Cosmopolitan Aim Research Articles

Purposiveness, transcendental ideas, andphilosophical history. Notes on the Idea for aUniversal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim, in lightof the Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique ofPure Reason

This paper aims to point to relationship between Transcendental Dialectic of the Critique of Pure Reason (KrV) and Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim (IaG). Specifically, it seeks to show the theoretical and methodological foundation that the principle of purposiveness and the systematicity of reason, as presented in the KrV, offer to Kant’s philosophical conception of history in the IaG. The paper is divided into three sections. The first section presents – as problematic – the premises that, in the introduction to the IaG, Kant adopts in his philosophical investigation of history. The second section focuses on the Appendix to the Transcendental Dialectic, examining the legitimate use of transcendental ideas, as well as their indeterminate objective necessity. Finally, the third section examines some propositions of the IaG, suggesting that the repercussion of the Transcendental Dialectic on the IaG allows us to understand Kant’s distinctive investigative method in philosophical history.

Kant's Racial and Moral Theories

In the field of study of Immaneul Kant, it has become apparent that scholars must reassess his seemingly universalist moral theory in the context of his racist and otherwise bigoted thought. In particular, many of these analyses revolve around one particular instance of anti-colonial sentiment found in Kant’s essay “Toward Perpetual Peace”. In this paper, I engage with two attempts by Pauline Kleingeld and Lucy Allais, which argue for a primarily-universalist and primarily-racist Kant respectively. Ultimately, I argue that Kleingeld and Allais’ analyses both fail because they prioritize philosophical motivations for Kant other than his teleology in his conceptions of morality and human nature. I first present an analysis of Kant’s work focused around his essay “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim” that demonstrates the primacy of teleology to Kant’s system of thought, including his moral theory. I then argue that it is the nature of a teleological system such as Kant’s to establish a hierarchy, and I show how this is apparent in Kant’s work, including “Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals”. Under this lens, it becomes clear that Kant’s exclusionary epistemology of human nature is not inconsistent with his ethics, and is easily recontextualized through his teleological perspective of human life and behavior.

Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Missionary Cosmopolitanism in Nineteenth-Century British Literature

Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics by Dilek Huseyinzadegan

Reviewed by: Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics by Dilek Huseyinzadegan Elaine P. Miller (bio) Dilek Huseyinzadegan, Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics Northwestern University Press, 2019, 204 pp. ISBN 978-0-8101-3987-9 The opening pages of Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics present the controversial central claim of the book head on: Kant’s teleological arguments in political philosophy, which have a contentious reputation in Kant circles, not only should not be omitted from scholarly inquiry but form an essential part of what Dilek Huseyinzadegan calls “Kant’s nonideal theory,” or the second prong of his dual-focused political philosophy. Nonideal theory, a term Huseyinzadegan borrows from Charles Mills, is anchored, on her argument, in the regulative principle of Zweckmässigkeit, or purposiveness, and has as its purview the contingent variables of politics such as history, culture, and geography. Accordingly, she names “nonideal” the part of his political philosophy that takes up not a priori ideals and political goals but the messiness of actual, empirical history. In The Racial Contract, Mills describes the aim of examining a nonideal contract, such as Rousseau’s in “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality,” in order to “explain and expose the inequities of the actual nonideal polity” (Mills 1997, 9). The racial contract, in relation to social contract theory, starts with “uncomfortable reality” in order not to have to continually “retreat into illusory idealizing abstraction,” and so that it can readily shift between the hypothetical and the actual (Mills 1997, 130). Part of the historical support for Mills’s argument that the racial contract constructs not only racial exploitation but also race [End Page 238] itself can be directly traced to Kant. Huseyinzadegan’s work is not an apologia for Kant, but a demonstration of the ways in which Kant countenanced the nonideal features of his own description of geography and peoples as a part of political philosophy that concerned itself with empirical, historical reality alongside the principles of political right. Huseyinzadegan locates Kant’s political philosophy not only in the obvious “political writings” but in a range of critical and noncritical texts, focusing notably on the Critique of Judgment, a work that some may feel has nothing to do with politics. Of course, Hannah Arendt’s Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy argued convincingly for the relevance of the “Critique of Aesthetic Judgment” to a Kantian political philosophy, and spurred a whole line of interpretations in this vein, but this is not Huseyinzadegan’s focus. She draws attention rather to the relatively neglected “Critique of Teleological Judgment,” fully aware of the controversy to which this focus might give rise. In emphasizing purposiveness as a regulative principle that informs Kant’s political philosophy, she argues that Kant’s use of teleology does not render up an unsavory narrative of world history moving inexorably toward a European end, but rather foregrounds the gap between the ideals put forward by his theory of Recht and the realities of current culture that fail to live up to them. It is in her identification of Zweckmässigkeit, which operates as a link, in the manner of reflective judgment, between the ideals of Recht and the nonideality of actual history, that Huseyinzadegan makes a decisive contribution to the interpretation of Kantian political philosophy. Chapters 1–3 of Kant’s Nonideal Theory of Politics cover Kant’s essay “What is Orientation in Thinking?”; “Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim”; “What is Enlightenment?”; and the Doctrine of Right. Huseyinzadegan starts by identifying in the Critique of Pure Reason a precursor to the concept of reflective judgment. Here Kant talks about ideas of reason as providing an “imaginary focus” that allows for a greater unity and extension between the concepts of the understanding and the sensible experience they constitute. This hypothetical unity gives rise to a hope that, despite all the diversity and seeming infinitude of empirical experiences, it still might be possible for us to draw them all together as if they belonged to this imaginary focal point. The regulative use of this imaginary point serves to orient us in an otherwise bewildering or overwhelming amount of sensible experience. We cannot dogmatically assert the...

