Das Rousseausche in Friedrich Schillers ‚Wilhelm Tell’ (German Edition)

In this paper we want to show some aspects of this mechanism and of its very need for freedom itself, which will reveal the essential pragmatic condition of the Enlightenment. The mechanism is ultimately — and therefore metaphysically — a condition of the being of man which is active and passive at the same time , of the logical use of his faculties which can be reflective and determinative and of the form of government which can be republican and despotic. Ein deutscher Philosoph , by Manfred Kuehn La persistance d'un concept dogmatique au sein du criticisme?

Von den Vorlesungen zur Metaphysik der Sitten. These papers were first presented at a conference held at the Humboldt University Berlin in June Tobias Rosefeldt Die 36 Jahre der Philosophie: Eine Rekonstruktion , by Volker Dieringer Redemption in Poetry and Philosophy: Wordsworth, Kant, and the making of the post-Christian imagination. Baylor University Press, Hajime, Tanabe and Cody Staton. This creative essay by Tanabe represents the hallmark Kyoto School interpretation of Kant.

Tanabe weaves his account of Kant with elements from other philosophers in an attempt to think systematically about the nature of freedom. In this brief, but rich essay,Tanabe unfolds one of the more creative aspects of his philosophy through Kant. Belonging to such kind of nature reason would turn an object of possible empirical knowledge and, accordingly, have to correspond to something in the world of phenomena — what obviously is not the case. Kants Umgang mit dem Offenbarungsbegriff vor und in der Religionsschrift als Beitrag zu dessen diskreter Transformation.

So you cannot consistently split the difference between Conceptualism and super-Conceptualism in the way that, e. Kantianism, Liberalism, and Feminism: Problem formy w perspektywie transcendentalnej u Kanta i Wittgensteina: Seminare Kant - Leibniz - Schiller , ed. Zu Kants Begriff des reinen Existenzbewusstseins. Untersuchungen zu Kant und Hegel. Kant and Non-Conceptual Content. Most of the contributions were originally published in the International Journal of Philosophical Studies , vol.

Kant and non-conceptual content: Kant and Contemporary Theory of Knowledge. Kant Yearbook , vol. Jochen Briesen Is Kant W right? George Olms Verlag, Untersuchungen zur Vernunftkonzeption in Herders Metakritik. Transformationen vorkritischer — Figurationen nachkantischer Philosophie. The article starts out with a brief presentation of the meaning of Kantian constructivism, and then goes on to analyze the concept of right and of the attributes that define citizenships: Finally, it examines the Kantian conception of the original contract in order to demonstrate that, according to Kant, there are political duties of both right and virtue.

Einige Anmerkungen zu KrV B ff. The collegiality and deliberativeness of the researchers and institutions, involved in Kantian studies, which allowed for the high quality of early volumes, is absent today. The responsible institutions and publishers do not react to information regarding even the most obvious shortcomings and mistakes that could be easily corrected, while the plans for future reprints are based predominantly on commercial interests.

The problems of unification of orthography, correction of mistakes in recent reprints, incorrect abbreviations of names, differences in printed editions are discussed in detail. Verlag Karl Alber, Prolegomenon haud magnum , Christian Illies Kann die teleologische Urteilskraft naturalisiert werden?

Die Grundlegung der modernen Philosophie C. Kant denies the reducibility of his synthetic to analytic judgments by conceptual analysis. Leibniz upholds general reducibility, presenting the Principle of Sufficient Reason as its instrument. First, this principle is described as incompatible with the metaphysics of experience.

Second, Kant claims it is incompatible with the metaphysical contingency of free agency. Kant on symbolic representation of the absolute"; Jutta Heinz, "'Neither mere allegories nor mere history': Hegel's distinction between mystical and symbolical in The Spirit of Christianity and its Fate "; James Vigus, "'All are but parts of one stupendous whole'?: The essay tries to show against this the reasons that Kant had in order to discharge the principle of retaliation: Kant, however, thinks that the degree of the punishment must be appropriate to the weight of the crime.

Such a consistency between crime and punishment is only guaranteed within the frame of the jus talionis. The article tries to expose the relationship between Rousseau and Kant with regard to the concept of the general will. In part III it is discussed how Kant has changed the theory of the general will in order to combine it with a representative constitution of the republic.

The paper investigates some aspects of the critique which was presented by the criminal-political Enlightenment, particularly connected with the name Cesare Beccaria, and aimed against the prevalent practice in criminal law. Beside torture it was particularly death penalty that became the object of the enlightened critique. However, a more thorough research shows that from the point of view of humanity there were much fewer objections raised against the cruelty of criminal practice than there were thoughts about its utility.

According to this, reform proposals focus on changes of criminal judiciary in the form of utilitarianism. In the last part the author outlines the opposite views of I. Kant who definitely overcame the theoretical utilitarianism of the Enlightenment in criminal law. Das Leben der Vernunft: Kants Theorie einer eigentlich rationalen Naturwissenschaft und die Revolutionen der Mathematik und der Physik im Eine logisch-semantische Untersuchung im Hinblick auf Arist.

Die Freiheit der Alten und die Freiheit der Heutigen: Kants normatives Modell der Demokratie Margit Ruffing: Humes Wunderkritik und das Problem des Zeugnisses anderer: Mit einem Ausblick auf Kant Andree Hahmann: Teleologie, Subjekt und Gott Mikiko Tanaka: Der Ort des "Zweifelglaubens" innerhalb einer differenzierten Idee der kantischen Ethikotheologie: Jahrhunderts Ernst Wolfgang Orth: Bewusstsein als Funktion der Mitteilung Werner Busch: Cosmopolitan Philosophy and Diplomatic Casuistry. Kant, Critique and Politics. Kant and the Creation of Freedom: Oxford University Press, Riflessioni sul sentimento morale nella critica della ragione pratica.

Curiously, Kant argues for this principle by inferring from a psychological premise about internal sensations they have intensive magnitudes to a metaphysical thesis about external objects they also have intensive magnitudes.

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Most commentators dismiss the argument as a failure. In this article I give a reconstruction of Kant's argument that attempts to rehabilitate the argument back into his broader transcendental theory of experience. I argue that we can make sense of the argument's central inference by appeal to Kant's theory of empirical intuition and by an analysis of the way in which Kant thinks sensory matter constitutes our most basic representations of objects. Kant and the modernity of the absent public. Das Schematismuskapitel in der Kritik der reinen Vernunft: Notes on Two Recent Studies.

A Study for Educators. Adventures in the Abyss. Canadian Journal of Continental Philosophy The Centrality of Aesthetic Judgments of Taste. Between Scholasticism and Cosmopolitanism. Trendelenburg versus Kant, Fischer and Bird. Trendelenburg argued that Kant's arguments in support of transcendental idealism ignored the possibility that space and time are both ideal and real. This undermines transcendental idealism.

Bird's attempt to show that the Analytic considers, but rejects, the alternative fails: But neither Bird's descriptivism, nor Fischer's commitment to things-in-themselves, answers Trendelenburg's sceptical worry about transcendental idealism. Here Kant admits the existence of bodies external to us, although unknown as what they might be in themselves. The most important recent discussions of this passage, i.

The article is a contribution to understanding the nature of Kant's transcendental idealism, defending the view, especially against Prauss and Bird, that Kant is committed to the existence of things in themselves. How to Treat Persons. Kants und Hegels Auseinandersetzung mit Hobbes. Diese Umdeutung ist jedoch nicht ohne Suggestionskraft. Kants Vertragskonstruktion nun revidiert diese antimodernistische Ausrichtung, die der Kontraktualismus bei Rousseau erhalten hat. Selected Articles Kaliningrad , pp.

The 18th century philosophy actively used the notion of machine in its extended meaning, especially when describing both the world as a whole and its constituent bodies. Consequently, the initial meaning of that notion underwent peculiar changes: A metaphysical comprehension of the notion of machine was developed predominantly in the framework of cosmology. International Philosophical Quarterly One of the most widely accepted contemporary constraints on theories of self-knowledge is that they must account for the very different ways in which cognitive subjects know their own minds and the ways in which they know other minds.

Through the influence of Peter Strawson, Kant is often taken to be an original source for this view. I argue that Kant is quite explicit in holding the opposite position. In a little discussed passage in the Paralogisms chapter, he argues that cognitive subjects have no way of understanding the minds of others except by using their own minds as a model for others. Kant Studies Online , posted April 2, In order to sustain this interpretation, I shall reconstruct parts of arguments from the entire Critique of Teleological Judgment. First, I shall argue that in the Analytic as in the Dialectic, the external purposiveness can legitimize only a teleological history of nature but not a universal history.

Second, I defend that in the Methodology, the idea of a universal history is grounded in an interest of pure practical reason. It also offers an examination about the critiques that were formulated in the reviews.

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The objective of this paper is to analyze the meaning of the central thesis of Kantian philosophy of history: However, although it seems simple at first glance, the question of the meaning of this thesis is still a topic for intense debate. The originality of this paper is to present, for the first time, a general, systematic and exhaustive chart of the different interpretations and criticisms this thesis has received throughout history. Thus, any interpretation that aims to be minimally satisfactory needs to consider all arguments and positions presented here.

This paper reconstructs the Kantian foundation of the teleological judgment from the formal-logical ground to the deduction of the reflective teleological judgment. An intricate logical argumentation is put forth, which is not as linear as the text would suggest. It is defended that the internal or the intrinsic purposiveness of nature is transcendental legitimated, whereas the external or relative purposiveness remains only as useful and problematic.

Studia z praktycznej filozofii Kanta i jej historia. Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Mikolaja Kopernika, I will show that this premise is not prone to convince in regard to the writings by Hume and Kant. McDowell not only fails to interpret both of these philosophers in an adequate manner but he also fails to draw attention to the qualities of their theories, which are still of a systematic interest these days. We look forward to clarify the main aspects of the doctrine of radical evil in the text Religion , in order then to focus its main function in the idea of an ethical community.

