Abstract

In this paper, I outline Kant’s attempt to account for the category of relations, which is concomitant with his effort to prove that atomism cannot describe human experience. Kant’s journey from the First Critique to his last work the Opus Postumum is a struggle against atomistic versions of the world. In the last instance, it is a transit from I think to I act; and it is also recognition that to act can only be performed in a relational manner in community with others. In order to substantiate his explanation of real forces in the world, Kant rethinks and extends his understanding of the subject from the subject as the unity of apperception to the self-positing subject living in the world with others. In order to defend ‘the being in the world’ who ‘has rights,’ I argue that we need to return to Kant’s general account of rights for all humans in the world.