The article investigates the problem of Kant's proposal for a final global legal order. Kant expressed his stance very vaguely in the consecutively published texts On the Common Saying, Toward Perpetual Peace and The Metaphysics of Morals, which enabled numerous, often contradictory interpretations. The aim of the paper is to propose an alternative method of analysis of Kant's texts, which on one side reconciles textual discrepancies in his writings and on the other throws new light on many of the previous (...) interpretations. In order to accomplish this goal, I draw distinctions between four perspectives, from which the philosopher considers this issue in his writings. This allows me to give the final form of Kant's world peace, explain the character of the international state of nature vs the original one, and understand the role of the principles of politics and the status of Kant's teleological understanding of history. (shrink)

O objetivo deste artigo é examinar a hipótese de que a teoria kantiana do direito público seja estruturalmente antinômica, a despeito de que Kant só lhe tenha admitido o aspecto paradoxal. Com efeito, a teoria kantiana do direito público simultaneamente sustenta: (i) que o ingresso dos homens em um estado juridicamente organizado depende da obediência ao comando da razão que nos ordena celebrar o pactum unionis civilis e aceitar a submissão a uma ordem constitucional civil; (ii) que devemos aceitar como (...) nosso legítimo soberano a quem quer que tenha condições de efetivamente impor seu poder sobre nós. Bons intérpretes como Bouterwek e Hermann Cohen pensaram, contudo, que a verdadeira dificuldade dessa análise é uma desconcertante confusão dos conceitos de soberano e de soberania. A hipótese que procuramos explorar neste artigo é a de que se obterá um melhor entendimento da posição de Kant se admitirmos que os dois planos de análise e as teses conflitantes a que se acaba de aludir estão em uma posição reciprocamente equivalente à que se encontram tese e antítese nas antinomias dinâmicas analisadas na "Crítica da razão pura". The aim of this paper is to examine the hypothesis that Kantian theory of public rights is founded on an antinomic conceptual structure, even though Kant only admitted the paradoxical character of his doctrine. Kant's theory on public right states, at the same time, that: (i) the access to a rightful condition is dependent on our compliance to the command of reason to celebrate the pactum unionis civilis and the corresponding submission of the citizens under a civil constitution; (ii) we shall accept as our legitimate sovereign whoever is able to impose his power over us. Good interpreters, as Bouterwek and Hermann Cohen thought, however, that the true difficulty with his analysis is that it contains an astonishing confusion of the concepts of sovereign and sovereignty. The hypothesis I would like to explore in this paper is that perhaps a better understanding of Kant's position on this theme can be obtained by admitting that the two levels of analysis and the conflicting thesis we found in his doctrine of public rights are in a position reciprocally analogous to that occupied by thesis and antithesis in the dynamical antinomies assessed in the Critique of Pure Reason. (shrink)

Although Kant argues that a world republic with coercive public law is the only rational way to secure a lawful cosmopolitan condition, he states that it is an unachievable ideal, and he proposes a voluntary, non-coercive federation of states as a substitute. While some scholars have criticized Kant for moving away from this ideal due merely to pragmatic considerations, I argue that his rejection of a coercive world republic is based on his conception of state sovereignty and what is required (...) for a lawful condition. I consider how we can institutionalize a lawful condition between states without a coercive world republic in ways that go beyond Kant’s voluntary federation. I also consider how we can resolve this dilemma in Kant’s account to support a federal world republic. (Published online first on June 16, 2014). (shrink)

The aim of this paper is to offer a political reading of Religion within the boundaries of mere reason. For this I will examine the way in which Kant’s international law is applied in the ethical-legal parallel in this work. In the first place, I will show that although Kant uses in Religion the term “republic” to refer to the association of States, however, he does not hold the model of a world republic for international law, but rather of a (...) Federation of States. In the second place, I will show that Kant does not hold a state analogy with international law, but an ethical-legal analogy between the ethical community and the international legal condition under the free Federation of States and cosmopolitan right. Finally, I will present the sense in which this analogy exposes Kant's idea of progress for existing political communities. (shrink)