Dois momentos do cosmopolitismo kantiano

Nesse artigo, busco investigar dois momentos da concepção kantiana de cosmopolitismo. Primeiramente, como ela aparece nas Observações sobre o sentimento do belo e do sublime (1764) e, em seguida, como é retomada em Ideia de uma história universal de um ponto de vista cosmopolita (1784). Argumento que nesses dois textos há um nexo entre cosmopolitismo e história e que esse vínculo opera sob o fundo da metafísica especial. Atestada pela ideia especulativa de totalidade, pertencente à cosmologia racional, a articulação entre cosmopolitismo e metafísica especial termina por evocar a teologia racional, devido ao uso que Kant dá à “natureza” como a autora de um plano orientado para realizar a destinação moral da humanidade. Após examinar o estatuto dos argumentos teológicos nas Observações e na Ideia de uma história universal, procuro apontar as diferenças da concepção kantiana de cosmopolitismo nesses dois escritos.

From sociology to social theory: Critical cosmopolitanism, modernity, and post-universalism

This article focuses on the critical cosmopolitan aim of transcending sociology’s provincial outlook, which mistakenly universalizes Western societies’ historical experiences and normative aspirations. The authors argue that a change in perspective, from sociology to social theory, is crucial in this regard. While a sociological inflection carries a primary investment in the analysis of changes cosmopolitanism brings to the social world, social theory addresses the ontological and epistemological features that these changes precipitate. To demonstrate this, the authors offer a condensed reconstruction of critical cosmopolitan sociology, presenting Beck’s foundational formulation, outlining three main criticisms it faces and alternative programs stemming from them, and demonstrating how Delanty’s immanent-transcendent approach overcomes these limitations. To conclude, the authors address a crucial onto-epistemological challenge facing contemporary cosmopolitan scholarship, namely, how to mediate between the particular and the universal.

Practical Necessity and the Fulfilment of the Plan of Nature in Kant’s Idea for a Universal History

Abstract I explore the role of practical necessity in Kant’s essay Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim. This form of necessity arises on the basis of social and interstate antagonism and Kant appeals to it with the aim of avoiding the introduction of a standpoint that is external to the agents whose attitudes and actions are being described. In connection with the role that Kant accords to practical necessity in the establishment of the legal and political conditions required to fulfil the ‘plan of nature’ in the course of history, I argue that in this essay he fails to identify a mechanism that would explain a fundamental moral change in that which motivates human beings once these conditions have been established. This in turn invites questions concerning the kind of universal history that Kant proposes. In particular, I argue that the choice of historical material that it demands could, in certain circumstances, be regarded as counterpurposive in relation to the aim of nature of which Kant speaks in the same essay.

