Kantian individualism and political libertarianism.

• Author: Otteson, James R.

Immanuel Kant's political philosophy seems to involve a tension: a commitment to protecting individual agency and independence, yet an endorsement of state powers and duties that may impinge on that independence. The problem arises because Kant endorses a view of the individual human agent that implies a minimal, libertarian state, yet he endorses a state that seems in some cases to conflict with that agency. I maintain that Kantian individual agency does indeed suggest a minimal state and is inconsistent with a state that acts beyond the protection of that agency.

Kantian Individualism and Personal Freedom

I begin with Kant's 1785 Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals (1981). The essay's argument is motivated by Kant's concern for the dignity of the individual autonomous will, which has worth in itself only because it is an end in itself. Relevant here are two claims Kant makes: autonomy or freedom is necessary for an individual to be a "person," and this claim admits of no exceptions; that is, any admixture of heteronomy in one's moral maxims or any treatment by others as anything other than an end in oneself compromises one's moral personhood.

Kant's first claim centers on his concept of personhood, which itself rests on his notion of an autonomous will. "Rational beings," he says, "are called persons inasmuch as their nature already marks them out as ends in themselves, i.e., as something which is not to be used merely as a means and hence there is imposed thereby a limit on all arbitrary use of such beings, which are thus the objects of respect" ([1785] 1981, 36, hereafter cited as 1981). A person, unlike a thing, has the capacity both to construct laws for himself and to choose to follow them; hence, Kant argues, a person must be treated as an end, not simply as a means. Of course persons may be treated as means--when one pays someone else to mow one's lawn, for example--but persons may never be treated simply as means. Respecting the mower's personhood presumably entails making him an offer and allowing him to accept or decline it as he judges fit, consistent with his own rationality; forcing someone to mow one's lawn against his will is treating him merely as a means.

Kant extends the argument by linking the notion of a person with the notions of worth and respect. The only thing whose existence has "absolute worth," he says, is "man, and in general every rational being" (1981, 35). Only the rational being is subject to the moral law, and hence only such a being warrants our respect as an end in itself. The rational being alone is "autonomous" and hence alone has "dignity": "Reason, therefore, relates every maxim of the will as legislating universal laws to every other will and also to every action toward oneself; it does so not on account of any other practical motive or future advantage but rather from the idea of the dignity of a rational being who obeys no law except what he at the same time enacts himself" (1981, 40). Kant goes so far as to say that in the kingdom of ends, "everything has either a price or a dignity" (1981, 40)--and apparently not both, and there is no third alternative--which means that everything that is not a person has a price; only persons, insofar as they are persons, have a dignity. "Now morality is the condition under which alone a rational being can be an end in himself, for only thereby can he be a legislating member in the kingdom of ends. Hence morality and humanity, insofar as it is capable of morality, alone have dignity" (1981, 40-41). Individual human beings have a dignity because of their natures as beings of a certain kind (namely, rational and autonomous), and this fact about them entails that these individuals must be respected, both by themselves and by others.

This conception of rational nature implies that my using you against your will to achieve an end of mine is immoral because it violates your dignity as a person. It uses you simply as a means to my end and, by making you adopt my maxim, induces heteronomy into your will. The end I wish to achieve by using you, whether good or bad, is irrelevant: not only must the law hold without exception if it is to count as a moral law, but, given the nature of a rational will, any use of the will simply as a means, whether by oneself or by another, disrespects it. So even if I enslaved you in order to force you to use your keen intellect to search for a cure for cancer that could benefit countless others, I have nevertheless violated your dignity as a rational being--and therefore, according to Kant, I have acted immorally.

