Did Kant respect persons?

Res Publica

Volumn 6, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 285-299

  Neumann, Michael ^a  

^a TRENT UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

Author keywords

Kant; Liberalism; Libertarianism; Nozick; Rawls; Respect for persons

Indexed keywords

EID: 33748676820     PISSN: 13564765     EISSN: 15728692     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1009619600489     Document Type: Article

References (47)

1. One recent writer whose 'Kantianism' is some what closer to Rawls than to Nozick is Charles Taylor: see, for example, his Multiculturalism and "The Politics of Recognition" (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1992), 41, 57. [T]he second principle ... is commonly thought to derive from ... Kant's ... system. This principle is sometimes referred to as the Principle of Respect for Persons, by which is usually meant that individuals should be allowed to be self-determining agents making
2. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals (Trans. Lewis White Beck) (Indianaplis: Bobbs-Merrill [Library of Liberal Arts], 1959), 54 [4:429]. (Numbers in square brackets, in this and other references to Kant's work, are to volume and page numbers of the
3. "Akademie-Ausgabe": Kants gessamelte Schriften (Berlin, Königliche Akademie der Wissenschaften: G. Reimer, 1902-1942)
4. . Nozick's reliance on this passage has already been noted. Rawls takes it as a point of departure for his "Main Grounds for the Two Principles", A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1971), 179-83. The formulation is also central to
5. R.S. Downie and Elizabeth Telfer, Respect for Persons: A philosophical analysis of the moral, political and religious idea of the supreme worth of the individual person (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1969).
6. Something very similar to this interpretation is found, for instance, in Robert Paul Wolff's The Autonomy of Reason: A Commentary on Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals (New York: Harper and Row, 1973), 175: "[Presumably, what Kant means by treating humanity as an end-in-itself is that I must never fail to take account of the fact that I am dealing with rational moral agents rather than things. In short, I must keep in mind that they have purposes too. This in turn involves respecting their purposes, rather than ignoring them
7. ." Nancy (Ann) Davis' "Using Persons and Common Sense", Ethics 94/3 (1984), 387-406, provides another example of this sort of interpretation when she suggests it is "Kantian" to be able to "share the ends of" another's action (402).
8. Tom L. Beauchamp, "Suicide", in Tom Reagan, ed., Matters of Life and Death (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1980), 80.
9. Nozick, Anarchy, State, and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1974), 30ff.
10. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, op. cit., 256.
11. Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Ibid., 440.
12. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., 24ff. [4:408].
13. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., 49 [4:425].
14. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., 65 [4:439].
15. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., 47 [4:429].
16. Derek Parfit, Reasons and Persons (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984), 219-80.
17. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason (trans. Lewis White Beck) (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1956), 89 [5:87].
18. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (Mary Gregor, ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), Part II, I.ii.11, 186 [6:434ff.].
19. For example, with regard to contingent (meritorious) duty to others, Kant says that "the ends of any person, who is an end in himself, must as far as possible be also my end, if that conception of an end in itself it to have full effect on me". - Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., 50 [4:430].
20. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., 54 [4:435].
21. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., 54 [4:436] ("nur so viele Formeln eben desselben Gesetzes").
22. See David Lyons, Forms and Limits of Utilitarianism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1965), 28ff. The phrase "extensional equivalence" is misleading because, unlike two terms which have the same extension in semantics, extensional equivalence covers both actual and possible cases.
23. See, for example, Critique of Practical Reason, op. cit., 32 [5:31ff.];
24. Critique of Practical Reason, ibid. 74 [5:71ff.];
25. Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., 45 [4: 427].
26. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., 39 [4:421],
27. and Critique of Practical Reason, op. cit., 30 [5:30].
28. Here is a much more discursive presentation of the argument in the other direction; from the first to the second formulation. If I treat you according to the first formulation, I treat you according to universal and necessary practical principles. But these principles set the goals of any rational nature, including your own. So when I treat you this way, I treat your rational nature according to its own goals and principles, and therefore as an end in itself. Since your rational nature is your humanity, when I treat you in this manner I am also treating you according to the goals and principles of your humanity. I am therefore acting so that I treat the humanity in your person as an end, not a mere means. So to act according to maxims that I can at the same time will as universal laws of nature is to treat the humanity in your person as an end, never a mere means. The first formulation of the categorical imperative does indeed imply the second formulation.
29. Charles Taylor, Critique of Practical Reason, op. cit., 56-7.
30. See also Carol Gould's discussion of "the right that each individual has to self-development" in Rethinking Democracy: Freedom and social cooperation in politics, economy, and society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988), 206 ff.
31. See, for instance, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., 14ff. [4:398].
32. Kant, Critique of Judgement (trans. James Creed Meredith) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952) Li. 1.5, BA 16, 49 [5:210].
33. Victor J. Seidler, Kant, Respect, and Injustice: The limits of Liberal Moral Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986), 36.
34. See also Christine M. Korsgaard, Creating the Kingdom of Ends (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 130ff.;
35. and Thomas E. Hill Jr., Autonomy and Self-Respect (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1991), 168ff.,
36. and Dignity and Practical Reason in Kant's Moral Theory (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 39ff.
37. See above and, for instance, Critique of Practical Reason, op. cit., Li. 1.3, 101 [5:97ff.],
38. and Critique of Practical Reason, II.v, 130 [5:128]: "[N]ow a being which is capable [m.i.] of actions by the idea of laws is an intelligence (a rational being), and the causality of such a being according to the idea of laws is his will."
39. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., Part I, general Remark E, 108 [6:335].
40. Kant, Critique of Practical Reason, op. cit., 79-81 [5:77f.]
41. Kant, Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., 49 [4:431].
42. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, op. cit., Pt. II, Introduction, viii-ix, 154-7 [6:391-95].
43. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., vii, 153 [6:390] and
44. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, 203-13 [6:462-68] .
45. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid., viii, 155 [6:393].
46. Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals, Ibid.,v.B., 151 [6:388].
47. I would like to thank Manal Stamboulie and John Burbidge for their comments on an earlier version of this essay.