Roles are ubiquitous elements of moral and political reality. In this paper, I suggest that we should understand roles as intelligible realities with interesting parallels to the three categories of intelligible reality that Kant himself discusses. In the Doctrine of Right, Kant sees property, contract and status as intelligible realities. I will argue that roles combine elements of all three, albeit often in non-juridical form. That is, roles involve control of certain resources [property], commitments to others [contract], and obligations to act on others’ behalf as well as rights to direct others’ actions [status]. Not least, roles constitute various forms of collective action – something that Kant says little about. I will close with some brief remarks on the intelligible reality of relationships, organisations and other collective agents.
