Institutionalising Kant’s political philosophy: Foregrounding cosmopolitan right
| Author | Luke Ulaş |
| Published date | 01 July 2021 |
| Date | 01 July 2021 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/1474885118794006 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
EJPT
Article
Institutionalising Kant’s
political philosophy:
Foregrounding
cosmopolitan right
Luke Ulas¸
Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, UK
Abstract
There exists a longstanding debate over the global institutional implications of Immanuel
Kant’s political philosophy: does such a philosophy entail a federal world government, or
instead only a confederal ‘league of nations’? However, while the systematic nature of
Kant’s tripartite ‘doctrine of right’ is well recognised, this debate has been conducted
with all but exclusive focus on ‘international right’ in particular. This article, by contrast,
brings ‘cosmopolitan right’ firmly into view. It proceeds by way of engagement with
the two Kantian arguments made in defence of a ‘league of nations’ in discussion of
international right, each of which appeals to aspects of states’ supposed ‘personhood’:
the first appeals to states’ distinctive moral personality; the second to states’ physical
manifestation. The article considers what happens when we assess these arguments not
just in light of the demands of international right, but also in light of cosmopolitan right,
and thus in light of public right more comprehensively. The answer is that such argu-
ments cannot succeed as full defences of a league of nations. Indeed, when we assess
such arguments with cosmopolitan right in view, they point instead – either tentatively
or definitively – in the direction of world government.
Keywords
Cosmopolitanism, global justice, Kant, league of nations, world government
Among the debates that attend to interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s political
philosophy is an institutional question: does such a philosophy entail a federal
world government (Weltrepublik/Vo
¨lkerstaat), or instead only a confederal
‘league of nations’ (Vo
¨lkerbund )?
1
To ask this question is not to ask what Kant
himself actually thought – a vexed issue in itself, given his apparent inconsistency
on the matter across various of his works. Rather, it is to ask which institutional
European Journal of Political Theory
2021, Vol. 20(3) 421–442
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DOI: 10.1177/1474885118794006
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Corresponding author:
Luke Ulas¸, Department of Politics, University of Sheffield, S10 2TU, UK.
Email: l.a.ulas@sheffield.ac.uk
form can be best rendered consistent with the content of Kant’s political philoso-
phy, regardless of what Kant’s own institutional view may actually have been.
To paraphrase one contributor to the debate, it is to ask what Kant – and any
Kantian – should say (Carson, 1988).
For some Kant scholars, the proper Kantian answer to the institutional question
is world government. For those of this persuasion, if the institutional ‘surrogate’ of
a league of nations has a role, then this is only as political necessity, or as a tem-
porary transitional institution on the way to eventual global sovereignty (e.g. Byrd
and Hruschka, 2008; Carson, 1988; Habermas, 2006; Ho
¨ffe, 2006; Hodgson, 2012;
Kleingeld, 2012; Lutz-Bachman, 1997). On the other side of the argument, how-
ever, are those who argue that there are good normative reasons, internal to Kant’s
political philosophy, for the rejection of a world government and endorsement
instead of a confederal league (e.g. Brown, 2009; Capps and Rivers, 2010;
Cavallar, 1994; Flikschuh, 2010; Holland, 2017; Mikalsen, 2011; Raponi, 2014;
Ripstein, 2009; Varden, 2011).
This debate, however, has to date been conducted with focus upon one of the
three forms of ‘public right’ at the heart of Kant’s political philosophy, namely
‘international right’. It has here either been argued that the need for a world
government follows by simple analogy with the requirement for individuals to
join together in a state in order to realise ‘domestic right’; or else it has been
claimed that the international context is sufficiently disanalogous to the individual
context that a league of nations is instead the correct answer. In neither approach is
much attention paid to the third form of right, namely ‘cosmopolitan right’, the
institutional implications of which remain underexplored. In one sense this is
understandable, because Kant himself does not address the institutional question
with specific reference to cosmopolitan right. But it is nevertheless also surprising,
because the systematic, multi-level nature of the ‘doctrine of right’ – comprising
domestic, international and cosmopolitan forms – is well recognised. Kant makes
this systematic nature plain when he writes that ‘if the principle of outer freedom
limited by law [i.e. public right] is lacking in any of [the] three possible forms of
rightful condition, the framework of all the others is unavoidably undermined and
must finally collapse’(MM 6:311).
2
Since this is the case, it cannot be sufficient,
when considering the institutional question, to restrict our focus to international
right, because in doing so we remain ignorant about whether the institution
we deem appropriate for the realisation of international right, considered in
abstraction, renders cosmopolitan right ‘lacking’. What is needed, in order
properly to consider the institutional question, is to bring cosmopolitan right
into view. That is the purpose of this article.
After first explicating the content of cosmopolitan right – and in particular,
arguing for a reading of cosmopolitan right that includes a modest right of
asylum – the article will proceed in a way that might be described as dialectical.
The bulk of the article focuses on the arguments that are made in defence of a
league of nations in discussion of international right. These two arguments contend
that the demands of right as they apply to individuals in a ‘state of nature’ cannot
be simply transposed to states in a second, international state of nature. Both of
422 European Journal of Political Theory 20(3)
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