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• Translator’s Preface.
• Bibliographical Note.
• Prefatory Explanations.
• Prolegomena. General Introduction to the Metaphysic of Morals.
• I.: The Relation of the Faculties of the Human Mind to the Moral Laws.
• II.: The Idea and Necessity of a Metaphysic of Morals.
• III.: The Division of a Metaphysic of Morals.
• General Divisions of the Metaphysic of Morals.
• I.: Division of the Metaphysic of Morals As a System of Duties Generally.
• II.: Division of the Metaphysic of Morals According to Relations of Obligation.
• IV.: General Preliminary Conceptions Defined and Explained.
• Introduction to the Science of Right.
• General Definitions and Divisions.
• A.: What the Science of Right Is.
• B.: What Is Right?
• C.: Universal Principle of Right.
• D.: Right Is Conjoined With the Title Or Authority to Compel.
• E.: Strict Right May Be Also Represented As the Possibility of a Universal Reciprocal Compulsion In Harmony With the Freedom of All According to Universal Laws.
• F.: Supplementary Remarks On Equivocal Right.
• Division of the Science of Right.
• A.: General Division of the Duties of Right.
• B.: Universal Division of Rights.
• C.: Methodical Division of the Science of Right.
• The Science of Right. Part First. Private Right. the System of Those Laws Which Require No External Promulgation.
• Private Right. the Principles of the External Mine and Thine Generally.
• Chapter First. of the Mode of Having Anything External As One’s Own.
• Private Right: Chapter Second. the Mode of Acquiring Anything External.
• First Section. Principles of Real Right.
• Second Section. Principles of Personal Right.
• Third Section. Principles of Personal Right That Is Real In Kind.
• The Rights of the Family As a Domestic Society.
• Title First. Conjugal Right. (husband and Wife.)
• Rights of the Family As a Domestic Society.: Title Second. Parental Right. (parent and Child.)
• Rights of the Family As a Domestic Society.: Title Third. Household Right. (master and Servant.)
• Systematic Division of All the Rights Capable of Being Acquired By Contract.
• Episodical Section. the Ideal Acquisition of External Objects of the Will.
• Private Right.: Chapter Third. Acquisition Conditioned By the Sentence of a Public Judicatory.
• Transition From the Mine and Thine In the State of Nature to the Mine and Thine In the Juridical State Generally.
• The Science of Right. Part Second. Public Right. the System of Those Laws Which Require Public Promulgation.
• Public Right. the Principles of Right In Civil Society.
• Public Right.
• I.: Right of the State and Constitutional Law.
• Constitutional and Juridical Consequences Arising From the Nature of the Civil Union.
• Public Right.
• II.: The Right of Nations and International Law.
• Public Right.
• III.: The Universal Right of Mankind.
• Conclusion.
• Supplementary Explanations of the Principles of Right.
• Objection As to the Faculty of Desire.
• Apologia. Kant’s Vindication of His Philosophical Style.

DIVISION OF THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT.

A.

General Division of the Duties of Right.

(Juridical Duties.)

In this Division we may very conveniently follow Ulpian, if his three Formulæ are taken in a general sense, which may not have been quite clearly in his mind, but which they are capable of being developed into or of receiving. They are the following:—

• 1. Honeste vive. ‘Live rightly.’ Juridical Rectitude, or Honour (Honestas juridica), consists in maintaining one’s own worth as a man in relation to others. This Duty may be rendered by the proposition, ‘Do not make thyself a mere Means for the use of others, but be to them likewise an End.’ This Duty will be explained in the next Formula as an Obligation arising out of the Right of Humanity in our own Person (Lex justi).
• 2. Neminem læde. ‘Do Wrong to no one.’ This Formula may be rendered so as to mean, ‘Do no Wrong to any one, even if thou shouldst be under the necessity, in observing this Duty, to cease from all connection with others and to avoid all Society’ (Lex juridica).
• 3. Suum cuique tribue. ‘Assign to every one what is his own.’ This may be rendered, ‘Enter, if Wrong cannot be avoided, into a Society with others in which every one may have secured to him what is his own.’—If this Formula were to be simply translated, ‘Give every one his own,’ it would express an absurdity, for we cannot give any one what he already has. If it is to have a definite meaning, it must therefore run thus, ‘Enter into a state in which every one can have what is his own secured against the action of every other’ (Lex justitiæ).

These three classical Formulæ, at the same time, represent principles which suggest a Division of the System of Juridical Duties into Internal Duties, External Duties, and those Connecting Duties which contain the latter as deduced from the Principle of the former by subsumption.

B.

Universal Division of Rights.

