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Law and Morality in Kant

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 December 2025

Edited by
Martin Brecher  and
Philipp-Alexander Hirsch
Martin Brecher
Affiliation:
Universität Mannheim, Germany
Philipp-Alexander Hirsch
Affiliation:
Max Planck Institute, Freiburg

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Chapter
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Law and Morality in Kant , pp. i - ii
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2026
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BYCreative Common License - NC
This content is Open Access and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence CC-BY-NC 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/cclicenses/

Law and Morality in Kant

How do law and morality relate to each other in Kant’s philosophy? Is law to be understood merely as an application of general moral principles to legal institutions, or does law have its own normativity that cannot be traced back to that of morality? This volume of new essays is a comprehensive treatment of law and morality in Kant, which also sheds new light on Kant’s practical philosophy more broadly. The essays present different approaches to this core issue and address related topics including the justification of legal coercion, the role of freedom and autonomy for law and politics, legal punishment and the question of its ethical presuppositions, moral luck, and the role of permissive laws in Kant’s legal and political philosophy. The volume will be of interest to researchers and graduate students working on Kant’s moral and legal philosophy. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Martin Brecher is a faculty member at the Department of Philosophy at the University of Mannheim. He is the author of Vernunftrecht und Verdinglichung: Eine Rekonstruktion von Kants Eherecht (2025) and co-editor of Kant on Sex, Love, and Friendship (2023).

Philipp-Alexander Hirsch is leader of the Independent Research Group ‘Criminal Law Theory’ at the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Crime, Security and Law in Freiburg. He is the author of Kants Einleitung in die Rechtslehre von 1784 (2012) and Freiheit und Staatlichkeit bei Kant (2017).

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