This paper traces the development of Kant's freedom based justification of state authority. In the literature, there is a good deal of disagreement about how Kant’s principle of right and its defense of equal civil liberty, is related to the categorical imperative and the vision of freedom as autonomy. In this essay I show that this uncertainty existed at the time Kant was writing as well, and that contemporary debates can help us better to understand the solution he eventually came up with. Before Kant finally composed his Doctrine of Right, several of his conservative followers, including August Wilhelm Rehberg and Friedrich Gentz, attempted to construct political theories based on a different interpretation of Kantian freedom. In composing the final version of his political philosophy Kant sought to answer such critics by emphasizing the unity of his moral vision, connecting moral autonomy and civil liberty. This study shows how Kant as a result developed a sophisticated theory of the realization of external freedom within a regulated system of property. Although it may be possible to endorse Kant’s Doctrine of Right without buying into the idea of transcendental freedom, the evidence shows that Kant himself found it important to bridge the inner and the outer realms of freedom. This striving for unity may indeed be why Kant’s theory is still worth pursuing. The paper will be a chapter of a book called Kant’s Politics in Context (under contract with Oxford University Press).
