2014 Issue №2(48)

Leaping beyond the limits of one’s time with the help of imagination is a rather common procedure; however, such leap made with the help of rational philosophical principles and taking one 150 years into the future to a precisely designed landing ground is unprecedented. Kant preformed this intellectual feat through understanding the true essence of human nature. All the novelties and discoveries that he introduced into philosophy are the results of this initial achievement. Whereas the Enlightenment formulated the principle of naturalism as a basic one for the comprehensive understanding of the world, Kant juxtaposed it with the principles of transcendental anthropology. As a result, it requires a new understanding of 1) the nature and its relation to human consciousness and 2) the active and, thus, tirfucntional, structure of human consciousness.

Robert Nozik's political theory contains an attempt to utilize Kant's notion of individual freedom and the second formula of his categorical imperative (“the principle of humanity as an end in itself”) for the justification of his libertarian “minimal state”. This article analyses and criticizes this attempt on the following grounds: a) the anthropological models of Kant's and Nozik's theories are incommensurable; b) different notions of human nature result in different understandings of freedom — for Nozik it is the basic property of human nature, for Kant it is the result of entering the civil condition; c) the incommensurability of anthropological presuppositions and basic notions distorts the meaning of Kantian formula of categorical imperative when transplanted into an alien philosophical context.