Freedom and poverty in the Kantian state

Abstract

The coercive authority of the Kantian state is rationally grounded in the ideal of equal external freedom, which is realized when each individual can choose and act without being constrained by another's will. This ideal does not seem like it can justify state‐mandated economic redistribution. For if one is externally free just as long as one can choose and act without being constrained by another, then only direct slavery, serfdom, or other systems of overt control seem to threaten external freedom. Yet Kant endows the freedom‐based state with considerable powers of economic redistribution. I argue that recent commentary has misunderstood both Kant's account of why poverty is a form of freedom‐threatening dependence and the extent of the Kantian state's powers for remedying poverty. Criticizing Arthur Ripstein and the Kantianism of the “Toronto‐School,” I argue that the most salient notion of dependence at issue within the Kantian framework is not the direct control of the choice‐making capacities of another but asymmetrical influence in a power relationship. For Kant, poverty is fundamentally a problem of structural disempowerment.

Beyond Frontier Town: Do Early Modern Theories of Property Apply to Capitalist Economies?

“…Ripstein (2009, pp. 273-8) and Hasan (2018) derive the same conclusion from the idea that Poor would otherwise not possess the kind of agency required to form a polity of equals with Rich. It seems, however, that a tax grounded in Poor's needs for agency could only cover Poor's most basic needs.…”

Legitimacy as Public Willing: Kant on Freedom and the Law

“…Within recent Anglophone scholarship, Arthur Ripstein has most explicitly expressed concerns about this tendency to collapse Kantian freedom into a form of immunity from encroachment by others. As a number of critics have pointed out (e.g., Flikschuh ; ; Hasan ), however, Ripstein’s (, 13) own reconstruction of freedom as “independence from being constrained by the choice of another person” is at least ambivalent in relation to the two conceptions.…”

Kant, coercion, and the legitimation of inequality

“…His doctrine of right looks © well suited to orienting us to resist neoliberal inequality, offering an a priori argument for sovereignty that makes justice, not market efficiency, the aim of the state and places few substantive restrictions on state power in its service. Recent scholarship has sought to reconstruct Kant's account of right as a freestanding view of politics that does not need to rely on his other writings (Hasan, 2018;Hodgson, 2010;Ripstein, 2009;Rostbøll, 2016;Uleman, 2004;Varda, 2006;Weinrib, 2008;Zylberman, 2016). 1 Against a history of interpretation that saw Kant's view of the state as essentially libertarian, these scholars argue he held an egalitarian view of justice that requires state action to address poverty and inequality, disagreeing only about whether Kant's theory of justice justifies the now-familiar national welfare state, including social programs like public education and universal health care (Ripstein, 2009, p. 267), or requires further redistribution aimed at fuller equality (Hasan, 2018, p. 923).…”