The Independence of Right from Ethics Allen Wood Right and ethics ...

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value possessed by others as ends in themselves would ground the ethical claim that their rightshave on us as moral beings. They could never ground the entitlement of one person to haveanother person coerced or externally constrained to respect their rights. That last claim, to thecoercive enforcement of external freedom as independence of another’s choice, is one thatbelongs to right alone. It could not be derived from ethics, since the claims of ethics are neverentitled to coercive enforcement. Right therefore rests solely on the claim any person has on anyother, from the impartial standpoint of reason, to be left free to choose his actions in furtheranceof his own ends, rather than being forced to choose them to serve the ends of someone else.The basis of right is the protection of external freedom, however it is used, hence not onany of the ends individuals might set. But the condition of right, in which the external freedom ofall according to universal law is protected, is a condition into which we may all be coerced toenter (MS 6:256, 312). Preserving and perfecting such a condition can therefore also be seen asitself a kind of end. These are the sole legitimate ends of politics and civil law, the only ends thata ruler or politician as such may rightly seek, and all actions of the public authority may bejustified only in relation to these ends. But it is still never the case that coercion can be justifiedmerely because it serves some valuable end or other. Human perfection, happiness andflourishing, for instance, are valuable ends, but no one may be coerced to promote them justbecause they are valuable. It is not because the condition of right -- its establishment orpreservation -- may be brought under the general concept of a valuable end that we may becoerced into such a condition or coerced to obey its laws or to fulfill duties of right. Rather,coercion can be justified only because, it is needed for the preservation of the freedom of allaccording to universal law, and the condition of right, is nothing except the condition in whichthis freedom is protected.12
Coercion is never justified in the name of any end as such. Ethical duties always rest onends. This is why no ethical duty, as such, can ever carry with it a right of coercive enforcement:Forcibly to compel someone to discharge a duty of beneficence, for example, is itself a violationof the right of the person compelled. If duties of right had their basis in the categoricalimperative, they too could not be enforced through external constraint. It is only the rationalclaim that the external freedom of each person has on every other that grounds duties of right.Ethical duties and incentives, therefore, could not belong to the sphere of right as such. They canneither explain why we have duties of right nor determine the content of those duties. The wholeidea that right must somehow be derived from ethics, and that the universal principle of rightmust either be a version of, or derived from, the categorical imperative, involves a projectiononto Kant of the basic error that legal and political philosophy is nothing but an application ofethics to the specific circumstances of law and politics. It is an error inimical to human freedom.Right is grounded on our humanity. The ethical claim involves the worth of every personas an end in itself. This involves an ethical worth that belongs to the humanity of every person inKant’s technical sense of the term – humanity as the capacity to set ends and choose means tothem (G 4:429, KU 6:431, R 6:27, VA 7:322-324, 327). The worth of humanity as end in itselfprovides the end or matter of ethical duty and the motive (Bewegungsgrund) for obeying theethical imperative (G 4:426-429). This end in itself is an existent or self-sufficient end (a personhaving a worth for whose sake we act), as distinct from the ends to be produced that might be setas ends based on this end (for example, the ends of our own perfection or the happiness ofothers). The basis of the innate right to freedom is also ‘humanity’ in the same technical sense ofthe term: namely, the capacity to set ends according to reason and choose actions as means tothem. Each human being has an innate right to freedom “(independence from being constrained13
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Page 15 and 16: standards of right, be coercively p
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The Independence of Right from Ethics Allen Wood Right and ethics ...

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