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Between Persons: Kantian reflections on the interpersonal domain https://doi.org/10.17863/CAM.123631 Rodriguez, Facundo 000000020668543X Holton, Richard Langton, Rae Kant might strike some as the wrong companion for an inquiry into interpersonal relationships. After all, Kant remained unmarried until his death and barely left Königsberg in his lifetime. These biographical notes are popularly used to explain a supposed tendency in his thinking. The little space Kant left for interpersonal relationships in his life is, allegedly, reflected in the meagre treatment that he offers of these relationships in his ethical writings. Yet, there was another Kant, one who hosted lively dinner parties, maintained vigorous epistolary exchanges with fellow thinkers, and who did not hesitate to celebrate friendship as a ‘sweet delight’. I show that there is much we can learn from this Kant by focusing on the understudied Kantian notion of a ‘unity of will’. Kant repeatedly argues that relationships between persons bring about a union of wills, or a shared deliberative standpoint in which the will of one is guided by the will of the other. This view of interpersonal relationships has much to offer to our philosophical understanding of loneliness, the nature of permissible sexual interactions, and the moral value of love and friendship, I suggest in this thesis. It also reveals a communitarian ideal at the heart of Kant’s moral project, one that has been systematically ignored by critics and sympathisers alike. For Kant, autonomy is not a capacity that must be fenced off from others to be preserved, but one we must exercise ‘along with others’ in friendship and love. University of Cambridge 2025-08-20 Thesis Doctoral Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) eng Gates Cambridge Scholarship https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/393212 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/0ec65b36-d548-482a-87a9-8135c84eac3f/download 38b85b6b3af40623aca2aed4a1675a55 https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/bitstreams/2d79044f-6ab8-47bb-8504-90428d02a9f0/download 87eda9de84448d1f82354d60eee3eb5f http://purl.org/NET/rdflicense/allrightsreserved autonomy consent Kant Loneliness Love objectification Respect Shared agency