Laila Helmy, a history student at the University of Cambridge, details a nuanced account of Kant’s moral and political theory, picking out the complexities of holding freedom as foundational.
Freedom sits at the centre of Immanuel Kant’s political theory, not merely because it is valued above other values, such as benefit or the avoidance of harm, but because it is the foundation that everything else rests on. In Kant’s moral and political theories alike, freedom exists as a necessary normative principle; it is the basis of morality, of right, and of a just political system. This is most aptly portrayed by Kant’s emphasis on the importance of the will of a rational agent as the location of moral worth. The existence of will necessitates the freedom to make a rational judgment; in his moral theory, an agent’s will or maxim, rather than its result, determines its moral worth. Freedom, or more precisely, the autonomy to set one’s end, is therefore seen as necessary to the existence of morality. Kant’s belief in the ‘innate right of humanity’, described as the ‘only original right belonging to every human being by virtue of his humanity’, defines independence from restriction by the choices of others, in coexistence with the freedom of everyone else, as the foundation of a rightful political condition. This balance of equal freedom, to Kant, necessitates a coercive public legal order.
Thus, in Kant’s political and moral theories alike, freedom is a necessary, foundational principle. However, it is essential to distinguish between Kant’s moral and political theories. While freedom is defined as autonomy to self-legislation in the ethical sphere, in the sphere of rights, it is relational, dependent on the actions of others. Furthermore, to be autonomous, one cannot be guided by external incentives such as religion or self-interest; morality and the free act of judgement must be a priori. In a rightful political system, external incentives and coercion are essential to cultivate the conditions necessary for freedom. Therefore, Kant’s prioritisation of freedom over the results of actions, over the avoidance of harm and the pursuit of happiness, and his conception of the duty to leave the state of nature, illustrate its role as a necessary and foundational principle of his moral and political theories.
Kant’s moral and political theories reject consequentialist prioritisations of the result of an action, locating moral worth in the maxim that guided the action, rather than its end. This is inherent within his definition of freedom itself, in the moral sphere, only an autonomous action can have moral worth. Central to Kant’s moral thought in his Groundwork on the metaphysics of morals is his attempt to isolate a ‘supreme principle of morality’ from empirical incentives, including feeling, desire, and material incentives, in rejection of heteronomous theories. The categorical imperative, an unconditional and universal guiding principle of rationality, demonstrates the importance of autonomy. It is a priori, isolated from empirical considerations, and thus presupposes the autonomy of moral agents. To Kant, the question of what one ‘ought to do’ is an expression of the autonomy of rational beings. The ability to self-legislate and adopt maxims through judgment distinguishes an action from duty, from an action that merely has a good result. Kant’s notion of the good will, or a will detached from nonmoral incentive, as the only unconditional good emphasises this. Other values, such as happiness, benevolence or material goods, are limited; it is the presence of good will that gives an action moral worth, rather than its result. For Kant, a duty must be self-given and is inseparable from self-constraint. This act of pursuing a maxim that one has set for themselves, against nonmoral empirical incentives, is central to morality, rather than its result. This is illustrated by Kant’s example of a man helping others, not out of sympathy, but rather because of his recognition of their dignity, as containing moral worth, as opposed to a sympathetic man who acts benevolently out of sympathy and innocence. Therefore, freedom in making a judgment is placed above the end of one’s action, because morality cannot exist without autonomy.
This is echoed in Kant’s political theory, outlined in his Doctrine of Right, as the primary role of a rightful civil condition is not to promote the greatest happiness, but to promote the ‘innate right’ of independence, or freedom, of all. In contrast to Kant’s conception of freedom as autonomy from empirical incentives within his moral theory, however, this necessitates the existence of a coercive external authority that creates and enforces laws the populace could, in principle, agree to without violating their right to independence. Therefore, in the political sphere, the protection of freedom constrains the means of the state, and the ends that it can pursue, even if they are more widely beneficial. Therefore, while Kant’s definition of freedom in the ethical sphere differs from its counterpart in a rightful political condition, in both cases, the exercise of freedom is prioritised over the result of individual action or public legislation, because this exercise is where moral worth, or right, is located.
