Introduction

Abstract

The Italian philosopher Norberto Bobbio rightly spoke of the primacy of rights in current political and legal discourse as a radical overturning of the millennia-old practice of considering moral philosophy’s chief task to consist in the drafting of a catalog of duties, rather than of rights (Bobbio 2009, p. 432). From Moses’s two tablets, to Cicero’s De officiis, onto even Immanuel Kant – who viewed his Sittenlehre as a “doctrine of duties,” (Kant 1996, Ak 6:239) –, moral philosophy was believed to be a study of man’s duties. Thus, the overarching question of Kant’s second Critique is not “What are my rights?,” but rather “What should I do?”.