Moral personality and Independence: Rehberg’s Critique of Kant’s Principles of Right

My aim in this article is twofold: on the one hand, I present Rehberg’s critique of Kant’s 1793 essay regarding some fundamental issues in his moral and legal theory; on the other hand, I outline possible responses to these objections found in Kant’s final system of morals. Part of these answers can be traced to the way in which Kant refines his conception of public right and the republican ideal, especially the notion of innate freedom, independence, and citizenship. They are also found in the section on private right of the Doctrine of Right, in which he deals with topics such as private property, labor contracts, and domestic rights whose treatment is absent in previous texts. Importantly, vis-à-vis Rehberg’s criticisms, in his systematic theory of right Kant brings independence and self-mastery into his definition of innate right, but also introduces a new category of private right that accommodates dependent relationships in the domestic sphere by making them compatible with moral personality. In this way, Rehberg’s engagement with Kant’s political project allows us to examine his republican ideal in the light of an intellectual context in which philosophical efforts to discredit human freedom, social equality and material independence as desirable prospects were not an exception