The details of the example of the ‘murderer at the door’ – as it is commonly, if inaccurately called – are more complicated than most interpreters assume. This chapter is dedicated to the details of the case, many of which surface only in the light of other eighteenth-century versions of the story. Does the would-be murderer know that the person hiding his intended victim knows about his murderous intentions? Why are the options of the person asked about the victim’s hiding place restricted to yes or no, and how would this restriction work in practice? What are the reasons or motives of someone who intends to lie to a would-be murderer? And what are Constant’s ‘intermediate principles’, which he introduces to defuse the problem case? The chapter also explores Johann Gottlieb Fichte’s discussion of the case in his 1798 System of Ethics. Fichte and Kant agree that lying is not a legitimate option; but Fichte is by far the more radical moralist of the two.

Kant’s critique of perfectionism in the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals launches lively debate on the limits of coercion and the requisites for free action, foundational for post-Kantian perfectionism. The Critique of Practical Reason reformulates the Leibnizian concept of spontaneity as a ‘true apology for Leibniz’, salvaging what is most vital in his thought. Spontaneous freedom does not externalise a unique content, as in Leibniz, but now conceived as negative liberty, signifies the will’s ability to abstract from external causes or to admit them selectively according to rational criteria. Spontaneity is the condition for an order of right, as the sphere of compatible external actions among juridical subjects. Here Kant effects a second modification of Leibniz, in the idea of mutual causality or reciprocity. The Metaphysics of Morals of 1797 elaborates the distinction between pure and empirical practical reason, freedom and happiness, and delineates the sphere of rightful interaction. Neither happiness nor virtue are subject to constraint, but in the sphere of right coercion or mutual limitation is the condition that assures and generalises freedom.

Kant’s criticisms between the Groundwork (1785) and the Metaphysics of Morals (1797) do not eradicate perfectionism but transpose it to a new register, the perfection of freedom itself and the conditions of its exercise. Kant’s evocative but incomplete statements of his political position after 1785 elicit numerous debates among Kantians on the basis and limits of state action. Early Kantians view progress as the outcropping of spontaneous freedom, not as administered and imposed. These debates, involving Hufeland, Reinhold, and Humboldt, offer various combinations of Leibnizian and Kantian ideas. In response to Kant’s Groundwork, Hufeland justifies legitimate political constraint through its contribution to systemic perfection. Wilhelm von Humboldt’s early formulation of the limits of state action derives from Kantian anti-paternalism, the Groundwork assertion of the inviolability of rational beings, combined with a modified Leibnizian monadology admitting interaction. His defence of a minimalist state is a possible but not a necessary consequence of Kantian premises. It draws criticism from Karl von Dalberg, who defends Wolffian reformist interventionism.

Kant’s 1784 lectures on Achenwall is commonly known as the Feyerabend lectures because the manuscript was attributed to Gottfried Feyerabend. These lectures range over the topics eventually treated in Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals (1798), which include both right and ethics. From these lectures we learn how Kant thought about the concepts of end in itself, self-sufficient end and human dignity just prior to writing the Groundwork (1785). Kant accepts much of what he finds in Achenwall, but also advances criticisms of the concept of obligation found in Achenwall and also in Baumgarten. He also rejects Achenwall’s attempt to justify coercion of duties of right simply through the distinction, common in the tradition since Pufundorf, between perfect and imperfect duties. The present discussion concludes that in the 1780s Kant’s position on the relation of right to ethics was still unclear. He appears to base right on the ethical value of humanity as end in itself, but also worries that grounding right on an ethical principle cannot explain why duties of right may be coerced.

The textbook Immanuel Kant assigned for his course on Naturrecht was Gottfried Achenwall’s Natural Law. In the Feyerabend transcript of his course (1784), Kant not only explains Achenwall’s text but also criticizes him and expounds his own alternative theory. Since it is not always obvious from the lecture notes whether Kant is explaining Achenwall, criticizing him, or presenting his own theory, one must know the basics about Achenwall’s positions when reading Kant’s Feyerabend lectures. In this essay, we introduce Achenwall and his handbook to readers of Kant’s Feyerabend lectures. We start with some background information and then discuss Achenwall’s position on freedom and obligation, natural law and right, and his theory of property and the state. We end by pointing out a few of the main points of disagreement between Kant and Achenwall that emerge from the Feyerabend lectures.

