Kant on Poverty and Social Justice

The main purpose of this paper is to bring into relief the difficulties faced by generous interpretations of the Kantian problem of poverty and to propose an alternative interpretation which a) agrees with some generous interpretations that Kant’s juridical treatment of poverty is to be understood by analogy with his juridical treatment of slavery, but which b) departs from generous interpretations in general by arguing that this analogy is not to be understood in terms of ‘dependence’ as such, but in terms of ‘depersonification’. More specifically, it argues that what makes slavery and poverty unjust for Kant is not that they entail a human being finding herself (completely) dependent on the choice of another human being, but that they entail a human being being deprived of her juridical personality. The Kantian problem of poverty is ultimately a problem of depersonification, and this problem of depersonification does not arise in all complete dependence relations.