With the differentiation between the most free selfdetermination and the obligatory moral law, we look forward to show that, with his doctrine of radical evil, Kant, although he treats a moral-philosophical problem trusted by the platonic tradition, that is, or free-will is already under the moral law or its autonomy is morally neutral, did not intend to solve it, once this doctrine serves, rather, as an introduction to the thought of a virtuous community under the domain of God, therefore, to the clarification of the question: Such as it is thought the public right to pressure in the ambit of law, in the ambit of ethics, for certain, virtuous community has inserted freely the function of overcoming the status ethical naturalis.

Kants Zweckbegriff und das Problem einer Philosophie der technischen Kultur. Teleology , edited by Dietmar H. Knappik, Franz, and Erasmus Mayr. Kant on Symbolic Representation of the Absolute. Toward a Critique of Hermeneutic Experience. This tradition created a sub-system of creative communication and leisure bringing together both nobility and aristocracy and ordinary curious citizens. Kant, Hegel, und die Frage der Metaphysik: Revised doctoral dissertation Uni-Tilburg, Legal systems divide the world into persons and property, treating animals as property.

Some animal rights advocates have proposed treating animals as persons. Another option is to introduce a third normative category. This raises questions about how normative categories are established. In this article I argue that Kant established normative categories by determining what the presuppositions of rational practice are. Although the other animals do not engage in rational practice, our own rational practice requires us to give them standing.

This paper shows why Kant's critique of empirical psychology should not be read as a scathing criticism of quantitative scientific psychology, but has valuable lessons to teach in support of it. By analysing Kant's alleged objections in the light of his critical theory of cognition, it provides a fresh look at the problem of quantifying first-person experiences, such as emotions and sense-perceptions.

An in-depth discussion of applying the mathematical principles, which are defined in the Critique of Pure Reason as the constitutive conditions for mathematical-numerical experience in general, to inner sense will demonstrate why it is in principle possible to justify a quantitative structure of psychological judgments on the grounds of Kant's critical thinking.

In conclusion, it will propose how Kant's critique could be used in a constructive way to develop first steps towards a transcendental foundation of psychological knowledge. Christian Krijnen and Marc de Launay op cit. Quite a lot of parallels could be found between works by J. However, the major step towards the transcendental deduction of the categories has been taken by Kant himself in terms of content and methodology.

For Kant, postulates are originally subjective propositions necessarily supposed as objective ones. Otherwise, systematic theoretical cognition and compliance with the moral law become impossible. Krzymuski, Edmund, and Jan Widacki. Krakowskie Towarzystwo Edukacyjne, Kuehn, Manfred, and Charles Griswold. New Interpretations of a Controversial Doctrine , ed.

Journal of the History of Philosophy In a recent paper, Robert Hanna argues that Kant's incongruent counterparts example can be mobilized to show that some mental representations, which represent complex states of affairs as complex, do so entirely non-conceptually. I will argue that Hanna is right to see that Kant uses incongruent counterparts to show that there must be a non-conceptual component to cognition, but goes too far in concluding that there must be entirely non-conceptual representations that represent objects as existing in space and time.

Kant is deeply committed to the thesis that no representation of a complex state of affairs as complex can be entirely non-conceptual. For Kant, all representations of complex states of affairs as complex including those of incongruent counterparts are conceptually structured. I present an interpretation of the Transcendental Aesthetic according to which Kant not only aims at Leibnizian and Newtonian accounts of space and time, but also Hume's. Hume's account fails to make representations of complex states of affairs sufficiently determinate. Kant offers an account later in the Critique that is meant to correct this failing by requiring that all representations of complex states of affairs as complex be conceptually inferentially structured.

From Dichotomy to Identity , by Sally S. Brandom, Robert, and Francesco Lanzillotti. Kant always emphasized the problematic nature of self-knowledge in the fields of anthropology and psychology. Ever since his first works, he insisted on the impossibility of knowing with certainty, on the basis of actions, the subjective moral disposition of the agent, which alone gives action a moral value. This difficulty is not mitigated when moral judgment is directed at the subject itself. To these cognitive problems there is now added a tendency to self-deceit that is active in any moral life.

Cambridge Scholars Publishing, This essay concerns Kant's argument for the ideality and subjectivity of space in the Metaphysical Exposition of Space in the Critique of Pure Reason. This shows that some allegations by influential Anglo-Saxon commentators about the justificatory priority of ideality over subjectivity, and of the latter over the former, are unfounded. The essay also suggests an answer to the so-called neglected alternative objection.

Garden Theory and Philosophy in the Time of Kant. Thus we shall see that the three elements contained in the organic production according to the school of epigenesis in , that is to say, the geographical context, the formative force and certain virtual or generic dispositions are those which allow explain the origin of the permanent variations inside the species, the races. The theory of races is then the origin and the source of intelligibility of the Kantian conception of epigenesis. Heidegger stands up to the traditional, well known neo-Kantian interpretation of the Critique , and offers a new conception of ontological knowledge and cognition.

According to this conception, cognition is grounded in transcendental imagination where a threefold synthesis takes place. The paper consists of two parts. Part One presents the principles by which the human personality is structured, as well as the fundamental methodological questions of the essence of humanity. The author attempts to demonstrate that Kant was one of the first philosophers to discern the specificity of human nature in social relations of human personality, which he presented neither in a causal-deterministic form as a spiritual substance handed down from generation to generation nor an essentialist one as a timeless transcendental essence , but rather as a function of social experience for a particular human being both pragmatic-teleological and transcendental-a posteriori.

Race, sex and biology in Kant, Schelling and Hegel. Strategies of naturalization have pervaded throughout the course of modernity. In order to understand both the stability and the discontinuities of modes of naturalization that refer to the knowledge of the life sciences, it is worth going back to the time when biology and related forms of naturalizing sex and race first emerged.

The article explores philosophical articulations of biological knowledge at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. Changchun chu ban she, Licht dos Santos, Paulo R. The article presents the philosophical thought of Rudolf Zocher, Wolfgang Cramer and Hans Wagner, whose theoretical stance can be dubbed Neoneo-Kantianism. The article investigates their philosophical output and argues that they developed a transcendental reflection of a different kind than that of Baden Neo-Kantianism.

The transcendental reflection of Neoneo-Kantianism, especially in the work of Hans Wagner, takes on the topic of phenomenological inquiry and treats consciousness as a source of subject- object distinction, unlike Rickert and Windelband, who were developing transcendental reflection focused on aprioristic forms of cognition, much in the post-Fichtean vein, thus giving primacy to the subjective conditions of possible experience.

However, some worries and disagreements have arisen within the camp of contemporary virtue ethics concerning the Kantian concept of virtue. Some scholars have pointed out that Kantian virtue is at best nothing more than Aristotelian continence, that is, strength of will in the face of contrary emotions and appetites, and hence not a real virtue. The paper argues in favor of 2. Es handelt sich um eine sowohl historische als auch theoretische Betrachtung: Thus, the author shows an historic panorama of these assertions, which, whether as a purpose of the nature, considering it to an end to the human species, or instead, as an end to the human genre, since it demands the exercise of freedom.

This is also something that we are biologically set to accomplish. However, this endeavour will depend on our choices and also those of ours descendants.

Passwort vergessen?

Hence, affirming the existence of a biological determination of the human species does not imply reducing its behavior to a phenomena which can be merely explain by the laws of biology. Kant and the Morality of Freedom , by Katerina Deligiorgi Inhaltliche Inversionen und terminologische Ausdifferenzierungen in Kants Moralphilosophie zwischen und This article aims to show how Kant articulates his conception of human nature, arguing that it is linked to the attempt to show that morality is feasible to free human beings, i.

At the same time, we intend to analyze the closeness of the later philosophy of Kant with the ethics of care of the self of Foucault, arguing that such proximity rests on the thesis shared by both of a self-training or self-construction of man. In his response to the question about the conditions of the possibility of dependable cognition Kant first points to the faculties of the cognitive powers and subsequently lists the criteria and normative foundations of knowledge — a system of forms, concepts and principles.

Kant primarily seeks the possibilities of experience — independent cognition, the logical criteria governing the possibility of cognition as such. The paper outlines the creation of the systemic union of the primal concepts and principles of pure reason, which is necessary for the creation of knowledge. In other words, it follows the constitution phases of the cognition system: It is this systemic unity which makes cognition science — or, in other words, pure reason — as it constitutes a specific system and is able to create science understood as the systemicunity of specific fields.

Die Bestimmung des Menschen Norbert Hinske and Clemens Schwaiger. Schiller interprete dell'etica kantiana. Kant and Schiller did not propose the same ethical system, yet their convictions were not completely antithetical, especially regarding the issue of purism and emotions. Paton in the s and which renewed the interest in Kantian ethics in the second half of the twentieth century. The final scope of this paper is, therefore, to prove that a true interdisciplinary approach is the only solution. A Polyphonic, Functional, and Open Concept.

Reason can be found in everybody since it is non-exclusive, but everybody has access to it only in part since human beings unavoidably follow, without however being aware of it, preconceptions and private views. Difficult Freedom and Radical Evil in Kant: The Dialectics of Aesthetic Agency: Revaluating German Aesthetics from Kant to Adorno. Specifically, he tried, without success, to develop the transcendental ground for microscale motions of bodies encountered in physical, electrical and chemical processes.

The paper is devoted to the contemporary discussions about the history of analytic philosophy, the criteria of its distinguishing as a philosophical movement and its present status. Makino, Eiji, and Kazuhiko Uzawa. According to a World-Concept and his Cosmopolitanism. This paper argues that, although no resistance or revolution is permitted in the Kantian state, very tyrannical regimes must not be obeyed because they do not qualify as states.

The essay shows how a state ceases to be a state, argues that persons have a moral responsibility to judge about it and defends the compatibility of this with Kantian authority. The reconstructed Kantian view has implications for how we conceive authority and obligation. It calls for a morally demanding definition of the state and asserts that the primary personal responsibility is not to evaluate the morality of every single law but to evaluate the moral standing of the polity.