Immanuel Kant: Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim”, trans. A. W. Wood, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Anthropology, History, and Education

Immanuel Kant: Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim”, trans. A. W. Wood, in The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Immanuel Kant: Anthropology, History, and Education

Emergent constellations: Global citizenship education and outrospective fluency

Global citizenship education (GCE) is an essential element of twenty-first-century teaching and learning. For some, GCE signifies an attitude of cosmopolitan purpose, placing humanity ahead of self. For others, GCE embodies a fractured sense of both learner and educator identity. For a third group, GCE is a critical interrogation of pervasive norms. How schools practise GCE, despite globalised rhetoric, poses challenges for educators and students alike. In this article, research is presented from an ongoing study into the activation of GCE in a single international school. The conceptualisation developed as part of the research is aimed at reconciling the individual learner and the learning community, without losing the strengths of either. Underpinned by Habermas’ (1984) Theory of Communicative Action and Krznaric’s (2014) outrospective empathy, outrospective GCE features pathways towards mindful-yet-active global learning. The conceptualisation presented in this article, although reflective of universal ideas, does not account for all cases and contexts. Instead, outrospective GCE applies to educators seeking a means of engaging with and enlivening situated GCE innovation.

Providencia y cosmopolitismo. Elementos estoicos en la filosofía política de Kant

This paper aims to show in the first instance that the notion of providence that Kant uses in works such as Perpetual Peace and Ideas for a universal History with a cosmopolitan Purpose corresponds in some central aspects to the Stoic idea of providence. Secondly, it will be argued that it is in this context in which it is possible to assess the Kantian notion of cosmopolitanism correctly. Finally, this paper suggests that this way of philosophically confronting the problems of history and politics provides an answer to the systematicity constraint, which according to Kant is required by reason itself. indeed, this very idea of system is linked to a good extent to Stoic philosophy.

Immanuel Kant and Endogenous Growth Theory

AbstractDespite the modern origins of endogenous growth theory, we argue that the ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Aim’ written by Immanuel Kant in 1784 provides an early and coherent example of such a theory. Kant's endogenous growth mechanism is driven by the inherent rivalry that exists between agents which increases effort and strengthens the accumulation of knowledge, which in turn is carried through generations. In an exercise in ‘rational reconstruction’, we present a mathematical model of Kant's mechanism. We use the model to contribute to the contemporary policy debate as to whether ‘keeping up with the Joneses’ leads to excessive effort.

Defending Kant after Darwin: a Reassessment of Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose

The paper argues that Kant’s teleology in Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose can be salvaged only if the mechanism of social unsociability, considered as the true center of the essay, is a) detached from the ? by contemporary standards ? hardly defensible notion of ‘natural dispositions’ and b) understood in conjunction with general premises that Kant does not make explicit, but rather takes as self-evidently true. In this perspective, Kant’s teleology is reduced to the affirmationthat, given certain constant features of human beings (mainly, limited benevolence and ability to see their best interest through experience) as well as relatively constant objective circumstances of the world we live in (mainly, availability of finite yet sufficient resources and sustainable growth in a competitive yet peaceful system), an approximation of human affairs towards the ‘cosmopolitan constitution’ is the most likely outcome. The paper moves the first steps towards a defense of this thesis by reformulating Kant’s argument in a way to make it compatible with contemporary science.

