2017 Vol. 36. №2

This article considers Kant’s deliberations on the essence and varieties of human love, based on the Lectures on Ethics. Kant distinguished between the love of benevolence (ethical love) — a commitment to the other’s wellbeing (discussed in Kant’s other ethical writings) — and a love of delight (aesthetical love), further divided into the sensual and intellectual love. The sensual love of delight is identified with sexual love. The intellectual love of delight eludes definition, since such delight is difficult to perceive. The collision between vital and moral love results in a need to examine under what conditions relations between the sexes are compatible with morality. Such an examination is taking the form of an ethical and legal deduction of matrimony. Kant’s proof of the moral unacceptability of concubinage given in the Lectures is based on the ethical (‘its purpose is merely that one party allows their person to the other for enjoyment’) rather than formal considerations (an allegedly unequal contract). The moral contradiction of mutual objectification and instrumentalisation of free persons in matrimony is on the surface of Kant’s deduction. The moral prohibition of instrumentalisation rules out family ethics and family law. However, the root of all evil is not solely this circumstance. A morally illegitimate union of concubinage is formed to attain the subjective ends of a hedonistic individual and it does not contradict the ends of the human race. Therefore, such a deduction (unlike that presented in the Metaphysics of Morals) has to make a transition from strategies to maxims. In effect, the deduction rests on the question as to which form of delight should lie at the foundation of a matrimony. The ethical problem is solved beyond the realm of ethics — a morally acceptable union of the sexes can be based only on aesthetic delight within the element of beauty.

The universal public law is a section of Kant’s lectures on natural right, which he delivered in 1784. A traditional part of the then natural right compendia, it might seem strange to us today. Kant distinguished between three branches of government. However, they were not identical in the name or function to the executive, legislative, and judicial powers. Of interest is the justification of the exclusion of certain powers from the monarch’s authority — the monarch must not dispense justice or rule in a way that is demeaning to his or her greatness. Moreover, the section covers the problem of the rights and obligations of the monarch and his or her subjects in religious matters. This problem was crucial to the Enlightenment. Kant’s deliberations on the issue include a long prehistory of formulating the concept of religious tolerance and modelling relations between the state and different confessions, based on the rules of natural law, which date back to the early Enlightenment. For the first time, it was discussed at length by Christian Thomasius, whose endeavours marked the beginning of the Enlightenment in Germany. Moreover, a number of important aspects relate Thomasius’s early Enlightenment ideas and Kant’s late Enlightenment concept. Firstly, this is the perspective on the role of the monarch in regulating interactions between different confessions. Thus, both thinkers stressed that the secular ruler had to pay heed only to the worldly happiness and wellbeing of his or her subjects. The major criterion for resolving theological disputes must be nothing else than upholding peace and order in the state. This article is supplemented with a translation of a section of Kant’s lectures on national law.