borders closely on enthusiasm"
(7:85). Kant is not pointing to the revolution itself as a sign of
progress but to the reaction of people such as himself to news of the
revolution. The spectators endorse the revolution not because it is
legitimate but because it is aimed at the creation of a civil
constitution. Revolution, then, is wrong but still contributes to
progress.



In fact, Kant did believe that the French Revolution was legitimate,
at least in its earliest stages, and a look at his argument
illuminates some of his complex terminology. The French king possessed
sovereignty until he convened the Estates General as representative of
the people, at which time sovereignty "passed to the
people" even though the king had intended for the assembly to
resolve specific problems and then return the reins of power to him
(6:341-2). Further, the king could not have any power to
restrain the actions of the assembly as a condition for it being given
the sovereign power, for there can be no restrictions on this
sovereign power. This understanding of sovereignty shows the
difference between a rebellion against authority and peaceful transfer
of sovereign power such as an election. In an election, sovereignty is
passed back to the people, so there is nothing wrong with the people
replacing the entire government. Without an election (or similar
method of designating the return of sovereignty to the people), any
action aimed at replacing the government is wrong.


## 7. Punishment



Kant was long considered to be an exemplar of the retributivist theory
of punishment. While he does claim that the only proper justification
of punishment is guilt for a crime, he does not limit the usefulness
of punishment to retributivist matters. Punishment can have as its
justification only the guilt of the criminal. All other uses of
punishment, such as rehabilitation (the alleged good of the criminal)
or deterrence (alleged good to society) uses the criminal merely as a
means (6:331). Once this guilt is determined, however, Kant does not
deny that something useful can be drawn from the punishment. In the
Feyerabend lectures on Natural Right, Kant is clear that the sovereign
"must punish in order to obtain security", and even while
using the law of retribution, "in such a way the best security
is obtained" (27:1390-91). The state is authorized to use
its coercive force to defend freedom against limitations to freedom;
more particularly, since right does not entail that citizens must
limit their own freedom but only that "freedom is limited"
by conditions of right, it is right for another, i.e. the state, to
actively limit citizens' freedom in accord with right (6:231).
The state is authorized to use force to defend property rights
(6:256). Kant's view, then, is that punishment of a particular
individual may serve deterrent functions even when the punishment may
not be based solely on deterrence as its justification.



Retributivist theory holds not only that criminal guilt is required
for punishment, but that the appropriate type and amount of punishment
is also determined by the crime itself. Traditionally this is the
heart of the ancient injunction "an eye for an eye". Kant
supports this measurement for punishment because all other
measurements bring into consideration elements besides strict justice
(6:332), such as the psychological states of others that would measure
the effectiveness of various possible punishments on deterrence. As a
principle, retribution grounds but does not specify the exact
punishment. Kant recognizes that "like for like" is not
always possible to the letter, but believes that justice requires that
it be used as the principle for specific judgments of punishment.



The retributivist theory of punishment leads to Kant's
insistence on capital punishment. He argues that the only punishment
possibly equivalent to death, the amount of inflicted harm, is death.
Death is qualitatively different from any kind of life, so no
substitute could be found that would equal death. Kant rejects the
argument against capital punishment offered earlier in his century by
the Italian reformer, the Marchese Cesare Beccaria, who argued that in
a social contract no one would willingly give to the state power over
one's own life, for the preservation of that life is the
fundamental reason one enters a social contract at all. Kant objects
to Beccaria's claim by distinguishing between the source of a
social contract in "pure reason in me" as opposed to the
source of the crime, myself as capable of criminal acts. The latter
person wills the crime but not the punishments, but the former person
wills in the abstract that anyone who is convicted of a capital crime
will be punished by death. Hence one and the same individual both
commits the crime and endorses the punishment of death. This solution
mirrors the claim that individuals can be coerced to join a civil
condition: reason dictates that entering the civil condition is
mandatory even if one's particular arbitrary choice might be to
remain outside it (see section 3).


## 8. International Relations and History



In the "Doctrine of Right" Kant complains that the German
word used to describe international right,
"Volkerrecht", is misleading, for it means literally
the right of nations or peoples. He suggests that it would better be
called "Staatenrecht", the right of states. Nonetheless
Kant still uses the phrase "right of nations" and also
discusses a "league of nations", although it is clear that
he is referring not to nations as peoples but to states as
organizations. Kant is also inconsistent in his use of other terms,
such as "federation". For the sake of clarity, this entry
will maintain consistent terminology for the discussion of concepts
in international right, even where that requires departures from
Kant's own usage.



