Autonomy and republicanism: Immanuel Kant's philosophy of freedom

Political Theory

Volumn 25, Issue 4, 1997, Pages 524-558

  Bielefeldt, Heiner ^a  

^a BIELEFELD UNIVERSITY   (Germany)

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EID: 21744459998     PISSN: 00905917     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1177/0090591797025004003     Document Type: Article

References (110)

1. See Michael J. Sandel, ed., Introduction, Liberalism and Its Critics (New York: New York University Press, 1984), 5.
2. Kant, "An Answer to the Question: What Is Enlightenment?" (1784), Political Writings, 2d ed., trans. H. B. Nisbet, ed. Hans Reiss (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 54.
3. Ibid., 54.
4. Ibid., 54.
5. Ibid., 54.
6. Ibid., 54.
7. Ibid., 58.
8. See Aquinas, Summa Theologiae, II/I, qu. 19, art. 5, resp.
9. Kant, Metaphysics of Morals (1797). Translated, with introduction and notes, by Mary Gregor (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 202.
10. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (1785). Translated by Lewis White Beck, critical essays edited by Robert Paul Wolff (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 11.
11. Lewis White Beck, "Kant's Two Conceptions of the Will in Their Political Context," Kant and Political Philosophy: The Contemporary Legacy, ed. Ronald Beiner and Willi am James Booth (New Haven, CT, and London: Yale University Press, 1993), 43.
12. See Onora O'Neill, Constructions of Reason: Explorations of Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), 77.
13. Foundations, 56.
14. The distinction between Wille and Willkür, that is, between the inwardly binding self-legislative "will" on one hand and the faculty of "choice" on the other, is developed by Kant in Metaphysics of Morals. For a closer analysis, See Beck, "Kant's Two Conceptions," Kant and Political Philosophy.
15. See J. B. Schneewind, "Autonomy, Obligation, and Virtue: An Overview of Kant's Moral Philosophy," The Cambridge Companion to Kant, ed. Paul Guyer (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 309-41.
16. See Michael J. Sandel, "Justice and the Good," Liberalism and Its Critics, 170: "Freed from the dictates of nature and the sanction of social roles, the deontological subject is installed as sovereign, cast as the author of the only moral meanings there are." The same misunderstanding can be found in the introduction by John Ladd to Kant's "Metaphysical Elements of Justice," pt. I of Metaphysics of Morals (Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1965), xxvi: "It is clear, therefore, that, in Kant's theory of moral autonomy, the individual's Will plays the same role that is assigned to the Will of God by some theologians; it provides the foundation of morality."
17. Foundations, 35: "Thus no imperatives hold for the divine will or, more generally, for a holy will. The 'ought' is here out of place, for the volition of itself is necessarily in unison with the law. Therefore imperatives are only formulas expressing the relation of objective laws of volition in general to the subjective imperfection of the will of this or that rational being, e.g., the human will."
18. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (1788). 3rd ed., Irans, and ed. Lewis White Beck (New York: Macmillan, 1993), 86.
19. See Kant's analysis of the concept of the "highest good" in Critique of Practical Reason, 116ff.
20. Kant confesses that reading Rousseau has liberated him from his former intellectual superciliousness and made him respect the morality of ordinary people. See Kant's Collected Works, ed. Prussian Academy of Sciences (Berlin, 1902 ff), 20:44.
21. Critique of Practical Reason, 8, footnote.
22. Foundations, 23.
23. Ibid., 24 f.
24. See Otfried Hoffe, Immanuel Kant (Munich: C. H. Beck, 1983), 172.
25. These distinctions can be found in the first two sections of Foundations.
26. See, for instance, Seyla Benhabib, Situating the Self: Gender, Community and Postmodernism and Contemporary Ethics (New York: Routledge, 1992), 131.
27. See Dieter Henrich, "Der Begriff der sittlichen Ensicht und Kants Lehre vom Faktum der Vernunft," Kant: Zur Deutung seiner Theorie von Erkennen und Handelnin, ed. Gerold Prauss (Cologne: Kiepenheuer & Witsch, 1973), 223-54.
28. Foundations, 94.
29. See the third antinomy of nature versus freedom in the dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason (1781). For an interpretation, See Henry E. Allison, Kant's Theory of Freedom (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), 11 ff.
30. Foundations, 89.