In recent developments in political and legal philosophy, there is a tendency to endorse minimalist lists of human rights which do not include a right to political participation. Against such tendencies, I shall argue that the right to political participation, understood as distinct from a right to democracy, should have a place even on minimalist lists. In addition, I shall defend the need to extend the right to political participation to include participation not just in national, but also in international (...) and global governance processes. The argument will be based on a cosmopolitan conception of political legitimacy and on a political conception of human rights that is normatively anchored in legitimacy. The central claim of my paper is that a right to political participation is necessary – but not sufficient – for political legitimacy in the global realm. (shrink)

This article explores the bases of Kant’s cosmopolitanism in his more systematic writings on freedom, judgment, and community. My argument is that, if we peer beneath his more explicitly normative prescriptions for achieving “perpetual peace,” we find the tools not just of a cosmopolitan vision but what we might call a “cosmopolitical method.” While many assume Kant’s political thought descends directly from his moral philosophy, a look back at relevant passages in the first Critique reveals an alternative reading that points (...) toward his theory of reflective judgment, which combines practical freedom with judgments based on theoretical concepts. Of particular importance is Kant’s conception of community as commercium, through which Kant discerns all matters of right to concern the way free actors are constrained to share the earth in common. These considerations allow for a broader way of thinking about Kantian cosmopolitanism, one that is responsive to the reflective judgment of world citizens as they encounter new challenges. (shrink)

This paper explores the implications of Manfred Kuehn’s observation that Kant’s claim in Religion within the Boundaries of Mere Reason that the ethical community must be a community under God seems “a bit strained.” After clarifying Kant’s train of thought that results in his conception of the ethical community in the form of the “visible church,” the paper argues that the seemingly strong religious dimension may be misleading. If we understand the ethical community to be the development of the kingdom (...) of ends in the Groundwork, it becomes apparent that Kant’s notion of God’s “sovereignty” over the ethical community is a shared sovereignty lodged in rationality and not in God’s own will. The “strain” that Kuehn senses thus suggests the potentially gratuitous nature of Kant’s references to God’s sovereignty over the ethical community. Despite the initial appearances, Kant’s account of the ethical community in the form of the visible church is, over the long term, closer to a secularizing move than to a robustly religious one. (shrink)

In Religion within the Bounds of Bare Reason Kant speaks of an ethical state of nature and of an ethico-civil condition, with explicit reference to the juridical state of nature and the juridico-civil condition he discusses at length in his legal-political writings. Given that the Religion is the only work where Kant introduces a parallel between these concepts, one might think that this is only a loose analogy, serving a merely illustrative function. The paper provides a first outline of the (...) similarities and the differences between the state of nature and the civil condition in Right and in ethics. The comparison points to a deeper, structural relation between the two pairs of concepts. By doing so, it makes room for developing a unitary conception of the state of nature and of the civil condition, which would underlie both the ethical and the juridical version. (shrink)

This paper concentrates on the way Kant's distinction between duties of right and duties of virtue operates at the interstate level. I argue that his Right of Nations (V ölkerrecht) can be interpreted as a duty to establish a kind of interstate distributive justice (that is, as a duty to secure states in their independence and territorial possessions), which is called for to secure domestic distributive justice and to protect individuals' freedom and private property. Or at least this is 'ideal (...) theory' for, as I specify, this cosmopolitan linkage is compromised by Kant's endeavour to accomodate the existence of non-republican states. (shrink)

The aim of this article is to argue that the principle of “publicity” constitutes a fundamental idea in Kant’s political thought. Publicity provides a central insight that binds together various strands of Kant’s political writings (on issues as diverse as the question of Enlightenment, the right of revolution, historical teleology, reflective judgment, cosmopolitan citizenship, democratic peace, and republican government), and moreover, it offers a much-needed cornerstone for a systematic exposition of his nonexistent political philosophy. Apart from some eminent examples, publicity (...) has been a rather neglected topic in the ever-expanding literature on Kant’s political ideas. Revisiting this notion will make us more attentive to his evocation of the “spirit of republicanism” over and above the letter of the law, and might prompt us to reconsider Kant’s reputation as a classical representative of liberal political thought. Indeed, it should inspire us to situate Kant’s appeal for the “public use of reason” in the vicinity of the republican ideal of political liberty. (shrink)

