3.1 Law of the common will condition

Kant’s statement of the ‘law of the common will condition’ in [T9.2] raises a serious puzzle, since in the Doctrine of Right, Kant plays with two conceptions of ‘common will’. Apart from the actually (wirklich) united will expressed by the positive laws of a civil state (MS, 6: 264), Kant frequently speaks of an a priori idea, or the Idea (Idee) of, the united will of all (6: 258–9, 264, 267–8). Sometimes, he carefully distinguishes them: the Idea of united will has an a priori authority, whereas an actually united will is valid in the spatiotemporal world (VAMS, 23: 304). Nonetheless, sometimes Kant writes as if they can be conflated:

Indeed, this conflation seems to have led some recent scholars to identify the a priori united will with actual ones (Varden Reference Varden2008: 17–18; Ripstein Reference Ripstein2009: 154–9). But on this interpretation, Kant’s point in [T9.2] becomes unintelligible: if outside civil states no variant of united will yet exists, then we lose the referent of ‘common will’ mentioned in [T9.2], which is supposed to bear on the legitimacy of provisional property absent positive laws. Earlier scholars do recognize the independent existence of the a priori united will (Kersting Reference Kersting1984: 144–9; Mulholland Reference Mulholland1990: 278–81; Byrd and Hruschka Reference Byrd and Hruschka2006: 268–71), and it seems that provisional property can therefore find some justificatory support from this a priori legislative authority (Ludwig Reference Ludwig1988: 119). But this approach faces a different difficulty: although the a priori united will is frequently spoken of, its content is rarely specified. As a result, it remains obscure on what ‘law’ provisional property is based.

Building upon Messina’s insightful study (Reference Messina2021: 73–7), however, a middle path can be identified to unpack the ‘law of the common will condition’, without either overstating the significance of the a priori variant of united will or sidelining it altogether. To begin with, we may acknowledge the existence of the a priori variant of united will, which even has some positive content bearing upon the acquisition of provisional property. Indeed, Kant has adduced two a priori principles of Right before mentioning the a priori united will, and the a priori united will must have committed itself to these principles. First, the Universal Principle of Right (MS, 6: 230). As Byrd and Hruschka helpfully note in this connection (Reference Byrd and Hruschka2010: 52–8), the physical acts of every individual could thereby have juridical relevance, say, as a step towards acquiring an exclusive right over an external object under appropriate circumstances.Footnote ²¹ Second, the Juridical Postulate of Practical Reason: ‘It is therefore an a priori presupposition of practical reason to regard and treat any object of my choice as something which could objectively be mine’ (6: 246–7), in light of which two corollaries can be attributed to Kant. For one thing, the Juridical Postulate of Practical Reason has a duty-imposing function, in the sense that no one is permitted to act in such a way that private property becomes, in general, impossible (6: 252). For another, however, by its introduction alone Kant has not specified any determinate rule to answer the question of who, by which action, shall own what (Byrd and Hruschka Reference Byrd and Hruschka2006: 256–7).Footnote ²² This indeterminacy will contribute to the conclusion that the state of nature must be left (6: 307–8, 312); and with the commitment to the normative necessity of civil states, Kant must endorse the view that any claim made in accordance with the a priori united will must still defer to the decisions of an actually united will. As it seems, Kant’s apparent conflation of the a priori united will with the actually united will precisely registers this ‘deference’ relation (if not the stronger ‘identity’ relation).

Yet there is one lingering issue: Kant mentions in addition two well-known rules in traditional jurisprudence, which seem to militate against indeterminacy in the state of nature and, moreover, are not simply conceived as the result of arbitrary guesswork. On the one hand, the rule of ‘prior in time, stronger in right’ (MS, 6: 259) bears on the original acquisition of immovables; on the other hand, the rule of ‘an accessory follows its principal’ (6: 268–9) bears on the acquisition of movables. Absent positive laws, it is hard to deny the relevance of these rules to the acquisition of provisional property, but the force of these rules must be duly qualified. Take the rule of first occupancy as our example: while Kant acknowledges that this rule creates an ‘empirical title’, he does not yet identify it with a ‘rational title’ conferred by the united will (6: 264; cf. Stilz Reference Stilz, Flikschuh and Ypi2014: 211–13; Tan Reference Tan2025: 475–6). Yet even if we assume that the a priori united will favours first occupancy by ratifying it, the rule of first occupancy is surely insufficiently determinate to resolve the most difficult problem of demarcating ‘the quantity as well as the quality’ of original acquisition (6: 266). Moreover, as the ‘deference’ relation implies, this rule is not immune from modification or suspension by a civil authority (cf. ZeF, 8: 347–8). Taking these considerations into account, it seems more plausible to say that the a priori united will favours first occupancy, but only negatively: that is, the a priori united will bars any claimant who does not even have a good-faith case of first occupancy from raising a claim to provisional property in the first place. Therefore, the ‘law of the common will condition’ identifies some instances of pretended claims and rules them out, but it is only a necessary, not sufficient condition for provisional property.

