ABSTRACT
Deontologists prescribe and evaluate on the basis of duties, rules, motives, and acceptability of means. The duties of public justice merely protect an arena for rational freedom in an unfree world. Perfect duties, whether of virtue or justice, give rise to rights, but for Immanuel Kant only perfect duties of justice provide the basis of public or political rights. As a deontologist, Kant believed that duties are more important than actual consequences and that we should choose on the basis of our moral duty. Kantians argue that a person's individual duty to help some of those in need is a more widely recognized basis for international action than trying to explain why people have a right rather than a mere need for food, clothing, education, and shelter. The concept of freedom was equally central to Kant’s discussion of the public arena, especially to his concept of Recht.
