IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE DEED ON THE ORIGIN OF PROPERTY AND SOCIETY IN ROUSSEAU AND KANT

Resumo

This paper aims at confronting the two different accounts given by Rousseau and Kant on the origin of private property. Firstly, I shall present briefly the context in which Rousseau tells his story of this event and regrets its consequences (I). Secondly, I shall present summarily the way in which Kant tells the same episode (II), in order to make two kinds of remarks: the first one refers to the legal subject emerging from the Doctrine of Right (III), while the second one refers to the wrong interpretation according to which Kant would justify the existence of the State with the necessity of guaranteeing private property. Against this interpretation, I shall try to show that, actually, in Kant the exeundum e statu naturali has a different theoretical and motivational basis (IV).