For Kant, a rightful condition, above all else, ensures a system of equal freedom as a necessary consequence of the ‘innate right of humanity’. This supersedes the importance of other values, such as the avoidance of harm, and the pursuit of a utilitarian conception of widespread happiness. Crucially, the concept of right is inseparable from the ‘right to coerce’ as this system of equal freedom necessitates coercive public laws as limits to independence, rather than as punishment. Kant’s political theory emphasises external coercion as a guiding principle to avoid violating anyone’s right to independence from domination. Thus, to be wronged is to lose one’s independence to set and pursue one’s own ends, independent of the choices of any other individual, or in other words, one’s freedom. For Kant, an action that causes harm without violating this innate right is not wrong; it would rather be unjust for one’s right to pursue their own purposes to be restricted unless they are violating someone else’s independence through the usurpation or destruction of their means. This commitment to freedom, as Kant defines it in the sphere of rights, is the basis for his account of private rights, including the acquired right to property. Freedom necessarily entails that an individual is entitled to own things and set an end using these as means, as long as everyone else can do the same, unaffected. While property ownership and the consequent inequality it causes may harm others who can no longer use the property, they are not robbed of their ability to set and pursue their own ends, so it cannot be seen as wrong. This is emphasised by Kant’s statement that no one is entitled to means they do not already have, regardless of ‘need or wish’. Furthermore, coercion is seen as necessary and legitimate to safeguard this system of equal freedom within the sphere of public rights, relating to the means accessible by a just state, justifying the use of force or coercion to ‘hinder a hindrance to freedom’, as Ripstein put it.
This prioritisation of freedom above the avoidance of harm or the pursuit of happiness is also present in Kant’s moral theory, expressed in the formulation of the categorical imperative, which states that one must only follow maxims that they can ‘will that it become a universal law’. Here, once again, Kant prioritises the autonomous judgement of a rational being, isolated from any particular end, including happiness or the avoidance of harm. This is emphasised by his rejection of an example of what he justifies as a desirable universal law of nature, that ‘no one will harm others or deprive them of what is rightfully theirs, but all will refuse to help others or to participate in their aims unless the assistance needed is owed by strict right’. Although this would lead to the avoidance of harm, it cannot be approved as moral, as it restricts one’s freedom to one day ask for help or the ‘love and participation of others’, which he viewed as an immutable necessity of human interdependence. Therefore, freedom is placed above other desirable values in both Kant’s moral and political theory due to the normative and unconditional role of freedom as the foundation of a rightful condition and of morality.
Kant’s argument that as rational beings we have an obligation to leave the state of nature and ‘submit ourselves to the constraint of law, which limits our freedom solely in order that it may be consistent with the freedom of others’ in his Doctrine of Rights, emphasises the protection of universal rights as a necessary condition of freedom. This illustrates a more nuanced side of Kant’s writings on freedom, distinct from the staunch autonomy and rejection of external factors in his moral theory. As Tuck argues, this obligation to exit the state of nature arises from Kant’s Hobbesian conception of the state of nature as one where no matter how ‘law abiding’ an individual, it is ‘a priori’ that in a condition with no public order, where individuals have boundless, but insecure, rights that are not dependent on each other’s opinions they are ‘never…secure against violence from one another’. Consequently, this state of nature, which tends toward warfare and violence, makes the equal exercise of freedom impossible, necessitating a coercive public order built on the reciprocal limits of freedom. This argument highlights the importance of distinguishing between Kant’s separate conceptions of freedom in the moral and political spheres. Clearly, the unconditional a priori freedom outlined in his theory of moral autonomy must not form the basis of public order. Therefore, freedom is not merely placed above other values; the boundless, innate freedom of the state of nature is also subsumed to ensure a sustainable, rightful condition grounded in equal rights. Crucially, this cannot be seen as a sacrifice of freedom as a means to a happier end, but rather, as a necessity inherently contained within the concept of freedom, as to Kant, one cannot be truly free in a constant state of war.
In conclusion, the exercise of freedom in Kant’s moral and political theories is consistently and unconditionally placed above other values, including the pursuit of beneficial ends and empirical incentives, because it is the basis of morality and notions of right. To Kant, freedom is not an isolated value to be protected or gifted; it is a necessary result of human rationality and the primary measure of morality and political legitimacy. The differences between Kant’s conception of freedom in the moral and the political spheres illustrate the centrality of universality to freedom: freedom must be universal and unconditional. Therefore, while other values are considered by Kant, specifically in his political theory, they are necessarily secondary to freedom as they derive from it.
Bibliography:
Primary sources:
Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, ed. M. Gregor (Cambridge, 1998)
Political Writings, ed. H. Reiss, (2nd edn., Cambridge, 1991)
Secondary sources:
E. Ellis, Kant’s Politics (New Haven, 2005)
C. Meckstroth, ‘Kant’s critique of morality’, in Meckstroth, The Struggle for Democracy: Paradoxes of Progress and the Politics of Change (Oxford, 2015)
A. Ripstein, Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy (Cambridge MA, 2009)
R. Tuck, ‘The Hobbesianism of Kant’, in Tuck, The Rights of War and Peace: Political Thought and the International Order from Grotius to Kant, (Oxford, 1999)
A. Wood, Kant’s Ethical Thought (Cambridge, 1999)