Two of them deserve particular attention: Gadamer e Arendt interpreti di Kant. Marques, Ubirajara Rancan de Azevedo. Yet this reading faces a number of problems, all arising from the different features Kant seems to assign to appearances and things in themselves. The debate about how to understand this distinction has largely ignored the way that Kant applies this distinction to the self. This study shows for the first time that it is possible to describe the connections between morality and happiness in Immanuel Kant's philosophy in structural terms.

Ultimately, Kant's ethical philosophy teaches that goodness is a never-ending task in a conscious life, a life that remains aware of its own proclivities, engages with them wisely, and regards morality as the final reference point. Formen der Weltbeziehung in Kants Anthropologie. According to some interpretations of Kant Mathieu, Lehmann , there is a strict relationship between the last part of the Critique of Judgment and the Opus Postumum. In the Opus Postumum, instead of seeking a subjective principle the concept of end for reflective judgment, Kant seeks an objective principle of conformity to an end in nature itself, which, in a certain sense, makes it so that reflective judgment is not present in the principle.

How is it possible, then, to understand the connection between the two works if the antinomy of teleological judgment is characteristically preponderant in the second part of the third Critique? If the antinomy of teleological judgment is between mechanism and finalism, and this judgment is not present in the Opus Postumum, how does Kant think of the relationship between mechanism and final cause in this work?

In the posthumous work, is the antinomic thought of Kant with respect to speculation on nature not present? The purpose of this paper, however, is not to make an analysis of the above-mentioned antinomy, even though in the first part the antinomy is explained along with the arguments supporting it. Given that the antinomic thought of the Critique of Judgment is also present in the reflections on nature found in the posthumous work, we present, as a basis for the analysis given here, some reflections on the status of the antinomy in regard to the relation between the philosophy of nature and practical philosophy.

Kant's ethics has long been bedevilled by a peculiar tension. Women are not incidentally or tangentially excluded from the boundaries of political and moral agency, but rather must adopt an explicitly nonmoral character if we are to understand humanity as moving toward its naturally given, moral ends. We show how some important Cartesian echoes, clearly evident in True Estimation , have played a role in shaping some seminal ideas of Kant on dynamical forces. This paper aims to inquire, based on certain passages from Rousseau and Kant, if the bringing together of these philosophers could be fruitful in order to think a notion of human being compatible with that of dignity, which is evidently important in contemporary political philosophy.

Stanford University Press, A Response to Stephen Palmquist. The article discusses the meaning of the two kinds of faith such as the historical and pure religion. It highlights the theory of German philosopher Immanuel Kant on the difference of the two kinds of faith and mentions how they unite with shared morality.

It also mentions the theory of professor Stephen Palmquist and his interpretation of Kant's religion with dogmatic assumptions of grace. The Problem of Critical Ontology: The contemporary discussion of non-conceptual content inaugurated by Gareth Evans and John McDowell has generated a range of differing views as to Kant's position on the issues raised. I argue that for Kant perception is prior to thought and that it is as being prior that perception connects us to reality in outer intuition. I then argue that for Kant thought relates to perception by being the rule for perceptual procedures.

This accounts for thought's extending in scope beyond what we actually perceive to all that is manifest in space and time. As against Merleau-Ponty this Kantian understanding of thought beyond perception does not distort the nature of reality which remains essentially that which can be engaged. Epigenesis and the Development of Critical Philosophy. The University of Chicago Press, Kant's organicism — Generation and the task of classification — Buffon's natural history and the founding of organicism — Kant and the problem of origin — Kant's eclecticism — The rebirth of metaphysics — From the unity of reason to the unity of race — Empirical psychology in Tetens and Kant — Kant's architectonic: Bemerkungen zum zweiten Moment des Geschmacksurteils.

Kant denies that there can be any right of necessity. But, in reality, Kant goes further. According to Kant, the court of justice would find him guilty, but it would not punish him. A Commentary , edited by B. Sharon Byrd and Joachim Hruschka The first is that it implies a problematic asymmetry between powerful and less powerful states. The second is that it entails creating a global police force that has an obligation to intervene against egregious human rights violations worldwide, and that this seems incompatible with the idea that every person has an innate right to freedom.

There are important normative constraints relevant for institutional design in the international domain that Habermas does not take sufficiently into account. On the basis of my assessment of the multi-level model, I propose a hybrid model combining elements from Kant and Habermas. Kantowskie a priori i problem jego uhistorycznienia. Wydawnictwo Naukowe Akademii Pomorskiej, Commercium, Critique, and the Cosmopolitan Problematic. In this essay, I argue that there is more to his cosmopolitan point of view than his normative agenda.

I will further show how his particular way of framing the cosmopolitan problematic can be expanded and expatiated upon to develop a more critical, reflexive, and open-ended conception of cosmopolitan thinking. Chaukhamba Surbharati Prakashan, The Concept of Religious Passion.

According to Immanuel Kant. Leibniz, Kant und die Welt im Kopf des Philosophen. On the basis of my own reading of the many different uses of legal analogies in the first Critique , I argue that they cannot form a consistent methodological paradigm as Henrich and Bubner claim. It argues in defense of the thesis that although Kant often criticizes Stoic ethics, particularly its eudaimonism , he also adopts certain Stoic positions in his ethics and incorporates them into key aspects of his Doctrine of Virtue.

Specifically, the article attempts to show how Kant adopts the ideal of the Stoic sage and one of its most salient characteristics: The purpose of this article is to examine the religious and theological elements of Immanuel Kant's work. This is an area of Kant's oeuvre that has been neglected in the history of international thought; this is problematic as it is in these works that Kant addresses many themes which are important to his international-relations project, for example, human nature, the corruption of society, the possibility of ethical community, and cosmopolitanism.

A Reply to Hare. A Comparison of Two Federalisms. Kant e la geometria. Some artistic representations—the painting of a hat in a famous picture by Rembrandt is an example—are able to present vividly the character of what they represent precisely by calling attention to their medium of representation.

There is a puzzle about this whose structure, I argue, is analogous to that of a familiar Kantian problem for traditional realism. I offer a precise characterization of the puzzle, before arguing that an analogue for the case of representation to the Kantian solution to the problem for traditional realism is implausible.

I offer an alternative solution to the puzzle about representation which also explains why we should be interested in artistic representation in the first place. I close with the outline of a possible realist response to the traditional Kantian problem. This article articulates, and seeks to resolve, a paradox yielded by juxtaposing the ethical and the political philosophy of Immanuel Kant. As history demonstrates there is no certainty that the state will observe the rights of its citizens. The purpose of this intervention is to furnish a Kantian position on the current and continuing debate in international relations concerning the conflict between human rights and national self-determination.

Das Minimum der reinen praktischen Vernunft: Vom kategorischen Imperativ zum allgemeinen Rechtsprinzip bei Kant. On the one hand, Mosayebi answers this question by showing how Kant consistently developed the general principle of law from his moral philosophy. On the other hand, he demonstrates those transcendental critical moments that characterize this principle in contrast to the categorical imperative. The article is focused upon the anthropological crisis as one of the most important foundations of the global cultural crisis caused by the rapid development of modern technologies, including human technologies; it demonstrates the contents of the anthropological paradigm which dominated the culture throughout the 20th century, its essence is reduced to the total domination of man over the things in existence; it reveals the methodological importance of anthropological ideas regarding the anthropological era, the relation between man and the world, and the moral categorical imperative as suggested by I.

The new paradigm is aimed at overcoming the opposition of subject and object, man and culture, man and society, and man and nature; it opens the way to the environmental dimension of human existence, restoring its integrity, harmonious relationship with oneself, the others, and the world. Man can no longer exist outside of the world as its transformer master and user. He has to return to the world, coordinating his actions with the laws of nature to find a new home.

Perhaps the world as a Universe and peace as a Union will become this new home. Vorgeschichte und Bedeutung einer Definition. Essays on His Theory of Human Nature. A Commentary , by James J. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion Naturteleologie bei Aristoteles, Leibniz, Kant und Hegel: The article develops the following theses: The author of the article believes that the idea of perpetual peace formulated by Saint-Pierre, Rousseau, and Kant is always relevant for the humanity.

At the same time, the author stresses that more significant results in establishing peace and politics were achieved in the second half of the 20th century than ever before. Kant played the decisive role in this process being the only philosopher who took the issue of philosophical justification of perpetual peace to the logical conclusion. One can say that the humanity is now firmly on the path towards perpetual peace, whose philosophical justification was given by Kant.

Naragon, Steve, and Werner Stark. Notizen und Hinweise zu einem neu aufgefunden Kant-Blatt. Kant, Kantianism, and Idealism: Writers like Christine Korsgaard and Allen Wood understand Kant's idea of rational nature as an end in itself as a commitment to a substantive value.

This makes it hard for them to explain the supposed equivalence between the universal law and humanity formulations of the categorical imperative, since the former does not appear to assert any substantive value. Nor is it easy for defenders of value-based readings to explain Kant's claim that the law-giving nature of practical reason makes all beings with practical reason regard the idea of a rational nature as an end in itself. This article seeks to replace these value-based readings with a reading of the idea of rational nature as an end that fits better with the overall argument of the Groundwork.

Eine Studie zu Kants moralischer Psychologie. This text is a compilation of fragments from A. Some pages of the manuscript are missing. The front page of the typed version has L. Ognev is most satisfactory. The text is published according to the typed version by the kind permission of Father Savva. In doubtful cases omission, mismatched word endings, etc. All page-by-page notes are made by the publisher.

The offered fragments are thematically linked to E. Ein Produkt der Einbildungskraft? At once, he will search explicative models of nature, which not introduce moral elements in his considerations. Rediscovering Critical Ethics , by Sorin Baiasu Self-Legislation and Radical Kantian Constructivism. Radical constructivists appeal to self-legislation in arguing that rational agents are the ultimate sources of normative authority over themselves.

