Juridical Personality and the Role of Juridical Obligation

Abstract

Abstract This paper introduces the idea of juridical personality as an essential piece of Kant’s account of human moral agency. The problem is that natural human activities of production and reproduction make persons morally vulnerable to one another regardless of the quality of their willing. The solution lies in the acquisition of the moral powers to obligate others that can only be conferred by juridical institutions. Drawing on under-appreciated text in the Introduction of the Metaphysics of Morals and the first part of the Doctrine of Right it is argued that the juridical personality and its duties are the possibility condition of moral action across the board. Collateral benefits are an explication of the source of many human duties, juridical and ethical; an account of responsibility for the actual effects of duty-related actions; and a deeper understanding of the moral point of moral motivation.

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