Kant's Argument for the Right to Freedom

Kant claims that every human being has an innate right to freedom. While most interpreters treat this right as foundational to his Doctrine of Right, Kant’s argument for it has received significantly less attention. Among those who do discuss it, a prominent view (which I call the value reading) holds that the right to freedom is grounded in the value of humanity, conceived as the capacity to set and pursue ends. In this paper, I challenge this reading on textual and systematic grounds. Drawing on Kant’s repeated characterizations of freedom as an axiom of Right, I propose a novel interpretation of his argument: rather than being grounded in a value, the innate right to freedom functions as a condition of possibility for the system of mutually coercible obligations that Kant calls Right. Moreover, while on the value reading justified laws are taken to place justified restrictions on freedom, I show that on Kant’s republican conception of freedom subjection to the coercive laws of a just state constitutes external freedom.