ABSTRACT
Beginning in 1985, John Rawls has repeatedly emphasized that modern, pluralistic societies should be structured in accordance with a political conception of justice. In doing so, he has insisted that his own liberalism should be understood as political, in contrast to the comprehensive liberalisms of Immanuel Kant and Mill. The comprehensive liberalisms of Kant and Mill can maintain their own social pre-eminence only by violating their own principles against the use of state oppression. Kant would be operating within the latter branch of the philosophical Rechtslehre. In this chapter, author tries to show that Kant conceives of the core of his Rechtslehre as independent from the rest of his philosophy. Kant aims to specify the Rechtslehre game in such a way that it manifests a preference not merely for the instantiation of Recht but also for a particular way of instantiating Recht over all alternative instantiations.
