The World as Will and Idea, Vol. II — Arthur Schopenhauer, trans. Haldane & Kemp

The " Philosophy of Law " is one of Kant's latest woitfl and is so poor that, although I entirely disagree with it, I think a polemic against it is superfluous, since of its own weakness it must die a natural death, just as if it were not the work of this great man, but the production of an ordinary mortal. Therefore, as regards the " Philosophy of Law," I give up the negative mode of procedure and refl to the positive, that is, to the short outline of it gi\ the fourth book. Just one or two general remarks on

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Kant's " Philosophy of Law " may be made here. The errors which I have condemned in considering the " Critique of Pure Reason," as clinging to Kant throughout, appear in the " Philosophy of Law " in such excess that one often believes he is reading a satirical parody of the Kantian style, or at least that he is listening to a Kantian. Two principal errors, however, are these.

He desires (and many have since then desired) to separate the Philosophy of Law sharply from ethics, and yet not to make the former dependent upon positive legislation, i.e., upon arbitrary sanction, but to let the conception of law exist for itself pure and a priori.

But this is not possible ; because conduct, apart from its ethical significance, and apart from the physical relation to others, and thereby from external sanction, does not admit even of the possibility of any third view.

Consequently, when he says, " Legal obligation is that which can be enforced," this can is either to be understood physically, and then all law is positive and arbitrary, and again all arbitrariness that achieves its end is law ; or the can is to be understood ethically, and we are again in the province of ethics.

With Kant the conception of legal right hovers between heaven and earth, and has no ground on which to stand ; with me it belongs to ethics. Secondly, his definition of the conception law is entirely negative, and thereby inadequate.1 Legal right is that which is consistent with the compatibility of the respective freedom of individuals together, according to a general law.

Freedom (here the empirical, i.e., physical, not the moral freedom of the will) signifies not being hindered or interfered with, and is thus a mere negation ; compatibility, again, has exactly the same significance. Thus we remain with mere negations and obtain no positive conception, indeed do not learn at all, what is really being spoken about, unless we know it already from some other source.

1 Although the conception of legal planation of these conceptions must right is properly negative in opposi- not on this account be entirely negation to that of wrong, which is the tive. positive starting-point, yet the ex152 CRITICISM OF THE KANTIAN PHILOSOPHY.

In the course of the exposition the most perverse views afterwards develop themselves, such as that in the state of nature, i.e., outside the State, there is no right to property at all, which really means that all right or law is positive, and involves that natural law is based upon positive law, instead of which the case ought to be reversed. Further, the founding of legal acquisition on possession; the ethical obligation to establish the civil constitution ; the ground of the right of punishment, &c, &c, all of which, as I have said, I do not regard as worth a special refutation. However, these Kantian errors have exercised a very injurious influence. They have confused and obscured truths long known and expressed, and have occasioned strange theories and much writing and controversy. This certainly cannot last, and we see already how truth and sound reason again make way for themselves. Of the latter, the " Naturrtckt " of J. C. F. Meister specially bears evidence, and is thus a contrast to many a preposterous theory, though I do not regard it as on this account a pattern of perfection.