Published June 22, 2019 | Version v1
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Freedom and Bonds in Kant

Creators

  • 1. Universidad de Navarra

Description

The thesis that I intend to address in this article can be summarized with the idea that positive bonds[1] engender not only dependence, but also freedom and autonomy. Accordingly, it is worth asking what positive human bonds are based on. Or, to phrase the question another way, how can dependence and autonomy be blended when we talk about relationships in terms of bonds, that is, relationships with a special quality of union?

I will try to answer these questions through a selection of texts that pay special attention to these issues from Kant’s Metaphysics of Morals, Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason, and his Lectures on Ethics[2]. I will thus briefly address the Kantian concept of freedom and introduce the idea of bonds that, as we will see below, is not as alien to Kantian ethics as it may at first seem.

 

[1] What I mean by “positive bonds” is the idea of being bound to someone without becoming passive, that is, without losing your autonomy. As Lara Denis holds: “We owe it to ourselves to avoid relationships in which we are continually dependent on someone else” (Denis, 2001, p.5).

[2] I will cite Kant’s texts according to their initials in German, followed by the volume and page of the Prussian Academy edition of Kant’s Gesammelte Schriften. Thus, the Critique of Practical Reason corresponds to KpR; Metaphysics of Morals corresponds to MS; Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason to RGV; and his Lectures on Ethics from Collins correspond to V-Mo/Collins.

Notes

Almudena Rivadulla Durán, PhD Student of the Department of Philosophy of the University of Navarra and team member of the research group CEMID of the Institute of Culture and Society of the University of Navarra

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References

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