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Bona Fama Defuncti in Kant’s Rechtslehre: Some Perspectives

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 November 2019

Thomas Mertens
Thomas Mertens*
Affiliation:
Radboud University
*
Email: t.mertens@jur.ru.nl
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Abstract

Although Kant’s final work in moral philosophy, Die Metaphysik der Sitten, currently attracts much scholarly attention, there is still a lot to explore. This article is an attempt to get to grips with a particular, often neglected passage of the Rechtslehre, namely §35. Here Kant defends the view that not only can a person’s good reputation can be tarnished after his death, but also that this constitutes a violation of this dead person’s property. Here I will not be able to fully clarify what Kant means when he holds that persons can be harmed after their death, but I will put Kant’s view in a few perspectives.

Keywords

private lawposthumous harmideal acquisitiondefamation

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Type
Articles
Information
Kantian Review , Volume 24 , Special Issue 4: Special Issue on Kant & Law , December 2019 , pp. 513 - 529
Copyright
© Kantian Review, 2019 

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