3.2 Preparedness condition

Thus construed, the ‘law of the common will condition’ does not look impressive. Appealing to an a priori legislative authority to underwrite acquisition in the state of nature is an option that Lockeans can equally take advantage of (appealing to natural law, in their language). Nonetheless, on the standard Lockean account, the mere conformity with a priori laws (say, by labouring on the land and respecting in the meantime the Lockean proviso of natural law) has been sufficient for a claim to be binding. Yet in this connection, Kant departs from Lockeans decisively by identifying another necessary condition for a property claim in the state of nature to have any duty-implying force: the ‘preparedness condition’ captured by [T9.1]. Indeed, this condition allows different interpretations: Kant might mean that provisional property prepares for a civil state insofar as its acquisition places a range of physical objects within the scope of juridical disputes, into which a civil authority can intervene (MS, 6: 306); Kant might also mean that defectiveness of provisional property awaits its remedy in a civil state (Hasan Reference Hasan2018: 865; Stone and Hasan Reference Stone and Hasan2022: 73). However, there seems to be another aspect concerning the disposition of the claimant, as is suggested by [T2]:

In [T2.1], Kant speaks of a disposition of ‘preparedness’, ‘readiness’, or ‘willingness’ by the language of bereit and bequem (Guyer Reference Guyer2000: 283). For ease of communication, call the claimant who is willing to submit to a civil state a ‘compliant claimant’ and the claimant who is not a ‘recalcitrant claimant’. With other grounds for favouring a compliant claimant being eliminated in [T2.2] and [T2.3], the difference in terms of their dispositions, according to [T2.4], eventually gives the compliant claimant an advantage. In effect, Kant attributes ‘provisional property’ only to compliant claimants.

Before moving on, two objections need to be addressed. It might be objected that referring to willingness or preparedness, which seems to be an internal disposition, in the condition of juridical right and duty runs against the way Kant individuates the realm of Right, since Right pertains to external and intersubjective relations (MS, 6: 218–21, 229–31). However, the divide between the internal and the external is not so clear-cut as it might seem. For instance, Kant does recognize that the inner world bears upon juridical questions, say, in distinguishing culpable negligence (culpa) from intentional wrongdoing (dolus, 6: 224; cf. Refl, 6479, 19: 21). Accordingly, some descriptions of disposition pertain to the realm of Right, so long as ‘disposition’ is not understood in the sense of one’s ultimate motivational structure, namely Gesinnung (RGV, 6: 25). Moreover, the disposition to live in a civil state does not have to be a mere inner disposition; instead, it can be interpreted as an inner state revealed by external actions. To clarify, the proposed reading does not require that such preparedness be revealed by proactive seeking – in other words, a compliant claimant may, but is not obligated to, coerce every recalcitrant claimant she happens to encounter out of the state of nature. Nonetheless, while a claimant can be presumed to be innocent (MS, 6: 238, 257) – presumed to be willing to join a civil state – even absent proactive seeking, she must unambiguously display her willingness by external action when a juridical dispute arises: she must, before proceeding, invite her opponent to submit the case to public institutions; likewise, she must take up the offer of public adjudication once it is made by an opponent.Footnote ²³

It might also be objected that the ‘preparedness condition’ does not really distinguish Kant’s account of ‘provisional property’ from the Lockean theory of pre-institutional property: after all, a Lockean labourer in the state of nature may happen to be willing to join a civil state. However, one critical difference stands out: while on Kant’s account, the conferral of duty-implying provisional property is strictly conditional upon the willingness to join a civil state, the Lockean theory of pre-institutional property does not conceive the force of pre-institutional property as so conditioned. To illustrate, a Lockean labourer who refuses to join a civil state still qualifies as an owner of binding property rights on the Lockean picture; but on Kant’s account, duty-implying ‘provisional property’ is not conferred on such a claimant in the first place.Footnote ²⁴