The Who and the What of Educational Cosmopolitanism

In the educational strand of cosmopolitanism, much attention has been placed on theorizing and describing who is cosmopolitan. It has been argued that cosmopolitan sensibilities negotiate and/or embody such paradoxes as rootedness and rootlessness, local and global concerns, private and public identities. Concurrently, cosmopolitanism has also been formulated as a globally-minded project for and ethico-political responsibility to human rights and global justice. Such articulations underscore cosmopolitanism in anthropocentric terms. People can be cosmopolitan and cosmopolitan projects aim to cultivate cosmopolitan subjectivities. What is striking about scholarship in educational cosmopolitanism is its lack of serious attention placed on the greatest global threat facing not only but largely created by human beings: environmental degradation. In this paper, I provide an overview of key texts written on the who in educational cosmopolitanism which helps lay the groundwork for an analysis of what is cosmopolitan. Regarding the what, I examine a range of boundary-defying emergencies described in cosmopolitan terms including climate change, radioactive poisoning of the planet, and bioinvasion. In the last analysis, I consider what it would take and what the possibilities are for our species to be truly committed to caring not only for the human world.

Two Responses to Paul Bourget: Henry James and Thomas Mann

In Homi Bhabha’s introduction to The Location of Culture, he argues that we need to think beyond concepts such as nationality, historical period, class and gender and consider the interstices or spaces between them, in order to explore what identity really means. Taking a cue from Benedict Anderson’s work on the ‘imagined communities’ of nationality, Bhabha suggests that there is evidence of what he calls ‘a more transnational and translational sense of the hybridity of imagined communities’.1 Although one might think that the term ‘cosmopolitan’ could denote such a hybrid imagined community, Bhabha does not use it here, possibly because of its social connotations, or possibly because he does not wish to attach these interstices to one particular label. He does however refer to it in two overlapping articles from 1996, ‘Unpacking My Library. . . Again’ and ‘Unsatisfied: Notes on Vernacular Cosmopolitanism’.2 In these pieces he criticizes Martha Nussbaum’s essay ‘Patriotism and Cosmopolitanism’ on the grounds that her ‘universalist model’ of cosmopolitanism does not address questions of ‘humanness’, agency or the position of the subject.3 Bhabha takes specific issue with her spatial model of cosmopolitan identity, where the self is at the centre of a series of concentric circles from family, to ethnic and communal groups, to humanity per se. Nussbaum’s universalist view of cosmopolitanism, based mainly on her reading of the Stoic philosophers and Kant, owes an acknowledged debt to Kant’s two essays that might be seen as the founding texts of modern cosmopolitan theory: ‘Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose’ (1784) and ‘Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch’ (1795).4 In the latter, Kant conceives a tripartite model of national or civic law, international law and cosmopolitan law, based on a loose global federation of nation states. Where Nussbaum suggests that universal cosmopolitanism is the outermost circle of this model,

Advancing Cosmopolitanism through International Competition

The impact of the Olympics seems global, but is it cosmopolitan? Cosmopolitan theory needs to be expanded to include criteria for evaluating the effects of transnational non-governmental associations. Such criteria would enable cosmopolitans not merely to argue for the toleration of associations but also to consider how associations advance cosmopolitan norms and dispositions. Assessing institutional, developmental, shared identity and public sphere effects, this article uses the example of the Olympics to explore what it would mean for an association's effects to be cosmopolitan. Establishing standardised international rules and shared global norms such as fair play are cosmopolitan aspects of the Olympic movement. These shared rules and practices lead to transnational communities among elite athletes, sports administrators and even audiences. The nationalistic aspects of the Olympic Games keep this association a partial expression of cosmopolitanism. Partial expressions of cosmopolitanism, however, have the potential indirectly to advance cosmopolitan norms among those who do not necessarily embrace cosmopolitanism. The Olympics demonstrates that to advance cosmopolitanism requires more than a declared cosmopolitan purpose.

