Kant's justice and Kantian justice

Abstract

Much contemporary work on justice is seen, both by protagonists and by critics, as Kantian. Evidently not all its conclusions accord with Kant's views on obligations, rights or justice; but this in itself is not surprising since its aim is to develop Kant's basic insights, even to improve on his conclusions. The improved conclusions are plain enough. No contemporary writer has endorsed Kant's lack of concern with democracy, or his exclusion of women and of workers from active citizenship, and most aim to offer an account of economic justice that is more than an account of just property rights. On the other hand, nearly all contemporary writers on justice endorse Kant's liberal, republican conception of justice, his concern for respect for persons and for rights, and many see his writings on international justice as having a distinctive importance in the post Cold War world, in that he queries both the statism assumed by ‘realist’ writers on international relations and the merely abstract cosmopolitanism favoured both by some ‘idealist’ writers on international relations and by many advocates of human rights. The reasons for preferring some contemporary version of Kantian justice to Kant's account of justice may seem overwhelming; at any rate I shall not dispute their merits. And yet, I believe, there is much more to be said. The deeper and more significant differences between Kant's work and contemporary Kantianism lie not, I shall argue, in the specific conclusions about justice or about morality that each body of work offers, but in the background conceptions of action, freedom and reason on which each relies.