Kant, Libertarianism, and the Limits of Contract Right
By 'libertarianism' here (and in my tagline) I mean the family of broadly Lockean political theories, mostly articulated in the 20th century, which take private property to be the most fundamental concept for political theory. (Locke himself writes, "'Where there is no property, there is no injustice,' is a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid: For the idea of property being a right to any thing, and the idea to which the name injustice is given, being the invasion or violation of that right; it is evident, that these ideas, being thus established, and these names annexed to...
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Kant's Argument for Monogamy
In my previous post on
The Problem of Sex in Kant's Ethics, I ended with Kant's argument for monogamy, on which I declined to offer any commentary. I am going to offer a brief reconstruction here (go back to the previous post for the original text).
The argument can be understood as follows:
- Sex involves the use of the other's 'sexual attribute' as a means
- It is impermissible (contrary to right) to use what one has no right to
- One cannot have a right to the sexual attribute of another without having a right to the whole person...
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