Kant à l’épreuve de l’inoculation de la petite vérole

Abstract

Au XVIII e siècle, alors que sévissait encore la la petite vérole, une maladie très meurtrière, l’inoculation de la variole s’est progressivement répandue à travers toute l’Europe. Considérée comme l’ancêtre du vaccin, cette méthode consistait à inoculer du matériau variolique prélevé d’une personne malade à une personne saine afin de prévenir les risques de la variole naturelle circulant parmi la population. Cet article analyse l’étude de cas à laquelle le philosophe Kant a été confronté de son vivant : l’inoculation de la variole est-elle moralement permise ?

Smallpox was an endemic, very contagious disease which caused a high mortality rate during the age of enlightenment. In order to counter act this epidemic, smallpox inoculation was developed. This technique consisted in the inoculation of infected pus taken from a sick person into a healthy one in order to prevent the risks of natural smallpox infection. It was in this context that a German doctor in charge of inoculation wrote to Kant twice in 1799, and again in 1800, to ask him if inoculation was morally permissible. Kant wrote a draft of an answer, but it was never completed or published during his lifetime. These drafts provide elements of an answer that he nevertheless refused to give explicitly in the Doctrine of Virtue (1797) where the question of the morality of inoculation remained unanswered.