Hostname: page-component-7dd5485656-bvgqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-10-29T19:23:29.886Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The provisionality of property rights in Kant's Doctrine of Right

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Rafeeq Hasan
Rafeeq Hasan*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Amherst College, Amherst, MA, USA
*
E-mail: rhasan@amherst.edu
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I criticize two ways of interpreting Kant's claim that property rights are merely ‘provisional’ in the state of nature. Weak provisionality holds that in the state of nature agents can make rightful claims to property. What is lacking is the institutional context necessary to render their claims secure. By contrast, strong provisionality holds that making property claims in the state of nature wrongs others. I argue for a third view, anticipatory provisionality, according to which state of nature property claims do not wrong others, but anticipate a condition in which the authority to make such claims can no longer be unilaterally determined.

Keywords

Kant, Immanuelprovisional rightpropertyredistribution

Information

Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 48 , Issue 6 , December 2018 , pp. 850 - 876
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Journal of Philosophy 2017

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Aune, Bruce. 1979. Kant's Theory of Morals. Princeton: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Banham, Gary. 2007. “Publicity and Provisional Right.” Politics and Ethics Review 3(1): 73–89. 10.3366/per.2007.3.1.73CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Banham, Gary. 2011. “New Work on Kant's Doctrine of Right.” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 19(3): 549–560. 10.1080/09608788.2011.563527CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brandt, Reinhardt. 1982. “Das Erlaubnisgesetz oder: Vernunft und Geschichte in Kants Rechtslehre.” In Rechtsphilosophie der Aufklärung, edited by Brandt, R., 233–275. Berlin: de Gruyter. 10.1515/9783110850192CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brudner, Alan. 2011. “Private Law and Kantian Right.” University of Toronto Law Journal 61(2): 279–311. 10.3138/utlj.61.2.279CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Brudner, Alan. 2013. The Unity of the Common Law. 2nd ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199592807.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Byrd, B. Sharon, and Hruschka, Joachim. 2010. Kant's Doctrine of Right: A Commentary, 67–68. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511712050CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Epstein, Richard A. Winter. 1997. “Takings, Exclusivity, and Speech: The Legacy of PruneYard v Robins.” The University of Chicago Law Review 64(1): 21–56. 10.2307/1600196CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flikschuh, Katrin. 2000. Kant and Modern Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9780511487187CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Flikschuh, Katrin. 2008. “Reason, Right, and Revolution: Kant and Locke.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 36(4): 375–404. 10.1111/papa.2008.36.issue-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gregor, Mary. June 1998. “Kant's Theory of Property.” The Review of Metaphysics 42(4): 757–787.Google Scholar
Guyer, Paul. 2000a. “Life, Liberty, and Property: Rawls and Kant.” In Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness, 262–286. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CBO9781139173339CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul. 2000b. “Kantian Foundations for Liberalism.” Kant on Freedom, Law, and Happiness 235–261.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Guyer, Paul. 2002. “Kant's Deductions of the Principles of Right.” In Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretive Essays, edited by Timmons, Mark, 23–64. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Guyer, Paul. 2006. Kant. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hasan, Rafeeq. Forthcoming. “Freedom and Poverty in the Kantian State.” European Journal of Philosophy.Google Scholar
Hobbes, Thomas. (1651) 1996. Leviathan. Edited by Tuck, Richard. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Hodgson, Louis-Philippe. March 2010. “Kant on Property Rights and the State.” Kantian Review 15(1): 58–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kant, Immanuel. (1787) 1933. Critique of Pure Reason. Translated by Kemp Smith, Norman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1795) 1996. Toward Perpetual Peace, in Practical Philosophy. Translated and edited by Gregor, Mary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. (1797) 1996. The Doctrine of Right, Part I of the Metaphysics of Morals in Practical Philosophy. Translated and edited by Gregor, Mary. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kant, I. 2016. Lectures and Drafts on Political Philosophy. Translated by Rauscher, and Westphal, Kenneth and edited by Rauscher, Frederick. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Kersting, Wolfgang. 1992. “Kant's Concept of the State.” In Kant's Political Philosophy, edited by Williams, Howard, 143–165. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.Google Scholar
