The fragility of the Kantian civil condition and how to remedy it

Abstract

What kind of political authority needs to be in place in order to safeguard the civil condition? This we might understand as the challenge posed by modern political theorising, namely that of offering a political/legal solution to the conflict of human interaction, and the threats it brings when it turns violent. Such a solution must be capable of striking a balance between a right to be free and a need to be safe. This paper argues that Kant saw clearly into the fragile nature of the civil condition, by appropriating this traditional problem into his own terms: what intensity of conflict is permissible to guarantee the stability of political authority, and the continuity of the civil condition? The aim of the author is therefore to emphasise the political dimension of Kant’s juridical/institutional scaffolding we are most familiar with, in order to show that a civil condition is maintained by three ingredients: law, freedom, and force.