Given the lack of international institutions, Kant says, states must
be considered to be in a state of nature relative to one another. Like
individuals in the state of nature, then, they must be considered to
be in a state of war with each other. Like individuals, the states are
obligated to leave this state of nature to form some type of union
under a social contract. Before the creation of some such union (see
next paragraph), states do have a right to go to war against other
states if another state threatens it or actively aggresses against it
(6:346). But any declaration of war ought to be confirmed by the
people "as colegislating members of a state" (6:345).
Rulers who wage war without such consent are using their subjects as
property, as mere means, rather than treating them as ends in
themselves. This claim is one of Kant's strongest statements
that actual voting by citizens is required: citizens "must
therefore give their free assent, through their representatives, not
only to waging war in general but also to each particular declaration
of war" (6:345-46). Once war has been declared, states are
obligated to conduct the war under principles that leave open the
possibility of an eventual league of states. Actions that undermine
future trust between states, such as the use of assassination, are
prohibited.



States are obligated to leave this state of nature among states and
enter into a union of states. He considers several models of this
worldwide political institution. The first is a single universal state
in which the entirety of humanity is ruled directly by the single
state or is subject to a single monarch. He rejects this model for
failing to fulfill the function of the international institution by in
effect dissolving the separateness of states rather than providing a
means for peaceful relations among states. The second model is a
league of states in which states voluntarily submit themselves to an
organization for resolving international disputes. The league would
not have coercive power to enforce its decisions, and states would be
free to leave the league if they chose. He sometimes refers to this
model as a "federation", although he notes that it cannot
be an indissoluble union based upon a constitution, as in the
federalist structure of the United States (6:351), so it is best to
refer to this model as a "league". The third model is a
state of states or a world republic of states in which each state
joins a federation of states with coercive power. In this model, a
state's relation to the international federation is closely
analogous to an individual person's relation to a state. Only
these second and third models receive Kant's approval. He offers
different reasons for supporting each of the two models.



Kant holds out the third model as the ideal form for the correct
international institution. He calls the world republic an
"idea" (8:357), a term that Kant uses for concepts created
by the faculty of reason that cannot be met in experience but that can
serve as models or goals for actual human behavior (the social
contract is another idea of reason in political philosophy). The ideal
international union is a federation of states that has coercive power
over member states but whose decisions arise from debate and
discussion among those member states. Kant is unclear regarding
whether that coercive force is to be realized by joint action of
member states, sanctioned by the federation, against a non-compliant
member or by a distinct international force controlled by the
federation itself. The precise status of states' membership is
also not clearly stated: he generally says that states have a right to
withdraw from the federation, although he often states that the
federation is indissoluble and even indicates in the "Doctrine
of Right" that states may go to war to "establish a
condition more closely approaching a rightful condition"
(6:344), implying that states can be coerced into membership. Kant
recognizes that actual states will balk at this international
federation since rulers will object to such a surrender of their
sovereign power. Kant thus argues that the second model, a league of
states in which each state opts to negotiate with other nations
instead of waging war, must be adopted as a "negative
surrogate" (8:357). In a league of states, individual nations
are allowed to leave at will and the league itself has no coercive
powers over members. States voluntarily agree to settle disputes in a
way that avoids war and encourages further peaceful relations. Leagues
of states need not extend worldwide but should expand over time in
order to approximate a worldwide union of all states.



