Natural Law and Public Reason in Kant’s Political Philosophy

Canadian Journal of Philosophy 26 (3):389-411 (1996)
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Abstract

My intention in this essay will be to explore the role that consent-based arguments perform in Kant's political and legal philosophy. I want to uncover the extent to which Kant considered that the legitimacy of the State and of its laws depends upon the outcome of intersubjective deliberation. Commentators have divided over the following question: Is Kant best viewed as a member of the social contract tradition, according to which the legitimacy of the state and of the laws it promulgates derives from the consent of those people over whom it claims authority, or should he be read as having put forward a secularized version of natural law theory, according to which the state and its laws are legitimate to the extent that they are attained by standards of sound reason and supported by an objective account of the human good?

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Daniel Marc Weinstock
Université de Montréal

Citations of this work

Critical Notice.Daniel M. Weinstock - 2000 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (2):315-339.
Critical Notice.Daniel M. Weinstock - 2000 - Canadian Journal of Philosophy 30 (2):315-339.
Kant’s Universalism versus Pragmatism.Hemmo Laiho - 2019 - In Krzysztof Skowroński & Sami Pihlström (eds.), Pragmatist Kant—Pragmatism, Kant, and Kantianism in the Twenty-first Century. Helsinki, Finland: pp. 60-75.

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References found in this work

Political Liberalism.Stephen Mulhall - 1994 - Philosophical Quarterly 44 (177):542-545.
Natural Law and Natural Rights.Richard Tuck - 1981 - Philosophical Quarterly 31 (124):282-284.
The Right to Private Property.Jeremy Waldron & Stephen A. Munzer - 1992 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 21 (2):196-206.

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