31. Critique of Practical Reason, 70 ff. For an analysis of Kant's typic, See Paul Dietrichson, "Kant's Criteria of Universalizability," within the series of critical essays in the edition by Robert Paul Wolff of Kant's Foundations, 163-207; Gerhard Krüger, Philosophie und Moral in der Kantischen Kritik, 2d ed. (Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1967), 84 ff; Johannes Schwartländer, Der Menschist Person: Kants Lehre vom Menschen(Stattgart:Koluhammtt, 1968), 154 ff; Heinrich Böckerstette, Aporien der Freiheit und ihre Aufklärung durch Kant (Stuttgart: Frommann Holzboog, 1982), 325 ff; Annemarie Pieper, "Kant und die Methode der Analogie," Kant in der Diskussion der Moderne, ed. Gerhard Schönrich and Yasushi Kalo (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1996), 92-112.
32. Critique of Practical Reason, 48.
33. Ibid., 169.
34. Foundations, 20.
35. Ibid., 20, footnote.
36. Onora O'Neill, "Consistency in Action," Morality and Universality: Essays on Ethical Universalizability, ed. Nelson T. Potter and Mark Timmons (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1985), 162.
37. Foundations, 44.
38. Ibid., 23.
39. Ibid.. 34.
40. Rawls differs essentially from Kant. In his Theory of Justice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1971), he fails to distinguish between practical and theoretical use of reason. Consequently, the universalizability test which Rawls carries out with his construction of an "original position" amounts to a mere thought experiment See Heiner Bielefeldt, Neuzeitliches Freiheitsrecht und politische Gerechtigkeit: Perspektiven der Gesellschaftsvertragstheorien (Würzburg: Köngishausen & Neumann, 1990), 127 ff.
41. Foundations, 6.
42. See Hannah Arendt, Lectures on Kant's Political Philosophy, ed. Ronald Beiner, with an interpretative essay (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982).
43. See Ronald Beiner, Political Judgment (London: Methuen, 1983), 63 ff.
44. Kant, "Über ein vermeintes Recht aus Menschenliebe zu lügen" (1797), Collected Works, 8:423-30.
45. L. W. Beck has argued that, from a systematic point of view, the universalizability requirement of the categorical imperative can well be applied to maxims that are formulated conditionally, that is, in if-clauses. This possibility of "apodictic hypothetical imperatives" is not taken into account by Kant See Lewis White Beck, "Apodictic Imperatives," Kant Studien 49 (1957-58), 7-24.
46. See Benhabib, Judgement and the Moral Foundations of politics in Hannah Arendt's thought. In situating the self, 121-44.
47. Ibid., 54.
48. See Richard McCarty, "Motivation and Moral Choice in Kant's Theory of Rational Agency," Kant Studien 85 (1994), 15-31.
49. The "sense of justice" which Rawls invokes as a motivation to act in accordance with the principles of justice (see Theory of Justice, chap. 8) is no equivalent to Kant's notion of respect, because the Rawlsian sense of justice operates as a psychological, that is, empirical, inclination, whereas for Kant the moral law itself works as a motive to act morally, a motive which goes beyond the realm of empirical psychology.
50. Foundations, 16.
51. Critique of Practical Reason, 19 f.
52. H. J. Paton, The Categorical Imperative: A Study in Kant's Moral Philosophy (London: Hutchinson, 1947), 63 ff.
53. See Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), 240.
54. Critique of Practical Reason, 77 f.
55. Ibid., 81.
56. Ibid., 81.
57. Benhabib, In the shadow of Aristotle and Hegel. In situating the self, 23-67.
58. Foundations, 60.
59. On the different formulations of the categorical imperative and their interrelation, See Paton, The Categorical Imperative, 129 ff.
60. Foundations, 20.
61. Peter Berger, "On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honour," Liberalism and Its Critics, 149-58.
62. See Steven B. Smith, Hegel's Critique of Liberalism: Rights in Context (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), 70 ff.
63. Metaphysics of Morals, 56.
64. Ibid., 63.1 have replaced the term "universal law" in Gregor's translation with the term "general law." For an explanation, see note 76.
65. Ibid., 63: 'This principle of innate freedom already involves the following authorizations, which are not really distinct from it...: innate equality, that is, independence from being bound by others to more than one can in rum bind them."
66. Ibid., 57.
67. Ibid., 57.
68. Ibid., 46. For a closer analysis of this difference between ethics and jurisprudence, See Wolfgang Kersting, Wohlgeordnete Freiheit: Immanuel Kants Rechts- und Staatsphilosopie (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1993), 175 ff.
69. Kant, Religion within the Limits of Reason Alone (1793). Translated, with an introduction and notes, by Theodore M. Greene and Hoyt H. Hudson, and essay by John R. Silber (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), 87.
70. See Gerhard Luf, Freiheit und Gleichheit: Die Aktualität impolitischen Denken Kants (Vienna and New York: Springer, 1978), 53.
71. Kant, "Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch" (1795), Political Writings, 101.