In the essay "Toward Perpetual Peace", Kant offers a set
of six "preliminary articles" which aim to reduce the
likelihood of war, but cannot by themselves establish permanent peace
(8:343-47). These are a ban on making temporary peace treaties
while still planning for future wars, the prohibition of annexation of
one state by another, the abolition of standing armies, the refusal to
take on national debts for external affairs, a ban on interference by
one state in the internal affairs of another, and a set of limits on
the conduct of war that disallows acts that would breed mistrust and
make peace impossible. These six articles are negative laws that
prohibit states from engaging in certain kinds of conduct. They are
not sufficient by themselves to prevent states from lapsing back into
their old habits of warring on one another. To institute an
international order that can genuinely bring about perpetual peace,
Kant offers three "definitive articles". The first of
these is that every state shall have a republican civil constitution
(8:348, discussed in section 4 above). In a republican constitution,
the people who decide whether there will be a war are the same people
who would pay the price for the war, both in monetary terms (taxes and
other financial burdens) and in flesh and blood. Republican states
will therefore be very hesitant to go to war and will readily accept
negotiations rather than resort to war. This consideration is
Kant's most important contribution to the debate about securing
peace. He believes that when states are ruled in accordance with the
wishes of the people, their self-interest will provide a consistent
basis for pacific relations among states. The second definitive
article is that each state shall participate in a union of states
(8:354, discussed in the previous paragraph). The third definitive
article advocates a cosmopolitan right of universal hospitality
(8:357, discussed in section 9 below).



Kant's view of historical progress is tied to his view of
international relations. He actually presents several versions of his
argument for the progress of humanity toward the ideal condition in
which states, each governed by a republican civil constitution and
thus each providing maximal consistent freedom for its citizens, all
cooperate in a republican federation of states. In his essay
"Idea for a Universal History from a Cosmopolitan Point of
View" (8:15-31), he takes the basis of his claims for
historical progress to be the culmination of the human ability to
reason, which, as a natural property of human beings, must be worked
out to perfection in the species. He argues that incessant wars will
eventually lead rulers to recognize the benefits of peaceful
negotiation. They will gradually increase the freedoms of their
citizens, because freer citizens are economically more productive and
hence make the state stronger in its international dealings.
Importantly in this essay he relies on the self-interest of presumably
unelected rulers as a significant force in the movement toward
international peace. In "Toward Perpetual Peace" Kant
suggests that some particular state may, through "good
fortune", become a republic and then act as a focal point for
other states to join in peaceful relations, and that gradually such
cooperation can spread to all states (8:356). These positions
certainly reveal that Kant considered world peace impossible without
both individual republican states and an international federation
among them.


## 9. Cosmopolitan Right



Relations among the states of the world, covered above, are not
exhaustive of possible political relations outside one domestic state.
Individuals can relate to states of which they are not members and to
other individuals who are members of other states. In this they are
considered "citizens of a universal state of human beings"
with corresponding "rights of citizens of the world"
(8:349, footnote). The rights individuals have as citizens of the
world form the basis of cosmopolitan right. Based on these lofty
sounding pronouncements, some writers inspired by Kant discuss
cosmopolitan right as if it were equivalent to general human rights
and as if it formed the foundation for worldwide progress. But general
human rights in Kant would have to be found in the innate right to
freedom, not specifically in cosmopolitan right, and progress toward
peace is driven more by republicanism and the behavior of states as
discussed in the previous section. Kant's particular discussion
of cosmopolitan right is restricted to the right of hospitality. Since
all peoples share a limited amount of living space due to the
spherical shape of the earth, the totality of which they must be
understood to have originally shared in common, they must be
understood to have a right to possible interaction with one another.
This cosmopolitan right is limited to a right to offer to engage in
commerce, not a right to actual commerce itself, which must always be
voluntary trade. A citizen of one state may try to establish links
with other peoples; no state is allowed to deny foreign citizens a
right to travel in its land. And in an emergency such as a shipwreck,
states must provide non-citizens with temporary shelter; this
provision is sometimes understood as a basis for a state duty to
accept refugees.



Colonial rule and settlement is another matter entirely. In his
published writings in the 1790s, Kant is strongly critical of the
European colonization of other lands already inhabited by other
peoples. Settlement in these cases is allowed only by uncoerced
informed contract. Even land that appears empty might be used by
shepherds or hunters and cannot be appropriated without their consent
(6:354). These positions represent a change in Kant's thought,
for he had previously indicated acceptance if not endorsement of the
European colonial practices of his time and the racial hierarchy
behind them. Kant himself produced a theory of human racial
classifications and origins and thought that non-Europeans were
inferior in various ways. Kant thought that the course of world
progress involved the spread of European culture and law throughout
the world to what he considered to be less advanced cultures and
inferior races. By the mid-1790s, however, Kant appears to have given
up beliefs about racial inferiority and no longer discusses it in his
lectures. He publicly criticized European colonial practices as
violations of the rights of indigenous peoples who are capable of
governing themselves (8:358-60).