I chart the roots of radical constructivism and argue that its two leading Kantian proponents are unable to defend an account of self-legislation as the fundamental source of practical normativity without this legislation collapsing into a fatal arbitrariness. Christine Korsgaard cannot adequately justify the critical resources which agents use to navigate their practical identities.

This leaves her account riven between rigorism and voluntarism, such that it will not escape a paradox that arises when self-legislation is unable to appeal to external normative standards. However, she ultimately fails to defend sufficiently unconditional practical norms which could guide legislation.

These endemic problems with radical constructivist models of self-legislation prompt a reconstruction of a neglected realist self-legislative tradition which is exemplified by Christian Wolff. In outlining a rationalist and realist account of self-legislation, I argue that it can also make sense of our ability to overcome anomie and deference in practical action. Thus, I claim that we need not make laws but can make them our own. Note on the Deduction of Categories.

Reflections on an attempt to clarify from an ethical normative point of view the problems from the beginning of human life] Kant e-Prints 8. The Copenhagen interpretation also takes quantum theory as evidence for anti-realism. This article argues that the law of causality, as transcendental, applies only to the world as observable, not to hypothetical unobservable objects such as quarks, detectable only by high energy accelerators.

We present the first English translation of this obscure book review. Kant could have avoided much confusion surrounding Religion , had he taken this review more seriously. We therefore respond to three objections that Kant failed to address: Kant zwischen Phronesis und Klugheit. Kant, Hegel, Heidegger in Cornelio Fabro. Ateneo Pontificio Regina Apostolorum, My goal is to focus on the Religion and make sense of moral feeling as it appears in this context. As Kant notes, if the new, morally upright man is of a different character than the man he used to be, then it remains unclear how the new man can properly bear the debts of his old self.

To address this issue, we need the presupposition that a person is both continually conscious of her empirical, bodily identity and capable of experiencing a felt recognition of the moral law; without this presupposition, I argue that fair punishment and the just payment of evil debts is impossible.

It argues that we should distinguish between the idea of independence and its empirical form; that Kant equates the former with the idea of freedom as the real, non-nominal exercise of choice and the idea of equality as the absence of all overt and covert coercion; and that, as construed, both ideas are intrinsically connected with conditions which must be satisfied if consent to a law is to be real rather than merely nominal.

This seems uncontroversial point, or overwhelmingly accepted by commentators on Kant. However, it does not seem to be the case with reference to the presence in Kant's moral philosophy of what Rawls calls Manichean moral psychology. Such psychology asserts the existence of two selves, a good, that we have while we belong to the intelligible world, and the other bad, that we have while we belong to the sensible world.

Rawls rightly points out the difficulties that immediately emerge from the Manichean moral psychology, namely related to the theory of moral evil in general and, correspondingly, to the understanding of moral responsibility. The aim of the article will be to discuss if Rawls is right to attribute to Kant's moral thought in Groundwork such Manichean moral psychology.

I will argue that the reading of Rawls, in its most general aspects, is well founded. Nevertheless, I will argue that certain considerations that Rawls makes about the intelligible world and sensible world, especially about its possible ineffectiveness, or abandonment of this distinction in Religion, cannot be accepted fully.

This presence can authenticate the Augustinian moral psychology. In this paper, I intend to discuss whether Rawls offers a more solid justification than Kant on political and legal principles we evoke when judging human sociality. Kant, Lesniewski et l'ontologie. The article explores the Kantian concept of moral autonomy on the basis of its conceptual framework, highlighting the differences and similarities with the concepts of personal independence and authenticity.

Kantian autonomy is defined as the capacity for self-legislation of the human animal according to the best reasons, which are always open to critique and whose only limitation is the dignity of persons. In what follows, we have in view to consider some meanings of imagination in the Kantian philosophy. We refer to the following aspects: Ontologia fondamentale e metaontologia: On the origin of property and society in Rousseau and Kant.

This paper aims at confronting the two different accounts given by Rousseau and Kant on the origin of private property. Firstly, I shall present briefly the context in which Rousseau tells his story of this event and regrets its consequences I. Secondly, I shall present summarily the way in which Kant tells the same episode II , in order to make two kinds of remarks: Against this interpretation, I shall try to show that, actually, in Kant the exeundum e statu naturali has a different theoretical and motivational basis IV.

A Commentary , by Henry E. Ich denke' and I think. Between Transcendental Apperception and Empirical Consciousness. Revised doctoral dissertation Uni-Greifswald, Presses universitaires de France, Schulting and Verburgt op cit. Kwasi Wiredu statt Immanuel Kant. Diskurs ob der Notwendigkeit einer interkulturellen Philosophiedidaktik. The final section before the concluding paragraph discusses the nature of practical reason and its outermost boundary.

I show that Kant intends the claims in the deduction to have the status of mere ideas of reason rather than an ontological claims about our real selves. The outermost boundary of practical reason also provides a limitation in that reason can never provide complete explanations and can never be satisfied in its quest for an unconditioned, whether practical or speculative, but simply assumes an idea of an unconditioned, in this case the unconditioned moral law.

Groundwork III provides only a partial justification of a practical view of humans as moral beings. Kants Freiheitstheorie im dritten Abschnitt der Grundlegung. From Critique to Physiological Thinking. Revista de Filosofia 36, special issue This text analyzes and evaluates the influence of the political philosophies of Rousseau and Kant in Habermasian thought. It is argued that Habermas' critique of Rousseau and Kant is due to Habermas' project of the radicalization of democracy, to which the contributions of the two philosophers present some obstacles.

Nevertheless, it may be said that, according to Habermas, the contribution of each one serves to solve the problems in the contribution of the other. This article aims to discuss the character of the transcendental concept of space and time — found in the Transcendental Aesthetic — and its importance in the following issues: Die Kultivierung der Freiheit bei der Macht. Rivera de Rosales, Jacinto. The purpose of this is to clarify the role and the scope of finality in the understanding and way of being of Nature.

Immanuel Kants theoretische Einbildungskraft , by Karl Hepfer Studien und Materialien zur Geschichte der Philosophie , vol. Christian Bermes Acerca de las causas y las razones. Rocha Oliveira, Ivo da. Kant holds that 1 his theory of transcendental idealism does not imply that our experiences are systematically illusory, that 2 appearances are not numerically distinct from things as they are in themselves, and that 3 his idealism is, in some important sense, idealist.

In this paper, I produce a reading of transcendental idealism that accounts for each of these claims. I recommend that we model the mind-world relationship according to transcendental idealism on an understanding of how certain of our judgments refer to the contents of our illusions and dreams. It is in this context that what I have called an elpidological imperative takes shape, because self-confidence is fundamental in order not to give in to the discouragement provoked by the absurd spectacle of human history.

The conflicts of our selfish inclinations, the antagonisms of unsociable sociability, will serve to deploy our best natural dispositions, as if guided by a plan established indistinctly by Nature, Providence, or Fate. In sum, politics is regarded as a condition of possibility of our moral life and not as its corollary. Global Justice, Kant and the Responsibility to Protect: Part three then turns to addressing why and in what sense Kant thinks that we are justified in assuming that nature is systematic.

Most modern philosophers understand happiness fundamentally in terms of the subjective states of pleasure or desire satisfaction; while pre-modern philosophers tend to understand happiness fundamentally in terms of possessing certain objective goods like virtue, which do not reduce to pleasure or desire satisfaction, or engaging in objectively worthwhile activities like doing philosophy This paper investigates two modern conceptions of happiness: I argue that their subjectivist conceptions of happiness do not prevent them from recognizing certain objective goods that help us to become happy.

Ideas y Valores Colombia 62, Suppl. It is true that in his time women throughout Europe were excluded from active citizenship, depriving them of the right to be political and, consequently, ethical and even historical subjects. But it is also true that in that same period a movement was emerging in defense of gender equality querelle des femmes , in which Kant regrettably did not participate.

Giudizio giuridico e giudizio estetico: Kant zwischen Hobbes und Rousseau. The history of speculation on a notion or notions called analyticity, now usually characterized as truth in virtue of meanings and independently of fact, is often viewed from the perspective of the Quine-Carnap dispute. In this paper, it is argued that the problem lies not with Bolzano, but rather with the received historical account, especially its interpretation of Kant.

Being the birthplace of artistic beauty, genius is found by Kant in a free play of understanding and imagination. Two species of beauty are identified: Beauty is not seen as a quality of an object in observation, but as a peculiar act within the subject. Determinant principle of aesthetic evaluation is found in reflective judgment whereas its concept of formal purposiveness of nature becomes a mediator between the fields of human nature and human freedom. The autonomy of the aesthetic judgment is provided by means of avoiding both the legislation of understanding and the legislation of reason.

By this way it can be shown that art is an end in itself. What is hereby questioned is the meaning of art in general and the purpose of its being theoretically discussed in particular. The aim of this paper is to critically review several interpretations of Kantian sensible intuition. The first interpretation is the recent construal of Kantian sensible intuition as a mental analogue of a direct referential term. The second is the old, widespread assumption that Kantian intuitions do not refer to mind-independent entities, such as bodies and their physical properties, unless they are brought under categories.

The third is the assumption that, by referring to mind-independent entities, sensible intuitions represent objectively in the sense that they represent in a relative, perspective-independent manner. The fourth is the construal of Kantian sensible intuitions as non-conceptual content. In this paper, I support the alternative view that Kantian sensible representation is to be seen as iconic de re presentation of objects without representational content.

A Matter of Right or of Virtue? Kant and the Contemporary Debate. The author explains why Kant placed marriage in the state regulation sphere and then proceeded to undermine the placement by challenging the view of sexuality. According to the author, marriage appears to be morally optional. The article examines the following problems: Basing on the analysis of Kant's treatise and of the current structure of the EU, the author arrives to the conclusion that the two projects can suitably be compared.

However, such comparison requires viewing the EU as an intermediate stage in the establishment of global peace union. The comparative analysis of Kant's theory and the European project, the EU in its curent form suits Kant's definition of a federtion of souvereign states, united for the purpose of securing peace, and in some respects went even further. It is obvious that it its development the EU will undergo difficulties and crises.

