Ethics and Right in Kant's Political Philosophy

Abstract

Kant's account of political change and in particular his view of the change of legal norms is importantly shaped by his account of the link between ethical and juridical norms. In the recent Kant literature, there has been a resurgence of interest in the way in which Kant views this link. Commentators have identified three possibe positions: an independentist view, according to which right is independent from ethics; a dependentist view, which claims that Kant's legal norms are derived directly from his ethical norms; and, finally, an indirectly dependentist view, which regards the derivation as possible, although not in a direct way. Papers in this panel examine various apects of this vexed relation in Kant's practical philosophy.