Kantianism and Legislation

Abstract

Political philosophers in the Kantian tradition often assume that they can use theories of justice to evaluate laws and institutions. For example, many believe that justice requires coercive distribution of wealth, or government-enforced universal access to health care, or minimum wages. This article rejects this fallacy, which I call The Moral Turn. Principles of justice underdetermine judgments about most of the social and economic issues of the day. To be sure, a theory of justice may yield non-contingent or necessary moral content, especially in the area of basic constitutional rights. But in order to evaluate everyday pieces of legislation we need the empirical sciences. Philosophers either purport to derive institutional recommendations directly from principles of justice, or make quick and unsupported empirical assumptions to derive those institutional recommendations. On most areas of public policy, theories of justice have no institutional consequences. Kant's Universal Principle of Justice, or Rawls's Difference Principle, are compatible with a broad range of economic and political institutions, from laissez-faire to the welfare state. Which one is on the whole justified can only be decided by appealing to the empirical sciences (economics, political science, psychology). Because Immanuel Kant inaugurated the tradition of moral formalism, I first discuss Kant's own views on the matter as presented in his Doctrine of Right, and conclude that while Kant was aware of the problem, he often jumped to institutional conclusions without empirical support. I then discuss some modern neo-Kantian philosophers and show how they, too, perpetrate The Moral Turn. I use the examples of John Rawls and coercive redistribution, Norman Daniels and universal health care, and the minimum wage. Finally, I show that rejecting The Moral Turn does not commit one to utilitarianism in politics.