ABSTRACT This article examines the under-researched figure A.W. Rehberg in his exchange with Kant over the relationship between theory and practice in the philosophy of right. I argue that Rehberg raises, what I call, two problems of political matter which attempt to show that Kant's overly formal approach to political theory cannot justifiably determine political practice. The first problem is the problem of positive determinations of right, rather than merely negative prohibitions. Rehberg takes this to mean that Kant cannot determine (...) us to a specific form of constitution. I argue that Kant's innovation of intelligible property functions as a response to this critique in that it provides the possibility of synthetic propositions of right a priori. Second, Rehberg insists that an a priori system of right cannot relate to already formed historical communities. Here Kant's response comes close to agreeing with Rehberg as Kant takes prudential or historical reasoning to harmonize with the demands of a priori right in order to applied to the sensible world. Kant, in this instance, comes closer to Rehberg by denying centralized enlightened monarchy and the reliance on natural and historical development for the application of right. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This is the first English translation of A.W. Rehberg's Über das Verhältnis der Theorie zur Praxis which was a published as a response to Immanuel Kant's On the Common Saying: That may be correct in theory, but is of no use in practice. Rehberg's response appeared originally in February 1794.

In this masterful work, both an illumination of Kant's thought and an important contribution to contemporary legal and political theory, Arthur Ripstein gives a comprehensive yet accessible account of Kant's political philosophy. In addition to providing a clear and coherent statement of the most misunderstood of Kant's ideas, Ripstein also shows that Kant's views remain conceptually powerful and morally appealing today.

In this paper, I examine Kant’s reception of and solution to the problem of the unity of the political will. I propose that Kant distances himself from the modern paradigmatic foundations of sovereignty principally with his theses of the ideality of the general will and of the apriority of the justification of popular sovereignty. My interpretative hypothesis is that Kant solves the problem by grounding sovereignty in a conceptual element which is new in the history of political philosophy, i. e. (...) the a priori unified omnilateral will. In section IV, I explain why my reading of the ideality of the general will can respond to seemingly plausible objections arising from Kant’s own texts and how it works in the face of concrete political states of affairs. (shrink)

In this essay, I examine Kant’s interpretation of Rousseau through the lens of Reflection 6593. This Reflection deserves scrutiny because it serves as a bridge between Kant’s well-known engagement with Rousseau in the mid-1760s and his later discussions of the vocation of the human being in the lectures on ethics and anthropology. Through a close reading of R 6593, I argue that the Reflection offers the earliest evidence of Kant’s philosophy of history and its integration into his treatment of the (...) human vocation. This change, I propose, is instigated by Rousseau’s “Abstract” of St. Pierre’s Perpetual Peace. I conclude that R 6593 is a crucial indicator of Kant’s evolving views on Rousseau and shows his enduring importance for understanding the formation of Kant’s mature political thought. (shrink)

There are two senses of the word “people”, first as an ethnic group and second as the collection of citizens of a state. How do they relate to one another and to the state? I show that in his political philosophy Kant insists that “people” in this second sense is constituted only in terms of being subject to a single state, while in his social philosophy he allows for an ethnic conception of peoples that share a language and culture and (...) have distinct characters. In his philosophy of history he insists that the general historical correspondence between ethnic peoples and states is both natural and positive for development toward peace, both because linguistic and religious differences deter the formation of a single world-encompassing state and because their competition through war eventually leads to perpetual peace. Nevertheless I argue that Kant’s insistence on the a priori basis of right combined with the mature development of state and international institutions give reasons that states should not correspond to ethnic peoples. (shrink)