Revisiting the Problem of Non-Coercible Rights in Kant’s Legal Philosophy

JVF Conference Papers

Immanuel Kant is not known for mincing words. Normally terminological and grammatical complexity cloak a philosopher in the safety of multiple interpretations. With Kant, however, these two salient features combine with a third, namely systematicity, and tend instead to push him further out on a philosophical limb. Nowhere is this more apparent than in his moral philosophy, where one encounters such terms as ‘categorical imperative’ and ‘apodeictic’. The most notable example of Kant’s stringency is perhaps the desert island case from the 'Rechtslehre'...

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