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Kant's Theory of the Social Contract University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1991 Kant's theory of the social contract. Kevin E. Dodson University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Dodson, Kevin E., "Kant's theory of the social contract." (1991). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 2074. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/2074 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. DATE DUE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AT AMHERST LD 323A M267 1991 06^75 KANT’S THEORY OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT A Dissertation Presented by KEVIN E. DODSON Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetss in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY September, 1991 Department of Philosophy Copyright by Kevin Eugene Dodson 1991 All Rights Reserved KANT'S THEORY OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT A Dissertation Presented by KEVIN E. DODSON Approved as to style and content by: Robert Paul Wolff, Chair 1^(3 Robert Ackermann, Member Bruce Aune, Member Susan Meld Shell, Member Peter Fenves, Member l?U^ dohn Robison, Department Head department of Philosophy ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to many persons in the writing of my dissertation. I want to thank the members of my committee (Robert J. Ackermann, Bruce Aune, Peter Fenves, and Susan Meld Shell) for the time and effort they devoted to reading and commenting upon my dissertation. I owe a special debt to my director Robert Paul Wolff for all his patience and guidance in the writing of my thesis. Professor Wolff taught me not only about Kant and political theory but also about reading philosophical texts. I have had too many friends and colleagues among my fellow graduate students to acknowledge all of them by name; however, I want to recognize a select few. My years as a graduate student would have been much less interesting and exciting had it not been for George Teaman (my arch-nemesis), Alex Pienknagura, and Dan Costello. I also wish to thank my parents and my brother Rob for their encouragement and support. Lastly, I want to thank my wife Catalina, without whose support and encouragement this dissertation would never have been written. ABSTRACT KANT’S THEORY OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT SEPTEMBER, 1991 KEVIN E. DODSON, B. A. UNIVERSITY OF WASHINGTON Ph. D., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS Directed by: Professor Robert Paul Wolff The thesis of my dissertation is that Kant’s theory of the social contract, which is the central concept of his political philosophy, provides, when suitably reconstructed, an adequate theoretical foundation for liberal democracy. I take liberal democracy to consist of three components: first, the rule of law; second, democratic self-rule (either representative, direct, or some combination of the two); and third, the recognition and institutional guarantee of the rights of individuals. In the dissertation, I take as my starting point Kant’s conception of autonomy. For Kant, the idea of the social contract explains how individual moral agents can maintain their autonomy in the context of community. The social contract resolves the conflict between moral autonomy and political authority by defining a model of civil society in which free, equal, and independent rational agents collectively legislate the public laws that are to govern their external relations, which are essentially property relations. Ideal civil society, then, is a condition of maximum equal freedom for rational agents who interact with one another. V TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS iv ABSTRACT Chapter I. INTRODUCTION 1 II. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND 11 III. THE IDEA OF THE SOCIAL CONTRACT 80 IV. AUTONOMY AND AUTHORITY 113 V. THE A PRIORI PRINCIPLES OF JUSTICE 139 VI. KANT'S REPUBLICANISM 209 VII. THE IDEAL AND THE REAL 234 VIII. CONCLUSION: THE SOCIAL CONTRACT AND HISTORY 271 BIBLIOGRAPHY 289 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION The past two decades have seen an upsurge of interest in Kant's long-neglected political theory. While Kant's stature as a political theorist does not yet rival that of Hobbes or Rousseau in the English-speaking world, we are finally beginning to recognize his contributions to political philosophy. For far too long, commentators slighted Kant's politics in favor of his many other contributions to philosophy, and while this was understandable, it nonetheless did a great injustice to Kant's rich and sophisticated thinking on the moral foundations of politics. With the publication of several studies of Kant's political theory over the last two decades, this injustice has now been rectified.^ As yet, however, no commentator on Kant's political theory has focused on the all-important idea of the social contract and provided us with a comprehensive account of Kant's thought about this notion. Given the centrality of the concept of the social contract to Kant's theory (and those of Hobbes, Locke, and Rousseau), this is somewhat surprising. A clear and comprehensive account of Kant's thinking on this matter is essential to an understanding of his politics, and this is what I propose to provide in my dissertation. My initial interest in Kant's political philosophy grew out of my desire to ground my pre-philosophical commitment to liberal democracy. providing an It is my conviction that utilitarianism is incapable of Problem of History , 1_ Among the most notable of these are: William Galston, Kant and the Philosophy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1975); Patrick Riley, Kant's Political The Rights of Reason: A (Totowa, NJ: Rowman and Allanheld, 1983); Susan Meld Shell, Toronto Press, 1980), and Study of Kant's Philosophy and Politics, (Toronto: University of 1983). Howard Williams, Kant's Political Philosophy, (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1 adequate foundation for liberal democratic theory and that only social contract theory is up to the task. Kant's theory provides the most cogent and philosophically sophisticated version of classical social contract theory. I take liberal democracy to consist of three components: first, the rule of law; second, democratic self-rule (either representative, direct, or some combination of the two); and third, the recognition and institutional guarantee of individual rights. Thus, any defense of liberal democracy must provide some account and justification of the rule of law, democracy, and human rights. Of these three notions, I take it that the third is logically prior to the first and second. The task of law in a liberal democracy is to define and protect the rights of individuals within civil society. The most fundamental of these rights is the right to participate as a free and equal citizen in the collective decisions of that society. Thus, the concept of right is the basic concept of Kant's politics. Kant's political theory, however, is rooted in his ethics, and thus the concept of right is in turn grounded in the autonomy of the will, which Kant declares in the Grundlegung to be "the supreme principle of morality." Now the three components of liberal democracy appear to be incompatible in practice. For example, a majority may democratically enact a law that violates the rights of individuals within civil society. Kant's theory, however, provides a satisfactory resolution of this problem. According to Kant, an individual is autonomous when she obeys no laws except those she has given to herself, that is, when she is self- legislating. Obedience to external legislation is heteronomy. This poses a rather tricky issue in the justification of civil society. A law is essentially a command, and political authority is the right to issue those commands 2 and enforce thenn through the use of force. When one enters into civil society, one subjects oneself to some authority. But this submission to authority would appear to place us in a condition of heteronomy and be in conflict with our own autonomy. How can we reconcile the right to issue commands with the right to obey only those commands we have given to ourselves? The reconciliation of these two conflicting requirements is central to my project. If Kant's attempted reconciliation of these two conflicting demands fails, then he cannot justify the moral legitimacy of the rule of law and civil society itself; authority must give way to autonomy. For a utilitarian, the conflict between autonomy and authority never arises. The rule of law is justified by its consequences for the social balance of pleasure over pain (or whatever other standard a particular variant of utilitarianism may employ). The autonomy of the individual need not be considered, except insofar as it has consequences for that social balance. Though utilitarian theories may be capable of grounding the rule of law, they are incapable of providing an adequate foundation for democratic self-rule and the rights of individuals. Because utilitarian theories are teleological in nature, democratic self-rule and individual rights can be justified only in instrumental terms. That is, the rights of individuals and democratic self-rule are justified only if they promote the end specified by utilitarian theory. Let us consider the theory elaborated by John Stuart Mill in Utilitarianism as an example.2 The fundamental problem with Mill's 2- John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism. (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill, 1983). 3 theory in this regard is shared by all utilitarian theories, despite their variations. Therefore, a brief discussion of Mill will enable us to examine this difficulty with sufficient clarity and generality. In simplest terms. Mill maintains that one should act so as to produce the greatest amount of happiness in society at large.
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