Abstract

It is difficult to find an unambiguous interpretation of the relationship between Kant’s Rechtslehre and Tugendlehre. This also seems apparent from the failure, among Kantian scholars, to identify such a common perspective. For this reason, my thesis argues that it is not possible to understand the relation between ethics and the right in Kant from a unique point of view, but only by adopting different perspectives will it be possible to analyze the numerous facets of this relationship and understand them. I have singled out three perspectives in my analysis: the metaethical and metajuridical perspective, which refers to Kantian moral thinking prior to the distinction between ethics and the right; the perspective of freedom, that is, the perspective of the different spheres in which human freedom fulfils itself; and finally, the perspective of the totality, that is, the communitarian dimension in which ethics and the right can realise themselves and their proper ends. On the one hand, by adopting these perspectives my analysis makes it possible to interpret the relation between ethics and right for Kant in terms of a co-implication in the difference. On the other hand, it provides a possibility to generally re-interpret Kantian morality, which shows itself to be permeated with a content of value: the value of humanity in every person. So the ground of Kantian morality is not duty per se, but the unconditional duty for respecting the absolute value of humanity. From this point of view, Kantian ethics and the right are defined as an ethics and a right for the respect of the person