Garrath Williams’ groundbreaking new work, Kant Incorporated, has just been published open access in the Cambridge University Press series, “Elements in the Philosophy of Immanuel Kant.”

We often think of profit-making businesses as corporations. But almost every organisation is incorporated – universities, charities, political parties, churches, and more. Incorporation means an organisation has its own legal identity. It has legal rights – to own property and employ people, for example. It also has legal duties – for instance, a charity must pursue public benefits; a university must advance learning.

“Corporations influence our lives and structure our societies,” says Dr Williams. “So it is vital to examine these rights and duties. Corporations promise important benefits, but they also pose fundamental dangers.”

Dr Williams’s book is the first to analyse corporations through Kantian ideas. Although Kant wrote over two centuries ago, contemporary thinkers increasingly use his work to understand moral and political life. His philosophy remains inspiring because of its central principles, freedom and equality.

Although corporations often serve valuable purposes, they also threaten equality and freedom. In every corporation, some people act on behalf of the corporation. In other words, those people gain additional legal powers, usually with less legal liability. This goes against the Kantian idea of equal freedom. Kant Incorporated considers how this can be justified, and the safeguards needed.

Kant Incorporated is part of a larger project, Using People Well, Treating People Badly. Funded by the UK’s Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) and the German Research Council (DFG), the project also involves Bristol University and Ruhr University, Bochum.

The project looks at how people can be useful to one another – or act “as means,” in Kant’s terms – and how this can go wrong. Kant talks about using someone “merely as means,” as in exploitation. Social exclusion may also prevent people from acting as means. For example, laws sometimes prohibit refugees from paid work, limiting their ability to take part in everyday life. Kant Incorporated considers how people can be useful within corporations, as well as dangers of exploitation and hierarchy.

To discuss Kant Incorporated, the University of Toronto’s Centre for Ethics will host a symposium on Monday 24 November. Four experts on Kant will comment on the book: Lucy Allais (author of Manifest Reality: Kant’s Idealism and his Realism), Carla Bagnoli (author of Ethical Constructivism), Jordan Pascoe (author of Kant’s Theory of Labour), and Arthur Ripstein (author of Kant and the Law of War, as well as Force and Freedom: Kant’s Legal and Political Philosophy). The symposium will also be accessible online.