The Legal Power And State In Kant's Moral Metaphysics

What value the civil society for human means, Kant's standpoint is not only different from the classic political philosophy, but also different from modern natural rights theory. The former regards city-state as necessary condition for the perfection of human, the latter regards it as an artificial design for peace and happiness of human. As a philosopher, Kant obviously also disagree the depreciation to civil society from Christianity. In Kant's opinion, the classic political philosophy gives it an exorbitant value, because to realize a civil constitution, it is possible to a demonic people. But following Rousseau, Kant has knew that the modern natural rights theory gives civil society a too low value, because a people is not citizen, but also not natural, he will be not value to himself and others. There has been not theory that elevates civil society to Idea until Kant, so that it is a duty for human to enter into it. The duty is not based on natural end, and not on orders from God. It is based on transcendental freedom and moral laws. Although Kant has destroyed traditional natural law, but he never abandoned the concept of it like Hobbes. The natural Law is still a kind of unconditional percept, but it should contain natural rights.Leaving from natural state and entering into civil society, it is a percept of practical reason. The view of Kant based on his thought of natural right. In all of his work, Metaphysics of Moral most distinctly exhibits the thought. But the work has been not got corresponding attention, so that some problems are still in dark. Especially how to deduce right from moral law, and how to demonstrate the moral necessity of civil society, these problems need a convincing interpretation. It is not enough to use the book of Metaphysics of Moral, but need study the manuscript of Kant and the notes from students. Furthermore, these problems must been set into tradition to realize the relation of Kant's terms and traditional natural law theory. According to the method, the study will clarify the structure of Kant's right theory.There are three key problems that must be resolved. First of all, how deduce right and laws of right from moral law. Second, how deduce external right from inner right. Finally, how demonstrate the necessity of civil society based on the theory of right. To these problems, the answer of Kant is obviously different from modern natural rights theory. It does not start with natural rights, but with natural laws. Because the natural laws in the natural rights theory are just hypothetical percepts. They are essentially means pointed out by reason to the end of happiness. But natural laws should be categorical percepts that give human unconditional duty.Natural rights are not the starting point of Kant, because natural laws should be logical condition of natural rights, so that the latter must be deduced from the former. But the deduction is not direct. It can be clarified according to a contrast from the deduction of Kant and his cotemporary author. In Kant's system, doctrine of right is in a dimension that moral laws can be applied. Right that corresponds to possibility of external lawgiving cannot be directly deduced from moral laws. But it dose not mean that right should be independent on moral. In fact, only when the moral laws are applied to human that is a kind of limited reason being, the divining between right and moral is possible. In this dimension there is a twofold lawgiving of reason, according to it, right can be deduced from moral. Firstly, lex iusti and inner right can be deduced from the formula of humanity. Secondly, in virtue of permissive law of practical reason external right can be deduced from inner right. But without that dimension, whether lex iusti and permissive law of practical reason, both of them should be impossible in the system of moral.There are postulates of right in the dimension. But how deduce external right according to the permissive law of practical reason, it is the second problem in Kant's system of right. The problem is related to an antiquated suspect to property. So it is necessary to discuss two typical schemes that designed from Thomas Aquina and John Locke. The latter is criticized by Kant, but the theory frame of the former is accepted, although has been adjusted in ground and details. The critic makes Metaphysics of Moral appeal to permissive law. It actually originated from a tradition of canonists in the twelfth century. They appealed to the law in purpose to resist to that suspect to property. Obviously, Kant is in the tradition when he appealed to the permissive law of practical reason like the canonists.The final problem is how to properly understand the postulate of public right. The postulate gives human a power of compulsion that can be applied to the people who refuse to enter into civil society. But the power seems to contradict with inner right. In purpose to eliminate the superficial contradiction, it is important to clarify the concept of civil society of Kant. The essential element of the society is distributive justice. In fact, Kant defines three but not two state. They are original natural state, adventitious state and public right state. The divining is obviously different from tradition. It comes from Kant's critic to Pufendorf and Achenwall. Kant's understanding to the distributive justice comes from Hobbes who transforms mean of the concept in Aristotle's tradition. According to the transform, the distributive justice should base on the communicated justice. But different from Hobbes, the communicated justice is not artificial but natural. The postulate of public right has another reason that comes from the theory of nature of human. The nature of human is evil. It is not a concluding from experience, but a legal presupposition that origins from the duality of human. According to the presupposition, only the fact that others are adjacency to me can threat my life, so that I can rightly force them to enter into civil society with me. The inference show that the postulate of public right is also not a prima natural law but secondary.