Kant’s republican theory of justice and international relations
| Author | Terry Nardin |
| Published date | 01 September 2017 |
| Date | 01 September 2017 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1177/0047117817723064 |
| Subject Matter | Articles |
https://doi.org/10.1177/0047117817723064
International Relations
2017, Vol. 31(3) 357 –372
© The Author(s) 2017
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DOI: 10.1177/0047117817723064
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Kant’s republican theory
of justice and international
relations
Terry Nardin
National University of Singapore; Yale-NUS College
Abstract
Kant’s primary concern in writing on international relations is how to achieve ‘justice’ (Recht)
between states. This means that instead of reading Kant as a theorist of peace or world
government, as IR theorists have usually done, he is better read as a theorist international justice.
His view of justice, which identifies it with a legal order that respects freedom as independence
or nondomination, is broadly republican. But he equivocates on the possibility of justice at the
international level, and this narrows what is usually seen as a wide gap between Kant’s thought
and political realism. The paradox his uncertainty reveals is that it is wrong for states to remain
in a lawless condition yet impossible for them to escape it so long as they remain independent.
An international order cannot generate genuine law because there are no institutions to make,
interpret, or enforce it. This means that states are entitled to determine their own foreign affairs.
The gap between sovereignty and justice cannot be closed so long as these ideas are defined as
they are within the state. The problem is not that a full, secure, and nonvoluntary system of justice
that preserves the sovereignty of states is contingently unlikely. It is conceptually impossible. This
conclusion poses a challenge to current theories of global justice.
Keywords
freedom, global justice, independence, intellectual history, international legal order, international
relations, International Relations theory, Kant, nondomination, political realism, republicanism
So much has been written about Kant on International Relations (IR) that one needs a
good reason to write yet another article on the subject. My reason is that IR theorists
often overlook questions that emerge more clearly if one starts not with Kant’s remarks
Corresponding author:
Terry Nardin, Yale-NUS College, 10 College Avenue West, Singapore 138609.
Email: tnardin@yale-nus.edu.sg
723064IRE0010.1177/0047117817723064International RelationsNardin
research-article2017
Article
358 International Relations 31(3)
on international relations but with his more general political and legal philosophy. Kant’s
main concern in writing on the state and law is with Recht, which I will translate as ‘jus-
tice’. His focus is on the justice of law, and his ideas about international justice are based
on his ideas about justice in this sense. So, instead of reading Kant as a theorist of peace
or world government, as IR theorists usually do, I propose to read him as a theorist of
justice. And before discussing his ideas about international justice, I will discuss his
ideas about justice within the state: civil justice.
Kant sounds several republican notes in writing about civil justice. He focuses on the
threat of despotism and on separating legislative and executive authority as a barrier to
despotism. He also draws upon the republican idea of freedom as independence or non-
domination. But in contrast to many others who use a republican vocabulary, Kant is
concerned as much with the ways that independence can be violated in relations between
private persons as with threats posed by despotic government. He also breaks with repub-
lican thinkers by distinguishing normative and empirical considerations in defining inde-
pendence. The duty to respect independence sets limits to justifiable coercion, which in
a legal order are limits beyond which moral obligations are not legally enforceable.
Kant’s theory of justice also has some unexpected affinities with political realism. His
theory rests on a distinction between ethics and politics and, therefore, on a version of
‘the autonomy of the political’ that post-Rawlsian realists emphasize as an alternative to
Kantian liberalism.1 And it suggests a revised view of Kant’s contribution to IR theory,
which is, I will argue, less substantial than many suppose. Kant’s theory of justice is
powerful, but his application of that theory to international relations supports the realist
conclusion that understandings of justice derived from the civil condition, where there
are institutions for enacting, adjudicating, and enforcing law, have limited purchase at
the international level. To work out the implications of the idea of justice as justifiable
coercion for relations between states is largely a task for politics, not philosophy.
I begin by suggesting that by focusing on the contingent relationship between peace
and republican institutions, IR theorists have neglected Kant’s contribution to debates on
international and global justice. What Kant has to say about these topics rests on his
theory of justice in general, which is not well understood by IR scholars. This theory
reveals another side of Kant’s republicanism, one focused on the idea of justice as justifi-
able coercion. To establish this, I locate Kant within the larger realm of republican politi-
cal thought and suggest how his conception of independence differs from that of
contemporary republican political theorists. And I conclude by sketching some implica-
tions of Kant’s republican understanding of justice for international relations. This
understanding differs from the cosmopolitan and distributive view of justice that prevails
in the contemporary literature on ‘global justice’. Kant’s pessimism about the possibility
of establishing a genuine legal order beyond the state raises questions about the realism
of proposals, including his own, for justice outside a civil order.
Some approaches to Kant on international relations
Like Hobbes and other philosophers whose writings have become canonical for IR the-
ory, Kant wrote little about international relations. Commentators, therefore, return
repeatedly to the same few texts, seeking new ways to dispel their obscurities and resolve
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