Chapter 2 introduces the normative theory on which the book relies. Principles of natural law are guides for practical human action. The principles are “natural” because they are knowable through human reason and valid guides to action whether they have been accepted in any community’s laws. They are “law” in that they supply reasons or justifications for action. Natural law theory focuses human action on survival and on flourishing understood rationally. Natural law justifies reasoning with interests, understood as distinct components of a person’s well-being. Natural law also justifies reasoning with rights, understood as entitlements to act and be free from interference backed by claims against others. Natural rights focus social and political life on desirable, low, and uncontroversial goals like survival and freedom. Natural rights also help specialize – around distinct fields of human activity organized around people’s bodies, their capacities to make livings, their capacities to associate, and their capacities to use property.

This chapter presents an overview of Plato’s moral realism. The metaphysical framework of Plato’s moral realism is explained. This framework’s fundamental principle is the superordinate Idea of the Good, which is both the anchor for moral realism and the unhypothetical first principle of all. Thus, for Plato normativity is woven into metaphysics (Section 1.1). A taxonomy of types of moral realism is provided within which Plato’s moral realism can be situated (Section 1.2). Plato’s moral realism is compared to versions of antimoral realism and naturalistic versions of moral realism (Section 1.3). The priority of “good” to “right” in Plato is explained (Section 1.4). The priority of “good” to “value” is further explained. The universality of the Good goes beyond objectivity and is intended to preclude the possibility that “good” and “good for me” can possibly conflict (Section 1.5).

This chapter considers the law of civil remedies: the definition and nature of ‘remedies’ and the relationship between remedy and right. It provides extracts which discuss the ongoing debate about whether judges should have discretion in the remedies they grant. It considers the nature of the common law and equity divide in Australian law as expressed in case law and in academic discussion. Finally, it outlines a functional approach to remedies.

Kant’s Rechtslehre is concerned with the freedom that is to coexist with the freedom of choice of others in accordance with a universal law. I argue that this freedom is not to be directly equated with freedom of choice: it is instead the independence that is a condition of genuine free choice because it ensures that one is not constrained to act in accordance with the choices of others. Kant’s distinction between active and passive citizenship, however, is incompatible with this notion of independence because property rights of a certain type make it possible for some citizens to dominate other citizens, who cannot, therefore, be classed as genuinely independent. Thus the concept of property is central to the question of how right can secure the freedom of citizens. I show that Kant understands this concept in terms of a relation between persons with respect to things, rather than in terms of only a relation between a person and a thing. I argue that although Kant appears to argue in favour of private property, he does not sufficiently justify this form of property by demonstrating that other forms of property would be less compatible with the freedom that right is to secure and guarantee.

I begin with an account of the fundamental aims of Hegel’s ‘science of right’ so as to show how his account of property faces two key challenges: justifying the concept of property and any specific form of it, on the one hand, and integrating property into the system of right, which includes subordinating it to any higher moments of right, on the other. I then turn to Hegel’s argument for private property. I distinguish between two interpretations of his argument: the ‘embodiment’ interpretation and the ‘recognition’ interpretation. I identify serious problems with the first interpretation and then argue for a version of the second one that entails the type of triadic model of the concept of property developed by Fichte and already implicit in Kant’s Rechtslehre. I show that this triadic model, and thus Hegel’s full argument for private property, becomes explicit only at the stage of contract. Next, I discuss how Hegel seeks to integrate private property into ethical life, and I argue that the idea of ethical life is, in fact, more compatible with some form of common or collective property because this form of property is more expressive of this idea.

This chapter begins with Fichte’s early theory of property as presented in his defence of the French Revolution from 1793. My intention is to show how tensions within this theory of property can be explained in terms of an unsuccessful attempt to establish a necessary connection between the right to property and labour. In the later Foundations of Natural Right, Fichte’s attempt to explain the connection between the right to property and labour leads him to reject his earlier dyadic (person–thing) model of the concept of property. A triadic (person–thing–person) model is instead shown to follow from Fichte’s understanding of the concept of right and the role of recognition in his theory of right. The connection between the right to property and labour is explained in terms of how each person’s property rights must enable him or her to live from his or her labour. This will be shown to demand forms of property other than private property in relation to certain activities and the resources required by them. Fichte nevertheless speaks of ‘absolute property’ and thereby suggests the possibility of some role for private property within the rational state.

