ABSTRACT
Kant recognised that for several important reasons, the relations between justice and virtue are complex. The main juridical problem Kant addressed concerns acquired rights (RL §6). Acquiring such rights also bestows correlative obligations to respect others’ counter-part rights, both innate and acquired. Central to Kant’s doctrine of justice is our capacity to be responsible, imputable, hence also intelligent and informed rational agents. Our capacity to be responsible involves our understanding of our own and others’ actions, intentions and aims. Regardless of our motives, we are obligated strictly and juridically to live honourably, to injure no one, and in conditions of proximity, to be citizens of a republican system of distributive justice. I undergird Herman’s (2007, 130–153) findings by showing how properly understanding Kant’s moral philosophy requires dismissing partisan debates about deontology, teleology, consequentialism and perfectionism. To moral philosophy belong ethics, justice and philosophy of education. None of us can develop solo our rational and emotional capacities to be responsible, imputable agents. Including philosophy of education within moral philosophy reveals important fundamental links between Kant’s and Aristotle’s views: Kant’s universalisation tests provide conditiones sine qua non for any logos which can be orthos, whilst Aristotle’s educational concerns about developing our fidelity to reason underscore Kant’s view that we are indeed a zoôn politikon.
