Kantian Grounds of Justice

The fundamental problem of political philosophy is reconciling individual freedom and political authority. Conceptions of justice specify how the relationship between individual freedom and political authority is to be established. The idea of individual freedom is specifically the grounding principle of justice for Kantian political philosophy. However, there is a disagreement between Kantians on the question of how freedom should be conceived in the context of political justice. Rainer Forst’s works exemplify one of the most elaborate attempts to reconstruct Kant’s political philosophy grounded in freedom as moral autonomy. In this paper, I first introduce and assess critically Rainer Forst’s conception of political justice. Then, as an alternative to Forst’s Kantian interpretation of political justice, I propose and briefly discuss a more acceptable conception of Kantian idea of political justice, which is not based on moral autonomy. I argue that Kant’s idea of freedom as an innate right is the grounding principle of political justice