The Post-Kantian Working Group presents
Rafeeq Hasan, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Amherst College:
“Kant and Marx on Human Needs.”
What is the relationship between freedom and need? I engage this question by exploring the status of need in Kant’s freedom-based political philosophy. Kant treats as a defining feature of rightful relations that no one can compel another to provide for her needs. Yet Kant also insists that the state should engage in redistributive taxation to meet the needs of vulnerable citizens. Why does the state owe me something that no private person does? I argue that for Kant our needs are best understood as a call for recognition by others. The social dimension of Kant’s politics of freedom has been obscured by the influential reading of Kant as concerned only with freedom from domination. I then argue that Kant’s true account of need has surprising convergences with the young Marx. Thinking Kant with Marx suggests that socialism is best understood as unfolding the inner truth of liberalism, rather than as replacing it wholesale.