The Crooked Timber

Left alone in a field, a tree grows every which way; planted in a grove, it has to race its neighbors for light, and it grows straight. Immanuel Kant thought that was a picture of us under law, and this episode, The Crooked Timber, follows the image into his politics. Paul Guyer lays out the doctrine of right, the part of morality a state may enforce: why what is true in theory must work in practice, the one right nobody has to earn, and the vote Kant denied to women, which Guyer refuses to pass over in silence. Law can straighten citizens. Then comes the harder question: who straightens the ruler?