Kant's Innate Right and Bodily Rights

Much recent work in Kant’s political philosophy has tended to associate the innate right to freedom with bodily rights. While bodily rights are not taken to exhaust the entitlements of the innate right, they form an important part of it according to a number of recent commentators (for example Hodgson, Pallikkathayil, and Ripstein). However, this trend has recently been challenged by Katrin Flikschuh, who argues that the innate right does not provide concrete entitlements, but rather is a right to be recognised, and held responsible, as a legally accountable agent. Such a recognition has no implications for rights over one’s body. Flikschuh further argues (i) that there is no strong textual evidence for such an association and (ii) that the association with bodily rights brings Kant uncomfortably close to ‘foundationalist’ accounts of the innate right, according to which the innate right is an unquestioned or self-evident starting point for the subsequent arguments of the Doctrine of Right. This, she argues, is inconsistent with Kant’s long-applied non-foundationalist methodology in both his theoretical and practical philosophy. The aim of this paper is to rescue bodily rights from Flikschuh’s criticism. The paper begins with a brief description of the work associating bodily rights and the innate right. It then moves to a presentation of Flikschuh’s criticisms. My aim will be to show that while her worries about foundationalism are justified, this does not require the dissociation of the innate right and bodily rights. Finally, I argue that there are also positive grounds for continuing to endorse the connection between the innate right and bodily rights that do not fall prey to Flikschuh’s legitimate worries.