Bona Fama Defuncti in Kant’s Rechtslehre: Some Perspectives

Although Kant’s final work in moral philosophy, Die Metaphysik der Sitten, currently attracts much scholarly attention, there is still a lot to explore. This article is an attempt to get to grips with a particular, often neglected passage of the Rechtslehre, namely §35. Here Kant defends the view that not only can a person’s good reputation can be tarnished after his death, but also that this constitutes a violation of this dead person’s property. Here I will not be able to fully clarify what Kant means when he holds that persons can be harmed after their death, but I will put Kant’s view in a few perspectives.