3.3 Justifying provisional property without a wrong-tolerating permission

Adding the ‘preparedness condition’ to the ‘law of the common will condition’ has a surprising upshot: ‘provisional property’ becomes a type of claim that can withstand the most critical charge Kant levels against pre-institutional property claims in general: the charge of unilateral imposition. As Kant’s critique of unilateralism has now been well-known, I shall be brief: first, absent public institutions, the answers to juridical questions (about laws, or facts, or about the application of laws to facts) are indeterminate (MS, 6: 266); second, in virtue of the innate equality of each and its implied requirement of reciprocity (6: 237), no private party has the standing to answer the juridical questions in a way binding on others. Given that in the face of indeterminacy, asserting one’s own answer as if it were binding on others comes close to an enterprise of arrogating an unpossessed authority, such a claim must have no duty-implying force.Footnote ²⁵

How is Kant’s critique of unilateralism related to his conception of ‘provisional property’? Indeed, it has often been argued that claiming provisional property is also morally objectionable because of its unilateral element, but its wrong is tolerated by an a priori ‘permissive law’.Footnote ²⁶ However, we should not accept this suggestion too hastily. Note first that, for instance, in [T4] Kant seems to exonerate ‘provisional property’ from this challenge by asserting that provisional property is binding, despite its unilateral element; more bluntly, elsewhere Kant argues that claiming provisional property ‘is an act of the private will (Privatwillkür), yet not unilateral (ohne doch eigenmächtig zu sein)’ (MS, 6: 250).Footnote ²⁷ The textual evidence suggests that Kant’s attitude to provisional property might be more nuanced than is believed.

Second, contrary to the popular reading, it is unclear whether Kant’s permissive law in the Doctrine of Right functions by lifting a prohibition to begin with. While Hruschka’s assertion (Reference Hruschka2004) that Kant’s permissive law in the Doctrine of Right is not concerned with prohibited actions seems to go too far, a more modest proposal articulated by Brecher merits careful consideration: Kant’s permissive law is indeed limited by prohibitions, but it does not function by ‘tolerating, or excusing’ wrongs (Brecher Reference Brecher, Brecher and Hirsch2026: 149). Instead, sometimes Kant’s permissive law marks out a distinct mode of interaction that turns out to be immune to the generic charge of wrong levelled against other modes of interaction. To illustrate, while for Kant there is a generic moral objection to sexual intercourse due to the tendency of objectification, marriage is marked out as a distinct mode of interaction by Kant’s permissive law, insofar as marriage is the only mode that avoids the problem of objectification. But this is not tantamount to saying that marriage should also have been contrary to humanity were it not for a wrong-tolerating permission (MS, 6: 276–80; Brecher Reference Brecher, Brecher and Hirsch2026: 167). In short, sometimes Kant’s permissive law locates a limited range of permissions against the backdrop of prohibitions, but it does not lift a prohibition. I contend that the acquisition of provisional property is capable of a similar analysis:Footnote ²⁸ Kant’s permissive law marks out ‘provisional property’ as a distinct mode of claiming external objects that carries with itself a good response to the charge of unilateralism, since a claim that merits the designation of ‘provisional property’ has taken up a self-critical attitude by denying to itself the authority of passing binding verdicts. Accordingly, claiming provisional property does not in the first place commit a wrong that would call for toleration thereafter.

To begin with, insofar as a claim of provisional property is made in accordance with the law of the a priori united will, it purports to acquire its binding force by triggering an a priori legislative authority that has been valid for others. In Kant’s own language, a unilateral action can be ‘included’ (enthalten) in the a priori united will (MS, 6: 263): while a unilateral action on its own has no force, it may have its effect by standing in a proper relation to the a priori united will of all, which is the real spring of binding force (VAMS, 23: 304). The philosophical point is not mysterious, since Kant’s laws of the a priori united will can be interpreted as a minimal set of a priori power-conferring laws (Byrd and Hruschka Reference Byrd and Hruschka2010: 94–106; Brecher Reference Brecher, Brecher and Hirsch2026: 162; Pinheiro Walla Reference Pinheiro Walla, Brecher and Hirsch2026: 184–90); and a power-conferring law can be construed as functioning by endowing a private action with the authority of the common will. Therefore, a claim of provisional property never asserts that ‘this must be binding on others simply because of my say-so’; instead, it says that ‘this might have juridical effect on others, not because of anything about me, but because of the a priori united will, which might have recognized my acquisitive action and bound others accordingly’.