It is sometimes held that modern institutionally-focussed conceptions of social justice are lacking in one essential respect: they ignore the importance of civic friendship or solidarity. It is also, typically simultaneously, held that Aristotle’s thought provides a fertile ground for elucidating an account of civic friendship. I argue, first, that Aristotle is no help on this score: he has no conception of distinctively civic friendship. I then go on to argue that the Kantian distinction between perfect and imperfect duties is (...) more useful than talk of civic friendship in capturing the non-institutional demands of social justice. (shrink)

Kant described the state as a ‘moral person’, and did so when dealing with international relations. For all the interest in his contribution to the theory of global politics, the locution according to which Kant characterized the state has received very little attention. When notice has been taken of it, the moral personality of the state has moved arguments in opposing directions. On one recent reading, when Kant called the state a moral person he intended to indicate that it possessed (...) certain duties to itself and to others, for the sake of which it could be coerced to leave the international state of nature. On another, the juridical compulsion of states to join a state of nations or world republic is categorically ruled out because this would impair their moral personality. Both cannot be right. In this article, I analyse Kant’s notion of moral personhood, contextualizing it within his wider philosophical concerns. On the basis of this groundwork I put forward an argument about Kant’s theory of the moral person of the state which allows me to show how he in fact was able coherently to incorporate two seemingly contradictory arguments about the state as an international actor in a single argument, and present this as my solution to what I call the Perpetual Peace Puzzle. (shrink)

El artículo reconstruye tres estratos de un concepto de lo social que puede encontrarse en la filosofía práctica de Immanuel Kant sin recurrir a sus textos de antropología e historia. Para ello se especifican las nociones de coexistencia humana y coacción recíproca universal que describe en su Metafísica de las costumbres, con el fin de indicar que con ellas no cabe referirse a una sociedad, sino a la forma de una. Posteriormente se reconstruyen algunas coordenadas de la “comunidad ética” presentes (...) en La religión..., para argumentar, por una parte, que aquí puede hablarse de una sociedad como tal, y por otra, que esta puede conformar un puente entre la forma de la sociedad jurídica y la formación ética de las personas, i.e., entre el uso externo de la libertad y su uso interno, al socializar máximas morales y abrigar estas una peculiar normatividad intrínseca. (shrink)

In the following essay, I attempt to reactualize some of Kant’s most fundamental conceptions of a state’s sovereignty and the legitimacy of the cosmopolitan order. To this end, I provide what appears as a viable solution to Kant’s “sovereignty dilemma”; that is, the reconciliation between state sovereignty and the international enforceability of laws. I consider that a key component of the overall Kantian cosmopolitan project is the role played by the transcendental notion of an “originally united will” in its validation (...) of constituencies. I emphasize the view that for Kant state-citizens are also, as he says, “citizens of the world” or “citizens of the earth”. I argue, furthermore, that a state’s sovereignty must comply with a number of different constitutional wholes. I then proceed by confronting the Kantian notion of a general united will with the Habermasian conception of “double sovereignty.” I conclude by suggesting a fusion/synthesis between the two views, one which would require endorsing the idea of cosmopolitan constitutionalism as a meta-framework for interpreting the legitimacy of member states’ compliance with policy indications of transnational constituencies. (shrink)

This article defends state sovereignty as necessary for a form of popular sovereignty capable of realising the republican value of non-domination and argues it remains achievable and normatively warranted in an interconnected world. Many scholars, including certain republicans, contend that the external sovereignty of states can no longer be maintained or justified in such circumstances. Consequently, we must abandon the sovereignty of states and reconceive popular sovereignty on a different basis. Some argue sovereignty must be displaced upwards to a more (...) global state, while others advocate it be vertically and horizontally dispersed to units below, across and above the state. Each group offers a related vision of the European Union to illustrate their proposals. Both these arguments are criticised as more likely to produce than reduce domination because neither can sustain a form of popular sovereignty capable of instantiating relations of non-domination. This article proposes the alternative of a republican association of sovereign states that allows sovereign states and their peoples to mutually regulate their external sovereignty in non-dominating ways. This alternative proposal provides a more plausible and defensible means for sustaining the requisite kind of popular sovereignty in contemporary conditions and a more appropriate vision of the European Union. (shrink)

This article is a study of that eminently European contribution to world politics: the idea of cosmopolitanism. The argument is that modern cosmopolitanism depends on two postulates which are contradictory. Cosmopolitans have always claimed, “There are two cities, one higher and one lower.” Modern cosmopolitans, however, claim, without abandoning the first postulate, “There is only one city.” In this article I ask four questions which enable the contradiction between these to be illustrated. These are: Is the cosmopolis the higher of (...) two cities? Is it a community of men and gods? What is the criterion of inclusion in it? How free is one to be cosmopolitan? Along the way I clarify what I consider the fundamental contradiction of modern cosmopolitanism to be by distinguishing it from what I call the fundamental problem and the fundamental paradox of cosmopolitanism. (shrink)

A comprehensive and practical study tool, introducing Kant's thought and key works and exploring his continuing influence.