Cosmopolitan right is an important component of perpetual peace.
Interaction among the peoples of the world, Kant notes, has increased
in recent times. Now "a violation of right on one place of the
earth is felt in all" as peoples depend upon one another and
know about one another more and more (8:360). Violations of
cosmopolitan right would make more difficult the trust and cooperation
necessary for perpetual peace among states. And for Kant, perpetual
peace is the "highest political good" (6:355).


## 10. Social Philosophy



"Social philosophy," can be taken to mean the relationship
of persons to institutions, and to each other via these institutions,
that are not part of the state. Family is a clear example of a social
institution that transcends the individual but has at least some
elements that are not controlled by the state. Other examples would be
economic institutions such as businesses and markets, religious
institutions, social clubs and private associations created to advance
interests or for mere enjoyment, educational and university
institutions, and social systems and classifications such as race and
gender. It is worth noting a few particulars, if only as examples of
the range of this topic. Kant favored right-governed free markets that
allowed people to choose and pursue their ends, but advocated the duty
of citizens to support those in society who could not support
themselves, and even gave the state the power to arrange for this help
(6:326). He offered a biological explanation of race in several essays
and also, certainly into his "Critical" period, held that
other races were inferior to Europeans, although he did late in his
career insist that non-European peoples possessed full political
rights. He supported a reform movement in education based on the
principles presented by Rousseau in "Emile". I will not
provide detailed treatment of Kant's views on these particular
matters (some of which are scant) but only focus on the nature of
social philosophy for Kant.



Kant had no comprehensive social philosophy. One might be tempted to
claim that, in line with natural law theorists, Kant discusses natural
rights related to some social institutions. One might read the first
half of the "Doctrine of Right" as a social philosophy,
since this half on "Private Right" discusses the rights of
individuals relative to one another, in contrast to the second half on
"Public Right" that discusses the rights of individuals
relative to the state. Kant even offers an explanation of this
difference by claiming that the opposite of state of nature is not a
social but the civil condition, that is, a state (6:306). The state of
nature can include voluntary societies (Kant mentions domestic
relations in general) where there is no a priori obligation for
individuals to enter them. This approach to Kant, however, is subject
to some doubt, since he explicitly links all forms of property to the
obligation to enter the civil condition (see section 5 above), and his
discussion of marriage and family comes in the form of property
relations akin to contract relations. It is thus not obvious how
Kant's explanations of these social institutions, which presuppose
property relations, could apply to social philosophy independent of
the state. Thus even if some form of family or household or
property-like institutions could exist outside the civil condition,
Kant does not discuss them.



Another approach to the issue of social philosophy in Kant is to view
it in terms of moral philosophy properly speaking, that is, the
obligations human beings have to act under the proper maxims, as
discussed in the "Doctrine of Virtue" (see section 1
above). In the "Doctrine of Virtue" Kant talks about the
obligation to develop friendships and to participate in social
intercourse (6:469-74). In the *Religion within the
Boundaries of Mere Reason* Kant discusses the development of an
"ethical commonwealth" in which human beings strengthen
one another's moral resolve through their participation in the
moral community of a church. He also holds that educational
institutions, the subject of his book *On Pedagogy*, should be
designed to provide for the development of morality in human beings,
who lack a natural disposition for the moral good. In these cases
Kant's social philosophy is treated as an arm of his theory of
virtue, not as a freestanding topic in its own right.



A third approach to social philosophy comes through Kant's
*Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View*. Kant had
envisioned anthropology as an empirical application of ethics, akin to
empirical physics as a application of pure metaphysical principles of
nature. Knowledge of the general characteristics of human being as
well as particular characteristics of genders, races, nationalities,
etc, can aid in determining one's precise duties toward
particular individuals. Further, this knowledge can aid moral agents
in their own task of motivating themselves to morality. These promises
of anthropology in its practical application are unfulfilled, however,
in the details of Kant's text. He does little critical
assessment of social prejudices or practices to screen out stereotypes
detrimental to moral development. His own personal views, considered
sexist and racist universally today and even out of step with some of
his more progressive colleagues, pervade his direct discussions of
these social institutions.