7 - Kant's kingdom of ends: metaphysical, not political

Summary

The concept of every rational being as one who must regard himself as making universal law through all the maxims of his will, so as to appraise himself and his actions from this point of view, leads to a closely connected and very fruitful concept, namely that of a kingdom of ends.

(G IV 433)

The law of reciprocal coercion necessarily in accord with the freedom of everyone under the principle of universal freedom is, as it were, the construction of that concept, that is, the presentation of it in pure intuition a priori, by analogy with presenting the possibility of bodies moving freely under the law of the equality of action and reaction.

(MdS VI 232)

INTRODUCTION

Much recent writing on Kant's ‘kingdom of ends’ gives it a semi-political interpretation, representing it as the normative ideal of a democratic order of mutually legislating citizens of equal moral standing. Implicit parallels are drawn between Kant's account of agents as each legislating the moral law to themselves and John Rawls' ideal of a well-ordered society in which a community of co-legislators reach reasonable agreement on shareable principles of justice. Related liberal values are introduced in the course of textual exposition, yielding richly normative interpretations of what Kant himself says is ‘only an ideal’ (G IV 433). One finds the subtle alignment of Kantian moral autonomy, conceived as the free subjection of Willkür under Wille, with liberal personal autonomy understood in terms of individuals' competence to judge for themselves what the good life consists in for them.