While the concept of the supersensible illustrates this distinction, it is only through this concept that Kant that can justify the specific possibility of claiming subjective validity in taste. The priority of the solution found in the dialectic is illustrated not only by a comparative analysis of the two sections, but also by a historical reconstruction of the process of the formation of the work, which shows that the first formulation of the concept of validity coincides with the use of the concept of the supersensible.

I move from the tenet that according to Kant the duty to set up a civil state beyond a society has nothing to do with the pursuit of happiness carried out by all human beings, since the first one refers to a commandment of practical reason, which gives form to a duty that grounds the property rights. Third, I will consider the function that general will fulfils in the system of Right, which only cosmopolitan Right could successfully top. I claim that cosmopolitan right belongs to the juridical duties which practical reason commands to the human species, what dissuades from considering it an emotional expression of human pursuit of justice.

From the point of view of argumentation, the article leans in its crucial points on the theses as defended by O. Idealismus in praktischer Absicht: Studien zu Kant, Schelling und Hegel. Philosophie und Geschichte der Wissenschaften , vol. Bedingungen der Synthesis bei Kant , by Anselmo Aportone Santos, Leonel Ribeiro dos. The natural man, the reference to human progress through culture, the moral improvement of man and his ultimate destiny are common elements in the philosophy of Rousseau and Kant.

These questions lead us to the scope in which they are defined but, at the same time, also distinguished their anthropological conceptions. Harvard University Press, , ch. Chatto and Windus, For a suggestive systematic account, see Lawrence A. Cambridge University Press, Hain, , esp. Princeton University Press, Wochenschrift der Deutschen Sozialdemokratie Cambridge University Press, , Harvard University Press, , Meiner, ; John H.

University of Chicago Press, Akademie Verlag, , 19—39, esp. The human duty to perfect oneself was indeed a leitmotif in natural law, theology, and anthropology in eighteenth-century Germany. Yet he did so by radically shifting the focus of the teleological question about the Bestimmung des Menschen from the purpose of the individual to the aim of humanity as a historically perfectible collective. Instead, Kant believed they would reveal a central conundrum of humanity: This conundrum, Kant maintained, was the result of a characteristic human tension: Kritische Ausgabe des integralen Textes, ed.

Heinrich Meier, 5th ed. Brian Jacobs and Patrick Kain Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , 85— Kant, Gesammelte Schriften, ed. Wilhelm Dilthey et al. Reimer, De Gruyter, — hence AA, followed by volume number. In line with much of the contemporary literature on natural law, but especially with Montesquieu,15 Diderot further sketches out how isolated individuals, seeking to satisfy their needs in a state of nature, would 10 11 12 13 14 15 Kant, AA XV, The problem of needs is a recurring but rather scattered theme in Rousseau scholarship.

Blackwell, , nor in the Dictionnaire de Jean-Jacques Rousseau, ed. Johann Heinrich Zedler, vol. Zedler, , — Miller, and Harold S. Cambridge University Press, , 6—7 I. However, the eventual results of this coming together are ambivalent. According to a common notion at the time, man in the state of nature was weak, naked, without natural weapons, and hence in need of support against predators and protection from harsh weather conditions.

Rousseau powerfully challenged this claim. Because his imagination was extremely limited, he never cared about the future — nor could he develop the boundless desires characteristic of civilisation. He was thus happy and content. In a social context, and driven by imagination, this leads to a state of permanent comparison between himself and others, creating sociable feelings of affection, such as love, but also triggering competition and with it envy and hatred. The latter were part of a novel, unnatural needs cycle resulting from the invention of metallurgy with its ultimate outcome — urban luxury production.

Montesquieu, Spirit of the Laws, 6—7. This text can be accessed at www. Mark Goldie and Robert Wokler Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , —; E. Bernard Mandeville and the Discovery of Society Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, , ch. A Conceptual and Historical Investigation Cambridge: Higher wages in luxury production led to migration into cities and hence to the neglect of agriculture and to depopulation.

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Even the farmer cannot dispense of them anymore. As a result, the original relation has been reversed, and he who cultivates the land to feed the artisan and the skilled worker has become their slave. Their triangular relationship was almost symbiotic, for the sciences not only supplied global trade and imperial conquest with the necessary technologies and knowledge, but also further evolved as a result. Rousseau 10 , 9— As Robert Wokler has pointed out, it was the reaction of his critics that made Rousseau sharpen and further develop his rather muddled criticism of modern civilisation in the First Discourse into a powerful argument about social inequality.

The handwritten Remarks on Observations Concerning the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime of reveal how Kant struggled with Rousseauvian themes in this crucial phase of his intellectual development. His account rests on a distinction between man in the state of nature and civilised man, as well as between the individual and mankind as a whole. Studies in Honor of R. Manchester University Press, , — Though physically able to produce an offspring, civil law would not allow the bachelor to enter wedlock before he was ready to support a family.

Liberty Fund, , 31— Kant, AA IV, — Felicitas Munzel, in Lectures on Anthropology, ed. Allen Wood and Robert B. He viewed their current, glory-conditioned pursuit as intrinsically connected to luxury and as leading to idleness, melancholy, and bad health, thereby weakening human morality and virtue. The result was somewhat paradoxical: Instead of providing help to the poor, civilised human beings would merely indulge in cosmopolitan moralising without action.

The answer to this question was implied above. In his Remarks of , he redescribed amour propre as an outward-looking striving for honour. Its result was the system of sharply distinguished ranks in commercial monarchies. People would hence tend to identify intellectual talents, wealth, and privileges of birth with moral worth, leading thereby to the corruption of our moral feelings.

They also allude to the quasi-aristocratic rules of conduct within the Republic of Letters and to the common meritocratic self-image of the eighteenth-century scholar. Anne Goldgar, Impolite Learning: Paul, Science and Immortality: In terms of the ancient association between wisdom and virtue, one would expect scholars to be the most virtuous of men. Yet in reality, loud-mouthed courtesans and savages were more restrained in their quarrels and wars than prideful gens de lettres. Champion, , esp. A Genealogy of Economic Science Cambridge: Being a Philosophical, Historical and Critical Correspondence [.

Michel Bohm, , a-b. In society we thus need, to a certain extent, external honour as a means of recognising our inner worth. It implied a sense of recognition of their intellectual and moral authority. Under civilised conditions, honour and the sciences can thus bring about both positive and negative effects. These lend new decoration to the whole, deter much evil and if they are raised to a certain height, ameliorate the evil which they themselves have brought about. AA XX, 42—43, trans. Shell in Kant and the Limits of Autonomy, Replying to the critics of his First Discourse, Rousseau insisted that he did not want to abolish the arts and sciences; for under already corrupt conditions they would prevent greater evil.

As he wrote in the fragment on Luxury, Commerce and the Arts, the best use one could make of philosophy is its employment to destroy the defects it had caused. The Remarks merely offer some scattered ideas. What seems clear is that the early Kant believed that Wissenschaften, correctly understood, would instruct us about our real needs, making us more moderate without turning to asceticism, the perverted reaction to luxury. Human nature endures the hardest ills under the deceptive appearance of external welfare; and Rousseau was not so wrong when he preferred to it the condition of savages, as long, namely, as one leaves out this last stage to which our species has yet to ascend.

We are cultivated in a high degree by art and science. We are civilized, perhaps to the point of being overburdened, by all sorts of social 60 62 63 64 61 Rousseau, OC III, Kant, AA XX, Kant, Bemerkungen, 10, 18, and Christopher Brooke, Philosophic Pride: Princeton University Press, , ch. Shell, Kant and the Limits of Autonomy, Philosophy and Politics from Plato to Dewey, ed. Christopher Brooke and Elizabeth Frazer London: Routledge, , — But very much is still lacking before we can be held to be already moralized.

For the idea of morality still belongs to culture; but the use of this idea, which comes down only to a resemblance of morals in love of honor and in external propriety, constitutes only being civilized. Here the problem of evil and ills in human history and current society is raised with powerful political implications. However, in his responses to the critics of this essay and in his subsequent writings, Rousseau developed this critique into a more general argument about the limited role of reason in human nature in general and as a basis for moral agency in particular.

He forever goes astray in his quest for it; and if he sometimes attains it, he almost always does so to his detriment. Reason alienated man from the animal-like slumber within the moment by creating an unnatural concern for the future, the past, and the opinions of others. A Critical Guide, ed. Rousseau, DI, ; Cf. For Rousseau, they thus stood at the origins of evil. Instead, Kant employed this Cynic analysis of the effects of reason on human happiness in order to refute eudaemonistic positions in Enlightenment moral philosophy.

Engaging with Rousseau Reaction and Interpretation from the Eighteenth Century to the Present

On the problem of evil and natural goodness in Rousseau see P. Kant, Lectures On Ethics, trans. Schneewind and Peter Heath Cambridge: Kant, Groundwork for the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. Yale University Press, , 11—12; AA 4, — It could only be approximated by mankind as a social collective throughout history. This condition was to be approximated in the perpetual peace of a cosmopolitan league of nations, in which the moral actions of citizens followed the force of conscience. Cambridge University Press, , —; Jeanine M. Freedom, Dependence and Necessity Cambridge: Jacobs and Kain, 15— By nature, man was thus a dexterous and strong, even if not a handsome and kind, animal.

By contrast to Rousseau, Kant stressed the aggressively unsociable character of original man: Yet with respect to his own species, with respect to other human beings. In another passage, Kant stresses that human beings in the state of nature were innocent and morally good in a negative sense, possessing neither virtues nor vices. One of the most comprehensible answers is provided in the Pillau lecture notes of winter — Rorty and Schmidt, — and — AA XXV, ; cf.

Thomas Hobbes, On the Citizen, ed. Richard Tuck and Michael Silverthorne Cambridge: There, the multiplying needs of human beings prompted them to further develop their skills in the arts and the sciences. Contentment no longer depended on the absolute satisfaction of our natural needs of food, shelter, and so on. In contrast to neoEpicurean defenders of the unsociable origins of modern commercial society, and especially to Mandeville, Kant was reluctant to praise the security, ease, and pleasures created by civilisation.

