Strata of the Intersubjectivity A Rework of a Concept of Society Present in Kant’s Practical Philosophy

Abstract

This article presents a rework of three strata of a concept of the social which can be found in Immanuel Kant’s practical philosophy without turning to his anthropological and historical works. To do this, the notions of human coexistence (natural right) and universal reciprocal coercion (civil right) that Kant describes in The Metaphysics of Morals are specified to point out that, with them, it is not possible to refer to a society, but to a form of it. Subsequently, some of the coordinates of the “ethical community” addressed in Religion… have been reworked to argue, on the one hand, that here we can speak of a society as such, and on the other hand, that it can build a bridge between the juridical society and the ethical education of people, i.e., between the external use of freedom and its internal use, because (a) it allows to socialize moral maxims and (b) these can harbor a peculiar intrinsic normativity.