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Kant's Critique of Right

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2011

Gary Banham
Gary Banham
Affiliation:
Manchester Metropolitan University
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Extract

This article has two objectives: first, to bring to the fore Kant's neglected distinction between ‘critique’ and ‘doctrine’ and, second, to relate this distinction to Kant's notion of a philosophy of right. Kant's culminating contribution to practical philosophy, the Metaphysics of Morals, contains a doctrine of right and this ‘doctrine’ has received relatively little attention thus far in English-language writing on Kant. One of the reasons for this relative neglect is, I believe, due to the prevalent attention provided to Kant's practical critique at the expense of his practical doctrine. I aim to provide an account of Kant's critique of right in order to enable an understanding of Kant's doctrine of right to be provided with some initial orientation. I will be suggesting that this critique of right is presented in Toward Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch.

Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 6 , March 2002 , pp. 35 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Kantian Review 2002

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References

Notes

1 This point is ably made by Förster's, Eckhartseminal study: Kant's Final Synthesis: An Essay on the Opus Postumum (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 54Google Scholar.

2 Howard, Dick, The Politics of Critique (Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press, 1988), p. 89.Google Scholar

3 O'Neill, Onora, Constructions of Reason: Explorationsof Kant's Practical Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 55.Google Scholar

4 Gregor, Mary, Laws of Freedom: A Study of Kant's Method in Applying the Categorical Imperative in the Metaphysik der Sitten (Oxford: Blackwell, 1963), p. 17.Google Scholar

5 For further discussion of the relation between these two forms of schematism see Caygill, Howard, ‘Post-Modernism and judgment’, Economy and Society, 17/1 (1986) andGoogle ScholarCaygill, Howard, The Art of Judgment (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989), pp. 250–1Google Scholar.

6 For a defence of these readings of the first and third Critiques see Banham, Gary, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics (London: Macmillan Press and New York: St Martin's Press, 2000), chapters 1, 2 and passimCrossRefGoogle Scholar.

7 The question of Kant's ‘dissatisfaction’ with his own formulation is a central problem of interpreting Perpetual Peace. I will return to this question again in future work where I hope to appraise it from a wider perspective in relation to how Kant achieves his goal of a unity of practical reason. Only within this context will it become possible to see whether there is here a genuine indecision on Kant's part or a final resolution of the difficulty within the context of systematization. Whilst some readers may be sceptical about the way I set the problem out in relation to different types of ‘schema’ when Kant does not use this term in the essay under consideration it seems to me, particularly in connection with the relation between this essay and the essay on theory and practice, that this is the most consistent way of treating Kant's methodological orientation in these works.

8 For an account of the analogical nature of reflective judgement see , Banham, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics, chapter 8, esp. pp. 183–4.Google Scholar For an application of the thought of reflective judgement to the philosophy of history see Makkreel, Rudolf A., Imagination and Interpretation in Kant: The Hermeneutical Import of the Critique of Judgment (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990)Google Scholar.

9 For an argument for this view see Saner, Hans, Kant's Political Thought: Its Origin and Development (1967; 1973 tr. E. B. Ashton, Cambridge: Chicago University Press) and alsoGoogle ScholarHöffe, Otfried, ‘Some Kantian reflections on a world republic’, Kantian Review, 2 (1998), 51–2.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The language of peace and war is used widely in the first Critique as both these authors mention. See my discussion of this topic in tonnection with what I term ‘the ultimate politics of critique’ in , Banham, Kant and the Ends of Aesthetics, chapter 10Google Scholar.

10 A version of this paper was presented at the Warwick Social and Political Thought seminar and I would like to thank the participants at this presentation for comments that helped in the drafting of this article. My thanks must also go to the students of Parrs Wood Adult Education Centre to whom versions of this material were first presented. Supportive help in developing this piece has been provided by Howard Williams, Sharon Anderson-Gold, an anonymous reader and Donald Milligan, to all of whom I would like to give thanks.