Abstract

This essay analyzes Rawls' notion of the subject in the light of Kantian philosophy. The author investigates the affinities between Rawls' idea of free moral person and the Kantian notion of rational subjectivity. The rational person is constructed by Rawls on the basis of the kantian noumenical Self, and is perfectly inserted in the logical mechanism of modern representation: the subject and the State share the same normative universality of the kantian practical reason. But, unlike Kant, Rawls defines the political domain solely from the idea of equal liberty imprinted in human reason, without taking account of the complexity and the contingency of the political.