Heritages of Radical Enlightenment. Kant’s contribution to the affirmation of social rights

Abstract

The idea of “social right” is undoubtedly part of what has been called “the Radical Enlightenment”, of which Kant has been one of the main and more fruitful intellectual voices. The paper’s first focus is devoted to framing the particular status that social rights possess and have possessed in the light of their intellectual genealogy and their intrinsically problematic content. Next, the paper examines how Kant related to this broader picture, analysing the text dealing with the question of rights most directly, namely the first part of the Metaphysics of Morals. The paper explores thus the foundation of social rights as understood by Kant (hinted at in the Metaphysics of Morals), and turns to the work which is more conceptually connected to the former: the Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals. It is in this context, within the discourse related to the fundaments of the moral and juridical community, that promising traces can be found of a “latent foundation” for social rights, that is destined to have an influencing ethical and political future and shall be analysed critically and in-depth.