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1 results

  • Chapter 12 - Happiness, Paternalism, and Social Welfare

  • Edited by Frederick Rauscher, Michigan State University
  • Book:
    Kant's Lectures on Political Philosophy
    Published online:
    18 July 2025
    Print publication:
    07 August 2025, pp 219-237

  • Summary

    Popular minimalist and moderate liberal interpreters suggest that, both in the 1780s and in the more fully developed political works of the 1790s, Kant adopts a narrow and skeptical approach to state-sponsored efforts addressing social welfare. Interpreted with due attention to context, however, relevant passages from Kant’s 1784 lectures in political philosophy—the Naturrecht Feyerabend—suggest no necessarily narrow commitments in the realm of social supports. Read in conjunction with his Feyerabend discussion of innate right, meanwhile, the contemporaneous essay on enlightenment provides us reasons (including an active conception of civic agency and a positive understanding of the state’s role) to conclude that the account of justice that Kant’s early works advance indeed could support a rich menu of such programs. Publications from the 1790s might, of course, take a contrary stance. It falls to those who favor a more conservative reading, however, to prove that Kant altered an earlier, agency-oriented position friendly to state-sponsored supports.