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

serve their ends – is an unconditional requirement of reason. It is independent of ethics, andindependent of all ethical values, including the happiness of others, or even of one’s ownhappiness. The exercise of coercion by the state, therefore, can never be justified in the name ofanyone’s welfare or happiness, not even the welfare or happiness of all – as utilitarian politicaltheories, for example, seem committed to attempt. Coercion can never be justified except in thename of external freedom according to universal law, including the freedom of those coerced.This basic idea of Kant’s theory of right, when stated directly and forcefully, has atendency to sound like a libertarian slogan. No doubt this is why Kant’s theory of right was atone time read by people like F. A. Hayek, Robert Nozick and Mary Gregor as supporting theirlibertarian political ideology. (A recent commentary on the Doctrine of Right by Sharon Byrdand Joachim Hruschka shows that this reading is still alive and well.) But earlier twentiethcenturyKantian theories of right – those, for instance, of Hermann Cohen, Paul Natorp, KarlVorländer, Max Adler, and Julius Ebbinghaus -- and also the consensus of more recenttreatments of Kantian right -- by Wolfgang Kersting, Allen Rosen, Paul Guyer, LeslieMulholland, Alexander Kaufman, Arthur Ripstein and myself – have all defended a verydifferent set of conclusions, arguing that Kantian right would sooner result in a social democraticstate than in the state friendly to wealth and privilege that is celebrated by libertarians.Libertarians often claim -- thinking that the claim is good Kantianism -- that no one’sfreedom may be restricted by the state for the sake of the welfare of others, or even the welfareof all. And they are right, as far as that one claim goes. But in practice, their ideology advancesonly the interests of concentrated wealth, capital and corporate power. That is because their wayof thinking refuses to acknowledge that it is equally essential to right that the external freedom ofthe rich and powerful must be restricted by the state in order to protect the external freedom of18