Kant and Corruption with a Focus on Environmental Policy

Recent contributions on corruption in Kant tend to focus on his writings on religion (Auweele 2015, Merritt 2020). Other accounts take a more political angle with indirect consideration of corruption in sincerity and international politics (Baiasu and Loriaux 2017) or leadership and ethical institutions (DiCenso 2019). This paper pursues a route not dissimilar from the latter: it inquires into Kantian views on corruption (both moral or political) by focusing on convergences between Kant’s works on ethics, religion, and politics, and by exploring their relevance for the globally important issue of sustainability. The paper proceeds in three parts. In order to pinpoint the paper’s focus and to motivate its aims, I begin by considering various ways that corruption (and related practices) is viewed across Kant’s works and by commentators. After discussing diverging literature on this topic, I disambiguate the term for moral and political purposes, highlighting the academic lacuna on this specific side. This sets the stage in the second part for beginning to think about how Kantians might answer the following sorts of questions: Does Kant present a systematic account of moral or political corruption? What resources can Kantian thought provide for making sense of environmentally-relevant global (or local) issues rooted in or exacerbated by bribery, deception, or hypocrisy? Should regulatory capture be viewed primarily as an ethical or juridical issue for Kant? Can Kantians make sense of corrupt systems, or must corruption be understood and addressed at the individual level? If they can, what degree of corruption at the institutional level, if any, constitutes a state of nature for which there is a duty to exit? In the third and final part, I concentrate on Kant’s Doctrine of Right and Doctrine of Virtue to make the case that regulatory capture should be viewed as morally and juridically impermissible. Individuals have obligations to avoid corrupting behaviors and practices that tend toward the undermining of duty for self-interest. Regulatory capture vis-à-vis environmental policy, understood from the perspective of the individual, is thus proscribed. Furthermore—and since regulatory capture should not be appreciated merely as an individual problem but a phenomenon involving maladaptive democratic systems—governments have obligations to forcibly reign in corruption, for it undermines the stability and legitimacy of the juridical state in the first place. The climate crisis, presented as a case study for such discussions, reminds us why these Kantian injunctions matter for today’s global politics. Sources: DiCenso, James J. (2019). ‘Kant on Ethical Institutions’. The Southern Journal of Philosophy 57: 30-55. Baiasu, Sorin and Sylvie Loriaux (eds) (2017). Sincerity in Politics and International Relations. Routledge. Merritt, Melissa (2021). ‘Nature, Corruption, and Freedom: Stoic Ethics in Kant's Religion’. European Journal of Philosophy 29 (1): 3-24. Timmerman, Jens (2000). ‘Kant’s Puzzling Ethics of Maxims’. The Harvard Review of Philosophy 8: 39-52. Vanden Auweele, D. (2015). ‘Kant on Religious Moral Education’. Kantian Review 20 (3): 373-394