Günter Zöller (University of Munich / McGill University)

"Homo homini civis. The Modernity of Classical German Political Philosophy" 

Abstract:
 The paper focuses on the specifically political conception of the human
 individual in the moral, social and political philosophy of Kant and the
 German idealists, placing their political thinking into the larger
 historical context of modern accounts of the relation between the citizen
 and the state. In particular, I propose to draw on Kant, Fichte and Hegel
 for extracting a conception of selfhood that is mindful of the worth of
 the individual and attentive to its supra- and inter-individual existence
 in general and its existence in political or civil society and the state
 in particular.