Kant's critique of economic reason: between social domination and the construction of a good life

Abstract

Speaker: Nuria Sánchez Madrid, Complutense University of Madrid This lecture aims to offer a broad reading of the somewhat tacit presence of the various axes that constitute economic rationality in Kant’s work—basically the household, the market, and the state (Brosch 2024; Williams 2025). Although Kant did not witness most of the forms of domination generated by late capitalism -specially the impersonal ones, which Marx mainly focuses in the "Grundrisse" and "The Capital", nonetheless this author provides conceptual tools that allow us to respond to what Agnes Heller identified as one of capitalism’s main contradictions: the production of needs whose satisfaction is structurally impeded by the hegemonic frameworks of production, circulation, and consumption of goods. The author will highlight several points of inequality that Kant assumes to be inevitable in his writings on legal and political philosophy (concerning women, dependent workers, colonialist market and racialised subjects), insofar as they represent non-ideal elements that any updating of his legacy must critically confront. The seminar suggests that these elements are crucial in understanding the complexities of Kant's work. The author will explore the Kantian framework that prevents the collapse of the structure of needs that Heller characterises as ‘radical’ in the face of the excesses typical of capitalist exploitation. This seminar aims to highlight Kant's functionalist approach to economic activity, engaging in a dialogue with Williams' account of corporations (2025) in Kant's writings. The author argues for the hermeneutic benefits of focusing attention on the individual social agent in order to identify the processes that oppress and reify them, while still taking into account the impersonal logics of domination that characterise neoliberal capitalism. Thus it is argued that Kant's focus on the individual agent can counteract the determinist accounts often devoted to capitalist exploitation and domination in recent times. This seminar concludes that Heller’s interpretative strategy underscores the functional value of the Kantian notion of 'limit' in providing the economic sphere with a rationality that serves social reproduction rather than endangering it.