He rather reminded his students of the loss of natural freedom in civil society, occasioned by our dependence on ranks, governmental authorities, and the delusions of social status Wahn des Standes. Everyone, Kant told his students, would ask where evil came from, while one ought rather to enquire how the good arose. Siegfried Lebrecht Crusius, — Compared to the ignorant innocence of savages, civilised men — bound by burdensome masquerades of propriety — were thus worse off with respect to moral freedom. See Phillipson, Adam Smith: An Enlightened Life London: Allen Lane, , ch.

Mandeville, The Fable of the Bees, I, Mankind regained natural freedom on a higher level through the power of reason, prompted by human malevolence and wants. He assumed that the human being is good by nature as far as nature allows good to be transmitted , but good in a negative way; that is, he is not evil of his own accord and on purpose, but only in danger of being infected and ruined by evil or inept leaders and examples. Kant, Anthropology from a Pragmatic Point of View , trans.

Loudon, in Anthropology, History, and Education, ed. For earlier and quite similar formulations of this claim, see Lectures on Anthropology, ; cf. AA XXV, , , and For Kant, however, the Discourses were only the diagnosis of the disease. The republican state, founded on contract and a civil religion, had to regulate needs in order to secure its citizens against dependence on an arbitrary will.

This could be achieved through laws, taxation, the regulation of property relations, and public education. Rousseau called for keeping them in check without endowing them with a positive role in society. As sketched out above, Kant too viewed the arts and sciences as part of the multiplication of needs in a luxury-driven economy, always prone to reinforce social and moral inequalities. Kant, AA XV, The cultivation of taste especially provided a model of how to make men sociable and overcome ideological and other forms of moral dissent in modern society. Rousseau claims the former, but Hume rightly refutes him; for if we do not educate ourselves, virtue will not emerge, even if we possess the disposition to it.

One could ask whether Kant ever succeeded in harmonising this Humean vision of sociable politeness with his Rousseauvian principles, for in many ways he was convinced that the unnatural needs culminating in and maintained by the sciences and the arts merely tamed human beings, making them peaceful and lawabiding but not necessarily moral. Penguin, , vii—xxxiv. Three short quotations can be cited to illustrate this point. Gallimard, , XIII 1 , Albin Michel, , — Rousseau, published in Of all the reproaches that could be levelled against him, she conceded, the greatest was that he had abandoned his children.

In brief, Rousseau was an adornment to French culture. The emphasis fell upon reasonableness, toleration, and the sentiments of the heart. Fisher Unwin, , Benjamin Constant and the Politics of Religion Cambridge: In essence, Constant drew a distinction between two moral systems. Actes Sud, , 25— Kelly, The Humane Comedy: Constant, Tocqueville and French Liberalism Cambridge: Both, she believed, produced equally negative and harmful outcomes. Although not always citing him by name, they disagreed with Rousseau on almost every issue: Society was not, they avowed, the source of all our woes, and the state of nature was far from being an idyllic condition.

At best, in their view, Rousseau was a dangerous dreamer. If, in political terms, this generated a support of representative government, it also demanded a society resting upon the solid foundations of private property and a free market. Foulon, , 6. The most frightful fate awaits those who, having the misfortune of being born after us, will add their knowledge to ours. The development of our productive capacities already makes us very unhappy. Guillaumin, , Guillaumin, , IV, Guillaumin, , VI, Moreover, when — out of a spirit of completeness — she did discuss the writings on politics, she focused almost exclusively upon Du Contrat social.

This was not something that was to change. Almost without exception, French liberals were to ignore the writings on the proposed constitutional arrangements for Poland and Corsica. This is worth mentioning because it is there that Rousseau provides a description of the citizens of Geneva that would surely have struck a chord with their own perspectives and preoccupations. Paris, , — French liberals, however, were not alone in this. Liberty Fund, , Thanks to my colleague Robin Douglass for encouraging me to make this point.

This, of course, was none other than her father, Jacques Necker! Philosophy, Revolution, and Human Rights — Oxford: Oxford University Press, , Buisson, , 2 vols. See Bruno Bernardi ed. University of Chicago Press, , II, In the space available, it is not possible to provide more than an overview of how liberal writers contributed to this debate. To begin, it might be useful to remember that writers of a liberal disposition in France tended to favour the idea of a mixed and balanced constitution and that, in line with this, they also, following Montesquieu, tended to be admirers of English parliamentary practices and constitutional principles.

Craiutu, A Virtue for Courageous Minds: Moderation in French Political thought, — Princeton: From the liberal perspective, therefore, the question that needed an answer was that posed by Jean-Joseph Mounier in It is interesting to note, however, that in a slightly later text Mounier conceded that Rousseau would not have approved of the crimes of the Revolution.

Gotta, , Where Constant agreed with Rousseau was that political authority was only legitimate if it derived from the general will. Not everyone regained the equivalent of what they had lost. In a note to his text, Constant added: This, Constant countered, was only possible when government was understood in the most restricted sense. Moreover, it was not possible for society to exercise the prerogatives bestowed upon it by Rousseau. Yesterday my will was the only source of legitimacy for the law; why then should the law remain legitimate when it is no longer sanctioned by my will?

Can I not will more than once? Does my will exhaust its rights by a single act? Durand, , 28— But, for all that, a more even-handed approach to Rousseau became established among moderate, liberal opinion, and even some of the most ardent republicans came to free themselves from their Rousseauvian rhetorical excesses. A writer such as Jules Barni was emblematic of these developments. More easily cast as a republican than a liberal, during the Second Empire — Barni played a key role in encouraging his colleagues to make the political compromises required to establish the Republic on a solid foundation.

Hachette, , Jeremy Jennings, Revolution and the Republic: Mercure de France, , 7— See Jennings, Revolution and the Republic, 60— So had the abolition of the feudal order on the night of 6 August More generally, an admiration for Rousseau amongst the members of the Constituent Assembly had pushed the Revolution in the direction of a republic. Moreover, it was around these maxims that both liberals and republicans were able to unite in the later years of the Second Empire and upon this alliance was a new and enduring political culture built in the early years of the Third Republic after In summary, among French liberals — as elsewhere — Rousseau was subject to a complex and often incomplete reading from the late eighteenth century onwards.

But, with the passing of time and as memories of the Terror retreated into the distance, Rousseau, like the Revolution of 98 99 Ibid. However, if ever this consensus faltered, there was always the traditional fallback position on which everyone had always agreed: Rousseau was a great writer. Firmin-Didot, , 7. Moreover, John Rawls argues that these two values hold a moral attraction for us. In equality, we are attracted by the idea that all human lives have equal worth and that there is no reason that they should be too different under the impact of arbitrary factors that are wholly exterior to people.

Rawls nevertheless thinks that these two values can both be derived from a higher moral ideal — which is the aspiration to live in a society of free, cooperating equals. The principles of this collaborative project would be acceptable to all its participants because they would be able to satisfy optimally the attraction felt by each of us to both of these central values. Both strategies are based on the idea that being free is not a condition of factual non-interference, but is rather a moral status which implies that those around us have some duty toward us, and that the relations we have with one another have some kind of legitimacy and reciprocity.

Erin Kelly Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, , 1— Ronald Dworkin, Sovereign Virtue: Harvard University Press, , — In the Social Contract, Rousseau explicitly claims that freedom and equality are mutually connected: Freedom, because any individual dependence is that much force taken away from the State; equality, because freedom cannot subsist without it.

Rousseau then argues that freedom cannot subsist without equality and, in the Letters Written from the Mountain, he adds that freedom without justice is a true contradiction. One is inequality of authority or power, which means that some men have a right to give orders to others and to be obeyed by them. The other is inequality of wealth. Rousseau, Social Contract, II. Any unauthorized power would inevitably lead to personal dependence. This is what we might call domination. Domination is destructive of moral equality; it brings force — actual or potential — into civil relationships and it undermines completely the bases of reciprocal duty.

It renders the civil association a merely factual one, without any right or legitimacy. The consequence of excessive wealth is thus that some citizens can manage to escape the law and, as soon as some are no longer subject to the law, reciprocity of rights and duties disappears and the social contract itself is broken. Moreover, the excessive wealth of some citizens necessarily goes along with the excessive poverty of others; when some citizens are too poor to live in an independent way, they are ready to sell themselves — which means that they are ready to submit themselves to some particular will to cover their subsistence.

The poorest citizens are thus led to consent to some asymmetry of duties, but their consent is not enough to legitimize this absence of the reciprocity of rights and duties. Rousseau constantly stresses that the question is not whether one has consented to some inequality, but whether this inequality is compatible with equal independence.

They should not only have the right to perform such actions but an actual possibility of doing so, a power to perform them. I am free only when those around me have a duty to let 7 8 Ibid.: Rousseau means that if people have more power than others, this excess of power should never take the physical form of forceful constraint. Rousseau adds there in a footnote: Here is what he says in the Discourse on Political Economy: The greatest evil has already been done where there are poor people to defend and rich people to restrain.

Rousseau explicitly formulates this fact in the Project for a Constitution for Corsica: Civil power is exercised in two manners: Everywhere that wealth dominates, power and authority are ordinarily separated, because the means of acquiring wealth and the means of attaining authority, not being the same, are rarely employed by the same people. Then the apparent power is in the hands of the magistrates and the real power is in those of the rich.

The second reason why we cannot go back in time to a different condition is also very important. University Press of New England, , henceforth Plan. Those whose wealth would be redistributed might no longer have any duty toward the state, since they would be treated in an unequal manner and with unequal respect. As Rousseau frequently emphasizes, the law can mention nobody in particular and it should be applied to the entire citizenry without any distinction. According to Rousseau, one must consequently make a strict distinction between preventing excessive differences of wealth from developing themselves, and correcting those excessive differences of wealth after they have emerged.

