INTRODUCTION

Much recent writing on Kant's ‘kingdom of ends’ gives it a semi-political interpretation, representing it as the normative ideal of a democratic order of mutually legislating citizens of equal moral standing. Implicit parallels are drawn between Kant's account of agents as each legislating the moral law to themselves and John Rawls' ideal of a well-ordered society in which a community of co-legislators reach reasonable agreement on shareable principles of justice. Related liberal values are introduced in the course of textual exposition, yielding richly normative interpretations of what Kant himself says is ‘only an ideal’ (G IV 433). One finds the subtle alignment of Kantian moral autonomy, conceived as the free subjection of Willkür under Wille, with liberal personal autonomy understood in terms of individuals' competence to judge for themselves what the good life consists in for them.