I.

Natural Right and Positive Right.

The System of Rights, viewed as a scientific System of Doctrines, is divided into Natural Right and Positive Right. Natural Right rests upon pure rational Principles à priori; Positive or Statutory Right is what proceeds from the Will of a Legislator.

II.

Innate Right and Acquired Right.

The System of Rights may again be regarded in reference to the implied Powers of dealing morally with others as bound by Obligations, that is, as furnishing a legal Title of action in relation to them. Thus viewed, the System is divided into Innate Right and Acquired Right. Innate Right is that Right which belongs to every one by Nature, independent of all juridical acts of experience. Acquired Right is that Right which is founded upon such juridical acts.

Innate Right may also be called the ‘Internal Mine and Thine’ (Meum vel Tuum internum); for External Right must always be acquired.

There is only one Innate Right, the Birthright of Freedom.

Freedom is Independence of the compulsory Will of another; and in so far as it can co-exist with the Freedom of all according to a universal Law, it is the one sole original, inborn Right belonging to every man in virtue of his Humanity. There is, indeed, an innate Equality belonging to every man which consists in his Right to be independent of being bound by others to anything more than that to which he may also reciprocally bind them. It is, consequently, the inborn quality of every man in virtue of which he ought to be his own master by Right (sui juris). There is, also, the natural quality of Justness attributable to a man as naturally of unimpeachable Right (justi), because he has done no Wrong to any one prior to his own juridical actions. And, further, there is also the innate Right of Common Action on the part of every man so that he may do towards others what does not infringe their Rights or take away anything that is theirs unless they are willing to appropriate it; such as merely to communicate thought, to narrate anything, or to promise something whether truly and honestly, or untruly and dishonestly (veriloquium aut falsiloquium), for it rests entirely upon these others whether they will believe or trust in it or not.1 But all these Rights or Titles are already included in the Principle of Innate Freedom, and are not really distinguished from it, even as dividing members under a higher species of Right.

The reason why such a Division into separate Rights has been introduced into the System of Natural Right viewed as including all that is innate, was not without a purpose. Its object was to enable proof to be more readily put forward in case of any controversy arising about an Acquired Right, and questions emerging either with reference to a fact that might be in doubt, or, if that were established, in reference to a Right under dispute. For the party repudiating an obligation, and on whom the burden of proof (onus probandi) might be incumbent, could thus methodically refer to his Innate Right of Freedom as specified under various relations in detail, and could therefore found upon them equally as different Titles of Right.

In the relation of Innate Right, and consequently of the Internal ‘Mine’ and ‘Thine,’ there is therefore not Rights, but only one Right. And, accordingly, this highest Division of Rights into Innate and Acquired, which evidently consists of two members extremely unequal in their contents, is properly placed in the Introduction; and the subdivisions of the Science of Right may be referred in detail to the External Mine and Thine.

C.

Methodical Division of the Science of Right.

The highest Division of the System of Natural Right should not be—as it is frequently put—into ‘Natural Right’ and ‘Social Right,’ but into Natural Right and Civil Right. The first constitutes Private Right; the second, Public Right. For it is not the ‘Social state’ but the ‘Civil state’ that is opposed to the ‘State of Nature;’ for in the ‘State of Nature’ there may well be Society of some kind, but there is no ‘civil’ Society, as an Institution securing the Mine and Thine by public laws. It is thus that Right, viewed under reference to the state of Nature, is specially called Private Right. The whole of the Principles of Right will therefore fall to be expounded under the two subdivisions of Private Right and Public Right.

THE SCIENCE OF RIGHT.
PART FIRST. PRIVATE RIGHT. THE SYSTEM OF THOSE LAWS WHICH REQUIRE NO EXTERNAL PROMULGATION.

[1 ]It is customary to designate every untruth that is spoken intentionally as such, although it may be in a frivolous manner, a ‘Lie,’ or Falsehood (mendacium), because it may do harm, at least in so far as any one who repeats it in good faith may be made a laughing-stock of to others on account of his easy credulity. But in the juridical sense, only that Untruth is called a Lie which immediately infringes the Right of another, such as a false allegation of a Contract having been concluded, when the allegation is put forward in order to deprive some one of what is his (falsiloquium dolosum). This distinction of conceptions so closely allied is not without foundation; because on the occasion of a simple statement of one’s thoughts, it is always free for another to take them as he may; and yet the resulting repute that such a one is a man whose word cannot be trusted, comes so close to the opprobrium of directly calling him a Liar, that the boundary-line separating what in such a case belongs to Jurisprudence and what is special to Ethics, can hardly be otherwise drawn.