It is, therefore, one of the most important tasks of government to prevent extreme inequality of fortunes, not by taking their treasures away from those who possess them, but by depriving everyone of the means to accumulate treasures, nor by building poorhouses, but by shielding citizens from becoming poor. In addition to the break with the generality of law that would be implied by a redistributive state, transfers of wealth in order to re-establish equality of conditions might deprive some citizens of what truly belongs to them, of what they have legitimately acquired by their own work and personal exertion within the context of equal laws.

Yet again, such deprivation would be a negation of the very conditions of general freedom. Rousseau argues several times that securing property, which has been acquired in conformity with just principles, is the very basis of the social order. No law can despoil any private individual of any portion of his possession. They understood much too late that, in order to keep liberty alive and maintain the material bases of personal independence for all, property should remain distributed so that no one should be forced to sell himself and no one would be able to buy the freedom of any other citizen.

By the time they understood this point, writes Rousseau, the distribution of wealth had already reached a degree of inequality that could not be corrected without committing some injustice: When this morality is weakened, the desire to acquire and to dominate tends to overthrow all institutional and political barriers.

But if abuse is inevitable, does it follow that it ought not at least be regulated? It is precisely because the force of things always tends to destroy equality, that the force of legislation ought always tend to maintain it. A posteriori redistribution seems to be altogether excluded here. One of the upshots of this analysis is also that when Rousseau argues that the right of property is a consequence of social conventions, he certainly does not mean that the government can redistribute property freely according to needs or whatever it deems convenient.

This grounds the very title of property in the public acknowledgment that what we own is truly ours because it has been rightly acquired, and because it does not interfere with the freedom of others to own what is necessary for their independence. Such an idea is widely accepted today, for instance by libertarians. Hayek, Law, Legislation and Liberty, vol.

University of Chicago Press, , Nevertheless, it is a striking fact that in the nineteenth century many liberal writers claimed that Rousseau could be considered as the spiritual father of a social and redistributive republic. His political philosophy was replete with internal contradictions since it could be used both to justify individual freedom under an impersonal law and to legitimize redistribution from the rich to the poor according to needs. Lycurgus and Jesus Christ.

Writing under the impact of the proletarian uprising of June , Baudrillart sees Rousseau as the intellectual father of a whole generation of socialist writers who claimed that the democratic state should equalize the material conditions without which freedom, as an individual right, would remain nothing more than a delusion.

Firstly, according to Baudrillart, Rousseau thought that the individual should submit himself to the state without any reservation. He is the most authoritative master of those principles of political and social pressure that overburden the human person under the tyranny of the State. He is one of the instigators of this levelling system which is condemned by spiritualism and disowned by the partisans of freedom. This is supposed to be especially true of the right of property, so that Rousseau is supposed to have said that one can only possess what has been attributed to him by the general will, and to have granted that the state could freely redistribute private property according to want and other social necessities.

Guillaumin, , I, 68—69, and 96— Louis Blanc is a good example here. For Blanc, Rousseau perceived the distinction between individualism — which is blind to the difference between those who possess the means of leading an independent life and those who do not — and fraternity, which takes this essential difference into account and aims at erasing it. In his History of the French Revolution, Louis Blanc claims that three different principles shape the history of the world: Authority resorts to force and constraint as means of government.

The second principle, individualism, takes man as being outside society, making the individual the sole judge of all that is around him and of himself while endowing him with the exalted feeling of his rights without teaching him his duties. Pagnerre, , I, As a means of government, it resorts to persuasion and to the voluntary consent of the heart. Blanc argues that the principle of authority generates oppression by suppressing individual personality, that the principle of individualism leads to oppression through competition and anarchy, and that only the principle of fraternity may lead to freedom through harmony.

The reason why individualism cannot generate genuine freedom is that it does not pay any attention to the fact that whole classes of citizens are deprived of any material means and any kind of knowledge or instruction that are required to exercise the formal independence granted to all. Thus, the kind of freedom praised by individualism is a false one, a freedom liberating only those who already have the means for independence from anyone else.

But such a philosophy is not suitable for those who have no capital, who are entirely dependent on others in order to subsist, and who due to their subordination are free only in name.

This theory tended to make every man his own master by freeing him of any social action, supressing any obstacles the strongest could encounter on their way to selfaggrandizement, and simultaneously suppressing any help the weakest could have found in the state to resist what was being realized at their expense. None of the bourgeois thinkers, says Blanc, managed to understand that when public authority refrains from acting and remains content with the protection of the existing situation, it actually does act — behind the mask of impartiality and equal rights — in favour of those who possess the means of an independent life and against those who have no access to such means.

Blanc then binds Rousseau and Robespierre in common praise for having understood that a strong public authority would remain Downloaded from https: Both Rousseau and Robespierre understood, according to Blanc, that the absence of the state would allow the strongest — those who have exclusive access to the means of production — to subject the weakest to a kind of new servitude under the guise of equality of rights. Rousseau and Robespierre are thus supposed to have perceived that the public authority of the state should rectify this unfair competition whose results are a foregone conclusion , and that only the democratic state could gather enough might in order to contain the private power generated by monopolistic access to wealth, natural resources, and knowledge.

The towering feature in the Social Contract is the preoccupation with freedom. When Rousseau invokes social unity and when he wants to acknowledge as legitimate only those laws which have their source in the general will, it is because he has in view the possible oppression of the weakest by the strongest, it is because he feels the necessity to oppose the despotism of the few — either in an organized or in an anarchical form — with the regular and organized strength of all, so that in forming this association Rousseau has given the individual the truest guarantees and drawn the only path which can lead all men equally to happiness and freedom.

In this situation, an equal right to work and to endeavour under an impersonal and general law becomes the right to submit, bound hand and foot, to the conditions imposed by those who possess those means of production. In the absence of any means for independent existence, equal rights expose the propertyless to a kind of dependence which, while much less visible than the direct personal 22 Ibid. I cannot work, says the poor, without accepting the conditions which will be offered to me by the owners of the means of work.

And if, in virtue of what you call the liberty of contracts, those conditions are exceedingly hard, if I am expected to sell my body and my soul, if nothing does protect me from this unhappy condition, or if — in the worst case — I am useless and those who can offer work just do not need me, what will I become? The right, considered in an abstract manner, is only a delusion apt to maintain the people in hopes which will always be frustrated. The physically impaired have the right to walk, but such a right is useless for them;24 the same is true for the poorest members of modern industrial society.

The Revolution of abolished all the juridical bonds that had prevented them from working wherever they wished and in any sort of trade; it provided them with all individual liberties. Yet this right to be free and to choose their own goals is of no use if it cannot ensure that they will have the material means necessary for the realization of their projects. A man is truly free if he is not more hindered than anyone else in achieving his goals by the two main enemies of personal development: The result of this unequal freedom — if such an expression makes any sense — is that individuals with fewer capacities but more opportunities for their realization become better placed than those with more capacities yet fewer opportunities, and this is fundamentally unjust.

For Blanc, the meaning of this word — which would be replaced by 23 24 25 26 Ibid. Dentu, — , III, ; ; Bureau du Nouveau Monde, , Blanc, Questions, III, Thus, when equal access to independent means of living does not exist, it may and should be established through the state.

This is meant to rectify the unfair results of the competition and contractual relations between owners and non-owners, and to restore the reciprocity of rights and duties which such inequality undermines. Blanc seems to be entirely blind to the fact that correcting inequalities a posteriori implies that the republic makes special laws concerning determinate economic groups and that it breaks dramatically with the principle of justice, which postulates that law should always be general and impersonal.

He claims that when property is distributed in a widely unequal manner, equal rights and impersonal laws are only a recipe for the subordination of non-owners and for outright domination by those who possess the means of production. He then puts forth a different idea of freedom based on special legislation meant to limit the power of the strongest, to control the various ways property can be used in order to exert pressure on non-owners, and to provide substitute means of independence to those who lack any access to property — for instance, a right to work by which he means a right to have employment and access to free credit.

A free society, according to Blanc, would permanently assess the material effects of such a special legislation in terms of the actual independence of all, and it would constantly re-elaborate and adjust it in order to promote real autonomy for all and maintain society as a continuum of independent citizens. III This leaves two questions on our agenda. Furne et Pagnerre, , One might say that Rousseau and Blanc share the same notion of freedom but that they have differently conceptualized the way to realize it.

How can we explain such a difference in conceptions about a shared concept? The second question is as follows: Where there is sharp asymmetry of access to the means of production, there can be no real freedom unless the state actively supports and protects the weakest, namely those who have nothing to live on but the cost of their manpower. Rousseau does not seem to have anticipated that even without violence or usurpation, land and the other means of personal independence might become monopolized by some at the expense of the greatest number. Any dynamic economy is wholly out of his mental universe.

He does not envisage either that the rights to acquire property and to work freely might lose all of their relevance once there is no more vacant land to settle on, and where non-owners would have to accept the very severe conditions imposed by property holders in order to gain access to potential work for their subsistence. Nor does Rousseau address the question of those who cultivate more land than they need and who subsequently offer non-owners salaried work for their subsistence.

In other words, Downloaded from https: Nor does he address the problem of how legitimate prior private appropriation is when there is no more vacant land to occupy a question which did bother Locke a great deal. On the one hand, the classical liberal solution is that private appropriation is legitimate even when some individuals are deprived of any opportunity to appropriate parts of nature or do not have independent access to means of production. For the classical liberal, there can be no usurpation, no theft, in private appropriation since the land itself is valueless.

Appropriating it does not deprive anyone from what is his, since the land has no value: Those who have no property cannot complain, since they have not been robbed of anything and their position under the impact of past private appropriations is better than their initial condition before such appropriations occurred. Thus no rights have been violated by those who are now the owners of natural resources, nothing is due by them to non-owners, and no redistribution will ever be legitimate.

