The aim of this paper is to examine the hypothesis that Kantian theory of public rights is founded on an antinomic conceptual structure, even though Kant only admitted the paradoxical character of his doctrine. Kant's theory on public right states, at the same time, that: (i) the access to a rightful condition is dependent on our compliance to the command of reason to celebrate the pactum unionis civilis and the corresponding submission of the citizens under a civil constitution; (ii) we shall accept as our legitimate sovereign whoever is able to impose his power over us. Good interpreters, as Bouterwek and Hermann Cohen thought, however, that the true difficulty with his analysis is that it contains an astonishing confusion of the concepts of sovereign and sovereignty. The hypothesis I would like to explore in this paper is that perhaps a better understanding of Kant's position on this theme can be obtained by admitting that the two levels of analysis and the conflicting thesis we found in his doctrine of public rights are in a position reciprocally analogous to that occupied by thesis and antithesis in the dynamical antinomies assessed in the Critique of Pure Reason.
Kant; public rights; constitutional foundation; antinomy