Kant’s PoliticalZweckmässigkeit

Abstract

While Kant's political writings employ a teleological language, the exact benefit of such language to his politics is far from clear. Against recent interpretations of Kant's political thought, which downplay or dismiss the role of teleology, I restore Zweckmässigkeit to its place in Kant's politics as a theoretically and practically useful material principle, and show that a teleological perspective complements the perspective stipulated by the formal principle of Recht. By means of a systematic reconstruction of what I call 'political Zweckmässigkeit', we gain a fuller portrayal of and a valuable insight into Kant's political thought.

Does the Kantian state dominate?: Freedom and majoritarian rule

“…These are actual citizens in actual states giving their actual consent through votes. Indeed, Kant 13 Some have interpreted Kant's political ideals as regulative ideals in the sense that they are not standards for the actual legitimacy of state in the empirical world but rather ideals that should guide the shaping of the institutions in the "non-ideal" state (See Horn, 2016;Huseyinzadegan, 2015).…”