According to Blanc, the private appropriation of natural resources and the monopolization of the means of production by some to the exclusion of others are outright violations of the right of non-owners to independence. Natural resources are common property and those who exclusively appropriate them should thus pay a rent to society, so as to compensate those who are concretely deprived of access to what is theirs. Cambridge University Press, , — Firmin Didot, ; A. Paulin et Lheureux, Therefore, the legitimacy of private property cannot be established in a historical way or by reference to its origin; it has to be established structurally by assessing the availability of an independent life to all members of the political community.

If someone may be said to own X legitimately, it is not because he worked personally to produce it, but because X is for him a precondition of his personal freedom as nondomination, and because its appropriation does not hinder the independence of others. Louis Blanc is thus part of an intellectual conversion to a theory of freedom that is no longer based on natural rights but on consequentialist considerations. If Rousseau did not address those questions in an explicit manner, he nevertheless gave two series of very important indications concerning them.

The second concerns the consequences of equal rights and impersonal laws in a context where inequalities of wealth reached a point where a minority had concentrated the means of production in its hands while the majority would be propertyless. Can this right be left unbounded? How can a man or a people seize an immense territory and deprive all mankind of it except by a punishable usurpation, since it deprives the rest of mankind of a place to live and of foods which nature gives to all in common? Of course, Rousseau does not consider here the case of an appropriator who would work and cultivate more land than he needs for his subsistence and who would, afterwards, offer a salary to non-owners in exchange for the necessities of their subsistence.

But his logic leads to the idea that such a behaviour would endanger the freedom of non-owners and that, consequently, the validity of the initial title would lose its former strength due to exerting such a negative impact on the freedom of others. Rousseau is also well aware that, when inequality has reached a point where some members of the community are forced to sell themselves for subsistence, the impersonal rule securing for each what he has acquired becomes a recipe for oppression and servitude.

In a footnote to the last chapter of Book I of the Social Contract, Rousseau thus makes clear that some degrees of inequality of wealth are incompatible with moral equality and that they render equality before the law a mere sham. Under bad governments this equality is only apparent and illusory; it serves only to maintain the poor in his misery and the rich in his usurpation. In fact the laws are always useful to those who possess something and injurious to those who have nothing: Whence it follows that the social state is advantageous for men only insofar as all have something and none has too much of anything.

And this is what we might call domination. This domination is destructive of moral equality: In Emile, Rousseau has an even clearer statement of the way inequality of wealth is destructive of moral equality. In the state of nature there is a de facto equality that is real and indestructible, because it is impossible in that state for the difference between man and man by 34 Ibid.

In the civil state there is a de jure equality that is chimerical and vain, because the means designed to maintain it themselves serve to destroy it, and because the public power, added to that of the stronger to oppress the weak, breaks the sort of equilibrium Nature had placed between them. The question for Rousseau is therefore not whether public action to close the gap between widely different degrees of wealth might destroy equality of rights; where inequality of wealth reaches a certain point, it is accompanied by a kind of inequality of power which in itself is destructive of equality of rights.

In this case, equality of rights and the generality of law no longer exist. If equality of rights disappears under excessive social differentiation, no public action to halt or reduce this inequality of wealth can destroy an equality of rights that does no longer exist.

Equality of rights, if genuine, is moral equality requiring comparable degrees of wealth and power. If we pay attention to what Rousseau actually says, we see that he goes even further than that: Equal rights conferred on unequal persons amount to a system of secret oppression. Thus it is a way to ask those without property to consent to their own servitude. Many individuals, according to Rousseau, have actually consented to be slaves, but this cannot mean that they have an 36 37 Book IV in Emile, ed. Christopher Kelly and Allan Bloom Hanover: In the Social Contract Book I, chapter 4 Rousseau explains very clearly why it is impossible to have a duty toward someone who has no duty of his own toward us.

In his Constitution for Corsica, as we have observed above, Rousseau has an elaborate formulation of this idea. In such a situation, these very laws would be made and operated according to the will and interests of the wealthiest citizens. This means that equality of rights and an impersonal general law generate common freedom only if all have the kind of property necessary to secure their personal independence. When this is not the case — when the means of personal independence of the greatest number are in the hands of a minority — the equality of rights generates a kind of servitude that is radically opposed to freedom.

IV Let us now go back to where we started. Rousseau was convinced that it was impossible to restore the conditions of freedom once inequality has gone beyond a critical point. One of his reasons is that it would be impossible to correct this kind of excessive inequality without breaking with the impartiality and generality of the law — without depriving some citizens of what belongs to them and thus committing a sort of injustice. The mode of acquisition work or violence is less important than its consequences dependence or independence for the determination of legitimacy.

The reason is that property is only legitimate and part of freedom as far as it is acknowledged as such by the people around us, who are under a duty to respect it as sacred and inviolable. But, as Rousseau hinted on many occasions, it would be contradictory to argue you have a duty to respect, at the hands of another man, the very means this man uses to reduce you to personal dependence. Such a duty would be exactly equivalent to the pact of submission which Rousseau considers as incapable of producing any right.

The second argument that might justify the nineteenth-century reading of Rousseau is an extended version of the Lockean proviso; indeed, this is frequently used by left libertarians. This infringement of the rights of others implies that, under one form or another, the appropriator is under an obligation to give back part of what he has taken from the community or pay a rent for what he occupies. In turn, this obligation might justify various kinds of social transfers and redistribution, and consequently the transfers of the welfare state do not violate equality of rights but aim at rectifying some of its past violations.

If this is the case, equality of rights and the generality of the law can no longer be considered as the heart and substance of common freedom, at least as far as property is concerned. In an industrial and modern society, where the means of production and natural resources are concentrated in a few hands, an equal right to work and acquire private wealth — as well as general laws protecting the product of our work — cannot secure equal Downloaded from https: On the contrary, maximizing freedom requires that the state attempt to correct the detrimental consequences of such a concentration of wealth, and in particular the fact that some members of the community are forced to lead a dependent life under domination because they have to accept very severe conditions in order to attain their subsistence.

Therefore, under the impact of unequal wealth and the resulting asymmetry of conditions, freedom as generated by equal law simply vanishes. It would be quite consistent to conclude that special laws, in this context, cannot contradict either justice or freedom since neither justice nor freedom are available under such unequal conditions. If there is no rule of law where inequalities are too crucial, correcting inequalities in such a situation cannot possibly go against the rule of law nor imperil or deny a freedom that simply does not exist.

There is at least one author who read Rousseau in precisely this key in His name is Aubert de Vitry, and his pamphlet features Rousseau emerging from his grave and addressing the National Assembly. Here is what Aubert makes him say: Private property that goes beyond what is needed for the subsistence of the family is a crime against the state, a crime against humankind, a crime against other properties, a theft committed against all citizens and against each of them in particular, since when a family has something in excess, there is another family that lacks the necessities of life.

Punishing such a crime is not a violation of justice, but an homage to justice; forcing a thief to give back what he has stolen is not taking away from him anything which is his. Rue du Hurepois, , — In addition to its thoughtprovoking content, the key to its success lay in the multiplicity of meanings that its readers and interpreters could derive from it. In addition, it also provides an insight into the arguably weaker responses that the Social Contract generated in the Russian Empire.

Variations in the pattern of reception principally arose from the differences in the legal-political traditions and societal structures within these two realms. For the Habsburg Monarchy, natural law and contract theory, although not yet in the form espoused by Rousseau, constituted an essential part of Enlightened Absolutist legal theory in the second half of the eighteenth century.

As shall be shown, depending on the context and the political climate, anti-feudal initiatives could range from cautious to radical-revolutionary. In addition, the Social Contract could be commandeered for the purposes of national emancipation, as will be revealed in reference to the document submitted by the representatives of the Transylvanian Romanians to Emperor Leopold II. It also fostered an emotional attachment among the citizens to their fatherland in both its ideal and applied forms.

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The Social Contract also drew attention to various ways in which imperial Russia violated the rights of its foreign population and of humanity in general. The antiRussian Polish republican nobility asked Rousseau to provide them with a draft constitution designed to protect them against royal absolutism, which resulted in Considerations on the Government of Poland. This work gave some insight into how Rousseau envisaged the abstract principles of right and justice set out in the Social Contract would operate in practice, conditioned by accidents of time and space. In particular, it is vital to take into account the paradox that despite its huge and sustained impact, the Social Contract was never actually legalized by the authorities.

However, it was proscribed once again when Francis II acceded to the throne in Routledge, , Moreover, private libraries, shielded from public scrutiny, could easily elude the authorities and hold illegal literature. This was in stark contrast to his mother, who possessed her own private book collection and did not feel similarly bound by such regulations. During the trial of the Hungarian Jacobin conspirators described in more detail below , one accusation levelled against Ferenc Szentirmay was that the police had found a nearly completed Hungarian translation of the Social Contract at his home.

It is true that I embarked on translating the Social Contract into Hungarian. My motivation was merely to test to what extent the Hungarian language is suitable for rendering such a complicated text. Should the censor not have granted permission for the publication of the text, I would have suppressed it. Ives, Enlightenment and National Revival: The Social Contract was initially forbidden but subsequently became tolerated under the reign of Tsar Paul I.

Ultimately, however, the Committee agreed to grant permission for the book to be published legally, because it was already available in many libraries and enjoyed widespread circulation. The young poet Vasili V. Popugaev interpreted this as a landmark decision, and it inspired him to compose a joyful poem entitled: Nonetheless, these obstacles still could not 7 8 Ibid.

Northwestern University Press, , In the lands of Habsburg Monarchy, natural rights and contractual theory provided the cornerstone of political and legal thinking during the Josephinist period. Their legal textbooks, commonly used throughout the Monarchy until the mid nineteenth century, prepared the ground for the popularization of social contract theory.

Joseph II, himself a student of Martini, subscribed to contract theory and professed that his rule was based on the general will and the consent of the citizens. Leopold stated in his notes that this passage came from chapter 2 of the Social Contract. These references to the Social Contract introduced the following observation by Leopold: What I ask is that in order to construct a viable code in all states, even in monarchies, one must begin with the principle posited by the Americans, the principle of equality.

They extend it to politics: