Winter School of the Standing Group on Kantian Political Thought

About

Kant’s legal and political thought has provided inspiring tools - such as the ideas of totality, autonomy, and social transformation - for critical and revolutionary social movements in the first half of the twentieth century. Against interpretations that confine Kant within a narrow neo-Kantian framework, disconnected from the impact he had on Marxist theorists such as György Lukács and Rosa Luxemburg.

This Winter School aims to show that Kant’s work offered stimulating perspectives for these thinkers, particularly regarding the articulation between party and co-legislation, as well as between organisation and individual agency.

Another key focus of the sessions will be the points of convergence and divergence between Kant and Marx concerning the right to property and its social meaning, the experience of revolution, and the transformation of the State into a network of institutions intended, on the one hand, to guarantee lawfulness, and, on the other, to remove social domination.

In this context, special attention will also be devoted to post-Marxist developments, notably Agnes Heller’s reworking of Kantian autonomy through her theory of radical needs, which reconnects moral agency, everyday life, and social emancipation beyond economic reductionism, while preserving a critical horizon of democratic and emancipatory transformation.