Abstract

A careful, detailed, summary and interpretation of the development of Kant’s views on political philosophy from his early denial that the concept of obligation could be derived from Wolff’s Naturkausalität until all the major elements of his own Rechtsphilosophie could be identified. The major source for the author’s reconstruction of these largely unpublished views is, of necessity, the large volume of disorganized, problematically dated Reflexionen, and student transcripts and summaries of his lectures. He convincingly organizes these materials into four main "phases": 1762-1765, when legal obligation was grounded in the notion of the "analogon rationis"; 1766-68, "The competent judge as necessary condition of law"; 1769-1771, with its initial attempt to connect a universal order of law and the problems of "Verstandes erkenntniss"; and post-1772, wherein, the author asserts, the truly critical foundation for Kant’s philosophy of law is discovered, his transcendentally justified notion of freedom. All of this material represents a judicious and quite useful compilation of pertinent Reflexionen and marginalia, but the author’s main purpose in amassing and presenting this often confusing material is interpretive and polemical.