Kant’s Right of Majesty and the Freedom and Equality of Citizens

Throughout The Doctrine of Right, Kant affirms a right of majesty of sovereigns. Such rights include that of clemency and that of forced loans. The presence of such rights should be worrying for the Kantian. On widely accepted readings of Kant’s political philosophy, the power of sovereigns over citizens is made compatible with the freedom and equality of those citizens because sovereign power is expressed in law grounded in the general united will of the people. The establishment of a legal system ensures that the powers of sovereign are carried out by public officials who do not judge unilaterally, but as the agents of the omnilateral will. Such an approach would stand up to scrutiny were the rights of majesty legally enshrined. It would even go through if such rights were temporary rights, held by the sovereign during the transition to a rightful condition. The text, however, problematises both accounts in the same way. In the text, Kant invokes the right of majesty in contravention of established rightful law. Rights of majesty are explicitly not legally enshrined and the sovereign acting on their right may violate law even in a rightful condition. The freedom and equality of citizens thus appears to be under threat from the unilateral judgments of the sovereign exercising their rights of majesty. In this paper, I argue that the freedom and equality of citizens is compatible with the right of majesty, in Kant’s view, because the right of majesty is the right of the sovereign to act prudently to maintain the state. The state, being the condition of the freedom and equality of citizens, is not only something that requires political action to institute, but also to maintain.