Large Language Models (LLMs) like ChatGPT were trained on human conversation, but in the future they will also train us. As chatbots speak from our smartphones and customer service helplines, they will become a part of everyday life and a growing share of all the conversations we ever have. It’s hard to doubt this will have some effect on us. Here I explore a specific concern about the impact of artificial conversation on our capacity to deliberate and hold ourselves accountable (...) to reason – that is, to be autonomous, in Kant’s sense of the term. I develop ideas from psychologist Jean Piaget to show how chatbots are autonomy traps: their deference to our commands tempts us into venting authoritarian whims, ultimately weakening our own self-control. I argue that the Kantian tradition, including Piaget and sociologist Emile Durkheim, offers powerful conceptual resources for resisting this slide. But it will require us to do something that may seem bizarre: we will need to treat mindless chatbots as if they are autonomous persons too. (shrink)

In this essay I discuss the issue of Kantian hospitality and how Katrin Flikschuh’s arguments in “Kant’s Nomads: Encountering Strangers” offer us a framework for dealing with certain problems that seem to arise out of the Kantian account, namely, problems of dealing with cultures unlike modern liberal states, such as nomadic and indigenous communities. I look at some criticisms of Kant’s position on hospitality and cosmopolitan right and on how Flikschuh’s discussion helps to resolve these criticisms. I focus especially on (...) her discussion of respectful interaction and openness in the course of encountering cultural others, encounters that inherently and positively contain a large element of unexpectedness. (shrink)

In her thought-provoking article: “Kant’s Nomads: Encountering Strangers”, Katrin Flikschuh pursues three aims: I- to loosen the noose of the Kantian duty of state entrance against the repeated allegations of its inflexible universality; II- to rescue Kant from a certain “belligerent” liberal discourse that has overlooked his ambivalence on the question, at the expense of his potentially constructive insights; III- to articulate the possibility of an encounter with deep and permanent differences in culture or a “reflexive openness” that can help (...) us face the “culturally unfamiliar”. Its success relies upon reading Kant’s philosophy as proceeding from a first-personal experiential standpoint, that is, a regressive strategy of justification. Though sympathetic to Flikschuh’s project, this paper wishes to examine to what extent it is compatible with the Kantian theory of the State, on the one hand, and his transcendental idealism, on the other. In the end, it may be that Kant’s openness to the other, however sincere, remains transitory at best. (shrink)

In this thesis I defend the principle of global egalitarianism. According to this idea most of the existing detrimental inequalities in this world are morally objectionable. As detrimental inequalities I understand those that are not to the benefit of the worst off people and that can be non-wastefully removed. To begin with, I consider various justifications of the idea that only those detrimental inequalities that occur within one and the same state are morally objectionable. I identify Thomas Nagel’s approach as (...) the most promising defence of this traditional position. However, I also show that Nagel’s argument does not even justify the elimination of detrimental inequalities within states. A discussion of the concept of political legitimacy rather shows that egalitarian justice is not a necessary condition of the justifiability of the exercise of coercive political power. I, then, consider other, more Rawlsian approaches to the question of detrimental inequalities. These views appear more plausible than Nagel’s position and argue that egalitarian duties also arise in certain international contexts. But also these more global theories of distributive justice suffer from shortcomings. Since they make the application of duties of justice dependent on the existence of social practices they cannot adequately account for the justified interests of non-participants that are affected by these practices. The counter-intuitive implications of practice-dependent theories lead me to investigate the plausibility of a theory that does not limit justice to existing practices and that argues for the inherent value of equality. This theory is global egalitarianism. I defend global egalitarianism by debilitating three objections that opponents of this idea frequently present in the relevant literature. Finally I also address two particular objections to the idea that global egalitarian duties are institutionalizable with the help of coercive global authorities. (shrink)