Immanuel Kant

“ For if the people regarded themselves as entitled to oppose force to the Constitution, however defective it may be, and to resist the supreme authority, they would also suppose they had a right to substitute force for the supreme Legislation that establishes all rights. ”

“ But such a Foundation, although presumably made for all time, is not really established as a perpetuity; for the State may throw off any burden thus imposed upon it by the Church at will. For the Church itself is an institution established on faith, and if this faith be an illusion engendered by mere opinion, and if it disappear with the enlightenment of the people, the terrible power of the Clergy founded upon it also falls. The State will then, with full right, seize upon the presumed property of the Church, consisting of the land bestowed upon it by legacies. ”

“ The question really to be determined here is whether the Church can belong to the State or the State to the Church, in the relation of property; for two supreme powers cannot be subordinated to one another without contradiction. It is clear that only the former constitution (politico-hierarchica) , according to which the property of the Church belongs to the State, can have proper existence; for every Civil Constitution is of this world, because it is an earthly human power that can be incorporated with all its consequences and effects in experience. ”

“ Any defects attaching to it ought to be gradually removed by reforms carried out on itself; for otherwise, according to the opposite maxim, that the subject may proceed according to his own private will, a good Constitution can only be realized by blind accident. The precept, 'Obey the authority that has power over you,' forbids investigating into how this power has been attained, at least with any view to undermining it. For the Power which already exists, and under which any one may be living, is already in possession of the power of Legislation ”

“ Thus his dignity as a citizen is suspended, at least in a particular instance, by his being subjected to an external obligation of duty, to which he may not oppose resistance on his side. Men of rank and wealth, when mulcted in a fine, feel the humiliation of being compelled to bend under the will of an inferior in position, more than the loss of the money. ”

“ A Civil state is no doubt here presupposed, in order to make the thing in question the property of another person when its former owner is no more; but this transmission of the possession from the hand of the dead (mort-main) does not alter the possibility of Acquisition according to the universal Principles of Natural Right, although a Civil Constitution must be assumed in order to apply them to cases of actual experience. ”

“ A man may neither desire a wife in order to enjoy her as if she were a thing by the immediate pleasure in mere physical intercourse, nor may the wife surrender herself for this purpose; for otherwise the rights of personality would be given up on both sides. ”

“ Religion, as manifested in the form of belief in the dogmas of the Church and the power of the Priests who form the aristocracy of such a constitution, even when it is monarchical and papal, ought not to be forced upon the people, nor taken from them by any political power. Neither should the citizen—as is at present the case in Great Britain with the Irish Nation—be excluded from the political services of the State, and the advantages thence arising, on account of a religion that may be different from that of the Court. ”

“ If, however, I am entitled, on any ground whatever, to press for the possession of an object which has escaped from my power or been taken from me, this conception of right is a sign in effect that I hold myself entitled to conduct myself towards it as being mine and in my rational possession, and so to use it as my object.
The 'Mine' in this connection does not mean that it is constituted by ownership of the Person of another; for a man cannot even be the owner of himself, and much less of another person. ”

“ These crimes are called unnatural, because they are committed against all that is essential to Humanity. To punish them by arbitrary penalties, is literally opposed to the conception of a penal Justice. But even then the criminal cannot complain that wrong is done to him, since his own evil deed draws the punishment upon himself; and he only experiences what is in accordance with the spirit, if not the letter, of the penal Law which he has broken in his relation to others. ”

“ Now, it is asserted that obedience must be given to whoever is in possession of the supreme authoritative and legislative power over a people; and this must be done so unconditionally by right, that it would even be penal to inquire publicly into the title of a power thus held, with the view of calling it in doubt, or opposing it in consequence of its being found defective. ”

“ The latter relation is distinguished from the former in that the domestic enters the contract on the understanding that he will be available for everything that is allowable in respect of the well-being of the household, and is not merely engaged for a certain assigned and specified piece of work. On the other hand, an artisan or a day-labourer who is hired for a specific piece of work, does not give himself into the possession of another, nor is he therefore a member of his household. ”

“ A Desire, viewed as an active Striving (nisus) to be a cause by means of one's own mental representations, even although the individual may perceive his incapacity to attain the desired effect, is still a mode of causality within his own internal experience.—There is therefore a misunderstanding involved in the objection, that because the consciousness of one's Power in a case of Desire may be at the same time accompanied with a consciousness of the Want of Power in respect of the external world, the definition is therefore not applicable to the Idealist. ”

“ The will of the people is naturally un-unified, and consequently it is lawless; and its unconditional subjection under a sovereign Will, uniting all particular wills by one law, is a fact which can only originate in the institution of a supreme power, and thus is public Right founded. Hence to allow a Right of resistance to this sovereignty, and to limit its supreme power, is a contradiction ”

“ And the fact that all Acquisition in the state of Nature is merely provisory, has no influence upon the question of Security in the Possession of what has been acquired, this consideration necessarily taking precedence before the former. ”

“ This in fact does not admit of doubt. The merely logical Division, indeed, as abstracting from the object of Knowledge, is always in the form of a Dichotomy; so that every Right is either a Real or a not-Real Right. ”