But, to reiterate, the ‘law of the common will condition’ is only a necessary condition for the acquisition of provisional property. As has been mentioned, Lockeans might likewise defend their case for pre-institutional property claims by appealing to an a priori legislative authority. Nonetheless, recall that on the standard Lockean account, a Lockean labourer who refuses to submit to a civil state is not thereby disqualified from enjoying binding property rights. It is in this connection, however, that the Lockean claim becomes self-defeating. When a juridical dispute arises, for instance, Lockeans must allow the possibility that both parties rest their cases on a priori laws. However, each party’s claim is still based on her private interpretation of the a priori laws and thereby remains unilateral vis-à-vis the opponent’s, as Kant diagnoses in [T2.2] and [T2.3]. To do full justice to the equality of each, therefore, claims made in accordance with a priori laws must still defer to an actually united will, as is mentioned above. Nonetheless, if now a Lockean claimant refuses to submit her case to public adjudication and instead acts on her own judgement, she effectively asserts that her own verdict is binding on others (Varden Reference Varden, Gomes and Stephenson2024: 413–15). At this stage, the Lockean claimant manifestly attempts to arrogate an unpossessed authority to herself. This is the very reason why a Lockean pre-institutional property claim, if it omits the commitment to the ‘preparedness condition’, deteriorates into a mere pretended claim, which conveys no duty-implying force.

Yet the same consideration shows why a claim that merits the designation of ‘provisional property’ is not thereby wrongful and null. For one thing, satisfaction of the ‘law of the common will’ condition has put such a claim on the track of respecting the innate equality of each. Now, insofar as the ‘preparedness condition’ is satisfied, for another, a claim of provisional property continues to respect the innate equality of each by showing deference to the decision of an actually united will, whenever a dispute arises and the option of public determination is on the table. To illustrate, a claim of provisional property does not assert that ‘my judgment on this case must have been binding and unappealable’; instead, ‘this is negotiable, and let us submit the case to public institutions if your judgement disagrees with mine’. Notably, satisfaction of the ‘preparedness condition’ makes a huge normative difference: the compliant claimant, by deferring to public determination, expressly denies that her own judgement of the case is more authoritative than another’s.

Insofar as both the ‘law of the common will condition’ and the ‘preparedness condition’ bespeak a serious commitment to the equality of each, nothing in the claim of a provisional property seems to run against the normative principles behind Kant’s charge of unilateralism against pre-institutional property in general. This further explains why Kant feels no difficulty in attributing duty-implying force to provisional property. Recall the content of the duty to respect provisional property: abstain from it, if you are not willing to submit your dispute with the owner of provisional property to a civil state. This formulation, as it should now be clear, places the duty to abstain only on recalcitrant claimants. To be clear, Kant never argues that in the encounter between two compliant claimants, one is entitled to coercively exclude the other. While it must be puzzling how to describe such a scenario (say, whether both parties have claims of provisional property to the same object), Kant is simply silent on this issue. But this is a fair omission, since the encounter between two compliant claimants raises no normative concern: both parties are willing to resolve their dispute through public institutions, and neither will assert uncertified authority against the other. Nonetheless, a compliant claimant, on the strength of her provisional property, is not bound to surrender to a recalcitrant claimant’s pretended claim that is manifestly inferior.Footnote ²⁹ The owner of provisional property, indeed, has no standing to judge whether the other has a good case in conformity with a priori laws; but so long as the other party refuses to submit to public institutions, the manifest disrespect for innate equality in this regard must have undermined the recalcitrant claimant’s counterclaim to the same object. This pairwise comparison, therefore, reveals an asymmetry of standing, which is precisely reflected in the coercively enforceable duty to refrain from provisional property.Footnote ³⁰ To reiterate, however, once the opponent changes her mind and becomes willing to submit to public institutions, coercion must cease – otherwise the coercer herself would fall into the position of a recalcitrant claimant and thereby forfeit her claim of provisional property, insofar as the offer to submit the case to public institutions is not taken up.

