Kant’s Political Liberalism

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter argues that the author’s form of Kantian liberalism can be reasonably expected to command a wider overlapping consensus than Rawls’ liberalism. It can include more disagreement, the chapter argues, because of its thin account of liberalism’s end, namely, the single principle of independence. As Thomas Pogge has argued, the simplicity of Kant’s political theory—in its appeal to the single principle of external freedom—allows it to be affirmed from a Hobbesian or Millean view, or indeed from many religious views. At the same time, Kant’s distinction between legality and morality means that citizens need not abide by the law for moral reasons. They can obey for any reason, so long as they obey.