Kant’s Political Theory: Interpretations and Applications

Chapter 3: Is Kant’s Rechtslehre a “Comprehensive Liberalism”?

I. Introduction1 Beginning in 1985, John Rawls repeatedly emphasized that modern, pluralistic societies should be structured in accordance with a political conception of justice.1 In doing so, he has insisted that his own liberalism should be understood as political, in contrast to the comprehensive liberalisms of Kant and John Stuart Mill.2 While this refinement in Rawls’s position has been discussed by many scholars, his characterization of Kant’s liberalism as comprehensive has not been critically explored in the literature. My interest in beginning such an exploration here is entirely focused on Kant. My guiding thought is that we can gain a better understanding of Kant’s Rechtslehre by confronting it with the distinction Rawls developed two centuries later.3 By calling a conception of social justice comprehensive, Rawls means that it relies on “conceptions of what is of value in human life, as well as ideals of personal virtue and character, that are to inform much of our nonpolitical conduct” (PL, 175; cf. 13). He contends that “Kant’s doctrine is a This essay appeared originally as “Is Kant’s Rechtslehre Comprehensive?” in The Southern Journal of Philosophy 36, no. 1, Spindel Supplement: Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (1998): 161–87. Reprinted with the kind permission of The Southern Journal of Philosophy. For revising this essay, I learned a lot from the lively discussions the paper evoked in Memphis and Lawrence. Many thanks also to Rüdiger Bittner, Ernesto Garcia, Samuel Kerstein, and Fang-Li Zhang for their detailed and very helpful critical comments and suggestions. 3 is kant’s rechtslehre a “comprehensive liberalism”? Thomas W. Pogge kant’s rechtslehre 75 comprehensive moral view in which the ideal of autonomy has a regulative role for all of life” (PL, 99),4 and also, more cautiously, that “the basic conceptions of person and society in Kant’s view have, let us assume, a foundation in his transcendental idealism” (PL, 100). Evoking Isaiah Berlin, Rawls mentions as one main drawback of comprehensive conceptions of social justice that they are likely to be socially divisive, for example in their approach to public education: “The liberalisms of Kant and Mill may lead to requirements designed to foster the values of autonomy and individuality as ideals to govern much if not all of life” (PL, 199). But such requirements lead to a fatal dilemma, given what Rawls calls the “fact of oppression,” namely, “that a continuing shared understanding on one comprehensive religious, philosophical, or moral doctrine can be maintained only by the oppressive use of state power” (PL, 37). The comprehensive liberalisms of Kant and Mill can maintain their social preeminence only by violating their own strictures against the use of state oppression (PL, 37, note 39). Rawls does not define political conceptions of social justice simply as ones that are noncomprehensive or freestanding. Rather, he adds two further elements to his definition, namely, that political conceptions of social justice apply to, and only to, the basic structure of a closed and self-contained society (PL, 11–12) and that they are “expressed in terms of certain fundamental ideas seen as implicit in the public political culture of a democratic society” (PL, 13).5 To avoid the problems Rawls points to, Kant’s liberalism need only be freestanding, not political; and so I ignore these two further elements. Simply put, our question is then whether Kant’s Rechtslehre is freestanding—or beholden to and hence biased toward other parts of his philosophical corpus, such as his teachings about good will and autonomy or his transcendental idealism. Let us begin with some straightforward points. It can hardly be disputed that Kant did develop and endorse the doctrine of transcendental idealism and an ideal of autonomy. But this cannot decide our question. For the fact that the author of a conception of social justice has also held and expressed broader religious, moral, or philosophical views—and surely Rawls himself has held, and presumably expressed, such views as well—does not show that the conception of social justice he sets forth depends upon these broader views in any way. Nor can our question be settled by pointing to Kant’s claim that his Rechtslehre fits into the broader worldview of his critical philosophy or by 76 kant’s political theory noting that Kant presents his entire philosophy as a system unified by certain key terms, propositions, and methods. For...