Crisis and Critique: The Political Language of Kant’s Theoretical Philosophy

The paper aims to consider political implications of Immanuel Kant’s theoretical philosophy and therefore to contribute to the debate on the role of legal and political metaphors in the Critique of Pure Reason. With regard to recent contributions to this debate, it is possible to distinguish (broadly construed) between two main accounts: a private-law oriented reading and a rather political or public-law oriented reading. The private law account emphasises that Kant has developed his theory of experience and knowledge against the background of the model of natural private law theory of acquisition of private property. (Seeberg 2006) It relies on Kant’s self-interpretation of the critical project, presented in the 1790 polemical writing against Johann August Eberhard. There, Kant argues against an understanding of the pure concepts of the understanding as innate representations and claims that the cognising subject acquires these concepts through a procedure which natural private law scholars had labelled “original acquisition”. (On the role of the theory of original acquisition in Kant, see also Oberhausen 1997) Knowledge of objects of experience, on the other hand, were acquired derivatively. The political reading of the legal metaphors in Kant rejects the understanding of Kant’s theoretical philosophy through the lens of natural private law. (O’Neil 1989; Moeller 2020) The acquisition of knowledge must not be compared to the acquisition of private property. The relation between different knowers must be construed in another way than against the background of the relations between different proprietors. According to this account, Kant’s aim in the Critique of Pure Reason must be understood as establishing a legal condition for knowledge – a condition in which cognising subjects may formulate legitimate claims. The reference to the natural private law theory of acquisition is explicitly rejected. (See, e.g., Moeller 2020) In the paper, I will argue that both accounts rely only partly on legitimate grounds and fail to grasp the full picture. The reason for their shortcomings is the narrow interpretation of the natural law theory of acquisition as having merely a private law character. It will be argued that the theory of acquisition as it has emerged in natural law in and after Hugo Grotius has essentially also a political and public law dimension: the establishment of a legal condition is nothing else than a process of acquisition – the process of acquisition of sovereign rights.