This paper consists of two parts. In the first part, I shall expound the kantian concept of paradox and its three different senses, the anthropological, the rhetorical and the metaphysical. In the second part, I shall examine the presence of these senses of paradox in Kant’s texts about Enlightenment. The paradox of immaturity consists of the fact that we are responsible, as human beings, and non-responsible, as subjects of a State, of the exit from it. Another formulation of the same (...) paradox, but in dynamical and metaphysical terms, is that of heautocracy, the paradox of self-constraint, which implies that the subject is at the same time active and passive. Finally, the opposition between public and private use of reason also seems paradoxical, since private use seems to be a prejudiced use while public use seems to be free and reasonable as such. (shrink)

Religious conservatives in the U.S. have frequently opposed public-health measures designed to combat STDs among minors, such as sex education, condom distribution, and HPV vaccination. Using Rawls’s method of conjecture, I will clear up what I take to be a misunderstanding on the part of religious conservatives: even if we grant their premises regarding the nature and source of sexual norms, the wide-ranging authority of parents to enforce these norms against their minor children, and the potential sexual-disinhibition effects of the (...) above public-health measures, their opposition to at least one of these measures, HPV vaccination, cannot be justified. In fact, their comprehensive doctrines, when properly interpreted, should lead them to back this measure and thereby draw closer to a policy consensus with other citizens regarding teenage sexual health. (shrink)