4.1 The textual worry

Kant’s discussion of provisional property is mainly located in §§9–17 in the Doctrine of Right, and it is surrounded by two extensive arguments on the normative necessity of civil states: §8 on the one hand, and §42 (together with §41 and §44) on the other. In both §8 and §42, Kant seems to pass some sweeping verdicts on the nullity of pre-institutional property claims. Consider Kant’s verdict in §8:

However, it is premature to decide whether provisional property falls under the scope of this problematization, since in §8 Kant has not introduced the concept of provisional property at all. Yet in §42 Kant repeats this claim almost verbatim,

It seems that at the end of the day, provisional property falls within the scope of Kant’s sweeping problematization, since the verdict in §42 must govern all the preceding sections. But on closer scrutiny, this might not be what Kant has in mind, since in both [T11] and [T12] Kant’s verdict is conditional in structure: no one is bound to respect another’s property claim unless the other provides assurance. Yet on the technical definition of ‘provisional property’, its owner must be a compliant claimant, whose disposition entails an assurance of a certain kind. To reiterate, ‘willingness’ is tested by external action: a compliant claimant must invite her opponent to submit the case to public institutions before proceeding; failing this, she is not a compliant claimant at all. Therefore, the willingness entails the assurance that no coercion shall be legitimately used unless the invitation is made but declined. Given the provision of such an assurance, it is at least not obvious why provisional property does not merit respect.

Indeed, it might be objected that an assurance grounded in one’s disposition is too weak: after all, no one can read another’s mind, and an individual may reasonably feel insecure vis-à-vis another claimant who, nevertheless, happens to be compliant in the state of nature. Therefore, the objection continues, the assurance entailed by willingness is not sufficient to place provisional property under the exception clause of [T11] and [T12]. While there is no knock-down response to this objection, it might be helpful to highlight that Kant does acknowledge that disposition matters in describing the normative situation of the state of nature, even in §42:

This famous passage has an important scope restriction: Kant focuses on the disputes between individuals who elect to stay in the state of nature, not generally the disputes between individuals who happen to be in the state of nature. While Kant denies that individuals electing to remain in the state of nature have binding property claims, this makes perfect sense according to the reconstruction of this paper: for these individuals possess no more than pretended claims failing the satisfaction of the ‘preparedness condition’. Nonetheless, given the scope restriction of [T13], this description does not apply to a claim of provisional property: even though the claimant of provisional property happens to be in the state of nature, she never has the intention to stay there. Therefore, [T13] does not deny that infringing provisional property is a material wrong. Accordingly, if the same scope restriction applies to §42 as a whole, §42 is broadly compatible with the postulation of a duty to respect provisional property.

4.2 The philosophical worry

Even if this textual response does not look definitive, the textual worry mentioned above will lose its bite once the underlying philosophical worry is addressed. The philosophical worry is this: how can Kant’s argument leading to the normative necessity of civil states take off, if claiming provisional property is neither wrongful nor null? In response, I will argue that the proposed reading does not harm Kant’s argument, since provisional property does not have a place in the justification of the duty to leave the state of nature. Instead, it is a corollary of that justification.

To delimit the scope, two different statements need to be carefully distinguished. There is a respected normative statement that provisional property is defective in numerous ways in comparison with conclusive property within a civil state. Scholars have rightly observed that only conclusive property in a civil state is ‘fully justified’ (Hodgson Reference Hodgson2010: 58) or ‘fully legitimate’ (Hasan Reference Hasan2018: 852). However, nothing yet commits Kant, only for this reason, to assuming the wrongfulness or nullity of provisional property, a less justified category as it is – unless an ‘all-or-none’ Manichaean logic is assumed, as Klein puts it (Reference Klein2022: 217).

By contrast, I shall focus on the methodological assumption that Kant introduces ‘provisional property’ in order to demonstrate the normative necessity of civil states by means of exposing the defectiveness of provisional property. While this methodological claim finds its most sophisticated articulation in a recent Hegelian reading (Stone and Hasan Reference Stone and Hasan2022: 56), it has a long history and wide appeal. For instance, Friedrich Bouterwek, the author of a review of the Doctrine of Right that prompts Kant’s response, comments that ‘Kant himself only posits a provisional acquisition in the state of nature, and thereby (deßwegen) presses on the juridical necessity of a civil constitution’ (Reference Bouterwek, Klippel, Hüning and Eisfeld2021 [1797]: 92). It must be admitted that this interpretation is not uninvited, since there are at least two passages where Kant flags the necessity of a public order precisely by stressing that provisional property is ‘only’ or ‘merely’ provisional (MS, 6: 312, 350). Yet this methodological claim seems to imply that the conclusion about the normative necessity of civil states must be premised on an anterior demonstration of the wrongfulness or nullity of provisional property. If we do not want to surrender the conclusion, its premise must be made true, as it were.