This inference implicates the second part of Kant's argument: for a law to be morally valid, it must be necessary and admit of no exceptions (1981, 2). Kant argues that "moral worth" comes only from acting out of respect for duty to such a moral law (1981, 11-12) and further that "reason in the consciousness of its dignity despises" "empirical inducements" that would lead it to act otherwise than from its duty (1981, 22). Just as the moral law itself can admit of no exceptions--because it would then compromise its universality and thereby its formal character as law--so too the rational will can admit of no exploitation as a mere means without thereby becoming compromised. Kant claims, moreover, that autonomy of the will is the "supreme principle of morality" (1981, 44); hence, one who violates another's autonomy, regardless of the reason, has acted immorally and compromised the victim's personhood. Charles Taylor has rightly claimed that for Kant "the moral will is necessarily autonomous.... It is impossible to state what morality consists in without making clear that it consists in freedom. So while morality is central to freedom, this involves no limitation of our possible freedom, because moral life is essentially freedom" (1984, 107; compare Korsgaard 1996, chaps. 6 and 7).

It is difficult to imagine a stronger defense of the "sacred" dignity of individual agency. Kantian individuality is premised on its rational nature and its entailed inherent dignity, and the rest of his moral philosophy arguably is built on this vision. (1)

Kant relies on a similarly robust conception of individuality in work other than his explicitly moral philosophy. The 1784 essay "An Answer to the Question: 'What Is Enlightenment?'" (Kant 1991), for example, emphasizes in strong terms the threat that paternalism poses to one's will. Kant argues that "enlightenment" (Aufklarung) involves a transition from moral and intellectual immaturity, wherein one depends on others to make one's moral and intellectual decisions, to maturity, wherein one makes such decisions for oneself. One cannot effect this transition if one remains under another's tutelage, and, as a corollary, one compromises another's enlightenment if one undertakes to make such decisions for the other person--which, as Kant argues, is the case under a paternalistic government. Kant also writes in his 1786 essay "What Is Orientation in Thinking?" that "To think for oneself means to look within oneself (i.e. in one's own reason) for the supreme touchstone of truth; and the maxim of thinking for oneself at all times is enlightenment" (1991, 249, italics and bold in the original). These passages are consistent with the position he takes in Grounding that a person who depends on others is acting heteronomously, not autonomously, and is to that extent not exercising a free moral will.

These passages also help to clarify Kant's notion of personhood and rational agency by indicating some of their practical implications. For example, on the basis of his argument, one would expect him to argue for setting severe limits on the authority that any group of people, including the state, may exercise over others: because individual freedom is necessary both to achieve enlightenment and to exercise one's moral agency, Kant should argue that no group may impinge on that freedom without thereby acting immorally.

Kant expressly draws this conclusion in his 1793 essay "On the Common Saying: 'This May Be True in Theory, but It Does Not Apply in Practice'":

Right is the restriction of each individual's freedom so that it harmonises with the freedom of everyone else (in so far as this is possible within the terms of a general law). And public right is the distinctive quality of the external laws which make this constant harmony possible. Since every restriction of freedom through the arbitrary will of another party is termed coercion, it follows that a civil constitution is a relationship among free men who are subject to coercive laws, while they retain their freedom within the general union with their fellows. (1991, 73, emphasis in original) Kant insists on the protection of a sphere of liberty for each individual to self-legislate under universalizable laws of rationality, consistent with the formulation of the categorical imperative requiring the treatment of others "always at the same time as an end and never simply as a means" (1981, 36). This formulation of the categorical imperative might even logically entail the position Kant articulates about "right," "public right," and "freedom." Persons do not lose their personhood when they join a civil community, so they cannot rationally endorse a state that will be destructive of that personhood; on the contrary, according to Kant, a person enters civil society rationally willing that the society will protect both his own agency and that of others. Robert B. Pippen rightly says that for Kant "political duties are a subset of moral duties" (1985, 107-42), but the argument here puts it slightly differently: political rights, or "dignities," derive from moral rights, which for Kant are determined by one's moral agency. Thus, the only "coercive laws" to which individuals may rationally allow themselves to be subject in civil society are those that require respect for each others' moral agency (and provide for the...