“ Justification of the Conception of a Personal Right of a Real Kind. The Definition of a Personal Right of a Real Kind may be put shortly and appropriately thus: 'it is the Right which a man has to have another Person than himself as his.' I say intentionally a 'Person;' for one might have another man who had lost his civil personality and become enslaved as his ”

“ Thus it has been found that the poor and the sick may be better and more cheaply provided for by giving them the assistance of a certain sum of money proportionate to the wants of the time, and allowing them to board with relatives or friends, than by maintaining them in magnificent and costly institutions like Greenwich Hospital, or other similar institutions which are maintained at great expense and yet impose much restriction on personal liberty. ”

“ The confirmation of the Right to break hire by purchase, may be further shown by certain juridical consequences that follow from such a naked contract of hire as is here under consideration. Thus the Heirs of the Lessee when he dies should not have the obligation imposed upon them to continue the hire, because it is only an obligation as against a certain person and should cease with his death, although here again the legal period of intimation must be always kept in view. ”

“ For I can say ' this is my father ' in indicating my natural relationship of connection with him, by which I merely state that I have a father. But I may not say ' I have him as mine ' in this relation. However, if I say 'my Wife,' this indicates a special juridical relation of a possessor to an object viewed as a thing, although in this case it is a person. But physical possession is the condition of the use of a thing as such (manipulatio) ; although in another relation the object must at the same time be treated as a Person. ”

“ That a Sovereign Power and a Sovereign are to be recognised, and that the one or the other whose existence is not given in any way a priori is also to be regarded a priori as a master, are represented so as to be one and the same thing.' Now, while this view is admitted to be paradoxical, I hope when it is more closely considered, it will not at least be convicted of heterodoxy. ”

“ Until the children attain maturity, they belong as members of the household to the family; but thereafter they may belong to the domestics (famulatus) as servants of the household, and they can enter into this relation only by a contract whereby they are bound to the master of the house as his domestics. In like manner, a relation of master and servant may be formed outside of the family, in accordance with a personal right of a real kind on the part of the master; and the domestics are acquired to the household by contract (famulatus domesticus) . ”

“ On the other hand, the believers whose Kingdom is in Heaven as the other world, in so far as a hierarchico-political constitution relating to this world is conceded to them, must submit themselves to the sufferings of the time, under the supreme power of the men who act in the world. ”

“ Now every fact is an object which presents itself to the senses, whereas what can only be realized by pure Reason must be regarded as an idea for which no adequately corresponding object can be found in experience. Thus a perfect juridical Constitution among men is an ideal Thing in itself. ”

“ Hence a contract that would bind any one for such mere use would be an illegal contract (pactum turpe) .
2. In like manner, a husband and wife cannot produce a child as their mutual offspring (res artificialis) without both coming under the obligation towards it and towards each other to maintain it as their child. This relation accordingly involves the acquisition of a human being as if it were a thing, but it holds only in form according to the idea of a merely Personal Right of a real kind. ”

“ Finally, if, on attaining the age of majority, the duty of the parents in regard to the maintenance of their children ceases, they have still the Right to use them as members of the house subjected to their authority, in order to maintain the household until they are released from parental control. ”

“ The State must have the liberty to reconstitute them, in accordance with the wants of the time. No one may be surprised that it proves always more and more difficult to carry out such ideas, as for instance a provision that poor foundationers must make up for the inadequacy of the funds of their benevolent institution by singing as mendicants ”

“ For the Right of the latter arising from the contract of hire, is a Personal Right to what a certain person has to perform for another (jus ad rem) ; it is not a Real Right (jus in re) that holds against every possessor of the thing.
The Lessee might indeed secure himself in his lease and acquire a Real Right in the house ”

“ A spiritual order, like that of the Roman Catholic Church, which does not propagate itself in direct descendants, may, under the favour of the State, possess lands with subjects attached to them, and may constitute a spiritual corporation called the Church. ”

“ In other words, it is only under the condition of a marriage having been previously concluded that there can be such a reciprocal surrender of the two persons into the possession of each other that they will not dehumanize themselves by making a corporeal use of each other. ”

“ But if the spirit, rather than the mere letter, of the will of a private Testator is to form the ground of determination, it may be that circumstances will arise in the course of time such as would make the abolition of such foundations advisable, at least in respect of their form. ”

“ Is there not likewise a violent and yet consciously ineffective form of Desire as a mere mental longing, which is expressed by such words as 'Would to God such a one were still alive!' Yet although this Desire is actless in the sense of not issuing in overt action, it is not effectless in the sense of having no consequence at all ”

“ I do not say (§ 34, p. 136) that 'every man necessarily accepts every thing that is offered to him, when by such acceptance he can only gain and can lose nothing;' for there are no things of such a kind. But what I say is, that every one always in fact accepts the Right of the offer of the thing, at the moment in which it is offered, inevitably and tacitly, but yet validly ”

“ There is merely a difference in the manner of the enjoyment between the exhaustion which may thus be produced and the consumption of bodies by the teeth and maw of the savage; and in such reciprocal use of the sexes the one is really made a res fungibilis to the other. ”

“ In this way he would provide against being dispossessed before the expiry of the time agreed upon, either by the intimation of the proprietor or by his natural death, or even by his civil death as a bankrupt. ”