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Kantian Right and Ideal Justice

Citizenship
Jurisprudence
Ethics
Liberalism
Louis-Philippe Hodgson
York University
Louis-Philippe Hodgson
York University

Abstract

Despite the best efforts of contemporary Kantians, the recent renewal of interest in Kant’s political writings has had little impact on the mainstream of contemporary political philosophy. The main reason is simple: Kant’s approach is perceived to be implausibly radical. According to the dominant interpretation of his theory, Kant holds that all political questions should be decided entirely in terms of the demands of universal freedom. Welfare, happiness, and even the satisfaction of basic needs are excluded from our theorizing about justice—unless of course they can be shown to be in some way part of the ideal of universal freedom. Thus construed, Kant’s contribution to political philosophy is in direct competition with several sophisticated theories of justice that have appeared on the stage over the past few decades, including, most obviously, John Rawls’s. And in that kind of company, it should be said, Kant’s theory looks rather primitive. I argue that Kant’s contribution to political thought is more modest, but also more plausible and illuminating, than the dominant interpretation suggests. As I read him, he is concerned with questions that are different from (and narrower than) those which chiefly animate the post-Rawlsian literature. His central claim concerns the legitimate enforcement of rights: he maintains that rights can be enforced in a manner that is acceptable to all only if the enforcement is carried out by the right kind of agent. The focus on universal freedom is meant to shed light on how such an agent should be structured, and hence on what kind of institutional structures make up a legitimate state; it is also meant to establish the general contours of the rights that a legitimate state must recognize. These are important contributions, but I maintain that they leave largely open the questions with which theories of substantive justice are concerned—questions concerning what the state should ideally do, how an ideal state should be structured, and what specific interpretation should ideally be adopted of the general rights that are required for legitimacy. Against the dominant interpretation, I contend that it is consistent with Kant’s fundamental outlook to appeal to considerations other than universal freedom to answer these questions of substantive justice. If this is correct, Kant’s political philosophy is compatible with a much broader range of views about substantive justice than has been recognized, and hence it need not take us outside the mainstream of contemporary political philosophy.