Review of Gottlieb Hufeland's Essay on the principle of natural right (1786) [translated and edited by Allen Wood]

Summary

Introduction

In October 1785 Gottlieb Hufeland (1760–1817), then a twenty-five-year-old scholar with doctorates in philosophy and law at the University of Jena, sent Kant a copy of his book on natural right (see AK 10:388–389, 412–413). Kant was requested to review it for the Fenaer Allegemeine Literaturzeitung (see AK 10:398–399), and the review appeared on April 18, 1786 (AK 13:173).

Hufeland's approach to ethics is Wolffian, basing ethics in general on the striving for perfection. He attempts to derive the individual's right from the obligation to pursue one's own perfection, arguing that it entails the authorization to use coercion to defend one's perfection and to act so as to increase it. Kant's review praises the thoroughness and scholarship of Hufeland's book, and expresses optimism about Hufeland's future contributioon to this and other areas of philosophy.

In his review Kant emphasizes the points on which he and Hufeland agree, such as the apriority of principles of right, but criticizes Hufeland's derivation of right from an obligation, arguing that this leads to the paradox that people have no rights they may not press to the full, and also leaves indeterminate the extent of an individual's rights. Kant's own approach, already present in the Critique of Pure Reason, is to base right on the conditions of everyone's external freedom under universal laws (A316/B373).