Korsgaard, Christine. Forthcoming. “The Claims of Animals and the Needs of Strangers: Two Cases of Imperfect Right.”Google Scholar
LeBar, Mark. 1999. “Kant on Welfare.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 29(2): 225–249. 10.1080/00455091.1999.10717512CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Locke, John. (1689) 1988. “The Second Treatise of Government.” In Two Treatises of Government, edited by Laslett, Peter, 265–428. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Moran, Kate. 2017. “Neither Justice Nor Charity? Kant on ‘General Injustice’.” Canadian Journal of Philosophy 47(4): 477–498.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Mulholland, Leslie. 1990. Kant's System of Rights. New York: Columbia University Press.Google Scholar
O’Neill, Onora. 1989. Constructions of Reason. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Pallikkathayil, Japa. 2016. “Persons and Bodies.” In Freedom and Force: Essays on Kant's Legal Philosophy, edited by Kisilevsky, Sari and Stone, Martin, 35–54. Oxford: Hart Publishing.Google Scholar
Pallikkathayil, Japa. October 2010. “Deriving Morality from Politics: Rethinking the Formula of Humanity.” Ethics 121(1): 116–147. 10.1086/656041CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pippin, Robert. 1999. “Dividing and Deriving in Kant's Rechtslehre.” In Metaphysische Anfangsgründe der Rechtslehre, edited by Höffe, Otfried, 63–85. Berlin: Akademie Verlag.Google Scholar
Pippin, Robert. 2006. “Mine and Thine? The Kantian State.” In The Cambridge Companion to Kant and Modern Philosophy, edited by Guyer, Paul, 416–446. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 10.1017/CCOL052182303XCrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ripstein, Arthur. 2009. Force and Freedom: Kant's Legal and Political Philosophy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 10.4159/9780674054516CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ryan, Alan. 1984. Property and Political Theory. London: Blackwell.Google Scholar
Stilz, Anna. 2013. “Occupancy Rights and the Wrong of Removal.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 41(4): 324–356. 10.1111/papa.2013.41.issue-4CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stilz, Anna. 2014. “Provisional Right and Non-State Peoples.” In Kant and Colonialism: Historical and Critical Perspectives, edited by Flikschuh, Katrin and Ypi, Lea, 197–220. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199669622.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tierney, Brian. 2001a. “Kant on Property: The Problem of Permissive Law.” Journal of the History of Ideas. 62(2): 301–312. 10.1353/jhi.2001.0020CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tierney, Brian. 2001b. “Permissive Natural Law and Property: Gratian to Kant.” Journal of the History of Ideas. 62(3): 381–399. 10.1353/jhi.2001.0031CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tierney, Brian. 2014. Liberty and Law: The Idea of Permissive Natural Law, 1100–1800. Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press. 10.2307/j.ctt6wpkf1CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Uleman, Jennifer. May 2004. “External Freedom in Kant's Rechtslehre: Political, Metaphysical.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 68(3): 578–601. 10.1111/phpr.2004.68.issue-3CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Varden, Helga. 2008. “Kant's Non-Voluntarist Conception of Political Obligations: Why Justice is Impossible in the State of Nature.” Kantian Review 13(2): 1–45. 10.1017/S1369415400001217CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Waldron, Jeremy. May 1996. “Kant's Legal Positivism.” Harvard Law Review 109(7): 1535–1566. 10.2307/1342024CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinrib, Ernst. 1987. “Law as a Kantian Idea of Reason.” Columbia Law Review 87(3): 472–408. 10.2307/1122668CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weinrib, Ernst. 2003. “Poverty and Property in Kant's System of Rights.” Notre Dame Law Review 78(3): 795–828.Google Scholar
Westphal, Kenneth. 2002. “A Kantian Justification of Possession.” In Kant's Metaphysics of Morals: Interpretive Essays, 89–109.Google Scholar
Williams, Howard. 1983. Kant's Political Philosophy. New York: St. Martin's Press.Google Scholar
Wood, Allen. 2014. “The Independence of Right from Ethics.” In The Free Development of Each: Studies on Freedom, Right, and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy, 70–89. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199685530.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
YPI, Lea. 2013. “What's Wrong with Colonialism.” Philosophy and Public Affairs 41(2): 158–191. 10.1111/papa.2013.41.issue-2CrossRefGoogle Scholar