Immanuel Kant’ta Doğa Durumundan Sivil Topluma Geçiş Üzerine Bir Soruşturma: Aklın Bir İdesi Olarak Toplum Sözleşmesi

Turkish

Political philosophy in the 17th and 18th centuries was shaped on the social contract theory, which was put forward both to provide a historical explanation of the emergence of the state and to determine the nature, obligations, and limits of political authority.This article examines Immanuel Kant's social contract theory in which he discusses the transition from the state of nature to civil society.Kant, one of the modern contract theorists, bases the conceptual and theoretical status of the contract on a completely idealist and rational perspective as an ideal of reason, rather than determining it realistically or hypothetically like others.This perspective also dominates Kant's views on how to understand human history, how human beings can overcome their immaturity, how the human species can be perfected and morally progress, and how permanent peace can be achieved in the international arena.This conception, which allows for determining possible a priori contracting conditions, becomes distinguished in that it paves the way for identifying the necessary and universal principles for establishing public justice.As an ideal of reason, the contract, on the one hand, guides the legislator by providing a formal criterion for evaluating laws, on the other hand, it serves as a critical criterion for testing the conformity of public laws to justice.In this article, it is pointed out that Kant realizes the transition from the state of nature to civil society -whether it is based on unsocial sociability, change in living conditions, or the establishment of national and international peace -as a demand of reason, depending on completely rational aims and hopes. Structured Abstract:Political philosophy of the 17th and 18th centuries was generally shaped around the social contract theory, in which the existence and legitimacy of the state was based on the consensus of citizens.Immanuel Kant's contributions to this theory, which was employed not only to provide a historical explanation of the emergence of the state but also to determine the nature, obligations, and limits of political authority, are less well known than those of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, and Jean Jacques Rousseau.In general, in Hobbes' and Rousseau's theory, the state of nature is explained based on assumption, in Locke's, based on historical reality.Unlike these theorists, Kant thinks that when the state of nature and the social contract are assumed to be an event that has occurred or should occur, the validity and credibility of the theory will depend on whether