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

imperative of duty, then Kant seems to be equally silent on what that independent ground couldbe.Right is grounded on external freedom. In my view, the key to finding a possible paththrough these difficulties is to recognize that Kant rejects the common idea that the sphere ofright, including the philosophy of law and politics, consists merely in an application of generalmoral principles to the specific circumstances of law or the political state. We must understandright, in other words, as grounded independently of the principle of morality. This ground, as Isee it, is one which identifies right with the conditions for protecting what Kant calls ‘externalfreedom’ – freedom as the independence from constraint by the choice of another (MS 6:237).Considering the conditions under which people may have external freedom in accordance withuniversal law permits us to see how right might be a separate sphere of morals (Sitten), entirelyindependent of the sphere of ethics, one that rests on grounds of practical reason that areindependent of the categorical imperative that grounds ethical duties, even though the basis ofright does have something in common with the basis of ethics, making both of them spheres ofmorals.External freedom is the freedom of a person to make choices independently of constraintby the choices of others. The only way for my choices to be completely independent of everyoneelse’s, however, would be for me to have absolute power over their choices. The externalfreedom of any given person, therefore, must always be limited, since otherwise no one elsecould have any external freedom. That, however, is just the point of the universal principle ofright: it declares that external freedom, for any given person, is rightful freedom only when it cancoexist with the freedom of all others according to universal law (MS 6:230).3