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The General Will and Reform in Kant’s Legal-Political Philosophy

Citizenship
Democracy
Jurisprudence
Ethics

Abstract

Kant argues that once a state establishes a monopoly on coercion, as it must, it must also reconcile this monopoly with each citizen’s right to freedom. Required are specific systemic (public right) steps by the state to secure each citizen’s right to freedom, such as laws governing the proper functioning of public offices, laws guaranteeing unconditional poverty relief and regulate land, the economy and the financial system. Such necessary conditions of public right show against Locke, as both Hobbes and Rousseau would agree, that the rights of the state are not identical to those of individuals. In addition, they show against Hobbes that any relatively stable, law-governed monopoly on coercion is not legitimate. Interesting too is that Kant’s account of public right shows against Rousseau that we can say something about the principles of public right a priori, that democracy is not a necessary condition of legitimacy, and that the sheer fact that a majority of the citizens have agreed on a certain law does not make that law legitimate. In addition, Kant provides good reasons why as long as the basic legal-political framework is in place—each citizen is legally recognized as having basic innate, private, and public rights—even though it may be very non-ideal in many regards, it is minimally just. Although Kant argues that states need be neither democracies nor very well functioning to be minimally just (to issue political obligations and exercise coercion legitimately), he does supply a most interesting account of reform. As long as the basic legal-political framework is liberal and representative in nature—that is, as long as it grounds all state-authorized uses of coercion understood in terms of citizens’ basic rights and has at least one active citizen—reform rather than violence is possible and the way forward. The aim is to gradually replace all inherited notions of public privilege with merit-based ones as well as to strengthen the public right system so as to provide conditions under which everyone can work their way out of difficult socio-economic positions and into positions of active citizenship. This is achieved by each citizen being secured access to at least full, knowledgeable participation in public reason generally and by being given access to the skills needed to hold public office. Key to facilitating the transition to active citizenship is building better protections for vulnerable groups and solid systems of education accessible to all so that the people in increasingly better ways can govern themselves through public legal-political institutions and active public participation.