Spatial Historiography and Empire in Michel Butor's Degrés

Michel Butor reflects on the idea of in his 1960 novel Degres as well as in his contemporary theoretical essays on the roman comme recherche. Of particular concern for the former is the place of metropolitan France in the history of globalization, especially the post-World War II period in which European hegemony has given way to a rising American empire. The relationship between history, geography, and empire is not only a theoretical question for Butor, however; it is also formally apparent in his experimentation with literary space and time and his reflexive, shifting use of voice. Although it is Michel de Montaigne to whom Butor devoted a book, (1) it is Immanuel Kant who first propounded the idea of in modern European philosophy. While Montaigne derided what he called cosmography as opposed to topography in his famous essay Des Cannibales, Kant called for a common universal reason to supersede particular accounts of different places. (2) In his essay Idea For a Universal With Cosmopolitan Purpose [Idee zu einer allgemeinen Geschichte in weltburgerlicher Absicht], Kant defines such universal reason as a historical narrative, determined by nature, which will inevitably lead to a world order of cosmopolitan peace. He also admits at the beginning of his ninth proposition that this progressive ideal may appear to be no more than a strange work of fiction, ultimately comparing the linear, narrative development of history to the writing of a novel: A philosophical attempt to work out a universal history of the world [allgemeine Weltgesehichte] in accordance with a plan of nature aimed at a perfect civil union of mankind, must be regarded as possible and even as capable of furthering the purpose of nature itself. It is admittedly a strange and at first sight absurd proposition to write a history [Geschichte] according to an idea of how world events must develop if they arc to conform to certain rational ends; it would seem that only a novel [Roman] could result from such premises. (3) Butor, in his essay Rechcrches sur la technique du roman, refers to as one of the implicit meanings of histoire, but also acknowledges its inaccessibility, its referential impossibility: Nous savons bien que dans ce qu'on nous raconte, il y a des choses qui ne sont pas vraies, non sculement des erreurs mais des fictions, nous savons bien que le meme mot francais histoire designe a la fois le mensonge et la verite, la conscience meme que nous avons du monde en mouvement, l'Histoire ... (4) He goes on to argue that as much as this concept may exist, it can never remain entirely stable due to a kind of dialectic or counterpoint of conflicting temporal orders, on which he further elaborates under the heading Contrepont temporel: Un effort rigoureux pour suivre I'ordre chronologique strict, en s'interdisant tout retour en arriere, amenc a des constatations surprenantes: toute reference a 1'histoire universelle devient impossible, toute reference u passe des personnages rencontres, a la memoire, et par consequent toute interiorite. (5) It is along different yet comparable lines that Walter Benjamin questions the projects of universal history and historicism in his 1940 essay On the Concept of [Uber den Begriff der Geschichte]. Here, Benjamin critiques the way in which historieism produces a conception of the past in terms of empty time, and instead develops a more open, architectonic idea of history based on what he calls the now-time [Jetztzeit]: History is the subject of a construction whose site is not homogenous, empty time but time filled by the now-time. (6) It is in this way that Benjamin opposes the homogenizing universalism of historicism--and its implicit justification of historical oppression as naturally ordained--with the more revolutionary potential of both historical materialism and the now-time (related to what he elsewhere calls messianic time). …

Historical trends and human futures

Kant’s essay Idea for a universal history with a cosmopolitan purpose differs in deep ways from standard Enlightenment views of human history. Although he agrees with many contemporaries that unsocial sociability can drive human progress, he argues that we know too little about the trends of history to offer either metaphysical defence or empirical vindication of the perfectibility of man or the inevitability of progress. However, as freely acting beings we can contribute to a better future, so have grounds for committing ourselves to human progress even if we cannot guarantee or know that it will continue indefinitely. As Kant sees, it, human progress is better seen as a practical assumption—an Idea of Reason—than as a theoretical claim.

World legislation: The form and function of a romantic cosmopolitanism

I suggest that a potential fruit of the idea of cosmopolitanism is the challenge it can pose to conventional oppositions between Enlightenment and Romanticism, and between empiricism and visionary imagination. I attempt to sketch an outline of such a challenge by deriving a dialectical conception of cosmopolitism, on the models of Hegel's “concrete universal” and Benjamin's discussion of Klee's “Angelus Novus,” from Kant's Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. I try to illustrate the pertinence of such a conception to both English Romanticism itself, with particular emphasis on Wordsworth's “Intimations Ode,” and to recent critical discourse upon it, by way of discussions of Hartman, McGann, and Chandler.