72. See Klaus E. Kaehler, "Die Argumente von apriorischer Rechtslehre und positivem Recht bei Kant," Jahrbuch für Recht und Ethik (Annual Review of Law and Ethics) 1 (1993): 103-12.
73. See "Perpetual Peace," 126 f.
74. Metaphysics of Morals, 56.
75. Berger, "On the Obsolescence of the Concept of Honour," Liberalism and Its Critics.
76. This translation can sometimes be found in the edition by Hans Reiss of Kant's Political Writings (Irans. H. B. Nisbet), where Kant's definition of right reads as follows: "Right is the restriction of each individual's freedom so that it harmonises with the freedom of everyone else (in so far as this is possible within the terms of a general law)." Kant, "On the Common Saying: "This May Be True in Theory, but It Does Not Apply in Practice" (1793), Political Writings, 73 (emphasis added). It should be noted that Nisbet's translation of allgemein seems to randomly shift back and forth between "general" and "universal." Gregor's translation can be justified with regard to Kant himself, who, by invoking the Latin distinction between "universal" and "general," emphasizes that the very concept of law requires universality in the sense of being valid without arbitrary exceptions. See Kant, "Perpetual Peace," 98.
77. See Ingeborg Maus, Zur Aufklärung der Demokratietheorie: Rechts- und demokratietheoretische Überlegungen im Anschluβ an Kant (Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp, 1992).
78. See Theory and Practice, 79: "An entire people cannot, however, be expected to reach unanimity, but only to show a majority of votes (and not even of direct votes, but simply of the votes of those delegated in a large nation to represent the people)." See also "Perpetual Peace," 101: "For any form of government which is not representative is essentially an anomaly."
79. Theory and Practice, 79.
80. See Rousseau, Da contrat social, II, 4; Kant, Metaphysics of Morals, 128.
81. See RawIs, Theory of Justice, 118 ff.
82. Du contrat social, II, 6.
83. Metaphysics of Morals, 128: decrees "are directed to decisions in particular cases and are given as subject to be changed."
84. See Perpetual Peace," 101.
85. Kant, "Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose" (1784), Political Writings, 46.
86. See Perpetual Peace," 108.
87. Ibid., 114.
88. Ibid., 114.
89. An example is the interpretation of Kant's philosophy of right by Hans-Georg Deggau, DieAporien der Rechtslehre Kants (Stuttgart: Frommann Holzboog, 1983).
90. Metaphysics of Morals, 124.
91. The "natural right" which Hobbes assumes people have in the state of nature is purely abstract in that it permits everyone to use all available means of self-defense. It includes neither normative claims nor normative constraints. See Leviathan, 1,14. Kant, by contrast, postulates the validity of concrete legal claims and legal constraints also in the state of nature. See Metaphysics of Morals, 77 ff. On the difference between Hobbes and Kant in this regard, See Kersting, Wohlgeordnete Freiheit: Immanuel Kants Rechts- und Staatsphilosopie, 329.
92. Metaphysics of Morals, 77.
93. Ibid., 85.
94. See C. B. Macpherson, The Political Theory of Possessive Individualism: Hobbes to Locke (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1962).
95. Metaphysics of Morals, 77.
96. See "Perpetual Peace," 93 ff.
97. Ibid., 96.
98. Ibid.. 117.
99. Theory and Practice, 73. That Kant purges the concept of a social contract from all voluntaristic connotations is rightly pointed out by Patrick Riley, Will and Political Legitimacy: A Critical Exposition of Social Contract Theory in Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, Kant, and Hegel (Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), 125 ff.
100. See What Is Enlightenment?" 55.
101. Theory and Practice, 84 f.
102. Kant, "The Contest of Faculties" (1797), Political Writings, 187.
103. Metaphysics of Morals, 149.
104. See Contest of Faculties," 184.
105. See Perpetual Peace," 101.
106. See Theory and Practice, 78: "The only qualification required by a citizen (apart, of course, from being an adult male) is that he must be his own master (sui iuris), and must have some property (which can include any skill, trade, fine art or science) to support himself."
107. See, for instance, Wolfgang Schild, "Freiheit-Gleichheit-'Selbständigkeit' (Kant): Strukturmomente der Freiheit," Menschenrechte und Demokratie, ed. Johannes Schwartländer (Kehl: N. P. Engel, 1981), 135-76.
108. See Eduard Bernstein, Die Voraussetzungen des Sozialismus und die Aufgaben der Sozialdemokratie (1899) (Reinbek: Rowohlt, 1969).
109. See, for instance, Isaiah Berlin, 'Two Concepts of Liberty," Liberalism and Its Critics, 15-36.
110. See, for instance, Benjamin R. Barber, "Liberal Democracy and the Costs of Consent," Liberalism and the Moral Life, ed. Nancy L. Rosenblum (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1989X54-68.