The Trop Principle Challenges Kant

In his discussion of the Trop principle, Brettschneider explains that prisoners can have their right to freedom of movement taken away while still retaining their political rights (144). 

I want to consider an example. Imagine a man who is imprisoned for life as a result of heinous crimes. Brettschneider argues that this prisoner is still a citizen, and thus retains his ability to “think, speak, and participate in political life” (144). In other words, he is still engaged with the state, and the state still upholds his rights.


This poses a major problem for the Kantian conception of rights. Kant says that the point of the state is to secure freedom, the one innate right. He rejects all other bases for the state. To Kant, freedom means the ability to set and pursue one’s ends. The man in jail for life has certainly lost his ability to set and pursue his own ends. He is even more severely limited in his ability to set and pursue his own ends than the man who is confined to his own property in Ripstein’s libertarian example. Therefore, the state no longer upholds his Kantian freedom. Yet, the state still upholds his civic rights to think, speak, and participate in political life. If there exist civic rights that the state should uphold even after one’s Kantian freedom has been taken away; it cannot be true that the right to Kantian freedom is the one innate right.

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