Pacts or “social contracts” form the basis of sovereignty in many early modern theories of political authority, and in Pufendorf’s too. Most such theories treat the pact as the means by which a pre-existing right—for example, divine right, or the natural right of individuals grounded in their strength, reason, or property—is transferred to a sovereign on the condition that the right be protected, to be rescinded if it is not. For Pufendorf, however, there is no pre-existing right since the sovereignty pact creates a new right—the right to issue unchallengeable commands for the purposes of achieving social peace—by instituting two new moral personae: the citizen who obeys the sovereign in exchange for protection, and the sovereign invested with the right of absolute command to provide social peace. Since Pufendorf’s sovereignty is constituted not by a prior moral right, but rather by the capacity to exercise unchallengeable authority for the end of social peace, there is no naturally rightful form of government. Pufendorf thus takes a neutral and pluralistic view of the three traditional forms of government—monarchical, aristocratic and democratic—insofar as each is capable of exercising the capacity for sovereign rule.

The Catholic Church holds the concept of natural law in reference to a created order. While this concept has been put aside in philosophy and science the Church deems that creation implies an inherent relationship between all its components. The Social doctrine of the Church is built on the concept of natural law accessible to human intelligence. The teaching of Thomas Aquinas drawing from Aristotle remains the main source of Catholic understanding of natural law. Natural law and natural rights are not to be confused. Right refers to a natural order of things, which is the natural law apprehended by reason at a given moment. The source of human rights is entailed in a measure inscribed in the order created by God. So natural rights are determined on the basis of what constitutes a just relationship between persons in accordance with natural law. The attention given today to the ecosystem including the biosphere and human society altogether brings us back to the core of natural law. The ecosystem witnesses to an order which pre-exists to our attempts to use it arbitrarily. ’Integral ecology’ apprehends the human being in its interdependence with the created order of the universe.

Payne offers an account of the unsettling effects of confessions of violence by armed left guerillas or revolutionary fighters in Argentina in two moments in Argentine history. The chapter considers how the timing of these confessions shaped responses to them. In the years shortly after the transition from authoritarian rule, contentious debate moved toward a full accounting on the left for its role in past violence. In recent years, this proved less possible. As the right reconsolidated its political power, the confessional narratives from the Argentine armed left fueled fears of a backlash against the left, reinforcing a view of the left’s shared responsibility with the authoritarian regime for human rights violations, and a call for its prosecution. This silencing of open debate over the left’s past actions prevented the process of condemning violations regardless of who committed them. The prescriptive dimension to this observation highlights the need for urgency in thinking self-critically, to reflect broadly on the motives and consequences of violence, and to use moments of political advantage to condemn those parts of the (temporarily) dominant power’s past that deserve condemnation.

Chapter 2 explicates Augustine’s critique of political pride, as tending to foment “lust for domination” (libido dominandi), in books I–V of The City of God. In this opening segment, Augustine depicts pride as unnatural for human beings and unjust, thereby paving the way for a greater appreciation of the naturalness and justice of moderation and humility in political life.

Are legal traditions incommensurable? Professor H. Patrick Glenn argued that the idea that legal traditions were not suitable for comparison was a result of the reification of cultures. This chapter discusses Glenn’s insights of tradition and commensurability by examining the variants of the concepts and practices of lineage property in historical Confucianism. In the Confucian sphere of influence, marked by the shared precept of ancestral worship and primacy of ritual obligation, legal developments concerning lineage organization and property converged and diverged, revealing the complexity in humanity’s efforts to respond to the various challenges it faced. This examination illustrates Glenn’s central idea that legal traditions of the world are not only comparable and translatable but also transplantable. Transformation and transmission of law in East Asia underscore the need to compare legal traditions, both within and without in all its independence and interdependence, and further to understand the past in its own terms in all the interconnectedness of autonomous dimensions of life at a given time.