It is this methodological assumption, I believe, that motivates many interpretations to attach a negative valence to provisional property. Nonetheless, this methodological thesis might not apply to Kant’s argumentative arc: to drive home the normative necessity of civil states, Kant does not have to call the normative profile of provisional property into question. As [T13] has suggested, Kant is primarily concerned with the normative confusion resulting from the policy of electing to remain in the state of nature; but then all that Kant needs to demonstrate is that this very policy is contrary to duty. For this purpose, however, it suffices to show that a pretended claim – not a claim of provisional property, I stress – made by someone who adopts the policy of electing to remain in the state of nature has no binding force. Indeed, Kant’s argument in §8 can be interpreted precisely in this way:

In [T14.1], Kant starts by describing an alleged property claim, by which Kant seems to refer indiscriminately to claims of provisional property and pretended claims. Nonetheless, two considerations count against this impression. For one thing, a claim of provisional property does not fit perfectly the description of [T14.1], since a claim of provisional property only purports to put recalcitrant claimants under the obligation to abstain, as is mentioned, not ‘everyone else’. When we move to [T14.2], for another, the term Anmaßung should catch our attention. While Kant does not explain what is meant by Anmaßung at this moment, Anmaßung nevertheless reappears in §9, where it is used to denote specifically a claim raised by someone ‘who does not want to enter with me into a condition of public lawful freedom’ (MS, 6: 257). These reflections, therefore, lend some preliminary plausibility to the view that [T14] only questions the normative profile of pretended claims, those made without the satisfaction of the ‘preparedness condition’ in particular.

Moreover, the normative necessity of civil states can be nicely demonstrated on the assumption that [T14] is an argument that exclusively takes pretended claims as its target.Footnote ³¹ Thus construed, the argument roughly runs as follows:

1. (1) Consider the normative profile of claims to external objects raised by individuals who elect to remain in the state of nature, even if these claims are made in conformity with a priori laws ([T14.1] and [T14.2]).

2. (2) But such claims remain unilateral insofar as they are made only in accordance with their private conceptions of the a priori laws (MS, 6: 312). These pretended claims are incompatible with the innate equality of each and thus cannot be binding ([T14.3]).

3. (3) Accordingly, the policy of remaining in the state of nature, if it were adopted by all, would make private property impossible in general (appealing to the universalization test).Footnote ³²

4. (4) But recall the Juridical Postulate of Practical Reason and its duty-imposing function (MS, 6: 252), from which Kant may conclude that it is contrary to duty to act on a policy whose generalization makes private property impossible (6: 256).

5. (5) Therefore, the policy of remaining in the state of nature is contrary to duty (equivalent to the Postulate of Public Right, MS, 6: 307).

Notably, Kant’s justificatory goal is achieved without provisional property being mentioned at all. Yet if Kant is not pressured by his justificatory goal (of demonstrating the normative necessity of civil states) to question the normative profile of provisional property, then Kant’s decision to ascribe duty-implying force to provisional property will not harm his own argument. To be clear, nothing in the proposed reading denies the normative thesis that provisional property is inferior to conclusive property within a civil state: a claim of provisional property is surely inferior insofar as it is only entitled to exclude some claimants (namely, recalcitrant claimants) for the time being (namely, before entrance into a civil state). However, when we turn to Kant’s argumentative arc, we shall discover that provisional property’s normative inferiority (to conclusive property) is not the motor behind Kant’s argument leading to the necessity of civil states.

Instead, ‘provisional property’ is not introduced until Kant’s main justificatory goal of §8 has been met. In an addendum to §8, Kant alludes to ‘provisional property’ and its duty-implying force:

Kant embarks on the task of outlining the normative profile of provisional property in §§9–17, and interestingly, the results of §8 have paved the way for attaching a positive valence to provisional property. Essentially, §8 reveals the truth of two claims: that a pretended claim is not binding because of its unilateral character, and that the state of nature must be left. However, to reiterate, a claim that merits the designation of ‘provisional property’ has a good response to the charge of unilateralism; and the claimant of provisional property, in virtue of being a compliant claimant, does not shirk the duty of joining a civil state. As the details of ‘provisional property’ are filled in, accordingly, ‘provisional property’ turns out to be a type of claim consistent with the results of §8. Therefore, Kant’s postulation of provisional property sits happily with his overall philosophical project in the Doctrine of Right.