Arthur Ripstein’s conception of Kantian freedom has exerted an enormous recent influence on scholars of Kant’s political philosophy; however, the conception seems to me flawed. In this paper, I argue that Ripstein’s conception of Kantian freedom as “your capacity to choose the ends you will use your means to pursue” – your “purposiveness” – is both too narrow and too broad: (1) Wrongful acts such as coercive threats cannot choose my ends for me; instead, such acts wrongfully restrict my perceived options. And (2) rightful changes to the context in which I choose that render my means insufficient for my ends restrict my capacity to choose them. Alternatively, my purposiveness reduces to my entitlements; but then freedom as purposiveness is viciously circular or fails as a new approach to the “devastating” objection that motivates it.

中文翻译：

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作为“目的性”的康德自由

亚瑟·里普斯坦 (Arthur Ripstein) 的康德自由观最近对研究康德政治哲学的学者产生了巨大影响；然而，这个概念在我看来是有缺陷的。在这篇论文中，我认为里普斯坦将康德自由定义为“你选择你将使用你的手段追求的目标的能力”——你的“目的性”——既太狭隘又太宽泛：(1)不法的强制威胁等行为不能为我选择我的目的；相反，这些行为错误地限制了我的感知选择。和 (2)合法的我选择的环境发生变化，使我的手段不足以达到我的目的，这限制了我选择它们的能力。或者，我的目的性减少到我的权利；但是作为目的性的自由是恶性循环的，或者作为一种新的方法来解决激发它的“毁灭性”反对意见而失败。