The provisionality of property rights in Kant's Doctrine of Right

Abstract

AbstractI criticize two ways of interpreting Kant's claim that property rights are merely ‘provisional’ in the state of nature. Weak provisionality holds that in the state of nature agents can make rightful claims to property. What is lacking is the institutional context necessary to render their claims secure. By contrast, strong provisionality holds that making property claims in the state of nature wrongs others. I argue for a third view, anticipatory provisionality, according to which state of nature property claims do not wrong others, but anticipate a condition in which the authority to make such claims can no longer be unilaterally determined.