Dignity Beyond Price: Kant and His Revolutionary British Contemporary

Abstract

Abstract This chapter provides a comparison of the philosophies of Richard Price and Immanuel Kant. They were almost exact contemporaries and equally important in their respective cultures but apparently did not know of each other. Price’s outstanding achievements have been underappreciated ever since he was unfairly criticized by Edmund Burke. In their general moral theory, common respect for dignity, positive orientation to rationalism, and enlightened involvement in public issues, Price and Kant have a lot in common that is still relevant to contemporary philosophy. But whereas Price hailed the Glorious Revolution, the Declaration of Independence, and French Revolution, Kant only mentioned the French. Like Thomas Jefferson, they both asserted the self-evidence of human equality, and yet they did not explain how a doctrine could be presented both as revolutionary and self-evident. The chapter concludes with a discussion of self-evidence in the context of writings by Danielle Allen and other contemporary scholars.