Kant on the gratuitous contract

Abstract

An analysis of the possible reasons why Kant develops in detail the gratuitous contracts, in comparison to other kinds of contracts, in his work The Metaphysics of Morals, requires examining the Kantian distinction between private law and public law, under whose considerations different conclusions are opposed. In this respect, on the basis of the notion of contract and its place in the system of the Doctrine of Right, Kant’s careful treatment of gratuitous contracts of donation and lending is due to the legal problems that arise, in the first case, when there is a temporal discrepancy between the promise to donate and the giving of the thing donated, in the interim of which there is a retract of the promisor, and, in the second case, when the thing lent suffers damage at the hands of the bailee (in lending agreement). These problems seem to refer, in the last instance, to the ancient discussion that has arisen among jurists with respect to the cause of gratuitous contracts. Kant, however, seems to go beyond a positive legal consideration, by maintaining that, from an a priori point of view, it is not possible to coerce a person for the realization of the virtuous duty of beneficence, consisting in the maxim of proposing the happiness of others as an end.