In, Kant defends a position that cannot be salvaged. The essay is nonetheless important because it helps us understand his philosophy of law and, more specifically, his interpretation of the social contract. Kant considers truthfulness a strict legal duty because it is the necessary condition for the juridical state. As attested by Kants arguments against the death penalty, not even the right to life has such strict unconditional status. Within the juridical state, established by the social contract, the innate right (...) to freedom is transformed into a bundle of merely positive rights, including the right to life. Understanding the reason for the rejection of thus helps us understand the, in a sense, character of Kant’s legal philosophy. In conclusion, some suggestions are made to bring his position closer to our common moral understanding. (shrink)

Abstract:Social contracting has a long and important place in the history of political philosophy (Hardin, 1991; Waldron, 1989) and as a theory of justice (Baynes, 1989; Rawls, 1971). More recently, it has been developed into an individual rights-based theory of organizations (Keeley, 1980, 1988), and as a way to integrate ethics and moral legitimacy into corporate strategy and action (Donaldson, 1982; Freeman&Gilbert, 1988). Currently, it is being proposed as an integrative theory of economic ethics (Donaldson&Dunfee, forthcoming). This paper will extend (...) the Donaldson and Dunfee approach by arguing thatsocial contracting can best be understood and applied in organizational settings if it is perceived and treated as a network governance process. This insight can benefit management scholars and practitioners alike, since it calls attention to the processes by which trust is created and sustained in on-going contractual relationships. It also strongly suggests that a new approach to applying managerial discretion, asmoral agency, is needed to realize the full competitive and ethical potential of emerging network forms. (shrink)

The central claim of Kant's political philosophy is that rational agents sharing a territory can justifiably be forced to live under a state; they have, in Kant's words, a duty of right to leave the state of nature. Perhaps something along these lines is entailed by any theory of state legitimacy, but the point raises special difficulties for Kant. He believes that rational agents have a right to freedom; that is, he believes that a rational agent's external freedom - her (...) ability to set and pursue ends for herself without being subject to the choices of others - can justifiably be restricted only for the sake of external freedom itself. To establish that human beings can be forced to join a civil condition, it will therefore not do to show that the state promotes security, prosperity or any other such value: Kant has to show that human beings living side by side need a state to be free. (shrink)